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From the top you should know we’re committed to a parallel path acquisition strategy. We’re going to work down a dozen different paths - State Park, National Recreation Area Designation, Revenues (Bonding, Property Taxes), Grants & Foundations, County Park, Forest Management Plan Administrative designation as National Recreation Area, Modified Walnut Creek Development Option, Park/Recreational Amenities (only), “As Is,” Conventional Development, Non-conventional Development. We’ll pursue each of the options, flushing and fleshing out the costs and benefits and drawbacks associated with each (i.e. even leaving it “as is” is going to cost us in forest health, security and liability; if a State Park, the state will need a revenue generator - camping, RV park, admission - such that the operation is revenue neutral (pays for itself; and so on).
We’ll determine a window of time as we go along, following which we’ll call off some of the as yet unfruitful paths. We fully expect some of the paths to dead end early, but we feel the need to address them since neighbors of ours have verbalized them. We fully expect others will naturally divert into still others. Our main concern is acquisition; and unlike some others who have weighed in, we are of one mind that time is not our friend in this process.
So, here’s how we see it in both a development and a non-development form.
As for a non-development option we have agreed together as a committee to support the National Recreation Area Designation as the most likely wholesale “gift” acquisition” scenario. Several of us are passionately confident, several others are guarded and less confident, but we’ve agreed on this as our non-development option.
On the development front, we’ve likewise agreed that a cut-down version of the (old Tejido) Walnut Creek Development Option is the one we as a committee can support. We’re thinking of commercial (retail) development in maybe 45 acres in the NE corner of the park - proceeding south only as far as the contiguous commercial zoning designation (not as far as the residential, that is (so as to avoid the objections of those immediate neighbors) and stopping well short of Walnut Creek on the SW border. With those sale/development proceeds we would set out to purchase the balance in phases, first the entire Walnut Creek path (including the existing developed area (103 acres), which we are given to understand from John Vuolo the USFS would require be our very first acreage purchase), then the remaining 270-300 acres to the south and west.
It’s a little sketchy, but it’s what we’re behind, at this point in our research, for both development and non-development options.
Thanks for helping us on this. Hope this gives you a little insight into what we’re thinking.
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