Sonoma County awards $300,000 contract to study options for new government campus

Nearly six months after agreeing in principle to hire a consultant to help steer the county in its push for a new home for its government offices, Sonoma County supervisors have selected that consultant and will pay the company up to $300,000.

The agreement with San Francisco-based Project Finance Advisory Limited comes months after supervisors and the Santa Rosa City Council agreed to move forward together in paying for a study of a potential new joint campus for county and city services.

Votes from both government bodies took place Jan. 29, and they agreed to spend together more than $600,000 for consulting advice on redeveloping their separate government complexes and other publicly owned land. One option up for study is a new joint city-county government center downtown.

“(The goal is to) produce hard data to support a decision to move forward together, move forward separately or not move forward at all,” Santa Rosa Assistant City Manager David Guhin said in a interview earlier this year.

Santa Rosa on Aug. 6 is set to award its contract to Jones Lang LaSalle, the Chicago-based real estate services firm, according to Guhin. He said the city is still negotiating the contract amount.

For the county, Project Finance Advisory Limited is tasked with completing a comparative financial analysis for location options for a potential new county government center and creating a community and staff engagement plan related to those options, among other work, according to county documents related to the contract.