Special meeting to focus on needs, wants; free-flowing brainstorm session hoped for

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

The city’s Economic Development Board will hold a special workshop Wednesday to discuss First Street, Main Street and Chamber of Commerce activities.

Calling it a “roundtable discussion,” acting Economic Development manager Mario Giuliani said the meeting at the city’s Community Center “will be kind of a workshop format. The idea is to talk about activities that are happening on First Street, some possible activities you would like to see.”

Key topics of the discussion, he said, will be vision, activities and ideas for First Street; how to measure an activity’s success; and how to get the word out about activities.

Roundtable meetings like this one are a good way to allow people to brainstorm and provide feedback, Giuliani said. “This is a great opportunity to plant the seed of a new idea. Sometimes it takes those ideas a few years to really sprout, but they’ve got to be planted somewhere,” he said.

“Here’s an opportunity for someone to plant their seed.”

Tourism panel talks intermodal

At the meeting of the Tourism Committee of the EDB last Thursday, much of the focus was on the upcoming Sunset Weekend in Menlo Park, a two-day event held by Sunset magazine at which destination cities hawk their wares — in a word, themselves.

At this year’s event June 2-3, Benicia, once again, will be one of them. “Our application was accepted, so we will be participating,” Giuliani told committee members. “And it is a corner booth, so that’s a nice addition from last year.”

Discussion of the details of Benicia’s participation in Sunset Weekend will be ongoing, Giuliani said.

Also last week, senior city engineer Mike Roberts gave an update on the intermodal project, showing committee members artistic renderings of the changes slated for the area around City Park.

“I’m very excited about this project. I think it’s going to revitalize Main Street and Military,” Roberts said.

The improvements, including bulbouts — enlarged sidewalk corners — and lighted crosswalks are set to “make it more attractive, and more walkable for people downtown,” he said.

Merchants and other committee members were urged to pass on details of the project to other downtown merchants. Construction, Roberts said, is slated to start in late May and “we figure (the project) will be done in August.”

Meanwhile, he said, “We’ve taken some exceptional steps to minimally impact the residents and downtown businesses. One is the schedule. The other is, we’re only allowed one lane of traffic to be taken or used by the contractor in each direction at one time. This is to ensure there is smooth traffic flow.

“The third is, any time the signals would go on flashing red or be shut down, rather than having that occur or putting up stop signs we’re requiring that they have flaggers in the intersections move the traffic through.”

If You Go
Benicia Economic Development Board will meet at the Benicia Community Center, 370 East L St., Room 2, on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.