When I came to Gilroy in 1980, the Gilroy Dispatch was filled with letters about rampant growth. The development at the time was the Northwest Quadrant. The claims were that Gilroy was sprawling, we were becoming another San Jose and we were losing our small town charm.
I hear these same fears echoed today at the city’s proposal to annex land of which I am an owner to the north of town. There are a lot of differences between then and now and a lot has thankfully changed since then.
The County’s Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) is the body that determines where urban expansions should and should not occur. Their goal is to encourage orderly boundaries, discourage urban sprawl and to preserve agricultural and open space lands.
The ultimate physical boundaries and services area line for any city is called the Sphere of Influence (SOI) line. At the time, Gilroy’s northern SOI line was at Church Avenue in San Martin; Morgan Hill’s southern SOI Line was at Church Avenue in San Martin. Theoretically, Gilroy and Morgan Hill could have expanded to this common road.
After a lengthy study, LAFCO decreed in their own 1984 SOI study that Gilroy should push back to Masten/Fitzgerald and Morgan Hill should retreat to Middle Avenue. This is a 3.5-mile separation that specifically addressed the fear of sprawl. Further, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors made this area a protected rural residential special use area in the general plan.
Not too many years later, Gilroy took a major step to address rampant growth in residential development by instituting the Residential Development Ordinance (RDO). The intent was to place a numerical annual limit on the number of homes that could be approved and built. For 20 years since the beginning of the RDO, Gilroy has grown at a modest 3 percent rate.
As time went on, Gilroy realized that while they had a handle on the volume of residential development, they did not have sufficient control of the quality of the homes, developments, neighborhoods, related infrastructure and services. All of these projects around town resulted in unsystematic, piecemeal development leading to problems such as the traffic congestion on Santa Teresa near Christopher High School.
The Neighborhood District Zoning Ordinance was implemented in the 2002 general plan as a strategic growth management tool that encourages greater innovation to achieve housing and community design goals. As the city’s zoning code states, these districts were put in place to protect, maintain, and enhance the quality of the city’s existing residential neighborhoods.
Former mayor Don Gage, Mayor Perry Woodward and councilmembers Peter Leroe-Muñoz and Terri Aulman took leadership and made the right call in proceeding with the annexation processes for the North Gilroy Neighborhood District—to gain permanent, local control over the planned future growth area, eliminating piecemeal development, maximizing community benefit (schools, roads, highway access, high-end retailers, taxes and fees), preserving our rural character and encouraging comprehensive, thoughtful investment over the next 20-plus years.
The fact is, not a speck of dirt will likely be turned for at least 10 years. This opportunity gives our community time to pause, reflect, engage, consider and verify the facts, cooperatively and carefully plan for a future of our hometown that we can continue to be proud of.
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Jeff Martin owns land that is part of the proposed 721-acre North Gilroy Neighborhood District development. He wrote this column for The Dispatch.
