Joe Mathews:
Santa Rosa is a model urban center.
Adjust your California maps: The little dot marking Santa Rosa needs to be bigger.
Dramatic changes in housing, aging, transportation and criminal justice are altering the Golden State’s geography, and no place in California stands to benefit more than Santa Rosa.
The Sonoma County seat seems poised to become the most successful example of a certain type of urban center — the rapidly growing midsize city that serves as a crossroads between major regions. The city’s motto — “Out There. In the Middle of Everything” — encapsulates the new and paradoxical centrality of edge cities, from Fairfield and Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County) to Riverside and Escondido (San Diego County). In an era when California’s coastal regions have soured even on motherhood (by making children and housing prohibitively expensive) and apple pie (too much sugar and not locally grown), these edge cities are bastions of hoary traditions like economic growth and middle-class opportunity.
As the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area, Santa Rosa, population 175,000, plays many roles. It’s the northern spillover area for people and businesses seeking refuge from the closer-in Bay Area’s higher costs. Employers like it too; the city now boasts 88,000 jobs, its highest employment level ever.
“We’re on the move, and we’re interested in growing,” says Santa Rosa City Council Member Julie Combs.
And by dint of geography and deliberate strategy, the city is emerging as California’s weed crossroads — or, in the words used by the city, the “farmto-market” center for medical and recreational marijuana, connecting the cannabis growers of Northern California with the retailers and consumers of the Bay Area and points south.
While many other California cities have decided to limit the marijuana industry, Santa Rosa has rapidly issued permits for cannabis operations, creating a run on warehouse space. What the city wants is higher-wage professional jobs — in sales, finance, distribution or lab testing — that the newly legal $22 billion-a-year industry will require.
And while Marin County to the south is famously antigrowth, Santa Rosa has been busily preparing for the new people heading its way. In downtown Santa Rosa, there are plans for taller buildings, including a hotel. Santa Rosa’s expanding airport could handle double its number of travelers by the end of the next decade. The first 43 miles of a new 70-mile commuter rail line, the SMART train, opened this summer, connecting Santa Rosa to San Rafael, and, eventually, the ferry to San Francisco.
The City Council has distinguished itself by making housing its top priority, with a multiphase plan that promises more housing both for younger families and seniors. The city has put its own money into affordable housing, is working with the county to establish a housing trust, and is encouraging denser, taller construction — while still preserving its urban growth boundaries. Santa Rosa also has responded aggressively to rising homelessness — declaring a local state of emergency that allows for zoning to help house people quickly.
All of this progress has been helped by a series of inclusive community conversations, some called Santa Rosa Together. The community’s cohesion opened the door to annexing Roseland and other poorer communities on the southwest side into the city, with the goal of giving the 8,000 or so people there more political voice and better services.
All this change can be jarring for some longtime residents accustomed to a smaller town that identified itself with the cartoon strip Peanuts and its author, Charles M. Schulz. Santa Rosa still remains home to a Schulz Museum, part of a complex with an ice rink.
But the world is changing. MetLife fired Snoopy last year after 30 years of sponsorship, and the Peanuts brand was sold to a Canadian company. And Santa Rosans will soon have to adjust to living in a city of 200,000, rather than the 1970 town of 50,000.
Next year, Santa Rosa celebrates the sesquicentennial of its incorporation. It is also the 75th anniversary of its star turn in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt.” Hitchcock portrayed Santa Rosa as an out-of-the-way place where a serial killer could hide easily.
Today, the geography of 21st century California makes Santa Rosa inescapable.