Cloverdale, Sonoma County's northernmost city, is taking up one of the largest development proposals the area has seen in decades. The City Council scheduled a special meeting for Wednesday night, Oct. 7, to hear public comment on Esmeralda, a planned neighborhood with housing, a resort hotel and shops on the town's southeastern edge. The Press Democrat reports a second public meeting is set for Oct. 14.
What's proposed
The Esmeralda Land Company wants to build on a 266-acre property off Asti Road that includes a shuttered lumber mill and a former wood treatment plant. The plan calls for more than 600 homes, ranging from apartments to townhomes and single-family houses, plus a hotel of up to 160 rooms, restaurants, retail space, an event center, an amphitheater, a racquet club, a park and potentially a K-6 school. The company's chief executive, Devon Zuegel, has estimated the project could add about 1,500 residents and hopes construction could start as early as spring 2027, according to The Press Democrat. The company is an offshoot of Edge Esmeralda, a month-long pop-up village and retreat that began in 2024.
The city's Planning Commission voted 4-1 earlier this month to recommend approval, with conditions that include a new recycled-water study, routine soil testing and a requirement that the developer hire a consultant to monitor environmental safeguards, KQED reported.
The contamination debate
About 8 acres of the property once held a wood treatment plant that closed in 1976. State agencies and the site's owners spent decades cleaning up the soil and groundwater, and in 2012 the regional water board certified the site as decontaminated. The following year, regulators barred homes, schools, hospitals and day care centers from ever being built on that former plant area and a 14.5-acre buffer around it. Esmeralda's design keeps those uses off the restricted land.
Resident Jennifer Sullivan, who has led much of the opposition, argues that disturbing the site could bring old chemicals back to the surface. She says the project relies too heavily on environmental reviews done for an earlier proposal, the abandoned Alexander Valley Resort, even though Esmeralda would include far more homes. Sullivan told KQED she plans to gather signatures for a referendum if the council approves the plan as is.
Zuegel counters that the land has been studied continuously for more than 20 years and describes the project as a brownfield redevelopment that would clean the property to higher standards. City staff said a narrower addendum to the earlier environmental report was sufficient, and UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf told KQED that courts usually give cities the benefit of the doubt on that kind of call.
Vice Mayor Todd Lands told KQED that opposition has come from roughly the same 15 to 20 people, while supportive letters keep arriving. Councilmember Andrés Marquez said he expects the council's deliberations to center on compromise.