Cotati Merchants Blast City Plans for Slimmer Streets

Scores of Cotati merchants are fighting a plan set forth by city planners that would slim Old Redwood Highway down from two lanes north and south to one lane in either direction, and add in two round-abouts — one at St. Joseph Way near Highway 116 and one at William and George streets.

On a recent day, signs peppered the entire city, from businesses on East Cotati Avenue, lawns along Old Redwood Highway, to City Hall, decrying: "Protect Cotati — No round-abouts."

The redesign comes at the heels of two proposed streetscape ideas for downtown Cotati currently being explored by the city's Design Review Committee, Planning Commission and City Council. Both alternatives aim to:

• Limit lane widths in order to calm traffic.
• Create on-street parking to maximize frontage/mobility options.
• Tight curb radius and narrow street crossings to calm traffic and improve walkability.
• Ample sidewalks and generous streetscapes to maximize appeal and usefulness.
• Lighting that is effective for commerce, pedestrians and cyclists.

Officials pointed to Cotati's Downtown Specific Plan, adopted in August 2009, as the ultimate goal of the throughfare revamp, which aims to "enhance Old Redwood Highway as the downtown, mixed-use, center of Cotati community life," improve walking and bicycling throughout downtown and make the street safer for all modes of transportation.

"This plan has been in the works for a long time," said Vicki Parker, the city’s community development director. "It is the most important corridor for the city, so it’s in need of some improvements from a traffic safety standpoint, as well as aesthetics and function."

Option A, called the Village Main Street, would limit driving speeds on Old Redwood Highway, which is a main connector to highways 101 and 116, to 25 mph and add in round-abouts at St. Joseph Way and William and George streets.

The street would be slimmed down to one lane in each direction, a tree-lined median would be added, as well as new vegetation to line the sidewalks and on-street parking and bike lanes would be striped in. The plan is expected to accomodate 2,400 cars per hour, decrease pedestrian crossing time down to 10 seconds from the current 16 and reduce car crashes by 51 percent and injuries by an estimated 73 percent. The price tag is $3.5 million and construction would take a year.

Option B, called City Boulevard, would put driving speeds at 40 mph, keep two vehicle lanes in each direction, stripe in new bike lanes and car parking, put pedestrian crossing times at 40 seconds, also accommodate 2,400 cars per hour and also include a tree-lined median in between north-south travel lanes. Total estimated cost for that project is set at $4.7 million and construction would take two years.

City Manager Dianne Thompson said included in the City Boulevard plan is also signalized intersections at the intersections of Old Redwood Highway and St. Joseph, as well at William and Bruce.

But merchants up and down Old Redwood Highway say the plans will kill their business, in part because of lenthy construction, backed-up traffic on a two-lane street and less car capacity.

“These two designs aren’t designs from the public, they’re the city’s designs,” said Rick Stewart, owner of Arch’s Glass, which has been in its current location on Old Redwood Highway since 1972. “The two-lane road would be a detriment to business in Cotati — we need cars in order to get business."

Stewart said he and other merchants have presented another design to the city that would accomodate a mix of the city's goals and local business owners 'goals — large sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic lights, safer pedestrian crossings and four-lane traffic flow.

For Roileen Miller, owner of Miller Driving School, which has been in business downtown Cotati for 30 years, it's the round-abouts that are the most trouble.

"I think they are going to kill a lot of business. How are trucks going to be able to maneuver around them?" she said. "And the construction is going to tear up the streets. How are we going to make it if all that happens?"

"It's a capacity issue," said Tom Scott, co-owner of Oliver's Market in Cotati, in an email. "It's not that round-abouts are bad — they're not. It's that a two-lane road with round-abouts has about one-half the capacity of a four lane road with traffic signals."

Scott compared both alternatives, which would accomodate 2,400 vehicles per hour with the current 3,500.

"We rely on traffic to drive our business," Scott added. "We believe customers will feel that its too hard to get to the store and they will choose to shop elsewhere if the round-abouts are installed."

Scott said he and Steve Maass, who've owned and run the store since 1988, don't want to leave Cotati. 

"We’ve had trouble for the last couple years negotiating what we feel is a fair deal on our lease from the current landlord that we have," Scott said. "So we bought this new land about two years ago, and have been working with the city of Cotati to create a development there."

Scott's talking about the 6.73-acre plot at the intersection of St. Joseph Way and Old Redwood Highway, where one of the round-abouts would go. The mixed-use development, with a pricetag of between $16 and $18 million, would construct three new buildings on the vacant plot that used to be a little league field.

The new development would build a new 39,000-square-foot grocery store to house Oliver's and the company's corporate offices (currently located in Rohnert Park), 14 residential units, a bank, a restaurant and 5,300 square feet of additional commercial office space, according to plans submitted to the city.

"Even if we prevail on the issue of the round-abouts, the project itself is a financial stretch for a small company like ours," Scott said in an email. "We need the support of the city staff to help us gain the entitlements and help with some of the fees associated with the development."

Plans for Oliver's has been stalled in the entitlement and design review process since they submitted plans in June, according to planning documents. The company over the last two years has spent about $400,000 in architectural drawings, civil engineering drawings, biological studies, traffic studies, noise studies, geotechnical studies and envoironmental studies.

"We're just trying to find a way to stay in Cotati," Scott said. "If at the end of the day we are not able to, we will be looking for a home for the 125 employees currently employed in Cotati."

“All projects like this go through a formalized entitlement process,” Parker said. “For this level of environmental review, it’s hard to tell how long it’s going to take — maybe between 10 and 12 more months.”

Parker said after going through Design Review Commission, plans will go to Planning Commission and then City Council.”

“We haven’t completed our initial study yet,” she added. “We’re doing a review that ensures all design elements set forth in our code are met — things like parking layouts, landscaping, aesthetics and open space.”

As for the new location, Scott said Oliver's is still trying to renegotiate a lease with the current landlord, the Mill Valley-based Sunhill Corporation.

Scott said the company has let the shopping center fall into serious disrepair: the parking lot has huge holes in it, the gutter systems are leaky, the trees need trimming.

"We're willing to pay significantly more rent than we're paying now," Scott said. "But we're having trouble even getting them to the table."

Editor's note: Come back to Rohnert Park Patch tomorrow morning for a profile exploring how Oliver's impacts the local economy. Check out the video simulation from the city of Cotati on what the Village Main Street alternative could look like.