Downtown Stockton is Lookin’ Up
Emily Baime and the Downtown Stockton Alliance
by JAMIE MENAKER
If attitude is everything, then all future inquiries about the city of Stockton should be directed to Emily Baime. As Marketing Director for the Downtown Stockton Alliance since January 2008, Baime refuses to let any negative portrayals of the city sway her. “I actually really like the negativity,” says Baime. “Every time I see something in the newspaper, or people are gossiping in the back of a meeting, it feels like a challenge. Bring it on.”
Baime and the Rest of the Downtown Stockton Alliance (DSA) work tirelessly to “develop, promote, and maintain” downtown Stockton. The DSA was originally incorporated in 1996, in response to property and business owners faced with downtown decline and frustrated by the state of the downtown area. As such, almost 300 property owners and 1,300 downtown businesses [ed: check] are now part of the officially titled Downtown District. It’s a win-win situation for all involved—the city benefits when its businesses are doing well, and businesses thrive when the city is a successful urban sprawl.
Enter Emily Baime. From her first meeting with former DSA Executive Director Kathy Miller (Miller is now Stockton’s Vice Mayor, and Dennis Smallie heads up the DSA), she was inspired by Miller’s statement, “The only way that you can tell the health of the community is by looking at its downtown.” Baime came from a Hospitality and Tourism background in San Diego, and has seen first-hand the success that the bustling Gaslamp District has afforded her former city, a success that she hopes to bring to Stockton.
One way that Baime is tackling this challenge is overseeing close to 150 special events downtown per year, like farmers markets, pub crawls, free concerts, and community celebrations, creating reasons for Stocktonians to come downtown and see that the desperate state the city was in five or six years ago isn’t how it is today.
The reality is that crime in the Downtown District is down 50 percent over the last ten years. The DSA has a dedicated task force for maintenance of the Downtown District—cleaning graffiti, fixing broken windows, power-washing public areas—and another dedicated task force to promote community safety. Fourteen Stockton police officers on bikes, and six ambassadors who carry a cell phone at all times to answer questions, provide safety escorts, and recommend restaurants are on duty weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and weekends until 10 p.m.
“From my understanding, Stockton has gone through several phases,” says Baime. “The heaviest part of its decline, when the DSA came to be; then a surge in economic development because this organization and others in Stockton were lobbying so hard; and finally, now, there’s a great infrastructure, and we just have to activate all that and secure downtown as a desirable place to come.”
According to Baime, one of the largest priorities for the future is to establish downtown as an entertainment district, a nighttime destination where San Joaquin natives can go from a restaurant, to a movie, to a club, to a bar, all in the same vicinity, and won’t have to head out of the area for a nightlife. Next up after that is developing housing downtown to keep the area in use twenty-four hours a day.
“The most enjoyable part of my job,” says Baime, “is that I get the opportunity to connect the dots between people in the community that are eager to get things done. At any given meeting, one business will be excited about sponsoring a fireworks display, and another one will express excitement about the fireworks display as well. All these people are very excited about their little piece, and I get to bring it all together and make sure that the bigger product is a success.”
For a list of Downtown Stockton Events see our latest issue of San Joaquin Magazine!
