Healdsburg consultant’s role questioned in sale of mill site to hotel developer
Before tourists discovered Healdsburg, before the “Redwood Empire” became Wine Country, there was a lumberyard at the gateway to downtown, one of the first sights to greet motorists coming off the freeway.
Nu Forest Products is still operating there, manufacturing siding, flooring and crown molding. But its days are numbered since the property sold this spring to a Canada-based company specializing in hotel and residential projects.
Just what will get built on the site is still uncertain, part of the ongoing debate over tourism, growth and housing affordability in one of the priciest real estate markets in Sonoma County.
But a city housing consultant’s ties to the buyer of the property, and his role in convincing the hotel developer to come to Healdsburg, have inflamed the discussion.
Jim Heid, who was hired by the city to help the community come up with a vision for remaking central Healdsburg, is under scrutiny for his ties to Replay Resorts, a former client of his that bought the Nu Forest property.
Critics, especially those who see Healdsburg’s small town character threatened by a flood of tourists and affluent, second-home buyers, complain Heid was hired as a neutral facilitator for community workshops on housing and redevelopment, yet enticed Replay Resorts to come to Healdsburg.
Heid is not accused of profiting from the deal, and city officials say he has done nothing improper as far as the Nu Forest sale. But his association with David Hill, project director for Replay Resorts, has prompted questions about favoritism, and whether he is tilting development toward a hotel and high-end housing that define other projects by the company.
Heid, who lives in Healdsburg, owns another house in town he began renting to Hill in May, which has raised more questions about whether his relationship with Replay is too close.
“The appearance is that this is not a totally objective relationship. It may be legal, but it raises questions the public is well deserved in asking,” former Healdsburg Mayor Pete Foppiano said of the landlord-tenant relationship between the two men, as well as Heid’s work as a consultant for the company in 2013.
Healdsburg has been grappling with whether to loosen its strict construction limit, now set at 30 new market-rate homes per year. The controversy has made Heid a lightning rod for opponents of a November ballot measure on the change to the growth ordinance, in part because it is seen as facilitating Replay’s ability to build homes if the company doesn’t have to compete as much for building allocations.
The proposed change would allow more than twice as many market-rate homes to be built - up to 420 homes over an initial six-year period - and allow the City Council to reset the cap without voter approval.
Heid, like the City Council, has come to favor amending the growth control measure, which puts him at odds with slower growth proponents and those skeptical of more hotels.
He acknowledges telling the developer in 2015 that the NuForest site and adjoining deteriorating Garden Inn building were for sale.
Hill said Heid told him of the 10 acres of developable land for sale in city limits. “I said ‘That’s impossible. Where are there 10 acres in Healdsburg?’” Hill said of his surprise to find such a large swath of land.
In April, Replay announced it was buying the site in a $16.5 million transaction with plans to build a hotel and housing, according to county records.
City Councilman Eric Ziedrich defended Heid, saying it was public information that the Nu Forest property was for sale.
“It’s not like he fed them some inside information,” Ziedrich said.
But Heid’s critics are not appeased.
“You put it all together and it starts to smell a little fishy,” said Jim Winston, head of Healdsburg Citizens for Responsible Growth.
Winston, who wrote the growth management ordinance approved by voters in 2000, is opposed to plans to amend it, fearing a floodgate of new development that will alter Healdsburg’s small-town character.
Some, like Winston, think Heid crossed a line and went beyond the role of neutral facilitator and fact provider at city-sponsored meetings. But others say Heid’s critics are looking for any opening to keep the tight growth ordinance in place and undermine the conclusion that it needs to be changed to allow for more housing diversity.
Heid said his critics are searching for a conspiracy that doesn’t exist.
“People are grasping at straws, not looking at the real question: What is the future of Healdsburg and how do you house people who want to live here? All of this is smoke and dust,” he said.
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