Civilized Nature will be moving to Issaquah Highlands around next fall.
I previously wrote how this locally-owned pet store will be the next victim of Regency’s drive to nationalize the Sammamish Highlands shopping center with the addition of Petco. I’ve learned from Nature that the local Regency rep actually went to bat with Corporate to make a move to Issaquah Highlands possible.
Petco is planned to open around June; Nature hopes it can survive the overlap until its own lease expires.
There were three “Docket Requests” submitted to the City from citizens seeking amendments to the Comprehensive Plan. One was from Ace Hardware, which as I’ve reported in a previous post was a placeholder and which is superseded by the preferred Development Agreement proposal. Another was from the landowners in the Town Center’s Southeast Quadrant. And the third had to do with how density is treated.
Staff urged the Council to reject all three requests, saying the Ace was too difficult to achieve given wetland issues and timing and that the other two should wait until the 2015 Comp Plan rewrite.
The recommendation to put off Comp Plan changes of consequence to 2015 may have some merit under ordinary circumstances. But we have what I call an “economic emergency” right now.
Regency owns almost all the commercial space in the heart of Sammamish (only the Saffron complex is owned by someone else) and it’s now clear Regency doesn’t give a hoot about local businesses. Ace Hardware, the Sushi restaurant and Rancho Grande are being pushed out in favor of national retailers. Several other local businesses are gone. Civilized Nature is going.
The lack of alternative commercially zoned space is killing opportunities for our local business.
And, unfathomably, the City Administration has not on its own initiative proposed identifying properties in the city outside the Town Center that could be rezoned commercial and which do not have the regulations associated with the Town Center that, as we now know, make it virtually impossible for small businesses to locate there.
Recognizing this, last January I submitted a long list of ideas to the City Council to redress some of these issues. The proposal was put on the shelf.
With the time for Comp Plan amendments now upon us, the City Administration did not come forth with a single idea to redress this, but instead says wait until 2015.
This is ridiculous. Even more so, it seems that nobody on the City Council suggested changes, either. Where is our leadership? Where is the vision?
At the December 4 City Council meeting, I provided public comment resubmitting my January list of suggestions and urged the Council to direct staff to include rezonings on the current Docket Request. This submittal is below the jump. the January memo is here.
The City Council is to make decisions regarding Ace Hardware, the Docket Request from the Southeast Quadrant, the other Docket Request and, I hope, my December 4 suggestion all at the December 11 meeting. I urge citizens to appear again to support affirmative action on these. It seems the City needs the proverbial 2×4 upside the head to get the message. It’s astounding that we have this economic emergency that is devastating locally owned businesses and neither the City Administration or the Council has taken any action to meet this emergency.
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Civilized Nature, the local pet store in the Sammamish Highlands shopping center, is the next locally owned store that will be leaving the City.
I confirmed today (Dec. 4) that the pet store will move because it won’t be able to compete with mega-chain Petco, which will move into the former Hollywood Video that has been vacant for a couple of years, and the Rancho Grande and Sushi restaurants whose leases weren’t renewed to make way for Petco.
Ace Hardware’s lease expires August 28, 2013. Petco is said to start construction in January and to open several months later. Civilized Nature did not tell me where it will move to, but since there is no commercial space in Sammamish that is available, Civilized is all but certain to move out of the city.
At the City Council meeting tonight, which was standing room only, I presented recommendations to rezone more land commercial to serve local businesses. I’ll be posting my remarks later.
The City is about to undertake a Comprehensive Plan Amendment process. Astounding as it seems, the City Administration did not put commercial rezoning on the agenda for the Council, even after the lack of commercial zoning outside the Town Center became clear and may be a death knell for Ace. In fact, the Staff report recommended against a rezone for Ace Hardware, for a number of complex reasons.
In more posts this week, I’ll publish various documents concerning the Ace situation.
As just about anyone who reads anything in Sammamish knows, Ace Hardware lost its lease and would have had to move by September 2012. A public outcry, and pressure from the city, got the property owner, Regency, to extend the lease one more year.
But now Rancho Grande, two stores down from Ace, lost its lease and has closed last week. A sign on the window blames a lease issue.
A reader commented on another of our posts that Petco is supposed to take over the old Hollywood Video and the Rancho Grande space. The reader also claims Trader Joe will take over Ace’s space. Neither is confirmed.
I did talk with a doctor at Swedish Pine Lake Medical Center. Swedish had wanted the Ace space, but, the doctor says, it’s no longer available.
If the Petco story is true, this will essentially force Civilized Nature out of business.
Regency doesn’t seem to care one whit about our local businesses.
Sammamish Comment 