Fallas. Did you shudder? Did you roll your eyes?
That word inspired many emotions two summers ago. A discount store. Ooooh. Mayor Alice Patino and City Councilmembers Bob Orach and Willie Green didn’t like that idea.
Eeewwwwww, gross, they said (I’m paraphrasing, of course) when it came up in June 2013. Discounts. Nope. Not in our downtown. We want something with a little bit more swagger, a little bit more panache. Maybe a Nordstrom. They fell on the Downtown Specific Plan to be their savior.
Those aren’t the types of stores we outlined in this plan, they said. Because it won’t have a regional draw. News flash, guys, nothing downtown has a regional draw. Not even that big fancy new movie theater. I think a better goal would be to get Santa Maria residents to shop in Santa Maria, rather than go elsewhere to buy their goods.
Well, three months later, only the mayor still held out. The City Council allowed the business that had already bought the downtown building that once housed Mervyn’s and spent money cleaning up the place to actually put their store in it. A Fallas Department Store willing to put tax revenue into city coiffers.
I’m not sure exactly what inspired the recently announced revision of the Downtown Specific Plan, but I’m almost positive it had something to do with that summer-long discussion about bargain basement stores being allowed downtown.
Maybe this new plan will alleviate the hold that discussion had in this community. Maybe this new plan will allow for stores to put roots downtown without a discussion over regional draw and the “kinds” of stores we want. Maybe. But I seriously doubt it. Because there are still politicians and a certain crowd of residents that have an illusion about what downtown Santa Maria really is.
What it is: A big ugly half-empty building called a mall, and the big strip mall across the street. What it isn’t: The town we tore down decades ago, with those eclectic, classic old buildings that every downtown these days wants to have. That ship sailed. It’s never coming back. Now, we just have to figure out the best way to fill those spaces. And it won’t be a Nordstrom. It probably won’t even be Nordstrom Rack.
The Canary likes to go shoe shopping at Nordstrom Rack. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 6, 2015.
