Esmeralda Courts Locals as It Tries to Learn From California Forever’s Mistakes

Mark Thayer and his wife quietly perused the brightly colored presentation boards arranged around the Cloverdale Veterans Memorial Building on a recent Wednesday in October. They were curious, but skeptical, and wanted to learn more about a project called Esmeralda, potentially coming to their city.

Thayer had read some Facebook posts about the proposed project: a dense, walkable development on the southern end of Cloverdale, where he lives, a city perched at the northernmost tip of Sonoma County. That night was important: he would be getting information straight from the source.

The Esmeralda Land Company, the group behind the project, was hosting an informational open house. The development would include a resort hotel, hundreds of homes and an event space — a substantial change for the small city of nearly 9,000 people — and locals had questions, Thayer included.

Who would live there? How big would it be? What about water? Would this project actually pan out?

“I’m interested in how it will be developed,” Thayer said. Would it be a bunch of vacation homes? “I hope that it’s something that’s for people that live [there] full-time.”

But one of the biggest questions plaguing the company since it first introduced its plans last year: Was it connected to California Forever, the company that wants to build a mega-development in southeast Solano County?

That proposed development faced a rocky start and backlash from residents who criticized California Forever for secretly buying land and suing local farmers. The project has remained controversial ever since.

Esmeralda is not related to the Solano-based company, but as it prepares to submit a formal project application to Cloverdale city officials, expected Nov. 12, leaders have tried to distance their project from California Forever and learn from its mistakes. The Esmeralda Land Company has spent the past two years on outreach, even before securing the property, though it has an exclusive negotiating deal to do so.

So far, the efforts seem to be paying off with local leaders rallying around the project, and many residents are cautiously optimistic about it. Urbanist and author Alex Schafran credited the warmer reception to the company’s approach of getting local buy-in before submitting an official development application.

Compared to California Forever, he said, “It’s night and day.”

“[Esmeralda] is — at least on paper — trying to do things the way a lot of folks have been hoping that urban planning and development would be done: starting with a consultation, starting with the conversations, incorporating local people in the visioning of what’s there, and then being able to actually deliver on the vision that they created,” Schafran said.

Still, some residents remain skeptical of whether Esmeralda will actually deliver on its ambitious plan and whether the new development will truly be affordable and accessible to the rest of the city.

“Cloverdale is a great town, so people are protective of it,” Esmeralda CEO and Founder Devon Zuegel said. “We’re really committed to making sure that we create a place that people are proud of being part of this community.”

Both California Forever and Esmeralda want to build walkable neighborhoods, but the latter project is much smaller. Preliminary plans show the Cloverdale project would include a 184-room hotel, retail space, an outdoor amphitheater and around 600 homes, ranging from apartments to single-family homes to senior housing. Year-round, the neighborhood would host educational events for visitors and Cloverdale residents.

Right now, the 266-acre lot where the development would be built is largely vacant, with low rolling hills and a lone truck repair facility. But Zuegel imagines her project will transform the area into a “mini college campus.”

It’s modeled after Chautauqua, a small resort town in upstate New York that became home to a cultural movement named after the city. When Zuegel talks about her inspiration for the project, she reminisces over summers spent in Chautauqua, where her grandmother lived. During that time, she attended seminars, including one hosted by Jane Goodall, and saw the Beach Boys perform.

Zuegel said she chose to develop Esmeralda in Cloverdale precisely because of its small-town feel.

“I love Cloverdale, I think it’s such a charming town,” she said. “It really reminded me of Chautauqua, and so, I think leaning into what Cloverdale is already so amazing at, and bringing that out even further, was something that really drew to me.”

While the company has been working hard to garner trust in the community and distance itself from California Forever, Esmeralda shares similarities with the Solano-based company. Like California Forever CEO Jan Sramek, Zuegel worked in Silicon Valley, including at the software developer platform Github and blockchain company Bloom Protocol.

And similar to California Forever’s experience in Solano County, residents in Cloverdale raised questions about Esmeralda’s investors. Rumors circulated early on, claiming Esmeralda is backed by venture capitalist Peter Thiel. While Zuegel has refuted that rumor and denied any relations to the conservative libertarian, she has declined to reveal the identities of the project’s 19 backers.

When the question came up during a project open house in October, Zuegel was nonspecific, saying they “tend to actually be private individuals who live in the Bay Area.”

Like California Forever, Esmeralda has its detractors. Skeptical residents pointed to similar proposals for Cloverdale that have failed to materialize and concerns that the new development will be populated by rich Silicon Valley tech-types.

Nilda Andrews, who attended the company’s first project open house in July, came away with mixed feelings. She recently moved to the small city from San Francisco and said the whole project sounded “very elitist.”

“How are they going to bring in the rest of Cloverdale?” she asked. “I’m good for change. But I’m for change for everybody. Not just for the few, the elite.”

Mary Ann Brigham, a Cloverdale resident and former mayor of the city, attended Esmeralda’s second open house in October. She has seen multiple projects proposed — and dropped — on the vacant site where Esmeralda would be located and doubts this project will be an exception.

Most recently, in 2004, a developer completed an environmental impact report for a similar project called the Alexander Valley Resort Project, which included a 150-room hotel, a spa, and a golf course, along with 165 single-family homes. But, according to the Press Democrat, the project fell through in 2017.

“They all end up wasting a lot of the city’s time and money, and then they never go through with it. So, am I skeptical? Yeah,” Brigham said. “I don’t believe anything until a check’s in my hand.”

But perhaps one of the sharpest differences between the two companies is their relationships with local elected officials, with California Forever starting on shaky ground and never quite recovering. Esmeralda is hoping to find surer footing.

Soon after California Forever formally announced its ambitious plan, the project became a political hot potato as some local and county officials were vocal in their opposition, while others declined to comment on it. Some distanced themselves after initially trying to work with California Forever or learn more about the plan.

The project was scheduled to go before voters in November 2024, but the company scrapped its ballot measure, in part due to the lack of support among local elects. California Forever is now pursuing its project through an annexation deal with nearby Suisun City. But even there — after attempting to bypass reluctant county officials and a contentious vote — there are headwinds. Residents are gathering signatures in a bid to recall the entire Suisun City Council.

“The start of the process was always going to be controversial — the secrecy [of the land acquisition] raises understandable concerns,” California Forever CEO Jan Sramek recently tweeted. “We made mistakes when rolling it out.”

Zuegel said she watched those mistakes and tried to learn from them.

“Seeing the frustration that people had with California Forever definitely further underlined ‘Okay [community outreach] is really important to do,’’ she said. “We’re all learning from different examples that we see out there.”

In Cloverdale, Mayor Todd Lands said that when he first heard about Esmeralda, he was worried it was connected to California Forever and became one of its biggest critics.

“I made fun of them. They came in here with a project called ‘Edge Esmeralda.’ I called them ‘Utopia,’ I called them ‘the Emerald City,’” he said.

But his opinion changed as he learned more and got to know Zuegel. “I listened to their pitch, and I went through what they were actually proposing to the city, and it was done very well. And it was the exact opposite of what I was expecting it to be.”

Beginning in the summer of 2024, the company hosted Edge Esmeralda, a month-long “pop-up village” in Healdsburg, which illustrated what amenities the future development could include. Zuegel said the pop-up was a way to embed into the community and get to know the locals.

“Developers often don’t necessarily know how to speak to a local community,” she said. “We wanted to show the ‘Chautauqua way’ of having this multi-generational community in a place that people can walk around. Instead of just having a presentation… we wanted people to be able to live it.”

Company staff also reached out to local organizations, including the Cloverdale Senior Center, the Cloverdale Chamber of Commerce and the Veterans Memorial Building, among others.

Melanie Hall, the Senior Center’s program manager, said Zuegel came to the center for a tour and eagerly engaged with staff and residents.

“This doesn’t happen that often,” she said. “You don’t usually hear a developer say, ‘We want to hear from the community first if what we’re going to do is going to fit for them.’ So I’m really impressed with that.”

Zuegel said she has tried to incorporate feedback from locals into her company’s plan. After speaking with local businesses, she expressed interest in opening what she called “outposts” within Esmeralda — Plank Coffee could have a grab-and-go station in the hotel. Dahlia & Sage, a small grocery store, could offer hotel guests deli sandwiches and baked goods with their morning coffee.

Erik Terreri, a local realtor who attended the July event, said he hopes those outposts lead to visitors patronizing downtown Cloverdale, too, which currently sees little foot traffic.

“In order to sort of bring people from outside, you’ve got to have more than one good restaurant that’s attracting them. You’ve got to have a few. There’s a critical tipping point, right?” he said. “I see a symbiotic relationship between what they’re going to try and do there and what we’ve been trying to do here in town.”