Sausalito will soon allow large chain stores in the Marinship area and invite more boutique businesses into its other commercial zones.<\/p>\n
The \u201cformula retail\u201d ordinance update, which the City Council unanimously approved on first reading on Feb. 17, still bans drive-thru food businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very modest step,\u201d said Councilmember Ian Sobieski. \u201cAll these big fast food chains are prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always viewed formula retail in Sausalito cautiously,\u201d said Councilmember Jill Hoffman. \u201cIt may not seem like an aggressive step forward, but I think for Sausalito, it\u2019s an aggressive step and I\u2019m cautiously optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
City officials have been wrestling with the formula retail rules since 2024. The prior code did not precisely define what constituted a formula retail business.<\/p>\n
In 2017, a court overturned a successful Malibu ballot measure that banned certain businesses. Sausalito, like many Marin municipalities, has ongoing struggles filling downtown storefronts.<\/p>\n
In late 2024, the Planning Commission developed a code update that defined formula retail as a business with six or more locations worldwide. When that came before the City Council last spring, the members felt the definition was too restrictive. The council created a study group led by Sobieski and Hoffman, and a more nuanced definition and application emerged.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have 50 or more locations in California, you will qualify as formula retail, and you will be allowed in the shopping center district,\u201d said city planner Matthew Mandich. \u201cBy right, if you have 50 or below, you will not qualify as formula retail, and you\u2019ll be able to locate in the city\u2019s commercial zones accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on the use type, you may still need a discretionary permit of some kind,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you will be able to locate in the commercial zones without any additional formula retail zoning clearance or anything of that nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
Certain business uses are exempt, Mandich said, such as grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, medical and real estate offices, service stations, movie theaters and couriers.<\/p>\n
He said specialty chains with fewer than 50 California locations include Blue Bottle Coffee, Anthropologie, Tacolicious, Marine Layer, Faherty, Hudson Grace, Alo, Equinox, Gott\u2019s, Louis Vuitton and Boichik Bagels.<\/p>\n
The code revisions were mostly praised during public comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that businesses need in town is certainty and clarity of process and ease of process,\u201d said Carlo Berg, who owns Marinship properties. \u201cFor too long, formula retail and the ordinance in general has been something that people have twisted themselves into contortions to get around.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish this was a magic bullet that we could point at our vacancies,\u201d said Adrian Brinton. \u201cIt\u2019s one big step along the way and it\u2019s one piece of the puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I was to expand into a storefront, the cost of renting downtown is astronomical and not friendly to local businesses here,\u201d said Justine Kahn, founder of Botnia, a cosmetics maker in the Marinship area. \u201cIt does scare me a little bit to have formula retail take over certain areas of town, especially near Mollie Stone\u2019s, where we have a delicate ecosystem of light manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe local businesses that are organically grown from the inside out in the southern Marin community, in Sausalito in particular, I don\u2019t know how they\u2019re going to stand up to competition that\u2019s been tested on the national level,\u201d said Babette McDougal.<\/p>\n
Members of the City Council praised the proposal and the effort to customize the ordinance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest chain, the biggest franchise in Sausalito, is called vacant storefront,\u201d Sobieski said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemoving a barrier to potential businesses is an important step in the right direction,\u201d said Councilmember Joan Cox.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we can finally embrace those businesses, like Rustic Bakery, for instance, when they approach us about the opportunity to be in our downtown,\u201d said Vice Mayor Melissa Blaustein.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sausalito will soon allow large chain stores in the Marinship area and invite more boutique businesses into its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[387,7,383,181,23,992,100,180,993,266,101,103,102,3624,3625,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-194779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-marin-county","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newsletter","16":"tag-north-bay","17":"tag-northern-california","18":"tag-san-francisco","19":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","20":"tag-san-francisco-news","21":"tag-sausalito","22":"tag-sausalito-city-council","23":"tag-sf","24":"tag-sf-headlines","25":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}