Santa Rosa to take up shifting of Oakmont ridgeline

A local developer wants to make changes to a key Santa Rosa planning document to make it easier to build senior housing on a disputed ridgeline in the eastern part of the city.

Oakmont Senior Living has asked the city to change the portion of the general plan identifying a ridge running across its 68-acre property between Highway 12 and Annadel State Park.

The company worries that identifying its property as a ridgeline would give ammunition to critics of a future development on the property.

“This jumped out as something that could be a lightning rod for opposition,” said Tom Jones, principal of Brelje & Race Consulting Engineers.

The city appears to have identified an elevated portion of the property as a ridge “in error,” said Steve McCullagh, a project manager for Oakmont Senior Living.

“To me it’s obvious that this was placed on the wrong ridge,” McCullagh said.

He believes the far higher and more prominent ridgeline of Annadel State Park to the south is what the city should have marked as a ridge instead of his property.

But others still want to see the ridge protected. Bill Greene, an Oakmont resident who lives on Meadowstone Drive, is urging the city to block development of the site and avoid “another Fountaingrove fiasco.”

“Do not allow any building on that ridge,” Greene urged the city in a letter. “It is visible from both Oakmont and Annadel (State) Park and is a beautiful bit of nature, something that is becoming very rare in Santa Rosa.”

The developer’s request has garnered little attention to date. Only a few residents provided comments by the Dec. 1 deadline and the Oakmont Village Association has agreed to support the plan.

But nevertheless, it will require the planning commission and City Council early next year to revisit two sensitive issues - ridgeline development in general and the prospect of a large housing development beside Oakmont in particular.

The graded but undeveloped property along Elnoka Lane was once the site of a proposed senior development that went bust in the 1990s. In 2011, Oakmont Senior Living proposed the controversial Elnoka Village apartment complex that stirred the ire of the neighboring and politically influential community of Oakmont.

Those plans called for 209 units of multifamily housing and some commercial space on a 12-acre portion of the property closest to Highway 12 just north of Oakmont, the age-restricted community of mostly single-family homes.

The company dropped those plans last month, but now has much bigger plans in the works.

It wants to build up to 475 units of housing for seniors and employees in a series of one-, two- and three-story buildings covering the entire 68-acre site. The gated community would include assisted living and memory-care residents, McCullagh said.

Before it or any future developer makes a formal submission to the city, however, the company wants the reference to the ridge removed to smooth the approvals process, Jones said.

“It became clear that this ridgeline designation would possibly be a significant constraint and certainly a weapon that would be used against any project,” Jones said.

He called it an “extremely painful process” for Oakmont Senior Living to previously put forward a plan consistent with city zoning only to have the environmental review rejected by the council after Oakmont residents rallied against it.

In reviewing the development potential for the property, the company recognized that the city’s rules restricting development on ridgelines could prove problematic.

The city instituted new rules restricting development on ridgelines in 2002 following concerns about the increase in the number of hillside homes visible from the valley floor, particularly the newer, larger homes in the Fountaingrove area.

The city’s rules “prohibit development on hillsides and ridgelines where structures would interrupt the skyline,” as well as other general policy goals meant to preserve ridgelines.

But Oakmont Senior Living contends in its application that development of the Elnoka property would not cause structures to “interrupt the skyline” because the ridge is “dwarfed” by the peaks of Annadel State Park to the south.

The developer noted the southern end of the ridge in question was developed with homes in the Oakmont subdivision. There are three homes at the center of the property - and on the western side of the ridge - that cannot be viewed from Highway 12.

City planner Joel Galbraith said he is reviewing the application and trying to understand exactly how the various ridges in the city came to be designated as such in the city’s General Plan. He said it is not clear that property was designated as a ridge in error. The city would not have identified Annadel State Park as a ridgeline because it is outside city limits, he said.

The issue will go before the Planning Commission and City Council early next year.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.