Downtown expert Roger Brooks warned Heber City leaders there are two major issues that can kill a community’s downtown — having a highway run through the middle and not having the correct mix of businesses available for shoppers and pedestrians.
Heber City is experiencing both problems, he pointed out.
With U.S. 40 running through the heart of Heber City and with real estate, insurance and a gaggle of other office-based businesses lining the busy street, the room grew somewhat tense during the meeting Tuesday where the City Council and Planning Commission had gathered.
Brooks explained he’s surveyed 2,000 downtowns and downtown districts in the United States and Canada, and re-emphasized that the biggest killer had already arrived to Heber City.
However, he said, there is hope. Rather than waiting 10 or 20 years for the Utah Department of Transportation to finish a bypass that will divert the county’s traffic away from Heber City, he referred to the community’s Envision 2050 general plan.
“They actually showcased a pedestrian mall behind the backside of the buildings that sit on the west side of Main Street,” Brooks said. “That is how Heber City will create a downtown atmosphere that can win.”
He also said that such a project will likely be necessary for a successful downtown so long as U.S. 40 remains in the center of Heber City.
Without the pedestrian mall, he warned it will be difficult to foster necessary businesses and keep them alive.
“We can fill that full of fantastic restaurants, retail shops, you name it,” Brooks said. “They are not likely to succeed, because right in front of their doors you have a major freeway. … But that pedestrian mall area on the back will be a pedestrian mall, and if you get that, then the fronts of those buildings then go up on the back side and now you have a place where downtown can succeed.”
Those two aspects, he said, are the most important hurdles the city needs to face for a successful downtown.
“The next phase of this really creative downtown atmosphere is to do that pedestrian walkway,” Brooks said.
He said it could be one of the city’s next key projects.
“Downtowns are about an intimate, pedestrian-friendly place for people to gather and hang out,” Brooks said. “It needs to be beautiful. … But that’s minor to these other things.”
Once a more suitable atmosphere is created for those businesses, Brooks and Keri Smith — a community leader in Caldwell, Idaho, who has pushed for and promoted a vibrant downtown in the city — explained there is still work to do when it comes to securing the right kinds of businesses.
Heber City officials toured Caldwell earlier this year.
On a recent visit to Heber City, Smith said she noticed similarities between businesses on Main Street and businesses that operated downtown in Caldwell before she was able to help the community secure a better future for their downtown.
“If you would have went to my downtown just a decade ago, you would have seen pawn shops, thrift stores, banks, churches, seasonal tax business and real estate office,” she said. “We had a couple of very old dive-type residents.”
A lot of those businesses were not conducive to the atmosphere of a thriving downtown, she said. The city implemented zoning changes to motivate them to move somewhere where they wouldn’t we where pedestrian visitors would be more likely to visit.
“It’s really key to implementing the right business mix, and you have to strategically think about what that right business mix is and what will drive traffic,” she said. “The zoning ordinance needs to be very specific.”
She said approved businesses need to meet high standards.
“Although real estate businesses who want to be down there in the main thick of things, they really are not driving traffic that are bringing people down to spend money and have a quality experience in your downtown.”
She said it’s never too early to start the zoning process.
Brooks said he follows what he terms the 10-10-10 rule: within three linear blocks, every successful downtown needs 10 places that serve food, 10 destination retail shops and 10 businesses open past 6 p.m.
“Seventy percent of all brick and mortar spending takes place after 6 p.m.,” he said.
Councilor Sid Ostergaard said that while local businesses are interested in moving downtown and becoming a more central part of Heber City, high rent discourages them.
He asked Smith and Brooks what they would recommend.
Brooks said it could be helpful to limit or even prevent franchises or chains from the core downtown area.
“People are coming into your core downtown to go to Wendy’s, McDonald’s,” he said. “By restricting those, then it keeps property owners from raising their rent to where the only people that can afford to be there are those chains and franchises.”
Smith said that in Caldwell, they started with usual downtown rent prices coming somewhere between $5-$7 per square foot yearly. Now, as businesses have enjoyed the foot traffic and customers that have been attracted to that area, property owners take some of that success and rates look closer to $20-$25 per square foot annually.
She added that property owners were incentivized to improve their shops.
“We are getting nearly the same rent as downtown Boise in our little, tiny hometown,” she said. “Our businesses are making it as long as there’s a right business mix and they’re doing their part to drive traffic into their own store.”
As Heber City continues to try to recruit Wasatch County and the Wasatch County School District to the city’s community reinvestment agency, Ostergaard asked if the community faced backlash from community members who worried incentives for property owners downtown were unfair or only benefited developers, an issue he said he’s seen.
Smith said it wasn’t a huge issue — she said social media wasn’t as big a force 10 years ago — and Brooks recommended city officials try to put it into perspective for their constituents.
“The primary duty of every elected official is to improve the quality of life for their citizens,” Brooks explained. “In order to improve the quality of life for your citizens, you need tax base. Wouldn’t it be great if your commercial district was providing a greater share of the taxes than your residences?”
Heber City is considering zoning regulations for the municipality’s downtown zone, and there are meetings scheduled next month to once gain pitch the CRA to Wasatch County and the school district.