This weekend at the Rockridge Out and About, FANS will sponsor a booth as a way of promoting our belief that an appropriately scaled Safeway store is essential to the future of our pedestrian oriented, small shop community. The proposed Safeway store is simply too large and inconsistent with the neighborhood. We will have two alternative proposals to discuss that we have been working on for some time.
Each proposal solves the boundary conditions that surround the site and address things in need of repair including: new landscaping and trees, new signage, and street improvements such as benches, trellises and wider sidewalks.
The proposed buildings on the site differentiate the two drawings. One shows a renovated, or rebuilt, building on the footprint of the existing store, with the possibility of a modest addition. The other proposes; new shops along College to mirror those on the other side that most clearly personify 'Rockridge'; and a new grocery store on Claremont. Proposal 1 Proposal 2
We welcome neighborhood comments.
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6 comments:
The second proposal adds 10K SF while reducing parking to only 94 spaces. This plan appears to be an attempt to create the maximum amount of congestion on College Ave. while limiting the expansion of Safeway. There is a reason that the Rockridge Architects are unemployed. They have no design skills. Really awful.
The second proposal adds 13,325 sq. ft., not 10,000. The design is an alternative to the huge 65,000 sq ft complex Safeway wants to build, which will, indeed, increase traffic and bring the area to a standstill. At least the proposals try and promote more pedistrian traffic, not an increase in auto traffic to an area that is already extremely congested.
Safeway seems determine to damn the neighborhood and ram their (Safeway's) College & Claremont Avenues *BIG BOX* SHOPPING MALL down our throats! Despite the fact that by far most of the community has told Safeway reps that WE DON'T WANT IT! And *BIG BOX STORES* look for *BIG BOX TRAFFIC* from all around to support those stores!! We know what these Claremont and College (and Alcatraz and Ashby) Avenues (besides Tunnel Road) are like *already* when traffic is busy. Traffic would go from "heavy" to "nightmare"!!
As I've said before at neighborhood meetings about Safeway, there is still the question of *WHY* Safeway *wants* to build *TWO* BIG BOX SAFEWAY STORES (MALLS) only about *1* mile apart from each other: one BIG BOX store at Claremont and the other BIG BOX store off Broadway & 51st Street (/Pleasant Valley Ave)!? Those *TWO* BIG BOX Safeway stores will be each other's primary competitor!
But, at least a BIG BOX Safeway Mall is much more appropriate off 51st & Broadway where their already *is* a large shopping mall that *could* use renovating/rebuilding, set apart from the midst of a residential area.
Now when Walmart has been known to do this in a community (build two BIG BOX Walmarts relatively close to each other or at both ends of a small city/town along a major thoroughfare), it has been to almost completely drive out small independent businesses in the community -- and then Walmart closes one of their stores and leaves the other one empty (an eyesore, if not a blight)!
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And in a declining economy that doesn't look to ever rebound completely within even the next decade to pre-deep recession levels (with even the former numbers of certain professional jobs never coming back, because they have either been, or will continue to be, outsourced overseas or otherwise computerized), the two BIG BOX mile-apart Safeway stores might end up canabalizing each others business, to the point where one would close! And that one would most likely be the College & Claremont Avenues store.
A, at the time, brand new beautiful, gourmet style, BIG BOX Albertson's closed in *Walnut Creek* a few years ago, after only being open about a couple of years! The Walnut Creek Albertson's is now a *HUGE* restaurant, after being empty for a lllonggg time, but this economy has seen a lot of restaurants go under. Let's see how many huge restaurants stay in business with more and more of our discretionary and recreational budget being eaten up by high gas and energy prices, higher and higher fees (hidden, highly regressive taxes) for everything, steadily falling wages' buying power, and increasing unemployment or even just underemployment, not to mention a society where the college-educated will owe much more in (massive) student loans (which may not be payed off until people are in their 40's) than the previous college generations ever owed, which will affect their budget for many many years!
Safeway in England, after moving into that country only a relatively few years ago, went out of business there (and was bought out by Tesco, a British gorcery company). There are new grocery store companies in Southern California (Fresh & Easy): will they start opening stores in the East Bay -- more competition for Safeway? Now there's a new BIG BOX Target (in an appropriate location) in commercial Emeryville: major discount competition for Safeway (I already buy my bathroom supplies, like mouthwash, toothpaste, shampoo, etc., there).
Trader Joe's near the Rockridge BART has already taken a lot of *both* Safeway location's business! And that's not the only major grocery store that both Safeway locations already compete with (especially at the College-Claremont Safeway) -- besides the increasing popularity of local farmer's markets (or the semi-open-air Yasai fruits & vegetables Market across from the College-Claremont Safeway). And, besides that, more no-frills ethnic markets (often with cheaper prices and more interesting food) have opened up over the years.
So, I wonder if Safeway is really out to destroy the other independent businesses -- the pharmacy, the butcher, the flower shops, the card shops, the stationary, the body lotions shops, the wine shops, etc., maybe even one or two of the coffee shops, all except for the restaurants -- off of College Avenue. Or, if, as one person once pointed out, also intend to make more money by selling LOT'S more shelf space to product vendors.
Whatever Safeway's plan, you can bet that they will somehow get the powers at Oakland City Hall to rubberstamp Safeway's original BIG BOX SHOPPING MALL plan and you can bet that, if we let Safeway, that it will come at our neighborhood's quality of life expense and/or commercial risk.
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