Gary Gillmor’s thinking ahead, far, far ahead.The politically
savvy real estate developer based out of Santa Clara wants to make
Gilroy 20 percent bigger by annexing more than 2,000 of his
cattle-friendly acres into the city.
Gilroy – Gary Gillmor’s thinking ahead, far, far ahead.
The politically savvy real estate developer based out of Santa Clara wants to make Gilroy 20 percent bigger by annexing more than 2,000 of his cattle-friendly acres into the city. While his “Day Ranch” project tentatively calls for homes on 12 percent of the land, Gillmor said nothing’s final and that he’s concerned with the environment and especially with having his family’s land controlled locally by Gilroy, not by the distant seat of Santa Clara County.
Bringing his swath of land into the city, though, would bypass Planning Commission recommendations by catapulting development so far northwest that there would be a gap between the city and Gillmor’s island development, which poses significant costs and begs the question: Is this even possible?
City Planner Melissa Durkin is working on the nascent project northwest of Gilroy between the Gavilan and Coastal ranges, and she said Gillmor’s plan exhibits the 71-year-old’s ambition because the northern-most chunk extends beyond even the city’s “sphere of influence.” The SOI encompasses the city’s General Plan as a rough guide for the next 25, 50 or 100 years, Durkin said.
Gillmor wants to fast-forward time by amending the SOI, which would require the Planning Commission to expand it. The body’s never done this, though, because there’s already five years worth of land marked for residential development within the city, but most of it’s between Gillmor’s project and the city limits and hasn’t been annexed yet, Durkin said.
The City Council would have to approve the SOI expansion, followed by a thumbs-up from the Local Agency Formation Commission, a regional agency with veto power over annexation requests. This would just be the first step, Durkin said, as the city would then have to amend its 20-year General Plan and urban service boundaries to prepare for ultimate annexation.
“It’s going to be very difficult to finance this project,” Durkin said, referring to the more than $40,000 in fees Gillmor’s “Lucky Day Partnership” has already paid and the sundry studies and environmental reports to come. None of this includes the enormous water, sewer and road costs Gillmor will have to pay if a residential project materializes in what many see as no-man’s land.
But Gillmor says it’s too early to label his project as residential even though it calls for low-density housing on 248 of Gillmor’s 2,014 acres.
“All we’re asking for is local control. We’re not asking for residential development,” Gillmor said. “We’re not asking for anything. It’ll take years for this to take place.”
Ten years ago, though, Gillmor and Gilroy had a run-in with LAFCO.
The city wanted to expand the golf course, and Gillmor agreed to sell 218 acres to the city for a discounted $3.1 million. In turn, the City Council approved “100 some-odd houses around the golf course,” Gillmor said, but a San Jose-centered LAFCO killed the project. Now he’s willing to try again so he can escape the county’s dictates.
“The city got the shaft then,” Gillmor said. “We’ll go through it again with LAFCO, but we want the city to control our property, and then we’d wait years in line like everyone else to develop” whatever the city decides.
Durkin doesn’t see the sense, though.
“It’s just not logical,” said Durkin, who has recommended Gillmor nix his SOI request by chopping off the project’s northern part.
“The area contained without your [SOI] request is vast and discontinuous,” Durkin wrote to Gillmor Aug. 29. “It will prematurely extend city services, and it will strain police and fire services.”
But Gillmor knows the planning process intimately since he spent four years on the Santa Clara City Council beginning in 1965, and then he became the mayor four years later and served until 1977. Afterward he began his real estate business, Gary Gillmor & Associates. Now he runs it with his daughter, Lisa Gillmor, who also sat on the Santa Clara council during the ’90s.
“I think [Durkin] is misinterpreting our plans. It’s not that we want residential development to be out in the boonies,” Gillmor said. “Anyone could say anything. They could say we’re going to build 5,000 houses, but what we have is 248 acres earmarked for whatever’s best for the property, and it’s up to the city to decide.”
Mayor Al Pinherio said he wants to fill in the city’s undeveloped pockets before expanding, but he said he’ll look at Gillmor’s project as he would any other.
Planning Commissioner and council candidate Tim Day agreed.
“Until I see what it’s all about, I’m not going to say yay or nay,” said Day, adding that he received a call from Gillmor earlier in the week but hasn’t received a contribution from Gillmor, who said he hasn’t donated to any candidates, but cautioned his partnership group may have.
Day Ranch, which is owned in partnership with Gillmor’s children and some 200 investors, never came up in their conversation, Day said, although “typically in Gilroy we don’t jump over open spaces to build. We build adjacently … But with Christopher High (going into the city’s northwest quadrant), the next developments will go northwestward, and the city council has said as much.”
At Monday’s council meeting, Councilman Russ Valiquette said committing to south-side and west-side developments meant “the next time we start looking, we’ll have no choice but to go north.”
Gillmor’s plans call for 20 acres to be donated to the city for, say, a fire station and another 10 to the school district for a potential school. They also call for an environmental education center to complement the 1,714 acres that will remain open space.
The empty lands will “provide natural buffers for the adjacent housing (to the southeast that’s already planned by the city) and agriculture/grazing fields,” according to paperwork filed by Gillmor’s Lucky Day Partnership.
Still, Durkin’s reply notes that Gillmor’s project would turn designated “park” land in the southeast part of Gillmor’s project into residential land. As for Gillmor’s nod to open spaces, Durkin wrote, “The city is only interested in park preserves that complement park facilities. The proposed preserve would not serve the greater good of Gilroy.”
But the greater good of Gilroy is what Gillmor wants.
“Does the city of Gilroy want to control it’s own destiny, or sit around and see what happens? I’m looking to the future, and right now we’re just studying, we’re not developing,” Gillmor said.
