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ATTACHMENT 2 ATTACHMENT 2: PUBLIC COMMENTS Original Message From: Madden Mike [ Sent: Monday, November 26, 2018 11:05 AM To: Gerry Beaudin Subject: Bank Buildings Gerry, Here' s my issue in writing. A bit of history, a dose of opinion and a simple solution or two... Thanks for your consideration, Mike What to do about the Bank Buildings? As we plan the next chapters of Pleasanton's Downtown, it is imperative that we consider and appreciate its history with a clear understanding of how we got here in the first place. The citizens and leaders of Pleasanton have always thought the Downtown to be special and have always desired to make it a vibrant component of the City of Planned Progress. As strip malls came to town in the early 1970's and the Stoneridge Mall was in its planning phase, Downtown was struggling. Main Street was home to many bars, several gas stations,and little else. Prior to ATM's and credit cards being accepted everywhere; people were forced to use cash. Where did they get their cash? They went to the Bank. In an effort to force people Downtown on a regular basis,the City Council mandated that before a bank could open a branch anywhere else in town, they first had to have a branch in the Downtown. As a result of this "ordinance," banks were constructed in Downtown,five of which remain on Main Street to this day: First Republic, Heritage, Bank of America, Chase,and US Bank. Times have changed, people have changed, banking has changed and Pleasanton has changed, but the desire to keep our Downtown special has remained. Where banks were once part of the solution to save our Downtown,they are now the most criticized element of that same Downtown. (The current use provisions regarding banks in the Downtown,was a hastily thrown together solution to thwart a one-time, unpopular threat with the development of the Pastime property. Now is the time to craft a well thought-out solution to the issue.) Outlawing banks in the downtown is a shortsighted, lazy, and unfair outcome to buildings that were built to solve a problem and mandated by the city. (And giving them a 90 day window to find another bank is the same as outlawing them...) The easiest but most unpopular solution would be to"grandfather"them and note that they were built as financial institutions under a city mandate, and since there's only 5 of them,they might continue to add something that downtown can use, larger buildings with ample parking. A more complicated solution would be to craft a "bank building conversion program,"that would be incentive based, rather than short sighted and penal. Such a program might stipulate that should one of the five banks want to convert to restaurant use, all normally associated fees would be waived or otherwise absorbed by the city. The same fee-waiver incentive might be work for a residential conversion. Forty years ago, Banks on Main were part of the solution. Penalizing these properties is not the answer to getting our Downtown to the next level of its evolution,whatever that might mean in 2018... 1