As new DLBA vice president Kris Larson plans what to make of downtown’s bones, will he be able to sidestep its warring retail factions?

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM

“I don’t want to be dragged into this muddy fight,” Kris Larson almost pleads, proving how quickly he’s gotten up to speed as the new vice president of the Downtown Long Beach Associates (DLBA). Just about every veteran of Pine Avenue’s long-and-whining road to nowhere has wished something similar at one time or another.

Larson only arrived in Long Beach a few months ago. He came across the country from Raleigh, N.C., to help the city’s oldest economic center get a fresh start. At age 34, he couldn’t have fully appreciated how stale an assignment this was—the makeover of downtown Long Beach has been a work-in-(search-of)-progress for 40 years. And speaking of appreciation, well, the warring factions of the DLBA hardly ever do.

Now there are even signs of mutiny. Two petitions by DLBA stakeholders—one signed by businesses, the other by residents—are demanding that the organization’s president, Kraig Kojian, be fired after 10 years on the job.

“During his tenure, the retail and restaurants downtown have suffered a steady decline,” the petition reads. “The business owners have brought forward their concerns and ideas to improve the situation, and have found Mr. Kojian dismissive, uncooperative and unwilling to take the initiative necessary to implement improvements.”

The calls for Kojian’s head come at an unfortunate time for Larson, who is preparing to roll out the first phase of the long-range economic development program he will be implementing for the DLBA—a Web site that will provide an easy Internet inventory of downtown Long Beach properties. He’s clearly disappointed, but steadfastly diplomatic.

“I inherited a lot of situations I wasn’t privy to when I took the job,” Larson acknowledges. “I’m still learning about the personality and ego conflicts.”

The philosophy and design of the revival plan Larson has submitted to the DLBA board is based on what he describes as “science and art’’—that is, a framework of hard data that will be colored in by the energy and creativity of downtown businesses and residents. The Redevelopment Agency (RDA) paid an outside consulting firm, Strategic Economics of Berkeley, to assemble a comprehensive and current inventory of the number and demographics of existing businesses and residents—the DLBA had been using data from the last census in 2000. Larson is using this as the basis of the economic development plans he has begun to submit to DLBA and RDA officials.

“We are reshaping the process of economic development,” Larson says. “We are moving from a top-down model to more of a community-driven model.”

It already sounds better than the so-called strategy pursued by Larson’s sorta predecessor, Donald T. Smith, who was paid $262,000 a year by the RDA to beg big retailers to relocate downtown. Smith’s face was rarely seen unless he was feeding it at Smooth’s, and he was so universally considered ineffective that ultra-mannered Robert Garcia successfully campaigned for the 1st District City Council seat by unabashedly calling for him to be fired. Garcia’s reaction when told Smith had been quietly permitted to leave before his one-year contract had even expired: “Finally!”

By contrast, Larson loves to walk the eclectic downtown streets and started strolling when he came to town for his job interview last November. He says it’s what sold him on Long Beach.

“I was exploring on foot, not knowing where to go, and I happened on the corner of Linden and First—where Utopia restaurant is,” Larson says. “Walking up and down that little block made me feel I was in this really special but secret place. It is one of the best-scaled, double-loaded retail spaces.”

Best-scaled, double-loaded? Larson likes to talk the techno lingo. “That means it has well-designed business space on both sides of the street,” he explains.

Pine Avenue is like that, too, says Larson.

“There are so many old buildings with this great art deco vocabulary, many of which were built after the 1933 earthquake, with a scale that respects pedestrians,” he says. “Downtown has great bones.”

Nonetheless, as Larson rhapsodizes about architectural anatomy over a hot cup of something at the It’s a Grind coffee house that opened at 247 Pine last summer, the view out the front window and across the street is of the scuffed-and-faded tombs of long-deceased Bath & Body Works, Express clothing and Crate & Barrel housewares. So much of downtown’s bones add up to a skeleton, pretty much the way they did before a bustle of mid-1990s activity disintegrated during the last 10 years.

“People are struggling,” Larson allows. “Many are going to say, ‘I’m tired of hearing about plans. When are you going to help me?’ The reality is, it’s really tough. But there are some advantages to putting plans in place during down times, so that when the cycle picks up, we are ready. And there are some exciting things happening.”

He wasn’t talking about the petition calling for Kojian to be fired—although that’s definitely stirred up excitement.

“There’s a real shitstorm brewing,” says Scott Hamilton, president of DOMA Properties, who has advised the DLBA’s executive committee of the petition’s existence. “For so long the standard response we have gotten is that everything is going great at the DLBA—that the dissent was just a small group of negative people. But businesspeople do not sign a document like this lightly. And we have signatures of businesses all along Pine Avenue.”

Jim Anderson, chairman of the DLBA executive committee, declined to comment on the petitions because he says he still has not seen them.

“We have not delivered the petitions to the executive board because we don’t believe that would get us anywhere,” says Hamilton. “We are going to present it to the entire board. That is the only way to get anything done.”

Kojian did not respond to requests to be interviewed. Anderson says he supports Kojian’s refusal to comment because any comment would be beside the point.

“The point is that Kraig is doing exactly what the board has directed him to do,” says Anderson. “If there is confusion or unhappiness, it’s really an issue with the board.”

Meanwhile, Larson continues to plan and work and try to stay out of the fray.

“My hope is that they will trust my professional acumen,” he says. “I hope they say, ‘Kris, we want to give you the ball and let you run with it.’ ”

Tags: dlba, downtown, Kraig Kojian, kris larson, Long Beach, Pine Avenue