BONNY DOON – The entrance to Back Ranch Road is almost a secret, where drivers duck into a cleft along a Highway 1 bluff and climb to a meadow overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
You would think the highway vistas – ordered rows of artichokes and Brussels sprouts spilling over wheat-colored cliffs – cannot be topped, but the view from the meadow falsifies the idea. It is so beautiful up there it can knot your stomach.
It is also a backdrop to what could be the next chapter in the 40-year history of North Coast development wars. On an abandoned quarry just beyond Back Ranch Road, a top Apple Inc. executive plans a dream home that some say is too expansive and too far out of place for Santa Cruz County’s North Coast.
“What we’re talking about in terms of a surrounding neighborhood is a dozen properties surrounded by a state park. And this is like a king coming to build his castle on top of the mountain,” said Jodi Frediani, who lives below the knoll on which the home would be built and argues it is too far out of character for the Moore Creek area to be built.
Bonny Doon residents have always felt protective of their hamlet, which has drawn artists, scientists, environmentalists and even business leaders, tucking homes into the crevasses of a landscape that transitions from open coastal terraces to dense redwood forests.
In 2010, Apple vice president Bob Mansfield and wife Andrea sought county approval to build on 45 acres covering a prominent knoll. The home would sit atop an old quarry that one neighborhood historian believes provided the asphalt to pave not only downtown’s Pacific Avenue, but San Francisco’s Market Street as well.
The majesty of the surroundings – it is just outside the northern border of Wilder Ranch State Park – is matched by the architectural plans. The 9,000-square-foot home – about 6,000 of which is above grade – includes a basement theater and agricultural roof. It will include four barns, an outdoor kitchen, a potting shed and even a herd of goats.
QUESTIONS ABOUND
And while Bonny Doon homes are spaced far apart from one another (a feature enforced by zoning rules), that hasn’t stopped some from objecting to the scale. That has set the stage for the county to decide a series of questions: How big is too big? How do you define the character or a rural neighborhood? And how much say should one’s neighbors have over one’s home?
“I don’t think it’s inconsistent with the area, but obviously there’s differences of opinion there. There’s a number of people who live on the road who feel it’s consistent, there’s some that don’t,” said land-use consultant Jonathan Swift, who is working with the Mansfields, who declined to comment.
Like generational grudges that one might find in Bonny Doon’s spiritual homeland of Scotland, the Mansfield project has set neighbor upon neighbor. It has a whiff of class warfare, with one online posting accusing the Mansfields of being members of the so-called 1 percent, which drew a retort from a county planner who said the applicant’s status is irrelevant to land-use decisions.
“It just feels like, whether they’re from out of town or not or the 1 percent or not, there’s no respect for what our county has developed over the years,” said Jonathan Wittwer, a prominent conservation attorney representing a group of concerned neighbors.
Wittwer, a resident of Smith Grade, also would be a neighbor.
And just as Wittwer is no normal neighbor, neither is Frediani. She is a fierce defender of woods, and has acted as a forestry consultant to the local Ventana Chapter of the Sierra Club, which has a reputation for taking aggressive environmental stances on everything from bicycle paths to the expansion of Highway 1, often through litigation.
BATTLE MOUNTAIN
But while some area neighbors don’t like the project, there are many who do.
“Many refer to Bonny Doon as Battle Mountain whereas others refer to it as “hypocrite hill.” We have seen that almost anybody wishing to develop legally their property must deal with the agony and expense of neighbors who will oppose whatever it is they want to do,” William Cunningham, who lives near the property, wrote in a letter to the county that includes an accusation that at least one project opponent has skirted county laws over the years.
“If all houses were required to be invisible their neighbors,” he added, “we would have to live in caves.”
Undoubtedly, the Mansfields have taken steps to minimize the home’s visual and environmental impacts, including avoiding building on the highest point on the property, using a vegetative roof, solar panels and large cisterns to provide water.
But unquestionably, the home would still have visual and environmental impacts, demonstrated when the Mansfields – at the behest of neighbors – cobbled together a temporary timber frame showing the rooflines of the home.
Even figuring out just how big the house is has been controversial. Neighbors accused the Mansfields of manipulating the design by, among other things, having a low basement ceiling to avoid triggering the county’s restrictive “monster home” law.
Since the application was filed, the county twice changed how it calculates square footage, and the project is now proceeding under that ordinance, which covers homes more than 7,000 square feet. Swift, who still is frustrated by those decisions, says the Mansfields were not trying to play games with county rules.
“Is that a game because we’re building a house less than 7,000 square feet? I don’t think so. Are you breaking the speed limit if you drive 64 miles an hour instead of 65?” he asked.
WAITING IT OUT
Mansfield, who oversees Apple divisions that produce iPhones and laptops, products that helped make Apple the world’s most valuable company, is navigating native objections and the county’s often-tricky permit process with the help of a raft of consultants. He has so far produced a historic review, an archaeological review, a biotic review and a geologic review and more.
Mansfield’s money – he cashed out more than $26 million in stock options during the last year, according to SEC filings – is a luxury that builders who encounter local opposition (and the county’s Byzantine codes) do not enjoy. He can afford to be patient, spending money to satisfy question after neighborhood question.
The project has drawn concern from the city water department, which takes in Majors Creek water shortly downstream from the project (though most of it is in a different watershed). A former UC Santa Cruz geologist has also raised issues, though his report was dismissed by a county geologist as “not … help [sic] in understanding the site geology.” The Center for Biological Diversity and the Ventana Chapter of the Sierra Club, the latter of which speculated that endangered red-legged frogs could be found on the property (though none actually have been), are also following the project.
Some have also questioned the sweet tax deal on the property, which the Mansfields inherited after buying the land in 2006. For the 45 acres of undeveloped, highly desirable real estate, they pay $139 a year in property taxes. The Mansfields bought it for $1.4 million, but on county rolls it’s worth just $6,649.
Why?
Under a state program that dates to the 1970s, property owners could volunteer their land for an open space easement, agreeing not to subdivide or develop the property in exchange for a tax break. About 140 local parcels have those easements, though many owners appear to pay more than the Mansfields in taxes.
So how can you build on undevelopable property? Because the easement allows a homestead. The easement was signed by former supervisor Gary Patton, the godfather of many of the county’s slow-growth policies, who practices law alongside Wittwer, the lawyer fighting the very thing the easement may allow.
Patton said allowing homes is typical for open space easements, though the scale of what the Mansfields are proposing may not have been contemplated at the time.
“I just don’t think anybody was really thinking about it,” Patton said.
Wittwer said under state law, issues concerning open space easements should be decided by the county’s open space committee. But the county doesn’t have an open space committee – the county board has never needed one, and none have ever been convened.
“They should appoint one and it should meet,” Wittwer said.
MONSTER HOME?
The project remains under review, and no future hearing dates have been set. The county’s “monster home” law will be key, since it clearly includes language saying a home must fit with the surrounding neighborhood.
But what is that neighborhood? Moore Ranch Road opponents have drawn up a list of homes in their hamlet, showing the average square footage to be less than 2,000. But Swift said there are many homes in the area much bigger than that, and by several factors.
Back on Back Ranch Road, rolling over a patched-up, winding strip of asphalt, the first house to crack the horizon is a looming estate, 7,000 square feet, according to county records, with a 940-square-foot garage. It is not clear if the basement is counted.
Beyond that are more modest homes, but as you traverse the spine of Back Ranch Road, bigger homes still emerge from the landscape. In that context, the Mansfield project, which sits on a unique piece of property, might not seem out of place if the county has to decide whether it fits into the neighborhood.
But what’s a neighborhood? As far as Frediani’s concerned, it’s an idyllic speck of Bonny Doon that includes the handful of homes on Moore Ranch Road. Any wider net should be ignored, she said.
“If you’re going to do that, why stop there? Why not all of California? Why not Beverly Hills?”
Follow Sentinel reporter Jason Hoppin on Twitter @scnewsdude
