Renaissance
Petaluma
Advocating for
Opportunity, Vitality
and Prosperity
◼︎ Click here to join Renaissance Petaluma and help shape Petaluma's future.
◼︎ Click here to join Renaissance Petaluma and help shape Petaluma's future.
About Renaissance Petaluma
Renaissance Petaluma is a policy-forward advocacy organization composed of a coalition of business owners, community leaders, and interested Petaluma citizens building momentum for Petaluma's next chapter of growth, vitality, and prosperity.
Renaissance Petaluma is dedicated to advancing thoughtful development, historic preservation, and economic vitality in downtown Petaluma. We champion initiatives that honor the city’s architectural heritage while supporting its long-term growth and civic identity.
We believe Petaluma's best days are ahead. As CNN recognized Petaluma as one of "America's Best Towns to Visit in 2025", we're working to ensure our community has the infrastructure, amenities and economic vitality to capitalize on this momentum—not just for visitors, but for everyone who calls Petaluma home.
Renaissance Petaluma was created to ensure that Petaluma’s next generation of buildings, businesses, and public spaces continue a proud architectural and cultural lineage, rigorously balancing preservation with contemporary opportunity.
We choose the name Renaissance Petaluma to reflect our sense that the ethos of the Renaissance was not about recreating or mimicking the past, but about revitalizing it—absorbing historic ideas, reinterpreting them through new lenses, and synthesizing them into something radically contemporary.
Renaissance Petaluma affirms that it’s purpose is the promotion of the social welfare of Petaluma through research, public education, and advocacy on civic issues of importance to the community. The organizations actions will always focus on policies, not politicians — fostering informed public debate while preserving its nonpartisan integrity.
Our Mission
Renaissance Petaluma is dedicated to preserving the character of Petaluma while inspiring and advocating for its next chapter through policies and initiatives that strengthen Petaluma’s fiscal foundation while preserving and revitalizing the city’s historic character.
We believe that economic vitality and historic preservation are mutually reinforcing cornerstones of community progress.
Our mission extends far beyond any one development project. We advocate for comprehensive downtown revitalization, enhanced tourism infrastructure, and economic policies that benefit all Petaluma businesses and residents.
Through research, public engagement, and advocacy, we promote policies that ensure Petaluma’s built environment reflects both its heritage and its capacity for innovation in the twenty-first century.
Key Lenses of Advocacy
Renaissance Petaluma brings a balanced, evidence-driven approach to civic advocacy by evaluating every proposal it examines through four key lenses: Economic, Employment, Built Environment, and Social & Cultural Impacts. Rather than beginning with assumptions or narrowing debate to a single issue, Renaissance Petaluma weighs the full range of benefits and harms to understand how a proposal affects the community as a whole. This commitment to “balancing the equities” ensures that Petaluma’s decisions honor its heritage, strengthen its economy, and protect the shared quality of life that defines the city.
Economic Lens
Demonstration of positive and sustainable contributions to the city’s overall financial well-being.
Employment Lens
Strengthening of the local economy through the creation of meaningful employment opportunities and support for the broader workforce ecosystem.
Built Environment Lens
Enhancement of Petaluma’s physical character by aligning with its architectural heritage, historic context, and long-term planning goals.
Cultural & Social Lens
Enrichment of the community’s cultural and social fabric by fostering connection, supporting local identity, and contributing to a vibrant civic life.
Our Founding Principles
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Support businesses that create quality jobs with competitive wages
Generate tax revenue that reduces resident burden and funds city services and infrastructure
Build supplier networks that benefit local farms, food producers, and service providers
Capture visitor spending that currently flows to neighboring cities
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Support thoughtful development that respects Petaluma's architectural heritage
Advocate for design review processes that honor downtown's unique identity
Champion the authenticity and charm that earned CNN's recognition as one of “America’s Best Towns to Visit in 2025”
Preserve the walkable, human-scale downtown that locals love
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Advocate for amenities that serve residents first—dining, culture, gathering spaces
Support infrastructure improvements—parking, streetscapes, public spaces
Promote events and programming that activate downtown year-round
Strengthen the arts, antique fairs, farmers markets, and festivals that enhance our community.
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Concentrate development downtown to protect open space and agricultural lands
Support Petaluma's Blueprint for Climate Action and carbon neutrality goals
Advance projects that meet Urban Growth Boundary commitments
Build for the long term, not short-term gain
Join the Renaissance
Petaluma has always been shaped by people who care deeply about it — those who build with purpose, create with integrity, and protect what makes this City unlike anywhere else
Renaissance Petaluma continues that tradition. We’re residents, business owners, and community partners working to ensure that Petaluma grows thoughtfully — with its history, creativity, and spirit intact.
Join us in helping shape what comes next. Stay informed, share your voice, and be part of a community committed to keeping Petaluma authentic, vibrant, and beautifully itself.
Initiative Update:
Zoning Overlay — Beyond the Hotel
A vote to defeat the referendum affirms that the city retains the ability to adjust its zoning thoughtfully rather than freezing rules based on past assumptions. As Petaluma updates its General Plan for the next decade, this vote sends a clear signal about whether the community accepts careful adaptation as part of responsible local governance.
RenPet’s ongoing work will focus on helping voters understand the stakes, and why zoning overlays and other adaption tools remain essential planning tools for Petaluma’s future.
The Appellation Petaluma Hotel may have dominated headlines, but the real issue behind Petaluma Historic Advocates (PHA) opposition has always been the Downtown Zoning Overlay that made the Hotel possible. Although the Hotel has been redesigned to comply with existing zoning, the Overlay itself remains under challenge and is headed for a public vote. This is no longer about one project. It is about whether Petaluma will preserve its ability to adapt zoning rules to real-world conditions as the city evolves.
Although the hotel project that prompted the referendum has been revised and no longer depends on the zoning overlay, the vote itself has taken on broader significance. It now asks whether Petaluma is willing to allow adaptive planning tools, used narrowly, transparently, and with public review when circumstances justify them.
Renaissance Petaluma is advocating for the City Council to place the overlay referendum on the June 2026 Primary ballot, where voters can decide the policy question directly and decisively. A June vote provides clarity, respects the public process already completed, and ensures that the November election focuses on leadership rather than lingering uncertainty about a zoning issue.
Initiative Update:
Appellation Petaluma Hotel
A new, smaller Appellation Petaluma Hotel has been submitted to the City. It is a four-story, 56-room boutique hotel at 2 Petaluma Boulevard South. The revised project preserves the hotel’s signature elements including destination dining, a rooftop restaurant, a basement speakeasy, and professional 24/7 valet operations, but at a reduced scale.
This downsizing reflects a compromise between the developer and the City in response to opposition from the Petaluma Historic Advocates (PHA), not a mandate from Petaluma voters. The initiative signatures gathered by PHA represent only a small share of city residents and do not constitute a citywide vote.
While the revised hotel will still generate jobs, activate a vacant downtown site, and contribute to Petaluma’s hospitality economy, the approximately 40% reduction in room count and overall scale will result in lower annual tax revenues to the City over the long term.