The Clearlake Planning Commission will meet to discuss the Provinsalia project beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Clearlake City Hall, 14050 Olympic Drive. They'll receive public comment on the project's final environmental impact report (EIR).
On Dec. 16, the commission is expected to hold another meeting on Provinsalia, at which time commissioners will discuss the project further and consider making recommendations to the Clearlake City Council on the EIR's certification. At that time they'll also consider a proposed general plan amendment and rezone.
The project has been on the drawing board for several years, and during that time it has changed significantly.
Dick Price of the Modesto-based Price Group is representing the property's owners, Lake County Resort Partners Inc.
He said the project, on 292 acres along Cache Creek, is currently slated to include 665 units – 565 single family homes and 100 condominium units in duplexes and fourplexes. That's down from the original 735 units. Originally, it also called for an 18-hole golf course, which since has been reduced to nine holes, and the overall size of the property also has decreased by more than 200 acres.
Price told Lake County News in a weekend interview that he plans to be at the Tuesday meeting and will return for the Dec. 16 meeting as well.
He said Clearlake city staff has been extremely professional in its handling of the project. “Everybody is making an effort to do their part to get it before the Planning Commission for a vote.”
Price said he expects the Planning Commission will approve the final EIR on Dec. 16. “I don't know that there's anything more to do to make it complete.”
The Sierra Club Lake Group, which has followed the project for several years, has quite a different opinion.
In a six-page letter to the Planning Commission and Clearlake City Administrator Dale Neiman, group chair Victoria Brandon urges against accepting the EIR, the rezone or general plan amendment, citing, among other things, “procedural and substantive lapses in the EIR make certification unwise, and could in all likelihood expose the city to legal action.”
Brandon writes that many comments on the draft EIR were omitted – among them, input from Supervisor Ed Robey and Lake County Community Development Director Richard Coel. Further, she says that the evaluation of the project's impacts on climate change is “grossly inadequate” and counters the state's policies of reducing and controlling carbon emissions.
Provinsalia will have “numerous adverse environmental impacts,” according to Brandon, including loss of natural undisturbed open space and rural lands, increased traffic and air pollution, destructions of cultural resources and a contribution to the jobs/housing imbalance, fire hazards, impacts to wildlife and stress on the school district, among other things.
Infrastructure is another concern Brandon mentions.
Provinsalia will get its drinking water supply from the Konocti County Water District, said Price. That will require annexing the property into the district under the auspice of the Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO).
“That issue of water is pretty well settled,” Price said, adding that the district, which has an agreement with Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, has more than enough water to serve Provinsalia.
Getting the water to the subdivision won't be easy; Price said it will require putting a water line in under the freeway.
Sanitation may be a bigger issue. Lake County Sanitation District's current system can't support the hundreds of proposed homes that would be built.
“It's not a question of whether or not they could handle us – they can't,” Price said.
In order to hook up to the system Price said the subdivision will have to provide new sewer lines and a new pumping station. That will run about $2 million, Price estimated.
But Brandon's letter suggests that hooking Provinsalia up to the Southeast Treatment Plant on the north edge of the city will cost at least $13 million.
She points out that five miles of sewer lines cannot be constructed incrementally; “the full costs will be incurred before the first residents can move in, meaning that the expense must be assumed by the taxpayers of Clearlake or the county of Lake.”
The only acceptable solution, she suggests, is that the developers pay for the improvements up front and recover their costs later, which would require the housing units be priced about $22,000 higher than comparable properties.
Price said Provinsalia will be built in 10 phases, but not by Lake County Resort Partners Inc.
Rather, the company hopes to sell off the phases to national-level builders. Some of the companies they're speaking to include Del Webb and Foremost.
“They're all telling me not to call them until 2010,” said Price. “They're not interested in going forward at the moment on anything.”
He added, “Everyone's concerned about what the future may bring.”
The people behind the property
During a joint City Council and Planning Commission meeting in April to discuss Provinsalia, the prospect of bond funding to help move the project forward had been suggested. Brandon's letter also mentions Mello-Roos bonds underwritten by the city.
“If Provinsalia becomes yet another lamentable example of Lake County’s many paper subdivisions
the City will still be liable for this obligation, and will furthermore be burdened with the costs of repairing this pristine parcel if the project is abandoned after grading has taken place,” Brandon notes. “This scenario seems far from improbable in the current real estate market: given Lake County’s spiraling foreclosure rate, the rising number of homes with mortgage debt exceeding their market value, and the gloomy economic outlook generally, it’s hard to see who the purchasers of these large, jammed together houses might be.”
However, Price said that bond funding isn't a consideration at this point, because the property's owners don't believe it's needed.
The main owner of Lake County Resort Partners Inc. is Jorge Rangel de Alba, said Price.
Rangel de Alba is a wealthy Mexican businessman whose business interests are multinational, and include banking, automotive, tourism and development. Based in Mexico City, he's also reportedly an honorary consul general to the Republic of Mongolia.
According to Price, Rangel de Alba became involved with the property when he was approached by another developer, Agustin Rosas-Maxemin, whose Armax International Inc. – with offices in both San Francisco and Mexico City – has built everything from single-family homes to commercial and multi-unit residential projects.
Price, who works with Armax, said Rosas-Maxemin had purchased the property initially. He and Rangel de Alba became acquainted after Rangel de Alba purchased several condominium units in San Francisco's posh Nobb Hill neighborhood that Rosas-Maxemin had built.
Rosas-Maxemin was seeking a financial backer for the project and so approached Rangel de Alba. “Jorge had never done anything like this, ever, so this is his first experience,” said Price.
Eventually, Rosas-Maxemin sold his rights to the project after Rangel de Alba decided not to have him continue, said Price.
The project got its name from Rosas-Maxemin, who also has a development named Provinsalia in San Jose. That Provinsalia consists of 72 hillside homes between 1,500 and 2,000 square feet each – built in a style “reminiscent of those found in Provence or Tuscany” – and ranging in price from $432,000 to $733,700, according to the Armax Web site.
Price said it was at his urging that Rangel de Alba sold off the additional land originally included in the Provinsalia proposal – and purchased before he was brought on – because it had “unacceptable” terrain that could be built on, and too many trees which couldn't be easily replaced. That property, he added, also was in the county jurisdiction and outside of the city's, where the majority of the land is.
The company listed as the property's owner has changed several times. It was previously Cache Creek LLC, incorporated in Delaware, according to property records. In April, it was stated at the Clearlake meeting on Provinsalia that the company was Cache Creek Inc. Since then, the company has reformed under the new name, Lake County Resort Partners Inc., said Price.
It was as Cache Creek LLC that the company sold off the additional 219.7 acres, which stretch down along Cache Creek toward the dam, to Starlite Ventures LLC, based in Houston, Texas. The property was transferred on June 23, 2005, for a reported $2 million. Starlite Ventures formed on June 15, 2005, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Price said he doesn't know who is behind Starlite Ventures. “They made a point of not telling me who it was.”
The company's registered agent is Eric Villasenor of Houston. The company has no Web site or phone number, but is reported in good standing through May 15, 2009.
However, Rangel de Alba's family also owns furniture stores including Roche Bobois and Bang and Olufsen. An Eric Villasenor is listed as chief financial officer of European Designs, which operates stores under luxury brands including those owned by Rangel de Alba's family.
Price said he doesn't believe the additional property that was sold to Starlite Ventures can be developed due to terrain, trees and lack of an entry.
The city's oak tree ordinance, adopted earlier this year, also would challenge the property's development, he said. “Even without that, that other property that Starlite took was just impossible to work with.”
What's ahead for the project
If Provinsalia gets the Planning Commission's go ahead this month, the project is scheduled to go before the City Council on Jan. 10, 2009, Price said.
After that, Price said the company will need to apply for a tentative subdivision map, which could take six to eight months, at which point they'll have to decide how to move forward.
“I can't imagine us starting construction until the spring of '10,” he said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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