By Emily Alpert Staff Writer
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 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 has remade its image.
“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 mostly locals. On weekends, shoppers pour in from Hollister, Morgan Hill, Los Banos and “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.”
Meanwhile, the big-box sprawl is getting bigger: two new shopping centers spanning more than 100,000 square feet each are slated to open east of Gilroy Crossing, on the south side of Pacheco Pass Highway. 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.
Emily Alpert covers public safety issues for The Dispatch. She can be reached at 847-7158, or at ea*****@gi************.com.
