Amador County – Aesthetics came to the forefront Monday in Sutter Creek Planning Commission’s latest meeting to look at the Gold Rush Ranch & Golf Resort Specific Plan. Noise also played a part as areas of the plan covered sound walls and ridgelines. Chairman Robin Peters said sound walls can be built on hills to minimize visual impacts and to allow them to go unnoticed. He said “there are sound walls in town and people do not know they are there because they are 3 feet tall.” He said he thought “there are certain types of sound walls that Sutter Creek will tolerate.” Resident Sharyn Brown in public comment said in the Bay Area, where she is from, they did not allow solid walls and she encouraged the commission to try that. She also encouraged the use of “story poles,” which tell a “story” of the visual impact of proposed housing in a neighborhood by being constructed in the footprint of the project. She said “story poles” and tenacity helped reduce the size of a project in the Bay Area. Peters said no one on the commission was opposed to “story pole,” but how does the city enforce the revelations of the “story pole,” and what does it enforce? Gold Rush Project Manager Jim Harnish said “story poles are connected with a discretionary act, most often with a design review process.” He said the design standards help say what does or does not work. Commissioner Frank Cunha asked about preservation of visual ridges, and a staffer for Anders Hauge said the language on the plan’s “scenic ridgelines” is in the section on “implementation measures.” The commission and Hauge agreed to look at changes for the visual ridgeline section, in part, which said that “structures that rise above the crest of a visible ridge shall be partially obscured by surrounding vegetation, meaning that the mass of the vegetation shall be more prominent than the mass of the structure.” Resident Toni Linde said they should “be extremely careful with” ridgelines, and she noted that a Visions Committee workshop a few years ago found that attendees wanted “no houses on ridgelines.” And she said an 8-foot sound wall “screams gated community.” Peters agreed, saying short walls on berms are OK, but 8-foot walls are not good. Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.