Questions

The community needed to relocate the school, but did not have sufficient funds to pay for that public benefit. The school district and the City Council asked Regency to buy the land in order to pay for the brand-new, state-of-the-art LEED®-certified school facility on Riesling. Regency stepped up and paid for the land in a good faith effort to accomplish the community goal for a new school while meeting the City’s goal of redevelopment of the existing site.

The City shared the school district's desire for a new Kenilworth Junior High School. City leaders indicated they would work to facilitate the development of a shopping center as well as provide for a mixture of other uses on the site.

Additionally, the City had identified more than $100-200 million in annual retail sales leaving Petaluma going to neighboring retail opportunities in Novato, Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa. The City's own Retail Leakage & Sustainable Retail Strategy Study, June 2004, analyzed the entire city and identified this location as the best possible site to provide this shopping center for the convenience of the public. This convenient center-of-town location, with Highway 101 close by, has the least traffic impacts of any other possible location in the community. This shopping opportunity would address the retail leakage, in addition to the convenience and parking concerns as expressed by Petalumans, in the City's study.

With project provided road improvements the traffic Level of Service on East Washington will be at the same rating before the project as after the project. In addition, this does not reflect the fact that the relocation of the school took more than 500 daily trips OUT of that intersection from parents dropping kids off.

• Provide a new, wider East Washington Street with improved street trees at the gateway to the community along the project frontage and in front of the swim center.
• Improve the otherwise-confusing vehicle circulation and parking layout around the swim center and skate park.
• Provide new and dramatically improved Kenilworth Drive with a sidewalk on one side, new curb, gutter, and importantly, bike lanes on both sides of the new street.
• Provide a new eastbound bicycle lane along the project’s East Washington Street frontage, consistent with the City’s Bicycle Plan.
• Provide a second left turn lane on the East Washington Street approach to the westbound Johnson Drive/Ellis Street intersection.
• Caltrans will be taking land from the project to provide for an improved Highway 101 southbound on-ramp at East Washington Street. Caltrans is working with the city to improve the Highway 101/East Washington Street interchange to significantly improve traffic flow.
• Provide continuous sidewalks on all sides of the City swim center and skate park.

The project will incorporate green building techniques such as using recycled materials, water conservation methods, reduced energy consumption through efficient systems, storm water cleaned in vegetative bioswales, retained rain water for reuse in landscaping, drought-tolerant native landscaping, more daylighting inside buildings, low-VOC adhesives and paints where appropriate and lower carbon emitting mixtures in building materials. We are also investigating ways to incorporate the power of the sun with solar panels.

The project incorporates many green principles and benefits, including…

• Pedestrian- and bike-friendly access and facilities
• Lower carbon-footprint materials
• Low VOC paints and adhesives
• Native landscaping/water efficiency, with vegetative bioswales
• Solar energy
• High-quality interior air
• Energy-efficient buildings
• Low-flow toilets and other water conservation methods
• Recycling