At its special meeting on February 8, 2010, the Petaluma City Council approved the vesting tentative map and related documents for a shopping center near East Washington and 101 proposed by Regency to include Target as its anchor tenant. Another long meeting with many hours of public comment was well-managed by Mayor Torliatt, leading to a decision that Regency itself had delayed due to its ill-timed lawsuit filed against the city in January. Next steps include determining whether Regency will be able to negotiate a binding lease commitment with Friedman’s as well as various project design review decisions by the Petaluma Planning Commission. Also needed is dismissal of the Regency lawsuit which should include payment to the city of its legal fees and staff costs incurred defending its legitimate interests to properly process project plans which now include legally binding assurances for multi-million dollar payments of impact fees and important local sourcing provisions.
D
Adding Friedman’s to the mix will require doing much of the planning process over due to the complexity of it. Still Friedman’s will be a welcome addition to Petaluma. On the other hand, Regency doesn’t have anything more than a letter of intent from Target either. The few new Target stores that are being built are Super Targets with sales tax exempt groceries being a prime component. That’s something that we certainly do not need.
February 9th, 2010 10:11 am
michael
I can think of no other description of what just happened w/ the approval of the Target Center. My normally apolitical Wife, upon reading of this loudly proclaimed “Well…Madam Mayor Pamela Torliatt and Mr.s Glass, Harris, Healy and Rabbitt…we will remember who voted for this!”
I will look cynically at the situation and consider this simply another example of the prostitution of our Corporate City Council to unelected deep-pockets Commercial Corporate greed. There’s nothing in this for the Common Man but minimum wage jobs and traffic congestion to the point of strangulation. The City gets a small financial windfall while the Big Money goes to Corporate Boardrooms. But the problems causing the dire financial situation won’t go away and soon we need another fix of supposed Retail Sales Tax Windfall funds.
I focus the my point on success or failure in the “Serve the People” or Local Quality of Life”arenas of our lives. In almost every instance I can personally remember I’ve witnessed the City Council cave to, succumb to, ignore or approve any number of situations that led directly to the lessening of an everyday Civic Quality of Life. Just try to drive downtown since it was “up-graded.”
No. I will make it a personal thing and myself remember these people. Remember and remind my friends, how they ill-served me and my community by being so short-sighted and morally (in a civic-arena sense) empty as to not see or take responsibility for the long-range damage they do to the Civic Quality of Life for a little immediate, temporary financial gain.
Where does this end?
February 9th, 2010 1:58 pm
Grumpy Petaluman
Insofar as Regency got tired from hearing from Petalumans, the civil action appears to me to be a likely SLAPP suit. The mere fact that the CC took time to consider conditions that may or may not have been legal does not seem a credible substantive due process violation, and Regency’s counsel knows full well that they had to allege a due process violation because their underlying CEQA claim (for failing to process within one year) has just been rejected by the Court of Appeal in the Sebastopol case.
February 10th, 2010 10:53 am