Petition from Sonoma Valley groups to preserve SDC ‘goes viral’

A petition to fund and preserve the Sonoma Developmental Center as open space has garnered more than 1,600 signatures.|

Links to related websites:

Petition to fund fund and preserve the center as open space:

https://bit.ly/2PRrzLe

?Sonoma Land Trust blog on the center’s transition:

https://transformsdc.com

Save Our Space campaign

https://eldridgeforall.org

A petition to fund and preserve the soon-to-be-closed Sonoma Developmental Center as open space has garnered more than 1,600 signatures and the support of dozens of Sonoma Valley organizations since it launched last week.

The petition was hammered out by representatives of the Glen Ellen Historical Society, the Sonoma Land Trust, the Sonoma Ecology Center and the Glen Ellen Forum, and went live Aug. 22. Since then, groups including the Sonoma Valley Historical Society have circulated the petition among their memberships.

“It’s all too easy to imagine (the center) ending up as an exclusive resort or all houses,” said Richard Dale, executive director of the ecology center. “It would be just horrible. That would change the fundamental character of the Sonoma Valley.”

The state-owned, 127-year-old Eldridge campus near Glen Ellen, with its more than 700 acres of tree-lined streets and forested hillsides, has been winding down operations since 2015, when Gov. Jerry Brown first announced its pending closure, now slated for Dec. 31. Starting in 2015, the SDC Coalition, chaired by 1st District Supervisor Susan Gorin, has conducted an extensive public process to decide what to do with the campus. Additionally, the Glen Ellen Forum community group held a workshop in April to gather community consensus.

The petition is addressed to Gov. Brown and asks the state to transfer the property to a local agency and provide enough funding to manage the place and develop a plan for re-use.

It also asks for a finalized agreement and timeline for the preservation of the parcel’s open space through transfer to the state or county park systems.

According to the petition, “As SDC nears closure, no agreement is in place between the state and Sonoma County to protect this special place. We are very concerned about increased risks to public safety, wildfire damage, and the threat of vandalism … to what will suddenly be a mostly vacant property.”

“It’s two-pronged,” said Tracy Salcedo, a member of the SDC/Eldridge subcommittee of the Glen Ellen Forum. “We want to preserve the open space and get a land use process in place funded by the state to see through the redevelopment of the property.”

Jim Sheer, director of the Glen Ellen Historical Society, noted, “(The petition) seems to have gone viral within the county. A lot of it was constructed by John McCaull of the Sonoma Land Trust. We have all come together to formulate the best way of transferring the property once SDC closes.”

One of the many groups to circulate the petition, the Sonoma Valley Historical Society, sent a link to the petition in an email blast Saturday.

“We do not want sprawling high-end homes soaking up precious resources or a golf course eviscerating this sacred land,” the email said. “Now is an important time to show Gov. Jerry Brown and Sacramento that our community cares about what happens to the site.”

At public meetings held over the last year, residents have expressed preferences for county oversight, protections for the wildlife habitat and public access to the approximately 16 miles of developed trails on the site.

Hundreds of residents attended one such meeting in June at the Hanna Boys Center conducted by Jim Stickley of Wallace Roberts Todd, a nationally recognized design firm hired to produce an in-depth analysis of the site. Stickley told the audience the bulk of the property’s utility systems are obsolete and require as much as $115 million in upgrades to meet modern codes.

However, that’s if the campus is to be kept in working order for institutional needs, which almost no one expects. Also, those costs don’t include multimillion-dollar seismic upgrades and the repair of structures burned in October’s Nuns fire.

“We feel so strongly that (the center) is so connected to Sonoma Valley that we want that preserved,” Gorin, whose district includes the Sonoma Valley, said at the June meeting.

The supervisor articulated a plan that would see the state grant the property to the county, and then see it transferred to the adjacent state and regional parks systems.

Other concepts floated at the meeting included full-scale redevelopment of the core property for housing, room for office or commercial spaces and potential for a satellite Sonoma State University campus.

Dale said of the possibility of housing on the site, “Some of that in little bits might be OK,” but that preserving the open space was paramount.

You can reach Janis Mara at janis.mara@sonomanews.com.

Links to related websites:

Petition to fund fund and preserve the center as open space:

https://bit.ly/2PRrzLe

?Sonoma Land Trust blog on the center’s transition:

https://transformsdc.com

Save Our Space campaign

https://eldridgeforall.org

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