Here’s something I bet you didn’t know about me: I love discount shopping. I’m talking all kinds of discount shopping: garage sales, Black Friday sales, Christmas sales, Mother’s Day sales, Father Day’s sales, bar mitzvah sales … wait a second. I don’t think that last one is real, at least on a national scale. I just used that omniscient and omnipotent Internet tool, Google, to see if bar mitzvah sales exist, and this is what I came up with: “Frankel Photography announces big summer sale on Bar Mitzvah, wedding packages” from Topix. There was also, “Site of Bob Dylan’s Bar Mitzvah for sale” from The New York Times. Cool! I wonder if it’s on discount?
OK, OK. I’m starting to veer into tangent territory. Sorry. I decided to write about my love of discount shopping because I noticed Fallas—the discount giant with a slightly giggle-inducing name—recently opened a store in Lompoc. No, I promise I didn’t mix up my Central Coast cities. Fallas has opened in Lompoc, not Santa Maria.
As you might recall, Fallas’ parent company, National Stores Inc., bought the old Mervyn’s building in Santa Maria Town Center West last March and started making improvements. The plan was to turn the space into a Fallas Discount Store, but opposition from the majority of the Santa Maria City Council put that plan on ice—until now.
The council was expected to discuss Fallas at its Aug. 6 meeting. Unfortunately, that meeting was scheduled after my deadline so I wasn’t able to attend. I’m not going to try to guess what happened—I’m a canary, not a mind reader—but I do want to put in my two cents on the issue.
Back in June, Mayor Alice Patino and City Council members Bob Orach and Willie Green ultimately decided to freeze the Fallas project because it didn’t fit into the downtown specific plan. Patino said she didn’t see people driving from out of the area to shop at a discount store in Santa Maria.
Well, guess where people in Santa Maria are probably driving now to shop on the cheap? Say it with me: L-O-M-P-O-C. Yeah, Lompoc! And here is yet another example of Lompoc beating Santa Maria to the business punch. Once again, Lompoc city officials used their business-friendly wiles and speedier permitting processes to bring another revenue-generating business to the City of Arts and Flowers.
It’s only fair to point out that the Lompoc Fallas is located in a part of town that is already home to a bevy of strip malls and fast-food joints—not in the beloved downtown. But I also think it’s important to point out that Fallas is known for selling well-known brands like Nike, Steve Madden, and more, just like the now-defunct Mervyn’s and other big-name merchandisers like Ross and Marshall’s.
If the whole downtown thing really is an issue, the council need look no farther than San Luis Obispo, which has a Ross right smack-dab in the middle of its precious—and coveted—downtown. Of course, Ross isn’t a Latin last name, but you can’t win them all, right?
The Canary is willing to travel for a good deal. Send comments or ideas to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 8-15, 2013.