Five Syllable City

Anticipation is growing in advance of the June 24 City Council meeting, where the next episode of the Wal-Mart serial is scheduled to run. This installment will focus on the Atascadero Shield Initiative, which was supported by enough petition signatures to qualify for action by the City Council, either to enact it or place it on the ballot for the November election. In the run-up to the next Council showdown on Wal-Mart, letters to the editor have been proliferating in the Tribune and the Atascadero News. On June 18, the Tribune also chimed in with a lead editorial entitled “Initiative may worsen Atascadero’s retail ‘crisis,’” recommending that the Council not enact the Shield Initiative, but instead refer the matter to the voters for what the Tribune implied should be rejection in November. Meanwhile, the June 20 edition of the Atascadero News carried a full-page color advertisement rallying opposition to the Shield Initiative and urging people to show up at the Council meeting to demonstrate their opposition. And so the drumbeat continues, with spokespersons and activists sounding off and the opposing forces readying themselves for another round of public conflict on Tuesday night at the Council meeting.

As the quasi-carnival atmosphere begins to take shape in expectation of the next Wal-Mart shootout, one starts to wonder whether this running controversy, with its now almost ritualistic public displays of support and opposition, is partially a response to an unfulfilled need for community in Atascadero. As has often been noted in this blog and elsewhere, there is no community hub in Atascadero, no center where people regularly meet, or where they can go to see and be seen. There are also no events or occasions that draw participants from all segments of the Atascadero population, the way the Mid-State Fair and certain wine-related and other events do in Paso Robles. With such a void existing in Atascadero, perhaps the opportunity to gather around an issue, showing up at City Hall to be counted en masse on one side or the other, provides a measure of reaffirmation of membership in a community that is otherwise hard to find.

The problem, of course, is that depending on controversy to satisfy a craving for community has the effect of reinforcing the identity of the community as one which is divided and conflicting, both in people’s minds and in reality. Those who congregate for the Wal-Mart showdown events do so in distinct groups of “us” and “them.” From there it is all too easy to slip into the hateful name-calling vocabulary of talk radio, reducing real people who are neighbors to two-dimensional, cartoon-character abstractions labeled variously as socialist, anti-worker, elitist, trash, no-growth, good old boys, tree-huggers, pawns of developers and brokers, and so on.

As important as it is to find places and causes to bring people together in Atascadero, it is equally important to exorcise the demon of divisiveness that the Wal-Mart issue has become. In that regard, if there is any hope of ever covering over the cleavage exposed by Wal-Mart, it will only be realized by letting the voters express their will on the issue. Only through a cathartic popular vote will the people have their say and will it be learned with certainty what the majority thinks about a Wal-Mart supercenter. Once that is done, maybe Atascadero will achieve the kind of closure needed to enable the community to heal and move on to address more cohesively the many other challenges that are pressing.

At its June 24 meeting, the City Council majority should exercise restraint and refrain from deciding on its own to adopt the Atascadero Shield Initiative. Instead, the Council should place the matter on the ballot for November and afford the voters a chance to make the conclusive decision on this lightening rod question. By proceeding in that way, the Council can help bring our community closer to reaching closure on a conflict that has been dividing it for too long.

The members of Atascadero’s City Council made the right decision at the Redevelopment Agency meeting on May 27, when they refused to dedicate public funds to the Colony Square project. Even though the project is a worthy one, and is of great importance to the revitalization of the downtown, tough love is the right way for the City to nurture the project at this stage. The reality is that the current developers are undercapitalized and beyond their depth in connection with this 50 to 60 million dollar project. Their business plan seems to be based on the premise that if they succeed in getting the initial, 18-million-dollar, first phase of the project completed, they will qualify for the additional financing needed to finish the project. After the movie theater goes in, the developers hope, high-paying retailers will line up to participate, expected rents will increase and the project will become bankable in the estimation of potential lenders.

Who knows? Maybe a fortuitous series of events such as those hoped for by Colony Square’s current developers could unfold. Nonetheless, it would be imprudent for the City of Atascadero to advance funds on the basis of such a speculative plan. The hard truth is that it will probably be necessary to restructure the ownership of the Colony Square project for the project to succeed. The current developers will almost surely need either to recruit another partner prepared to commit substantial capital to the project, or sell the project altogether. The Redevelopment Agency enhanced the prospects for that happening sooner rather than later by declining to provide the stop-gap, take-a-chance financing that the current developers were requesting to keep the project going within the present ownership structure.

Rather than allocate money to propping up the Colony Square project, the City of Atascadero should apply any available discretionary funds to rebuild the historic City Hall for a productive use. That extraordinary building is the most valuable physical asset which Atascadero has, and occupies a position of pivotal strategic importance in the downtown area. While there were repeated suggestions during the May 27 meeting that Colony Square is a “catalyst project” for Atascadero’s downtown revitalization, the fact is that rebuilding the City Hall is the real “catalyst project” for the downtown, as it is the project that will determine whether, and when, downtown redevelopment goes forward in earnest. In fact, rebuilding the old City Hall may well make or break the Colony Square project itself.

With the old City Hall standing in a ruined state, and with doubt remaining about its future prospects, an air of uncertainty pervades Atascadero’s downtown. It is a basic fact of business life that uncertainty is a condition that is inhospitable to business. And that fact is only underscored when the uncertainty relates to whether, when and how the largest, best-positioned, most prominent and impressive building in a community is going to be rebuilt and used. Until that uncertainty is resolved, reasonable, risk-averse businesspersons will continue to take a pass on development projects in the downtown area. That is why, from a business standpoint, it is of pressing importance for the City of Atascadero to put a definite, viable, plan on the books for rebuilding the old City Hall and applying it to a productive use.

It must be acknowledged that deciding on the best course to follow in rebuilding the City Hall is not a simple matter. As has been noted frequently in the four and a half years since the earthquake damaged the building, there are formidable engineering challenges in retrofitting the building which have to be overcome. In addition, how the old City Hall is to be used after it is retrofitted may affect the City’s right to keep amounts that it has received from FEMA to reimburse it for tenant improvements and rent payments the City has made while leasing the new City Hall from the Redevelopment Agency. So a careful analysis is needed to evaluate the various courses of action open and the costs and benefits, direct and indirect, associated with each option for rebuilding and using the structure. Based on that kind of analysis, a strategy should be committed to which will best serve the City’s interests, taking into account not only dollars and cents spent and saved immediately but also all of the short and long term effects that rebuilding the City Hall for a particular use can be expected to have on the revitalization of Atascadero’s downtown.

As things are, the crucial project of rebuilding of the old City Hall is a matter that seems just to be drifting along. It is more or less accepted within the City Council and staff that the retrofit is going forward and that the building will be used as a City Hall in its next incarnation, in order to avoid any risk of losing some or all of the reimbursements that FEMA has been providing. That the City’s employees prefer not to leave their current offices and go back to the old building, and that the highest and best use of the historic City Hall may not be as an office building for city employees but as an attraction such as a museum, are realities that are being ignored in letting the project drift along. Those realities are making their presence felt, however, by giving rise to the perceptible lack of enthusiasm and urgency on the part of the city in retrofitting the building. It is no accident that, almost four and a half years after the earthquake, no commitment has been made to a definite plan for rebuilding Atascadero’s centerpiece structure or a timeline for doing so.

Sound management of the City’s affairs calls for adopting a methodical, proactive approach to deciding what to do with the old City Hall. A strategy for dealing with this invaluable public asset needs to be developed after careful consideration of all of the various alternatives, and comparison of the costs and benefits of each option, including implications for FEMA funding, city employee morale and downtown redevelopment. For the purpose of formulating that strategy, it would be advisable to impanel a committee, composed not only of city officials but also selected members of the public, to study the matter and make recommendations to the City Council and the City Manager.

In any event, the fate of the historic City Hall should not be determined by what happens to occur while the matter drifts along in the current of day-to-day affairs. Following that approach leaves it essentially to chance that a correct decision will be made on how to deal with the building. It could also make it very difficult to explain how decisions were made that might later be regarded as misjudgments in any post-mortems and recrimination sessions that would take place if there is dissatisfaction in the future about what was done with the building. In addition, letting the matter just drift along without the City government being committed to a positive plan for the use of this pivotal property perpetuates the uncertainty that is stifling business development in Atascadero’s downtown area.

Announcing a definite, considered plan for restoring the old City Hall to productive use is an essential step that needs to be taken to give credibility to plans for the revitalization of the downtown area. When that genuinely “catalyst project” is on the books, struggling projects like Colony Square will be given new life, and substantial developers will have a reason to consider more seriously the possibility of undertaking projects in Atascadero’s rebuilding downtown. As things stand, there is too much uncertainty about the fate of this key property for rightfully cautious lenders and developers to commit themselves to projects in the area.