26 San Diego Uptown News | October 15-28, 2010 FROM PAGE 6 PARTNERSHIP


structure and focus. “Unfortunately,” Hargreaves


wrote, “the proposed contract is limited in scope and does not in- clude any projects that fall within the Five Points Neighborhood. Therefore, I will be organizing and closing all the project files for the Five Points Neighborhood in the coming months and preparing a final status report for the neigh- borhood.” Earlier this year, a group of dis-


satisfied business owners in the Five Points area organized to ex- plore breaking away from Uptown Partnership. Su-Mei Yu, owner of Saffron


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restaurant in Five Points, said she recognizes the need for an agency such as Uptown Partnership to help residents and business owners manage parking meter revenue. However, Yu said she feels Uptown Partnership has accomplished little in the way of tangible projects in Five Points. “I think they’ve had many years


to prove themselves ... (and) done only mediocre work,” she said. “Next to Gelato Vero (on India Street) there used to be a sign that said two-hour parking only. Some- body ripped out that sign and it’s never been replaced. It’s simple things like that have been ex- plained to them. We’re not talking about rocket science.” Though projects in Five Points


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have been suspended, Schultz said one of its four staff members will continue to work on two ongoing projects in the Mission Hills area. “Because we have a three-


month contract with the city [we’re] trying to focus on those areas where we think we can have the best response and the most im- pact,” Schultz said. An Uptown Partnership staff


member will be working to get curbs built in front of driveways that are no longer being used in the business area near Washington and Goldfinch streets, and to establish locations for new multi-space park- ing meter kiosks, she said. “It’s a fairly low-level effort,”


Schultz said. “They’re relatively easy for us to achieve.”


However, Wilson and some Five


Points business owners have criti- cized Uptown Partnership and its board for spending what they view as a disproportionate amount of time and money on projects in the Mission Hills area. “That board of directors has a


majority of people from Mission Hills; that’s the most affluent com- munity in Uptown,” Wilson said. “The problem is Mission Hills only generates five percent of the park- ing meter revenue. This is sort of a reverse Robin Hood. It’s take from Hillcrest and Bankers Hills, which are getting the growth and have the parking meters, and giving it to the community with the highest income level.” Though there was some talk


about the Hillcrest Business Im- provement Association taking con- trol of Uptown Partnership’s duties, Nicholls said he no longer views that as a viable option should Up- town Partnership be disolved. “The business association has


voted and taken a position that we want to see a different manage- ment structure” for Uptown Part- nership, Nicholls said. “We could certainly do it, but I don’t think it’s the best thing. The best thing would be a board of directors that represents the community that they claim to represent, and that proportionately represent their community ... not handpicked peo- ple every time.” Gloria said he believes that


there is an overall need for Uptown Partnership to continue, whether it be run by paid staff or volunteers. “I believe there is a great deal of


value in what Uptown Partnership does,” Gloria said. “I don’t believe it’s in the community’s interest to eliminate Uptown Partnership or


to break it into smaller pieces such that it’s not capable financially of doing anything.” While Uptown Partnership


works to restructure itself in the hope of securing additional fund- ing, 187 new parking spaces have been freed up for use on nights and weekends in the Department of Motor Vehicles parking lot on Nor- mal Street. A $1-per-hour fee will be col-


lected and used for ongoing main- tenance to the site. Use of the space was secured


by Councilmember Gloria and state Sen. Christine Kehoe. Gloria also helped secure 32 new parking spac- es in the lot adjacent to the long- shuttered Pernicano’s restaurant on Sixth Avenue. “As it became clear that a park-


ing structure is not financially vi- able for Hillcrest, my approach to this has been, looking at our existing inventory,” Gloria said. “We have a series of parking lots that are not utilized or underuti- lized. The DMV, Pernicano’s, the AT&T parking lot, the post office and the future library site all have surface parking lots with a number of spaces that, in each of those cas- es, were not available to the gen- eral public. In each of those cases we’ve systematically gone though working with individual property owners to open them up to the community.” Gloria said the DMV still in-


tends to redevelop the property in the future, which could mean an eventual reduction or elimination of those parking spaces. “I think in the current economic


environment that’s highly unlikely ... so all the more reason to take ad- vantage of this [parking] now,” he said.u


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