Happy 50th Birthday to Rohnert Park!

The Friendly City sign along Commerce Boulevard and Highway 101 has been restored to its original glory -- all is right with the world.

When I first moved to Rohnert Park in the mid-1980s, friends from home would ask about the sign, and if the people in Rohnert Park were really all that friendly. “Not that I have met,” was my usual response.

They would also ask about the dichotomy of my moving there from Bolinas, a small town about hour away on the Marin County coast that is famous (to this day) for tearing down road signs marking a turnoff to keep people from finding it.  Had I moved to Rohnert Park from the “Unfriendly” city? Maybe.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the area that is now Rohnert Park was a huge seed farm owned by the Rohnert Family and occupied by other settlers.  The Rohnert’s planted a variety of seeds, and even today, some people report the occurrence of carrots and other vegetables sprouting out of the sidewalks near their homes.

Rohnert Park was conceived in 1962 as a Master Planned community, meaning that each neighborhood had close proximity to schools, parks, shopping and public transportation. That hasn’t always worked with the closure of some schools and public facilities due to budget shortfalls.

Business came to Rohnert Park, with State Farm Insurance becoming the centerpiece of office space along the Rohnert Park Expressway and State Farm Drive, until the company uprooted its office in favor of Bakersfield in 2011.   Another company that had its corporate headquarters here, CrossCheck, Inc., has flown south to Petaluma.  All of these follow Agilent Technologies (formerly Hewlett Packard), which shuttered their huge facility at the end of Valley House Drive, making way for what is now the burgeoning Sonoma Mountain Village.

The office vacancy space in Rohnert Park is high, yes. But we are apparently going to have a Casino and hotel/conference center on the west side of town, which will make up for some lost tax revenue.

I would wager that there are more fast food restaurants and restaurant chains in Rohnert Park per capita than in any other Sonoma County city.  There have been new family-run restaurants opening in recent years, especially at Wolf Den Plaza, across from Sonoma State University, where one can find delicious Himalayan food at Shangri-la, Korean Barbecue at The Korean House, and cuisine of the Middle East at Sahara.  Across town, on the west end of Rohnert Park Expressway, it’s worth a trip to Seasons Pizzeria Sports Bar and Grill where one will find an upbeat atmosphere plus great food and spirits.  

Over at Mountain Shadows Plaza, in the space that was once Sonoma Taco Shop, is Big Daddy’s Diner -- home to Rohnert Park’s “Best Hamburger” (according to the 2012 Rohnert Park Patch Readers Choice voters) and also the town’s most “Family Friendly Restaurant.”

But Mountain Shadows Plaza is also hurting. Mountain Shadows was once a thriving shopping center that was anchored by a Roger Wilco grocery store. It is today a shadow of what it once was -- with light shopping traffic in the center, a Starbucks, and struggling small businesses.  The empty supermarket space needs to be filled to bring life back to the center.

Like any city, Rohnert Park has crime. Thankfully, we don’t have all that much of it, at least according to the police logs. Yes, we have our share of DUIs and prostitution arrests, and an occasional murder. None of this is intended to be made light of.  

My favorite local crime story, however, was back in 2007 when the owners of Redwoods Mortuary were busted for storing decaying bodies in an industrial storehouse, in-between a carpet store and a video repair store along State Farm Drive. The macabre situation was discovered after neighboring businesses reported a foul odor coming from the warehouse where the bodies were being stored. The mortuary, which was actually located in a strip mall a few blocks away, had never even applied for a conditional use permit, according to city officials at the time, and had been using a swamp cooler to keep the bodies from decaying.

For all that Rohnert Park is, or is not, the town has finally become home to me after buying a house in M Section more than 8 years ago. We live at the end of what was described as a “quiet cul de sac” when we bought the place. (The realtor had obviously never been there on a sunny afternoon with kids playing in the streets, or on a holiday weekend when the adults set up lawn chairs, couches and tables in the street and have all day alcohol-fueled parties). Still, it’s their cul de sac, too.

So happy 50th Birthday, Rohnert Park! A town that remains the Friendly City, but which also has its own unique set of challenges -- like most cities today in these United States. At the ripe age of 50, Rohnert Park is as normal as Anytown, USA.