For six years, the building at Plaza North sat as a 90,000-square-foot reminder of what a town loses when something closes and nothing replaces it. It opened as a Kmart in 1980, complete with a dine-in restaurant and an outdoor garden department, and when it went dark, it stayed dark on the east side of town for longer than most Petalumans' kids have been in school. This summer, that finally changed. A new Boot Barn opened in early July. Hobby Lobby followed a few weeks later. A second Grocery Outlet is set to open August 27, wedged between the other two in the same building.
That is a real thing worth noticing. But if you have also caught yourself wondering why the storefronts along Petaluma Boulevard still look the way they've looked for years, the two facts are connected, and not in the way the "downtown comeback" headlines suggest.
The East Side Finished What the Kmart Started
The math on Plaza North is straightforward once you see it laid out. The building sat empty for six years, and it's taking three national chains landing within about two months of each other to fill it back up. Boot Barn and Hobby Lobby are open now. Grocery Outlet's second Petaluma location, joining the one already established at River Plaza, arrives August 27 to complete the trio.
None of this is downtown. Plaza North sits on North McDowell Boulevard, on the city's east side, in the retail corridor that has absorbed most of Petaluma's big-box turnover for years. The building didn't get subdivided into boutiques or reimagined as mixed-use. It got refilled the way big buildings usually get refilled: by chains with the footprint and the leasing budget to take on 90,000 square feet at once.
South Petaluma Got Its Own Quiet Opening
A few miles south, a different kind of storefront opened with far less fanfare. Stemple Creek Ranch, the fourth-generation West Marin meat business, opened a retail store on July 27 at 2086 Marina Ave. The location doubles as the company's new headquarters and shipping center, which moved into part of the former Miyoko's vegan cheese plant back in January. A meat company now occupies part of a building that used to produce vegan cheese, which is the kind of detail that only means something if you've been paying attention to who's been leasing industrial space on that side of town. Store hours are 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays, aimed squarely at people who already know the address rather than passersby.
Downtown's Openings Are Filling Turnover, Not Vacancy
Here is where the story gets more interesting than a simple list of new businesses. Downtown did get openings this summer. It just didn't get them the way the east side did.
Blanton's Boot and Hat, a western wear shop from Erin Blanton Eames and her husband Ryan Eames, has spent the past year building out a space at 216 Petaluma Blvd North and was gearing up to open this summer. The grand opening is set to be marked by the hanging of an oversized neon boot sign, made by an Austin artist, timed to coincide with the restoration of the Poehlmann Hatchery's baby chick sign a few blocks north. It's a genuinely nice piece of local choreography. It's also going into a storefront on one of downtown's most visible blocks, not into one of the parcels that has sat vacant for a decade.
The same pattern holds a few blocks over. The Hot Spot, a ceramic-painting studio owned by Tara Spillane, took over the space formerly occupied by Hollingsworth Jewelers, opening in soft-opening mode this past spring. Spillane has plans to fill the walls with murals from local artists and to run a mobile art program that has already made a stop at Old Adobe School. It's a welcome addition to the block. But Hollingsworth Jewelers wasn't sitting empty for years waiting for a tenant. It turned over.
And on Grey Street, Old Caz Backyard opened August 8, taking over the site that The Block had occupied since 2017, before its farewell event this past May. Old Caz founders Tom Edwards and Bryan Rengel brought more than 30 taps, a full kitchen, and live music to the space, expanding out of Rohnert Park for the first time. Edwards has described the move as personal, tied back to mornings on the Petaluma River with Rengel during their Sonoma State rowing days. It's a strong opening. It is also, again, one business replacing another business that closed months earlier, not a vacant storefront finally getting a tenant.
What the Vacancy Map Actually Shows
This distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, and Petaluma Urban Chat has been trying to make exactly this point since it launched its Vacancy Project this year. The nonprofit built an interactive map that pinpoints more than 40 empty commercial and industrial parcels within a half-mile of Petaluma Boulevard North and Washington Street, which is to say, within the heart of downtown itself. Some of those spaces have been empty for decades. A large parcel behind the train depot has sat fenced off for more than 60 years. The former Fourth and Sea Fish & Chips location on 4th Street has sat empty since the restaurant closed in May 2020.
Urban Chat's own writeup of the project puts the pattern plainly:
"In Petaluma, most of the new business investment is outside the City's downtown and central core, as local, regional, and national chains continue to move into shopping malls on Petaluma's east side and the Lakeville Highway area."
Board member Amy Levine, who helped launch the mapping effort, put it another way when the group presented the map to residents this summer. Petaluma has spent more than 30 years and no shortage of planning dollars trying to revive its downtown, she said, and yet there isn't much to show for the effort when it comes to actual implementation. That's not a knock on any single business opening this summer. It's a description of where the energy in Petaluma's commercial real estate is actually going, and it isn't the historic core.
Lakeville Square Keeps Cycling Through the Same Slot
If you want to see the turnover pattern in miniature, look at Lakeville Square. Chef Christian Caiazzo and Katrina Fried, who already run two Italian concepts downtown, Stellina Pronto on Kentucky Street and Stellina Alimentari in the former Thistle Meats space, are now permitted to remodel a 1,503-square-foot space at 2620 Lakeville Highway for a third concept, a bakery and café. That spot has a history. It was Noah's Bagels, then Bright Bear Bakery, then Tea Rex Boba. No opening date has been announced for the Stellina version, and as of late July the project still had a few hurdles to clear.
That's four food-and-drink businesses cycling through one address in the span of a few years, at a location that isn't vacant in any of Urban Chat's sense of the word. It's occupied. It just doesn't stay occupied by the same tenant for long.
The Quick Version, If You're Trying to Keep It Straight
- Plaza North (east side): Boot Barn and Hobby Lobby open now, second Grocery Outlet opening August 27, filling the former Kmart building after six years vacant.
- 2086 Marina Ave (south Petaluma): Stemple Creek Ranch's new retail store, open weekdays 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- 216 Petaluma Blvd North (downtown): Blanton's Boot and Hat, western wear, was gearing up to open this summer.
- Former Hollingsworth Jewelers (downtown): The Hot Spot ceramic-painting studio, in soft-opening mode since this spring.
- 20 Grey St (downtown): Old Caz Backyard opened August 8, replacing The Block.
- 2620 Lakeville Highway (Lakeville Square): A third Stellina concept, bakery and café, no confirmed opening date yet.
The Real Story Is Where the Buildings Are
None of this means downtown Petaluma is failing. It means the storefronts getting the most attention this summer, the leather smell of a new Boot Barn, the neon boot going up on Petaluma Boulevard, are landing on top of a much older and much less visible pattern: big buildings on the east side get filled by chains, small downtown spaces get filled by turnover, and the genuinely long-vacant parcels, the ones Urban Chat has been mapping block by block, mostly stay exactly as empty as they were a year ago.
If you've lived here long enough to remember what used to be in half these buildings, that distinction probably already felt true. Now there's a map that says so.
Understanding a town at this level of detail, which building used to be what, which corridor is actually absorbing growth, which vacancies are structural rather than cyclical, is the same kind of knowledge that shapes good decisions about buying or selling a home here. If you're weighing a move in Petaluma and want someone who tracks these patterns block by block rather than at a glance, Jen Birmingham offers a free home valuation and seller consultation to walk through what your specific street and situation actually look like right now.
