Master Plan revisions for additions to Sonoma Valley Regional Park workshop

Sonoma Valley Regional Park is one of the Valley’s recreational gems, hiding in plain sight along Highway 12 between Sonoma and Glen Ellen. It spans the north side of the Sonoma Developmental Center and, unlike other regional parks in the area – Maxwell Farms and Larson – it’s purely a “passive recreation park,” without playgrounds, tennis courts or baseball diamonds.

It’s recently grown by almost a third, with the addition of 70 acres bringing the park’s size up to just over 200 acres, comparable in scale to Helen Putnam Regional Park in Petaluma and Foothill Regional Park in Windsor. Now Sonoma County Regional Parks is in the midst of public review for the Draft Master Plan for the expansion properties, with the second of two community workshops taking place Wednesday, April 27, at the Dunbar School in Glen Ellen

The two add-ons include a 29-acre parcel, known as the Curreri Addition, on its northern boundary; and a 41-acre parcel, known as the Sonoma Developmental Center Addition or SDC41, along Highway 12 adjacent to the park’s southeast boundary.

The Sonoma Land Trust led the Curreri acquisition with funding from its partners, transferring title to Regional Parks in late 2014. The parcel helps protect crucial wildlife habitat within the Sonoma Valley “wildlife corridor,” a narrowing of the natural route of movement for wildlife like mountain lion, bear, fox, bobcat and others may safely traverse the Valley floor.

The other flank of the expanded Regional Park was purchased from the Sonoma Developmental Center by the county’s Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District after the state declared it surplus property. This parcel is also recognized as part of the habitat corridor connecting Sonoma Mountain with the southern Mayacamas Mountains; its addition provides an opportunity to expand the park’s trail system through oak woodlands running parallel to Highway 12 for about half a mile across from Imagery Wine Estate.

This Master Plan community workshop follows similar workshops in Sonoma about other elements of the Regional Parks system, Maxwell Farms and Larson Park. Unlike those two, however, Sonoma Valley is more typical of county parks. “Maxwell and Larson are much more suburban parks than we generally have,” said Karen Davis-Brown, the project manager for the Draft Master Plan process. “Most of our parks are passive recreation. We’re more about trails – hiking, biking – than we are about ballfields.”

Like the rest of the Sonoma Valley Regional Park – which opened to the public almost 40 years ago, in 1978 – neither parcel is currently developed, in the sense of containing structures or facilities, though there are two large Sonoma County Water Agency holding tanks above the park’s parking lot at the Highway 12 access. That parking lot is the only developed area in the park, though there are accessible trailheads on the west side of the park off Arnold Drive.

Because of the passive recreation nature of the park, the first workshop held in October at the Kenwood fire station focused on trails and other natural amenities of the expansion properties, as will Wednesday’s workshop. Both the Curreri addition and SDC41 already have rudimentary trails; integrating them with the existing trail system in the core park is a major park of the master planning process.

“We need to either hook to existing trials or get trails from the expansion property to the trailheads,” said Davis-Brown. “The conservation easement for Curreri doesn’t allow us to build, unless it’s very minimalist building such as storage for basic park maintenance.”

Among its suggestions from the first workshop was making at least one of the trails for hikers only, not the multi-use trails that the Regional Parks frequently favor. Others suggested keeping the trails separate – if there’s one for hikers, then one for horses and one for bicyclists, too.

Whether wheel, hoof or boot trail, it’s likely dogs will be allowed anyway. “Our policy for this park already is dogs are allowed, we’re not looking to change that,” said Davis-Brown. The Liz Perrone Dog Park is inset into the park off Highway 12, next to the Cal Fire Glen Ellen station. But aside from that enclosed area, leashed dogs only are allowed on the park trails, per Regional Parks policy.

One other suggestion that arose from the first workshop was to change the name of the current Cougar Trail – with its evocation of the big cat that transits the wildlife corridor – to Curreri Trail, to honor the family whose former property is now part of Sonoma Valley Regional Park.

The second and final public workshop for the expansion properties Draft Master Plan will be held April 27, with an open house at 5:30 p.m. and the workshop from 6 to 8 p.m. Dunbar Elementary School is located at 11700 Dunbar Road, Glen Ellen. Additional information can be found on parks.sonomacounty.ca.gov.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com