Discover one of Santa Rosa’s most colorful neighborhoods: SOFA arts district

Motorists traveling along busy Santa Rosa Avenue, past shopping centers and automotive businesses, can do themselves a favor by flipping their turn signals and steering onto Sebastopol Avenue, where a charming, artsy neighborhood awaits discovery.

Although it’s easy to drive right past Santa Rosa’s South of A Street arts district, this tucked-away area adjacent to Highway 101 is an oasis for creativity, from its many art studios to locally owned shops and galleries, contemporary cuisine and a resident theater company.

“It’s like this hidden gem in Santa Rosa. It’s just bright and vibrant. It’s a community,” said Amanda Dunker, who owns a business in the neighborhood with her fiancé, Jeremy Nusser. “The people who live here and work here come together. We were so fortunate to stumble upon this location.”

The couple live in Healdsburg but consider the neighborhood, known as the SOFA arts district, like a second home. They moved their business, Avalow, to a corner lot that once housed a 1909 gas station and a 1930s diner.

“It’s a cool, historic pocket to city history,” Nusser said. “The people here are what make it magical. They’re just amazing. It’s turning into one of the most colorful, interesting places in Santa Rosa.”

Seeing its potential, the couple transformed the property into a garden showroom and workshop space, with 30 of their handcrafted, raised-bed planters on display and brimming with vegetables and flowers in their test garden.

Across the street, Robin and Simmon Factor also arrived with ambitions to help revitalize the area. After selling their longtime store in Montgomery Village, Village Art Supply, they opened Chroma Gallery in 2014 in a space that once housed a Pontiac dealership and then a transmission shop, displaying art where cars and trucks once parked.

Having a creative vision - and looking beyond the surface - has been a trend for a decade or more in this tree-lined neighborhood just a few blocks south of the downtown Santa Rosa Plaza shopping center. Once a thriving gateway into the city before Highway 101 was built, the neighborhood suffered and fell on crime-ridden hard times.

The historic area, next to Juilliard Park and bordered by South A Street and Sonoma, Santa Rosa and Sebastopol avenues, “was much more iffy,” Simmon Factor said. “It has really changed over the years. Certain people moved in and have taken leadership roles in cleaning up the area.”

Factor, an artist, has long envisioned the area as an arts magnet for locals and tourists. “For so many years I’ve known many, many artists,” he said. “I knew this was the neighborhood for artists.”

After opening Chroma Gallery, Factor further transformed the space, establishing the Santa Rosa Arts Center, a fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems, Inc., a Santa Rosa-based nonprofit. Founded in 2017, the light-filled arts center is an anchor in the SOFA district, with a gallery of rotating exhibits showcasing artists of all skill levels. The center, featuring a backyard stage, offers classes, workshops, concerts and special events. The building also houses studios for nine artists of various mediums.

Factor credits several of the artists who initially approached the building owners about using the space as art studios. “They all were sympathetic,” Factor said. “It was the kernel the district sprang from.”

About 30 artists work from the SOFA district, several along South A Street, where the arts center is located. The neighborhood also is home to the Imaginists, an experimental theater company on Sebastopol Avenue that last year closed escrow on the building where they’re based. The group is working on a campaign to pay its loan, with donations accepted at theimaginists.org.

A sign at the Imaginists door reads, “100% Artist Occupied, 100% Artist Owned.” Among those that have donated to the troupe’s fundraising campaign is The Astro Motel, another SOFA neighborhood gem. Built in 1963 but fallen into blight, it was sold and remodeled into a 34-room, midcentury modern motel in 2017.

Owned by the creators of SOFA restaurant The Spinster Sisters (including chef Liza Hinman), The Astro also hosts special community events like author and poetry readings and parties, and has Shinola bikes for rent. (One of its investors is Andy Hampsten, a Giro d’Italia bicycle race champion.)

The Spinster Sisters opened in 2012, offering original dishes prepared from locally sourced ingredients. The popular restaurant draws fans to the neighborhood for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The Spinster Sisters and The Astro, like many neighboring businesses, emphasize community, collaboration and hospitality. Every November the SOFA district hosts a Winterblast festival with live music, open houses and a lively parade of costumed characters and sofas decked out for the occasion, mounted on wheels and pushed along the route. Yes, full-sized sofas and loveseats, like those found in living rooms.

First Friday Open Studios invite visitors to explore SOFA art studios and galleries, with doors open from 5 to 8 p.m. Another popular event, the annual SOFA ArtWalk, will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Aug. 3, 4, 10 and 11 throughout the art district. Admission is free.

Visitors will discover a quaint neighborhood, with creativity around every corner. Walk past a barbershop, hair salon and art studios on South A Street to find Art Alley alongside the Santa Rosa Arts Center, where murals and art installations wait to be discovered. A nearby light pole has been yarn-bombed, another form of street art.

Trek past two photo studios (one offering tintype portraits), turn on Sebastopol Avenue toward Santa Rosa Avenue, just past a dog grooming business, and a colorful scene unfolds. Outside a bungalow, a handmade sign invites passersby to purchase vegetable starts planted in dozens of red plastic cups lining the front yard. There’s a box to leave payments, a trusting honor system.

A few steps away, two mailboxes are painted with cheerful polka dots; down the street a sea of bright pink geraniums planted along the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County tumble onto the sidewalk, adding to the colorful neighborhood.

A block away, various activities welcome visitors to the 9-plus acre Juilliard Park, one of the city’s oldest parks. There may be a wedding going on, or kids in the playground, or games at the bocce ball courts.

Upcoming events include the Sonoma County Matsuri Japanese Arts Festival from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 19, a free celebration featuring Japanese food, folk dances, Taiko drumming and and origami demonstrations. Plus, the annual “Live at Juilliard” free Sunday concert series runs this year from 5-7 p.m. July 7 to Aug. 11, marking its 26th season. Gypsy-flamenco-jazz band Dgiin opens the season.

Factor, of the arts center, is hopeful the SOFA district will continue to evolve. He points to regarded arts centers like those in Sebastopol and Mendocino, and knows they started out small, too.

Transformations in the neighborhood have turned the once run-down area into a destination for those who appreciate art, culture and cuisine - and word is spreading about all that SOFA has to offer, Factor said.

A few businesses recently closed or moved out of the neighborhood to larger places (like Criminal Baking Co. & Noshery), but new tenants are setting up in the SOFA district, too.

Vicky Kumpfer, tending shop at Papillon Floral on South A Street, is grateful for all the positive changes in the community. An artist and former arts coordinator for the city and onetime visual arts manager for the Arts Council of Sonoma County, she’s encouraged by the neighborhood’s growth.

“We’ve got to keep the art in the arts district, and promote it further,” she said.