Proposed Petaluma Target shopping center draws fire

<p>A proposed Target store and shopping center in Petaluma won’t be the economic boon depicted in a recent fiscal analysis, the Living Wage Coalition of Sonoma County said Monday.</p><p>The analysis will be reviewed tonight by the city council</p><p>Target employees are likely to earn far less than predicted in the report and fewer than half of them will receive health benefits, said Marty Bennett, coalition co-chairman.</p><p>Also, Bennett said calculations done by the consulting firm Area Economics overstated the amount of sales taxes that would be generated and underestimated the impact of the 380,000-square-foot shopping center on existing stores.</p><p>Bennett, who lobbied successfully for the fiscal reporting requirement last year, will ask the city council to require the consultants to re-write the analysis.</p><p>“We’ve got some major issues with it,” Bennett said. “It’s critical that we get this right the first time because we have three more of these coming down pike.”</p><p>David Shiver, a principal for Emeryville-based Bay Area Economics, did not immediately return phone calls. His firm’s report, completed last month for developers Regency Centers Corp., was the first ever for the city.</p><p>It said the project on East Washington Street just west of Highway 101 could create 721 full- and part-time jobs, many offering competitive wages and benefits.</p><p>It also said the center could generate $1 million a year for the city in sales taxes and bring an additional $472,000 in property taxes to the redevelopment agency.</p><p>But Bennett said his organization’s researchers found wages would average around $9 an hour, not $14 as mentioned in the report, and only 41 percent of employees would receive benefits.</p><p>Among other things, Bennett said the consultants failed to look at changes in the economy over the past six months and underestimated retail competition between cities.</p>