The Upland City Council will revisit the Villa Serena Specific Plan Project on Monday, June 9.
The reconsideration comes more than five years after the project was first approved. The project was suspended after it became mired in controversy and legal challenges.
While the project proponents and city officials say those issues have been hashed out and resolved, there remain some Uplanders and in particular the residents of the immediately adjoining properties, who believe the intensity of the proposed development is too intense and therefore incompatible with the surrounding area.
On April 13, 2020, during a teleconferenced meeting in which the public participated remotely and electronically rather than in a physical forum, the Upland City Council voted 4-to-1 to give Frontier Homes an entitlement to construct 65 single family detached residential units on 9.14-acres owned by the Colonies Partners within the footprint of the defunct flood control detention basin north of 15th Street.
The residential area of Upland south of 15th Street and north of the commercial corridor on the north side of Foothill Boulevard between Campus Avenue on the West and running to Grove Avenue on the east is referred to as Foothill Knolls.
Project opponents asserted that in the run-up to the project’s consideration and approval, Upland municipal employees falsified and hid documentation and data indicating a portion of the site for the Villa Serena project was off limits to development pursuant to a covenant with the State of California.
Documentation upon which the city relied in evaluating the property contained discrepancies that were not satisfactorily resolved, those opponents said.
In 1999, 7.1 acres in the city’s northeastern quadrant upon which a portion of the Villa Serena Project is proposed to be located were set aside as wetlands at the insistence of the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, formerly known as the Department of Fish & Game, in accordance with a 25-point “streambed alteration agreement” the City of Upland entered into with the state. The property in question is intended to serve as habitat for a multitude of species indigenous to the area.
The passage of time and the changeover in city personnel resulted in the restrictions contained in the city’s pact with the state being forgotten or ignored when the city’s community development division began its evaluation of Frontier Homes July 26, 2018 application for a general plan amendment and zone change, site plan and design review and tentative tract map for the 65-dwelling unit Villa Serena project on the 9.14 acres owned by the Colonies Partners which included the 7.1 acre set-aside.
City officials did not notify the California Department of Fish & Wildlife about the project until the day it was to be considered by the city council – April 13, 2020, doing so only at the request of then-Councilwoman Janice Elliott. It had been city officials’ contention that a biological resources assessment that Frontier Homes had completed in 2018 and submitted to the city as part of its project application obviated the need for that notification. That assessment stated there were no sensitive biological resources – either sensitive species or critical habitat – documented as existing in the immediate area of the proposed development.
Ultimately, however, after the project was approved by the city council on a 4-to-1 vote with Elliott dissenting, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife would conclude that the land to be developed was host to multiple species of flora and fauna.
Thereafter, a group of Upland residents living both within and outside the Foothill Knolls District, led by Lois Sicking Dieter, formed Friends of Upland Wetlands, which retained attorney Cory Briggs, who filed a petition for a writ of mandate on the newly-formed association’s behalf in San Bernardino County Superior Court, naming the City of Upland as the respondent and Frontier Homes as the real party in interest. The writ sought the rescission of the approval of the Villa Serena project until a full-blown environmental impact report was undertaken and completed.
Judge David Cohn heard the matter. He rendered a decision on July 14, 2020 which held that Friends of Upland Wetlands was correct in its assessment and that, given that a portion of the project area was within a wetlands area, the city was required to consult with “the responsible agencies,” meaning the Department of Fish & Wildlife, before proceeding with its consideration and approval of the project. Judge Cohn rejected the initial study and mitigated declaration the city had used to do the environmental certification of the project as insufficient. “A full environmental impact report is required,” Judge Cohn ruled.
The project has now returned and will come before the city council on June 9.
The council will consider the Villa Serena Specific Plan Project, which, according to the council agenda, is to consist of 65 single-family residences, private community facilities, and ancillary features/improvements on the western 9.16-acre portion of the 15th Street flood control basin. According to the city, the plan also calls for the modification of the remaining 11-acres of the 15th Street flood control basin east of the proposed residential development to retain the basin’s stormwater and flood control capacity; the extension of 15th Street from the southwest corner of the project site to Campus Avenue; and development of a 0.15-acre public pocket park on 15th Street near the north end of Fernando Avenue. A 4.29-acre area at the extreme eastern boundary of the basin would remain unaffected by project activities, the city maintains.