13 ATTACHMENT 08 - Laserfiche WebLink

lease, and manage retail shopping centers, and Safeway is one of its primary anchors. He stated that the company was formed to take advantage of market conditions, the lack of financing, and the lack of developers to be able to perform; and it was a way for Safeway to get into the market and get stores open and develop high quality projects. He presented pictures of the inside of their new lifestyle store, a grocery section featuring over 300 organic products with their "O" brand. He indicated that they like to buy local produce and have a bright line green product. He presented the floral, meat, seafood, and ready meal sections, wine selections, and pizza ovens. He noted that their lifestyle store is an exciting opportunity where they would roll out new products and a new areas of the store. Mr. Reuter stated that about ten years ago, Safeway and PG &E partnered and created some energy efficiency programs which have provided rebates in excess of about $38 million. He added that Safeway wanted to save money and offered rebates for those who can reduce their carbon footprint. He noted that the energy efficiency programs reduce 8.5 million megawatts of energy use; their lighting focuses on product rather than on the store, their LED signs reduce energy by 80 percent, they use wind energy for their corporate offices in San Francisco, and they have participated in a number of energy projects over the last couple of years. Mr. Reuter then presented a breakdown of their components for recycling: six percent from the food bank, 46 percent from cardboard, and 20 percent compost. He indicated that they make use of everything they can and noted that they are trying to convert grease to bio fuel for their trucks. He stated that they are one of the original members of the U.S. Green Building Council since 2004 and that they build their current prototype to a Silver LEED rating. Mr. Reuter stated that Safeway is a community partner based in Pleasanton and has over 3,600 employees at their headquarters. He indicated that their new shopping center employs about 350 full and part time employees and that the project proposed is about a $40 million project. He added that they donate to a variety of about 75 community organizations. Commissioner Blank stated that in the summary that Mr. Pavan provided, the Commission spent a lot of time discussing what the freeway off-ramp would look like. He indicated that he was a little surprised with the 5 year view. He stated that the sense of the Commission was that when people came off of the freeway, the Commission did not want it to look like a truck stop. He added that he was surprised about the vegetation in the video rendering, which was almost non - existent, and he felt there were huge gaps in it. He said when making the turn off of the freeway, the site is astonishing beautiful in the renderings, but the ride down the freeway off-ramp does not look very good and he wondered if additional landscaping was needed. Mr. Rodrigues stated that the video is not as current as the simulation. He indicated that it was shot last week and that Safeway could not be seen when riding down the off -ramp. EXCERPT: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, August 25, 2010 Page 9 of 14