Plans for housing at Sonoma County’s Chanate Road hospital site to be aired at public meeting in Santa Rosa

One of the largest and most controversial housing projects planned in Sonoma County is approaching its biggest public milestone in nearly a year, even as a group of Santa Rosa residents have mounted a persistent and increasingly visible campaign to scale down the proposed development.

Santa Rosa officials will host a meeting with community members tonight to discuss plans to develop 82 acres off Chanate Road, including the site of the old county hospital complex, where developer Bill Gallaher wants to build about 870 housing units. The meeting, set for 6 p.m. at the Finley Center, marks the first chance for the public to weigh in on the project since the Board of Supervisors sold the property to Gallaher in July.

Neighbors now organized under the moniker Friends of Chanate have long opposed Gallaher’s plans, arguing the site can’t support that many housing units and contending the sale process last summer was fatally flawed. The project‘s critics, who are challenging the county’s sale of the site in court, recently escalated their campaign by planting some signs along Chanate Road and elsewhere that appear to invoke the October wildfires, suggesting the development’s size would make evacuation from the hilly, forested neighborhood more difficult in future emergencies.

Yet the project’s supporters still view it as an invaluable effort to produce hundreds of new housing units, an initiative made even more necessary after the fires destroyed 5,300 homes in the region, exacerbating an already-chronic housing shortage.

“There are people who don’t want anything built there, but I think the majority of the community understands that we need all kinds of housing right now,” said Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who represents the area. “Obviously the city is going to listen to the community regarding what their concerns are, and I think that’s what we’ve always told people. The details, in terms of how it actually gets built out, is between the city and the developer and the community.”

But detractors of the plan say their concerns lie not with the entire prospect of building housing at the former hospital site, but with the size of Gallaher’s plans and the steps supervisors followed - or didn’t - to sell the site.

“I’ve heard of no one saying ‘don’t do anything,’” said Ken Howe, an El Dorado Court resident who is part of Friends of Chanate. “We want it to be developed. We just want it to be reasonable.”

Komron Shahhosseini, Gallaher’s project manger for the proposed Chanate Road development, didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.

As currently envisioned, the new development would include at least 385 market-rate units, 162 units affordable to residents with very low incomes, 260 units reserved for seniors and 50 to 60 units for homeless veterans, according to the city. Plans also call for a commercial center with a small Oliver’s Market grocery store, an amphitheater, 2 miles of trails and dozens of acres of open space, among other offerings.

Gallaher’s team has met with city officials but has yet to file a formal application to develop the property - tonight’s neighborhood meeting is required before that can happen, according to David Guhin, the city’s director of planning and economic development. The developer also needs to have a preliminary meeting with the city’s design review board.

The meeting tonight will offer multiple avenues for residents to weigh in, including through written and verbal questions of the developer’s team and city staff, Guhin said. And it’s far from the last time residents will be able to weigh in as the project works its way through Santa Rosa’s planning and permitting process, which will likely take at least a year and a half from when the developer submits an application, he said.

“This is the first, very initial step to get the public engaged,” Guhin said. “There will be multiple opportunities throughout the project.”

Friends of Chanate sent city leaders a letter in May trying to convince them to put the brakes on the project until a judge had a chance to decide on the merits of the neighborhood group’s lawsuit. But Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey said that wouldn’t be appropriate.

“We’re going through our process and the judicial system is going through its process,” Coursey said. “If we get told to stop, we’ll certainly do that. But we don’t want to predict what the outcome of that will be.”

Coursey said he had not yet closely studied the project details and stressed there isn’t even a submitted application yet. He agreed some amount of housing is appropriate for the site and said he looked forward to a “thorough vetting process” to determine the right number.

Critics’ legal arguments will be aired July 20 before a Sonoma County Superior Court judge. Friends of Chanate is arguing supervisors made an improper gift of public funds when they sold the 82-acre site to Gallaher for $6 million - though the price could rise to as much as $11.5 million, depending on the number of units he is allowed to build - and that supervisors violated state open-meetings requirements and failed to appropriately study the potential environmental impacts.

“The county handled this very poorly,” said Noreen Evans, an attorney and former state legislator who is representing Friends of Chanate. “The public has a very strong interest in what happens to that property and what its ultimate sales price is. We’re looking forward to our day in court.”

But the county and Gallaher’s lawyer contend the property’s sales price was adequate, in particular because of the numerous public benefits the deal provides, such as the cost of developing the planned affordable housing and the demolition and maintenance costs the county will avoid.

Taking all of the benefits into consideration, the sale is ultimately worth as much as $71.9 million to taxpayers, county officials have said. The county further argues it fulfilled all of its legal requirements regarding open meetings and environmental analysis.

“We believe our position is strong, and we expect to prevail at the hearing on the 20th,” said assistant county counsel Bob Pittman.

Residents involved in the lawsuit don’t plan to bring it up at tonight’s meeting, Howe said. But they are apparently trying to drum up opposition to the development, as shown by the signs that have started to pop up.

The white signs say “Chanate Road: The Wrong Place for 867 High-Density Apartments” in black letters, below which is a black box framing the words “How Will YOU evacuate?” in red and white. Zane decried the signs as “scare tactics” in the wake of October’s wildfires - the city’s devastated Fountaingrove neighborhood is just a few minutes’ drive away from the Chanate Road property where the hospital complex sits.

“When it comes to housing, people shouldn’t be using the fire to intimidate others,” Zane said. “We already have enough grief and trauma in our midst.”

But Howe defended the sign-planting effort, which he has been involved with.

“You have to in some way get people’s attention, and evacuation is a big topic right now regarding the traffic,” he said. “If you have 800 units, there’s going to be a lot of traffic. It’s not a scare - it’s reality.”