(December 24)  Two Chino landowners are undertaking a petition drive to have the city rezone eight parcels on 29.6 acres south of Francis Avenue between Benson and Vernon avenues from their current low density residential use to a much more intensive residential land use designation that would allow for up to eight homes per acre.
Ron “Yogi” Brewer of 11915 Vernon Avenue and Matt Evans of 11867 Vernon Avenue are asking the city’s planning division to change the current single family residential (RD1) land use designation, which calls for one unit per acre, to single-family (RD8) allowance, which provides for up to eight units per acre.
Chino, which historically was an agricultural community, has transformed itself into a suburban municipality, but it yet contains a few hundred acres where the distinction between residential and equestrian as well as residential and commercial agricultural uses is blurred. The properties in question have zoning that currently allows horses to be kept there.
Brewer and Evans’ stated rationale in asking for the zone change is that the equestrian uses associated with the current zoning designations on the property have fallen out of favor with many of the nearby non-agricultural residential neighborhoods.
Maintaining that the property has become unsuitable for livestock or horses, Brewer and Evans are seeking the requisite signatures of 10 percent of Chino’s registered voters – in excess of 3,200 – to place a measure on next year’s ballot calling for higher density single family homes on the acreage than is permitted there now. Such a change, they claim, will eliminate unpleasant animal odors, flies and unanchored soil that results in dust.
While Brewer and Evans have stated that the rezoning they seek would guarantee high quality homes are constructed and that they are not asking the city to allow them to construct apartments, some opposition to their agenda has formed, including that of former mayor and current Chino councilwoman Eunice Ulloa.
Some of those in opposition to the zone change claim Brewer and Evans are actually trying to manipulate the city’s zoning code to engineer a quadrupling in the value of the property.