The Gold Rush proposal has been long in both design and application. The process began eight years ago when Sutter Creek moved to secure the Noble Ranch after a planned subdivision, White Horse, pulled up lame and died. The city's decision was based on months of commissioned engineering studies that were unable to identify any other suitable effluent disposal site. The hope was another developer would emerge to take down the costs of the land and leave Sutter Creek/ARSA a disposal easement. Troy Claveran's original group, which evolved into the present ownership, has done that.
In his Dec. 16 letter, "At what price golf?" Bart Weatherly asserted that Gold Rush was approved as a golf course resort in 2004, but got greedy and now wants to add 1,400 homes - a maneuver of a magnitude that would give greed a bad name if it needed one. While what Bart says is not false, it is incomplete. A free-standing golf resort without homes was never considered economically viable. However, the size of the residential request was unknown until about a year ago. The acquisition of the property between the ranch and the bowling alley upped the housing potential.
The original strategy was to split the project into portions and review them one at a time. Any phase denied by the city was subject to a buy-back. Both parties soon realized difficulties with the piecemeal approach. Not only were legal questions raised, but assessing impacts without the total coordinated picture was, at best, problematic. The approval that Bart refers to was allowed to expire in favor of the ongoing complicated but comprehensive master plan review.