'New Urbanism' Guy Creates New Towns

Orrin Thiessen, a Sonoma County developer, is fashioning a new downtown for Windsor, a small town near Santa Rosa. The multi-phase project will include commercial and office space and 25 homes near a transit station. Every retailer in the $175-million project will be locally owned.

By J.T. Long

Ask Orrin Thiessen for his definition of "new urbanism" and his answer is simple. "It's old urbanism all over again."

Developer Orrin Thiessen said he runs his business based on intuition rather than crunching numbers (photo by J.T. Long).

This self taught designer, developer, real estate broker and now landscape architect broke ground in October on the fifth phase of Windsor Town Green, a brand new old-fashioned downtown in the Sonoma County town of Windsor just north of Santa Rosa.

The newest addition to the six-phase, $175-million project will add 30,000 sq. ft. of commercial, 15 offices and 250 homes to the mix on 14 acres near a planned Sonoma County Transit Station.

The first four phases added more than 120 homes, condos and apartments and more than 50 new businesses.

This mixed-use project takes the term literally. A gold façade with a Spanish medallion motif sits next to an olive green stucco fascia with Victorian details around the corner from a terra cotta front with Old West-looking woodwork. Many of the false fronts are based on photos of actual long-gone Windsor landmarks.

All share a bright color palette and a three-story layout that puts retail on the bottom floor and residents upstairs.

Condos sell for between $190,000 and $439,000 as quickly as they are built. Most residents sign on the dotted line before the space is completed.

The units being built in this newest phase will sell in the $400,000 to $500,000 range.

All of the businesses are local-no chains. There are independent jewelry stores, a children's book store, restaurants and, as a tribute to Main Street America, a sweet shop/soda fountain, which Thiessen said is packed practically every day.

Thiessen said this mix is just what people have been waiting for.

On a recent weekday morning, traffic at Windsor Town Green included an older couple walking by the magazine/art store to the café, a woman opening a store for the day and lots of construction workers.

"The energy is just now starting to really build," Thiessen said while walking the main street in his office attire of shorts and a plaid shirt.

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When asked about the similarities to Main Street Disneyland, Thiessen's response was: "What's wrong with Disneyland?" Walt Disney was trying to recreate his hometown; Thiessen said he is bringing the vision to life by having people actually live in it.

Thiessen likes to have his fingerprints on everything. "It's just faster if I am the developer, architect and the builder and sharing the plans with myself," he said. He subs out most of the work, but keeps close tabs on every nail used to build his dream. "I run my business based on intuition rather than crunching numbers," he said only minutes after pointing out that his calculator doesn't work for big equations.

Marriage Made in Heaven

Windsor City Manager Matt Mullan calls the development experience "a marriage made in heaven." The town incorporated in 1992 because of a desire for local control over growth and one of the first things the council did was create a general plan for a revitalized downtown.

"It's like starting a family," said Mullan, who is also the general manger for the water district and executive director of the redevelopment agency. "We wanted to determine how our town would develop and we wanted a vibrant commercial corridor."

Mullan estimated that the town and redevelopment agency spent about $15 million on road improvements, turning an abandoned school into a civic center and creating the setting for the Town Green.

Thiessen, who had already developed a small mixed-use project for nearby downtown Graton, saw the opportunity that other developers approached by the town had rejected.

"We didn't have to do a lot of research to see that we were hemorrhaging sales taxes to Santa Rosa," said Thiessen. Not long ago, he said Windsor, a town of 25,000, had no restaurants; it has seven now.

Thiessen approached the council with a plan that incorporated all the mixed-use, smart-growth strategies it had envisioned.

But Thiessen quickly learned that the most difficult thing about being a visionary is finding funding sources that share that vision.

"Several lenders turned us down, even ones I had worked with for years," he said. National Bank of the Redwoods finally gave him a loan to complete the first building and when that was a success, others started to return his phone calls.

Thiessen started by buying up some of the blighted buildings and doing historical re-creations. In some cases, he had to get creative. One resident who was not motivated to sell ended up trading for a condo when his wife fell in love with the plan. Another decided to open a commercial space in exchange for his land.

"I did whatever it took," Thiessen said.

The transformation could be called gentrification, but Thiessen said that has a negative connotation so he prefers the term "redevelopment."

"It is not a big sales tax generator, but it has exceeded our expectations," said Mullan of the destination status the area has become.

"There was a time when it was illegal to do this kind of development," Thiessen said from his office on the Green. Zoning ordinances called for low-density, single-family homes and mixed use was not allowed.

"Sonoma County is a progressive place. They saw the possibilities," he said.

Communities near his home town and others around the state and the nation are now starting to enact growth boundaries and focus on higher-density, mixed-use and transit projects.

What's Next?

Thiessen has turned down a number of cities who have come to him with requests to do a similar project in their downtowns. He has turned them down because he said he doesn't want to get too big.

He has agreed to redevelop nearby downtown Cotati, partly because it is near his home, which is a nothing like his developments. He lives in a craftsman-style home on a 140-acre nature preserve. He took on the Cotati project partly because, like in Windsor, he sees a city willing to do some creative master planning.

He is also turning a school in Occidental into residential and has a mixed-use project in the small town of Forestville on the drawing board.

Now the college drop-out is a lecturer at Sonoma State University on his brand of new urbanism and people are finally listening.