New Construction In Contra Costa County

By
– Digital Editor, San Francisco Business Times

Jul 30, 2020

Two separate plans for 1,000-plus new single-family homes in the East Bay cities of Antioch and Pittsburg received key approvals this week.

The Antioch subdivision — dubbed "The Ranch" by Roseville-based developer Richland Communities — won a unanimous thumbs up from the City Council and will include a total of 1,177 homes: 543 single-family, 212 medium-density and 422 senior homes. The plans also include a village center with commercial, retail, office space and a new fire station.

The Ranch is located on a large plot of open space near Antioch's southern edge and is the biggest single residential development the city has approved in 10 years.

The area to the east of The Ranch is also seeing a glut of homes go up right now as Concord-based DeNova Homes is building 533 houses as part of its Aviano Farms project, Blackhawk Nunn Partners is developing 220-unit Creekside Vineyards at Sand Creek, according to the East Bay Times.

Richland Communities originally proposed a 1,667-home plan but scaled it back to 1,307 units in 2017 and then to the current level of 1,177 a year later because of environmental concerns from the community.

Just west of Antioch, another large-scale housing proposal also cleared a key hurdle on Tuesday evening.

After a meeting that lasted for hours Tuesday night and saw a 40-minute technical breakdown during a lengthy public comment session, the Pittsburg Planning Commission ended up greenlighting one of the city's largest new housing plans in a decade.

Plans for the Faria/Southwest Hills project by Concord-based developer Seeno Homes, through its Discover Builders subsidiary, would include up to 1,500 homes on 341 acres with another 265 acres for open space. The homes would be zoned for single-family residential with a 4,000-square-foot minimum lot size.

By a one-vote margin, the Planning Commission recommended the City Council approve the development agreement, the environmental impact documents and an amendment to the city's general plan and pre-zoning designations.

The project itself is complicated as it lies outside of the Pittsburg city limits but within its development zone, Pittsburg City Planner Kristin Pollot told me, and will later require the city to approve its annexation. Pollot, who delivered the project presentation to the commission on Tuesday evening said she was pleased to see it move forward after so much time planning.

"I've been working on this project for the last 10 years," she said. "I'm glad to see it moving forward in one way or another. It's not good to have applications sitting in pending status that long."

She said she expected the project to go before the City Council for official approval in late August.

Pollot told me that the area is currently unincorporated territory of Contra Costa County owned by Albert Seeno Jr., the patriarch of the Seeno family of homebuilders, who lives there now.

The project also has its detractors. Both the city of Concord and the East Bay Regional Park District — as well as many environmentalists — have come out in opposition to it based mostly on traffic, environmental concerns and a desire to preserve the current character of the landscape.

There are also no current home renderings, as the developer has not yet submitted any. Commissioner Trinh Nguyen pointed this out and noted that many comments from the community she read focused on how the developer had no actual plans for people to look at yet.

Seeno Construction and Discovery Homes — which is also directly linked to Faria Land Investors — have a long reputation for construction and political influence in Pittsburg. In 2016, Albert Seeno III pleaded guilty to bank fraud on behalf of Discovery Sales in federal court and agreed that the company would pay an $11 million fine.

Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2020/07/30/two-major-contra-costa-housing-developments-move.html

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