How 5 local women stopped Safeway from building a gas station in their neighborhood

On a brisk morning last month, about 100 volunteers showed up, shovels ready, at McDowell Park, a small east side park across from Washington Square Shopping Center. The park has a baseball field, a playground for small children, a picnic area with a grill and a grassy field where children’s soccer teams practice and dog walkers socialize. An elementary school, a preschool, and a childcare center are next to the park, with two large apartment complexes across the street.

The park has few frills but offers a precious outdoor space enjoyed by many people in the neighborhood.

The volunteers were there to plant 80 trees in the park and on the grounds of McDowell Elementary School. The event was organized by ReLeaf Petaluma, a nonprofit organization with a mission to plant 10,000 native trees ‒ such as coast live oak, valley oak and California cottonwood ‒ in neighborhoods throughout the city. The trees will beautify the neighborhoods and, perhaps more crucially, provide cool shade, promote a biodiverse ecosystem and capture CO2 to help counter the effects of climate change.

Wearing sturdy shoes and gardening gloves, Rebecca Carpenter, Eugenia Praetzel, JoAnn McEachin, Kim Pierce and Adriann Saslow were among the volunteers who came ready to dig.

These five women led the “No Gas Here” movement in the east Petaluma neighborhood, which ended successfully in March of 2021 when a city ordinance banning new gas stations was passed.

“It feels like the final chapter of a very long book, and planting trees that produce clean air for the schools and community who need it feels like the right thing to do,” Pierce commented. She lives in the neighborhood and works as a loan signing agent. The “long book” she refers to is the multi-year campaign her group led against plans to build a large Safeway gas station on the corner of McDowell Boulevard and Maria Drive.

“It all started nine years ago,” said Saslow, a mother and a web designer who lives across the street from the once-planned gas station site.

“Our family had just bought a house, and within a month we received a letter from the Planning Commission about the safety of putting a gas station across the street,” recalled Saslow, who said she was stunned. “I said expletives that should not be in print!”

Safeway, it turns out, had proposed putting a new eight-pump gas station on the corner of McDowell Boulevard and Maria Drive.

Saslow attended a public meeting, which was almost empty. At the time, the city’s Planning Commission was only required to notify people within 500 feet of a proposed development, Saslow said, adding that only two or three homes received the notification. But she offered her feedback.

“I said, ‘Could you please not build a gas station there?’” she recalled. After the meeting, she launched a website to garner support.

Saslow heard nothing about it for the next five years. She’d begun to think that the project had been abandoned when she received a second Planning Commission meeting notification about the gas station. It was there that she met JoAnn McEachin.

“JoAnn drafted a petition,” Saslow said. “It was right after my son was born. I remember scrolling Pinterest and looking for articles on how to do Facebook and internet better while nursing my son in the middle of the night.”

Rebecca Carpenter became involved when she was approached by a neighbor, Chris Marsh, with a petition. Carpenter is a Department of Energy administrative contractor at Berkeley Lab and lives a few hundred feet away from the gas station site. She was on the way out of Safeway when Marsh pointed toward the childcare center across the parking lot.

“She told me, ‘That’s where they want to build a gas station,’” Carpenter said. “Well, that school is a Four C’s, which provides childcare for low-income working families. They do a fabulous job of taking care of children in our county. This just set my hair on fire.”

Another concern for Carpenter was benzene. Gasoline contains the chemical, which is harmful when inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

Eugenia Praetzel, an educator at McDowell Elementary School at the time, recalls learning about the planned construction later than the others.

“There was minimal outreach to the school,” she said. “I taught for many years on that campus so I knew many kids spent long hours there, often until 6 at night, because their parents were working.”

One concern was that with normal wind patterns, carcinogens from the gas station would blow directly into the preschool and into the classrooms. “The more research I did about those toxins,” said Praetzel, “the more frightening it became. That inspired me to dig my heels in.”

According to Saslow, one environmental impact study showed that the new gas station would have brought 2,000 cars a day. Already, McDowell Boulevard is full of trucks and other commercial vehicles.

“You can tell how filthy the air gets by looking at the plants in front of the house.” Saslow said. “Imagine 2,000 additional cars per day. I do not want my kids breathing in all that pollution.”

Pierce added, “Honestly, I didn't know how bad a gas station is for the environment and people’s health. We wanted an environmental impact report.”

The group began to knock on their neighbors’ doors to inform them of the proposal and ask for their support to stop the gas station and to demand an environmental report, which Safeway did not provide. People gave small donations, $5 or $10. The group made it onto the City Council meeting agenda and organized neighbors and parents to pack City Hall.

“I think we went to about 10 city council meetings, sometimes staying past midnight,” said Saslow. “It was heartening to see school children and their parents, neighbors and teachers from the community show up in support.”

These efforts began to pay off, as word got out about the gas station. Yard signs with the group’s name, “No Gas Here,” popped up everywhere. The movement picked up steam as more people in the community and beyond learned about the proposal. Residents from all over town showed up at council meetings to express their opposition. The Argus-Courier published opinion pieces and articles on the issue. The story even received national attention.

However, the neighbors’ growing visibility came at a personal cost. Saslow said, “It wasn’t easy. I was the face of this whole fight. The extra visibility and scrutiny took a toll on my mental health. At one point, I stepped back for a month or two. I was traumatized.”

Some people had to drop out of the core group because they or their family felt that their job security could be under threat. Even the city of Petaluma came under threat of litigation because they voted to require an environmental impact report before constructing the gas station.

“People were blaming us for the rising gas prices. It was ridiculous,” said Pierce, frustrated. “I don’t like bullies who can just walk in, spread their money around and threaten people to get their way. I felt an obligation, not only to protect the people, but to make a difference in our town.”

When things got tough, Praetzel remembered the lessons she’d learned from her father, one of the attorneys who stopped a development called Marincello from being built in the Marin Headlands.

“He, with a small group of other friends, took on Gulf Oil and now the Headlands is preserved,” said Praetzel. “He taught me that just because we were up against a huge multi-billion-dollar company, it didn’t mean that we can be plowed over. And that a small group of determined people can in fact be quite powerful.”

Everybody had their own skills to bring to the table, McEachin says.

“Adriann is creative and did the social media work,” she said. “JoAnn knew about legal stuff, KP was the best cheerleader, Genie had her scientific knowledge and Rebecca crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s. And many others were involved too.”

In 2021, the city of Petaluma became the first city in the country to ban new gas station construction within the city limits as part of its goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2030. Now other cities are following Petaluma’s lead and prohibiting applications for new gas stations or expansions.

A few months later in the same year, the Argus-Courier published an announcement by Safeway that the gas station project had been abandoned.

“We made a difference!” said Carpenter. “This corner of the city was once thought of as blighted. Nobody was paying any attention to it at all. Now, we are planting trees to make it beautiful. It’s like a good thing came out of a good thing, having a ripple effect. I'm so proud of all of us. Yeah!”

Lina Hoshino’s “Another Perspective” runs in the Argus-Courier on the third Friday of every month.