Comment - "looks like a badly designed modern motel"

My parents moved to Sonoma in the ‘40s. They bought the Blue Wing Inn (which they owned until 1968 and the Ray-Adler Adobe on East Spain and First Street East. My sisters and I grew up in that wonderful house.

In the 50s the Sonoma Planning Commission started to talk about allowing a big motel chain in Sonoma. A motel to be built IN the PLAZA.
The Planning Commission saw all those acres going to waste.

My mother and a few friends fought like fury to save the Plaza. And to save the old adobes in Sonoma. For the most part they prevailed.

But can you imagine Sonoma if they had lost? Sonoma without a Plaza? Without the old adobes?
Please do.

If you are going to allow the Pinelli plot, the vacant lot to the east of the Blue Wing Inn to be built on, I would strongly suggest that you chose a plan in keeping with the historical (and tourist destination) Sonoma.

Design elements that worked well with Adobe do not work with modern materials and designs. What you have planned looks like a badly designed modern motel somehow connected to a modern barracks.

Please do not allow them to build what looks like a cheap two-story motel right in the middle of the area of Old Adobes.

Build if you must. But please. A better design. Also, what say a tile roof? It would fit in much better with the Mission and other buildings around the Plaza.

Deborah Black
Sonoma