The city of Sebastopol recently made a surprising administrative mistake: it approved the opening of a Little Caesars pizza restaurant in the downtown core, an area where chain businesses have been banned since 2018, with a few exceptions.<\/p>\n
Francesca Malerba-Locke, who owns Attico, a local consignment furniture store, said the error goes beyond pizza. She values Sebastopol for its small shops, local flavors, and a downtown that feels unique.<\/p>\n
“Disappointing that a big mistake like this would go through,” Malerba-Locke said.\u00a0 “It doesn’t add to the charm of the [town].”<\/p>\n
She added that it could take away the commercial space from a restaurant that would have provided a better food option for locals.<\/p>\n
City leaders discovered the mistake only after Little Caesars had already begun building out the space. By that point, officials said they couldn’t legally stop the project.<\/p>\n
“It’s an error. The city of Sebastopol has taken ownership and admitted we’ve made an error, an administrative error on approval.\u00a0 But Little Caesars, I guess, took that approval and ran with it and started making improvements. And so they had a vested interest by the time we realized our error. And we had to let them move forward,” said Councilmember Neysa Hinton.<\/p>\n
Not all residents are upset. Some younger Sebastopol residents said they welcome the fast, inexpensive option.<\/p>\n
“For me specifically, I do like it. Because I’m a big fan of it,” said AJ Mercado, a local worker. “I mainly just like it because it’s cheap. It’s not really the best food, but it’s cheap enough for me.”<\/p>\n
Hinton said that ultimately, the decision is up to the customers.<\/p>\n
“The consumer now will decide whether they like it or not with their pocketbook. I point out we don’t have a Burger King and we don’t have a McDonald’s in Sebastopol. They both went out of business,” she said.<\/p>\n
Others said they will continue supporting local businesses.<\/p>\n
“What do I think about Little Caesars? I don’t think it’s necessarily a part of our community here in Sebastopol. There’s a lot better pizza to be had in Sebastopol. So that’s where I’ll be going,” said resident Rick Rocklewitz.<\/p>\n
Steve DeCosse, who runs Acre Pizza \u2014 the only pizzeria in the downtown core \u2014 said the new chain won’t impact his business.<\/p>\n
“We’re just building a resilient community, one pizza at a time.\u00a0 It won’t impact us because of the quality of what we do, and we’re really supported by our community, and they understand this,” he said.<\/p>\n
For Malerba-Locke, the main takeaway is ensuring that future applications don’t slip through the cracks.<\/p>\n
“Original as possible so that people coming to town and they see stores that are unique,” she said.<\/p>\n
The city said it has added safeguards to prevent a similar mistake in the future. Little Caesars plans to open to the public sometime in the next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Sebastopol recently made a surprising administrative mistake: it approved the opening of a Little Caesars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,39573,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-67143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-san-francisco","9":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","10":"tag-san-francisco-news","11":"tag-sebastopol","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67143","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=67143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}