Santee's Fanita Ranch and the POD People

By Maggie Acerra

A Bait and Switch manuever against the citizens of Santee regarding their ballot approved Fanita Ranch Development

At Wednesday's 09/10/14 City Council meeting, the City Council approver the go ahead for the environmental study portion of the Home Fed, Inc. development group's application process, for the long stalled Fanita Ranch. You may remember that the voters in Santee approved a huge development on 2,600 acres of prime land on our east end. This is 1/4 of Santee's land that is being be used for the development.

Let's refresh our memories here. We were told that Santee had to have move up housing, we needed move up housing, and that this would be the start of Santee becoming the La Jolla of East County. Yes, folks, Fanita Ranch started all of that "La Jolla of East County" stuff that we have been hearing for almost 10 years now.

Here is the original Barratt Developers description of what the voters would eventually approve as a ballot issue:

"Developer Barratt American has proposed building 1,380 homes on Fanita Ranch's 2,600 acres. More than half of the residences will be built on half-acre lots. City leaders expect them to sell well above the county's median home price of $478,000. The project includes a commercial district, a fire station and a school site. The developer is still pondering whether to build a large park with sports fields or a golf course"

Well, it didn't work out well for Barratt and Fanita Ranch. The developers went bankrupt and the land sat for years waiting. Then the Home Fed, Inc. group came along to purchased the 2,600 acres.

About 5 months ago, the company held a meeting with about 50 people in Santee to review their plans what they temporarily still call Fanita Ranch. The name is the only thing familiar that remains from the original ballot initiative that the Santee voters approved. The Home Fed representative told us that the Fanita Ranch name will change once the building starts. Right now, it is being kept to keep you thinking, that this is the development that you approved all those years ago.

According to the representative from Home Fed, instead of large homes on 1/2 to 1 acre lots, which is specifically the move up housing the voters approved, we now have 1089 units using only 17% of the land with the houses being built to a 32-foot wide specification. You see, your two-story house is "wasted space" by these developers.

YOU DON"T NEED all that space, according to them, and have designed our Fanita Ranch "move up housing" on the European Density Model. The kind you see in pictures of small narrow homes built up and up and up on top of each other. They actually can fit about 10,000 people in a 4 mile square radius using this model over there.

They even showed us a picture of a European street, narrow on both sides, with the homes on top of it in long rows. The new communities will be called "pods" with a Community POD Center in each pod, for those that want to get a little green time in; a little park will be built right in the middle of the "pod".

Let me repeat,

The ballot initiative the Santee voters approved for what we were told was much needed "move up housing" went from 2200 units using 56% of the 2,600 acres of land - to 1089 units on 17% of the land with the rest reserved for "open space"

Business space will be built with little apartments over them and, here is a phrase they introduced us to called Hide The Diversity. They do this hiding by putting the low income housing in the middle, and then hiding it all behind the 32 foot wide homes. YES, there is an HOA expecting you to pay for the privilege of living in the POD Communities and abide by their rules and regulations they hand down from on high.

BAIT AND SWITCH - LAND GRABBING - CON JOB

They always used to ask the candidates running for City Council if they were behind the Fanita Ranch Development. The candidates would say "Well, the voters approved it, so we have to abide by it" Unfortunately for every citizen in Santee, they hope you really think that, until it's too late for you to realize that you have been conned.

By the way, according to the Home Fed rep, "boomers are too old to drive, anyway, and really don't need their cars any longer" so the small, tight enclosures are perfect for them to walk to the store and back! I was able to speak at the end of the presentation, and told the Home Fed Representative that this looked nothing like what the Santee voters approved, he stated that it was too bad because this was the only way they could make money on the development.

It's assumed by the developers that people will not leave the PODS (maybe they won't be able to!) they have created because the streets will not connect any of the Pod Community's streets to Cuyamaca or Fanita Drive. All roads leading in and out of the Fanita Ranch Pod Communities will be using Mast Avenue. Yes, that is right, even more congestion along the so-called "smart growth" corridors of Santee.

The current plan is to create this POD development, crowd people into them, and then claim the rest of the land as "open space." This means that government and SANDAG will decide how and what is built, and the government will rake in the money to grow itself larger and larger, until a monster is truly created. What's REALLY rotten about all of this for the Santee citizens is that:

THE CITY COUNCIL AND MAYOR KNOW OF THESE NEW DEVELOPMENT PLANS AND ARE GOING FORWARD WITH THIS CON JOB!

Let them know that this is NOT YOUR APPROVED FANITA RANCH PLAN. It goes back to the original plan the voters approved all those years ago or IT GOES BACK TO THE BALLOT!