The Santa Rosa City Council must be credited. Why? The only reason is that it has the courage to envisage and approach the development of plenty of buildings for bettering the city when the nation is reeling under the brunt of a terrible downturn. Don’t you think so? Well, if you decline to credit, you should give an ovation. The Santa Rosa City Council has sanctioned $4.1 million to purchase the mostly-vacant earlier Westamerica Bank building across First Street from City Hall.
When it gets acquired, the 14,500-square-foot bank would become the latest acquisition in the city’s expanding downtown real estate portfolio. But this is nothing new for an aspirant city like Santa Rosa, which is the largest city in California’s Wine Country and fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area. It should be remembered that the city redevelopment agency paid $3 million for the AT&T monolith on Third Street and the city spent $3 million for Chamber Plaza office close to the bank a couple of years back. The same trend is going on in full swing.
However, this has failed to make everyone have glee and one of them is the Mayor, Susan Gorin. According to her, the purchase is untimely since the city is facing a projected $20 million budget deficit next year. Nevertheless she agreed that the purchase ought to reduce the city’s costs. Whatever it is, a considerable section of the city officials are jubilant and they are considering this as a noteworthy step towards a major development in the future. The city has in mind as a purpose to convert the three-story bank building into city offices and move in some staff now housed in 19,000-square-feet of leased buildings scattered all through the city.
On the other hand the city is planning to get hold of the vacant Charles Schwab office complex adjacent to the AT&T building on Third Street and is studying the details therefore. There have already been initial discussions over the prospect of combining the Schwab property with AT&T.
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