Behind a chain-link fence on a neglected orchard, a series of crumbling earthen walls known as Santa Rosa’s birthplace is once again at the heart of the city — this time in a developer’s push to build new housing.
San Jose development firm Swenson is reviving stalled plans for a new neighborhood of town houses on a nearly 14-acre property that includes the Carrillo Adobe, a historic landmark that has languished on private land for more than a century.
The North Bay’s largest city must approve 4,685 new housing units by 2031 or face state penalties, and was already nearly 40% there at the end of 2024, according to Chronicle data. But many neighbors as well as descendants of both the Carrillo family and the Indigenous people who lived there object to the scale of the project, with 162 three-story town houses. They warn that the project, called Creekside Village Townhomes, risks paving over one of the most culturally rich pieces of land not yet developed in the Santa Rosa valley…