HomeMy WebLinkAbout11/7/2023 Item 6a, Brown
Pamela Brown <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:downtown
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Dear Council member,
I have been in San Luis Obispo for over 50 years and have seen many changes to our downtown in that time. I know
some change is inevitable and necessary, but some of the recent changes are just ludicrous and counter-productive. I
used to hear people say how lucky we were to still have a charming downtown that had plenty of retail and that hadn’t
been killed by all of the stores moving to malls.
The pandemic didn’t help and neither did a decade of City Councils. Have any of you bothered to add up the number of
square feet of empty retail space there is in just the 800 block of Higuera? I don’t have the answer to how to fix the
situation, but I do know nobody wants to go downtown and pay the ridicuolus cost of parking when they can park free
at a shopping center. Additionally, landlords have created an untenable situation with unreasonable rents. Restaurants,
bars and farmers’ market bring people downtown evenings, but shoppers are going elsewhere.
It may be too late to revive downtown, but it’s time to start trying. Please do what you can to make
downtown welcoming. Subsidize retail? Free or low cost parking? Thank you for giving this your attention.
Sincerely,
Pamela Brown
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