“You can’t go home again.” Thomas Wolfe gave this oft-quoted
title to his final book, in which Wolfe’s protagonist George Webber is rejected
by his home town following the success of his novel, a story which reveals
unflattering truths about his former neighbors. I can empathize with George
Webber’s alienation, though from a different perspective. Let me tell you my
story.
As attentive readers may recall, my original hometown was
Gilroy, California. I left the Garlic Capitol for college in 1970, and though I
visit family there several times a year, I’ve never returned to live. Unlike
Webber, I always felt welcome in Gilroy. Being there gave me the sense of
security you get from standing on “home turf.” And I remained loyal to my home,
and long considered myself one of its defenders.
But Gilroy seems to have changed, profoundly. For decades, the
change was just the steady uprooting of orchards, but the heart of town kept
beating. Then “we” brought in the factory outlet mall, which appears to double
in size every year. Gilroy, unable to muster political support for urban growth
boundaries or a downtown redevelopment district, couldn’t say no to retail
sprawl.
This summer it hit me, finally, like an approaching shock
wave I’d been watching but hadn’t yet felt. My sister took me on a tour of the
latest round of retail expansion on the city’s southwest edge. We drove along wide
soulless streets, lined with spacious parking lots fronting a Who’s Who of big
box stores. Crowning it all was Wal-Mart, soon to be metastasizing as a vast
new “Power Center” in a former garlic field. Then we drove downtown. The last
two main street banks had been boarded up; storefront vacancies and sleazy
establishments abounded; and the old tomato cannery -- which once lent the
fragrance of an Italian sauce to the summer evening air -- was being torn down.
Then the final blow: a downtown used car lot surrounded by
chain link and topped with…razor wire. Razor wire on Monterey Street! At that
point, I gave up on Gilroy. It was lost. It brought to mind Potterstown,
the tawdry future of lovely Bedford Falls; the town without the civilizing
influence of Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey in the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
I later talked with a former schoolmate and dissenting City Council member, who
told me, “We killed the center core of downtown.”
But Potterstown was just a bad
dream. And lovely Petaluma is *still* a wonderful town, though the imperial
retail powers that have exploited and ruined Gilroy and scores of other towns
across America won’t bypass Petaluma just because we love our small town charm.
But they can be controlled, as Petaluma is learning. The big box retail
expansion proposed for the Petaluma River upstream floodplain (aka Chelsea Outlet Mall expansion) was recently turned back
for lack of City Council support. And now, at last, there is serious
consideration of purchasing that land for a far more appropriate use: playing
fields and riverside parklands.
Playing fields are a perfect fit. As other far-sighted
cities like McMinnville, Oregon, have learned, you can develop recreation while
reducing flood damage, allowing you to attract funding from open space,
recreation, and emergency management sources. As for retail development, of
course we need it. But, as I told the Council, “you can be *all for* new retail
development without being for *all* new retail development.” We can decide
*where* we want it – downtown and along the Washington and McDowell corridors,
near the freeway… not in the flood plain. And *how* we want it, rejecting
businesses that will cannibalize locally-owned firms, using their national base
to subsidize lower prices only until their competition is killed.
Maybe we really can’t go home again. But we don’t ever have
to leave, to abandon it and let it be spoiled to begin with. The time to act is
now. Start by telling your City Council and City Manager (citymgr@ci.petaluma.ca.us)
you want them to aggressively pursue playing fields for the Corona Reach
floodplain. Send an email and attend the City Council meeting this Monday,
January 24, 7PM.