For several years now, Margie Bennett, a teacher who lives in the Naglee Park neighborhood of San Jose, has enjoyed shopping at the downtown Safeway, a midsized store on the ground floor of a high-rise at Second and San Fernando streets.
It hasn’t been without misgivings. Bennett remembers the Zanotto’s downtown store, a forerunner forced to close after Safeway opened with public help in 2009. But she has grown to like Safeway’s short lines, good service and validated parking in the underground garage next door.
Now that last privilege is gone, and Bennett is upset. The garage no longer offers validated parking. The charge now, advertised in a note as you enter, is $4 per hour, or $1 for 15 minutes.
“There’s going to be a lot of people who won’t shop there because of that,” Bennett warned me.
In the litany of civic outrages, the parking dilemma of Safeway’s customers downtown might not rank at the very top. But it does illustrate a simmering battle between the San Jose and Santa Clara County governments, a new chapter in a feud that goes back at least half a century.
Estate squabble
One way to think of this fight is to imagine a squabble among the heirs of a rich uncle. In this case, the deceased uncle is the old San Jose Redevelopment Agency, for three decades the most important player downtown. Gov. Jerry Brown essentially killed the agency five years ago.
I’ll avoid the question of whether the slaying was justified. What’s important is there is a still a bureaucratic vestige — an executor of the estate — called the Successor Agency to the Redevelopment Agency, charged with disposing the properties owned by the agency.
One of those properties is the 330-slot garage that the Safeway customers use at 88 E. San Fernando Street. The city of San Jose, one of the heirs, bid $850,000 to buy the garage last year. At that reasonable price, the idea was to keep the validations alive for Safeway customers.
The oversight board for the Successor Agency, however, is heavily weighted with folks sympathetic to county government, which traditionally has resented the amount of money that flowed into redevelopment.
Citing state guidelines for the dissolution of redevelopment property, the oversight board rejected the city’s offer, challenging the city’s method of appraising the property.
Earlier this year, the board accepted the garage sale to a private operator, MVP REIT Inc., which paid $3.575 million. At that price, the new owners needed to charge more for parking.
Heirs split hairs
Confused? Think of the garage as a gold necklace among the rich uncle’s stuff that the heirs are squabbling over. One heir suggests that Uncle Rich really wanted to leave it for charity. The other heir says, nope, let’s sell it and divide the profit. And by the way, I’m first in line.
Prompted by Ru Weerakoon, an aide to Mayor Sam Liccardo, MVP REIT has talked to Safeway and San Jose about continuing the validation program, but city officials say the negotiations have gone nowhere.
“After multiple discussions with all interested parties, including the City of San Jose, we were disappointed to learn that validation in the parking garage is no longer a viable option,” said Safeway media spokeswoman Wendy Gutshall in an email.
If this were just a matter of inconvenience, maybe we could all shrug. Cheap parking, however, is part of downtown’s lifeblood.
When the parking lot across Second Street from Safeway went from public to private ownership, the new parking fees had an impact on San Fernando Street restaurants, contributing to the closure of P.F. Chang’s. “It was pretty devastating,” says Mayor Liccardo.
Let’s hope that the same thing doesn’t happen to the Safeway. It’s been a good addition to downtown.
Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/scottherhold.
