Monrovia Old Town Report (1/19/17 Issue)

– Courtesy photo by Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

By Pam Fitzpatrick

A nice, but visibly angry gentleman approached me during this week’s filming in Old Town and asked me a simple question: “What does all of this do for the citizens of Monrovia?” He wasn’t in the mood for an explanation, and I totally understood his frustration with the inconvenience – but for that gentleman and for all of the frustrated visitors to Old Town when filming occurs, here’s the simple answer…

Occasional filming in our historic district, even when it blocks off streets and requires intermittent traffic control and/or pedestrian control, helps keep Myrtle Avenue and its surrounds vibrant.  As it occurs, it can be a pain in the neck – and for the merchants, it can mean loss of revenue on those specific days, even considering the impact fees paid to the individual shop owners directly impacted. But everything we do in Old Town is about the long-term – not just short-term – impact. The other fee – th0e Old Town Impact fee – can be hefty, and it is paid directly to the city.  Those fees are spent by the City making Old Town what is today and what we all want it to be tomorrow.  How does a regular citizen benefit?  Filming revenue along with the continuing PR we get from repeated airing of the movies, commercials and TV shows filmed here help keep Old Town alive and vibrant, plain and simple.

Hope that helps….

And for another slight inconvenience with benefits, we have “rain.” (That’s the wet stuff that’s been falling from the sky, in case you’ve forgotten). Southern Californian’s get wonky in the wet stuff, and sales in an outside town center like ours can suffer. But the long-term benefits totally outweigh the short-term financial losses. Street Fair has been suffering a bit from the rain, and from even the threat of rain. I can see by the weather report for Friday the 20^th that we have a 100% chance of rain in Monrovia, and unless that changes the fair will be cancelled. The rain policy for street fair is this: if it’s not raining and the weather report looks reasonably good, we have street fair. If we set up and all looks good, but it starts to rain during the evening, we all pack up our stuff and run for shelter. Hint: you can pretty much tell if the fair is going to set up on any given Friday by the delivery of the porta-potties on west Colorado by Wells Faro Bank!

My friend, Kristin Miller who owns Charlie’s House in the 400 block of Myrtle, is on her way to Dallas for the annual Gift Show. I’m always happy when Kristin goes to the Gift Show – not because I want her gone (but her mom, Mary Margaret who watches the shop is a total pleasure…), but because when the deliveries start coming in at Charlie’s House they are spectacular. Gives me something to look forward to….

Speaking of Kristin, she filled me in on the Special MOTAB meeting from Tuesday morning, Jan. 17. Looks like Old Town will have carriage rides on Myrtle for Valentine’s Day!  I may be wrong (but I don’t think so, as Monk says…) but I believe the rides will be from 6 p.m. – 10 p.m. on Feb. 14 (which is a Tuesday).  I do know that each carriage ride will accommodate 4 people and there will be 4 carriage rides per hour, for a total of 64 available spaces for that four hour period. This time the tickets will not be sold on the street, but by phone starting Feb. 1.  You heard it here first: the person to call starting Feb. 1 is Susan Matthews at City Hall. I suspect there will be a reservation number published shortly.

More next week….

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