June 2006
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1st Place - Chocolate Noir
2nd Place - Greetings From Seaside Solano
Getting chocolatier and chalkier each year, the festival was an overwhelming success! For the first time since year one, the SAA decided to give prizes for the best art. Despite the premise that people should do art for art’s sake, we needed to bump up the level of creativity on the avenue. Over 400 daring artists, young and old, greenhorn and professional, showed up with chalk in hand to decorate our sidewalks.
The winners are:
First Prize $250
Located at 1853 Solano Ave.
“Chocolate Noir: She did it for the Cookie”
Ainsley Seago of Berkeley
Second Prize $100
Located at 1849 Solano
“Greetings from Seaside Solano”
Adeline Vargas of Berkeley,
Amber Arakaki of Berkeley,
Kristin Tso of Berkeley, Liang Huan of Berkeley,
Yuk Fai Tham of Berkeley
Runners Up $50 each
Located at 1580 Solano
“Animals of the World”
Tina & Julia Curiel of Lafayette
Located at 1820 Solano
“Chocolate Saves Lives”
Eva Reutinger of Albany
Located at 1877 Solano
“Footprints in Action”
Melanie Harbert of Newark
While being delighted with all of the artwork, about 2,500 festival attendees ate pounds and pounds of chocolate delights that they discovered in your businesses. The addition this year of the ‘Golden Ticket’ game allowed those of you without food in your store to participate by holding an in-store raffle using festival tickets. So far, the feedback has been very positive. We hope more of you will participate next year.
Shop Local! Shop Local! Shop Local! For every taxable dollar you spend, 1% of the sales tax goes into the city’s general fund. That fund is what pays for street repairs, sidewalks, police, etc. So instead of driving off to Costco or buying something online, find a small business on Solano and support your neighbor. You may pay a few cents more but studies show that locally-owned businesses reinvest more money into their local economies than national chain stores do. More about this in the upcoming months.
Solano Avenue Gift Certificates (SAGCs) are one of the best marketing tools the SAA has. Since we started the program in 1999, we have kept over $47,000 on Solano, money that could have easily been spent somewhere else, money that went directly into your cash registers. Sold as presents for weddings, teachers, or stocking stuffers they’re also sold to the schools as scrip with an 8% discount, something the board feels is well worth it as an advertising expense. Now is the time to sign up for the coming year. Only $35/year gives you a huge bump in marketing your business. Give SAGCs a try!
Anyone who believes they suffered a business loss as a result of the PG&E outage on Tuesday, May 23 may submit a claim to seek reimbursement for their damages. The claim form is available at www.pge.com or by calling PG&E at (800) 743-5000.
By Betty Biddie
First, a big howdy-do to our BID Advisory Board members who come to boring evening meetings when theyÕre tired and just want to go home: Chair - Jan Snidow, Powder Box; Gay Austin, Berkeley Hills Realty; Emma Eversole, Solano Financial Services; Virgina Jones, Red Oak Realty; Kim Kleghorn, RE/MAX Executive Berkeley; and Tom Taylor, Art Thou Graphics. WeÕve got three more seats available (although I need to re-cane the chairs). Please give me a call and IÕll put my earpiece in so I can hear you, sweetie. They gave me a bit more allowance to buy a few more planters for the avenue. They look purty, donÕt they? If you have one in front of your store, donÕt ferget to give the plants a little drink now and then, and me too! We want to keep everything looking neat and tidy for company.
There have been lots of opportunities in the past couple of years to help you get your business as green as possible. Alameda County and/or the City of Berkeley has made you a Certified Green Business if you took them up on the offers of replacement lighting, insulation, recycling, etc. For members who have your certification, the SAA will put a special green logo next to your name in the SAA Directory and on our website. Just keep us posted! Never too late to go green…
As a BID/SAA member, your business listing is on the SAA website (www.solanoave. org/directory.html). Please check to see if it is listed correctly. If you haven’t written your 25-word free business description, email it to us ASAP. No website of your own? We can still put a description of your business online for you for free. If you haven’t been getting email from us, we don’t want you to feel left out of the loop. Make sure we have your email, too. These paper newsletters are getting more and more infrequent!
Your Solano Avenue Association is fortunate to have a strong, talented, and dedicated group of directors. That being said, if there were one thing that could make this board even more effective, it would be the presence of retailers and restaurateurs from the avenue. If you scan the businesses represented on the board of directors, you will find service providers of virtually every stripe Š but not one store or restaurant is to be found. There are, of course, very good reasons for this state of affairs. Retail and dining establishments require inordinately long hours which makes coming to two morning meetings a month very challenging if not impossible to pull off. But consider, if you will, the issues facing our association Š a potential shopping mall at the waterfront, possible redevelopment at Safeway and the Albany Unified School District property between Talbot & Cornell, a struggling Oaks Theater, aging street banners, and the list goes on. Many of these issues could particularly affect stores and restaurants. Although we consider these issues with everyoneÕs best interest in mind, each business represents their own self-interest best. I have a suggestion and a request for members who are too busy to serve as directors. Come to meetings occasionally and let us know what you need from the association, or what you can offer to your community of business people. We meet the second and fourth Tuesday of the month at 8:15 until 9:45 at The Mechanics Bank on San Pablo Avenue at Washington. Your input would be appreciated.
The folks at the Race Track would like to make better use of their land and so have invited developer Rick Caruso to come up with a retail mall proposal. Caruso has held many community meetings to gather input about what you want to see go in there and how to co-market it with Solano Avenue. He will be holding another meeting for the merchants on June 29, 7PM at California Bank and Trust, 1451 Solano Ave. Although the plans are in flux and controversial, you may take a look at the project at this website: www.goldengatealbany. com and be sure to click on ‘community process’ and then ‘visuals.’ There are several other groups who have made proposals for the land and we encourage you to check them out as well. They are the Albany Waterfront Coalition at www.albanywaterfrontcoalition.org; Citizens for the Albany Shoreline at www.albanyshoreline.org; Citizens for East Shore Parks at www.eastshorepark.org. The city of Albany will be forming a task force to review all of this confusing issue. FYI, the SAA Board has not yet taken a position on the project, mainly because it isn't complete. We welcome your input as whatever is constructed will have a definite impact on Solano Avenue.
Keeping with song titles as our inspiration, the 32nd Solano Avenue Stroll and Parade, a National Local Legacy, will have as a theme, “Send in the Clowns.” Individuals dressed as clowns will lead the parade as our Grand Marshals. Groups of clowns and businesses will have individual parade entries. So put your clown hats on and get thinking about how you are going to promote your business in the parade.
We received some beautiful entries for the poster art contest and it was way hard to choose. But the board put their clown noses on and came through with a winner. The $500 prize goes to Cat Manning of Berkeley.
During the Stroll, our entertainers will teach circus arts to the fair-goers. Learn to make a balloon dog, juggle bananas, or walk on stilts. We’ll be doing some of this at the Kickoff Party, Thursday, August 10, 5:30-7:30 at Golden Gate Fields Turf Club to which you are all invited.
So far, this year’s Stroll sponsors include: City of Albany, City of Berkeley, Berkeley Civic Arts Program, Golden Gate Fields, Automobile Assn. of America, Pharmaca, Safeway, Solano Avenue Cyclery, Starbucks, Berkeley Hills Realty, Red Oak Realty, BART, KFOG, Daily Californian, Comcast, EB Daily News, and Hills Newspapers. It’s still not too late to get on the circus train………
