Target center rings up $670KShopping plaza bolsters sales tax revenue for city

It’s been a year and a half since East Washington Place, also known as the Target shopping center, opened amid fanfare and controversy, with developer Regency Center and some city leaders promising it would be a convenience for Petaluma residents and a boon for city coffers.

And while its convenience may be a matter of personal preference, by now Petaluma does have numbers on how much sales tax money the shopping center has generated so far for the city: about $670,000 over the last fiscal year, according to city Finance Director Bill Mushallo.

As Mushallo explained, sales data comes with a six-month delay, because businesses report their results at the end of the fiscal quarter, and that information is delivered to the city by the end of the next fiscal quarter.

Because of this delay, “We’ve got data through June 30 right now,” Mushallo said, which represents the first year’s worth of sales tax income at East Washington Place.

In addition to Target, which opened its doors in summer 2013, the 33-acre, 378,000-square-foot shopping center features numerous businesses encircling a vast parking lot, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, TJ Maxx, Sleep Train, Panera, Chipotle and Chase Bank. The Target store alone claims to have brought 200 new jobs to the city.

Those businesses weren’t all there at once, which may be why the center is not yet hitting projections of $1 million a year in sales tax revenue.

“The project will generate an estimated net fiscal surplus of approximately $1 million annually to the City of Petaluma General Fund, owing largely to the sales taxes generated,” wrote consultant Bay Area Economics in a fiscal and economic impact report prepared for the city in 2009, when the project was still under consideration.

The firm also pointed to nearly a half-million dollars in estimated property tax revenues each year.

As for the other major new shopping center development - Deer Creek Village, which opened this spring on North McDowell Boulevard with anchor store Friedman’s Home Improvement - Mushallo said no sales date has been reported yet due to the six-month delay.

However, he said, “We’re actually projecting for this fiscal year, between the two centers, about $1.3 million in sales tax revenue.” The city won’t know final numbers until late October or early November of next year, he said.

Built by Merlone Geier Partners, the 36.5-acre, 315,000-square-foot project includes City Sports, Mary’s Pizza Shack and a few other tenants.

A parallel fiscal report on Deer Creek, written by the same firm and released at the same time, estimated the center would generate about $681,000 per year for the city in sales tax revenue.

(Contact Don Frances at don.frances@arguscourier.com)