Wonder Inn developer Jason Landver is now on the record confirming plans to build 20 villas on the 138 acres adjacent to the site of the proposed luxury resort.  Per the San Bernardino County Sentinel:

Last week, Landver in a statement to the Sentinel confirmed that he and [Alan] Greenberg, who are being assisted by development consultant David Mlynarski, are purposed to see the entirety of the 160 acres built upon.

In his free-ranging interview, Landver said that he and Greenberg will abide by the existing zoning on the 138.78 acres they own that will be left after the hotel is built. In this way, he said, roughly 20 homes will be placed on the property. He emphasized that they will be prefabricated single-story structures of right around 2,000 square feet each.

Landver’s acknowledgement of the residential component of their development was significant. Though there had been rumors to the effect that what Greenberg and Landver had embarked upon would not confine itself to the resort complex alone, their application to the county gave no indication that they were going to construct anything other than the 106-room hotel along with an all-night restaurant, a spa/wellness center, conference hall and event center, a 6,000-square foot swimming pool, hot tubs, outdoor showers and a 205-space parking lot.

When asked by the Sentinel for a response, Stop the Wonder Inn Project’s Rick Hamburg pointed out:  “None of this is disclosed in the initial study/mitigated negative declaration. Such plans are contrary to the California Environmental Quality Act statute prohibiting ‘spot zoning’ and ‘piecemealing’ and should be addressed by the county with a full environmental impact report.”

What is “piecemealing”? 

Piecemealing or segmenting means dividing a project into two or more pieces and evaluating each piece in a separate environmental document, rather than evaluating the whole of the project in one environmental document. This is explicitly forbidden by CEQA, because dividing a project into a number of pieces would allow a Lead Agency to minimize the apparent environmental impacts of a project by evaluating individual pieces separately, each of which may have a less than-significant impact on the environment, but which together may result in a significant impact.  Segmenting a project may also hinder developing comprehensive mitigation strategies.  –– CEQA Portal, Association of Environmental Professionals

The Sentinel has further confirmed that County Land Use Services had not been informed of these plans:

Landver did not seem to appreciate the significance of his acknowledgment that the development at the site was to go beyond the resort hotel.

Neither of the two San Bernardino County Department of Land Use Services staff members who are processing Greenberg and Landver’s application, Senior Planner Azhar Khan and Supervising Planner Chris Warrick, were aware that the entire 160 acres that Greenburg and Landver had acquired were to be developed, essentially, together. This puts the soundness of their decision to allow a mitigated negative declaration to suffice as the environmental certification for the hotel project in doubt. Allowing the residential properties to be developed while allowing Gammel Road to remain unpaved, would seem to involve less than sterling quality planning. Moreover, if Gammel Road were to be paved, a more comprehensive environmental examination of the developmental impacts would be in order. Landver’s acknowledgment that he and Greenberg intend to proceed with a project or combination of projects entailing nearly eight times as much land as was previously indicated throws into doubt whether they can proceed with the project by carrying out an environmental certification on the cheap.

Mr. Landver had a lot more to say in his interview with the Sentinel, and SWIP’s Rick Hamburg pushed back with vigor.  We recommend reading the full article.  Further, we hope to examine more of Mr. Landver’s claims in detail in future posts on this blog.  (If you have trouble accessing the article, you can see a pdf here.)

In the meantime, if you want to know more about the concerns with “piecemealing” with this project, see pp 16-19 of the SWIP Response Comments to the Wonder Inn Hotel/Resort Initial Study.