::: COMMUNITY NEWS

County planners do about-face and now endorse development project

Published Thursday, May 25, 2006

About six weeks after recommending that county supervisors reject a subdivision proposed for Murieta North, county planners have reversed their stand and now recommend approval of the Residences of Murieta Hills.

A planning staff member attributes the about-face to design changes made by developers, but development critics like Candy Chand of the Rancho Murieta Development Concerned Citizens Committee charge that staff "caved" to developer pressure in the second document, issued in late April.

Clay Heil of Warmington Homes has a different view. "The plan was changed drastically and I think it's nonsense to say that we applied pressure," he said in a recent phone interview. "If that's the case, why didn't we apply pressure to get our first plan approved? ... I think the county strictly responded to the revision of our plan, and that's appropriate."

Chand said the developers' revised plan for the project was "an improvement, but it's not enough." She added that planners "do not make the final determination. … It's all going to come down to the (county) Board of Supervisors."

In March, Chand termed the planning staff's first action -- a denial recommendation for the Residences and the Retreat projects -- "a huge step forward."

If the supervisors accepted the staff recommendations when the projects came before them, developers would have "to virtually go back to the drawing board and create alternate projects which will look, feel, and be constructed quite differently from what they've previously proposed," Chand wrote in an e-mail to RanchoMurieta.com. In another e-mail, she wrote, "… The developers are dead in the water and they know it."

The developers say they were already working on changes to the Residences project when the negative staff report came out.

"We were re-evaluating some of our plan layouts but we didn't pull the trigger on anything," said Woodside Group representative Andrew C. Zinniger. "Then when the staff report came out, it became very clear that we needed to make some changes to address the concerns that staff brought up."

The Retreat and Residences are separate projects that are being processed by Planning at the same time. The Retreat consists of three parcels totaling about 30 acres scattered around the Country Club's North Course, and the Residences of Murieta Hills occupies 145 acres at the northwest edge of the community, between Stonehouse Road and Guadalupe, Escuela and Puerto drives. The planning staff has not yet issued its opinion on the Retreat developers' project revisions.

The RMDCCC had numerous reasons to regard the initial staff reports as validation of its efforts.

RMDCCC causes were well represented in the planning report for the Residences, which listed grading issues, loss of oak trees, and a lack of compatibility with existing North development among the reasons to deny approval. The report also said another RMDCCC issue -- custom homes versus production homes -- was "neither a regulatory issue nor an environmental one (neither the county nor the state regulate this issue)," but it said the issue "does potentially have implications related to sensitivity to the natural environment."

The staff report disagreed with the RMDCCC view when it affirmed a 2004 planning study that showed "decisions in Rancho Murieta (for example regarding open space) have been deliberate incremental choices by county decision-makers, rather than mistakes or errors compounded over time as has been suggested by some."

When it was presented to the supervisors at a public hearing in 2004, the study's examination of approved land uses for the community undermined the RMDCCC claim that the community is entitled to 1,806 acres of undisturbed, dedicated open space.

On the other hand, the staff report nods towards a master plan update, another RMDCCC issue. "Members of the community have raised the point that perhaps it is time to pause and take stock of the cumulative changes in Rancho Murieta in the form of a revision to update the master plan," it said.

The report said the project "should be redesigned to be more accommodating of the natural environment" and suggested including circle lots, a problematic approach the community abandoned in favor of estate lots more than a decade ago in developing the South subdivisions and the Fairways on the North.

The estate lots are retained in the revised Residences plan. Zinniger pointed out the Retreat project is comprised of "essentially circle lots," yet planners find the design unacceptable.

The staff report also stated, "There is virtually no fencing throughout north Rancho Murieta currently." Heil disagreed. "I don't know how the staff ever said that. … It seems like that may have come from the (development) opponents rather from proper investigation of what's existing out there."

In revising the design of the proposed subdivision, Residences developers focused on grading, "the biggest issue in the staff report," their attorney, James B. Wiley, wrote in the March 31 letter to Planning Director Robert Sherry submitted with the modifications.

The revised plan for the Residences divides it into two projects to create the Residences East, owned by Warmington Homes, and the Residences West, owned by the Woodside Group. Each has 99 lots, an overall decrease of 58 homes.

By separating the projects and keeping the lot numbers under 100, the developers are able to pay a fee of $10,000 per lot to satisfy the requirements of the county's low-income housing ordinance instead of building 36 half-plexes on 18 lots.

The changes increased total open space to 46.6 percent of the property, up from 37 percent, preserved 95 percent of oak trees (up from 94 percent), reduced grading and lessened the severity of grading by preserving steeper slopes from development.

"We (had) already changed it from the original plan we submitted in 2001 and saved additional trees," said Heil. "Their concerns with the grading caused us to take a look at it and to reduce the area and the amount of grading … The folks out there talked about open space in the early hearings, and here we are at 47 percent open space, (which is) unheard of …"

Zinniger commented, "The argument can be made that the development opponents have done a good job. They've improved on the master plan considerably." He said he "highly doubted" other developed areas of the community have spared as many trees or preserved as much open space as the Residences plan proposes – "and Rancho Murieta will have that forever."

Reacting to the design changes, RMDCCC member Janis Eckard wrote in April, "Developers still plan terraced production housing on hilly terrain." She also noted that the subdivision won't annex, an RMDCCC issue the staff report doesn't address. Chand remarked in a phone interview, "It doesn't look like they addressed many of the concerns that the planners had in their report."

The planning staff about-face came in the form of an addendum on the Residences East and West projects prepared for the May 5 Subdivision Review Committee meeting.

In the two addendum documents, the staff compares its reasons for originally recommending denial with the design changes that have been made. The maps are described as an improvement over the previous plan, and approval is recommended "subject to several conditions." Lot grading is identified as an issue "of greatest concern" and subject to conditions. Establishing a trail system and wrought-iron fencing requirements are among the conditions.

As far as grading goes, "What we do in the new plan is (avoid) the areas of greatest topography completely" to reduce the grading area by 32 percent, Zinniger explained. Another strategy was to set the streets "as close to natural grade as possible."

But grading has its uses, especially when it comes to drainage, the developers maintain. "Drainage is a concern to us," Heil said. "We want to make sure lots drain to the front and don't have cross-lot drainage. That's another reason for padding the lots."

The revised design addresses planners' concerns about the subdivision's isolation from the rest of the community with a new, full street connection to Puerto Drive, although it's not the extension of Fuente De Paz the Rancho Murieta Association has requested for a better circulation pattern within the community.

Although planners may have changed their minds about the Residences, Murieta Holdings developer Robert J. Cassano said last week he thinks it's "not likely" they'll do the same in considering the revised version of the Retreat project.

Instead of increasing the proposed densities to accommodate multi-family and on-site low-income housing, the developers have dropped the number of single-family Retreat homes in from 95 to 84.

Cassano described the revised plan as "a far better layout" that fulfills other planning objectives by preserving 57 percent more oak trees, increasing open space to 43 percent, reducing grading, and eliminating the need to widen a golf cart path and intrude on the golf course.

"I'm hoping policy makers see the value of what I'm proposing. Actually, it's a better plan," he said.
According to Cassano, even a lower density version of multi-family housing like townhouses would be inappropriate for the Retreats because of parking considerations.

The three Retreat properties are planned as high-end homes for empty-nesters. The planning staff report on the project recommended denial of the project because the community's master plan calls for high-density zoning allowing up to 573 units.

In 2004, as the supervisors developed a county low-income housing ordinance, they voted to take two of the Retreat properties out of the county's inventory of low-income housing at the request of Cassano's partner, Gerry N. Kamilos.

Although the county was facing a shortfall of acreage for the low- and very low-income categories at that time, several supervisors said Rancho Murieta wasn't a good fit for these categories of low-income housing because it lacks jobs and public transportation.