Safeway Working Group

For the past 15 months the Citizens for a Better Burlingame, along with representatives from 5 other stakeholder groups and Safeway, have been meeting to define the parameters for a development on the Safeway site at Howard and El Camino.  On August 19th the working group will present their recommendations at a joint City Council & Planning Commission meeting.

There are several areas where the stakeholder groups, including the CBB, have reached a consensus.  The guidelines will enable Safeway to propose a development that is significantly better than the one that was turned down by both the planning commission and the city council in 2004. (See the CBB archives to review the community concerns with the previous design).  There do remain several areas, including size and height of the development, where the working group does not have a consensus.

CBB members and their guests were invited to an informational meeting on August 14th to hear from the CBB representatives on the Safeway working group, review the current draft proposals of the working group with questions, answers and discussion afterwards.

The Working Group is a collaborative community effort. Its initial tasks are to identify stakeholder interests and to establish the design criteria for developing the Safeway site. The goal is to have a new store that both enhances Burlingame and is financially feasible for Safeway.

The Working Group is comprised of seven stakeholder representatives and one alternate representative for each group. The stakeholder groups are:

• the Burlingame Chamber of Commerce,
• the Citizens for Better Burlingame, 
• the Downtown Burlingame Merchants,
• the Downtown Burlingame property owners,
• the adjacent homeowners (residents of the neighborhoods southeast and southwest of the store), 
• previous petitioners for a new Safeway, and 
• Safeway.

The CBB representatives on the Working Group are co-chair Charles Voltz and Co-Chair Susan Castner-Paine.

The public is invited to observe Working Group meetings. Public comment will be taken during the first and last fifteen minutes of each meeting.

You can also provide your feedback to the CBB so that your ideas will be represented.

Safeway Working Group Meetings

A standing room only crowd packed into the Lane Room on August 19 to hear the Safeway Working Group recommendations. One of the pressing recommendations was for our City to hire an appraiser to value the two city parking lots (lots K and L) which may be used for the Safeway project.

Since then the council has received letters from Safeway asking for clarification on parking and use of city land and an additional letter stating the parameters of there proposed planning submission.

Meanwhile Mayor O’Mahony has been writing to select residents voicing her opposition to any proposal that includes underground parking.

Read the CBB’s response to the retrograde thinking of our Mayor and Safeway.

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Purpose & Process

The purpose of the working group is to identify a plan for developing the Safeway site that both enhances Burlingame and is financially feasible for Safeway.

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CBB\'s Position

As part of the Safeway Working Group process each representative group has been asked to state its interests in the new Safeway store.  Interests are the areas that they wish the new development to address.  You can read about the CBB’s stated interests here and you can contribute to the process.

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