Mayor Jim Wickham Mill Valley Chamber Members and friends at Piazza D'Angelo on Sept. 10, 2019.
More than 40 Chamber Members and friends had an opportunity to ask City officials direct questions in a casual setting in the beautiful confines of the Piazza D’Angelo dining room this week.
The result of our “Coffee & Conversation with the Mayor and City Manager” on Sept. 10 was a far-reaching, free-form discussion on a wide array of subjects, from the City’s efforts to improve commercial application processing and PG&E’s planned Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPSs) to employee parking and a subject that is steeped in complexities: what qualifies as a formula or chain business, whether the City should seek to regulate them and, if so, how?
Mayor Jim Wickham kicked off the event by regaling the group with his memories of the downtown Mill Valley business community when he was a kid and later as a Mill Valley Police Dept. foot patrol officer downtown.
“I always wanted to make sure the business community was deeply tied into the larger Mill Valley community,” he said.
Planning Process Improvements
Wickham and City Manager Jim McCann lauded the recent efforts of Planning Director Patrick Kelly to reach out to the business community for feedback on ways to make the commercial permit application process faster and less expensive. Kelly recent gathered a number of business owners, City and county planning and health officials and planning consultants into a room to identify ways to improve the process.
Kelly and his team came away with a number of actionable recommendations, including:
The Depot
Wickham said the continued closure of the Depot Bookstore & Cafe, which closed its doors in March in anticipation of a renovation, was due “to a lot of issues outside of our control” and that they hoped to resolve it soon.
McCann added that “we are working hard to bring them over the line – you can help if you all are investors and are interested in investing in that. The City has authorized a construction reimbursement agreement in April 2018 and as well as a lease extension and allocated $500,000 from the City budget for the renovation of the Chamber office and construction of public bathrooms. The building permit is sitting in Patrick’s office ready to be issued and it has been ready for months – they simply need to have their funds together in sufficient quantities to move forward.”
Public Safety Power Shutoffs
When PG&E’s Public Safety Power Shutoffs came up, McCann noted that the City Council will continue its discussion of contingency plans in the event of a power shutoff on Sept. 16, and the Chamber will be producing a resource toolkit of sorts to assist businesses.
Kelly pointed out that the City has some ordinances on the books that don’t consider the possibility of PSPSs, particularly noise constraints. At its Sept. 16th meeting, the City Council will consider a one-year emergency ordinance to give business owners an opportunity to explore installing power generators to serve as a contingency in case of a PSPS, and will monitor the issue if/when PSPSs arise.
“We have to balance all these needs,” he said. “We’ll build in some reasonable restrictions and and live with it and see how it goes and revisit it next year,” McCann added. Wickham noted that when PSPSs do occur, the longest delays in restoring power will likely come from PG&E’s requirement that each power line be visually inspected before restoration.
Mill Valley Market’s Ryan Canepa noted that while they’re deploying a 250 kilowatt generator to manage PSPSs, “We just hope to avoid next year the City saying that the (noise exemptions) aren’t needed anymore. It’s a big investment for us and I’m sure it is for other businesses that need to get generators.”
Chain Businesses
Chain stores garnered most of the attention of the discussion.
Bill Green, chief operating officer of the 15-store Margaret O’Leary business and spouse to its eponymous founder, noted the brand’s deep roots in Mill Valley: “We’ve been connected to this town in various ways for a very long time. But we don’t have a plan in Mill Valley to say as a community what businesses we want. And now we have J. McLaughlin, a Wall Street-financed company, coming to town (ed. Note: the business plans to open in the former Once Around and Uko Boutique space at 75 Throckmorton Avenue.)
“How do we work on some sort of guidelines for this town so that we see the retailers we want to see come in?” he added.
Wickham noted that what works financially for a landlord tends to drive the types of businesses that come to town, and that while “everyone would love to have a hardware store in downtown, you’d have to sell a lot of screws to make it work with the rents in downtown Mill Valley.”
Both Wickham and McCann suggested that the business community continues to gather feedback on the subject and bring possible recommendations to the Planning Commission. The Chamber intends to do just that, with plans to convene a discussion in the coming weeks.
McCann noted that the City does not have an ordinance that prohibits chain/formula businesses from opening in town, but does “have policies that give guidance in the General Plan – I think we have sufficient strength there, and if there are new policies to incorporate that the business community wants to explore, that’s something that we can look at.”
Equator Coffees co-founder Helen Russell, who recently navigated formula business regulations for their new cafe in the Cibo space in Sausalito, said, “We don’t think of ourselves as a chain, but Sausalito is extremely well-versed in chains, and we had to change the name of our new cafe to Sausalito Equator in order to go through that process. We made that investment of money and time – it took us eight months – but we get it, if you’re Sausalito and Godiva Chocolate or Starbucks wants to come in. They have a lot of history with this issue.”
Downtown Project
Bonnie Powers, co-owner of the Poet and/the Bench retail shop at 11 Throckmorton Ave., reminded City officials of the extremely difficult experience they had during the 18-month Miller Avenue Streetscape Project and, equally impactful, with the myriad utilities that dug up all around the shop’s former space on Locust Avenue. With that in mind, she wondered aloud how the City planned to manage the Downtown Project, a multi-year effort to improve the infrastructure downtown, starting with the sewer system, but have delayed until 2020 due to the likely impact that construction would have on downtown merchants during the critically important fall and holiday retail seasons.
“When this project does kick off, how can we ensure that we as retailers are really kept in the loop about what’s happening?” she asked.
“You were in the eye of the storm there on Locust,” McCann said. “Both the work the City was doing and and then unfortunately there were some utility failures from PG&E and MMWD in that area as well. We’ve got an advisory group that will help us review some design components of the Downtown Project and we’ll be sure to communicate plans to businesses long before the project begins.”
Have questions/comments about any of the subjects discussed at this event? Email us at info@millvalley.org. And thank you to Piazza D'Angelo for hosting us and to Equator Coffees for the delicious coffee and pastries!
The result of our “Coffee & Conversation with the Mayor and City Manager” on Sept. 10 was a far-reaching, free-form discussion on a wide array of subjects, from the City’s efforts to improve commercial application processing and PG&E’s planned Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPSs) to employee parking and a subject that is steeped in complexities: what qualifies as a formula or chain business, whether the City should seek to regulate them and, if so, how?
Mayor Jim Wickham kicked off the event by regaling the group with his memories of the downtown Mill Valley business community when he was a kid and later as a Mill Valley Police Dept. foot patrol officer downtown.
“I always wanted to make sure the business community was deeply tied into the larger Mill Valley community,” he said.
Planning Process Improvements
Wickham and City Manager Jim McCann lauded the recent efforts of Planning Director Patrick Kelly to reach out to the business community for feedback on ways to make the commercial permit application process faster and less expensive. Kelly recent gathered a number of business owners, City and county planning and health officials and planning consultants into a room to identify ways to improve the process.
Kelly and his team came away with a number of actionable recommendations, including:
- Develop improved hand out materials to better explain permit process (flow chart to better explain steps to process; handout on how to open a business in Mill Valley, etc.)
- Provide for concurrent review by City and County Environmental Health Services for food establishments or permit applications
- Knowing who to call instead of waiting
- Provide opportunity for making appointments
- Make a pre-application meeting mandatory
- Offer expedited review (subject to appropriate fees)
- Staff encouraged to attend after hours Chamber meetings
- Continue the conversation and hold periodic meetings like this between City and business representatives.
The Depot
Wickham said the continued closure of the Depot Bookstore & Cafe, which closed its doors in March in anticipation of a renovation, was due “to a lot of issues outside of our control” and that they hoped to resolve it soon.
McCann added that “we are working hard to bring them over the line – you can help if you all are investors and are interested in investing in that. The City has authorized a construction reimbursement agreement in April 2018 and as well as a lease extension and allocated $500,000 from the City budget for the renovation of the Chamber office and construction of public bathrooms. The building permit is sitting in Patrick’s office ready to be issued and it has been ready for months – they simply need to have their funds together in sufficient quantities to move forward.”
Public Safety Power Shutoffs
When PG&E’s Public Safety Power Shutoffs came up, McCann noted that the City Council will continue its discussion of contingency plans in the event of a power shutoff on Sept. 16, and the Chamber will be producing a resource toolkit of sorts to assist businesses.
Kelly pointed out that the City has some ordinances on the books that don’t consider the possibility of PSPSs, particularly noise constraints. At its Sept. 16th meeting, the City Council will consider a one-year emergency ordinance to give business owners an opportunity to explore installing power generators to serve as a contingency in case of a PSPS, and will monitor the issue if/when PSPSs arise.
“We have to balance all these needs,” he said. “We’ll build in some reasonable restrictions and and live with it and see how it goes and revisit it next year,” McCann added. Wickham noted that when PSPSs do occur, the longest delays in restoring power will likely come from PG&E’s requirement that each power line be visually inspected before restoration.
Mill Valley Market’s Ryan Canepa noted that while they’re deploying a 250 kilowatt generator to manage PSPSs, “We just hope to avoid next year the City saying that the (noise exemptions) aren’t needed anymore. It’s a big investment for us and I’m sure it is for other businesses that need to get generators.”
Chain Businesses
Chain stores garnered most of the attention of the discussion.
Bill Green, chief operating officer of the 15-store Margaret O’Leary business and spouse to its eponymous founder, noted the brand’s deep roots in Mill Valley: “We’ve been connected to this town in various ways for a very long time. But we don’t have a plan in Mill Valley to say as a community what businesses we want. And now we have J. McLaughlin, a Wall Street-financed company, coming to town (ed. Note: the business plans to open in the former Once Around and Uko Boutique space at 75 Throckmorton Avenue.)
“How do we work on some sort of guidelines for this town so that we see the retailers we want to see come in?” he added.
Wickham noted that what works financially for a landlord tends to drive the types of businesses that come to town, and that while “everyone would love to have a hardware store in downtown, you’d have to sell a lot of screws to make it work with the rents in downtown Mill Valley.”
Both Wickham and McCann suggested that the business community continues to gather feedback on the subject and bring possible recommendations to the Planning Commission. The Chamber intends to do just that, with plans to convene a discussion in the coming weeks.
McCann noted that the City does not have an ordinance that prohibits chain/formula businesses from opening in town, but does “have policies that give guidance in the General Plan – I think we have sufficient strength there, and if there are new policies to incorporate that the business community wants to explore, that’s something that we can look at.”
Equator Coffees co-founder Helen Russell, who recently navigated formula business regulations for their new cafe in the Cibo space in Sausalito, said, “We don’t think of ourselves as a chain, but Sausalito is extremely well-versed in chains, and we had to change the name of our new cafe to Sausalito Equator in order to go through that process. We made that investment of money and time – it took us eight months – but we get it, if you’re Sausalito and Godiva Chocolate or Starbucks wants to come in. They have a lot of history with this issue.”
Downtown Project
Bonnie Powers, co-owner of the Poet and/the Bench retail shop at 11 Throckmorton Ave., reminded City officials of the extremely difficult experience they had during the 18-month Miller Avenue Streetscape Project and, equally impactful, with the myriad utilities that dug up all around the shop’s former space on Locust Avenue. With that in mind, she wondered aloud how the City planned to manage the Downtown Project, a multi-year effort to improve the infrastructure downtown, starting with the sewer system, but have delayed until 2020 due to the likely impact that construction would have on downtown merchants during the critically important fall and holiday retail seasons.
“When this project does kick off, how can we ensure that we as retailers are really kept in the loop about what’s happening?” she asked.
“You were in the eye of the storm there on Locust,” McCann said. “Both the work the City was doing and and then unfortunately there were some utility failures from PG&E and MMWD in that area as well. We’ve got an advisory group that will help us review some design components of the Downtown Project and we’ll be sure to communicate plans to businesses long before the project begins.”
Have questions/comments about any of the subjects discussed at this event? Email us at info@millvalley.org. And thank you to Piazza D'Angelo for hosting us and to Equator Coffees for the delicious coffee and pastries!