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The site plan for Deer Creek Village.
By LORI A. CARTER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Lowe’s has dropped out of a proposed Petaluma development that could have given the city its only home improvement warehouse store and perhaps captured millions of dollars in revenue spent in other cities, developers announced Tuesday.
The move disappointed supporters of the project but was hailed as a stroke of luck by opponents.
It also reopens the door for a locally favored Friedman’s Home Improvement store to return to Petaluma, which until November 2010 had plans to open at the East Washington Place shopping center.
Tuesday’s announcement came a day after Lowe’s said it will close 20 underperforming stores nationwide and open fewer than half of the 30 new stores it had planned in the next year. The Cotati Lowe’s is not affected.
But Lowe’s spokeswoman Stacey Lentz said the decision to drop the Petaluma store was unrelated to the national contraction — that it was the slow pace of Petaluma’s planning approval process that caused the company to abandon the plans.
“The contractual agreements to have all the approvals needed for the project were not obtained before the agreed deadline,” she said. That deadline was Oct. 15.
“Essentially the clock ran out on a project that could have broken ground in 2010,” said Marko Mlikotin, a spokesman for the developer, Merlone Geier Partners of San Francisco.
Lowe’s was to be the centerpiece of Deer Creek Village, 346,000 square feet of retail and office space, a health club, garden center and restaurant on 36.5 acres of vacant land at the southwest corner of Rainier Avenue and North McDowell Boulevard.
Lowe’s had been in the plans for a shopping center at the site since 2004, before Merlone Geier bought the property.
A draft version of the final environmental impact report for Deer Creek Village is being examined by city planning staff. The final EIR may go before the city’s Planning Commission next month and later to the City Council.
Merlone Geier plans to move forward with the shopping center and already has begun discussions with other home improvement stores as possible replacements for Lowe’s, Mlikotin said. He declined to be more specific.
“It looks to me like this is Friedman’s big chance to have Petaluma to itself,” said Councilman Mike Healy, long a Deer Creek Village supporter. “I hope Merlone Geier is knocking on their door.”
Friedman’s chief operating officer, David Proctor, didn’t return a call Tuesday seeking comment on his company’s plans.
David Keller, a vocal opponent of the project, urged city leaders to seize on Lowe’s pullout as an occasion to recast the project.
“This is a perfect time to go back to the drawing table and see what works for our community,” he said. “What’s going to work in that neighborhood? I hope Merlone Geier and the Planning Commission and the City Council will be willing to get off the fast train and look at what will work there in the long run.”
He expressed concerns that outside chains brought in wouldn’t care about the community if they failed.
Of the 20 stores Lowe’s announced Monday it would close, 18 of them have been built since 2006 and 10 since 2007. Only one was in California, in the central valley town of Los Banos.
Greg Geertsen, a Merlone Geier managing partner, said the Deer Creek development application was deemed complete by the city more than two years ago. Typically, entitlements must be granted within a year.
“Lowe’s supporters will no doubt be saddened to hear of this news, since Petaluma has a need for a major home improvement store,” he said in a written statement. “Despite this development, our firm remains committed to building the Deer Creek Village shopping center that promises to bring hundreds of new jobs and new tax revenue for city services.”
According to a 2009 city economic analysis, Deer Creek would create 510 retail, office and service jobs and 331 temporary construction jobs. The city would receive $681,000 in annual sales tax revenue and $311,000 in annual property tax revenue, in addition to several million dollars in development fees.
An economic report prepared last year by the city counted $28.6 million in “sales leakage” on building materials and home furnishing spent by Petaluma residents in neighboring cities. Lowe’s had said it could generate about $40 million in annual sales at the Petaluma store. Other tenants, including two restaurants and smaller stores, are expected to do another $40 million in sales, developers said.
The Deer Creek proposal has been undergoing formal city planning scrutiny for more than two years and the EIR has been delayed three times with city requirements for additional studies. Beyond the standard EIR, the city requested separate reviews of air quality, traffic and economic impacts the project may have on other businesses in Petaluma.
Councilwoman Tiffany Renee called Lowe’s exodus an “opportunity” to see Friedman’s return to its birthplace. The company, which has warehouse home improvement stores in Sonoma, Santa Rosa and Ukiah, was founded in Petaluma six decades ago but left town in the 1970s.
“I am very concerned that we could end up with a big-box store that we don’t want,” Renee said.
She and other councilmembers worried that if Lowe’s failed, a Walmart or a Super Target grocery store could move in. But city planners said any use other than what was studied in the EIR would need separate approval.
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Steveguy – Dutra’s proposed asphalt plant would have 6, count’em, 6 employees. There already is too much asphalt production capacity in Sonoma County. So what jobs are you yammering about?
Yes this is an opportunity to bring Friedman’s back to Petaluma. So what’s wrong with that? Talk about a company that would bring REAL jobs with REAL wages and REAL benefits to Petaluma.
Neither Merlone-Geier nor its predecessor Downey Savings and Loan (Rest in Pieces) had any binding agreement with Lowes. The rumour has long been that Lowes was a red herring anyway. Merlone-Geier’s legal representative also represented WalMart in its failed quest to build in West Santa Rosa. Do I need to spell out the real anchor tenant here for you?
By the way, are any of you concerned that the elevation of this property is about the same as the Outlet Mall? You know, the wasteland that has been flooded maybe three times since it was built and can’t keep tenants.
Gimmme a thumbs down if the truth hurts.
It can get worse, they may choose`to close their`store in Cotati.
When I read these complaints about regulation and other difficulties that new businesses experiance in trying to operate in Petaluma, I’m alarmed that a ‘business at all costs’ mentality continues to infect our public discourse.
It is exactly this rampant disregard for the long term values of stable communities that has gravely damaged our cities and natural environment already and continues to threaten our future.
Lowes is not welcome here. They’ve failed to convey a proper regard for the welfare of Petaluma. Their profits are taken away from this area and lost to our local resources. They’re out of scale retailing practices destroy local businesses.
I laugh at those who tell us that Carl’s Jr. is going to Texas, where doing business is so much easier. Thank God they’re leaving! How many obesity creating rat burgers do we need. There is already one of their nutritional travesties on nearly every street corner. How much of this corporate crap are we expected to swallow? It’s already way too much.
Let’s look to the future and create communities we can be proud of. When we look back in twenty or thirty years let’s not see a poisoned wilderness of big box stores and fast food garage.
To me the most ironic thing is that an asphalt plant in the worst pot-holed city in the county and maybe the whole state can be held up indefinately in court. Yet when it is a government proposal, it is full steam and full wasted money ahead.
We are truly doomed at this rate. Sorry to say.
Meanwhile, an asphalt plant and a quarry that will provide real jobs are tied up in court by some technicality.
The BOS voted for them. yet they are sued to a standstill, costing the taxpayer and the companies millions. Go figure, especially since SMART needs gravel and asphalt, and local is ‘greener’.
It’s all a mess, an unsustainable mess.
Occupy every inept government institution !!!!!!!!
On behalf on Lowes in Cotati and Home Depot in Rohnert Park, thank you Petaluma. Keep those sales-tax dollars flowing our way.
I find it ironic that Councilwoman Tiffany Renee called Lowe’s exodus an “opportunity” to see Friedman’s return to its birthplace, and was concerned that Lowes could close that store in the future. Didn’t Friedman’s do just that, some 30 years ago? Friedmans’s didn’t exactly break the door down, wanting to come back, taking over six decades later to come back.
Of course there were actual people opposing this project. What project in California isn’t opposed by some people?
If that’s the criterion by which one brings business to a standstill, then one shouldn’t wonder where the jobs went.
Another business run out of town by Petaluma. This started long before Deercreek. Lowes would already be in Petaluma not Cotati if Petaluma was not so business backwards. Costco as well. Petaluma repeatedly delays and obstructs businesses then cannot figure out where the tax base went. Meanwhile the Economic Development Director is missing in action, busy filling office space. Great leadership in action.
When your priorities are paining bike symbols all over the streets, in traffic lanes, with no dedicated lanes, and for no apparent reason, this is what you end up with.
Sorry, I thought that there were actual PEOPLE opposing this project. As in voters who evidently do not agree with the posters here.
It seems you folks here can’t acknowledge that others disagree with you. Sounds like a nursery school playground.
This was a corporate decision made far away. Maybe they see things about the economy in the future that they don’t like? All that tax revenue wouldn’t exist if the business fails – especially if it was built and took down a lot of local businesses with it.
Would you prefer an empty shell of a building?
The big winner here is Orchard Supply. Those Petaluma folk have deep enough pockets, they can afford an extra $10.00 for a shovel. A lot of old egg money in that town.
Greg,
Thanks for the heads up on the two trespassing individuals as in Mayor Glass and former politician Ms. Cader-Thompson.
Of course, the police never issued any enforcement citation against them despite that trespass, did they? Of course not.
The government only wants our money. Otherwise, they could care less about the public.
Gallup poll: Government More to Blame Than Wall Street For Woes
October 18, 2011
——-
The public is not fooled. Everyone knows who is at fault for destroying our country and our communities.
May 23, 2011: Petaluma hires Ingred Alverde as economic development director, with a salary/benefit package of $100,000+.
May 27, 2011: Janice Cader-Thompson, a former Petaluma city council member. trespasses onto the proposed Lowe’s site. Ms. Cader-Thompson stands in front of a tractor that is attempting to mow the field. Shortly after, she is joined by Mayor Glass, who stands “in front of, or adjacent to” the tractor.
Let me think: If you were a business looking for a city that actually wanted you to succeed, what would you do?
Congratulations Petaluma, you just chased away millions in tax revenue. You complain about “climate change”and then force people to drive to Cotati, Rohnert Park or Santa Rosa to get their bulding supplies. The inmates are running the asylum!
California, at both the state and local level, is succeeding at regulating the state’s economy.
It is destroying it, through regulation. And we, as the voters, continue to stupidly return the offenders to office time after time.
As a native Californian beyond age 50 it deeply saddens me just how backward and oppressive the state has become.
From Oct 15, 2011 Wall Street Journal…
CA business environment:
- California has ranked dead last in Chief Executive magazine’s poll about states’ business environments.
- From 1994 through 2008, the latest year for which data are available in the National Establishment Time Series database (a joint project of Walls & Associates and Dun and Bradstreet), California ranked 47th among the states in net jobs created through business relocation, losing 124,000 more jobs to other places than it gained from other places.
- it generated just 285,000 more jobs from new businesses than it lost to business failures, placing 29th in the country, close to none of those 285,000 net jobs were created between 2000 and 2008, meaning that start-ups haven’t contributed to California employment for more than a decade.
- CKE, which runs Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., has stopped opening restaurants in California, where the regulatory process can take up to two years. But it plans to open 300 in Texas, where the start-up time can be six weeks and opening costs $200,000 less than in California.
- A 2009 study by two California State University finance professors estimated that regulation cost the state’s businesses $493 billion annually, or nearly $135,000 per company.
- Earlier this year Bing Energy, a fuel-cell maker, announced that it would relocate from Chico in San Bernardino County to Tallahassee, Fla., where it expected to hire nearly 250 workers. Solar Millennium, an energy company, canceled plans to build a facility in Ridgecrest, Calif.—an undertaking that would have created 700 temporary jobs and 75 permanent ones—after lengthy delays caused by state environmental reviews, including one on the project’s impact on the Mojave ground squirrel. AQT Solar, an energy-cell maker based in Sunnyvale, will employ 1,000 people at a new 184,000-square-foot manufacturing plant—in South Carolina. Then there’s Biocentric Energy Holdings, a Santa Ana energy company that moved to Salt Lake City; and Calisolar, a Santa Clara–based green-energy company building a factory in Ontario, Canada, that will employ 350 workers.
- California taxes are high and hit employers and employees hard. While the highest individual income-tax bracket, 10.3%, applies to million-dollar earners, the second-highest, 9.3%, kicks in at $47,000. Even in high-tax New Jersey, the top bracket of 8.97% doesn’t kick in until filers hit $500,000 in income. California also has a high corporate tax rate of 8.84%.
Not even “GREEN” jobs are being created in this disaster that we call California. Add in the fact the state is bankrupt and what a wondrous Utopia the left has created.
And this comes as a surprise to anyone, c’mon be real. Petaluma is just another liberal controlled community that seeks nothing more than to destroy businesses all in the name of how much the business can feed into the liberal programs sucking America dry.
Back in the days, Petaluma was a good ol country boy community where we looked after what was right, today; Petaluma has become a cesspool of liberals that have their own agenda that isn’t in the best of normal people.
Today, one must kowtow to the liberal mindset in order to get anything passed or accomplished or one must pay off some liberal political action committee claiming to be for the environment or some or sick social agenda.
Keep it up elected officials, you’re on a roll, you will eventually get your liberal dream, another Oakland, Richmond, Pittsburg, or any other crime ridden cities that liberals love to nurture.
Is it not clear where the jobs have gone? Your government is killing them.