Report: Proposed 'New Farm' Development is Illegal

A legal analysis just issued by local environmental groups calls a proposed Tassajara Valley development illegal because it would break a voter-approved urban limit line.

Greenbelt Alliance, Save Mount Diablo and City Council candidate Phil O'Loane spoke out against the New Farm project and presented the analysis to Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors at a Tuesday morning meeting.

“It’s time to call this ‘new sprawl’ project what it is – the wrong development in the wrong place – and reject it once and for all,” said Jeremy Madsen, Executive Director of Greenbelt Alliance, according to a press release. “Voters want to protect the region’s farmlands and natural areas while ensuring that new growth creates walkable neighborhoods with easier access to jobs, services, and transit. This project would undermine that sensible vision and turn protected open space into asphalt and traffic.”

Developers FT Land wants the county to rezone the 770-plus rural acres into a now-nonexistent land-use designation: Rural mixed-use.

The new designation would allow them to build the planned 187 units, including estate homes scattered amongst olive orchards, an olive oil manufacturing plant and several low-income apartments.

Rezoning would also pave the way for a proposed cemetery, training grounds for firefighters, a religious facility, parks, trails, a community center, gardens and a roadside farm stand.

The rest of the 671 acres would be farmland or open space, the plan states.

O'Loane – – supported the legal analysis that building in the unincorporated valley would break the county's voter-approved urban limit line. That border protects the Tassajara Valley as rural.

San Ramon has kept a close eye on the New Farm plan since it would lie just east of the city's urban growth boundary. Future residents would rely on San Ramon schools and police services.

City leaders urged voters to expand that urban growth boundary last year and put that proposal on the general election ballot as Measure W. More than 70 percent of voters opposed it, however, including O'Loane, who chaired the campaign against it.

"New Farm is a blatantly illegal attempt to destroy voter-approved Urban Limit Lines in Contra Costa County and flies in the face of reasonable growth management policies that have been a hallmark of our county for 20 years," O'Loane wrote in his May 26 letter.

If New Farm gets a green light, it would set a precedent that developers could skirt urban limit lines by bringing city infrastructure to rural land, O'Loane continued.

Developers this spring paid about $350,000 to the county to conduct an environmental review for New Farm. used it as an example of why voters should have brought the Tassajara Valley into city control.

But environmental groups and residents who opposed Measure W and still oppose New Farm say the county's urban limit line should be enough to block development. Now the battle for them is to convince county leaders to play by the rules, according to the legal analysis they presented this week.

“[Developers] have three legal paths they can take: They can ask the voters of Danville, the voters of San Ramon, or voters countywide to change our urban limit lines," Save Mount Diablo's Executive Director Ron Brown said Tuesday. "But we know from polling a year-and-a-half ago that more than two-thirds of county voters are opposed to New Farm and development in the Tassajara Valley. They believe the valley should be preserved."

The valley is now used mostly for cattle grazing. The New Farm site houses a barn and several corrals on the property's northeastern corner. The southern part of the property by San Ramon holds a house, two barns and a few other structures.

If New Farm gets built, developers will have to bring in drinkable water, figure out where to send sewage and where to hook up other infrastructure east of Camino Tassajara.

You can read the entire legal analysis, public comments and other documents related to the project by clicking on the PDFs attached to this article.

For more information, visit the county's website, which has a page dedicated to New Farm documents.