Deal offers state money and path forward for closed Sonoma Developmental Center

The state has committed to spending up to $40 million under a new plan that would stave off any immediate sale of the Sonoma Developmental Center campus and extend basic post-closure operations at the shuttered facility another three years, giving more time to Sonoma County and many local stakeholders to decide the prized property’s future.

The proposal unveiled Tuesday was negotiated between two state agencies that oversee the 128-?year-old Sonoma Valley campus and a coalition that includes three state lawmakers from the region.

The plan, which could be approved Friday in a special public meeting of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, would keep the state in charge of security, landscaping and fire prevention activities on the 880-acre Eldridge property in the interim and put the county in the driver seat over planning for future development or sale options.

“It’s a good day,” said state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, one of the three legislators closely involved in the negotiations and public debate over the center’s future. “Developmental centers that have gone through a typical (state) process are vulnerable to the highest bidder. The process that will instead be launched in the coming weeks will be focused on community input and having all voices at the head of the table.”

The future of the state-owned property has been in question since well before Gov. Jerry Brown announced in 2015 his plan to shutter the facility and two others like it in Central and Southern California. Over the decades, the Sonoma campus, the oldest and largest of the three centers, has been home to thousands of developmentally disabled residents, and officials have scrambled in the intervening years to transition the remaining residents - including a few dozen at the Eldridge facility at the end of last year - into community-based homes.

With the December shutdown at SDC passed, the clock has been ticking on a withdrawal of state funding for the sprawling, tree-lined property. It includes 140 buildings, many of them aging, and hundreds of acres of open space flanking the Sonoma Mountains, with views of the Mayacamas Mountains to the east.

This year support for the property fell to about $1 million a month for upkeep until July, when the property was set for transfer to the Department of General Services for disposition.

The deal unveiled Tuesday, a product of years of discussions involving state officials and lawmakers, the county and citizens’ groups, would fund state maintenance through June 2022. The county, in turn, would take a lead role in coming up with a plan for the property’s future.

Interest in that vision has been intense ever since the closure order. Many neighbors and conservationists have called for much of the property to be set aside from development, with its 700 acres of open space absorbed or managed by either the state or county park system. The acreage, sandwiched between two state and county parks, functions as critical corridor for wildlife in the region, conservationists say.

“Everything in that arena should be retained locally and kept in open space and parks in perpetuity,” said state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, who along with Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, joined McGuire in brokering the agreement. “It’s certainly not a done deal yet that state parks would take any of that over. But, to me, that’s going to be the easiest part to solve, and it’s the developed areas that will be a little more difficult.”

Advocates for the developmentally disabled also have pushed for some retention of care services on the campus, home to about 3,000 special-needs residents at its peak decades ago, with about as many employees to care for them.

Many people have called for that legacy to be preserved in any future plan.

“People come up to me and say, ‘My grandmother worked there, or my parents worked there. Or I have family member living there,’?” said Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin, whose district includes Sonoma Valley. “It is indeed a place of great reverence and acknowledgment for how important this caregiving facility is for many, for their entire lives.”

But costs tied to the property’s transformation are likely to be steep. The state spent $2.1 million last year for an outside study that found the property was in need of nearly $115 million in infrastructure repairs to meet modern codes. A majority of its buildings were obsolete and would also require millions of dollars in seismic upgrades.

Gorin called the state’s financial investment - estimated to be $10 to $12 million per year through mid-2022 - “a heavy lift.”

If the deal is approved by the Board of Supervisors, the state would kick in another $3.5 million to support the county’s oversight of a community-driven land-use planning process for the campus.

Another part of the deal, according to McGuire, is state funding of up to $80,000 to erect a memorial at the crumbling cemetery where about 1,400 former residents are buried. The tribute is meant to answer a longtime request of family members and patient advocates.

Reaching a similar accord and guiding vision for the rest of the property will not be so easy.

Gorin speculated it could happen by splitting up the 180 acres where the bulk of the buildings are located so they can be sold off piecemeal. She also offered a scenario where the whole parcel is transferred to a nonprofit, as with The Presidio in San Francisco after it ceased being a military base.

“We’re not sure what the future will be regarding the transition of the land itself. Those questions are open-ended,” Gorin said. “Really it will depend, but the developmental center will remain always a part of the fabric of Sonoma Valley and certainly Glen Ellen.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @kfixler.