Congratulations!  Responding to pressure from you and others who care about Wonder Valley, County Land Use Services has just announced they will extend the comment period from 21 to 36 days!  

We did it!!!

The new deadline is Feb 22 at 4:30 pm.  This gives us more time to review the thousand pages of the Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration and make meaningful comments.  As we learn and understand more we’ll be sharing with you how to respond most effectively, so watch for updates. 

Important: We had tentatively scheduled an informational meeting for Jan.28 at the Wonder Valley Community Center. In light of this new development we may be rescheduling that meeting. Watch for updates!

So take a victory lap and join us in a deep breath of relief, before we get back to work! 

And always, you can help by getting the word out about the Wonder Inn, including with this printable flyer.  Plus, we now have buttons and stickers!  Contact us to find out where you can get them. And follow us on Instagram!

Thanks everyone!

Where Things Stand, And What You Can Do

County Land Use Services has reviewed the proposal for the Wonder Inn Project and decided they liked what they saw. We don’t. So now what?”

Status

The developers of the proposed 106-room hotel and resort submitted their application for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) in November 2021. In the ensuing year-plus they have submitted required technical studies to justify that their project meets the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act  and County development codes to the San Bernardino County Land Use Services (LUS) department.  Since learning of this CUP application a working group of concerned residents of Wonder Valley and the Morongo Basin have been regularly meeting to learn more about the project and have put up the stopwonderinn.org website with details about it.

These studies have now been reviewed by LUS and their report posted (look for Wonder Inn Hotel/Resort section or links at the bottom of this post) on January 14, 2023.  LUS has essentially greenlighted the project to proceed through the approval process, issuing their decision as follows: “Although the proposed project could have a significant effect on the environment, there shall not be a significant effect in this case because revisions in the project have been made by or agreed to by the project proponent. A MITIGATED NEGATIVE DECLARATION shall be prepared.”

The members of the Stop Wonder Inn Project working group will vigorously object to the LUS assessment as we feel that the project is highly inappropriate in the Wonder Valley area. We are in the process of reviewing the submitted studies in detail and are preparing to submit detailed, substantive comments to LUS.  

However, LUS has set the comment period on the Initial Study from January 17, 2023 to February 7, 2023 at 4:30 PM.  This gives the public only 21 days to review over 1000 pages of technical information and formulate a response to LUS with objections to the project and the report.  Given that the developers and LUS have taken over a year to create the report and propose mitigations, 21 days is an unreasonable amount of time for our concerned community to prepare informed responses — especially as our cursory review of the documents (in only the two days that we have had access to them) raises many questions. Therefore, we will immediately be requesting an extension to 45 days. We urge you to advocate for this extension to County officials as well, and to make it simple, you can use our webform to submit a request. UPDATE: WE GOT AN EXTENSION – Now 36 Days!  NEW DEADLINE FEB. 22, 2023.

If the Mitigated Negative Declaration stands without additional study, the project will be put before the County Planning Commission for potential approval and from there to the County Board of Supervisors for approval or denial. Those events are not currently scheduled but could happen in the near future. We will keep you up to date on when such events will happen and will encourage you to show up at these meetings to convey your objections and concerns about this project in person.

What You Can Do

• First, request an extension of the comment period to 45 days.  You can use our webform to submit a request for extension. WE GOT THE EXTENSION – THANKS EVERYONE!
• We are planning a community informational meeting in the next two weeks SOON to break down what we’re learning in our review of the report and help you understand how to send in your own comments.  Watch for that announcement.
• The submitted developer studies are technically detailed and voluminous but if you have any knowledge or expertise in any of the content we would love to hear from you with constructive flags and analysis.  Send your ideas to info@stopwonderinn.org.  You can access the report and supporting documents at the links below.
• Talk to your friends and neighbors about this project and tell them how they can participate in objecting to this project and let them know that they can sign up for our mailing list on this website.

If you’re ready to submit your comments on the report to County LUS please submit comments via our web form or directly to County LUS at azhar.khan@lus.sbcounty.gov or to:

Azhar Khan, Planner
County of San Bernardino
Land Use Services Department, Planning Division
385 N. Arrowhead Ave 1st Flr
San Bernardino, CA 92415

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Links to documents submitted to LUS:

• Notice of Availablity
• Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND)
• Appendices
• Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA)
• Habitat Assessment
• Cultural Report
• Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) Analysis

Feel free to print out copies of this flyer to communicate your concerns and opposition to the Wonder Inn development project.

At the May 1st meeting at the Wonder Valley Community Center the developers who are proposing the Wonder Inn project faced almost unanimous opposition to what they would like to build and operate. Almost from the start of the meeting the ~90 attendees from the Wonder Valley community heard the developers justifications for wanting to build this project here. Their statements (to paraphrase) of “wanting to benefit the community” and to “blend and fit into the community” were met largely with a degree of disbelief by the attendees, as those statements do not “ring true” with what in reality this proposed project would do to disrupt and damage the quiet, peaceful nature of Wonder Valley and why people have chosen to live there.

You can read a news report from Z107 that recounts the meeting here.

Also read the Desert Trail report published on April 15 here.

And please, spread the word so that your friends and neighbors can express their opposition to this project.

Here is a chance to hear directly from the developers proposing this project and for you to express your concerns about it to them and others attending this meeting As announced by Friends of Wonder Valley: A public information meeting by the Transtech project team for the proposed Wonder Inn resort in Wonder Valley will be held on Sunday, May 1, 2022, at 1 PM at the Wonder Valley Community Center, 80526-1/2 Amboy Road, Wonder Valley. The proposed 106-unit wellness resort on Amboy and Gammel Roads is anchored on the existing “Pink Building” to house lobby, restaurant, spa, and conference center. The resort includes a 6000-sf swimming pool, a new 180,000-gallon water tank, and a 205-space parking lot. The project goes before the Planning Commission to secure a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) to rezone 21 acres from Rural Living (RL) to Commercial Services (CS). This event is sponsored by the Friends of Wonder Valley. 1:00 p.m., Sunday, May 1, 2022,  at the Wonder Valley Community Center 80526-1/2 Amboy Road, Wonder Valley Phone 760-367-9880 for more information

A 106 room hotel, with an open-24-hour restaurant, spa/wellness center and event center located at Amboy Road and Gammel Road in Wonder Valley, California is being proposed and is in review by San Bernardino County. This project would be unlike anything in the wide open spaces of Wonder Valley. It would permanently change the quality of life by imposing unwanted light pollution diminishing our irreplaceable, beautiful dark skies, increased vehicle traffic with its associated dangers and air pollution, increased energy consumption in these times of climate change, and significant water use affecting out shared aquifer. It would strain the area’s already under-resourced fire and law services.

Why? Why allow this development to be the first step in beginning the degradation of this unique and special place?

We encourage you to send your comments to SB County officials in opposition to this project via this link.

The project is located at the intersection of Amboy Road and Gammel Road about six miles east of Adobe Road on Twentynine Palms. The current “pink” building on that some refer to as “the old post office” but it was most likely a Southern California Edison facility. (County ownership rolls show that Edison owned this site back to 1981, but then was transferred to a series of private owners until acquired by the current owners in 2020.

The Project site is partially designated as 3.18 acres of Commercial Service (CS), a portion of A.P.N. 0625-071-04 and 131.42 acres of Rural Living (RL-5). The Project Conditional Use Permit application includes a rezoning request for 21.22 acres of RL-5 to CS zoning to provide the 25 acres for the Project. The owners and developers of this parcel also own an additional ~134.5 acres adjacent and mostly to the south of the main parcel. The CUP application record can be viewed on the County Land Use Services Planning site as record number PROJ-2021-00163.

The developers submitted applications for the Conditional Use Permit in November 2021 and appear to be in the process of submitting various required surveys to Land Use Services (LUS) with the goal of having the project approved by the County Planning Commission and ultimately the Board Of Supervisors. It is expected that this process could take six to 12 months.

After LUS review it is expected that the public will have access to the various environmental surveys submitted at the Environment, Desert Region site. You may sign up for email updates there as they are posted.