In a region where housing advocates proclaim the virtues of adding apartments and condominiums to the cores of established cities, Santa Rosa shows how difficult such a transformation can be.

No Bay Area city has been more aggressive at cutting developer fees and speeding up the review process. City officials recently took potential builders on a bus tour of potential sites. This month, the City Council and Planning Commission gave their initial OK to a plan that would allow as many as 7,000 new units downtown.

Despite all this, the only housing under construction near historic Courthouse Square is a modest building with 17 apartments. Developers are intrigued but wary. Blueprints for approved projects are gathering dust.

The problem isn’t lack of will, or neighbors fighting growth. Pin the blame instead on basic economics — the underlying dynamics that make city-centered growth a less-than-sure thing, no matter what planners and the obvious need for housing might suggest.

Whatever the outcome, Santa Rosa’s initiative stands out. And if it is driven in part by downtown’s potential, it also is inseparable from the ravages of the 2017 Tubbs Fire.

“You can’t be antigrowth at the same time we need to rebuild housing that was destroyed,” said Chris Thornberg, founder of Beacon Economics, a research firm. “When there’s tragedy, there’s opportunity as well.”

The tragedy is undeniable: Seven people died in Santa Rosa as a result of the devastating fire in October 2017 that destroyed 3,043 housing units in this city of 175,000.

So is the determined response.

During the past two years, 2,010 homes have been completed or were under construction. Another 210 are in the permit process. Though painful for the people who lost their homes, the process was made easier by a concerted city effort to cut fees and reduce paperwork so houses could move forward with relative ease.

That type of proactive strategy is shaping the city’s downtown efforts as well.

What officials seek is the type of concentrated growth that supporters say should blossom in mixed-use neighborhoods with easy access to transit, such as the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit line that opened last year and connects Santa Rosa to Marin County.

This sentiment isn’t new: In 2007, Santa Rosa approved a downtown plan that cleared the way for 3,400 new housing units in the central core. But the payoff has been just 100 units constructed, while an additional 275 were approved but haven’t broken ground. A prominent site in Railroad Square by the SMART Station is on its third developer.

This time around, the city isn’t just drawing up plans.

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“I liken it to an experiment,” said David Guhin, the assistant city manager in charge of development efforts. “What we’ve heard over and over is ‘the city is the problem, the process is the problem.’ So we went through systematically removing every barrier that I heard complaints about.”

Projects will no longer be charged development impact fees for anything built above the third floor. The Design Review Board, which previously had veto power over downtown proposals, now has only an advisory role — part of a larger quest to trim the approval process in the district from 18 to six months.

In March, the city and the Bay Area Council business group arranged a bus tour showing off downtown Santa Rosa to more than 50 potential builders and investors.

If developers have a site where they hope to build, the city arranges a meeting — before any proposal is submitted — that includes staffers from every city department likely to have a say in future reviews. The idea is to get everyone involved from the start, so that a project can move smoothly once an application is filed.

“It shows we’re serious,” Guhin said. “We want to see housing built.”

Developers have taken notice.

“It’s like an alternate universe in terms of the genuine encouragement” to build, said Keith Rogal, a Napa developer looking at the downtown with investors. He was especially impressed at the City Hall meeting on the main site his team is investigating.

“On one-week notice, department heads had studied our plans and identified ways to make the process as streamlined as possible,” Rogal recalled. “They’re not just saying they want housing, they’re really pushing for it.”

This sentiment is echoed by Larry Florin. The CEO of Burbank Housing, the largest nonprofit developer in the North Bay, he once served as a housing adviser to former San Francisco Mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom.

“San Francisco puts on the brakes. Here, it’s how can you put on the gas,” said Florin, who has a supportive housing project set to break ground next spring near Courthouse Square.

But Florin’s project is the exception. Though market-rate developers are testing the water, they’re not yet diving in.

A big part of the problem is that, despite the North Bay’s need for housing, building costs are out of whack with anticipated rents. Construction costs aren’t much lower in Santa Rosa than in other mid-size Bay Area cities — but its average rent is well below that of cities like Walnut Creek, San Rafael or Redwood City, according to a study done as part of downtown planning efforts.

Nor is this a proven market. Housing advocates can make the case that downtowns like Santa Rosa’s are ideal for young renters wanting a lively scene or older couples with roots in the area. But there’s no way to know until it happens. Which means that well-financed developers who specialize in mixed-use housing outside of major cities go elsewhere.

The one project now under construction, with 17 apartments at Seventh and Riley streets, is being done by Hugh Futrell — a local development veteran who has his own construction crews, which reduces overall costs by nearly 10%.

“If we were having to hire building contractors, I don’t know if this would pencil out,” Futrell said. He also has plans for a 107-apartment complex approved in 2017. It would rise 112 feet, making it the tallest structure downtown. Futrell says he hopes to start construction next year, but “in the end, there has to be a balance of costs and values.”

The proposed downtown plan, by the Oakland firm Dyett & Bhatia, aims to bring about major changes, once and for all.

Height limits essentially are abolished in the blocks around Courthouse Square so that developers can best figure out how to package their projects in ways that make economic sense. The long-range goal is an “urban core,” where “tall new buildings attract new residents and employees to strengthen the role of the Courthouse Square area as the business and cultural hub of Santa Rosa and the wider region.”

A few years ago, such language likely would have triggered a backlash from residents who’d rather see things stay pretty much the way they are. When the city’s Planning Commission and City Council met on Dec. 3 to review the draft of the plan, however, there was no opposition from the public.

“When I look at this plan I think, ‘Gee, that’s the city I want to live in,’” said Chris Rogers, a native Santa Rosan who joined the council in 2017.

Vice Mayor Victoria Fleming emphasized that all types of housing are needed if a downtown boom is to help fill the city’s larger needs.

“We need a mix,” Fleming said afterward. “What will make downtown truly vibrant is housing that will be for young families, older people, lower-income people and people with disabilities.”

That said, she supports the intensified efforts. She also calls them a sign of the times.

“The Tubbs Fire has been a catalyst,” Fleming said. “We had a housing crisis prior to 2017, but the loss of 5% of our housing stock put an end to partisan debates over whether the right type of development was needed. And that allowed elected officials to give planners the direction to be creative and urgent.”

The current schedule calls for the plan to be fleshed out while the environmental report is being done. A final vote would come by next summer.

Then the next test begins.

“It’s a great plan that should be a regional model, but developers don’t turn on a dime,” the economist Thornberg said. “It will take a little patience and a continued commitment from the city.”

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron