GILROY
– City officials say the controversial health clinic planning to
move into the Garlic Festival Store building at Fifth and Monterey
streets will not be the victim of a new, more stringent permitting
process designed to keep medical centers from proliferating
downtown.
GILROY – City officials say the controversial health clinic planning to move into the Garlic Festival Store building at Fifth and Monterey streets will not be the victim of a new, more stringent permitting process designed to keep medical centers from proliferating downtown.
Gardner Family Health Network CEO Reymundo Espinoza was worried his clinic was the target of a new ordinance City Council could approve next month. The ordinance would require health care clinics to pass through a bureaucratic obstacle – called a Conditional Use Permit – before opening a center in downtown.
Espinoza wants his clinic to fall under current rules since he filed his project with the city several weeks before the ordinance was even discussed. This week, Espinoza presented Council with a letter requesting special language be written into the new law that would grandfather the Gardner clinic.
Gardner has submitted a building permit application to improve the former Garlic Festival Store site, but may not have the permit issued and construction under way by the time the conditional use permit is adopted.
“We feel we needed a little clarity on this,” Espinoza told officials.
City Administrator Jay Baksa told Espinoza that since he already submitted to planner the designs for the building renovations, the city would consider the health clinic project under current rules.
“This is a nothing issue. The city has always taken a high road with situations like this,” Baksa said.
City planners have reviewed plans for the clinic and asked for some changes to be made. Espinoza must now produce a second draft of the plans which includes those changes.
“Now if you leave tonight and we don’t see you for a long while that could be a problem,” Baksa told Espinoza.
Gardner health clinic has been the focal point of an intense controversy that will surely play into the November elections. At issue is whether shops in the downtown core, roughly between Fourth and Eighth streets along Monterey Street, should be specialty retail only.
Many downtown revitalization activists believe novelty shops, cafes and restaurants – not health care clinics – are the best way to make historical downtown a community and cultural focal point.
Just last week, a high-profile antique store owner announced he would move his shop from Gilroy to Morgan Hill. Charles Coachman, owner of Coachman Antiques, laid blame for his decision to move on Peter Arellano and Charlie Morales, the two Councilmen who kept a moratorium on downtown medical centers from passing.
