Are gated communities coming? The big change that may alter the ‘identity’ of rural Elk Grove
Gates could soon go up around part of a rural Elk Grove subdivision and some neighbors say it could threaten the fields-and-sky lifestyle they’ve built there.
Elk Grove leaders are prepared to pass the general plan amendment at its City Council meeting Wednesday night that would lift the ban on gated communities in the Elk Grove Rural Community, the ranch-like parcels along the city’s eastern edge. Rural Elk Grove is generally defined as a 9-square-mile area between Elk Grove-Florin Road, Sheldon Road and Grant Line Road.
City planning staff recommend a yes vote exempting a portion of the still-under construction Sheldon Park Estates from the city’s general plan to allow builders to convert the 75-acre Sheldon Park North neighborhood into a private gated community with two vehicle gates.
Elk Grove has for years had a ban on gated neighborhoods in the rural area. Still, council members have discussed lifting the rural gated community ban several times over the past few years with rural residents “express(ing) their concerns that gated subdivisions will alter the character of the open style community,” city planners said in their report to Elk Grove City Council.
More than 20 gated communities dot Elk Grove in neighborhoods across the urban city limits. But head out into Elk Grove’s rural community where dense subdivisions give way to more spacious parcels and open spaces are the rule.
Just one gated community — the 28-acre, 12-parcel Shires neighborhood — sits in the city’s rural area.
The planners’ recommendation on the Wednesday agenda comes despite letters in opposition from Elk Grove rural residents sent to planners during the city’s public hearing period last fall and early this year.
Planners say gated subdivisions will not be detrimental to the city’s rural area; and that the subdivisions could “diversify the types of housing in the city, adding that many of the parcels in the rural area are smaller than 10 acres, meaning gated subdivisions on the smaller lots would be unlikely due the the costs involved.
Most opponents say open space and a rural way of life, not iron bars and mechanized gates, were the reasons they chose to make their homes there instead of the city’s subdivisions.
Others added that gates do little to keep homes and communities safe in areas where crime rates are low and that the communities promoted and exploited their residents’ fears.
Bill Myers, president of the Sheldon Community Association, opposed the amendment. In an October letter to planning commissioners, Myers said, for the city’s rural residents who farm or keep large animals, the issue goes beyond zoning and larger parcels.
“Agricultural residential zoning is much more than simply a land size designation. Its fundamental purpose is to maintain a rural identity, history and quality of life,” Myers wrote. “It is intended to not just be urban homes on larger lots, but to be qualitatively different from the rest of the city,” making the community, he said, part of the identity of the city itself. “We are a rural community, not just a rural area.”
But the amendment’s supporters are keen to see the gates go up, concerned about a host of issues from speeders to break-ins and thefts to illegal dumping and the setting off of illegal fireworks by people entering the development.
The instances, all and more in the space of a year, were part of a long list Sheldon Park Estates resident Stephen Lufti sent to planners in November calling for his neighborhood to be privatized and gated.
Lufti ended his letter with yet more concerns: “If these things have happened within the first year of living here,” he said, “I’m afraid to see what will happen over the next 10.”
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