Alhambra Highlands design guidelines up for review

Richfield Investment Corporation’s slick new website launches with a photo montage of endless wheat fields blowing in the breeze and a majestic oak tree gracing a sweep of grasslands – not a man-made structure in sight. 

A fashionable electronica soundtrack plays as the sentence, “a rich field is the land of opportunity for those who are good stewards of the earth,” scrolls over the bucolic images. However, the company’s site does not showcase a rendering of Richfield’s proposed Alhambra Highlands housing development. 

The Houston-based corporation envisions building 112 “semi-custom” homes atop a scenic ridge that spans Richfield’s 298-acre Martinez property; the home sites would range between 7,900 and 16,000 square feet, spread over 76.2 acres. Related roads, sewer systems and water tanks would accompany the development and according to Chip Griffin, the project’s consulting planner hired by the City, “the project would be constructed in multiple phases over a 10-year period, with an anticipated build out in 2019.” 

650 oak trees are slated for destruction to make way for the subdivision.

“The first phase would include the project infrastructure and rough grading of the subdivision and residential lots,” Griffin wrote to the Planning Commission in early March, adding that the first phase would take roughly two years and market demand would dictate the construction timeline thereafter on the semi-custom homes. Yesterday Griffin said the permitting schedule has been pushed back due to “various reasons,” but that the Design Review Committee’s (DRC) examination of the Alhambra Highlands Design Guidelines (AHDG) on Wednesday is a necessary step in the overall process of Richfield seeking the City’s permission to move forward with the latest iteration of the project. 

The DRC will review the guidelines, crafted by Richfield, which are “to work in conjunction with several other documents to help shape the development of Alhambra Highlands … the AHDG provide qualitative direction for architectural style, scale, color, shape and visual appearance of structures, hardscape and landscape,” said Griffin. He, speaking on behalf of the City, advocated that the DRC recommend the approval of the AHDG to the Planning Commission.

Griffin was unsure how the recent move by the City Council to change the process by which Planned Unit Developments (PUDs) – such as Alhambra Highlands – are approved would impact the proposed development, although he pointed out that Richfield’s application “has already been approved by the City.”

At the July 21 Council meeting, a public hearing on the proposed “replacement of the current process allowing a Planned Unit Development (PUD) as a conditional use, subject to Use Permit approval by the Planning Commission, with a new process defining a PUD as a specific Overlay Zoning District, subject to approval of a Zoning Map Amendment by the City Council,” garnered no discussion and was quickly approved by the Council (Council member Mike Menesini was absent).

Richfield project manager Debbie Chung said Monday that she didn’t see a reason why the City would reject the Alhambra Highlands development plan, since “we have come up with a more viable, workable plan at this point,” as a result of significant resident opposition since Richfield’s renewed effort to get Alhambra Highlands off the ground.

“We have been working diligently trying to fine tune the proposed development as a result of public concern, although we have to work within the City’s confine of the [Alhambra Valley] Specific Plan,” said Chung.
Richfield Investment Corporation has attempted to develop its Martinez property since the mid-1980s. In 1990, the City approved 148 homes for construction, and in 1993, another 68 for a total of 216 on 253 acres.

For reasons Richfield declined to state, although the company sought multiple extensions on the project, it was never started, and after the proposed building acreage was designated as the critical habitat of the Alameda whipsnake, through the efforts of local and national environmental groups, the development was put on hold until 2008, when the corporation filed another application to build. This time the project was scaled back to an initial building site of 76 acres.

One of the criteria the DRC will be applying to the project is whether it “substantially preserves views from nearby properties where this can be done without severe or undue restrictions on the use of the site, balancing the property rights of the applicant and the affected property owners,” according to Griffin.

According to the Alhambra Highlands Residential Project Initial Study, a 138-page document prepared by Griffin and released Feb. 17, the housing development will have a “substantial adverse effect on scenic vista and substantially degrade the existing visual character or quality of the site and its surroundings,” as well as  “directly or indirectly destroy[ing] a unique paleontological resource or unique geological feature.”