From the City of Sacramento’s official press release:
In a unanimous vote at City Council on Tuesday, January 29th, Sacramento Mayor Fargo and the City Council voted to begin the process of annexing 577 acres adjacent to North Natomas called the Greenbriar Project.
Mayor Fargo brought forward amendments to the resolution clarifying that no construction in Greenbriar will take place until the levees are certified for at least 100 year flood protection and subsequent entitlements (habitat conservation plan, development guidelines, and subdivision maps, etc.) will require Council approval.
The action taken at Council on Tuesday night is the first stage of entitlements for annexation and zoning. Many steps still remain before development is permitted. The annexation into the City is scheduled for public hearings at the Local Agency Formation Commission on March 5.
Mayor’s Amendments to the Resolution to include the following language:
8. The entitlements for which the EIR was prepared are first stage legislative entitlements, and do not authorize any actual development. Before any actual development may occur, the following must be approved by Council: a development agreement, a tentative map, any subdivision modifications, and PUD development guidelines and any necessary changes to the PUD Schematic Plan and Guidelines, and any special permits or other entitlements required for
development.
Before the tentative map, development agreement and other entitlements are approved, and before a grading permit may be issued, a habitat conservation plan must be prepared and approved, and an incidental take permit issued, by U.S. Fish and Wildlife and California Department of Fish and Game.
9. In recognition of the pending remapping by FEMA of the area in which the project is located, the project has been conditioned to prohibit vertical construction unless and until the property has at least 100 year flood protection.
I am not as concerned about the flood issue as most of the SacBee commenters, since they won’t be able to build until the levees have been fixed. What bothers me most about this is it short-circuits sound planning for the entire Joint Vision area. The point of doing large-area planning is to figure out the best places to put the various uses that will ultimately be built. Greenbriar is predominantly residential, and this is no doubt the absolute worst place in the whole Joint Vision area for housing. Houses pushed up against two freeways (will we never learn this is a bad idea?) and under an airport flight path. Notice how the school is jammed in the corner by the freeway junction? This is because it cannot legally be farther to the west, away from the freeways, due to the flight path issue. With the freeway frontage, this site only makes sense for commercial uses, but the city would never buy into this because it does not support their light-rail fantasies. It really seems like the city is being planned to support transit. It ought to be the other way around.