Overlay District
2023-07-14 05:42:13.639613+02 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Petaluma folks! If you think the highest and best use of the vacant lots downtown is weeds and empty parking, then by all means, lobby the City Council to vote no on any form of the proposed Building Form Overlay District
However, it seems to me like doing *something* with those lots would be good for the city. We have an opportunity, EKN is footing the bill, so let's work with the Planning Department to come up with an overlay plan that will make it economically feasible for some sort of development on those lots. It doesn't have to be EKN's hotel, and even if it is, there are a lot of vacant lots that could be productive and valuable for the city, and right now aren't. Talk to developers, find out what they'd need to get to build the sort of downtown you want to see, and bring that to the Planning Department as feedback.
And if you do lobby the Council to vote no, you'll probably be a lot more effective if you go into that with an understanding of the fiscal and legal realities of the city, and with a vision for how the city can get on to stronger fiscal footing with more housing and more money to pay for infrastructure maintenance.
So, a little background: Ross Jones had been trying for years to build something on the vacant lot left to him by his grandmother at B St and the Boulevard, next to the hardware store. It used to be a gas station, so the first step was site remediation. He's got specific skills in hotels, and so after looking at various options, he ended up pitching a hotel. Eventually, as often happens with local developers who have roots in a town, the opposition wore him out, and he sold to an out of town developer, EKN.
Much of downtown is zoned Mixed Use 2. There are MU2 zones all over the city. EKN decided that the current MU2 standards did not allow them to build a hotel that made economic sense. So if the city wants that site to be something other than a vacant lot there, they either have to hope that another developer picks up the project and figures out how to make money with something that does conform, or change the standards.
A change could involve reworking the standards for MU2 zones, but that would allow a whole bunch of things to happen on lots nowhere near downtown. It could be a zoning variance for that particular lot, but that opens up the city to lawsuits from other lot owners about special treatment. So the proposal is for an "overlay district" that covers a larger portion of downtown lots, that would allow different standards for a limited period.
The Know Before You Grow forum with the city planning department hosted by the Petaluma Women's Club yesterday explored that, and had a lot of angry people who, to my ear, weren't listening to what was being said and were more interested in having an anti-hotel pep rally than actually having a reasoned discussion that looked at options, and that could have used the fact that EKN was throwing some substantial money at the city to explore those options.
This recording undoubtedly sucks. I was distracted by some audio issues and coordination with the venue. I know that the Planning folks are going through it deeply today, but I also really wish we'd been able to get out of our reactions and have a real discussion about the future of downtown.
At any rate, yeah: We can be angry, and continue to have weeds and empty parking lots and empty 1970s bank buildings, or we can decide we want something out of downtown and pursue it. The choice is ours.