We
’re mystified about why approving a Ford dealership at U.S. 101
and Dunne Avenue seems to be such a difficult decision for the City
Council. The proposal was before City Council Wednesday, but,
predictably, it was tabled until June 18.
We’re mystified about why approving a Ford dealership at U.S. 101 and Dunne Avenue seems to be such a difficult decision for the City Council. The proposal was before City Council Wednesday, but, predictably, it was tabled until June 18.
Here’s a commercial location – the stretch of Dunne Avenue on both sides of the Highway 101 already includes a grocery store, two drug stores, almost innumerable fast food joints, a hotel, three gas stations, a Starbucks and a Chevy dealership – so the addition of a Ford dealership is not changing the character of the area.
Here’s a chance to increase Morgan Hill’s woeful sales tax revenue and give local residents a new place to spend their money in town, rather than heading to San Jose or Gilroy and putting their hard-earned dollars in those cities’ coffers.
Here’s a chance to give out-of-towners more reasons to visit the city and spend some money, a chance to try to reverse our sales tax drain.
Why wouldn’t City Council approve the Ford dealership? The only reasons we can find to reject the dealership is if City Council members want to reinforce Morgan Hill’s image as a business-unfriendly town, or if they think the interests of a few outweigh the interest of the entire community.
Certainly you can’t use the excuse dreamed up by that ever-creative attorney Bruce Tichinin, who is working for Bob Lynch Ford in Gilroy to fight the proposed Ford competitor in Morgan Hill: that two Ford dealerships can’t survive in South Valley.
Two Chevy dealerships – South County Chevrolet in Morgan Hill and Harry Marx Chevrolet in Gilroy – do just fine in the same region, thank you. Second, Ford Motor Company knows the auto business much better than either Tichinin or the Morgan Hill City Council. If Ford Motor Company’s bean-counters and marketers think two Ford dealers are sustainable in South Valley, we’ll defer to their judgment.
Council members should put pleas from neighbors who don’t want them to approve the new dealership in the NIMBYism round file. Neighbors are worried about lights, noise and – gasp – people test-driving cars on “their” streets. We know it’s difficult for some people to grasp, but they don’t own the streets in front of their homes. Roads are public property and anyone with a driver’s license and a vehicle can drive on them.
Further, anyone who buys a home in proximity to a major freeway interchange has to expect commercial development. Any commercial development will have traffic, noise and lighting impacts and Council will be required to make sure that those impacts are mitigated as much as possible. That’s the function of California’s strict environmental quality law, CEQA..
Anyone who lives near land zoned for commercial development is naive, at best, to argue that commercial development shouldn’t occur there. If an auto dealership doesn’t belong at Dunne and U.S. 101 – where there’s already another auto dealership just across the freeway – we don’t know where you could build one. There’s simply no more appropriate location than this site.
City Council has a fiduciary duty to weigh the benefits and costs of any proposal and do what is best for the entire community – not just a vocal group of NIMBY-minded neighbors, and certainly not what is best for a miffed, out-of-town businessman trying to protect his pocketbook.
The site is right, the product is right, and especially in these economically lean days, the time is right. We urge City Council to do what is best for all of Morgan Hill: Approve the Ford dealership.
Make your views known. Here’s how:
Council members can be contacted at City Hall, 17555 Peak Ave., Morgan Hill, at 779-7271 or at their personal numbers:
• Dennis Kennedy, 779-7758,
ma******@ao*.com
• Hedy Chang, 778-0511,
hc****@mo*********.gov
• Larry Carr , 501-7854, 779-9622,
lc***@mo*********.gov
• Greg Sellers, 778-2370,
gs******@mo*********.gov
