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It's not in the best interest of the community to simply allow economic Darwinism. Instead, interested residents need to play an active role in planning!

Home Depot wants to occupy the empty Lipton plant on the West Side of Santa Cruz. Recently there was also a plan for a Lowe's, the national Big Box hardware chain, to move into the empty Wrigley building.

Is this good for the West Side of Santa Cruz? Many residents say it's not.

They're concerned that this type of project will use all our limited industrial lands for low-wage retail jobs instead of high-tech, high-wage businesses like oceanography, computers, etc.

These stores on the far West Side would draw a LOT of traffic. The EIR for the Watsonville Home Depot plans for 5000 auto and truck trips a day. Two box stores? How about 10,000 trips? All these trips don't provide any allowance for additional trips because of University expansion at Terrace Point, development of the former Texas Instruments building, and the general University growth of another 8000 trips a day. A plan like this leaves us with TRAFFIC GRIDLOCK.

This kind of traffic will do serious harm to residential neighborhoods. Traffic to these locations MUST travel on Mission, Swift Street and Fair Ave. Some percentage will travel off onto other residential streets causing a traffic mess on more than just those three streets.

It's a familiar pattern around the country. Stores like these destroy existing small businesses leaving a very real question whether the expected economic benefits are out-weighed by the losses of many businesses.

The City is in the process of updating the General Plan, which controls all development in Santa Cruz. The General Plan now allows almost anything on our industrial lands. Many people think there are major oversights in the zoning ordinance allowing these big box retailers as principally permitted uses on our Industrially Zoned land.

I proposed a stopgap Zoning amendment that now requires applications for any of these big box stores to be submitted to discretionary public hearings before the Planning Commission and the City Council. A variation of that proposal was adopted by the Council.

But, that's not enough to assure a quality community decision on this issue. Interested residents MUST participate in the General Plan revision process. Further, an economic study needs to demonstrate the tradeoffs of various Industrial zone land uses. Then, smart community planning can be employed to assure that any major development on Industrially Zoned (I-G) will happen only after a significant and informed community discussion. Only that will allow us to reach a new community consensus about what WE want for our Industrial lands.