Cotati divided by plan to overhaul Old Redwood Highway

In Cotati, where issues of growth, boosting the economy and preserving a proudly small town sensibility have always been fractious, the old dilemmas are new again.

This time, the question is how to redesign the city's scraggly main street, a commercial heart spotted with vacant lots, while at the same time supporting the needs of Cotati businesses.

The Planning Commission on Thursday takes up the issue, which already has some of the hallmarks of controversies past. People are haggling and agonizing. Signs have sprouted as if it were election season. Meetings that last for hours are being held.

"They get pretty bitter," Prue Draper, a 61-year resident and the city's unofficial historian, said about the way debates over such issues tend to go in Cotati.

"People really care about this stupid little town," she said (using the adjective affectionately). "It's just got a personality, and people that settle here treasure it, but they all see it in different ways."

City officials have proposed two options. For $3.5 million and a year of construction, residents would get Village Mainstreet, a two-lane street with two roundabouts. For $4.7 million and two years of construction, they would get City Boulevard, four lanes with traffic lights.

They have cast the decision as a "community choice" but they could hardly have made it clearer which they prefer, saying that years of public meetings have produced a broad consensus for what the community wants.

"What do you want the town's character to be?" City Manager Dianne Thompson said at one public meeting.

Then she framed it as, "New restaurants, shops, housing and other independent businesses, or higher traffic speeds, chain stores and a street pattern that make it difficult to walk and bike."

But a major city employer, Oliver's Market, which had planned to move to a downtown lot it bought and build a shopping center there, has objected to the city's plan, saying it would harm the business because it doesn't allow for future traffic growth.

"We need as much traffic as we can get, we don't need the road to fail," said Tom Scott, Oliver's general manager.

Community meetings have evidenced a broad range of opinion among residents. But many merchants on Old Redwood Highway have raised similar concerns as Oliver's officials, and the issue has come to its sharpest point in the differences between the grocer and the city.

Oliver's officials, who in 1997 fought tooth-and-nail a plan by Lucky Supermarkets to set up shop on the same lot they now own, say they can't risk what would be a $15 million investment; they've already spent $3.5 million on the land and planning studies. They say they won't make the move if the city goes forward with the Village Mainstreet option.

"If we build it and it fails as a center we all lose," said Steve Maass, Oliver's founding owner.

The issue threatens to splinter Cotati as such conflicts have in the past.

One member of the City Council, in private, likened Oliver's, which started in Cotati, to a schoolyard bully. Opponents of the plan accused city leaders of being autocrats intent on forcing their vision on unwilling residents. Oliver's officials said the city had led them astray by asking them to plan around the four-lane proposal.

It's just possible, though, that things may be finding a more even keel. Thompson says Oliver's alternative street designs will get a good look. And Maass and Scott have softened suggestions that they may leave town altogether.

"Compromise," Draper barked at city and company officials last week, urging them to work to avoid a repeat of the battle between Oliver's and Lucky Supermarket supporters.

That, Draper said later, resulted in the "virtual destruction of the community. Hard feelings still persist after all these years."

Scott remembered that time as "The War of the Roses," and said he does not want to go there again.

In 1997, "Our survival was at stake," he said. "This isn't like that. While walking away from this project would cost us a lot of money, it's not going to kill us."

Maass, who said the company's plan to move was spurred by long, futile negotiations with the landlord of Oliver's current store, now says he may be able to work something out to stay in the East Cotati Avenue store, although he would much rather move.

"We very well may stay where we are," said Maass, who called on the city to be a partner in resolving the impasse.

"If we do build there, we need the city," he said. "If there isn't a strong partnership, it's not going to happen."