Proposed Changes to City General Plan Draw Criticism

Voters – many of them angry over a proposal to expand the city's urban growth boundary – overwhelmingly rejected updates to San Ramon's general plan when it went to the ballot last fall.

So the city scratched those boundary changes from the 2030 plan, which needed voter approval. But state law requires San Ramon to update its main land-use document, forcing the city back to the drawing board.

This time, instead of voters, the City Council has the final say.

The plan has drawn lots of criticism. Some of it from Toyota, which has a distribution center and regional office in Bishop Ranch.

Carlos Soria, a project development manager for the automaker, said the facility will need to expand in a few years, but it won't be able to if the city changes the land-use designation from warehouse to mixed-use retail-residential.

Toyota's warehouse lies within a part of the city – from Interstate 680 to Alcosta Boulevard and Executive Parkway to Fostoria Way – slated for rezoning to make way for stores, restaurants, condos and office space.

Soria said the company has already invested about $10 million in recent years to upgrade the San Ramon warehouse.

Under the proposed rezoning, the manufacturer would be unable to ever expand or remodel the place – something that has to happen in the near future. If the building is kept the way it is, it just won't be cost-effective to stay in town, he said.

"We don't want to move, but it looks like we'll have to," Soria, who received a letter from San Ramon's economic development department saying Toyota's plans don't align with the city's vision for that part of the city. "Ultimately, the city will do what it wants."

Small business owners worry about the same thing.

"If they go ahead with this, I may never be able to expand again," said Kevin L'Hommedieu, who owns Kevin and Conner's Shop, a decades-old car repair business in the planning area.

Planning Commission Chairman Harry Sachs said approving the general plan updates as proposed won't automatically make the rezoning changes in the . Specific plans require separate environmental reviews and separate approval by City Council, he said.

"We're talking a long-term, 20- to 30-year plan," he said. "This is a long-range project. It won't happen overnight and certainly not without public discussion ... and input."

Part of why the city wants to rezone that part of town for high-density stores and housing is because of a change from on high that links land use and air quality in municipal planning.

Cities that plan to build homes above storefronts and close to public transportation will get more government money thanks to an anti-sprawl bill signed into law a couple years ago.

The Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008 requires cities need to start building homes closer to the work place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

San Ramon could lose out on future state and federal funding if it doesn't designate more of the city for affordable or high-density housing, Sachs noted.

That's why in the conceptual outline of the Camino Ramon Specific Plan, some 160 acres now zoned for service or warehouse types of business would become mixed-use retail-residential.

Even if it takes decades to build shopping plazas with five-story apartments atop stores, offices and eateries as envisioned in the specific plan, the state wants to see on paper that cities are headed in that direction, Councilman Dave Hudson recently told San Ramon Patch.

L'Hommedieu just wonders why the city would look into rezoning areas that house some of the oldest businesses in town. He likened it to eminent domain.

"It's puts pressure on us," he said. "As a business grows, it needs to expand. The city wants to take away our ability to do that."

. It's a set of guidelines that determines where people will live and how they will get to work.

For more on the existing plan, click here. For an explanation of why it needs to be edited, click here.

The plan is up for discussion at a Planning Commission meeting at 7 tonight in the City Council chambers, 2222 Camino Ramon. To view the staff report, check out the documents attached to this article.

To view the entire agenda, click here.