Rob Edwards is the first executive director of the Downtown
Ventura Organization (DVO). Edwards was hired by the DVO board of
directors in July 2007 to manage Ventura’s historic downtown
business district and implement the National Trust for Historic
Preservation’s Main Street™ Approach to achieve commercial
district revitalization. The Main Street™ business model is widely
respected as the most efficient method of effecting holistic,
incremental, positive changes to historic shopping districts. The
Main Street Approach™ has been implemented in over 1,200
communities nationwide since the mid-1970’s.
Edwards has held posts as director of economic development
in downtown Phoenix, manager of business development in downtown
Washington, DC, and executive director of two other National Trust
Main Street™ programs—historic downtown Daytona Beach and the 14th
Street Heights neighborhood in Washington, DC.
Edwards’s resume spans various disciplines: small business
development, retail site selection, urban landscape design,
downtown promotion, real estate brokerage, political fundraising,
and marketing collateral design. He was most recently the director
of marketing and communications of Los Angeles’s Downtown Center
Business Improvement District—the non-profit that serves over 400
individual and institutional investors who own the 65 city blocks
between the 101, 10 and 110 freeways.
Edwards has authored articles on retail recruiting and
downtown redevelopment for, or has been cited as an expert source
by, the Washington Post, The Arizona Republic,
Retail Traffic, National Real Estate Investor and
MSNBC.com. He’s achieved several proficiency certificates in
economic development and is currently studying for the field’s
highest level of professional certification, the CEcD—a credential
achieved by just a handful of professionals in Ventura County. He
has experience designing consumer-centric websites to market
downtowns, designing and implementing historic, nature and
cultural pedestrian trails. Edwards co-designed the wayfinding
signage that marks the “Civil War to Civil Rights” walking trail
throughout downtown Washington DC. He has experience recruiting
creative class industries such as: biomedical and bioscience
firms, high technology start-ups, and film production. Rob is a
self-taught painter and several of his works on canvas are owned
by personalities on Capitol Hill, Wall Street, and Hollywood.
Edwards has also worked on city, congressional, statewide,
and presidential campaigns as an individual and PAC fundraiser in
both paid and volunteer capacities. During the 1994 election cycle
he was a full-time fundraising aide to California Democratic Party
chairman Bill Press in the Party’s West Hollywood headquarters. In
1996 he managed the campaign office of San Francisco City/County
Supervisor Leslie Katz, then returned to DC to assist the major
donor credentialing team of the second Clinton/Gore inauguration
committee. In autumn of 2000 he used his two-week vacation from
his day job to campaign in swing state Michigan for Al Gore and
spent his 2004 vacation time on the New Hampshire primary campaign
of Senator John Edwards.
Soon after September 11, 2001 Edwards entered Washington
DC’s police academy and subsequently served as a sworn, uniformed
reserve police officer for several years in both the downtown DC
precinct as well as the department’s then newly-formed Gay &
Lesbian Liaison Unit. Supported by his sergeant, Edwards
co-authored a grant request that won the District of Columbia
government its first ever Innovation in American Government Award
from the Ashe Institute at Harvard University. (Each year just
five government programs are selected from more than 1,500
nationwide applicants as the very best of government best
practices. The $100,000 award recognized the DC police
department’s unique approach to community policing within the GLBT
community.)
The youngest of five, Rob was raised on the family’s farm
in rural Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. His father, Laurens
Edwards, a chemical engineer and scientist, was co-developer of
the rocket fuel that sent the Apollo missions to the moon.
Edwards attended Lehigh University in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania on a full Army ROTC scholarship. As a freshman cadet
he was inducted into the Army’s honor society, the Scabbard &
Blade; he attended Camp All-American at Fort Bragg, North Carolina
in 1989. He earned a B.A. in 1990 from Lehigh with a double major
in urban studies and economics; he co-founded Lehigh’s Student
Senate and was twice an officer of the campus government. His
fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, was acknowledged by its national
office as one of the top ten chapters in America. He now chairs
the marketing committee of the University’s alumni board of
directors. He waited on tables, valet parked cars, and was an
ocean lifeguard on the Jersey shore (Cape May) during his college
summers.
Edwards studied graduate-level urban planning at both UCLA
and under world-renown landscape architect Ian McHarg at the
University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Fine Arts.
Excelling, but admittedly undercapitalized (broke), Rob dropped
out of UPenn with a 3.8 GPA before finishing his city planning
degree.
Just six weeks after arriving in Ventura the Pacific
Coast Business Times named Edwards to its “Forty Under 40”
list of young professionals to watch in 2008. He is the newest and
youngest member of Ventura’s Chamber of Commerce board of
directors. The California Main Street Association in Sacramento
recently invited him to serve on their six-member board of
directors to represent the downtowns of greater Los Angeles. He
also serves on the advisory board of the new Ventura City Corps.
Partnering with Kiley Olivier of Goldcoast Broadcasting,
Edwards’ first self-produced radio advertising campaign on behalf
of downtown Ventura’s merchants won an ADDY Award for one of the
best radio campaigns in all of greater Los Angeles in 2007.
Edwards’ print and radio advertising campaigns on behalf of
the downtown Ventura merchants has been nominated for best ad
campaign and best branding effort by the International Downtown
Association and the International Economic Development Council,
respectively. The winners will be announced in late July. A win in
either of the competitions by this freshman downtown organization
will be a first and will certainly put downtown Ventura on the map
as one to watch over the next several years.
When asked what achievement he is most proud of, he said,
“I am an award-winning architect. Yah, I won the blue ribbon for
“best bird house” at the 1978 Pennsylvania State 4-H Fair. It was
my first (and only) design/build project! Mom allowed me to choose
between a pack of fair food tickets or a $10 cash prize as a
reward. Not knowing what $10 would get me, I took the food tickets
and downed two funnel cakes within the hour. I was in hog heaven
... until I got sick all over the front seat of her new Mercury
Cougar—about 95 miles from home. It wasn’t pretty. And she wasn’t
happy. That was the day I learned: cash is king.”
Edwards, 40,
is single and lives in the Pierpont neighborhood of Ventura and is
always looking for new friends to kayak with.
