Land Use – Enviro Updates

California again delays ‘zone zero’ wildfire protection rules for homes

December 10, 2025

Todd Woody, BLOOMBERG

A California state agency won’t meet Governor Gavin Newsom’s year-end deadline to finish long-delayed regulations to protect homes from wildfires, rules that experts say could have limited the destruction of the January Los Angeles firestorms.

At a meeting of the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection on Monday, chair Terrence O’Brien said officials would wait until March 2026 to continue work on regulations to require ember-resistant zones, called Zone Zero, around some 2 million houses in high-risk wildfire areas. That means it could be mid-2029 or later before any mandate takes effect for existing homes.

O’Brien cited continued disagreement on how strictly to enforce the Zone Zero requirement to remove plants, wood fences and other combustible material within five feet of a home for the ongoing delays. A 2020 law enacted after a series of devastating wildfires originally mandated a January 2023 deadline to complete the regulations. “That continues to be the challenge we face,” he said at the meeting.

Land Usebuilding regulations, Calfire, California Board of Forestry, fire resilience, wildfire hazard, zone zero

Developer of Cloverdale resort project seeks to assure city, public of adequate water supply

December 9, 2025

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

One question has been dogging the backers of a proposed housing and resort project vying to transform Cloverdale’s long-stalled Alexander Valley Resort site and remake the look of Sonoma County’s northernmost city.

Will there be enough water?

Representatives for Esmeralda Land Company insist there is, citing reports from a consultant the Bay Area developer hired for their ambitious project, which calls for 605 homes — in a mix of apartments, town homes and single family homes — two hotels and two restaurants on 266 acres off Asti Road.

Devon Zuegel, the principal of Esmeralda will be on hand Wednesday at the Cloverdale City Council meeting to field questions focused on water demands tied to the project, which also includes a racquet club, two indoor pavilions, an outdoor amphitheater, retail space, light industrial facilities, a K-6 private school and a standalone office building.

It would also have more than 1.8 million square feet of landscaped area, including a dog park, community garden and playground. The project is conceptualized to be a walkable, bikeable community for multiple generations, according to Zuegel.

Land Use, WaterCloverdale, Esmeralda, groundwater, Lake Mendocino, Russian River

Sonoma County BOS passes new cannabis business regulations

December 9, 2025

Emma Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

In the brisk early hours Tuesday morning, Scott Orr, Sonoma County’s planning and permitting director, posted outside the main administrative building yellow and orange signs showing the distance of proposed setback requirements for commercial cannabis farms.

Land-use policy discussions don’t often include such displays, but the signs were another signal of the sharp debate that was expected to prevail Tuesday as the Board of Supervisors was set to adopt revised and controversial regulations governing the commercial cannabis industry outside city limits.

The ordinance overhaul marks the first significant change to the county’s regulations of commercial cannabis cultivation, sales and distribution since 2018.

The board voted 4 to 1 to adopt the new rules, which will take effect July 1.

The vote capped a fractious and labored process launched by the county in 2021 to amend its rules governing commercial cannabis and settle years of criticism from the local legal industry seeking relief from what they called a burdensome permitting process. Residents, as well, have been outspoken, seeking stronger safeguards against noise, odor and strain on limited water supplies.

Agriculture/Food System, Land Usecannabis, cannabis industry, cannabis regulations, events, Farm Bureau, neighborhoods

Vine removals to continue as wine industry sees ‘structural change’

December 4, 2025

Jeff Quackenbush, NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

More significant removals are expected in 2026–2027 as growers confront years of oversupply, falling demand and bulk-wine inventories that remain stubbornly elevated.

The long-awaited wine industry rebound may be in sight in the next two years, but not before a dramatic supply contraction, including significant vineyard removals across California and even in the North Coast, according to experts at a major trade show in Santa Rosa on Thursday.

Analysts, lenders, accountants and marketers at the 13th WIN Expo Trade Show and Conference said the California wine business is undergoing a structural retrenching, not a cyclical dip, and a turnaround depends on eliminating excess inventory, reducing grape output and rebuilding how consumers are engaged.

Agriculture/Food System, Land Usevine removal, vineyards, wine industry

Silent partner in project to transform Sonoma Developmental Center

November 29, 2025

Phil Barber, PRESS DEMOCRAT

In September 2005, a Stockton-based developer known as the Grupe Company paid nearly $500,000 to Riverbank, a town in Stanislaus County with about 20,000 people at the time. The money would allow the city to update its general plan. One public policy professor said at the time that he’d never heard of a private business funding a general plan, which serves as a blueprint for growth and land use.

The final study proposed three alternatives for Riverbank, all of which carved out specific benefits for the Grupe Company. After an outcry by residents, the Riverbank City Council approved a plan that would slash proposed Grupe development by half. Months later, the developer announced it was no longer interested in paying for the update.

It was a “valuable lesson in developer tactics,” as a Modesto Bee editorial put it at the time, that would seem to have nothing to do with the North Bay.

But the Grupe Company is on the verge of becoming an important player here, too. It makes up half of Eldridge Renewal LLC, the partnership selected by the state to redevelop the historic Sonoma Developmental Center campus at the western edge of Sonoma Valley.

Habitats, Land UseGrupe Company, master-planned community, Sonoma Developmental Center, Sonoma Valley, wildfire evacuation, wildlife corridor

Santa Rosa opens single-family neighborhoods to duplexes, small apartments

November 20, 2025

Paulina Pineda, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Santa Rosa will now allow duplexes and small apartment buildings on nearly 2,000 properties zoned for single-family homes — a sweeping zoning change that city officials say will expand housing options but some residents fear could push them out.

Under the changes, duplexes, townhomes and garden-style apartments with up to 20 units would be allowed in areas on the edges of the city center and near some commercial corridors.

Such missing middle housing was common decades ago but has largely given way to larger single-family homes and bigger multifamily projects.

Planning officials and housing advocates say the new small- to-midsize-density housing could help fill a gap in the local market and better serve working-class residents, young families and older adults who want to rent or own in a city that has become increasingly out of reach.

Land Usehousing, infill development, multi-family housing, Santa Rosa

Rumors of tech-backed ‘autonomy’ stir backlash to Cloverdale Esmeralda megaproject

November 13, 2025

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Is the Network State — an online movement that uses cryptocurrency to fund self-governing micro-communities — coming to Cloverdale?

That speculation, fueled by a Nov. 12 blog post by the account The Nerd Reich, became a flashpoint Wednesday night during a joint meeting of the Cloverdale City Council and Planning Commission. The groups gathered for a presentation from the Esmeralda Land Co. about its proposal to redevelop the long-stalled Alexander Valley Resort site.

Esmeralda, a Bay Area-based developer founded by Devon Zuegel, wants to transform the 266-acre property on Cloverdale’s south end into a new mixed-use neighborhood with homes, public parkland, restaurants, retail space, multiple hotels, and a conference and event center. Zuegel said the plan scales back what has been approved on the site for the past two decades and adds a public park that would be gifted to the city.

Land UseCloverdale, development, Esmeralda, mixed-use development