Local health care advocacy group blasts sale of Chanate Road campus

Martin Espinoza, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Dr. Panna Lossy is no political gadfly. You won’t find her queuing up every Tuesday to address the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors during the public comment portion of the weekly meetings.
That’s because Lossy, a family care physician who has been practicing in the community for more than 20 years, works long hours caring for patients at the Vista Family Health Center in Santa Rosa or teaching the next generation of family doctors at the Santa Rosa Family Practice Residency.
But in recent weeks, Lossy and other local physicians have turned to activism, targeting the county’s plan to sell the 82-acre site of the former Sutter Medical Center off Chanate Road in Santa Rosa to a local developer who wants to build up to 800 new housing units there. Though the deal has not been finalized, developer Bill Gallaher and his team would pay between $6 million and $12 million for the property, depending on the number of housing units ultimately built.
The sale, which could soon become final, would be the county’s largest sale of land in recent history. Championed by Supervisor Shirlee Zane, whose district includes the property, the sale also represents a significant effort on the part of the county to shore up the supply of available housing units at a time of rising rental prices.
But Lossy and other members of a new health care advocacy group called H-PEACE are waging an uphill battle to slow the sale and project, which they call a “giveaway” that flies in the face of the property’s more than 100-year history and tradition as a health care safety net for the county’s low-income residents.
“I was just shocked. I was just floored — both that they were selling it so cheaply and that there hasn’t been more public process,” Lossy said. “It seems so shortsighted to sell this huge community asset when there are so many external forces that are making it very difficult to provide care to a vulnerable community.”
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