Developers face uphill battle with LAFCO to build 1.5 million
square foot mall
Gilroy – A proposal to build a giant mall on pristine farmland east of Gilroy could re-ignite the fiercest land-use battle the city has seen in a decade. But this time, opponents of development may have the upper hand.
Five years ago, city council told regional land-use officials at the Local Agency Formation Commission to butt out of plans to redraw Gilroy’s growth boundaries. Council members, warning of a shortage of land for high-tech companies with high-paying jobs, insisted on including 660 acres of farmland and open space in the city’s 20-year growth boundary.
Less than five years since that decision, the land is being targeted for development – not by a Cisco, but by one of America’s leading mall developers, Westfield Corporation. Last month, the company submitted an application asking the city to annex 119 acres of the notorious 660 to make room for a 1.5 million-square-foot mall.
And to bring the land within city limits, officials will have to go hat in hand to the very agency it defied five years ago.
“The 660 is the biggest unresolved issue that there is between LAFCO and Gilroy,” said LAFCO executive officer Neelima Palacherla. She said the same issues that concerned the agency in 2002 remain today.
“It’s prime ag land,” she said. “There is so much more land that the city has within its boundaries that it should be using before it goes out and converts all this land. There are the infrastructure issues, flooding issues. We had listed all those issues and sent them out (in 2002), and you know what happened from there.”
Since then, the agency has challenged the city’s every effort to expand. It has so far blocked plans to incorporate land for the new sports complex – city officials have proceeded with development regardless – and begrudgingly gave permission to incorporate a 27-acre farm in south Gilroy. The latter annexation eked through on assurances that it would fall subject to the city’s new farmland preservation policy, though not before LAFCO officials criticized the policy itself.
“LAFCO was not particularly enthralled by the campus industrial idea when the General Plan went through,” City Administrator Jay Baksa said. “That’s why we’ve told Westfield to talk to LAFCO. If you don’t get through LAFCO, you won’t get anywhere with us.”
For the moment, Westfield representatives are saying little about the project, which they began discussing with city planners in December. The project could involve an outdoor mall that adds movie theaters and other entertainment options to the traditional mix of retail and restaurants.
Asked if the 660 could prove more difficult to develop than other areas, Westfield spokeswoman Katy Dickey said “each market is unique and we develop and redevelop all over the world. We look forward to working with local and regional officials.”
The company will also have to contend with environmentalists.
“It seems like yet another renunciation of Gilroy’s agricultural heritage,” said Brian Schmidt, a policy advocate with the Committee for Green Foothills. “It seems to raise all kinds of traffic issues. It’s something that the community has to watch very closely, because if they don’t, there are impacts that they’re not going to have a chance to fix afterwards.”
City Councilman Peter Arellano said he would likely oppose a move to change the zoning of the land to allow commercial development.
“If we wanted that as campus industrial, then it should stay campus industrial,” Arellano said. “The whole big push was that we didn’t have enough land in one location for something like Cisco to come, and that’s what they convinced the people on.”
During the original voting on he 660, council rejected a motion to require that the city use up 65 percent of its vacant industrial land before any development could proceed in the 660. Meanwhile, the council included a clause that would allow commercial developments “that draw a clear majority of customers from outside of Gilroy.”
Councilman Craig Gartman defended the clause as a way to give the city latitude in land-use decisions. He had “mixed feelings” about the Westfield proposal, but he had no illusions about potential roadblocks.
“I think we’re going to face extremely serious challenges from LAFCO,” he said, “because they have been dead set against the City of Gilroy expanding in that direction for many years.”
