Controversial AG subdivision returns to City Council

The Arroyo Grande City Council will soon be asked to approve or reject a controversial residential subdivision off James Way that first came before the city 10 years ago.

The city's Planning Commission recommended approval of the project last week, but the council can reject the project or approve it - with or without additional modifications.

Planning commissioners approved their recommendation on a 2-1 vote, with Commissioner Kristen Barneich dissenting, Chairman Caren Ray absent and Commissioner Doug Tait stepping down due to a conflict of

interest because he lives within 300 feet of the site.

The decision came at the end of a long public hearing where about half a dozen neighborhood residents opposed the project over height limitations, a lack of predesigned homes, damage to oak woodlands and other issues.

Ironically, many of them objected to changes the developers made based on comments from the City Council and objections raised by citizens when the project was considered in 2005 and 2007.

“All through the years, the whole process was to reduce the size of the lots, cluster the homes and get them out of the Pismo clarkia area,” said Vice Chairman John Keen.

“Now we get comments the lots need to be larger and spread out. That's going back to what got us where we are today.”

The Meadows at Rancho Grande, also known as Tract 1998, is a project of Castlerock Development located on a hillside north of James Way and east of La Canada Drive.

Dennis Law, an attorney for Castlerock, said the site had an allocation of 40 homes when the Rancho Grande Master Plan was approved in 1978. The initial plan submitted in 1998 was for 36 homes.

But the discovery of the rare and endangered Pismo clarkia, a small flowering plant found only in western San Luis Obispo County, and potential impacts to oaks and riparian habitat led to various revisions until a 21-unit project was rejected by the City Council in 2005.

A 17-home proposal in 2007 was further revised to the 15-home project considered this week by the Planning Commission.

The current project calls for one home near the entrance to the development on La Canada and the remaining 14 on lots clustered near the top of a hill at the northeast corner of the 26-acre site.

A gully on the property would have to be filled in to avoid slopes in excess of 20 percent and create at least one buildable home site.

A permanent open space parcel of 22 acres would include a 50-foot buffer for Pismo clarkia habitat. Of the 1,260 oak trees on the site, 11 would be transplanted, and

44 new trees would be planted.

The project also includes a plan for restoring Meadow Creek, which flows through the site, and constructing an emergency access from the south on a permanent easement through a former school site owned by Lucia Mar Unified School District.

A well on the property that does not draw from the Santa Maria Valley Groundwater Basin will be dedicated to the city and is expected to provide about 50 acre-feet of water a year.

But area residents weren't satisfied with the revised proposal.

Patrick Smith said the dense cluster of homes on small lots would be “totally out of character with the surrounding neighborhood.” He said the small, sloped lots would be difficult to build on and would make the two-story homes seem three stories tall.

“Approval of this project now will kick the can down the road and push difficult constraints issues on individual builders ... who will seek individual variances,” Smith said.

MaryAnn Otter said it's unreasonable to expect 15 homeowners to pay the costs for the homeowners association to monitor construction and environmental issues as proposed.

She also objected to the developer selling vacant lots where buyers would have custom homes built to fit the terrain, saying houses should be predesigned and built on larger, graded lots.

“No one, not even the developer, knows what the development will look like,” she said, calling it a “pig in a poke.”

Anna Unkovich called the site an “environmental treasure” whose protection “has come up again and again and again.”

“How can we allow the destruction of oaks in this environmental area?” she told commissioners. “You are the official stewards of this land. I ask you to simply hold firm on the protections you've established.”

Barneich agreed with much of the residents' concerns and was particularly troubled about filling in the gully she called a “beautiful canyon.”

“I'm really struggling to approve this project because I know homes are probably going to go here,” she said. “The mitigation sounds good on paper, but I'm reluctant to believe it will all be followed to a T.”

But Keen said he wasn't bothered by the plan to fill in the gully to provide home sites.

“If they didn't (fill it), it would move (the project) into the area impacted by clarkia, trees and riparian habitat,” he said “It's an ideal way to get building lots on the property.”

Commissioner Richard Marshall, who moved to recommend the project with a number of modified conditions, also supported the plan.

“Short of buying the land from the owner, I don't see how we can avoid development there,” he said. “The next best approach is, what's reasonable for the land?”

He also said he was not bothered by the lack of predesigned homes, noting the “lot sales” development is “extremely common and very routine.”

Marshall said the most important aspect was the elimination of the Class 1 impacts, which can't be mitigated, to the oaks and Pismo clarkia.

May 11, 2008