Two Music Schools, One Business Center: Sweet Harmony or Sour Notes

A conditional use permit was granted to Rancho Canyon Music on Wednesday allowing the teaching center to return to its original location in the Santa Margarita Center, a site that it had occupied for some time prior to moving to another location.

That means the business center at the corner of Empresa and Santa Margarita Parkway will now be home to Craig Ferguson’s as well as Jeff Gill's OC Music, which took residence in the center while RCM was conducting business across from the town's Toyota dealership.

After a unanimous decision by the Rancho Santa Margarita Planning Commission, Rancho Canyon Music will return to its old location. OC Music Center has been at the site for about the past year. 

Although commissioners mentioned that many business centers try to avoid repetition of services, they said such discussion was better suited to the businesses and their landlord rather than determined from the dais.

One concern was the amount of parking that the “new” music store would bring to the small center if there were two cars (for a teacher and student) for each of the nine teaching rooms (instead of the seven that it had previously in that same location), as well as cars for nine waiting students, and two employees.

“I’d be stunned if 29 parking places were being taken by (Rancho Canyon Music),” said commissioner Brad McGirr, referring to a worst-case scenario. 

Gill, who opened his first music store in the Bay area in 1979, recognized that some locations actually benefit from like businesses in the same locale, restaurants congregated into a certain area being an example.

“I think they call it synergy,” Gill said after telling the commission his concerns of having a competing business in the same center and asking them to hold off on their vote. “The only tricky part is that people might think they’re going to one store and instead go to the other. It would create less confusion if they were in different centers, but I’m happy to compete with them.

“In certain key areas I think we offer better products and programs, normally related to our new Yamaha brand instruments.”

Even Ferguson said the two businesses are “fairly different.”

“They’re a Yamaha school of instruction and we do private instruction,” he said. “They do a lot of group instruction and we do virtually no group instruction.”

Although in the same center, OC Music faces Empresa and is located near ; Rancho Canyon Music also faces Empresa but it's in the center of the lot a good stone's throw from .

Rancho Canyon Music primarily rents out equipment to students, and OC Music offers more retail with new Yamaha brand instruments available on a rent-to-own basis.

 In other planning commission news:

• Approved a permit to allow the sale of beer and wine for on-site consumption at Thai Smile restaurant, is a couple storefronts from Rancho Canyon Music.
• Approved a permit to allow the sale of beer and wine for off-site consumption to , 22312 El Paseo, Suite B.