Big plans afoot for the Castagnasso Horse Farm
The Castagnasso House as it appears today
The continued presence of a horse farm just half-a-block from Sonoma Plaza at 196 East Spain Street is a near miracle. A longtime home to Clydesdales owned by the Castagnasso family, the property was sold to new owners in 2021 when the Castagnasso family relocated to the East Coast. The property is zoned Medium Density Residential, but the new owners have no plan for additional housing and plan to continue to operate a horse farm to provide boarding for retired and rescue horses.
A rendering of the house after its expansion and tree removal
The proposed project entails the construction of 2,315 square feet of additions to the existing 2,007 sf residence, construction of a new 382 sf Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), pool, landscaping, and modifications to many of the existing accessory structures on site. As proposed the residence would total 4,322 sf with 2,050 sf of covered porches. The one-story, 382-square-foot ADU would be utilized for a future farm manager and would be constructed in the southeast corner of the barnyard and would be separated from the residence by a covered 189-square-foot outdoor storage area. The project also entails frontage improvements along East Spain Street.
A rendering of the rear of the house with swimming pool and planned additions
As noted in the Historic Resource Evaluation (HRE) undertaken by the current property owners, the farm complex is on what was originally Lots 18 and 23 of the Pueblo Map of Sonoma. The land was part of the early land grant to the Mission and was developed before 1888. Amelia Brunck Colton Russell lived on the property as early as 1895, and enlarged the house and built the first barn on the property around 1904. Before 1911, she and her second husband raised the barn from one story to two stories, and between 1911-1913 they significantly rebuilt the house, adding the two-story gambrel roof section on the east. In 1916 the Russells moved to Michigan. The Castagnasso family purchased the property in 1919 and further improved the property in 1922. They built the large horse barn at the north end of the property and modified the two-story Dairy Barn with the addition of shed-roof wings on the north and south and a small porch on the western gable end.
The farm at 196 Spain Street East is over 100 years old, is within the City of Sonoma’s Historic Overlay Zone, is included in the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation’s inventory of historic resources, is included in the California Office of Historic Preservation’s “Built Environmental resource Directory” (BERD) with a status code of “1D” and is included as a contributing element to the Sonoma Plaza National Register Historic District (NRHD). Specifically, the house, two barns and pasture on the west side of the property constitute the historic resources on this site as defined in the 1992 Sonoma Plaza NRHD. The other outbuildings have either lost physical integrity or are modern structures.
The farm at 196 Spain Street East is over 100 years old, is within the City of Sonoma’s Historic Overlay Zone, is included in the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation’s inventory of historic resources, is included in the California Office of Historic Preservation’s “Built Environmental resource Directory” (BERD) and is included as a contributing element to the Sonoma Plaza National Register Historic District (NRHD) Historic District (NRHD).
As significant tree is slated for removal, a Deodar Cedar (Cedrus deodora) with a trunk diameter of 34 inches located near the corner of the property at East Spain Street and Second Street East. A 27” diameter Olive tree and a 10” diameter Coast Live Oak are also slated for removal.
The project is not without some difficulties. In documents provided to the SUN a major difference of opinion between the owners and the city’s Planning Department has emerged over the city’s requirement that the HRE be peer reviewed. This requirement was added over the past year and goes into effect when a property owner hires their own HRE consultant instead of accepting a consultant chosen by the Planning Department. The new regulation is intended to mitigate the potential effect of HRE consultant “shopping” with an intention of a property owner hiring a consultant predisposed to producing a report favorable to the aims of the property owner instead of an impartial analysis. The effect of the dispute going forward is impossible to determine at this time.
5 thoughts on “Big plans afoot for the Castagnasso Horse Farm”
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Who is this report by? Interesting notion that there can be an impartial analysis and that all of those who commission studies and consultants do not have interests at stake. It’s my observation that no consultant will bite the hand that feeds them. For example, the city’s DeNovo consultant for the Housing Element and now the General Plan, divines the dominant interests and seeks to back them up. Another example, Valley of the Moon Alliance’s in-process fire evac study was certainly “shopped” and will deserve to be peer-reviewed, but then this gets to be an endless house of mirrors of shopping for an honest broker, and since public policy is one big struggle between competing interests, an “objective study” and the facts will always be biased unless somehow disinvested third parties can be found with no skin in the game and they can be sure of getting work if they produce actual independent opinions.
I trust that the city will not create obstacle after obstacle for this project. The best way to preserve a property is to use it and the proposed uses for this property are thoughtful and a benefit to Sonoma.
Yet another obtuse word salad from Fred Allebach, who can always find a way to claim victimhood perpetrated by “dominant interests.”
Looks pretty good . . . as long as we can still see the horsies!
I hope that before the pool is started, a proper survey is done to establish if it is a Indian burial site. I hate to see this type of “growth” taking over and destroying historical propery.