North Bay Business Journal

Share your thoughts on this week’s NBBJ Pulse Poll question: “Should the state return $5.5 million in Santa Rosa redevelopment funds for the Railroad Square Cannery project?”

At issue is $5.5 million in city redevelopment funds committed to 93 units of affordable senior housing that have been snatched away from Santa Rosa as Sacramento has shut down redevelopment agencies across the state. The funding is the critical link in the cannery area project.

Without it, the project collapses and it will be years if not decades before anything happens at what is considered Santa Rosa’s best opportunity for transit-centered downtown development.

On Oct. 29, 1975, the New York Daily News carried this headline after President Gerald Ford gave a speech denying federal assistance to keep New York out of bankruptcy: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

For Santa Rosa and its 13-year effort to rebuild Railroad Square, the headline could read: “Gov. Brown and Sacramento to Santa Rosa: Drop Dead.”

Green business column items: Fast-growing electric vehicle maker Tesla Motors Inc. plans to open a service center in Marin County. It’s part of a plan by the Palo Alto-based company to double the number of repair facilities — currently 18 worldwide, including a large new one at the Fremont factory — by year-end, according to the company’s July 25 report on its second fiscal quarter. …

Novato-based fuel-cell electric plant developer G3 Power Systems (g3powersystems.com) launched like lightning in 2010 with significant projects but now is seeking U.S. Bankruptcy Court protection as it liquidates. …

Santa Rosa-based electric vehicle maker Zap Inc. is in a legal tussle with the owner of the building where the company had been assembling and distributing vehicles that arrived from manufacturing plants in China. …

A large mixed-use city-centered development planned at the site of the historic Santa Rosa Cannery has received a $1.5 million federal grant, a major boost to the project even though it has lost a health club as a potential tenant.

SANTA ROSA – Métier Ltd., the business software provider that’s growing its presence in downtown Santa Rosa, will grow faster in response to acquiring Sears Holdings as an enterprise client.

Predictably, a column like last week’s about a developer’s proposal for a health club and senior housing project in Railroad Square elicited an attack on the potential for profit and a question about what would happen to the “public benefits.”

Imagine this proposal coming to your city’s leaders in today’s awful economic environment: Build a privately financed, state-of-the-art health club near downtown and adjacent to a rising heritage neighborhood with three stories of affordable senior housing on top.

Impossible?

Well, there is such a proposal surrounding Santa Rosa’s long-delayed Railroad Square SMART project. And it should be warmly and emphatically welcomed.

SANTA ROSA – The Sonoma County Fair board is holding a public meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 16 on the plans for a permanent year-round public market at the fairgrounds inspired by Pike’s Place Market in Seattle, Wash.

It was a year dominated by a struggling economy that touched virtually everyone.

SANTA ROSA – West End Village, a ground-breaking attached single-family housing development near Railroad Square and the SMART rail, has been approved by the city’s Design Review Board.

SANTA ROSA – The Santa Rosa Economic Development Division can take a lot of the credit in Washington, D.C.-based Métier’s decision to open its first branch office in the city.

SANTA ROSA – A Washington, D.C. area project and portfolio management software company has chosen Santa Rosa for its first off-site branch that could someday employ up to 125 people.

NORTH BAY – Funding, the primary obstacle of the mixed-use Railroad Square project in Santa Rosa, no longer stands in the way.

The project was approved to receive $15 million in state bond and federal stimulus funds.

SANTA ROSA – The North Bay, and Santa Rosa in particular, has been in need of a singular symbol of hope to counter the pervasive string of bad economic news. Funding just approved to jumpstart the visionary Railroad Square redevelopment project may be it.

SANTA ROSA – Another phase of a planned “urban village” in the Railroad Square area of downtown Santa Rosa received approval from not only the city Planning Commission but also a group advocating the reworking of streets and land-use priorities to better accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians.

SANTA ROSA – Funding was the primary obstacle left in the way of the mixed-use Railroad Square project in Santa Rosa getting under way, and it looked to be closer than ever, but a new wrinkle has appeared: the federal economic stimulus bill.

SANTA ROSA – A local family of investors is betting that a collective tasting room and new restaurant by a well-known local chef will be a winning combination for their building on a prominent corner of the Railroad Square district.

North Bay restaurateurs confirmed last week the definitive arrival of the recession in hospitality, and though some have joined the ever-lengthening list of eateries looking to sell, others are doing what they can do to embrace the change.