By Doug Curlee | Editor at Large

Navajo Planners get an earful from fellow board member

Dan Smith is frustrated. He’s about $30 million frustrated.

The longtime Grantville developer and property owner has fought for years to clean up and develop the areas of Grantville that desperately need cleaning up and developing, and he’s near the boiling point.

Smith’s property just north of Interstate 8 on Mission Gorge Road is continually flooded every time there’s a rainstorm that causes Alvarado Creek to overflow its banks. He has pushed for years to get the creek widened, or deepened, or whatever it will take to fix the problem.

At Wednesday’s Navajo Community Planners meeting, Smith asked a question that’s been on his mind a lot: Where is $30 million worth of developer impact fee money that Smith thinks — justifiably — ought to be spent in and around Grantville.

“This money is somewhere,” Smith said. “We assume it’s sitting in a designated special account, but we don’t know that. This was collected from developers in Grantville, and it ought to be spent in Grantville.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way.

Matt Adams, chairman of the Navajo Planners, countered this way.

“That money can be spent anywhere within the Navajo Community Plan area — it’s not earmarked for Grantville.”

Smith knows that, but it doesn’t make him happy.

He had hoped to confront city staff about it, but none were there at the meeting.

What did get accomplished was a decision to write letters to the city, and to Councilmember Scott Sherman’s office, to see if a meeting, or series of meetings, with all the stakeholders in the Grantville redevelopment plans at the same table to see what can be hammered out to get something, anything, actually underway.

Those meetings would necessarily include the city, CalTrans, the county, the regional Water Quality Control Board, and possibly the U.S Army Corps of Engineers. The Environmental Protection Agency would also be interested.

There are major plans afoot for development in Grantville, which is why almost all the zoning there has been changed from industrial to commercial and residential applications.

There will be a lot more money in developer impact fees collected as redevelopment proceeds, and Smith would like to see a coherent plan for spending that money wisely — and locally.

Where would Smith start? That’s easy.

“Nothing can really be done in Grantville until the Alvarado Creek problem is solved,” Smith said. “That’s gotta be first on everybody’s agenda, because that creek flood control problem affects nearly every project in Grantville.”

—Doug Curlee is Editor at Large. Reach him at [email protected].