Safeway
When are we getting a new Safeway? This appears to be one of the most frequently asked questions of my constituents. I am happy to say that plans were recently submitted and will be presented to the Planning Commission in the fall. It has been a long journey since the Council rejected the proposal in 2004 due to the size and lack of integration with the downtown business community.
I was elected to the City Council in 2005 and had the opportunity to meet with Safeway representatives during the summer of 2006. At that time, I encouraged them to come back and renegotiate a new project. Fortunately in 2007, the Council appointed a subcommittee consisting of myself and another Councilmember to meet with Safeway and a mediator in order to establish a constructive, transparent public process. This involved community stakeholders and Safeway in a collaborative approach to help develop a design that was both economically feasible for Safeway and aesthetically pleasing and practical for the community.
The Safeway working group was formed and composed of seven different stakeholder groups that represented the diversity of the Burlingame community. They included:
- Downtown merchants
- Downtown landlords
- Residents located in close proximity to the existing Safeway
- The Chamber of Commerce
- Petitioners for a new Safeway
- Citizens for a Better Burlingame
- Safeway
The stakeholder group met over the past 18 months to establish a set of design criteria that represented the common interests of the stakeholder group. I had the opportunity to sit in on many of their meetings and observe the dynamics of this group. Secondly, the working group developed a variety of different design options.
Safeway is proposing to demolish an existing one story Safeway and construct a new grocery store with a mezzanine, at grade parking, and rooftop parking. The new grocery store will contain approximately 44,982 square feet of floor area on the first floor with a 6,865 square foot mezzanine. They are also proposing a two-story retail/office building on Primrose. This new building will contain approximately 13,332 square feet on the first floor and 5,407 square feet on the second floor. The Atherton General Appliance store will remain at its current destination. There will be a total of 211 on-site parking spaces and the zoning requires 186 parking spaces. The heritage oak tree will be protected and there will be a roof top garden on Primrose and Howard.
On the 22nd of June, the Planning Commission viewed the project and verbalized their concerns regarding Commercial Design Review and Environmental Scoping.
As your current Mayor, I would like to thank the Working Group for their tireless hours of dedication and constructive input to this project. I am encouraged by this current proposal. I attended most of these meetings and I saw how passionate our stakeholders were to establish a project that we can all be proud of. It is a project that is a vast improvement from five years ago. We need to remember, it is a project that will be present in our community for at least fifty years. Let it be a building that enhances our Howard and Primrose retail areas.
If you have any questions or feedback on this exciting process, please feel free to contact me.
