PD Editorial: Build housing, not county offices at Chanate site

In October 2014, Sutter Health open its new hospital, vacating county-owned buildings on Chanate Road in Santa Rosa. Ten months later, with real estate prices zooming ever higher and thousands of people on waiting lists for low-cost rentals, county officials signed off on a plan to sell or lease the hospital buildings and surrounding acreage for affordable housing.

“We need housing, and we need it now,” Supervisor Shirlee Zane, whose district includes the property, said at the time. “We're in a dire housing crisis, so we're not going to sit on this site and wait for two years to do something with it. We want to get a shovel in the ground as soon as possible.”

“This opportunity comes around once in a lifetime,” Supervisor David Rabbitt concurred.

Turn the clock forward five years. The county still owns the 72-acre Chanate Road property and is spending more than $750,000 a year on security and fire prevention costs for the dilapidated hospital complex. And the supervisors appear to be heading down the wrong path.

Instead of selling or leasing the land to a builder, at least three supervisors are open to moving about 3,000 employees to a new county administration center on the Chanate Road property.

The idea, as Zane explained it to The Press Democrat editorial board, is to clear much of the sprawling county complex a mile away on Mendocino Avenue for housing. The jail and the courthouse would remain, but the rest of the property could be redeveloped as housing, with convenient access to public transit and Highway 101.

But moving county offices to Chanate Road carries significant public expenses. A General Services Department report issued in 2015 estimates a $60 million cost to renovate and retrofit the hospital buildings, some of which date to the 1930s. Demolition is a more likely option. Combined with removal of asbestos and other hazardous materials, the report says, demolition would cost about $6 million.

Then comes the cost of a new county complex, which has yet to be determined.

The county already is evaluating a move to downtown Santa Rosa or remodeling the existing county complex. If officials instead opt for Chanate Road, expect objections from residents of the adjacent Hidden Valley and Cobblestone neighborhoods. They sued to block a sale to developer Bill Gallaher, who planned rental housing and shelter for homeless veterans. After losing the first round in court, the county canceled the sale.

The neighbors' primary objection was traffic on Chanate, which was gridlocked by evacuees during the Tubbs fire in 2017.

Neighbors also objected to the California Community Housing Agency, which was selected as the preferred bidder when the property was put up for sale a second time. Working with BUILD, a highly regarded developer of affordable housing in the Bay Area, the agency proposed 500 workforce and affordable housing units and offered the county an equity share in the project.

The consortium withdrew its bid last week as reports surfaced that Zane and Supervisors James Gore and Lynda Hopkins are willing to consider the site for county offices.

A busy office complex would generate even more traffic than housing, which is likely to mean that nothing gets built anytime soon, and taxpayers remain stuck with the bill for security and fire prevention.

Sonoma County needs affordable housing more than ever, so we encourage the supervisors to invite the California Community Housing Agency back to the table.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com.