Planners mull updated proposal for Long Gulch Ranch
Tuolumne County planners are currently reviewing a revised plan for a proposed 13-lot residential subdivision on a portion of land in Groveland known as Long Gulch Ranch, a property once eyed for a much larger development plan that ultimately failed.
The county Community Development Department published a stakeholder notification this week detailing the proposal for rezoning 78 acres east of Ferretti and Clements roads from “exclusive agriculture” to “residential estate,” as well as a tentative subdivision map to divide the parcel into 13 lots ranging in size from 5 to 10 acres.
Brian Fitzgerald, of Tahoe City, is the developer of the project. He’s the operating partner of the Petalumabased Long Gulch Ranch Limited Partnership, which regained ownership of the entire 1,150-acre property through bankruptcy court after larger development plans fizzled in 2009.
In 2014, the Mother Lode Land Trust purchased about half of the ranch property adjacent to the gated Pine Mountain Lake community to create a buffer for the Great Gray Owl.
The trust also received nearly $700,000 from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy in December to acquire 303 more acres, with plans of creating recreational trails linking to the nearby communities and U.S. Forest Service trails.
Another piece of the ranch property was sold several years ago to developers who split it up into nine lots, eight of which have access to the PML Airport runway.
Ron Kopf, a development consultant who has worked with Fitzgerald on plans for the property over the years, said in an interview that the current project is between Ferretti Road and a piece that was split up into 17-acre lots adjacent to agricultural land.
The current plans under review are reduced from an earlier proposal that called for 19 lots at 3 acres each.
Kopf explained that they were originally looking at making them 3-acre lots to make them more effective to sell, but the county has a regulation to drill a well for every four lots if they’re 3 acres before a subdivision map can be approved.
“The county doesn’t have the same requirement for 5-acre lots,” Kopf said.
“He would have spent over $100,000 drilling wells prior to knowing whether it would get approved. You end up with less lots, but also it doesn’t make sense to spend a bunch of money prior to knowing you have a project that will be approved.”
Water and sewer to the proposed 13 lots would be provided by private wells and septic systems, as opposed to tying into the Groveland Community Services District’s public water and sewer system.
Kopf said the problem with GCSD is the ability to get enough pressure in that area.
“GCSD is looking at the option of another water tank to provide pressure, but the site they would like was part of the land that was sold to the environmental group for the Great Gray Owl habitat buffer,” Kopf said. “It added too many moving parts and became very expensive to provide water that way through GCSD, and the timing was uncertain.”
The district also has a long history with the property, dating back to when a previous development plan for a 372-home gated community centered around a golf course was approved by the county in 1996 under the condition that GCSD would provide the water and sewer services for it.
In 2005, Long Gulch Ranch LP sold the property for $5 million to Yosemite Gateway Partners, a Berkeley-based partnership headed by developer Dan Levin and attorney Tom Dashiell.
Yosemite Club Partners paid $2 million down that was divided among the 30 partners in Long Gulch Ranch LP, which included Brian Fitzgerald and his father, P. Marshal Fitzgerald, while the group carried the loan for the remaining $3 million.
The new owners deposited $135,000 into a development account to cover GCSD’S costs for working on the project, as the district would be providing water and sewer services to the proposed community.
However, the district’s total expenses on the project grew to $219,000 by 2008. Yosemite Club Partners went bankrupt that year amid the housing market crash before paying the additional $84,000 to GCSD.
Several liens were placed on the property by GCSD totaling $84,000, but by 2013 the total amount owed to the district had grown to $160,000 with penalties and interest.
Long Gulch Ranch’s previous owners took back the property through bankruptcy court with the district’s liens attached, along with unpaid property taxes left by Yosemite Club Partners that totaled more than $400,000 by 2013.
Kopf helped the owners negotiate a deal to clear the property’s debts before the zoning was reverted back to mostly agricultural and low-density residential, the way it was prior to the large-scale development’s approval.
Fitzgerald said at the time that his plan was to sell roughly half of the property to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for habitat preservation.
The previous 372-home plan failed because GCSD wanted the development group to pay for upgrading the district’s entire water and sewer system at a cost of roughly $20 million, Kopf said, which made the project infeasible.
Public comments on the latest proposal to split 78 acres of the Long Gulch Ranch property into 13 residential lots are due to the county Community Development Department by Feb. 28, according to the stakeholder notification.
Comments can be mailed to senior planner Natalie Rizzi at nrizzi@ co.tuolumne.ca.us, mailed to 2 S. Green St., Sonora, CA 95370, or brought to the department at 48 Yaney Ave. in Sonora during business hours.
The stakeholder notification can be viewed on the county’s website at bit. ly/3ir9pfu.