The residents overrule the planners and vote to live how they have always wanted, in homes with yards, and space to breathe and park their cars, still the most efficient way to get around our part of the world.
Placer OKs 14,000 homes
By Mary Lynne Vellinga and Art Campos - Bee Staff Writers
Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Placer County supervisors Monday approved a development the size of a small city just north of the Sacramento County line.
The Placer Vineyards project -- in the works for the past 13 years -- is the largest development ever approved for the unincorporated portion of Placer County, and one of the largest ever approved in the region.
It will bring 14,132 houses to a rectangular swath of 5,230 acres of farmland west of Roseville. About 32,800 new residents are expected in the development, which will be built over 20 to 30 years.
The unanimous vote on Placer Vineyards was a setback to the voluntary "Blueprint" regional growth plan adopted by the member governments of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments in 2004.
The idea behind Blueprint was to pack more people into areas earmarked for growth, making it more efficient to serve them with public transit and reducing the need to build on more farmland over the next half century.
In this case, however, the Blueprint concept lost amid community concerns about traffic.
The Placer supervisors opted instead for a plan containing fairly typical suburban densities for single family homes. SACOG had advocated an alternative with 21,631 residential units.
