Faced with storefront vacancies, Mountain View adopts plan to boost economic vitality in the city

Years after the pandemic, Mountain View is still struggling to fully recover from the economic fallout. Commercial vacancy rates remain stubbornly high and small businesses are finding it difficult to stay afloat as many continue to work from home. Adding to these challenges, one of the city’s largest employers, Google, is downsizing its workforce and office needs.

A new economic vitality strategy seeks to turn things around. On Tuesday evening, April 23, the City Council unanimously approved a plan that laid out the city’s economic vision and priorities to make Mountain View a more business-friendly environment for the entire community.

“I’m very excited to see the work plan that’s proposed and even more excited to see it implemented,” said Council member Lucas Ramirez, a sentiment that was shared by his colleagues at the council meeting on April 23.

But council members had slightly different perspectives about the best approach to boost economic activity in the city. The problem of storefront vacancies loomed large in their deliberations, with some debating the value of a commercial vacancy tax, similar to what was enacted in San Francisco in 2022.

Responding to public comments, Council member Emily Ann Ramos proposed to make a vacancy tax a higher priority in the work plan, which was ranked as a “last resort” in the council report. For Ramos, it was preferable for the city to come up with its own measure to put on a ballot, rather than face the possibility of a citizen’s initiative.

“I want us to be ready so that we don’t have to worry about having a bad vacancy tax put on the ballot measure instead of a good one,” she said.

Council member Margaret Abe-Koga voiced the strongest opposition to a vacancy tax, stating that it would signal to the community that they were not business friendly. She also said the public was showing fatigue with ballot revenue measures.

Council members Lucas Ramirez and Alison Hicks were not against the idea of a vacancy tax, but said they preferred to prioritize other options first.

“Before we penalize folks, let’s see if there are things we can do to make it easier to fill vacant spaces,” Ramirez said.

The vacancy rate for retail and offices in downtown Mountain View is 8.5% and 25%, respectively, which is higher than other cities in the region, according to the council report. But Economic Vitality Manager John Lang said this was not necessarily reflective of what’s happening on the ground. Although there are about 18 or 19 vacancies on Castro Street, 10 of the businesses have active permits or are getting permits, he said.

“Part of the challenge and perception around vacancies (is) just because it may be empty, doesn’t mean there’s not necessarily something occurring,” he said, adding that the city could do more to signal active engagement with signs like “Coming soon” posted to windows.

In many respects, the work plan is meant to address these perceptions, while also implementing concrete steps to improve economic vitality in the city. It has five main goals, broadly reflecting the city’s commitment to economic development and the wellbeing of the community. Each of these goals has a subset of strategies that, in turn, have corresponding “action items” that also are marked by a proposed timeline and cost estimate.

In total, there are 164 action items in the work plan, a number that concerned Abe-Koga, who questioned whether this was too ambitious to implement, even when parsed out over several years.

“My concern with this is that there’s so many strategies. I just want us to be realistic… What is 21 items in a year, for instance? Can we really get all of this done?” she asked.

Other council members honed in on specific strategies, pressing for clarification about the intent of the work plan’s scope, particularly in the case of proposed zoning changes.

Hicks asked whether changes would be made to restricting ground floor office uses in the historic downtown area. “I want to know exactly what ‘flexible’ means… I’m for flexibility, but the right kind in the right places,” she said, adding that she would oppose any changes that broke up the flow of pedestrian engagement.

Lang said this flexibility was to allow for new experiences in the downtown area that would capture the changing needs of the community. As it stands, the codes also were not consistent. What can be done “by right” on one street requires a conditional use permit on an adjacent one, which adds another obstacle for businesses, he said.

Council members showed interest in shuffling the timeline for different action items, moving them from mid and long-term ranges (five to 10 years) to more immediate implementation, and vice versa.

For anything involving zoning changes, this would be difficult to accomplish, according to Dawn Cameron, acting assistant city manager and community development director. Staff already were tasked with housing element obligations as well as two precise plans. Adding more items to their agenda would be too much to cover in the near term, she said.

Recognizing these limitations, council members largely settled on what was originally proposed in the council report with some minor modifications, and acknowledged Cameron’s reference to the work plan as a “living document” that could be adjusted as needed over the next several years.

“I was happy to hear you say it’s a living document. And because the situation is so fluid, I think we’re going to want to be checking in a lot,” Hicks said.