SANTA ROSA, CA Greenbelt Alliance has endorsed the proposed DeTurk Winery Village mixed-used project located near the Railroad Square Historic District and future SMART train station in downtown Santa Rosa. If approved and built, it will provide 185 new apartment homes—15 of them for very-low income residents.
“The DeTurk Winery Village meets our tough endorsement criteria for good growth in the downtown near transit,” said Teri Shore, Regional Director for Greenbelt Alliance in Santa Rosa. “And it adds new homes for people across the income spectrum that the city of Santa Rosa so desperately needs.”
The project will incorporate the historic red-brick DeTurk Winery building at 806 Donahue & 8 West 9th Street, which withstood the 1906 earthquake. It will include approximately 20,000 square feet of existing commercial space within the rehabilitated building to provide shops and jobs close to homes and transit.
Some neighbors were opposed due to parking and density. The city’s Planning Commission will soon review the final project design and conditions and vote to approve or deny.
The DeTurk Winery Village is within the boundaries of the city’s Downtown Station Area Specific Plan (DSASP) and conforms to the plan’s smart growth vision. Greenbelt Alliance led a multi-year campaign to shape the station area plan, which was adopted by the Santa Rosa City Council in 2007.
The SMART station is within a quarter mile of the project and is scheduled to open later this year. There are also two bus stops located at opposite ends of the project site. The developer will offer free rail passes when the SMART station opens as part of a forthcoming Transportation Demand Management (TDM) plan.
Expanded sidewalks and new bicycle lanes will be provided, helping residents safely access nearby businesses, downtown, and the SMART station. The project also includes a walking path through the site that will connect with a nearby park and small public plaza between the residential buildings.
The proposal wisely prioritizes creating great places for people rather than dedicating excessive space to cars. It includes 175 parking spaces with a residential parking ratio of .5 spaces/unit (utilizing new state law AB 744, which allows lower parking ratios near transit), and shared commercial parking areas.
In sum, the De Turk Winery Village project will help create a thriving, transit-friendly neighborhood, improve Santa Rosa’s pressing housing affordability crisis, support the local economy, and relieve development pressure on our natural and agricultural lands.
Along with Greenbelt Alliance, the DeTurk Winery Village is supported by a growing list of organizations, including Friends of SMART, the Sonoma County Transportation and Land Use Coalition, the Sierra Club and Urban Community Partnership.
To date, Greenbelt Alliance has endorsed over 175 top-notch housing plans and projects totaling over 70,000 new Bay Area homes. Since 2000, our endorsements have helped improve 140 neighborhoods around the region.
Greenbelt Alliance’s project endorsement program requires proposed developments to meet strict criteria, including efficient use of land and community engagement by the developer and that are affordable to a wide range of Bay Area residents.
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Learn more about our endorsement program here: http://www.greenbelt.org/endorsement/.
Greenbelt Alliance is the San Francisco Bay Area’s leading organization protecting natural and agricultural landscapes from sprawl development and helping our cities and towns grow in smart ways to make the region great for everyone. Since the 1980s, we have provided an independent validation of outstanding infill development proposals to ensure that the right development happens in the right place and doesn’t occur where it doesn’t belong. Our endorsements have helped improve more than 140 neighborhoods around the region and have helped make the Bay Area the one-of-a-kind place it is today.
