What's at stake?
"Based on my recollection of the people who sent me here to represent them, they were loud and clear that they are against SEDA." - Councilmember Brandon Vang
The political calculus of Mayor Jerry Dyer’s vision to build a new Clovis in southeast Fresno appeared to begin swirling the drain this week.
The mayor’s margin of error grew slimmer on Thursday to gain the Fresno City Council’s approval of a $4 billion mega-project known as the Southeast Development Area (SEDA).
Brandon Vang, the councilmember for the area where Dyer’s signature project would be built, told the mayor on Thursday he opposes SEDA.
Vang said that SEDA was at the top of his constituents’ concerns — ranking atop other radioactive issues like homelessness and crime.
“This is a very hot subject matter,” Vang said. “Based on my recollection of the people who sent me here to represent them, they were loud and clear that they are against SEDA.”
SEDA also got new opposition Thursday, Vang also revealed.
Vang also said the Sanger Unified School District formally opposes SEDA.
SEDA would potentially put advanced industrial manufacturing next door to a school in Sanger Unified.
“Sanger Unified is currently opposed to SEDA in its current form, as it has areas surrounding Lone Star [a Sanger Unified school] that are not conducive to an educational environment,” Vang said, explaining that he was speaking on behalf of the Sanger superintendent.
A potential SEDA approval now faces a formidable obstacle.
Four council members would have to side with the mayor — and against nearly all the school districts in the city, organized labor, residents from across the city who have repeatedly packed city hall to oppose SEDA, and now even the city council member who is responsible for Southeast Fresno’s families.
Sixteen months ago, such a situation was one of Dyer’s worst fears when it came to SEDA. If the Vang domino were to fall, Dyer told a meeting room full of developers at city hall last year, he was not confident he’d have the political juice to keep the rest of the council reigned in.
“Quite frankly, we have a new council member in D5 [Vang] who, man, he comes into office….I’m sure he’s got his share of anti-SEDA because of the falsities that have been out there. So we need time to educate,” Dyer told the developers last May.
“If Brandon is not on board, I could lose D6. I could lose Nick Richardson on this thing.”
“Is this number real?”
After Vang’s comments, northeast Councilmember Nick Richardson said on Thursday he was still undecided on SEDA.
“I’m not a one or a zero on this. A lot of times we think about this in very binary terms, but I’m going to analyze. I’m going to ask a lot of questions,” he said.
Questions asked by Richardson and others on Thursday revolved around a long-awaited financial plan for SEDA’s first phase, known as South SEDA.
The area South of Jensen Avenue is envisioned by Dyer to have 18 million square feet of industrial space and 10,000 homes. An earlier draft of the plan released last year tallied over $650 million in infrastructure costs for the South SEDA area, with developer fees covering only $233 million.
Dyer’s plan unveiled earlier this week does not cover how to pay for the vast majority of the costs for SEDA’s first phase. Instead, the plan discussed on Thursday focused only on the very first sewer pipe SEDA needs.
The sewer pipe will cost around $72 million, and city residents will have to foot the bill at first. This would happen, Dyer’s financial gurus said on Thursday, via a $86 million loan.
The money will likely come from a savings account from the utilities department, according to a city finance official at the meeting.
Other options include surcharges on residential utility bills if the savings account runs out of cash.
Dyer’s team claims the loan is worth the risk because South SEDA could add $11 million per year to city bank accounts once it’s entirely built out — sometime between 2047-2066.
Even that scenario rests on a scale, pace and price of new homes being sold to new residents in that area which would defy the state of Claifornia’s population projections.
Council members found many of the numbers hard to believe on Thursday.
Dyer’s team assumed 21 homes per acre — roughly seven times the density of the single family homes at Riverstone in Madera County.
In actual numbers, Dyer assumes 10,070 homes on 467 acres east of Temperance Avenue. Despite the tiny lot sizes this requires, Dyer’s team assumes the homes would sell for over half a million dollars.
The assumption, were it to become a reality, would stick out like a sore thumb for southeast Fresno, said Vang.
“The house – if you only build a 1,500, 2,000 square foot home, you’re gonna have to build up, not only two stories, but perhaps even three.”
“And so I ask myself: Is this number real?” he asked.
One farmer questioned why anyone would pay half a million dollars to be packed in like sardines at the dusty edge of town.
“What target demographic would pay so much for so little?” said David Ramming, a farmer in southeast Fresno.
Councilmember hopes data center ban restores SEDA’s sanity
What’s the motive for SEDA?
This question has gotten louder and louder in recent weeks as SEDA has moved closer and closer to a final vote. Dyer’s team has failed to find a financial plan that meets his standards yet has continued to lobby for approval of the 9,000-acre mega-development.
This question has gotten so loud that even council members are starting to think the worst-case scenario.
When city hall was packed to the rafters once again last month to oppose SEDA, Councilmember Miguel Arias dropped a bombshell.
Maybe the mayor had an ace up his sleeve to pay for SEDA’s multi-billion-dollar shortfalls, he suggested.
Maybe a tech company would come in to save the day on SEDA’s infrastructure shortfalls — by using south SEDA’s “Flexible Research and Development” zoning to build a bunch of giant data centers.
Data centers aren’t technically listed as a use in the city’s planning rulebook, but under current rules datacenters can be allowed if the city’s planning director makes a special determination.
On Thursday, Richardson made the first move to squash that fire with a blanket data center ban.
Richardson said he hoped his data center ban would restore some sanity to the SEDA conversation.
“Insinuating that [SEDA] is to build a data center, this gets rid of that conversation,” said Richardson.
“Our SEDA conversations can continue without having to worry about whether or not data centers are involved.”
The data center ban gained the mayor’s support, and planning staff are set to begin drafting language for the ban.
The next SEDA hearing has not been scheduled yet. The data center ban, once put into language, will be sent to the airport and planning commissions before it goes to the city council for approval, likely sometime early next year.
