Planning Commission sends Sonoma Developmental Center plan to Board of Supervisors

The plan to redevelop the historic 945-acre Sonoma Developmental Center property in Glen Ellen bounded toward the finish line this week, when the county Planning Commission forwarded an environmental impact report and site-specific plan to the Board of Supervisors with only modest recommended changes.

The alterations urged by the Planning Commission include bumping the number of required lower-income units from 283 to 362; adding 50-foot setbacks to Mill Creek where it runs through the property, and increasing the setbacks along Sonoma Creek from 50 to 100 feet. Other changes would shift some development from the northeast portion of the property to the southeast; and clarify limits on particular models of housing.

In the recommended plan, 40-60% of residential units will be multi-family housing, 20-40% will go to single-family attached units (town houses and duplexes) and 10-30% to single-family detached houses.

“This has been a lengthy process, because we wanted to get this right,” said Bradley Dunn, policy manager for Permit Sonoma. “We’re really excited to move a project that brings desperately needed middle-class-workforce and affordable housing to Sonoma Valley. And that’s our goal here. This will bring housing for hundreds of working-class Sonoma Valley residents.”

The overall amount of housing for the property remains untouched in the documents the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors will evaluate on Dec. 16.

Some advocates of lower density were buoyed by what they saw as a recommendation to reduce the total number of units from 1,000 to 850. But whichever firm is selected by the California Department of General Services to develop the property could add up to 150 additional units by meeting certain eligibility requirements, Dunn said.

The proposal to allow as many as 1,000 housing units — plus a potential 120-room hotel, shops and offices — in an area of sparse population is what led Greg Carr, the planning commissioner for District 1, which includes the Sonoma Developmental Center, to cast the only no vote.

“The amount of development included, that’s the biggest objection,” Carr told The Press Democrat. “And that reflects the way most of the folks in the district feel. Pretty much 100% of the community has one opinion on this.”

The commission made a lot of good changes to the specific plan, Carr said. Those include expansion of the wildlife corridor, increasing the percentage of affordable housing units, scaling down the footprints of houses and introducing a five-year review. But he doesn’t understand why his four fellow commissioners felt compelled to agree to 1,000 units.

“Never in the hearings did I hear any rationale for that,” Carr said, referring to roughly 18 hours of discussion over four epic meetings. “It sort of left me thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’ I’m hoping the board, if it does the same, will at least express to the community why they feel it’s so important.”

Housing, and especially affordable housing, is of course important to this region, and to Sonoma Valley. The question is how much of it should be market-rate, and whether this all-but-abandoned campus, which abuts Jack London State Park, is the place for it.

It is an appropriate spot, according to Efren Carrillo, vice president of housing development for Burbank Housing and a former Sonoma County Supervisor.

“We believe that the proposed plan responds to the statewide and localized housing affordability crisis that remains persistent,” Carrillo said during public comment at the Oct. 27 Planning Commission meeting.

But many who live near the former institution for the developmentally disabled, which operated from 1891-2018, are convinced a development the size of a small town is a bad fit there.

That would include the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission, a joint advisory agency tasked with helping to guide local planning in the valley. The commission voted unanimously to reject the environmental impact report and specific plan, arguing that the project is too big and includes too many units, that the financial feasibility is questionable, the EIR inadequate and the unknowns too plentiful.

Arthur Dawson, a local historical consultant and a former ecologist at Sonoma Ecology Center, favors an alternative that emphasizes historic preservation and calls for 450 housing units. The county and the firm that prepared the EIR, Dhayat & Bhatia, ultimately rejected that alternative.

Dawson said most people he knows in Sonoma Valley would eagerly partner with the county if it scaled down the project. “We don’t want to be in a fight with the county or state,” he said. “It’s a lost opportunity. We’re being ignored.”

Dawson has a lot of ties in the area, and he said several groups have begun to discuss a legal response to the redevelopment plans should the Board of Supervisors greenlight them.

“People are certainly starting to talk about this more seriously,” Dawson said. “I’ve heard that because of the questionable nature of how this has come about, it could be attractive to lawyers.”

At least one prominent local stakeholder viewed the Planning Commission’s recommendation positively, though.

“We were delighted, and a little surprised, to see that the commissioners proposed expanding the buffer areas around the wildlife corridor,” said John McCaull, land acquisition director for Sonoma Land Trust. “And they expanded that designation to include more of the northern edge of campus, too. That’s a very significant improvement. It’s more than we asked for.”

While housing units have emerged as a contentious element of the project, consensus has formed around finding a way to hand the 700 acres of open space directly to a steward such as Sonoma County Regional Parks or California State Parks.

To see that idea propelled forward by the Planning Commission, along with the wildlife buffers, makes Land Trust staff more enthusiastic than they have been since the start of community hearings on the redevelopment plan.

“That land is open to the public now,” McCaull said. “But imagine if we could start putting up better signs, and have parks events and things. We’ve been waiting quite a few years to get to that activation.”

McCaull also acknowledged the hurdles ahead. SDC is owned by the State of California, which is allowing Sonoma County a unique opportunity to participate in its transformation. The eventual framework must work for the state, the county and the developer who wins the bid.

General Services anticipates interviewing developers later this month, a representative said, and will award the bid “sometime in 2023.”

That will open a whole new period of debate. Before the Land Trust can make a definitive statement on the project, McCaull said, the organization will need to know who the developer is, and would want to see a project-level environmental impact report that included specific numbers rather than a range.

“That is gonna be maybe the biggest challenge for everyone,” McCaull said. “There’ll be another couple years of serious negotiations to do with the actual developer. That’s absolutely as important as everything we’ve done so far with the specific plan. We have a ways to go. So please don’t take me as satisfied. But I do feel more optimistic.”

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