How to resolve AdBlock issue? LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved the new environmental report and all permit requests for the Guenoc Valley project, paving the way for the large-scale luxury resort and residential development in south Lake County.
While supervisors raised clarifying questions about water supply and road maintenance related to the project, both the board and speakers during public comment voiced overwhelming support, citing the project’s potential for economic growth, job opportunities, and design features to address wildfire risk, evacuation, education and other concerns.
On July 24 and Aug. 8, the Lake County Planning Commission discussed the project over the course of two meetings. In the July meeting, officials, local community leaders and residents were mostly critical, raising concerns over wildfire risks and high-density workforce housing.
Before the commission’s second meeting, some commissioners and community representatives toured the site during visits organized by the developer, as they disclosed.
Later, the August meeting showed shifted community attitudes and mostly support. Ultimately, the commission recommended to the Board of Supervisors that it approve most requests by the project applicant.
After three hours of presentations, public comment and board deliberations, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the project’s updated environmental impact report, or EIR, along with all permits and amendment requests.
Those approvals included zoning changes to create a new district for mixed-use development, and rezoning part of the Santa Clara site from single-family to two-family residential — a higher density change that the Planning Commission deadlocked on in its August 8 meeting, resulting in an automatic denial and appeal to the board.
The Guenoc Valley Mixed Use Planned Development Project is a luxury destination that at full buildout will include up to 400 hotel rooms, 450 resort residential units, 1,400 residential estates and 500 workforce co-housing units on a portion of the 16,000-acre, 82-parcel Guenoc property.
The project applicant is San Francisco-based Lotusland Investment Holdings. Its owner, Chinese developer Yiming Xu, immigrated from China to Canada in 1996. Since the early 2000s, he has been involved in various real estate and luxury resort developments in China. Xu has owned the property since 2016.
According to the project’s official website, the Guenoc Valley project development is led by Lotusland’s developing partners, Jonathan Breene and Adrian Zecha of Mahaman, as well as Yiming Xu’s son, Alex Xu.
Lake County News submitted a letter with questions to the board as public comment for the meeting right before the meeting. The questions included asking if anyone in the county had any information about the project’s financing, Lotusland’s owner, the company’s financial capacity — or at least how much the project will cost.
They were not brought up during the board meeting, and by the time of publication of this story, none of the supervisors had responded.
Fire, water, roads — and the unanswered
This wasn’t Lotusland’s first try.
The Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors approved their environmental reports and permits in 2020. Lawsuits by environmental groups and intervention by the California Attorney General paused progress, citing inadequate community evacuation analysis. Now the project returned with a new EIR.
Annalee Sanborn of Acorn Environmental explained the fire mitigation measures in the updated EIR: an additional Grange Road connector for emergency access and evacuation route for evacuation, a new fire station and several temporary refuge points.
Joshua Dimon, UC Berkeley Disaster Lab Lead scientist, later told the board that the fire mitigation features will reduce fire intensity across the site by about 50%. Dimon’s team conducted the wildfire risk assessment for the updated EIR.
Sanborn explained the project’s "significant and unavoidable” environmental impact on aesthetics, agricultural and forestry resources, greenhouse gas emissions, noise and transportation.
And she also noted that the EIR measured “extremely conservative impacts” to farmland or biological habitats. “But the actual impacts will be lower once houses are designed,” Sanborn added.
In fact, the developer and the two environmental groups reached a habitat conservation agreement on Aug. 7 to protect 3,717 acres within the Guenoc property, alongside implementation of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with $2 million for additional off-site conservation.
Rod Hodil, attorney for the project applicant, said that the developer had entered into a “non-binding” agreement with Middletown’s Callayomi County Water District for a potential purchase of one off-site well.
“That is my line in the dirt, Middletown water,” said District 1 Supervisor Helen Owen, of whose district the project is located, asking adding it as a condition for approval, instead a non-binding term.
“I think this is a phenomenal project. I think it's an amazing opportunity. My only concern left is the nonbinding,” Owen said. “It's my responsibility to protect the people of Middletown, and I know that there's people in Middletown right now that are needing water.”
Deputy County Counsel Nicole Johnson said that the condition of drilling up to one well was already added to the use permit.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier also asked if there is any fee to support maintenance of county roads, such as Butts Canyon Road, which will see heavy traffic from the Guenoc Valley project. He pointed to the agreement with Brassfield Winery, where a per-case fee helps maintain High Valley Road, and suggested a comparable per-stay fee on hotel or resort guests.
“I would personally rather not walk away today with a developer agreement that says nothing about the future of [Butts Canyon] Road, even though there’s potential for thousands of people to travel every single day to get to work, let alone the people that will be staying there,” he said.
Johnson said now it was “a big picture” and fees related to roads are more granular for future analysis.
“I think we can wait for the specific development plans; I don’t think we need to do that today,” said Supervisor Jessica Pyska.
“I just wanted to make the statement, because we're kind of giving a little bit of a blessing today to move forward. But to me, there's something that I feel could be missing,” Sabatier said.
The biggest appeal: Promises on job prospects
During the developers’ presentation, Breene told the board that the project could generate $3.8 billion in economic benefits for Lake County over 25 years, including $2.47 billion in labor income, $635 million in local taxes and $212 million in state taxes. It would also create an estimated 2,688 jobs annually.
The outlook of job creation and economic impact appealed to the audience in the board chambers, including supervisors and the public.
During public comment, Max Hopkins said the project is a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity.
“What this project presents is truly a monumental future with education, employment opportunities in an environmentally sensitive and just astounding process,” he said.
“I can tell you that we need this, we need this injection into our county,” said Amanda Martin, Chief Executive chief executive officer of the Lake County Chamber of Commerce, citing the needs of the local hospitality industry that has struggled in recent years. “The indirect economic infusion into our county will be huge.”
During the board discussion, Pyska said Napa County supervisors “are always asking” for more Lake County employees to work in their resorts because “nobody can afford to live in Napa; They live in our county.”
“So I said you can have them for a little while,” Pyska said, drawing laughter from the audience in the chamber. “But they're going to be working here, and we're going to be keeping them here.”
The promises made during the meeting were significant and appealing.
During public comment, Margaux Kambara voiced her support for the project as a great opportunity. Also she brought up the concern: “A lot of communities were promised big things, and the developer didn't deliver, or the big corporation came to town, started building and then left and did not hire the dozens, the scores of local people that were promised.”
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