Potential site for new hospital

A potential site for a new Sonoma Valley Hospital was to be discussed in closed session Wednesday night by the hospital board.
The board planned to talk with its attorney about a 12.5-acre property at Harris and Leveroni Roads — basically right across the road from the 17-acre Leveroni family hayfield that the board was poised to buy through eminent domain as part of the failed May, 2006 Measure C ballot proposal to build a new hospital.
The Harris Road acreage includes the Cooper House, a clapboard-sided Victorian farmhouse which was built in 1851 by James Cooper.
Susanna Le Valley, who is listed by Sonoma County as the property’s owner, didn’t respond to two messages left by the Sun at her home.
Hospital spokesman Scott Gregerson said that the Harris Road property was brought to the hospital’s attention by a real estate agent.
Regarding the hospital board’s closed-door discussion of the potential site, Gregerson said, “This is very early-stage due diligence just to see if this is viable or something the board of directors is interested in pursuing.”
He added, “There’s … appeal in a single owner.”
A single-owner property contrasts the hospital’s preferred site: some 15 acres at the southwest corner of Broadway and Napa Road that has several different property owners — some of whom are reluctant to sell.
The property is right alongside Sonoma Creek. Carriger Creek is about 200 yards to the west of house. The property is listed as a flood zone and as vineyard land by the county.
Sonoma City Planner David Goodison said that property is kitty-corner to the city’s urban growth boundary.
Contacted Tuesday night, Sonoma historian Gerald Hill said that he wasn’t 100 percent certain, but he believed the Cooper House was built by James Cooper, the Gold Rush-era co-owner of the Blue Wing Inn, an adobe hotel on Sonoma’s plaza that currently stands empty and is owned by Sonoma State Historic Park.
The bridge over Sonoma Creek is called the Cooper Bridge.
Joe Leveroni, whose family led the fight against Measure C but endorsed the Measure B hospital parcel tax, wasn’t happy to hear that he could potentially have a new hospital across the road from his family’s dairy and home.
“I’m disappointed. I think there’s lot better options,” Leveroni said, adding that the Harris Road site was “in established farmland, close to a dairy, just wrong for a host of reasons.”
He said, “From what I know about it, it sounds all wrong for Sonoma.”