For several years, Moraga residents have complained about the dilapidated condition of the Moraga Shopping Center calling it a dump, a blight, tacky, unwelcoming, and an embarrassment to a community that considers itself affluent.  While past town councils have felt that their hands were tied, because the property owners chose to operate in a status quo manner, new Moraga Mayor Kerry Hillis is demanding significant changes and improvements.

    During the Town Council’s Jan. 14 meeting, a staff report was presented by Planning Director Sonia Urzua outlining a proposed Professional Services Agreement with Kosmont Companies for on-call real estate and economic development advisory services. The initial payment is a not-to-exceed amount of $60,000.  There is enough funding in the General Fund Budget Fiscal Year 2025-2026 to cover the cost of a one-year agreement.

    According to Urzua’s staff report, “On February 26, 2025, the Town Council approved a top priority to develop and implement a plan to encourage commercial landowners and business owners to develop their underutilized properties. Kosmont would begin with an in-person kickoff meeting with Town staff and a review of background materials (including prior studies and available market data), and coordinate with Town staff to engage private property owners and better understand near-term and long-term objectives and development constraints, including challenges associated with underutilized properties.”

    Kosmont has been a real estate advisory firm for 39 years “working with cities and public agencies on over 1,000 economic development strategies, real estate market analyses, and public and private projects.”

    Both Vice Mayor Brian Dolan and Town Manager Scott Mitnick have worked with Kosmont during their tenures at other cities and highly recommend their services for the Town’s purposes. All council members agreed that something must be done with the Moraga Shopping Center.

    Prior to Hillis giving his comments on the matter, he warned his fellow council members that his thoughts would not be brief, calling what he had to say as “tough love,” and describing Moraga as “a scenic and uniquely isolated cul de sac community with eye-popping property values and fantastic schools, yet with no downtown, few recreational amenities other than largely unimproved open spaces and decaying relics of another age’s idea for commercial districts. 

    “Through it all we have largely ignored one asset that Moraga has, that no one else in our county can claim, the only traditional 4-year university in all of Contra Costa County – Saint Mary’s College – a small school with one of the best college sports programs in the United States,” Hillis went on to say.    

    Circling back to the shopping center, Hillis stated, “Due to a point of the combination of the above factors coupled with landowners who seem to lack a profit motive entirely in an area we’ve always talked about – having a downtown at the Moraga Center – it’s completely covered in blight and decaying buildings, including a myriad of abandoned banks, rusting and broken signage, illegally constructed facilities, rotting farm equipment, an illegal RV encampment where multiple people live and multiple people have died, gas stations with wrecking yards of vehicles surrounding them along our scenic corridor, mostly vacant storefronts that aren’t even available to rent as the landowner is using them to store decades worth of accumulated who-knows-what, and acres and acres of land that has never been developed in human history – and I’m not over-stating that.”

    Hillis reminded everyone that for approximately the past three years, since Mitnick was hired as town manager, a major focus of his energies was directed toward building a rapport with the Moraga Shopping Center property owners. The town has even upzoned the area, virtually increasing the value by “tens of millions of dollars.  Potentially hundreds of millions of dollars” to no avail.
 
    “We are all tired of beating our heads against the wall,” Hillis continued, “and begging the owners to participate in capitalism and making multiple future generations of their family extravagantly wealthy. That is not our job.”

    Hillis pointed out that Rheem Valley Shopping Center’s property owners are more than happy to work with the Town.  A case in point, the recent upgrade to CVS’s exterior and the incoming Grocery Outlet. He also noted other ways that Rheem has out-shined Moraga’s downtown with the only post office, the Town Offices and Chambers and two gyms located on that side of the Town.

    “We need to make the entirety of Moraga, not just the part by the country club, look like a place that merits our $2 million property values,” said Hillis, “and to that, we must double-down on vigorous code enforcement to compel errant landowners and business owners to not treat our scenic corridors as their private junk heaps, or a place to illegally store an RV encampment, which as I’ve already pointed out, is a public health threat.  What was allowed in the past will not be tolerated anymore – period.  End of story!”

    Hillis proposed the idea of a vacant storefront tax as incentive to bring businesses into downtown. He also stressed that Moraga needs to aid SMC with whatever progress they require in building new college facilities. And, by improving the shopping center, the Town will help to increase student enrollment.

    Before a unanimous council vote to retain Kosmont’s services, Hillis concluded, “With the aid of Kosmont we will finally have the safe, beautiful, and engaging community we all want.”