Shiloh Sustainable Village stands to breathe new life into Windsor’s economy, but is it on a collision course with Town Green Village? NorthBay biz takes an in-depth look at this small town power struggle.
In a gutsy move during our current economic crisis, construction will soon begin on one of the most environmentally friendly mixed-use developments in the United States—and you won’t believe where: Right next to a Home Depot and a Wal-Mart!
Late this year, North Street Partners LLC of Healdsburg will begin erecting Shiloh Sustainable Village on the north side of Shiloh Road in Windsor, immediately east of the Highway 101 on- and off-ramps and adjacent to the Shiloh Shopping Center.
The project is spearheaded by Jake Whiteley of Healdsburg, co-founder and owner of Flying Goat Coffee, and Sean Rodrigues, an architect who moved to Santa Rosa from South Africa seven years ago. The duo is securing backing from both private investors and banks for the $50 million project and hope to complete the first phase—64,000 square feet of retail and 76 affordable apartments geared toward seniors—by the middle of 2011.
Four-time Windsor mayor and current city councilwoman Debora Fudge says she believes Shiloh Sustainable Village is the perfect project for its location and will be instrumental in setting the tone for future Shiloh Road development. A former planning commissioner, Fudge holds a bachelor’s degree in community conservation education from UC Davis and a master’s degree in environmental planning from CSU Sacramento. She’s been an advocate of smart growth planning since the town was incorporated in 1992. Fudge was opposed to the construction of Windsor’s Wal-Mart, which was put to a vote of the townspeople. The project passed by only 83 votes out of more than 8,000 that were cast.
“As soon as Wal-Mart was approved by the voters, we knew developers would propose sprawl development all the way down Shiloh Road. Right away, we got proposals for mini-marts, storage facilities, car washes, gas stations, RV parks…you name it. We knew we had to preplan to avoid these applications, so we created the Shiloh Road Vision Plan and involved everyone—property owners, developers, commissioners and townspeople. We decided on a mixed-use village with services that would cater to those who’d move in because they could get what they needed without having to drive.
“We also wanted diverse housing types,” Fudge continues. “Sean Rodrigues saw our vision plan and knew his project would fit perfectly. Had we not preplanned, there’s no doubt that today we’d have all those businesses that tend to tag off Wal-Mart, developments instead of this new, affordable, highly energy-efficient neighborhood called Shiloh Sustainable Village. I’m proud to live in a town that plans thoughtfully for the future.”
From the beginning
Rodrigues’ concept for Shiloh Sustainable Village was actually one he entered in an American Institute of Architects (AIA) competition in 2003, which was looking for new ways to develop “green” mixed-use projects. In 2004, he approached the Windsor Town Council with his plan and “got lots of favorable response,” he remembers. But while Rodrigues had the ideas, he didn’t have the contacts. Enter longtime Sonoma County resident Jake Whiteley, whose years in the coffee business locally yielded almost as many community contacts as the number of beans he’d roasted, and North Street Partners LLC was born.
Working with a team of architects and engineering consultants and with input from The Enterprise Foundation and Greenbelt Alliance, two organizations that promote affordable green housing development, Rodrigues and Whiteley feverishly fine-tuned their plans for Shiloh Sustainable Village and presented it to the Windsor Town Council in 2006. “It was a beauty contest, and we were competing against other proposed developments,” Rodrigues says.
“I remember going into Town Hall one day, and one of the town planners took me aside and said, ‘Look what proposal just came in! Do you think he can pull it off?’” Fudge recounts. “Sean knew what we were looking for—higher-density housing and services located together. He gave us exactly what we wanted, and even more. We were like, ‘Wow!’”
What Rodrigues planned wasn’t just a nifty new neighborhood of row houses and apartments coexisting with retail. The entire development has been planned around smart growth principles and will be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. In fact, the development is part of the LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot projects, one of only 120 selected across the United States. Buildings will be heated and cooled via a passive, geothermal loop system. Venting and louvers for natural air flow will be installed in the retail spaces and housing . Low-energy lighting and appliances will be used, and solar panels will generate power.
“We should be able to produce 200 kilowatts of renewable energy,” Rodrigues says, “which is enough to offer our apartment residents free electricity with an overflow that will help reduce operating costs for the retailers.”
The project will use low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) materials in carpeting and paints, and will feature high-performance glass in windows to maximize natural light. Since they’re relying on thermal mass to control temperature fluctuations, the stores and housing will have thicker floors and walls. They also plan to harvest rainwater.
“Our goal is to reduce water use by 30 percent from the average baseline for a similar project,” Rodrigues explains. “To do this, we’ll have more efficient appliances, waterless urinals in the retail areas and dual flush/low-flow toilets in the residences.” Rain catchment and storage systems will gather water to irrigate the 450 trees that will be planted. And a significant amount of landscaping will be xeriscape (landscaping and gardening that doesn’t require supplemental irrigation). Even the parking garage that’s planned for the center of the retail development is green; it’ll be shrouded in a trellis-like structure to enable the growth of vines, an aesthetically pleasing addition that will also provide shade.
Anchored in retail
Phase one is the retail development, anchored by a 10,000-square-foot grocery store owned by Mike Runyan and Todd Davis, who also own Skyhawk Village Market in Santa Rosa. Other confirmed tenants will include Bear Republic Brewing Company restaurant, a pharmacy, an eyewear shop, a coffee shop, a wine tasting collective, a bank, a copy/printing shop, a housewares store, a small seafood restaurant and possibly a Mexican restaurant. There also will be a medical clinic.
Eighty residential apartments, described by Whiteley as “stacked flats,” will be built above the retail establishments. Accessible via elevators, they’ll be marketed to low-income elderly and disabled residents. Petaluma Ecumenical Properties (PEP) will manage the senior housing.
Phase two will be the construction of 60 row houses, immediately behind the retail development, “once housing makes a comeback,” Whiteley says. Each row home will have its own photovoltaic system to provide up to 2 kilowatts of power, which will equate, when combined with electricity saving strategies such as LED lighting and high-efficiency appliances, to essentially free energy in many cases. The three-bedroom, 1,400-square-foot row houses will be built around Sundial Court, which will include a large sundial in its center to track the time, so “People will be aware of energy conservation on a subliminal level at all times,” Rodrigues explains.
The duo is currently in negotiations to purchase land adjacent to the project, on which it hopes to build a 110-room boutique hotel, with construction starting in late 2010.
Seeing both sides
The Shiloh Sustainable Village project is another feather in the cap for Windsor—a community that’s risen from its previous reputation as a “lazy, backwater town” to national prominence as a leader in “smart growth” in just eight short years, mostly thanks to its downtown redevelopment project, Town Green Village, which has been lauded as a model for urban development and even won an award from the Sierra Club in 2005.
The problem is that Town Green Village, a magnificent collection of retail, office, food service and residential condominiums created by visionary developer Orrin Thiessen and, essentially, the project that gave Windsor its soul, has been buffeted by the slaughterhouse combo of a mortgage meltdown and a retail capitulation. Residential values have cratered, some condos are in foreclosure and Thiessen has been forced to sell several units below cost. Meanwhile, a few retail establishments—mostly boutique stores with strict niche appeal, such as a candle-making shop, a scrapbooking store and a children’s book store—have been moving in and out with the rapidity of a proverbial revolving door. The last thing Town Green Village needs right now is more competition.
This raises the question: Is Shiloh Sustainable Village good for the viability of Windsor’s sparkling downtown crown jewel? North Street Partners say they’ll be complementary. Thiessen isn’t so sure.
Conceptually, the two projects appear to be polar opposites. Town Green Village is on Windsor’s west side, away from most of the freeway noise and distraction. While its core is centered around Windsor’s Town Green (a central park/gathering place), the project is also adjacent to the new train station and reaches north along the railroad tracks, an area that will see new life when SMART begins operating in about five years.
In all, the project covers 14 acres. Architecture is historically based, with many of the buildings’ facades being composites of structures that were landmarks in Windsor and throughout Sonoma County. The setting is so pristine that many have compared it with Disneyland’s Main Street, leading some locals to refer to the project as “Windsorland.” Pretty much everything is within walking distance for residents of the village and the neighboring housing developments, encouraging more pedestrian traffic—which is good, because finding parking can sometimes be difficult, especially when special events are staged on the green.
On the other hand, Shiloh Sustainable Village is on Windsor’s east side, at the southern border of the town. Its neighbors will be a succession of big box stores (Home Depot, Office Depot and Wal-Mart) and it’s right across the street from a Burger King and a Shell station. The freeway is its lifeline and the site plan is dense, covering only six acres. The architecture will be über modern and there’ll be ample parking (a necessity because access is almost totally via vehicle). The surrounding retail developments and the busy traffic flow don’t encourage walking, unless, of course, one happens to live there.
Hard times
Amazingly enough, both Whiteley and Rodrigues seem to be enthusiastic about forging ahead during a recession. “It should enable us to get some good deals in the way of materials, labor, and such,” says Whiteley. “The only real problem right now is that you have to make the banks happy.” Meanwhile, Thiessen is left scratching his head over what he considers the town’s “counter- intuitive” approach to development in rough economic times.
“It’s important to have green projects, so I’m not opposed to what they’re doing over there,” he explains. “It’s just that it’s unfortunate for us. I hope we have all our commercial buildings leased before they open, or it’ll be competition for the downtown.”
Whiteley and Rodrigues are rapidly filling their retail space, largely because they both believe it’s the most important element in a development. “Some believe residential drives a mixed-use project,” says Rodrigues. “I believe retail does. Retail has to come first, because only a tiny portion of shopping is done by onsite residents. Relying on them won’t work.”
Thiessen admits that, if he had it to do over again, he would “definitely have found at least one large anchor retailer.” As it’s evolved, though, Town Green Village has become a magnet for a wide selection of restaurants, many of which (Mirepoix, Langley’s on the Green and Odyssey, to name a few) are critically acclaimed. Thiessen is concerned that Shiloh Sustainable Village, which will also include restaurants, might impact the downtown food purveyors. “The restaurants basically have become our anchor tenants,” Thiessen says. “If Shiloh Village has restaurants, then they’ll be a competitor.”
Keys to success
Thiessen firmly believes the key to the future retail success of Town Green Village lies with a real, full-service grocery store locating adjacent to the property. It’s something that Whiteley and Rodrigues have already nailed down for their project…and something Thiessen has been striving for for quite some time.
Right now, there are two small markets in the Town Green project, neither of which carries enough selection to even merit shopping carts. There’s vacant land behind a McDonald’s that borders the east side of Town Green Village. According to both Fudge and Thiessen, the town has been approached by the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain to build on the site. Thiessen sees it as a godsend but says the preference of some town council members for mixed-use buildings is standing in the way, “which is ludicrous in this economy—especially with the need for an anchor downtown.”
Grocers, he says, have specific physical limitations that almost eliminate their willingness to build a mixed-use building. “Equipment on the roofs would make it too noisy for living and office space above, they need loading docks and they don’t want to share their parking lot with residential or office space,” he explains. The town had looked at whether or not the old Windsor Vineyards facility, which is located on the Town Green, could be converted into a grocery store, but that idea was cast aside because grocers generally are formula-based businesses with tried-and-true store layouts, and they feel the Windsor Vineyards space can’t be retrofitted. “With formula-based businesses, you just can’t put things in willy-nilly,” Thiessen says.
“I’m hoping they’ll set aside the requirement for mixed use,” Thiessen continues, adding that a grocery store would bring more traffic—and more shoppers—to the Town Green Village. And it would be a boon for the town’s coffers.
“Since the project would be in the redevelopment district, the town would make hundreds of thousands of dollars in special taxes over time,” Thiessen says. “They’re turning away taxes when they’re broke. It’s just counterintuitive. But the town staff is negative toward anchor stores (in downtown), and they’re not looking at the big picture. They believe they’re representing the town council, which may or may not be true.”
Fudge says the town will talk with Fresh & Easy once the company makes a formal application. “We want to pull people over to the west side and downtown every day. We want people to shop locally,” she says.
Housing is another concern. Sales of residential condos in Town Green Village have slowed to a trickle since the housing bubble burst. One can’t help but wonder what impact the addition of another 136 residential units at Shiloh Sustainable Village will have on the market.
Back in the heyday of the dot-com boom, Windsor was issuing as many as 350 residential building permits each year. But concerned about overdevelopment, the town council instituted growth controls and, in 1997, lowered the number of permits to 150 per year. Once affordable housing was factored in, the town usually issued between 200 and 250 permits annually. In 2008, it issued a grand total of five permits.
“It’s pretty sad,” says Peter Chamberlin, Windsor’s building and planning director. Looking at the slowdown across the county, he adds, “We’re not alone—but we may be the worst.”
“I’ve been in real estate for 35 years, and I’ve been through two housing recessions,” Thiessen says. “This is way beyond any of that.”
Town Green Village residential condos have always been attractive, and the waiting lists have been long. At one point, Thiessen had 250 people on the waiting list for the only Town Green building with an elevator, which made it more accessible for the elderly. But “in the end, out of the 250, only two people bought units,” he says.
Late last year, Thiessen got permission from his lenders to sell residential condominiums below what was owed to move them out of inventory. “At the time, we were selling about one condo a month,” he says. “With the price drop, we sold 23 in three months, which actually is amazing considering everything else that’s going on [in the economy].”
According to Thiessen, residential values are hovering at about 20 percent below costs. He believes it would help if local governments reduced some of the fees they assess builders (just the affordable housing fee on a house he’s constructing in Occidental, for example, was $22,000). “But instead, they’re not issuing any permits. Some cities are even raising fees,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense.”
For their part, Whiteley and Rodrigues won’t be building the row houses until the housing industry is on more steady feet, which, they say, shouldn’t put pressure on Town Green Village.
Whether or not the two projects will actually compete is something only time will tell. In the meantime, Fudge believes they will, in fact, complement each other.
“Sean and Jake aren’t trying to compete with downtown. They’re trying to provide what the people living in Shiloh Sustainable Village will need,” she says. “They’re in different locations, and they’re reaching out to different constituents. People who want more activity will choose Town Green Village, where they can walk to the library, stores and restaurants. Those who want super energy-efficient, state-of-the-art condos will go to Shiloh Sustainable Village.”
There’s even the dichotomy of preferred mode of travel to consider: “Those who will be taking the train will want to live downtown, close to the train station. Those who drive will want to live closer to the freeway,” she reasons.
Herbert Hoover once described competition as “the incentive to progress.” As the drama in Windsor unfolds over the next couple of years, one thing is certain: The sleepy little town—always a bridesmaid to her more glamorous sisters to the north and south, Healdsburg and Santa Rosa—has certainly come of age.
