Why Haystack Landing Can’t Be Everything to Everybody

Last time, I wrote about the tentatively-named Haystack Landing, a proposed mixed-use project, with residential over retail, midway between downtown Petaluma and the coming SMART train station.  Although I demurred slightly on the architecture, I was mostly thrilled with the project, with my principal wish being that ground-breaking could occur soon.

But, as with most land development projects, it’s inevitable that other folks won’t be as content.  Some will be querulous and others merely curious, but there will always be some who wish that their particular issue could have addressed differently.

Before, during, and after the public meeting last week, some of those concerns reached my ears.  In my role as an advocate for urbanism, I’ll try to address those concerns.

To be clear, I have no role in the Haystack Landing project.  The responses below are based solely on conversations with the project team and on knowledge gained from past projects.  Perhaps I didn’t sit at the table for Haystack Landing, but I’ve sat at enough tables to understand how the realities of zoning codes, construction financing, and marketplace preferences play out.

Why do the buildings top out at four stories?  More stories would put more people downtown: There are a several approaches that can be taken to answering this question, but I’ll tackle it through parking balance.

Each use, whether market-rate residential, affordable residential, or retail, has a parking requirement. With each home or retail space added, more parking is required, reducing the land available for the building footprint.  It becomes a dance to find the balance point between parking and building uses such that the site is fully used, and fully parked, in a form will satisfy the marketplace.

For Haystack Landing, the project team found their balance point at 140 homes plus about 20,000 square-feet of retail in four-story buildings with 180 surface parking stalls.  From my review, I have no reason to disagree with their conclusion.  If they had pushed the buildings higher, they would have needed more parking, for which there wasn’t room without eliminating building footprints.

Some may point out that structured parking could have increased the parking count without increasing the land area dedicated to parking, thereby allowing more building stories.  They’d be right, but the problem is that structured parking is expensive, perhaps $20,000 per parking space compared to $2,000 for a ground space.

Adding structured parking would significantly bump the sales prices, or rental rates, on the units, perhaps pushing those prices beyond what the market will bear.  From the early days of the recession until now, developers have reported that they can’t find a way to make structured parking pay except in the densest urban settings.  If the Haystack Landing team says that they found the same, I have no reason to dispute them.

But what if additional stories were committed to affordable units without associated parking?: This is an interesting question that forces me to dig deeper into the project.  There are four arguments against the suggestion.

First, although I’d like to believe otherwise, there may not be a market for affordable units with no parking.

Second, the assigned transects for the site (transects being the form-based code equivalents of zones which are used within the Central Petaluma Specific Plan) allow only four stories on much of the site, with six stories allowed only along the E. Washington Street frontage.  So a variance or zone change would be required to go above four stories.

Third, there is also no provision in the SmartCode for residential units without parking, so another variance would be required.

Fourth, the building code changes above four stories, requiring a more expensive form of construction.

So the taller buildings would become more expensive in order to add affordable units with an uncertain market.  That’s not a workable proposition.

Personally, I’m intrigued by the idea of a fifth or even sixth story along E. Washington Street, liking the image it would create for Petaluma.  I’d suggest that fourth floor homes become multi-story units internally, which would get around the parking issue.  But it still wouldn’t overcome the building code constraint.

Why can’t the project look more like downtown?:  The easy answer is that construction codes and economics have changed over the last century, with the money that used to go into elaborate facades instead going into seismic code compliance, fire suppression systems, handicapped access, and union wages.

But there is also the problem that downtown Petaluma doesn’t have a single style to which Haystack Landing could conform.  I love downtown, but it has a broad diverse range of

architectural styles, leaving current-day architects at a loss when it comes to matching downtown.  Anyone who argues that downtown Petaluma has a style is confusing familiarity and fondness for coherence.

What should be done to mitigate for the increased traffic?: This is a multi-faceted question.  To begin, it’s likely that congestion won’t change.  In the obverse side of the theory of induced traffic, if more traffic is added to an already congested street, more drivers would defer or delay trips, so

congestion would remain the same, although there is still the impact of more deferred or delayed trips.

Also, there aren’t many traffic improvements that can be made in the vicinity of Haystack Landing.  There is no room for a third lane on E. Washington Street.  The D Street Bridge constricts D Street to its current one lane.  And Lakeville doesn’t offer any opportunities either.

However, Haystack Landing, with its location and its restricted parking, will generate fewer trips than other residential projects.  Because of the way that trip data is collected from other projects, we don’t know what the likely Haystack Landing trip generation would be, but with ten daily trips per home being typical for single-family homes, seven or so trips from Haystack Landing would seem likely.  And that number would decrease as the urbanism increases around the project, allowing more daily chores to be completed on foot or by transit.

Despite this lower trip generation, Haystack Landing will pay the same traffic impact fee per unit as for an apartment with unlimited parking on the urban fringe.  State law allows cities to impose lower traffic impact fees for projects in urban settings, but Petaluma has chosen not to do so.

But as there are few opportunities for traffic improvements near Haystack Landing, it is likely that the traffic impact fees would be spent on improvements in the more suburban parts of the community.

So, the complete traffic answer is that Haystack Landing will generate fewer trips that other residential projects, but will pay for more than its fair share for city traffic improvements.  However, the improvements will likely occur elsewhere other than around Haystack Landing because there are few improvement opportunities near the project.  It’s an answer that makes my head spin.

Is it best for one developer to design all 140 units?: Admittedly, this is my question, although I never asked it of anyone because I already knew the answer.

Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of fine-grained urbanism, believing that many small projects serve cities better than a few large projects.  (Jane Jacobs made this argument in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and for me it remains true a half-century later.)

In a perfect world, I would prefer that different teams develop the two blocks that will result when the current block is divided by the new street.  Even though the massing of the two blocks would likely remain the similar given the constraints of the Station Area Master Plan and SmartCode, I think the different teams might generate solutions sufficiently different to meet Jacobs’ goal of a fine grain.

But I also understand the financial downside of having multiple development entities.  The costs of entitlement, including CEQA compliance, aren’t halved when the project area is halved.  Indeed, those costs may not change much at all.  So the total costs of entitlement, which can be a significant percentage of the overall development costs, could be doubled if the blocks were developed separately.

As much as I think that fine-grained urbanism would be better for our cities, our current methods of entitlement and environmental protection work against it.

Why is there is an old warehouse on the Copeland Street frontage?: the aerial photo at the beginning of this post shows two warehouses along Copeland Street.  Pacifica Companies has acquired one of those warehouses, will demolish it, and will replace it with new construction.

But no purchase agreement was reached on the other warehouse, so it will remain in place, with the Haystack Landing buildings constructed on both sides of it.

In January, I noted to the Petaluma City Council that this situation is why eminent domain exists and that the City should find a way to acquire the property and to resell it to Pacifica Companies so it could become part of Haystack Landing.

I still feel that way, but I also see the possibility that, when the warehouse finally goes away years from now, a creative development team will find a quirky way to use the odd parcel, resulting in a solution that future generations of Petalumans will find endearing.  Good urbanism sometimes works out that way.

So, I’m less bothered by the warehouse than I was six months ago.

Any other thoughts on Haystack Landing?  I suggest contacting the developer, but I also remain always willing to chat about urbanist projects.

HBO is currently airing an original program that will seemingly impart lessons relevant to urbanism.  I’m intrigued by the plot and by the learning opportunities.  I’ll share what I know in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Intro to Urbanism, Part Nine: Valuing Form over Initial Use

As the calendar turns to February, it’s time to wind up my New Year’s “Intro to Urbanism”.  Today’s part nine will visit the role of buildings in an urban setting.  A week from now, part ten will offer a summing up.  (For new readers, earlier parts at are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.)

Urbanism thinking on buildings was foreshadowed a few posts earlier when I quoted Jan Gehl, Danish architect and urban designer.  His approach to urban design is “First life, then spaces, then buildings.  The other way around never works.”

In well-conceived urban places, buildings are intended to facilitate meaningful and productive urban lives, not to be the stars themselves.

Admittedly, this is counter to the current infatuation with “starchitects” or WFAs (world famous architects), but it doesn’t marginalize architects.  Indeed, it assigns a more difficult role to them.  Rather than designing a building that looks like a giant shaving brush, they must instead create buildings that draw people into and through an urban setting, while also functioning well once the user is inside the building.

Just last evening, over beer and nachos, I listened as a long-time architect chatted with a pair of recent architectural graduates about the need to conceive buildings so that people are enticed to explore the full extent of an urban setting.  In the final report on the Petaluma Station Area Plan, the project architects, Opticos Design of Berkeley, described this intention as designing a series of “theatrical settings”.

But also in urbanism, it’s not enough to design a building that works well on the day it opens.  It’s also essential to take a longer perspective.

It has long been observed that many buildings outlive their initial uses.  Here in Petaluma, a one-time train depot is now the visitors’ center, a former mortuary is now the police station, and a downtown gym occupies a space that was once part of a grain mill.

And even if the use remains the same, the share and detailing of a building can change greatly over time.  My wife and I live in a home that was originally built in 1920 as the twin of the 1918 home next door.  (Subdivision construction proceeded at slower pace a century ago.)  But over the intervening years, the two homes have taken very different paths.  Being on a larger lot, a garage was added to the home next door, a space that now serves as an art studio.

But our home, being on a smaller lot, didn’t have space for a garage, so a former owner instead took it upward, slightly expanding the footprint before adding a second story and an attic.

With different windows, siding, and roofing materials, only someone in the crawl space of the two homes could recognize their common heritage.  But both have changed logically in response to their settings and to the needs of their owners and both fit well within the neighborhood.

Recognizing the reality of the uses and physical form of buildings evolving over time, many zoning codes, particularly for urban areas, have begun taking a different structure than the zoning codes that governed the growth of suburbia.  In past zoning codes, the primary factor on which the code was based was use.  Building aesthetics, site planning, etc., all mattered, but use was the initial criterion.  These codes were described as use-based codes.

Many contemporary codes take an alternative approach, looking first at the form of the building.  Use still matters, a developer can’t put a rendering plan downtown no matter how attractive the building, but form is the first criterion to be considered.  Form-based codes might require buildings to remain close to the street, demand that parking be shielded from the street, or mandate features to enliven a sidewalk.

Under a form-based code, even if the use of a building changes multiple times during its useful life, it continues to be an element that supports the urban life of the community.

Putting urban life before buildings and imposing a form-based code on new buildings changes how we view new buildings and how our urban places expand and evolve.  But the value of good architecture remains.

In my next post, there’s an evolving situation in Minnesota involving an attempt to stifle an urbanist proponent.  The facts of the situation have a personal relevance to me, so I’m awaiting the promised updates and will then offer my thoughts.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

You Can’t Go Home Again – Part 7, A Pair of Sluggish Downtowns

 With this post, I’ll conclude my urbanist observations from a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest.  The previous post in the series is here.

During my drive from the North Bay to the Northwest, I took several breaks.  And as I often do when traveling, I wandered around downtowns, camera in hand, looking at what’s working and what’s not.  On this trip, my main photo stops were in Klamath Falls, Oregon and Marysville, California.  The thoughts that jumped into my head are below.

 

Observation #13: Good bones aren’t nearly enough - No reasonable observer would describe the downtowns of Klamath Fall or Marysville as healthy.  In both places, I spied a few successful businesses and a handful of pedestrians, but nothing like the level of activity that can be found in most North Bay cities.  The downtowns of San Rafael, Santa Rosa, Sonoma, and other North Bay cities have a vitality that far eclipses the street life in Klamath Falls and Marysville.

 

And yet both Klamath Falls and Marysville have fine-looking downtown buildings.  Rehabilitation would probably be needed required to return some of the buildings to full utilization, but it’s always better to begin with a downtown that has buildings, especially well-constructed buildings, instead of empty lots.

It’s easy to visualize a bustling downtown against a backdrop of the existing buildings in either city.  But neither city has that bustle.

It’s a reminder that architecture isn’t enough.  Urbanism doesn’t spring from buildings alone, but from a complicated calculus of downtown residents, businesses, jobs, other magnets, and well-managed parking.  The next time someone argues that a building will revitalize downtown, look deeply into the proposal and think about Klamath Falls and Marysville.  Buildings are essential but not sufficient for urbanism.

 

Observation #14: Helping hands are expensive and should be used well - Downtown Marysville has arches at a number of intersections.  The arches are a good addition to downtown in both their aesthetics and their reference to local history.  They give Marysville a more interesting and memorable downtown.

 

But there is an apparent mismatch between the arches and the vacant buildings that stand near   It’s as if a fondant frosting was applied to a wedding cake made of sawdust.

This comment isn’t intended as a criticism of the Marysville City Council which pursued the funds for the arches.  Nor is it an argument that historical elements aren’t appropriate.

Instead, it’s a condemnation of a funding system that dictates the funding priorities of cities.  Whatever funds were devoted to the arches could have been better spent in any number of areas, such as infrastructure upgrades, historic building renovation tax credits, or rent subsidies for a new wave of risk-oblivious downtown residents.  As a result, Marysville got arches and a comatose downtown.

Cities have always been and will remain a primary economic driver in national and state economies.  But the current model is to divert the revenue to Sacramento or to Washington, D.C. and then to release it back to cities with funding priorities set from above.  And so we get arches instead of people.

The arches are a beautiful addition to downtown Marysville.  But what would be truly striking would be sidewalk cafes full of diners enjoying the evening breezes at the end of a North Valley day.  Whether or not the arches are in the background.

And with that, my Northwest observations are at an end.  The life conditions that allowed me to prosper during almost two decades in the Northwest have passed, never to return, but I still enjoy visiting the region.  I’ll be looking for an opportunity to return.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Tom Wolfe Tackles 20th Century Architecture

I recently reviewed “The Geography of Nowhere” by James Howard Kunstler.  A reader commented that Tom Wolfe covered much of the same ground, and reached many of the same conclusions, in his book “From Bauhaus to Our House”.

It was a good comment.  And much appreciated because it motivated me to finally read Wolfe’s commentary on 20th century architecture.  Considering the short length, only 143 pages in my copy, I should have read it years ago.

To refresh your memory, Kunstler argued, with his characteristic self-righteous indignation, that a post- World War I detour by architecture into the international/modern style resulted in soulless, unappealing buildings and that the buildings in turn sapped the vitality of public places resulting in a diminution of the public realm.

Wolfe, perhaps because he wrote his book a dozen years earlier (“Bauhaus” is copyrighted in 1981 compared to the 1993 “Nowhere”) doesn’t touch the public realm question.  But he deals in far more depth with the evolution of modern architecture.  And he does it with more credibility than Kunstler. 

To note a key point on which Kunstler and Wolfe differ, Kunstler posited that the key turning point in the ascension of modern architecture was adoption by the Nazis of classical architecture, which later forced the victors of World War II to adopt modern architecture to avoid a connection to Nazism.

Wolfe points elsewhere.  He describes that the arrival of key European architects in the U.S. in the late 1930s, escaping the looming Nazi conquest.  He then argues that the willingness of the U.S. to accept the dicta brought by immigrants, no matter how nonsensical, was the key turning point.

Wolfe argues his scenario more effectively, even noting that the Nazis didn’t adopt pure classical architecture but an unadorned alternative.  And his scenario is more consistent with the historical timeline.

Wolfe also more effectively describes the origins of modern architecture in the effort to create affordable housing for European workers.  And the subsequent absurdity of modern architecture becoming the reigning style in the U.S. during a century in which the U.S. grew to dominate the world.  In his words:

“In short, the reigning architectural style in this, the very Babylon of capitalism, became worker housing.  Worker housing, as developed by a handful of architects, inside the compounds, amid the rubble of Europe in the early 1920s, was now pitched up high and wide, in the form of Ivy League art gallery annexes, museums for art patrons, apartments for the rich, corporate headquarters, city halls, country estates.  It was made to serve every purpose, in fact, except housing for workers”

This isn’t to say that Wolfe’s exposition is without flaws.  Where Kunstler’s efforts are often undermined by his self-righteousness, Wolfe damages his own credibility with excessive detached irony.  Even down to posing on the back cover in a white suit with white shoes, Wolf is so committed to being the cool and nonchalant New Yorker that he overwhelms the reader with phrases like “O young silver princes set against the rubble!” when talking about the young European architects in the 1920s and “O white gods!” when the architects arrive in the U.S. 

Both books are worth reading, with Wolfe’s effort the more intellectually complete and Kunstler’s the more on point for urbanism issues.

And both raise legitimate questions about how well-served the public is when architects, at least those at the upper end of the profession, are focused on ideological concepts over the design of buildings that serve the commonweal.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)