Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds Re-Use: Turning toward the Finish Line

Regular followers have read the following recitation so many times that they can likely anticipate every word.  But for the new readers, I should lay out the background before moving to the heart of this post.  I’ll try to do so expediently.

Petaluma Urban Chat, a citizens group that sprung from readers of this blog, has been studying the possible re-use of the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds.  The Fairgrounds site is owned by the City of Petaluma, which leased it to the Sonoma Marin Fair Board under a contract that will expire in 2023.  And eight years can be the blink of an eye in the world of land use.  The end of the current lease will provide an opportunity to reduce the size of the Fairgrounds and to redevelop a portion of the site.

The site is well-located between downtown Petaluma and the freeway and can likely support moderately intense urban-style development.  Also, the site is only four blocks from the coming SMART train station.  Working outside the auspices of the City or the Fair Board, Urban Chat has begun considering a possible plan.  The twin goals are to educate ourselves about the opportunities and constraints at the site and to have a plan to show to interested members of the community.

After a couple of different approaches didn’t gain traction, we hit upon a mini-charette format and have been working steadily toward a plan that should represent a group consensus.  Although, in place of mini-charette, I probably should have described the process as a slow-moving and unfacilitated charette.

(A note on terminology: One reader took me to task for using the word “charette”, thinking that many wouldn’t know it.  I suspect that “charette” is more widely understood that he thinks, but I’m always willing to fill possible knowledge gaps.  “Charette” is derived from the French word for cart.  The original use referred to the cart in which a representative of the king would arrive in the town square and advise the citizens of the changes that were coming their way.  Over time, it came to refer to a process by which the citizens had a chance to comment upon and to shape the changes.

Today, charette refers still refers to a process by which the community participates in a land-use decision.  A contemporary charette is usually time intensive, perhaps extending over a three-day weekend, and is facilitated by an architect or other land-use professional.  As Petaluma Urban Chat meets once a month and, although several land-use professionals participate, none are paid to direct the effort, my description of our process as a slow-moving and unfacilitated charette is reasonable.)

We’ve met twice under the charette process.  In November, we settled on a package of land uses that we thought would best serve the community.  In December, we decided which portion of the site would be available for re-use and which would retain the reduced fair footprint.  (The December decision forced changes in the November allocations.)

This history sets the stage for the next and near-final task, developing a site plan.  Over the next month or so, we’ll assign locations on the re-use site for the selected land uses.

The November and December decisions, although different formats were used, were made using everyone in attendance.  However, the site planning process is more complex and not well-suited to twenty-five people trying to find consensus in a single meeting.  Instead, we’ll break into teams.

Over the next month, each team will develop a plan for presentation to the entire Urban Chat group.  We’ll try to assign a land-use professional to each group, not to direct the teams, but to have familiarity with raising the key issues and guiding groups toward consensus.  Also, the charette steering committee, architect Ross Jones, local urbanist David Powers, and me, will help facilitate where we can.  (When not facilitating, Jones, Powers, and I will develop our own site concept.)

The schedule for the three site planning meetings will be:

Tuesday, January 13: Set teams and begin planning.

Tuesday, January 27: Optional meeting for facilitation.  (The teams are, of course, also welcome to meet at other times if they wish.)

Tuesday, February 10: Presentation of team plans and selection of best plan.  There can also be discussion of combining the best elements of several plans.

All three meetings will be held at Taps in the River Plaza shopping center, across the Balshaw Bridge from downtown Petaluma.  The address is 54 East Washington Street.  All three meetings will begin at 5:30pm.  I’d like to say that all three meetings will conclude by 7:00, but the likely compelling nature of the discussions may result in the meetings carrying on somewhat longer.

Following the last meeting, we’ll put together the best possible graphics of the result to share with the community.  The graphics will be a challenge given our non-existent budget, but we’ll do the best we can and aren’t above relying on the kindness of strangers.  (Hint, hint.)

To assist the teams in their site planning, they’ll be given a list of questions to consider as they ponder the site.  The preliminary list of questions follows, although other questions may be added before Tuesday.

Where would the fair-attending public enter the reconfigured fairgrounds?

The current fairgrounds layout includes extensive parking.  How might parking work for the new fairgrounds?

The Director of the Live Oak Charter School advised Urban Chat in December that, as long as the education function was enhanced, the school might be amenable to relocation.  Where would the school fit in the new plan?

Extensive projects don’t get built in a single phase.  Where would the initial redevelopment occur and in what direction would future increments proceed?

The Old D Street neighborhood has reportedly been resistant to change.  How would you structure the project to minimize their concerns or to provide them sufficient amenities to support the redevelopment?

The principal entrance to the East Washington Place shopping center adjoins the north end of the redevelopment area.  If it remains in place, it would be a barrier between the redevelopment and the swim center/skateboard park.  Would you look at relocating the entrance?  And if you do, how would you mollify the shopping center owner and tenants?

To what extent do you anticipate the Petaluma citizens who don’t live nearby visiting the re-use site?  How would you handle their arrival and their parking?

In the blog post that reported the results of the most recent meeting, a street grid system was proposed for the re-use site.  The blocks that are shown are similar in size to the blocks in the Old D Street neighborhood, which are unusually large for a residential neighborhood or an urban setting.  Would you use that grid system, would you add some intermediate streets to reduce the block size, or would you propose a different street system?

Also, we have maps and plans of the existing site conditions which can be available on paper and electronically at the meeting.

I hope you find the potential of this process to be intriguing and will consider joining us on January 13.  You’re also encouraged to bring friends.  All are welcome at Urban Chat meetings.  If you haven’t attended the recent meetings, you’ll have a bit of catch-up to do, but the links above will help with that effort and the Urban Chat folks are always happy to assist newcomers.

And if you wish to do any preparation before the upcoming, you might look at the Petaluma Station Area master plan for the types of buildings that could fit on the Fairgrounds or perhaps read my post about UrbanPlan, a high school program challenging students to develop a plan for a site with some similarities to the Fairgrounds.

Next, I’ll return to my New Years Intro to Urbanism, with a review of the many reasons why urbanism is a good solution to land use in the 21st century.

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

Northern California Tour: Checking on Suisun City

For those readers who don’t live in Northern California and don’t follow the news from my part of the world, it has been a historically dry year for the northern half of the Golden State.  Depending on the metric used, it may be drier than any previous year in this century or the last.  (Next week, I’ll attend a meeting on the relationship between land use and drought.  I hope that much of the information is worth sharing.)

Once one adjusts to brown lawns, shorter showers, and higher produce prices, living in a drought can be rather pleasant.  Day after day of blue skies, no roof leaks, and no umbrella shopping.  It’s not the kind of weather that leads to cabin fever.

Nonetheless, I found myself antsy about a week back.  I’d been without a reason to go out and visit interesting communities since the fall.  The absence of on-the-ground ah-hah moments was wearing on me.  So I scheduled a family lunch at the far end of a daytrip, made an itinerary of good and bad urban spots between home and lunch, packed up my camera and notepad, and hit the road early in the morning.

I’ll share my observations and insights over the next few weeks.

The first stop on my Northern California tour was Suisun City, immediately south of and tucked against Fairfield.  I hadn’t visited the community in more than a year, but regretted every time I drove I-80 without stopping in.  This was a day when I would absolutely make time for one of my favorite evolving urbanist communities.

I’ve written about Suisun City several times previously, noting first my surprise at how much urban redevelopment had taken place in the small town and then my comfort in the community.

Both emotions resurfaced immediately upon my drive into town.  I can’t help smiling at the tidiness and sense of rightness that Suisun City exudes.  It’s not a perfect little town, but it’s on a good path, with newer and older residential neighborhoods within a short walk of an increasingly vibrant downtown and a stock of interesting, if under-utilized, downtown buildings that can be gradually put to better use as the community continues to mature.

 But there was something else that struck me this time.  It lurked beneath the other emotions, but was always there.  It was a shiver of fear that the community had begun to drift.

The signs on vacant downtown lots that advised of coming development had sun-faded since I last visited, with nary a piece of construction equipment in sight.

The vacant land on the east side of the channel, for which I though retail was essential for the walkability of the eastside housing, continued to lay fallow.

And when I took a short drive through the eastside, I came across a neighborhood where ill-maintained cars and inept home improvements were beginning to accumulate along a street that had been sparkling and new only a few years ago.

 What I saw wasn’t the beginning of an inevitable and fatal slide.  But it was a warning sign about the need to nurture urbanism.

The analogy that popped into my mind was that drivable suburbanism and walkable urbanism are both gardens.  Drivable suburbanism, with its gasoline pricing that doesn’t reflect all the real costs and its subsidized streets and parking, gets constant attention, watering, and fertilization.  It produces a crop that I find tasteless and bland, but the production is consistent and dependable.

On the other hand, walkable urbanism gets infrequent attention.  When the all the pieces fall into place, including good redevelopment laws and a city staff with a great vision, progress can be made quickly.  That’s what happened in Suisun City a decade ago.  But when that attention is withdrawn, nature begins to gather at the perimeter of the garden, ready to reclaim its former domain.

Right now, Suisun City seems a lovely fledgling garden, with hearty young fruit trees and raised beds filled with healthy vegetables, providing goodness to the community.  But the gardeners have been withdrawn and the garden is at risk.

The problem isn’t that urbanism needs excessive care.  Every garden needs a little tending and I suspect that walkable urbanism needs less than drivable suburbanism.  The problem is that we provide constant care to drivable suburbanism and only sporadic care to walkable urbanism, a situation that is completely backwards.

I’ll continue to check in on Suisun City, hoping to see a little more garden-tending in future years.

For those who’ve remember my previous posts on urban dining, it should be obvious that I had breakfast at Bab’s Delta Diner, in the heart of the redeveloping west side.  The Delta Diner is a magnet to me.  As always, it provided a warm and welcoming atmosphere on the morning of my visit.  The staff was attentive and fun, perhaps responding to the felicitous environment of Suisun City.

Regarding the food, I was somewhat less impressed by my omelet this time than last.  The seasoning wasn’t as focused, leaving the flavors muddy, plus an extra slice of cheese on top dampened the character of the seafood.  But the option of fried rice in place of breakfast potatoes will save any breakfast.  Bab’s doesn’t serve exceptional fried rice, but it doesn’t need to be exceptional.  Even a competent fried rice is a fine complement to breakfast.

I expect that there are other good dining options in Suisun City and I should try them someday.  But for now, the Delta Diner is my place.  And I recommend that anyone wandering off I-80 into Suisun City make time for breakfast or lunch there, preferably with the fried rice.

For now, it’s onward with my Northern California tour.

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

Place Review: Stockton

In a recent post, I described a visit to Suisun City.  I lauded the city for its incremental and successful approach to redevelopment.

I had stopped in Suisun City while enroute to Stockton.  My goal in Stockton wasn’t a search for urban forms.  It was watching minor league baseball and catching up with an old high school friend.  But urbanism is always close to my conscious mind, especially with the Suisun City insights still bouncing around in my head.

So I asked my old friend to tell me about Stockton’s biggest redevelopment projects.  (As a quick note, my question effectively equated redevelopment to urbanism, which is often inaccurate.  The California redevelopment legislation was originally intended to assist with urban problems.  And much of the electorate still thinks of redevelopment in terms of urban land use.  But many, perhaps most municipalities, eventually used the broad definition of “blight” to fund projects that were drivable suburban.  I hope that any rebirth of redevelopment will refocus redevelopment on walkable urban.)  

My friend doesn’t work in land development, but has been a practicing attorney in Stockton for almost thirty years, so is familiar with the community.  He thought at length about my question, but could name only three projects.  The Banner Island Ballpark in which we were sitting, an arena immediately to the east, and a hotel on the other side of the arena.

With the fine example of Suisun City still fresh in my mind, I’d found a perfect counterexample.  A city that had put many of its redevelopment hopes into a single, outsized, and eventually flawed basket.

The three new facilities were experiencing a range of successes.  The ballpark is drawing mediocre crowds, but still provides a good place for family and youth outings.  I understood that the minor league ice hockey franchise that plays in the arena has been successful and that the arena has booked other events.  The hotel has been an utter failure.  Unable to attract either a major hotel operator or adequate visitors, a portion of the hotel is being converted to graduate student housing for the University of Pacific.

But to really see the redevelopment failure requires a wider angle lens.  There is virtually no new business vitality around the perimeter of the new structures.  No pubs for pre-game beverages.  No new shops.  No new restaurants.  The nearest business to the ballpark is a crane and sign business.  Further away are aging light industrial buildings and residential neighborhoods that show cracks of deterioration.

The goal of Stockton redevelopment should have been neighborhood revitalization.  It failed.

Before closing, I have a couple of thoughts on the ballpark, which may provide insights to urban design.  In a post at the opening of baseball season , I wrote about neo-traditional ballpark design in which a ballpark conforms to the quirkiness of the available urban site.  It can be an endearing element of a ballpark, such as the rightfield wall at AT&T Park.  However, some ballpark owners and architects are eager to inject quirkiness even when the site doesn’t demand it.

Banner Island Ballpark provides a couple of fine examples of forced neo-traditional design.

To accommodate the circular footprint of the adjoining arena and the access road around it, the leftfield corner is pushed toward home plate, resulting in a homerun distance of 300 feet at the foul line.  The fence then angles back to a more normal depth.  The unusual fence alignment allows cheap homeruns right down the foul line and probably also creates triples on some groundballs down the line.

In right field, a bump was added to the wall to provide special seating for sponsorship.  The resulting eccentric bounces probably turn a few doubles into triples.

Were the unusual features necessary or forced?  Even though that ballpark was built at the same time as the arena, I’ll give a pass to the leftfield corner.  It allowed the dramatic architecture of the arena.  But I find the rightfield feature irredeemably artificial.

Drawing an analogy to urban design, most cities have quirks, either physical or character, that help define the city.  Good urban design should accommodate those quirks, but not caricature them.  It’s a fine line.

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

Place Review: Return to Suisun City

A few weeks ago, I reported on a visit to Suisun City.  The city had undergone broad redevelopment efforts and seemed to offer helpful insights about the redevelopment process.  The visit on which I reported had been cut short by inclement weather, so I promised to visit again.

Recently, the next opportunity arose.  My schedule was again constrained, so I couldn’t look around as much as I would have liked, but I was able to take a good amble through the Waterside District on the west side of the Suisun Slough.

(Last time I visited, the weather was cool, rainy, and windy.  This time, it was hot and windy.  The wind seems to be only constant in Suisun City.)

I remain impressed by the redevelopment efforts in Suisun City.   And I was particularly impressed by the incremental approach that the City had taken toward redevelopment.  Except for the Victorian Harbor residential development on the east side of Suisun Slough, the redevelopment improvements seemed to have all been relatively small in scale.

As a visitor unfamiliar with the pre-redevelopment town, I couldn’t even be sure where the redevelopment efforts had stopped and started.  An art deco movie theatre stood next to a historic mansion which stood next to a public plaza. My guess was that the theatre was refurbished, the mansion restored, and the plaza newly built, but I wasn’t sure.

Along the fringes of the downtown, the redevelopment merged seamlessly into the walkable urban residential neighborhoods.  And within the neighborhoods, newer homes, which seemed to date from the redevelopment era, stand cheek-by-jowl with older historical homes, daring observers to tell the difference.

Daniel Burnham (1846-1912), mastermind of the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition and founder of the City Beautiful movement, once said, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.”  I appreciate his point.  However, the big plans of which he speaks should be long-term visions.  Actual implementation of urban redevelopment is better if taken in small steps, following Jane Jacobs’ concerns about “the cataclysmic flow of capital”.

Working in smaller steps, as Suisun City seems to have done, allows the next redevelopment efforts to be fine-tuned as the previous improvements are absorbed into the fabric of urban life.

Landscape architects have a rule about public improvements that functions as a corollary to Jacobs’ proscription against cataclysmic flows of capital.  Landscape architects know that the public will find ways to use a project that they hadn’t anticipated.  Therefore, many of the best landscape architects will insist on holding back a portion of the construction budget to facilitate what the public teaches them.  Sometimes, it’ll be the addition of a footpath where the public has been cutting through the shrubbery.  Sometimes adding a garbage can where the public has begun using a quiet nook for lunch.  But the crowd wisdom always finds something the designers overlooked.

Urban redevelopment and landscape architecture have a common need to watch how the public integrates a new site into their daily lives.  It’s a lesson that Suisun City seems to have learned well.  While having a Burnham vision, Suisun City has implemented small, incremental steps that were building toward that vision.  It’s too bad that their successes have been temporarily suspended by the dissolution of redevelopment.  More than any city I know, Suisun City deserves to continue toward their vision.

I don’t want to oversell Suisun City.  Please don’t book a week of vacation to sample the local urban delights.  There’s not that much to see.  But if you want to spend a day looking about, enjoying the dining options in the Waterfront District, and chatting with the locals about the changes that have come to their community, I recommend it highly.  I know I’ll be visiting again.

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

“We Had the Funeral, Now It’s Time to Move On” – Concluded

In my last post, I began reporting about a recent Urban Land Institute (ULI) program on the dissolution of California redevelopment and the need for a new program to replace it. In this post, I’ll conclude by summarizing the thoughts of the speakers on the form that the redevelopment replacement might take. The speakers were Darrell Steinberg, President pro tem of the State Senate, John Shirey, Sacramento City Manager, Bill Fulton of Smart Growth America, and Meea Kang of Domus Development, who provided the quote that is the title.

Fulton observed that redevelopment happens elsewhere without the California model, so developing a new model isn’t impossible. However, he noted that a restoration of redevelopment will require resolution of both constitution and budget issues. Shirey stated that it might be a challenge to get Governor Brown’s buy-off on any new approach.

Fulton remarked that redevelopment question contains two elements, the loss of tax increment financing and disposition of the assets that have been accumulated by the now dissolved redevelopment agencies. He believes that the two should be considered separately. On tax increment financing, he expects the Legislature to propose a new approach and Governor Brown to likely agree as long as no state funds were required. He also observed that taxes other than property taxes, such as sales or transient occupancy taxes, could be used as a basis for tax increment financing. He noted that business-to-business sales taxes are far are more important than often understood and might provide another interesting opportunity. Steinberg supported an update to property-tax increment financing, perhaps with a new base year.

On current redevelopment assets, Fulton feared that an immediate forced sale of the assets, which may be mandated to help balance the state budget, could reduce the sale proceeds. Instead, he proposed that the state allow the assets to be used as an endowment for future redevelopment.

Steinberg commented that his SB 1151 would do what Fulton was proposing. It would allow redevelopment assets to be preserved as a trust. He further suggested that the Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) might be willing to invest in infrastructure, augmenting the opportunity provided by the trust.

Fulton proposed that any renewed redevelopment approach not use “blight” as a criterion. He thought that blight had a “squishy” definition which was prone to uses not originally intended. He suggested that new redevelopment should instead focus on the uses at which redevelopment had excelled, such as infill and transit-oriented development. Steinberg later noted that these were the same types of land-uses which ULI often espoused. He thought that Governor Brown would be most likely to support a return of redevelopment if it focused on these types of projects. He also observed that the priority should be building healthy communities.

Fulton commented that systemic changes were needed to assist any new approach to redevelopment. He noted that California is moving increasingly toward urban development, but the planning system remains based on suburban development. He argued that we need a new system, one that includes more acknowledgement of urban projects and redevelopment. (As the coauthor of the respected “Guide to California Planning”, his comments had weight.) He also suggested that urban specific plans should become more important.

On a related topic, Kang suggested a need to reduce non-market barriers, such as CEQA and parking. Fulton observed that the prompt and expansive implementation of SB 226, which reduces the CEQA barriers for infill development, could provide multiple benefits.

Fulton suggested the possibility that future redevelopment bonds be issued under a state-imposed cap, with the state providing general oversight. When Steinberg later described his SB 1156, it appeared to be consistent with the concept. The bill would authorize a Joint Power Authority to oversee new redevelopment projects and to avoid competition between agencies.

In response to a question, Fulton acknowledged that other states had redevelopment systems that might be used as models for California. However, he noted that property tax abatement is a frequently-used tool in other states, but is unconstitutional in California.

In response to a question on the use of eminent domain, Fulton noted that the use of eminent domain was already in decline before the recent backlash against it. He suggested that it might be better to focus on the assembly of large parcels without eminent domain, although eminent domain should remain an available tool.

To provide an immediate boost to pending projects that would have formerly fallen under redevelopment, Fulton offered several thoughts. He suggested that the state expedite the distribution of funds that were previously awarded under Propositions 1-C and 84. He also proposed that cities consider offering density bonuses in exchange for infrastructure funding.

Lastly, Steinberg suggested that his SB 654 for affordable housing could mitigate some effects of the loss of redevelopment. However, he won’t push for passage until after the May revenue estimates are released. The estimates may require revisions to the bill.

Overall, it was a well-assembled program that provided an insightful road map to the pending decisions.

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