A downtown that still feels like Fairfax
The rule keeping chain retail off Broadway and Bolinas Road expires, and the bigger problem downtown is the empty storefronts.
March 3, 2027
The day the formula business moratorium expires. As of today there's no ordinance drafted to replace it.
Every month left before the rule lapses.
Six empty storefronts, one afternoon
I walked Bolinas Road, Broadway and Sir Francis Drake with a phone and photographed what I found. This took under an hour and I wasn't looking hard.
The old Pancho Villa building on Sir Francis Drake, across from Good Earth. A prime corner, empty for something like a decade. 
The Hummingbird closed recently on Broadway. 
Bolinas Road at Sherman. The dry cleaner burned. What is left is fence, gravel and parked vans. 
Sir Francis Drake, as you come into town. Two units side by side, both empty. 
Bolinas Road. Painted, tidy, and available. 
Bolinas Road again. Somebody has started moving in, which is rarer than it should be.
That's the problem downtown. Not that too many businesses want in.
Where things actually stand
The council gave direction on a formula business ordinance, 4 to 0. That's the rule that keeps chain retail off Broadway and Bolinas Road. The moratorium holding the line expires March 3, 2027, and there's no drafted ordinance behind it yet.
It should get written, and I'll push for it. I also want to be straight about how big a threat this actually is, because I think it's smaller than it gets made out to be.
Why the chain store panic is overstated
Start with the physical problem. There's almost nowhere in Fairfax for a business like that to go. We don't have the lots, the parking, or the frontage, and the buildings we do have are old.
Then the money. A chain that wanted in would be buying a building that has to be brought up to modern code before it opens. At what construction costs here now, that's a million dollars and change before the doors open, and well over a year of permitting and building. After all that they would find out whether Fairfax would actually shop there, which isn't a safe bet.
You can see the arithmetic in what has already happened here. The full rebuild at 1601 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, which was a pizzeria and a dry cleaner, took serious money and a long time. So did the work that produced Village Sake downtown. The Bank of America building by the Grotto has been proposed for a redo and it hasn't happened.
M&G's has been here longer than most of us
Which is rather the point. What does well in Fairfax is usually what is already here. Three storefronts within a hundred yards of this one are empty.
The real problem downtown isn't that too many businesses want in. It's that too few do.
Fairfax has more empty commercial space than it has people trying to fill it, and that has been true for a while. Every one of those buildings needs the same expensive upgrade before anyone can open in it, which is most of why the queue of new projects is as short as it is.
None of us want a row of corporate chains on Bolinas Road. But an empty storefront doesn't employ anybody's kid either. And the money someone spends bringing an old building up to code stays in that building for whoever comes next, which around here's usually a neighbor's son or daughter, or someone's second act.
So: write the ordinance, protect the character, and stop treating a vacancy problem as though it were an invasion.
Two smaller things, closer to hand
The business license audit has landed hard on Bolinas Road merchants. Collecting what's genuinely owed is legitimate.
Charging retroactive penalties to a small merchant who didn't know they were out of compliance is a separate decision, though. A correction window with the penalties waived gets you the same compliance without closing anybody.
And Peri Park closed in late July after a flea infestation, which the Town treated with heat rather than pesticide and expected to have finished by August 7. That part was handled well. The Town's park pages, meanwhile, haven't been updated since 2024, so a parent checking whether the playground is open has no way to find out. Small things are exactly how people work out how much attention they're getting. The full story is here on why the playground closed.
What I would do
- Get the draft formula business ordinance onto a council agenda before June 2027, with a published drafting schedule attached to it. A schedule, not a promise.
- Write it on land use grounds, which is what holds up in court: store size, frontage width, design, retail mix. Not the identity of the operator. Several California cities already have versions that have survived challenge, so nobody has to invent one here.
- Take the vacancy problem as seriously as the chain store problem. That means looking at what it actually costs to open a business in Fairfax today, and asking staff what the Town could reasonably do about the permitting half of it.
- A penalty amnesty window on the business license audit for merchants who come into compliance voluntarily.
- Park pages that get updated when something changes. The Peri Park closure was handled well and communicated badly, and only one of those two is expensive to fix.
- The formula business moratorium expires with no replacement drafted
What I don't know yet
Whether town counsel has already been instructed to start drafting and it simply hasn't surfaced on an agenda. If it has, that's good news.
I also don't know the current commercial vacancy rate downtown, or how many merchants the license audit has actually penalized and for how much. I've asked about both.
Am I missing anything?
If you know something about downtown that I do not, or you would go a different way on it, I would like to hear it.
Your name and neighborhood help if you are happy to give them. Nothing you send will ever be shared without your permission, and I would never sell your information.
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