Redevelopment in Sebastopol’s Northeast area is still being conceptualized—and debated.
Traversing pastoral highways into a sleepy downtown Sebastopol on a crisp Tuesday morning, the small, unconventional city exudes a sensibility of low-impact living, authentic design and a crystal clear focus on community.
“I’ll meet you by the gazebo,” said Sebastopol Preservation Coalition member and retired civil engineer Dave Little when he offered to take me on an informative walking tour of the city’s nearby historic apple packing district, a neighboring old and abandoned lumber yard and the former Ford dealership property, epicenter of a long-unfolding redevelopment controversy.
Sebastopol has a reputation within the Bay Area as a colorful enclave of freethinking artists and politically active citizenry. Somehow, this relatively small (a mere 8,000 residents), formerly agricultural community has successfully maintained a small town, pastoral feel while still appealing to a progressive, urban and creative populace. It’s an interesting dichotomy, and one that, in no small measure, has fanned the flames of this newest debate.
My guide for the morning’s walking tour hadn’t considered himself a leading player—or, for that matter, much of a player at all—in local political/community activism until last winter. That’s when five years of simmering civic debates surrounding the potential revitalization of his hometown’s underdeveloped, light industrial Northeast area finally hit the popular radar, inspiring deep passions and incendiary opposition.
Concerned that major zoning changes to 56 prime acres within the city’s General Plan might lead to a fundamental change to Sebastopol’s quintessential character and scale, scores of residents, such as Little and a legion of downtown business owners, rallied against a proposed redevelopment plan.
“Intelligent development is the goal,” explains Little as we cross a busy Highway 12 by the movie theater and head down into the city’s current hot spot of rezoning controversy and historical legacy.
Seeds of opportunity
Sebastopol’s contentious Northeast Area Plan stems from the decline in the apple processing industry, including the 2004 closure of Sebastopol’s last apple juice and sauce processor, Barlow Company. The closure left 54 acres of outdated warehouses and vacant land straddling Highway 12 along Sebastopol Avenue, and soon there was talk about updating the area, which is now zoned a combination of light industrial and downtown and occupied by an eclectic variety of light industry and commercial businesses.
In spring 2008, the Sebastopol Planning Commission approved a redevelopment plan; at press time, the Sebastopol City Council was studying the plan’s environmental impact report (EIR) and could cast final votes in mid-November. The plan doesn’t call for specific construction or development projects. Rather it’s a proposal for the gradual redevelopment of the historic warehouse district and removal of the General Plan growth management ordinance for this specific area over the next 20 years.
Specifically, it calls for 391,000 square feet of commercial space, 300 housing units and a plethora of new streets to accommodate all the new citizenry. The plan also extends the same parking requirements as currently apply to new development in the city’s downtown and proposes to eliminate “level of service” requirements for both the plan area and Sebastopol’s downtown, which would be a significant change to the city’s traffic policies.
Current zoning allows for building heights of three stories, and “net-fill” is already allowed in the area. Net-fill refers to the need to both raise new construction above 100-year-flood elevations and to address stormwater displacement caused by such measures. According to the city, the plan would create new environmental requirements limiting fill and mandating green building concepts.
To complicate matters further, the area is located in a flood zone and earthquake liquefaction area, the latter means an earthquake could cause large areas to sink (liquefaction was a major factor in the destruction in San Francisco’s Marina District during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake). Obviously, this poses concern for redevelopment opponents and is a key factor in fueling community fire.
In a June 2008 statement to the public, the City of Sebastopol outlined its position on the controversial Northeast Area Plan as a “dedication to the enhancement and protection of the immediate and long-term well-being of the City, its citizens and its natural environment.”
Adoption of the plan wouldn’t approve any specific development project, including the chic, urban, rendering that was briefly presented as one potential transformation of the warehouse district by Barney Aldridge, a former mortgage executive who owns about 12 acres in the heart of the area, including the former Barlow plant some surrounding property.
“Barney Aldridge is one of the major property owners in the Northeast area, but he has no development applications pending with the city,” confirms Sebastopol City Planning Director Kenyon Webster.
Monterey’s Cannery Row is, perhaps, a more palatable vision for the area’s redevelopment, at least according to one of the warehouse district’s longest standing business tenants, Ron Balzer of Creative Images, a screen printing, embroidery and advertising company. “I’d like to see this area preserved as an historic cannery district in keeping with its light industrial heritage,” says the former Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce president, who’s experienced two significant flooding incidents in the low-laying district over the last 13 years. “Just give it a face-lift. There’s not enough money in the economy to raze this entire parcel of land.”
The controversy grows
And although concerned Sebastopol citizens and business owners for the most part prefer to maintain a local, uncrowded, environmentally friendly and sustainable community, the idea of revitalizing the site of the city’s last fruit processing plant isn’t entirely unfathomable.
“All voices of the community need to be listened to. Personally, the city’s proposed vision horrifies me; it will kill our downtown,” says Paula Downing, director of Sebastopol’s thriving Farmers Market. “Dozens of people who have little stores in Sebastopol have said, ‘Please don’t do this.’ This includes many long-established families and businesses, like Ken Silveira of Pacific Market and Mark Sell of Sebastopol Hardware, who both spoke out against the current plan.
“My vision is to see 50 to 60 local food producers, growers and winemakers use the space for the Sebastopol food industry and as a wine and food destination,” continues Downing. “People need places to produce quality food—cold storage for apples, and community wine and olive presses—small growers and producers are in dire need of these work places.
“Retail is such a dominant feature of development. But who’s going to come here for retail? If a town like Petaluma—which is four times as big as Sebastopol—has 60 to 70 percent store vacancy, then how will we support so much retail?”
Over the past two years, the plan has been closely monitored by Greenbelt Alliance, which works to protect working farms and natural areas while making Bay Area cities better places to live. A key component of Greenbelt Alliance’s work is identifying where new growth should occur and which development proposals best meet the needs of the region. Endorsing and advocating for livable,
transit-accessible communities with a wide range of housing options for families of all sizes and income levels, Greenbelt Alliance has written to the Sebastopol City Council in support of several of the concepts proposed in the plan and calling for a project that will “feature compact, walkable development that enhances downtown Sebastopol and provides homes that people from a range of income levels can afford,” similar to the Aldridge Management proposal.
According to Sebastopol artist and Preservation Coalition activist Holly Downing (no relation to Paula), a growing petition of some 30-plus businesses calls for the Chamber of Commerce “to further promote existing business, which, quite frankly, is struggling. Rezoning the Northeast Area will raise rents, and there’s an overwhelming fear that pedestrians won’t cross Highway 12 to support downtown business,” says Downing. “This will lead to the death of our downtown.”
As a painter, Downing says she appreciates the structural beauty of the stark warehouse buildings that currently house light industrial tenants including glassblowers, food producers, artisan stoneworkers, a bottle top manufacturer and Sebastopol Center for the Arts. “Not all redevelopment needs to be perfectly matching, architecturally, as with the cookie-cutter design of Windsor Town Square,” she says.
Further complicating the debate, says Little, as we walk by the industrious open-front buildings, “If these companies are forced to leave, many will have no alternative but to leave California.”
Like Paula Downing, Holly Downing envisions a beautifully retrofitted, light industrial area, similar to those in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, complete with wooden boardwalks and bustling restaurants and cafes to support the area and encourage foot traffic. “If it floods, let it flood,” she says. “Sandbags have worked here for decades.”
Paula Downing confirms plans to meet with Aldridge Management to discuss relocating the Farmer’s Market to an expanded, covered location within the redevelopment area. But though she admits the market needs more space, she says she’s reluctant to “abandon downtown.”
And while Barney Aldridge remains an elusive interview, I did encounter Aldridge Management Property Manager Jennifer Lopez, who happened to be touring the district in her SUV during my walking tour with Little. “An indoor Farmers Market may be a possibility for any future project,” she says.
Big ideas
There’s been considerable talk within Sebastopol’s business community about a large grocery store potentially anchoring an eventual project once the plan has been approved. But Vanessa Cornish, media spokesperson for Whole Foods Markets in Northern California, says of the rumor that the grocery chain was in negotiations to relocate from its present location on nearby McKinley Street, “There are no plans to move Whole Foods to the old lumber yard in Sebastopol or anywhere else in the district.” This is no doubt music to the ears of the competing supermarkets, including Fiesta Markets, Fircrest, Safeway and Lucky.
Neither are there plans afoot for big box additions such as Wal-Mart, Target or Costco in the rezoned area, according to Kenyon Webster: “Current zoning prohibits ‘big boxes.’ The Northeast Plan incorporates this existing regulation. There isn’t a single policy in the plan that calls for big box stores.”
Popular concepts put forth by the public during three city council hearings in the past year and a half, which included an apple museum, cooperative food hall, community gardens and a seasonal amphitheater, could still be pursued. However, Webster points out, nearly all of the land within the plan is privately owned, and it would be highly unlikely that a private landowner would allow community use without market-level compensation.
Looking to the future
Not all business owners in Sebastopol are opposed to potentially attracting out-of-town shoppers with a revitalized retail district. And given that much of the city’s recent retail tax revenues can reasonably be attributed to thriving Northeast area businesses, including medical cannabis dispensary, Peace in Medicine Healing Center, and neighboring Guayaki, distributors of organic Yerba Mate fair trade beverages and products, recognition of the need for some level of revitalization within the area would be hard to deny by even the most ardent of opposition.
“The more there is in Sebastopol to draw people here, the better for all of our businesses,” says George Rich of Patterson’s Emporium, a home accessory and furniture shop that opened its doors last year in a tastefully remodeled Gravenstein Highway strip-mall that once housed R.S. Basso’s furniture outlet.
Former Sebastopol Planning Commissioner and co-owner of Sebastopol Hardware Mark Sell was quoted in the Sonoma-West Times and News this past July as saying, “As a Sebastopol business owner, I’m concerned about the long-term economic viability of our city’s merchants.” Sell cited the shortfall of retail square footage in Sebastopol and the resulting boost in rental costs, which he worries could push up retail prices and increase rents in the proposed new housing above, thus preventing those who staff the businesses from living in the area.
“The Northeast Plan proponents have done no economic study on the impacts of our traditional downtown,” says Helen Shane, coordinator of the Sebastopol Urban Growth Boundary Initiative, the Sonoma County Rural Heritage Initiative and former city planning commissioner. But having called publicly for an Economic Impact Analysis, similar to the one the Petaluma City Council agreed to this October to study its proposed developments, opponents to the plan had, at press time, still failed to garner a City Council majority in favor of such a study. (The city of Sebastopol has conducted a fiscal analysis, which studies the plan’s impact on the development site, but has not conducted a wider economic analysis, which would study how redevelopment in the area would effect the greater community, including neighboring businesses and residents.)
“Fiscal and Economic Impact Analysis (FEIA) is clear in what developers are required to show in their project proposals,” explains Tiffany Renee, a candidate for Petaluma City Council and proponent of the successful FEIA on three major projects in Petaluma: Deer Creek Plaza, East Washington Place and the Basin Street/Bayer Properties riverfront project.
Sebastopol City officials have said it’s unlikely the plan will be approved before the end of this year, so the debate is destined to continue into 2009. And while there will be no fast or easy answer, there’s one positive beacon for the revitalization of Sebastopol’s Eastern entryway.
“The Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District has approved a grant for the purchase and improvement of the non-mobile home part of the Village Park property,” says Kenyon Webster. “Our city plans to convert the campground into a public park within the next three years or so.”
Sebastopol City Council approved the purchase in September 2007 and plans to restore a 9-acre area next to the Laguna de Santa Rosa that’s prone to flooding with a public park that includes pedestrian trails, picnic tables and native landscaping. When complete, it will be a striking new gateway to an evolving community.
