Shops hoping to put on a happy face

Jeffrey Libby

Thursday, July 19, 2001 | 10:49 a.m.

The Indian headdress window mural and the red paint adorning the one-story cinderblock motorcycle shop at 1 South Water St. will go.

So, too, will the tired-out shingles of the mansard roof at an engineering firm housed in another cement block building a few blocks south at 108 Market St.

The Henderson Redevelopment Agency on Tuesday approved $200,000 for a building facade improvement program. They say fresh paint, new marquees and other aesthetic updates for existing businesses should spark new investment in a downtown that has been treading water since the 1980s.

Business owners are already lining up to qualify for as much as $30,000 toward improvements to each building side that faces Water Street. The city will pay up to 80 percent of a project. Businesses kick in the other 20 percent.

And there's a word in the air, a mantra planners are repeating that promises a unity of design up and down the main street of Henderson's old downtown.

Steven "Staz" De Stout, owner of Staz's American Motorcycles, was looking for it Wednesday afternoon while a customer fired up one of his chrome-bright bikes in the former toy shop he converted in 1994.

"What's that word they're using? I think it's Art Nouveau," De Stout said. "Whatever it is, it will be a style both we and the city like."

Cody Walker, a redevelopment agency planner, supplied the answer later in the day during a phone interview. "It's moderne, modern with an 'e.' Just short of Art Deco," he said.

According to Walker, a consulting group hired this spring by the city detected the "streamlined" elements of the 1930s American moderne style in the back-side of the five-story sign for the Eldorado Casino and in the Sprint building at the corner of Pacific Avenue and Water Street.

"It's a very industrial look, which ties in with Henderson's past," Walker said.

The redevelopment agency hopes to help finance improvement for six to 12 facades in the next six months. If the projects go well, then the agency will consider funding additional projects, Ned Madonia, a redevelopment planner, said.

Tom Foster, president of Professional Design Associates, said Wednesday he planned to walk the two blocks to City Hall and pick up an application later in the day while matching funding was still available.

Though his company of nine electrical engineers usually travels to meet with clients, he said improvements to his Market Street building would make it a more pleasant place for employees to arrive at each day.

As the downtown improves, he said he would be more likely to invite clients to lunch.

"It's a unique street, Water Street. That's what everyone says when they visit, even though it's not spruced up yet. It has that small town feel when you want to get away from the crowds," he said.

In other redevelopment areas, facade improvement programs have helped spark new business investment in blighted areas early on in the process. That could be a boon for the Henderson Redevelopment Agency, which has struggled for six years to forge a plan of action and on Tuesday killed a large project that had been in planning stages for 2 1/2 years.

"What it does is, it changes the immediate look," said Claire Carpenter, executive director of the Downtown El Cajon Inc., a privately-financed redevelopment agency in El Cajon, Calif., which started its effort in 1997 with a facade improvement program.

"You start to see the aesthetic level of the whole area start to change. Often that's enough to get people talking about dreams that they wouldn't have before," Carpenter said.

In her small city of 98,000 people, vacancy rates have dropped in the downtown and visitors who have been away say they feel a new sense of safety, Carpenter said.

But even before the first paint pot has been cracked in Henderson, Walker says the optimism along Water Street in the past month has already gained momentum. A Mexican restaurant, a hair salon and a sign shop have all opened in the downtown. Other interested businesses are holding out for larger spaces, Walker said.

With a newly-designed 2001 Rude American custom bike just coming off the production line at $32,900 for the soft-tail model, De Stout is also optimistic about traffic along Water Street.

"With the Rude American, this place is going to get so much exposure it's not going to funny," De Stout said.