Arcade history repeats itself
by Winnie Hirsch

What has the shopping center at the "Y" intersection got to do with the redevelopment of downtown Ojai? - specifically, that area north of the Arcade now being demolished so that underground sewer, water and electrical systems will be made serviceable again and the area restored to beauty.
In case you doubt it, it has plenty to do with it, for no sooner was that shopping center completed in 1966 than the new grocery store (now Vons) was advertised as the largest air-conditioned building in the Ojai Valley with automatic doors ("which really pleased the shoppers"). For those and other reasons, the new shops drew business away from the old downtown. Stores in the village began to close. The Arcade became seedier and seedier and the back of the Arcade was a shambles - although that was nothing new.
By the late 1960s, the Ojai City Council recognized that something had to be done to revitalize the down-at-heels Arcade. It was no longer attracting the locals, let alone tourists, and it was only then that somebody brought up the idea of a redevelopment agency to finance the needed improvements.
Most people, I think, have no idea how badly off this area was before it was redeveloped the first time. They don't know that the sidewalks outside the Arcade buildings were lighted by a very few lanterns of extraordinarily small wattage and that all were connected to a box attached at the rear of Rains Department Store.
They don't know that there would have been no street lights at all in the Arcade if the newest merchant in the block wasn't assigned to go door-to-door collecting money each month from its merchants to pay for public lighting.
They don't know that some of the merchants were doing so badly they couldn't contribute their share. Some people probably don't know that the merchants still pay for all the improved lighting in the village and are assessed for it and other amenities now available to the public.
Some people don't even know that by the 1970s the property taxes derived from what would become the Ojai Redevelopment Project Area were so low that the school board declared that the schools would scarcely feel the loss of income if the funds were diverted from the general fund into redevelopment to enable improvement of the area.
Of course, redevelopment didn't get started without a battle. Not in Ojai! No way!
We who were members of the first Ojai Redevelopment Commission had to face an auditorium jam-packed with frightened, enraged people. They had learned that a Redevelopment Agency had the right of condemnation, and they were sure that bulldozers would go through the city destroying their homes. No one seemed to listen when we assured them that no property could be condemned unless a government had the money up front and that penniless Ojai couldn't afford to condemn one piece of property, let alone 300, even if it wanted to.
Ojai Mayor James Loebl spent countless evenings listening to residents' worries about what would happen if redevelopment became a reality. When it was brought to a vote of the people, redevelopment won. I know because victory was celebrated in an empty store we owned behind the Arcade.
After that, however, nothing seemed to happen downtown. Some of us became discouraged by the lack of activity. We didn't know that things were really happening and that those things were awful, at least they were awful for those who had to cope with them.
The problem was that at the beginning of the last century, surveyors simply rounded off their measurements, so when the Redevelopment Project Area was re-surveyed, it was discovered that almost every property owner in the Arcade held a few feet of somebody else's property and that a few feet of his own property belonged to someone else!
It was then that Ojai Redevelopment Commissioner David Hirschberg and the late City Council member Frank McDevitt began days of talking. They talked and they talked their way from one end of the Arcade to the other, convincing each owner (some of whom were absent) to sign a release so that redevelopment could begin. They were holding their breaths, fearing that the last property owner might not sign up. But he did. A triumphant Hirschberg later said, "Coordinating people was something I did well."
Hirschberg also admitted, when the project was finally finished (1981), that he was not completely satisfied with the result. He regretted that t he city (acting as the Redevelopment Agency) hadn't acquired all the open space behind the Arcade, that the passage which runs from Ojai Avenue to the plazas behind was less inviting than planned, and that the contractor with the lowest bid got the job. The result, he thought, wasn't top of the line.
On the good side, those of us who had been less involved were delighted with the results. Whatever its faults, the area looked a thousand times better and the project was completed in the nick of time. Due to the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, cities were cut off from much of the property tax they had depended on. With redevelopment completed, stores in Ojai began to thrive and tourists began to leave more money in town - which meant that the city of Ojai was hurt less than most cities by the cut in property taxes.
Now, 20 years later, the process of improvement has begun again. This time the city should achieve success faster because the area is properly surveyed and the city knows where the old water and sewage lines are - which is more than they knew back then. The city has been satisfied with past performances of the new contractor, and all of us hope that the refurbished plazas will be better maintained in the future than in the past.
So, dear readers, be kind to the shopkeepers who are working under considerable stress and inconveniences. Let us hope that the project is finished by Thanksgiving and that the result will be as lovely as the artist's rendition.

Note: No property in the Ojai Redevelopment Project Area was ever condemned. In those days Ojai City Council members (mayor included) received $25 a month; commissioners, as they do today, received nothing.

© 2002 The Ojai Valley News

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