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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

October 24, 2005

Cloverdale poised for business expansion

92-acre annexation designed to add to city's jobs base

A request by Santa Rosa developer Kevin Carinalli would bring in about 92 acres southwest of town where the city envisions rows of commercial buildings that would be home to potential employers.

The expansion was stalled for several years until recently, when disagreement among about a dozen property owners was resolved, City Councilman Bob Jehn said.

Now, Carinalli and others can go forward, helping the city fix its longstanding jobs-to-housing imbalance.

"I know the property owners down there have finally come together," Jehn said last week. "It's going to happen."

The annexation would be a different kind of growth spurt for Cloverdale, where the population rose 67 percent from 1990 to 2005 with the construction of new subdivisions.

Many residents commute 30 miles south to Santa Rosa because there are few jobs after the collapse of Cloverdale's once-healthy timber industry.

Development of businesses fronting Highway 101 could breathe life into the job market and put tax dollars in local coffers.

It will include a number of houses on the property west of Foothill Boulevard, but the exact number was not known.

The expansion takes in the hills west of town where the city has a 400-foot elevation restriction on building.

"We don't just want to be a bedroom community sticking people in single-occupancy vehicles on the freeway headed to work," Jehn said.

The next step is for the developer to submit an application to the city, including an annexation request.

Bob Ragle of Christopherson Homes, who owns 28 acres, said that will come in the next few months.

Carinalli, who owns about 30 acres, did not return calls. Carinalli is the son of Santa Rosa real estate investor Clem Carinalli, one of the largest property owners in the county.

Support for the annexation goes back years.

Community Development Director Bruce Kibby said the city earmarked the area in the late 1970s for light industrial use and a handful of businesses opened, including a butane distributor.

The city is updating its 20-year master plan, and continues to foresee industrial development there.

A much larger, 254-acre expansion is anticipated with construction of the Alexander Valley Resort east of the freeway, Kibby said.

That development, which goes to the Planning Commission in December, includes about 200 houses, Kibby said.

If the two annexations happen, the city will be close to reaching the southern limits of its planned expansion, Kibby said.

Whether Cloverdale will sprawl past that point is uncertain because the City Council hasn't adopted an urban-growth boundary. It is the only city in Sonoma County without the growth-control policy.

That rankles open-space advocates, who fear the city will succumb to pressure from developers.

Daisy Pistey-Lyhne, a spokeswoman for the Bay Area environmental group Greenbelt Alliance, said Cloverdale has a chance to adopt a boundary during its master-plan update.

"Unless we have that, there's a possibility growth will continue unchecked to the south of Cloverdale," Pistey-Lyhne said.

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