The Sonoma Pacific Company, the so-called “pallet factory” near the intersection of Broadway and Highway 116, which suffered three notable fires in the past 12 years, has ceased operations.
“If it hadn’t been for the three majors, I’d still be in business,” said Tommy Thompson, who purchased the business in 2016. He was referring to a confluence of bad luck that drove his company under: the inability to get insurance following the 2017 Sonoma Complex fires, which put the whole Valley in high fire risk category; the loss of his biggest customer, Chevron, when he was unable to provide pallets to their specs following a 2018 propane fire at the Sonoma industrial property; and COVID-19.
“My customers shut down the second week of March, and we shut down the fourth week,” said Thompson. Though he had started a parallel business selling mulch, which continued to do well in sales even to individual local customers in the spring, the owner of the property was unwilling to extend the lease past June 30, 2020, because the factory could not get insurance.
The manufacturing facility started at its Fremont Drive location in 1972, making pallets and other functional wood storage products. A 2007 fire was caused by a lumber treatment device that malfunctioned, while a much larger 2013 blaze was touched off by sparks from a chain dragged behind a tow-truck driving down an adjacent road, which set fire to grass outside the plant.
Tommy Thompson, who purchased the business under the business name El Pelado, LLC, did so with plans to upgrade and fire-safe the facility, but a July 2018 fire at his high-thermal oven led to the explosion of the oven’s propane tank.
Thompson said at the time that although Schell-Vista Fire District crews arrived quickly, they had to stand around for 20 minutes to wait for the propane tank to blow up, because it was too dangerous to approach the fire. When it did, the tank and other material flew through the air, bouncing off some RVs parked in the lot next door and landing in the middle of Fremont Drive, Highway 121.
At that time Thompson vowed to replace the propane fuel system with natural gas, delivered by half-inch pipe from PG&E, to eliminate the possibility of another explosion. He ordered a replacement high-thermal furnace, identical to the one that was damaged, converted to natural gas.
The new furnace took some five months to arrive, during which time Thompson went through the process of getting a permit from Permit Sonoma, the county permitting agency, for the replacement oven – a process he found needlessly problematic.
“It’s an attitude more than anything,” said Thompson about the permitting process. “It’s not that these people want to cause harm, it’s because of the way the rules are enforced. … You have to prove to them that you’re not doing anything wrong.” It was an experience he found frustrating considering the initial permit for the same type of furnace was only four years old, and all he sought was to replace it.
Tennis Wick, director of Permit Sonoma, was sympathetic, acknowledging that although “the prior explosions and fires caused concern,” Thompson’s permit application did provide measures for a safer operation.
“Environmental and accessibility regulations can be frustrating for existing businesses that have to upgrade,” Wick told the Index-Tribune in an email. “To my knowledge, there were no regulatory changes; the physical changes to the business triggered their application.”
By the time the furnace arrived, and the permit was finalized, his biggest customer – Chevron – went elsewhere with their business.
His effort to find insurance for the business was less successful, and he was never able to do so. Then the coronavirus shutdown sapped whatever flexibility his business had to operate, and he had to close the 48-year old business for good.
“Those three aspects – the fire, the lack of insurance and COVID – for me, it was mortal,” said Thompson. He now lives in San Mateo County.
Ray Mulas, the fire chief of Schell Vista, said he attended a clearance auction in mid-June, when all the machinery, plastic pallets, trucks and other materials were sold off. He purchased a truck, and when he went to pick it up a week or so later the place was all but empty.
“Everything was sold – it was cleared out,” said Mulas. “I’ve never seen a place as empty before. You’d be hard pressed to find some sawdust someplace.”
Though Sonoma Pacific had ceased its major operations in March, some of their neighbors were unaware the business was closing. “I can usually hear their machinery, and we get their sawdust over here,” said Deborah Garant, facilities manager of Sonoma Moll Storage. But while she had not heard the business had closed when informed of it by the Index-Tribune, she said, “I haven’t heard anything from there this week.”
Whether or not a new lease has been lined up for the property is uncertain. But the adjoining lot to the east has been bought by the owners of Victory Station, and an application for a 245-vehicle parking lot is being processed by the county, a lot that may be big enough to accommodate the vans operating out of the proposed Amazon transfer station at that location.
“Pretty much hard gravel yard, you could store RVs there,” said Mulas of the former Sonoma Pacific location.
Or perhaps delivery vans.
Email Christian at [email protected].
