"Save Our Ridges"

The REAL information regarding NWSP (Northwest Specific Plan)

San Ramon City Council recently approved a development and zoning plan to locate over 800 homes on the ridgelines of the NWSP. They claim this approval does not require the vote of the citizens of San Ramon. This assumption has since been challenged by two lawsuits, one by the Sierra Club and another by the East Bay Regional Parks. Many residence of San Ramon support these lawsuits to preserve the Las Trampas Ridge and hope you will also.

A few reasons for the lawsuits are listed below:

Las Trampas Ridgeline

The aesthetic impact of housing on what is now open space will compromise the integrity of the adjacent Las Trampas Regional Wilderness. It will have major impacts on environmental and biological resources, and park users. The land includes the southern end of the Las Trampas Ridge. (See map below. Click map for larger map size.)

Faria Ranch Development Site
Faria Remainder Parcel
East Bay Regional Park District

San Ramon's General Plan and Ordinance 197-

Ordinance 197 specifically prohibits development on or adjacent to Major and Minor Ridges. These lands are to be preserved for open space. It also provides that exceptions to such policies "must be approved by the voters of San Ramon."

It prohibits:

1. Development within 100 vertical feet of major ridges and within 50 vertical feet of minor ridges;
2. Development on slopes greater than 20%;
3. Development within 100 feet of the center of a creek bed; and, construction of dwelling units in excess of 32 feet in height.

The city and the developer are planning to build approximately 800 homes on our lovely view shed!! They will be grading over one million yards of earth and MOVING a creek (this means filling it in and actually moving it vertically). The land contains three majors ridges, two creeks, and the Calaveras fault line.

Any exemptions regarding Ordinance 197 must be put to a vote of the people; which this San Ramon City Council has refused to do. The General Plan has Ordinance 197 embedded in it at least 25 times and it has not been modified at all by vote of the people over the years. If we let the City of San Ramon have their way on this development where does it stop?! This project is in direct violation of Ordinance 197 and should not stand.

School or Open Space-

The General Plan called for a school and if a school was deemed not necessary by the San Ramon School District then that dedicated land should revert to open space.

As approved by San Ramon City Council, that the developer could use 2.4 acres for an Educational Facility or Outreach Facility. SRCC is not requiring the developer to maintain 15-20 acres of usable land in case a school is later needed (which is sure to happen due to the increase of approximately 200 students with the NWSP development and even more when another development known as the Crow Canyon Specific Plan comes into effect). Do you know what that does to the residents that already live here? They will need to drive their kids clear across town to another school because Twin Creeks Elementary will be so overcrowded. This overcrowding of our schools could potentially threaten our "Blue Ribbon" standards.

Problems with the EIR (Environmental Impact Report)-

On the Draft EIR pertaining to Air Quality: Air quality could not be mitigated. Then miraculously on the Final EIR (with nothing changed!) it states that the air quality would be OK. In regards to the traffic problems that are going to arise, the EIR used data from 1992 in order for the numbers to all work out. SRCC does not plan on changing any roads to accommodate all the traffic that is going to be using Crow Canyon and other roads. There will be a minimum of 1,600 more cars on the road with the NWSP development and even more when the Crow Canyon Specific Plan goes into effect.

Community Park Size

A big push by the City was to have a community park within walking distance (3 miles) and approximately 2.5 acres per 1,000 residents. Well guess what? The Community Park that was approved is only big enough to support the NWSP neighborhood, not the surrounding residents.

The County Option

The City Council has tried to spread seeds of fear by threatening that the project could end up in the County and be much larger than the developer is asking for right now……………. BUT, the County is no longer in the business of developing next to cities and that just isn't going to happen.

Help-

This flyer is just the beginning of trying to get more concerned residents involved. There will be more information to follow and anyone interested in finding out how they can help, please contact the San Ramon Community general E-mail box.

Warm regards from concerned San Ramon citizens.
"Save Our Ridges"

Feel Free to Save and Print Save Our Ridges PDF Flyer

By-the-way, read the Introduction to San Ramon News.

San Ramon Facing Downtown Envy Disease

The Antiplanner Perspective On The San Ramon City Center

From The Thoreau Institute, a non-profit organization that seeks ways to protect the environment without big government.

The following quotes are from an article written on The Antiplanner website looking at the San Ramon City Center plan.

But the city is suffering from an acute case of "downtown envy," a disease the strikes many Sun Belt cities. Many people, including most urban planners, think that a city can’t be a real city unless it has a distinctive downtown or city center. But in today's automobile age, developers no longer build distinctive city centers, so cities that have grown up since 1945 often feel they have to subsidize them.

The article goes on to ask the tough question. Why does San Ramon need a downtown?

At the city council meeting that first heard Mehran's proposal, someone testified that San Ramon "needs a downtown." Why? San Ramon is not a pedestrian-oriented city like Berkeley — yet it is hard to really find a downtown even in Berkeley. It is not a streetcar city like Los Angeles — yet Los Angeles only has a downtown because of huge subsidies and lobbying from downtown property owners.

Anyone that has gone through the intersection of Bollinger and Alcosta Blvd. in the morning or evening commute has to wonder, do we really need more density in this particular area?

Yet I have to wonder if San Ramon needs more density. Thanks to environmental demands that all available greenspaces be kept green, San Ramon's population density has already increased to 4,400 per square mile, which is pretty high considering all the land that is in office parks. Mehran's proposal will just add to the density, which will add to the congestion. Mehran himself lives in San Francisco, so he probably doesn't mind density, but many San Ramon residents are not too keen on the idea.

Alex Mehran, of Sunset Development Company, is the developer that is leading the charge on this downtown center plan. Accordingly, "Mehran's vision in 1978 was that San Francisco was too expensive and too congested and so many companies would want to locate in a suburb that was relatively free of congestion." Now, Mehran and the City Council want to turn that San Ramon vision into a nightmare of congestion, and high rise densities like that of Concord, with eight-story office high-rises. Furthermore, Mehran wants to have a major upscale shopping anchor for the downtown center. But, no upscale department store has yet committed to the downtown plan. What happens if no upscale department store is found to anchor a downtown plan?

Maybe, the San Ramon Council needs to step back and really ask themselves if this "downtown envy" is good for San Ramon. The questions that must be addressed are: Do we want more traffic? Do we want higher densities? Do we want 8-story office high-rises?

Read the complete article:
Anti-Town Planning #2: San Ramon City Center

Would also like to thank The Harper Team for forwarding the article to us.

Feel free to email us information or links that might prove insightful to this topic or other city topics.

By-the-way, read the San Ramon News Introduction.