Anyone who has visited the bay area can enjoy a lot of different types of communities. All of them have been faced with the challenge of how to manage their growth.
Cities like Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Gatos and Campbell have all made choices that allowed them to stay true to the style and rhythm of their respective communities. To accomplish this, they have required new businesses to work within certain limits. Often, these communities can work cooperatively with businesses so that these requirements can be offset in other ways. The benefit is that the community gets to keep its personality while benefiting from the commerce drawn in by the new business. Los Gatos is a great example of this. Downtown Los Gatos is a great place to take a walk. It became a destination spot because it integrated what I like to call "Anchor" businesses which drew in more folks who would then visit other local businesses, allowing the whole downtown area to grow.
When the time came to do something new with the old elementary school in Los Gatos there were lots of options tossed around. One of them included destroying the historic building and building a huge retail mall. Instead of allowing that, Los Gatos managed to save the historic building while still converting it to retail use. This got the businesses a place to do their thing while holding tight to the very reasons people want to live in Los Gatos.
Los Gatos never forgot that the very reason people want to visit and live in their city is exactly that style and rhythm we talked about earlier.
Enter a city like Gilroy. Unlike Los Gatos, Gilroy took the path that allows the big stores to define what the city will look and feel like. The end result is acres of giant square boxes strewn across the countryside. So what will the net result be? Lacking any feel other than what these new retail outlets offer, who is going to want to live in Gilroy? Will they draw residents? If so, will they draw a balanced spectrum of residents of various incomes? Most likely not. Folks with the money to spend are going to want to live somewhere that offers what places like Los Gatos have.
Morgan Hill has had a style all its own for a long time. The pressurized atmosphere of silicon valley to the north get left behind. It has a rural friendly feel. So with plenty of local examples of how communities have choosen to manage their growth, which model would you prefer?
Sadly, with the ongoing construction of the new Target retail compound at Cochrane and 101, it would appear that the powers that be in Morgan HIll have decided they want to be like Gilroy when they grow up. Basically, what is being built in Morgan Hill is a carbon copy of that retail apocalypse that sits on the 152 at 101 in Gilroy.
I am not going to argue that getting these stores into Morgan Hill is a bad idea. I am simply going to point out that integrating these businesses into Morgan Hill is a better long term plan that integrating Morgan Hill into what these businesses want to do.
I have made this point before, but currently, enough higher income families have been drawn to Morgan Hill that we can be pretty sure that whatever makes Morgan Hill unique is a good thing. However, allowing developments like the new Target Compound will only diminish that appeal so that while some bean counter at city hall figured out it was a good short term move, in the long term, the folks with the money to spend are going to be alienated by this kind of growth - resulting in a decline in funds available to be spent in our community.
Maybe its a question of doing things the hard way or the easy way. Sadly, as is often the case, the easy way is seldom the right way.
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