Spring Lake Village expansion in Santa Rosa worries neighbors

A senior community in east Santa Rosa that just finished a major expansion is planning to grow again, signaling the strong market for high-end senior housing but also raising traffic and transparency concerns among neighbors in the semi-rural area.

Spring Lake Village just completed a $140 million upgrade and expansion in February, adding 62 new units on the west side of its Montgomery Drive campus, nearly all of which are already occupied.

Enjoying such high demand for its independent living, continuing care and skilled nursing facilities, the community is now eyeing an eastward expansion into a former orchard with more than ?300 trees, troubling some neighbors.

Walnut Creek-based Episcopal Senior Communities has acquired four pieces of land to the east of its existing campus in the past two years, including two residential parcels, a bed and breakfast, and a vacant 6-acre parcel at the corner of Highway 12 and Los Alamos Road.

It’s that easternmost vacant parcel where the company wants to expand next, by adding 24-independent living units, including six single-story duplex cottages and a two-story, 12-unit apartment building.

The eastern “grove” would have its own community center with pool and exercise room and will be tied in to the main campus by both walking paths and a shuttle bus. The housing units will all have full kitchens, but residents are expected to eat at least one meal a day at the main dining hall, said Sharon York, the executive director of Spring Lake Village.

Neighbors are concerned for a number of reasons. One is traffic. Montgomery Drive is used by visitors to Spring Lake Regional Park and Annadel State Park, as well as drivers seeking a shortcut to Highway 12.

The main entrance to the facility will be off Los Alamos Road, which is a major concern for residents of the Villa Los Alamos condominium complex, said Melinda Cabral, president of the homeowners association.

“They are telling us the driveway to this thing has to be across from our driveway, which isn’t going to work” because of poor sight lines, Cabral said. Residents are also concerned about noise and lights.

Embarking on an expansion before the first one is even complete strikes Ken Wells, a resident of Brey Road on the western border, as “nontransparent” regarding the community’s long-term plans.

“They tell you on paper they’re not planning anything new and then a year later here’s another parcel and here’s another development,” Wells said. “They’re piece-mealing the project until they have a Spring Lake Village that is a whole neighborhood there.”

York denied the company is piece-mealing the project, but rather called it a new project that is responding to market demands. ?It acquired the vacant parcel about two years ago, long after the ?environmental work for the first phase was complete and before it had any concrete expansion plans, she said.

The company bought three additional parcels between the vacant parcel and the main campus last year, the Melitta Station Inn bed and breakfast and two residential properties on Montgomery Drive, one of which was older and, after a permit “snafu” that saw the project halted briefly last year, has been torn down, York said.

The bed and breakfast property is no longer open to the public, and is instead used mostly as housing for visiting staff, she said. The residential properties could someday be used for another future expansion, but no plans exist today, she said.

Spring Lake Village owned the western property it expanded onto for 20 years before work was complete, she said. She noted that the current approval process has just begun and she fully expects a full dialogue with the community in the coming months.

“I can appreciate the neighbors’ concerns, but at the end of the day I’m confident that we’ll be able to work things out to satisfy everyone,” she said.

The project will have a complete environmental impact report performed as part of the review, said Michelle Gervais, the land-use consultant on the project. The company was requesting an EIR largely because of “lessons learned” on the last project, which York said took six years to get approved.

City planner Patrick Streeter said just because a project happens in phases doesn’t mean it’s inappropriately “piece-mealed” under state environmental law. Such “segmentation” would be prohibited if it aimed to evade environmental review, which is not the case here, he said.

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