Cotati Housing Development
The plan for the now-vacant property has generated pushback on Nextdoor, the neighborhood-focused social media platform.
Noah Housh with the city planning office says this site has long been marked for development .
“since at least 2001…it was actually planned to be a large Nokia corporate campus…obviously the iPhone was invented…and the idea of the North Bay being a large telecommunications hub wasn’t fulfilled.”
Now, the city is weighing plans for two separate residential projects, though both are still in the early stages.
“…one are townhome condominium for-sale homes, and the other are for-rent apartment homes. There’s about 300 units total between both applications…and neither one of them have been deemed complete…”
Many complaints argue that new homes will worsen drought conditions. But Housh says water needs are already accounted for.
“The general plan is the constitution for the city, and you update it about every ten years…do you have enough police force, do you have water, sewer, park space, all of these that are critical for life get analyzed. This level of growth was anticipated ….and we have that capacity.”
While much frustration is directed at Cotati officials, property owners are ultimately responsible for development. Housh says outreach efforts have been overshadowed in recent years.
“We actually held a housing workshop at the city in October of 2019, to start to tell the whole community ‘hey, the housing element update is coming,’…literally the day we held that meeting is when the Kincaid fire started, and then it’s just been an ongoing series of emergencies….in the meantime the state continues to change the law on housing…so ideally you hold a lot of meetings, take a lot of time…its just the community has been so overwhelmed with things lately that I think our efforts may have not been as successful as I would have wished.”
Quinn Nelson 