Great story but please know this is NOT just a neighborhood issue. The development is proposed for right next to the Heather Farm Park which makes it a large community issue. 3700 people have signed the petition and only about 25 homes are directly affected by this development. Mine is NOT one of those homes.

Walnut Creek's mayor and council members could end this monstrous proposed environmental action immediately. It would be interested to see which developers contributed to their campaigns, overtly or covertly. To think Walnut Creek's city logo is a tree while they stand by and hide behind nebulous legality and loopholes. The quarterly Walnut Creek newsletter In a Nutshell, feel good fluff published at taxpayer expense sent to every address in Walnut Creek, trumpted on Winter, 2021's front page: "Matt Francois Begins Term As Mayor," including the Council's "following priorities," the third of the five "Environmental sustainability and climate action."

How is allowing the destruction of the pastoral heat sink, natural drainage, home of myriad wildlife of Seven Hills Ranch's 30 acres for a Rossmoor, Jr. aiding "environmental sustainability and climate action?"

Menlo Park-based developer Ned Spieker, Jr.'s proposed retirement community has absolutely nothing to do with alleviating the Bay Area housing crisis. The leveling, paving of these 30 acres, removal of over 400 trees, 380 protected under Contra Costa County, Chapter 816-6 Tree Protection and Preservation, is entirely self-serving: 52 single-story "cottage residences, with two-bedroom condos going for $2.5 million each, clearly for the half of one percent of seniors.

There are already at least 22 senior communities, convalescent homes excluding giant Rossmoor in Walnut Creek, with its onsite and neighboring clinics, doctors; dozens of other retirement homes in adjacent Pleasant Hill, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, as well as scores of large private houses turned into senior care homes.

Rossmoor itself always has hundreds of vacancies, most luxurious by any measure, with amenities long in place, for far less money than Ned Spieker's proposal.

As for the huge restaurant onsite with liquor license, there are already 192 restaurants, bistros, cafes, bars in Walnut Creek, most of them

most of them within two miles of Seven Hills Ranch.

Aside from the noise, dust of four years construction, 17,000 truckloads of earth, we're left with more light pollution, which interrupts human circadian rhythm, causing breast cancer in women, and why Paris, the City of Light, has turned down their night lights, something Walnut Creek's banks, retailers and car dealers won't allow.

Seven Hills Ranch borders Heather Farm Park, which opened in 1970, when Walnut Creek's population half today's 74,000, so Seven Hills would provide welcomed "breathing space" for East Bay residents wanting to stroll, enjoy nature, relax. Far better than three- and four-story buildings, inc. one of 84,000 sq. ft. solely for eight dozen retirees requiring nursing care, a 622-space parking lot, the entire ranch surrounded by 10- to 22-foot retaining wall, the complex larger than an aircraft carrier.

There are many already leveled languishing strip malls and other sites far better suited for such development.

The Walnut Creek City Council could instantly quash this environmental catastrophe by denying Spieker use of narrow residential Kinross Drive as entrance road. Simple as that. Of course, this would require Council members able to wonder what future generations think of them, left them.

We already know that when on the Walnut Creek Planning Commission, present Council member and past mayor Cindy Silva rubber-stamped every one of the 140 proposals crossing her desk.

Still more telling is that there is not a word about this nightmare in In a Nutshell, let alone directing readers to the below website and petition, despite everyone from KGO-7 to the San Jose Mercury News running stories on this proposed debacle. Make no mistake: This monstrosity serves no one but Ned Spieker, Jr. of Menlo Park, while leaving us all the lesser:

Web Link

Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi (Official Lyric Video)

Contra Costa County based private developers are always so enthusiastic about overdeveloping other congested parts of the SF midpeninsula, most notably Palo Alto while a plethora of CCC residents cry NIMBY.

What comes around, goes around.

Walnut Creek is so paved over that it no longer matters.

As for Joni Mitchell...WC was never paradise. That designation is reserved for Blackhawk.