Wildwood Market Coming to Saratoga Village

What defines a grocery store?

The City of Saratoga needs to answer that question to grant a new business, Wildwood Market, a conditional-use permit.

The city’s zoning code currently does not define what a market is, so eight local cities were surveyed to discover how those towns qualified a market. The options varied, with some cities not requiring conditional-use permits at all for grocery stores, or markets, in their zoning codes.

“It’s not an easy thing to define,” said Saratoga Mayor Chuck Page. “It’s worth going through this effort so that businesses that are essentially the same business aren’t treated differently.”

Wildwood Market will be Saratoga Village’s first grocery store. “We’ve had similar things to grocery stores, but without meat or produce, so it’s been a retail store,” said Page, pointing to the example of Le Chateau.

Wildwood Market will open at the site of the old Saratoga Drug Store on Big Basin Way, likely before the end of this year, said Page.

At its Oct. 17 Council meeting, officials came up with three possible definitions, and passed them on to the Planning Department—which will meet to discuss the issue before the end of the year—for consideration.

The first option would define a market as a retail space that sells any fresh perishable item, such as meats, vegetables, fruits, eggs, baked goods and dairy products.

The second definition would be a retail store that devotes 10 percent or more of its floor area to selling perishable foods.

The third option would encompass a retail space with perishable items, but with less than 4,000 square feet of use.

One of the purposes of requiring a conditional-use permit is to help protect surrounding properties from impacts such as odors that can result from certain business activities such as the improper disposal of unpacked perishable food items, according to a staff report.