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Developer Gerry Kamilos and development opponent Candy Chand disagreed over the open space required in future development.

Developer and opponent clash over question of planned open space

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Published Sunday, September 7, 2003

Developer Gerry N. Kamilos and longtime development opponent Candy Chand locked horns Thursday at the monthly "town hall" meeting over the relevance of a page from a 1972 document.

The question they debated boils down to this: Is the community owed additional acres of open space, or has the community plan been definitively changed to modify a 1972 allocation of 1,216 acres of open space?

To Chand and Ted Hart, who also spoke at the 45-minute meeting, the 1972 developer's vision of a relatively high-density mix of 5,000 townhouses, cottage lots, homes and apartments left a legacy of open space that's no
longer represented in plans for the community.

"The question is, where did the 1,216 acres go?" asked Hart after reading the page into the public record.

Kamilos said the community has moved away from higher densities over time. A 1969 plan called for 7,000 units. The 1974 plan approved by the county board of supervisors lowered that to 5,000 units. Under the 1983 plan, approved by the board of supervisors in 1984, the number stayed the same, but densities dropped
and individual lots increased in size, he said.

He passed out copies of the '83 environmental impact report to the audience of seven and left an additional copy at the Rancho Murieta Association Building for residents to review.

Kamilos said the build-out plan proposed by Murieta Holdings continues the trend toward lower densities and also reduces the total number of units from 5,000 to about 4,100.

He pointed out that under the 1983 plan, there were 437 units -- townhouses, circle lots and estate lots -- planned for the same area where Murieta Holdings proposes to build 236 single-family homes in a development called the Residences of Murieta Hills.

Community plans evolve over time "as a result of changing markets, as a result of changing demographics, as a result of infrastructure. … There are many communities you can point to that have gone through the same process," Kamilos said. He estimated that "80 percent of the homes (in the community) were built under the '83 plan. … This is the basis we're working off of."

Chand said she had researched the 1973 and '83 environmental impact reports that formed a basis for the community master plans approved in 1974 and '84. She said she found the one-page 1972 summary of development in the 1973 environmental report, where it appears as an addendum. Since the page she presented to the Rancho Murieta Association board of directors in August came from a document other than the
environmental impact report, this discovery showed the document had relevance in the planning process, she said.

But the issue of the 1,216 acres of open space is not specifically addressed in the 1983 report, she noted. "They never said (in the '83 report) they were going to dilute the number or take it away," Chand said. Her interpretation is the issue was pushed aside, to be dealt with later. Now the only land left to fulfill the requirement is undeveloped property, which includes some of the "most valuable, pristine areas," land that is typically preserved as open space, she said.

Chand accused Kamilos of misleading the community about open space requirements. "You said there were never open-space provisions in Murieta," Chand said, citing comments that appeared on RanchoMurieta.com during the past 2½ years. "No, I never said that," Kamilos replied.

According to a story from the "town hall" meeting in December 2000, the developers were asked, "Will sizable acreage, say 100 acres, be set aside for a nature conservancy?" The developers responded that there was no provision in the original community development master plan for a conservancy, but the lower housing density they proposed "allows flexibility to preserve open space," developer Robert J. Cassano -- Kamilos' partner -- was quoted as saying.

Chand also posed a question on RanchoMurieta.com about open space in late 2000. It prompted a detailed answer from Kamilos in which he compared open space per acre at the Serrano and Whitney Oaks developments with Rancho Murieta. He concluded that Rancho Murieta would have approximately 753 acres of open space at build-out or 0.184 open-space acres per house, which was more than either Serrano or Whitney Oaks.

The developers also provided a map of the community showing open space. It's available here.

Thursday, at the "town hall" meeting, Kamilos told Chand he would check on the exact acreage of open space in the community and provide an answer at next month's "town hall" meeting.

Although the discussion at Thursday's "town hall" was centered on the 1974 and '84 ordinances approved by the county, there were nine other ordinances approved in that 10-year period. Each affected development in Rancho Murieta and each required an environmental document.

In December 1979, an expansion of Murieta Village was approved. In August 1982, the construction of Murieta Plaza shopping center, a 7.2-acre project, was approved.

In 1984, the updated master plan for the community replaced the 1974 plan, which the ordinance approved by the supervisors termed "outdated as to its practical application to the development." A 1977 ordinance had already amended previous ordinances.

The new master plan opened the area around Lake Calero to development. "That was a good chunk of land," Sabrina Okamura-Johnson, associate environmental analyst with the county's Department of Environmental Review and Assessment, noted recently.

The ordinances continued after 1984 too. The Street of Dreams was approved in 1986 and developments on the South were approved in 1989, '90, '91, '92 and '93. An ordinance in 1994 approved plans for Unit 6, the Fairways.

In all, a planning department chronology prepared in 1995 lists 25 ordinances related to Rancho Murieta development.

The clue to the open-space issue is somewhere in that documentation.

"Let the planners do the investigation," said Okamura-Johnson. "They're the keepers of all those different actions." Planning is a logical, cumulative process, she explained.

The results of the planners' research will come out at the public hearings for the Murieta Holdings projects, when the open-space issue will be among the issues addressed, planning officials say.

Kamilos said Thursday he expects the environmental impact report for the Murieta Holdings projects to
be released by early October. Public hearings will be scheduled after that.