A new village for families building the future
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Imagine living on a college campus. You run into friends just walking to class, and everyone is learning and creating side by side together. Group dinners, creative projects, book clubs, and pickup sports happen spontaneously.
Why only live this way for four years? Wouldn’t kids thrive in a place like that? Able to roam with their friends, and immersed in opportunities to learn, build, and explore?
It would be great to be a parent there, too. Instead of being a chauffeur for your kids, you could give them more freedom and just tell them to be back by dark.
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Why don’t more places like this exist? That’s the question my husband asked the first time I took him to meet my grandma, who lives in a place called Chautauqua.
Chautauqua is the closest thing to this vision that I’ve found. It’s a town of ~8,000 people founded in 1874 in western New York. You can picture it as a sort of cross between a college campus and family summer camp.
Chautauqua was built before the car, so people walk or bike nearly everywhere. This makes it safe for kids to explore, and it’s easy to live an active lifestyle where you actually know your neighbors.
The thing that makes Chautauqua truly unique is that, for 9 weeks every summer, it turns into a sort of mini college campus. Every day, there are dozens of lectures, workshops, performances, and activities in beautiful pavilions scattered throughout town. I’ll never forget that once when I was 8 years old, Jane Goodall came and talked about her work with chimpanzees.
Chautauqua was built during the industrial revolution by great American inventors and entrepreneurs. People like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford summered there with their families. In fact, Chautauqua’s main hotel was the first to be lit by Edison’s light bulbs, and it was wired by Thomas Edison himself!
My fondest childhood memories are the summers I spent at Grandma’s house. I’d sit on the porch reading, and family friends would walk by and stop to chat. Sometimes I’d jump down and join them on their way to a lecture or workshop.
Our vision for Esmeralda is to build a year-round community that takes the best parts of Chautauqua and updates it with the Bay Area’s dynamism, diversity, and culture of invention.
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The “cold start problem” is a challenge for starting any new community. Chautauqua solved this through something I call the “ladder of commitment”. The community began as a temporary gathering in 1874 where everyone camped in tents, and as people returned year after year, a permanent town sprouted up.
We’ve followed this same playbook by organizing a “popup village” called Edge Esmeralda, as a prototype for the village are building. This past June, we gathered 1,300 people in the town of Healdsburg, CA over 30 days for a sort of modern day, ephemeral Chautauqua.
We chose Healdsburg because it is just 15 minutes from the land we are purchasing to build our permanent village. The site is a short bike ride into downtown Cloverdale, a charming small town in north Sonoma County. The property lies within the Alexander Valley AVA, and has beautiful rolling hills surrounded by vineyards.
We started to reach out to key city leaders over a year ago, and we’ve been delighted by the positive response we’ve received from locals. We’re now deep in the diligence phase. If it continues to go well, we will proceed with purchasing the property!
We’d love to hear your ideas for how to make Esmeralda an incredible place to live. Here are a few ways you can get involved:
- Get updates by subscribing to our mailing list
- Attend part or all of Edge Esmeralda 2025
- Other ideas for how you could contribute? Let me know!
Please don’t be a stranger. We look forward to hearing from you!
— Devon & the Esmeralda team
FAQs
What are the Esmeralda Institute & the Esmeralda Land Company?
The Esmeralda Institute is a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to lifelong learning across generations, inspired by the 150-year-old Chautauqua Institution.
The Esmeralda Land Company is an independent, for-profit company that is developing the project.
How is Esmeralda funded?
Esmeralda Land Company is backed by patient, values-aligned investors who see this as a unique opportunity to create a special place that will bring new opportunities and energy to Northern Sonoma. No, Esmeralda Land Company is not part of California Forever. :)
What is the current status of the project, as of October 2024?
Esmeralda Land Company recently executed a Purchase & Sale Agreement on the AVR property in Cloverdale. Before closing on the purchase, we are engaging in a rigorous due diligence process to ensure that our development vision is feasible.
Years prior to Esmeralda Land Company’s involvement, Cloverdale approved the 266-acre AVR property for a flagship hotel, spa, restaurants, homes, shops, and an event/conference center.
The Esmeralda Land Company team has met with Cloverdale’s City Manager, the Mayor, and all five Council members to understand their hopes for the AVR property and build upon the City’s vision, including the hotel.
Why did Esmeralda choose to put down roots in Sonoma County?
This June, the Esmeralda Institute organized a month-long 1,300-person gathering in Healdsburg called Edge Esmeralda, modeled after Chautauqua’s summer program. The event received coverage from The Press Democrat, The Healdsburg Tribune, and Sonoma Magazine.
Will this be a gated community?
Not at all! Esmeralda will be open to the public. In fact, this land has historically been closed to the public, and we plan to change that.
Far from being a gated community, we plan to build out a vast new network of publicly accessible trails across the site, including the SMART Pathway and the Great Redwood Trail.
Additionally, the Institute will host activities, events, and classes that all Cloverdale residents can enjoy.
Esmeralda’s 5 Core Development Principles
- Support a multi-generational community
- Prioritize pedestrians & cyclists
- Cultivate a culture of lifelong learning
- Harmonize with nature
- Promote health & wellness
Where does the name “Esmeralda” come from?
Esmeralda is the Spanish word for “emerald”. A Spanish name felt fitting given the history of California and Sonoma’s Mediterranean climate.
Plus, I have family from Chile, Guatemala, and Argentina and speak Spanish at home, so the name just felt right.
Esmeralda is also one of the fictional cities in one of my favorite books, Invisible Cities. by Italian writer Italo Calvino.
What is the historical use of this property?
The property is the site of a former sawmill, and it has been zoned for redevelopment since 2009. This will be an adaptive reuse of formerly industrial land.
The site was once occupied by heavy timber mills and wood processing operations, which resulted in substantial soil disturbance. Under the careful regulatory guidance of the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the site’s current owners have spent years of effort on remediation from these industrial uses.
These days, CalFire regularly conducts drills on the property that involve bulldozing paths around the site to improve their firefighting skills. Justa few weeks ago, they completed a large drill. Needless to say, the site is not a pristine, untouched natural landscape.
That said, the site is beautiful and there are still some natural areas that are relatively untouched. As I said before, we plan to preserve almost 60% of the site as open space. Our plan protects the most beautiful natural areas, and will restore and create new habitat.
Is this project related to California Forever?
No, Esmeralda is not related to California Forever, and our project is very different from their proposal. They are building a large new city built from scratch in a rural, unincorporated area; we are creating a new neighborhood inside the boundaries of an existing incorporated city, on a former industrial site.
The political and social context couldn’t be more different. The City of Cloverdale started analyzing the 266-acre site for potential redevelopment over 20 years ago. As far back as 2004, the City published a draft EIR for the property that included a flagship hotel, spa, restaurants, homes, shops, and an event/conference center. Twenty years later, we are showing up as private-sector partners, helping the City to achieve its vision while adding new energy and ideas.
Since we announced our plans to purchase the property this summer, we have received tremendous local support: hundreds of messages of encouragement, and dozens of invitations for coffee and walks. Everyone I have met wants to share ideas and learn more about our plans. I’m impressed with the YIMBY sentiment in Cloverdale.
A year before this summer’s formal announcement, we reached out to local leaders to learn about the history of the site and Cloverdale’s unique opportunities and challenges. The fact that the City Council, Chamber of Commerce, and City Manager were helpful and supportive of our ideas and interest in the site was a big part of our decision to move forward. We are here to create a win-win situation, and one of our key selection criteria for a site was a local community that welcomed us and was excited to work together.
One reason the City is excited about this project is that it will generate substantial property tax and TOT (Transient Occupancy Tax) for the town. The City has a structural budget deficit of about $1 million. This is where the idea to build a flagship hotel on the site comes from, and why it’s required in the Development Agreement associated with this property that was approved over 10 years ago.
Cloverdale residents tell us that they are excited that our potential project will generate new jobs, bring foot traffic and vitality downtown, and attract investment more generally in the City.
Will Esmeralda have access to transit?
Yes! The land is a 4 min bike ride from the future terminus of the SMART train, which runs to Marin’s ferry. Also, we’d like to connect our onsite trails to the SMART Pathway and Great Redwood Trail.
The SMART train runs to Larkspur, where you can get on a ferry straight to the San Francisco Ferry Building: It doesn’t yet extend to Cloverdale, but SMART recently closed the funding for the extension to Windsor and Healdsburg. SMART only began operating in 2017 and has been quickly extending the network.
We’re also thrilled that the SMART Pathway is slated to extend up to Cloverdale and right near our site as well. It runs parallel to the train, and it will connect Cloverdale to the rest of Sonoma and Marin to the the south.
Meanwhile the Great Redwood Trail will connect to Cloverdale from the north. It currently runs from Humboldt County through Mendocino County. The next stretch will connect to Cloverdale. As the northernmost city in Sonoma, Cloverdale will be the perfect jumping off point to the Great Redwood Trail.
Esmeralda could one day be like those beautiful villages along the Danube Cycle Path, which runs through Germany, Austrian, and Hungry.
How is Esmeralda going to tackle housing affordability?
It is important to us that this new neighborhood support a wide range of incomes and life stages. To that end, our housing vision includes:
- A commitment to build a diverse range of housing types and styles, from small “affordable-by-design” 1-bedroom cottages to larger, 4-bedroom, multi-generational homes that include attached ADUs. A diversity of sizes means a diversity of prices and lifestyle choices.
- A prime site for deeply affordable below-market-rate (BMR) family housing. (Notably, Cloverdale is one of the few cities in Wine Country that has not only met but surpassed its low income housing RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) target!)
- Both small-lot single family homes as well as stacked flats. This will ensure a greater diversity of price points.
- We are in conversations with senior housing developers who are interested in providing “continuum of care” units that could accommodate active seniors to memory care.
