By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

The Economic Development Board on Wednesday heard a report on city sales tax revenues in the second quarter of 2013.

Economic Development Manager Mario Giuliani reviewed the second-quarter sales tax report as it pertained to four areas in the city: downtown, Solano Square, Southampton Shopping Center and the Industrial Park. All areas were down compared to the second quarter of 2012 except Solano Square, he said.

Downtown, while the first quarter was up from 2012, the second quarter was down slightly, he said, $48,672 in 2012 to $48,264 in 2013.

Yet, “We’re still trending upward compared to other years,” Giuliani said.

The report showed that of the 246 reporting businesses on First Street, 33, or 13 percent, are restaurants and bars — yet that group brought in 70 percent of downtown sales tax receipts, Giuliani said.

“When I have talked about it in the past and we’ve been excited about the growth of our downtown sales tax, I’ve always cautioned by saying it’s being driven by our restaurants and bars. That is not a bad thing, but … my hope is to continue to break this down and chart this moving forward, and see how we can improve this number here,” he said, pointing at the other 30 percent.

The Industrial Park, by far the biggest revenue generator in the city, was down to $868,305 from $917,696 in the second quarter of 2012.

“We’re really seeing just kind of flat growth in the Industrial Park,” Giuliani said. “We really need and want to achieve a million dollars per quarter. We actually did that prior to the great recession.”

He said a couple businesses in the Industrial Park had banner quarters in 2012, but that was not something that could be sustained. “That was reflected a year later,” he said.

Related to the Industrial Park, a bright spot was Transient Occupancy Tax receipts, which Giuliani said continued to do well in the second quarter of 2013, up to $83,628 from $82,455 in 2012.

“As I’ve noted in our staff report, TOT is not aligned with our tourism program,” he said. “Our TOT is driven by our business in the Industrial Park, overnight stays for business.”

Meanwhile at Southampton Shopping Center, he said, revenue volatility has been the rule, though that may be changing.

“In ‘07-’08, the two-year quarter average was $72,000. Tracking that, it went down to $69,000 in ’09-’10. Looking at ‘11 and ‘12 it dropped even further, to $58,000. That’s a 19-percent decrease since 2007,” Giuliani said.

“Obviously we’re hopeful with the addition of Huckleberry’s and Panda Express, two restaurants, that our sales tax through those entities will bring those numbers back up in the center.”

He compared the volatility of Southampton to the relative stability of Solano Square, which has seen year-over-year improvement since 2007.

“While it is a smaller center, while it is generating less income, it still experienced the same recession that Southampton did. It did not have the same vacancy volatility, nor did it have the same volatility in sales tax receipts … in fact year after year it has gone up,” he said.

Board member Chad Coester credited Solano Square with avoiding Southampton’s tendency to “cannibalize.”

“The businesses coexist and don’t cannibalize each other, but if you look at Southampton, you have two fast food quick and convenient Chinese restaurants, one probably will die or will at least share the revenue for a period of time, same with Dollar General and the other facilities,” he said.

In other business, the EDB discussed moving its next meeting to Dec. 11 to make it a joint session with the Community Sustainability Commission. No final decision was made.