LAKEPORT – Will the Board of Supervisors conclude that Cristallago is good for the county, or could its members decide the project is inconsistent with plans for how Lake County will grow in the decades ahead?
Those are some of the key questions expected to be at issue when the Board of Supervisors discusses the housing and resort development on Tuesday.
The discussion focusing on Cristallago will begin at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Board of Supervisors' chambers at the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport. The meeting will be broadcast live on TV8.
The project has been working its way through the county approval process since the end of 2005, according to Emily Minton, a county planner teaming with Community Development Director Rick Coel to handle the project.
Cristallago would be located on 860 acres spread across numerous parcels located at 3595, 3851, 3907, 4051, 4141, 4151, 4161, 4283, 4483, 4637 and 4687 Hill Road, and 3580 Scotts Valley Road, Lakeport,
Matt Boeger and Mark Mitchell of Cristallago Development Corp. envision a Tuscan-themed development that would include up to 650 single family homes on lots ranging in size from 5,400 to 10,000 square feet; 325 resort units, including time shares and a hotel, clustered around the “Tuscan Hillside Village”; an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course; a trail system on 567 acres; a 25,000-square foot (or larger) clubhouse; spa; conference center; and nature preserve.
The total acreage is held by a number of owners, including Mark and Yvette Mitchell, Gerald and Constance Mitchell, Rocky Liao, Richard and Kimberly Evans and Mitch Adams, according to county assessor's records.
“The Cristallago Development Team has spent five years and $2,000,000 to get the project under way as quickly as possible,” said Jim Burns, a member of that team.
“Let's all hope the Board of Supervisors makes the right decision,” said Burns.
However, while for the developers the right decision is the go-ahead to move forward, it's quite the reverse for some Lake County residents as well as the Sierra Club Lake Group, which is appealing the Lake County Planning Commission's Oct. 22 decision to certify the project's programmatic environmental impact report (EIR).
At that same Oct. 22 meeting, the commission approved Cristallago's proposed rezone, general plan amendment and general plan of development, setting the stage for the board's Tuesday discussion, as Lake County News has reported.
The position of the Sierra Club Lake Group is that the project doesn't come anywhere close to upholding the county's guidelines for growth, and that it's based on outdated community planning concepts and has a “deeply flawed” EIR.
Minton said the decision on that crucial document will be the first item of consideration for the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, before they can look at the larger project.
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) – which requires environmental analysis that can include EIRs – “always comes first,” Minton said.
The board can uphold the commission's certification, certify the document on its own or uphold the Sierra Club Lake Group's appeal. If the board does the latter, and finds the document is not sufficient, the other considerations would have to come back at a later time, Minton said.
County staff points to inconsistencies
The project has been an unusual case because, from staff's very first analysis, they determined that it wasn't consistent with the county's general plan or the Lakeport Area Plan, said Minton.
“We are still pointing out inconsistencies” with those documents, said Minton.
The issue about general plan consistency is expected to be debated before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Minton said county planners didn't have the project for very long before it went before the Lake County Planning Commission in January of 2006, where it received the go-ahead.
Cristallago then went before the board on April 4, 2006, when the supervisors considered disapproving the proposed general plan amendment, rezones, Williamson Act contract cancellations and general plan of development, according to county documents.
Following a four-and-a-half-hour-long public hearing and discussion, the board voted 4-1 – with then-District 1 Supervisor Ed Robey voting no – not to disapprove the general plan amendment, rezone and general plan of development.
Instead, they recommended that staff be given direction on policy amendments to the Lakeport Area Plan and the Lake County General Plan, then undergoing an update. They also directed staff to proceed with processing the project's applications and to prepare for “an appropriate environmental document for this proposal.”
“It's a huge project and a process we don't typically go through,” said Minton.
That's because they usually have an EIR that answers a lot of questions around a project. That isn't the case here, Minton said, with the developer choosing to do a programmatic EIR that she said doesn't include all of the detailed studies a full EIR would have.
However, those studies will need to be done in future steps, she said.
If the EIR is determined sufficient, the board would then move to making a determination about whether or not to approve or deny the project, or to suggest modifications, Minton said.
Concerns about water
During its time on the drawing board so far, Cristallago has undergone significant changes and been through numerous public hearings.
Initially, it was proposed to include closer to 1,000 home and 200 resort units, but that was modified to the current project.
It also had originally been proposed to include the Marina at Lyons Creek, a marina, fishing lodge and beach club slated to be built on 110 acres along the lakeshore. Minton said in a previous interview that the marina wasn't formally included in the Cristallago project.
The land is held by one of Boeger's companies, Boeger Land Investments, which Boeger told Lake County News in a previous interview was formed specifically to hold the land. That company, which holds a 50-percent share of the land, went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy last summer, as Lake County News has reported.
Westamerica Bank, which holds the note on the land, has filed motions to foreclose on the property, but as recently as last month the federal bankruptcy court denied the latest motion to do so, according to court records.
While the marina isn't formally in the Cristallago plans, the property does include an easement that will provide water for the development. Boeger told the Lake County Planning Commission last Sept. 10 that, regardless of who ends up owning the 110-acre property, he has the water rights and the easement is held free and clear by another entity, North Lakeport Water System Inc.
According to the easement document, Boeger Land Investments and the Clovander Inc. – which owns the other 50-percent interest in the marina property – granted the North Lakeport Water System Inc. the easement.
The agent for Clovander Inc. is Robert W. O'Neel, who also is president of the North Lakeport Water System Inc., according to local and state records.
It's unclear if O'Neel is the real estate broker and speculator caught in the midst of economic collapse and lawsuits following the economic downtown – and profiled in a Santa Rosa Press Democrat story from last fall – or his father, who helped found Sonoma Family Homes, which has a development called Robin Hill Landing it's designing in Lakeport, next to the marina property.
Water is a significant concern for neighbors of the project. One letter sent to the county and included in Tuesday's board packet is from Scotts Valley residents Cynthia Forbes and William Ham, who said they and their neighbors' well levels have dropped significantly in recent years, and that Cristallago puts them in jeopardy of losing their water.
Mark Dellinger, administrator of Lake County Special Districts, said he's satisfied with the conditions for the project's approval relating to its water supply. He said he'll be on hand at Tuesday's hearing to answer any questions.
Dellinger said the developers have to commit to upgrading the water plant for Community Service Area 21 in north Lakeport to provide the necessary water. That plant is designed in such a way that it can be built in modules, with each module adding 500 residential water connections.
“That provides the capacity necessary to make the project work in effect,” Dellinger said.
Dellinger estimates of the needed upgrades to the plant are in the area of $1.2 million to $2 million. “If some of this infrastructure was being built today, there would probably be some significant savings.”
Initially, the project will use groundwater for irrigation of the golf course. Originally the developers proposed upgrading the county's Northwest Regional Wastewater Plant to tertiary treatment to provide water for the golf course's irrigation. However, that water already is committed to The Geysers steamfield, Dellinger said.
The project will require a pipeline to be built from the lake to the project, extending under Highway 29, Dellinger said. The pipeline will have reuse capabilities for when the homes are built, at which time they can use treated water generated from the development for irrigating the golf course.
In the mean time, he said a well that was drilled in the Robin Hill area showed “a significant supply” of water was available.
Assuming the board approves the project, Dellinger said there is bonding and other ways to protect the county. “Those are just standard provisions of any development like this,” he said.
Debating the requirements to move forward
Burns said many of the concerns about the project's impacts – such as vacancy rates and traffic – can be allayed because the consultants doing the EIR “were overstating impacts all along.”
Specifically, they assumed a 5-percent vacancy rate for the residential development, when over the past 30 years the county has had residential vacancy rates in the area of 27 to 28 percent, he noted.
At the same time, traffic impacts were overstated by 30 percent, Burns said.
A letter from Boeger to the board, dated Jan. 21, maintained that the EIR meets CEQA's standard for adequacy, and that it identifies all project impacts and necessary mitigations.
Boeger wrote that it's not “reasonably feasible” to fully engineer a project before approval, which he said is a “massive undertaking in terms of time and money” that the courts have determined isn't required for a programmatic EIR like Cristallago's.
“Cristallago will be phased in over many years and design standards will need change along with the times and market conditions,” Boeger stated.
He said that requiring performance standards for the project is the appropriate mitigation, and it doesn't result in deferring environmental analysis, which is what he said the Sierra Club Lake Group is claiming.
In addition, Boeger said the board doesn't have to find that Cristallago is consistent with county policy in order to certify the EIR.
Boeger asked the board to reject the other three alternatives proposed to the current Cristallago plan, including no project, an alternative that would allow for 134 residences, no resort and no golf course in keeping with the current general plan densities, or an alternative that would allow for 325 homes and 175 resort units.
In making the decision, Boeger's letter to the board states, “No project is required to be consistent with each and every applicable policy,” and no project would ever be approved if that was required.
Rather, “This is the part of the process where the policy makers get to consider and weigh the project's positive benefits to the county against all the potential negative impacts considered by the EIR. If the positive benefits outweigh the impacts then the project application should be recommended for approvals.”
Boeger's letter to the board asked, “What is most important to the county?”
He suggested that the 325 unit resort will create 532 full time jobs, bring in 40,000 new visitors, net $800,000 in transient occupancy tax (TOT) revenue, create $47 million in total local spending and $1.4 million in net fiscal benefit to the county.
Burns told Lake County News that, between the resort and residential components, Cristallago will create 670 new jobs. That's especially important, he said, with the recent closure of Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa and the county's 18.5-percent unemployment rate.
Boeger suggested that the board support “a brighter future” for Lake County by approving the project.
Sierra Club asserts flaws in the EIR
A letter submitted to the county by Victoria Brandon, chair of the Sierra Club Lake Group, lays out the organization's concerns about the plan.
“CEQA requires that all reasonably foreseeable consequences of a project be examined, but this has not taken place,” Brandon stated, pointing to several “glaring” inadequacies in the analysis, including water supply, traffic, air quality, cultural and biological resources, alternatives analysis and general plan inconsistencies.
Environmental impacts of concern cited by the Sierra Club include extensive grading, which will disturb the “asbestos-laden serpentine soil,” destruction of nearly 100 acres of oak woodlands, potential loss of rare plants and biological and cultural resources, increased traffic and possible sedimentation that would impact Scotts and Lyons creeks and therefore Clear Lake, and distortion of the entire north Lakeport area's growth pattern.
“Some of these environmental impacts are still subject to debate – and if the Board of Supervisors does not choose to reject the project outright we urge it to allow that debate to continue by decertifying the EIR, substantively addressing the many questions that have been raised, and recirculating it for public review,” Brandon wrote, adding that significant and unavoidable impacts have certainly been identified to oak woodlands and “public and scenic views and visual character.”
While it's argued that Cristallago “would provide an economic engine not only for the Lakeport area but also for the whole of Lake County,” Brandon's letter challenges that notion, which she called “dubious even during the unprecedented housing bubble that prevailed at the time of the original application” and which, under current circumstances, “has become absurd.”
Brandon said the game of golf has been declining nationwide for years, the economic evaluation of the resort was based on having dedicated marina facilities on the lakeshore property that now is the focus of Westamerica's attempted foreclosure action, residential projections were based on demand during the housing bubble, the jobs created would be low-paying service sector jobs and the developers' “shaky financial condition” gives rise to the concern that the project could shut down after grading has begun.
She went on to point out the project is “grossly inconsistent” with county planning documents, with the most obvious inconsistency in the proposal to build the project with residential densities not allowed outside of community growth boundaries.
Brandon wrote that state planning and zoning law “explicitly forbids” the county from approving a project that would conflict with the general plan or render the plan “internally inconsistent.”
She summed up the group's objections by asserting that approving Cristallago would “eviscerate our General Plan, set devastating precedents for the rest of Lake County, distort growth patterns in the Lakeport region, and create environmental havoc, all without a viable expectation of realizing the compensatory benefits that have been promised.”
What might happen next
Minton said that if the board approves the project plans and the EIR, the plan itself at that point would only be conceptual. “It doesn't allow any development,” she said.
The developers would then need to come back with a specific plan of development and possibly a tentative subdivision map, and the lengthy public hearing process would start again. That plan and map would need to go to the planning commission, but not necessarily to the board, she said.
Much of what would happen next depends on what would be included in the project's first phase, which at this point includes the golf course, Minton explained.
Some of the studies that the developers would need to do next include a geologic study that would include analyzing the numbers of homes, Minton said. That study would be necessary to update one done in the 1980s for a previously proposed project on the site.
The neighbors are concerned about serpentine soils, which the developers have proposed to cap. The depths of the cap would depend on what's to go on top of a certain area, Minton explained.
“That will be another specific study that they need to bring back,” she said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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