Watchdog groups want County review of Amazon’s Sonoma warehouse deal
The grassroots groups Mobilize Sonoma and the Valley of the Moon Alliance (VOTMA) have filed a joint request with County Planning Department to re-review the approval of Amazon’s plans to convert a huge new, vacant warehouse in Schellville into a distribution center.
The groups contend that Amazon’s plans for the site are significantly more intense than what the building was initially cleared for, and that the deal went down without planning review or public comment.
In its first foray into Sonoma County, Amazon inked a deal for the 250k-square-foot Victory Station warehouse space on Eighth Street and Highway 12. The facility, which sits outside the Sonoma city limits, has been vacant since its 2018 completion. Amazon will reportedly spend $15 million to ready the delivery center for opening later this year.
The draw for Amazon is frontage access to a highway linking key regions of three counties. But the traffic and activity that hub would generate, the groups contend, constitute too great a variance from the initial County guidelines.
“Amazon seems to be proposing a very traffic-intensive, regional scale, retail-delivery and distribution center that would operate 24-hours a day, year-round,” said Kathy Pons of VOTMA. “There has been no indication that Amazon will respect the conditions of the original approval under which the facility was built.”
Pons said that the operation would have more than 250 workers and drivers, two to three shifts per day, all of whom would commute long distances to work there. “Taken together with the intensity of the operation and the truck traffic involved, that expansion constitutes a change of use under County codes, and it should be reviewed as such.”
Norman Gilroy, speaking for Mobilize Sonoma, said the Victory Station warehouse complex is at a very sensitive location for traffic circulation in the Sonoma Valley. “It was approved in 2017 as a wholesale wine-storage facility to serve the local industry, with few employees and minimal truck activity spread out over the year. The conditions of approval even banned truck traffic from the facility during the morning and evening peak hours, and channeled truck egress away from Highway 121 and onto 8th Street East and Napa Road.”
Gilroy said the limitations were to last at least until the installation of a nearby traffic circle, and stop light, which are “at least four years away.”
An additional concern, Gilroy said, “is placing such a people-intensive facility right across the street from the highly explosive, five-million-gallon capacity, LPG rail-storage yard at the foot of 8th Street. (It) boggles the imagination.”
In their joint statement to County planner Tennis Wick, Pons and Gilroy said that despite their concerns, they have not taken a formal position on the project. “But so far, the review of Amazon’s proposal has been behind the scenes at Permit Sonoma, and without public input. For that reason, we have asked Planning Director Wick to intervene, and to allow the communities that would be most affected to express their views before an irretrievable step is taken that could change Sonoma Valley lifestyles forever.”
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Beyond the facts stated in the article, the roads are in poor condition with no shoulder space for vehicles to pull over on a single lane traffic road also located in a flood zone and have been closed several times each winter. The alternates routes during floods can barely handle current traffic. I have seen freight trucks during the floods use smaller roads and cause roadway erosion as the vehicles run off the because they too narrow. The entire primary roadway infrastructure was never designed to handle 24 hours traffic volumes nor the secondary routes through the agricultural communities.
The primary roadways were never designed to accommodate high volume 24 hour traffic on a single lane highway with no shoulders for vehicles to pull out of the way. They need improve miles of roadways to make them safe for travel. This area floods every year and the secondary roads accommodate the traffic poorly. I have seen freight trucks use the roads during floods and create erosion as the trucks do not stay on the narrow roads create gullies making the roads collapse and even narrower. All of the secondary roads would need to be widened and improved as some of those too flood in the rainy season. It’s clear no one knows the area who is leasing the building to Amazon nor does Amazon understand their faulty plan to rent in a non feasible location.
Improve the roads. The Sonoma economy is 9n the skids and will not fully.recover tourist wise. 250 people employed means food 9n their table.
No guarantee that the employees will all be local.
Let’s throw commute traffic in on top of the distribution traffic this would bring in? On top of tourist traffic in high season?
Forget it. The roads are not up to snuff, and this is a really bad idea all around.
Have Amazon fix the roads and provide affordable housing! They have managed to benefit and profit from local activities without out paying for the added burden imposed on tax payers!
Calm down jeff that location cannot handle any more traffic without it affecting side streets which the public wont tolerste
This is bullshit, there has been mass amounts of semi trucking on 121/8th street and Napa street for over 15 years. All the wineries Sebastiani, Ravenswood, Buena Vista winery, Grosskoph trucking yard, the storage warehouses, airport on 8th.
Please Amazon can only help this economy that is shot from shelter in place and lack of work in the town of Sonoma. Wake up people your like the looters during the protests
Walmart regularly adds roundabouts when opening new stores that likely generate more traffic than this use would.
Our roads cannot accommodate this tenant. Major modifications would need to be made in advance of tenancy. Fact: During normal non-COVID19 times, there are 20-60 minute delays on Highway 12 on weekends. This will only add to that!
Where is the link to the planning package/agenda/traffic study for Amazon proposal? Community members need to read that before the meeting, cannot locate on PRMD website. Please post the link a.s.a.p.