On the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, for an agenda item slated to come before the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors at its meeting of December 3, 2024, Permit Sonoma, the County agency tasked with project analysis, approval, and denial, recommended that the Specific Plan and EIR for the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC) be scrapped.
The recommendation appears to be in response to a court ruling in April that the County had violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) but comes on the heels of an application by Rogal Development for demolition and redevelopment of the SDC campus. That application now includes over 900 homes, a resort hotel and commercial space (see pictured land use plan showing new construction in orange). Rogal’s proposal has met with alarm and resistance from the valley community where opinion is that it is too large, too commercial, will impact the adjacent wildlife corridor, and create an undue evacuation hazard in the event of a wildfire.
Attendant to its project application, Eldridge Renewal (Rogal’s development LLC) submitted its plans under the terms of what’s called the “Builder’s Remedy,” a provision of the “Housing Crisis Act.”
As noted in the Permit Sonoma report, “In August 2023, Eldridge Renewal, LLC submitted a preliminary development application under Government Code § 65941.1 (known as Senate Bill 330 or the Housing Crisis Act) for a major subdivision and housing development project within the 180-acre core campus, which vested the project’s right to only be subject to the ordinances, policies, and standards adopted and in effect when the preliminary application was submitted (Government Code § 65589.5(o)). Because the County did not have a compliant Housing Element at the time that the project’s preliminary application was deemed submitted, the project is granted protection from denial based on zoning, specific plan, or general plan inconsistency under Section 65589.5(d) of the State Housing Accountability Act (HAA), a provision known as “the builder’s remedy.” Under the HAA, the County is restricted in its ability to deny, make infeasible, or reduce the density of the project, even if it conflicts with the General Plan or an adopted Specific Plan. The project would further not be subject to any revisions to the SDC Specific Plan because of the vested rights granted by the preliminary application submittal. Therefore, staff’s recommended County actions regarding the SDC Specific Plan are not relevant to processing the development project application.”
In short, Permit Sonoma is recommending that the County of Sonoma not object to the Builder’s Remedy application, and that the project proceed without being subject to either a revised Specific Plan or EIR.
As for the substantial public money already spent to date on the development of SDC – meetings staff time and plans and reports – no record or reckoning is provided in the Permit Sonoma report to the Board of Supervisors, but in reference to its recommendation, it instead notes “There are no fiscal impacts associated with today’s action.”
By Larry Barnett
Be First to Comment