Articles

After yesterday's California Supreme Court oral argument in California Redevelopment Association vs. Matosantos – the lawsuit challenging the state's new pay-ransom-or-die redevelopment system – it's still hard to tell where the court will go. But the biggest question that emerged was: What happens it the court upholds AB 1x 26, which abolishes redevelopment, but strikes down AB 1x 27, which permits redevelopment agencies to continue to exist if they pay a "remittance" to the state?

The Malibu Bay Company (MBC) owns the last undeveloped beach front parcel in Malibu, a 2.08-acre, 200-foot-wide parcel. In order to accommodate its proposed division into four parcels, MDC proposed an amendment to the Local Implementation Plan of Malibu's local coastal plan in order to create a new zoning district which would allow for lot widths of 45 feet, a decrease from the, then existing, standard of 80 feet.

Forget about setbacks, traffic counts, and environmental impact reports. A new nationwide initiative suggests that planners and community development officials should be focusing as much on canvases, scripts, and jam sessions—especially if those planners are in California. 

In a feat of chronological gymnastics regarding a proposed development in the City of Napa, the Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District held that a Notice of Determination posted over the course of 31 calendar days was not posted long enough to satisfy the California Environmental Quality Act's requirement that it be posted for 30 days. 

This case involved the perfect storm of events resulting in the flooding of the plaintiffs' properties and an ensuing legal tempest. Plaintiffs sued the county in court claiming that the flooding was a result of county's failure to maintain a county road, from which the runoff spilled. Plaintiff claimed that the county's neglect of the road constituted a taking and inverse condemnation. In Gutierrez v. County of San Bernardino, the Fourth District Court of Appeals grappled with the application of the "reasonableness" takings test that applies to flood control projects.

Gov. Jerry Brown considered over 600 bills that came to his desk this legislative session. Some of the most contentious involved land use, particularly bills concerning redevelopment and the California Environmental Quality Act. The City of Los Angeles got a CEQA exemption for its proposed football stadium and infill developments have received special dispensation; speculation is that other such exemptions may be on the horizon.

Sacramento County may not rank among California's great wine countries, but it does appreciate the value of aging. Eight years in the making, the land use element of the county's new general plan update is on the verge of approval by the county Board of Supervisors. In contrast with the contentiousness that has surrounded many other recently updated county general plans, this one—save some concerns about the protection of wild habitats—seems to be pleasing just about everyone. 

In the ongoing billboard wars that have taken place up and down the state in recent years, the advertisers have won the latest legal battle. 

In Hill v. San Jose Family Housing Partners, the Court of Appeal for the Sixth Appellate District held: (1) that a written easement for a billboard was enforceable, even if the billboard was constructed in an illegal manner; and (2) that the servient owners of a development that unreasonably interfered with the visibility of the billboard could owe the billboard owner damages for lost profits.

As with most things in life, one person's gain is another person's loss, and public-private partnerships are not exempt from these types of tradeoffs. To the state engineers and their representative union, the contracting out to private engineering firms of engineering services traditionally performed by Caltrans engineering staff represents one of those zero-sum games. This becomes the backdrop to a challenge to the Phase II improvement work on Doyle Drive, the highway approach to the southern terminus of the Golden Gate Bridge.

When the City of Morgan Hill annexed an 80-acre plot of land over public outcry, city residents fought back by approving ballot measures limiting the development that could take place on that parcel. With a recent appeals court ruling – 31 years after the initial annexation -- a developer's project is high and dry, with the court ruling that the city's actions did not amount to inverse condemnation or illegal spot zoning. 

This month – October 10, to be exact – marks the 100th anniversary of initiative and referendum in California. It's hard to imagine that Gov. Hiram Johnson, the godfather of the constitutional amendment, could have imagined all the different ways that the initiative process would be used – especially by the moneyed interests that were his target in 1911. But it's equally hard to imagine that Johnson could have foreseen the way the initiative and referendum process would transform planning and development in California.

By now, most CEQA practitioners have faced the problem of what to do when a project opponent submits the attorney general's 18-page list of potential greenhouse gas mitigation measures, when many of the measures in the list may not be appropriate for a particular project.  On June 30, 2011, the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District held that the lead agency is not required to explain why each of the proposed measures is inappropriate for the project at issue. 

There was a time when the biggest opponents to infill development were the interstate highway, the barbeque grill, and the American dream. Following the failure of Assembly Bill 710, you might be able to add advocates of affordable housing to the list.

According to some Fresno locals, it was 30 years ago -- perhaps because of Proposition 13, perhaps because of the falling price of grapes -- that the city at the heart of the San Joaquin Valley went into decline. Since then, accusations of corruption, dismal economics, and nearly unmitigated low-density development have made the city both the butt of jokes and one of the nation's most forlorn urban areas. It has not suffered the spectacular fall of, say, Detroit -- but only because it never rose to Detroit's industrial prominence in the first place.