A demolition permit was issued Wednesday for the old Safeway building. Randy Kyte of Harsch Development indicated that they have found structural deficiencies in the building and foundation, which may ultimately lead to demolition of the entire building rather than just portions, and reconstruction per the approved plans. So that there are no surprises, Randy will be talking to the neighbors who have expressed interest in the project and he will advise them about how the demolition will proceed a portion at a time, including the possibility of total demolition.”
Isn’t this interesting. The design review now becomes a new building from the ground up. So now the Planning Board and the City Council can reevaluate their OSH decision. What do you think they will do now?

I’ll still shop at Encinal Hardware for most of what I need.

How are Borders, Bed/Bath, Old Navy and Crapplebees NOT “Big Boxes” but OSH is? Are they medium boxes?

Ask any legitimate retailer and they’ll tell you – ALAMEDA IS A CRAPPY MARKET.

Oh – and Good Chevrolet shut the doors today.

The roughly $5 million of sales tax revenue to the city reflects $500 million of spending in the city. Alameda’s share of the sales tax is 1%

To generate another $5 million in sales tax – to close the current budget gap, for example, would require another $500 million in spending. The studies for Alameda Landing suggested that $41 million in taxable sales was being ‘leaked’ from Alameda. So even if we captured all of that, there’s another $459 million in taxable sales to generate. That would require roughly twice the number of homes (another 30,000 homes) and twice the number of people than are in Alameda today. I don’t think many people want an Alameda that looks like that.

Also note that the theatre itself generates little sales tax revenue – movie ticket sales aren’t taxable. It would take millions of dinners at BurgerMeister to generate even $100 million of taxable sales, never mind $500 million. We can capture some more retail sales, but nearly enough to make a big difference. Hmm…sales tax on a $3.14 pair of girls tights would be about 27 cents.

The City would do better to focus on raising business-to-business sales tax revenue, by bringing in more Peet’s Coffee and other like companies that pay B2B sales tax. That would also bring more jobs to Alameda, and give more people a chance to live and work on the island. (Perhaps walking, bicycling or taking public transit, rather than using their cars.)

As for OSH, it is essentially a new development. The “existing building” is the old Safeway building, that was vacated when Harsch expanded ATC and Safeway moved to a bigger location. Harsch has expanded ATC by, depending how you count, 200,000 sq ft or so.