St. Vincent de Paul mulls legal action over Sebastopol's withdrawl from Gravenstein Commons project
Will the ghost of Gravenstein Commons come back to haunt the city?
Saint Vincent de Paul Sonoma County (SVdP) is no longer planning to build a 22-unit, extremely low income housing development on the site formerly known as Horizon Shine at 845 Gravenstein Highway, but strangely, the Gravenstein Commons project, like some strange ghost, continues to move through Sebastopol’s approval process.
It was reviewed again by the Design Review Board (DRB) on Tuesday. There were enough objections—no to the primary color accents, no to the clock tower, simplify the landscaping—that it was continued to the DRB’s next meeting in June.
If SVdP has no plans and not enough money to build Gravenstein Commons, why is it taking up the time of a city committee to review (and re-review) the plans?
That’s complicated.
The legal option
“We truly don't know what we're gonna do,” said Jack Tibbetts, director of Saint Vincent de Paul Sonoma County. “I mean, I'll just be upfront and transparent with you, we are exploring three options. First and foremost, we are taking steps to file a lawsuit against the city—just given the way in which this all went down.”
At their April 2 meeting, the city council of Sebastopol backed out of an agreement to be a partner with SVdP in a multi-million-dollar Project Homekey development at 845 Gravenstein Highway. The city council had its reasons, including uncertainties about the cost of the project and an unwillingness to pick up the tab should SVdP be unable to raise the additional funds needed to finish it.
The state had awarded the partnership $6.5 million (though no money had changed hands yet). The county had offered (though not yet approved) an additional $3 million in funding. Tibbetts was sure SVdP could raise the rest. In the end, however, the Sebastopol City Council felt it wasn’t a risk that the city, with its deep financial problems, should undertake.
Tibbetts clearly feels burned.
“We feel like we were asked by the previous council to go acquire this property to help them with the Morris Street issue. We did that. There were public forums and public city council meetings where the whole community was told that that we are going to temporarily relocate people to Horizon Shine, and we are going to pursue affordable housing at this location for the long term. You know it's easy to sometimes think we [SVdP] are getting really taken advantage of or let down on the financial side of things at the end of the day.”
SVdP’s attorney Scott Lewis has filed a public records request with the city, in which he accuses the city of breaching its commitment to SVdP and causing SVdP to incur an almost million dollar loss. Sebastopol City Attorney Larry McLaughlin confirmed that they had received the public records request.
Here is a section from Lewis’s letter, acquired via a public records request from the Sebastopol Times to the city of Sebastopol:
As you know, the City of Sebastopol's City Council passed a resolution last May to direct staff to enter into an agreement and be a co-applicant with St. Vincent de Paul to apply for $6.5 million in Project Homekey funds from the State of California to build 22 units of permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless.
Since then, SVdP has expended $256,762 in development costs and incurred $720,000 worth of debt to secure the North Gravenstein site.
All of these expenditures secured an award from the state in the amount of $6.5 million in contemplation and promise of the partnership created between the City of Sebastopol and St. Vincent de Paul. As you can imagine, this is a huge achievement in the face of the desperate need for low and no income families.
The $6.5 mm grant is now at risk as well as the expenditures noted above.
Mr. Tibbetts has authorized my office to begin an investigation into why the City breached its commitment and how St. Vincent de Paul can recoup its significant costs.
“We’re in the information gathering stage now,” Tibbetts said. “It should be noted that my board of directors voted to give me the authority to take any and all legal action up to and including a lawsuit. We do have an attorney, and he’s requested information from the city of Sebastopol…And based on that, we’re going to probably end up taking the next step of trying to recover some of the loss as a result of their action. And yeah, that's kind of the way I think it's going to go.”
“I mean, obviously, I would hope that Sebastopol might have a change of heart and stick to the project, but I'm not expecting that at this point,” Tibbetts said.
The window to do so is closing. Tibbetts said he just got a letter this week from the state asking why their signed grant acceptance paperwork hadn’t been returned.
McLaughlin said that some members of the city council are aware of SVdP’s inquiry, but said that none of them had asked the city to reconsider restarting the Project Homekey development with SVdP.
“I do think some council members are aware of that potential window of opportunity, but nobody's asked to have any meeting about that so far,” he said.
Other options for the site
In addition to considering a lawsuit, Tibbetts said he’s considering leasing the former Horizon Shine site out as a used car lot to defray SVdP’s $3,500 a month mortgage on the property.
The final option he mentioned explains why the project is still moving through the city’s design review process.
According to Tibbetts, SVdP has already sunk $75,000 in design costs into Gravenstein Commons. If they can toss in another $10K in design fees to get the plans approved, they might be able to bundle the project and sell it.
“There’s always the option of just bundling the project, the land and the architectural designs and selling them to a different developer, who might be another nonprofit or for profit,” he said.
Asked who would buy a low-income project with twenty-two 400-square-foot studios, he suggested that another low-income developer might find it attractive.
On the other hand, he said, “There’s no requirement that it even has to be sold as affordable. It can be sold as market rate.”
I am disgusted by this particular decision of our city council. St Vincent de Paul has a fine record of follow through. I wish the city council would reconsider.