Your suggestion is very timely. The City is currently updating its General Plan, a guide for future decisions with respect to land use, development, and related policy matters. Tonight (April 17, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.), the City Council will conduct a Study Session regarding the General Plan Update. The objective of this session is to provide a presentation of the draft Economic Development Report; and present new draft land use designations to foster new opportunities for retail and food service establishments. The community is encouraged to attend and participate in the discussions.

More specific to your post… although the City would love to have greater influence on the type of retail businesses locating in the community, the City’s role is somewhat limited. The City can only establish zoning and encourage businesses to locate in the community; the commercial property owners ultimately determine which businesses they will lease to. Thank you for using Community Voice!

Thank you for the information. Perhaps the limited influence should include (if not already) the demographics of the city so property owners can make wiser decisions on whom (type of shop/dining) they rent to and not limit the potential customers to an limited population. I just see that so many 'mom-n-pop' retail geared to a limited population are going out of business in our plaza's and it makes our city look less desirable.

Example, ex-Ralphs plaza (corner of Walker/La Palma); it would be great to have a more trendy food market along with trendier shops/dining. I actually go to the cleaners there and when talking to the owner of that shop, she says that business is definitely down for all retailers in the plaza since Ralph’s closed… and quite frankly, the parking lot looks so empty all the time…depressing

Unfortunately I can’t attend tonight’s session (work schedule), but would appreciate you taking my input to either start or be part of the brainstorming done on this topic.

City web site stated a Wal-Mart market was in the works?

I would like to know more about how the City encourages businesses to locate in the community. Can they target certain markets I did attend one meeting with outside consultants that did a survey of businesses that residents would like to see in the community, however I don't think the survey was presented so all residents could provide input. Also the Shop La Palma program was not administrated well over the last few years. We need to have a strong program encouraging shopping in your home town. This also would be an asset in presenting to prospective retailers why they would want to open a store in La Palma. I feel it was a mistake to farm out our Chamber of Commerce. What should have been done was better management of what results were expected.

I think La Palma residents would like to have more businesses, especially places for social gathering but in talking with many residents, more than 80% do NOT want rental properties and preferably no extra housing, less it just gets more crowded. I don't believe the consultant company produced a good survey. The questions were rediculously biased to make the answers support rental properties. I kept my survey to prove how biased it was. We the people of La Palma will not stand for a wholesale change to our city. I expect our city council to recognize this and stand up for us.