Time to read: about 2 minutes
The Pleasanton Planning Commission on Wednesday is set to consider a proposal by the city planning staff to require that the front 60% of all Main Street buildings be genuine retail.
Peter MacDonald.
The retail mandate just started recently with the newly adopted Downtown Specific Plan in 2018, which required that the front 25% of Main Street buildings be retail ("active ground-floor use" in planner talk, which includes restaurants).
So, why not up the retail mandate to 60%? Main Street cannot support the kind and quantity of retail the planners are proposing to require. The building spaces are too small, the parking is far away and there are not enough customers to support that much retail on Main Street. Instead of increased vitality, we will get empty buildings and struggling businesses -- the opposite of vitality.