August 20, 2004

Back to the Table of Contents Page

Back to the Weekly Home Page

Classifieds

Publication Date: Friday, August 20, 2004

What's to become of our neighborhood shopping center?

Pleasanton is slowly shutting down new development.

Although not a building moratorium, which the Planning Commission once sought and the City Council rejected, officials are encouraging developers to hold back on any new projects that involve land use changes or could add more traffic until the city revises its General Plan and approves it, now scheduled for December 2005.

Affected by this decision are: ¥ A proposed Home Depot on 14 acres of vacant land at Stanley and Bernal Avenue, across from McDonald's. ¥ A new Lexus dealership at Old Santa Rita and Santa Rita roads, on property currently earmarked for an assisted living and care facility. ¥ Hundreds of homes and apartments proposed for the Hacienda Business Park as part of a restructuring of commercially zoned acreage and empty office buildings that its corporate owners no longer need.

"No one is saying developers can't come in with their plans," explained City Planning Director Brian Swift. "It's just that the council has said it does not want to consider any new projects that might require a General Plan amendment before the new Plan is adopted."

Immediately affected by the council's action are plans to tear down the 25-year-old, mostly vacant Vintage Hills Center at the corner of Tawny Drive and Bernal Avenue and replace it with 188 units of senior housing. That proposal was the latest of three submitted by James Tong, a principal of Charter Properties on Hopyard Road, who said he has an option to buy the 5.1 acre site from its owners.

Although Tong did not disclose the names of the owners or the pending sale price, the last owner of record was reported to be a family headed by Chung Fong Hsich, a business owner and resident of San Francisco. A local real estate investor estimated the property's value at about $5 million, although the owners listed the property two years ago with Jeffery Hutchins and a San Francisco commercial real estate group for $7 million. Hutchins and the "For Sale" sign that stood at the center's corner for nearly two years are both gone.

Tong told the council that the property is now owned by a family of six. One lives in El Paso, Texas, another in Australia and a third in Shanghai. He does not know where the other three live.

Tong said his option to buy the old retail center will expire in October, and urged the council to "fast track" his application without waiting for the completion of the General Plan revision.

"Timing is critical for our interests," Tong said. "I have an option on this property and I don't think I can wait until December 2005."

But the council refused, and told Tong to await the planning document. Last week, Tong cancelled an $18,500 traffic study he was paying the city to conduct, a key part of his application process.

The decision brought relief - at least for the time being - to the owners of the two retail businesses still left in the Vintage Hills Center, Cutt Company hair care and the Vintage Hills Cleaners. A shopping center built in 1979, it was once was the pride of a growing Vintage Hills community. At the time, the anchor store was the popular Flair Market, a 20,000-square-foot full service grocery store, with a Ben Franklin store and smaller retail outlets that included Cutt Co. and the cleaners.

Jimmy Mak, owner of Cutt Co., and Rivga and Young Lim, owners of Vintage Hills Cleaners, have been unable to obtain leases from the center's owners for the past several years. They pay their rents on a monthly basis to a property management company, having never met the owners, hoping that they would be given at least 30-day notices if the center is sold and redeveloped for other uses. But with their own businesses successful and growing, in an area with significant population increases over the last 10 years, they don't understand the rush to demolish the retail center and convert it to housing.

"My shop and the cleaners do a good business here," Mak said. "Neither of us is very large, but we're comfortable with the customers we have. This is a perfect site for many small businesses like ours, and it would be a good place for an upscale market like Whole Foods or Trader Joe's."

He said the Baskin-Robbins store closed after its longtime franchise owner died of cancer and her family could not find a buyer because the center's owner would not provide a lease.

"A couple of my clients wanted to buy the franchise, which the family might have sold for as much as $100,000, but they couldn't get the franchise without a lease," he said. "That was a very popular store for the kids who play across Tawny in the park and parents. It would still be a great business for this site."

Mak said he bought Cutt Co. from its former owner eight years ago, and has seen the business grow as more people move into Vintage Hills, Ruby Hill and other east and southeast side communities.

"Even without a lease, I just remodeled my shop to expand it," Mak said. "The shop has been here for 25 years. I have people coming in all the time and asking how they can rent space in this center. It has a lot of potential."

Rivga Lim agreed. Standing in front of automated sorting racks with hundreds of freshly cleaned and laundered shirts, dresses, suits and slacks, Lim said her business has grown each year along with the neighboring population. In addition to a full-time staff, she hires high school students to help out after school and during the summer months.

"We've heard from many of our customers that they would like to see another ice cream store, a coffee shop, a fitness center, children's learning center and a quality food store like Andronico's. We want the shopping center to stay here."

So do some members of the City Council. Councilman Steve Brozosky said he has researched the site and that its loss of retailers was often because the center owner would not renew leases.

"I know people have tried to lease space on this property and were told they could not," Brozosky complained to Tong at a recent council meeting. "The council approved a request by Bonfare Market to open a store there, and then the owner refused to write a lease that would have allowed Bonfare to continue."

He said a dance studio quit the center because it was not being maintained.

"Who would want to take their kids to a dance studio with broken windows and vandalism all around it?" Brozosky asked.

"I don't like being taken advantage of and having this center become blighted so that the city will want to approve any proposal that comes along just to get rid of the blight. Frankly, I'm looking for a shopping center there. We don't have one in that part of town."

Tong agreed that by Pleasanton standards, the Vintage Hills Center today "can almost be considered a blighted area."

"With only two tenants, doors boarded up with plywood and broken windows, I don't see why the city of Pleasanton needs such a shopping center that is a neighborhood eyesore," he added. "That's why I urge the city to consider this senior apartment proposal. If you approve this project, the blighted area will go away."

Brozosky said he had another plan for fixing the blight, and that would be through the eminent domain process, with the city buying the property and then reselling it to a developer who could restore it as a retail center.

Mayor Tom Pico said that although redevelopment agencies have the power of eminent domain on deteriorated commercial properties like the Vintage Hills Center, cities, themselves, do not.

"It's my understanding that we don't have that kind of authority without creating a redevelopment agency, a proposal that this city has twice turned down," Pico said.

Housing advocate Patricia Belding said she was disappointed with the decision against moving forward on Tong's proposal.

"We need to create more affordable housing in Pleasanton and this is an opportunity," she said.

Connie Goldade, a housing consultant, said Tong's proposed project would provide affordable apartments for seniors 62 years of age and older in two- and three-story buildings. Included would be what she described as "senior amenities," including a common dining facility for those who would want to have their meals there, van pooling, private meeting rooms, a medical exam room for visiting nurses and doctors, and a clubhouse-type facility that would be available to tenants and community organizations.

Tong's financial advisor Max Nardoni of the Klein Financial Group said that current low interest rates and the recent availability of subsidized housing bonds make the senior apartment project financially feasible now. He said no one can predict what the market will look like in 2006, when Tong's plan - or someone else's - could be considered again.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.