Gilroy
– Look out, outlets: The big-box stores that dominate 10th
Street east of Highway 101 have surpassed Gilroy’s Premium Outlets
in sales tax revenue, pouring more than $3 million into city
coffers.
Gilroy – Look out, outlets: The big-box stores that dominate 10th Street east of Highway 101 have surpassed Gilroy’s Premium Outlets in sales tax revenue, pouring more than $3 million into city coffers.
And that’s before this year’s holiday shopping blitz.
Pacheco Pass Center’s 700,000-plus square feet of retail provided 19.05 percent of Gilroy’s sales tax revenue from October 2005 to October 2006. Across the street, Gilroy Crossing’s monolithic shops chipped in 7.16 percent. City officials are still waiting on fourth-quarter tax figures, but store owners say they’ll push revenues even higher. Shops’ earnings have ticked up a few percentage points every month.
“Because of those additional dollars, our community weathered the economic downturn during the dot-com bust,” said Larry Cope, director of the Gilroy Economic Development Corporation. “We stayed in the black, and a lot of other communities didn’t.”
The retail explosion hasn’t just refilled the city’s budget, it’s remade its image. Big-name stores in bigger buildings are now synonymous with growing up in Gilroy. Local teens work their first jobs shilling smoothies at Jamba Juice or scooping ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery; a trio of girls say Target is their favorite after-school hangout. At Pacheco Pass coffeeshop It’s a Grind, owners say their oldest employee is 21.
“When I was a kid, I’d say I was from Gilroy, and people would say, ‘Garlic!’ ” recalled Josh Praycraft, a 26-year-old student. “Now, I say I’m from Gilroy, and people say, ‘Shopping!'”
During the week, the stores draw more locals, such as Mary Kay consultant Stephanie Stafford, who shops at Target at least once a week. On weekends, shoppers pour in from Morgan Hill, Hollister, Los Banos, “pretty much anywhere north of Salinas,” said Cope. “When you look at Gilroy’s population, there’s really no technical way to support the number of shopping centers we have, without outsiders coming in.”
Hundreds of customers pack into Jamba Juice every weekend, said store manager Feather Warner. Her customers come from Salinas and San Jose; truckers stop in as they begin, or end, their cross-country hauls.
“Come in on a Saturday when it’s sunny,” she said, “and you’d be amazed. We serve 300 to 500 guests on weekend days, 100 to 200 on weekdays.”
To keep sales up, businesses at Pacheco Pass Center share strategies on center-wide conference calls, said It’s a Grind co-owner Dan Dixon, a former real estate agent who took over the coffeeshop in December along with Todd Daugherty, a registered nurse.
“We’re doing well,” Dixon said. “Even though we’re here in commercial land, and there’s limited foot-traffic, people make a special trip out here for it. We’ve got regulars.”
Meanwhile, the big-box sprawl is getting bigger: two new shopping centers spanning more than 100,000 square feet each east of Gilroy Crossing, on the south side of Pacheco Pass Highway, are in the planning process. One is being developed by Land Capital Group; the other is a project of McCarthy Ranch Group. And a still-larger megamall, the 119-acre Westfield project, would rival the size of both Pacheco Pass shopping centers combined, if plans proceed to build on farmland east of the outlets.
Gilroy Crossing changed hands late last year, when Washington investor Amin Lakha bought the shopping center for $86 million from its original developers, affiliates of Regency Centers Corp. and American Capital Group LLC, as reported by the Silican Valley/San Jose Business Journal.
