Local environmentalists say they want no part in a panel that
will help plan the future of farmland east of Gilroy because they
say it will operate under the assumption that building a mega mall
is inevitable, not preventable.
Local environmentalists say they want no part in a panel that will help plan the future of farmland east of Gilroy because they say it will operate under the assumption that building a mega mall is inevitable, not preventable.
Councilman Peter Arellano sympathized with this argument along with a couple of his colleagues at Monday night’s council meeting. He told City Planner Deborah Schwarz that he wanted her to continually remind the yet-to-be-formed, 15-member East Gilroy Specific Plan Task Force of one thing: They are to analyze 681 acres of mostly agricultural land east of the city in an objective manner and should not see development as a foregone conclusion. Preserving the land is still possible, he said.
The need to craft the East Gilroy Specific Plan became necessary when the Westfield Group applied to build a 1.5-million-square-foot mall on 108 of 681 acres that still belong to Santa Clara County. The plan will dictate the future development of that land located south and east of the existing Gilroy Premium Outlets, but Arellano and Councilwoman Cat Tucker have said the commercial developer’s application has already tainted the task force.
“We’re asking citizens to give up their time, but if it’s already concluded that 108 acres are designated (to Westfield) without their input, then what’s the point?” Arellano asked Schwarz, the city’s part-time planner who works exclusively on the Westfield Mall Project and who took issue with Arellano’s rhetorical question.
“The Westfield 108 is not an accomplished fact,” Schwarz told the council Monday night. “It’s an application being processed simultaneously.”
But David Collier, a member of Save Open Spaces Gilroy, disagreed.
“The city wants a design with Westfield in mind,” Collier said Tuesday. “If, on the other hand, they presented a task force to consider the optimal use of (the 681 acres), then we might very well be interested in participating in that task force.”
Nonsense, said Mark Zappa, a local conservative activist who has applied to be on the task force as an adjacent landowner because his office sits adjacent to the 681 acres on Camino Arroyo. He said he will likely lose his office view of the eastern foothills if a mall goes in, but he said development outweighs the vista.
“The preservationists want to keep it, as they call it, pristine farmland even though many owners (within the 681 acres) want to see development,” Zappa said, adding that environmentalists do not own the concerned land and have no right to hold land-owners hostage to their open space dictates.
“Open space people don’t have a vested interest in this land,” Zappa continued. “There is so much open space in Gilroy and surrounding areas. This area is a natural area for growth, and farming in this area is just not viable if you ask the farmers.”
The Australian-based, multi-billion-dollar Westfield Group has already begun to pay about $1 million to fast-track its project by bank-rolling city planners such as Schwarz to work on it and by helping the city create the specific plan and conduct environmental reports.
Today is the last day for property owners within the 681 acres to apply to be on the task force. Beginning Thursday, Schwarz and a city-hired and Westfield-financed consultant (Moore, Iacofano, Goltsmann) will begin interviewing the 15 applicants who applied to be on the task force as of Monday evening.
Three of the 15 applicants do not live in Gilroy. One is a Los Angeles-based Westfield representative, and the two others are a land-use consultant and developer who want to represent landowners and personal property, respectively. The majority of the 15 applied for the one position on the task force reserved for adjacent property owners, and the only remotely environmental applicant is an adjacent landowner who Schwarz said has a stake in agricultural tourism.
Regardless, Schwarz will vet these applicants further and then present a list of candidates and their qualifications to the city council Dec. 17. As per its direction Monday night, the council will then pick and choose from the applicants and/or interview them itself before selecting some to be on the task force, probably after the new year, councilmembers said.
Either way, the noticeable lack of green applicants is not the city’s fault, according to Councilman Bob Dillon. He said that if the environmentalists did not want to be on the task force, then so be it: They had the choice.
But Councilman Dion Bracco said he saw environmental potential in some of the applicants he knows, but that he was still surprised more have not applied.
“I don’t like to see a task force slanted one way or another,” Bracco said Tuesday. “If a person is applying as a citizen but they’re a developer, then I call them a developer. So I want to see a balanced task force. Otherwise, the council may have to decide to start over.”
Tucker suggested this idea, too, as well as adding more positions on the task force to achieve a chorus of voices.
“Either it’s going to be a real task force, or it’s of no value,” Tucker said Tuesday. “It seems like (the Westfield project) is already a done deal, but it’s not suppose to be that way.”
Councilman Craig Gartman said Monday night that letters Schwarz wrote to potential task force members asking them to be on the task force included language that implied that the land would, in fact, be developed and that the task force just needed to show how it would be so.
But Schwarz dismissed Gartman’s semantic argument and said the task force could decide to leave all the land as is. She added, though, that she would work to make sure that its members are not prejudiced by Westfield’s simultaneous application. Aside from this, she said the council has the final choice on the land and could nix development all together if it willed.
That would sure please Collier.
“The optimal societal use of that land is to leave it in agricultural production,” Collier said. “Given that position, (Save Open Space Gilroy) does not feel comfortable joining a committee whose purpose is to suggest what to design as far as urbanization.”
