Lodi Council discusses options for new bike path
The Lodi City Council voted unanimously to hold a public hearing on Feb. 1 to consider the approval of the Rose Gate II subdivision after hearing several concerns and inquiries from the public about including a bike path in the project during its meeting Wednesday night.
Bike Lodi chairwoman Kathryn Siddle said that the group had concerns about a bike path that was initially included in the master plan, but has disappeared as the plan has been amended.
“Our concern is the history of the bike path, which was originally on the Westside Facilities Master Plan in
2001. The records show the plan has been amended on one or more occasions. Currently, the bike path is no longer on the map at all,” she said. “Overall, we’re asking why there is a complete lack of a bike path on this current plan and want to know how can we re-establish (the path).”
Bike Lodi member Jeff Pell also chimed in on the matter.
According to Pell, when the city’s Westside Facilities Master Plan was approved in 2001, it included a space called the greenbelt corridor, which was planned to extend north to Turner Road and south to Harney Lane. The 200-to-300-feet-wide corridor and include stormwater retention basins and a 12-foot-wide meandering bike and pedestrian path. The corridor was to act as a buffer between agriculture and urban conflicts.
In 2007, however, Pell said the plan was amended at the request of Tom Doucette, who works for FCB Homes, the developer of Rose Gate. One of the seven amendments approved modified the greenbelt corridor, renaming it the open space corridor, reducing its width to 30 to 50 feet and leaving the bike path intact.
The Rose Gate II plan, by contrast, does not include either the corridor or the bike path, Pell said.
“I ask that the open space corridor with a class one bicycle pedestrian path be reinstated before Rose Gate II is approved,” he said.
Another member of Bike Lodi, Anita Herman, shared a study with council explaining the health benefits of biking and that pedestrian and bike infrastructure increases property values as well as retail sales.
Lodi resident Dan Arbuckle informed the council that the parks and recreation report has recently been completed and the number one thing the community asked for was more connectivity — more bike lanes, more walking trails and more ability to be outside and connected to their community.
“Here is just a perfect opportunity to add so much value and connection to our community, and I think it would be a mistake for us not to pursue that to the full potential,” Arbuckle said.
Lodi Chamber of Commerce President Pat Patrick explained that members of the chamber’s vision action teams have mentioned the need of bike paths for tourism and for the quality of life for the residents.
According to City Manager Steve Schwabauer, the former community development director put together the Westside Master Plan, which was intended to be a greenbelt buffer between Lodi and the agricultural areas to west. It included open space area for drainage basins that would be long and narrow and a bike and pedestrian path along the western edge of the city, which was in some parts intended to be a barrier to future development to the west.
That development concept continued to rule Lodi’s development plans through 2007. In that year, Schwabauer said, the council made a major revision to the plan, eliminating the bike path. That brought a corridor for some landscaping area within the Westside area. Later, a new general plan was developed that continued to call for a bike path to the west, but it’s not clear where that would be located, Schwabauer said. Since then, the council has approved several subdivision maps for both Rose Gate I and II and Villa Fiore that do not include the Westside Master Plan improvements eliminated by the council in 2007.
Because the city does have approved subdivision maps that are consistent with the 2007 Westside Master Plan, it can’t force the developers to change their plans. Schwabauer said city staff is working with developers on these projects to see whether a corridor and bike path can be included.
“The problem is that we’ve got three subdivisions that have approved subdivision maps,” Schwabauer said. “The discussion we can have is can we negotiate a change. The discussion we cannot have is ‘can we ... wholesale force the developers who’ve got vested subdivision maps to change what they’re doing?’ The time for this discussion, frankly, was in 2007 and 2010 when we made the changes, not today. What we need to be discussing is whether or not we can get some of it back, if that’s what the council’s desire is and how we can ensure that properties that are currently vested don’t get through without the changes being made.”