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photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCBDevon Zuegel, founder of the Esmeralda Institute and Esmeralda Land Company
(center) addresses the crowd at an Esmeralda open house at the Cloverdale
Veteran's Memorial building on Oct. 10, 2025.
Developers behind an idyllic and ambitious new neighborhood and resort in Cloverdale again made their pitch at a town hall this week.
Esmeralda—the human-forward, car-light project—is getting a mixed reception.
Modeled in the vein of Chautauqua, New York, Esmeralda promises over 500 new units, commercial space, a hotel resort, and a large public park bordering the Russian River.
It's the vision of Bay Area tech entrepreneur Devon Zuegel.
On October 15, she and her team hosted their second open house on the project.
Some of the criticisms voiced by residents in the echo-y main hall of the Cloverdale Veteran's Memorial Building were about water, traffic and concerns over competition with downtown businesses.
That's not to say there's united opposition to the project though.
Gene Marcinkowski is a longtime Cloverdale resident and one of the caretakers of the Veteran's Memorial Building. He told KRCB News he feels more positive about Esmeralda's proposal for the derelict Louisiana Pacific Lumber yard.
“This is actually the third group that has tried to do this property,” Marcinkowski said. “And I think some of the people against it are because they've been promised something and then it's been pulled out, you know? But this, to me so far, seems like the best bet. The other group wanted to get rid of our airport, which—as a pilot—I did not want to happen at all.”
Zuegel said she's very appreciative of all the feedback she's gotten from residents - good and bad.
“We're going to be investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this project, and I'm going to personally be spending the rest of my life working on this,” Zuegel said. “So we want to make sure that it's good. We don't want to build something that creates problems for Cloverdale, or like is not desirable by the people who are living in this new neighborhood.
Zuegel and the Esmeralda development team have stressed their desire to integrate the 266-acre property with the rest of Cloverdale, with an emphasis on bike connectivity, and a proposed extension of the Route 68 Cloverdale shuttle bus.
Mary Ann Brigham, an eight year member of the Cloverdale city council, said she's not opposed to a new development. but feels a new, well-moneyed enclave of second homes for San Francisco tech workers, separated from the heart of Cloverdale by Highway 101, won't be a seamless fit.
“They talk about the schools…I smiled at that—the people who live in those $2 million mansions, they're not going to send their kids to Cloverdale School,” Brigham said. “I mean, that's a joke, right? And one of the biggest complaints I hear about Healdsburg is…I have friends who own homes in Healdsburg and they've moved up here to Cloverdale and they rent [the Healdsburg home] because they can make a lot of money. But they said the whole city has changed in that it's almost empty all week and then all the people come up on the weekends. But that's it. That's not a community.”
Esmeralda Land Company does not yet own the east Cloverdale property, which borders the Cloverdale Airport, but does have a purchase agreement in place, according to Zeugel.
Esmeralda is next set to bring the proposal before Sonoma County's Airport Land Use Commission on November 10.
