City Took Away Housing That Would Have Supported CVS

Blighted CVS – Thank City Hall’s Leading Lights from Twenty Years Ago

By John Fricke

Once upon a time, there was a small town with a not so nice street.  To protect the innocent, let’s call this town, Pottersville.  

The not-so-nice street was called San Pablo Avenue, and on one of its blocks there were a number of contiguous properties that were occupied by a grimy Kentucky Fried Chicken, a greasy spoon called, Broom Bush Café, some residential units, and a moribund paint store.  The Best and the Brightest down at City Hall decided that this block of San Pablo Avenue needed to be destroyed to save it.  

Having designated virtually all of Pottersville as a redevelopment zone, City Hall’s big thinkers came up with a plan: they demanded that the private property owners sell their parcels of land to the city government (at a generous price).  The city government would consolidate the contiguous parcels, raze everything, and turn the whole thing over to a developer who would create something better: retail shops that fronted on San Pablo, surface parking, and townhouses in the back. 

To the neighbors living nearby, including this correspondent, the plan seemed like not a bad idea.  Who wouldn’t mind getting rid of the decades-old KFC with its rotating bucket on a pole (which had long since stopped rotating).  The Broom Brush Café had been there for some time, but the area needed more housing.  The paint store was bumping along, but who could argue with progress?  A profit-oriented developer was on the case.  What could go wrong?

City Hall’s alchemists held community meetings, displayed renderings of the future “Promenade”.  No longer would the parking spaces front on San Pablo, they said.  The new businesses would have entrances that would be right on the street, thereby ‘activating’ the street with pedestrians.  The nearby neighbors dreamed of neighborhood-serving retail that they could walk to.  City Hall’s bright lights said new retail space would feature tall ceilings, a smart facade, not another big-box retail monstrosity.  (Never mind that Pottersville’s big box nirvana was brought to you by the same usual suspects. ‘Meet the new boss . . .’)

The existing property owners took their payouts and left.  (Broom Bush Café relocated to Berkeley.)  But even before construction began, the promises started to go south.  The housing would not be built right away, first the retail, they said.  The Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise cut a separate deal with City Hall – it would reopen at a new location right down the street.  And the neighborhood-serving retail was merely a bait-and-switch.  Even though City Hall now owned the land, it made no demands on the developer in terms of what types of businesses would be selected as tenants.  

Then, the developer rolled out the hit parade of proposed future tenants: IHOP, Panda Express, Longs (which demanded a liquor license), Hawaiian BBQ, and Quizno’s Subs.  

Neighbors and I organized a full-throated opposition.  We attended numerous city council meetings, we wore stickers (“Mom and Pop, not IHOP”).  I argued that the city was within its legal right to exercise final approval over tenants.  The city attorney took a different legal position, namely, that the city council had given away the store to the developer, and needed to give away more.

The know-it-all experts in city hall tried to explain – while talking slowly and not using any big words – that the developer had incurred large costs in constructing the new retail space, and that he needed to charge high rents to recoup his investment – only the national fast-food chains were in a position to pay at that rate.  Translation: we should feel the developer’s pain.  

Had my second-grade teacher, Mrs. McGuinness, been on the scene, she would have asked all the miscreants down at city hall to get out a piece of paper and a pencil, and write, twenty times, First Do No Harm.  

Although we were unable to close the barn door on IHOP, over the course of several city council meetings, we pressured the city council to find neighborhood-serving retail for the remaining retail space that was slated for Panda Express.  When Arizmendi expressed initial interest, we organized a community meeting to court the Arizmendi people (mainly, Jacques Kaswan) who had reservations about San Pablo Avenue.  We then persuaded the city council to subsidize the rent for five years so that Arizmendi could get on its feet.  

And what about the townhouses? Pixar cast a roving eye across its vast sea of surface parking spaces, and fixed its gaze upon the land slated for the townhouses.  When Pixar came calling, City Hall quickly struck a deal to ditch the townhouses and sell the land to Pixar.  Was Pixar planning to use the land to house some of its employees?  Not.  Pixar paved it over and striped more surface parking spaces for its car commuters.  The Pixar superblock got even bigger.  

Why did CVS close last fall?  Was it done in by the pandemic?  By the steady stream of shoplifters?  By the ‘challenges’ associated with San Pablo Avenue?  

CVS’s demise was foreordained over twenty years ago when the rocket scientists down at City Hall napalmed the block and then caved to their handpicked developer and to Pixar.  The one success story, Arizmendi, arose despite city hall’s genuflection to the developer, Pixar, and fast food nation.  

So, dear reader, the next time you walk along the Promenade, averting your eyes from the blighted black hole that was once CVS, don’t reach into your pocket looking for Zuzu’s petals.  They disappeared over twenty years ago when the brainiacs down at City Hall decided that they knew best.  

John Fricke is a sometimes Tattler contributor, longtime Emeryville resident, father of three, husband, lawyer, and former member of the Emeryville City Council.  He is currently spending a year living in Berlin.