ALAMEDA TIMES-STAR

New Patterson Ranch plans are in the offing
Environmentalists wary of donation of Fremont land to park district

By Scott Wong, STAFF WRITER, Inside Bay Area
Wednesday, October 26, 2005

FREMONT — One of the city's pioneer families is expected to give the East Bay Regional Park District nearly half of its 427-acre north Fremont property known as Patterson Ranch.

But environmentalists, who for years have been fighting the ranch's development, say much of the gifted land already had been protected through an agreement struck with the city more than 20 years ago.

"We feel there is a donation coming to win the hearts and minds of the voting population of Fremont ," said Newark resident Dan Ondrasek, a member of Friends of Coyote Hills and Fremont, a local environmental group. "But we want the citizens of Fremont to know they've already been given that — it's a hollow gift."

Richard Frisbie, a San Mateo planner who represents the Patterson family and has been involved with most of the development of north Fremont's Ardenwood neighborhood, said environmental groups have misrepresented the agreement's provisions.

"It's a white elephant that people who oppose the project want to throw out there," he said.

In exchange for granting the city a 136-acre easement on the property, the Patterson family was allowed to sell developers rights to 150 housing units that could be used to increase the density of residential projects.

The state, however, frowned on the complex scheme, and the city did away with the program when it recently updated its state-mandated housing plan.

Now the city has no way of compensating the family for establishing the easement, Frisbie said. But he suspects the debate over the agreement will become a moot point once final blueprints are unveiled this week.

The development team will present its new plan at 7 p.m. today during a community meeting at DeVry University . The plan will reflect comments from both the City Council and the community, and it will be more specific, Frisbie said.

"Past plans were in a blobby-type form," he said. "This is definitive."

For more information on tonight's meeting, call (408) 309-1426. For a detailed look at existing plans, visit http://www.pattersonranch.net. To learn more about the group opposing the project, visit http://www.fchf.org.

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