Ready to Grow, but S-l-o-w-l-y

A generation ago, this quiet Sonoma County community became a poster town for a national slow-growth movement. Now it stands at a crossroads, needing housing and money but determined to get both without losing its historic character.

The city of 55,000, with its Victorian houses and century-old iron-front buildings about 35 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, has a strict growth boundary around its 13.3 square miles. Voters here overwhelmingly approved the curbs when the City Council put them on the ballot in 1998.

Residents were worried that their mostly undeveloped valley, where cattle graze and grapes grow, would be swallowed by an expanding city, subdivided and built upon. “The problem was the filling up of the Petaluma Valley with single-family homes,” said Mayor Clark Thompson.

Now Petaluma finds itself short of cash and striving to fill housing needs created in part by high-tech firms that have spilled over from Silicon Valley. But the boundary leaves little room for more homes or business development.

Concerns about growth date to at least 1972. That year, the city enacted the Petaluma Plan, limiting new housing to 500 units annually, after a population surge forced schools into double sessions and put pressure on other city services.

Challenged by the construction industry and others, the controversial policy, which thrust Petaluma into the national spotlight, reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court refused to hear arguments against a lower court ruling that upheld the plan, which is still in effect.

Petaluma is a city that seems to dress as a hamlet. “We are still a town of 500, with 60,000 people in it,” said City Manager Fred Stouder.

The city needs money to fix pocked, worn streets, to breathe life into aging facilities and to improve parks, said Mike Moore, community development director. And because Petaluma straddles Highway 101, a long-running debate over funds for a cross-town connector continues.

But a city report projects virtually no growth in sales tax revenue over the next five years. Things are so dire that 10 city jobs are to remain vacant during the fiscal year that began July 1.

To bring in revenue, the City Council has approved a plan to combine new housing with commercial development on large open blocks and fields downtown, near railroad tracks and the Petaluma River, actually a tidal slough. The mixed-use elements will share buildings of two or three stories, but other details of the plan have not been worked out.

As they bow to economic needs, city leaders--while split on some growth issues--are trying not to sacrifice Petaluma’s celebrated charm.

The town’s ‘50s-style main drag was used for cruising scenes in George Lucas’ 1973 classic, “American Graffiti.” Another movie paean to decades past, “Peggy Sue Got Married,” was shot here in 1986. More recently, “The Horse Whisperer” was filmed here.

But Petaluma’s charm and serenity were shattered in 1993 by the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Though scarred by that event, residents today are focusing on other problems, especially the city’s financial dilemma.

While some cities opt for quick, flashy fixes to bring in tax dollars, Petaluma remains an anomaly. There is the requisite Starbucks coffeehouse, but little else downtown fitting the familiar franchise formula.

Most downtown buildings are only one or two stories. Antique shops are ubiquitous. The World Wristwrestling Championships still call Petaluma home after 40 years. And every April, the town stages an annual butter and eggs parade, a reminder of its days as “the World’s Egg Basket.”

“Petaluma’s always had a strong sense of its own identity,” says John Sheehy, former publisher of the magazine the Utne Reader and a Petaluma native.

Councilwoman Janice Cader-Thompson, another Petaluma native and perhaps the council’s strongest proponent of limited growth, said it’s the town’s “old guard”--along with real estate developers--who want to sell their land for “large profits.” Recent arrivals want the city to retain the character for which they came.

The influx of high-tech firms and their high-paying jobs in recent years have contributed to rising housing costs. City figures show the average price of a three-bedroom home on Petaluma’s older west side has risen from $275,000 in 1991 to about $400,000 now.

Typical rent for a one-bedroom apartment climbed from $750 in 1996 to $1,050 last year. Apartment vacancies have dwindled. Fewer than 1% of apartments in complexes of 30 or more units were empty during a survey made last December.

“The . . . rule of thumb [is] that a healthy vacancy rate is 5%,” said Bonne Gaebler, Petaluma’s housing administrator.

“We have a couple of complexes where there are two or three people sleeping on the floor, and they take turns sleeping,” Gaebler said. “Even if they could find an apartment . . . it would probably be too expensive for them.”

Petaluma, like many California towns, also has a homeless problem. Families needing shelter generally outnumber the 47 available beds by about 2 to 1, said John Records, a former corporate lawyer who runs a nonprofit agency for the homeless.

Civic leaders frequently unite on local issues, even on matters that can open deep rifts in other communities. Bill White, a real estate developer who has financed many Petaluma projects, and former Councilman David Keller, an architect of the 1998 growth boundary, agree on the need to develop vacant downtown land.

Another area being looked at for redevelopment is within the flood plain, prone to annual washouts and the site of an Army Corps of Engineers project to remedy the problem. Mayor Thompson said an existing outlet mall wants to expand there.

But Keller is wary of such a scenario. “Flood plains flood at some point,” he said, calling development plans there “bad public policy.”

There’s no agreement in sight on some other revenue-raising concepts, either, such as whether to allow a big-box retailer--a Costco or Wal-Mart--in as the anchor of a major complex. Petaluma shoppers still depends primarily upon 1970s-style strip malls.

“I don’t know if we need a big mall,” said Onita Pellegrini, a Petaluma native who runs the Chamber of Commerce.

There were about 50 local growth-control measures on ballots in California last November. Proponents contend that sprawl erodes farmlands and forests, strains public services and is just plain ugly. Opponents reply that market forces should be left alone and that limitations only drive up housing costs.

Michael Pawlukiewicz, director of environment and policy education at the nonprofit Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., says that narrowly defined growth boundaries generally don’t work. To be successful, such curbs must be at least regional in scope, he said.

“Boulder [Colo.] is a great example,” Pawlukiewicz said. “The city itself has this nice little greenbelt around it. You can drive between Boulder and Denver and see all these sprawling subdivisions.”

Sonoma County Supervisor Mike Kerns, whose district includes Petaluma, acknowledges the need for broader thinking.

“Cities sometimes do things without considering the wider impact,” he said. “I think everybody here in Sonoma County needs to do a better job of looking at things in a regional perspective.”