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The San Ramon Planning Commission voted Tuesday to approve an extension for a previously approved housing project that is set to replace the longstanding Golden Skate rink, following the owners’ announcement that the rink would remain open “indefinitely” amid an uptick in community support spurred by a closure announcement in 2021.
According Bryan Wenter, attorney for the property owner Hassan Sharifi, the decision on the table for the commission at this week’s meeting was not whether or not to grant an extension, but instead to confirm the length of the extension being granted under the Subdivision Map Act.
“Case law confirms that the extension is not discretionary – the discretion of a planning commission or a decision-making body with respect to a map is in connection with approving or disapproving a map in the first instance,” Wenter said. “When an extension request is filed, the discretion is limited to the length of the extension, not whether to give an extension or attempt to make any findings for disapproval.of the previously approved project.”
Although Wenter and Sharifi were seeking a six-year extension in their initial request to the city last month, Wenter added that an 18-month extension recommended by city staff was “fine with us,” and that he hoped they would not have to return with another extension request.
Wenter went on to contend with a point in the staff report on the item prepared for that evening’s meeting that suggested the Planning Commission had some discretion in deciding whether or not the project could be subject to changes in the city’s General Plan update following the expiration of its previous approval.
“We disagree with the characterization in the staff report that this is something that can be disapproved – it cannot be disapproved,” Wenter said.
“In addition, the staff report seems to state that the vested rights of this project are somehow in play such that the project could be subjected to changes in the General Plan, specific plan, or other zoning standards and criteria,” he continued. “That also is not true. This project was the subject of a preliminary application filed in the fall of 2020 that locked in the rules in effect at that point. It also, of course, is the subject of a vesting tentative map.”
Although the owners cited a loss of revenue and reduced attendance at the rink due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the now-rescinded closure announcement in 2021, plans for the rink’s demolition were already underway as of 2020, when the application for the 47-unit Windflower Fields Townhomes project on the site at 2701 Hooper Dr. was first submitted.
While he agreed that there are some cases in which projects don’t meet the initial construction timeline granted in the application and approval process, Wenter argued that this is not the case for Windflower Fields, with a vesting tentative map already established.
“Once that project is approved, as is the case with this project, the vesting goes back to the point in time that the project application was deemed complete, and that project vests the rules, the ordinances, the policies that are in effect at the time the application was deemed complete, and this was deemed complete,” Wenter said. “The vesting was accomplished through SB 330 locking in the rules in effect in fall 2020.”
That means the project is not subject to changes in the city’s current General Plan – which was adopted at the end of 2023 – but instead the previous General Plan that was in effect before the update.
Although the project was approved unanimously by the Planning Commission and City Council in 2022 – following the reversal of the decision to close the rink – it was met with numerous critiques, particularly at the Planning Commission level.
However, SB 330 — also known as the Housing Crisis Act — went into effect in 2020, limiting the discretion of municipalities in rejecting new housing projects with the goal of making it easier for developers to get housing projects approved – particularly when those projects include affordable housing, a requirement that the Windflower Fields project is proposed to meet with 16 junior ADUs in addition to the 47 multi-family homes.
Prior to that, developers had initially sought to replace the rink with a 227-unit apartment building in 2017.
Nonetheless, construction on the project has been delayed for a different reason, according to Wenter’s letter to the city last month – a landslide on the adjacent Faria Preserve property that has spread to the site in question.
Despite some back-and-forth between Wenter and the commission that evening, Commissioner Eric Wallis ultimately called the extension a “fairly straightforward request under the Subdivision Map Act, with the commission voting unanimously to approve an 18-month extension.
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