The owners of The Ruse, the luxury bed and breakfast formerly known as Honor Mansion, have withdrawn their appeal to the city council of the city’s denial of their proposed use for the three-acre property. The hearing had been anticipated to take place at the Feb. 21 meeting, but with their withdrawal, the city’s decision will stand. City Manager Jeff Kay confirmed the news Tuesday evening, Feb. 14.
Initial efforts to contact their lawyer, Erin Carlstrom of Clement, Fitzpatrick & Kenworthy, were unsuccessful. Her letter to the city, delivered late on Tuesday, read, “On behalf of my client, 891 Grove Street, LLC (‘Applicant/Appellant’), and its appeal of the Planning Commission’s Decision of October 25, 2022, Applicant/Appellant have (sic) elected to withdraw its appeal in this matter.”
The letter was addressed to Scott Duiven, the city’s community development director, and copied by email to all members of the Healdsburg City Council. No further explanation was proffered.
The directors of the LLC now include brothers Patrick and Jonathan Wilhelm, whose family owns the Mayacama Golf Club in Santa Rosa, and an agent, Levi White. Silicon Valley executive Craig Ramsey, founder of Vlocity and co-owner of The Matheson in downtown Healdsburg, was shown as the sole manager or member of the LLC on its original filing, in July 2020.
The issue concerns the city’s land use determination for the former Honor Mansion, which was sold by longtime owner Steve Fowler in 2020 for about $5 million to the current owners. They in turn spent an unknown amount to upgrade the property, a remodel that included a 2,392-square-foot outdoor pavilion with a full kitchen, bar area and lounge that could serve beer, wine and spirits.
Other recreational features of their redesign included pickleball courts, a badminton and yoga lawn, an extensive putting green, a redesigned swimming pool and other features of a luxury resort.
The changes included changing the name to The Ruse, an odd choice for a project that in retrospect appears to have attempted an end run around local zoning permits.
After a year of working with the city on the project, whose general contractor was longtime Healdsburg city official Jerry Eddinger, on Sept. 1, 2022, the Wilhelms applied for a use permit for a “private recreational park and swim club” at the former B&B, a significant change from the permit for the 11-room bed and breakfast that it had been operating under for more than 20 years.
Duiven balked, and refused to issue the permit. His reasoning was that the property straddles two zones in Healdsburg, a Grove Mixed Use (GMU) zone and residential zone R-1-6,000 (one dwelling unit per 6,000 square foot lot). Duiven held that the proposal most accurately met the Healdsburg Land Use Code as a “private club, fraternal lodge and meeting hall,” an intensive use not permitted in the residential zone.
Patrick Wilhelm filed an appeal to that ruling, which came before the city’s Planning Commission on Oct. 25, 2022. His argument was in part that since the lot is split into two planning zones, residential and mixed use, the more intensive uses of their project should be allowed as being compatible with the mixed use zone.
The Planning Commission unanimously rejected the appeal to Duiven’s decision, and 10 days later lawyer Carlstrom filed another appeal, whose next stop would have been the city council. However, by withdrawing the appeal, the owners of The Ruse have foreclosed the possibility of suing the City of Healdsburg, since they have not exhausted all other means of administrative remedies, which is a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit.
The hearing was likely to be a contentious one. On Jan. 3, Healdsburg resident Jon Eisenberg sent a letter to members of the city council, outlining several areas of concern about donations made to council members or candidates by the owners of The Ruse, which he characterized as a “pay-to-play” effort to influence the city council.
His letter documented contributions to council members Evelyn Mitchel, David Hagele and Ron Edwards, as well as candidate Susan Graf. The contributions never exceeded 26% of overall contributions to the candidate’s campaign funds, and at least one of the candidates returned some of the contributions.
Eisenberg, a retired appellate lawyer, pointed out the candidates themselves were not guilty of pay-to-play wrongdoing, but the donors who were suspect—Craig Ramsey, Patrick Wilhelm and Jonathan Wilhelm and “persons or entities connected to them or The Ruse” who made the “substantial campaign contributions” to the candidates.
The city council members were generally relieved not to have to go through the appeal, especially those cited by Eisenberg as having received donations from the Wilhelms, Ramsey or their affiliates. “I am relieved,” said Evelyn Mitchell. “I look forward to putting this behind us and to allow everyone to move on.”
According to public financial disclosure documents, Mitchell received $4,200 in campaign donations from the Wilhelms, Ramsey and affiliated entities; she returned much of it in October, before the election, when The Ruse issue became heated.
David Hagele, who did not run for office in 2022, received $1,000 in donations from the WIlhelms in his 2020 race. He said he was “looking forward to the rest of our agenda on Tuesday…especially the mid-year budget update and the presentation from the library.”
Chris Herrod, who only joined the council this year and was not a recipient of any of the cited donations, was asked why he thought the appeal was dropped. “It’s purely conjecture, but I think the community’s overwhelming objection to the developer’s plans played a key role in their deciding to withdraw the appeal,” said Herrod.
Mayor Ariel Kelley would have recused herself from the appeal hearing anyway, as she lives next door to the subject property on Grove Street.
