I was having a little fun with a friend of mine, whom we’ll call “Byron,” so as to let him remain somewhat anonymous. Because what loving parent would actually hang a moniker like that around a kid’s neck?
You no doubt see my point.
I’d sent Byron a link to a story that ran in my hometown newspaper, the Marin Independent Journal. In the story, it said Marin was the most educated county in the Golden State. The U.S. Census Bureau found 54 percent of adults 25 years old and older have a bachelor’s degree, and 22.5 percent hold an advanced degree. I mention this because Byron has an inclination to believe that there are times when I may share with him something that’s not, how you say, rooted deeply in truth.
I may or may not do this because, as my good friend Jack Nicholson once said, Byron can’t handle the truth. But the more I think about it, I’m not sure I can handle it either.
If Marin is pretty well educated, it follows that we have a better shot at solving problems. On top of that, since Marin also has a little bit of wealth going on, it also means if we can’t figure it out, we can afford to hire a smarty pants type to solve the riddle.
With me so far?
So if that’s the deal, how is it that it takes six years to get a Target store location approved in San Rafael? Please understand I’m no great fan of Target. I don’t own stock in the company and don’t shop there on a regular basis.
Now, I know that someplace out there in the vast Marin-Sonoma-Napa region is a learned person saying that approving a Target in East San Rafael was, well, complicated. Indeed, one often hears the phrase “it’s complicated” in the capital of political correctness, Marin County. I’m not trying to say that things in general can’t be “complicated.” But it’s also code for “I don’t want to talk about that right now, with you.”
I was single for more than a few years and uttered that phrase on occasion. At times, it was even true.
In the case of Target, there were complications like the location of the store. Then there were the type of jobs that would be created. Some folks were concerned that the big box retailer could have an unhealthy impact on existing retailers.
And there were arguments on the other side. The new store would bring increased sales tax revenues. In a town where it seems city hall often has to debate how many cops it can afford or how many days to leave the library closed, that’s not a bad thing. Residents would have more retail choices and save on gas driving to Novato. Win for wallets, win for the environment.
And then there was the inevitable lawsuit and legal challenges. In the end, all those issues are valid and deserving of through public hearings. Again, I say unto you, six years to approve one store?
In all fairness, and I’m nothing if not fair (ask “Byron”), this isn’t so much a Target problem, though you certainly couldn’t prove that by the retailer’s management digging out of the snow back in Minneapolis. Marin believes in slow when it comes to change. And slow can be good. Slow food works. Slow to anger is a pretty worthy idea. But glacial is a problem. If it’s going to take six years to get a final answer on a 136,000-square-foot retail space, you better hold the public hearing on an ice rink. Or perhaps in a morgue.
Even before Marin was declared Smartville by the Census folks, this issue was on my mind. Once you finish this column, if you haven’t yet had your fill, slide over here and read my story about Disney buying up Lucasfilm. As I spoke with people about that story, this issue came up in a more subtle way.
When a few neighbors next door to Grady Ranch let it be known they were ready to sue the county over the approved film studio project, Lucas pulled the plug. After lobbying the neighbors for 25 years and working for a decade to get a master plan approved, the matter still wasn’t fully settled. Now the disapproving neighbors are looking at the new project, which will focus on affordable housing.
Karma can indeed be a challenge.
More to the point, however, is that Grady Ranch is only the most recent example of the tendency to slow-walk everything in Marin. In this case, the disappearance of the Lucasfilm project took with it 690 construction jobs and 270 jobs in Marin for every 100 workers at the new film studio. This is to say nothing of the added tax revenues.
The Disney deal was in the works for months but both Mouse & Co. and Lucasfilm kept it hushed up well. My guess is that Lucas would have used Grady Ranch for his own film making after selling off his company; after all, none of the Marin properties were actually part of the deal.
It’s also worth noting that Dr. Robert Eyler, the interim CEO of the Marin Economic Forum, sent a letter to Disney CEO Robert Iger asking for a meeting to assure Iger and Disney that Marin isn’t really the slow-motion-delay-at-all-cost-nothing-can-change-no-matter-how-positive-it-might-be-for-the economy-type place.
To the best of my knowledge and recollection, senator, Eyler is still checking the mailbox for a missive from Mr. Iger. One can only hope that the mail delivery from SoCal is as slow as the “processing process” in Marin.
