designedforcars

THE CITY DESIGNED FOR DRIVING CARS

Communities are delicate things; once they start to crumble, it can be difficult to make them whole again. So in a spirit of optimism the first annual “Congress for Community Progress” was held at the Flamingo Hotel in March 1963. Formed by the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce, its avowed mission was to “unify community thought and action” around ways to improve the city, according to general chairman Judge Hilliard Comstock, while avoiding “rehashing mistakes of the past.”

The 268 participants – drawn from downtown business interests, social clubs, churches, unions and the City Hall bureaucracy – were split into seven panels. Some of their recommendations had little or no chance: An arts festival intended to draw visitors by the hundreds of thousands, a volunteer-run “central service club” for all elderly and handicapped residents, donations of large plots of land for new parks and baseball fields, and a “United Crusade” to collect donations for all local charities.

In contrast, the streets and traffic panel did not indulge in daydreams. They pushed to lobby for a bill in the state legislature for higher gas and road taxes, plus an upcoming municipal bond vote that would fund over $1 million in streetwork. “There’s nothing wrong with Sonoma County and Santa Rosa’s road, street and parking problems that money won’t cure,” promised Press Democrat editor Art Volkerts.

Much has been written here about Santa Rosa’s urban renewal misadventures during the 1960s and 1970s, which culminated with the city bulldozing a third of downtown so a private developer could build the mall. Should you be unfamiliar with that sad story, here’s a short recap or Gentle Reader can plunge into the extensive series about it all, “YESTERDAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER.”

But before we began tearing those buildings down, there was another civic program that set the stage for Santa Rosa destroying its Shadow of a Doubt character in the name of progress. That was the city’s embrace of a street improvement plan to supersize many of our streets, both commercial and residential. Because of it, Santa Rosa gradually turned from “The City Designed for Living” into “The City Designed for Cars.”


SANTA ROSA TRAFFIC IS A MESS

To be sure, Santa Rosa had downtown traffic problems in the 1950s. Browse the PD from those years and you’ll find frequent mention of traffic snarls, traffic jams and it otherwise being a general traffic mess. Some of those woes were of the city’s making – for example, the main bus stops were at the corner of Mendocino and Fourth Streets. In 1953 they took away a second parking spot on each side of Mendocino to make it easier for the buses to pull in and out, but that did little or nothing to ease congestion caused by them stopping at the busiest intersection downtown.

Jaywalking was also a persistent problem. (O Pepper, where for art thou?) The 1954 solution was to install “scramble” traffic light systems on Fourth Street at the B St. and D St. intersections. Now part of the timing cycle stopped traffic from all directions so pedestrians could cross in any direction, even diagonally. Some might recall Santa Rosa revived the concept at the Fourth and D intersection in 2007-2008 to mixed reviews; so it was in the mid 1950s. Then the police department liked it but drivers didn’t. The PD wrote, “Now almost any evening from 5 o’clock to 5:30 you will find a maddening, blaring, stalling, stop-and-go traffic jam.”

The scramble SNAFU was just another example of Santa Rosa’s stumbling management of the street situation, according to the city’s Planning Director. At a 1955 meeting he complained there were no studies being done as to what was the best course of action, with changes being made piecemeal based on “someone’s opinion” about what would improve matters. This led directly to the hiring of Jackson Faustman.

As so often happened with the later urban renewal projects, trouble can be traced to the city hiring an expensive out-of-town consultant who likely had never set foot in Santa Rosa.

The 1957 decision was to hire Jackson Faustman, a traffic engineer in Sacramento, to write an analysis of Santa Rosa’s traffic situation with “specific and detailed recommendations for the solution of both existing problems and those that will occur in the immediate future.” The report alone would cost the modern equivalent of $33,000.

Dr. Faustman would additionally make about half that much every year going forward for being available, with the odd proviso that he teach “a young man with the capacity and desire to be trained as a traffic engineer…and train him to the point where he can take over the traffic problems of the city and eliminate the need for consultation service.” (I’m sure it’s just sloppy writing in the Press Democrat, but raise your hand if you also think that reads like the city was seeking to force some kid into indentured servitude.) The job went to 36 year-old “Woody” Hamilton, who was already a city assistant engineer of some sort.1

Faustman delivered his first report to a city commission a few months later (Hamilton was credited as co-author). His primary recommendation was to make Mendocino Ave. three lanes of one way northbound traffic between Fourth St. and College Ave, with B St. being a matching three lanes headed south. City officials batted the idea around for more than a year while Faustman kept hauling in charts and warning that otherwise there would be such gridlock by 1970 no one would be able to reach downtown.

The city gave him a hard NO on the one way streets, but Faustman said from the beginning that was just the means to achieve his real goal: Increasing traffic capacity of major streets “by 50 per cent or better.” And to that end, in late 1958 he revealed his new Master Street Plan to widen 33 streets.

The Jackson Faustman proposal for widening Santa Rosa streets. The numbers are his recommended priorities for the projects. Press Democrat, November 27 1958
The Jackson Faustman proposal for widening Santa Rosa streets. The numbers are his recommended priorities for the projects. Press Democrat, November 27 1958

He helpfully offered a map showing which projects he thought should take priority, given his belief it would cost about $8 million. In today’s dollars, that worked out to about $87M – and that was before Woody Hamilton pointed out a few weeks later that Faustman was wrong and the true estimate was a million over that (figure $98M total today).

Even for the Press Democrat, where the editors never saw a construction project they didn’t like, this as a staggering amount of money for a non-emergency public works program. There was no chance the newspaper, Chamber of Commerce, and their other cronies could twist arms of voters into passing a $9M bond measure expected to require about twenty years to complete. It was also more than the city could legally put on the ballot.

The traffic commission approved a slightly modified version of the plan and estimated the cost of just the top ten projects would be about $2.8M.2 Our Grand Poobahs began musing about a bond that might cover at least that much if it were sweetened with promise of a new library, a new park and maybe a new city hall.

But spending all that money on even a scaled-back widening campaign was an affront to Santa Rosans who had been waiting years, even decades, for the city to perform basic street work, as the PD acknowledged:


There would be no money for work on mile after mile of local streets which now lace the city without sidewalks, curbs, or gutters, and without adequate base to serve the needs of heavy, modern traffic. These streets will have to be brought up to standard – if they ever are – by assessment against property owners…

Homeowners paying for their own sidewalks and whatnot? Well, yeah, the city had a long history of doing exactly that. A half century earlier there was quite a fuss about Santa Rosa forcing people to hire cement contractors to lay sidewalks in their front yards. Failure to do so meant the city would hire someone to do the work and put a lien on your house for the expense.

The city was still doing that in the mid-1950s, only now it was forcing residents to pay by means of assessments. And as that newspaper article continued, City Hall was considering using assessments to help fund street widening:


…Along major streets, where widening and resurfacing projects are to be scheduled, owners will also pay some small share, but city officials have not yet completed studies to show how much of the projects could be paid for by assessment.

WHAT’S AN ASSESSMENT DISTRICT?

In California, local governments can designate a particular area as an “Assessment District” for infrastructure work done within its borders. Usually most of the cost is billed to property owners within the District and paid off over many years via property tax surcharges.

District projects are supposed to provide specific improvements to the area which can only be provided by the government. Examples include bringing in sewer and water lines or constructing streets for a new subdivision. The money is not supposed to be spent on anything that benefits the overall community, such as parks, swimming pools, public schools, libraries or city/county offices.

An Assessment District can blanket all/most of a city or be limited to a few buildings on a certain street. There are usually public hearings before the District is approved but there will probably not be a public vote required.

It’s likely the suggestion “owners will also pay some small share” gave more than a few folks the nervous jimmies. Most of the widening projects were expected to cost over a hundred thousand dollars, with some past a half million – even a “small share” could be more than the value of someone’s house (theoretically).

There was already an ongoing 1957 lawsuit against the city for abuse of assessments. Sixteen residents on Pacific Avenue between Bryden Lane and King St. found they were expected to pay the full cost of sidewalks, curbs, gutters and most of the street paving – plus the loss of a slice of their front yards because the city also made their street about 25 percent wider. They charged the city with fraud because it was the general public, not they, who would benefit from the work, and thus was against state law (see sidebar). The case would not be resolved for twelve years.3

Despite all the hype around the Faustman report and the silly prediction of a 1970 gridlock apocalypse, nothing really happened over the next four years. Santa Rosa tried to pass a bond in 1961 that included $5.5M for streets and storm drains but it failed badly, drawing a pathetic 30 percent approval.

By the time they tried a bond proposal again in 1963, however, the ground had shifted. The city’s Urban Renewal Agency (URA) was no longer treating redevelopment as if it were a contest between architectural firms to see who could come up with the most fanciful and impractical models for Santa Rosa v. 2.0. The Agency was now deciding which actual buildings would be demolished and awarding construction contracts worth big bucks to build something else. Federal and state grant money was also starting to flow in that would pay for redevelopment.

Just before the bond vote, the state road tax bill discussed by the traffic panel at the Congress for Community Progress had passed, with Santa Rosa expecting to get over $128k annually for street work. So the pitch for the new muni bond was combining that road money with half of the city’s sales tax and…presto! The street widening would be paid for without any new taxes.

The Press Democrat gushed, “…[it] may sound like the city has found out how to print its own money without going to jail. Actually, it is so simple that one wonders why nobody worked it out before. Essentially, what the City Council has done is to make positive that existing city revenues at present tax rates will be used to buy worthwhile and needed things instead of being frittered away.” (Memo to self: Search pre-1963 editions of the Press Democrat for ANY suggestion of city frittering.)

Unable to resist a free lunch, voters approved the bond by a whopping 80 percent. But there was apparently enough pushback for the PD to feel its passage was threatened. On the eve of the vote an editorial read, in part:


The campaign has also seen the ugly banner of sectionalism waved by the opponents. They would pit the older sections of our city against the new, east Santa Rosa against west, and north against south. This has happened in other cities, and progress has passed them by while the divided sections voted down bond issue after bond issue because of jealous fear. Now the moment of truth faces the Santa Rosa voter. We trust in his common sense and judgment to see through the smokescreen.

Who were these fear-mongering jealous sectionalists? Alas, the villains were never named in the paper and nor were their positions described, which makes me wonder if the editor was denouncing straw men, particularly since so much ink was spent in promoting the bond as if passage was a civic duty. Subscribers were encouraged to send pledges to vote for it; reporters and photographers covered doings of a pro-bond group calling itself “Forward Santa Rosa;” so many wrote in support that the letters section sometimes spilled over to the next page. One example from Santa Rosan Al Ridste:4


…It is a radiant, joyful thing to realize that we can build a new front for the city. In this lovely community “designed for living” there are rare potentialities. It is a move in which everyone can win eventually. It will, of course, cause some growing pains for some and some of the usual disturbances that always comes with change, but after what will not be too long a time, there will be gladness and pride in the new look and the new usefulness of whole locality…

The bond specified ten street improvements to be completed during the first tranche of work but curiously, only two of the projects resembled anything found on Faustman’s famous priority list. Presumably traffic engineer Hamilton, the URA and others decided an update was needed because the city’s needs had changed over the four years hence, which is quite reasonable. But after the bond passed the city continued tinkering with the work plans. This was when they resurrected a developer’s 1960 proposal to connect Sonoma Ave. to Ellis Street, which culminated in the demolition of Luther Burbank’s home for no good reason.

As the city finalized street plans in early 1964, it became clear assessments were going to be more than a “small share” of the funding. As with the Pacific Ave. situation, property owners were being expected to pay for a huge share of it.

A few years earlier the City Council wrote guidelines for street improvements in assessment districts; adjoining properties would usually pay about 55 percent overall. There were tweaks for residential vs. commercial zoning and public buildings were to be billed for the full price.5

The roar of outrage began when two churches – the First Methodist Church and St. Eugene’s – learned the city was requiring them to pay for all the street work in front. Later the Junior College received a similar notice.

There were other grumblings. Protests and petitions led to a steady stream of Council assessment hearings that year: Santa Rosa Ave. Montgomery Drive. Chanate Road. Sonoma Ave. The Council had considerable leeway to negotiate costs; some districts ended up owing considerably less than others because the city or URA contributed more than usual.

Othertimes the Council showed little or no willingness to compromise. Councilman Hugh Codding commented other councilmen were “railroading” particular projects thru. His lone Council ally was Charles DeMeo, who said city staff wasn’t presenting facts which might convince residents they should agree with the assessments. Quote the PD, “…why don’t you gentlemen who prefer to overrule the protests come forth with some definite proposals[?]” DeMeo also remarked he “didn’t question the fairness of the staff… but sometimes did question their judgement.”

Codding was taken aback by strong neighborhood pushback from one district:


“It seems obvious to me that the majority of those in the area don’t wish to see the improvements made,” councilman Codding said. “It seems rather foolish to see the proceedings go ahead. I move we abandon action…” Mayor Robert Tuttle quickly gaveled Mr. Codding’s motion “…out of order,” saying “…we’ll see.”

That happened at the big fight over widening Mendocino Ave. north of College Ave. Not only would the district pay a larger percentage (65 percent) but at 84 feet the street would be wider than any of the other projects at the time.6

At a three hour public hearing, it was made clear 9 out of 10 property owners in the district were opposed. “Codding made another motion that the project be ‘permanently abandoned’ until at least 75 percent of the abutting property owners sign a petition favoring the street widening,” the PD reported. Among those speaking against the assessment was Judge Comstock, the chairman for that Congress for Community Progress the previous year where he urged the city to “unify community thought and action.” Now here was the Council saying they didn’t care a neighborhood was united in protest.

Just as the public was caught unawares the city would use assessment districts to fund streetwork, people seemed genuinely surprised when they started chopping down trees growing next to the streets being widened.

A row of catalpa trees in the curb strip fronting Juilliard Park “had to come out there was no choice” according to a city engineer, who told the PD in 1965 catalpas were also “not street trees” and prone to untidiness. Although the paper was told decorative trees would be planted in their place, today there are no trees there at all except for some unlovely arborvitae set back in the park lawn several feet away from the street.

Hundreds of other street trees must have been taken out, but only the loss of those catalpas earned a brief notice in the Press Democrat, perhaps because someone recalled they had been planted by Juilliard himself in 1916 to acclaim.

More research is needed, but something needs to be written about Santa Rosa’s great tree purge from those years. A 1967 report called for a new master tree plan where there were to be no mature trees next to streets at all. By then nearly half of the street trees that had been planted in the previous twenty years were gone or about to be removed, many replaced by shrubs in planters.

1966trafficAnd lo, the city of Santa Rosa cut the trees, widened major streets, and charged neighbors for the pleasure of taking away some of their property. As the statistics show, daily traffic on most of the remodeled streets went up dramatically. Those who had planned this gazed upon their works and called it good because Santa Rosa was now more efficient.

(RIGHT: Traffic increases on Santa Rosa arterial routes 1961-1966. Press Democrat, September 25, 1966)

Our resident experts believed better efficiency was critical because they thought Santa Rosa was about to grow big, fast. The U.S. Commerce Dept. predicted in 1962 the greater San Francisco Bay Area population would be the size of Chicago’s by 1980. Santa Rosa’s planners took those estimates and declared over that timespan the number of people living here would more than triple.7 Our local Chamber of Commerce even produced a film on the topic – in color, boasted the Press Democrat – shown at the Congress for Community Progress. (For the record, our city planners guesstimated too high by over 50,000 people. We didn’t hit their projections until 1999.)

Dr. Faustman and city staff produced reams of studies concerning street loads, peak hour traffic volumes, circulation plans and such, all with the aim of relieving those expected 1980 traffic jams. The rallying cry was “Get the through traffic off local streets,” as a city engineer put it, turning the widened major streets into arteries that would move cars between different parts of the city as fast as possible.

But in practice those arterial streets were really connectors between shopping centers. Sonoma Ave. would make it easy to drive from downtown to Montgomery Village (there was no highway 12 expressway yet). A wider Mendocino Ave. made it an easy trip for downtown shoppers to check out sales at Coddingtown. And directly southward of Courthouse Square there was Santa Rosa Ave. with its miles of flashy neon signs.


THE HIGH PRICE OF WIDE STREETS

Urban planning critic Jane Jacobs mainly wrote about the road problems in New York City c. 1960, but if she had taken a peek at the Santa Rosa situation five years later she might have used us as the poster child for street planning gone wrong. To expand on her points about arterial streets:

* CROSSTOWN BARRIERS   They act as barriers, making it difficult and dangerous to cross against traffic.

* JAMS OR SPEEDWAYS   They only work as smoothly as promised under optimal traffic loads – too many rush hour cars and they choke up and when traffic is light some drivers treat them like expressways, speeding far faster than is legal.

* BIKE AT YOUR OWN RISK   Even when there are bike lanes – a hit-or-miss situation all over Santa Rosa – both speeding vehicles and traffic jams make arterial streets hazardous for bicyclists and electric scooter riders, often leading them to shift to sidewalks where they feel safer but creates a set of risks for pedestrians.

All in all it was a great traffic plan for moving shoppers around town as well as a great demonstration of confirmation bias. Faustman and the others did not consider whether that plan would ultimately be a good thing to do in Santa Rosa, even if the population did balloon in the future – the point of their studies was only to show how their predetermined objectives could be achieved.

It was also an example of backward thinking. Going pavement crazy might have seemed like a swell idea during the heyday of 1950s Car Culture, but it was now the mid-1960s and there was growing consensus that overbuilding streets made cities less livable.

Jane Jacobs’ 1961 widely read book on the failures of contemporary city design, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” has a damning chapter on the topic. “Traffic arteries…are powerful and insistent instruments of city destruction,” she began. Now more than sixty years later it’s even more apparent her views were prophetic.

Were Faustman and Santa Rosa’s decision makers not reading the trade journals and popular magazines where the old views on urban planning had been challenged for years? Residents here certainly weren’t informed there might be a downside to turning some streets into virtual freeways.

Much of the streetwork took place amid the flush of major projects around town, among them knocking down the Carnegie library and the courthouse, the entombment of Santa Rosa Creek into a culvert and starting construction for the elevated portion of highway 101. Widening a few streets and cutting down a bunch of old trees was hardly worth a moment of thought.

But for those today who nostalgically yearn for “old Santa Rosa,” the decision to completely surrender our main streets to automobiles stands as a milestone. The damage it did to the town is unrepairable: The uglification, increased noise and pollution, the splitting apart of established neighborhoods. It may not have been the dumbest thing we ever did – but then again, maybe it was.

 


1 His father, Woodman Hamilton Sr. was a pottery maker, and the work from his Glen Ellen Pottery studio was so highly regarded in the 1930s that it was exhibited at fairs to represent craftsmanship in Sonoma County.

2 A breakdown of costs for all projects can be found in the January 20, 1959 Press Democrat.
3 The Pacific Ave. Assessment was for $53,000. The lawsuit was won by the city, then overturned by the state Supreme Court. In 1969 it went again before the City Council to reassess the properties, although most of the original plaintiffs had moved or were now dead. See: December 25, 1969 Press Democrat.
4 Alfred Ridste was the father of movie star Carole Landis who died in 1948. He and other members of the family alleged she was murdered by actor Rex Harrison, with whom she was having an affair.
5 No copies of the 1958 version of the city policy manual can be found at the library or in the city archives, as far as I can tell, and I did not consult the 1957/1958 minutes of the City Council when the policies were written. My observations are drawn completely from information given in the 1964 Press Democrat.
6 The usual widening for major streets in those Santa Rosa projects was 64′ on 86′ right of way, with secondary streets 40′ on 60′ right of way. The original traffic plan called for 6 foot median on the widened major streets. See: Press Democrat, August 28 1962
7 “Between 1960 and 1980 it is estimated that the population of the Santa Rosa planning area will increase from 36 per cent to 43 per cent of the total county population. Assuming a county population of 295,000 in 1980, we can estimate a population increase to about 135,000 in the Santa Rosa planning area.” Press Democrat, August 28 1962

 

TOP: Section from “Traffic Jam” by Earl Mayan, Saturday Evening Post cover, April 28, 1956

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WHO OWNED COURTHOUSE SQUARE?

Santa Rosa has a history of making regrettable decisions, lord knows, and this series, “YESTERDAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER,” delves into just the cascading series of failures leading up to construction of the shopping mall, which was the ultimissimo mistake. But in our big book of blunders there’s one small chapter where the town didn’t pick the worst possible option – although it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

The project we were trying so hard to screwup was (once again) Courthouse Square, and this attempt started in 1966, the same year we tore down the courthouse. Immediately following that we stabbed a four-lane street through the middle and declared that the western sliver of what remained would now be called “Old Courthouse Square.” That part of the story was explored in the previous article, “TEARING APART ‘THE CITY DESIGNED FOR LIVING’“.

All of that had been done under the authority of Santa Rosa’s Urban Renewal Agency (URA), an unelected five member body which had broad powers for redeveloping all of downtown Santa Rosa, as also discussed in that article. As a first step that year the county had sold all of Courthouse Square (plus the county garage and jail) to the URA for $400k, but the county only expected to be paid half of that, considering the new street and west side of the Square as a donation. To raise the remaining $200k, the plan was that the city would sell the east side of the Square to a developer. “For Sale: 26,000 sq. Feet,” read the URA marketing blurb, with an asking price of $305k.

But a year passed with only a single bid: Eureka Federal Savings offered $260k (can’t have enough massive bank buildings squatting on prime downtown locations). Potential buyers found the city’s right to sell the property was…uncertain, to say the least.

This was hardly the first time questions about ownership of the Square were raised; you could say it was Sonoma County’s oldest parlor game, going back to just after the Civil War (see sidebar).

1868deed


THAT TROUBLESOME GIFT

The town was founded, as everyone knows, in 1854 by Barney Hoen & Co. and Julio Carrillo. They also donated a couple of acres for a central plaza, with the company providing the eastern half and Julio giving the western side. The notarized Oct. 23, 1854 dedication document stated “the public square…[is] donated to and for the use and benefit of Sonoma County forever…”

At that moment Carrillo was one of the wealthiest men in Sonoma county, but Fortuna did not smile upon him long. Around Christmas of 1867, Julio found himself unable to feed his family (12 kids!) because he didn’t have enough credit left with storekeepers to buy a meager sack of flour. “Stung to the quick, in the heat of his indignation he re-deeded half of the Plaza,” wrote historian Robert Thompson, attempting to sell it to three local men for $300, as told in “COURTHOUSE SQUARE FOR SALE, CHEAP.”

The first news about the “re-deed” appeared in the Santa Rosa paper shortly after New Year’s Day, 1868, when it was also discovered that the 1854 document was never recorded – an oversight which was immediately corrected, albeit 13 years late. Still, the men who claimed to now own some of the most valuable property in town persisted, building a shack on the plaza in the middle of the night (it was torn down the next day). They tried to do it again in 1870, but it was also knocked down immediately as the town council rushed through an ordinance explicitly making it illegal to put up a building in the plaza.

In the 1870s Santa Rosa acted like they owned the place, as the Common Council passed more ordinances about the plaza and made improvements: Gates must be kept closed (“Is it not astonishing that some people will be so careless as to leave the gates of our Plaza open after they have passed through, so that cows and other animals can get in?” – Sonoma Democrat, Feb. 26, 1870), liquor and cussing were banned and new benches were added along with a flagpole.

The next dust-up came in 1883, when county supervisors decided we needed a new courthouse – the one at the current location of Exchange Bank was a leaky, plaster-cracked mess. Santa Rosa insisted it should be built in the middle of the Plaza. Petaluma objected, and offered to built it in their town; Santa Rosa founders Hahman and Hoen objected, saying it had been gifted with the clear intent of it remaining a park; even District Attorney Thomas Geary opined “the county had no more right to put a building there than they had on the county road.” The squabble ended only when Santa Rosa sent the Supervisors a resolution “surrendering the possession of the plaza.” (For more, see “HOW COURTHOUSE SQUARE TORE SONOMA COUNTY APART.”)

But at the time the Petaluma Argus began sewing doubt that the plaza might not be owned by the city OR the county – everything about the title to the plaza land was unclear. What did “use and benefit of Sonoma County” mean legally? Apparently Julio was truthful in saying there was no deed or other paperwork.

After that the issue lay dormant until 1953, when the Planning Commission produced a review of possible new sites for the courthouse. The County Taxpayers’ Association shot back with a 25-page critique which included this point: “It is reliably reported…should it be used for other than a Courthouse or a park, the title will revert to the heir of the donor”. In his writeup on the group’s response, PD reporter Fred Fletcher commented, “this has been rumored in the Courthouse for years.”

The URA certainly knew about the problems. A few years earlier while they were hashing out ideas about where to put the new city hall/civic center, a site selection committee was appointed with Judge Hilliard Comstock as chairman. When they were considering the Square he looked into the title issue and reported that although the county felt it owned the Square because of its long use, the descendants of Julio Carrillo et. al. might have a case to demand it back if it were now sold as private property.

“Help us clear the title,” URA member O. E. Christensen asked mayor Hugh Codding in a June, 1967 meeting. “We can go from there. We can advertise the property, but not consummate the title. Untie our hands then we can move.” Codding offered to help. In the meantime they seeded the east side with grass, since development was a year or two away. Later Skylark Nursery loaned sixteen magnolia and cedar trees in containers to dress up the place a bit. The very next day they were blown over by high winds and rolled out into the street.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the new four-lane road our new, dinky, “Old Courthouse Square” was dedicated with fanfare. Mayor Codding predicted the citizenry would become “more aware and more proud of this historic center of the city of Santa Rosa” as a result. Supervisor Robert Rath commented they were “revering back to perhaps what was in the mind of Mr. Carrillo when the property was dedicated to public use in 1853” (wrong year, and nope). Some descendants of Julio Carrillo were present at the dedication and wrote a letter to the PD that they were “surprised how the actual facts could be so conveniently omitted.”

Around then, talk began about the east side of the square. Maybe it was because the thousand or so people at that September dedication looked across the street at the vacant lot and wondered why that couldn’t be a public park, too. Gaye LeBaron had an item in her social column commenting that people around town were musing about putting a statue of Burbank over there, or bocce ball courts, or something else. “It isn’t so much what the people want, it’s what they don’t want,” she wrote. “And lots of them don’t want a building on that square.”

Battle lines were being drawn. On the side wanting a big honking bank was the URA, the Downtown Development Association and the Press Democrat. The PD probably did not win many converts by reproducing the URA’s site plan shown below. Not only did it show the proposed building’s footprint would dwarf all retail spaces downtown, but the illustration’s caption pointed out there would still be plenty of open space around (shown here in black). In an editorial, the PD went so far as to suggest the town already had too many parks and bits of greenery: “Between Fremont Park, Juilliard Park, the existing park on the westerly side of Old Courthouse Square, and the landscaping scheduled within the urban redevelopment area, Downtown Santa Rosa already may have received more than its fair share of the city funds available for places for people to enjoy, and for children to play.”

URA site plan of downtown Santa Rosa as it appeared in the Press Democrat, December 17, 1967
URA site plan of downtown Santa Rosa as it appeared in the Press Democrat, December 17, 1967

The Press Democrat wandered further into the weeds with an editorial claiming it would cost the city $800,000 to make it a park. (Estimating $450k in lost tax revenue + $350k to buy it from the county and create a concrete-paved plaza like the westerly side of the Square.) Mayor Codding called the guesstimate ridiculous and the editorial “an insult to my intelligence.” Codding, who was the most vocal advocate for preserving it as a park, had also asked the Board of Supervisors to consider donating the land.

By the start of 1968, every civic and service group in or near Santa Rosa was off the fence on the park question – even the Chamber of Commerce opposed development – and only the PD was surprised when the City Council voted to ask the Supervisors to donate it (Codding was absent that day, as ol’ Hugh was taking time off to shoot at bears in Alaska).

In the background during all this, the Quest for Title was slogging into its second year. Initially the county and city/URA were all meeting in efforts to settle it until the County Counsel decided to split off, so now there were two separate efforts to unravel that 115 year old knot.

(Sidenote: While doing this research the news cycle was paying much attention to a NASCAR pileup and playing in slow motion the last seconds before the crash over and over, and I thought, gee, how timely.)

The Supervisors were in a grand pickle. For two fiscal years now, their budget counted on receiving $198k for the east side of the Square. (Why $198k and not an even $200k was never explained, as far as I can tell.) That represented six percent of a year’s county tax revenue – a huge writeoff.

Over the course of that summer the Supes mulled and pondered what to do, relying upon the advice of County Counsel Richard Ramsey, although some of his suggestions – as reported in the PD – seemed unsound and aimed mainly at provoking Santa Rosa. He said the county “certainly is entitled to use the property for whatever it wants” and the Supervisors could take it over and sell it themselves. Or they could sue the city for the $198k and the title, while also assuring them there was “no question” the county could get a “marketable title” to the property. There was a closed session and another speckled with considerable bitter comments.

The Board of Supervisors decided to sue the city of Santa Rosa and its Urban Renewal Agency, demanding $800k + interest (about $6 million today). They arrived at that figure by claiming damages because the market value of the land was “substantially impaired” because the city “refuse[d] to cooperate in transferring title” (!) and had “permanently seized possession” of the Square, which had deprived the county of using its legal property. Oh, lawyers.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement went nowhere. Codding suggested the city deed everything back to the county, which would have mucked up the ownership issue further still (which I think was his intent). A Press Democrat editorial bemoaned that a drawn-out legal fight could leave the east side in limbo for years, neither the city or county maintaining it as the place deteriorated into the “Sonoma County Memorial Weed Patch.”

Our story finally winds up in 1970, with a Believe-it-or-not! twist you probably aren’t expecting. The lawsuit itself was settled fairly amicably; Santa Rosa paid the county $50,000 and gave them some land southwest of town which was outside of city limits. The agreement stated the city would have to pay $48k more if the east portion of the Square ever became something other than public use.

As for the question of title…

While the Supervisors were debating whether or not to sue in 1968, they split into two camps: One side simply wanted that $198k and said the city was in breach of contract. The other Supes’ position was that they would like to donate the land to Santa Rosa, but their hands were tied until the title was resolved. But all of them had apparently forgotten the county had previously quitclaimed the western side and roadway back in 1966 – an inconvenient fact which was brought up in the PD’s coverage. In other words, the county had already declared they were no longer claiming any form of ownership to two-thirds of the original plaza, only the remnant on the eastern side.

In the end, the county wanted money for something they couldn’t prove they legally had. Who knows what County Counsel Ramsey was thinking in promising the Supervisors he could obtain a “marketable title” in court, although at least one of his predecessors had also made the claim. Maybe Ramsey had dreams of prancing before Supreme Courts in Sacramento or Washington, making the case that Julio Carrillo and the others never meant to donate it to the people of Sonoma county but rather the county government (which practically didn’t yet exist in 1854).

Thus the one thing everyone expected to happen, didn’t – the title of the Plaza/Square was still unresolved as the county and city settled their spat in 1970. The troublesome ancient document was left to gather dust in the Recorder’s office as everyone backed away from it slowly.

Was this ever resolved in the fifty years since? Not as far as I can tell – it seems that it’s all just been forgotten, like one of the dangerous treasures buried deep in the Raiders of the Lost Ark’s warehouse.

"Old Courthouse Square" in 1968 looking east. Image: Sonoma County Library
“Old Courthouse Square” in 1968 looking east. Image: Sonoma County Library
East side of Courthouse Square in 1977. Image: Sonoma County Library
East side of Courthouse Square in 1977. Image: Sonoma County Library

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1966construction

TEARING APART “THE CITY DESIGNED FOR LIVING”

In 1946 the Chamber of Commerce had a contest to find a new slogan “best fitting Santa Rosa.” Out of 400+ entries the winner was Mrs. B. Taylor, who came up with “The City Designed for Living.” She was awarded $25 and it was money well spent; everybody loved the motto, which was added to the city’s stationery. It was often part of the Press Democrat’s masthead and stores worked it into their newspaper ads. The Chamber wanted to update it in 2007 and paid $80,000 to Tennessee experts who came up with “California Cornucopia” – a catchphrase so hideously vapid it inspired only an abundance of invective. Nor did it help that it came with a logo which looked like someone’s doodle on the back of a cocktail napkin.

Today’s Santa Rosa would be unrecognizable to Mrs. B. (sorry, no first name I can find EDIT 2024: Her name was Edith). Hers was a city where downtown was a destination – the place you usually were when not at home. It was where you picked up groceries, dropped off shoes for repair, visited the dentist, bought a new toaster, got a haircut or a perm. Mrs. B. saw the sidewalks filled with kids after school and if she was out late the stores beckoned evening shoppers with lighted windows. It was the world as seen in Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” – and who knows, maybe Mrs. B. can be spotted in the background of some scene in the movie.

Mrs. B. might find herself lost in Santa Rosa’s tiny downtown because so many landmarks are gone. What happened to the courthouse? Where are all those blocks of stores between B street and Railroad Square? How did they get rid of Santa Rosa Creek? There’s little she will recognize beyond a few scattered buildings.

The story of how all that happened is the theme of this series, “Yesterday is Just Around the Corner,” and the short explanation is that Santa Rosa was gripped by an epidemic of Redevelopment Fever in the 1960s and 1970s. Yes, some rich people became richer because of the deals and some of the doings should have probably seen the inside of a courtroom, but it was good intentions, not greed or corruption, that led to the dismantling of “The City Designed for Living.” And Santa Rosa was far from alone; communities all over the country were making similar stupid, irreversible decisions in those days.

This chapter is about the Urban Renewal Agency (URA), an unelected five member body with a full-time planner and an executive director (hired from Merced) which had broad powers to make deals for redeveloping all of downtown Santa Rosa. Formed by the city in 1958, they kicked it off a couple of years later by declaring forty acres of downtown so “blighted” that it needed to be demolished. Designating sections of your town blighted was a necessary first step before applying for free redevelopment money from the government.

The appointed members of the URA had diverse backgrounds that might have served them well on some less critical civic board or committee, but as far as I can tell none of them were educated about urban planning or architecture. Members in the early 1960s included the owner of a building supply company, a retired promotion director of a packing company, a personal injury lawyer, the manager of Sears and the VP of a savings & loan.

Before the mid-1960s the URA shuffled paper. They interviewed and hired a parade of out-of-town urban planning consultants to draw plans and build models, then made a sweetheart deal with a development group led by Henry Trione to draw more plans and build more models. They facilitated fantasy projects which had no actual schedules nor budgets; nothing planned during those years was ever built.

Things began to change in 1966, the year we tore down the courthouse in Courthouse Square. That demolition was nearly a decade in the making; the building was damaged in a 1957 earthquake – mostly cosmetic, not structural – and the Board of Supervisors mulled over the idea of building a courthouse at the new County Administration Center instead of downtown. After lots of due mulling (and a legally-questionable financing deal), the Sonoma County Hall of Justice joined the other county offices at the big campus outside of city limits, and on March 22, 1966, the Supervisors officially agreed to sell Courthouse Square to the city of Santa Rosa URA for $400,000.

While that deal was in the works, the URA was focused on what to do with Courthouse Square once it was in their hands. Courthouse Square wasn’t in the blight zone but was still central to the URA’s plans to remake downtown, and they began with the presumption that it was essential to punch a four-lane street through the middle of it, connecting Santa Rosa and Mendocino Avenues. Like almost all the URA’s other sweeping decisions, this was declared as a done deal with no public input – and if the Press Democrat ever wrote a critical word about the URA’s doings, I’ve yet to find it.

An early proposal was for all city offices to be stuffed in a “Civic Tower” up to 15 stories high and straddling both sides of the new street. The description in the PD said there would be parks on either side, including two lakes (!) and a constant-flow artificial creek. This plan was abandoned but the debate over where to build the new city hall became a marathon political squabble between the URA and developer/city councilman Hugh Codding, who wanted it near Coddingtown or the County Administration Center. Finally the none-of-the-above option was chosen, and the civic center would be built on top of the filled-in bed of Santa Rosa Creek (MORE).

With no worries over the placement of city hall and the courthouse being demolished, Courthouse Square was a blank slate in the spring of 1966 – albeit a blank slate that was going to have a four-lane road through the middle. This was the URA’s own development project, which in itself probably stretched the limit of the Agency’s charter. But the URA also began taking on powers that clearly belonged to city departments and/or the City Council, such as the closing of city streets.

The URA had decided that the old side streets, Hinton and Exchange Avenues, weren’t needed any longer and would be turned into sidewalks. The former Hahman pharmacy, next to the Empire Building and built in 1908, would be torn down to create a walkway to a planned parking garage that was going to be built at Third and B streets (the old drugstore wasn’t demolished until 2018).

J. Clarence Felciano, Santa Rosa’s go-to architect during the mid-century, was awarded the contract to design the new Square; he had a 10-point plan focused on making it a place welcoming to pedestrians and holding public assemblies. There would be multiple fountains and the bunya-bunya trees would be preserved (honk if you still miss them).

The URA’s plans for Courthouse Square were revealed at a public meeting on June 1 – a day fraught with symbolism, as just hours earlier everyone downtown would have heard the wrecking ball destroying the magnificent stained glass skylight in the courthouse. In the audience were members of the Planning Commission, city planning staff and downtown business stakeholders who were hearing some of the details for the first time. And this was no dog-and-pony show of some architect’s proposal; the URA was expecting to sign construction contracts within a few weeks.

The meeting did not go well.

The arrogance displayed by members of the URA was astonishing. Planning Commissioner Ernest Thomas said the URA was “trying to move the plans too fast” and the Planning and Parks Department hadn’t been consulted – that the URA expected the Commissioners and others to “come down here and make comment and give approval in one evening.” He asked for the Planning Department to have a chance to study the plan.

“The overall plans of Urban Renewal has always been to connect the two streets through the Courthouse Square.” URA Chairman Michael Panas told the Commissioner.

URA member O. E. Christensen piled on, according to the Press Democrat’s coverage. “I’m surprised to hear you say you haven’t known about the Courthouse Square plan, Mr. Thomas, [all city officials] knew of this plan as far back as four years ago.” Thomas was “trying to make it appear we’re attempting to rush this,” he charged, and make it look like the URA was attempting to get the city to “approve something which hasn’t had prior study…we’ve been studying this thing for several years.” He also said, “we’re in no hurry, here,” apparently forgetting that at the top of the meeting Panas had announced they were expecting construction bids in six weeks.

Commissioner Thomas was not reassured. He found it “amazing” that they didn’t see a problem with their street through the square having “two-way traffic dumping into one-way traffic.” Christensen – a structural engineer who specialized in schools and large commercial buildings – replied that wasn’t the URA’s worry; working out traffic problems was a job for the city to “accomplish.”

Another voice of dissent was Wells Fargo manager James Keegan, whose bank was on the corner between the Empire Building and Fourth street. With Exchange avenue slated to be sidewalked over in the URA’s plan, he was “considerably disturbed” that bank customers would be dependent upon construction of that proposed garage at Third and B and the proposed walkway where the drugstore used to be. What assurances could the URA give that the property could be acquired for the walkway?

“None,” replied Chairman Panas, who added there were “ways” to get the land, but it was “out of the hands of the agency.” There was no money in the URA budget to buy it. Banker Keegan commented that the area designed for public assemblies should then be turned into parking, as having an assembly area was a “big joke” anyway.

The meeting closed with the URA admitting the cost for all this was “quite over” what they had planned, but was worth it. Remember the thumpity-thump faux cobblestone paving that shook your fillings loose? That cost an extra $40k.

Despite the complete lack of input on the project by the public or any other governmental body, the URA plowed ahead on building the new roadway that autumn. Suggestions were made on its name: Main street, Burbank Plaza, Central Plaza, Rosacino or Mendorosa avenue. Hugh Codding took note of all the heavy construction equipment parked on the square and quipped it should be named the “Demilitarized Zone.”

“Old Courthouse Square” was chosen as the name for both the street and the plaza on its west side (which wouldn’t be built for another year). Street signs were erected at both ends with “Old Court House Square” [sic] lettered in Ye Olde English style because Santa Rosa was apparently founded by Sir Walter Raleigh.

The ribbon cutting was November 5, 1966. Mayor DeMeo gave a shout-out to the city’s founders, albeit one slightly incoherent: “Their gift to the city even now is more enhanced than originally.” That was followed by a “Parade of Progress” where antique autos and the latest models thumpity-thumped in both directions. There was soon a traffic jam on the Fourth street side.

Aside from the roadway and the adjacent sidewalks, no other work was completed in 1966. Exchange and Hinton avenues were still open and the little west side plaza was to come the following year. As for the east side of Courthouse Square, the URA had big plans – to sell it off. “For Sale: 26,000 sq. Feet” read a Press Democrat headline.

NEXT: WHO OWNED COURTHOUSE SQUARE?

Construction equipment in the Courthouse Square street extension, 1966 or 1967. Photo at top and this one courtesy Sonoma County Library
Construction equipment in the Courthouse Square street extension, 1966 or 1967. Photo at top and this one courtesy Sonoma County Library

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