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Association is enthusiastic about plans for holidays
WGBPA officials say organizing community events is demanding
By Kate Carter
At their most well-attended board meeting in months, the Willow Glen Business and Professional Association confirmed plans for a Santa's Trail down Lincoln Avenue to follow the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Willow Glen Elementary School on Nov. 30, at 6:30 p.m.
The business association also firmed up plans to decorate the street for the holiday season and dispelled fears that Christmas might not arrive in Willow Glen this year.
The association sponsors the lights and Christmas decorations that appear downtown each year. There were too few board members at the association meeting last month for a quorum and to select a committee to lead the holiday effort, association president Bob Waligore said.
Approximately 20 members attended the Oct. 18 meeting, however, and most expressed enthusiasm about keeping the event alive, even though the Christmas event is not an acknowledged moneymaker.
Last year was the first time the association tried to draw the approximately 1,000 visitors into the business district after the tree lighting at the school, and many business owners did not receive much business, association Vice President Chris Carris said.
"It's a logistics problem," he said, referring to the difficulty in getting people from the tree-lighting location down the street to the businesses.
Some ideas to encourage people to visit Lincoln Avenue included using vehicles from Bob Lewis Volkswagen or Yellow Cab, or providing construction vehicles and horse-and-carriages to transport people along the Santa's Trail, offering visitors a map of stores that would be open and having craft projects for kids.
Laura Augusta, owner of L'Daisy Patch, said she would distribute a flyer to Lincoln Avenue businesses to find out how each wanted to be involved.
Frank Schapairo of Site 1 Real Estate said he would head up the effort to decorate the avenue in time for the event, and help establish a routine for the annual effort.
"My goal is to implement standards for decorating the avenue for years to come," he said.
Carris said that the Stone Church, Women Kickin' It and Alano West have also volunteered to help prepare and put up decorations.
Carris said that he is concerned about lighting the trees along the avenue, as the lights already strung on the trees may no longer work after a year of growth and exposure. He also said that the association's decoration may need some updating to be ready for display. Some of the work of hanging decorations and powering lights will have to be done by professionals, he said. Melinda Waller, legislative aide for District 6 Councilman Frank Fiscalini, said that she would try to get the city to help with this. Board members listed a number of other people who they said could help Christmas arrive in Willow Glen.
Although some merchants are volunteering to help make the event work, there's still a lot to be done in a short amount of time.
"Right now, a lot of enthusiasm is not tempered with a whole lot of data," Carris said. "Ideas are good but execution is better. There's a lot of work that we have to do to pull this off."
Waligore and Carris said that it is getting much more difficult to have events in Willow Glen, because of growing competition with other community functions, and the increasing complexity of organizing large-scale parties.
"It's not quite as simple, and not nearly as cheap, as it used to be," Carris said.
Business owners are more short-staffed and have less time to devote to work outside their own businesses, they said. Events on Lincoln Avenue are entirely volunteer-based, unlike other smaller cities where the events are often coordinated through the city, such as in Los Gatos, Palo Alto and Campbell, Carris said. Instead, Willow Glen has to represent itself without the authority of a civic body behind it, he said.
Carris and Waligore said the business association needs the community to get more involved.
Carris said that if the community wants the activities, they should volunteer and support the merchants. "If we cannot survive financially, Willow Glen will not stay the village that it is," he said.
Schapairo said that he want to "get everyone out to donate time, services, or money." And he's confident that Willow Glen will pull through.
Anyone interested in helping out can contact Schapairo at 408.266.1371.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
