How difficult zoning issues have impeded small businesses in downtown Vallejo

VALLEJO — Gina Grant, the owner of the pet grooming store Napa Natural Dog Co. in downtown Vallejo, was on maternity leave when she received a call from her assistant: her upcoming and expanded store location at 306 Georgia St. had been tagged. A note on the door from the city’s planning department indicated they needed to stop construction.

“My assistant contacted the city to figure out how to proceed,” Grant said, “and they notified her that we needed to get a business license, because the plan they had was for a recording studio.” 

After talking to her landlord, who had applied for the license, Grant found out that he had indeed applied for a recording studio. When that business walked out of the lease, he offered the space to Grant, but didn’t change the application. 

Grant applied for the correct business license. It was denied because a city ordinance forbade pet grooming stores at 306 Georgia St. She couldn’t believe it. Her store at 508 Sacramento St. was on the very same block as the new location, just around the corner. 

Napa Natural Dog Co. is a thriving business open six days a week, so it seemed like an ideal candidate for expansion in one of the main thoroughfares in downtown Vallejo. 

Unfortunately, the municipal code’s land use table identifies animal grooming and pet stores as being a permitted use within the Downtown Mixed Use District (DMX), but "not permitted within the Georgia Street Corridor between Sonoma Boulevard and Mare Island Way."

Even Kristin Pollot, Vallejo’s Planning and Development Services Director, admits this limitation is random. “City staff understands that this regulation may feel a bit arbitrary to some,” Pollot said, “so we are actively looking at ways to update the land use table to try to allow more flexibility within the DMX District, where appropriate.”

Grant is one of many Vallejo business owners who have taken expensive risks in trying to open a small business in downtown Vallejo only to face difficult zoning issues and a lack of support from city staff.

Short staffing in the city government has hindered communication between prospective entrepreneurs and city planners, leaving business owners waiting and wondering whether they’ll be able to proceed. Meanwhile, it also prevents the city from enforcing flagrant violations of the zoning code, like people who live in a storefront while barely conducting business, if at all, leaving other businesses struggling to survive in a depleted economic environment.

According to Vallejo’s municipal code, the downtown zoning district is intended to create and establish regulations “that will promote a vibrant, pedestrian-oriented place.” But business owners say it often has the opposite effect.

Grant isn’t even the only pet store owner who has seen her dreams shattered because of the same obscure regulation. Summer Winston, the owner of The SHäP, a reptile store located in the Georgia Street Galleria, had the same problem. Winston could not be reached for comment, but in an Instagram post on June 29, she explained that she was forced to close the shop because she “ran into zoning issues with the city of Vallejo that could not be resolved.”

In the video accompanying the post, she added, “There’s a municipal code I wasn’t aware of that says that pet stores are allowed in downtown Vallejo, but they are not allowed in this section of the street where we are located. All the workarounds around this are prohibitively expensive, from $3,000 to $6,000.” Her projected closing date is Sept. 20, just over a year since she opened.

Grant, meanwhile, tried to fight back. Her landlord, who owned both the building where Napa Natural Dog Co. operated and the one where she was planning to move, had already run new water lines and revamped the electrical system to accommodate the expanded business. Grant decided to do everything in her power to move forward.

She tried to figure out a process to get an amendment to the zoning ordinance. She sent numerous emails to staff in the planning department and to Assistant City Manager Gillian Haen. Getting answers, however, was difficult. “They tagged us in February 2023 and I didn’t get clear guidance until May 8,” months later, Grant said.

She learned that the fee for the amendment application was $6,292.78. This included a $5,000 deposit for work done on the text amendment, a planning commission noticing fee, and a City Council noticing fee. If staff spent more hours than anticipated, the fee would increase, and if they spent less, part of the deposit would be refunded.

Unwilling to spend so much money for an amendment application that may not be approved, Grant requested a meeting with the City Council to ask for a fee waiver. She was notified that a process to waive a fee did not exist, therefore that petition would be considered a special request and she would be charged an hourly fee, with a total calculated at $869.76.

“My landlord advised me to reach the City Council members individually and ask them if I had their vote before I pay to take this to the council,” Grant explained. “I sent out a really diplomatic, nice email to each of them. Nobody responded. Dead silence.”

At that point, frustrated, she gave up her dream of moving into the new location.

This was not Grant’s first run-in with the city’s planning department. When she opened Napa Natural Dog Co. four years ago, getting the business license was easy, but she ran into a problem when she tried to hang a small sign outside the store with the name of her business. 

“They wanted me to get a permit to close the street to hang up my sign and pay all kinds of money,” Grant said. 

She spent months trying to solve this issue, but trying to get clear answers was the most frustrating part. “Nobody knows anything about anything. They can’t direct you where to go. They can’t give you a straightforward answer,” Grant said. “Finally I got through to someone and he told me I didn’t need a permit because when the landlord had presented the architectural designs it already included the payment and permit for the sign.”

Pollot pointed out that the city is working to modify zoning. “The Planning Department has recently hired a consultant to begin working on a wide range of zoning code updates, which we plan to begin moving forward (in phases) for Council consideration in the coming months,” she said.

Unfortunately, these changes will arrive too late for Grant and Winston.

Part of the problem is that potential business owners need to have a business address before they apply for a business license, and sometimes they get into a lease before starting the paperwork. 

That was the case for Dorean Raye, the owner of Neighborhood Plant Dealer, another Galleria tenant. Raye hired Legal Zoom to do the paperwork for her, but by then she had already gotten locked into a lease. “I feel fortunate and thankful that we didn’t have any zoning issues,” Raye said, “but you’re really taking a risk, because what if you get a lease and then you’re not approved?”

Even so, Raye said she found the process quite easy until she got to the city ordinances. “It got a bit confusing because I had to file a different form,” she said. “It just took more reading than I wanted to do.”

Pollot pointed out that it’s quite common that prospective business owners get the lease or even the business running before requesting a license. “Verifying the zoning for a new business should always be the first step before investing time and money in a new business location,” Pollot advised. 

Finding information about zoning on the city’s website, however, is not easy. This reporter couldn’t find the city ordinance that blocked pet stores from a certain section of Georgia Street until Pollot sent a link to the land use code, and even then it took some digging to find the appropriate section.

Pollot recommended verifying the zoning information directly with a planner. She also emphasized that it’s important to check with the Building Division for any potential known safety issues with the space, including verification of plans for accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Not everyone has trouble getting their business license. Dylan Webb, owner of Formulation Barber Shop, also in the Galleria, found the process easy, but had some trouble with the inspection by the Building Division. 

Webb had the keys to his store since May 1, but it was not yet open for business. The inspection was scheduled between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. in early May, and he took the day off from his job to receive the inspectors, but they didn’t show up. 

“Around 3 or 4 p.m. they reached back out to me, and said, ‘I’m sorry, we are super short staffed,’” Webb said. “It would have been nice to know that in the morning.”

Understaffing in City Hall affects both the licensing and enforcement processes. As of October 2023, there was a 28% citywide vacancy rate in city staff, with the police, water, and fire departments among the most affected. The planning department had the city’s highest vacancy rate at 46%. As of today, aside from the rank and file vacancies, several senior positions in the planning department are still vacant.

Understaffing contributes to another complaint from business owners in downtown Vallejo: enforcement of the live/work ordinance. A live/work unit is defined in the municipal code as “A unit that combines a workspace and incidental residential occupancy, in which the work component is the primary use and the residential component is secondary.” 

Although the municipal code does not regulate hours of operation, the definition clearly states that “work” is the most important part of the live/work unit. 

Yet many locations in downtown Vallejo that are supposedly live/work hardly have any business activity. Some open only once a week, during the Saturday farmers market, others open only once a month to keep a semblance of business activity, and others don’t open at all. Often these “ghost” businesses look vacant because there’s paper covering the windows so you cannot see inside. 

Jessica Brooks, owner of Anchor Pantry at 620 Marin St., said that this issue is her biggest complaint about the downtown zoning. “We want to get more people downtown, but these stores are closed all day,” she said. “The owners live there, but they don’t work out of the place. It’s confusing for people who come to visit, because they’re like, ‘Why is downtown so empty?’” 

From Brooks’ point of view, the city has the power to change that. “There should be some standards, like you should be open at least from Thursday through Saturday, or some standards about business hours,” she said. “The city should be asking for your business plan or something that shows that you actually have a business.”

Understaffing, however, doesn’t allow the city to enforce the live/work code. “Our department currently only has three out of six code enforcement officer positions filled,” Pollot said, “and these officers are responsible for addressing code violation issues/complaints across the entire city, which makes it difficult to stay on top of the already challenging non-compliant live/work zoning violations.”

The problems have persisted even since the City Council voted to move code enforcement to the Planning Department last year and allocated extra funds to bolster its staff. Pollot added that over the coming year, as they rebuild staffing across city departments, they could try to take a closer look at different options to better monitor the operation of live/work units.

Despite all these issues, Pollot sees a brighter future ahead. She says that the city’s Economic Development Department is proactive with business recruitment efforts and that a recent grant allocation will help with this effort. 

“The city has received a grant from [the Metropolitan Transportation Commission] MTC for $1.3M each for a new Downtown Specific Plan and a new Waterfront Specific Plan,” she said, “both of which will help to streamline the permitting process and spur development in those areas. These public planning processes are scheduled to begin in Fall/Winter 2024.”

But she also warned that many of the existing tenant spaces in downtown have their own unique challenges that can add significant costs/time for new owners, such as the need to address ADA accessibility, and safety issues like unreinforced masonry. 

“We are hopeful that the new Specific Plan process will ignite new development opportunities downtown by allowing more flexibility and creating an even more streamlined process,” she concluded.