Downtown Petaluma hotel project replaced with apartment proposal

A developer who for years was planning to build a 54-room boutique hotel topped with a model farm in downtown Petaluma is changing course toward apartments.|

A developer who for years was planning to build a 54-room boutique hotel topped with a model farm in downtown Petaluma is changing course toward apartments, according to a member of the project team.

Citing a general decline of interest from hotel investors in the current economy, developer and architect Ross Jones is now looking to build an undetermined number of apartment units at the vacant lot once pegged for “The Petaluman” hotel, said Dave Alden, a civil engineer who is helping Jones in navigating the approval process.

The hotel project at the corner of Petaluma Boulevard South and B Street was nearly ready to move forward, Alden said, which included securing an off-site parking area.

“The real problem was just that the hospitality economy got soft, and construction costs went up,” he said.

The specifics of the apartments, including number of units and pricing, have not been determined, Alden said. Yet the idea has already attracted the interest of multiple potential investors.

Unlike the hotel, the apartments are likely to use mechanical lifts to accommodate all needed parking on a portion of the site. The hotel project had a larger parking requirement, and had included a proposal for a 58-car parking shed two blocks away.

Alden said the city’s off-site parking requirement had come as a surprise to the hotel project team, who had long assumed they would be able to secure spaces at locations like the city’s Keller Street Parking Garage. The off-site parking proposal to satisfy the requirement had faced push back from neighbors who feared impacts like noise and car exhaust, but Alden said measures were planned to address those concerns.

“I think that was solvable,” he said.

He described the hotel as Jones’ “first love,” but said the investor climate has soured. The land at 2 Petaluma Blvd. South has been in the developer’s family since 1963, and was most recently the site of a Chevron gas station.

The Petaluman would have been the first new hotel in downtown Petaluma in recent memory, and has long joined the redeveloped Silk Mill hotel project and revamped Hotel Petaluma as a third high-profile hospitality project in the works for the city’s central business district.

The hotel was reported to cost an anticipated $23 million to build and employ 24 full-time workers. Room rates would average $260 a night, and hotel bed tax would generate between $250,000 and $300,000 annually for the city.

Alden said the apartment design was likely to include elements from The Petaluman, and that previous approvals could expedite the process. The site itself was already cleaned up after the exit of the gas station, and Chevron has a standing agreement to wrap up some work at the property before a future development there moves forward.

The apartments could also be converted to a hotel in the future, and Alden said the emergence of new investors for a hotel could prompt Jones to return to those plans.

A timeline on the apartments is not yet known, and would likely be subject to at least one public hearing to approve a new site plan.

“Like every developer, he’d like to do it as soon as possible,” he said.

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)

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