Work at the Soho House resort in Kenwood has stalled. The site is waiting on PG&E for the transformers that would give it permanent power.
Crews on site say the hold-up is electrical. The transformers are the large commercial units a resort of this size needs. They were expected about two weeks ago, and the hope now is next week or the one after.
The resort sits on 350 acres off Campagna Lane at the foot of Hood Mountain. Soho House confirmed it in December and calls it Soho Ranch House Sonoma. It will have 50 cottages and villas, club space, restaurants and two pools. The stated opening is 2027. We have been watching the project since July.
Everyone wants a transformer
A resort in Kenwood is now queuing behind the artificial-intelligence industry.
Transformers have become one of the hardest pieces of equipment in the world to buy. Lead times on the large units run two to four years, against a few months before the pandemic. Demand for substation transformers rose 116% between 2019 and 2025. For the biggest units it rose 274%.
Data centres are the reason. American data-centre electricity demand grew more than 18% last year, and every new megawatt needs its own transformers and switchgear. Utilities rebuilding old grid equipment are bidding for the same factory slots. Industry trackers reckon switchgear is sold out into 2028.
Manufacturers are building new plants, and Hitachi Energy has put more than $1 billion into American production. The first of that capacity arrives in 2028.
None of which helps a job site in Kenwood this month. It does explain why a delay that sounds like paperwork is really a place in a very long line.
A 25-year permit trail
The county file goes back further than the Soho House name. The grading permit that opened this round of work, GRD20-0237, cites its authority as PLP01-0006. That is a planning application numbered for 2001. The county gave it final approval on 2 November 2004, under the name Sonoma Country Inn.
A hotel approved in 2004, on an application from 2001, opening in 2027 at the earliest.
Work restarted in September 2020. Since then the county has logged 43 permits on the main parcel, and the shape of the resort is visible in the list:
- 17 cottage permits in four groups, filed through the summer of 2021: six for Unit C, six for Unit D, three for Unit E and two villas.
- The Main House and a health club, both August 2021.
- A private sewer system and a wastewater plant rated at 13,400 gallons a day.
- Two 8,000-gallon concrete water tanks, and a private water main tapped into the old Sonoma Country Inn subdivision.
- An entry gate with a Knox box, so the fire district can get in.
The fire that cost it a year
The 2017 Nuns Fire reached this property. County inspectors opened damage records on the resort parcel and eight neighbouring parcels on 24 October 2017. All of them came back green, the tag for a site inspected and found safe.
The fire still cost the project a year. It burned through in October 2017, after the Planning Commission had approved the current design and after opponents had filed their appeal. The county then asked the developer to prove the hillside would hold.
Three studies followed. A vegetation consultant mapped the burn. Geotechnical engineers filed a post-fire report on landslide and debris-flow risk in February 2018. Two weeks later, engineers filed an erosion and sediment control plan. The county rewrote its environmental addendum in March 2018 to take the fire into account.
The findings were mild. Fire burned the upper residential lots, the eastern ridge and the ground between the site and Highway 12. The main inn, the spa and the west-ridge cottages stood in unburned ground. Site roads had worked as a firebreak. Hood Mountain Regional Park, just to the north, took moderate to severe damage.
Supervisors denied the appeal on 1 April 2018 and let the design stand.
The 2020 Glass Fire left less behind. It started on 27 September 2020, seven weeks after Yucaipa bought the property. CAL FIRE’s perimeter takes in the resort parcel, and the county opened no damage record there. One neighbouring parcel got one.
The grading permit that restarted the whole project, GRD20-0237, was filed on 29 September 2020. The Glass Fire was two days old and still burning.
Still on temporary power
Two permits in the file are for temporary power. One in February 2021 covered a powered gate and security station. Another in September 2021 covered construction. Nothing in the record replaces them.
That fits what the crews describe. A building site runs on temporary service until the utility sets permanent transformers.
Only one permit has been filed this year: GRD20-0237.R01, on 21 August, a revision to that original grading permit. It is listed as started.
The site has stalled before. Construction on the 2004 approval halted years ago. A private equity firm founded by Ron Burkle bought the property in 2020 and leased it to Soho House.
We have asked PG&E for an expected delivery date and will report the answer. Sources: Sonoma County permit records for APN 051-260-014 and neighbouring parcels, retrieved 26 and 27 August 2026, searchable on our permit database. Transformer lead times and demand growth from industry supply-chain reporting, 2026. Site information from crews working on the project. Fire history from Permit Sonoma’s March 2018 Board of Supervisors summary report on the Sonoma Country Inn appeal, the county’s post-fire safety assessment records, and CAL FIRE perimeter data.