Over the protests of more than 200 residents on hand for the December 10 Rancho Cucamonga Planning Commission meeting, that advisory panel recommended that the City Council early next year alter the land use allowances in Etiwanda Heights to to allow multi-family housing to be built on that never-before-developed.
The planning commission’s action raised hackles for multiple reasons.
The specific plan for that area which provides the legal land use standards for the 4,085-acre area in the northeast quadrant of the city, known as the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, was derived over a more than 20 month public vetting process throughout the last few months of 2017, all of 2018 and most of the following year in which the city painstakingly sought and gathered the input of city residents with regard to how the property should be zoned and ultimately developed prior to the plan’s official adoption on November 6, 2019. The Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was then relied upon by municipal officials in making an application to the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission [LAFCO] to annex the 4,085 acres, which at that time were outside the city limits, into Rancho Cucamonga. City officials, who in city documents and in multiple verbal statements during the derivation of the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan offered assurances that the city would abide by the land use and development standards contained in the plan, reiterated those commitments repeatedly while LAFCO was evaluating the annexation proposal. Throughout that process, city residents, most particularly those living at the periphery of the acreage proposed for being brought into the city raised no objections to the annexation, at least in part because of their faith in the city’s avowals.
The land use standards specified for Etiwanda Heights remained in place for more than five years after the passage of the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan.
Unbeknownst to the public, in 2024, county officials entered into confidential and exclusive negotiations with developer James “Jimmy” Previti and representatives of his company, Frontier Enterprises with regard to 1,252.21 acres – slightly less than 1.96 square miles – of county flood control district property which was contained within the 4,085 acres annexed by the city in 2020. That property was subject to the land use restrictions articulated in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan.
On the day prior to Thanksgiving 2024, November 27, 2024, in a closed-door session from which the public was excluded, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors worked out the final details and then ratified the sale of the 1,252.21 acres for the agreed-upon price of $93 million, or $74,275.21 per acre.
Just as secretively as the county had carried out its negotiations for the sale of the flood control property to Frontier Enterprises, also referred to as the Previti Group, Rancho Cucamonga City officials began a dialogue with the Priveti Group in January 2025. Those discussions pertained to the company’s intention to initiate construction on the property it had acquired from the county.
Hidden from the public was that the exchanges between city officials and the landowner were taking place with regard to the 1,252.21 acres or that the Previti Group was pressing city officials to deviate from the standards contained in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan. More than ten months elapsed without city residents having an inkling..