High on the public-interest scale for the upcoming March 3 City Council meeting is the question of “formula retail stores”—what they are, where they are allowed and where they are to be excluded in Healdsburg’s downtown.
Briefly put, a formula retail store sells a branded line of products with standardized services, menus, decor, uniforms, architecture, signs or other similar features, as if the store is following a formula. If that’s not clear enough, visit the new Faherty’s menswear shop at 326 Healdsburg Ave., half a block off the Plaza.
It’s a formula store, with products, look and services found at approximately 60 other stores, coast to coast. Under Healdsburg’s current limits on formula stores, it is permitted. But when its opening was announced, a number of downtown businesses both on the Plaza and on nearby streets launched a “Vote Yes on Local” campaign to expand the exclusion zones to prevent the wider spread of formula stores.
The revised ordinance that comes before the council is the result of a six-month process that included a neighborhood sign campaign, a city staff report and revisions by the City Council, and finally a Planning Commission hearing last month.
Ironically, the council review will take place even as another men’s clothing store that seems to skirt the edges of the formula store definition, Patrick James, opens at 103 Plaza St. That’s directly facing the Plaza on a block that even now bans formula stores.
Until recently the location was the home of Outlander, which ceased operations on Feb. 1, and the agreement to turn the storefront over to Patrick James was apparently reached between the owners of the two stores. According to Planning Director Scott Duiven, whoever takes over Outlander’s lease can do so without any review by the city itself.
“When retail spaces turn over we typically don’t know about it until a business license and/or sign permit are applied for by the new business or if a building permit is submitted for tenant improvements,” Duiven told the Tribune. And, as of now, Patrick James has not applied for a business license with the City of Healdsburg.
In fact, though, Patrick James has listed the Healdsburg as a store location on its website, though it is listed as Outlander—a name it intends to keep until the fall.
In the Fine Print
The changes to the municipal code that will be taken up by the council on Monday should be fairly familiar, in that they were discussed at length by the council in August and again in December, and the Planning Department crafted a series of ordinance changes approved by the Planning Commission on Jan. 28.
The opportunity to take a straightforward approach is sometimes not the one the council chooses to take, so some debate, less from the floor than from the dais, is to be expected.
Faherty’s opened in November, and a month later the city’s senior planner, Ellen McDowell, proposed to the council that the exclusion zone for formula stores be expanded from just the four block faces around the Plaza to almost seven full city blocks, from the roundabout to North Street, from Foss Creek to East Street.
After some discussion the council agreed, though McDowell’s proposal was amended to include both sides of North Street. When the Planning Commission met on Jan. 28 it substantially agreed with the City Council on all points, though it changed a single word in the definition of a formula store.
“A retail business which is required by contractual or other arrangement or affiliation to maintain a standardized (“formula”) array of services and/or merchandise (etc.)… which causes it to be substantially identical to 10 or more other retail businesses or restaurants in the United States…” The word “identical” was changed to “similar,” and that is what will be presented to the council on March 3.
Yet as a recent editorial in the Press Democrat made clear, there is still the perspective that the city should not overly limit what the editors called “free market forces.” This despite the fact that most of the cited opportunities a chain or formula store would bring to Healdsburg would challenge local business already in operation—for instance a Home Depot would compete with Healdsburg Lumber, and a Trader Joe’s with Big John’s and Shelton’s.
Preserving Healdsburg’s identity is also in the General Plan and Municipal Code, which is where the discussion next Monday will focus.
The City has just posted a special FAQ on formula stores and related topics. Anyone can find the FAQ here: https://healdsburg.gov/DocumentCenter/View/19375/Formula-Retail-FAQ
The Healdsburg City Council meets at 6pm on Monday, March 3, at 401 Grove St. The meeting is broadcast on Facebook and other services, but people who wish to offer public comment may only do so at the meeting.
My wife and I have many happy memories of the kind and courteous staff in the Outlander store. We will miss them.
I have no idea what a formula store is. For a second, I thought they sold baby formula. My wish is for a Taco Bell in town, but then, El Diarrhito and the other Mexican restaurants in town wouldn’t like the competition.
PS: As for the City Council defining Healdsburg’s identity. We already know what that is:
A real estate agent drinking at a tasting room on the Plaza while watching the tourists and potential home buyers from the SF Bay Area.