Village Merchants Planning First Wine Walk Event

Village Merchants are gathering steam to host the first Wine Walk Event in the Village. A number of Merchants have agreed to pitch in to host the event. The first event would benefit the local Meals on Wheels efforts.

Village Merchants have made a formal proposal to the VBA for their support to aid in making the first event happen this summer.

The event will be a self guided tour form Northwoods Resort to Pine Knot Marina and is one of many events the retail community is actively trying to put into place in order to better compete in the regional marketplace by attracting more get-a-way and leisure travel customers from throughout SoCal.

Rassmussen takes temperature of Small Business

The confidence of 20 million small business owners takes a dip for the worse. Cash flow problems on the rise. More from Jan Norman on Small Business outlook: http://jan.freedomblogging.com/2009/05/26/business-owners-turn-more-pessimistic/14481/

A tip for our City Council as they wrap up the 09-10 budget.. Park City, UT has found themselves a bit short of projected revenues as major lodging interests file for bankruptcy before paying local bed taxes (The Block right here in Big Bear Lake). Might there be more on the horizon? TOT is a major percentage of our General Fund.

Park City Utah

Some interesting facts off the Park City Website.

• Park City was founded as a silver-mining town in 1869. By 1900, it was a booming mining town with 10,000 residents and 100 saloons
• Second largest silver strike in U. S., 1200 miles of mining tunnels under the city; the deepest mining shaft is 2600’ Flagstaff Mountain was the first mining claim in the Park City area; George Hearst owned the Ontario Mine
• Summit County was one of the fastest growing counties in the US during the 1990’s
• Park City population: 8,066 in the City; 21,000 additional in Snyderville Basin
  Elevation: 7000’ at Main Street (ranges from 6500’- 10,000’)
• City Size: 17.6 square miles
• Average Daily Water Consumption: 4. 6 million gallons
  School Population: 4,336 (Fall 2008)
• Assessed Property Valuation: $4,635,372,939 (Primary residences); $5,602,376,327 (Vacation homes)
• Number of Primary Dwelling Unit: 3,179
• Number of Secondary Homes/ Units: 4,773
• Lodging capacity: 23,307(pillow count)
• Gross Taxable Sales: $450 million in City
• Number of Restaurants: 131
• Number of Park City Business Licenses: 1,917
• Number of Retail Store: 286 in Park City & Basin
• Number of City Police Officers: 24 full-time, 16 part-time
• Number of City Employee: 305 full-time equivalents
• Number of Miles of City Roads: 121

Park City Toursim Recognized by Local Leadership

Developing our Retail Marketplace and Tourism Offering is Paramount to local growth and prosperity for small business and their employees. I think we would do well aspiring to be the Park City of California.

Recent story below from the Park City Record on Park City Tourism.

http://www.parkrecord.com/ci_12379908

US Travel Association and Toursim Workers Rally

Tourism is off in Vegas, Park City and other destinations. Folks that are planning a vacation are planning on staying closer to home.

Oskar Garcia on Tourism. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/may/12/nv-tourism-rally-051209/?california

There may be an opportunity Big Bear Lake. Can we take advantage? If so, how will we do it?

Spring Brings Flowers and more Business Closures

Some more negative movement in retail and commercial vacancies in April 2009 include these Big Bear Lake Storefronts: 1. Friendz Salon (had recently relocated to smaller space) Moonridge Rd, 2. Edelweiss Books on Village Dr., 3. Big Bear Souvenir and Gift (had recently relocated to smaller space) Pine Knot Ave., 4. Burger King on Big Bear Blvd., Big Bear Real Estate Village Dr. Office, Cool Cabins Village Dr. Office and the 5. Mineral Shop on Village Dr. has closed and vacated the space. 6. Scrapbooking Stampede (recently moved to Blvd from Moonridge) has closed and vacated the space in Summit Plaza.



On the Recently Rented Front: 1. The Chrome Stop has reopened on Red Ant Hill and Mill Creek, 2. The Kite Factory has reopened on the other side of the Blvd at Alden. 3. Forrest Farms Market and Deli has taken a much smaller space in the Verizon Plaza with Sandy's Sports Bar and Bear Valley Printing. 4. Get the Burger will reopen in the former Sushi Ai at Big Bear Blvd. and Fox Farm.

Fast Food Fatality

The Big Bear Lake Fast Food Franchise Burger King, on Big Bear Blvd., Closed and Boarded Up. This unattractive reality is just another in our ever growing list of retail vacancies. I hope the upcoming economic summit hosted by the Big Bear Lake Chamber of Commerce focuses on real strategy and plans to combat the 3 year decline in retail revenues the City has seen and promotes an emergency plan of action by civic and business leaders to stem the growing numbers of business failures in the valley. The questions and answers should pertain to; what are we doing? who is doing it? and when is it going to be done? What we don't need is eight hours of how we can all get along while going broke.

Arissa Turner on Burger King:
http://www.bigbeargrizzly.net/articles/2009/05/06/news/doc4a00cdbb182f4998857814.txt

Orange County Retail Vacancies up 70% year to date

Jeff Collins on Orange County Retail Vacancies:

O.C. retail vacancies jump 70 percent