CLEARLAKE – The Clearlake City Council and Redevelopment Agency is set to consider an agreement with a Roseville firm to explore developing a major commercial site along Highway 53.
The item is scheduled to appear on the agenda of City Council's Tuesday, Jan. 9 meeting. The meeting is taking place at 4 p.m. because council members are leaving for ethics training later that evening.
Interim City Administrator Robert Van Nort prepared the staff report for the council on the proposal, which involves the 25.9-acre Clearlake Commercial Development Site.
Also referred to as the Clearlake Business Park, the property is located on the west side of Highway 53, and between Highway 53, Airport Road and Victor Street, near the now-closed Outrageous Waters water park.
Last June the Clearlake Redevelopment Agency approved a five-year plan that specifically addressed the property. The plan outlines the agency's economic development goal of having a private developer place a high quality retail project on the site.
For more than a year the city has sought applications from developers interested in the project.
Van Nort's staff report recommends the council authorize and direct city staff to prepare an exclusive negotiation agreement with Katz Kirkpatrick Properties (KKP) of Roseville.
The draft agreement that staff negotiates, Van Nort's report states, will include a certain time period during which the agency, the consultants and developers have to determine a development proposal.
Another issue that will be determined during the negotiations is whether the city plans to sell the property or lease it long-term, according to the report.
“These matters would then be presented for public review and Agency Board consideration prior to or at the conclusion of the exclusive negotiation period,” said Van Nort's report.
In the event the negotiations don't end successfully, Van Nort's report said “the matter will be brought back to the Agency Board with an alternate recommendation.”
Fred Katz, a KKP principal, said Friday his firm submitted an application to the city in July 2006 regarding the project. The company, he said, specializes in shopping center development.
According to a company background on KKP's Web site, it has developed nearly 50 neighborhood and community shopping centers, many of them around Northern California.
Van Nort's report states that three companies – including KKP – submitted written proposals, with one of them – Clearlake Redevelopment Group of Santa Cruz – dropping out. In October KKP and another competing firm, Cypress Equities Northwest LLC of San Ramon, presented their qualifications to a committee that included former City Administrator Kathy Kivley, the interim finance director and the city clerk and redevelopment agency consultants.
If the city and KKP enter into the exclusive negotiating agreement, Katz said, the next step will be for his firm to study the area's economics, and find out what kind of development the city wants on the property and whether it wants to sell the land to KKP or lease it to them.
“We need to comply with the city's ideas,” he said.
No price has been put on the property, said Katz, in the case the city were to sell it.
Katz said the company's project portfolio includes shopping centers in Chico, Corning, Red Bluff and Napa. Among the major tenants in their developments are Kohl's, Safeway, Home Depot, Raley's, Rite-Aid, Wal-Mart and Target, he said.
“We would propose to do a center similar to the kind of tenant mix we've had in the past,” Katz said.
The Clearlake property, said Katz, has a number of attributes which he believes could attract some of the major tenants he's worked with before. Those include visibility from the highway, reasonable access, a population base sufficient to support the retailers and the fact that retailers such as Kohl's, Target, Home Depot and Raley's don't already have a presence here.
“We see the site as an opportunity for these retailers to come to Lake County,” said Katz.
But, Katz cautioned, nothing is yet on the drawing board. “It's the very, very earliest stages of discussion,” he said.
Katz said his partners, Steve Kirkpatrick and Michael Raphel, will be at Tuesday's meeting to discuss the proposed agreement.
Mayor Judy Thein said Friday she doesn't really have a vision for the site, since the council doesn't yet know what KKP might propose.
Thein said that, as part of her mayoral appointments, she will appoint two council members to be on the Clearlake Business Park Subcommittee.
“This will give the council members an opportunity to be actively involved in the entire process so that we are able to represent the best interests of our community and our citizens,” she said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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