Moving forward together
The Sebastopol Downtown Association and the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce detail their plans to merge into a single organization.
More than 40 local business owners showed up at the Sebastopol Downtown Association’s monthly meeting at Hopmonk on Monday, July 10, to hear SDA President Adam Bulbulia and Sebastopol Chamber Director Myriah Volk talk about their plans for a merger. They were joined on the stage by Adam Parks of the Barlow business Victorian Farmstead Meats, who is on the board of both organizations.
They’d come together to discuss the progress they’d made in joining the two organizations, which for years have had a tense, rather competitive relationship. The SDA represents businesses in the Downtown Business District, while the Chamber is a private membership organization serving business all over town.
“Now we are starting the process of acting like one organization,” Bulbulia said. “We need to get the whole town working together, and we need to serve the whole town.”
According to the three, the plan to do that looks like this: the town would be comprised of four districts — the Barlow, downtown, south end and north end — and each of those districts would have a representative on the Chamber Board. The SDA would represent the downtown district on the Chamber board.
This has several advantages. The main one is the two groups could more easily coordinate their activities. Another big advantage is financial. The SDA is supported by a small assessment tacked on the business license fee of every business in the Sebastopol Downtown Business District — a roughly L-shaped distrct that stretches down Main Street from Bank of America to Hippizzazz, with a little offshoot that takes in the businesses scattered up and down Bodega Ave in the downtown core. (It does not include the Barlow.) This assessment brings in roughly $10,000 a year, according to Parks, who noted that wasn’t much to work with when it comes to buying print and radio advertising.
Parks said their group would like to expand the business district to incorporate all businesses in the city, a move which could potentially increase that haul to $50,000. That’s a nicer chunk of change to pay for promotions, but it’s not enough to hire a director to spearhead those promotions.
Enter Myriah Volk, the Chamber’s director. Running campaigns to promote local business is what she already does. If the SDA was part of the Chamber, Volk could potentially tap those funds to pay for marketing campaigns for businesses all over town.
Their plan envisions a kind of tiered membership program for local businesses, with the fee for business improvement district being Tier 1. That would entitle business owner to a certain basic set of services. If you also joined the Chamber, that would be Tier 2, which would include even more services—and so on for Tiers 3 and 4.
“More money means more marketing which means more support,” Parks said.
The audience of business owners listened politely to this plan. Some were skeptical, —they’ve seen business promotion schemes come and go in this town—but all in all there was an energetic and hopeful air to the gathering.
Andrea Caron, the owner of Silk Moon, said after the meeting, “I loved it. I really did. Finally having the Downtown Association and the Chamber of Commerce getting together and also having a Downtown Association president that's not necessarily a merchant on Main Street (Editor’s note: Bulbulbia runs a therapy business.) is going to really help represent the rest of Sebastopol businesses, which is what I'm really excited about. I think the business district should be more inclusive than just Main Street. And, of course, there’s strength in numbers.”
“Sebastopol has a lot of momentum right now, with all the new businesses opening up,” Volk said. “It’s a really good time to be a business person in Sebastopol.”