The Sonoma Developmental Center: What now?

By Supervisor Susan Gorin — It’s shaping up to be an exciting, eventful time in the First District, with the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC) Specific Planning process top of mind for many, myself included. While I expect that many reading have been following the SDC specific planning process closely, I will provide a bit of background to contextualize where we are.

In 2019, the State of California, which owns the SDC site, established a three-year timeline for the specific planning process for SDC, of which we are now in year three. After drafting an Environmental Impact Report and two public hearings before the Planning Commission, a final EIR and a final Specific Plan are expected to come before the Planning Commission in July/August and the Board of Supervisors for adoption in September 2022, with community meetings before that timeframe. 

At a marathon meeting on January 25, Permit Sonoma came before the Board of Supervisors to present a framework for the project description that will go into the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the redevelopment of SDC. This followed the release of three draft alternatives in November 2021, and a robust period of public engagement and feedback. While, as First District Supervisor, I have been following this closely, I was grateful for the opportunity to talk about SDC with my colleagues on the Board. SDC is a local issue to the Sonoma Valley with countywide interest and impacts: it demonstrates overlapping concerns of housing, climate change, employment, education, jobs, and more, all  important to our county as a whole.

I want to thank the efforts of the North Sonoma Valley Municipal Advisory Council (NSV MAC) and Springs Municipal Advisory Council (SMAC), both of which held Special Meetings in January to draft and approve letters incorporating the feedback, concerns, and, ultimately, the visions of community members in response to the SDC draft alternatives released in November 2021. I am very appreciative of their work. I also want to thank the hundreds of community members who have sent emails and shared feedback over the last several months for their thoughtful, detailed comments.

In the meeting, I hoped to provide context for my board colleagues and to reflect the feedback I’ve heard from First District residents: immediate neighbors in Glen Ellen as well as neighbors in the Springs, the City of Sonoma, Kenwood, Oakmont – altogether a diverse community with a range of interests, but some resounding commonalities. In providing direction to staff, I wanted to be specific, intentional, and to emphasize what a unique opportunity we have before us with such a special site. 

I stated my priorities as follows: that we protect the natural resources of the site and maintain the permeability of the campus for wildlife passing through, with strong linkages to surrounding parks. That we ask the state to use federally allocated infrastructure dollars to invest in infrastructure updates at SDC; it is too great a burden for the development of the site to shoulder all that cost to maintain economic feasibility. That we be innovative, and consider state-of-the-art facilities such as a climate center, a nonprofit hub, workforce training, a maker space, and more. That we understand we are building housing for future generations, for our youth, and for diverse communities, so that we boost the number of affordable units in the overall plan. That we develop a plan that will work for the scale of the surrounding community as they have expressed to us, looking at a range of 450-700 units for analysis. That we consider fire safety, fire-resilience by design. That we encourage multimodal transportation options and renewable energy/microgrid for the campus. Altogether, that we move forward with great intention. 

While the 25th was a big day for SDC before the Board of Supervisors, it certainly wasn’t the beginning or end of an ongoing dialogue with the planning team and with our community. I started my comments stating that it has been a long time birthing this baby – spanning my entire tenure as Supervisor – and the baby that is SDC is not quite born yet. 

On February 8th, Permit Sonoma released the Notice of Preparation for the Program Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Sonoma Developmental Center Specific Plan.  The EIR will analyze a range of alternatives with 450-1,000 housing units and different mixes of employment, services, historic preservation, etc. incorporated in each alternative.  A public scoping meeting is scheduled for February 17th at 5:30pm, to be conducted virtually over Zoom, and the public can make verbal comments regarding the scope of the proposed program EIR at the meeting.  

At the January 25th meeting I delivered very specific comments – asking for a range of 450-700 units to be analyzed.  But Permit Sonoma is asking for comments on a higher range of units on the site.  The Sonoma Valley CAC (Citizens Advisory Committee) will be receiving a tutorial on the purpose of scoping for an EIR at a special meeting in early March.  You might join that zoom to learn more about the process and how to comment.  Written comments should be addressed to Brian Oh at [email protected].  The comment period closes on March 25th at 5:00pm PST.

Sign up for updates on the SDC Specific Plan website: https://www.sdcspecificplan.com/sign-up-for-updates