PITTSBURG – A controversial 606-acre parcel of land within the rolling hills of Los Medanos southwest of Pittsburg was incorporated into city limits Wednesday, clearing the way in which for a successful East Bay developer to appreciate his decades-long plans to construct custom homes near the scenic ridge.
The Faria/Southwest Hills project goals to accumulate to 1,500 recent single-family homes across the Los Medanos Ridgeline. The project, proposed by Discovery Builders – owned by Concord-based developer Albert Seeno III – has already been approved twice by the Pittsburg City Council.
The Contra Costa Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) — an influential group of city, county and special district officials answerable for overseeing the expansion of city limits — gave the green light to rezoning the Seeno-owned land in a 5-2 vote Wednesday. Farias's move forward relied on LAFCO approval to make sure future development can access services from Contra Costa Water and Delta Diablo Sanitation districts.
Before the vote, Pittsburg City Manager Garrett Evans pushed for approval, citing the project's plans to guard the mountain range, concentrate residential development within the valley, provide access to neighboring Thurgood Marshall Regional Park and preserve 44 percent of the property as open space — twice as much as originally proposed.
“This is a better project than 20 years ago,” Evans said on Wednesday. “It gives us hope, development and opportunities.”
The two commissioners who disagreed with the choice — Scott Perkins, San Ramon's deputy mayor, and Charles R. Lewis IV, an unelected public representative — expressed concern that the project developers' extensive list of environmental documents didn’t answer all of LAFCO officials' questions on the impact on surrounding open space.
Lewis insisted that crucial details in regards to the location and plan for the Faria project's development were still missing – information that LAFCO's executive director, Lou Ann Texeira, had requested in a minimum of a dozen “polite but firm letters.” Those documents, he said, were essential not only to assist the general public understand the proposed project, but in addition to enable LAFCO to think about approving annexation.
“The applicant has provided unlimited information – several boxes of documents – but the project level is not covered,” Lewis said, suggesting that there’s a lack of detail on the impacts of the development project.
He said town must have required more documentation from the developers before approving the project. “This does not seem to me to be a simple oversight that (the city of Pittsburg) overlooked or forgot. This is a willful failure to comply with the orders of this commission. I consider this both a substantive and procedural violation of due process.”
Winter King, Save Mount Diablo's attorney with the law firm Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, shared Lewis' concerns and argued that LAFCO should reject Pittsburg's annexation request.
However, Tom Geiger, the commission's legal counsel, said Pittsburg's final environmental certification from last yr was sufficient, especially since no lawsuits were filed after the City Council's April 2023 vote. In addition, he pointed to a 2022 court ruling that a programmatic environmental impact assessment was “appropriate and legal.”
“There was a small window of opportunity to take action against it,” Geiger said, “but that time has expired – the city certified it over a year ago.”
Commissioner Federal Glover said he was not originally a supporter of the Faria project, but modified his mind after years of discussions and changes to the plan.
“I know I've been trying to bring the parties together over the last few months, but it hasn't happened,” Glover said. “I don't know if further dialogue between the applicant and Save Mount Dablo will lead to anything more.”
In addition to a youth recreation center and mountaineering trails connecting to Thurgood Marshall Regional Park, plans for the opposite half of the Faria/Southwest Hills project include 265 acres of open space and greenbelt along the ridge as a buffer from the East Bay Regional Park District site, which in turn sits between a billion-dollar, 12,200-unit housing complex to be built across the hill on the previous Concord Naval Weapons Station.
But this buffer just isn’t enough to guard the nearby open spaces, say members and supporters of the nonprofit land and nature conservation organization Save Mount Diablo, which has been advocating for the “Save the Ridge” for years.
Environmentalists sent a whole lot of letters urging LAFCO to reject the annexation, saying the Albert Seeno III development was “disastrous” and threatened to “flatten the tops of Pittsburg's hills.” Opponents say Discovery Builders “never conducted a project-level environmental impact assessment as LAFCO has repeatedly requested,” nor did it provide an in depth site plan or a subdivision plan with home lots and streets.”
Seth Adams, conservation director for Save Mount Diablo, failed to convince the commission to ask for more green space – up to 500 feet – even though the regional park, with competing wildlife habitats, nature access, neighborhood traffic, fire risk and community views could be impacted by heavy grading during construction. He said Seeno's development team was unwilling to come to the negotiating table to openly discuss alternatives.
“Save Mount Diablo supports sensitive development and open space protection,” Adams said. “We don't care if Seeno goes ahead with their project, we just want them to avoid wasting the ridge and have less impact from development. That's not that arduous.”
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