Borders Books, Music and Cafe has signed a lease to open a 23,065-sq.-ft. store in downtown Santa Cruz, Calif. The store will stock some 200,000 book, music, periodical and video titles. The company aims for a February 2000 opening.
The announcement has provoked a strong reaction in Santa Cruz, whose downtown has been painstakingly rebuilt since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and which features many smaller retailers. The area is known for its activism. This past February, a group of citizens in neighboring Capitola were successful in getting the city council to reduce by half the allowable space for Borders in a new development there, causing Borders to withdraw from the project.
The new Borders store will be one block from Bookshop Santa Cruz, the 14,000-sq.-ft. independent that was destroyed in the earthquake and operated out of a tent in its parking lot for several years before rebuilding. Owner Neal Coonerty's wife and bookstore partner, Candy, died just two months ago. "Personally I'm devastated," Coonerty told PW. "Already my children and I have lost a huge part of our life. Two weeks later, to have another part put in jeopardy is overwhelming."
Both because of Coonerty's role as vice-president and secretary of the ABA, which sued Borders last year, and a supporter of the battle against the Borders store in Capitola, Coonerty and others believe that the Borders opening down the street is "vengeance."
Redtree Properties is the developer of both the Capitola property Borders was interested in and the Borders Santa Cruz site. Redtree COO John Tremoulis told several local newspapers, "This is a university town. There should be a lot diversity in bookstores."
Borders president Rich Flanagan said in a statement: "Santa Cruz is a wonderful community with a business district that's clearly experiencing a renaissance. One of our core strengths is that when Borders comes to a new community, we become a kind of cultural center with dozens of free in-store events each month and an environment that encourages people to come in and explore; to get together. We expect that our store will add to the vitality Santa Cruz is experiencing downtown."
One city council member has already spoken out against Borders, and Mayor Katherine Beiers told the Santa Cruz County Sentinel: "Every time a store of that magnitude proposes to come to town, it's disheartening. Borders is a good bookstore, but it still causes great concern."
Downtown Santa Cruz has some chain stores, including Starbucks, the Gap, Wherehouse, Jamba Juice, Peet's and Taco Bell. The consensus is that there are few legal grounds for keeping Borders out of Santa Cruz. Still, Coonerty, a former Santa Cruz mayor and instrumental in rebuilding downtown, said he wants the city planning and community development department require Redtree to seek a modification of its design permit.
Coonerty argues that the site as approved showed four retail tenants; Borders is now the sole tenant. Such a modification would be significant enough to be heard before the city council, he hopes.
Coonerty also said he believes the Borders store would be out of scale and out of character for the downtown area, as outlined in the downtown recovery plan adopted by the city council and the basis for the downtown's rebuilding. There are several specialty and used bookstores in the downtown area that together form "a diverse vibrant bookselling community," Coonerty said. "This is like dropping a bomb into that."
Many Santa Cruzans are circulating petitions asking the mayor and city council not to turn the downtown area into "a superstore strip mall." A former mayor and activist is organizing a campaign to have people hand out anti-Borders leaflets outside its front doors during all business hours the first year of the store's operation.
