Amador County – Plymouth City Council and Planning Commission last week discussed the status and details of two housing developments in an information workshop.
City consultant Richard Prima said developers Reeder/Sutherland have finished the Environmental Impact Reports for its Zinfandel and Shenandoah Ridge residential subdivisions. He said the city has “comments from agencies and we’re working on responses to those.”
Prima is working on 13 pages of “Conditions of Approval,” which are so lengthy due to a lack of recent history of development and construction details in the city, due to a moratorium. He said they must document conditions being approved, and should get design guidelines to serve as zoning because the area to be annexed is not currently zoned by the city. A “development agreement” also must be approved.
Part of the process will be establishing an assessment district, or Community Facilities District to fund infrastructure. Bob Reeder, partner of Reeder/Sutherland, said with the wide spread of homes, they are “looking at a cost per lot to us somewhere around $100,000 per lot,” for infrastructure.
Reeder and Stefan Horstschraer showed design methods to preserve “tree canopy” with homes plotted using a hand-held Global Positioning System unit while on the property. He said they intend to have 2,000- to 3,000-square-foot homes on lots of one-quarter acre, up to a full acre in size. The average lot size is one-third of an acre, in Zinfandel, with 360 homes planned on 365 acres, and 140 acres of open space, Horstschraer said.
Reeder said phasing was market driven, developers are realistic, and “there’s going to be a limit to the number of homes you can sell, even in a good market.” He said they “do not need the prices to come back to the peak of 2005.” He said: “I got very nervous when prices got that high, because I didn’t think it could last.”
He said it was optimistic to hope to start building in two years, and he cited Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as looking for a 10 percent recovery to show the housing market was “really back on its feet.”
Mayor Greg Baldwin asked about home design standards, and if these would change if the subdivisions are sold. Prima said design guidelines in the project will be imbedded in building standards.
Asked about agricultural buffer zones, and Horstschraer said: “We started our discussion with neighboring agricultural owners well before the General Plan,” and all but one owner has made an agreement on buffers. The one hold-out is developers JTS Properties.
Councilwoman Sandy Kyles asked if the council would hold separate public hearings on the projects, and Councilman Jon Colburn said the attorney has recommended that they be kept separate.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
