photo credit: Wayne Hsieh/flickr
The main building at the Sonoma Developmental Center.

To the chagrin of many, this week Sonoma County elected officials repealed a collection of environmental and planning documents related to the Sonoma Developmental Center property.

A state-run school for people with developmental disabilities until 2018, sprawling Sonoma Development Center is near Glen Ellen.

The property is nearly 1000 acres of mixed redwood forest and clinical wards.

Almost five years after starting a specific plan for the redevelopment of the SDC property, the carefully worked document has been scrapped.

It's been outflanked by a lawsuit, and an application for a “builders remedy” project, circumstances that have not been well received, including by outgoing Sonoma Valley supervisor Susan Gorin.

"There has been no community engagement on the part of the development team," Gorin said to applause in the Board of Supervisors chambers in Santa Rosa on Tuesday.

She and the rest of the board were left with little choice but to repeal the special plan documents.

They were squeezed on one side by a ruling in Sonoma County Superior Court which found the county had not complied with the California Environmental Quality Act - CEQA - during the planning process for redevelopment of the SDC.

On the other side, developers Keith Rogal and the Grupe Company are moving to advance plans for close to a thousand new units and a hotel at the site.

They are using a process known as the “builder’s remedy”, which allows developers to go over the heads of local jurisdictions for approval.

That move hasn’t gone over well with local residents and community members like Jack Sporer.

I run a small winery in Sonoma Valley, and I'm acutely aware of the local deficiencies in housing, it is very hard to find housing for harvest workers each year, and I'm entirely in favor of increasing our housing stock to ease the current crunch," Sporer said, before noting his desire for infill projects.

"However, I think the current plan by Eldridge Renewal [LLC] is entirely outsized in relation to what Sonoma Valley can actually handle," Sporer said.

Fire danger, impacts to nearby wildlife corridors, and increased vehicle traffic have all been flagged up as major concerns for SDC redevelopment since the very beginning.

Representatives for project developers Keith Rogal and the Grupe Company could not be reached before publication; but Sonoma County Supervisors hinted at the likelihood of more court battles over efforts to reshape the SDC.