Building brouhaha returns to Moon Mountain

They say some houses are haunted, villages cursed and properties jinxed. Now people are beginning to wonder if the corner lot at Moon Mountain and Highway 12 doesn't have something weird going on.

“It is kind of a notorious property,” said Karin Theriault, a planner with the county's Permit and Resource Management Department (PRMD). She's now grappling with the latest chapter in a protracted saga of attempts to build on the adjacent 1.1 acre lots, with addresses at 70 Moon Mountain and 16581 Highway 12. “I understand that the neighbors are concerned about whatever goes on this property, so I wanted to give them a good heads-up.”

So Theriault issued an unusual 20-day public notice to the neighborhood about County's upcoming Design Review Committee meeting on Wednesday, July 6, to hear the latest plans for the lots.

As recently as 10 years ago, the site was just “four acres with two steer grazing on it,” as one longtime resident said. Then the property was subdivided, half of it deeded to the Jehovah's Witnesses and the other half sold to a developer – who eventually put up the luxury vacation rental home on Highway 12 now known as Villa Terra Nova.

Note: This 8-minute video steps through the project history and features 3D renderings integrated with Google earth and “drive-by” animations.

After an appeal from the residents of the Mission Oaks neighborhood, the Jehovah's Witness hall was denied by the Board of Supervisors in 2010. But three years later two enormous 7,000 square foot homes started to take shape and, again, the neighbors had justifiable cause for complaint: It turned out the contractor of record did not have an appropriate contractor's license, and the construction was abandoned and foreclosed upon.

In 2015, a limited partnership called KS Mattson Partners purchased the property for just under $1 million, absorbed and paid off the permits and fees, demolished the unfinished houses, and made a concerted effort to reach out to the sensitized neighbors.

The purchase was one of several Ken and Stacy Mattson have made in Sonoma recently – including the historic Sonoma's Best store on East Napa and Eighth Street East, a 1916 Craftsman-style home on East Napa Street near the Sonoma Community Center, and two businesses on Highway 12 in the Springs including the Boyes Market, as well as the Moon Mountain lots.

But neighborhood engagement was seen as a priority at Moon Mountain. Tim Sloat, of Lefever Mattson (an affiliated real estate firm that deals in multi-unit housing), held a “demolition party” on Oct. 15 of that year for the neighbors, promising to keep them informed of developments at every step of the way.

Just this June, Sloat organized another get-together at Sonoma's Best. Owners Ken and Stacy Mattson were there, meeting informally with many of the skeptical neighbors and previewing their plans for the property. An Index-Tribune reporter was present, and found the Mattsons friendly and engaging. “We have a real desire to be a good neighbor,” Ken Mattson said at that time.

So the negative reaction of many of those neighbors to his plans has come as something of a shock. “These are residential lots, we're doing residential, we're within the bounds of what's allowed to be there,” Mattson told the Index-Tribune in a telephone conversation this week. “I came in and got rid of a complete eyesore in the neighborhood there; to have this much confusion over what I'm doing, I'm frankly a little bit shocked.”

What he's doing, according to plans submitted to the County, is proposing a pair of two-story, five-bedroom Spanish Revival homes of around 5,000 square feet each, plus separate granny units of 824 square feet, on the two lots. Each house will have a pool, one has a bocce court, both have 35-foot turrets. A common driveway off Moon Mountain – there will be no access from Highway 12 – runs between the two houses, and leads to attached garages in each. It will tap into a public sewer system, and get its own water from an on-site well.

That's a total of some 12,000 square feet of homes, 12 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms – in a neighborhood where the average house size is 2,200 square feet, according to Carmen Carlton. She found out about the plans when she attended a Planning Department meeting in May, and was surprised that the neighbors hadn't been told about them as Sloat had promised at the October demolition party.

“It looked like they were putting in vacation rentals, they were designed to be rented out by the room,” said Carleton. Aside from the design, her main complaint was that the two houses are “completely out of proportion with the neighborhood.”

Yet Sloat and Mattson point out that they demolished two larger eyesores that were being built on the lots. “I do think it's important and fair to keep pointing out that we electively demolished two homes that were 40 percent larger, much bulkier and more clearly out of scale with the environs, so that we could more quickly solve the immediate blight and safety concerns,” Sloat told the Index-Tribune.

Another oft-cited concern of the neighbors is the design of the houses – analogous to “a Courtyard by Marriott,” as Skye Hallberg said; others have said it looks like a piece of Danville dropped in the middle of Sonoma Valley.

“I went to the (Sonoma's Best) meeting and it seemed weird as to why they are doing this project,” said Barbara Kavanaugh, widow of the late neighborhood voice Dennis Kavanaugh. “From what we can see the project looks like two Ramada Inns, each with a tower and a large berm to hide it from highway.”

That berm is itself a source of some confusion. While some think it's designed to shield the houses from the highway for privacy (or to create a “compound”), Theriault of PRMD points out that new scenic corridor landscape regulations require “that new site development blend into the natural surroundings of the property, and be substantially screened to public view.”

Mattson regards the berm as a feature, not a bug, to use the terminology of the tech world. “Our landscape designer is the same person that designed the one next door for [Villa Terra Nova]. It's a continuation of her berm, for all intents and purposes. We're making the two look like it was all done in tandem.”

Even the property owners farther up Moon Mountain – a winding, tree-shaded road with many gated houses along the way – aren't happy with the plans. Marcia and Gary Nelson are among those who are skeptical of the project. “The planned project is out of scale for the plot, requires a special easement to share driveway space, and leaves little room for barriers for noise mitigation to the dwellers or basic vegetation,” wrote the Nelsons in a letter to the Design Review Committee.

“They will never live in those houses. And they will never have full-time tenants,” insisted Carlton. “These are not financially sound investments, unless you're going to do it as a bed and breakfast, or a group home or something like that. There's no way this makes sense.” Among her arguments is that the Mattsons have a primary residence in Piedmont (a 14,000-square-foot Tudor in what was once known as “the city of millionaires”) and another home in Malibu, as well other addresses in California.

Mattson is taken aback by the controversy. “I've had multiple homes since I was 24 years old. I'm not understanding why that's unusual. Lots of people have a number of homes.” When asked why they need a second home in Sonoma if they already have the one on East Napa Street, he pointed out that one is “too small for us,” about 2,000 square feet. “I don't consider that to be ‘pretty good size.' I haven't lived in a house like that since I was 24 years old.”

When the Design Review Committee looks at the application on July 6, however, none of that is on the table. The role of the Design Review Committee, a three-member board that usually reviews commercial, not residential projects, is to approve, deny or recommend changes to a proposal. Theriault admitted that in her experience they've never denied an application, though they have suggested changes to plans that, when made, have led to their approval.

“To some degree,” said Mattson, “it is our lot, and we are allowed to do what we want to do within the bounds of what the rules are.” In the absence of any violations of restrictions or regulations, and in full compliance of what the county has asked, it's not clear upon what grounds the committee would reject the application.

Then again, strange things happen on Moon Mountain Road.

The Design Review Committee meets at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 6, at the PRMD hearing room, 2550 Ventura Ave., Santa Rosa. The meeting is open to the public.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.