• Planning Commission Meeting February 2018

Two items of note came from the February 21st Planning Commission meeting. 

Item 2.1 Smith Ranch Self-Storage

This should have been a slam dunk, but got hung up a bit discussing how a perimeter wall, with a two foot pathway, would be maintained. 

From the presentation.

In the end, the applicant agreed to have a maintenance plan in place, that would be approved by the city planners, before permits were to be issued.

The other hang up came as to when it would be built and how much time would it take. 

This project is planned to built in three phases

This is to be a family run business with their corporate headquarters transferred from Temecula to Wildomar upon completion of Phase I, which was estimated to take between 9 and 12 months after groundbreaking.

It was explained that Phase II would begin after Phase I was 70%-90% occupied. Then, depending on the economy, Phase II would begin, which would take between 5 and 6 months to complete. In turn, Phase III would follow the pattern of Phase II.

In the end, it was approved 3-0 with Commissioners Ballard and Strong absent.

Item 2.2 Boyajian Consistency Change of Zone

This item got a lot of attention, but there is no point in going into any real details at this point since it was stated up front:
"There are no immediate plans to develop this site".

A look at the General Plan map and the Zoning map.
The area in question is designated by the blue star within the odd diamond shape.

This was just a formality for the current owner to get the zone changed to meet the General Plan (from what I heard after the meeting, it's so that it'll make it easier for them to sell the land). 

For those that read Wildomar Rap regularly, we went through this last Summer with the Camelia Townhouse fiasco. When many irate homeowners from the adjacent development (Grizzly Ridge), coupled with a known contingent of Wildomar cranks, tried to block that development.

There were many local residents from the North Ranch community that spoke against this. North Ranch is a new development, visible from Clinton Keith Road, off of Stable Lanes Road. 

This For Lease sign is clearly visible in the Google Maps November 2016 edition.
You can see the southern edge of North Ranch in the distance.

The concerns were all the usual NIMBY things: 

• quality of life
• increased traffic 
• homelessness
• fire hazards 
• lose of privacy 
• lower property values, etc.

Funny thing about this is that North Ranch is a brand new area. Being that I live in Windsong Valley, I was so happy to see it get built. Now I have a short cut to Barons.

Seriously though, each person that moved there should have been fully apprised of what was in store for that corner. It's been on the GP as Commercial Retail for as long as Wildomar has been a city. 

This is what the same corner looked like in 2007. Notice, there are no houses in the background, because North Ranch was years off into the future.

The RR designation (zoning for Rural Residential) was something that the county slapped onto most parcels that weren't already developed, or in development at the time. If you want to blame Riverside County for being sloppy and lazy, I doubt you'll get too many defending them... unless there are some Bob Buster holdovers still out there.

I feel for the residents, a bit, but you can't expect to move into a place that has a General Plan —that includes Commercial Retail, then get angry because the landowners want to develop their lands. This is still the USA, though I've heard that some people want California to secede. 

I imagine that many of the same people that spoke at the Planning Commission meeting will attend the March 14th City Council meeting to repeat their grievances. 

Let's hope that in the meantime, all those concerned will brush up on the General Plan and what its intent is. Also how the Zoning Map is not about what goes there as much as how it goes there (set backs, parking spaces, landscaping, etc).

UPDATE

It was drawn to my attention that the image of the For Lease sign on the corner wasn't of the parcel in question. Since the comments from the public speakers were discussing commercial retail off of Stable Lanes, I used that image and the basic NIMBY points remain valid.

I did come up with two other Google Images to give people a more accurate view of the area. 

The yellow star is the location of item 2.2. The reddish star denotes the corner of Stable Lanes and Clinton Keith that are in the google images I used above.

A 2014 image of the back of the field in question with a for sale sign prominently displayed, which is directly across from the Stater Brothers shopping center, on Hidden Springs Road.

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"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."

– Goethe

Sounds like Goethe has read Wildomar Rap more than once.