For nearly 13 years, the old firehouse at 3120 Ross Road sat mostly empty in downtown Graton. Now it's the site of the small Sonoma County town's very first dedicated coffee shop, a project called Graton Station that's already serving espresso out of a weekend coffee cart while a full cafe and bakery take shape inside.
Graton Station was created by Ferrell Carter, Adrian Apana, Tori Immel and Matt Jorgensen, according to Sonoma Magazine. The coffee cart currently runs from 8 AM to 1 PM on Saturdays and Sundays, serving coffee and pastries along with shrubs poured as refreshing sodas, per the same outlet's reporting. Behind the counter, employee Bri Fischer has been pulling espresso shots for the growing crowd of regulars, the magazine reported after photographing the team in Graton in mid-August.
The firehouse itself has quite a history. Built originally as a train depot before it became the town's fire station, the building sat along the old route of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad — an electric interurban line that once hauled West Sonoma County's apple and agricultural freight until passenger service ended in 1932, according to Santa Rosa History. The rail line's old right-of-way next to the firehouse later became Sonoma County's West County Trail, which now anchors the site as a pedestrian and cyclist hub, according to a local blog covering the town's redevelopment, Crystal Davis Realtor.
From Mail Service to Community Hub
Local resident George Melo owned the building for more than a decade, running a mail service out of the front section while slowly restoring the structure, per the Crystal Davis Realtor blog. Melo agreed to lease and eventually sell the facility to Graton Station co-founders Jorgensen and Immel in 2025, according to the Sebastopol Times.
The planned cafe will include communal tables and lounge space, and the team envisions the room hosting dinners, live music and other gatherings once construction is finished, per Sonoma Magazine. The menu is set to expand beyond the coffee cart's current offerings into full breakfast and lunch service, with breakfast sandwiches, savory porridge, mushroom toast, soups, salads and roasted chicken sandwiches planned, along with housemade breads and pastries. The magazine reports the menu will change with the seasons, based on what's available from local farms and producers.
Underneath the food program is Preservatory, a food preservation and reclamation project launched by Apana and Carter that turns Sonoma County apples, tomatoes, berries and other produce into jams, pickles, sauces, shrubs and other pantry staples. The pair previously worked at SingleThread, Troubadour Bread & Bistro, Quail & Condor and Maison Porcella, per Sonoma Magazine's reporting. According to the Sebastopol Times, the partnership between the ReVillage founders and the Preservatory chefs grew out of a meeting at the May 2025 Green Valley Food & Wine Festival in Graton.
A Kitchen Built Around What's Ripe
Graton Station is also developing a community-supported kitchen, which will give members a rotating selection of baked goods, prepared foods and pantry items, with selections based on what local farms have in abundance, per Sonoma Magazine. The team also plans to hold classes and demonstrations on canning, fermenting and other preservation methods as part of the build-out.
None of this construction is happening on donations alone. Graton Station secured $625,000 in an initial qualified investor round with a $125,000 match before launching a public Wefunder campaign, the Sebastopol Times reported. The campaign offers interest-bearing promissory notes starting at $500, letting investors choose between a 5% annual cash return or a 7.5% “edible dividend” redeemable for food and drinks at the cafe — a structure that lets community members invest directly in the cafe's construction, per the Wefunder campaign details cited in the Sebastopol Times report. Organizers unveiled that crowdfunding campaign at a public launch event in May, when visitors toured an outdoor sunken garden and “conversation pit” built alongside the firehouse, according to Patch.
A Public Square Rising Next Door
Graton Station isn't the only project reshaping this stretch of downtown. Next door, the roughly half-acre Graton Town Square site — a former gas station — was fully acquired in November 2025 by the Graton Community Services District using a $750,000 grant from Sonoma County Ag + Open Space along with donations from more than 150 local residents, according to Sonoma Land Trust. Conservation easements on the property are meant to keep the land open to the public permanently, and the acquisition establishes downtown Graton's first official public square.
That public project and the private cafe are legally and financially distinct, even though they share organizers. Graton Station operates as a private benefit corporation funded partly through debt-based crowdfunding, while Graton Town Square is a public park project funded through grants and non-profit donations — a distinction that has prompted community discussion about the difference between community investment returns and public land stewardship, per the Crystal Davis Realtor blog. The overarching non-profit connecting the two, the ReVillage Foundation, was co-founded by Immel and Jorgensen with the stated aim of strengthening Graton's local economy and creating shared community spaces, per Sonoma Magazine's reporting. Its parent commercial entity, ReVillage Development, oversees Graton Station, while the ReVillage Foundation itself manages public programming and fundraising for the Town Square in partnership with local agencies, according to ReVillage.
Local government structure shifted to make the Town Square possible. The Graton Community Services District had historically focused strictly on managing wastewater for roughly 1,700 residents, but expanded its scope into parks and public spaces following board leadership changes in recent elections, according to the Crystal Davis Realtor blog. The district remains the primary local special agency serving Graton's unincorporated community.
Artstart, a non-profit youth organization that has provided paid public-art apprenticeships to more than 2,000 young people across Sonoma County, is also creating a mural on the back wall of the Graton Firehouse facing the West County Trail, adding another layer of community involvement to the renovation. Graton is an unincorporated census-designated place with an estimated population of 1,845 and a median household income of $91,429, according to World Population Review, which notes the town's population has grown roughly 5.8% since the 2020 census. For a small agricultural community that size, a full-time cafe, bakery and public square arriving at once marks a rare and coordinated moment of investment in its historic town center.
