WALNUT CREEK — A tiny 50-square-foot strip of land was one of the last battlegrounds for opponents of a 30-acre senior care community slated to transform Seven Hills Ranch’s low rolling hills and wildlife habitat.
Nestled in a residential neighborhood less than a mile northwest of the John Muir Health Walnut Creek Medical Center and east of Interstate 680, that minuscule piece of property at the northern end of Kinross Drive has for years been coveted as a potential primary access point for the planned Seven Hills Ranch development The Glen at Heather Farm.
There was only one problem: the parcel was technically city property. That fact has kept the controversial gated development in a state of limbo, even after the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the plan in November of 2022, despite 4,000 signatures collected in opposition.
But on Tuesday, the Walnut Creek City Council finally sold that sliver of land, technically designated “Lot A,” to Spieker Senior Development Partners for $500,000, clearing the path for the development of 354 independent senior living units, 100 medical care units, an 85,000-square-foot medical center and a multi-story clubhouse.
While the sale of land roughly the length of a semitrailer and 1 foot wide may seem simple on paper, scores of community members who spoke at this week’s meeting were still hotly divided.
Denise Kalm was one of several senior public commenters who were excited that The Glen at Heather Farm was one step closer to completion in Walnut Creek — where no similar “comprehensive” continuing care senior facilities exist inside city limits.
“You need us to get out of the homes we own in Walnut Creek,” Kalm said, explaining how the townhome she’s lived in for 40 years would be good for another family moving into the city. She said facilities like The Glen at Heather Farm would help “keep people like me that do volunteer work and care about the community, and you bring in new families.”
But scores of other community members and at least one formal opposition group were not so pleased. Many opposed the project’s plan to remove more than 350 trees, erect retaining walls around the property, conduct years of construction and establish some commercial uses on the land, which was owned by the Hale family for almost a century.
“Do not make this sale impacting thousands of families and endangering my family’s health and property,” said Caroline Love, who moved into a single-family home near the proposed Kinross Drive extension 13 years ago. “Do not give our land to a corporation who will destroy our peaceful community with years of construction and misuse of this beautiful land.”
After more than four hours of discussion Tuesday, the five-member Walnut Creek City Council approved the sale of the Kinross easement in one of seven different resolutions, which were largely intertwined in the land sale and other project agreements. Councilmember Kevin Wilk cast the lone “no” vote for each.
So why did Spieker Senior Development Partners — an operator of continuing care retirement communities across California, including one in Pleasanton — opt to acquire Lot A as the entrance to its proposed Walnut Creek senior facility, rather than other nearby roadways, including Seven Hill Ranch Road and North San Carlos Drive?
It’s an issue of space and traffic, according to Teri Killgore, Walnut Creek’s assistant city manager, and Troy Bourne, one of the principals at Spieker.
They said the extension of Kinross Drive would push traffic onto Marchbanks Drive, which is wide enough to realistically support an increased volume of pedestrian, bicycle and vehicle traffic, and avoids existing congestion further south near Walnut Creek Intermediate School and Ygnacio Valley Road.
Conversely, efforts to widen Seven Hills Ranch Road would require acquisition of several feet of private homeowners’ property and removal of even more trees. Other suggestions to use North San Carlos Drive would conflict with existing drop-off and pick-up congestion at Seven Hills School, in addition to forcing the senior facility’s residents and employees to traverse the entirety of Heather Farms Park to reach the community.
Bourne tried to assure project opponents that the debate over street capacity was moot since very few senior residents will commute — creating 30% less daily traffic and 50% less peak period traffic than a single-family development. Additionally, he elaborated that the facility’s average occupancy rate will likely drop from 1.6 people to only 1.2 after the first 10 years of operation, since many residents are already in their mid-70s when they move in.
“Even if you add an employee to every single home in the community, you still wouldn’t get to the average household size that a regular single-family home has in Walnut Creek,” Bourne said. Even though more than 2,500 local residents have already submitted deposits to join the community’s pre-construction waitlist, he said a project like The Glen at Heather Farms “is one of the most benign traffic uses.”
The development is estimated to take up to four years once the developer acquires all required permits and approvals, according to city documents.
In addition to the half-million-dollar sticker price for the Kinross easement, Walnut Creek officials also negotiated for the developer to cough up $2 million for improvements to Heather Farm Park and contribute another $500,000 to the city’s Lesher Center for the Arts — both required to be paid out before the project is issued its first building permit and certificate of occupancy, respectively.
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Moreover, $1.75 million will be paid out for transportation improvements within Walnut Creek before any trucks start moving in and out of the land for grading work. That process will take an estimated 12 months to export 75,000 cubic yards of soil — enough dirt to fill roughly 5,000 full-size dump trucks.
In total, Walnut Creek will receive $4.75 million in exchange for the Kinross Drive extension. Depending on how quickly project timelines move forward, city staff said that lump sum will arrive in city coffers within the next 10 years.
Wrapping up Tuesday’s meeting, Councilmember Cindy Silva acknowledged that there was no good way to mitigate all impacts to surrounding neighborhoods.
Yet, if the Seven Hills Ranch property isn’t developed into a senior care community, she said residents’ concerns about traffic and density would be worse if a different multi-family developer swooped in with a broader plan.
“It’s not like this (senior community) isn’t needed,” Silva said, explaining that 30% of Walnut Creek’s population is over the age of 65. “I truly appreciate that the (Hale) family chose to sell their father’s property to a development that is less impactful and more community focused.”
