GILROY
– When 530 homes eventually get built in Gilroy’s pristine
Hecker Pass, the area’s namesake highway will not be the only road
serving new residents’ transportation needs.
GILROY – When 530 homes eventually get built in Gilroy’s pristine Hecker Pass, the area’s namesake highway will not be the only road serving new residents’ transportation needs.
Current plans call for a roughly one-mile-long extension of Third Street, from Santa Teresa Boulevard west to Michael Bonfante’s 34-acre nursery. Two currently unnamed roads will connect Third Street to Hecker Pass to the north.
And, the city isn’t going to pay for any of it.
“It’s a cost the developer has to bear,” City Traffic Engineer Kristi Abrams said. “That’s how it always is for collector and local roads (the technical terms for roads serving a particular development and not the population at large).”
As for the road work’s specific price tag, Abrams said the city has “no clue” at this point in time of the planning process.
“We’re at a point where this is just lines on paper,” Abrams said.
Hecker Pass landowner Jim Hoey estimates a $10 million to $12 million bill for the Third Street extension and the two major cross streets.
“We’re still working on the numbers for all of the infrastructure, but that’s a fair ballpark range right now,” Hoey said.
To a certain degree, the costs will get passed on to home buyers.
“That’s typical in any development,” Hoey said. “But you can only pass on the costs so far.”
Hoey said the landowners did not expect the city to use money from its coveted Traffic Impact Fund to pay for the roads. Developers around the city are charged impact fees that feed into the Traffic Impact Fund. Revenue is then spent on major expressways and arterial roads in the city – but not on roads that serve primarily one development.
The new Third Street will be a two-lane road except where the unnamed streets cross it. At the easternmost cross street, Third Street will be four lanes with a turn lane for northbound drivers. At the westernmost cross street, Third Street will widen to include only a turn lane.
The westernmost cross street will cross Hecker Pass as well. The passage is necessary to access a cluster of homes planned for the area.
Third Street will not cross over Uvas Creek, saving the developer millions of dollars. And, the street will not be used to access Eagle Ridge.
Hoey, a major landowner in the Hecker Pass area, said he has never been approached by Bonfante Gardens, Eagle Ridge homeowners or Eagle Ridge developer Shapell Industries to make Third Street an alternative third route into the gated community.
Eagle Ridge’s third access road instead will be the entrance of Bonfante Gardens Theme Park, a deal the park and Shapell reached to appease Eagle Ridge homeowners.
Pleasing the homeowners is an important step in approving a real estate deal between Bonfante Gardens and Shapell to help keep the park financially solvent. For millions of dollars, the park will sell a 33-acre storage lot to Shapell.
Shapell plans to build 118 luxury homes with 6,000-square-foot lots on the new acreage.
As for the Hecker Pass development, landowners are nearly finished conducting an environmental impact analysis on the project. Once the environmental work is reviewed by the public, the plans will go back in front of the Gilroy Planning Commission and City Council.
Last Monday, conceptual plans went before those two bodies. Mayor Al Pinheiro criticized the plan for clustering the 530 homes too densely. Pinheiro said he preferred the housing clusters to be scattered across the planning area.
However, Hoey says Hecker Pass landowners likely will hold another workshop with the Planning Commission and City Council in the next few months. Hoey says a side-by-side comparison of the two clustering schemes likely will convince the mayor the homeowners are on the right track.
“It’s a superior plan because by clustering the homes a little more intensely you get more open space and ag land,” Hoey said. “The other plan was good, but there weren’t specific tracts of ag land like there is now.”
