A lament for a scrapped plan
EDITOR: With the controversy arising over another proposed hotel in The Barlow, it might be helpful for your readers to remember a bit of the recent history of development in that area.
In 2003 the Sebastopol City Council recognized that the old apple processing district in the northeast area of the city would eventually come under pressure to develop. The General Plan at the time allowed for what we now see there — a tourist oriented, low density zone that few of us local residents visit for more than a loaf of Village Bakery’s great bread or a cup of coffee at Taylor Maid.
We wanted to guide development in a different direction, one that would be a higher density, pedestrian and transit oriented mix of residential and retail, similar to Windsor’s new downtown or Petaluma’s Theater District.
The Northeast Area Plan for the area now mostly occupied by The Barlow called for 300 units of new housing, 20 percent of which would be affordable to low income families. The housing would have been in the second and third stories of buildings occupied by retail and commercial businesses on the ground floor. All new construction, including streets and sidewalks, would have been on a platform raised above the 100 year flood level, with parking below.
It would have provided Sebastopol an extension of our downtown with a public plaza not surrounded by a state highway. McKinley Street would have been a pedestrian lane on weekends and in the evenings. In exchange for allowing a fourth story on certain buildings, we would have been able to negotiate a designated space for a new public library. All new construction would have been required to have either living roof systems or solar roofs.
The plan was developed over a four year period with participation by several hundred residents and supported by both environmentalists and the business community. In 2008 a group of people who were opposed to any new residential development organized a campaign to stop its formal adoption. Their argument was that it was “too big,” that it would create unbearable traffic jams and that it would destroy Sebastopol’s small town character. Some even argued that since new residents would probably be driving cars the plan would contradict our commitment to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
This group succeeded in electing a council majority which rejected the plan in March of 2008. That majority, Sarah Gurney, Guy Wilson and Linda Kelley essentially voted for The Barlow as the preferred alternative to more housing. Sebastopol will have to live with the consequences of this decision for many years to come.
Larry Robinson
Sebastopol
