Creative Placemaking: A Vision for the City of Martinez Part 2

California's political landscape has changed, dramatically, with the swearing in of Governor Brown. Suddenly the smoldering embers of battles fifty years in the fighting have engulfed the Golden State quicker than the Station Fire of August '09. The question of embracing a "financing tool" that has turned neighbor against neighbor, stymied growth and according to one property owner, put off erstwhile investors, a Martinez Redevelopment Agency, could be settled once and for all with the stroke of a gubernatorial pen.

It's been a busy news cycle.

Meanwhile back to my reading list (have I mentioned just how much my kids hated moving because it meant small U-Haul boxes weighted with books?) I'm really enjoying Richard Florida's, The Rise of the Creative Class. Much of what I've read thus far resonates, i.e., in the chapter on The Power of Place, I ran across a 'manifesto' written by people working in the creative fields, the Creative Class, as Richard has coined. A quick google search led me to an article written about the group so I posted a link to my FaceBook profile. Immediately a young woman in my community, Candice Ferrogiaro (who epitomizes the Creative Class) owner of Citrus Salon, commented we should do that here. I think so too that's why I forwarded the Creative Placemaking white paper to our city manager, Phil Vince and Council Member Lara DeLaney.

Added to the books and reports I'm reading is the Downtown Specific Plan for the City of Martinez. It is in Appendix B - Existing Conditions that further bolsters my position and, in my opinion, behooves our elected officials to revisit in light of the case studies presented in Creative Placemaking. Even though my role as General Plan Update Task Force member is to think more broadly, our Historic Downtown remains a constant theme of our meetings.

As noted in my first paragraph the specter of a Redevelopment Agency in the City of Martinez is looming once again. Emotions run high on both sides of the issue. And a quick search of my name on the Gazette's website will show I've had a hand in that debate. Yet this was before I actually worked for the newspaper and spent my hours downtown listening to merchants and looking at the decline.

Last summer, armed with my BlackBerry and Mino HD, I began chronicling instances of musical involvement in community events and posted many facebook updates and tweets. The most telling comment was from a friend who used to live in Martinez, 'when did Martinez become so cool?' Sure Martinez has been called quaint, but cool?

So to wrap up a post that took too long to write, my vision for the downtown Historic District of Martinez is to transition from a Culture of Quaint to a Culture of Cool. Between Florida's book and the National Endowment for the Arts I am convinced the answer to our economic malaise rests on adopting a Creative Placemaking plan. The fact that grant monies are currently available to communities who encourage and adopt  creative placemaking means no matter where the redevelopment conversation goes, change and growth aren't dependent on the outcome.

I'll go into specifics next.