Downtown El Cajon Business Partners have teamed with New City America, a nationally recognized urban revitalization firm to re-energize the city’s downtown area. Leading the mission is Marco Li Mandri, best known for transforming San Diego’s Little Italy into a vibrant destination as well as the Third Avenue Village in Chula Vista. With more than 30 years of experience in revitalizing communities, Li Mandri will serve as the new executive director for downtown El Cajon. Serving as district manager, Dominic Li Mandri will help spearhead the rebranding process with goals of bringing new businesses into the empty storefronts, expanding outdoor activities, creating clean, safe, and welcoming streets, along with creating a compassionate approach to the city’s unsheltered population, working with outreach teams.
Dominic Li Mandri said the PBID in downtown El Cajon is longstanding, operating downtown doing sidewalk cleaning, special enhancements, as well as overseeing some of the iconic events held downtown.
“With New City America coming onboard, this year we are going to be looking in the first few months to digest, learn, and understand a lot of the history of the downtown. Where the events got set up and where they came from. How they have organized them in the past. We view all the vendors the Association has, as well as generally how nonprofit conducts business. And, how we can improve and enhance that process so that we provide more immediate results and value to the stakeholders of the district, the city included,” he said.
Li Mandri said this process is similar to what they did in Downtown Chula Vista, and plans on implementing a similar strategy in Downtown El Cajon in terms of transitioning the 501(c)(6) to a 501(c)(3) which makes it more advantageous going after grants and sponsorships, and non-assessment district revenue in order to do much more than the current assessment budget allows.
“For example, in Chula Vista, our assessment budget is around $530,000, but our operating budget is somewhere around $900,000,” he said. “This is because we are incredibly entrepreneurial in how we manage these districts in terms of securing sponsorships, securing grants, and looking to generate or develop events that ultimately, and ideally, provide a net revenue for the associations. Historically, for example, we know that there are certain events in Downtown El Cajon that have not been revenue neutral or have not produced a net profit in the past. What New City America will be looking to do is to partner with agencies, board members, existing stakeholders within the district to figure out how we can reevaluate these events.”
Li Mandri said the idea is to “engine” these events to help them stand out.
“We are really looking forward to working with Downtown El Cajon stakeholders. New City America is very selective with the communities it works for, and we see incredible promise and potential in Downtown El Cajon…We see Downtown El Cajon being the entrance of East County. “
