The backbone of our community are our local businesses who’ve stuck it out through thick and thin over the years. And these last two years have been particularly trying for all of us and our local businesses.

We want to see our town thrive which is why we have strong concerns about the growing proliferation of national chain and discount stores popping up in our community. These stores add little value to the unique character of our town and in fact threaten to upend it by making it difficult for our existing small businesses to survive in what has been a very difficult time.

The latest example is a Sacramento based developer’s plan to build a new discount grocery store at 851 S. Franklin Street, at the busy entrance to Noyo Harbor. The proposed Grocery Outlet will hurt our existing businesses, like Harvest Market, and would add yet another national chain discount store to our community.

Furthermore, the site of the proposed grocery store, which includes the County Social Services Building that will be demolished instead of repurposed, is also a problem. The Grocery Outlet will generate hundreds of new car trips per day along S. Main Street and N. Harbor Drive, which is also the entryway to the busy Noyo restaurants and shops. It’s hard enough already to try to get down to Noyo Harbor or back on to South Main Street, and we can only imagine how much worse traffic will be if we add hundreds of cars going in and out of this grocery store at this busy intersection, each and every day. The proposed grocery store also raises concerns about impacts to emergency response times, water use and quality, air/light/noise pollution, and public safety.

Which is why we successfully fought hard to get the City and developer to conduct a full and comprehensive Environmental Impact Report (EIR) so that we would know the true negative impacts this project will have on traffic, the environment and our community. We learned in April 2022, that the City approved the selection of the "suspicious" De Novo Planning Group to manage the EIR for the controversial Grocery Outlet project in Fort Bragg. The De Novo Group had already started work with the developer on the EIR before being selected and plans to use old impact studies to make the EIR cheaper and quicker.

So what we seem to have is a sham of an EIR being conducted that the City Council knowingly signed off on, and we have to wonder why that is.

Despite the City Council's questionable behavior and apparent greed to get this project approved, again, there is still time to act and to urge the City to use their discretion to say NO to the proposed Grocery Outlet at this site! NO to another discount store in Fort Bragg! NO to more traffic on Main Street and Harbor Drive! NO to something that will hurt our downtown and existing local businesses!

Thank you for SIGNING this petition and for supporting our downtown and local businesses!