|
 |
 |
| Tracy Press, Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |
|
|
| SUPES OK FINAL MAP FOR COMMUNITY - First neighborhood for Mountain House gets nod |
|
One small part of Mountain House is official, with a lot more to come.
In a move described as mostly a formality by the project manager, San Joaquin County’s Board of Supervisors approved a "final" final map for the town’s first neighborhood Tuesday.
Approval was a bit of housekeeping necessary to give the community services district overseeing the project a list of easement for the neighborhood. "You build the infrastructure, then you dedicate for the easements," said Eric Teed-Bose, Mountain House project manager. "It’s a formality to allow the public entity to accept those improvements."
Trimark Communities Inc., the principal builder for Mountain House, started on the project in spring 2001 after supervisors approved a tentative map for the Neighborhood "F," the first in the new town west of Tracy, in late 2000.
The first final map was approved last October, but approval of easements and street designations was left out of that approval because that responsibility lay with the Mountain House Board of Directors, which is made of the board of supervisors. To correct that oversight, the board approved the easements Tuesday as part of their consent calendar.
Teed-Bose said the approval doesn’t change what’s already going on at his work site, where streets for the first neighborhood are under construction west of Mountain House Parkway. Work to widen and add curbs and gutters to that road is also under way.
Paul Sensibaugh, general manager for the town’s community services district, said the easements needed to be approved because construction and improvements for the neighborhood’s first streets are nearly complete.
Next comes opening them for public access, he said, with model homes for purchase scheduled to appear in August.
The first homes for people to move into should start construction in October, and people will start moving in by spring 2003.
Teed-Bose said Neighborhood F, also known as Wicklund Crossing, will have 979 single-family homes and 480 multi-family homes, either apartments or condominiums. He said work on the single-family homes will begin first and take more than three years, for a total of about 2,400 residents.
Multi-family homes will start later and take longer, finishing within three to five years. "They’ll hold back on those until there’s more of a community," Teed-Bose said.
Wicklund Crossing will also have a five-acre park, built by Trimark, and a commercial building with a small country store and an information center on the entire project. The park will border Wicklund School, which will be part of the Lammersville School District. Workers began site preparations for the school this week. Teed-Bose said that unlike many communities, amenities like schools and parks will sprout out of the ground as the houses do.
"It’s one of the age-old issues in planning, that homes get built and the facilities like schools come after," he said. "It may be 50 to 100 homes before the school opens, but it’ll be there pretty quick."
Mello-Roos bonds will pay for the schools, but other features of most neighborhoods will be Trimark’s responsibility, he said, through either paying developer fees or building must-haves like parks and fire stations themselves.
Sensibaugh said the next step is approval of final maps for the next two neighborhoods, "E" and "G". Supervisors will see that item by the end of summer, he said. |
|
|
