News Room
Hillside project still in uphill struggle
By Chris Nichols - The Union Democrat
October 16, 2006
Fourteen years after the controversial Sunrise Hills development was approved by the city, homes continue to pop up at the Sonora subdivision.
The first phase of the subdivision, carved into a prominent hillside high above downtown ? is nearly complete, with about 70 of 83 homes built.
Yet the future of Sunrise Hills' second phase, originally planned as about 90 more homes, remains murky at best.
Today's stricter building limits on city hills, plus millions of dollars in tax debt, will likely delay any more construction for years to come.
"It's not going to be a quick process," said John Pierce, vice president of Woodland-based Tower Investments, which owns a 32-acre stretch of land on the southeastern portion of the hill, planned as the second phase. "There's just too much debt."
Before Pierce's company can build on the second phase, the company must pay off nearly $4 million in delinquent bond assessments and penalties, said Karen Stark, Sonora's finance director.
Tower Investments also owns six of the project's commercial lots. Those are also steeped in debt, four of them on the upper portion of Morning Star Drive have amassed $1.8 million in debt.
Pierce's company acquired the parcels after Sunrise Hills' original owner, Victor Child, of Sonora, went bankrupt trying to develop the project.
Tower Investments has developed and sold five commercial lots in the past five years. And it plans to develop two of its six remaining parcels. But Pierce acknowledged it may be a long time before all of the commercial and residential parcels are developed.
When first approved, Sunrise Hills caused a firestorm of criticism, for scraping the hillside clean of vegetation and planning to pack scores of homes on the steep earth.
Today, residents and current and former city officials are still mixed on the development's merits, and whether or not more building should take place.
Dale Harris and his wife, Penny, were among the first families to make Sunrise Hills their home in 2001.
The retirees say they knew of the controversy surrounding the project.
But with the chance at a postcard view of downtown and proximity to shops and city life, the Harrises and many others were more than willing to risk the financial entanglements and community criticism surrounding Sunrise Hills.
"We love our house and we love where we are," said Dale Harris, last week from his home, perched on low stilts just above Morning Star Drive.
"We like being up above the city, looking down on the city."
The Harrises, like others at the subdivision, say they couldn't be happier with their neighborhood, even if they, like all other homeowners, have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in bond assessments.
Those charges cover the city's cost of building roads, sewer and water lines for Sunrise Hills.
Yet others in the community say the Sunrise Hills has not been a success, and looks nothing like the plans pitched in the late 1980s by Child, a local optometrist.
Child, who is no longer involved with the project, was not available for comment Friday.
"Boxes on the hill wasn't my original designation," said Dwain McDonald, who voted in favor of the project as a Sonora planning commissioner.
Those original plans, he said, called for more landscaping on each residential lot and smaller, less prominent homes on the hillside.
"We didn't envision (the homes) being built on stilts and that look like they're three stories," McDonald said, calling the final result "dramatically different."
McDonald and other current and former city officials say they didn't oppose the project outright, acknowledging that there needs to be a place for growth in Sonora.
Former Sonora Mayor Liz Bass said Sunrise Hills, though a challenging project, has benefited the city.
It created Morning Star Drive, enabling residents to travel from the eastern part of the city to downtown. And it provided a needed spot for development.
"I'm glad it's there," said Bass, now a member of the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors, who lives just below the project.
She noted that complaints about the project's erosion and drainage have been limited in recent years.
City Administrator Greg Applegate confirmed that few, if any, such complaints have been received in the past five years.
"I'm pretty surprised it's done as well as it has," Bass said. "There were such dire predictions of ruining the landscape."
Another result of the project was the city's hillside preservation ordinance, developed and approved four years after Sunrise Hills was OK'd.
That ordinance limits the density of hillside developments in the city. Any project, such as Sunrise Hills' second phase, would have to clear the ordinance's restrictions before being built.
It's unlikely the second phase would be as large as the first, said city officials.
That's probably good news for many Sonorans who initially opposed the project years ago.
But property rights supporters like the Harrises and their neighbor Rowena Olsen say there's little reason to limit growth at Sunrise Hills.
"The earth was made for people," Olsen declared, standing outside the front door of her home on the lower portion of Morning Star Drive.
"If they stuck houses all over the hillside, that would be fine with me."