Carson City Supervisors deny Andersen Ranch West plan again: 'This is not a full project'
The Carson City Board of Supervisors denied the Andersen Ranch West Subdivision proposal yet again on Thursday, June 1, after just shy of two hours at the 5:30 p.m. meeting. The property proposed is located on 80 acres west of Ormsby Road and north of Kings Canyon Road.
At the April 27 Planning Commission meeting, the Andersen property left with a list of changes to add to their project including improvement on housing density, traffic, flooding, creation of an open area space for the protections of natural, cultural or scenic resources and so on.
The Andersen Ranch West wants to subdivide an 80.03-acre site consisting
of 2 parcels into 61 single family residential lots. The minimum lot size provided is 14,380 square feet, plus 3.89 acres of common open space and a 50.33-acre remainder parcel with an existing residence, under the regulations of the former code 17.10.
The entire tentative plan was redesigned to accommodate for the complaints from the Planning Commission.
First, Mark Forsberg, an attorney representing the Andersen family explained that the new plan applies with density requirements under the Carson City Master Plan. In their new proposal, they split the densities, so the new proposed density for the North parcel is 2.05 DU/AC which conforms with the allowed density range in the LDR designation, 0.2-3 DU/AC. This would be the first project in Carson City to do a density transfer, which made the board hesitant to validate it.
The new plan also solved problems of traffic, fire access, created wider streets in certain places and created open space around ranch. They even designated a large portion of the land as an open space natural resource conservation area, as code 17.10 dictates.
One of the additional critiques Forsberg notes is that someone at a previous meeting had said it was not a "nice enough" project and they wanted it to be "nicer."
“We don’t know how to meet a standard like that. It’s certainly not in the master plan or in the ordinance,” Forsberg replied.
The Andersen family fixed all the legal requirements that denied them the previous application of the proposal.
But the Board of Supervisors felt the project was unfinished. Even when Forsberg explained that Ash Canyon and Andersen Ranch East did not follow guidelines as strictly and weren't as extensive with code 17.10, Mayor Lori Bagwell reiterated that they don't know what kind of development will eventually exist on this land.
"The other [proposed development projects] we had the whole picture, we knew what the final product was going to look like," Mayor Lori Bagwell said. "Here, you’re asking me or this board ... to try to picture this project as a partial, not a complete project. Why would I let you take density from the 50-acre without a plan on the protection ...?"
Many board members agreed with this lack of a finished plan and some argued that the subdivision didn't coincide exactly with code 17.10 as it should have.
Forsberg said repeatedly that they carefully made sure all their adjustments coincided with the master plan, the ordinances and code 17.10. He said if the board was focusing mainly on the requirements, their application should be approved because of how strictly they followed the laws.
"What is the standard that we are expected to meet when we bring an application? Your view of how to treat it is, if we meet all these things, you can still say no," Forsberg said to the board. "That becomes an unmeetable standard for us, because we don’t know what to do. We don’t know what to come before you with and if we get turned down, where are we? We’ve got to take another shot in the dark.”
Forsberg also added that regardless of what they do develop, any plan they make in the future for the land cannot exceed the total number of 132 acres by the original zoning and the density requirement of the two parcels. They also put in their presentation and application that any future developments on the 50.33-acre property "will be subject to appropriate public hearing review", allowing the board to have a say in what gets developed on the land.
Most public commenters opposed the project and said they didn't want the board to give into this and make a mistake similar to how they feel Anderson Ranch East went. Other did not agree that it complied with code 17.10 and believed the density transfer was invalid.
"I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about what the loss is and what the project is and what it could be," Forsberg finished in his public comment.
The supervisors discussed and said they could not support this development. A couple agreed with the mayor saying they felt it was only a partial plan being proposed.
Ward 1 Supervisor Stacey Giomi simply added, "This is not a full project."
The board voted unanimously to deny the project according to Finding 6 (just as the Planning Commission did) which requires "conformity with the zoning ordinance and land use element of the City’s Master Plan."