Just as I was getting ready to write this column, planning to come to a conclusion about the El Rancho San Benito development, I was startled to see, in a recent Free Lance, that all but one of the candidates for supervisor predict they would vote against the development when it comes before the board.
They cited concerns about the location, or that it would turn Hollister into a ghost town, so I looked more carefully at the notes I brought back from the comparable development, Verrado, in Arizona. And I scrutinized maps of the area, and phoned the president of the Buckeye Chamber of Commerce to learn how Verrado had affected the historic town of Buckeye.
Looking at maps of the area was significant, because I realized I'd been over-simplifying the relative positions of Buckeye, Verrado and Phoenix. In fact, if the Google map can be believed, they are in almost exactly the same positions relative to each other as Hollister, the proposed El Rancho San Benito, and the larger cities (Gilroy and beyond) to the north.
In both cases, the older towns are off the main highway and would constitute a detour if one were traveling west to east into Phoenix or south to north to Gilroy or San Jose.
This is important because I had been thinking Buckeye had a geographic advantage that would make comparisons suspect, but this is not the case.
In fact, despite its off-the-main-road location, according to Deanna Kupcik, President/CEO of the Buckeye Valley Chamber of Commerce, Buckeye has benefited from the presence of Verrado and other planned communities nearby.
Just as in the case of Hollister, historic Buckeye's challenge has in part been to make sure Verrado residents and other new residents know it exists.
Verrado has helped by including Buckeye information in their welcome packet.
But more than that, the presence of the new development has answered the Buckeye area's need for housing in the present, while planning for staged growth in the future.
This is exactly what has been lacking in housing developments in San Benito County up until now. We can see the results of developers building out their property with mostly-identical housing, paying no regard to how the development would fit into the rest of the community or possible future developments.
The conscientious work of DMB so far, and its formation of the Gateway Partnership, which brings businesspeople and civic leaders together to review exactly how El Rancho San Benito and Hollister can complement each other, are the exact opposite of what other developers have done.
The housing in El Rancho San Benito should attract residents who, in turn, will attract economic development (i.e. employment) here, once the moratorium is lifted.
So, while I can't prove that El Rancho San Benito will be a good thing for San Benito County, I am confident that it will be a much better thing than the developments we allowed with little scrutiny in the past.
Elizabeth Gage Elizabeth Gage writes a weekly column every Thursday in the Hollister Free Lance
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