Resident,
Biz Owner to Head Pico District |
By Jorge Casuso
January 9 -- Realtor Robert Kronovet looks up and down
Pico Boulevard and sees plenty of potential. There’s the High
School and the College, four major hotels, a new park and a couple
of large chain stores, in addition to pockets of small businesses.
“We have a tremendous number of assets on Pico,” says
Kronovet, a former City Council and Rent Control Board candidate,
who was elected Tuesday night to chair the Pico Business Improvement
District.
“We’re trying to generate positive attitudes,”
Kronovet says. “We’re going to keep monitoring our growth
and the positive energy of the City.”
The Pico District board hopes to forge an identity for a thoroughfare
that claims more than 80 diverse businesses -- from small ma and
pa shops to Trader Joe’s to the Academy of Recording Arts
and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammys.
“We’re building our own success,” says Kronovet,
who finished a respectable fourth in his 2006 bid to become the
first non-tenant advocate elected to the Rent Board since it was
created nearly three decades ago. “We want more involvement
from the merchants.”
The district, which has $140,000 in the bank and an $80,000 budget
to promote the area, has used its voice to lobby for everything
from new signage for merchants to more officers to patrol the streets,
Kronovet says.
The Pico Artists at Work Festival doubled its turnout last year
and this year, the district will promote area businesses with an
event that will bring two large London buses to shuttle visitors
up and down the boulevard.
Although Pico has a visual identity forged in part by medians and
light fixtures that help tie the eclectic street together, it lacks
the cohesive nature of pedestrian strips such as The Third Street
Promenade, Montana Avenue and Main Street.
Instead of long rows of shops and restaurants, Pico claims small
pockets of shops separated by public institutions and parks.
But like other business districts in the city, it has grappled
with the sometimes conflicting interests of merchants and residents,
particularly over street parking and noise.
Both a Pico resident and a business owner, Kronovet sees a synergy
between those who run businesses on the strip and the neighbors
who live nearby.
“Merchants have always played a role in the prosperity of
an area,” says Kronovet, who lives a block from Pico and has
his realty firm on the strip. “If the businesses fall apart,
the residences fall apart.”
|
