State Launches Review of Tres Hermanos Ranch Sale

As explained in this San Gabriel Valley Tribune article today, the State of Calfornia's Department of Finance will review the recent sale of Tres Hermanos Ranch to the City of Industry, the agreement of which calls for approval of the deal by the department.

The department's staff who deal with redevelopment issues have 40 days to complete the review, though it is not expected to take that long.

As noted here recently, the cities of Diamond Bar and Chino Hills, in whose jurisdictions the ranch is located, have called for a state review and/or rejection of the sale as undercutting their tax receipts for the sale.  The City of Industry has stated that its purchase will yield open space, public access, and public uses--the latter meaning a planned solar farm on a substantial portion of the ranch.

While the article quotes state law requiring redevelopment land sales to "maximize value," the fundamental question with that word of "value," seems to be whether it is to be taken as meaning "dollar value" or some other qualifiable "value," such as open space, public access and so on.

The purchase price of $41.5 million agreed upon in a 4-3 vote by the City of Industry Successor Agency to the Urban Development Agency was contingent on a perpetual use of the 2,450 acres for public access and public uses.  However, a property management plan pegged the monetary value as roughly $86 to $122 million.

Interestingly, Chino Hills City Manager Rad Bartlam, who talked before of housing limits in general plans for the city, is now taking a different tack on the ranch by suggesting that his city and Diamond Bar could have bid $41.6 million ($100,000 more than the approved deal) and turned Tres Hermanos into parkland if the cities could have been allowed to bid.  He stated, "I would think the community would be better off having the cities of Chino Hills and Diamond Bar own it, than the City of Industry."