Fifth Street West housing project to seek final approval from Sonoma City Council

City staff are processing the final proposed map for the emergent Fifth Street West development known as the Hummingbird Cottages, which will bring 15 new housing units to Sonoma.

The 1.5-acre project includes nine single-family homes and six “duet homes,” which are described as attached single-family residences. Three of the housing units will be designated for low- and moderate-income, although exact price points have not been made public.

The developer, DeNova Homes, still needs the Sonoma City Council to approve its final configuration for the cottages in order to obtain a building permit.

“After city council, they will apply for the building permits with the final drawings to construct the actual units,” Community Development Director Jennifer Gates said. It is unclear when that review will occur.

The Concord-based developer began prepping the site at 19910 Fifth St. W. by taking down a number of Eucalyptus trees earlier this year. Currently, the property is being graded before construction can begin. DeNova Homes expects the cottages will be completed next summer.

Currently, DeNova Homes is planning on four layouts for its 15 units. Each of the single-family homes will feature three bedrooms and 2.5 baths, and range in size from 1,714 to 1,861 square feet.

The first duet model has two bedrooms and 2.5 baths spread across 1,330 square feet. The second is larger, with 1,588 square feet, three bedrooms and 2.5 baths. All units include a two-car garage, according to DeNova Homes.

The units were scaled back slightly — by about 100 square feet — after the Sonoma Planning Commission first denied the project’s application for being too dense and large for the site.

The project, which was controversial with neighbors because of its two-story design, was approved by the Planning Commission last year.

“This is an example of what you might call architectural gigantism,” neighbor Jim Oaks said in 2022, referring to the 31-foot-high homes.

City staff said the project is consistent with Sonoma’s General Plan. “In our zoning code, the developer has the ability to build two-story, single-family homes, with a maximum height of 30 feet,” Sonoma’s former Planning Director David Storer said in 2022. “It’s by right, they can do that.”

When proposing the development in 2021, DeNova Homes cited the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 in its push for city approval. “The Housing Crisis Act contains a number of important components, among which are vesting rights for housing applicants, prohibitions against growth control ordinances and limits on ‘completeness’ review. All three of these components apply to the project,” the developer wrote in a letter to the city.

DeNova also developed the affordable Mockingbird Place duplex on Fourth Street West and the market-rate, 30-unit Oliva Apartments on West Spain Street. They have also proposed building between 50 and 64 apartments at 19320 Sonoma Highway, a project that is still working its way through City Hall.

DeNova Homes was founded by Dave and Lori Sanson in 1989, but entered a joint venture with The Resmark Companies in 2020, an real estate investment firm with offices from Baltimore to Dallas to Los Angeles. Business Wire reported that DeNova’s projects in the Greater Bay Area were valued at $700 million in 2020. “They are located primarily within the four major-statistical-areas of East Bay, San Jose, Stockton and Santa Rosa-Petaluma,” according to the article.

Emily Charrier contributed to this report.

Contact Chase Hunter at chase.hunter@sonomanews.com and follow @Chase_HunterB on Twitter.