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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
May 15, 2007
Lagoon Valley
How Does its
Future Sound to You?
Nicole Byrd
Having a beautiful, scenic area
where you can hike, fish, or just spend a day with family and friends is something
the citizens of Vacaville value. This is
why Lagoon Valley is such a treasure for the community.
Located on Pena Adove
Road off of Interstate 80, Lagoon Valley is a 470 acre park that offers biking
trails,
hiking trails, fishing, an 18-hole disc golf
course, a playground, barbeque pits, picnic areas, a dog park, an archery range
and much more.
Having an outdoors pace with so much meaning to a community is something that
many people do not want to see marred or changed. A 1991 agreement that allowed
Triad Communities, a development company, to build in Lagoon Valley has spurred
many mixed emotions.
There have been many protests
against this development project by citizens as well as groups such as Greenbelt
Alliance, a non-profit group that focuses on
the Bay Area's land conservation and urban planning, according to its website.
This feature is intended to provide the perspective of both Triad Communities
and Greenbelt Alliance so that Vacaville's citizens can come to their own
conclusions on how they feel about this development project.
Triad
Communities LP and Standard Pacific Homes have a plan to improve and develop
Lagoon Valley, while still keeping its rural feel by preserving and enhancing
the park. Triad is a development company based in Seattle that has been developing
projects in Solano County since 1996.
[...]
What Lagoon Valley’s Past Could Mean for Vacaville’s
Future
by: Nicole Byrd
Greenbelt Alliance
Lagoon Valley is one of those places that pop up in the news every so often.
You see several stories about developments and lawsuits, then it all settles
down with no visible change to the valley. It can be confusing. So much
has happened, and yet there’s no evidence of any change on the ground.
So what is going on in Lagoon Valley? What has happened so far, and what
lies ahead?
Welcome to Lagoon Valley
Lagoon Valley is the gateway to Vacaville
from the west. Visible from
Interstate 80, it is a beautiful green valley, framed by rolling hills
and oak woodlands.
It is home to Lagoon Valley Lake and the Lagoon Valley/Pena Adobe Regional
Park, as well as Hines Nursery.
A Fateful Agreement
At the beginning of the 1980s,
Vacaville considered preserving Lagoon Valley by setting it aside as open space
separating Fairfield and Vacaville.
In the late 1980s, however, growth pressures intervened. Both Fairfield
and Vacaville considered annexing the valley into their city limits. Developers
wanted to build
a new golf course development there, and in 1988, the Vacaville City Council
approved a study on developing Lagoon Valley.
In 1990, the City of Vacaville annexed lower Lagoon Valley (the part
of the valley that is south of I-80). In 1991, the City finalized a plan
for
the
valley’s
development and entered into a development agreement for a proposed project
that was to include a Bank of America center, a Kaiser hospital, and
735 houses.
These steps
were controversial. Many Vacaville residents opposed the development.
A group called Voter’s Choice to Save Lagoon Valley was formed to oppose
the valley’s
development. The only way to overturn the City’s decision was by
a voter referendum.
The group only had thirty days to collect signatures, and fell short by
just 116. That narrow loss was momentous, because it ended the best chance
of
stopping development of the valley.
The Economy Steps In
The early
1990s were a period of recession for California, and suddenly major new
developments became much less lucrative.
Bank of America decided not to do the project in the valley after all,
citing infrastructure costs. The valley’s remote location and total
lack of development meant that it had no water or sewer services, and the
developer
would have had
to contribute toward the high cost of installing that infrastructure.
For now, Lagoon
Valley had seen a reprieve.
But with the development agreement still in place, the valley was still
slated for urbanization someday.
A Change of Plans
As the economy
bounced back with the dot-com boom, the City Council decided it had waited
long enough. In 1999, the council rezoned the valley for executive housing
.
In 2002, Triad Communities proposed to build the high-end housing development
the City Council had been hoping for.
The new development
proposed by Triad included 1,325 houses, a golf course, 1,000,000 square
feet of office space, and up to 50,000 square feet of retail. This was different
from the original development that the City Council had approved in 1991.
Because of these differences, the City Council had to amend the general plan
and
change
the development agreement.
This provided
another opening for people who wanted to protect Lagoon Valley. Two groups
took up the charge: Friends of Lagoon Valley and Greenbelt Alliance.
Friends of Lagoon
Valley is a local group formed to prevent development of the Valley and
permanently protect it as open space.
Greenbelt Alliance is a Bay Area-wide
nonprofit that
works to protect open space and make cities better places to live. With
help from Greenbelt Alliance, Friends of Lagoon Valley gathered signatures
for a referendum
like the one filed in 1991. Both groups also filed a lawsuit saying that
the environmental impact report failed to adequately reflect the project’s
impacts.
This time
enough signatures were gathered to get the referendum on the ballot.
It was to go before voters in March 2005.
It seemed
like a victory for protecting the valley. But it wasn’t.
According to Greenbelt Alliance’s legal counsel, all the lawsuit
could do was slow the inevitable. Because the city had entered into that
development
agreement back in 1991, neither the lawsuit nor the referendum could
stop development.
A New Opportunity
In late 2004, Greenbelt Alliance, Triad, and the City of Vacaville decided
to settle their lawsuit.
Ideally, for Greenbelt Alliance, the valley wouldn’t
be developed; but if it was to be developed, the best thing would be
to protect other areas from a similar fate.
Friends of Lagoon Valley decided to continue its opposition to the development.
The first court ruling went against the Friends, but the group has appealed
and the case is still pending.
The result
of the settlement was that although the Lagoon Valley development could
go forward -- at a greatly reduced scale -- the city would move forward with
a tool to protect
open space elsewhere around the city by establishing a new “urban planning
area.” This offered a new opportunity to plan for the future of
Vacaville.
Planning for the Future
An urban planning area is a
tool to deal with growth before it happens. It enables the community to
plan for where and how development should occur, and what lands
should be preserved. It creates an officially mapped area that separates
urban land from its surrounding greenbelt of farms, watersheds and parks.
It lasts
for a specific time, usually around 20 years, and it includes room to
accommodate new growth over that time.
An urban planning area would
put more control over how the community grows in the hands of local residents.
Because it has to be put into effect by Vacaville
voters, and because it can only be changed by a vote of the people, local
residents get more of a say about development. For instance, if Pleasants
Valley and
Upper Lagoon Valley were outside the adopted planning area, any development
there would
have to be approved by a vote.
An urban planning area in Vacaville would help to direct new growth and
investment into the city’s center. This would boost the city’s efforts
to revitalize the downtown and provide more customers for local shops.
It would
also encourage
compact development, like townhomes, apartments, and condominiums, so
seniors could get around without driving and young people could find
homes they can
afford without having to move out of the county.
It would also make good sense
financially. Growing within the existing urban area, where roads, schools,
transit, and other infrastructure are already available,
is a much more efficient use of taxpayer dollars.
Looking Ahead
The existence of the 1991 development agreement and the city’s enthusiasm
for developing Lagoon Valley make it difficult to prevent development there.
But the fate of other farming valleys still hangs in the balance, as does the
entire city’s future growth.
This, finally, is the new opportunity: the chance for Vacaville residents
to step back from what happens to one valley, and take a broader look at
what
will happen to the entire community and the lands all around it. Now is
the time to
preserve the farmland, scenic valleys, and rolling hills that surround
Vacaville, and craft a better plan for the future.
Nicole Byrd lives and works in Fairfield, and is the Solano-Napa
field representative for Greenbelt Alliance. Greenbelt Alliance is a non-profit
organization
that has worked since 1958 to protect open space and promote livable communities
throughout the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
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