Culture, cuisine, community, crime – State of Downtown touches on all - Modesto Bee

This summer will bring a new music event, Porchfest, to the downtown, college and La Loma areas.

If the Modesto Police Department moved out of downtown, crime there would drop.

The average person will take 31 steps before dropping his or her trash on the ground.

These were among the bits of information shared Friday morning at the first State of Downtown Modesto gathering, held at the Gallo Center for the Arts. Attendance was estimated at between 175-200, with the audience representing “the overall Modesto community with an emphasis on property and business owners,” organizers said.

The event was presented by the Downtown Modesto Partnership and included presentations by its CEO, Josh Bridegroom, and Modesto Police Department Chief Galen Carroll. Bridegroom spoke of DoMo efforts and events, while Carroll addressed crime and prevention.

But preceding them on stage were three panelists speaking on the “pillars” supporting downtown: culture, cuisine and community.

The voice of “community” was Ruhi Sheikh, co-founder of the annual Mod Shop event featuring designers, artisans and crafters. She’s one of the forces behind Modesto Porchfest, which will debut July 30.

Essentially, it’s about creating events that create community and that are fun and vibrant and make us feel that we have tons of culture, which we definitely do.

Ruhi Sheikh, on events like Porchfest, Mod Shop, the Ill List poetry slam and the Modesto Architecture Festival

It was inspired by the Napa Porchfest, though apparently the first porchfest was in Ithaca, N.Y., in 2007 and the events now are held in scores of communities in the U.S. and Canada. The idea is simple: “In really quaint pockets in towns like Modesto” where there are old homes with big porches, musicians play as audiences stroll or bike from venue to venue, Sheikh said.

“We have a vibrant music scene here, and we thought: Why not keep creating events that we want to attend, we want our families to attend?” she said. “So we decided to get some local music – some bands and some musicians – and hook up with people who have beautiful porches and create this walkable Porchfest day.”

Organizers have a website, http://ift.tt/2ozyRpn, with more information, including how to offer up time, a band or a porch.

Speaking on “cuisine” was Jeff Brown, co-owner of the downtown restaurant Commonwealth and the soon-to-open Churchkey at 910 12th St. Asked by panel discussion host Veronica Jacuinde of Viva Empower why downtown was chosen for Churchkey, Brown said the traffic in Commonwealth and other restaurants shows there remain big opportunities for dining establishments downtown.

“We want to continue to draw people downtown to benefit ourselves, to benefit other businesses, to be in a place where we like to be,” he said. “... The more nice people that are walking around downtown, the more that will come walking around downtown.”

“Culture” was represented by Bob Barzan, founder of the Modesto Art Museum and co-host of the Modesto Architecture Festival. The “museum without walls” – its events are held at various locations – was begun in 2005 and stepped up its community engagement a couple of years later in response to a report that called Modesto the least livable city in the country, Barzan said.

Yes, we have some challenges, but there’s a lot to look forward to and be positive about.

Galen Carroll, Modesto police chief, on crime downtown

“A city is much more than a group of people living together,” he told the audience. “Yes, it has paved streets, it has electricity, it has all those things we come to take for granted. But to be a real city, you have to have culture,” and an art museum is just manifestation of that.

Carroll’s talk on the serious subject of crime was sprinkled with humor. He projected a map showing areas of crime reports, and noted higher areas include downtown, McHenry Village and Plaza Parkway.

In downtown and retail areas, there’s always going to be a higher volume of calls for service, and “there’s not a whole bunch you can do about it” but “it’s nothing to panic about,” he said.

Downtown, the transit center and the Police Department itself were the biggest red spots on the map. “I’m thinking to get rid of some of the crime, we get rid of the Police Department, move it,” he joked. He then explained that the department shows up as a high crime area because a lot of people come there for things like requesting security checks on people they fear are at risk, or to seek restraining orders or file other reports.

The transit center is high because an officer is stationed there, so witnesses and reports a lot of activity, Carroll said.

In 2016, he said, there area nearly 183,000 calls for police service citywide, the chief said, and just 3 percent -- 6,138 -- were in the downtown. The top five types of calls downtown, he said, are traffic stops, security checks, restraining orders, suspicious person and public nuisance. “If we just stopped stopping people,” he said, reports would go way down.

Bridegroom talked about the work the DoMo Partnership does, describing much of it as “making bad things go away.”

The partnership is 97 percent funded by property owner assessments, and 82 percent of its expenditures are on “image enhancement services” -- assisting businesses and downtown visitors, hosting events, maintaining decorative lighting -- and cleaning and safety programs. “We tend to focus on making invisible the things people don’t want to see. So a lot of what do is stealth,” he said.

Those things people don’t want to see include garbage and graffiti. “There are blocks you can walk sometimes without having a place you can throw your refuse, and that’s unacceptable,” Bridegroom told the audience.

The partnership began researching how many receptacles should be within its borders and how far they should be spaced from one another. It got its answer from a study the Walt Disney Co. commissioned to determine how far the average person is willing to walk before dropping trash on the ground.

The answer? Thirty-one steps.

“We want to make it convenient for people,” Bridegroom said. “The average person’s strike is 2.7 feet. Multiply that by 31 and you get three trash cans per block face.”

The DoMo Partership is in the first phase -- J Street -- of adding those trash cans. The second and third phases will be on K and I streets.

For more on the Downtown Modesto Partnership, go to domopartnership.org.

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