Council to consider approving plans for ongoing downtown development

CLEARLAKE >> The Clearlake City Council is scheduled to approve the city’s downtown strategic vision and authorize City Manager Alan Flora to execute a contract with a consultant, consistent with the city’s downtown implementation program, as well as hold a public hearing to consider projects and authorize applications for funding through the Community Development Block Grant Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Program, among other actions at their virtual meeting tomorrow.

According to a staff report, in 2019 the City of Clearlake began a relationship with Retail Strategies for retail business recruitment. Retail Strategies uses a data-driven approach and utilizes existing relationships with national retailers to attempt to bring retailers to their clients. For Clearlake, much of the current emphasis is based on attracting new businesses to the Highway 53 corridor.

Both the City and the consultants are sensitive to the need to attract more business activity into the “downtown” area of Clearlake, however staff recognizes this takes a different approach to be successful, in large part due to Clearlake not offering a traditional downtown environment. Further, what is considered the downtown area struggles from a lack of adequate infrastructure, particularly pedestrian and multi-model transportation amenities, and many buildings that are suffering from a lack of investment.

In October of 2020 Downtown Strategies hosted a stakeholder input session which was nat-tended by various business owners and other interested parties within the community.

The report from staff notes that at this time,

Downtown Strategies has completed the Strategic Vision and will present an overview of their recommendations.

Further, staff have asked Downtown Strategies to provide a proposal for a further relationship on which items from the Vision they can assist the City with implementing. Funding for both the Strategic Vision and Implementation Proposal are covered with state funds already appropriated in the City’s budget.

Similar to neighbor city Lakeport’s plan with their Retail Coach consultant, Clearlake is looking at a three year plan with Downtown Strategies at a cost of $25,000 for the currently proposed scope of work. The proposed three year plan includes among other objectives to prioritize the public investment of infrastructure through a complete streets approach, Utilizing gateway design treatments, begin to position each node in Downtown Clearlake as a distinct, unique area with specific entry points and specific characteristics and establish branded wayfinding signage should provide directional navigation to and from key destinations such as each Downtown node, City Hall, and other key city locations.

Also on the City Council’s agenda is a public hearing in relations to projects funded through the Community Development Block Grant Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Program and a discussion of a facility use agreement with Adventist Health Clearlake for use of the city’s shower trailer. According to the staff report for Thursday’s meeting, Adventist Health Clear Lake, through community collaboration entitled the “Popup Care Shower Project,” has expressed interest in providing showers for people currently experiencing homelessness using the City’s recently installed shower trailer at the Clearlake Senior/Community Center.

All guidelines related to the shower project were provided to the city in documentation dated November, 2020. According to the documentation, the 2018 PIT Count showed that the county already have people who are experiencing homelessness in every community in Lake County. Of the 612 total counted — 504 adults, 108 children (one out of six homeless people in Lake County was a child.)

Because of the pandemic, the Clearlake City Council meetings will be viewable via livestreaming on the City of Clearlake’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTyifT_nKS-3woxEu1ilBXA and the public may participate through Zoom at: https://clearlakeca.zoom.us/j/91885808820

Thursday’s meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. More information can be found at https://www.clearlake.ca.us/143/City-Council