Search for market site is on

BURBANK — The City Council's rejection of a proposed Whole Foods Market in the Rancho District Tuesday has sent project developers back to the drawing board, eager to take the council up on its offer to have city staff members work with them to find an alternate site.

"We are going to work with the City Council and see if we can come up with a site," said Michael Hastings, who represents developer Tom Davies. "Hopefully, if it is a genuine offer and a site is found, then we can bring Whole Foods into the picture. I think way too many people want to see this happen."

During the public hearing on Tuesday, council members, project supporters and opponents largely agreed that a Whole Foods Market would be good for Burbank. Contentions emerged only in regard to the appropriateness of Main Street and Alameda Avenue as the project site.

Whole Foods officials chose the Rancho District location after a more than 10-year search in Burbank, so the council's decision on Tuesday was disappointing, said George Khoury, vice president of operations for Whole Foods Market.

"When you look at all the pieces to the puzzle, that site was a good place for us to be," he said. "But the city didn't see it that way and we respect that, and we'll go from there. We want to go where we are wanted. That's a really big thing for Whole Foods."

Whole Foods real-estate scouts are already actively looking for alternative sites and even customers call in periodically with site recommendations, Khoury added.

Having worked with Whole Foods for several years, city Planning Department staff has a good idea of the company's location requirements and are already searching out possibilities, city planner Joy Forbes said.

Whole Foods officials have tended to prefer sites that are close to freeway off-ramps and located on main arterials where there is traffic activity without traffic congestion, she said.

"We kind of know some of their criteria," she said. "So we're taking some of that already and are starting to look around town and see where it might be possible."

A Whole Foods facility usually needs about 70,000-square-feet of land if parking is subterranean and even more than that to accommodate surface parking, she said.

As for the property on Alameda and Main, the future is uncertain — whether it will remain in the hands of the current owner, or whether Davies will finalize the purchase to utilize the property for another project, Forbes said.