By RACHEL RASKIN-ZRIHEN, Times-Herald staff writer

As the largest city in the area's fastest growing county, Vallejo must quickly address some challenges or risk missing the economic opportunity boat, area officials said Thursday.

The first in a planned series of discussions of the area's "Growth Cities" held by the East Bay Business Times, the breakfast event at Vallejo's USA World Classics Museum drew more than 180 guests.

The panel featured Kaiser Permanente's Deborah Romer, the Solano Transportation Authority's Daryl Halls, Assemblywoman Noreen Evans and Triad Community's Curt Johansen.

All agreed that quickly and effectively addressing education, transportation and infrastructure concerns will help Vallejo realize its economic and quality of life potential.

Johansen said his firm's downtown redevelopment efforts aim to undo some mistakes made by long-ago city officials.

"In the 1960s, the thinking was that to compete with malls, downtowns needed to build parking lots, and a lot of downtowns became like ghost towns," Johansen said. "We now know that was exactly the wrong approach. Downtowns need to be made interesting in their own right."

Triad's downtown Vallejo project, now encompassing 20 square blocks, seeks to accomplish just that, Johansen said.

"Three years after coming here, our company is as excited about what's happening in Vallejo as any project we've ever done," he said. The end result will include buildings created to appear they were built incrementally to suggest a historical continuity, Johansen said.

The project also will include public access areas with narrowed streets to slow traffic and create diagonal parking, he added. Johansensaid solutions will be found later if the 1,500 parking spaces being created turn out to be insufficient, as some fear.

Romer noted that Kaiser's Solano County expansion, including construction underway in Vallejo and Vacaville, is meant to meet the area's growing population's medical needs and create local jobs. Kaiser was founded to provide health care to Northern California shipyard workers, and Vallejo's facility is nearing its

60th anniversary, she said.

"We're embarking on one of the most ambitious expansion projects in Northern California, with two new hospitals - in Vallejo and Vacaville," Romer said.

The two projects will create hundreds of construction and health care jobs within the next few years, Romer said.

"We're working with the community colleges to create the work force we'll need," she said.

Halls, Solano Transportation Authority executive director, stressed the importance of passing a transportation sales tax on June 6. Two previous attempts failed at the ballot box.

"Solano County is the fastest growing in the Bay Area, and Vallejo is expected to add 50,000 people and 21,000 jobs over the next 25 years," Halls said. He added that the next 25 years also will see the number of area seniors triple, and they will require housing and services.

"There are major infrastructure issues. Traffic on Interstate 80 is atrocious. The number of accidents is increasing with the population," Halls said. "Alarmingly, Vallejo only has about a half million dollars for preventive road maintenance per year. It's not nearly enough."

Assemblywoman Evans said she agrees passage of the transportation sales tax is critical.

"Don't lose heart," Evans said. "Other areas have had to go though this two, three and four times before they succeeded. But it's very important to do it this year, otherwise, we'll miss the boat, so to speak."

Evans, D-Santa Rosa, said Governor Schwarzenegger's proposed budget reduces, but doesn't eliminate the state's massive deficit. It provides for educational facilities but not education, she said, noting that the Vallejo City Unified School District's fiscal disaster isn't an isolated case, and illustrates a statewide educational crisis.

Evans also noted the statewide housing market is showing signs of decelerating, and Johansen was asked if that concerns Triad officials who plan hundreds of new housing units in Vallejo.

"We see the cooling housing market as a correction, and a good thing," he said.

Triad expects at least half of the buyers for its waterfront condos and penthouses to come from San Francisco, where comparable housing is at least twice as expensive.

"That market will only grow," Johansen said.

- E-mail Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at RachelZ@thnewsnet.com or call 553-6824.

© 2008 Vallejo Times Herald