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One of the most prominent redevelopment projects for San Ramon’s Bishop Ranch neighborhood is poised to continue moving forward following the City Council’s decision earlier this week to reject an appeal that was heard at a special meeting.
The discussion extended until late into the evening Tuesday as the council spent more than three hours hearing reviews of the Orchards project — which is set to replace the former Chevron Park site on Bollinger Canyon Drive with nearly 3,000 new housing units across multiple neighborhoods over the course of 20 years — as well as arguments from appellant Brian Swanson.
While the council and the appellant spent more than an hour in back-and-forth on a range of topics brought forward in the appeal, including conflicting interpretations of the California Environmental Quality Act and a traffic engineer’s report prepared for the project, councilmembers remained unpersuaded by the end of the hearing that there were grounds to determine that the city’s planning commission had made an error in its approval of the project earlier this year.
“I do believe the city did follow the appropriate law and process, and I thought the responses and the staff report point by point in the appeal were adequately explained,” Mayor Mark Armstrong said ahead of that evening’s vote.
“The city did not avoid an environmental review on this project,” Armstrong continued. “The environmental impacts of the development at this site were analyzed as part of the General Plan 2040 EIR. State law specifically allows projects that are consistent with that plan and density to rely on prior environmental analysis unless there are project specific impacts that are unique to the site.”
In addition to challenging the city’s interpretation of CEQA and other relevant laws, Swanson argued that a likely increase in vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions that were identified in the environmental impact report prepared for the current general plan meant that the Orchards project should be subject to “more care, not less,” in his calls for further environmental review of the project.
“I respectfully ask the council to focus on whether the record demonstrates with substantial evidence why no further review is warranted for these approvals,” Swanson said at the conclusion of his presentation on the appeal.
In response to a question from councilmember Sridhar Verose on what level of analysis he believed would be sufficient for the project, Swanson said that modeling rather than screening would be needed to determine that.
“You need to do detailed modeling, detailed modeling especially when the previous EIR identified it as an issue,” Swanson said. “Second, even if the modeling is done in detail, down to the nitty gritty, you need to make sure you’re following through with mitigation measures to try and attempt to reduce those potential environmental impacts.”
“Relying on CCTA in its countywide jurisdiction here in San Ramon? That’s not adequate, especially in the sense that Orchards is a complete transformation of use,” he continued. “And it’s even more rich that Chevron’s departure and continued disinvestment in California was celebrated by many here in California. Yet, here we are in California locally determining whether the EIR checklist is adequate.”
Overall, Swanson said that the issue with the project’s application material and the city’s process for approval was based on “not enough analysis, and conjecture,” repeating calls for detailed VMT modeling.
“So you are telling me that for 20 years we need to have a crystal ball and figure out how the transportation evolves, based on that, we need to come up with an analysis and show you how, is that the expectation?” Verose asked.
“You need to do your best,” Swanson said.
The applications approved by the planning commission in February were for the Orchards Master Plan and the Orchards Neighborhood District Development, the latter of which is for the first 358-unit housing project set to be built. While the master plan encompasses the other portions of the project that are set to be developed in the coming decades, Planning Division Manager Cindy Yee emphasized that each of those projects will be subject to their own environmental review processes.
“Any development plan application will have an environmental review associated with that,” Yee said.
Swanson continued to argue that the city’s approval of the project and others in Bishop Ranch was based on insufficient analysis, and a failure to account for existing traffic congestion and patterns.
“Camino Ramon looks like a more tidy Iran,” Swanson said. “And there’s been no cumulative impact analysis, no fiscal analysis, no absorption rate analysis.”
While the council’s decision that evening hinged on whether or not the planning commission had made any errors in approving the project applications, the conversation during questions and answers with Swanson and public comments later on wound up serving as a referendum on a wide range of complaints about traffic in the city, opposition to new housing developments, impacts of new development, and the city’s internal processes.
“As we continue to develop this city, it’s really disappointing to see all the trees that are getting cut down,” said Kirsten Duratov, a San Ramon resident who spent decades working at Chevron, during public comment. “I heard they’re all diseased. I don’t think all the redwoods were. But I hope that you would consider in the future things to allow a little more space for trees so we don’t have some of the development where there’s literally five feet between the streets.”
Duratov also echoed concerns about existing traffic issues in the city and the potential for more as housing inventory increases and the population grows.
“Walking down from Bollinger is super dangerous, and I can’t imagine what’s going to happen when all this housing comes in,” Duratov said. “I would love a walkable city. I’m still going to walk in the city, but I do think some of the concerns about traffic are an issue. And I really do ask that we could get more details on how all of this is going to work. It’s terrible already.”
Former mayor Greg Carr spoke in support of Swanson, and took issue with the framing of the staff report prepared for that evening’s meeting in which the recommendation was to deny the appeal.
“I don’t want them telling you or us,” Carr said. “They make that determination and nobody’s coming down. I thought somebody’s making that appeal and they see that – if that was me, all hell would break loose, because that’s not right. You deliberate and then you determine and direct staff. But not just go from deliberate to adopt. I’ve been seeing that since ’87 with the planning people in this city and it’s damn tiring.”
Former councilmember Jim Blickenstaff said he would be consulting with attorneys from Greenfire Law, an environmental law firm in Berkeley that has challenged multiple housing projects in the city and the region, “to get the definitive answer” on legal questions raised by Swanson’s appeal.
Among Greenfire’s clients is Citizens Against Market Place Apartment Development (CAMPAD), which the firm is representing in an upcoming appeal hearing on April 23 arguing against a 2024 judge’s ruling in favor of the city in a lawsuit brought by the neighborhood group after its own appeals of the Market Place redevelopment project were rejected by the city.
CAMPAD leader Susie Ferris-Inderkum said that traffic concerns about the Orchards project were parallel to some of the points raised by those opposing the Market Place project, and noted that a rejected appeal from the City Council is not the end of the story for those opposing projects in the city.
“This won’t be the only appeal if you deny it,” Ferris-Inderkum said. “There will be others, because the process of evaluation and approval for staff giving notices of exemption is a problem. It’s a serious problem.”
While the council ultimately voted to uphold the planning commission’s earlier approval of the Orchards applications and reject the appeal, many of Swanson’s other complaints are set to be heard in three different cases making their way through Contra Costa County Superior Court.
There is a demurrer hearing set for Wednesday (April 15) in one case, a hearing on a motion for judgement or dismissal in another on May 13. The most recent complaint, filed last month, does not have any hearings scheduled so far.
