Feng shui centers new look and direction of Vista's Main Street

Feng shui centers new look and direction of Vista's Main Street
This story has been modified since its original posting.

By RENEE HAINES - For the North County Times | Monday, September 15, 2008 6:50 PM PDT ∞

Editor's Note: Second in a series on how North County main streets are striving to change and find new ways of serving customers in a challenging economy.

When Maureen Barrack decided to open a business in downtown Vista, she consulted an expert on the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui ---- balance ---- to renovate the old building she planned to move into.

Barrack and other downtown Vista business owners are turning to innovative strategies in this challenging economy to grow their businesses and keep Main Street alive, too.

Barrack opened her Chiropractic Rehabilitation Wellness Center in October. The 60-year-old building, 8,000 square feet in size, had been the site of a now-defunct Sprouse-Reitz variety store and later a beauty college. Barrack's feng shui approach is apparent in her renovated building with its newly centered (for balance) entrance featuring a fountain inside the doorway and simple furnishings.

The outside is painted in rich reds and warm golds.

"I think starting from the outside brings people in," Barrack said. "My best value was painting the building."

The wellness center has become a popular showpiece for Vista's evolving city center.

In embracing feng shui, Barrack joins a community of entrepreneurs that includes Donald Trump, who uses the concept in designing his buildings.

Dozens of companies in California offer design services based on feng shui, the concept of creating harmony, balance and energizing business settings by the careful arrangement of furniture and the use of colors and lighting to create a mood.

Barrack's goal was to provide a balanced connection between old and new downtown Vista at her midpoint Main Street location.

The center of old town Vista is the vintage stretch of Main Street stretching south of Wildwood Park to the new Sprinter station near the intersection of Main Street and Santa Fe Avenue.

The new part of downtown is Village Square, the four-year-old modern shopping center complex on the other side of the Sprinter tracks that features national chains and a mega-plex movie theater.

Neither has been immune to the sour economy.

Empty storefronts mark parts of the old city center. Village Square in late August learned that it soon would lose a major anchor tenant, Linens 'n Things, as part of a series of store closings by the struggling national chain.

Yet, new retailers continue to arrive and incorporate strategies not just to grow their businesses, but also to promote the central business district.

Barrack, for example, helps support downtown Vista's promotion of the arts with her own indoor art gallery that offers free space for local artists to exhibit and sell their work. She hosts free public receptions with each new exhibit.

She has also created a profitable way for the city to grow its revenue base. Barrack has created space for multiple tenants who offer complementary wellness services inside her large building.

This allows her to share her overhead, and it's a new way for a business to locate downtown without having to bear all the costs of high rents and steep startup costs.

The multiple-tenant approach also multiplies the city's revenues from fees collected from many businesses instead of just one. It's one entrepreneur's practical solution to how to fill large, empty storefronts that mark hundreds of downtowns across the country.

"Diversification is a good thing in these trying times," Barrack said.

Innovative startups

Barrack's design strategy also is a preview of building innovations expected from the latest business that is under construction in downtown Vista.

In the Vista neighborhood where Barrack lives, her house borders the property of the Twelve Tribes. The Twelve Tribes is a nondenominational religious commune. The group operates similar communities around the country.

Commune artisans helped Barrack craft the cherry wood doors and other fixtures inside her center. The group now is building a multilevel restaurant in downtown Vista called the Yellow Deli. The group has cafes and stores in six other states, Canada, Germany and Spain.

Downtown Vista's arts businesses, meanwhile, are praising this year's move of the Vista Art Foundation's public gallery to a larger space in old downtown. Charles Bronson, a metal sculptor and foundation board member, said the larger space is welcome news to the struggling business of the arts, which has been hit hard by the recent hikes in the cost of metals and other materials.

Upsides to downturns

Like other downtown promoters, Janet Puckett, executive director of the Vista Village Business Association, said that empty lots and store spaces can be deceiving.

"We're struggling like everybody, but we're not falling apart," Puckett said.

One empty storefront is about to become a gourmet pizza restaurant, she said. An empty lot across the street from the Chiropractic Rehabilitation Wellness Center will become a mixed-use office/residential/retail building, Puckett added.

Puckett said that partly because of the sour economy and high gasoline prices, Vista has enjoyed rising attendance at downtown events such as its Rod Run classic car show and Vista Village Chocolate Festival.

"People are staying closer to home," she said. "The biggest impact I saw was at the Chocolate Festival. The attendance this year was almost double what it was last year, and I think the reason was that it was the first time gas prices had gone over $4."

When the Sprinter rail line opened earlier this year, Vista reaped a promotional benefit. Main Street is a stop along the new route from Escondido to Oceanside.

A new startup trend

Vista also is benefiting from a new business trend among the fast-growing sector of home-based businesses. Many are reaching the level of growth that has sent them shopping for small storefronts, Puckett said.

Puckett cited the example of Embroidery Image, a family-owned home-based business that moved to old downtown Vista this summer. "We're thrilled to have them because they have such high energy," Puckett said.

Mindy Shuman, co-owner of Embroidery Image with her parents, says the setting allows her to walk to restaurants, shops and festivals.

What downtown business associations do to promote their areas as destinations also is what attracts entrepreneurs to locate in downtowns, she said.

Like other downtown Vista businesses, Shuman's store, too, is helping promote downtown as it grows its operations.

The store recently opened a new gift shop, and "we are selling merchandise now that promotes Vista," Shuman said. “You can come in and get something that says 'Vista' on it.”

Her advice for incoming downtown retailers: "Keep it interesting. Make it the type of shop where someone walking by will want to come inside."

CORRECTION: Business owner misidentified

An article in Wednesday's business section misidentified Vista business owner Maureen Barrack. She is clinic director at the Chiropractic Rehabiitation Wellness Center. Her husband and co-owner, Rick Barrack, is a chiropractor.

We apologize.