Greenline glitch?

There is a 55-acre triangle of county land in southwest Chico where a majority of the property owners would like to jump the Greenline and get annexed into the city’s urban structure. The Estes area is just south of the 110-year-old Barber neighborhood and the old Diamond Match property, which is slated for development one day (see map on page 18).

The property owners, at least 11 of the 13 who own parcels there, want to move into the city, they say, because agriculture is no longer a viable option and the area’s location—surrounded on three sides by development and adjacent to existing neighborhoods and access to city infrastructure—make it a natural option for residential infill growth.

They signed a petition more than three years ago requesting the Chico City Council include the area for potential development in the update of the city’s general plan. This would have necessitated moving the area inside the Greenline. The council instead decided to label the land as an area of study rather than a special planning area, leaving it outside the Greenline.

The Estes triangle also sits east of the Union Pacific railroad tracks, making it pretty much the only place where the Greenline protects property on the east side of the tracks. To the south is the Hegan Lane Business Park.

But Estes is also nestled against the Riparia neighborhood along Comanche Creek, where the residents pride themselves on their agricultural accomplishments and back-to-nature lifestyles. The nonprofit GRUB (Growing Resourcefully Uniting Bellies) started there.

The Riparia folks have been through this before. Back in 1994 the general plan update included the construction of a bridge over the creek that would connect East Park Avenue to the industrial park’s Otterson Drive. The project was fiercely opposed, resulting in a referendum called Measure A (what else?) that was defeated by voters. However, two years ago the council included the concept of such a bridge in its update of the new general plan.

Duke Warren owns just less than 10 acres of Estes property, right next to eight acres owned by Greg Amarel, who allows the Butcher Shop Theater group to stage its summer plays on his land.

Warren has led the effort to push the area onto the other side of the Greenline. In June 2010 he addressed the City Council during one of its many meetings on updating Chico’s general plan. At that meeting Warren read to the council the petition he and 10 other Estes land owners had signed.

They wanted to be annexed into the city limits, he said, for eventual development.

“It is further our intention that maintaining the existing agricultural use of these properties is not in keeping with the premise of highest and best use of our lands. By our signatures below we also state that we cannot maintain a viable agricultural operation on these parcels due to the constraints and encumbrance of the adjacent urban city uses and relatively small parcel sizes.”

The area, he said, is simply no longer conducive to commercial agricultural practices.

“What has developed from this is a square peg in a round hole situation,” he said. “We are a county agricultural island situated in a city urban environment. Eight-six percent of the population owning land would like that to be changed.”

Warren said he’s let his almond orchard go uncultivated in recent years because it simply wasn’t worth the effort economically.

Warren’s testimony was followed by Chico State economics professor David Gallo, who referred to a study he’d done in 2001. He agreed that the area was no longer productive agriculturally and that allowing development there would benefit the environment.

His study compared a housing project proposed to be built at the western end of Eaton Road in north Chico to a similar-sized project if built in Estes. The conceptual projects consist of 240 housing units on 30 acres of land. Gallo concluded that an Estes project would reduce travel by 5,800 miles annually, saving more than 67,000 gallons of gas, reducing nitrogen and hydrocarbon exhausts by 4,500 and 9,000 pounds, respectively. Carbon-monoxide emissions would drop by 68,000 pounds annually, and carbon dioxide would be reduced by 664 tons per year.

“If the concern is environmental,” he told the council, “this infill project makes a lot of sense.”

But Gallo was followed by Bruce Balgooyen, a neighbor of Warren who said he earns a very good living farming on two acres in the Estes area, which has “some of the best soil in the world.”

“I had to listen to a sorry story about a man who said his almond trees died,” Balgooyen said. “Almond trees need to be watered. They need to be cared for. I live across the fence from there, and I’ve seen that almond orchard go down through the years because it was never cared for.”

Warren said he bought the land from Jim Estes, the man for whom the area is named. Estes testified at that same council meeting and said he used to farm the area but that poor production forced him to sell acreage just “to pay the bills.”

After purchasing the acreage, Warren said, he replaced the trees and eventually had someone else farm it for him. That person harvested the almonds, fertilized and mowed.

“There was never any real money in it,” he said. “I made enough money to pay the property taxes, and eventually that dwindled down to where the guy would do it to just to collect the crop. I’d ask him to just mow it twice a year, and finally it devolved to the point where he told me could no longer even afford to mow it.”

Warren said he had plans, if the Greenline were moved, to build an assisted-living facility along with an “independent senior-citizen village campus-like community” for his generation. He said he believes the main reason the Estes area has not been moved from behind the Greenline is the local political influence wielded by former county Supervisor Jane Dolan and her husband Bob Mulholland.

He mentioned that July 22 marks the second anniversary of the death of his long time partner Carrie Jean Holiman, who was hit and killed by a vehicle while jogging in south Chico two years ago, about a month after he’d addressed the council on moving the Greenline. Understandably, that tragedy distracted him from the effort.

His almond trees still stand on the property but are not harvested, and his fields are mowed for fire suppression purposes. He’s not sure what he’s going to do with the property, but said he truly believes it could have great potential if allowed to develop.