Sonoma County broke ground today on a new 10,000-square-foot behavioral health facility for teens and young adults at the Los Guilicos campus in Santa Rosa, a project county officials say will end the county's total reliance on out-of-county placements for youth in mental health or addiction crisis. The groundbreaking ceremony was held at 11:30 a.m. at 322 Hood House Drive, marking the start of construction on a campus that will house residential treatment wings, outpatient counseling spaces, and dedicated substance use services for people as young as 12.
The facility is funded by an $18.2 million grant Sonoma County received in July 2023 through Round 5 of the state Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program, according to Sonoma County Board of Supervisors filings. The county satisfied the program's local match requirement by contributing a 1.55-acre parcel on the Los Guilicos site. Those same filings state that before this project, Sonoma County had zero county-owned residential beds for youth behavioral health crisis care or adolescent substance use disorder treatment, a gap that for years forced agencies to place kids in crisis at facilities outside the county, cutting them off from local family support and adding placement costs for local government.
As reported by The Press Democrat, the new center will include two residential treatment wings serving teens ages 12 to 18: one with six beds for mental health crisis treatment and another with eight beds for drug use treatment. The facility will also offer individual, group and family counseling spaces, along with dedicated outpatient substance use treatment for people ages 12 to 25.
County Officials Frame Project as Overdue Investment
Nolan Sullivan, the county's director of health services, said the facility's services will allow county health staff to respond sooner and tailor treatment to children's specific needs, per the same account from the Press Democrat. Sullivan also said the project represents a significant county investment in compassionate, age-appropriate care close to home.
Board of Supervisors Chair Rebecca Hermosillo echoed that framing, saying the campus represents a meaningful investment in the health, safety and future of Sonoma County's youth. Hermosillo added that Sonoma County youth and their families deserve compassionate, age-appropriate care close to home.
Site Sits Amid Existing Youth Services Hub
Construction is rising largely on the footprint of an abandoned 7,600-square-foot gymnasium and swimming pool, which county supervisors voted in July 2025 to demolish under a $391,493 contract with Machado Brothers, Inc., according to the legistar filings. Delivery of the capital project is managed by Sonoma Public Infrastructure under a progressive design-build contract, with Unger Construction Co. serving as general contractor, Argonaut Constructors providing site support, and BA handling architectural design, according to a Sonoma County announcement.
The Los Guilicos campus in east Santa Rosa already functions as a hub for county youth and emergency services, housing the Valley of the Moon Children's Center, Sonoma County Juvenile Hall, Eliza's Village Emergency Shelter, and California Children's Services, as Oakmont Village News notes. The county previously opened its first local adult acute psychiatric facility, the 16-bed Sonoma County Healing Center run by Crestwood Behavioral Health, at the former Valley of the Moon Children's Center site on the same campus back in January 2022.
Part of a Broader Shift in County Behavioral Health Strategy
The youth project follows closely on the heels of a separate county pivot in behavioral health strategy. In July, Sonoma County supervisors voted unanimously to scrap a jail plan for a $135M campus instead, abandoning a long-planned jail-based mental health housing project in favor of a separate $135 million, 88-bed adult behavioral health campus at Los Guilicos and the Orenda Center.
Local mental health and substance use programming is also supported by Measure O, a quarter-cent sales tax Sonoma County voters approved in November 2020 that reached the midpoint of its 10-year term in 2025-2026, according to the county's Department of Health Services. To catch youth mental health concerns earlier, the county already runs a Crisis Assessment, Prevention, and Education team of clinicians stationed across nine high schools, Santa Rosa Junior College, and Sonoma State University.
Neighbors Raise Questions About Safety and Evacuation
Not everyone near the growing campus is focused solely on the clinical case for the project. At an August community town hall for nearby Oakmont residents, county officials presented plans for the expanding Los Guilicos behavioral health facilities while fielding questions about site safety, emergency wildfire evacuation routes, and who exactly will be housed there, per Oakmont Village News. The property sits near wildland-urban interface areas in east Santa Rosa, a detail that has kept evacuation planning central to community concerns as the campus adds more residential capacity.
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