Eating It’s Young…City of Simi Valley Is Not Helping Local Businesses
The Future of Simi Valley Retail is under attack and round one will prove to be tough reality for Simi Valley as the Thousand Oaks Mall will again take shoppers away from local businesses. What is more concerning is the Westfield plans for Topanga Plaza and the Promenade. Westfiled plans to adjoin the two Malls with the property that is boarded by Ownesmouth, Topanga Canyon, Victory and Erwin. The proposed expansion will include a $750-million outdoor village including:
- A 300 room hotel
- 150 condominiums
- Apartments
- Offices
- 550,000 square feet of retail
Approximately 24 million people a year shop at the two malls and the expansion will bring an estimated 10 million more annually.
Over 6,000 jobs will be created and millions in sales tax revenue for the city of Los Angeles.
Something this exciting and this large will definitely draw shoppers out of Simi Valley and no matter how much our Chamber of Commerce and our City Council fight to convince Simi Valley residents to “Shop Simi Valley First”, these two modern and behemoth projects (TO & Westfield) that bookend our town cannot be willed away. This is like trying to hide and elephant under the living room carpet.
What can our city do to bolster the retail for Simi Valley?
No more rezoning or giving variances to properties to allow more retail shops.
This will stop diluting the revenues that our current business are so reliant on.
Work with residential developers to add units to our city within the guidelines of the city’s General Plan.
Our population numbers are too small to support the businesses we already have. While this is not a very popular move, our City Council should have thought more about how to support added businesses instead of being seduced by sales tax revenues; sorry but both population and sales tax are a function of each other. Simi Valley is not a destination town and when the Westfield project is complete, any fantasy by our City that we are, will vanish.
The good news is that I am not proposing to just build homes willy nilly, we have several developments on the horizon and now that the city has backed our businesses into a under preforming corner, it is time for them to step up to the plate and create an environment that will provide more opportunity for success. The future Westfield development and the Thousand Oaks Mall will never go away, but let’s give our local business owners a fighting chance to be healthy for years to come.
