Business owners express concerns, confidence at first EDC merchants meeting

By FRANCISCO E. JIMENEZ
Staff Writer
reporter@sbnewspaper.com

Business owners from San Benito share ideas about how to improve the downtown area at a meeting inside Liberty Income Tax Wednesday morning. (Staff photo by Francisco E. Jimenez)

Business owners from San Benito share ideas about how to improve the downtown area at a meeting inside Liberty Income Tax Wednesday morning. (Staff photo by Francisco E. Jimenez)

The San Benito Economic Development Corporation held its first Downtown Merchants Meeting on Wednesday morning in what EDC Director Salomon Torres hopes will become a monthly event.

At the meeting, Torres along with fellow EDC board members and business owners discussed matters such as parking on Sam Houston Boulevard. Ideas to help nurture business growth were also discussed; both new and established business owners of the downtown district were also encouraged to work together toward achieving as much.

“Those of you who own a business are to be commended,” EDC board member Pete Claudio said during the meeting. “Ultimately, the goal is to make downtown better. How are we going to get traffic to stop?”

“We have to try to promote San Benito,” fellow EDC board member Jose Morales offered. “We need to go out and lend a hand to any (business owner) who needs it.”

The meeting was held inside Liberty Income Tax, located at 251 N Sam Houston Blvd., where owner David Perez refurbished the building thanks to the EDC’s revolving loan program.

“The basic idea is to not fall into the pitfalls that we had in the past,” said Ron Ogdee, whose family has long owned property on Sam Houston Blvd. “In the past, we’ve had countless meetings like this, but we always seem to focus on one facet. This group needs to focus on filling this community with the widest variety of businesses it can attract. It’s not the responsibility of the city to do that, but the city can help. That’s the only role I see for the EDC, is to help.”

Ogdee added, “The EDC has to go out and organize the people, prospective merchants and businesses to come and open up in San Benito. That’s basically where we’ve always fallen down in the past.”

While Ogdee shared his concern over history repeating itself, he also expressed confidence in Torres and his ideas to bring more businesses to San Benito.

“I am happy with the turnout,” Torres said. “We had a great mix of representatives. We had business owners, we had our EDC board members, and we had property owners, too. We wanted more actual business owners here, but I think those that were here are going to help get the word out of what we’re trying to accomplish in these meetings.”

Torres said that he saw hope in the future of the downtown business district with the group of merchants who attended Wednesday’s meeting. The EDC director said he plans to address some of the concerns brought forward by the business owners present at the meeting as well as provide them with data from the EDC’s analysis of the downtown district, such as who’s renting, owning and what type of businesses inhabit the area.

“We’re going to share with them this data that we’re going to collect over the next 30 days,” Torres said. “You’re also going to see the group formalize, or come up with some recommendations to the city, as far as the issue of parking. That topic kept coming up today. That’s a signal to us that we need to discuss it at great length, and then come up by the end of the meeting with some recommendations. We’re going to repeat what we did this time, meaning advertise for it, walk the streets again, and then probably recruit a couple of volunteers to help get the word out so that we can increase the number of attendees.”

The next meeting is scheduled for the third week of April. More information will be available in the coming weeks as it becomes available.

Read this story in the March 24 edition of the San Benito News, or subscribe to our E-Edition by clicking here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2013/03/22/business-owners-express-concerns-confidence-at-first-edc-merchants-meeting/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.