LOOKING FORWARD: A group of downtown Manteca merchants will ask the City Council this summer to make some changes downtown. Recommendations on their list range from tearing out medians to tearing out — well, just about everything.

MANTECA — Fighting to stay viable in a world of Targets and Best Buys, independent merchants will soon ask local lawmakers to start making some changes downtown — including one controversial proposal that could eventually see much of historic Manteca demolished.

The Downtown Subcommittee of the Manteca Assessment Task Force has been meeting for nearly a year with city officials and folks from the Manteca Convention and Visitors Bureau, brainstorming ways to bring more shoppers to the streets surrounding North Main Street and West Yosemite Avenue.

Their recommendations, which will be presented to the City Council in July, include four relatively minor traffic fixes and one controversial long-term plan to bulldoze and rebuild large portions of downtown.

In the short term, members want the council to jackhammer out the bulb-outs and medians installed several years ago along Main Street and Yosemite Avenue. Business owners argue that the additions, meant to beautify, have only succeeded in stalling traffic and keeping customers away.

”How many people do you run into in a day that say, ‘I hate going downtown, it’s such a pain?’”     Brenda Franklin, committee chair and owner of Tipton’s Stationery and Gifts, asked the committee May 7. “It doesn’t matter what you have on the shelf if you can’t get to it.”

The committee also wants the flow of traffic reversed on one-way Maple Avenue; new surfaces and striping in public parking lots; and city maintenance of downtown alleys.

But councilmen must conduct a traffic study before any of these changes can be made, said Deputy City Manager John Nowak, who has been sitting in on the committee meetings. Nowak said he was unsure how much that traffic study would cost.

The committee also voted in April to add one controversial long-term recommendation to their list — a proposal that the city buy and demolish large chunks of downtown for redevelopment, preserving only the most important historical sites.

Sun Post co-publisher and former Manteca mayor Carlon Perry, who proposed the idea, suggested the city could then give tax incentives to developers who would rebuild a more pedestrian-friendly center.

“The concept isn’t 10 or 20 years, it’s 30, 40, 50 years,” Perry said. “If they don’t make some major changes in the downtown, the downtown will not be a viable commercial center because of all the other shopping areas that they’re developing.”

Last summer, tourism expert Roger Brooks, who was hired by the Convention and Visitors Bureau to explore Manteca’s tourism potential, showed city leaders examples of cities that had completely renovated their downtowns.

The process is often slow, Brooks said in his presentation, and ofteninvolves cities selecting themes and handpicking businesses that may set up shop downtown.

But in Manteca, the severity of the idea has caused some apprehension;
a month after their April vote, some committee members were having second thoughts, citing concerns over lost revenue and public perception.

“It’s great to say, ‘OK, bulldoze everything.’ But it’s not coming back in two days,” Franklin said at the group's May 7 meeting. “By then (your customers) have found somewhere else to buy.”

The recommendation would have to be approved by a majority of the council and would have to undergo significant studies before any action could be taken, Nowak said.

Mayor Willie Weatherford and Convention and Visitors Bureau director Linda Abeldt did not return phone calls seeking comment on the issue.

The downtown committee will continues its discussions at future meetings.