Neighbors try to block addition to Petaluma historic house by longtime Levi Strauss executive

After living in Novato for decades, Peter and Ginnie Haas are moving up Highway 101 — to Petaluma, where they plan to spend their twilight years.

That’s why the Haases bought a 115-year-old house on 6th Street, in one of Petaluma’s historic districts.

“We wanted to be close to downtown,” said the 73-year-old Haas, the former executive and longtime board member of Levi Strauss & Co. “There’s such a vibrancy to the city, events taking place all the time. There’s a lot of ‘there’ there.”

As eager as they are to settle down in Petaluma, the Haases aren’t feeling the love from some of their future neighbors.

The six-bedroom house they bought on 6th Street in 2016 for $1.5 million was designed by the architect Brainerd Jones, who conceived many of Petaluma’s best known buildings, plus a trio of Carnegie libraries in Sonoma County. Haas, a multimillionaire part owner of Levi Strauss, intends to use some of his Carnegie-like net worth to renovate the place.

Those plans, which include a 4,200-square-foot underground space, part of which will serve as a parking garage, have alarmed and angered some of his neighbors in this city that reveres its old buildings.

“Stop the Big Dig” demands the flyer being distributed to area residents by members of Preserve Petaluma, who have taken the lead in opposing the project. Opponents of the “Big Dig” find themselves in a hole, however: When plans for the remodel were considered in July by the city’s Historic & Cultural Preservation Committee, they passed in a unanimous vote.

That committee’s decision was appealed by concerned citizens. The matter now will be decided at the Petaluma City Council meeting on Dec. 21.

Elsa Beatty, one of the Haases’ next-door neighbors, was shocked, she recalled, that “the committee didn’t really bat an eye” at the plans. Foes of the excavation the project requires — at least 80 dump truck loads of dirt and rock — and the 14 months it will take. Because water will need to be pumped out of the garage to keep it dry, they’re alarmed by the potential loss of groundwater in the neighborhood, and angered by the city’s decision not to force the project to undergo a California Environmental Quality Act review.

Most single-family home renovations don’t require such a review, said Bill Wolpert, the Haases’ Petalama-based architect, who also pointed out that because the city won’t let them lift the house, much of the excavation will be done with small equipment — not the kind of backhoe pictured on the Preserve Petaluma website — or by hand.

Preserve Petaluma also has problems with the proposed “demolition” of an “architecturally significant” rear dormer window that is being sacrificed in order to create an outdoor terrace with “unimpeded views of at least 6 neighboring backyards.”

Haas, in an interview Wednesday, objected to the characterization of the underground space as some kind of palatial excess. Yes, there will be room to park four cars. The underground space will also include a workshop, storage room, wine cellar and mud room, he said. “Nothing really out of the norm,” he said.

A larger, more existential issue, Beatty said, is the precedent Petaluma is setting by approving this home remodel. They fear that it puts the city’s historic districts on a slippery slope that will lead to the dilution of their distinct architectural character.

That is why, she said, the upcoming city council meeting “is kind of a pivotal moment for our community. How do we want our historic districts to look in the future?”

Asked to respond to Beatty’s concern, Petaluma deputy planning manager Brittany Bendix stood behind the department’s decision to greenlight the Haas project. “We wouldn’t have moved forward with it, if we weren’t comfortable making a recommendation, and the HCPC (Historic & Cultural Preservation Committee) approved it unanimously.”

What about the argument that this renovation will create “disharmony” with surrounding historic buildings, as Preserve Petaluma claims?

“I think the applicant here has tried to locate both the underground addition and the addition in the rear as discreetly as possible,” Bendix said. “They’re not proposing to raise the building, or add another story. They’re not proposing an addition to the front, or to the sides.”

After working with staff in Petaluma’s planning department, Wolpert presented the blueprints to the Development Review Committee in August 2019. “You sit around a table with all the heads of the development agencies, everybody asks questions and chimes in,” the architect said.

Most of the questions posed, he recalled, had to do with the excavation, and the water that might need to be pumped out. “And they were satisfied with our approach, and the measures we plan to take,” Wolpert said.

Wolpert then submitted the plans to an outside expert for historic design review. He and the Haases worked with historic preservationist Diana Painter, who reviewed the project “and how it relates to the Secretary of Interior’s guide for historic rehabilitation,” said the architect.

Painter, he recalled, “had a few problems with some things, so we made revisions until she was happy with it.”

Among the revisions: the brick stairways of the front stoop are being restored to their original wood.

“We’ve worked hard to come up with a plan that restores the house to its former glory, and maintains its historical characteristics,” Haas said in the interview.

“This is such a great, dynamic community. We’re looking forward to establishing our roots here.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.