GILROY—After hearing from its planning commission and about 40 people opposed to a giant new housing development north of Gilroy, the City Council Monday voted to forge ahead with the controversial plan to convert a square mile of farmland to homes.
The project’s developer says the master plan will include 4,000 new homes, two schools and parks. However densities in the draft general plan would increase the number of homes to 5,300, according to planning department estimates.
The next step is for the project to be approved by the state-mandated Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), a county-run body charged with managing urban sprawl.
“We’re here to take back the decision of how we will grow,” said Councilman Perry Woodward, who was on the winning side of the 4-3 vote. He argued that annexing the 721 acres of farmland just outside the city limits would give Gilroy residents the ability to decide how to develop the property. “I want Gilroy to be in the driver’s seat.”
Opponents charged that putting in so many new homes on open land would further worsen Gilroy’s jobs-housing imbalance. Councilman Dion Bracco backed them, saying all the community feedback he’s gotten is against it.
“We cannot pave our streets or fix our sidewalks,” he said. “Our city’s falling apart because we can’t fix what we have, and we are going to add more.”
Councilman Roland Velasco worried that with future allowances for even more density in the long years it will take to build the project, it will grow to 5,000 units.
“If you liked the traffic and noise impacts on the EIR, you’re absolutely going to love the new number,” he said.
Others feared that there wasn’t enough water for more residents, that it could cost the city $1.2 million a year to provide services for the new residents and that the city already had 3,100 new homes underway.
“What I love about Gilroy is that it’s not San Jose,” said one speaker. “We’ll lose that if we keep expanding outward.”
Committee for Green Foothills advocate Julie Hutcheson lamented the traffic that the project would add, as most of the new residents would work in San Jose. People wouldn’t know their neighbors because they would spend so much time on the freeway, she said.
“They’ll be able to pass the toothpaste out their window to their neighbor, but they won’t get to know them,” she said.
She said she represented many others from around the county who objected to replacing farmland with houses.
Mayor Don Gage argued that the city could have more power to properly plan a large development than with smaller infill ones within the city limits—even though that’s what the city’s General Plan calls for.
After the meeting, Gage said people from out of town were part of the problem.
“They were coming from San Jose,” he said. “They screwed up San Jose. Now they want to tell us how to screw up Gilroy.”
The property is owned by 27 different parties, including olive grower Jeff Martin. The Rancho 101 LLC and represented at the meeting by developer Skip Spiering.
