PL MINUTES 11191991 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Planning Commission Page 3 1 lease without better visibility was the reason the first sign 102 was added to the pylon in 1987 and now J.C. Penney' s lease is 13 up and the store management believes that because of the market 4 conditions within the general retail community of St . Anthony, 5 Rosedale and Columbia Heights they need more exposure along 6 Silver Lake Road. 7 8 Kenneth A. Sundvall, manager of the Apache J.C. Penney store, 9 said he had only been at Apache for a year and a half, although 10 he had been with Penneys for many, many years . It was his 11 contention that anything which dealt with the retail business 12 had to come down to economics in the long run. He told the 13 Commissioners of his lunch that afternoon with Ron Herges, the 14 manager of Herbergers and president of the Apache Merchants 15 Association, who had told him only a previous commitment he 16 could not break, would prevent him from attending the hearing 17 that evening to support the addition of Penney signage to his 18 own store' s identification on the shopping center pylon. Mr. 19 Sundvall said if it had been the other way around, he would 20 have welcomed Herbergers ' signage on the same sign as Penneys 21 because that would give more credibility and drawing power to 22 the center . 23 24 The Penney store manager contended that unless persons passing 25 by on Silver Lake Road had resided in the area for a number of 26 years it could well be that they might not even know there was 7 a Penneys in the shopping center . He said he had been made 8 aware of this by customers who just happened to drop by who 29 said as much to his clerks . Mr . sundvall argued further that 30 almost all neighborhood shopping centers like Har Mar and 31 Knollwood have the major stores in their centers listed on 32 their center signs . Even larger centers concentrate on major 33 retailers in their center in their advertising because they 34 know they help to draw the traffic to those centers . 35 36 Mr. Sundvall viewed Apache as more of a neighborhood than a 37 regional center. He said demographics indicated the trade area 38 to be relatively compact and to reach farther to the north than 39 the east where the competition is greater. He added that the 40 size of the competing dales also resulted in the shoppers 41 viewing Apache as a neighborhood center. Mr. Sundvall reported 42 the Apache Merchants Association had been reactivated to 43 promote the center with a calendar for 1992 already scheduled 44 to expand on collective efforts of the merchants to draw more 45 customers and get more involved with community activities . 46 Among these were the Special Olympics this summer, the Columbus 47 Day events and a shopping spree night which had to be 48 rescheduled because of the blizzard. 49 50 When Commissioner Werenicz inquired why Apache was never 51 identified in the regional or national J.C. Penney advertising, 52 the store manager told him that was a corporate decision which 0