Its all about footprint

It seems that Safeway is playing the numbers game again.  Several spokespeople have been raising the concern that it isn’t economic for them to build a store that is only ’17% larger’ than the current builkding space.  Here’s their logic:

The current square footage: 31,625 sq.ft (Safeway) 17,560 (Walgreens), 7,850 (Wells Fargo) total a 57,035 sq.ft. and the proposed square footage 45,728 (Safeway), 15,295 (Walgreens), 5,887 (retail) totals 66,910 sq. ft., only a 17% increase in store.

However according to "Supplement No. 1 to the Response to Comments Document on EIR", the numbers are

|Building Area|	Existing sq. ft |	Proposed Sq. ft |
Safeway	31,754	45,728
Wells Fargo	7,721	0
Walgreen	15,704	15,295
Retail	0	5,887
TOTAL	55,179	66,910

It seems Safeway is missing a very important point. It should be noted that this sq. footage contains an abandoned basement space beneath grade (*) that is not currently used by Safeway. What is truly telling about the size of the store is the massive increase in footprint that the one structure will have over the existing three separate structures.

|Building Footprint |	Existing sq. ft |	Proposed Sq. ft |
Safeway	24,710	45,728
Wells Fargo	7,721	0
Walgreen	15,704	10,750
Retail	0	5,887
TOTAL	48,134	62,365

The FOOTPRINT measure is very important because ALL buildings will be contained in one big box. Presently there are three buildings, which breaks up the bulk and mass.

We can clearly see that the Safeway store alone will be more than 80% larger than the current Safeway.

(*) We have recently learned that Safeway is presently using their basement space