photo credit: Courtesy City of Petaluma
A rendering of the planned hotel at
2 Petaluma Boulevard South.

It was supposed to be a fairly straightforward discussion---should those behind a proposed new hotel in Petaluma be required to first create some kind of representation of the building's size....or not?

While the city council ultimately deadlocked, the discussion raised concerns that despite ambitious plans and rhetoric, Petaluma is more comfortable with it's historic past than embracing the future.

This week Petaluma elected officials spent close to two hours discussing if the city wanted to require story poles for a new project. Story poles are essentially wooden stakes set up to show a proposed structure's height and bulk. But the item and a substitute proposal died on the dais.

The discussion is focused on the proposed EKN Appellation. That's a 93-room, 69-foot high hotel developers want to build on a vacant lot in downtown Petaluma.

According to the city's webpage detailing the project, "the EKN Appellation project would include the development of a 6-story hotel building with guest rooms, event space, and food service uses, and a below-grade parking garage with valet parking for 58 vehicles using parking lifts. The ground floor would include the hotel lobby and a restaurant with interior and exterior seating for 150 guests. Floors 2-5 would include 93 hotel rooms and a fitness center for hotel guests. Floor 6 would include a 1,372-square-foot event space and an exterior bar/event space with seating for 56 guests. The proposed hotel development would exceed current Floor Area Ratio (FAR), building height, and lot coverage maximums."

Letters received by the council from locals generally opposed the hotel, citing it's height and modern style. Many say the hotel would be too much of a contrast to nearby buildings dating to the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Addressing the council, local resident Julie Allewell said the hotel would open the door to Manhattanizing Petaluma.

"If you go to Wall Street, there's no sun. It's gloomy. I'm just worried that we won't see sun anymore on B Street or C Street because of this massive building that's going up," Allewell said.

Christine White told councilmembers they seem determined to undermine the city's historic district.

"It's hard to take our historic downtown that has preservation of for four stories and all of a sudden you want to extend it to six, I question why," White asked.

At the same time, councilmember Brian Barnacle argued the hotel isn't out of scale,

"On Western Street the Mutual Relief Building is 63 feet tall, and the Hotel Petaluma building is 53 feet tall. The façade on the street for the EKN hotel proposal is 45 feet," Barnacle said.

Barnacle, a former planning commissioner, said that overall, the hotel would bring many benefits. He says the city itself needs the tax revenue it would generate, and downtown merchants need the additional potential customers.

"If we want to see a strong healthy local downtown economy, we need to be willing to talk about the trade offs, because, in the last 20 years, there's been exactly zero things built between Washington Street and between D Street in our downtown core. Zero things built. We adopted the downtown specific plan, and since that time there's been nothing that's been occupied in our downtown. We've managed to build the Target shopping center, the Deer Creek shopping center, all things that are ripping business out of our downtown. So, if we really care about our downtown we need to be trying to invest in it, and that's what we haven't been doing for the last 20 years. That's what bad land-use policy looks like," Barnacle added.

Petaluma mayor Kevin McDonnell ultimately said he would support having the story poles installed, If he felt they would lead to an open discussion and objective evaluation. But he said it's unlikely to make a difference as many locals formed opinions on the proposal months ago.

McDonnell noted a wide gulf between Petaluma's conceptual aspirations and when the rubber meets the road.

"To an extent, that is Petaluma's track record. We have so many good ideas. When we plan, we put together a real plan of what our future should look like. When we see a project, we nitpick it and find a way that it just never proceeds. Like you say, we do have a reputation as a town where you can't get anything done. Haystack-got approved but can't get (sic) forward because they committed too much. The Hines property at the railroad station--it would have been a great housing project right in the middle, at a train station, that didn't happen. So many things, we chase nonprofit developers out of town too, for various reasons," McDonnell said.

The public comment period for the project's environmental review documents has been extended to November 13, 2023. Find more information here. 

Plans for the hotel are scheduled to go before the planning commission later this month. A proposal involving a downtown historic overlay zoning district that could also impact the plan is set to go before the city council in December.