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.