Roseland Review by Duane Dewitt - April 2018
Perhaps the longest, time wise, and slowest road construction project ever in Roseland, or all of Sonoma County for that matter, may be done by Christmas of this year. This is the Stony Point Road reconstruction from Sebastopol Rd. southward to Hearn Ave. This BIG money project could be delivered by Santa even.
All kidding aside this is one of the topics Roseland Review is contacted more about than any other. Go to the Santa Rosa City website srcity.org to get news you can use about this. It is possible to also get more information about other Santa Rosa city projects though sometimes the various departments are slow to update the site. This is especially true with the Recreation and Parks Department where the Board of Community Services does not often share news about Roseland issues in a timely manner.
On Saturday 21, April at 10 pm there will be a number of Roseland residents out at the Roseland Neighbor Wood on Burbank Ave. across from the new Roseland Creek elementary School. There will be a creek clean up at the Bridge on Burbank and cleaning up in the Oak Woodland itself. Good Fun. Then some Roseland residents will go down to the Santa Rosa Earth Day event in downtown Santa Rosa. Most folks in Santa Rosa do not know about the Roseland Neighbor Wood so it may be a good time to let folks know of this wonderful small piece of nature we have been blessed to still have.
Dennis Williams, a long time Roseland resident and current head of the local Sonoma County Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) will be at the Creek Cleanup with other members of the organization. In the past some folks from the Community Action Partnership (CAP) with an active group of Roseland residents have come out to help also. There will be folks from the organization Forests Unlimited also and they will be trying to support the effort for a better maintenance of the “Urban Forest” in Roseland. Often a problem has been many homeless folks pushed out of Santa Rosa have used the forested areas along creeks for some bit of respite from the harsh weather and problems in the housing crisis facing Sonoma County.
Now with the Homeless encampment hosted by the County of Sonoma on land owned by the taxpayers at the Roseland Village Shopping Centerbeing closed at the beginning of April some folks are now moving back to the creeks. Many of our less fortunate residents of Sonoma County have come to Roseland because folks here have been more tolerant. For the last two and a half years, since the county invited them and supported the camp, many other residents of Roseland along West Ave. especially have eagerly awaited the solution to housing these folks.
Now there is a Roseland Village Navigation Center for the homeless campers opened by the Sonoma County Community Development Commission in the old Roseland Hardware Store. It has been given a one year temporary use permit by the city of Santa Rosa Department of Planning and Economic Development. County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins has told the campers they have until the end of March to be moved off of the taxpayers land. The Roseland Hardware store has been bought by the Mid-Peninsula Housing Development organization for the project they are doing to provide some affordable housing with market rate housing in the future at the Roseland Village.
April may be the beginning of the work on the project beyond the planning stages. Many local kids and patrons of the Roseland Library are hopeful the Dollar Store building where the Library branch is located will be the last thing to be demolished on the site. The Roseland Library branch may be the best thing to have ever happened for a lot of people in Roseland. The library though in a bit of a rundown building is actually a very popular place with the community. The MidPen site at the old hardware building would make an excellent temporary site for the library and the Boys and Girls Club once the construction work starts. That’s not April Fooling!
