Eldridge For All - Save Our Space

Calling it “a short-sighted plan with serious environmental consequences,” two community advocacy organizations have filed suit requesting Sonoma County revise the environmental impact report (EIR) for the SDC Specific Plan and scale back proposed redevelopment of the former Sonoma Developmental Center campus.

The goal of the lawsuit is to require the county to revise the EIR to address critical environmental issues and provide accurate analyses for appropriate mitigations. The current EIR is incomplete and deeply flawed, according to the plaintiffs.

The advocacy coalitions, Sonoma County Tomorrow, Inc. and Sonoma Community Advocates for a Liveable Environment (SCALE), contend the EIR for redevelopment of the 180-acre SDC campus violates the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) on a number of issues. The plan, which allows construction of up to 1,000 homes, 400,000 square feet of commercial space, and a resort hotel in the middle of rural Sonoma Valley, must be scaled back to bring it into compliance with environmental law.

“This intensity of development is completely out of scale with the rural community that surrounds the site and, because of the high wildfire risk, could endanger the lives of thousands of current and future residents of Sonoma Valley,” said SCALE spokesperson Tracy Salcedo. Portions of the SDC campus, as well as the surrounding village of Glen Ellen, were devastated by the Nuns Fire in 2017, when residents struggled to navigate backed-up one-lane roads trying to evacuate.

The EIR’s wildfire evacuation analysis found that adding 2,400 residents and about l,000 workers on the site would have virtually no impact on evacuation travel time. “This analysis defies the real-world experience of Sonoma Valley residents in both 2017 and in the 2020 Glass Fire,” Salcedo said.

The EIR also fails to adequately analyze biological impacts of the redevelopment, including impacts on the critical Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor, a pinch-point running through the property that supports the movement of a variety of species within the Sonoma Valley and as far as Marin County’s coastal region and Berryessa Snow Mountain National Wildlife Monument. Excessive development puts the wildlife corridor and the surrounding 750 acres of open space at risk, diminishing the ability of plants and animal species to adapt to climate change.

The SDC Specific Plan also recommends removal of historic structures and landscaping. Instead, the plaintiffs say adaptive reuse of historic buildings, where feasible and as required by state law, would reduce resource and material consumption, put less waste in landfills, and consume less energy than demolishing buildings and constructing new ones.

While advocates support construction of affordable homes on the site, they stress it should be at a reduced density that doesn’t transform the rural site into a small city. “If Sonoma County continues on this misguided path to create new urban centers in its unincorporated areas, in the wildland-urban interface and on agricultural lands, both lives and communities will be at risk,” Salcedo said.

Because the county’s EIR doesn’t adequately study or mitigate the environmental impacts of such high-density development based on real-world conditions, “holding the county responsible for doing the job right is imperative,” Salcedo said. “We, as citizens and taxpayers, deserve nothing less. The property, as critical as it is to our health and well-being, deserves nothing less.”

For more information about SCALE, visit scaledownsdc.org. 

To jump start your ideas, we have provided a list of suggestions below. Also, here are just a few, among many, questions to consider:

1. The State requires housing on the site. Where will this housing go? What should the density be - low, moderate, high? HOW MANY NEW HOUSING UNITS CAN THE PLANNING SITE ACCOMODATE AND STILL BE COMPATIBLE WITH SURROUNDING OPEN SPACE, THE SONOMA VALLEY WILDLIFE CORRIDOR, AND GLEN ELLEN? 
2. Which of the already existing buildings can realistically be repurposed?
3. What types of commercial uses would you like to see? 
4. What types of public amenities do you envision?
5. Other uses? The Board of Supervisors has expressed interest in institutional uses that also include housing.
6. What is your greatest fear in relation to development of the SDC campus? Can you suggest ways to mitigate that fear?

IMPORTANT: READ DYETT AND BHATIA'S MARKET DEMAND ANALYSIS!!! (Chapter 9 of the Profile and Background Report; access by clicking on the SDC image above in the sidebar)

TO READ GLEN ELLEN FORUM SDC COMMITTEE ALTERNATIVES IDEAS, SCROLL DOWN TO THE PDF BELOW OR LOOK FOR IT ON OUR PUBLIC RECORD PAGE.

RESOURCES:

For a downloadable map of the core campus, SCROLL DOWN. Dyett and Bhatia's Profile and Background Report (September 2020) contains numerous maps as well.

If you'd like to learn more about residential density concepts, check out the link below to a very useful tool. This Residential Density Guide was published in Australia where the unit of land measurement is the hectare as opposed to the acre. Our focus should be on the number of units per acre, and this density issue will vary at different locations on the site. 1 hectare = about 2.5 acres. https://www.landcom.com.au/assets/Publications/Statement-of-Corporate-Intent/8477325cc1/Density-Guide-Book.pdf