Sonoma Land Trust says more time needed to study wildlife corridor at Sonoma Developmental Center

Less than two weeks before a landmark vote by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, the Sonoma Land Trust is urging political leaders to delay identifying a plan that will shape the future of the Sonoma Developmental Center property in Glen Ellen.

Trust members are asking for an extension of up to two years to study the wildlife corridor that runs through the site.

The Jan. 25 meeting of the supervisors was circled months ago as the moment the board would formally select a redevelopment plan for a 930-acre property, which overflows with history and scenic wonder.

The schedule, jointly developed by the state of California and Sonoma County, calls for completion of a draft environmental impact report by June or July, and adoption of a final specific plan for September.

Because of major disruptions from COVID-19 and years of episodic wildfires, the Land Trust said, there simply hasn’t been enough time to make an informed decision on a preferred alternative.

“We respectfully suggest that we blew past that timeline a long time ago,” said Eamon O’Byrne, executive director of Sonoma Land Trust. “And with no blame to the county. With the fires, and more recently the pandemic, how could we expect county staff to devote one minute of time to this? Let’s take a deep breath, take a step back and see what we can come up with.

“All we ask is let’s reset the clock.”

It’s a request that county officials call unrealistic, because of the unique decision-making structure guiding the process. The state owns SDC — which opened in 1891 as the California Home for the Care and Training of the Feeble Minded, and operated for 127 years as a facility for Californians with learning disabilities. It is the state that will reap the financial profit. But it is offering Sonoma County what both call an unprecedented opportunity to help decide how the property will ultimately be used.

The California Department of General Services, which manages the former institution, offered a chilly reception to the Land Trust’s proposal.

“We entered into the agreement and provided $3.5 million in funding on the premise that the Specific Plan would be completed within 3 years of County’s acceptance of the agreement,” DGS said in a written statement. “While, certainly, some degree of schedule adjustments could happen, the agreement doesn’t contemplate an extension to the degree that the Land Trust is suggesting.”

Maintaining the aging campus costs state taxpayers roughly $10 million a year, the department said.

And a major delay to the sell-off might be more than imprudent. According to DGS, it could be illegal under the legislation that authorized funding as part of the state’s budget process, which contemplated a three-year plan.

“The two-year extension appears to violate what is required by the law,” DGS said. “A delay will only delay a project that could help alleviate the state’s acute housing shortage, homelessness, and housing insecurity.”

If county leaders upend the agreement, Permit Sonoma policy manager Bradley Dunn said, “the state can walk away from the process and program land use there as it sees fit.”

Because different local stakeholders rank priorities like housing, open space and historic preservation differently, selling and redeveloping the SDC land was always bound to trigger friction. And there has been perhaps even more rancor than expected since Sonoma County presented three alternative plans in November. Judging by the many meetings, surveys and community workshops conducted since then, some would say no one is happy with any of the three alternatives.

Susan Gorin certainly isn’t. The county supervisor whose jurisdiction includes SDC believes all three are “lacking in innovation and creativity.”

Yet Gorin does not support the Land Trust’s appeal for months, or even years, of additional study. She believes the board can select among the best features of the various alternatives and come up with a better solution in a timely fashion.

“It’s premature to even talk about extending the timeline,” she said.

Her point, and Dunn’s, is that the environmental impact report scheduled for the next few months, and other work likely to follow the Jan. 25 vote, will adequately address whatever needs to be strengthened — including establishment of a wildlife corridor.

“Sonoma Land Trust and the Sonoma Ecology Center have been studying the wildlife corridor for 5-10 years. So I think there’s a lot of data,” Gorin said. “Does that mean we don’t need more? Probably not. But I don’t see the campus being developed anytime soon. I’m pragmatic enough to suggest it will be a number of years before any developer will be able to start putting pencil to paper.”

To Land Trust leaders, it makes no sense to rely on the environmental impact report if it’s evaluating a bad plan.

“If they had taken those needs into consideration up front, they might have come up with a different plan,” said John McCaull, the trust’s land acquisition director.

No one is disputing the significance of the corridor — including the county, which recognized it in its SDC Specific Plan Profile and Background Report, prepared by the planning firm Dyett & Bhatia in September 2020. That document cites the Bay Area Open Space Council’s Conservation Land Network, which called the Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor “a key area for protection.”

The Land Trust says the importance of the wildlife corridor can’t be overstated. To the west are the coast ranges, and beyond them the coastal habitat of Point Reyes; to the east, Sonoma Valley and the Mayacamas mountains, which provide links to the forests of Lake and Mendocino counties. This undeveloped chain crosses the SDC property at “the pinchiest of pinch points,” O’Byrne said.

Without the Glen Ellen corridor, he explained, apex predators like mountain lions, foxes, coyotes and badgers won’t have ample opportunity to forage and reproduce. That could lead to genetic drift in the species, and ultimately to their replacement in the area by other animals.

O’Byrne described that loss as the unraveling of an ancient thread that would have “cascading consequences.”

“We could eventually see a decline in water quality, air quality, forest cover,” he said. “You may not care about animals, but you probably like to breathe clean air and drink clean water.”

The wildlife corridor isn’t a trail waiting to be created by humans, O’Byrne said. It already exists. The problem in moving ahead with a redevelopment plan for SDC is that we don’t truly understand what’s going on there.

“What we don’t know is, how many animals at a given time are using this corridor?” O’Byrne said. “And are they using it in the daytime? Nighttime? Those are questions we need to answer to say, ‘What should we build here?’”

Sonoma Land Trust sent out an action alert Tuesday, asking its supporters to file online comments with the Board of Supervisors before their Jan. 25 meeting. The organization has hired the San Francisco law firm of Shute Mihaly & Weinberger to help it navigate what lies ahead.

The current development agreement, O’Byrne noted, says the timeline can be amended by mutual agreement of the state and county. He wonders why Sonoma County wouldn’t be interested in exploring that.

Dunn is unswayed.

“Mutual agreement of the parties means both the state and county would have to agree,” he said. “And the state has told us repeatedly they don’t have any interest in extending the timeline.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.