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SETTLEMENT REACHED ON PALOS COLORADOS:

LAFAYETTE DROPS LAWSUIT

MORAGA PLANNING COMMISSION APPROVES GENERAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

At the February 5, 2007 Planning Commission Meeting, the Town of Moraga, City of Lafayette, and Richfield Development Corp. announced that they had reached an agreement regarding the Palos Colorados project and that Lafayette would drop its lawsuit.

Lafayette filed the suit last August objecting to Richfield’s decision to remove the golf course (and Moraga’s finding that this change was not inconsistent with the 1999 Settlement Agreement) without first reaching mutual agreement on an alternative form of financial mitigation to replace the golf course mitigation find. Under the Settlement Agreement, $5.00 per round of golf played would have been split between Moraga and Lafayette to mitigate the project’s traffic and open space impacts. The suit also raised objections to the visibility of homes from the Lafayette BART station. The 1999 Settlement Agreement prescribed specific viewshed protections from the BART station which Lafayette argued were violated by the new plan.

The three parties indicated that agreement had been reached on the amount of financial mitigation, and that revisions Richfield had made to the site plan had satisfied the City of Lafayette that the visual impacts no longer violate the Settlement Agreement. PLOS will post the details of the agreement as soon as we are able.

Following the announcement, the Moraga Planning Commission proceeded to review and approve the General Development Plan and attached Conditions of Approval and the Conditional Use Permit for the project. The Vesting Tentative Map and Final Development Plan approvals, which are still required before construction, are expected to come before the Planning Commission in the coming year. To see the project site plan, click here.