16 Apr Pittsburg Development Decision Pushed Back Due to Pushback

The city of Pittsburg in 2021 approved the Seeno/Discovery Builders’ Faria development that proposes the construction of 1,500 homes on Los Medanos Ridgeline between Pittsburg and Concord. Save Mount Diablo’s Save the Ridge initiative has rallied hundreds of letter writers in opposition. (Cooper Ogden / Save Mount Diablo via Bay City News)

By Aly Brown
Bay City News

After receiving hundreds of emails opposing a housing project that would develop a portion of the Los Medanos Ridgeline between Pittsburg and Concord, the agency charged with deciding whether to annex the open space into the city of Pittsburg postponed its decision.

The Contra Costa Local Agency Formation Commission met April 10 to consider approving a boundary change that would annex more than 600 acres located in the rolling hills southwest of the city of Pittsburg. The annex would allow for the 1,500-unit Faria development project by Discovery Builders Inc., an Albert Seeno-owned developer company, to move forward.

But after receiving about 400 emails from opponents of the project, Lou Ann Texeira, LAFCo executive officer, said her two-person team needed more time and continued the item to June 12.

Every county in the state has a LAFCo, which has the power to act on boundary changes thanks to the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Act of 2000.

Seeno’s development project was at the heart of controversy for decades before it was ultimately approved by the Pittsburg City Council in 2021, when Faria was proposed as a 1,650-unit development on the ridgeline between Pittsburg and Concord.

Shortly after the project’s approval, Save Mount Diablo — a land trust and conservation organization — took legal action, challenging the council’s decision to approve a project with an inadequate Environmental Impact Review. A Contra Costa County Superior Court judge sided with Save Mount Diablo, demanding the council overturn its approval and conduct another EIR. A subsequent request for a retrial from Discovery Builders and the city of Pittsburg was denied.

In early 2023, a modified version of the project went before the Pittsburg Planning Commission, which recommended rejecting it — a recommendation the City Council ignored in April when approving the 1,500-unit project with no affordable houses. The city instead accepted in lieu fees from the developer.

>>>Read: Developers Propose Hundreds of Housing Units in Antioch With Little Focus on Affordability

Now, it’s the city’s application that awaits consideration from LAFCo to decide whether it will annex just over 600 acres.
Save Mount Diablo representatives, however, say the EIR is still inadequate and barely different from previous iterations.

Seth Adams, Save Mount Diablo land conservation director, pointed out that without a proper EIR it was unclear how wildlife will be impacted, but he knows from studies of other regional agencies that there is at least one golden eagle nest in proximity to the project.

“They’ll say Save Mount Diablo is against housing. No, we’re not,” Adams said. “We’re against avoiding environmental review, and we think things should be mitigated, and we think location matters.”

Adams further pointed out that Measure P, a 2005 voter-approved ballot initiative that established the urban limit line, was authored by Seeno himself.

“It had a big loophole in it. It said it will protect the ridges and slopes, but it included a clause in the actual language of the initiative that said the city can change this with a vote, which the city did,” he said.

“So based on the zoning and the general plan and Measure P, there was a certain number of houses that could be accommodated on this rugged site, and in some places the developer increased that by 25, and then-Mayor Shanelle Scales-Preston, council member Jelani Killings, council member Dionne Adams and council member Angelica Lopez all approved those changes without question,” Adams said.

No one from the Pittsburg City Council responded to requests for comment at press time.

In their request for a retrial in 2022, attorneys representing Discovery Builders and the city of Pittsburg said the EIR’s methodological approach was supported by substantial evidence, further writing:

“In 2017, shortly before the Draft EIR was circulated for public review, biological consultants revisited the project site to examine whether habitat conditions at the project site had changed since 2014 and whether the special-status plant species observed in 2014 could still be expected to occur at the project site. The 2017 study found that the project site ‘provides only marginal habitat for special-status plant species known from the region.'”

Texeira noted that the city of Pittsburg and Discovery Builders submitted all of the documentation that was required of them for the annexation application. Until June 12, LAFCo will continue reading through the 400 public comments and documents.

“I am encouraging the city and the developer and Save Mount Diablo to work together on some sort of permanent open space arrangement in the ridgeline area,” Texeira said.

Adams added that the houses, if built in that location, will be the most expensive in the city of Pittsburg, a strain on public services that are difficult to deliver to the top of the ridge and will impact the view for half of central Contra Costa County. He stressed the importance of moving the project.

“Save Mount Diablo calls on all the parties involved — Supervisor Glover, the Pittsburg City Council, the Concord City Council — to all get together with us and come up with a solution that will protect as much of the top of the Los Medanos Ridgeline as we can,” said Adams.

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