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 A rendition of the Cristallago project. Photo by Elizabeth Larson. LAKEPORT – Following more than four and a half hours of testimony and discussion on Thursday, the Lake County Planning Commission approved a rezone, general plan amendment, general plan of development and an environmental document that will allow one of the largest developments in the county's history to move forward.
The commission voted 4-1 – with District 3 Commissioner Clelia Baur voting no – to certify the final environmental impact report (EIR) for Cristallago. Three successive 3-2 votes – with Baur and District 4 Commissioner Cliff Swetnam voting no – approved the rezone, general plan amendment and general plan of development.
Cristallago Development Corp. proposes to build the resort and residential community on 860 acres along Hill Road north of Lakeport.
It's slated to include an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course, 650 single family homes, 325 resort units, a trail system, clubhouse, spa, conference center and nature preserve.
The plans for the resort still aren't finalized, and while concerns remain, such as some conflicts with the current general plan, the commissioners who voted to send the project to the next step said ultimately it's up to a higher authority – in this case, the Board of Supervisors – to give the final approvals.
Commissioners heard from numerous people throughout the hearing.
Those who supported it pointed to the potential for upscale housing, job growth, new commerce opportunities and an anchor resort on the lake's north end. They said it would be a boon to the county and emphasize its gifts.
“If you want this county to succeed, you have to give a little bit,” said businessman Bill Kearney.
The opposition centered on a large project that will permanently and negatively alter the rural lifestyle, and an overall plan that promotes a 1970s-style of development centered around golf – a sport which several people testified is a sport that's losing adherents – as well as the project's inconsistency with parts of the new general plan adopted last year.
“This project will destroy that 2008 general plan and the community growth plan that is critical to it,” said Kevin Goodwin, who lives near the project site.
By Thursday's hearing, county staff and the commission already had done a considerable amount of heavy lifting on the project, which has been on the drawing board for several years and has been the subject of several hearings.
During the previous two days, staff received about 85 additional pages of comment on the project.
Those documents included a 48-page document submitted by an attorney hired by the Sierra Club Lake Group to assess the adequacy of the final EIR, which was found wanting.
The commission took an early lunch which gave them close to two hours to try to get through all of the new documents in order to address the documents during the afternoon hearing.
Swetnam said county staff have told him that several of the issues he's brought up about Cristallago would be considered at a later time, which he took to be a conflict with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
Community Development Director Rick Coel noted that the project's programmatic EIR process is open-ended and necessarily so. That's because new standards can be expected to arise during the project's buildout, which will take place in phases over a 15- to 20-year horizon.
More specific rules about some of the development's aspects will be addressed during other steps in the process, such as application for a tentative subdivision map, Coel said. During those phases county officials will get “different bites of the apple,” he said.
During public comment, Victoria Brandon, chair of the Sierra Club Lake Group, suggested that many issues still needed to be solved before the EIR could go forward, and deferring them was improper.
John Lee, a neighbor to the proposed project, agreed that the project's EIR wasn't meeting requirements.
“Many people here are losing patience with the whole process and are looking for a way to get through this, whether it works or not,” he said.
Kearney said approving the project came down to a risk versus benefit analysis. “I think the benefit way outweighs the risk.”
Betsy Cawn had concerns about the project's water source, which must come through the county's Community Service Area (CSA) 21 in the north Lakeport area.
To connect to CSA 21, the North Lakeport Water System Inc., based in Santa Rosa, applied for a major use permit for construction of a water supply and treatment plant for up to1,330 new connections, but that permit was never activated and it expired.
Cawn said those 1,330 hookups were “a very significant amount of growth that is not addressed in the previous EIR.”
Coel clarified later in the meeting that the project's water system would have to be completed before building began.
Businesswoman Kathy Fowler said there are too many people trying not to see the county grow. She said the Cristallago plan is seeking to elevate the county.
Tom Lincoln, another local businessman who lives near the project area, said in his more than 30 years in business in Lakeport, “I've never seen the depth of famine we are experiencing right now from a business standpoint.” He also saw the project as offering a potential boost to the local economy.
Tom Powers, president of the Lakeport Unified School District Board of Trustees, told the commission that the district wanted to go on record in support of the project.
Swetnam said he wasn't happy with the EIR project, and he had narrowed his concerns to one issue – a conflict with the general plan, which called for residential to be the subordinate component in a resort development.
Baur said she saw many shortcomings in the project's final EIR. “It causes me a lot of dread,” she said, adding that she wasn't ready to certify the document.
The commission voted 4-1 to certify the final EIR, with Baur voting no, before moving to the general plan amendment, rezone and general plan of development.
Developers explain plans
Jim Burns, part of the development team, said economic development studies conducted on the county several years ago pointed to the need for an upscale resort and residential development with a signature golf course at the lake's north end.
Cristallago's developers took their cues from that study and followed the county's guidance in their plan, which they changed from more than 1,200 residential and resorts units originally.
Burns pointed out that during a 2006 Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Anthony Farrington asked that the project be more resort and less residential, and they went from a 5-1 ratio to a 2-1 ratio. But Burns said they can't lower the number of units any more.
Local business owner Christine Hutt said work and business opportunities are needed locally, and she had faith that county staff would help make the project a success.
Returning to the microphone, Brandon said the project is drawing on “paper water.” She called Cristallago a “poster child for sprawl” and 1970s-style development centering on a golf course.
“The lake is a tremendous attraction for this cohort of visitors and retirees in the future,” she said.
The project originally was to have a tie-in with a marina development on the lake, but Brandon pointed out that the lakeside property now is in foreclosure, as Lake County News has reported.
Clearlake Oaks resident and business owner Chuck Lamb said he opposed the project for a number of reasons, among them the half a million gallons of water a day the project would use, and the nearly 800 pounds of pesticide and hundreds more pounds of fertilizer that would be used annually.
The county already has six golf courses with three more proposed. “Why do we have to keep on building golf courses?” Lamb asked, showing a New York Times article that said people are giving up the sport.
Brad Peters, who lives next to the proposed site, said he didn't like to hear developers running down Lake County. “We absolutely have a gem here,” he said of Clear Lake, and Peters suggested the county needs to capitalize on that rather than golf.
Mark Mitchell, who along with partner Matt Boeger is a principal in Cristallago Development Corp., told the commission that there is plenty of water for the project, and that CSA 21 has 2,100 acre feet to serve the north Lakeport area. Mitchell said there is not yet an exact plan for where the water will be extracted for Cristallago.
Responding to requests for bonding and environmental review, he said bonding is common in such project anyway, and he noted that numerous biological studies have been completed over the years.
Melissa Fulton, who lives near the proposed site, said change is going to come. In her capacity as Lake County Chamber of Commerce chief executive officer, she's watched businesses start and fail for a variety of reasons, but now she's watching them fail for lack of customers.
She said if the community helps move the project forward, it can guarantee jobs and the building of new homes. She said baby boomers are retiring in droves and they want the kind of lifestyle that can be found in Lake County.
Speaking on behalf of the chamber, she said the organization took a stance in support of it two years ago.
Baur, responding to some comments from project proponents who said the commission had no choice in approving the project because it has nothing else to offer, said, “That feels like extortion to me.”
The general plan is the county's constitution, and introducing a major project like Cristallago that conflicts with the document is not good policy, Baur said. “It is to me an example of suburban sprawl,” and it could have been planned better, Baur added.
Commissioners Gil Schoux and Michael van der Boon said they supported the project, finding its benefits outweighed the negatives.
Swetnam said he believed that the vote was the most difficult decision he's made as a planning commissioner.
He said it came down to the conflict over the residential to resort ratio. “I think this is ultimately going to be decided by the Board (of Supervisors), which is the appropriate body.”
Commission Chair Gary Briggs said he also supported the project. He said the county has some very rough times ahead of it, and they have to make decisions for the future.
The commission then took the the three votes – each 3-2, with Swetnam and Baur voting no – on the general plan amendment, rezone and general plan of development.
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