Parking has to be a consideration. We have been promised signs at garages with numbers of available spaces, but we have been told at least 10 years they are coming. We also have no way to pay for parking with an app. We also have free parking for up to 3 hours, but when we need to pay for 4 hours it is very expensive as well as difficult to do. I am not sure, but do we still have all the color codes for parking, definitely problematic. But we do need to be able to park for half a day without the present encumbrances, 3 hours is barely long enough for a lingering lunch and a stroll around the retail, particularly for seniors who have the time to socialize in this way.

Opening up CAL Ave will open up the lost parking right in front of the retail businesses we are trying to save. It's a no brainer if the City Council can acknowledge that CAL Ave doesn't need to be all about dining at dinner and lunch time, yet dead the rest of the day. It's immoral to hurt the retail businesses just to please those people who treasure dining outside more than anything. Opening CAL Ave will also give easier access to the CAL Ave train station -- and aren't we trying to encourage people to use public transit and reduce car emissions? With CAL Ave closed, traffic is snarled up at Ash Street and shunted off to other narrow and residential streets. At the Ash Street /CAL Ave intersection cars have to negotiate a tight U-turn because DoorDash and other drivers park in the red zone and block cars and trucks from turning around. Life is not only about dining! We want our neighborhood shopping area back to what it was before COVID. We want RETAIL and dining. We want diversity -- not just restaurants.

Granted I'm not n international consultancy like this new firm or a national consultancy like Street Sense, but I had to laugh at issues City Council is considering:

* hiring a consultant to look at different designs for the street and come back with a report next fall

* how the street with be configured in the meantime"

Does it take big bucks, 2 consultancies and our huge well-paid staff to put up a colorful banner saying "BUSINESS DISTRICT" with arrows directing traffic to the streets parallel to Cal Ave??

Maybe they could all drive to nearby Menlo Park and Los Altos to see examples of signs like this? Maybe they could look at the signs near Town & Country Shopping Center listing featured retailers??

Since StreetSense sees Palo Alto a a "tourist destination" I'm curious how they'd direct flocks of tourists to our attractions, including Cal Ave, our second downtown.

What a waste of our taxpayer $$$$ and what a lack of common sense.

Parking requirements should only be lightened for below market housing and retail. Removing parking for 1/2 mile from a Caltrain station is overly optimistic or a way to allow developers and big business to gobble up the street parking.

Increasingly, I find myself spending my retail dollars outside of Palo Alto--not because I want to, but because I have to. Our shops are disappearing. Why are they moving to, and more successful in, nearby communities?

The report doesn't address this question with any deep consideration of local factors. Comparing our city's retail environment to one in Texas is, well, ludicrous.

From an NPR piece on consulting, "While the modern consulting industry has a history stretching back over a century, Mazzucato and Collington write that the use of consultants really exploded after the 1980s. That's when proponents of freer markets, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, began dismantling government bureaucracies and regulations. More left-leaning "Third Way" leaders, like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, continued in their wake. "Public sectors were transformed under the credo of New Public Management — a policy agenda that sought to make governments function more like businesses and diminished faith in the abilities of civil servants," Mazzucato and Collington write.

As governments lost the faith and capacity to do things themselves, they increasingly turned to consultants to help them accomplish tasks. Governments began using consultants for seemingly everything, from devising new tax rules to advising armies to overseeing the privatization of state industries to administering IT departments to devising strategies on how to cut carbon emissions."

Observation: The more city government relies on consultants, the less competent city staff becomes. They no longer do their own local studies and research, so they don't attain confidence and local knowledge from doing that work. Consultant dependency contributes to that. Staff reports are getting thinner with more and more decisions based on what OTHER cities are doing--boiler plate consultant recommendations that don't reflect local environment. The recent retail study is an example of this. Cal Ave debacle is another.

How about dusting off the previous "STUDIES" costing hundreds of thousands of dollars which outlined parking solutions, the study on implementing live parking signage, the promise of another downtown garage, the meeting with the property owners/ long time retailers who offered their opinions /solutions. The continued delay exacerbates the problem. The downtown sidewalks are dirty, the planted tree wells are mangy, the parklets are an eye sore and the retail turnover continues with few success stories. DO YOUR JOB - and I don't mean hiring more consultants! The train crossovers, the flooding caused by creeks, the roadway quality, the absurd traffic calming designs are all examples that have been before the Council & Staff for years! As a longtime palo alto resident, I believe you are failing our community.

Good comment about the hundreds of thousands of dollars our City Council wastes on consultants.

The main driver of whether a company sets foot in one retail are or another is RENT COSTS. Please do a comparison analysis to pressure the few landlords in downtown Palo Alto to lower rents! This doesn't require a consulting company, just a few hours of a summer intern to go collect information.

Then, the City needs to have a serious conversation with those landlords who prefer the blight of our downtown for years to lowering their rents in the short-term.

I second everything Barbara Gross said and I thank her for taking the time to write what she wrote. Ms. Gross has solid "city credentials" and credibility and our City Manager would be wise to heed what she has written and take some remedial steps. NOW.

Over the decades council members regularly wring their hands and lament the disappearance of traditional retail in Palo Alto’s core shopping areas. Council hires a consultant. Council then responds to lobbying from owners of retail zoned property to increase the ever-growing list of retail killing, euphemistically designated “retail-like” businesses, that can displace traditional retail. This essentially circumvents traditional retail zoning to allow leasing to more profitable businesses. Which over the years has, unfortunately, eroded Palo Alto’s shopping centers which now no longer have the previous critical mass of traditional retail required for successful shopping. An ever increasing downward spiral.

Los Altos has adhered to a more restricted formula as to what businesses are allowed to operate on the ground floor of their downtown shopping district, which as a result has retained a critical mass of shops so most shopping and errands can be easily completed at the same time. There is plenty of 2 hour street parking in front of the stores for maximum efficiency when running a quick errand, or plenty of 3 hour well signposted parking lots very conveniently behind which allows time to patronize the cafes, restaurants, get a hair cut, or massage, and also patronize the many individually owned shops, which a 2-hour parking limit restricts.

The latest push is to allow medical offices to displace retail in core shopping areas.

Maybe Mayor Kou could brief the staff on what we learned when we surveyed all the Town & Country Shopping Center retailers a few years ago? And I second the proposal to dust off the old studies about retail density and to require staff an council to search the archives here on "fake retail" where that controversy dates back almost 10 years, to 2014.

The waste of our money on consultants with no local knowledge is absurd when there so much local knowledge here.

Are the international consultants going to be aware of Footwear Etc.'s ad specifically blaming the high PA rents and urging patrons to drive to their other nearby stores? Of course not. No more than the Junior Museum & Zoo consultants were aware of how the old JMZ was used.

Sooooo, when's the city FINALLY going to restore all the libraries to their full schedules or do we have to listen to our "leaders" keep pleading poverty and threatening to cut emergency dispatchers??

I think allowing cars on Cal Ave will result in cars driving swiftly by all the stores one would like to help as drivers head to El Camino and beyond. We have a wonderful new garage on Sherman and an older one on Cambridge to keep the overflow onto neighborhood streets to a minimum. Perhaps a pointer to those will ensure their use.

Regarding the two consulting firms and the costs involved, why not hire Gunn and PALY students to team up to create a design for the evolution of California Ave. It willl be theirs to use someday.

Remember Diddums, the party store on Hamilton that got displaced by "fake retail" aka offices almost 10 years ago and pushed on to El Camino? The owner's daughter's efforts to promote the store just got written up in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning Web Link for making a TikTok video that's already gotten more than 60,000 views and didn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for consultants with no local knowledge.

Note that their San Carlos store is STILL downtown!

Many thanks for the link. Diddums was an Alidan's cave for the children. A must visit for every party and Christmas stocking stuffers. Who remember's the bead shop just up the street?

The Dragon Theatre closed in 2022 shortly after moving to San Jose. It is no longer in operation.

Web Link

@mjh, the Diddums daughter chose to post her TikTok appeal now because Halloween is their busiest time of year.

Maybe convert Cambridge Avenue and Birch Street into the California Avenue retail sector and keep California Avenue closed off to traffic for diners and casual.pedrstrians?

The street closure barriers on California Avenue also need to be more aesthetic.

An archway that says California Avenue and visible from ECR would be a nice touch.

Instant gratification is something that online shopping cannot do.

Our household needed one specific replacement item yesterday and needed it then, a couple of other items were agreed needing replacement. The problem was where to go to buy them. Our to go place had been Bed Bath and Beyond in the past in similar situations. Instead we had Target and WalMart as choices. Our shopping trip also included Kohls.

All four of those were outside Palo Alto. This is nothing new. We have always gone outside Palo Alto to buy household and similar essentials. Our choices are now much more limited and when you put footwear into the mix, we are very much less well served than we should be. Buying shoes and other footwear online is not going to happen. Because of the essential item needed, other purchases were also made and returning home with a couple of additional spontaneous purchases gave Mountain View tax dollars for their coffers.

Here in Palo Alto we have some upmarket shopping choices, but very little basic shopping. Instant gratification and items such as shoes will continue to be out of town purchases. Something that anyone looking to improve retail in town should consider.

Thank you Ocam's Razor.

I don't understand two things.

First, macroeconomics of Palo Alto retail It is really difficult to govern our city when so many opinions abound. I would like to understand how council, staff and citizens can make decisions when retail real estate markets are so unnstable. Here is a good theory about underlying financing and how "bankers guide" the leases (rent) presented to retailers and restuaranteurs.

Web Link

Second, common sense and mirco-economis. Economies of scale is the prime success factor for small commerce. The new marginal customers make a huge difference if a restaurant can reach to mor paying customers at noon and evenings. What is the city doing to promote customer convenience and access to all public garages. These free parking assest are wasting after 5pm, seven days a week.

There is no modern, active guidance system to these garages. Information could be availabe on an "Go Palo Alto" app....and it could be on a brightly lit signs at the entrance of garages. Instead I observe too many customers wasting their time orbiting downtown street faces and surface parking lots. Consultant recommendations and council commitments continue to be unanswered for this simple, commonsense solution.