SMART, RP Agree on Station Location

The nearly year-long effort to move the local SMART station to a downtown Rohnert Park location appears to have reached a solution this week, as the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District and the city council agreed to the more central location.

The agreement, which still must be validated by formal approval from the SMART board and the , places the station on Rohnert Park Expressway near the now-vacant State Farm campus, which was shuttered in July.

The relocation was  City Council meeting, shifting the station from its original site on Roberts Lake to the area on Rohnert Park Expressway with more foot traffic, more local residents and a projected “downtown” business community.

“As part of the agreement,” Bob Norberg reported in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, “Rohnert Park is offering to pay SMART $35,000 for the environmental impact work, which is now complete.”

Mayor Jake Mackenzie, who serves on the SMART board, is quoted in the PD article as saying “This is better all the way around, it is closer to the center of town and closer to a larger number of our residents.”

Other SMART stations are planned for Railroad Square in Santa Rosa to the north, and in Cotati off of East Cotati Avenue at Industrial Avenue to the south. The reduced commute line, part of a larger line approved by regional voters in 2008, will extend only from Santa Rosa’s station to downtown San Rafael.