C2 The BulleTin • Sunday, June 6, 2021
California eyes shuttered
malls, stores for new housing
BY ADAM BEAM
Associated Press
S
ACRAMENTO, Calif. — California
state lawmakers are grappling with
a particularly 21st-century prob-
lem: What to do with the growing
number of shopping malls and big box retail
stores left empty by consumers shifting their
purchases to the web.
A possible answer in crowded Califor-
nia cities is to build housing on these sites,
which already have ample parking and are
close to existing neighborhoods.
But local zoning laws often don’t allow
housing at these locations. Changing the
zoning is such a hassle that many developers
don’t bother trying. And it’s often not worth
it for local governments to change the desig-
nations. They would prefer to find new re-
tailers because sales taxes produce more rev-
enue than residential property taxes.
However, with a stubborn housing short-
age pushing prices to all-time highs, state
lawmakers are moving to pass new laws to
get around those barriers.
A bill that cleared the state Senate last
week would let developers build houses on
most commercial sites without changing the
zoning. Another proposal would pay local
governments to change the zoning to let de-
velopers build affordable housing.
“There has always been an incentive to
chase retail and a disincentive to build hous-
ing,” said Sen. Anthony Portantino, a Los
Angeles-area Democrat who authored the
bill to pay local governments. “There is more
dormant and vacant retail than ever.”
If successful, it’s believed California would
be the first state to allow multi-family hous-
ing on commercial sites statewide, said Eric
Phillips, vice president of policy and legisla-
tion for the California chapter of the Amer-
ican Planning Association. Developers who
use the law still would have to obey locally
approved design standards. But Phillips said
the law would limit local governments’ abil-
ity to reject the projects.
That’s why some local leaders oppose the
bill, arguing it undermines their authority.
“City leaders have the requisite local
knowledge to discern when and which sites
are appropriate for repurposing and which
are not,” wrote Mike Griffiths, member of
the Torrance City Council and founder of
California Cities for Local Control, a group
of 427 mayors and council members.
It’s a familiar battle in California. While
nearly everyone agrees there is an afford-
able housing shortage, state and local leaders
face different political pressures that often
derail ambitious proposals. Last year, a bill
that would have overridden local zoning
laws to let developers build small apartment
buildings in neighborhoods reserved for sin-
gle-family homes died in the state Senate.
Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat from
Salinas and author of this year’s zoning pro-
posal, said her bill is not a mandate. Devel-
Office
Continued from C1
Broker CBRE Group Inc. is
advising its Fortune 500 cli-
ents on a range of issues, from
short-term concerns around
keeping people safe to lon-
ger-term considerations on
what the office of the future
needs to look like, according to
Kate Smith, head of workplace
for the U.K.
It’s advising companies
Damian Dovarganes/AP
A shopping cart sits May 27 in an empty parking lot at the closed Sears in Buena Park Mall in Buena Park, California. California state lawmakers are grappling
with a particularly 21st-century problem: What to do with the growing number of shopping malls and big-box retail stores left empty by consumers shift-
ing to online purchases. A possible answer is to build housing on these sites, which already have ample parking and are close to existing neighborhoods.
opers could choose to use the bill or not. The
Senate approved the measure 32-2, sending
it to the state Assembly for consideration.
“It’s always a challenge when you’re trying
to do affordable housing, because there are
entrenched interests that don’t want to ne-
gotiate and compromise, and we’re working
really hard to try to break through that,” she
said. “I’m trying to give maximum flexibility
to local government because the more that
you start telling them how they have to do
it, the harder it becomes for them to actually
do it.”
Even before the pandemic, big-box re-
tail stores were struggling to adapt as more
people began buying things online. In 2019,
after purchasing Sears and Kmart, Trans-
formco closed 96 stores across the country
— including 29 in California.
The pandemic, of course, accelerated
this trend, prompting major retailers like
J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and J. Crew
to file for bankruptcy protection. An anal-
ysis by the investment firm UBS shows on-
line shopping will grow to 25% of all retail
sales by 2025. The analysis predicted that up
to 100,000 stores across the country could
close.
Local governments and developers in Cal-
on how to “magnetize” their
spaces to lure staff back, add-
ing perks like live music that
have been among the things
people missed most during
lockdowns, Smith said.
That’s assuming you can
actually fit people in your of-
fice. HSBC Holdings Plc has
scrapped its London headquar-
ters executive floor as it re-
duces office space by 40% glob-
ally and gives employees more
choice to work from home.
But in the skyscraper, elevators
are the biggest hurdle. Just two
people are allowed in a lift at a
time, in line with government
social-distancing guidelines,
keeping office capacity at about
3%, according to a company
spokesperson.
The co-working industry
— not long ago thought to be
on the verge of collapsing — is
cashing in on the demand for
flexibility. Deloitte LLP has
moved its entire Manchester
ifornia are already trying to redevelop some
retail sites. In Salinas, a city of about 150,000
people near the Monterey Peninsula, city of-
ficials are working to rezone a closed Kmart.
In San Francisco, developers recently an-
nounced plans to build nearly 3,000 homes
in the parking lot that surrounds Stonestown
Mall — a sprawling, 40-acre site that has lost
some anchor retail tenants in recent years.
Still, the idea of repurposing shopping
centers has divided labor unions and afford-
able housing advocates, putting one of the
Democratic Party’s core base of supporters
against backers of one of their top policy
goals.
Housing advocates love the idea, but they
don’t like how Democrats want to do it. Both
proposals in the Legislature would require
developers to use a “skilled and trained”
workforce to build the housing. That means
a certain percentage of workers must either
be enrolled or have completed a state-ap-
proved apprenticeship program.
Developers have said while there are
plenty of trained workers available in areas
like San Francisco and Los Angeles, those
workers are scarce in more rural parts of the
state, potentially delaying projects in those
areas.
office in the U.K. to 35,000
square feet (3,250 square me-
ters) in a WeWork building in
the city center.
WeWork is also trying to
make Zooming a little less
two-dimensional, signing a
deal with ARHT Media Inc. to
integrate hologram technology
in 16 of its offices around the
California needs to build about 180,000
new housing units per year to keep up with
demand, according to the state’s latest hous-
ing assessment. But it’s only managed about
80,000 per year for the past decade. That’s
one reason the state’s median sales price
for single-family homes hit a record high
$758,990 in March.
“At a time when we’re trying to increase
production, we don’t believe we should be
limiting who can do the work,” said Ray
Pearl, executive director of the California
Housing Consortium, a group that includes
affordable housing developers.
Robbie Hunter, president of the State
Building and Construction Trades Council
of California, dismissed that argument as
just greedy developers trying to maximize
their profits.
He said there is no construction project in
California that has been delayed because of a
lack of workers, adding: “We man every job.”
“When there is a demand for workers, we
rise with the demand,” Hunter said.
Labor unions appear to be winning. A bill
in the state Assembly that did not initially
require a “skilled and trained” workforce
stalled in committee because it did not have
enough support.
world.
And bit by bit, the silver-lin-
ing amenities are coming back
at London’s quirkier offices. At
London’s White Collar Factory,
as many as 30 employees, po-
liced by a traffic light system,
can use the rooftop running
track. At WeWork’s U.K. sites,
beer taps are reopening after
running dry for months to fol-
low government hospitality
guidelines.
The experiments should
keep going, CBRE’s Kate Smith
said.
“It is too early for most orga-
nizations to see what it means,”
she said. “They are in test-and-
learn mode.”
Masks Off!
Sunscreen On!
One in fi ve Americans will develop
skin cancer.
Don’t be the one.
21st-century medicine. Good old-fashioned care.
• The region’s expert in Mohs surgery
• Dr. Peters specializes in high-risk skin cancer treatment, early
detection, and prevention
Gerald Peters, MD, FAAD, FACMS
Ann Reitan, MHS, PA-C • Ericka Luckel, PA-C • Julie Natoli, PA-C
541-323-SKIN (7546) • www.petersderm.com
2353 NE Conners Ave • Bend