01 (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

businesses versus corporate owned businesses. The two studies indicate that a larger percentage of the dollars generated on the locally owned businesses stay in the community whereas a larger business like Home Depot, a lot of the dollars flow out of the community to pay people’s salaries that do not live here or profits to stockholders that live worldwide. There is a secondary effect of benefits to the local economy on a locally owned and operated business versus a large corporate business. Ms. Wagner agreed but also said that a majority of Home Depot employees do live in the tri-valley area as well employees of the other retail stores. They are really talking about the 20% profit margin that goes to the owners of local businesses; those 20% of the dollars would be re-invested in the community versus the 20% in the case of corporations that would go back to corporate headquarters to pay for salaries and stockholders and that there are probably many stockholders within the community. Councilmember Sullivan referred to the fiscal operating impacts and that the Council discussed the maintenance impacts on the roads which he thought was not part of the original analysis, or the $115,000 per year. Ms. Wagner said this was correct; they focused on public safety and felt the residual effect on that intersection was already pretty impacted. Everything on-site would be maintained by the property owner and the city would be collecting $2 million in impact fees which will be used throughout the community to improve traffic flow. He thanked Ms. Wagner for her analysis, felt the City had not looked at projects like this from the full spectrum of tax revenue, fiscal and local economic impacts, and felt the city definitely needed to do a better job in going forward, especially as it moves toward build-out. Mayor Hosterman questioned the date of the Iowa State University study and Councilmember Sullivan said some of the studies were dated 2001 and each is different, but they were all fairly recent. She questioned if they included opportunities for models that cities can use, and Councilmember Sullivan said that in addition to the environmental impact reports, some cities are doing economic impact reports to look at all issues when projects come forward. Councilmember McGovern disclosed that she had met with Regency Center and Home Depot representative Beverly Metz. She asked her to repeat how exactly Home Depot chose the site for an additional store in Pleasanton. Beverly Metz, Home Depot Real Estate Manager said Home Depot contracts with Thompson and Associates/MapInfo. They have done sales forecasts for the entire time Home Depot has been in business and they understand their model, their penetrations within communities and have extensive data on existing sales, dollar tickets per customer, and a analysis for every store across the country since 1983. They take that information and identify voids where they may have an existing store and sales penetration opportunities within communities that they are not accessing. In addition, they look at stores that have an extremely high volume, one of which is the Pleasanton store. She felt opening another store would help relieve that impact and penetrate better into the community to create more revenue. She said based on these studies, they would not spend millions of dollars to build the structure if they did not think it would be a profitable store, despite any slight impact it would have on the existing store’s sales. Councilmember McGovern also questioned if this store would be different in any way than the Johnson Street store. Ms. Metz said it will carry the exact same products; however, it City Council Minutes 9 May 15, 2007