Home Depot’s second attempt to build a store in Mountain View has far fewer obstacles to overcome than the company faced in its failed campaign to use the old Emporium site.
Despite its likely approval and the lack of an organized opposition, some residents continue to be skeptical of the company’s plan to replace the Sears building at San Antonio Shopping Center with a 130,000-square-foot home improvement store.
“We are very concerned,” said Elna Tymes, vice president of the Monta Loma Neighborhood Association. Voicing the worry of some homeowners who live near the shopping center — and next to what will be several hundred new homes at the Mayfield Mall site — Tymes said a Home Depot would “put even more traffic on an already overloaded San Antonio.”
Palo Alto-based Thoits Brothers, Inc., is hoping the establishment of a Home Depot will help rejuvenate the San Antonio Shopping Center. City officials, meanwhile, expect the store to generate sales tax revenues hundreds of thousands of dollars above and beyond what Sears produced.
“Revenue sources for the city [are] always a good thing, but the source needs to fit within the makeup of the community, rather than making the community conform around the source,” said Alicia Crank, a human relations commissioner who is running for city council this November.
A home for big boxes
Home Depot’s planned arrival, four years after voters soundly defeated a company-sponsored referendum to change the zoning (the company spent nearly $500,000 on the Measure N campaign), is a success story from the perspective of the city’s economic development plan.While some cities — like Palo Alto — put restrictions on big box retailers out of concern for their impacts on neighborhoods and smaller businesses, Mountain View continues to welcome them. Companies like Wal-Mart and Target consistently rank among the city’s top sales tax generators, and other companies have found a welcome mat in Mountain View when they wanted to move in or expand.
“When the bubble burst, we lost $10 million to $12 million [in annual sales tax revenue], because the community was focused on dot-com businesses,” said economic development director Ellis Berns, who said Home Depot and other big box stores help diversity the city’s revenue stream. “From an economic development standpoint, it will strengthen and stabilize our base.”
The city has had some recent success in working with developers to entice big box stores. After Circuit City abandoned its location on Grant Road, Nob Hill Foods, an upscale grocery store, expanded into its former space. And a new shopping center at Rengstorff and Old Middlefield will be home to REI, Best Buy, PetSmart and Bed, Bath & Beyond, right next to Orchard Supply Hardware and an expanding Costco.
All quiet on the business front
While residents have expressed concern about Home Depot, the local businesses that were instrumental in defeating Measure N in 2002 have so far been relatively silent on the issue.Debbie Schulz, manager of Minton’s Lumber on Evelyn Avenue, helped write the ballot arguments against Measure N, while Brian Avery of Avery Construction financed the opposition. Neither has made any public statements, and both were unavailable for comment early this week.
Daryl Thom, manager and owner of Bruce Bauer Lumber, located on San Antonio a few blocks from the proposed site, said he is not concerned about the impact.
“A good portion of our client base is looking for something they have a hard time delivering,” said Thom, who said Home Depot might even help by attracting more shoppers. “Contractors want the product they want at the quality they want. It’s more about time than it is an extra 10 cents for a two-by-four.”
Home Depot already has stores in East Palo Alto, Cupertino and Sunnyvale. The San Antonio location will put it squarely in the middle of thousands of new housing units planned for Mountain View and closer to the larger homes in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.
But first the measure will face hearings regarding traffic flow and design of the building, as well as informal meetings with neighbors, many of whom remain suspicious about the area’s ability to sustain the impacts.
“It isn’t that we don’t want to welcome Home Depot to the neighborhood,” said Tymes. But with construction projects planned all along San Antonio Road and down Central Expressway, including the massive housing development at Mayfield Mall, Monta Loma residents are starting to feel “set upon,” she said.
E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com
