Pico Facelift Spurs Merchants to Forge Identity

By Jorge Casuso

Unlike upscale Montana Avenue or trendy Main Street, Pico Boulevard has always seemed to lack an identity.

To most motorists it is "the Pico corridor," a busy thoroughfare that just happens to run past a hodgepodge of motels, car repair shops, apartment buildings, schools and a smattering of storefronts before it hits the storm drain on the beach.

But now Pico is getting a $7.4 million dollar face lift that will turn it into a stately boulevard with a neat rows of nearly 600 London plain trees and Jacarandas, new sidewalks and crosswalks, streetlights and a festive artsy entrance under the freeway.

The new, improved Pico, however, has left merchants - a dozen of whom met with city officials Thursday -- groping for a new identity they hope can be forged without sacrificing the low rents that have allowed their businesses to remain in an increasingly upscale city.

"We have a unique opportunity," said Clyde Smith, a long-time Pico activist. "People all over the country are talking about Santa Monica. It can be this new thing. You're talking about a new opportunity to look at the situation in a very new way."

Phillip Smith, who owns House of Records on the eastern end of Pico, sees the boulevard becoming a unique village. Unlike Montana or Main Street, which are little more than rows of boutiques and restaurants, "Pico Village" has all the ingredients of an independent little town.

There's a bank, a large grocery store (Trader Joe's), a pharmacy, a high school and a college, hotels and motels, a small post office, a locksmith, a music store, car repair shops and, what is rare in Santa Monica, a handful of gas stations. Soon, there will even be a park when Virginia Park is expanded south to Pico.

But Pico still lacks a unifying image. It has, for example, one of the most exclusive restaurants, Valentino, down the block from a McDonald's. A tiny woodwind repair shop sits just two blocks from the Grammy Awards headquarters.

"You need to define the future," Mark Richter, the city's economic development division manager, told the merchants. "We can't dictate what you want to do. People taking ownership -- in the successful streets that's the hallmark."

But some of the merchants, who said they had heard this talk before, were cynical.

"The city has never watched out for retail on Pico," said Mike Howell, owner of Santa Monica Lock & Safe Co. near Cloverfield Blvd. "We're very cynical. After 25 years we're saying, 'Yeah, right.' We've heard it all before."

Howell worries that the new medians will restrict traffic from turning into business. He also fears that the new trees will obscure storefront signs that are restricted under a city sign ordinance that will be enforced in April.

"I'm going to be harder to see," Howell said. "It's going to be prettier, but it's going to be harder to get to. The city has done everything it can to kill retail on Pico."

That merchants are cynical, if not fearful of raising rents, could be seen by the dearth of participation in one of the city's most ambitious business improvement projects. Though 411 merchants and property owners were sent surveys, only 53 responded. And few, if any, of the businesses that requested applications for loans have bothered to turn them in.

City officials acknowledge that merchants are wary of the economic fallout. But they say fears of being priced out are exaggerated.

"Pico is not going to become Montana, Main Street or the Third Street Promendade," said Gwen Pentecost, the city's senior administrative analyst for economic development.

"This is only a beginning," said the city's resource manager Jeff Mathieu. "The city jump starts the process. We go where the people want to go."