Rancho Cordova residents say 5-story warehouse will crowd them out of their neighborhoods
Plans for a new five-story, 155,000 square-foot warehouse in a Rancho Cordova community have rankled neighbors who say city leaders’ reliance on a two-decade old zoning plan to push the project forward could lead to present-day pain for hundreds of nearby residents.
The site of the 155,076 square-foot LogistiCenter of Rancho Cordova planned for North Mather Boulevard and Bear Hollow Drive sits in the city’s Villages of Zinfandel Special Zoning Area, which allows for commercial development.
Sacramento County established the zoning area in 2002, before Rancho Cordova became a city and mapped out the land for homes, parks, businesses and open space.
The plan is based on a 1998 environmental impact report. County officials at the time said the Environmental Impact Report took full account of future noise, traffic and other build out impacts.
Now with the LogistiCenter project on the tarmac and more than 1 million square feet of similar projects pending in their neighborhood as part of the planned Stone Creek warehouse complex, residents of the Villages and Stone Creek communities are crying foul.
They say Rancho Cordova leaders won’t budge from the 2002 zoning plan and won’t consider a new environmental study even as residents say they will soon be surrounded by acres of warehouses and the truck traffic, pollution and safety issues they say are sure to come.
“Residents are very upset,” said Villages resident Dawn Davison. “We’ve been trying to work with the city and we’re just getting lip service. There should be a new EIR. It’s ludicrous to say (the 1998) EIR is adequate for a project going forward in 2022.”
Rancho Cordova staff haven’t made a formal recommendation of the project. A public hearing on the logistics center has been pushed to an unspecified future date and staffers said in their report that they will wait for more direction from council members.
Council members had concerns of their own, according to a staff report, including how visible trucks and the plant’s loading dock would be from Bear Hollow Drive and a westerly bike trail; as well as the direction of truck traffic north on Bear Hollow and through a school zone. Navigator Elementary School is a short distance from the proposed logistics center on Bear Hollow.
Rancho Cordova’s public works department wants all non-passenger and commercial vehicles barred from using Bear Hollow Drive north of the project site as a truck route to the facility as well as nearby neighborhood roads, as a condition of city approval of the project.
Project developer Reno-based Dermody Properties has made some concessions. Drawings show plans to plant mature cedar and live oak as a screening and sound barrier.
But Davison and others say the overtures don’t go far enough.
They say they are concerned about the safety of students and other pedestrians at nearby Navigator Elementary; the stress that freight trucks will place on a busy Zinfandel Drive; and the diesel pollution Stone Creek and Villages residents will experience. Neighbors estimate trucks will make approximately 980 daily trips once the Stone Creek center is complete.
“I have grave concerns over the safety of drivers (and) pedestrians given the information we now know,” Stone Creek resident Kate Carroll wrote in a July letter to Rancho Cordova city council members. “When our city has cited an intent to become ‘green’ within a few short years, the amount of pollution created by large trucks seems a step backward, instead of forward, particularly where our citizens’ health is concerned.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2022 at 5:25 AM.
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