A new Home Depot store and garden center proposed for a vacant 14.7-acre site at Bernal Avenue and Stanley Boulevard could be closer to gaining city government approval after developers agreed to scuttle plans for an adjoining gasoline station and to make architectural changes.
Don MacKenzie and Pete Knoedler of Regency Centers, which would develop the land parcel across from McDonald’s for its owner, Frank Auf der Maur, said the store is needed on the east side of Pleasanton to serve a growing customer base.
In a second public meeting with the Planning Commission, billed as an unofficial workshop discussion, the Regency representatives said the site would be called Pleasanton Gateway and would include:
A Home Depot building materials store with 106,432 square feet of floor space and a 34,760-square-foot garden center. The store would be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
A Longs Drugs store with 15,789 square feet of floor space, which would include a drive-through lane on its north side facing Stanley. Except for fast-food restaurants, this would be Pleasanton’s first drive through for retail sales.
Three satellite stores with one building totaling 11,500 square feet and two others with 10,000 square feet each. Tenants have yet to be identified.
One 5,000-square-foot, drive through restaurant. No operator has been identified but Regency said it would not be a fast-foot restaurant and more likely a retailer that sells coffee and other beverages.
Responding to concerns expressed at a public meeting last January, Greg George, Real Estate manager for The Home Depot Corporation in Orange, Calif., assured planners that the company has no plans to sell or reduce retail operations at its store on Johnson Drive. Critics had discounted Home Depot’s argument that customers from central and east side Pleasanton neighborhoods would use the new store and not drive across the city to the Johnson Drive facility. Once the new store is open, they argued, the older store would be closed, with customers from the 580 and 680 freeway interchange areas using city streets to reach the new one.
“Our current store in Pleasanton has been very successful over the past 15 years,” George stated in a letter given to the Planning Commission. “Sales this year will exceed $60 million, growing to over $75 million by 2009.”
“Our operators have found that once a store reaches these volume levels, one of two things should happen,” George wrote. “The first would be to expand the store size and reconfigure the interior into a prototype layout. The second would be a new store opportunity in the nearby market.
“If there is housing growth, like we see in the Pleasanton, Dublin and Livermore area, we naturally want to open more stores to keep up with this anticipated growth,” he added.
George said the store proposed for the Bernal Avenue site would be profitable from year one, drawing close to $10.5 million in new sales from the local trade area it would serve.
Complaints from speakers at the public meeting focused on mounting traffic problems at the intersection of Bernal, Stanley and Valley, with congestions during peak hours causing backups all the way to Santa Rita Road.
As part of its development plans, Regency representatives said they would widen Stanley to 10 lanes, beyond the eight lanes already planned at the Bernal intersection. Bernal would be widened to eight lanes, although no changes are planned on Valley.
Asked to make more changes in its architectural plans, the Regency Group said it would make the Home Depot building design more compatible with surrounding architecture. The developer is expected to submit formal development plans to the city this summer.
