Cloverdale

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Cloverdale leaders faced intense criticism Wednesday, April 8, as a swarm of public commenters accused the city council of failing to ensure residents and resources are safeguarded from impacts associated with a proposed mega housing and resort development on the south end of town.

More than a dozen residents demanded the council require a new environmental impact report for the proposed Esmeralda project, slated for 266 acres of vacant former industrial land.

The project, one of the largest in northern Sonoma County in decades, has been inching toward formal consideration by the planning commission and city council. But proponents with the San Francisco-based developer, Esmeralda Land Company, have advanced their vision while relying in large part on an environmental report completed 18 years ago for the Alexander Valley Resort, a different, now defunct development on the same land.

Merely amending and adding to that report is not enough, residents told the five-member council in what made for a chorus of concern Wednesday.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2026/04/09/cloverdale-residents-demand-full-environmental-review-of-proposed-mega-development/

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Sonoma County’s northernmost city is a blue-collar bastion where many people take pride in their roots stretching back generations.

They don’t mind if the community of 9,500 residents, tucked at the top of the famed Alexander Valley grape growing region, tends to be overlooked by the rest of Wine Country.

Long hitched to its logging legacy, with a largely faded citrus crop in its past, the town still holds tight to its farming and industrial roots. Today, many more residents work for the school district, in service and local government jobs, or in construction. Even in a tumultuous time, the grape growing business retains its hold, too, with vineyards that stretch from the city limits to the foot of the Mayacamas Mountains.

One spot on the valley floor at the city’s southern outskirts, however, is commanding an outsize amount of attention these days.

There, on 266 acres once slated for a now-defunct resort project, an out-of-town developer that first came to the county in 2023 as host of an aspirational monthlong retreat and pop-up village, has proposed something that many Cloverdale residents think clashes with the identity and heritage of what one denizen called their “little country town.”

On former industrial land, builders have proposed a sleek, mixed-use community, with more than 600 homes, a resort hotel, two restaurants, office, commercial and light-industrial space, and possibly, its own school.

Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2026/02/09/cloverdale-esmeralda-development-housing-resort/