Thumbnail photo by Heather Polen
Matt Dochterman urged Crescent City Planning Commissioners to think big picture about a proposal to bring more trucks to the Rumiano Cheese factory.
In addition to recruiting for up to 25 new jobs, said Dochterman, vice president of operations for Sartori Cheese, more trucks means the plant at 511 9th Street will get more milk with which to make more cheese.
“We actually have an opportunity — a great thing for the community — that says we can expand production, make more product, expand the Rumiano brand into larger areas of the country and actually create more exposure for Crescent City,” he told commissioners at a special meeting Aug. 20. “We bring more milk in, it runs more hours per day, produces more cheese and (we don’t) have to expand the infrastructure of the site or anything else to do that.”
Despite the potential economic benefits, planning commissioners decided that the community’s concerns were worth listening to. Though he appeared hung up on Sartori’s decision to stop making the cheese curds that are popular with the locals, Chairman Ray Walp said residents are worried about more trucks visiting a factory that’s across the street from a school.
Shawna Hyatt, another planning commissioner, also pointed out that though the factory is in a commercial zone, it’s surrounded by homes. She questioned a statement from Crescent City contract planner Ethan Lawton that the proposal not only complies with the city’s general plan, but is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.
Hyatt and other planning commissioners asked for further studies focused specifically on potential traffic and noise impacts.
“The surrounding neighborhood is zoned residential, which is what we’re looking at being affected by doubling the number of tankers,” she said. “These aren’t regular vehicles, these are tankers weighing a couple of tons, right? Holding how much? How much do these things weigh? Do we know? I think we need more information on the nuisance and the vibration.”
According to Crescent City Manager Eric Wier, Sartori Cheese will be responsible for the additional information the Planning Commission requests. The studies will be conducted by a private engineering firm, he said.
City staff will follow up with Sartori Cheese and circle back to the Planning Commission, Wier told planning commissioners.
Sartori’s proposal comes about a year after it took over the Rumiano Cheese Company’s Crescent City plant. While there’s no plan to add on to the factory itself, the Wisconsin-based company is asking the city to allow for an increase in the number of daily milk and other “inbound deliveries,” according to Lawton’s presentation before the Planning Commission.
Instead of six to eight milk tankers delivering milk to the factory, Sartori plans to bring in 14 to 16 tankers every day from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Instead of one to two semi-trailers making inbound deliveries to the plant Monday through Friday, Sartori expects to bring in two to four semi-trailers.
As for outgoing products, the number of non-refrigerated trucks shipping out lactose and whey protein powders is expected to increase from one to two Monday through Friday to two to three trucks Monday through Friday.
The number of refrigerated trucks shipping out cheese and butter will change from two per day Monday through Friday to two to three per day on Saturdays and Sundays, according to Lawton’s staff report.
The plant’s proposed new receiving and shipping daily hours will be from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. including Saturdays and Sundays. Sartori is also asking to change its sanitation process from 10 p.m.-11 p.m. daily to 11 p.m. to midnight.
At last week’s meeting, Lawton said that the factory’s location within the Downtown Business Commercial zone — it’s the only business in that zone on 9th Street — food product processing is allowed. This includes onsite retail and light manufacturing, Lawton said. The city’s zoning ordinances also specifically mentions Rumiano Cheese Factory as an allowable use with a conditional use permit, he said.
The project is exempt from CEQA because there’s no proposal to increase the plant facility itself, Lawton said. Staff believe there are no significant noise and traffic impacts, he told Hyatt.
“CEQA, the state law, they analyze traffic according to vehicle miles traveled, so any increase in VMT is considered (a) potential impact if it’s significant or not,” Lawton said. Even though the factory is surrounded by homes, “according to CEQA this is a manufacturing/industrial area because it is zoned C1, Downtown Business District,” he said.
Crescent City resident Ardette Esselstrom said her late husband built the apartments near the cheese factory back in the 1970s when it was very small. She also owns a rental house neighboring the plant and has lived there herself.
Referring to a written comment she submitted to the Planning Commission, Esselstrom said her tenants already deal with trucks parked and waiting on the street to make deliveries or take out shipments. They block driveways and mailboxes and maneuver across the street to get to the facility, she said.
“These activities interfere with people simply trying to live in and access their homes,” Esselstrom said. “During the years my family has owned these properties, the city has already approved two previous expansions of Rumiano. The last one was in 2014 for the whey processing facility.”
Esselstrom challenged Lawton’s statement that Sartori’s proposal should be exempt from CEQA and asked if the factory is operating under the conditions established in its use permit for the 2014 expansion.
“How will the facility accommodate twice as many deliveries in the same time window? Where is that demonstrated in the staff analysis?” She asked. “Where will trucks wait without using the public street, sidewalk, bicycle or pedestrian facilities? Where is the traffic and safety analysis showing that these streets and this property can safely handle that increase? Where’s the truck turning analysis … and when one truck is unloading where is the next truck going to wait? Will it be on Rumiano’s property or sitting in the public street?”
According to Esselstrom, the cheese factory had asked delivery trucks to park at a site on Northcrest Drive, but said that no longer appears to be the case.
“Your conditional use permit ordinance requires you to make findings concerning the suitability and adequacy of this site — adequate off-street loading and the project’s effect on present and future traffic,” she said. “What evidence in the record allows you to make those findings when these issues haven’t even been studied?”
Jodi Mangum, another Crescent City resident who also lives near Rumiano, said she remembers the 2014 expansion as a sound coming from the factory that was a rumble in the middle of the night. Now, she compares it to the fog horn in the harbor and says sometimes she can’t hear it.
Still, Mangum said, there are a lot of children that are in the area — the factory is across the street from Crescent Elk Middle School and is near Joe Hamilton Elementary School.
“As a neighbor of Rumiano, I love Rumiano,” Mangum said. “I appreciate the store and now, if you go in the store, there’s no cheese. So, here we are. We’re going to be getting the impact of all the traffic and now we’ve had our cheese prices doubled so that the rest of the world can know about Crescent City and Rumiano Cheese.”
Dave Yeager, who had worked with Hemmingsen Construction doing contract work before becoming Crescent City public works director, said the heavy trucks going to and from the plant has “obviously degraded the road.” He noted that 9th Street is an approved truck route, but they shouldn’t be driving down 8th Street.
Yeager suggested that Planning Commissioners ask Sartori to go back to staging their trucks off site, noting both the schools and the number of churches near the plant. A possibility, he said, might be the Del Norte County Fairgrounds.
The factory’s new manager, Dustin Lawrence, who said he grew up in Smith River and went to school with Tony and Joby Rumiano, drew a parallel between the cheese factory’s founders and its current owners. Like their predecessors, Sartori is a cheesemaker that’s proud of what they do and creates a quality product.
Lawrence said Sartori has also doubled his employment team in less than 100 days. The plant had been without a manager for about a year and the retail space has also lost product, he said, but that’s changed.
“We have our product in there. My manager there is doing a good job as she’s learning quickly. I’m learning quickly and I know we’re going to improve a lot of things,” he said. “We’re not perfect at the moment, but we’re bringing business into Crescent City. We’re employing our people and we’re employing our farmers and we’re growing. I think Rumiano deserves to be known nationally.”
Lawrence told planning commissioners that residents’ concerns about increased truck traffic are being address. His colleague, Dochterman, speaking to Esselstrom’s concerns, stated that while Rumiano Cheese had asked trucks to stage offsite in the past while making deliveries or taking shipments, the company it contracts with “no longer operates those routes.”
“We have a contract with a local company that is hauling and the intention is how do we do better?” Dochterman told planning commissioners. “How do we stretch (the deliveries) over the course of time? If that’s clearly something we’ve heard, we can take that back and make that a priority.”
Before she and her colleagues reached a final consensus, Crescent City Planning Commission Debra Perius asked Dochterman if Sartori, and Rumiano Cheese, will leave the community if “we turn you down.”
The immediate answer, Dochterman said, is no. He also noted that the request to conduct traffic and noise analyses ahead of potentially doubling the number of deliveries to the cheese factory wasn’t unrealistic.
“The plant is a fixture. It makes a very unique product,” he said. “We would like that product and we would like more of it. So, if there are things we need to do to be able to get to that point, certainly we’re going to do that as expeditiously as we can.”
