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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…