The third managerial transition in Rancho Cucamonga’s 48-year history this week was marred by deep controversy over a secretive move by City Hall to reverse course on a key element of its land use policy, raising the specter of graft and influence peddling impacting governmental operations within San Bernardino County’s fourth most populous city.
The abrupt shift city officials are seeking to implement with regard to the intensity of development that is to be permitted to take place within the expanse of land most recently annexed the city while those officials were withholding from the public information relating to that alteration in policy is taking place just as Elisa Cox is officially succeeding John Gillison, who as of Monday officially departed as city manager after a tenure in that capacity which began in 2011.
Among Gillison’s most significant accomplishments was the city’s 2020 annexation of 6.38-square mile Etiwanda Heights, which was then situated above the northeastern quadrant of the city. That acquisition boosted the 40.12 square miles that were then within Rancho Cucamonga city limits to 46.5 square miles. That expansion was not effectuated casually, but had come after more than two decades of contemplation and informal discussion, followed by focused and intense preparation and action toward the annexation of the 4,085 acres in question in the 2017-to-2020 timeframe. This entailed, throughout all of 2018 and most of 2019, multiple public hearings, community workshops, scoping sessions, virtual workshops, surveys, and pop-up meetings in which the community, most particularly those then-current residents living in close proximity to the 4,085 acres under consideration for annexation, were encouraged to and did weigh in with regard to their perception of the advisability of expanding the city’s jurisdiction to include the land and the standards under which the property was to be developed once it became part of the city. The predominate, indeed nearly universal sentiment, expressed throughout this process was that the rustic and virtually undeveloped land should not be aggressively or intensely developed. Those present at the meetings, workshops and scoping sessions voiced, and the city staff summaries of that input documents consistently strong opposition to “apartments,” “condos,” “high-density,” and “multi-family housing.” Staff reports show residents explicitly added “No Apartments” and “No Condos” to priority boards during workshops. That input was utilized to inform what ultimately became the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, a binding planning document which was was ultimately given approval by the city council in November 2019.
As drawn up and ratified, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan permits a relatively narrow swath of property that was previously within the city limits, featuring chaparral, grasslands and oak woodlands alongside a natural alluvial creekbed, to be developed with something on the order of 90 to 100 homes. Further, under the plan, another 790 acres in the annexed property is to be designated as eligible for a variety of residential uses, including senior living cottages, some relatively small single family units as well as a number of half-acre sized lots to be zoned to allow equestrian use. Overall, the lion’s share of the land to be annexed, 88.2 percent or 3,603 of its 4,085 acres, is zoned for “rural/conservation” land use where no development is to occur.
The adopted plan reflected a prohibition on multifamily units by providing only single-family housing types in the designated “neighborhood area” within Etiwanda Heights. Overall, documents show, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was to allow “2,700–3,000 single-family homes” to be built while ensuring that there were to be “no multi-family units across the 790 acres” zoned to be developed residentially. The adopted plan reflected this by providing only single-family housing types in the so-called neighborhood area.
Thereafter, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was presented as the land use document cited in support of the city’s application with the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission to annex the 4,085 acres. That effort concluded successfully on November 9, 2020, when the Local Agency Formation commission, known by its acronym LAFCO, gave approval to the annexation. Throughout LAFCO’s processing and ultimate granting of that request, Rancho Cucamonga officials gave repeated assurances that the city was committed to abiding by the development standards and limitations contained in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, including assurances that upon the 6.38 square miles transitioning from unincorporated San Bernardino County land to property lying within Rancho Cucamonga municipal boundaries, that portion of it deemed suitable for residential development would consist of unattached single-family homes, each with its surrounding and separate yard. There were multiple attestations of this commitment, made by city officials in both verbal and written form, including the 2020 LAFCO annexation approval summary, dated November 9, 2020; city website announcements and at public presentations surrounding the annexation.
Ultimately, in making its annexation application and throughout LAFCO’s processing and ultimate granting of that request, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan formed the basis of how the city was proceeding toward the eventuality of expanding its boundaries. In this way, the city and its officials were doubly committed, and the city’s residents doubly assured, that there were to be no multifamily residences constructed in Etiwanda Heights and there was to be no high-density development of the property, and what development was to occur there would be within a subdivision or subdivisions of a density between 3.3 units to the acre and 3.67 units to the acre, an intensity below that which had occurred in the city’s residential tracts in the 1980s and 1990s. City officials’ repeated commitments to adhere to these standards were manifest in the 2020 LAFCO annexation approval summary, dated November 9, 2020; announcements on the city’s website; and city officials’ verbal statements during public presentations surrounding the annexation.
Throughout the remainder of Gilllison’s official tenure as city manager – a period of slightly more than five years running through November 30, 2025 – the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan had remained operative.
Contained within Etiwanda Heights was 1,252.21 acres of land owned by the San Bernardino County Flood Control District. Following the Army Corps of Engineers construction of a regional flood control system that included concrete channelization some two decades ago, the use of the acreage for damming, diversion purposes and containment basins ceased, although those basins remained operative, following normal precipitation or deluges, for percolation purposes. The county declared the property as surplus during the fist decade of the 21st Century and for a time entertained purchase and development proposals from various entities entities, including a competition in 2009 that was never resolved. Unbeknownst to the public, last year the county entered into confidential and exclusive negotiations with developer James “Jimmy” Previti and representatives of his company, Frontier Enterprises. 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 – slightly less than 1.96 square miles – for the agreed-upon price of $93 million, or $74,275.21 per acre. Though ownership of the property changed hands, it remained within the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan Area, and subject to the land use standards and restrictions contained in the document in its finalized form when ratified by the city council in 2019 and memorialized for a second time during LAFCO’s 2020 processing and ratification of the annexation of the 4,085 acres within which the 1,252.21-acres flood zone purchased by Previti lies.
In August 2025, it was announced that Gillison was to depart as manager as of December 1, at which time he was to be succeeded by Elisa Cox, who had been serving as the city’s second-in-command as assistant city manager since May 2002, had deputy city manager between August 2016 and April 2022 and prior to that had been assistant city manager in Sierra Madre for 22 months after having served in the capacity of that city’s human resources director and, previously, its head of community and personnel services.
The slightly-more-than-three-month duration of Cox’s transition into the position of city manager ensued. On November 18, 2025, as the countdown toward Cox’s inheritance of full oversight of City Hall was proceeding apace, public notice was given on that on December 10, 2025, the planning commission is to discuss and consider an alteration of the city’s planning standards as pertains to Etiwanda Heights in the form of a specific plan amendment – meaning most apparently the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan – which would add nine new building types, including duplexes, quadplexes, 12-plexes, walkups, so-called cottage courts, several higher-density small-lot product types, new block configurations, a density transfer mechanism and objective standard changes along expanded regulating zones permitting those products. The proposed amendment clearly presages the introduction of multi-family housing types that were excluded in the adopted 2019 Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan and referenced in the city’s 2020 public commitment.
On the same day that the notice went out a handful of people, followed a few days later by even more local residents, grew alarmed at what they perceived to be in the offing. A number of these initiated inquiries with City Hall to ascertain, precisely, what was happening, why it was happening, who was driving the proposed land use and policy change, whether this had been triggered by a proposal at odds with the previous development standards that originated with a landowner/developer or whether the change was being pushed by either elected city officials or city staff. According to several of those city residents who made those inquiries, city officials – from those at the level of the planning division up to that of city administration and the city council – stonewalled them.
While it is abundantly clear that there has been a reversal of attitude on the part of the city’s public officials with regard to Etiwanda Heights, most notably with regard to the prohibition on residential development of an intensity/density greater than single family units or cottages intended for senior citizens, who or what is driving the shift is not clear. Sources deep within City Hall have told the Sentinel that the change was played very close to the vest, and that information relating to the liberalization of land use standards on the property was not shared generally within the city’s planning division but rather on a strict need-to-know basis, meaning only among the city manager, i.e., Cox; the deputy city manager/director of community development, the city planner and no more than two of the city’s associate planners.
When residents asked specifically how the duplexes, quadplexes, 12-plexes, walkups, cottage courts, and the high-density small-lot units squared with the city’s commitment to construct single-family homes on the residentially-zoned property in Etiwanda Heights, they were met with silence. Similarly, inquiries with regard to who was making the request and whether it originated externally with Previti or other landowners within the district or if the proposal was generated internally by the mayor or members of the council, the planning commission or city staff went unanswered. In at least one case, a resident who pushed to obtain a greater explication of what the amendment was to entail and how many single-family units were to be converted to duplexes, quadplexes and 12-plexes as well as whether the term walk-up was a euphemism for an apartment building, he encountered hostility from city staff.
Redfin defines walk-up as “a type of apartment that doesn’t have elevators [in which] stairs are the primary way to navigate throughout the building.”
After being told that the action to be taken at the December 10 planning commission meeting had been personally planned by Cox as the “signature” kick-off to her era as city manager, the Sentinel initiated, or attempted to initiate, its own inquiries with Cox. Those included seven attempts to reach her by phone and a 2,748-word email delving into the particulars of the evolution of the terms memorialized in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, the city’s representations with regard to it during its 2019 adoption, the city’s commitment to its terms in the successful 2020 annexation drive and what had transpired since that necessitated the rescission of those terms.
Prior to the Sentinel’s attempted communication via email, Cox’s diverted the inquiry to the city’s planning division, where an associate planner said a senior department member knowledgeable about the proposal would reach back with an explanation of what the proposed changes entail, why they are being proposed and what the city’s motivation in pursuing the is, who requested and who formulated them and their timing. No one from the city’s planning division has followed through with that promised contact as of press time.
In the meantime…
The completed article appears in the December 5 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.