An illustration of the envisioned entryway to the new SDC campus. (Courtesy of Eldridge Renewal)
Hope is not a strategy. That, in a nutshell, was the message a Sonoma County Superior Court Judge sent this week to county planners about what the judge called “vague” and “open-ended” policy goals for the redevelopment of the former Sonoma Developmental Center in Glen Ellen.
In considering a lawsuit filed by a citizens group opposing the county’s plan to develop 1,000 housing units and a hotel at the 945-acre SDC site, Superior Court Judge Bradford DeMeo cited the plan’s lack of measurable performance standards in its promises to preserve the site’s historic characteristics and mitigate traffic and any adverse effects on open space and wildlife.
DeMeo ruled the plan violated the California Environmental Quality Act, which calls for such metrics.
“In general, the vast majority of these goals and policies are vague, open-ended, and devoid of any clear mandatory requirements or performance standards, as CEQA requires for mitigation measures,” the judge wrote. “They set forth hopeful intentions and vague statements that the goal of the Plan is to ‘promote’ or ‘encourage’ the stated measures or methods.”
Added DeMeo: “The purported mitigation measures in the Plan, its goals and policies, are on the whole facially toothless, vague, and limited to hopeful intentions,” he said.
The more-than-a-century-old Sonoma Developmental Center was shuttered by the state in 2018 and much of the land surrounding the main campus is in the planning stages to be developed for housing by developers Keith Rogal and the Grupe Company.
In addition to the housing, the county-approved specific plan at SDC includes a 170,000-square-foot hotel, a 161,000-square-foot “innovation center” and hundreds of acres of open space.
The county could appeal the ruling to the California Court of Appeal in San Francisco. Developer Rogal, in a comment to the Press Democrat, described the ruling as “a helpful roadmap,” adding that his group has not yet submitted a final project proposal. “Whenever our project proposal is deemed complete, the CEQA review process for that proposal will follow,” he wrote in an email to the PD. “We are fully committed to ensuring that the environmental review for our proposal will be appropriately thorough and authoritative, and look forward to a collaborative process with the County to accomplish that essential objective.”
County planners said they are considering next steps.
