Banks, offices coming to Clematis?
Property owners can’t find retailers to fill empty storefronts.
WEST PALM BEACH — Along with a redesign of Clematis’ streetscape and a new look for its back alleys, the rules of the road may soon change on West Palm’s main drag.
Property owners on Clematis Street and parts of Rosemary Avenue, restricted for 23 years to leasing only to shops or restaurants, may soon be free to fill store spaces with banks, offices and other businesses rather than let storefronts sit vacant.
While allowing banks and real estate offices hardly adds to a street’s sex appeal, “neither do vacancies,” said Raphael Clemente, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, which is pressing for the change. With the rise of Amazon.com, which draws shoppers from brick-and-mortar stores to e-tail, and with CityPlace and Palm Beach Outlets seducing other retailers, it becomes harder to sustain a downtown retail environment that used to include such chains as Banana Republic, Gap, Ann Taylor and Tommy Bahama, he said.
“It seemed reasonable to allow non-retail, non-restaurant uses to become tenants,” he said. “It’s all about remaining relevant in a changing economy and changing social situations.”
The City Commission is scheduled for an initial vote Monday.
Not everyone agrees with the proposal.
Russ Griffin, owner-optician of Finer Optics, at 330 Clematis since 1994, said the retail requirement should remain.
“If not, you’re going to have law firms, other businesses,” he argues. “Then anybody can close the front of that store and have offices and it wouldn’t benefit anybody walking by. I would be dead set against it . ... It needs to be retail or restaurants. That stimulates more growth, more walking around. I don’t think you’re going to come down here for real estate. You know where your bank is and you don’t need another one.”
But Thomas Rebhandl, owner of City Center Pharmacy at 416 Clematis, says the change makes sense.
“I don’t think there’s enough retail to fill all those spaces,” he said. “I’d rather see those spaces have tenants than have a storefront unoccupied for a couple of years.”
Added Jonathan Gladstone, a property owner on Clematis: “That’s something we’ve been advocating for a very long time.”
Gladstone, who is a retail broker, counts at least 43,000 square feet of vacant space, just on the 300 to 500 blocks.
He owns one of those, a building at 537-539 Clematis, at Clematis and Rosemary.
“It’s been dark for two years,” he said. “It’s really a Class A retail building, with marble floors, an elevator — just gorgeous.”
But even as an active retail broker, he can’t find a tenant for the 8,000-square-foot space and has had to turn down inquiries from banks that wanted to move in, he said. He lost a deal with a billion-dollar real estate company that wanted in, he added.
“With that old zoning, we’ve lost so many transactions that it’s not funny. ... These are large voids that can’t be filled very easily or quickly. It’s very difficult without new uses, like co-working spaces.”
People who think all storefronts should be filled with restaurants and nightclubs alone “never owned anything,” Gladstone said.
Restaurants go in and out of business and nightclubs house “unimaginable” activity, including beating sand stabbings, he said. “No way am I sending my kids to college based on restaurant revenue.”
The city recognizes the challenge, and with the help of a Knight Foundation grant is turning the shuttered Off the Hookah nightclub at 313 Clematis into a space for 12 small shops and offices, with an interior passageway leading back to an alley that the city is redesigning to attract pedestrians rather than stow garbage.
The Thoroughfare, as the project at 313 Clematis is called, is soliciting small and creative companies that otherwise would have to operate out of a warehouse or online. Applications for that competition are due to the city and Downtown Development Authority by May 14, at www.12x12wpb.com.
The winning competitors for the space will receive reduced rent, as well as marketing and advertising services, professional development training and three events to promote the space.
“The new space will help get the selected businesses off the ground, creating a new generation of success and prosperity rooted in a highly visible location on Clematis Street,” Mayor Jeri Muoio said.
Meanwhile, to encourage on-street dining and strolling, the city is scheduled to start a project in June on the 300 block that will remove curbs, widen sidewalks and shield more of the block with shade trees. Similar projects are planned for the 200600 blocks of Clematis in the future. The streetscape project is lauded by some as a boost for downtown walkability but criticized by some merchants because it comes at the expense of having fewer parking spaces.
The project to improve the alley between Clematis and Datura streets starts in October.
Development continues to bring people downtown, promising to feed the retail scene more as years go by. By the city’s count, since 1995, the number of downtown condos and apartments increased from 2,689 units to 6,753, with another 810 under construction and more in planning.
As those downtown dwellers move in, there’ll be more customers for downtown shops and the retail market will evolve organically, which is better than trying to force the issue with undue restrictions on what kinds of ground-floor tenants are allowed, said the Downtown Development Authority’s Clemente.
“If the market demand is there,” he said, “I’m sure the private sector will find its way in.”