Foster City aims to stem empty storefronts

Vice Mayor Herb Perez said he came up with the idea to do something about vacant storefronts years ago after the owners of the Charter Square shopping center announced plans to redevelop the site. The proposal was turned down as officials wanted the shopping center to remain, Perez said. 

“[The owner] then undertook an aggressive tactic to vacate the property, blight it and do nothing with it until it became an eyesore,” Perez said. “We now have that same thing happening at Edgewater Plaza.”

Perez said the issue of vacancies has and will deprive the city of needed services.

“It’s getting to a place where it’s just untenable,” he said. “The fundamental question is to what degree do you want Foster City to maintain its commercial and retail centers for services that the community wants and can’t get elsewhere?”

During the meeting, City Attorney Jean Savaree outlined an ordinance modeled after ones in San Francisco and San Jose that requires buildings unoccupied for 30 days or more to be registered with the city and inspected annually. An annual report would have to be completed by a licensed professional confirming the building is being maintained according to city code and then contact information for the property owner would have to be posted on the building’s exterior.  

Foster City has a property maintenance ordinance on the books, but the registration, inspection and posting is not currently required. The city also has a program in which owners of shopping centers can apply for matching funds from the city to upgrade their property, but only Beach Park shopping center has so far taken advantage of it, Savaree said. 

While Perez initially proposed the idea of expanding on the city’s maintenance ordinance to require registration and inspection, he said he’s now not sure it’s worth it. 

“It doesn’t do anything other than annoy the property owner, which if people want to do that I guess we can,” he said. “I’d rather find a way at this point to encourage them. … I’m not married to this one way or another.” 

Perez suggested addressing vacancies instead by fortifying the conditional use permit for shopping centers. Savaree said she’d look into it as well as a potential vacancy tax. 

Savaree noted cities can’t force property owners to rent out their properties, but taxing them is ostensibly possible. The vacancy tax seemed to excite some councilmembers, though Councilwoman Richa Awasthi said Oakland’s version has proved problematic according to her research.

The council ultimately agreed to table the matter to a meeting sometime in the future.

“I do like the direction we’re heading in. Don’t quit, let’s try to find something because this is a huge issue,” said Councilman Sanjay Gehani. “If someone has the staying power to blight the property or not rent it out and erode services from our community over time and come back to us and leverage it for rezoning or something like that. We shouldn’t have to be in that situation if we can try to protect ourselves from it.”