The proposed new title could be used by both the city and the Montrose Shopping Park Assn. in promotional materials to draw customers to the area, he said.
"I want the city calling it the 'official old-town district' to help the area promote itself," he said.
But the new name is only one aspect of a larger impetus to preserve the feel of the 94-year-old business district, which is known for its many single-proprietorship, mom-and-pop-style retailers.
A development plan for the shopping park could include zoning changes that would limit the square footage that any one merchant could occupy to 3,000 square feet, or limit the size of any one merchant's frontage, Drayman said.
"It's not to prevent national retailers, but to make sure that all the retailers, the national retailers and the single proprietorships, maintain the small, single-proprietorship character we've always had," he said. "They should be of a scale and proportion that maintains the nature the character and traditions."
Concerns about the changing face of Montrose have mounted among some residents and merchants in the past two years. A couple of new property owners, they say, are boosting rents to a rate too high for longtime, mom-and-pop shops in the retail district.
But Bruce Meyer, who scooped up two Honolulu Avenue properties last year — including the building currently occupied by Once Upon A Time bookstore, which is moving due to a rent increase — says that turnover in the area is to be expected.
"Nobody loves a rent increase, but it's just the way things happen with inflation and all the other factors … a new mortgage and new taxes that are dramatically increased," Meyer said.
