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A view of the West Avenue farm sold by Edmond and Irene Bayer to the city of Santa Rosa in 2007 for use as a park. SCOTT MANCHESTER/PD
By BOB NORBERG
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Santa Rosa and Fort Bragg will each receive $4.8 million to build new parks, part of $184 million in grants raised from a state bond sale.
“We think we will be able to deliver a developed park sooner than we originally thought,” said Rich Hovden, Santa Rosa’s park planning and management director. “We thought it would take quite a few years with little sums of money. … This is really a great thing for the community.”
Santa Rosa’s $4.8 million will go toward development of Bayer Park and Gardens in the Roseland area, a 5.5-acre farm the city acquired three years ago.
The former farm has a barn and farmhouse, which are now being used by LandPaths as part of a community gardening program for Sheppard School students and for 36 families.
“It’s a place that truly connects urban people with agriculture history, and it has great views of Taylor Mountain, said Craig Anderson, LandPaths executive director. “I wish I had a park like that in my neighborhood. It is like grandpa and grandma’s own farm.”
Under the development plan, estimated to cost $6 million and get under way in mid-2012, the city would create a learning center, caretakers’ home, greenhouse, turf-covered play areas, picnic areas, a water fountain, exercise course and event stage, with additional buildings and amenities to continue the agriculture uses.
The city has additional funding from Sonoma County’s open space district, which also provided some of the funding for the initial purchase, and another $2.1 million in state grants.
The city also is negotiating with LandPaths, a nonprofit that deals in open space and public access to public lands, to operate and maintain the new park.
“Even if we had the staff, just creating the partnership and engaging the community is of greater value than just the city providing the programs,” Hovden said.
In Fort Bragg, the state awarded a $4.8 million grant to develop a park along the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean on property that was part of the former Georgia-Pacific mill.
“It is incredibly important,” said Marie Jones, Fort Bragg’s community development director. “For 100 years, the citizens of Fort Bragg could not access their coastline.”
In a 2002 survey conducted when Georgia-Pacific closed, the top priority of residents was a coastal trail and access, Jones said.
The coastal park is also more important now that Fort Bragg relies more heavily on tourism.
The mill was once the economic engine for the city, employing half of the population, but effectively sealed the city off from the ocean.
The city acquired 92 acres of the 415-acre former mill site, including 3.5 miles of coastline, with a $4.1 million grant from the state Coastal Conservancy.
The Fort Bragg Coastal Trail project includes a 4.5-mile trail along the coastal bluffs with stairs to two small beaches.
Nearly 45 acres of asphalt will be removed and the land restored to native coastal habitat. Parking lots, access roads and restrooms also will be built.
“We will replace the asphalt with wetlands, it is one of the largest restoration projects in California,” Jones said.
Construction is expected to start next year.
Georgia-Pacific still owns the remainder of the site and is proposing a mixture of residential, commercial and light industrial uses, a hotel resort, marine education center and industrial arts center.
The state grants were authorized by Proposition 84, passed by voters in 2006 to provide funds for water quality programs, flood control and park improvements.
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Are schools are loosing money and are in need of it tremendously and we are spending HOW MUCH on a park??? Come on really?
Who is going to use the park? More soccer? If the City of Santa Rosa is going to build a new park, they need to open it up to all the folks that want to use it. When the ‘Place to Play’ fields were expanded the response I received was “everything is booked 10 deep” . Well, where is this money? Why discriminate against city tax payers the right to play on a city park. Five years later trying to use a park for the spring, still nothing.
Now everyone can see why the city is broke and continually raises sales taxes!
It was closing the senior center, letting parks and grass go unattended, and now they are wasting money on a new park it cant afford to maintain. Only in Taxifornia!
Why not use it for unemployment insurance payments, which are currently borrowed from the fed and we cant afford to pay back? Waste on one hand and borrow with the other!
Oh good. More dead brown grass this summer.
@Laura Carman
Perhaps then the prudent thing would have been to say no thanks?
Most of us know how government grants work: accept the attached strings or lose it. It’s the consequences that are the problem. It obligates cities to spend money they otherwise wouldn’t spend and then spend more to maintain what they couldn’t afford in the first place.
Given the financial circumstances of both state and local government these days, the former shouldn’t be offering the grant nor recipient accepting it.
I don’t think any of you realize how government grants work. There are a lot of strings attached, and if you don’t follow the rules or use the money EXACTLY how it is supposed to be used, you lose all the money. This grant is to build new parks, so there is no way the city can use it for anything else. I know it’s frustrating that they are building a new park when they can’t afford to maintain the old ones, but that’s just how it is.
They only know how to spend. Get rid of the bums.
Wanna make a bet that the final price is closer to 10M? All public works projects seem to be vastly underestimated for some mysterious reason. Public works projects should be held to the bid price with bonus money for early completion and penalty money for late completion. I bet overruns would be very rare.
Its funny we cannot afford to keep our State parks open due to lack of funding and they find money to open a NEW park! Or in this case go farther into debt for it.
Interesting. It was just a couple months ago that a SR city council member wanted to collect $5 per car to visit Howarth Park, because the city could no longer afford to properly maintain it.
Parks are great. The city should have a bunch. But . . . . the city should have only as many as they can afford to maintain.
Why not use the money to maintain the parks that are already in existence? Then later, when the economy is better, build this park? As I understand it, many of the existing parks are going with reduced or no maintenance at all. So this park gets built and then it’s allowed to go without maintenance?