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The San Ramon City Council voted to approve the planned Iron Horse Village development that was previously approved by the Planning Commission before coming to the council in response to a call for review from Councilmember Mark Armstrong in a special meeting Monday.
In a letter calling for council review of the project, Armstrong alleged that the project had been approved without sufficient consideration of several safety and comfort issues for its future residents, in particular those associated with its location near the busy intersection of Crow Canyon Road and Alcosta Boulevard, such as noise and emissions and the safety of drivers entering and exiting the development.
City staff said in a report prepared for the meeting and in a presentation at the start of the meeting that the project as it stood was consistent with the city’s standards and requirements, with its planning, engineering, and emergency departments all supporting it and calling for an affirmation of the Planning Commission’s original approval.
However, as the more than three-hour long meeting drew on, officials from Lennar, the developer behind the project, volunteered to address the concerns raised by Armstrong and others that evening, with the amended conditions of approval ultimately approved by the council.
Armstrong reiterated his concerns at the special meeting held on the topic Monday, where some of his fellow council members and a number of members of the public echoed and raised similar critiques of the potential traffic and safety hazards associated with the project.
“People walk out their front door and they’re going to have an eight-lane expressway in front of them and the ground is flat,” former San Ramon mayor Bill Clarkson said in a public comment. “There’s nothing between them but some landscaping and a wrought-iron fence.”
Clarkson called on a majority of the council to agree to approve the project only under the condition of an eight-foot wall in place of the planned iron fence.
“They’re geting their density, they’re getting all of their units, they’re essentially getting all that they want, and we’re getting a great builder, and all they need is to hear from you saying that you will not approve this project unless they put up an eight-foot wall,” Clarkson said. “And I don’t think they’re going to take you to court and sue you over an eight-foot wall when they’ve got their density and they’ve got everything else they want.”
Pat Buran, a longtime resident in a nearby neighborhood to the Iron Horse Village project, emphasized that noise was a problem in the area for current residents and would be a problem for residents in any future development without proper mitigation measures.
“Believe me, the people in this development are going to get a lot of noise,” Buran said.
She also pointed to the traffic on busy Crow Canyon Road, which would pose a risk for future residents as well as potentially be exacerbated by additional development in the area.
“It is very difficult to drive on Crow Canyon now,” Buran said. “Having an entry and an exit on Crow Canyon Road is going to make it more difficult. You need to find a way off of Alcosta. Maybe it means getting an easement from the postal service or whoever owns that land.”
Scott Perkins – who was selected as vice mayor at the previous council meeting and began his term succeeding Armstrong in the position Monday evening – said following the public comment period that the land connecting the project site with Alcosta Boulevard was owned by the postal service, and that they had denied the city’s request to use it for an easement.
“So long as they keep saying no, that’s it,” Perkins said. “We did get them to concede to having an emergency vehicle access but beyond that the answer was no.”
Perkins added that without being able to use the land owned by the postal service, the incline between Alcosta Boulevard and the project site would be too steep to hold more than one lane.
“There isn’t really much value in adding something on Alosta when you can’t put in two full lanes in and out at that location,” Perkins said. “We built highways over the Sierras and things like that, but in this case there’s not a lot of value added there.”
Near the end of the public comment period and more than two hours into the meeting, Lennar Division President Brian Olin returned to the podium to propose several amendments to the project’s conditions of approval aimed at addressing the concerns raised that evening.
“What I would like to enter into the conversation as part of hearing a consistent theme tonight – the concept of going back to the Planning Commission and delaying the hearings is obviously something that we have an interest in that we obviously want to get this development built and going,” Olin said. “And in the interest of hopefully seeking your approval tonight, I would like to address three potential amendments to the conditions of approval as proposed that I’d be in a position to agree to should there be an affirmative vote tonight.”
The first modification he suggested was an addition to conditions of approval that specified that developers would work with the city’s planning department to explore the possibility of a solid wall instead of a planned tube steel fence on Crow Canyon Road and Alcosta Boulevard.
“We’d like the approval to be such that we’ll work that out with them and we will use good faith efforts and all those types of things, but if they come up with a design for the wall that is acceptable to them then we will agree to install that as a wall vs. a tubular steel fence,” Olin said.
Olin also requested that the height of the potential wall be subject to the planning department’s review and approval.
“This isn’t a cost issue; this is an aesthetics issue that I think the city would want the ability to make the proper determination of what is the right look of that wall as it changes grades along the boulevard,” Olin said.
Another amendment Olin recommended was to a portion of the conditions of approval on the turn lane onto Crow Canyon Boulevard from the entrance and exit of the development that would have developers work with the city’s traffic engineering department to determine the appropriate length – somewhere between 150 and 200 feet – for the lane and follow the city’s recommendations.
The third suggested amendment would consist of an additional below market-rate housing unit.
“This is a plea from me that we please want to move this project along,” Olin said. “The BMR story, so on that I think we have found kind of a simple way to address that on the suggestion you made, Councilmember Perkins, which is we will provide an additional low-income – so there’s the moderate, low and very low – an additional low-income home in a single-family location. We’ll work that out with staff, but it will be one of those, and we will ask for in place of doing that that the fees we’re paying be used to offset, those fees come back to us.”
“We would be taking a big hit on that, but I think it would address some of your concerns about – now it’s not all on the left side, there will be another one; it will be a different type of product,” he added.
After some brief comments and questions, the council took a 10-minute recess during which city attorney Martin Lysons drafted the proposed amendments for discussion and a vote.
“First of all, I will say that I’m not looking to change the scope or reduce the density of this project,” Armstrong said.”That was never my intent. I wanted this to become a better project, a safer project, something that our future residents will be happy to live in, that our city will be proud of and everything else.
Armstrong said that while he supported the project as amended in order to address his concerns about the lack of a wall and the dispersal of affordable housing units, he continued to have reservations about the turning lane and the single entrance and exit, as well as the process behind their approval. However, he suggested these concerns be addressed for future developments and potentially discussed at a future goal-setting session aimed at clarifying the city’s objective standards rather than with the current project on the table.
“Just so that staff is clear that this is a priority for us, because we’re going to have more future development applications and we’ve got to get as objective and as crunchy as we can on some of these standards,” Armstrong said.
Perkins moved to approve the amended project, with Mayor Dave Hudson seconding the motion. It passed with a majority of council support.
The outcome means that Lennar will be able to move forward with next steps for the planned 125-unit development that is set to replace an existing office park at 3401 Crow Canyon Road.
