Petaluma's new central park

 

One of the most exciting steps forward this year is acquisition of the 20 acre south end of the McNear Peninsula. This is now, literally, Petaluma’s Central Park.

The new Floathouse will be up and running in the Turning Basin this summer

There are many new projects in the pipeline for the Turning Basin and also nearby. The big one to be aware of is that the new Floathouse will be up and running by next summer. Just walk over to the Floathouse, rent a kayak, stand up paddle board or other vessel and take off. It doesn't get easier than this. Watch the video. Our Floathouse needs your help to get complete before summer. Check it out!

Then go here:

https://www.thefloathousepetaluma.org/donate

Finally...our town has become fiscally sustainable !

My letter to the Editor on October 8, 2020 supporting the Measure U sales tax for use in Petaluma's General Fund:

Our town has fallen upon hard economic times decades in the making. But now is the time for us to stand up and fix the problem. Armchair quarterbacks can tell you who was to blame but what are you and I going to do about it today? Yes, our town has stumbled financially over the years. Mistakes were made.

 

All six City Council members and the Mayor recently voted “yes” to place a 1% sales tax benefitting our town on the November ballot. Each of them can tell you with detailed precision about the $15 million dollar shortage between our town’s annual General Fund and the basic City services that we all expect our City to perform.

 

Our town has been tightening its belt for over 20 years. Compared to other North Bay cities, our current sales tax level is one of the lowest. Unlike many other cities, our sales tax doesn’t have a dedicated Petaluma portion. It is time that we do. Most of our current sales tax goes to the state but none funds our city.

 

In these crazy times let’s now stand up and make our town work. It is time for a positive vision conversation.

 

No one likes a new tax. But all candidates up for City Council election support this. Those who have studied this topic know that we need long term fiscal sustainability.

 

Petaluma’s sales tax increase would be one penny on every dollar spent here in town. Some will tell you that spending another penny would make us weaker. I say that spending an extra penny will make us stronger as a town.

 

Regardless of who you vote into office, let’s stand up and make ourselves financially more healthy and sustainable as a town. Together. Vote “yes” for Petaluma’s Measure U.

Heading south out of Petaluma

 

Took a little bicycle ride south out of Petaluma yesterday. A year ago, we got some fun new bicycle paths. Slowly and steadily, Petaluma is becoming a bicycle friendly town.

As weird as the sky looked yesterday, at least the air was breathable. The next day, however, it was not and there was no bicycle riding to be done. Fire season is getting rougher every year.

Some live music in the Turning Basin

 Was surprised to paddle back into the Turning Basin to find a live music concert going on! This is on the new dock recently installed for the Floathouse which will be a new place to rent boats to get onto the water. It's been a long process but especially now that the river is getting dredged, we can see that the new Floathouse is going to be up and running in the near future.

Petaluma River dredging is happening!

Dredging of the Petaluma River has finally begun! It's been 17 years since the last dredging and our normal boat traffic in and out to downtown was severely restricted. The River is the heart and soul of Petaluma and so it will be good to return to a full access situation for all those that like to be on the water.

Couldn't help myself. Had to go check out the dredging equipment even as they had only just begun to set it up.

 

The 101 freeway is getting widened all the way through Petaluma. At Rainier Avenue, CalTrans is actually ramping the freeway up into the air so that Rainier Avenue can pass underneath from the east side to the west side and into this vacant field. For sure we will see new development projects using this new Rainier Avenue access underneath the freeway. But in order to create the so-called Rainier Cross Town Connector, we would need to spend another $80+ million to build a bridge 27 feet tall into the air heading west that would go up and over the SMART train tracks, the upper Petaluma River and also the new SMART pedestrian pathway.

 

The North River Apartments project has broken ground along Petaluma Blvd., Oak Street, and Water Street. This is very near to Brewsters.

This will be 184 new market rate apartments and will develop Water Street and also a new section of Oak Street. Right along the river and the pedestrian bridge leading towards Lynch Creek Trail.

Helen Putnam Park via B Street from downtown Petaluma

From downtown Petaluma, you can walk straight up B Street all the way to the dead end at Windsor Drive. Take a right and head up to the next left at Oxford Court. That is the east side entrance into Helen Putnam Park.

Crowded at noon on a Saturday. Social distancing did not look do-able. We bailed out to up and over the water tanks hill. Back around again to downtown.

Gorgeous walk. Spectacular day.

Time to stop and listen

Huge opportunity right now for most of us to take some time, get quiet, stop, listen and slow down.

Get out and go for a walk

The shelter in place quarantine order has been active for 13 hours. Thought I'd take a good walk across town to take a look at what is happening. Seems like most everything is open.

If you are planning on hunkering down at home for the next few weeks, make sure that you get out and get some exercise everyday.

Last week’s Argus Courier editorial was a huge promotion for “compromise” in the land use planning process. The editorial dismissed the “ideological purists” pushing to reduce the number of new car trips that keep getting added to our streets. But there are plenty of other cities that have already done much to reduce the growth of new car traffic.

The editorial might have us believe that it is the job of our City Council to rubber stamp whatever a developer happens to walk in the door with. If said project makes Petaluma’s traffic worse, the neighborhood less walkable and wastes the full opportunity presented by a new train station, then “That’s just business,” says the editorial.

But the lies of “compromise” are that we need to desperately choose between: getting a train station built, enticing developers to make money, creating a walkable neighborhood, or minimizing new car trips. We can have all four things. Scarcity mindset doesn’t result in a good deal. Don’t “compromise” our future vision for the next generation to just frantically get things done. Stop letting SMART and developers bully us.

Some say that we need more housing in Petaluma. But more accurately, just like the preceding 150 years, Petaluma is going to get more growth whether we think that we need it or not. Continuing to grow is already baked into our cake. There are only two ways to proceed from here: smart growth or dumb growth.

If we keep building new single-family houses with two car garages, walking distance to nowhere, then those new households will begin taking new car trips around town. Can we agree that building new housing that mindlessly increases new car use in Petaluma is dumb growth?

Can we agree that building new housing that encourages new people to not use a car for every trip is smart growth? Anyone disagree that car traffic is already getting excessive? How much more car traffic do we want? Instead of promoting high density housing for the Corona train station, our City Council desperately downzoned the property to single family use simply because the developer asked for it.

But mixed-use projects help reduce car trips and trip lengths because of the convenience of walking, bicycling, or using transit between project destinations (City’s VMT white paper). Design neighborhoods so that people can walk to buy a quart of milk or walk to the coffee shop; that’s a basic tenet of smart growth. How hard would it be to include a “mixed use” coffee shop and small corner grocery store at the new Corona Train Station? Instead, the developer was encouraged to ignore all public comment for 13 months. Previously, all public comment was deleted from the Corona Station Master Plan in 2012. Now we frantically need to make a deal to get the train station done?

We are so accustomed to driving our cars everywhere for everything. The idea that the east side train station should become a Petaluma destination and not just a parking lot point of departure is too much “ideologically pure” vision? Is it better to let the developer build whatever “makes the most economic sense” to himself than require smart growth for the future? An automobile dependent train station with auto dependent housing compromise? Are we desperate?

I disagree. Some cities bigger than ours are also much more walkable! More housing growth is coming. More cars are coming to Petaluma. How will we continue to grow ourselves in a manner that positively impacts: housing, transportation, city finances and environmental sustainability? What do we want Petaluma to look like and how will it function in the year 2040? What is the plan?

Often times developers are the land owners. But the vision, plan and rules for development is our job to articulate and enforce as a community. It’s fine for the developer to make some good money but what is the impact on all of us who already live here? What is the positive future vision that we are building towards? Hold steady, we can have it all.

We tend to let the developers guide our growth with incremental more of the same even as traffic grows extreme. The “compromise” the AC applauded let the developer dictate exactly what the future Corona Train Station should look like, for his own benefit. Any train station on the east side is better than none. But why not build a great one and get as many people to walk to it as possible? Why not?

How can the public give meaningful input to the developer for a large development project?

After being closely involved with the proposed Corona Station Development project for a full year, I was left feeling like my input made no difference at all to the developer. How can we do a better job of improving interactions between the public and the developer especially so as to avoid these repeated marathon City Council meetings that continue well past midnight?

A fit of desperation

Another marathon post-midnight City Council meeting Monday to determine the fate of new housing at the east side Corona Train Station. Couple of observations and things learned along the way. Earlier in the meeting, PEP Housing said that its latest “affordable housing” project on Petaluma Blvd will cost $540,000. per apartment to build.

My interests in the Corona Train Station project were originally for providing high density housing, a sense of place and a train station for the future. Affordable housing wasn’t really something I knew anything about. But I now realize that if you don’t build affordable housing within walking distance to public transit and shopping then it isn’t affordable housing because you need a car to get around. But low income folks are the ones who can least afford to also own and drive a car.

As part of the marathon Monday night meeting, the City Council not only approved the developer’s proposal for Corona Station, but also the developer’s scheme for a new 5 story building with roughly 400 market rate housing units on the empty SMART parcel next door to the downtown train station. Recall that the City Council had passed a resolution a couple of years back requiring that “inclusionary affordable housing” must be built by the developer on site in new housing projects. But Monday night, again, our City said “just kidding” and approved a plan for the developer to pay an in-lieu fee of $860,000 to the city and donate a 2.5 acre lot instead of building the approximately 50 required affordable housing units at the downtown train station. See above. It costs 50 x $540,000 = $27 million to build 50 affordable units.

Confused? I am. These are confusing times. My sympathy for our City Council members as, once again, a somewhat angry mob stood up to speak up at the podium in favor of higher density housing, more affordable housing, building a walkable neighborhood, and the possibility of inclusion of some lower income folks into our increasingly wealthy exclusive Petaluma population.

A slim majority of the City Council voted Monday night to approve a development project at the Corona Station that no one but the developer likes mostly because of the threat that, otherwise, a SMART station might not get built at all in east Petaluma anytime soon. At Corona this will be 110 single family houses with 17 of them designated affordable. Also the Council approved a 5 story building concept for the downtown train station that has had no public review process and will not have inclusionary affordable housing.

I am not one to point the finger of shame and blame. No doubt each City Council member made the best decision that they each thought they could make given the myriad of seemingly conflicting opportunities, problems and supposed solutions presented. I will say though that the process I have closely observed over the past 12 months did get narrowly approved Monday night in a fit of desperation more so than with any sense of building a positive inclusive vision for our future. The developer walked out with exactly what he wanted. Maybe this leads to the second train station getting built sometime soon.

whatever the developer walks in the door with

Monday night will be the final decision by the City Council for the Corona Train Station development. Snuck into this decision will also be a contractual nod of approval for the 5 story development contemplated for the empty lot at the downtown train station. If I understand correctly, some of the City Council members (possibly a majority) will waive the requirement for inclusionary affordable housing rules at both locations which will be very good for the developer but not good for anyone else. Probably, Corona Station will become a 110 unit single family housing subdivision. To accomplish this, the City Council will have to give the developer another “deal” and downzone the property from mixed use to single family. Again, this will be very good for the developer. Having been an observer of Petaluma land use development for 5 solid years now, it appears to me that most often whatever a developer walks in the door with is what gets built in Petaluma. But I’m open to hearing otherwise. When the general public is ready to take over the steering wheel in our town, we will realize that the days of building new single family houses and adding more cars to our streets are over. Time to build affordable housing near transit for people who will use transit.

Walking for a walkable community

At the January 27, 2020 City Council meeting, one of the Council Members stated that there was no need for either a coffee shop or a small corner grocery store at the proposed Corona Train station development because anyone could simply walk to either "Beyond the Glory" or to "Safeway." (That would be a 1.1 mile or 1.8 mile walk one way, respectively.)

This community walk, on the morning of February 1, 2020, was organized by Brian Barnacle. We walked the 1.1 mile from the Corona Train Station project to Beyond the Glory. Contrary to what a City Council Member stated, this is not a "walkable" trip. By definition, "walkable" is under 1/2 of a mile and has sidewalks the entire way.

 A livable community is one in which at least some trips can be made on foot. For the past 70 years we have been building out east Petaluma as a suburban sprawl bedroom community and, for many residents, every trip everywhere anytime is an automobile trip. This is a failed land use planning model. But even today we continue to build more automobile dependent single family housing.