Roseland Village housing development mired in legal dispute

A 175-apartment complex planned for Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhood remains mired in a legal challenge lodged by a nearby property owner and caught in the turnover at the top of the county’s main housing agency.

The 7½-acre Sebastopol Road site owned by the Sonoma County Community Development Commission has not seen much tangible progress since the City Council approved the project in June. Plans call for 100 market-rate apartments, 75 additional units for low-income tenants, retail space, a public plaza and a civic building that will include space for the Roseland library.

The $65 million-plus development, which has been in the works for more than a decade, is designed to create a clearer civic and commercial heart along with more housing in a growing part of southwest Santa Rosa.

The council’s vote to proceed came over an appeal from a neighboring property owner, John Paulsen, who owns Roseland Village Shopping Center. He is concerned the design of the new housing development will eliminate shared parking spaces and an existing path for trucks used to deliver supplies behind his center, which houses Camacho ?Market, Taqueria El Farolito and a party supply store, among other shops.

Paulsen, a Roseland native who now lives in Healdsburg, sued in Sonoma County Superior Court to block the development nearly a year ago. He cited a 1956 agreement between his father and the late developer Hugh Codding that he said should bar current plans. A judge has yet to rule on the case.

The new housing project’s layout could ruin Paulsen’s business, said his attorney Robert Nellesen, who also took issue with developers’ plans to build the market-rate housing before new homes for low-income residents.

“John can’t afford to lose his tenants,” Nellesen said, “and he will, if they can’t get their deliveries and patrons won’t come and park there.”

The city already has agreed to allow the market-?rate and affordable units separately, said Ali Gaylord, North Bay director of housing development for MidPen Housing, a Foster City nonprofit housing developer tapped by the county to oversee the project.

Gaylord said the 1956 agreement doesn’t require a specific path for on-site traffic and noted that plans call for a drivable path between the housing project’s parking spaces and the existing Roseland Village parking lot.

“Suing somebody doesn’t get affordable housing built faster,” Gaylord said.

No settlement negotiations have taken place, and it could take up to a year to resolve the case, Nellesen said.

“It’s not going to be over until there’s absolutely no legal resolution possible,” he said.

Ben Wickham, the outgoing affordable housing director at the Community Development Commission, is set to leave the commission in the coming weeks for a job with local affordable housing developer Burbank Housing - the latest departure in a wave of turnover at the top of the county’s chief housing and homelessness agency.

It has had two top officials leave in the past year, with the most recent, Geoffrey Ross, apparently forced to resign in January amid the homelessness crisis on the Joe Rodota Trail.

Wickham’s departure further muddies the waters about the development’s path forward.

“I think there’s a big question about that, since he does have a lot of history with this project,” Gaylord said.

Wickham said Friday he was not available for an interview, explaining in an email that he was not authorized to talk publicly about the project.

Barbie Robinson, the interim Community Development Commission leader and head of the county’s Health Services Department, said Wickham was “really busy trying to prepare for his transition” and that his duties would be taken over temporarily by Carrie Kronberg, who started as the commission’s newest assistant executive director in November after working for the state of Colorado, most recently as director of housing policy. Kronberg could not be reached for comment.

Robinson called Wickham’s departure “a loss for the commission,” noting he could still help the community by working at Burbank.

The project’s exact price tag remains unknown. It’s estimated to take $30 million to build the market-rate homes and at least $35 million to build the more affordable apartments, which cost more to build, per unit, than market-rate housing.

Tens of millions of dollars more from a variety of sources will be needed to construct new roads for the development, the 1-acre public plaza with a food court and a permanent home for the Roseland library and the Boys and Girls Club.

Robinson could not provide updated cost estimates or a development schedule Friday. She acknowledged the 175-unit project was “very much needed,” as it would be located in a socioeconomically disadvantaged area.

“It takes time to put deals together,” Robinson said. “With respect to that, as it takes time, the costs can fluctuate.”

Robinson also declined to comment on the pending litigation.

County officials are applying for millions of dollars in grant funding for the project. They have already secured a $2 million grant for environmental cleanup on the site, which is now underway.

A temporary summer plaza with food trucks was supposed to be a key sign of life on the former Albertsons grocery store property, which the Community Development Commission purchased about a decade ago. Paulsen has objected to that, too, Gaylord said, and the temporary plaza - plaza temporal in Spanish - won’t open in time for Cinco de Mayo as planned.

“That just leaves that site there sitting vacant and not activated, which was the whole impetus of the plaza temporal, getting something activated toward the street because of that derelict site there,” Gaylord said.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.