CHICO — Eric Nilsson and Susan Tchudi love Valley’s Edge — the property, that is, not the plan to develop it. Wednesday morning, they surveyed the northwest side of the 1,448-acre site and admired the majesty in view.
The owners of Valley’s Edge intend to preserve half the acreage as parks and open space. That includes historic rocks walls, historic oaks and seasonal streams. Their plan, approved by the Chico City Council but facing both a referendum and litigation, also calls for housing and commercial development to accommodate 7,000 people.
The property rolls from the Steve Harrison Memorial Bike Path into the foothills of southeast Chico. The bikeway separates Valley’s Edge from Stonegate, the residential project straddling Bruce Road that also got council approval but remains unbuilt, with litigation ongoing. The referendum will go a long way toward determining how far housing projects will go.
Councilors put the referendum on the ballot for the 2024 primary. That election day is March 5. Even though ballots won’t go out till February, referendum organizers already are ramping up their campaign. They’re training volunteers, honing their messaging and preparing to canvass residents.
“What we’re doing is drawing on the huge support we got from the people when we were working on the referendum and gathering signatures on petitions,” said Tchudi, a member of Smart Growth Advocates, one of the groups organizing the effort. “Now we’re contacting them to make sure we keep up the energy and that they’ll volunteer with us in the fall.”
The signature drive drew several hundred volunteers; that’s the target for this campaign, too, which will need to rally 17,000 voters to block the plan.
“There’s a tremendous amount of energy from that group of people who helped make the referendum a success,” added Nilsson, who serves on the board of the Butte Environmental Council. “The 6,500-plus verified signatures we got is unprecedented in Chico’s political history, and we know those signatures cross party lines, from all different stripes of life. And we also know that the arguments against Valley’s Edge resonate with people all across Chico.”
Valley’s Edge proponents also are active — galvanizing on a track parallel to the opposition.
“We have spent the past few months organizing our grassroots supporters of Valley’s Edge,” the plan developers said by email. “We’re gearing up to walk precincts, host neighborhood coffee meetups, and spread the word about Valley’s Edge.
“Person-to-person and neighbor-to-neighbor is how we are building our campaign, because the Chico community built this plan and supports this plan.”
Positions
During the push to qualify the ballot measure, referendum organizers called their effort “Valley’s Edge Resistance”; it’s now “Choose Chico – Stop Valley’s Edge – Vote ‘No’.” They cite six points of contention:
• Traffic congestion, air pollution and sprawl development.
• Fire safety (based on its location in the wildland-urban interface).
• Economic impacts (on city services and infrastructure, which they say development fees won’t cover).
• Water depletion (from the overdrafted Lower Tuscan Aquifer) and pollution (from runoff).
• Housing needs of Chico (with 94% of the 2,777 units single-family versus multifamily, and houses costing $650,000-$800,000).
• Loss of habitat and destruction of open space.
“This coalition of people is not no-growth,” Nilsson said. “Flat out, we’re in favor of growth. We are in favor of smart growth, which is in contrast to a sprawl development the size of Gridley.
“The growth that we are advocating for is the revitalization of downtown with mixed-use housing and take advantage of opportunity sites — a couple examples of that could be the Park Avenue corridor in a compact-city form or the Barber Yard proposal (to redevelop the Diamond Match property in southwest Chico). What we advocate for is smart, slow, incremental growth.”
Valley’s Edge, as planned, encompasses a build-out spanning decades. Along with approving the Valley’s Edge Specific Plan, the council authorized a 20-year development agreement; the ownership group indicated construction could extend another 10 years. Meriam Park represents an example of master-planned development envisioned for Valley’s Edge.
Whether growth happens there or elsewhere, new residents will travel city streets and require water. They cite the proximity of their site to economic hubs in south Chico such as Chico Marketplace, the Hegan Lane industrial park and the aforementioned Park Avenue corridor and Meriam Park.
Plan proponents have their own set of assertions, one of which overlaps the opponents’: housing choice.
“Chico has a severe housing shortage, and it greatly affects first-time home buyers,” Valley’s Edge said. “Chicoans are forced to purchase homes in outlying communities away from their place of employment, family, friends and shopping hubs. This increases traffic and greenhouse gas emissions” — issues raised by referendum organizers.
Other points include:
• Walkable neighborhoods.
• Adherence to firewise principles (Chico Fire Chief Steve Standridge having signed off on plans).
• Site where new housing always was to be built (per the city general plan).
“Valley’s Edge is not sprawl. In fact, it is the opposite of sprawl,” the proponents said, noting the site “is contiguous with developed lands in the City of Chico and Butte County” and “does not contain any prime or unique farmland, protecting our Greenline.”
Endgame
Valley’s Edge ownership obviously hopes to clear the barrier of the referendum and, pending the outcome of litigation, move forward with their plan.
Referendum proponents also have a multi-phased objective. Should the referendum succeed, they’d like the City Council to redesignate Valley’s Edge in the general plan to remove its as a special planning area, a status that afforded greater latitude in approval. Ultimately, they hope the property would become a protected open space preserve.
As a means toward that end, Nilsson referenced the California Wildland Conservation Board — via its the Climate Adaptation and Resilience Program and the Land Acquisition Program — as a source of potential funding to purchase the property. He’s contacted the state agency.
The coalition’s endgame, Nilsson added, “is about preserving the land and also about a strong and vibrant city core” — infill development that would “promote community connection, green spaces, walkability, bikeability, adequate public transportation, lively commerce and the arts.” Such planning, “with all the innovative folks in Chico, is doable.”
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