Santa Rosa sees more community events, safety efforts to encourage foot traffic downtown

Everyone has a theory of what downtown Santa Rosa needs to thrive.

Of the more than 250 people who responded to a recent Press Democrat query, the majority cited more events, less crime and better parking and transportation alternatives.

They also cite the need to physically reunify Courthouse Square and Railroad Square. And while that’s not going to happen anytime soon, the other priorities reflect how Santa Rosa’s downtown is in some ways defined by perception rather than reality.

The fact is, there already are more events and less crime, and as for the parking and transportation, let’s just say it’s a work in progress. Here’s a look at how the myths stack up against the facts.

More events taking place downtown

Santa Rosa resident Gary Lentz said that while there are great businesses in the city to attract people, there need to be more night spots; Courthouse Square’s event space isn’t used enough.

While Lentz agrees that the planned residential projects will help bring people downtown, that’s not enough.

“I think more bars with bands would be great,” Lentz said.

Alice, who didn’t want to give her last name, has lived downtown for seven and a half years.

She misses when live music would play in some of the parklets and wants to see more events in the city’s center.

“I like coming to happy hours downtown, visiting my friends and I wanted to be able to walk and not drive,” she said. “I like the live music … and I would like to see more (of it).”

Revitalizing Santa Rosa’s downtown has been a topic of discussions and essays ever since shelter-in-place orders lifted. Many businesses embraced a work-from-home model while others adopted a hybrid model and downsized to smaller offices.

But studies across the country say complete return-to-office efforts won’t provide the spark downtowns need to revive. A special Zoom event held by Politico in 2021 brought together city officials and planners to discuss how to fix America’s ailing downtowns.

Ideas that emerged included creating outdoor spaces with cultural events, rethinking street design to accommodate vehicles, bikes and pedestrians, moving parking areas farther out and making downtown attractive for diverse segments of the population in terms of age, race and ethnicity.

In Santa Rosa, those things are easier said than done.

Since the unveiling of the renovated and reunited Courthouse Square in 2017, many hoped that there would be more events held in the space. It wasn’t until recently that this became the case.

In 2020, Mercedes Hernandez, owner of the Holee Vintage store on Fourth Street started The SoCo Market for millennial business owners, in downtown Cotati. She had noticed that many people who lost their jobs during the pandemic used the opportunity to start a business of their own.

Hernandez wanted to give small businesses, particularly those owned by millennials, a place to show off their goods. She said as the market grew in popularity, Santa Rosa reached out and asked her to bring her endeavor to Courthouse Square.

She said as they’ve continued to operate downtown, now with more than 100 vendors, attendance has grown to include people from outside the North Bay.

“(These visitors) are also checking out the downtown area and visiting a lot of local shops and restaurants,” Hernandez said. “It’s kind of put Santa Rosa on the map a little bit more.”

Dozens of events and gatherings were canceled in 2020 when the pandemic shut down nearly everything. Data from the Santa Rosa economic development report found that only five special event permits for downtown Santa Rosa were issued that year.

The city has continued to issue more event permits as restrictions have lifted. The report states the city issued 29 special events permits between January and June of this year. As of June 1, an additional 14 were issued.

The Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce also has hosted many events that take place downtown while also bringing outside events to the area supported by the chamber. The chamber is slated to host 70 events, such as the annual tree lighting and Winter Lights Skating, in downtown Santa Rosa in 2023, one event more than in 2022.

The Railroad Square Historic Association also hosts its fair share of events with live music and holiday-related activities.

Cadance Allinson is executive director for the Downtown Action Organization. It’s great to see because I think finding new audiences and bringing them downtown is huge,” she said. “Most weekends there’s something happening here and the same with the summers. There’s just a lot going on.”

Increased safety efforts

But others have said they avoid downtown Santa Rosa because it’s “too dangerous” and that downtown is filled with crime, graffiti and drugs.

Santa Rosa Police Chief John Cregan said the crimes that occur downtown are more minor offenses, such as public indecency, or general complaints about the homeless.

“I don’t think we’ve ever seen a disproportionate amount of violent crimes being committed downtown,” Cregan said.

Data from the Santa Rosa Police Department showed that the downtown area had only 0.8% of citywide violent crime.

Downtown safety is a topic Cregan has zeroed in on since he took office last year. He said he and his department have seen tremendous progress and that many of the efforts put in place to curb crime have helped, such as expanding the Downtown Enforcement Team, which now haseight officers patrolling seven days a week.

The police department formed a resource team, the inResponse Mental Health Support Team, to help people experiencing a mental health crisis. Members are not sworn police officers but rather licensed mental health clinicians dispatched by 911 operators.

“I’ve been very clear from day one as chief that the best resource to go (help people) experiencing a mental health crisis is not a police officer,” Cregan said. “Our officers aren’t going down there to focus on enforcement action, they’re there to build connections with our community, for all members of our community.”

Data from the inResponse Mental Health Support Team showed that 410 dispatched calls were made in September alone. Cregan said the goal is to respond to 5,000 calls to service throughout 2023 with plans to launch a third team in early 2024 that would respond to calls between the hours of 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. seven days a week.

For the upcoming holiday season, the downtown police ambassadors program has been relaunched. Volunteers are encouraged to offer information, directions and assistance while monitoring the area. They will report unsafe or suspicious behavior directly to the police department.

More foot patrol officers also will be on duty, according to a release from the department. These officers will patrol Courthouse Square, Railroad Square and Santa Rosa Plaza, as well as Coddingtown Mall and Montgomery Village. Portions of their time will be spent at parking garages and near storefronts.

Property and business owners have told The Press Democrat the homeless population, among other reasons, contributes to challenges they have attracting customers and recruiting and retaining employees.

Santa Rosa City Council member Chris Rogers, whose district includes downtown, said he’s heard from business owners that things are improving. They cite mental health response and homeless service outreach helping people get the services they need and a debris removal team cleaning up trash and graffiti have helped.

“For all the negative things that we hear from people from time to time, we see downtown coming back,” he said. “I have been hearing from downtown business owners over the last couple of months that it’s getting better.”

Catholic Charities, which has a resource hub on Morgan Street, has added two dedicated workers to its Homeless Outreach Services Team, or HOST, providing a permanent presence in the area.

The team already does outreach in downtown but is often called away to other parts of the city. These two additional workers will stay in the downtown area.

Catholic Charities also teamed up with Burbank Housing to create the Caritas Homes development with the first phase of the high-density, affordable housing project opening earlier this year.

Catholic Charities CEO Jennielynn Holmes said homelessness has reduced in downtown in her opinion because of specific targeted efforts such as the HOST team and the downtown enforcement team.

She said there is typically a higher concentration of people experiencing homelessness in urban parts of the community.

“We know that homelessness affects every corner of our community and at the middle of it is a person suffering,” Holmes said. “So we really see a multifaceted approach to when we help the individual, we’re also helping the community.”

Push for walkable, bikeable downtown

Other organizations in Sonoma County are working on improved biking and walking infrastructure to discourage dependence on cars. In response to the Press Democrat’s recent article about housing projects downtown, many readers expressed concern that more housing would bring more traffic to the area.

Others worried that the elimination of parking lots in place of new apartment buildings would heighten the parking problem, despite a study from 2022 showing that 74% of the more than 8,700 public and private parking spots in downtown were vacant during peak hours.

Chris Guenther, co-founder of the Bikable Santa Rosa campaign, said the group focuses on cycling as ways to get to work or school, and there needs to be better infrastructure to make that possible.

“We are thoughtful about creating a viable network, which makes cycling more of an everyday transportation choice,” Guenther said. “We’ve got some good parks, but they don’t all connect and a lot of the parks that we have are sort of the old style of bike infrastructure.”

The California Department of Transportation, also known as CalTrans, has a classification system for different types of bike lanes. Guenther is referring to the Class II bike lane, usually just a painted lane.

“And that’s not safe,” he said.

Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Eris Weaver said while there aren’t many bike lanes in downtown Santa Rosa, traffic in Courthouse Square and Railroad Square is typically slower. She added that traveling between the two can sometimes be a challenge but that there are plans from the city to make bike travel in and out of downtown safer.

She said bike storage also needs to be addressed. There are bike racks in Courthouse Square and the SMART Train station, but not many other options.

Alexander Oceguera, the active transportation planner with the City of Santa Rosa, said the last count in 2022 showed there are 62 bike racks in downtown. At least 25 more bike racks have been installed since that count with plans to install 50 more.

Weaver and the coalition have pitched the idea of turning parking spots into bike storage. The coalition held an event earlier in October in front of Sonoma Clean Power and riders could leave their bikes with a free valet service.

“I don’t want to lock my bike where there’s a lot of people hanging out and then go shopping maybe three blocks away only because I”m worried my bike won’t be there when I get back,” she said. “I really feel like in the last couple of years that we’re on the edge of a big shift as people are wrapping their minds around getting away from the auto-centric paradigm.”

You can reach Staff Writer Sara Edwards at 707-521-5487 or sara.edwards@pressdemocrat. com. On Twitter @sedwards380.