Plans to create park in Graton move forward

They hope by next year to convene at what would be the community’s first and only public park.

But in the meantime, residents of the west Sonoma County village of Graton were content to meet up Sunday on a closed stretch of Bowen Street to celebrate progress toward the creation of a community park - a goal which seems increasingly likely with each passing month.

The Graton Green Group, a nonprofit formed for the singular purpose of siting and building a park for the town near Sebastopol, has finally raised sufficient funds to match a proposed $103,000 grant from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District toward the purchase of a half-acre of land in the center of town currently owned by developer Orrin Thiessen. There’s even an extra couple of thousand to pay for a land appraiser and some park planning, nonprofit president HolLynn D’Lil said.

The county Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider the Open Space grant on Oct. 25 and, while there are no guarantees, there have been no indications of opposition, either, according to Dewey Watson, the group’s vice president.

“We’re this close,” D’Lil said, narrowing her fingers together. “I’ve been working on this since 2007. This is huge for us.”

D’Lil has spearheaded years of effort to secure a park for the community, focusing initially on the old Graton Fire Station property at Ross and Graton roads. The Green Group bid on the land and lost to a private business owner.

When a parcel smack dab in the central business district came to market about two years later, D’Lil and two friends tried to buy it, but they lost that bid, as well, to a Southern California developer. Then he sold the property and it landed with Thiessen, who called D’Lil within days of his purchase to talk parks, she said.

Thiessen proposes building ?10 affordable housing units on part of the property, including six with secondary units upstairs and two that would be built by Habitat for Humanity. He wants to sell most of the remainder to the Graton Green Group, throwing in certain site studies and improvements for free.

While the group is about ready to buy the land, Thiessen said slow-going county approvals must be completed before he can move forward with his development and complete the sale of the park land. He said he hopes it takes no more than six months or a year.

On Sunday, about 100 supporters and community members assembled around the Graton Day Labor Center to eat, drink, hear music and play games. On one area of asphalt, someone had used sidewalk chalk to sketch a map of the park property so children in the crowd could draw what they’d like to see there one day: swing sets, slides, roundabouts, monkey bars, even a basketball court and a zoo.

A park, said Sean Mitchell, 9, would be “awesome.”

“Sometimes, I just want to go out and play,” he said.