A citizens’ committee has done what years of work by city officials and community leaders couldn’t. It’s developed a plan for building a bypass road for golfers to reach Pleasanton’s Callippe Preserve Golf Course without driving through a rural neighborhood–a plan almost everyone agrees will work.
Now it’s up to the City Council, which next Tuesday will hear the plan developed by the Happy Valley Blue Ribbon Committee that it established a year ago to find a solution to the nine-year-old vexing problem: how to keep golf course traffic off Alisal Street and Happy Valley Road.
The committee’s recommendation would close Westbridge Road, a temporary street that leads from the golf course to the L-shaped junction of Alisal and Happy Valley Road. Under the new plan, the estimated 1,000 cars a day now using those streets to reach the golf course would be shifted to a new road that would connect the golf course and drivers from the custom homes being built along the way to Sycamore Creek Way, a route long marked as a golf course bypass but also before the construction of homes in the upscale neighborhoods of Bridle Creek and Summerhill Estates.
If there are protests to the Blue Ribbon committee’s plan, it’s likely to come from residents in those newer communities.
The committee’s plan would also allow Greenbriar Homes to build a new custom home development between Alisal Street and the new bypass road to the east. Greenbriar has proposed building as many as 79 homes on the site in return for building the missing link of the bypass road that would connect Sycamore Way and Westbridge and Clubhouse Drive on the city’s golf course property. At one time, the Blue Ribbon committee suggested reducing that number to 63, but no specific development proposal will be part of Tuesday night’s presentation.
Housing developments, which the city hopes will pay for constructing the bypass road, have been part of the controversy over the alternative roadway to Alisal Street since the Happy Valley Specific Plan was approved June 16, 1998. The golf course opened in November 2005. Although that plan committed Pleasanton to providing a bypass to keep golf course traffic off Alisal and Happy Valley Road, the two main thoroughfares for those who live in the unincorporated part of Happy Valley, the Blue Ribbon committee’s recommendation marks the first time opposing groups have come together to support a bypass plan.
In 1998, when the specific plan was adopted, Summerhill Homes had planned to build 109 homes on the hillsides high above Alisal Street and pay for the bypass road. But that plan was rejected by the City Council in the face of protests from the community that the homes would be a visual eyesore in an otherwise pristine hillside view which could be seen from as far away as downtown.
Later, as the city mulled other plans for building the roadway, geological reports showed that parts of the hillside route would cross through unstable, shifting soil that could also add to the costs, if the road could be built at all. Preliminary estimates ranged up to $15 million, a cost that turned away other developers interested in building on the property, which is owned by rancher Al Spotorno.
Spotorno, a fourth-generation Pleasanton rancher, had city approvals to build 102 homes on his property, which extends down the hillside to Alisal Street. Greenbriar’s proposal for 79 homes would trim that number by 23, although Spotorno would retain the right to build an additional five homes somewhere else on his ranchland.
Developer Pat Costanza, executive vice president of Greenbriar who also served as a member of the Blue Ribbon committee, said the actual number of homes Greenbriar would build has yet to be decided. If the City Council accepts the bypass road recommendation Tuesday, then that plan, along with Greenbriar’s development plan, would go to the city Planning Department and the Planning Commission and, eventually, aired at a public hearing before being finalized. In any case, Costanza said the development plan would have to “pencil out” before his company can commit to building the bypass.
Greenbriar’s plan calls for all its proposed homes to be built on local streets that would serve the subdivision and connect only to the new bypass road. Three larger homes on up to 30,000-square-foot lots would be built on Alisal, the only homes planned with driveways onto that street.
Added to traffic from the golf course and the 34 homes under construction or already built along the fairways, the new Greenbriar development would account for more than the 1,800 cars a day to be shifted off Alisal and onto Sycamore Creek Way. Until a final development plan is approved for Greenbriar, city Traffic Engineer Mike Tassano said he can’t provide a reasonable estimate other than to say it would be far more than the current traffic volume now using Alisal.
The successful completion of the work of the Happy Valley Blue Ribbon Committee is seen as a tribute to Lorie Tinfow, who was Pleasanton’s administrative services director a year ago when she was asked by City Manager Nelson Fialho to manage the new committee. Tinfow, who left her City Hall post last October to become assistant city manager in Walnut Creek, where she had worked previously, has continued to chair the Blue Ribbon committee meetings and will make her last presentation to the council Tuesday, completing an agreement by both cities that allowed her to complete the work.
Tinfow knew the Blue Ribbon committee assignment would be formidable. Its first few meetings pitted long-time opponents of any development in Happy Valley, including the golf course, against city and Alameda County representatives on the committee who favored the golf course and related development, as well as rancher Spotorno and developer Costanza, who wanted even more.
Some who attended those early meetings, considered it to be the most dysfunctional group ever established by the City Council.
The council’s action to try again to find a suitable route for a bypass road also followed:
* A vote by property owners in Happy Valley in 2002 that rejected a bid to annex to Pleasanton by an 88-83-vote margin.
* Lawsuits and court appeals by the Alisal Improvement Club, the Happy Valley homeowners’ association, against Pleasanton to block the golf course from opening until the bypass road was built.
* Protests by Happy Valley residents at public hearings of the Alameda County Local Agency Formation Commission, which decided to allow Pleasanton to annex a 526-acre parcel southeast of Alisal (out of the 810 acres that comprise Happy Valley) to build the golf course. The annexed land included Spotorno’s ranch, where Greenbriar now intends to build new homes.
Still, Tinfow forged ahead, parlaying those three-hour-long meetings where as many as nine bypass route proposals were suggested into a manageable plan that eventually eight of the 11 Blue Ribbon committee members voted to accept.
“We never drew a line or told people to sit down,” Tinfow said. “Everyone had as many chances to speak their minds as they needed, including many from the community who attended these meetings as onlookers. I think this committee has accomplished its charge and, hopefully, we have a project that works for everyone.”
