Sonoma County supervisors unanimously decided Tuesday to unwind their sale of a sprawling northeast Santa Rosa property where a developer wanted to build 867 housing units, opting to scrap the controversial plan they backed last year and put the site back on the market.
The vote puts an end to developer Bill Gallaher’s vision to transform 82 acres off Chanate Road, where the old county hospital complex is located, into what would have been one of the city’s largest single housing projects in recent memory.
The Board of Supervisors had to take up the matter Tuesday because it chose not to appeal a July ruling from a Superior Court judge, who said the county incorrectly decided the sale agreement with Gallaher was exempt from state environmental review requirements.
Rather than reworking the deal with Gallaher’s team to comply with the judge’s ruling, supervisors instead directed county staff members to go back to the drawing board by offering most of the property for sale again.
“Make it a wide net so that we can have some good options,” said Supervisor Shirlee Zane, whose district includes the Chanate Road property. “Times have changed, and so we do need to give us as much flexibility as possible.”
State law requires the county to first offer the property for sale to certain government agencies and qualified nonprofits.
Supervisors will give those groups the option to purchase the site, which is comprised of 13 separate parcels, either in its entirety or in smaller pieces. Staff members expect to return to the board with more specific language before the end of November, a county spokeswoman said after the meeting.
The new sale process will exclude a nearly 10-acre portion of the site that features a beloved grassy meadow neighbors have long understood to be part of an open space preserve. County staff members will return at a later date with options for permanently protecting the meadow, since the deal with Gallaher would have required his team to secure a conservation easement there.
Gallaher wanted to build a mix of housing types on the vast Chanate Road property, including rental apartment buildings three or four stories tall, along with a series of other amenities such as a dog park, amphitheater, grocery store and trails.
County officials touted the deal as a unique way to use public property to help alleviate the severe regional housing shortage. But many neighbors have been consistently opposed to the plans, voicing strong objections about the possibility of introducing hundreds of new residents to the mostly two-lane Chanate Road area. Those concerns, among others, prompted residents organized under the name Friends of Chanate to successfully sue the county.
Tina Wallis, a Santa Rosa attorney who represented Gallaher in court, declined to comment when reached by phone after Tuesday’s vote.
The October 2017 wildfires proved a major factor in the public discussion.
“We have one way out of our community: It’s onto Chanate Road,” Joseph Zils, president of a homeowners association representing 92 homes in the area, told supervisors. “The plan that was proposed earlier was totally inadequate to address the types of emergencies we were faced with on Oct. 8 and 9.”
