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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

What’s Left Unsaid After Saying No to Home Depot

What’s Left Unsaid After Saying No to Home Depot Real Estate by Shelly Garcia It looks like Proposition H, the initiative that will limit all retail development in Agoura Hills to businesses of less than 60,000 square feet, will pass. At the Business Journal’s press time, it was leading by 110 votes, less than 1 percent of Agoura Hills’ registered voters. To be exact, of the 5,028 voters who cast votes either way for the measure, (representing about a 40-percent voter turnout) 2,569 were for it, 2,459 against. Which brings me to another question: What were the voters voting for? And what were they voting against? Sure, the encroachment of the urban on the suburban has created a backlash. Sure, NIMBYs have made it more and more difficult for developers to do what they do. But Proposition H was touted by its proponents as a way to strike back against traffic, congestion and urbanization. When a city of educated, affluent citizens obsessed with their oak trees can muster only 20 percent of its voters to pull a lever for what was promoted as the biggest environmental issue to hit Agoura Hills since the birth of the freeway, it makes you wonder just what kind of cause this really is. With the passage of the measure, Home Depot, the store that was set to become the anchor tenant of a retail development proposed by Selleck Development Group will not be coming to town. Dan Selleck, the president of the development company that bears his name, will go back to the drawing board to come up with another plan for the property, much of which he has already purchased. Selleck said he will look at a scaled-down version of the original plan, maybe alternative uses industrial, office buildings or a mixed use project. One thing is certain, there won’t be any easy choices. “Because of all the infrastructure improvements and traffic mitigation fees, it’s going to be a very expensive site to develop,” Selleck said, “and without a major tenant taking approximately 11 acres and paying for a large portion of the traffic improvements, we’re going to have to sit down and study the economics.” The passage of Measure H will likely limit Agoura Hills’ choices in many ways. Short of repealing the law, it means no new large stores can ever move to town no supermarkets, no department stores, no Target, no Circuit City, no Staples, no Lowe’s Home Improvement Centers, not even a Nordstrom. If an existing supermarket wants to expand, adding, say, a pharmacy or a bakery, it can’t. A respectably sized garden center can’t even plant roots in Agoura Hills now. The idea that Agoura Hills is now hamstrung in this way is troublesome to city officials like Ed Corridori, the town’s former mayor and a member of the city council. “Whenever you encumber property with restrictions that other properties don’t have, you affect the value and marketability of the property,” Corridori said. “Short term, is that going to make a difference? Probably not. The issue is whether long term, because there is a class of buyers that are eliminated or no longer going to be interested in that property, that affects the value and it attracts uses that are inclined toward lower values.” Corridori doesn’t think voters deliberately voted to reduce the value of and marketability of their city. He doesn’t even think they voted to keep big retailers out. What they voted for, was to keep Home Depot out. A lot of other folks agree. “I think they were perhaps voting on whether or not to approve a Home Depot,” said Mike Kamino, director of planning for the city. “And that wasn’t the issue here. Measure H wasn’t specifically a Home Depot measure.” Measure H was a Home Depot measure for the business group that put the vote in motion. Citizens for Responsible Growth, a group of local merchants who banded together to initiate and support the measure, wanted to keep Home Depot out because the store would compete directly with theirs. Competition probably wasn’t on the minds of the other 2,569 voters who gave the measure the green light. But Home Depot was, for reasons that may have more to do with the attitudes of the citizenry than the store. Here’s what one outspoken critic had to say on the CRG Web site, albeit anonymously: “Home Depot won’t care if you don’t shop you will get all the yahoos from the Valley stopping in and polluting our neighborhood. Look what trash from the Valley the Canyon Club is bringing in. More low renters lurking around in our neighborhoods seeing what house to rob for drug money.” Home Depot has struck an emotional chord in many neighborhoods because it brings with it pickup trucks, construction workers and day laborers. Those reactions may have been more pronounced in Agoura Hills, where brokers, at least privately, call the locals snooty at best, racist at worst. “Home Depot and Wal-Mart are especially lightning-rod tenants,” said a local retail broker who asked not to be named. “Home Depot because it draws a lot of day laborers. Wal-Mart is not always welcome because of their non-union stance. I don’t know if it would have been as big a lightning rod if it was a Target or Kohl’s.” So developers and brokers can rest assured that the passage of Measure H is not a harbinger of more problems and obstacles to come. Or can they? Whatever you think about attitudes surrounding Home Depot, the fact remains that a small group was able to manipulate a citizenry to permanently alter the way development is decided in a community. That’s not a very reassuring trend for the real estate industry. Senior reporter Shelly Garcia can be reached at 818-676-1750, ext. 14 or by e-mail at [email protected].

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