Petaluma Residents Challenge Regency's Bigbox Project

On Thursday March 11, a suit was filed in Sonoma County Superior Court challenging the City of Petaluma’s approval of the Environmental Impact Report and project entitlements of Regency Centers’ East Washington Place development. The anchor tenant would be Petaluma’s first big box chain store, a 130,000 square foot Target.

The suit was filed on behalf of the Petaluma Community Coalition (PCC) by the public interest law firm of M.R. Wolfe & Associates of San Francisco. The PCC is comprised of a number of Petaluma residents and community groups, including the Petaluma Neighborhood Association, the Petaluma River Council, Petaluma Tomorrow and the OWL Foundation.

“We filed this suit because the City’s approval of the EIR and project plan did not follow the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and because the proposed project will have devastating impacts on our streets, swim center, skateboard park, and nearby neighborhoods,” said Paul Francis, co-founder of the Petaluma Neighborhood Association. “You think getting across town is bad now, wait until this thing is built. People will be furious when they discover the reality- utter gridlock.”

“The design and implementation of this project makes a mockery of our recently updated General Plan,” said former City Councilman Matt Maguire. “We’ve been trying literally for years to get Regency to work with us to make this a viable project with a lot less impacts. They’ve done nothing but stonewall us. We have no other option than to bring suit to prevent this fiasco from happening to Petaluma.”

“Those of us who live nearest the project have a lot at stake, but our larger concern has always been what this will do to Petaluma,” Francis said. “The General Plan calls for a mixed use project with improved pedestrian, bike and transit access. The project as approved doesn’t have that. What we’re getting now is a typical 1970s style big box strip mall that is completely auto dependent. There is no housing. This is not a mixed-use project. It’s the opposite of what’s called for at this site.”

The suit’s intent is to get the City to recirculate the EIR to fully account for the negative impacts that were left out and to include a number of proposed mitigations that would lessen the project’s impacts. PCC also wants the Friedman’s Home Improvement store, touted by Regency as a likely major tenant, included in the revised EIR. Better mitigations of the traffic impacting a number of major intersections and East D St. should be part of the conditions of approval, along with ways to reduce the project’s significant greenhouse gases and air pollution.
“A lot can be done to improve it,” said Paul Francis. “Members of the public have suggested structured parking, reduction of the 16-acre parking lot, and more public spaces would be more consistent with the GP. Two and three story buildings with residential units on the upper floors and better links to surrounding areas would make this a pedestrian oriented project.”

Maguire and Francis note that Regency has been uncooperative with the City as well as neighborhood and citizen groups that want the project to reflect the site’s General Plan vision. The forgery of letters of support that were published in the Argus Courier, the baseless but expensive lawsuit filed by Regency against the City in the middle of the normal public review process, the lack of complete documentation provided in a timely manner, and the resistance to consider changes that would make the project align better with the GP have all made gaining even meager consensus nearly impossible, they said.

“If nothing else, we want to see the multilane roads pulled away from all four sides of the swim center and skateboard park,” Maguire stated. “It’s a shame that Regency has been so arrogant, that they’ve resorted to intimidation tactics, because this could be a pretty good project if they would get a clue for what Petaluma is really about.”

The review process has been skewed by gross misinformation in the press, developer PR ploys and hostility from Target supporters who have unfairly attacked the current council majority for, in their opinion, not approving the project quickly enough. PCC’s members note that more important than haste is to ensure good planning and a full public review, where all the problems are revealed and honestly addressed. This hasn’t been done, in part because of the pressure on the council to satisfy critics, Regency’s threatening lawsuit and the poor financial condition of the city.

The project will have at best a negligible benefit on the City’s finances, but will have serious impacts on its infrastructure and natural environment. Regency’s and Target’s cookie-cutter approach is designed to push their investment risks and costs onto the surrounding community, which will bear the traffic, air pollution and other burdens for years to come. However, both corporations have built far more attractive, community-friendly and less environmentally damaging projects in many other cities. “That’s what we want to see here,” Francis said. “All it takes is four votes and the will to do what’s right for our city.”

Development in Petaluma over the past two decades has been mixed. The Factory Outlet Mall, built in a floodplain, has flooded and the ungainly Auto Mall sign is not what was approved. The Kohl’s shopping center with its empty stores and useless architectural embellishments is typical of obsolete and unsuccessful shopping center design. On the other hand, the Theater District, an outgrowth of the Central Petaluma Specific Plan, has received wide acclaim. That project went through more community input than any of the others.

Approving a weak EIR without meaningful or effective mitigations sets a very low benchmark for future large projects that are queuing up. “We need and would love to see Friedman’s back in Petaluma, and we want to help the Council to do this project right the first time,” Maguire said. “Their premature approval and incomplete mitigations fail to serve the best interests of all of us, so we’re proceeding with this suit. We’re hoping a much better result will come out of it.”

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Rebuttal to Merlone Geier Partners' Budget Report

The letter below was sent to the City after the Petaluma Neighborhood Association’s members evaluated the accuracy of Merlone Geir Partners consultant’s Budget Impact Study.
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Dear Planning Commissioners, Council Members & City Manager,

On February 10th, 2010 you received a letter from Greg Geertsen of Merlone Geier Partners attached to an “economic study” that was presented to the Petaluma Area Chamber of Commerce. This purported study is entitled, Budgetary Impacts of New Retail Projects (Deer Creek Village and East Washington Place Shopping Centers).

Geertsen’s letter, along with the aforementioned document drafted by Navigant Consulting, conveyed erroneous information in an attempt to draw support for two poorly designed large retail projects in Petaluma.

The Petaluma Neighborhood Association and its research team have read and conducted a full analysis of the Navigant study and have determined the document to be inconclusive and specious in its findings. In more instances then we can count, the report incongruously draws parallels between random bits of information. This is a deceitful attempt to justify and push through approvals of two proposals that do not comply with Petaluma’s General Plan. The fact that this report was commissioned and presented by the proponent of one of the two projects, and is offered as an “objective” report of some benefit to the city, is preposterous on the face of it.

Would the city be better off with Deer Creek Plaza and East Washington Place?

There is no evidence provided by the Navigant report that the City of Petaluma would be better off financially or commercially with either of these two projects in place.

By using the period 2003-07, which predates the global recession, as a benchmark for its findings, there is absolutely no relevance to the claims made by Mr. Geertsen that either of these two retail projects, if approved at an earlier time, would curtail the city’s financial crisis or aid in the city’s ability to rebound from the economic downturn. His theories are purely speculative.

Conversely, we may even draw a contrary determination when the circumstances and the financial burdens of both projects are analyzed more thoughtfully. Petaluma’s financial crisis would not be lessened by the approval of either of these two projects, and in fact could easily be further impacted when the added burdens on our infrastructure are counted over time, as it is local taxpayers who ultimately pay for them.

The city’s financial problems were brought on by a number of serious economic issues that the Navigant report never bothered to address. Like most every other city in California today, the downturn of the economy culminated in a situation which caused our city’s expenditures to outpace its revenues. These macro-economic factors so far outweigh the purported benefits claimed by this report that they pale into insignificance when compared to these larger factors.

What is the True Intent of Navigant’s Report?

In the executive summary of the report and in several other locations, it states that the nature of their analysis is “independent and objective”. A further investigation into the business practices of the Navigant Consulting firm instead reveals a clear bias motivating their methodology.

According to their website, Navigant specializes in “Construction Consulting Services.” They are so-called experts in the field of “Schedule and Delay/Acceleration Analysis.” They have little experience in the field of retail economics or municipal fiscal policies. The report they prepared clearly reflects their lack of knowledge of the subject and demonstrates how nonobjective they truly are with regards to both of these two retail projects being proposed in our city. This is a classic example of the piper calling the tune, where Merlone Geier Partners went out and hired a consultant to report back with the results they wanted, and should only be given the consideration that such a commercial effort deserves.

How are other cities faring with Target and Lowe’s?

The Navigant study attempts to justify the building of both Petaluma big-box projects by drawing comparisons which are focused on Lowe’s and Target stores that were opened in 17 Northern California cities from 2003 to 2007. Again, for their comparative analysis, the preparers of this report utilized data through the end of 2007 only. As a result of gathering only pre-recession data, excluding pertinent information in the following years, and ignoring the larger economic context, the report falls short of providing a true economic analysis of any budgetary burdens big-box projects such as these have had on the cities included in their report. Given this extremely skewed starting point, their conclusions of benefits are equally suspect.

However, our research team wanted to test their premise that these kinds of projects are beneficial to the cities where they are built. We analyzed the cities Navigant listed and put together a chart on the following page that lists all 17 cities and the current state of their municipal budgets, as well as actions that they have been force to take to adjust to recent conditions. The information provided clearly shows that the majority of these Northern California cities are in just as much a financial crisis as Petaluma, in some cities the situation is even more severe. Cities such as Fremont, Stockton, Hayward, and Manteca have allowed over expansion that has led to excessive burdens on city services and infrastructure. These communities paid little regard to sustainable planning practices and continued to approve large big-box projects such as Target and Lowe’s, which led in part to a substantial drain of their city resources. The impacts of such practices have crippled their ability to stabilize their budgets.

Subject Cities’ Deficits & Fiscal Impacts
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Antioch: -$3 Million City Hall, laid off 24 employees in
2009, implemented furloughs and
trimmed expenses by $11 million

Cotati: -$700,000, Cotati voters to approve a 5-year
general transactions and use tax of
one half cent.

Dublin: -$1.5 Million, unavail.

Fremont: -$5.7 Million, City workers furloughs and layoffs

Gilroy: -$2.7 Million, Police Union led effort to recall
Mayor- Eliminated 71 F/T positionsclosed
city museum

Jackson: -$900,000, City employees asked to take concessions.

Lincoln: -$2 Million, Laid off 25 city workers, including 5
police officers. Created citizens advisory
task force to analyze longterm solution

Stockton: -$31 Million, Layoffs, service reductions citywide.

Lodi: -$1.46 Million, unavail.

Yuba City: -$2 Million, Will lay off 16 employees and eliminate
40 positions total.

Albany: -$216,514, Unavail.

Hayward: -$14 Million, Seeking cost cutting measures,
deficit estimated to reach $19 Million
by the end of the year.

Napa: -$3,269, unavail.

Morgan Hill: -$1.7 Million, Eliminated 16 positions

Manteca: -$4.3 Million, Hiring Freeze, furloughs, and outsourcing.

Contradictory Findings

In the “major findings” section of Mr. Geertsen’s cover letter, he sites a rapid drop of Petaluma’s General Fund revenues “of 34.6% since 2007” but then goes on to cite taxable retail sales levels from between 2003-2007. Mr. Geertsen then proceeds to juxtapose the pre-recessionary taxable retail sales data to Petaluma’s current post-recession budgetary data. By drawing upon data from two incongruent time periods, one from before the recession, the other from just after the economic downturn, he has created a blatant contradiction that is difficult to take seriously. Rational conclusions cannot be drawn from such methods.

Furthermore, the estimate of $1.7 million in annual revenue for both projects is a highly optimistic overestimate of revenue generation, which is based upon inconclusive data from the flawed Fiscal and Economic Impact Assessment reports done for the city. Both FEIAs used primarily pre-recession data to establish a base line for their findings, made general unsubstantiated assumptions about employment income levels, types of jobs created, and impacts on existing businesses and therefore the sales taxes lost, just to name a few shortcomings. The current decline in Consumer Price Indexes along with cumulative retail redundancies were not factored into to the retail sales tax (RST) estimates for either project. They were found completely inadequate by the City Council in providing usable information.

The FEIA prepared for Regency Center’s East Washington Place neglected to factor in the shortfall of revenues through secondary market consumers. Retailers rely heavily on the revenues generated by secondary markets of any given trade area, that is, those who travel from outside a town or city to take advantage of available shopping destinations. A Target store located in Petaluma with existing Target stores in Novato, Rohnert Park, and Napa, would therefore not reap the benefit of drawing from a secondary market, because one does not exist.

Most of the estimated revenue data provided in the FEIA for the East Washington Place proposal was taken from Target stores in cities that had the benefit of a secondary market draw where portion of consumer-spending comes from outside. With Lowe’s stores in Cotati and San Rafael, there will be a limited secondary market here as well.

As Petaluma will not have a true secondary market for either project, the retail sales tax revenue figures that the study cites is grossly exaggerated and needs further examination before his conclusions can be accepted as real.

Is Petaluma Over-Retailed?

Presently, Petaluma has nine major shopping centers that are built to similar specifications to both proposed projects, Deer Creek Plaza and East Washington Place. These existing shopping centers are typical auto-centric projects with limited pedestrian/bike amenities and virtually no connectivity to the neighborhoods or the community surrounding them. Petaluma’s various shopping centers range from older 70’s- 80’s bunker styled buildings to the recently built Redwood Gateway Center (Kohl’s plaza). All are of the same conceptual design with very low-density layouts, large expanses of parking, and pedestrian-unfriendly spaces that hinder pedestrian activity and connectivity. Over the years, these poorly planned projects have resulted in street infrastructure that has been unable to keep pace with the traffic conditions they have generated. With retail vacancies in almost all of these nine existing centers, there is a clear indication that Petaluma’s existing retail outlets, for a multitude of reasons, are not living up to their revenue potential.

Conclusion

Clearly this report is a self-serving attempt to sway those who either don’t care to exercise critical thinking, be bothered by facts, or have a political ax to grind. Anecdotally, one doesn’t have to look too far to see what these kinds of development projects do to a city. Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa both have long treated them favorably, and today are in worse economic shape than Petaluma. Furthermore, this kind of pay-for-results consulting should be treated warily, with such biased results destroying any credibility such consultants may have at one time had. Crass self-serving commercialism such as this report embodies taints the public discourse, and reflects most clearly on its authors and patrons.

We trust that you will recognize the inconclusiveness of their report and advocate for sustainable planning practices, well designed, pedestrian oriented mixed-use projects that comply with Petaluma’s General Plan.

East Washington Place EIR Analysis/General Plan Non-Compliance issues:

The following excerpts from our General Plan clearly stipulate what the objectives will be, not only for retail development at the Kenilworth site but, also the surrounding areas and the East Washington corridor. It provides a vision for how retail development should be integrated along the Washington Street corridor, referring to East Washington Street as “a entry gateway into Petaluma, and to create distinctive features at this point.”

The EWP/EIR fails to address the following land use objectives of our General Plan:

Chapter 1 of the General Plan reads as follows:

GOAL 1-G-1: Land Use (page 1-14)

Maintain a balanced land use program that meets
the long-term residential, employment, retail,
institutional, education, recreation, and open space
needs of the community.

Comment: Because there is no specific list of retail tenants aside from the possible anchor tenant, the project’s EIR does not comply with this GP objective to “meet the long term retail needs of our community”. The EIR is fictitious and inconclusive in this area.

A. Develop incentives in the Development Code
to encourage lot consolidation to enable
efficient multi-story buildings, and relocation of
driveways to side streets.

Comment: The project proposal makes no effort to achieve this objective. By proposing mostly inefficient large single story structures on a subdivided lot, it misses the point entirely.

1-P-6 Encourage mixed-use development, which
include opportunities for increased transit
access.

Comment: The project site is situated just five blocks from our new transit plaza and the Petaluma SMART rail station. Yet, there is no effort to implement Transit Oriented Design (TOD) elements into the site plan. Also see my TAC comments.

1-P-7 Encourage flexibility in building form and in the
nature of activities to allow for innovation and
the ability to change over time.

Comment: The proposed “building form” solely meets the minimum standards of the developer and is essentially a mono- use/mono-form design. The project EIR does not address the “flexibility of building form” therefore does not adequately provide alternatives for future innovation of the buildings.

1-P-27 Encourage innovative site and building design
to address parking solutions such as shared,
structured, and/or underground facilities.

Comment: The project proposal and the EIR both fail to address this objective in our GP. The project layout consists of a large 16.5acre patch of asphalt as the only option for providing parking at the site. The EIR does not adequately address this as a negative impact, provides no alternatives to meet the GP objective.

The EWP/EIR fails to address the following Community Design, Character, and sustainable building objectives of our General Plan:

Chapter 2 of the General Plan reads as follows:

Strong entries are another important element of community design, as
their character creates the image Petaluma presents upon
arrival.

Comment: The term “strong entries” is certainly open to interpretation. But, I think we can all agree that the backside of a large bunker style structure would do nothing to achieve this particular GP objective and would not enhance the character of Petaluma.

2-P-5 Strengthen the visual and aesthetic character of
major arterial corridors.

2-P-22 Encourage development with active ground level
uses, plazas and open spaces, while allowing
residential and commercial uses at upper floors.

2-P-23 Facilitate development patterns that provide
an urban edge along East Washington Street,
providing visual continuity and cohesiveness,
and increased safety.

2-P-23(D) Ensure that development at the old
Kenilworth Jr. High school site and any future
redevelopment of the Fairgrounds property
maintains a public, pedestrian, and active face
along East Washington Street, and provides
civic and ceremonial spaces with links to the
Library and other uses.

Comment: Sections 2-P-5, 2-P-22, 2-P-23, 2-P-23(D) of our GP provides us with a framework of how development should proceed at the Kenilworth site and the surrounding area. The EWP/EIR also quotes these policies from our GP. Why then, does the project proposal seemingly ignore these policies? Why does the project’s EIR reference these policies and yet it makes no attempt to address these critical viewpoints, nor the negative impacts relevant to a project design that is non-compliant?<

What Do You Want Your City To Be?

OPEN PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD EXTENDED THROUGH SEPTEMBER 14th- The Draft Environmental Impact Report is now available for Regency Center’s massive retail development proposal at the old Kenilworth site. This 380,000 sq. ft. retail shopping strip mall has a all the makings of a crudely designed bunker style shopping strip plaza, right in the heart of our community use areas and adjacent to our serene neighborhoods. Please take time to review this DEIR at http://www.cityofpetaluma.net/cdd/plan-eir.html and voice your opinion. Now is the time to address the adverse impacts a proposal such as this will have on our community and ask for a better designed project that will enhance the East Washington street corridor and not detract from it.

Impacts to consider:
– Increased Traffic Volume
– Who are the tenants?
– Poor “auto-centric” Design
– Road way encompassing our pool center
– Pedestrian and Bike access
– Impacts on Surrounding Neighborhoods
– Who pays for additional infrastructure needed to support such a project?
– What will be the impacts on (pool center and skate park, library, Fairgrounds, Kenilworth Park) our community use areas?

Allowing development based on such a mindless design would be to allow a disastrous continuum that has fueled so many of the problems in this community. Please read the DEIR and submit your comments to build a better Petaluma.