Close to Home: Planning the future of the Sonoma Developmental Center

Drive south through Glen Ellen, cross over a historic trestle bridge and enter the land that time seems to have forgotten. This sprawling campus of green grass, towering oaks and quaint cottage-style buildings is the Sonoma Developmental Center.

The center in the village of Eldridge opened in 1891 and served as home for developmentally challenged children and adults until December. At one time it was the largest employer in the county.

At 9:30 a.m. Friday, there is a special Board of Supervisors meeting where Sens. Mike McGuire and Bill Dodd and Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry will present the state proposal for funding a three-year process of community engagement and land-use planning and management of the site.

With intact watershed and gorgeous landscapes bookending a campus of aging buildings and infrastructure, this campus presents enormous opportunities and challenges.

I have had the privilege of chairing the SDC Coalition, a coalition of community groups and county departments working collaboratively over the past six years to preserve the land and keep it open for public access.

However, the aging campus presents multiple challenges in transitioning for the future. Some of the buildings are historic, some are reusable. All will prove to be expensive to mitigate for hazardous materials and retrofit to modern standards; and water, sewer, heating/cooling and electrical systems need to be replaced.

The largest intact parcel of land in the Sonoma Valley offers opportunities. It could be the site of desperately needed workforce housing. Sonoma Valley employers struggle to recruit and hire teachers, health professionals and workers for agriculture, tourism and related industries. The 2017 firestorm displaced many of those families.

We need to creatively think about future employment and services on the developmental center site. A museum to document its history, artist housing/studios, SRJC educational and vocational classes, a nonprofit hub, research and conference facilities, makerspace, business incubators - there are many possibilities. The footprint of the campus is less than 200 acres, and there are constraints on traffic and water availability, so the impact analysis will be critical in determining what can be accommodated to fit into the fabric of the valley.

Friday is the next stepping stone for the community to come together for a visioning process and community engagement and land-use process. A SDC Coalition-sponsored community workshop will be announced soon to begin this process. It has been a long six years. I am grateful to so many in the community, county and state to reach this milestone.

Susan Gorin represents the 1st district on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.

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