Target developer suing Petaluma

<p>The developers of a stalled shopping center along Highway 101 in Petaluma are fighting back in court, accusing the city of subjecting their project to needless delays, in excess of five years.</p><p>Regency Centers, the developer of a proposed Target shopping center off East Washington Street, filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Sonoma County court, claiming Petaluma officials have subjected the project to "an endless barrage of arbitrary, lengthy and wholly unjustified delays."</p><p>The corporation said the city has "unlawfully forced" it to repeatedly incur the high costs of environmental review in response to the city's ever-changing visions for the project.</p><p>The lawsuit follows a nearly six-hour meeting last week that stretched past midnight, in which the City Council voted 4-3 to postpone certifying the environmental studies that would have enabled the project to go forward.</p><p>Vice-mayor David Glass on Thursday disputed the developer's assertions that the city is dragging its feet. He said it was the first meeting the City Council has held to consider the environmental study.</p><p>"There's no attempt to stonewall or delay," he said of the council's action. "It's an attempt to make the best possible decision for the people of Petaluma."</p><p>He described it as a big project, with a lot of information and issues that need to be vetted. And he said he believes it can still go forward despite the lawsuit.</p><p>"I do think there will be a project," he said. "The question is, how will it impact the people of Petaluma? What do you get in terms of mitigations?"</p><p>The Regency Centers proposal is for a 364,000-square-foot retail center, including a Target store and Friedman's home improvement store. It would be located on 33 acres off East Washington Street, at the old Kenilworth Junior High School site and include smaller food and retail shops and office space.</p><p>Regency Centers, a company that has developed more than 400 shopping centers around the country since the 1960s, said the city urged it to buy the site in 2004.</p><p>The company paid $22 million for the property and incurred more than $1.5 million in preparing multiple environmental impact reports, according to the lawsuit.</p><p>Initially, the project included 227 townhouses, but it was subject to a variety of delays including uncertainty over water supplies and a revision of the city's general plan.</p><p>The developers said it took the city two years to issue a draft environmental impact report, which was released in December 2007. But it ended up being substantially amended because the city decided to drop the residential component, according to the lawsuit.</p><p>That led to the city scrapping key components of the draft environmental document, according to developers, which they claimed was particularly unreasonable, because the original document had analyzed a project alternative without residential uses.</p><p>Regency Centers said the revised document was deemed complete in early 2008, but the city failed to meet the legal deadline for certifying it.</p><p>The developers said they urged the city to move ahead because the delays were costing $50,000 per week in carrying costs.</p><p>In July, a divided City Council dissolved the Planning Commission and voted to combine a new commission with an architectural review committee. That not only caused further delays in reviewing environmental studies, but two new planning commissioners were avowed opponents of the project, according to the lawsuit.</p><p>Neither the city attorney, city manager, nor Mayor Pam Torliatt returned calls late Thursday afternoon.</p><p>Vice-mayor Glass said he had not seen the lawsuit but said there were legitimate reasons the project has been delayed, including "for the first couple years, Regency was trying to figure out what to do with the project themselves."</p><p>He said there were other factors, including the possibility a baseball stadium would be built next door and alter the configuration of the project.</p><p>Glass said he could not approve the voluminous environmental study last week because more time was needed to consider and justify some of the unavoidable impacts, as well as ensure certain requirements are met, like giving local residents priority for new jobs it will create.</p><p>"We're processing it to the best of our capabilities, to get it up and look at it and make a decision," Glass said.</p><p>And he denied the allegation by Regency Centers that he, along with three other council members who voted to send the document back for further review, had violated the open meeting laws by agreeing to do so prior to the meeting.</p><p>"I've never violated the Brown Act on this, or anything else in relation to Petaluma City Hall," he said.You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark mason@pressdemocrat.com.</p>