Just Say “No” To “Manhattanization” You snooze, you lose. Sebastopol residents are just now waking up to the Northeast Area Specific Plan. The Plan has been five years in the making, but only recently has the alarm clock gone off on in the public mind. Well, it’s time to roll out of bed, open your eyes, and smell the coffee, or rather the acrid aroma of gas fumes produced by the 8,000 daily car trips that the Plan will add to Sebastopol’s chronic downtown traffic congestion. All those car trips will follow from the construction of 300 new housing units and 648,000 square feet of commercial and parking projects in the Northeast Area, which is the historic apple processing and warehouse district situated between Sebastopol’s current town center and the Laguna de Santa Rosa. We are assured by Plan proponents that Sebastopol will be more “sustainable” in the future as a result of the vast scope of new construction envisioned by the Plan. These assurances, of course, beg the question of what is meant by the word “sustainable.” Plan supporters cite the Plan”s high-density development “ “growing up, not out” “ as an efficient use of limited urban space and energy resources within our growth boundary. They tout the use of solar technology, the creation of pedestrian and bike-friendly streets and sidewalks, and the building of a new civic center and public park, among other features, as key ingredients of the Plan. In the abstract, it all sounds good, even visionary. Indeed, the case can be made that by implementing the Northeast Plan Sebastopol will be establishing an urban planning model for other small towns around the country to follow. But I feel more than a little uneasy with the notion of redeveloping Sebastopol into an urban laboratory for a long-term experiment in close quarters living. I find counter-intuitive the idea that cramming a lot of buildings, cars, and people into a relatively small space will enhance that space, let alone the surrounding community, or will protect the environment in which we all have to live. In short, I don’t think the Manhattanization of Sebastopol’s warehouse district on the edge of the Laguna makes a lot of sense. I’m going against local Green Party orthodoxy here, but I’m not alone in my concerns. A growing number of critics have raised questions that have yet to be answered, and that may not even be answerable until after the Plan is built out. For example, we may have to find out the hard way that we lack sufficient underground water to meet the increased usage demands that development of the Plan will bring. How many straws can suck from the same aquifer before the well runs dry? Similarly, we won’t know until we get there, but we may regret constructing tall structures, on stilts, in a floodplain that may be prone to liquefaction in an earthquake. We may also end up wondering why we didn’t have the foresight to realize that motorists would avoid the congested Northeast Area by using side streets, thereby creating traffic sprawl in our residential neighborhoods. It is true that the Northeast Plan has been formulated in a public process involving numerous workshops, hearings, and meetings. I managed to miss all those meetings, as did about 7,000 other Sebastopol residents. The public process continues with a series of upcoming City Council and Planning Commission hearings. The public will have a right to be heard, but the process is no longer one of planning, but politics. The published commentaries and public statements of a majority of City Council members compel the conclusion that the Plan already has at least three yes votes on the Council, which is all that it will take to dictate Sebastopol’s future. Guy Wilson is a Sonoma West Times & News columnist
by Guy Wilson, Sonoma-West Times & News Columnist, 2-28-08