Commentary: A vision for the future of Petaluma Fairgrounds

I am pleased that Petaluma is moving forward with a citizen engagement process to advise the city council on the future of the fairgrounds site. I look forward to receiving their recommendations.

At the same time, I’d like to share my personal thoughts on the subject.

Some background. The purchase of what is now the fairgrounds site, along with the swim center, library and teen center sites, which have since been carved off, was authorized in a special election in December 1910 when Petaluma voters approved a $20,000 bond issuance for the purchase of 65.74 acres of land “commonly known as Kenilworth Park” to be “used as a public park.”

The bond measure barely passed the needed two-thirds threshold, passing by a total vote of 402 “yes” votes to 191 “no” votes. (This was before women’s suffrage).

Kenilworth Park, the main feature of which was a horse racetrack, was operated as a city park for the next 25 years. The Sonoma-Marin Fair moved onto the property in 1936 and has been there ever since.

The fair is a cherished local tradition. But at the same time, the property has never lived up to its potential as a “public park.”

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park became a city park in 1890, only 20 years before Kenilworth Park became a public park here. At the time, Golden Gate Park consisted mostly of sand dunes. But today, it is so full of beloved park amenities – museums, playgrounds, playing fields, lakes, trees, hiking and jogging trails, bison! – that nobody would dare suggest using some of it for housing or other uses.

San Francisco will meet its RHNA housing targets – much higher than Petaluma’s – elsewhere, while preserving its cherished park.

There is a path for retaining the fair and its ancillary ag-support activities, while also adding more park amenities onto the property.

This would be most readily achieved using a “hybrid” governance model, which would allow the city and the Sonoma-Marin Fair to each focus on what each does best.

The hybrid model would mean not renewing the current lease, but at the same time having the city and fair enter a long-term contract for the fair to continue to operate its annual fair and associated year-round activities on the property, while continuing to be supported by lease revenues of the various tenants there.

The hybrid model would also allow the city to utilize funding sources to which it has access – but the fair does not – to build new park amenities on the property. These funding sources are the city’s parkland development impact fees and the city’s share of countywide Measure M park revenues. Combined, these sources provide a bit over $1.3 million per year.

Once the hybrid governance model is agreed to, the community can move on to master plan the new park amenities and upgrades to existing fair structures.

The community will have a lot of fun deciding what new park amenities to add. Possibilities include the type of attractions on the lower part of Santa Rosa’s Howarth Park, such as a merry-go-round, a small-scale train, pony rides, and an expansive playground and picnic area.

My personal choice would be to include an outdoor amphitheater for concerts, plays and movies. Frost Amphitheater in Stanford occupies a footprint of land half the size of the current auto speedway and its staging area.

All of this is very achievable. The hybrid governance model would keep the promise made 112 years ago to use the property as a public park. It would allow the Fair to continue. And it would help the property to function more as the public park it was intended to be.

Mike Healy is the senior incumbent on the Petaluma City Council.