Now that the town has approved the work plans and general design of Old Town, at least two factions are looking at the project with an eye to incorporating their own schemes into the plan.
One is an ambitious undertaking by downtown business people to piggyback on Old Town's proposed underground garage. The idea has merit. On the other hand, an effort to coerce Old Town developers into building and subsidizing a theater is misguided.
With some residents and merchants getting cold feet about the town's proposal to charge for parking in downtown lots, merchants with a lot to lose unless the parking situation is improved are looking at other ways to create parking space--even if they have to pay for it themselves. They could pick up 105 spaces if the town built a second level below Old Town's proposed garage.
But with Old Town hoping for a March groundbreaking date, the decision must be made now, or it will be too late.
A group of some 35 business people met last week to talk about how much they would be willing to donate to the cause, and it actually looked as if the necessary $1.1 million might be achievable.
Their willingness to put their money where their mouth is suggests a good-faith effort on the part of the merchants to get what they want without putting the entire Old Town project at risk.
Meanwhile, however, theater enthusiasts are unhappy that the Town Council passed an ordinance allowing Old Town's former theater (originally a school auditorium) to be converted to retail space.
Old Town owners Deke Hunter and Ed Storm said earlier they did not oppose a theater so long as it was not a money-losing proposition for them. They put the burden on the theater supporters to find a company that would like to call Old Town home. They said that beyond the basic renovation they would do for any tenant, it would be up to the theater company to turn the space into a theater.
But theater supporters think these terms are unreasonable. Now, the group is flexing its muscles in an effort to force the Town Council to mandate that the developers renovate the dilapidated old theater and offer the tenant low rent besides.
What the theater group should have done is just what the merchants did: ask their supporters to put their money where their mouth is. Instead, the group wants the Town Council to tell Hunter-Storm that the price of developing the rundown Old Town shopping center should include having to build a theater for the community and to subsidize it with low rents.
The theater group suggests that Hunter-Storm owes the community something in exchange for being able to make money in the town, much as home developers are required to dedicate open space.
But that's a far cry from telling developers that instead of using their prime retail space for retail, they must literally build a theater from scratch, and then reduce the monthly rental fee.
If Los Gatans really think theater is a high priority--and little in the past few years really suggests that they do--then they should begin a communitywide effort to build a theater.
Developers of retail space do not owe the community a new theater and a lifetime of subsidized rent.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, January 15, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved .