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Council holds firm - only retail on Big Basin Way's ground level By Kate Carter Even longtime, active community members have to play by the rules in the city of Saratoga. That's the message that the city council sent June 19 when it upheld an earlier planning commission decision that prevented veteran resident and Coldwell Banker Realtor Miles Rankin from expanding his business into a Village area designated for retail uses. Rankin explained to the council, as he had last month to the planning commission, that he has worked as a Realtor out of the building at the corner of Big Basin Way and Third Street for about 40 years. He added that he has lived in Saratoga for 50 years and listed the different organizations in which he has been involved. He also provided information about the ways his business has served Saratoga during that time, causing passersby to stop and peruse the real estate listings in his window and bringing more property tax money to city coffers every time he made a sale. All he wants to do, he said, is allow his growing business to expand out of its cramped quarters into an additional 1,400-square-foot area of the same building out of which the Exclusively Yours boutique will soon move. He also said that his business would move out of a location in the Saratoga Village Center along Big Basin Way, where it has a 400-square-foot office with the same amount of frontage area as the Exclusively Yours location. The business would net a 1,000-square-foot increase in usable space, he said. "I think I'm rather aware of where Saratoga is going and what Saratoga needs," Rankin said. "I don't think it would be a detriment; I think it would be an asset." The building's owner, Robert Pollack, also spoke to the council in favor of Rankin's expansion, pointing to the street's difficulty in attracting retailers to that location - which already has four commercial sites awaiting retail tenants. "This will be the fifth," he said. "I don't think that's very good for the city. That's a considerable number of vacancies, and we certainly don't have any great excess of real estate offices." The council, however, unanimously agreed with the commission's reasoning that the site fronting Big Basin Way is intended in the city's General Plan for retail use to help boost the Village's foot traffic and increase the amount of sales tax revenue coming to the city. It determined that real estate isn't retail and doesn't have the same draw as another boutique or similar shop would have. It preferred to give the Village a chance to become a bigger retail destination by saving that space for such a retailer. Councilmen John Mehaffey and Stan Bogosian said they wanted to allow the city's economic development coordinator, Danielle Surdin, who has been on the job for about a year, more time to attract retailers to the area and not lose a prime location to a non-retail use. Bogosian added that he thought there could be some way for Rankin to expand the usable space in his current location or find other space in that building, rather than use the frontage area. Vice Mayor Evan Baker said that the city already has plenty of Coldwell Banker Realtors throughout its commercial areas and didn't see the need to allow Rankin any more space in the Village. "Even dear and valued people can ask to do something that's not good for that location," Councilwoman Ann Waltonsmith said. "At a certain point in time we have to make some hard decisions, and today is one of those," Mayor Nick Streit said. Pollack said the council's decision showed a lack of concern for the needs of the property owners to find tenants for their buildings and would create a financial challenge for him. "If we're short of space, OK," he said, "but what are all the owners supposed to do with all these buildings? Look at all the money we're going to lose. There's really nobody standing in line to come into Saratoga." Rankin also felt the council's decision wasn't fair to his needs - it would force him to keep the Village Center location, which houses four Realtors, rather than bring them all under one roof into a "first-class" site. "I would say that they're punishing us for being successful," he said. |
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