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.

'Worker Owned Cooperatives' Needed to Restore Emeryville's Tarnished Reputation

A Large Corporate Low Wage Service Sector 
Makes For a Town Without a Soul 

We Need Living Wage Jobs

Enter Worker Owned Co-Ops

Opinion/News Analysis
There's been much public debate in Emeryville over the years over how to best develop our town even as City Hall long ago settled on a pro-developer course, regardless of the debate.  As a result of this willful ignorance, many have come to rightfully condemn Emeryville decision makers over the flawed auto-centric model of development those decision makers have brought to our town over the last 20 some odd years.  This model, favored by developers, has brought us lots of shopping malls and drive-in drive-out lofts (formally condos, now morphing into one bedroom 100% rental projects).
This is well understood by Emeryville residents as our town's once unique character is eroded and the streets become ever more clogged with traffic.
But what's been debated less is how this model, resplendent with fast food franchises and retail chain stores, also brings a plethora of low wage/ no benefits service jobs that seem to be attached at the hip with this brand of development.  So ubiquitous now is this kind of development in Emeryville, minimum wage/ zero benefits service sector jobs have fairly come to be seen as representative of Emeryville and its values by the greater community.
This is who we are at this point, like it or not.

This is Emeryville
Minimum wage / no benefits;
the corporate service sector is
who we now are.

As Emeryville starts a new building spree in the wake of a recovering regional economy and with a finite amount of land left to develop, we need a new development model to fill out our town, one that will temper our 20 year binge of alienating, unsustainable and usurious development.  We need a new paradigm of public policy out of City Hall to create retail service sector jobs that pay a living wage and treat their workers with respect and dignity.  We need to become a model for how cities can move forward instead of a model for what's gone wrong in the Bay Area and beyond.
Attracting worker owned co-operatives to our town offers us the chance to remake our image and reclaim a city that more properly reflects our values.

Formerly known as a mecca for high paying mostly blue collar jobs in the East Bay, Emeryville long ago jettisoned that mantle, now instead there's been a wholesale embracing of the corporate low wage service sector model.  In so doing, not only have we thrown our town over to cars and all the degraded environment that comes with that, we also have shirked our civic moral duties to build a town that works for everybody.  The fact that we didn't shirk these duties in the past means we can do it again.  We can create a new municipal polity.

Enter Worker Owed Co-Ops
Businesses where the workers themselves own the enterprise represent a different model for how retail stores and other business can be refashioned in Emeryville.  These worker owned businesses offer a living wage and benefits for their workers. They also offer Emeryville residents a moral choice as they comport their daily transactions in the commons.
 So what exactly is a worker owned co-op?  The Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives (NoBAWC or "no boss"), the oldest and largest regional association of democratic workplaces in the United States, tell us these kinds of businesses are enterprises that produce goods, distributes goods and/or provides services and are owned and democratically controlled by its worker-owners.  Worker owned cooperatives generally have comparable or better pay (salary/wages plus profit-sharing) and benefits than comparably-sized conventional businesses in similar industries.  This is because the worker-owners decide what percentage of profits will go to themselves and what percentage will be retained by the cooperative.  Moreover, worker cooperatives don’t have overpaid managers, owners and outside shareholders who siphon money from the business.  These businesses allow money spent by residents to stay in the community, bolstering the local economy.  Worker owned co-ops run the gamut on types of businesses from bike shops and restaurants to web services, financial services and bookstores.  Just about any business can be a worker owned co-op.

Emeryville already has two such worker owned co-ops right now, San Pablo Avenue's Arizmendi Bakery and Pedal Express, a bicycle courier company on Powell Street. 

Pedal Express
Pedal Express is the East Bay's only bicycle courier company.  They have been worker owned and operated for the past twenty years and perhaps ironically count the City of Emeryville as one of their clients.

Co-owner Dominic Lucchesi says Pedal Express offers a different vision from Emeryville's current business sector model.  He told the Tattler, "Cooperatives provide long-term job opportunities with growth potential.  We at Pedal Express pride ourselves on paying a living wage, offering meaningful benefits, and encouraging flexibility and creativity.  The cooperative model also provides workers with a sense of ownership and connection to their community and its businesses.  These desirable qualities are often lacking in the low-paying service sector jobs that are all too common in today's corporate franchises and big box stores."

Arizmendi Bakery vs Panera Bakery
Arizmendi Bakery has operated at 4301 San Pablo Avenue since 2003 after former councilman John Fricke worked to attract the popular cooperative to the newly built Emeryville Promenade amid skeptical colleagues on the Council.  The bakery has been extremely popular offering a locally owned counter point to the national chain restaurant  I-HOP also in the Promenade development.
Arizmendi Bakery and Panera Bakery on 40th Street offers us a chance to directly compare the two business models:

Arizmendi Bakery (worker owned cooperative model)-

• pays at least $16 per hour
• full health insurance and dental coverage for all
• worker owned and democratically run
• worker/owners share in year end profits
• stipends paid for work related purchases
• five Bay Area locations
• Emeryville store is independently owned

Panera Bakery (standard Emeryville corporate model)-

• pays employees $8.06 per hour
• no benefits
• stockholder owned and run by CEO and Board of Directors
• more than 1500 locations across the US and Canada
• corporate headquarters in St Louis MO
• Emeryville unit sends its profits to the corporate headquarters

Worker owned cooperatives have also been shown to increase social justice and stability.  Cal Berkeley graduate student Amanda Cook, wrote a 2009 thesis documenting this benefit.  From her study, "In many conventional workplaces, workers perceive their interests as opposing corporate interests. Worker cooperatives, on the other hand, promote the idea that business practices should be compatible with everyone’s interests. Instead of becoming a battleground for individual and corporate interests, worker cooperatives adopt a family-like atmosphere of support, mutual responsibility, and, of course, cooperation."    
Ms Cook documents how worker cooperatives provide benefit to workers and the surrounding community in three major ways; she shows how this work "...is intrinsically valuable, participatory democracy is an educational activity, and active participation in decision making in one social sphere is likely to encourage active participation in other spheres."


The plight of minimum and low wage workers has been much in the news recently as fast food and other workers take to the streets to protest.  The corporate model is cruel and not sustainable.  These workers cannot survive on these wages and many are forced to use food stamps and other government provided services to make ends meet. Besides being an unethical abdication of government duty, this model represents a transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to the wealthy.  Emeryville has been complicit in this.
However Dave Karoly of NoBAWC says it doesn't have to be this way, "There is no reason why there can't be more than two worker owned cooperatives in Emeryville.  The establishment of more (worker) cooperatives in Emeryville would help change the perception of people living outside Emeryville that the city is just a destination for retail chain shopping" he told the Tattler.

The Emeryville Chamber of Commerce, historically an advocacy group for Emeryville's largest corporations on the other hand doesn't appear to be comfortable with such worker empowerment talk.  Chamber CEO Bob Canter was contacted for this story but he refused to comment.

Developers, itching to take advantage of a newly favorable market (especially in rental properties), are loading up the agendas at the Planning Commission and at City Council meetings.  A glut of new residential development is moving forward towards permit approval at City Hall from the Sherwin Williams project to the Avalon Bay project, to the Market Place development to the (just approved) Maz project, and there's more in the pipeline.  These development proposals all contain retail components along their respective street fronts.  This is where a new polity of worker owned cooperatives can be developed.

We need to realize how un-radical this whole idea is....or should be.  Neighboring cities are expanding these cooperatives and they're realizing the benefits.  Indeed, our own General Plan requires us to approve development that provides jobs for Emeryville residents.  These low wage service sector jobs aren't cutting it.  Workers at these jobs have to travel to our town for their employment since these corporate service jobs don't pay enough to afford to live in Emeryville.  This type of retail and fast food development is expressly forbidden by Emeryville's General Plan and yet there doesn't seem to be much of an interest among the decision makers at City Hall to rectify this.

Emeryville's new mayor Jac Asher is an outlier.  She agrees worker owned cooperatives offer a better way for Emeryville moving forward and she has publicly called for it.
We like Mayor Asher's idea; let's start adding these worker owned neighborhood enhancing kinds of retail establishments as conditions of approval for these incipient development proposals across town.  We've had more than our share of the neighborhood degrading and morally bankrupt low wage service sector development here thank you.  Let's finally start the job of making a livable town here in Emeryville.

Panera Bakery: More Suburban Style Development For Emeryville

New Panera Development Emblematic Of How Emeryville Subverts Its Own Goals

Opinion
If you listen to City Hall and the politicians ensconced therein you might think the ubiquitous suburban style strip mall development they've approved for the past two and a half decades is a thing of the past...they've gone to great pains recently to tell us that anyway.  But who are you going to believe; the politicians or your own lying eyes?

This 'fact file' from the company is two
years old.  Now there are 1562 stores.

The Emeryville Planning Commission and the City Council welcome their newest creation for our town: the Panera Bakery building on 40th and Horton Street.  And it runs roughshod over our new $2 million General Plan and its promise to make Emeryville a "memorable place".

NASDAQ traded, St Louis based Panera is a fast food national chain with stores across the US and Canada.  There are 1562 company-owned and franchise-operated stores total.
The corporate headquarters says they prefer to locate their stores in suburban strip malls and their business model is auto-centric vs pedestrian oriented.  With its warren of suburban malls, they see Emeryville as a perfect fit.  Our Planning Commission and City Council agree.

Here's the real deal: Does it
look like 40th Street?  Is that a
Panera Bakery in that building?

The new bakery turns its back to the street, opening up instead onto the massive surface parking lot, encouraging drivers, not pedestrian residents.  It is yet another nail in the coffin of 40th Street as a memorable place.  We remember in the early 1990's as East Bay Bridge Mall builder Catellus Development, told Emeryville residents that the incipient 40th Street would be a grand boulevard in the manner of Paris' Champs d'Elysees.  Some Champs d'Elysees it's turned out to be.

Panera will directly compete with San Pablo Avenue's Arizmendi Bakery, a locally serving worker owned collective that pays a living wage to its associates unlike Panera's $8.06 per hour wage.  Since Emeryville lacks affordable housing for its legion of low wage service workers, Panera employees will commute to Emeryville from all over the region.
Arizmendi's opened several years ago with support from former councilman John Fricke and as such might be considered the Fricke model of development for Emeryville, it could also be called the General Plan model of development since it dovetails so nicely with that document.  Conversely, Panera might be called the Nora Davis/Kurt Brinkman model of development or the anti-General Plan model.

We challenge the Planning Commission and City Council majority that approved Panera; how, precisely is this creating a memorable place?  We think this was just another in a long string of development approvals where the city employs its 'hands off developers' ethos.  It's pretty obvious they've forgotten memorability.

Let's see...Is this Emeryville or Concord or
Daytona Beach or Rancho Cucamonga or Peoria
or Kankakee or Sheboygan or Springfield?  I don't remember.