GILROY—An application to expand Gilroy city limits by nearly seven percent will not go before the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission Organization for deliberation by the end of the year as planned, according to Community Development Director Kristi Abrams.
The request to fold 721 acres north of Gilroy—most of it farmland—into the city’s urban service area is the first step in the process towards annexation. It was initiated in July 2014, when investors with Rancho 101 LLC filed the request and detailed their plans to convert agricultural lands into residential developments.
Studies of how future construction on the land would impact local and regional traffic and calls for further study from the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority have added delays to the applicants’ already aggressive timeline, Abrams said.
“We’re now looking at the beginning of 2016,” she said, of the application, which is scheduled for submission to LAFCO by Dec. 4.
But Rancho 101 LLC representative Skip Spiering told the Dispatch he isn’t holding his breath, and that LAFCO would review the application “whenever it gets there.”
“This is a long-term, large-scope project,” Spiering said Tuesday. “We’re talking a very, very long process.”
The 721-acre addition is a collection of parcels bounded by Fitzgerald Avenue to the north, Day Road to the south and Santa Teresa Boulevard and Monterey Road to the west and east.
Gilroy’s planning commission is scheduled to make its recommendation on the application to the City Council in November. The council will discuss it between December and January.
With public hearings on the North Gilroy Neighborhood District urban service area amendment more than three months away, the city is seeking input on an environmental impact report released in August.
Consultants with Monterey-based firm EMC Planning outlined “significant and unavoidable impacts” to the surrounding community—including the loss of 450 acres of viable farmland.
“The proposed project’s contribution to the cumulative loss of important farmland would be considerable,” consultants wrote in the report.
Other impacts included concerns about increased freeway traffic and future noise experienced by residents along Masten and Buena Vista avenues.
Whether the addition of residences in the area would impact response times of local police and fire agencies was not studied as part of the EIR. EMC Planning recommended further study and suggested entering mutual aid agreements with the South Santa Clara County Fire District if the Gilroy Fire Department’s staffing is not sufficient to meet demand.
Expected impact on water services was noted as “less than significant” in the EIR, as was the project’s effect on protected-status California species like the burrowing owl and red-legged frog.
Moving forward, Spiering said the proposed expansion of the North Gilroy Neighborhood District and its eventual development would function like an overflow valve when other Gilroy housing projects have been built out and occupied.
“There are better things ahead [for Gilroy] and we need to have the ability to grow.”
