Gateway I should tell us something about Gateway II

From the Yolo Sun opinion piece "Draft EIR For Petrovich’s Gateway 2 Proposal Is Now In Process – Public Comment Ends: May 24:"

Despite adverse economic conditions and its stalled build-out, Gateway Shopping Center’s adjacent "big brother" Gateway 2 Project has on April 8 begun its Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) period of public comment. This public comment period will last only 45 days, until May 24.

This new Gateway 2 Project is three times the size of the Gateway Shopping Center, at 154 acres, and intended to include: several hotels and restaurants, three big-box stores with their usual entourage of smaller retail outlets, an auto mall, movie theaters [sic], and 800,000 square feet of office space.

“The purpose of the Draft EIR,” states its official notice, “is to provide the public and City of Woodland decision makers with information about the effects which the proposed project is likely to have on the environment, to list ways in which the significant effects of the project might be minimized, and to indicate alternatives to the project.”

The development agreement for Gateway Shopping Center [Gateway Phase I], negotiated by the city council, was obviously a real sweet-heart deal for Paul Petrovich – regarding an essential mitigation measure connected to its officially determined “effects” of continuing Woodland’s historical retail sprawl (referred to as “urban decay” within planners’ jargon).

Petrovich was given six and a half years by the city council to produce compensatory benefit within Woodland’s downtown: His totally discretionary development of anything whatsoever – assessed at $3 million – or else he would default and pay the city about a million dollars.

Read the rest at YoloSun.wordpress.com.