Fairgrounds:
Regular readers don’t need to be reminded about the on-going Petaluma Urban
Chat study on possible re-use of the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds. (Occasional readers can catch up here.)
The
conceptual design efforts are nearing conclusion. The three teams are putting finishing touches
on their designs and will present the plans at the Urban Chat meeting on
Tuesday, February 24. Everyone is welcome,
indeed encouraged, to join us at 5:30pm at Taps, 54 E. Washington Street. And also encouraged to bring a friend or
two. Even if you’ve never attended an
Urban Chat meeting, if you have an interest in the future of Petaluma you’re
likely to find something of interest in the meeting.
For those
who haven’t been part of the process thus far, I should explain something about
the intended level of the conceptual plans.
The plans wouldn’t include detailed building footprints or architectural
sketches. To proceed to that level,
especially given our non-existent budget, would have been a waste of resources
and a short-circuiting of the process.
Instead, the
teams will present maps showing allocations of land use and proposed routes of connectivity. In land-use planning parlance, these are called
bubble diagrams and are a key step in the planning process.
My goal for
Tuesday evening is to settle on a single design concept, either one of the team
concepts or a combination of the best elements of multiple concepts, allowing
us to more fully develop that concept for public presentation. (In the past, I’ve been subtle with this
request. Today, subtlety is
dropped. If you have some graphical
presentation tools and skills, and are willing to donate a few hours, you can
help Urban Chat share their vision with the community. And you would earn my gratitude.)
Before
leaving the Fairgrounds subject, I’ll recount a recent conversation with one of
the conceptual design participants. He
wondered if the next step in the process might be assessing the business attraction
needs of the city and focusing the design effort toward that goal.
In response,
I shared the StrongTowns philosophy of job creation. To paraphrase the words of StrongTowns
founder Chuck Marohn, we often make political decisions as if a strong economy
will be the result of job creation. But
it’s the reverse that we should be following, having job creation be the result
of a strong economy. If we focus on job creation,
we run the risk of subsidizing businesses that keep people busy without creating
the goods and services that we truly need and want.
The application
of this principal to town planning is that we should be creating cool places to
live and letting job creation follow.
A great
example in our region is the South of Market neighborhood (SOMA) in San
Francisco. Twitter and others didn’t set
out to remake SOMA as their corporate setting.
Nor did the City of San Francisco get the ball rolling by trying to
attract Twitter and others. Instead, a
younger generation, including many who Richard Florida calls “the creatives”,
was attracted to the SOMA as cool place to live. (Unlike earlier generations, the coming generations
are more willing to move without having a job.
They often prioritize life style over employment. And employment usually finds them.)
Noting the accumulation
of talent in SOMA, Twitters and other expressed an interest in locating there,
the City provided key financial encouragement, and the rebirth of SOMA was
fully underway.
Although on
a smaller scale, I think the Fairgrounds can provide a similar function in
Petaluma, attracting folks who like the North Bay, but who want to live in a
walkable, convivial setting. And once
they’ve found their way to Petaluma, businesses who want to employ people with
that mindset will note the accumulation of talent and follow them to Petaluma.
Of course,
there would still be the challenge of finding places for the new businesses to locate,
but that’s a great problem to have.
(Personally, I remain intrigued by the possibilities of the
under-utilized industrial area in the triangle bounded by E. Washington Street,
Lakeville Street, and the Petaluma River. And the vision for the Fairgrounds
also includes agriculturally-related industrial space and locally-focused
retail.)
That’s my vision
of the role of the Fairgrounds in Petaluma’s future. If you share it, or if you have your own ideas
to test out, please join us on Tuesday the 24th.
Block
Parties: Another subject that regular readers should recognize as a
frequent topic is block parties, particularly how the Petaluma Municipal Code is
surprisingly unfriendly to block parties compared to other North Bay cities.
When I last
touched upon the subject, the Petaluma Police Chief and City Council had
indicated their support for block parties, tossing the Municipal Code question
back to City staff. I’ve since
communicated with City Hall, offering my thoughts about a block party process
that seems reasonable to me.
While I
await a response, I came across an exchange on the Quora website that
illustrates what can be good about block parties. I recommend reading the story, but for those who don’t, a police
officer on foot patrol at a block party in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood
of Brooklyn asked to borrow a skateboard.
To the surprise of the young skateboarders at the party, he proved his
ability to still do a few moves, perhaps forever changing the perceptions of some
about the police department.
There’s no
place in the North Bay like Bed-Stuy, but I can still hope for the equivalent
of this type of public-police interaction at North Bay block parties.
Data will be
the subject of my next post. I recently
attended a meeting on the advanced use of demographic data for land use
planning. The conclusions didn’t
surprise me, but the clarity that the data brought to the subject was
startling.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
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