BZA backs mobile home park closure, winery expansion

It was the final meeting for long-time Planning Commissioner Dick Fogg when the county’s Board of Zone Adjustments (BZA) met on June 25 – Fogg’s retirement was announced four days later. But all three items on the agenda pertained to the first district, the one Fogg has represented since 2002, on issues whose importance hasn’t diminished over the past 18 years: wineries, affordable housing and water use.

An application by the Sonoma Golf Club requesting an OK for additional membership, and hence water usage, was slated as the last agenda item. The private golf club asked to increase the number of its members from 319 to 554, a 70 percent hike in potential membership. But club owners, the Texas-based Escalante-Sonoma, did not offer any plan for the expansion of its 36,000-square-foot clubhouse, or the club’s 193-space parking lot, or detail where they would get the water for the expanded usage.

According to Fogg, someone from the golf club contacted him early in the morning of June 25 requesting that the item be continued to later time, saying they needed to “dig a little deeper” in their presentation before they felt it ready for permit review.

“Water has always been an issue on that property, and the lack thereof – and the fact that it’s not getting any better than it was 20 years ago,” Fogg told the Index-Tribune. So the hearing was “continued to a date uncertain.”

The winery topic was a request for the Kopriva winery at 21301 Cassidy Ranch Road, southeast of Sonoma, to add a new 6,000-square-foot winery facility and a 4,000-square-foot covered crush pad. Kopriva exclusively produces about 1,200 cases of non-oaked chardonnay, and the new use permit would give its 18-acre vineyard an annual production capacity of 8,000 cases, an appointment-only tasting room, and four agricultural promotional events per year.

The winery first filed for a permit in 2016, and was approved by the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission in 2017, and in the intervening period the applicants nailed down the loose edges of their proposal over water use, traffic and public events. The application was unanimously approved by the BZA.

But it was an affordable housing project that drew the most attention from the 5-member board - South Bay developer Milestone Housing is proposing the closure of a small RV trailer park in Boyes Hot Springs, relocating the residents to other similar facilities, then building a 90-plus apartment unit it its place.

Jane Riley, comprehensive planning manager for Permit Sonoma, recalled that in 2008 the owner of the Oaks Mobile Home Park made an application to the county to close the mobile home park on Siesta Way in Sonoma for a housing project. The BZA eventually approved the application, said Riley, conditioned on more than the six months’ relocation assistance than the applicant proposed: the BZA at the time required the park owners to provide assistance to the relocated residents for three and a half years.

“That project was conditionally approved,” said Riley. “(But) it never happened, they never proceeded with the closure and so the permit expired.” Now, 18 years later, the same owner – Shashikant Singapuri, of Mill Valley – returned with another application to close the park, this time with a full 42 months of support to dislocated residents as consistent with current federal law.

Marcus Griffin of Milestone, explained earlier to the Index-Tribune that the company was pushing toward a confirmation of this first step by July 1 in order to qualify for federal low-income tax credits to help fund the project.

Once again, biggest issue was the relocation of the current residents of the property. Griffin at the meeting introduced affordable housing consultant Michele Folk to describe the assistance to each household at the Siesta Way trailer complex. Folk outlined the 42 months of relocation assistance proposed for the current residents: 23 people in 12 family units, including five trailers, three mobile homes and a single standing residence.

Some commission members and those in public comment were wary of the fast timeline and uprooting 23 people during a pandemic, even given the 3.5 year support, just to meet the Milestone deadline for getting funding. Richard Shames, president of the Sonoma County Mobilehome Owners Association, was not alone in pointing out the irony of evicting low-income residents from a trailer park to make room for an affordable housing development.

In the end, the BZA voted 5-0 to approve the permit – along with a requirement that the residents get bilingual communication and full relocation support, and conditions that would guarantee the approval and funding for the 100 percent affordable housing project for seniors before the mobile home park is closed and its residents evicted.

“We don’t want to fly a plane before we’ve built it,” said Riley.