THE
WHITE RANCH BUSINESS
Originally published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June
28, 2006
By Tim Stelloh & Freda Moon
Angela and Andy Harney escaped South Lake Tahoe 12 years ago. The
bumper to bumper traffic, the seasonal ski bunnies, "the rat
race," as Angela puts it, had become too much for the couple.
They wanted to raise their two daughters in a "rural lifestyle."
So they came to the Mendocino Coast, just north of Fort Bragg, and
bought a humble, two-bedroom home on Airport Road.
Surrounded by wild roses and jasmine, the Harney's house sits on
a one-acre lot in a sparse development of single-family homes. A
white, 24-year-old Appaloosa horse chews grass in the family's front
yard and a massive cypress tree towers over the back.
Directly across the narrow two lanes of Airport Road is The White
Ranch-as it's been known since Gertrude and Val White bought it
in 1936-an almost entirely undeveloped, 69-acre swath of marshes
and gold grassland. Three prehistoric Pomo sites dot the property,
as do black-tailed deer, red-legged frogs-a threatened, California
native-and swamp harebell, a rare, lavender, chalice-like flower.
But
all that might change.
Two
Sacramento developers, John and Judy Reynen, have proposed a sprawling,
housing development for the land (the current site plan says 283
homes, while Reynen puts the number at 257). They bought it from
Fred White, the son of Gertrude and Val, in January for a mere $2.5
million. White would not comment on the sale. The Reynen's proposal
packs the property with market-priced, single-family homes and,
cloistered away in the northwest corner, a handful of "affordable"
apartments. A six-acre parcel would be set aside for "wetland
preservation."
The
project is a nightmare for residents like the Harneys and a political
tightrope for the City of Fort Bragg, with whom the Reynens applied
for annexation (most of the White Ranch property is in the County's
jurisdiction). During back-to-back public meetings in late March,
24 people spoke in opposition to the project. Only four supported
it.
Three
months later, at the June 12 City Council meeting, after council
members probed the more esoteric and seemingly arbitrary points
of the first findings of the property's Environmental Impact Report,
a handful of baffled community members took their turn.
How,
they wondered, could the City's infrastructure and $5 million annual
budget possibly support the project?
Harney
is less gentle. She loathes the Reynen's idea of bringing "New
Urbanism" to her rural neighborhood. "We don't want it
to come to our doorstep," she said.
Fort
Bragg, however, is at a crossroads. Throughout its history, it's
been a company town, home to timber men and their families. But
now that the trees have been felled and milled, and Georgia-Pacific
has packed its bags, the town's future is uncertain. Well-paying
manufacturing and trade jobs are disappearing, while service, retail
and tourism work has become, as Jason Dose, Fort Bragg's Director
of City Planning, puts it, the City's "bread and butter."
But
with the influx of Bay Area retiree money boosting real estate prices
to the sky (according to stats from the real estate agency Century
21, the average price for a home in Fort Bragg last year was $477,393,
while the average price this year is more than $500,000), local
service jobs-i.e., cashier and waitressing gigs-can no longer buy
a home on California's North Coast. High prices plus low-paying
jobs have created the much discussed housing crisis-not population
growth. According to Census data, 148 Fort Braggers left the city
between 2000 and 2004, dropping its population from 7,026 to 6,848,
and the Fort Bragg Unified School District reports a decline of
625 students between 1991 and 2005. Meanwhile, only 271 homes were
built between 1994 and 2004, according to City records. Those on
the bottom of Fort Bragg's economic pyramid have had the most trouble
finding housing.
Locals
can't afford to live in Fort Bragg anymore, so they're leaving.
They're going to Oregon or inland to Lake County. And in their place
are aging baby boomers looking for a slower pace in their golden
years.
At
the same time, the City is planning for the future of the former
G-P mill site-a 400-plus-acre property, or about one-third of the
area of the City of Fort Bragg. The City and community have cooked
up ideas for nearly every type of economic and residential development
on the land. But it will be years before the marine science center
or the environmentally-sound, light industry will materialize. Until
then, it is impossible to know what Fort Bragg will look like a
decade from now.
It's
easier, however, to gauge what Coastal people want their town to
be. All you have to do is ask-or hold a public meeting-and you'll
hear the agonized, angry, passionate pleas of Fort Braggers.
That's
what the City did, during its March 22 "scoping session."
Many
of those who showed up to the meetings were organized, somewhat
haphazardly, by Angela Harney. Harney is not the obvious choice
for a leader. She's a soft-spoken woman, with warm features-pink
cheeks and powdery blue-grey eyes. A massage therapist, an office
manager for the local Farmers Market and a mother to two daughters-one
16 and the other 12-Harney lacks the typical activist aggression.
But perhaps it's her motherly diplomacy that has positioned her
as the de facto (and reluctant) leader of the anti-White Ranch development
movement in Fort Bragg. All she did, she says, is create a flyer
informing her Airport Road neighbors about the plans for the property.
Soon, a loose-knit, unofficial group formed around Harney. They
shared in her concerns and had a few of their own.
At
the March 22 public meeting, after a painfully detailed description
of the application process by LSA Associates, the City's Berkeley-based,
$375K consultant (who was paid for the by the Reynens, but answers
to the City, as is customary with large-scale developments), many
of Harney's neighbors on Airport Road lined up to condemn the project.
Each
had the same laundry list of criticisms: the already brutal Highway
1 traffic, the already impacted sewage system, the non-existent
sidewalks along Highway 1, the lack of water, the lack of well-paying
jobs in Fort Bragg, the lack of demand for half-a-million-dollar
homes outside of the Bay Area geriatric crowd.
"We
have no industry here," said Robert Slaughter, a resident of
the Ocean Lake Mobile Home Park, directly to the South of the proposed
development. "Where are 2000 people going to work?"
Robert
Bloom, an Airport Road resident, also commented on the population
growth the project would bring. "It's equal to the whole population
of Mendocino Village," he said. "That blows my mind."
Then
there's the 103 acres of undeveloped City land, not including the
mill property. Why would the City consider developing outward-in
sprawling, SoCal fashion-instead of building on the grassy, vacant
lots within the current City limits? Much of the land is owned by
Fort Bragg's "historic families," according to Dose, the
City's Director of Development. While offers have been made on some
of those parcels, there haven't been many and apparently, they haven't
been sufficiently tempting.
Among
the City's electoral cadre, Dan Gjerde is the only one who's made
his opinion public. (Neither he, nor Councilmember Hammerstrom,
who also expressed concern about the project in public meetings,
returned calls for comment.) At the March 22 meeting, Gjerde roundly
condemned the possibility of widening Main Street to accommodate
the exodus of traffic the project would trigger.
"Removing
parking from Main Street would be one of the worst things that could
happen to his town," he said. "Here we are trying to plan
for the future of Fort Bragg to integrate the mill site into our
town. And if we remove parking from Main Street because we improperly
planned the future of our town on the north end, we will have effectively
segregated the people of this town from the Pacific Ocean."
In
a 17-point, 4-page letter to the City Council, Harney listed many
of the above objections and concluded with her greatest fear: That
Fort Bragg would be overtaken by "Central Valley Urbanism,"
a scenario in which the Coast is overrun by McMansions and BMW-driving,
mini-moguls from Silicon Valley.
Notably
absent from the letter is one question being whispered among her
neighbors: Who are these Reynens, and do we really have any say
over what they do?
Neighbors
point to Yolo County, where John Reynen, as part of the Conaway
Preservation Group-which is, in fact, a coalition of developers-purchased
the 17,300- acre Conaway Ranch in 2004. When the property went on
the market, Yolo County, which gets much of its water from Conaway
(the ranch has rights to some 50,000 acre-feet of groundwater and
Sacramento River water-or enough to supply 200,000 homes), sought
to buy the land. But because the previous owner insisted on a secret
bidding process, the County was restricted, under California law,
from entering the process. Instead, the land was sold to the so-called
Preservation Group.
The
CPG says it wants to preserve the ranch for "wildlife friendly
farming." But Yolo County isn't convinced that a group of developers
is big-hearted enough to put the interests of the community ahead
of their own pocketbooks. Why, after all, would they fork out $60
million to buy the ranch, only to set it aside as a wildlife preserve?
The question might seem cynical, if it weren't for the Preservation
Group's precursor in the early 1990s, the Conaway Conservancy Group.
Another
suspiciously named consortium with John Reynen among them, CCG sought
to build a 3,000-acre, mixed-use development on the ranch. Though
the development wasn't realized, the group was able to sell the
property's water to Southern California and the Bay Area. Fearing
a repeat, Yolo County claimed eminent domain on the property in
2004 and has since been involved in a torrential legal battle with
CPG, which refuses to sell the land.
During
the public comment portion of the June 12 City Council meeting,
Toni Cunha, an Airport Road resident, brought some of this history
to the floor. "What if we decide that we don't want this development
out on White Ranch," she said. "Do we have the resources
to go into litigation with these people?"
The
financial prowess of Reynen and his associates suggests that the
City does not.
Reynen's
longtime business partner, Steve Gidaro (a CPG and CCG alum), has
been accused by residents-and City Councilmembers-in the City of
Davis of trying to influence the 2004 City Council election using
big-time campaign contributions under a "misspelled" name
(his campaign disclosure, filed at the last minute, had his name
as "Guidaro"). The money, according to news accounts,
was used to bankroll councilmen who supported Gidaro's plan to develop
424 acres of prime ag land into 1,424 housing units and 49 acres
of commercial property.
Closer
to home, Reynen is developing a few properties around Fort Bragg.
Off Highway 20 and Summers Lane, there are a few large, suburban-style
homes going for between six and eight-hundred-thousand-dollars.
Closer to town, off Cedar Street, is a mini-subdivision that neighbors
protested at every step of the application process (there were environmental
health, transportation and planning problems, they said).
Many
of these homes are on the market through Top Dollar Realty, whose
funky, low-tech website claims the company's base is Upland, California
(with a secondary office in Mendocino County). The contact email
for the company is phudson@topdollarrealty.com.
Could
"phudson" be Pam Hudson, the vocal advocate of the White
Ranch development who spoke at the March 22 meeting about the need
for an expanded tax base for the schools and for affordable housing
in the area?
Top
Dollar Realty is, in fact, owned by Pam Hudson, who, while speaking
publicly in favor of the project, has not acknowledged her financial
interests in it. In a recent interview, she cited her husband's
desire to retire here (she acknowledged that she had never been
to the area) as her reason for coming to the Coast. When asked about
her profession she said that she "had been" a real estate
broker, with no mention of her current dealings with Reynen.
While
quietly profiting from the Reynen development projects on the Coast-and
publicly speaking as a concerned citizen-Hudson also employs Rachel
Carter-Setnik, who happens to be the wife of Micah Setnik, Reynen's
nephew. While Mama Setnik works as one of Hudson's agents, Papa
Setnik is the contractor responsible for building the Reynen's Fort
Bragg developments.
The
Reynens, it seems, like to keep their development dough in the family.
John
Reynen rebuffs criticism of his project. "Look at the cost
of housing in Fort Bragg. There's no way [Fort Bragg residents]
can buy housing as it is today," he said. "I'm going to
be able to bring it down 15-20 percent. It'll be a realistic market."
This
seems to be the prevailing wisdom among some in the business community.
Growth is good, period. Residential development will spur economic
development and the fruits of this massive project will be reaped
by the struggling Fort Bragg workforce. "If you build it, they
will come," seems to be the adage.
Michael
Butler, a civil engineer who recently wrote a letter opposing the
project to Mayor Dave Turner, cautions against this line of thinking.
"This
proposed development would cause a boom and bust that will first
strain local contractor's resources, and then put too many tradesmen
out of work. Any short-term economic benefit to the city will be
more than offset by the significant, permanent, negative impacts.
Anyone touting this potential cash influx to the city is being extremely
shortsighted - and risking the full potential of the GP development."
John
Reynen, for his part, is confident that his project will happen-regardless
of the concerns of the community. "We seem to have a good rapport
with the City Council," he said. "They're crossing all
the 'T's and dotting all the 'I's."
I'm a staff writer for the Stamford Advocate, a daily newspaper
in Southwestern Connecticut. I cover the environment and land-use
issues — everything from mismanaged landfills to big developers,
bad landlords, dying wetlands and the always troubled Long Island
Sound. 
