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Deal struck to allow Target at River Walk

BY JAMES GELUSO, Californian staff writer
e-mail: jgeluso@bakersfield.com | Friday, May 16 2008 5:20 PM

Last Updated: Monday, May 19 2008 8:55 AM

Bakersfield city staff and developer Castle & Cooke have worked out a compromise that would allow a Target into the Shops at Riverwalk.

The City Council will be asked to approve the agreement at its meeting Wednesday.

Bill Sampson, Castle & Cooke's senior vice president for commercial properties, said he doesn’t view it as a compromise.

“This is the city and Castle and Cooke working amicably together,” he said.

The agreement would keep the maximum size of buildings in the development at 100,000 square feet, except for one building, which would be allowed 140,000 square feet. That building, on the east side of Buena Vista Road, is where the Target would be.

In exchange, Castle & Cooke would gussy up the back of the building, which would face the park. The wall must be as architecturally interesting as the front, with changes of color and material and some corners. A wrought-iron fence and trees would also separate the building and its loading ramp from the park, said Assistant Planning Director Jim Eggert.

Sampson said that requirement is no more than what the city already requires in its big-box ordinance.

“That was in our plan to treat it that way,” he said. “We’re the ones who suggested to the city that it would be the proper thing to do.”

In addition, Castle & Cooke agreed to a special zoning — “planned commercial development” — that would require a public hearing and a planning commission vote before it could make changes.

“That PCD gives a lot more public scrutiny of changes,” Eggert said.

And the developer would make improvements to Buena Vista Road aimed at reducing traffic conflicts between park traffic and shopper traffic.

Those requirements present no problems, Sampson said.

Laura Tasker, who wrote to the city opposing the Target, said the compromise doesn’t adequately address her concerns.

“I’m concerned about the traffic. There’s been like two fatalities in the past six months,” she said.

And she doesn’t like the idea of a big Target sign looking out over Stockdale Highway. She wouldn’t mind a low-profile store, but that’s not what’s planned.

“It just seems like Castle & Cooke decides to change things whenever they want to change,” she said.

The Target would be allowed to have two smaller adjacent stores, and the one closest to the park entrance would be prohibited from selling alcohol to take away.

The Bakersfield Planning Commission approved allowing the Target, but when it went to the city council two weeks ago, City Manager Alan Tandy opposed it, saying it was too big and didn’t match the promised “high-end” focus of the shopping center. He also said he worried about the aesthetic collision of the park and the store.

Tandy dropped his opposition under the new deal.

Sampson told the council at its last meeting that the current economy and Bakersfield’s demographics mean the high-end retailers originally envisioned just won’t come here. But smaller boutique stores said they wouldn’t mind sharing a shopping center with a Target.