Is Comanche Creek safe?

I got a call this week from a woman who lives in the Barber Neighborhood in south Chico. She said members of her neighborhood group are concerned about the fate of the 20-acre Comanche Creek open-space area, on the southern edge of town, now that the state has abolished redevelopment agencies.

They’ve been working for years to turn it into a neighborhood nature preserve, and a lot of volunteer work has gone into cleaning it up. The city has also prepared a draft improvement plan designed to make it more attractive and accessible. She said her group was worried that the city might be forced to sell the land because it was owned by the city’s redevelopment agency.

Their biggest worry, she said, was that it could end up in the hands of Doug Guillon, the owner of the Hegan Lane Business Park just south of the creek. He’s long wanted to punch a road through there that would feed traffic directly to and from East Park Avenue. In 2001 a conservative City Council approved financing for a $2.9 million extension of Otterson Drive and a bridge over the creek, but it was overturned in a referendum vote.

County Supervisor Larry Wahl has never hidden his belief that purchasing the Comanche Creek property (in 2005, for $1.25 million) was a waste of taxpayers’ money. Now he’ll be playing a significant role in deciding its fate, as a member of the oversight board charged with disposing of the city’s unimproved redevelopment properties. The supervisors also named like-minded Chico City Councilman Mark Sorensen to the one “public” position on the seven-member panel. County Counsel Bruce Alpert challenged Sorensen’s appointment, however, on the basis that an elected official cannot also be a public representative. The position will go unfilled until state Attorney General Kamala Harris gives her opinion on the matter.

In the meantime, the Barber folks can relax, at least for now. There’s little chance that the Comanche Creek property will be sold, Sorensen said. Who’d buy it? It’s zoned for open space, and even if it were rezoned for development, creek setbacks would take up most of the buildable area.

As for putting in a road or bridge, he added in an email, redevelopment is gone and the city has no money for capital projects. Although the city’s general plan “does call for some sort of connection, somewhere, someday, to that commercial area, … [n]o plan exists. No road route has been established. … No known funding exists. … I do not even see this one on the long-range radar.”

Developing the property also may be illegal, Shawn Tillman, the senior planner who is the city’s resident redevelopment expert, said in a phone interview. If it was acquired through the bond process, legally it can’t be sold and developed. At this point he needs to look into its history to determine how it was acquired, something he expects to do in a week or so.

Robert Speer is editor of the CN&R.