The 'Committee for Building the Commons' meets the public at the O'Reilly complex

Will the city of Sebastopol buy this long-underused Sebastopol landmark for the Sebastopol Commons?

RM Horrell and Naomi Hupert review the six properties the committee considered in their search for the right home for the Sebastopol Commons. (Photo by Laura Hagar Rush)

(Editor’s note: Our regularly scheduled Saturday Towns column will appear later today.)

It was standing room only at the first large public meeting staged by the city’s ‘Committee for Building the Commons.’ The meeting was held on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the O’Reilly complex—that handsome group of three, tall, peaked-roof office buildings at the north end of town.

The Sebastopol Commons is envisioned as a shared civic space and multi-use community hub that would house the Sebastopol Library, Sebastopol City Hall and the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, as well as an array of other local nonprofits and related businesses. The Committee for Building the Commons is an outgrowth of an earlier city committee devoted to expanding the library, and several of the Commons committee’s members are connected with the library in some way.

The Commons Committee has nine members, including Sebastopol City Council members Stephen Zollman and Phill Carter; Senior Center representative Kent Jenkins; Sonoma County Library Foundation’s Naomi Hupert; Sebastopol’s representative on the Sonoma County Library Commission, Fred Engbarth; Sarah Glade Gurney, a member of Sonoma County Library’s Measure Y Oversight Committee; branch manager of the Sebastopol Library Deb Hoadley; Gravenstein Health Action Coalition’s Mary Lou Schmidt; and a local business representative, Copperfield’s CEO RM Horrell.

For the last year, the committee has been working to identify a space for The Sebastopol Commons. In April, the committee released a list of six possible sites. In the intervening months, they say they’ve narrowed that down to two: the O’Reilly complex or a rebuild of the existing city-owned properties downtown, consisting of the city hall, the library, the current senior center and the parking lot.

Truthfully, they’ve narrowed it down to one—the O’Reilly Complex—and Thursday’s meeting was an extended argument for why that was the case.

The meeting began with a brief introduction by Councilmember Zollman, who heads the committee. Next came a short presentation from Mary Lou Schmidt of the Gravenstein Action Coalition and former Sebastopol City Councilperson Sarah Gurney, members of the committee’s Needs Assessment Subcommittee. They’ve spent the last several months interviewing community leaders, nonprofit execs and board members, potential partners/tenants, business people and others in the community about what their needs were.

“We wanted to hear from a broader swath of locals about what Sebastopol needs,” Gurney said.

“Here’s what we learned: Every group is sharing the same core problems: not enough space, not enough storage, not enough meeting rooms, parking issues—did I mention parking?—and serious funding pressure,” Gurney said. “A lot of the organizations are small, mostly volunteer-run, and they’re struggling with visibility and getting enough people in through their doors so they can be as effective as they want.

In other words, we are looking through this committee work to increase the potential in our community…Having a well-designed, centrally located commons would be a game-changer for our town to help organizations collaborate, share costs, boost visibility, and actually serve the community better.”

Copperfield’s CEO RM Horrell and Naomi Hupert led the next portion of the meeting, which was a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of all the properties the committee had considered—mostly city-owned properties and properties that are currently for sale.

“Essentially, what we’re looking for is a solution to all of these problems,” Horrell said. “The problems being overcrowding, lack of parking, shared expenses that are being individually paid by these different entities that could somehow be combined and centrally located in a way that’s going to make it possible for everyone to access all of these benefits. I think most importantly, an opportunity that could come from finding a place like that, such as creating an evacuation space that reduces traffic in the center of town, finding a place that has a fire-resistant building, finding a place that has high-speed internet throughout, the generator, out of the floodplain, etc.”

He went property by property through the original six options, explaining the pros and mostly cons of each. (See chart below for details.) Some, like the Railroad Property and Towing Company lot, were in the floodplain. The Calder Creek corridor, which encompasses two city parking lots and the commercial area in between, was judged to be the most complex to develop and likely the most expensive.

Horrell said he knew that many people were interested in the old Rite Aid building downtown.

“I know many of us, including me, would love to see something there that’s community oriented.But that building is privately owned. The city does not own it and does not have control over what that owner chooses to do with it, and they [the owner] are choosing to pursue a for-profit commercial lease, and we really don’t have any control over that.”

He also discussed the problems with rebuilding on the current site of the library and city hall.

“That, of course, would be lovely if we could keep our library and our city hall downtown and add in more space for both, plus more space for a senior center. But the amount of construction, the disruption, the cost, the length of time to do something like that are huge challenges.”

A 2019 estimate for expanding the library alone was $18,000,000 which the committee said in today’s money would be roughly $32,000,000—and that would only solve the problem for the library.

The final option: the O’Reilly Complex

There wasn’t much description of the downside of the O’Reilly Complex. This was clearly the committee’s preferred option.

Located at the north end of Sebastopol, just before the corner of Hwy. 116 and Mill Station Road, the O’Reilly complex is made up of three buildings. The two 41,781 sq. ft., three-story office buildings on the southern end are developed as office space, with identical footprints. The third building on the north end is a warehouse. The property is a stone’s throw from the West County/Joe Rodota Trail. The Canopy condominium project, which is currently under construction, is located just behind the O’Reilly complex.

“Now, turning to this building that we’re in, this does answer some of our biggest concerns,” Horrell said. “The first of which is, did anyone have any trouble parking when they got here? That’s the first time I’ve been in a room in Sebastopol where no one complained about parking … Something that’s not listed on this list [above], though, is also the fact that this building exists in real time right now that we’re in. There’s not a 10-year wait to build it. There’s also no concern about new construction and those costs rising slowly over time before we can lock in a mortgage or whatever that might cost. It’s here, it’s now, and it’s available, and it suits every need that we have. The space is comfortable. The space is beautiful. It’s very adjacent to this new housing that’s here. It’s very adjacent to schools. It’s solving a lot of the concerns that we have had right from the start.”

O’Reilly detail from the SWOT analysis above.

Councilmember Phill Carter was up next to discuss the delicate topic of how the city—with all its current financial challenges—could swing the purchase of the O’Reilly complex, which is currently on the market for $18,000,000. The buildings can also be sold separately.

A handout for the event described three scenarios: 1) purchase one O’Reilly building; 2) purchase all three O’Reilly buildings and keep all three; and 3) purchase all three buildings and sell one. It also included a timeline for a kind of lease-to-own deal.

The committee recommends the second option. Councilmember Phill Carter has created a fluid financial model, balancing several different variables, including financing, city funding, the EIFD (a tax-sharing deal with the county), rentals, real estate sales and fundraising.

He referred people to the Commons page of his website, which explains these funding options in detail—and includes a neat interactive chart that lets you see what happens as you change the variables. At the meeting, he showed three different possibilities of how this might work.

Kent Jenkins, the final presenter, talked about the Senior Center’s involvement in the project. Of all the institutions involved in the Commons project, the senior center is perhaps the most pressed for space. As their membership has grown, the Sebastopol Area Senior Center has outgrown its current location and is now renting additional space in various buildings around town.

“By 2030, a few short years, one out of every three people in Sonoma County will be over the age of 60,” Jenkins said.

“This place [meaning O’Reilly] is important to the senior center because we are out of space. We have a very nice center … It’s a lovely home built at the turn of the last century. We remodeled it at the turn of this century, but it’s too small. We just can’t physically all fit in there. We can’t remodel it. We can’t do anything to get us all together, and our mission is that we are together. This is a place we can do that,” he said.

Jenkins also showed a chart of where people who use the Sebastopol Senior Center come from, emphasizing that it’s really a regional center, drawing from far beyond Sebastopol proper.

Jenkins also highlighted the intergenerational possibilities of the site, with the library and senior center in one place and the possibility of a local preschool as a tenant.

There was no public comment or public Q&A period at the end of the meeting, but after the presentation, the audience was invited to come and ask questions to the presenters.

Afterward, people were invited to walk around the building, which appears to be in excellent shape—clean and well-designed with great light and warm honey-colored wood accents.

As people streamed back to their cars, it was hard to find skeptics in this mostly senior crowd.

“I think it was a wonderful and thorough description of a big bargain that the city or the whole of West County should take advantage of, and it’ll pay off in the end,” said Tom Meyskens, who lives just around the corner.

“I thought it was a real eye opener, and it seemed to fit everybody’s needs,” Kathy Sparrow said. She noted how great it would be for the senior center, but added, “I like the fact that it could be multigenerational too.”

Franny Minervini-Zick, who has lived in Sebastopol for 45 years and owned a daycare, also liked the multigenerational aspect of the project. She commended the work Phill Carter had done on the potential financing.

“It sounded like it was totally doable,” she said, though she noted she was going to take the information back to her finance-minded husband so he could kick the tires. “I think there’s a lot of excitement, and I hope it happens.”

“If they find the money and everything, this is going to be absolutely fantastic,” Svetlana Vanchugova said. “I went into this building for the first time, and I am absolutely blown away. It’s really beautiful. It’s in immaculate condition, even after so many years.”

Noting that the crowd was made up almost entirely of seniors, St. Stephen’s Christy Laborda Harris said she hoped there would be another meeting—not during the day and not on the first day of school—so that working people and people with children could attend.

And there were some doubters. One observer, a retired attorney, noted wryly, “It’s unusual to have a public meeting with no Q&A.” When I agreed that that was an oversight, she said, “No. That was purposeful. This was a pitch.”

The Sebastopol City Council will discuss the future of the Sebastopol Commons at the September 15 city council meeting.

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