Planners question traffic at Target center

<p>The city’s first review of a draft report on the environmental impacts of a large shopping center proposal focused on how delivery trucks, buses and shoppers would get to the site.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>The Petaluma Planning Commission met Tuesday night to hold a public hearing on the draft EIR for Regency Centers’ East Washington Place project, a 378,000-square-foot Target-anchored shopping center with some office space, and commissioners said they would like to see changes in traffic plans there.</p><p>Specifically, some commissioners said delivery trucks coming to the East Washington Street site — formerly the Kenilworth Junior High School campus — should access the back of retail stores via Lindberg Lane at the south end, to avoid tying up traffic on a major thoroughfare in the city.</p><p>“I think it would be helpful to find out if that would improve the circulation for the project and for the city,” said Vice Mayor Teresa Barrett, who serves as the City Council’s liaison to the commission.</p><p>“I’m disappointed we’re going to see that truck traffic on Washington,” Commissioner Spence F. Burton said.</p><p>Other commissioners said a city bus stop should also be included on Kenilworth Drive, a north-south street that runs between the site and the Sonoma-Marin Fairgrounds and will be extended north to East Washington.</p><p>The parking lot of the project could be made more friendly for pedestrians, Commiss-ioner Jack Rittenhouse said, who also suggested separate bike lanes within the project.</p><p>And some members of the commission said they didn’t like the rerouting of Johnson Drive around the Petaluma Swim Center and skate park, saying it would put cars in conflict with users of the facilities.</p><p>“The way it’s set up now, you really strangle the pool area and the skate park with traffic,” Barrett said.</p><p>However, Bruce Qualls, vice president of Regency Centers, said the future alignment of Johnson Drive had been previously agreed to by the developer, the city and the adjacent fairgrounds.</p><p>Traffic congestion at intersections near the project site was identified as a significant impact in the draft EIR, although the city’s General Plan OK’d such impacts of future growth.</p><p>Even so, the final EIR will evaluate potential improvements to intersections along Lakeville Street to explain why those mitigations can’t be put in place, the document’s preparer said.</p><p>“The final EIR does need to include more information on why the mitigations aren’t feasible,” said Steve Noack of the firm Design, Community and Environment.</p><p>Although the project itself wasn’t under consideration by the commission, some members of the public said it would bring in shopping opportunities desired by Petalumans. Representatives of construction firms working with Regency said it would create local jobs.</p><p>A fiscal report on the project released earlier this year estimated that the city could receive $1.5 million annually in tax revenue, with 720 permanent jobs created at Target and other stores there.</p><p>However, critics of the proposal have said the benefits are overstated and the impact on local merchants is understated.</p><p>The commission agreed to request that it review the final EIR when it is complete. The final version will contain responses to comments by the commission and the public.</p><p>In the meantime, the City Council will conduct its own hearing on the draft report, scheduled for 7 p.m. on Sept. 14.</p><p>(Contact Corey Young at corey.young@arguscourier.com)</p>