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By KEVIN McCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Santa Rosa City Hall will study an alternative design for the ambitious Museum on the Square project that would change the way drivers reach parking areas and potentially improve the economic viability of the downtown redevelopment project.
The proposed "Museum on the Square."
Developer Hugh Futrell, who is leading an effort to transform the city-owned former AT&T building into a 10-story mixed-use tower, wants to shift the planned parking access from Third Street on the north side of the building to Second Street on the south side.
There’s just one problem — that stretch of Second Street is home to the city’s transit mall, where buses are welcome but cars are not.
Futrell, whose $23 million project is seen by many as potentially providing an economic boost to the downtown, wants the city to lift the prohibition on private vehicle access and allow future residents of Museum on the Square to reach the building parking through the transit mall.
But transit officials are balking, arguing that it raises a host of operational and safety issues, particularly the need to keep buses on schedule.
“Our big thing is we want to make sure we remove obstacles to our buses running on time,” said Jason Parrish, administrative services officer for the city transit department.
Adding private vehicles to an area heavily used by pedestrians and four bus services could create conflicts that have not been fully examined, Parrish said.
The current development agreement between Futrell and the city calls for drivers to enter the building on Third Street through a two-lane driveway that tunnels through the first floor to reach a small surface parking lot on the south side of the building. From there, residents would take be able to access the basement parking, Futrell said.
The agreement also says that the design may be changed if the council agrees to allow residential access from Second Street. That would be preferable to Futrell for several reasons.
One is that it would be a more attractive pedestrian environment if there is not a driveway going into the front of the building, he said.
Another is that avoiding the 20-foot-wide tunnel would increase the amount of usable square footage on the first floor by about 22 percent. That would allow the proposed restaurant to be 28 percent larger and the Sonoma County Art Museum space to be 19 percent larger.
Increasing the usable space improves the economic viability of the project and thus its chances of success, Futrell said.
“Taking that economic space out of the building has an impact of probably right in vicinity of $400,000 on us,” Futrell said.
But he said the most important thing is to get the issue resolved. The design needs to be completed because the next phase involves expensive construction drawings and meetings with lenders, Futrell said.
Futrell paid for a traffic study that concluded access through the transit mall could be done safely under certain restrictions. But given transit officials’ concerns, Futrell formally asked the city last month to hire an independent traffic engineer to resolve the issue.
The city council last week authorized City Manager Kathy Millison to hire a firm to do the study and report to the council in November.
The council is likely to be motivated to resolve the issue. The city redevelopment agency purchased the vacant concrete building on the southwest corner of Old Courthouse Square for $3 million 2007.
Futrell’s group is proposing to transform the five-story concrete eyesore into a 10-story glass-clad tower housing a museum and restaurant on the first floor, four stories of commercial space and five new floors of apartments.
Two local companies, TLCD Architecture — a partner in the project — and software firm Metier Ltd., have agreed to be tenants in the building, which has been touted by council members as the kind of live-work, pedestrian friendly development the city needs.
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Visualizing downtown as a vibrant and vital urban and pedestrian core, which it will hopefully someday be, suggests that the current transit mall would occupy real estate too valuable for a bus terminal. Further, for those passengers not busing specifically to downtown but instead around it, it seems unfortunate to rout them (and the collateral traffic) through downtown when a suitable and sensible and freeway-proximate location exists nearby and closer to the future train hub.
Either way, you’ll have to have a shuttle between the RR station and downtown. I think it makes sense to leave the Transit Mall where it is – more people come to downtown via buses than will come via the train, I would think…
The merchants of Railroad Square would benefit from all the increased pedestrian traffic in their area, especially when the train starts running.
And do they have such a powerful coalition that they can shape city planning decisions that shape the entire downtown?
Rail Road Square merchants would never allow the transit mall to locate near their district.
The transit mall should be relocated closer to the future Smart Train and under the elevated 101 – better for commuters on public transit, better for bus routing, better for downtown, better for the AT&T redevelopment.
Seems Mr. Futrell is the only citizen with access to the planning process of this project. I suspect many legal requirements for parking, access and safety take a back seat to his proposals. Different strokes for different folks!
The City of Santa Rosa is spending public funds for a study for a private for profit developer’s project? The city was advised of access problems at this site when its REDEVELOPMENT was first considered. An alternative, without this access problem, was suggested to the city council.
\Unfortunately, the Transit Mall is at capacity…\-City of Santa Rosa replied, when asked why aren’t other buses [eg Amtrak,Airporter] allowed to use the mall.
Not all buses that should be allowed to use the mall are allowed because it is over capacity. Even buses that are allowed, stack up on streets while waiting to enter the mall.
Allowing private vehicles to maneuver around and between buses to cross pedestrian paths is likely to get people injured or killed. There will be conflicts with baby strollers, wheel chairs, pedestrians, moving buses, loading / unloading buses, other transit and public safety vehicles. The private vehicles will turn across bus boarding area / transit mall pedestrian paths. These turning movements will have severely restricted sight distance. Imagine driving between two parked buses to cross a sidewalk.
This is a high profile, highly political, complex, expensive, elitist pet project of the council. It seems the city [excerpt for Jacobi who voted no and Vas Dupre who was absent] wants this study to justify permitting private vehicles in the mall. It is pain to see that allowing private vehicles is a bad idea. The problem is so acute that deed restrictions prohibit private passenger cars access to this site. A study is not needed. It seems they would claim to believe their study rather than their own eyes. People who use the buses have inferior life styles any way, according to some.
These studies are not rigorous, any problems can be marginalized. Consultants are inclined to please their markets. The study ought be made by an out of area consultant unlikely to seek other work here. What questions will the consultant be asked to answer? Will the risks of adding private vehicles to the mall be fully exposed? Or will mitigations [eg put up caution signs] be addressed? It already appears to may citizens that this council will do just about anything to get its pet projects done. Even throw granny and her grand kids under the bus.
Allowing private vehicles into the transit mall will cause serious risks of injury, in my professional opinion.
Richard M Canini Civil Engineer
Come on Futrell. It’s it time that you stopped trying to maximize the money you make off of Santa Rosa?
How about just taking the hit on the $400,000, leave the Transit Mall alone and complete the project as you agreed to.
BTW folks, the rendering used to illustrate this story is just that, an illustration. If you read the original story, Futrell made if very clear that this was simply a rendering and NOT a design for the project.
I think the time has come to update, IN PUBLIC, how the design of this project is appearing.
The article should have said how many cars and parking spaces there will be. If the five future proposed floors of apartments were instead offices or not built, wouldn’t there be less need for parking spaces? To study the impacts of changing the access to second street, which might interfere with the buses, we need to look at the number of cars. Of course the developer wants the most usage of the ground floor frontage as possible but adding a lot of cars to the already crowded transit station sounds like a bad idea. It’s a difficult market for building right now but we shouldn’t do anything which we will regret later.