What wine pairs with a need for housing?
City has land ideal for vineyards, but in areas slated for subdivisions
Imagine the slopes of the northeast corner of Yucaipa tangled with acres of twisting grapevines. Snow-capped Mount San Bernardino as a bold backdrop. And here and there small artisanal wineries with tasting rooms, a bedand-breakfast in a historic house and tourism dollars pouring into Uptown restaurants and merchants.
That could be Yucaipa’s future, says Donna Snodgrass, vice president of the Yucaipa Valley Wine Alliance, but the city has to correctly balance that dream with growing housing needs.
“Our vision is to do Temecula, only better,” Snodgrass said: less commercial, with a rustic patina. The sprouting movement can “breathe new life” and jobs into the city, she said.
As Southern California agricultural land is eaten up by development, Yucaipa is flowing in the opposite direction. The city is working on plans to help vineyards to grow on land currently slated for houses.
It is no easy task. On Monday, the City Council awarded a quarter-milliondollar contract for a plan to cluster homes in part of what vineyard supporters hope will become the city’s wine grapegrowing region.
Two mostly undeveloped areas in the city’s North Bench have the best soil and slopes to become a “wine country,” according to a recently completed report by the recipient of the new contract. One is 100 acres east of Yucaipa Ridge Road, and the other is 850 acres east of Jefferson Street and north of Oak Glen Road.
The majority of the study area features approved tentative tract maps for about 800 residential units, per the report.
To complicate plans further, the state prohibits residential property from being changed to nonresidential use unless potential units are replaced by increasing density elsewhere in Yucaipa, City Planner Benjamin Matlock told the council.
Alicia Murillo of the state’s Housing and Community Development department confirmed that if the city wanted to remove housing designations from one area of town, it would have to compensate in another.
On Jan. 25, the council unanimously agreed on the approach it wants to take to balance housing and vineyards. Councilman David Avila recused himself because he lives near the affected area.
Instead of shifting housing units away from the potential grape-growing areas into other parts of the city, or changing zoning rules on a case-by-case basis as property owners decide to grow grapes, the council agreed to make a master plan for clustering housing within the prime growing areas, allowing the other parts of those areas to be designated for agricultural use.
Councilman Bobby Duncan said at the Jan. 25 meeting he first and foremost wanted to protect the rights of property owners, “but secondly we need to make sure that we don’t cut down the number of houses in that whole area” to ensure the city does not run afoul of housing regulations.
Snodgrass said by phone Thursday that North Bench residents like herself do not like the idea of clustering housing in one spot. Residents are worried about traffic that would come from hundreds of densely packed houses, and where the water would
come from to support so many homes, as the area is currently on wells. Vineyards can use recycled water, which is already available in the area, she said.
The Wine Alliance would prefer to leave the homes spread out on large lots in the area and have the city allow commercial uses such as wineries in their midst, she said.
A petition against clustering houses in the North Bench, available on the Alliance’s website, has garnered more than 500 signatures, according to an emailed statement from the group. The denser housing also would lead to the loss of rural character for the area, the alliance says.
On Monday, the council unanimously agreed — again with Avila recusing himself — to have PlaceWorks conduct public outreach and develop a specific plan for development in the area.
The consultant had been contracted in September 2019 to work with the city’s American Viticultural Area Planning Committee to explore concepts, concerns and priorities for the burgeoning wine industry in the city that culminated in the January report.
The city plans to use a $250,000 Sustainable Lands Conservation Program grant from the state to pay for the development planning work. The grant is intended to be used to conserve agriculture and help local governments protect agricultural lands from more greenhouse gasintensive uses, according to the state’s website.
The specific plan, Matlock told the council, “would delineate the agricultural areas, the different uses that would support, and help ensure the market viability of those uses, and then also provide clustered housing to address the state law ‘no net loss’ provisions.”
Councilman Justin Beaver said he wanted to see the plan highlight agriculture instead of housing.
“I recognize we don’t need to have a net loss, but also we lost a huge agricultural segment of our city when we lost the orange groves at Chapman Heights, and I’d like to get some of that back,” Beaver said.
As the city progresses with its rule-making, the Wine Alliance’s work to get an official Yucaipa Valley wine grape-growing region designation from the federal government is nearing completion.
A group of residents started the nonprofit alliance in 2015 to get an American Viticultural Area designation, which would help market the region’s wines and their specific attributes.
The alliance’s petition met the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s filing requirements in June 2019. When finalized, the region, which includes 30,000 acres in Yucaipa, Oak Glen and Calimesa, can begin submitting for label approval for Yucaipa Valley-made wine.
“The AVA designation is going to happen, regardless of what the city does with the housing,” Snodgrass said.
The application is currently under final review by the federal bureau and is anticipated to be considered for rule-making by Congress in 2022.
“With our combination of soil, elevation and daily temperature shifts, the Yucaipa Valley has a climate that rivals Paso Robles, even Napa Valley,” alliance officials said in an email. “The wines we create here can be world-class, and with the political will we can create a wine industry that ships Yucaipa Valley wines all over the world. It would be a shame to sacrifice that for some tract homes.”