Eldridge For All - Save Our Space

After a long lull, the specific planning process for the former Sonoma Development Center property is kicking back into gear. The focus is on Eldridge, but the fact is that, given the intimate ties between Eldridge and Glen Ellen, my little hometown is also entering a brave new phase of its existence.

As I’ve encountered proposals for Eldridge and participated in the planning process, I’ve been struck by the fact that, over and over again, the ties between the two places are either overlooked or misunderstood. While I find it disappointing that explaining the ties would be necessary at this stage of the game, it’s also an opportunity. And it has an unanticipated upside: I’ve once again fallen in love with you, Glen Ellen. 

The Basics 

• Glen Ellen and Eldridge are inseparable. If you look at a map, you’ll see that Eldridge is completely surrounded by Glen Ellen. As one local community leader put it, Eldridge is the hole in the Glen Ellen donut. 
• What happens to Eldridge happens to Glen Ellen. If Eldridge becomes a resort, Glen Ellen becomes a resort. If Eldridge is urbanized, Glen Ellen is urbanized. If Eldridge becomes a model of sustainability and resiliency, Glen Ellen becomes a model of sustainability and resiliency.
• Eldridge is not a blank slate. Eldridge is now empty, hence the illusion. But Eldridge exists as part of Glen Ellen. Since their genesis in the nineteenth century, the twin villages have grown in tandem and possess the same intimate connections to the region’s wild places and to a legacy of caring. This connection can’t be monetized, but that doesn’t make the connection less valuable than money. 

Glen Ellen in a Nutshell

• Glen Ellen is a small, tight-knit, rural village of about 700 households. 
  • This language comes from the Land Use element of Sonoma County’s General Plan: Glen Ellen is a small village along Arnold Drive west of State Highway 12 … About 70 percent of the community is rural with rural residential and agricultural zoning. 
  • From the Glen Ellen Development and Design Guidelines: The small town character of Glen Ellen promotes a sense of community and an inherent openness which recognizes personal freedoms and varied lifestyles. The maintenance and enhancement of this small town character is of utmost importance to its residents.
• On the ground, Glen Ellen’s rural residential character looks like this: Homes on the north side of the Eldridge campus are on larger parcels, with the exception of those closest to the “downtown” area. It’s country living. On the south side of the Eldridge campus homes are closer together, but the mood is the same. It’s still country living. Whether you live in the apartments on Madrone or tucked in the woods on London Ranch Road, you live in a small town. You know the people in line with you at the grocery store. You meet up with neighbors to take a walk in the park or along the winding country roads. Your kids go to school and play sports with the neighbor kids, while you volunteer with the neighbors in classrooms or visit on the sidelines. You dance in the streets with your neighbors every October during the village fair.
• A growing number of second home owners have purchased in Glen Ellen for the same reason full-time residents do—because it is rural, charming, and friendly. These part-time residents boost the economy of Sonoma Valley when they’re in town, while their absences add to the quiet of village life.

A Matter of Scale

The argument that Eldridge should be able to accommodate thousands of residents and workers because it used to house and employ thousands of residents and workers is not valid. At its most populous, most of the residents of Eldridge did not leave Eldridge. They couldn’t, because they were disabled. To drop an equal number of people who are not disabled into the same place doesn’t replicate Eldridge, it blows Eldridge up (and Glen Ellen with it). 

Many wonderful, innovative ideas have been proposed as part of the redevelopment process. Data collated as part of the previous community workshops supports these ideals. Bring on housing that’s affordable. Bring on housing for the developmentally disabled. Bring on community gardens and biodiverse agriculture. Bring on post-petroleum technologies. Bring on sustainable businesses. Bring on an “institute” that researches and implements principles of resiliency. Bring on visiting scholars. Bring on innovation.

But bring it on at a scale whereby these uses complement the village that already exists, on both sides of SDC. Bring it on recognizing that the existing village already embraces and lives by these ideals. Bring it on at a scale that ensures the children of local residents, as well as the greater community, can find their place here. Bring it on at the scale that enables the residents of the existing village to feel safe, and that cultivates, rather than dilutes, the small-town, natural values that drew us here and have kept us here.

To do this, it must be understood that the existing village is as important as the goal.

The Importance of Transparency

A number of proposals have emerged, developed by small groups of people reimagining what can happen on the property. There’s CEPEC, there’s the SDC Campus Project, there’s CAFF, there’s the Eldridge Enterprise, and there are other plans, without doubt, in the works. 

The assumption of the Glen Ellen Forum, and of the larger community, has been that the specific planning process, and the proposals it generates, would be community driven. Most of the circulating proposals remain outside the specific planning process. The Eldridge Enterprise, developed by a “working group” of the SDC Coalition, is a troubling exception, especially as it begins recruiting endorsements. It is not community driven. The specific planning process for Eldridge must remain transparent, otherwise trust in a community-driven process is broken.

The Myth of NIMBY

With the formation of the Glen Ellen Forum in 2016, Glen Ellen has helped host forward-facing community workshops to shape a vision and guiding principles for Eldridge’s redevelopment. The community’s approach to that redevelopment is pragmatic and realistic, but constrained by the realities of being unincorporated. 

We know change is inevitable. All we want—and I feel confident saying “we” here, because Glen Ellenites helped collate the feedback from the Hanna and Dunbar workshops—is for change to be moderated so that the existing community survives and has the ability to define itself, even as it absorbs change. The interests of the immediate community should carry the same weight as the interests of prospective developers, the broader community, and private, commercial, nonprofit, and political interests as change is implemented.

A Vision for Eldridge

“Eldridge is a place where people of diverse backgrounds and interests live and work together, where natural resources are conserved and enhanced, concepts of sustainability and resiliency are put into practice, cultural legacies are honored, and compatibility with surrounding communities is preserved.”

—Vision Statement Developed for Community Consideration 

at the Hanna Workshop, June 2019

As we’ve had to circle up, yet again, to create a vision for the site, I feel like we, as representatives from Glen Ellen, are now outside the process. We are forced to be reactive to proposals developed outside the process, rather than proactive in helping develop proposals. In light of recent developments, I have to ask: What does community driven mean? To me, it means that no matter where proposals originate, whether in the city of Sonoma, or Oakmont, or Santa Rosa, or the hills of Healdsburg, they reflect not only the desires of their proponents, but also an understanding of what is fundamental: Glen Ellen and Eldridge are inseparable. What happens to Eldridge happens to Glen Ellen. 

Look at it this way: Glen Ellen is the village about to be inundated by the dam. The powers-that-be believe the dam is a greater good, and the little village in the valley should just roll over and accept obliteration. My response is, if you inundate Glen Ellen and Eldridge—their rural characters, the peace that comes when you drive up Arnold Drive into the envelope of oaks and open space that embraces them—you destroy exactly what you seek to exploit.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The residents of Glen Ellen will be the most profoundly impacted of all communities by what happens in Eldridge. Everyone else gets to go home, but we have to live with it—the density, the traffic, the change. All we want to do is inform that change.  

Community is priceless. And worth fighting for.

Kindly, Tracy

Proposed Vision Statement and Guiding Principles for Eldridge

(former site of the Sonoma Developmental Center) 

Proposed Eldridge Vision Statement

Eldridge is a place where people of diverse backgrounds and interests live and work together, where natural resources are conserved and enhanced, concepts of sustainability and resiliency are put into practice, cultural legacies are honored, and compatibility with surrounding communities is preserved.

Proposed Guiding Principles for the Eldridge Specific Plan

Drawing on the expertise and talent in the region, a community-led, public-private partnership will plan the future of Eldridge through the County’s specific plan process to address local challenges and create a higher quality of life in the Sonoma Valley. These principles provide the necessary level of detail to guide a specific planning process. 

1. Protection of open space on the Eldridge property: Eldridge’s open space and wildlife corridor lands will be permanently protected and managed to ensure environmental stewardship and continued public recreational use.
2. Principles of sustainability for the future use of Eldridge: Planners and decision-makers will use recognized principles of land use planning sustainability to gauge how well proposed land uses protect public trust resources and fit the character and values of the site and surrounding area, as well as benefit local communities and residents. The density, scale, and design for new development or redevelopment at Eldridge must be compatible with surrounding communities and Sonoma Valley’s constrained water resources and transportation system, and all development must be supported by sound infrastructure and appropriate public services.
3. A community-led specific plan for Eldridge: Stakeholders will create a specific plan for the Eldridge site that factors in the needs and land use priorities of the surrounding communities of Glen Ellen and Sonoma to ensure that future development will be compatible with existing land uses in Sonoma Valley. The planning process will have financial support from the state, and Sonoma County will exercise oversight and management in coordination with a Technical Advisory Committee and a Citizens Advisory Committee.
4. Development of housing options: Sonoma County faces an acute housing crisis and the SDC site presents an opportunity to accommodate reasonable housing solutions for the area. An appropriate housing footprint on the Eldridge property should be a priority for the specific plan. Housing should be based on the needs of Sonoma Valley with a workforce housing emphasis, inclusion of an affordable housing component (very low, low, and moderate Income), and housing for vulnerable populations. 
5. Development of new educational and employment opportunities for Sonoma Valley: Redevelopment will include replacement of economic and social benefits lost with the closure of the Sonoma Developmental Center. New institutional partners may include universities, colleges, government agencies, tribal entities, and nonprofit organizations, with the goal of expanding educational options, providing job training, and creating economic opportunities close to home. Important themes include providing green jobs and honoring SDC’s legacy as an institution caring for people with developmental disabilities and other vulnerable populations.
6. Preservation of historic and cultural sites: The site’s numerous historic, cultural, and Native American resources will be protected following state and local historic preservation guidelines.
7. Implementation: A governance entity will be considered for implementing the community's vision for Eldridge, embracing the concepts of environmental and economic sustainability and designed to represent state and local interests for the redevelopment process and ongoing operations.

Background

Since 2012, a coalition of nonprofit and community organizations has been working with Sonoma County agencies and departments to plan for the anticipated closure and repurposing of the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC). Beginning in 2015, the SDC Coalition launched the “Transform SDC” Project, which has served as an educational and organizing platform to imagine a new future for SDC after its closure as a residential hospital for people with developmental disabilities in December 2018. 

Permit Sonoma will be launching a $3.5 million land use planning process to create a “specific plan” for Eldridge—the place name and census tract for the SDC property. The specific plan is needed to represent the community’s vision and facilitate the site’s redevelopment, and also to meet various statutory priorities for reuse contained in the State of California’s FY 2019–2020 budget, which is funding the County’s planning work. The specific plan process is anticipated to begin in September 2019 and must be completed by December 2021.

A committee made up of representatives from the Glen Ellen Forum, the Sonoma Ecology Center, and the Sonoma Land Trust has drafted this proposal for organizational consideration and endorsement, and public review and discussion. The draft vision statement and guiding principles emerged from the many public meetings, workshops, and interviews conducted between 2015 and 2018, and we hope this document will inform the next phase of our community’s conversation about the future of SDC.

Resources

1. February 2019 “Land and Water Protection Proposal” developed by the Land Committee of the SDC Coalition, (linked to principle #1)
2. February 2017 Sustainability Principles for Changes at Sonoma Developmental Center by Sonoma Ecology Center (linked to principle #2)
3. August 2018 WRT “Existing Conditions Assessment” establishes different zones for the SDC property that are recommended for specific land use designations and uses. These zones should be used to ensure transfer of the “Land Protection Zones” (Zones A and B) into state and county park ownership, and to focus redevelopment and specific planning efforts in Zone C (linked to principles #1-4)
4. Sonoma Institute model under development by Sonoma Ecology Center (linked to principle #5)
5. The Glen Ellen Historical Society’s 2018 planning document. (linked to principle #6)
6. The vision for the Eldridge Cemetery conceived by the Parent Hospital Association. (linked to principle #6)
7. Transform SDC Project. (linked to Background)
8. Sonoma County’s Request for Proposals: Sonoma Developmental Center Site. (linked to Background)
9. State of California’s trailer bill language for Fiscal Year Budget 2019–2020. (linked to Background)