HomeMy WebLinkAboutBates 20216-20222 Havlik From: Scott, Shawna
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 2:01 PM
To: CityClerk
Cc: Emily Creel; Codron, Michael
Subject: FW: Froom Ranch Specific Plan
Attachments: Froom Council letter2.doc; Villaggio Open Space Statement.pdf
Please post attached correspondence, City Council September 15, 2020, Item # 9 Froom Ranch Specific Plan.
From:
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2020 1:29 PM
To: Scott, Shawna <sscott@slocity.org>; Emily Creel <ecreel@swca.com>
Subject: Froom Ranch Specific Plan
Greetings ladies, can you please forward the attached to the City Council for the Froom Ranch Specific Plan item on the
September 15 agenda? Please attach the "Villaggio Open Space Statement" as we refer to it a number of times in our
correspondence. Thank you both!
Neil Havlik
1
20216
TO: The Honorable City Council of the City of San Luis Obispo
FROM: Neil Havlik, California Native Plant Society, San Luis Obispo Chapter(CNPS-SLO)
SUBJECT: FROOM RANCH SPECIFIC PLAN AGENDA ITEM, September 15, 2020
Dear Mayor Harmon and Council Members:
At your meeting of September 15, 2020, you will be asked to approve various steps of the Froom
Ranch Specific Plan (FSRP), located on Los Osos Valley Road and Calle Joaquin. These steps
include certification of the project's Environmental Impact Report, (EIR), approval of certain
changes to the City's General Plan, approval of the Specific Plan and Vesting Tentative Map,
application for annexation, and other actions. The California Native Plant Society, San Luis
Obispo County Chapter (CNPS-SLO) would like to address various issues associated with this
project for your consideration.
We have come a long way from April 2016, when the FRSP as a concept first received the go-
ahead from the City Council. We especially wish to express our gratitude to Councilmember
Christiansen, who insisted at that time that an"actionable" alternative which kept the develop-
ment below the 150 foot elevation line be included in the EIR for analysis. That alternative
ended up being recognized as the "environmentally superior" alternative of the several
alternatives studied (including the project as originally proposed).
We also acknowledge, and express our appreciation to the project sponsors, for the important
changes that they have made to the project as a result of the analysis and findings of the project's
EIR.
We still have concerns about certain aspects of the project, specifically the ultimate disposition
of the open space lands of the project site, and the effects of the rerouting of Froom Creek
around the project site. We ask that the Council take certain additional steps described below to
strengthen and clarify the justification of its actions, and to provide further direction to the
project sponsors, City staff, and other agencies with jurisdiction over aspects of the project.
The 150 foot elevation line. Again we acknowledge the project sponsors for their decision to
relocate those portions of the Villaggio project above the 150 foot elevation line to below that
line. The EIR clearly showed the lands above that elevation to have significant resource value
which would be very difficult or impossible to mitigate, and many impacts were unavoidable
except by project redesign. Furthermore that elevation line has been an important limit in the
City's General Plan in the Irish Hills area for many years, and is at least partially responsible for
the creation of Irish Hills Natural Reserve, the City's largest and most diverse open space.
We also acknowledge the effort on the Madonna portion of the project to redesign it to relocate
the histaric Froom Ranch dairy buildings into a rural setting as opposed to the busy, urban
setting ariginally envisioned. We have been persuaded by the project sponsars that they have
done all that they could to keep private development below the 150 foot elevation line at the
20217
storage or quarry area, and we therefore withdraw our opposition to the private development
currently proposed at that site, which will be at or above the 150 foot elevation line. We base
this upon several findings, which we recommend that the Council adopt or reference in justifying
the General Plan amendment that is necessary to allow this aspect of the development, to wit
l. The storage or former quarry area has been so used for many years, with numerous
changes in elevation and ground materials due to quarrying activities and use of the site
for equipment and materials storage;
2. This use over the years has resulted in the site having very limited habitat value;
3. Re-grading and proper soil compaction of the site, relocating the historic Froom
Ranch buildings, developing a trailhead park which also serves neighborhood needs,
addressing the need for significant landscaping and habitat enhancement, and other
efforts, creates a particular burden on this portion of the Froom Ranch Specific Plan.
We appreciate that City staff included the reasoning above in the staff report; however, they did
not include the point of that reasoning, which was (and is) to keep intact the 150 foot elevation
standard elsewhere in the Irish Hills. The EIR stated that at least two other properties could be
affected by the removal of the 150 foot elevation limit. We do not think that is appropriate or
desirable. Therefore we repeat our conclusion here and ask that the Council include it in its
findings as a definitive statement about this matter:
For the above reasons a special, minor adjustment of the 150 foot elevation limit line in
this environmentally degraded location only can be justified to permit development as
currently (September 2020)proposed in the FRSP.
This rationale would serve to retain the 150 foot elevation limit for other portions of the Irish
Hills affected by that General Plan requirement.
Open Space Lot(Lot 1). The Vesting Tentative Map for the Froom Ranch Specific Plan
identifies essentially all of the land above the 150 foot elevation in the Villaggio portion of the
project site as an open space lot(Lot 1). This lot also includes the so-called"cove" area, which
holds the property's small oak woodland site and several small streams which flow into it, as
well as serving as an important wildlife corridor. Again, we recognize and appreciate the
changes made in this location by the project sponsors, which have resulted in the inclusion of the
cove into the open space lot.
Our concern is the ultimate fate of this lot. We have received a copy of an undated, unsigned,
one-page memarandum entitled"Villaggio Open Space Statement" (attached), which offers three
alternatives for the disposition of the lot. One alternative calls for an open space easement to be
held by the City, with ownership to remain with the owners of the Villaggio property. The
second is far the property to be dedicated to the City. The third is to grant an open space
20218
easement to the City, with fee ownership to be transferred at some undetermined time in the
future.
City staff have again included in the staff report the reasoning behind the CNPS-SLO
recommendation regarding Lot 1; however, the staff report states that the City cannot require
dedication as a condition of approval. This overlooks the fact that such a dedication has been
voluntarily offered in the "Villaggio Open Space Statement". The staff report goes on to say that
the City will have to evaluate whether or not it can accept such an offer. This is in effect saying
that the City can handle the 1,300 acre open space it already owns and manages, including miles
of trails, rare species, excellent wildlife habitat, and specialized vegetation (serpentine
bunchgrass), but has to struggle to figure out if it can handle the inclusion of an additional 50
acres contiguous with, and containing the same features, into the 1,300 acres. We find this
approach very difficult to understand; it seems to us that acceptance of this offer should be a
natural. We strongly recommend that the Council formally accept the offer of alternative
number 2 or 3, or at least make a clear statement that this is the Council's preferred outcome.
There is ample reason in City policy to support this choice. The EIR clearly identified the
presence of numerous conditions of high resource value on the site: a Federally recognized rare
plant species; several additional rare plant species of concern to the State of California, an
important wildlife corridor, a rare habitat (serpentine grassland), wetlands, and other features.
City open space policies and programs state that open space lands with conditions such as those
above requiring special attention should be protected in City ownership (See General Plan Open
Space Element, Appendix B, Paragraphs 3A, B, E, and G; 4B, C, and D; and SD). This action
will round out the already great Irish Hills Natural Reserve, and is simply the right thing to do.
To provide further protection, a conservation easement held by a qualified organization other
than the City, which restricts permissible uses to those supportive of open space and wildlife
habitat (such as is already the case at Irish Hills Natural Reserve, where the Land Conservancy
of San Luis Obispo County holds a conservation easement) should also be placed on this lot.
This also has implications for the matter addressed below.
Modification of the Agricultural Conservation Easement. The offer of conservation of Lot 1
is integral to justifying the changes in the agricultural conservation easement, which have been
proposed as part of the FRSP. It means that the public will be gaining a significant open space
and ecological resource in exchange for the loss of a portion (1.6 acres) of the existing 7.1 acre
agricultural conservation easement. We acknowledge that other nearby areas will be added to
the existing easement thus actually enlarging it to 7.8 acres, but the additional 2.3 acres is not of
equivalent value to the 1.6 acres being lost, so we believe that great care is needed to avoid
setting a precedent that the City could come to regret. By including Lot 1 as a dedication to the
City, the open space component of FRSP offers a "package" of attractive public open space
benefits—the open space lot, the histaric and trailhead park, a modified but enlarged agricultural
conseroation easement area, and a reestablished Froom Creek—as compensation for the approval
of the adjustment of the conservation easement and of the project. We strongly recommend that
findings to that effect be included in your decision rationale. This is important in arder to
20219
highlight the uniqueness of this situation and preempt possible requests for adjustments to other
easements where such gains may not be involved.
Rerouting of Froom Creek and Stormflow Issues. Our other major concern involves the
results of the rerouting of Froom Creek. We recognize the central importance of this rerouting to
the project—in fact, we believe that the project might not be able to be done without such
rerouting—and we further recognize that the current location of Froom Creek is not its original
or natural location. Therefore, we suggest that a finding that the opportunity presented by the
life plan community rises to the level of an overriding consideration justifying this exception to
the City's creek setback ordinance is appropriate. The purpose of such a finding is to again
highlight the unique situation here, and allow for it without weakening the Creek Setback
Ordinance as it generally applies to the City's waterways.
We recognize that the project sponsors have made changes to the Froom Creek rerouting design
to accommodate concerns raised in the EIR; we especially note the apparent elimination of the
"outside curve" levee. This levee had an opening,which rendered it basically useless, serving
only as a elevated platform inviting to weeds and other non-riparian and non-native species. It
is not clear from the submitted plans whether this elimination is complete or not, but we would
recommend its complete removal from the point where the rerouted creek begins to parallel the
identified wetland boundary to the southerly end of the property. We also appreciate the concept
of the larger area serving as a flood basin, but we remain concerned that the existing wetland
may get drowned with too much water over an extended period of time, and that the area may
not be able to hold all the water in a major storm event, placing at risk the existing developments
along Calle Joaquin in that area. In addition, we remain concerned that the rerouting may
intercept the groundwater flow in the area and dry up the wetland in the summer months; this
also must still be addressed. Finally, we still have been unable to see the vision that the project
sponsors have for the rerouted creek, what they believe it would look like in its fully revegetated
state, and how it would function ecologically.
This rerouting and revegetation is a huge undertaking. It will take years to be successfully
completed, and has many potential pitfalls and points of failure. Therefore we urge that the City
Council require that a highly detailed restoration plan be submitted to the State and Federal
regulatory agencies overseeing such matters, and that this submittal demonstrate among other
matters that:
1. The rerouting will not adversely affect the existing wetlands at Calle Joaquin, either
by extensive and long-term flooding (too much water) or by intercepting the groundwater
flow there (too little water);
2. Stormflows can safely and adequately exit the area(including the so-called"cut-off'
wetland) in a safe and timely manner;
3. The proposed revegetation palette will be diverse, healthy, and ecologically functional
within a reasonable timeframe; and
20220
4. The relocated detention basin will function ecologically as we11 or better than the
currently existing basins, which are proposed for removal.
We all hope the FRSP will be successful and will contribute to the quality of community life in
San Luis Obispo. It is the environmentally sensitive nature of the site that has driven the many
concerns expressed by CNPS-SLO and by others about the project. We can now see the
outcome of a highly analytical EIR, and the notable changes that the project sponsors were
willing to make to the project in response to community concerns. We will now be moving into
a new phase in which details such as those described in this letter will need to be addressed. We
appreciate the opportunity to continue to participate in the further detailing of this project with so
much significance for the City of San Luis Obispo. Thank you.
Neil Havlik, PhD,
City of San Luis Obispo Natural Resources Manager (retired)
California Native Plant Society, San Luis Obispo Chapter (CNPS-SLO)
September 14, 2020
20221
VILLAGGIO OPEN SPACE$TATEMENT
II Villaggio at San Luis Obispo, LLC("Villaggio"), and the Natural Resources division of the City of San Luis
Obispo's Office of Sustainability have discussed the manner of preserving as "open space" the portion of
the Villaggio "upper parcel"that is above the 150-foot urban reserve line. They have agreed that this will
be accomplished in one of three (3) alternative ways, i.e., either:
1. OPEN SPacE EasEMENT. By Villaggio retaining title to the open space area and recording an open
space easement under the 1974 Open Space Easement Act (CA Government Code §§ 51070, et
seq.) (the "Open Space Act"). Under this alternative, the Villaggio and the City would agree upon
the conservation objectives (e.g., protecting endangered plants, preserving wild animal access,
etc.),and imposed restrictions on usage subject to certain rights and burdens reserved to Villaggio
as owner of the property (e.g., hiking trail, a viewing platform, permitted livestock grazing, and
obligation to pay property taxes and bear liability for injuries to persons using the property).
2. CoNVEvaNCE To Cirv. By Villaggio causing the open space area to be a separate legal parcel, and
conveying title to that separate legal parcel to the City. Under this alternative,Villaggio as former
owner of the property would not have any ongoing responsibility for maintaining the property or
liability to persons using the property.
3. INITIAL EASEMENT AND SUBSEQUENT CONVEYANCE. BY VIIlaggl0:
(a) Easement. Initially granting to the City an open space easement under the Open Space
Act when the final Tract Map is recorded; and
(b) Conveyance. Subsequently causing the open space area to be a separate legal parcel, and
thereafter conveying title to that separate legal parcel to the City.
Villaggio expects to select a capital partner for development of the Villaggio Project by the end of calendar
year 2020. After Villaggio selects its capital partner and that capital partner provides input on the
alternatives and the terms of the preferred alternative, Villaggio will implement one of the three (3)
alternatives listed above.
C:\Users\rhill\Desktop\Villaggio Open Space Statement.docx
20222