Downtown Petaluma project to add shops, 178 housing units

One of the marquee sites targeted for development in the downtown Petaluma area will soon be home to apartments and retail, a long-desired goal for sustainability advocates looking to build high-density housing next to the city’s transit stations.

The Petaluma Planning Commission cast a 6-0 vote Tuesday night to approve Haystack Pacifica, a mixed-use development that will provide 178 housing units and approximately 24,855 square feet of ground floor commercial space on a 4.1-acre parcel bounded by Weller, East Washington, Copeland and East D streets. Commissioner Heidi Bauer was absent, but submitted written comments ahead of the meeting.

Once constructed, the four-story project will transform the eastern entrance to downtown, and local officials hope it can set a planning precedent that can be modeled citywide.

However, San Diego-based developer Pacifica Companies will still have to get one last blessing from the planning commission; to ensure the project can still move forward, the body approved Haystack with a condition that a handful of architectural elements get adjusted, but will only need a speedier consent vote at a future date.

Jonathan Ennis, president of BDE Architecture, was amenable to the city’s requests, allowing the commission to move forward on a procedural tactic that will allow one final review of the design issues that were raised this week.

“We have such a great opportunity to make an awesome project, not just a good enough project,” said Commissioner Diana Gomez. “I think with minor tweaks and designs, this could be an awesome project for this town.”

The development will be split by a newly-constructed transverse street that will link Copeland and Weller streets and separate the property into two blocks.

The housing will be placed above the retail spaces, grouped together in 25 three- and four-story buildings that wrap around the perimeter. The internal space of each block will house a two-story parking structure that sits below a residential courtyard on the third floor.

According to the site plans, 197 parking spaces will be built in the two garages, and an additional 57 are slated for the street perimeter of the buildings – a total of 254. The on-street spots will have two-hour limits, and 17 all-day garage spaces will be leased to Haystack’s retail tenants.

Those figures exceed the city’s requirements for parking. At least nine electric vehicle charging stations will be built.

In addition to the two courtyards, two open space areas will be constructed on each side of the transverse street, and three public pocket parks are designed for the site.

Bicycle advocates also commended the construction of a Class IV bike line on East D Street, a road that has been unfriendly to cyclists navigating its narrow edges. The new bike path would have both a physical buffer and separate, designated lane.

Under the city’s inclusionary housing policy, Pacifica Companies will be pricing 15 percent of the units at a low and very-low rate.

“That’s a really key component to a development so close to SMART, so close to transit for our buses, and so close to downtown,” said Commissioner Scott Alonso. “Downtown Petaluma is so walkable, but there’s not a lot of options for working-class folks to live downtown.”

Haystack Pacifica embodies a rare cross-section of policies and planning guidelines designed to encourage future-minded, infill developments since voters approved the urban growth boundary in 1998, preventing outward expansion.

According to city officials, the project provides the sort of high-density, pedestrian-friendly, transit-friendly mixed-use balance local leaders sought when crafting the Central Petaluma Specific Plan and Station Area Master Plan.

Dave Alden, a Petaluma-based civil engineer and smart growth advocate, pointed to a series of failed attempts over the last two decades to build on this site, and implored the commission to limit any excess requests.

“If you ask too much at this point, you may run the risk of killing a project that we have desperately needed for years,” Alden said. “If we can get this off the ground and working, the next developer can come in and do it easier, and that is a future we definitely want to have happen.”

Pacifica Companies bought the property in 2012, and put forward a proposal three years later that was widely-criticized, an aspect of the process that the developer welcomed as a group that touts its desire to generate broad public consensus for its projects.

Over the years, Pacifica has held seven various public outreach meetings, the most recent being a Know Before You Grow forum on smart growth at Riverfront Cafe last week.

At that meeting, multiple citizens raised concerns over the level of solar the developer said it would explore implementing in the future. Since the project will be entirely electrical, some called for utilizing the EverGreen energy program from Sonoma Clean Power, a request that would incur no cost prior to construction and result in 100% renewable power.

Concerns also lingered over the traffic burdens that could result if SMART doesn’t develop parking at its neighboring parcel.

Depending on how long the process takes to satisfy the commission’s requests, project officials estimate Haystack could be constructed in 2 to 3 years.

(Contact News Editor Yousef Baig at yousef.baig@arguscourier.com or 776-8461, and on Twitter @YousefBaig.)