Malling Sacramento

["Seth Sandronsky" <ssandron@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

June 28, 2001
PEN-L,

Yesterday in Elk Grove (a suburb south of Sacramento), the City Council
voted to allow developers to construct a mega-mall in Elk Grove.  Following
a Sacramento Bee news article is an Elk Grove farmer's personal testimony
from the current issue of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive
newspaper ($15 for a one-year subscription [six issues]: BPM, 403 21st
Street, Sacramento, CA 95814).

Elk Grove OKs massive mall: The city reverses the county's rejection of the
295-acre complex.
By Mary Lynne Vellinga
Bee Staff Writer
(Published June 28, 2001)

In their most significant development decision to date, Elk Grove City
Council members Wednesday unanimously approved building a $500 million
shopping mall on the city's rural southern edge.

With their 5-0 vote in favor of the Lent Ranch Marketplace, the council
repudiated Sacramento County's earlier rejection of the mall, which occurred
before Elk Grove incorporated in March 2000. The Sacramento County Policy
Planning Commission had concluded that the 295-acre retail complex was too
massive for its sensitive location on the urban services boundary, a line
adopted by the county in 1993 to contain growth.

City Council members said the mall, to be located along Highway 99 at the
Grant Line Road exit, would allow Elk Grove residents to shop in their own
community and pull in badly needed sales tax dollars.

"We're strengthening the fabric of our community by approving this project,"
said City Councilman Michael Leary.

Once the mall is built, Elk Grove "will be a regional player," said
Councilman Dan Briggs.

"Finally, we've gotten something here," Briggs said. "Sure downtown
(Sacramento) doesn't appreciate it. ... The county never appreciated us
ever."

Elk Grove Mayor Jim Cooper supported the project but was less effusive.
"It's time to move on; hopefully, we made the right decision," he said.

Opponents continued to argue that a regional shopping mall should not be
built on farm fields well beyond the current edge of suburban growth and
just across the freeway from two giant propane storage tanks. They warned
that the mall would worsen air pollution, snarl traffic and lead to more
development south of Kammerer Road, the county's growth boundary. They also
contended that Elk Grove does not have sufficient population to support such
a large retail development.

The Environmental Council of Sacramento and the Sierra Club have threatened
to sue.

"This is the opposite of smart growth," said Doug Jaffe, vice president of
the Environmental Council of Sacramento.

The council received last-minute letters of protest from Legal Services of
Northern California, which contended the developers needed to provide more
affordable housing for low-wage mall workers, and from the California
Department of Conservation, which said not enough was being done to save
farmland that will be paved over by the mall.

City staff advised the council that the project -- which includes a 280-unit
apartment complex -- complies with the county's requirement that a certain
amount of land be set aside for multi-family housing. But Cooper nonetheless
pressed for more affordable housing on the site. Developer Martin Feletto
responded by saying the entire apartment complex would be made affordable to
low-income residents, and that additional land in the complex could possibly
be used for housing.

"We're going to be in court one day litigating this if we don't take on our
responsibilities," Cooper said.

In a separate letter, Kenneth Trott, environmental coordinator of the
California Department of Conservation, said the proposed development fee of
$950 per acre to replace farmland lost to the mall was far too low. He
pointed out that The Nature Conservancy is paying about $2,000 an acre for
farmland outside the urban services boundary and thus presumably not in the
path of growth. A consultant to Elk Grove said the fee is the same as the
one imposed by the county in the new growth area of East Franklin, also in
Elk Grove.

If built as planned, the 1.3 million-square-foot Lent Ranch Marketplace will
be larger than Arden Fair mall. Lent Ranch will be surrounded by an
additional

2 million square feet of stores, entertainment facilities and apartments.

The Robinsons-May department store chain, Macy's, Dillard's and Gottschalks
have signed letters of intent to occupy the mall, which is being built by
General Growth Properties, a national mall developer. The surrounding retail
is being developed by M&H Realty Partners of San Francisco.

The center is expected to be an important source of sales tax for the young
city, which under the terms of its incorporation must turn over 90 percent
of its property taxes to Sacramento County for the next five years. Elk
Grove must continue to pay a declining share of its property taxes to the
county for the next 25 years.

"Clearly when 90 percent of your property tax is going to another agency,
the general fund becomes more heavily reliant on sales taxes," Elk Grove
City Manager David Jinkens said.

The Lent Ranch retail complex is projected to contribute $6.6 million
annually to city coffers.

Feletto said construction likely will start by early 2003. So far, he said,
the slowing economy had not affected the project. "There's always a risk
that the economy might force a retailer or someone to defer their plans, but
so far we've not seen that."

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bee's Mary Lynne Vellinga can be reached at (916) 321-1094 or
mlvellinga@xxxxxxxxxxx


Pastoral Perspective
By Tom Mahon

It was raining softly, the sky a medium shade of grey. My two brothers and I
rode on the old Farmall tractor and wagon to feed the cows and calves
waiting impatiently in the back field. We donít usually waste our precious
labor with three men doing a two-man job, but this day it was right to ride
together and savor the reassuring bonds of brotherhood; we were facing the
storm together.

When we got to the gates, Bob noticed that we weren?t alone. A flock of
thirty-five or forty sandhill cranes were in the pasture. We stopped and
marveled at their quiet dignity and stature. On the ground, these largest of
our native birds can almost look a man in the eye. Impossibly elegant in
flight, a few take off, as if in a dream. These birds have been riding the
thermals unchanged for millions of years. So what, you say, a very pretty
picture, but nothing unusual. The unusual thing is that these birds never
came up here in large numbers until a few years ago. When I was in my
twenties, all of the sandhills gathered at Crumpís ranch and the surrounding
areas by I-5. A relatively uninhabited area with permanent pasture and
grazing cattle created an ideal environment for them. Grass cropped low by
grazing provided visual protection from predators and also made it easy to
hunt for their food. Viewing platforms and subtle changes to the landscape
caused many of the birds to seek new territory.

I have been driving tractors for thirty years, preparing the fields in the
spring to plant corn or alfalfa. With a tree line all the way around the
fields I have plenty to look at while I do this lonely and sometimes
monotonous job. I usually see a coyote or two, or maybe some deer, but my
biggest group of fans are the many varieties of hawks. Swainson?s, Cooper?s,
Red-tailed, Marsh, and even Sparrow hawks hover silently above or sometimes
beside me waiting for the disc to turn up a tasty rodent. As large sections
of the Laguna area (and other choice spots) were torn up or paved over,
these numbers have increased dramatically. Where I used to have one to three
hawks visiting me, I now have as many as fifteen. When one hawk dives for a
vole or
gopher, two or three are trying to take it away from him.

Egrets and herons are thought of as wading birds. Summer usually finds them
wading in the shallows of streams, lakes, even irrigation ditches, patiently
waiting to read the slight movements of the water before striking with their
rapier-like beaks. In the winter, however, the elements of their aquatic
diet lie low in the cold, slippery mud, transfixed until spring. In this,
their lean times, the uplands hold the main food supply. The birds can be
seen dispersed on any lightly-populated, open, grassy areas dining on the
occasional mouse, vole, or gopher that venture out of their winter burrows.
Normally, these birds hunt in groups of two to six; in recent years the
densities have been increasing to as many as forty to a spot.

So, these are just birds, you say. Well, these birds, that are forced from a
large area into the relatively small areas along the creek and river, share
the same food supplies with the mammals. Egrets and herons eat the otters?
food. Hawks share with the coyotes, foxes, and bobcats. The results are
overpopulation, which can lead to a domino-effect of devastation from
disease from too much contact, and starvation from competition for food.

If we didn?t have help from organizations like the Nature Conservancy, which
actively tries to control urban sprawl and maintains areas of resources for
our birds and animals, things would be very grim, indeed.

The Lent Ranch Mall is not just a mall. Anyone who studies the plans in any
detail sees immediately that this is a core of a new city. If it is built,
the surrounding area would be taken for a large new town, a sort of South
Laguna. Please do not impose this urban monster on our delicate ecosystem;
it is already strained nearly to the breaking point. I speak out of respect
for the past generations, and for the generations to come. Thank You.

Tom Mahon made these remarks before the Elk Grove Planning Commission on
March 22, 2001. His family raises alfalfa, corn, and hay on their Elk Grove
ranch immediately adjacent to the proposed three-million square foot Lent
Ranch Marketplace.


Seth Sandronsky

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