Work at the Soho House resort in Kenwood has stalled while the site waits on PG&E for the transformers that would give it permanent power.
Crews on the site say the hold-up is electrical. A resort of this size needs large commercial transformers, and they were expected about two weeks ago. The hope now is for next week or the week after.
The resort sits on 350 acres off Campagna Lane, at the foot of Hood Mountain. Soho House confirmed the project in December and calls it Soho Ranch House Sonoma. It is to have 50 cottages and villas, club space, restaurants and two pools. The stated opening is 2027 at the earliest. We have been watching the project since July.
Everyone wants a transformer
Transformers have become some of the hardest equipment in the world to buy. Lead times on the large units now run two to four years, where before the pandemic they ran a few months. Demand for substation transformers rose 116% between 2019 and 2025, and 274% for the biggest units.
The data-center boom is driving it. American data-center electricity demand grew more than 18% last year, and each new megawatt needs its own transformers and switchgear. Utilities rebuilding old grid equipment are bidding for the same factory slots, and 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.
A 25-year permit trail
The grading permit behind the current work, GRD20-0237, cites its authority as PLP01-0006, a planning application numbered for 2001. The county gave that application final approval on November 2, 2004, when the project was called the Sonoma Country Inn.
Work restarted in September 2020. Since then the county has logged 43 permits on the main parcel. They include:
- 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 in 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.
What the fires did
The 2017 Nuns Fire reached the property. On October 24, 2017, county inspectors opened damage records on the resort parcel and eight neighboring parcels. All of them came back green, the tag for a site inspected and found safe.
The fire came through in October 2017, after the Planning Commission had approved the current design and after opponents had filed an appeal. The county asked the developer to prove the hillside would hold, and three studies followed. A vegetation consultant mapped the burn. In February 2018 geotechnical engineers filed a post-fire report on landslide and debris-flow risk, and two weeks later engineers filed an erosion and sediment control plan. In March the county rewrote its environmental addendum to take the fire into account.
The studies found that the fire had 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, and the site’s roads had worked as a firebreak. Hood Mountain Regional Park, just to the north, took moderate to severe damage.
Supervisors denied the appeal on March 27, 2018, and let the design stand.
The 2020 Glass Fire started on September 27, 2020, seven weeks after Yucaipa, the private equity firm founded by Ron Burkle, bought the property. CAL FIRE’s perimeter takes in the resort parcel, but the county opened no damage record there, and only one on a neighboring parcel. GRD20-0237, the grading permit that restarted the project, was filed two days later while the fire was still burning.
Still on temporary power
Two permits in the file cover temporary power. One, from February 2021, was for a powered gate and security station. The other, from September 2021, was for construction. Nothing in the record has replaced them. A building site stays on temporary service until the utility sets permanent transformers, and those are what this site is waiting for.
The only permit filed this year is GRD20-0237.R01, a revision to the original grading permit, filed on August 21 and listed as started.
The site has stalled before. Construction under the 2004 approval halted years ago. Yucaipa now leases the property 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 neighboring parcels, retrieved August 26 and 27, 2026, and 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.