Stockton plan looks north of Eight Mile Road

STOCKTON — More than two months ago, the City Council voted for the drafting of a new Stockton land-use map favoring neighborhood and downtown revitalization over sprawl from now through 2040.

Optimism was in the air, some of it even emanating from Eric Parfrey, an environmental activist and longtime city skeptic.

“This is like music to my ears,” Parfrey told the council, speaking from the dais that night on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Campaign for Common Ground. “We’re turning the corner on a very dark history of poor city planning in Stockton, and you’re doing something pretty radically different.”

But more than two months later, Parfrey says his optimism has been replaced by concern over the destiny of a small patch of the proposed landuse map that has come to symbolize the entire General Plan effort.

The land is several thousand acres immediately north of Eight Mile Road and east of Interstate 5. It is currently agricultural. And Parfrey is adamant it remain agricultural unless a transcendent development opportunity — a state university campus or a Tesla production plant — someday presents itself.

The City Council voted for that sort of map in early April. But as time has passed, Parfrey’s optimism has wavered, and the land almost certainly will be discussed once again at Thursday night’s Planning Commission meeting at City Hall.

Tom Pace, the city’s director for planning and engineering, acknowledged Parfrey’s concern in the days leading to tonight’s meeting. Pace also said city officials are simply working through what the council approved in April.

“We felt the direction council gave us was to look at options,” Pace said. “We are discussing with the Planning Commission two types of approaches ... for policies for development north of Eight Mile Road.”

Several factors are fueling Parfrey’s skepticism.

Some of it is the natural result of more than a decade spent pushing for Stockton to embrace neighborhood and downtown redevelopment over sprawl. Some of it relates to who owns the agricultural land north of Eight Mile Road. And a third factor appears to have been inadvertent.

After the council voted last month, a proposed long-range map posted on the city website showed a big green patch of agricultural land north of Eight Mile Road.

But early this month, a new map briefly appeared. The contested land on the new map remained green, but now it was covered with diagonal purple lines. The lines, according to the new map, designated the land as a “Commercial/Industrial Economic Enterprise Overlay.”

Pace said last week the map was posted accidentally. The city quickly took it down and replaced it with the original map.

“That was premature,” Pace acknowledged. “It was something that was prepared and apparently we inadvertently put the wrong version of the map up. The council will give us direction for what they want the map north of Eight Mile Road to show and we haven’t gotten there yet.”

The third factor of concern for Parfrey is the ownership of the land itself.

Parfrey says he believes developers affiliated with A.G. Spanos Companies are applying pressure on the city to adopt a map that could allow development of new single-family homes on the Eight Mile Road acreage.

A Spanos spokeswoman did not respond to an interview request Wednesday. Publicly available property records for the Eight Mile Road parcel reveal the land is owned by Trinity Capital Development LLC, a Spanos subsidiary.

Parfrey’s concern has been echoed by a coalition of community organizations that has organized as the Healthy Neighborhoods Collaborative.

After tonight’s Planning Commission meeting, the General Plan discussion is to shift one more time next month to the City Council. Unveiling of a draft of a new General Plan is expected late in 2017. City officials anticipate final approval of a new General Plan next June.

Pace framed the challenge of molding the future north of Eight Mile Road.

“Is it priority open space and agricultural with some possibility if something extraordinary comes along? That’s one posture,” Pace said. “Or, on the other hand, do we want to try to maximize our ability to respond more quickly to a development opportunity there and set up our General Plan to facilitate some kind of development there?”