Healdsburg bans downtown gun sales, sets limits elsewhere in the city

The Healdsburg City Council unanimously approved a ban on the sale of all firearms in its downtown and set restrictions for gun retailers throughout the city.

The ordinance passed Monday will take effect in 30 days, allowing gun stores only in commercial, mixed-use and industrial areas on the city’s edges. No shops can open within 500 feet of schools, parks and churches, among other defined sensitive areas. The floor space for selling firearms at any store selling guns, including sporting goods retailers, may not exceed 5 percent of the building’s square footage.

“This is strictly a land-use decision,” Vice Mayor David Hagele said. “What we voted on should have been on the books a while back. Like anything in zoning, you zone where things can go.”

The ordinance makes Healdsburg, a popular Wine Country destination of about 12,000 residents, the second city in Sonoma County to require a conditional use permit for gun sales. Rohnert Park adopted a similar measure in 1991. All other Sonoma County cities allow firearm sales in commercially zoned districts.

The issue arose in December when Windsor resident Scott Gabaldon began making plans to sell firearms in a vacant office space one block from the Healdsburg downtown plaza, between the Toy Chest toy store and the Raven Performing Arts Theater.

While the city studied whether that fit the intention of its downtown commercial district, the council passed an emergency ordinance to temporarily block Gabaldon from opening the business.

“These guys went way above and beyond any other city in the county, if not the state,” Gabaldon said Tuesday, adding that he’s considering filing a lawsuit against the city. “It just makes me so mad that a city thinks it can bully a business. I’m not giving up on it by any means.”

Healdsburg does not have any retailer now that sells guns. There are about 50 sites on the city’s outskirts where gun dealers would be permitted to operate, according to city staff.

“I feel like it’s a moderate response to the question of location, when we discovered it could be sandwiched between a toy store and a movie theater,” Mayor Brigette Mansell said of the city’s action. “We could have gone a lot further than we did, and have the right, but we didn’t. We did in fact leave ample opportunity for someone to sell guns in Healdsburg.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or at kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @kfixler.