How to resolve AdBlock issue? LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The question of whether Lake County should move forward with the Guenoc Valley project — a large-scale, mixed-use resort and residential community outside of Middletown — returned to the Lake County Planning Commission this week with a new environmental impact report.
After four hours of discussion, the commission on Thursday postponed making a decision on the project’s new environmental impact report, or EIR, along with requests for various permits and amendments, including zoning changes to create a new district for mixed-use development.
The commission voted unanimously to continue the item to a special meeting scheduled for Friday, Aug. 8.
The project proposes to span approximately 16,000 acres located in southeastern Lake County near Middletown, encompassing 82 existing parcels.
Staff’s report explains that, at full buildout, throughout multiple phases, the resort project would allow for the development of up to 400 hotel rooms, 450 resort residential units, 1,400 residential estates, and 500 workforce co-housing units within the zoning district.
Phase one would include the phased subdivision to allow up to 385 residential villas, 141 resort residential units, 147 hotel units, accessory resorts and commercial uses; a subdivision and rezoning of an off-site parcel to accommodate 21 single family residences with optional accessory dwelling units, 29 duplex units in 15 structures, and a community clubhouse and associated infrastructure, a proposed water supply well on an off-site parcel and pipeline located adjacent to and within Butts Canyon Road, along with intersection and electrical transmission line improvements.
The project applicant, San Francisco-based Lotusland Investment Holdings, has owned the property since 2016. The company is owned by Chinese developer Yiming Xu who immigrated to Canada from China in 1996. Since the early 2000s, he has been involved in various real estate and luxury resort developments in China.
Commissioners seek more time to consider the project
One major reason for the delay is the commission’s concerns over inadequate infrastructure and evacuation plans.
“The problem is not necessarily the project itself, but our infrastructure in the county — how can we build the roads to allow for this capacity so that is not a problem for this project and for any future projects that come forward,” said Planning Commission Chair Everardo Chavez Perez, referencing members of the public who spoke up as Valley Fire survivors who personally experienced that disaster’s trauma 10 years ago.
“What I’ve seen so far doesn’t satisfy me unless there's some more routes out and greater road structure,” Commissioner Maile Field said during the discussion on wildfire risks and a countywide evacuation plan.
Community Development Department Director Mireya Turner said that the countywide evacuation plan is still in progress. She also mentioned that the project has gone through “years of changes in design, changes in road standards, detailed analysis with the transportation experts” which resulted in the California attorney general withdrawing from a lawsuit against the county over the project.
The time limit also played a part in a delayed decision, the commissioners said.
The project has 34 documents attached to the meeting agenda packet, ranging from environmental reports and government planning documents to ordinance drafts and tribal comments.
Commissioners said that they only received the documents last Friday evening and the time they had for review was not enough.
“The project is huge,” said Commissioner Monica Rosenthal, who said she has been involved with the project for several years. "I’ve got to tell you, the onslaught of papers and materials we have to click through and read is quite overwhelming.”
“It is a lot of documents that we have to read and a lot of things taken into consideration and at the time as it is right now, I can’t vote on it as it is until we have a little bit more time to think about it and assess,” said Chavez Perez.
Toward the end of the meeting, Kevin Case, a development partner for the project spoke up: “If I could tell you the time and the experts and the resumes of the people that have gone into putting these documents together, it's disheartening when they haven't been read.”
Case asked the commissioners to read the wildfire protection plan and the wildfire risk assessment, among the 34 documents, regarding the fire-safety designs and mitigation plans for the project, conducted by Cal Fire and U.C. Berkeley experts.
“There's not another project in California that I'm aware of that has this many mitigation measures and design measures implemented into it,” Case said.
The Guenoc Valley project returns after litigation
This isn’t the project’s first EIR.
The original EIR for the project was approved by the Board of Supervisors in July, 2020. Two months later, the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Native Plant Society sued the county over the project, with the California Attorney General’s Office intervening in support of them.
In January, 2022, Lake County Superior Court Judge J. David Markham ruled that the EIR was inadequate in its community evacuation analysis.
The Center for Biological Diversity appealed the case, and in October 2024, the California First District Appellate Court ruled that a new EIR must be prepared as the previous document didn’t disclose the project’s wildfire ignition risks.
The new EIR and various zoning and permit requests under review this week, if approved by the Planning Commission at its Aug. 8 special meeting, will be moved forward to the Board of Supervisors for their final approval.
Despite the new document, key concerns remain.
The concerns raised by commissioners and the members of the public on Thursday surrounded wildfire risks and evacuation plans, as well as infrastructure, workforce housing and impact on farmland.
A presentation during the meeting outlined some of the wildfire mitigation and prevention plans.
These measures include designing an emergency access road called the Grange Road connector; removing development from some of the remote, fire-prone areas and consolidating it in the center of the property — which slightly increased density; and ensuring that no dead-end roads exist, in compliance with the state’s new fire-safe regulations.
Annalee Sanborn of Acorn Environmental, the presenter, also concluded that the project has “significant and unavoidable impact” on various environmental aspects: aesthetics, agricultural and forestry resources, greenhouse gas emissions, noise and transportation/traffic.
“There is quite a bit of prime, unique or locally important farmland on the Guenoc Valley site,” said Sanborn of the impact on agriculture, adding that up to 325 acres of farmland across the 16,000 acre site could potentially be impacted.
Sanborn said she is hired by Lotusland but works under the direction of county staff.
Concerns versus support
The meeting chambers were more than half full, with members of the public and developer representatives in attendance.
During public comment, opposition against the project focused on fire safety, workforce housing for hundreds of workers, and long-term impact on the community.
Some referenced their first-hand memories from the Valley Fire, which 10 years ago took four lives, destroyed nearly 2,000 structures, burned 76,067 acres and did an estimated $1.5 billion in overall damage.
For the survivors and witnesses, “No matter how many mitigations you put in and with all due respect to all of the effort put in — we need wider roads near Hidden Valley,” said Middletown Art Center Director Lisa Kaplan, who is also a Valley Fire survivor.
“I'm telling you, getting out of Hidden Valley was terrible during the Valley Fire. So imagine adding the Valley Oaks [project], adding workforce in Middletown, adding all of Guenoc pouring out into the Grange. How are we going to get out?” said Kaplan. “It's frightening, and there's many more people who were traumatized by that event than me. But you can take my tears and you can put them in your bucket of compassion, and you can say this is something to consider more than what is written so far.”
“Is Lake County ready for this? Look at all the infrastructure changes that are going to have to be made, needed and supported in order to be able to bring all of this to fruition within our county,” said long-time Hidden Valley Lake resident Bill Waite. “I know our roads are not ready for this. I know our health organizations are not ready for this. Our retail is not ready for this.”
Rev. Julia Bono of Rainbow Church in Middletown voiced strong community concerns about the worker co-housing site proposed for Santa Clara Avenue as part of the project, citing reasons such as flood and wildfire risks and lack of infrastructure and community engagement.
“Let me be clear, we are not opposed to the Guenoc Valley development. We are opposed to development that disregards the will, investments and well-being of the Middletowners who were living here first,” Bono said.
Farm Bureau Executive Director Rebecca Harper spoke on Zoom against the project, citing the project’s “significant and unavoidable impact” on agriculture as Sanborn presented.
“Agriculture is not just the land use, it's a way of life, a local economic engine and a cornerstone of our identity in Lake County,” Harper said. “We are also wary of the narrative that this project will usher in broad economic prosperity. The promise of an economic windfall should not come at the expense of irreplaceable farmland. Prime soils once lost cannot be replaced. Open space and rural character cannot be rezoned back into existence once paved over.”
Those who strongly supported the project, cited more jobs and greater economic outlook in the long run.
“There will also be a creation of long term well-paying jobs, which I think is much welcome and needed in the county, and it will also inject millions of dollars into our local budgets. So that's a huge plus to our county,” said Amanda Martin, Lake County Chamber of Commerce chief executive officer.
“I also just want to point out that sometimes this ‘not-in-our-backyard’ mentality, can also prevent growth and prevent opportunity that does seem like a positive opportunity for our county,” she added.
“It is just an amazing project that I was excited to hear about when I first heard about it about seven or eight years ago,” said Greg Folsom, who’s on the board of directors of the commerce chamber and is the former city manager for Clearlake. “Hopefully when we approve this, and what a great improvement this has been to the county, it's going to create jobs, generate huge property tax, transient occupancy tax and sales tax for the county.”
Richard Durham, a Lake County resident who raised two children here, said he was “totally impressed” by the project when he went out on a tour of the project months ago. He said his two children had left Lake County because there were no jobs here for them.
“I've been waiting all these years for projects like this to come along and help the community,” he said.
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