ORANGE AVENUE | CORONADO, CALIF. No doubt, it’s the quickest steelgirder- connected transition from urban grit to small-town, seaside charm: crossing the dramatic, boomerang-shaped San DiegoCoronado Bridge from downtown San Diego to the storied blocks of Coronado’s Orange Avenue home to one of the country’s most successfully revived coastal resort communities.
In the late 1980s, Coronado’s Orange Avenue had a 35 percent vacancy rate, and the locals were wondering how to make this once-famous beachside community nice again. “We definitely needed help,” says Rita Sarich, executive director of Coronado MainStreet Ltd. “All of those beautiful historic buildings, frankly, looked like junk.”
That’s when a team of concerned locals put their heads together and scoured the country for a suitable revival model. “We hired a Main Street manager and began the four-point process on how to evaluate and fix up our downtown in a timely manner,” Sarich says. “The approach really turned this place around, and fairly quickly.”
Today, Orange Avenue is a pinup with rows of flower gardens lining its grassy, topiary-dotted median, drawing crowds of vacationers and window-shoppers over THE bridge from San Diego.
Read the entire American Way article here.
