Marin is a challenging place to do business. On one hand, it has education and disposable income demographics that make retailers look as if they’ve overdosed on Viagra. On the other hand, it can be goofy enough to make Sarah Palin look like a raging intellectual. Please find the proof below.
By the time you read this, the San Rafael City Council may have already approved a new 137,000-square-foot Target store. The city’s planning commission gave its blessing to the project after a seven-hour public hearing. The meeting required two meal breaks and featured 14 PowerPoint presentations, six microphone replacements and a parade of 296 speakers.
Disregard that last sentence. But seven hours? Really?
For almost three years, Minnesota-based Target Stores has been mousing around with the idea of building a store in San Rafael on land that was formerly landfill. The new $40 million store could be located on Shoreline Parkway adjacent to a center that already has a Home Depot and car dealerships. The project had several stops and starts as it muddled through a terrible economy and a reticence on the part of Target to expand when other retailers are contracting.
While the city council no doubt loves the idea of adding 250 jobs along with $675,000 in annual sales tax revenue, not everyone shares its enthusiasm. Take United Market’s owner Bill Daniels. He owns the United location on Third Avenue just east of Highway 101 in the Mission City. And he’s not happy about the possibility that Target could open a location in East San Rafael. Daniels worries the expanded focus on groceries by Target might impact his business, and he doesn’t care for the fact that Target doesn’t pay union wages. Daniels has vowed to fight the new store and he told the Marin Independent Journal he has 25 local businesses behind him.
Funny thing is, Daniels is used to competition. Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s are within walking distance of his store. But he’s sweating a section of a Target store next to the San Rafael-Richmond Bridge.
Daniels has company if you head to San Anselmo or Fairfax, where the chambers of commerce have decided that the big box in San Rafael threatens businesses in their respective towns. San Anselmo Chamber CEO Connie Rodgers feels San Rafael is only thinking of itself and not about its neighbors. She’s worried that Target will put San Anselmo drug stores out of business, and she’s also worried the big box will hammer San Anselmo’s consignment stores, since consignment stores operate on the same deep discount principle as big box retailers.
Rogers thinks the city of San Rafael should be concerned for the merchants in San Anselmo. And in the best of all possible worlds, she’d be right. But these days, when cities are doing nothing but slashing budgets and making cuts, Rogers must know that San Rafael is going to greenlight the project and the money that comes with it.
If you follow Rogers’ logic, the city of Novato should be singing the blues. If you talk to local retail experts, they’ll say residents of Southern Marin won’t go any further north to shop than San Rafael, unless the item or store they need is only found in Novato. If that’s true, then the Target at the Vintage Oaks in Novato will be pretty cozy because soon, only Novato residents will be shopping there.
Ah, but it isn’t quite that simple. What about the folks who shop at Costco? There’s only one Costco in Marin and, while Marinites like their upscale boutique shops, big box markdowns work too. So while they’re hitting Costco, they may make a run to Target.
The San Rafael Chamber of Commerce voted to back the project, but the vote had its fireworks too. Bridget Moran, a director on San Rafael’s board and the CEO of the Agricultural Institute of Marin, resigned from the board because she strongly disagreed with the vote as well as its overall philosophy.
The San Rafael Planning Commission OK’d the project, though two commissioners voted against it, citing concerns over possible traffic congestion increases. Given the city’s track record on traffic flow, you can’t blame them. There are times when traffic on Fourth Street crawls. And while city officials always say officially that traffic and circulation concerns them, I’ve had more than one city hall type tell me off the record that having a jammed downtown because people want to be there is actually the kind of problem you want.
NextEra gets taste of Marin
The largest generator of wind and solar power in the country, NextEra, would like to build two windmill research towers in West Marin. The twin 197-foot towers come equipped with solar and wind info gathering and transmission gear as well as four bright orange balls to keep planes at bay.
The project carried a county staff recommendation, but the planning commission gave it a thumbs down, citing concerns ranging from bird and bat safety to visual blight. Barbara Salzman, who heads up the Marin Audubon Society, said all towers kill birds. Nona Dennis of the Marin Conservation League said the staff approval didn’t pass the sniff test.
On the other hand, a number of folks talked about the need for alternative energy in light of global warming and said the towers were exactly the kind of projects Marin should be approving.
Cliff Graham, a project director for NextEra, seemed perplexed. He remarked it was strange that the “greenest county on earth” rejected an alternative energy project. He said his company would appeal to the Board of Supervisors.
Don’t feel bad, Cliff. To an outsider, Marin can be confusing. But if you live here, sometimes it’s just plain funny.
Bill Meagher is a contributing editor at NorthBay biz. And he thinks if you put the windmills on top of the new San Rafael Target, you could kill both projects at the same time—and save the birds.
