Petaluma’s Water Street gets renewed attention

Amid a generational refocusing on the Petaluma River as a guiding force for city development, the cobbled and sometimes rough-and-tumble stretch known as Water Street has recently emerged as an outsize nexus of notable projects.|

(Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series on development along the Petaluma River.)

Before the open-air restaurant Brewsters Beer Garden began to take shape in a brick-lined alcove in downtown Petaluma, developer Mike Goebel faced a major decision - the address.

Nestled between two roadways, would Brewsters join its neighbors in laying claim to the widely known Petaluma Boulevard North? Or would the address read “Water Street,” the historically utilitarian, riverfront causeway on its opposite edge?

The question didn’t take much debate, said Goebel, a restaurateur with several successful venues already under his belt.

“That was kind of the appeal. We love the riverfront, and we think it’s such an important part of Petaluma’s history,” said Goebel, whose restaurant at 229 Water Street could open as soon as September. “The main entryway is actually on Water Street. So it kind of really adds to, and accentuates, the river.”

Amid a generational refocusing on the Petaluma River as a guiding force for city development, the cobbled and sometimes rough-and-tumble stretch known as Water Street has recently emerged as an outsize nexus of notable projects in Petaluma for both private business and public amenities.

Several in Petaluma pointed to Brewsters as a potential catalyst for moving Water Street, and particularly its grittier northern span, closer to the river-facing corridor envisioned when the city embarked on a major project to revamp parts of the roadway more than a decade ago.

Yet it is not the only notable project that stands to transform the riverfront causeway, joining a pedestrian bridge that made Water Street a new welcome mat for non-vehicular travelers and a big-ticket public art project making its way through the city’s review process.

“It certainly is a special street that not every town has,” said Tiffany Robbe, a senior planner with the city of Petaluma who worked closely on the Brewsters project.“This will be the first major, large-scale, standalone building that would use Water.”

Tucked between Petaluma Boulevard and the Petaluma River, Water Street exists for around five blocks along the waterfront in downtown Petaluma. The roadway historically served as a corridor for freight rail and a passenger trolley service, with trains rumbling along its historic wooden trestle, now gated off and in need of repair, as recently as 1992.

Times have changed since that trestle opened in 1922. In 2003, Petaluma wrapped up a $7.8 million project through its former redevelopment agency that sought to remake the portion of Water Street south of East Washington Street as a cosmopolitan frontage.

It was one of several ambitious redevelopment projects around that time to beautify downtown Petaluma, cutting parking in favor of pedestrian-friendly features, adding new lighting, burying utility lines and generally giving nearby businesses the ability to view the street less as a back-alley loading zone and more as an attractive second front.

Yet despite that work, not all of those businesses have come to embrace Water Street in the ensuing years, Robbe noted.

“The goal was that the existing buildings would become more two-sided, with tenants on the Boulevard and Water,” she said. “We see it, but we’re not there yet.”

One business that has dipped its toes in the water has been Lala’s Creamery, which owner Scott Andrew said opened a popular Water Street-facing outdoor seating area about seven years ago.

“It’s very popular on nice, sunny days, as we have shade canopies that keep everyone out of the direct sunlight,” said Andrew, in an email. “It’s also very popular for folks walking around town with their dogs, as it offers them a place to have ice cream with their furry friend.”

Others with Water Street-facing amenities include Cucina Paradiso and Water Street Bistro, along with Apple Box, whose outdoor seating area is on a pedestrian walkway along the trestle.

Robbe said some of the pedestrian-friendly elements seen along Water Street’s southern span will be coming to the north as part of the Brewsters project, and that plans are to ultimately develop sidewalks along both sides of the street.

“With the Brewsters project, we’ll have some of that street better developed,” she said, describing a planned sidewalk to be built at the restaurant as part of that project. “That might inspire the next buildings to the south to turn and open their businesses to the river.”

Long-term plans call for Water Street to extend farther north, where A.G. Spanos Companies is looking to build around 200 new units of housing as part of its North River Apartments development. Robbe said the particulars of that connection are still being hashed out, but the influx of new residents could mean more pedestrians to seek dining and recreation along the waterfront.

More cyclists and walkers are already cruising along the area after the installation of the Copeland Crossing in 2013, a $1.8 million, grant-funded pathway linking the northern end of Water Street with Lakeville Street on the river’s eastern bank. Coupled with the closure of a gap on the Lynch Creek trail in 2015 as the last part of an extensive floodwall project, the route connects the east side’s Prince Park with the west’s downtown core.

As a long-time advocate of a comprehensive vision for Petaluma’s riverfront known as Petaluma Water Ways, Susan Starbird described the crossing and subsequent gap closure as the single greatest step forward for the plan over the past five years. The crossing is now part of the San Francisco Bay Area Ridge Trail, a 550-mile contiguous route planned around the bay that today is around 365 miles.

“That was in process for so many years, and then, even after the bridge went in, there was this little stub of trail that needed to be completed by the Army Corp of Engineers,” Starbird said, referencing the floodwall project. “Having that link means you can get from the west side of town to the east side of town car-free.”

Other amenities are in the works on the south end of Water Street in the form of a planned $150,000 public art installation. The money comes from impact fees paid by developers in lieu of installing public art themselves, a fund that saw a major boost after construction of the East Washington Place shopping center.

Likely a testament to a growing sense of public pride around the Petaluma riverfront, the process has drawn a huge amount of interest as it winds its way through the city’s Public Art Committee. Committee members voted last week to scrap the two leading ideas and reset the process after more than a year of talks, arguing that the ambitious proposals were still underwhelming for such a high-profile location.

Public Art Committee Vice Chair Annee Booker Knight acknowledged the importance that the area held for Petaluma residents.

“It’s the heart of Petaluma,” she said. “The committee had the desire to create something on Water Street that could be a focal point and create an inviting atmosphere attract more families and groups to the river.”

Just beyond the end of Water Street is the trestle, a dilapidated stretch of rail that, for a time, was something of a public front porch extending well over the Petaluma River. The wooden structure was once a natural event venue, adding a significant amount of car-free space to the existing walkway, said Christopher Stevick, managing director of Petaluma Trolley, a nonprofit railway heritage group that has advocated for restoring the trestle.

Stevick said a rebuilt trestle could be a major boon for the downtown.

“We could have, I haven’t quite added it up, 20,000 square feet of downtown added that’s not there right now, accessible. That’s the heart of our city,” he said. In the past, “there were beer festivals, Santa Claus festivals, cultural festivals, that could be done without blocking our streets.”

The group is also advocating for creation of an excursion trolley service along Water Street, including the trestle.

Regardless of the need to close the roadway, the Petaluma Area Chamber of Commerce’s Petaluma River Craft Beer Festival has been hugely popular since the inaugural event along Water Street two years ago, said Onita Pellegrini, CEO.

The organization is gearing up for a third event in September, and expects tickets to sell out quickly for around 2,000 attendees including guests, vendors and volunteers, she said.

“It’s an absolutely perfect spot. The first year we did it, people were just amazed how fun it was, and what a beautiful location it was,” Pellegrini said. “It’s the combination of the fact that it’s in the center of the community, it’s a historic area and it’s right alongside the river. All of that ambiance rolls together.”

Closed in 1994, a restored trestle could be a welcome boost to event space in the area, Pellegrini said. Estimates have varied on the expense to rehabilitate the structure, which could reach more than $4 million.

Larry Zimmer, Petaluma’s deputy director of public works, said the city was able to use some grant funding to complete a design for restoring the trestle. Finding outside grants to fully repair the historic structure has proven to be a challenge, though Zimmer said the city maintains hope that the money will be identified as quickly as possible.

“It’s there, it’s ready. The sooner we can get it done, the better, because part of the design was to maintain as much of the existing structure that’s usable as possible,” he said.

Water Street isn’t the only historically utilitarian stretch in the heart of downtown Petaluma to get a facelift in recent years.

Located behind Helen Putnam Plaza, the walls of American Alley, which parallel Water Street on the other side of the boulevard, became a canvas for eight permanent murals in late 2015. Far from an afterthought, the brick-lined alley has come to include a handful of front-door entrances for surrounding businesses.

Those sorts of textures helped attract Goebel to build Brewsters Beer Garden in Petaluma, where the old walls around the venue’s courtyard will frame the massive Dairymen’s Feed & Supply Co-op on the other side of the river.

“We’re down in this sort of semi-industrial zone filled with artists and stuff like that, and we felt it was the perfect backdrop, the perfect setting, for what we wanted to do,” he said. “The city was pretty excited that we chose to make Water Street our main frontage. We would sort of be the first step in the movement.”

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports. Hannah Beausang contributed to this report)

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