Article taken from the Santa
Barbara News Press Homeowners oppose plan for
luxury enclave By
MORGAN GREEN 06/17/05
A show of hands by Rancho Embarcadero property owners on Wednesday revealed early opposition to a plan that would surround the neighborhood with private land preserves dotted with luxury homes. The overwhelming straw vote at a meeting attended by more than 50 Rancho Embarcadero homeowners came after critics said the 26-home project, dubbed the Tecolote Preserve, could come about only if the county altered a cornerstone agriculture preservation rule that establishes a minimum of 40 acres per home in rural areas. Many said they attended the special session of the Embarcadero Municipal Improvement District's board, the neighborhood's governing body, because the board considered the development proposed for the area uphill from Bacara Resort & Spa a "done deal" by the county. The board was preparing to negotiate with the developer for favorable treatment in exchange for cooperation on issues from hiking privileges and road access to a share of the development's property taxes. Any deal now would be premature, said homeowner Joan Bolton. "Perhaps this bears more investigation," she said. Board President Dan Suchman said the agency will decide its course after reviewing questionnaires distributed to residents. Their gist seemed apparent Wednesday night. The Tecolote Preserve project "is bad planning" and "the worst kind of leapfrog development," said Noel Langle, a Rancho Embarcadero resident and former county zoning administrator. County officials completed a preapplication examination of the plan this spring at the request of the developer, Wallover LLC of New York, a company operated by Alvin Dworman, who owns Bacara, located just across Highway 101 from Rancho Embarcadero and the 1,047-acre development site. In an April 29 letter, a county planner stated that there would be countywide implications in changing a bedrock rural protection policy to accommodate nearly double the number of allowable homes on the acreage -- meaning the door could be opened to nonfarm housing projects in rural areas away from existing communities. It's not known when Wallover intends to submit a formal application to the county. The company's local spokesman, John Davies, was on the East Coast on Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Others involved in the project declined to comment. The Wallover plan calls for 26 houses on lots of two or three acres apiece. The houses would be scattered through 428 acres of private agricultural preserve, acreage that is now under commercial cultivation. The lemon and avocado orchards and vegetable and herb gardens are operated by Bacara, in part for its own restaurants. The remainder of the development, about 619 acres in rugged foothills just below Los Padres National Forest, would be a private nature preserve. Home buyers would own equal shares of the farm and natural area, with control through a homeowners association. A 10-acre equestrian center for the residents also is sketched in. As is, the Wallover parcel contains legal lots for up to 15 houses. Rancho Embarcadero is a close-knit neighborhood of 160 homes on one-acre lots in Tecolote Canyon about half a mile inside the county's rural-urban boundary, which is Goleta's western city limit. Its residents do not consider their enclave an example of the urban expansion that many of them decry. In a "grandfathering" action decades ago, the county designated the already-developed area as an "existing developed rural neighborhood." The purpose, said Mr. Langle, was to prevent Rancho Embarcadero from expanding and building more homes. The county, he said, intended to preserve the rest of the area as rural. Michael Lunsford, representing the Gaviota Coast Conservancy, told the Embarcadero Municipal Improve- ment District board that much of the acreage the developer wants to designate as nature and farming preserves, in trade for additional house sites, is so steep that county rules already forbid development there. "This is clearly an effort to build housing in an area not zoned for it," he said. At the meeting, Bacara Ranch manager John Hunt said that designating 93 percent of the Wallover property as preserves was better for long-term ranch operations than if the existing 15 lots on the tract were sold piecemeal with one home on each. He told some audience members that granting Rancho Embarcadero residents special access to the tract for hiking and other activities would be a problem. Counting Rancho Embarcadero families and visitors, he said, "it could be thousands of people." Other concerns voiced by Rancho Embarcadero homeowners were the loss of the area's rural quality, traffic through their neighborhood to the new housing and access to the private preserves.
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