Planners split over Target center’s plans

<p>Petaluma’s new Planning Commission approved an environmental study of a proposed shopping center on Tuesday but failed to find enough votes to recommend that the project be approved.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>After two 3-3 votes with one member abstaining, the commission could not recommend either approval or denial of the site plan for the 380,000-square-foot East Washington Place project.</p><p>Regency Centers, the developer of the project that is proposed to include a Target store and possibly a Friedman’s Home Improvement location, is seeking to divide the former Kenilworth Junior High School site into six smaller parcels.</p><p>But several commissioners called the proposal an outdated, strip-mall-style project that doesn’t meet the city’s intent for a mix of uses on the 33-acre site.</p><p>The total square footage of the project is “overwhelming,” Comm-issioner Marianne Hurley said.</p><p>“This is an old model,” Hurley said of the project plan. “This is what they were building years ago.”</p><p>Commissioner Curtis Johansen agreed, saying the fact that only 4 percent of the project would be dedicated to office space does not represent a “robust combination” of uses.</p><p>“This is a typical ’70s-model shopping center,” Johansen said. “It could be a mixed-use urban village.”</p><p>Vice Mayor Teresa Barrett, the City Council’s liaison on the commission, joined with Hurley and Johansen in voting against the site plan.</p><p>Barrett said she disagreed with a proposed finding that the density of the project is appropriate for the area.</p><p>“As part of the larger East D Street neighborhood, I don’t believe that’s true,” she said. The layout of the project “is not approvable for me.”</p><p>Commissioners Chris Arras, Dennis Elias and Jennifer Pierre voted to recommend the site plan to the council, but with Commissioner Melissa Abercrombie abstaining from the discussion, neither recommendation garnered the required four votes.</p><p>Commissioners who supported the site plan also said changes should be made to boost the mix of uses in the project.</p><p>“I want to see some two-story buildings and I want to see some residential and I want to see some urban complexion to this site,” Elias said. “The model that you’re using here is not meeting the test of what the General Plan is asking for.”</p><p>“On the whole, the project could be designed better, to make it more fitting for a mixed-use property,” Arras said. But he also cautioned that the city should be careful not to “price this project out of the community.”</p><p>“Anything that could make this project more friendly to pedestrians, bicycles and transit is important, as long as it’s economically feasible,” Arras said.</p><p>The project now moves to the City Council without a recommendation from the Planning Commission. The council is tentatively scheduled to discuss the project Jan. 4.</p><p>Debate over the project — first proposed five years ago — has become one of the most contentious battles in the city’s effort to develop new shopping areas and address the “leakage” of sales tax revenue to other communities.</p><p>Regency said it has been working with Target on the project and expects the retailer to be the anchor tenant, but that the company isn’t likely to sign a lease until the project is approved.</p><p>More recently, Friedman’s Home Improvement announc-ed it has a preliminary agreement to locate a store, garden center and lumber yard at the center.</p><p>Commissioners asked whether that would change Regency’s proposed site plan, but city staff said the project application must be reviewed as submitted because Regency and Friedman’s do not have a formal agreement.</p><p>If the eventual inclusion of a Friedman’s prompts changes in the site plan, additional review of the project would take place at the time, city planners said.</p><p>Commissioners split 4-2 on the issue of whether the environmental impact report for the project is adequate, with Hurley and Johansen voting no.</p><p>The EIR found that the project would contribute to, but not be the sole cause of, traffic congestion on some nearby streets. Petaluma’s General Plan allows for an “F” level of service at some intersections near the project site.</p><p>The amount of development allowed by the year 2025 under the city’s General Plan would lead to an “F” designation for the intersections of Lakeville and D streets, and Lakeville and Caulfield Lane, at certain times of the day.</p><p>As it did with the General Plan last year, the City Council will be asked to approve “overriding considerations” allowing for greater congestion at those intersections as part of reviewing the project.</p><p>The project would also generate new emissions that could affect long-term air quality, mostly through traffic, the EIR found. However, the level of traffic associated with the project does not exceed what was anticipated in the General Plan, the EIR said.</p><p>The EIR does recommend that Regency Centers take steps to reduce traffic emissions, such as creating bike lanes and pedestrian paths throughout the project, providing bike lockers for store employees and limiting the idling of delivery trucks.</p><p>(Contact Corey Young at corey.young@arguscourier.com)</p>