Profile: Marco Li Mandri; Making a BID to Improve Business - Marco Li Mandri Convinces Local Shopkeepers That Chipping In Spruces Up Profits
San Diego Business Journal; San Diego CA; April 5, 1998; Mike Allen

The recession that broke the back of many San Diego businesses earlier this decade may be a vague memory to some folks, but not Marco Li Mandri. By late 1992, Li Mandr's San Diego Pasta Co., with outlets in Kensington and Hillcrest, was barely afloat, losing money and customers during the worst economic slump this region had every seen.

"The bottom really dropped out of the economy," Li Mandri remembers. "There were a lot of business that went out of business throughout San Diego. A lot of people we were in the food industry with- small mom-and-pops that grew pretty large and got big accounts - all went out from 1992 to 1994."

In mid-1993, Li Mandri shut down the pasta company that he founded nine years earlier and which had done some $900,000 in annual sales and employed about 30 people. Unemployed with a wife and five children to support, Li Mandri did what many people do when they suddenly find themselves out of work. He became a consultant. His idea was to take the expertise he had gained as both the owner of a small business and as president of a local business improvement district (BID), and help establish similar zones. As president of the Adams Avenue Business Association, Li Mandri headed up one of the more active business improvement districts.

Created under a 1989 state law, BIDs began springing up earlier in the decade as a way of helping older, urban shopping areas survive.

"The concept was to make cosmetic changes such as installing streetlights and repairing sidewalks to retain customers and attract new ones," Li Mandri says. "The commercial district is the face of the community," he says. "if the face is blemished, the impression someone gets is that the whole body is blemished."

But Li Mandri and his allies went beyond simply lobbying for government grants for street improvements. They began raising critical issues concerning how small business obtain credit or are excluded from getting the same. During the early 1990s, frequent bank mergers and acquisitions triggered regulatory oversight involving a little-known law called the Community Reinvestment Act. The law essentially required lenders to invest part of their profits into the communities where they did business. At public hearings, Li Mandri testified many banks were not making loans to small businesses because they didn't fit bankers' rather dubious underwriting standards.

"Our position was that the banks were in no position to determine whether or not somebody was credit worthy in light of what they did in the 1980's."

Li Mandri says the failure of San Diego's major savings institutions, including Great American Bank and HomeFed Bank, proved these and other lenders needed to overhaul their standards and make an effort to provide loans to small businesses.

Li Mandri took all his experience as a small businessman and as president of the Adams Avenue BID and launched a new company, trh Marco Group, specializing in establishing and running business improvement districts. In the early days, Li Mandri did a lot of driving. He was retained by Southwestern College's Small Business Development Center, helping new firms write their business plans and get started. At the same time, he was helping establish BIDs in such disparate places as West Hollywood and El Centro. Only a couple hundred miles apart, West Hollywood and El Centro could have been "at opposite ends of the universe," in terms of their populations and cultural attitudes, he says.
"But I really enjoyed that diversity. I thought it was great."

Since he started the Marco Group, he has been involved in the formation of seven BIDs, including five in San Diego county: Diamond (in southeastern San Diego), College, Little Italy, Imperial Beach and San Yisidro. The others are in the Los Angeles area. The company also manages two BIDs, located in Old Town and Little Italy.

Initially the concept of a BID, in which businesses levy additional fees on themselves for the improvements, is a hard sell, Li Mandri says. "This is no easy task , to convince somebody to asses themselves some additional fee."

But once the BID has been in place for a few years, the benefits usually convince even the most ardent doubters.
Steven Galasso, president of the Little Italy Association and the owner of Café Italiam said before the area adopted the BID, Li Mandri "kept hammering us on the idea, and finally, he sold us on it." Sonia Miró-McCall, a member of the association's excecutice board, calls Li Mandri "our Italian maverick." "He gets things done," she says. "He understands public policy and understands the political arena., and he has a passion for his work."

Li Mandri may have a soft spot in his heart for the Little Italy neighborhood, since he was born there. His family moved when he was a year old to the College Area. The second oldest of six children, Li Mandri was the only boy. "It was no picnic," he says of his childhood with a smile. "I got to know a lot about girls and women just by being surrounded by them." And what, pray tell, can he offer as pearls of wisdom to those of the male gender? Have patience, he says. "And learn when to keep your mouth shut."

But young Li Mandri found when he opened his mouth, the results were often positive. While attending UCSD, he persuaded a sufficient number of listeners to elect him president of the Associated Student Body for two years. Later, he helped organize an independent labor union representing clerical workers and gardeners at his alma mater. Li Mandri is not only an articulate speaker, he has an outgoing personality that has made him an effective organizer, says Paul Russo, owner of a College Area shopping center.

If organization seems to be one of his strong points, it should be, since he's been doing it for the last 25 years, he says.
It's a skill that comes in handy in helping his wife, Laura, raise their five children. In addition to her maternal duties, Laura also serves as president of People For Trees, a tree-panting group, and attends City College part-time. Li Mandri's limited leisure time is spent with his children.

Li Mandri is well aware pf the nurturing influences of his parents and grandparents, who all emigrated from Sicily to the New York/New Jersey area at the turn of the century. "If I had to pick the person who had the greatest effect on my life, it would be my grandfather, who I was named after," he says. "He was a very socially powerful person in his community and well respected. …People who knew him still talk about him today, even though he died more than 20 years ago."