Ocean Avenue Association Pushes Forward Renewal And Expansion

The future of the Ocean Avenue Association will be up for a vote soon.

The community benefit district, enabled by City Hall to charge property owners to implement cleaning and beautification services along Ingleside’s Ocean Avenue, was first formed in December 2010 for a 15-year term. Now, its charter is up for renewal.

Six members of OAA’s board of directors voted in September to increase both the area it serves by adding Lakeside Village and the Balboa Park BART station and approximately doubling its budget to $700,000.

“We want there to be a district that has the resources to accommodate, to manage any level of growth that happens on the corridor,” said Christian Martin, the OAA’s executive director.

The association has been toying with renewing its charter for over five years and has been given funding by the Office of Economic and Workforce Development to explore options. Under Martin’s leadership, the OAA has surveyed property owners about the CBD’s services and value ahead of a vote on another 15-year term.

Three proposed service levels have budgets ranging from $500,000 to $900,000. With each level comes more full-time ambassadors, with the ability to add two to five more including safety ambassadors.

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The Ingleside Light caught up with the Ocean Avenue Association’s executive director to learn more about its future.

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The second and third terms allow ambassadors to be out longer with hours ending at 6 p.m. for the second option and 9 p.m. for the highest. Roughly 40% of each budget could go towards cleaning, maintenance and safety tasks, 21.5% to 24.3% could go towards streetscaping improvements and beautification tasks, 10.7% to 12.4% could go to management and operations with the $500,000 tier receiving the most and just over 25% would go to marketing efforts like events.

“My general sense is that some people are just going to vote no regardless of the service level for OAA and some are going to vote yes,” said Gabe Cory, the OAA’s deputy director. “I think those that are already going to vote yes would want OAA to be successful and if we believe medium or small or large is the right path to take, I think they will most likely be supportive of that.”

During the outreach process, the OAA and its consultants were able to contact 78.5% of property owners, employees, business owners and other participants along Ocean Avenue. In tiny Lakeside Village, an area that would be added to the association’s service area, they were able to contact 100% of stakeholders with help from Friends of Lakeside Village’s Kath Tsakalakis.

Tsakalakis urged the board to opt for the $500,000 option to ease in the Lakeside Village property owners, which would make up 12% of the reconstituted district.

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Supervisor Myrna Melgar requested the review last year.

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“What the property owners have said very clearly is they really value the service,” Tsakalakis said. “They are willing to vote yes on option one and I haven’t had a single property owner say no all together.”

The OAA’s survey found that 35% of respondents rated their satisfaction with street and sidewalk cleaning as high and 27% rated it as very high; For security and safety, they rated their satisfaction as neutral at 31% and as high at 31%; and beautification and public art were rated high at 37% and very high at 35% while marketing and business development were rated neutral at 35% and high at 25%.

More than half of OAA's 10-member board, some who participated over Zoom, voted for the second option, prompting Tsakalakis to state that it might be more difficult to get property owners in Lakeside Village to vote yes due to the added costs.

“That’s a big chunk to consider,” Martin said, opening it up for the item to potentially be revoted on.

The next steps for OAA include submitting their final renewal documents to the Office of Economic and Workforce Development for review by OEWD and the City Attorney's Office. In addition, continual outreach will be conducted to property owners under OAA’s new boundary.