Dear City Council,

As currently designed, the Corona train station will become yet another automobile dependent land use in East Petaluma.

*          If this were a transit oriented development site, we would build 3 or 4 stories of high density housing over the parking and utilize the entire 6.5 acres.

*          It appears as if SMART negotiated to save themselves $3 million by building an open air parking lot instead of a parking garage. This landmark intersection of Corona Road and North McDowell will be defined by an open air parking lot. Is this the best we can do?

*          The Corona Station housing development project is “packaged” as “multi-family” housing units. But actually there is an air gap between each housing unit. This project is really 116 single family houses.

*          This property is 6.5 acres. SMART wants to remove 1.27 acres and throw away the buildable housing density. Yet still, there is 5.23 acres for the developer to work with.

*          The North River Apartments will be 184 housing units plus 5,000 square feet of commercial on a total of 3.92 acres.

*          Marina Crossing Apartments are 92 housing units on 2.17 acres.

*          Haystack Pacifica at the downtown train station will be 178 housing units plus 24,855 square feet of ground floor commercial on a 4.1 acre parcel.

*          East Petaluma could sorely use a sense of place defined by a prominent building at this major Corona Road intersection.

*          Is this the best that we can do? One more suburban, automobile dependent single family housing subdivision conceived of and designed as if the new train station doesn’t even exist on site.

*          The General Plan and the Zoning Regulations are outdated for this train station but it could easily be fixed with amendments right now.

I strongly urge a much higher housing density at the Corona train station. We can do much better here. Let’s create a real train station here with a strong sense of place, identity and functional transit oriented development.

Please take a look at this 2 ¾ minute video showing the automobile intensity of walking along North McDowell up to the train station project site. Let's create a walkable sense of having arrived at this major intersection and train station.

Dear Planning Commissioners,

The proposed 5.23 acre portion of the Corona Station Residential Project ignores the fact that it is an integral portion of the adjacent SMART train station. This proposal is more suburban (infill) sprawl. It is more of the same.

What about this residential development is Transit Oriented Development? Nothing.

These houses are more suburban sprawl with two car parking garages each. These proposed houses will be sold to people who may or may not ever use the train.

Point #1: Why don’t we encourage several 4 to 5 story buildings with a much higher density than that proposed? For comparison, what about several buildings like the new Marina Crossing apartments with 92 units each?

Point #2: There is no “there” there. As a rule, east side Petaluma suffers from a lack of land use and architecture that grants a sense of place. Much of the east side is drive by suburban housing tracts.

This proposal does nothing to celebrate the new train station.

This proposal does nothing to anchor the major, important intersection of North McDowell and Corona Road. How will you even know that there is a new train station there? All you will see is a parking lot full of cars on the corner.

I believe that this site provides a huge opportunity to do the following two things:

Solution A: Let’s create much more density (many more housing units) to provide some real Transit Oriented Development at this site. Make these units smaller and somewhat more “affordable”.

Solution B: Make this project Stand Out as different from the monotony of residential suburban sprawl. Provide an anchor for the intersection of North McDowell and Corona Road. Let’s encourage the developer to create a sense of place at this intersection. Provide an anchor with taller, bigger, more dense buildings.

This location deserves much better than more of the same. Usually, the developer drives the overall vision and plan for the site. But the conditional use permit puts the Planning Commission in the driver’s seat.

Ten years from now, when the new SMART corridor is fully functional, what are we going to wish was at this residential site?

Yes, we need the park and ride parking lot. But we also need some for real Transit Oriented Development housing next to it.

New Transit Oriented Development project proposed for Corona Road and North McDowell

This notification sign has gone up at Corona Road and North McDowell Street. Across the railroad tracks from the new Brody Ranch Development and also the location for the East Petaluma SMART Station. Another 110 housing units in a mix of single family buildings and duplex townhomes all smushed close together. These units have two car garages each, 2 to 4 bedroom "entry level homes" previously thought to sell for around $600,000. As I wrote in March, "In the end, we are going to wind up with more housing sprawl that results in more car traffic on the roads or else we are going to create an East Petaluma Train station destination that is pedestrian friendly and (hopefully) provides less expensive housing. We are going to provide more housing in east Petaluma where people no longer need their cars and actually use the train or else we are going to have a suburban park and ride train station where people mostly drive to the Corona Road station. Which will it be? This is a huge opportunity for us in Petaluma to create a “sense of place” on the east side and to get people out of their cars and onto the train." This project proposal is, in my opinion, more of the same on the East Side. But it is consistent with the new Brody Ranch and it is also consistent with the Transit Oriented Development Master Plan approved by the City in 2013. Is that good enough for this site? This project is also complicated by the ongoing negotiations with the City to get the developer to build the parking lot for the Corona Road SMART Station on this same empty lot. Planning Commission hearing November 12th!

122 room Courtyard Marriott hotel being built right now in Petaluma

122 room Courtyard Marriott is being built right now on the 35 Riverfront development. It’s the first building to go up. It will be followed by 134 single-family houses, 39 townhomes, 100 apartments, 60,000 square feet of office space, and 30,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.

New pathway in Petaluma.

New pathway and public open space in Petaluma. Check it out!

Sunday in Petaluma. Going for a walk. Getting my sun in.

The future of city transportation is multi-modal

If your city has too many cars does it just dry up and blow away? No. People begin using alternatives to the single occupancy car. People walk, use bikes, ride a scooter, take public transit, or call Uber/Lyft. Want to see the not too distant future for getting around Petaluma? Take a quick look.

Day on the Petaluma River - 12th annual

A positive vision conversation

As a boy in the fifth grade we were in the cafeteria having lunch when our teacher Miss Ruhle sat down beside us. My friend Dan joked that lunchtime was his favorite part of the school day. The implication was that it wasn’t cool to like school. Even in fifth grade, we had begun to learn the manly art of becoming naysayers and cynics.

It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I began to do the work of waking up emotionally, letting go of hopelessness, opening up to possibility and beginning to trust life around me again. The teenage journey into manhood beat the childlike trust and belief in goodness out of me. In my early teen years, my strategy became one of just keeping my mouth shut. Very much like the Clint Eastwood cowboy movie character, stoicism and cynicism came hand in hand.

I enjoyed reading last week’s Argus Courier. Several steps forward towards a positive vision for the future were noted.

The Haystack transit oriented development project had just been approved, officials were looking at how to advance both the Caulfield and Rainier cross-town connectors, and money was committed towards planning for renovations to the decrepit downtown trestle. Will any or all of these projects actually get built anytime soon? Who knows? But the point is that, as a community, we continue to take the baby steps forward towards the solutions and away from the cynicism. Nicely done!

The Class of 2019 had just graduated. Skip Sommer recalled the time in 1850 when the population of Sonoma County quadrupled in only two years. Petaluma was the center of almost all trade then. Petaluma has not stopped growing since.

This week I am thrilled to read that we may be able to go hike in Lafferty Ranch in the foreseeable future. That’s a big win for a guy like me. There is a group of citizens working on local control of the river dredging issue. That’s an important topic for all of us. Glad to see small steps forward on these two topics as well.

I don’t know if there are many naysayers and cynics in our town or not. But I do notice their voices on the internet pages of Nextdoor and Facebook. Maybe it’s the remnants of the boyhood wound inside of me that has me be so quick to react to the voices of doom and gloom. But I have a personal commitment to contribute towards a positive vision community conversation.

And so that’s how I read this and last week’s newspaper, as a missive of positive steps forward by the community. I don’t know if any of the positive steps in the news will result in construction of the solutions anytime soon. But I do know that taking baby steps in the right direction beats cynicism and hopelessness every time.