Sonoma County supervisors agree to sell Chanate Road property for $7.8 million

The trepidation was palpable Tuesday as the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to sell 72 acres of real estate along Chanate Road in northeast Santa Rosa — a move that could, after a half decade of fruitless efforts, allow the county to offload the property.

A cash windfall of $7.8 million will come to the county Dec. 31 if the next 60 days of due diligence go smoothly, but a history of setbacks and a lack of familiarity with the buyer, Newport Beach-based Village Partners, played on supervisors’ nerves Tuesday.

Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who had championed a previous proposal for a massive housing project to help alleviate the region’s housing crunch, probed for answers: Would Village Partners be able to close the deal? Would it walk away after uncovering the property’s various warts, from asbestos-ridden buildings to the Rogers Creek fault that runs through the area?

“This is important, because we’ve been left holding the bag three times now,” Zane said. “That’s why I’m asking these questions.”

A county-hired broker expressed confidence in Village Partners’ ability to pay. Company officials have not returned two phone messages and an email Monday and Tuesday seeking comment on their plans for the site, long heralded as a true county asset.

Along with its $7,795,000 offer to buy the property, Village Partners put down a $500,000 deposit, agreed to allow the county to lease its public health lab space back for $1 per year for the next two years, and rent the coroner’s office and morgue for three years at the same rate. Village Partners will also provide $50,000 in moving expenses to help relocate The Bird Rescue Center, a local nonprofit with space on the property.

For Zane, who served as a hospital chaplain when the site was home to the county hospital, there was reason to believe the offer was too good to be true. She wondered why, despite the most recent appraisal pegging the property’s price at just $4.24 million, Village Partners had offered so much more — $1.5 million more than its closest competitor in the bidding.

Board of Supervisors Chair Susan Gorin, who served with Zane on the ad hoc committee for the Chanate property for years, “never believing we would come to this point,” seemed to understand the sentiment.

“And we’re still holding our breath until Dec. 31 to make sure it (the sale) does close,” Gorin said, calling the board’s vote Tuesday “a momentous day for the county.”

Should the county succeed this time, it will bring to a close perhaps its most prolonged and controversial land use project, one that spanned the tenure of three General Services directors and nearly half of Zane’s time on the Board of Supervisors.

The first time supervisors agreed to a sale it was with local developer Bill Gallaher, who offered up to $12.5 million as part of a plan that could have seen up to 867 housing units built at the site along winding, scenic Chanate Road. But neighbors rallied against the sale, filed a lawsuit centered on environmental concerns and succeeded in getting the county to drop the deal in 2018.

There were more setbacks.

Another bidder, California Community Housing Authority, backed out last fall, leaving San Rafael-based EAH Housing to negotiate with the county for the property. But the EAH-led group crumbled, forcing county officials to again spike the sale in February.

In August 2019, when the Board of Supervisors voted to commence negotiations with EAH Housing, supervisors also voted to spend $10.8 million to demolish 13 of the decrepit buildings on the site, which had become a haven for squatters and looters. To date, a couple of trailers have been removed from the site, Sonoma County General Services Director Caroline Judy said Monday.

For the past half decade, the county has seen maintenance and security costs soar, reaching as high as $768,000 in 2018-19 as officials sought to combat vandals and squatters drawn to the site, home to about 20 buildings, most of which have been abandoned since 2018.

“It will be nice to get it off the county’s books,” said Supervisor David Rabbitt.

Before voting unanimously to approve the offer, supervisors took public comment, which also veered into questions and apprehension, including from Dr. Panna Lossy, whose family practice sits near the property along Chanate Road.

“This property has been used for the last 150 years to care for those needy in our community,” Lossy said. “How sure are you that we won’t regret selling for just a few million dollars this beautiful property?”

Zane won’t be around for the regrets, having lost her reelection bid to former Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey. His campaign leveraged resentment built up among Chanate property neighbors, who Zane referred to as NIMBYs. It became a hot-button issue during the race and the property may now be turned over to a developer in her last days in office.

On Monday, Zane previewed her vote and outlook for the property, which sits not far away from her own home in the McDonald Avenue neighborhood of Santa Rosa.

“I’m still going to make that choice, even though it has been politically painful for me, to be an advocate for affordable housing on that property,” Zane said. “And yeah, sometimes you do the right thing and you don’t get rewarded for it.”

You can reach Staff Writer Tyler Silvy at 707-526-8667 or tyler.silvy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @tylersilvy.