A time of transition: What will it take to bring downtown Santa Rosa back to life?

Windsor resident Dan Young has many memories of growing up in Santa Rosa, from cruising down Fourth Street to visiting Lena’s in Railroad Square and its packed bar and dinner crowd.

He says he doesn’t go downtown often anymore because he feels there just isn’t much for him to do and wishes there were more community events and live music.

“I don’t think [Old] Courthouse Square is a very comfortable place to be the way it is now,” he said. “It’s not very welcoming, at least to me anyway, but maybe there could be more of an effort to make it more decorative and like a place where people want to hang out for an afternoon.”

Santa Rosa resident Kyle Dane wants to see downtown become more walkable with better bike infrastructure. He applauds the 2017 reunification of Courthouse Square, which allows his teenage kids who frequent downtown to walk around with ease.

He feels, however, that many changes to Courthouse Square, especially removing the water features, erased the charm that downtown Santa Rosa once had.

About 50% of what brings Santa Rosa resident Moira Bessette downtown are the restaurants. She’s a frequent visitor to downtown Santa Rosa but wishes it hasn’t changed so drastically over the past five years.

She share’s Dane’s view of wanting a walkable downtown but feels that other factors like lack of easy parking and the 2016 removal of the Ruth Asawa fountain and Rosenberg fountain to make way for a reunited Courthouse Square have made Santa Rosa lose its appeal.

“Downtown has to be a welcoming, interesting, vibrant place but there also has to be something for people of all interest and all incomes,” she said. “Maybe that’s what we used to have when there was something for everyone and everything was in reach.”

Downtown Santa Rosa, once vibrant and energetic, is struggling with its identity. Petaluma is know for its old-town charm. Healdsburg is known for its chi-chi, upscale vibe. But Santa Rosa is caught somewhere in the middle.

Cities and downtowns across the country are grappling with how to revitalize their shopping and business districts to bring back visitors in a post-COVID society.

In San Francisco’s downtown San Francisco Centre shopping mall, Westfield gave up ownership in June and half of the retail tenants have pulled out, citing debunked crime theories that claim organized retail theft is to blame for the closures.

And, in New York, office vacancy rates have jumped by over 70%, according to reporting from Fortune.

But neither narrative really fits with Sonoma County’s largest city. While there’s no major exodus from downtown Santa Rosa, there are plenty of boarded-up shops. But there are new businesses as well, many of them dining related, and a cluster of recently opened entertainment venues — The Lost Church, Barrel Proof comedy, and the California Theatre appear to be thriving.

Still, Sonoma County residents say downtown isn’t the same.

In our multipart series, The Press Democrat will examine the state of housing development downtown and will survey business owners and restaurant owners about what attracts customers in this age of hybrid workplaces and takeout food. And we’ll conclude our series with some solutions and comments offered by those working to revitalize downtown.

What the research shows

A research brief from the University of Toronto, School of Cities and Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, looked into the pandemic recovery of downtowns last June.

The report said “to survive in the new era of remote work, downtowns will need to diversify their economic activity and land uses.”

Data from commercial real estate firm Keegan & Coppin found that downtown Santa Rosa vacancy rates rose from 13% in 2019 to around 21% in 2023, making up 65% of the increase in vacancy in the overall Santa Rosa market excluding the northern corridor near the airport.

“One of the biggest problems in downtown Santa Rosa is office space vacancy, and I think that’s truly predicated on the lack of parking and parking availability,” said Annette Cooper, senior real estate adviser with Keegan & Coppin.

A Reddit thread in r/santarosa posed the question of what people would like to see happen to make Santa Rosa a better place to live and work with multiple responses referring to downtown.

Many respondents suggested more affordable high-density housing, better solutions for those experiencing homelessness and tearing down Santa Rosa Plaza.

Press Democrat interviews with other residents reveal similar thoughts, with people wanting to see more community events downtown while others believe the homeless population and the way Santa Rosa Plaza divides downtown keeps people away.

Downtown Action Organization Executive Director Cadance Allinson moved to Santa Rosa in 2014 and remembers downtown being busy on weekend evenings with bars, restaurants and entertainment spaces that were open late.

The pandemic changed that, she said, forcing many late-night spots to close, leaving only a handful of options.

But she, along with experts and city officials, wouldn’t say the downtown is in decline exactly, but rather in a state of transition.

“There’s just been ebbs and flows of the culture in downtown,” Allinson said. “It’s definitely an optimistic time in downtown Santa Rosa because there’s so much on the horizon and … I think what’s happening now is that stuff is physically happening.”

Allinson is referring to the roughly half a dozen housing developments, along with retail and dining projects that have been announced over the last few years.

She said there are a number of areas to focus on when it comes to revitalizing downtown including physical upgrades such as signage and shrubbery, policies to bring more developers and foot traffic to downtown, and housing and community amenities.

City Council member Chris Rogers, whose district includes downtown Santa Rosa, recently attended a California League of Cities convention in Sacramento, where one of the sessions focused on downtown revitalization following the height of the pandemic.

“It’s a topic that’s really of high interest,” Rogers said. “The city has been focusing on how do we maximize potential by creating a place that is vibrant, that people want to come to, that has housing, mixed with retail and other types of amenities.”

The elephant in the room

Downtown Santa Rosa, according to the Downtown Station Area Specific Plan, encompasses approximately 720 acres. Its borders are defined as College Avenue to the north, Brookwood Avenue to the east, Sebastopol Road and State Route 12 to the south and Dutton Avenue to the west.

Some longtime residents point to landmark events, including elevating Highway 101 and constructing Santa Rosa Plaza, that have changed the face of downtown.

Rogers said he hears from people on how the mall separates and alienates Courthouse Square from Railroad Square making people reluctant to travel between the two.

And he hears complaints about parking and potential encounters with people experiencing homelessness as the most common reasons why people don’t want to come downtown.

Santa Rosa resident and community planning consultant David Woltering and San Jose resident and urban planner Rick Phillips wanted to look at challenges facing downtown Santa Rosa.

The two penned an essay about their findings and possible solutions to combat these challenges for the annual International Making Cities Livable Conference for city leaders, researchers, designers and urban planners.

The division of Courthouse Square and Railroad Square by the mall is the “elephant in the room,” they said.

The second essay, which the pair presented a few weeks ago at the annual conference in London, took a deeper look at solutions to the division, such as creating a path through the mall to allow people to and from each side and new developments on the north and south side to bring more visitors.

A further look at these solutions will be presented later in this series.

Raissa de la Rosa, director of the Santa Rosa Economic Development Department, said the city invested heavily in daytime businesses, such as the bank buildings just off Courthouse Square, without focusing as much on mixed-use or nighttime business.

“One of the big challenges is how do we bury those old bank buildings and what do we do with them as the banks are sort of downsizing and stuff like that,” de la Rosa said. “A lot of buildings are owned in trusts with families that don’t even live here anymore ... so it makes it really challenging to do development with the downtown as well.”

A state of transition

Roughly more than half a dozen development projects have been announced over the course of the last few years as part of downtown revitalization, such as the Stark’s latest and eighth restaurant, Augie’s French, and housing projects such as the development at 420 Mendocino Avenue and another potential project in the former White House lot on Third Street.

Allinson said it’s no coincidence these projects are occurring all at once, especially since many have been in the works for years. However, many have been halted by the wildfires, the pandemic and financing.

“There’s just a desire to get stuff done and I think it has made a huge impact,” she said. “Seeing the ordinance updates and projects that we’ve just been talking about for so long starting to move quickly underlies the hard work from people in the community and policies of the council and city manager’s office that are really driving it all.”

De la Rosa believes that downtown Santa Rosa is healthier than people think. She said she and her department have seen positive turnover of businesses with temporary vacancies.

“If you want an active downtown, you have to actually use the downtown,” she said. “You have to patronize businesses to help them out.”

Rogers believes challenges with downtown Santa Rosa are a matter of perspective. “The end goal is a place that has diverse options in housing that is affordable for folks, alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles as transportation and has a vibrant local economy,” he said. “It’s a very broad way to put it, but that’s what we’re really working on.”

This is the first in a series. Next week: Retail shopping

You can reach Staff Writer Sara Edwards at 707-521-5487 or sara.edwards@pressdemocrat. com. On Twitter @sedwards380.