Fountaingrove man rebuilds six relatives' homes before his own

Marwan Dada didn’t expect to be living with his parents and picking up side jobs in his 40s, especially not with years running a hardware store under his belt.

But then came the Tubbs fire. The October 2017 wildfire destroyed more than 3,000 Santa Rosa homes, among them those of Dada and several of his relatives, including aunts and uncles in their 60s and 70s whose insurance didn’t cover the full cost of rebuilding.

Through a combination of volunteering and acceding to requests from relatives, Dada now finds himself somewhere in the rebuilding process for not only his home but those of six of his relatives.

His parents bought a house while he works to rebuild their home, and that’s where he lives now, though he shows no signs of resentment.

“To be 45, living with your parents again, it definitely brings things in perspective now,” he said. “At least I’m alive.”

Dada’s experience with nuts and bolts in the hardware store didn’t fully prepare him for being a contractor in Santa Rosa after the Tubbs fire, where demand for concrete, lumber and labor has driven rebuilding prices as high as Fountaingrove’s hills.

Still, he’s been able to help out with framing and foundation work, and he credits good experiences with sub-contractors in part to personal relationships built through the store. He noted that he’s different than the majority of developers operating on other rebuilding job sites in that he’s not in this for the money.

“I’m doing this for basically nothing to try and get them back in their homes,” he said.

Not all of his relatives will be able to move back in prior to the closing of the two-year window for insurance companies to pay out cost-of-living expenses, but Dada is confident he’ll be able to start seeing some of his projects completed later this year. He’s optimistic that he hasn’t bitten off more than he can chew, and he’s upbeat about crashing with his folks if it means seeing his family back in their homes

“It bothered me,” he said of losing his home, “but for them, I feel like it was a little bit more of a blow than it was for me. I had an opportunity to help out, and I helped out.”

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Villa Capri awaits state OK

A Santa Rosa senior care home destroyed in the 2017 fires has been rebuilt and is soliciting new residents but can’t open until state regulators approve a settlement-mandated emergency disaster plan.

Oakmont Senior Living’s Villa Capri facility has the city of Santa Rosa’s OK for occupancy, earning that stamp of approval in early July. But the Windsor-based company has come up short with its emergency disaster plan. The state Department of Social Services required that document as part of a November settlement resulting from Villa Capri employees’ abandonment of residents in the face of the fires. At neighboring Oakmont-owned Varenna, which survived the fire, residents also were abandoned, the state found.

Oakmont’s first submitted plan for Villa Capri was incomplete, and the company has since put forward an updated version, according to the state social services department. The agency could take until mid-?August to review and approve that plan, which is supposed to contain information about who is in charge during evacuations and how residents will be taken to safety, among other measures.

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Marriott moving ahead

A new hotel proposed on Fountaingrove’s Round Barn Circle secured crucial approval from the Santa Rosa City Council in mid-July.

The council by a 5-1 vote backed the Residence Inn by Marriott proposed by Ajaib Bhadare and Tharaldson Hospitality. The vote came more than six months after the Planning Commission stalled the project over concerns about new development in a wildfire-prone area, triggering Bhadare’s appeal.

A similar hearing in February ended without a council vote, as the elected officials waited for developers to hash out a compromise with a nearby St. Joseph Health center, where physicians and cancer patients feared their scenic view would be blocked by the new hotel’s roof. The revised hotel plan now calls for the hotel to be a few feet shorter when viewed from the cancer center, and a top official for St. Joseph Health went on the record in support of the project.

The 114-room hotel site still needs architectural and landscaping approval by the city’s Design Review Board.

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Hundreds rebuilding

More than 800 homeowners are rebuilding in Fountaingrove, with just over 100 homes complete as of this month. More than 500 are under construction, with the rest either holding or waiting for city permits to break ground.

Fountaingrove’s rebuilding activity has surged this summer, but it continues to lag behind Coffey Park, where more than 400 homes have been built and where another 630 are under construction.

Combined city and county data show that 670 homes of the 5,300 homes across Sonoma County destroyed by the October 2017 wildfires have been rebuilt, with nearly 1,900 under construction and about 600 more preparing to break ground.

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