• Pop-up window: Click here for archive of development coverage -- news, maps, photos and more Published Monday, January 13, 2003 An overflow crowd of more than 60 residents attended Thursday night’s “town hall” meeting with the Murieta Holdings developers. It was the biggest turnout since the first “town hall," two years ago. The developers were asked many of the same questions -- about annexation, production homes and open space -- that they answered then. Much of the crowd was made up of opponents of the development, drawn by the expectation that the meeting would include presentations by two companies selected to build the planned Residences of Murieta Hills project, located on land between Guadalupe Drive, Puerto Drive, Escuela Drive and Stonehouse Road. (See tentative map here.) Instead, Robert J. Cassano and Gerry N. Kamilos, who make up Murieta Holdings, said the builders, Warmington Homes and Woodside Homes, would make a presentation at the Feb. 6 meeting. In opening comments, Kamilos responded to issues raised by the petition that has been circulated in the community this winter. The petition, with 1,200 or 1,300 signatures, is expected to be given to the Rancho Murieta Association and government agencies that oversee planning and development. Kamilos said the environmental impact report being prepared by the county addresses some of the concerns raised in the petition -- the impacts on traffic, wildlife and oak trees. He said the developers have “paid very close attention” to the impact on oak trees and worked to keep oak groves intact. Kamilos said the reduced densities proposed by the developers would lessen the impact on wildlife. He pointed out that Murieta Holdings is proposing a build-out on the North of about 1,100 homes instead of the 2,300 approved under the Planned Unit Development ordinance for Rancho Murieta. Some of the other issues addressed at the meeting were: Production houses Kamilos acknowledged that the production homes proposed for most of the development were “probably the major concern in the community.” In the petition, the houses are referred to as “tract homes.”

Warmington and Woodside will build Murieta Hills The Murieta Holdings developers announced Thursday that Warmington Homes and Woodside Homes will be builders for the Residences of Murieta Hills project and that both builders will be represented at the Feb. 6 “town hall” meeting. “They are preparing and are eager to present to the community the designs and elevations, materials, colors, all the elements they will pursue on the Murieta Hills project,” developer Gerry N. Kamilos told the “town hall” audience. His partner, Robert J. Cassano, said both builders have a large regional and West Coast presence and that each is represented in the Serrano development in El Dorado Hills. He said Warmington was founded in 1926 and got its start building movie-star homes in Southern California. It builds several hundred homes a year and is still family owned, he said. Woodside, also family owned, was founded in 1977, he said, and builds about 2,000 homes a year in Nevada, Arizona and California. “They’re very anxious to meet with people here to hear your concepts and concerns so their preliminary design concepts can be refined with input from the community and Gerry and I,” Cassano said.

Although the developers said there would be variety in the designs, colors, elevations and materials of the production homes, they did not offer any formula for the architectural controls that would ensure this variety. They promised more details at next month's meeting.

“Many people don’t want to go through … the details of (building) a custom home,” Kamilos said. “They want the convenience of selection. … It’s really not (about) coming up with an inferior product to a custom home or a semi-custom home. It’s really coming up with a process that allows the consumer choices.”

Mutual Benefit Agreement

Kamilos said the developers are under “no real obligation” to sign the Mutual Benefit Agreement with the Rancho Murieta Association because they can proceed with their development and move their subdivision maps forward through the county planning process without it. Nevertheless, “we’re prepared to sign it,” he told the group.

He described the agreement as providing “a tremendous amount of advantages to the community,” including the ability to create more amenities.

He said the developers would still upgrade the North Gate -- “MBA or not” -- but full payment of RMA dues by the new subdivisions, as negotiated in the agreement, would not happen.

Kamilos said that residents of the new subdivisions would realize $60 or $70 worth of “real services” from the monthly $101.50 RMA dues payment they would pay under the terms of the MBA.

Kamilos said the remaining $30 a month, which would add up to about $33,000 a month at build-out on the North, “is basically the RMA’s to do with it what they want.”

In addition, “The MBA locks in permanently the amount of units we can develop in the community,” he said. That information is contained in Exhibit H of the document, which sets out the following:

SUBDIVISION PHASES
The Residences of Murieta Hills	238
Vineyard Estates at Lake Calero	102
The Estates at Lakes Chesbro and Clementia	118
The Highlands	93
The Terrace	329
River Canyon Estates	118
The Retreats, West, North and East	95
Total Units	1,093

Open space and housing density

The developers were asked about the possibility of further reducing the number of homes they intend to develop and placing land in trust as open space.

Kamilos responded that the 40 percent reduction in the number of homes the developers have proposed on the North “can create a tremendous amount of open space. … Those areas could be set aside with deed restrictions in perpetuity.

“If you look at the density that we’re proposing here, it is far lower than the densities on the North that are already in place,” Kamilos said, and lower than what the county has allowed for the new areas. (See an overall development map here and density comparisons here.)

The proposed density for the Residences of Murieta Hills is 1.7 dwelling units per acre, which is lower than the 2.3 units the county has approved. It's also lower than the existing neighborhoods that border it -- Unit 4 along Puerto Drive has a density of 2.2, and Unit 2, along Guadalupe Drive, has a density of 2.8.

Kamilos said developers have to consider the fixed costs of developing infrastructure and facilities “ versus the cost of lowering the density. …You can only take it down so low.”

Custom homes

The Residences of Murieta Hills and the Retreat projects are the first subdivisions Murieta Holdings has submitted to the county for approval. Production homes are planned for each.

Although no tentative map has been submitted to the county yet, Murieta Holdings plans to develop a custom-home project of about 100 homes at Lake Calero. The concept of homes surrounded by a vineyard at Lake Calero was introduced at the developers’ “town hall” meeting in February 2001.

In an interview last month, Cassano said he thought it was “more than likely” the demand for custom homes at Calero would continue into development at Lake Chesbro, Lake Clementia and several other areas. “There might end up being 300 custom homes. … But you don’t really know for sure,” he concluded.

“The PTF isn’t going to be selling custom lots. They want to bulk-sell areas,” Cassano said. “Calero is being bulk-sold to (Murieta Holdings) and we’re doing the program. If land developers want to come in and do a custom lot program, that’s fine, but they’d have to buy bulk from PTF.”

On Thursday, Kamilos said that development around Lakes Calero and Clementia would be custom homes and “most likely” the area along Camino Del Lago facing the “Street of Dreams” would be custom also.

The two production-home projects now going through the planning process are the Residences of Murieta Hills, which consists of 238 single-family homes on lots 80 by 120 feet or larger. According to Cassano, this lot size is larger than the average estate lot in Rancho Murieta now.

The other project is the Retreat East, North and West. These are 98 single family homes located between Murieta Parkway and several holes of the North golf course. (See maps -- East, North and West.) They are targeted for the retiree and empty-nester market, but are not age-restricted. Cassano and Kamilos are currently building the same project at Valley Hi Country Club.

Developers' relationship to the PTF

In response to a question about the relationship of Murieta Holdings to the Pension Trust Fund of the Operating Engineers, Kamilos described the developers as the representatives of the PTF.
“They have brought us on as their master developer for the balance of the property,” he said. “We do have an arrangement. We’re not doing this for free.”

He added, “We don’t really see ourselves per se as developers, although that is what our
title is. Our role here is really to be a facilitator.”

Annexation and CC&Rs

The new development does not plan to annex to the RMA. Cassano said annexation would have been possible under the RMA CC&Rs in effect until 1996, but the restated CC&Rs “precluded that from happening.” He said managing the new development through its own association allows the developers to “have some control over our development plan.”

The CC&Rs for the new association are being drafted to be consistent with the RMA’s. In some respects, they will be more restrictive than the RMA’s, he said. The example Cassano offered was driveway parking in the Retreat projects. No driveway parking will be allowed. The RMA allows driveway parking under a permit system.

Potholes south of Highway 16

For the first time, a question was raised about who’s responsible for maintaining the road system south of Highway 16, in the area of the Plaza and the airport. Cassano replied that the PTF owns the roads and property owners in the area entered into an agreement two decades ago to use and maintain them.

However, the agreement hasn’t been enforced. “That’s about to change,” Cassano said. The developer who’s purchasing the 52-acre commercial site there from the PTF is now working with the Community Services District to make sure the agreement is enforced in the future, Cassano said.

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