Axel Cramer and Dane Hollar, the 31-year-old and 28-year-old principals in Green Collar Builders, have intentions of building 10,000 buildings throughout the world annually over the next 21 years. They have selected Joshua Tree as one of the communities to begin their initial round of construction. They plan to erect 64 homes in a subdivision they have dubbed LoveMore Ranch, adjacent to Alta Loma Road in Joshua Tree.
While Axel Cramer and Dane Hollar maintain they love Joshua Tree more than most, there are scores of Joshua Tree residents who claim they love concept a lot less than Cramer and Hollar do.
Those Joshua Tree residents would prefer that the duo undertake their mission to reinvigorate the planet elsewhere.
According to Cramer, those denizens of the desert community positioned off Highway 62 between Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms who are taking a stand against the project are doing so out of ignorance. In the first place, traditional development, including the type that has occurred in the desert, has proven to be unsustainable, he said. But Green Collar Builders represents a new approach that undertakes sustainable growth, he insisted. More than that, Cramer gushed, the project will be “regenerative.”
To get a glimpse of what the regenerative concept entails, one need go no further than the Green Collar Builders’ website. There the company’s mission statement credits Cramer and Hollar with intending to “Catalyze greater use of and capacity to construct state-of-the-art sustainable and regenerative building systems internationally, constructing 10000+ commercial & residential structures in the Western USA annually and generating top-quartile returns compared with competition in 2045+ based on value cornerstones of quality, communication and environmental regeneration.”
Put into laymen’s terms, that goulagash means, Cramer said, that he and Hollar aren’t raping the land by engaging in ecological havoc and harming the environment but making improvements, doing so at an intensity that is less than full-throttle.
First off, according to Cramer, LoveMore Ranch will have a net-negative carbon impact, meaning, apparently, that after the 64 homes are built and occupied with something like 256 residents, there will be less use of fossil fuel on the 18.5 acres where the homes are to be built than is in use their now.
Cramer was unable to explain, precisely, how that would be, particularly since there is virtually no human activity on the property at present.
Indeed, many within the Joshua Tree community perceive Cramer to be something of a charlatan.
On August 29, Cramer hosted what he said was to be a “community conversation” with regard to Green Collar Builders’ plan. Better than four score residents turned out for the event. While a few said they were satisfied with the modicum of details Cramer and the six others with him including architects and engineers, who were either Green Collar Builders corporate staff or consultants, others complained that when those with the information were questioned they proved hard to pin down as to facts and specifics.
Based on what information Cramer was willing to disgorge, the homes to be built will make minimal disturbance of the natural landscape and will be set down amid the existing desert chaparral, all electrical power supplied to the homes will come from solar panels on the houses themselves or a communal solar power plant to be built as part of the project, a small “pocket” wastewater treatment plant which will process all of the effluent generated among the 64 homes so that it can be used to irrigate a communal garden/vegetable and fruit farm. Hands down, Cramer said, the project will preserve at least 20 percent more of the desert habitat than would be the case with a traditional residential subdivision, and most likely, more than that.
When several of the local residents expressed skepticism about what Cramer is proposing, he shifted somewhat, saying that as the property owner with property development rights under the authority of the San Bernardino County Land Use Services Department, he and his company could simply develop the land to the standard provided for in the county’s zoning, which would permit up to 114 units, as per the low-density residential and single-family residential designation on the county zoning map for the area.
Some Joshua Tree residents took what Cramer said as a threat, and they questioned wheter he would stand by his expressed commitment to preserve the natural environment within the project area or limit the project to the 64 homes as he said he would.
Another issue that local residents found Cramer to be insufficiently forthcoming with regard to was to pricing on the homes. At one point he said these sustainable units would also be “affordable.” Yet he was unable to define, in dollar terms or in any other way what that meant. When specific monetary thresholds were mentioned – such as $500,000 – Cramer was unable to say whether the cost of the homes would come in at, below or above that figure.
Some accused Cramer of talking through his hat, and they said his effort to have those present divide into small groups to talk among themselves with one of the Green Collar Builders monitoring them and fielding questions was an effort by Cramer to “divide and conquer” the opposition to the project. When one resident sought to take the microphone to enunciate a series of questions that all present could hear, such that Cramer would have to respond to them on the record in a way that everyone would hear precisely what his and Green Collar Builders’ position was, Cramer resisted that approach, provoking even greater skepticism.
One Joshua Tree resident, Nelson Day, confronted Cramer, saying he was involved in perpetrating a “disgusting money grab” to develop property and reap a profit.
Joshua Tree resident Laird Davis noted that this was not the first time that real estate speculators had set their sights on Joshua Tree and that in the past the residents had risen up to resist the designs of the profiteers intent on exploiting the community. He said that the Joshua Tree residents would do so again.
At one point, after the Joshua Tree residents had enough of being herded into isolated groups in which they were assailed with Green Collar Builders corporate propaganda, several collectively buttonholed Cramer, demanding that he give clear and straightforward answers about what he and Hollar are up to.
He wasn’t up to anything untoward, Cramer said, honest injun. He was simply looking to create a living environment for residents to have a “deep engagement with the national park,” be able to grown their own food, live sustainably and give him and Hollar an opportunity to “push the frontier of generative development in the High Desert.”
He lived in San Diego Cramer said, but he had established a second home in Joshua Tree, located on the 18.5-acre property where the project is to take place, at 61650 Alta Loma Drive, between Hillview and Sunset roads almost four years ago. He loves that place more than anything, Cramer insisted.
Cut the nonsense, several of the Joshua Tree residents on hand told Cramer, not in so many words, pointing out that there is not sufficient water availability for Cramer and Hollar to create the residential subdivision they are touting. They called LoveMore Ranch a “boondoggle” and “poorly conceived” and “misplaced.”
Skepticism extended to who, exactly, is behind Cramer and Hollar, and whether what they are engaged in was simply a ploy to get the camel’s nose under the tent, such that after an entitlement to construct 64 homes or 72 home or 80 homes or 88 homes or 96 homes or 104 homes or 114 homes is obtained, further plans by whoever the deep-pocketed true sponsor of this effort to sink a deep well and proceed with a massive subdivision involving hundreds of acres and neighborhoods with four and six units to the acre, eight units to the acre, ten units to the acre or 12 units to the acre will materialize.
“Where’s your money coming from?” Davis asked.
Cramer refused to say.
Cramer is full of himself, Joshua tree residents say. He has been trying to cook up a plan to develop the property and obtain 27-to-one return on his investment since 2020, they said.