Sonoma County Blog » Windsor

Mark West Station

davesonoma — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:53:57 +0000

There are a lot of unique neighborhoods in Sonoma County. Tucked in between Santa Rosa and Windsor and bounded by Old Redwood Highway, Fulton Road, and Highway 101 is a small enclave of about 80 homes. They’re on Mark West Station Road, Donna Road, and Kay Avenue. The streets are laid out in the shape of an H with Kay as the crossbar.

The west end of the area is bordered by vineyards running all the way to Highway 101 and an ecological reserve that is an excellent example of the woodlands and plains that once covered most of the Santa Rosa area.

There’s a big range of home sizes here, from tiny cottages to elaborate, modern houses.
The lots tend to be big with one acre parcels as the most common size.One of the things I like most is the tree lined character of the area with some really terrific oaks. One of the reasons for the health of the vegetation here vegetation health is the high water table. It will flood in the winter when rains are heavy and the ground is saturated. Houses that are at grade level are vulnerable.

I think this is an area poised for improvement and growth. This is a superb location where you could bicycle to work anywhere in the Airport Blvd area of Santa Rosa. The current large lots combined with the modest existing homes represent excellent land values capable of supporting much more highly valued homes. A combination of owners remodeling their homes along with newcomers starting from scratch is likely to change the character of this charming neighborhood.

I just hope that in the rush to build new and better homes we don’t forget to allow for entry level housing for our young population. I was remembering today about the fun I had at age ten working with my dad to build a tree house. It wasn’t as nice as this one, but it inspired me to enjoy the building process.

Wohler Bridge

davesonoma — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 02:01:38 +0000

We don’t have a lot of old bridges left, at least steel truss bridges that remind me of the Erector Sets I grew up with. There’s one in Guerneville, but so many RV’s got dinged up trying to pass each other that they’ve made it into a pedestrian bridge and created a functional, but un-dramatic concrete replacement. This bridge, the Wohler Bridge, not only represents the engineering past for all of us, but it crosses the Russian River between Healdsburg and Forestville at a particularly beautiful stretch.

Windsor’s urbanism

davesonoma — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 06:22:19 +0000

Many long time Sonoma County residents have been a little skeptical of Windsor. In the immortal words of Gertrude Stein about her childhood home in Oakland, “there is no there, there.” That may have been a little unfair since Windsor has a long history as an important farming town and market center. The residential building boom in the last thirty years has converted the sleepy town into a typical subidivision town, but with the new efforts going on in the town core, tt’s time to reconsider.

In the last few years old downtown Windsor has been rebuilt with a smart new mixed-use pedestrian friendly core. The new buildings are vibrant and represent a new burst of creativity for this town between Santa Rosa and Healdsburg along the Highway 101 corridor.