A Low-Key Scoping Meeting for
Saranap Village EIR

APRIL 7—Today’s scoping meeting on the environmental impact report on Hall Equities Group’s (HEG) proposed Saranap Village development was sparsely attended and over quickly.

Scoping meetings provide information about a project to government agencies that will or may be involved in an EIR. They’re also an opportunity for the public to comment on topics relating to possible environmental impacts of a project.

The only audience member to speak at today's meeting was SCA President and Application Review Committee Chair David Dacus, who attended with fellow board and committee member Charles Huddleston. Dacus summarized the 10 written responses the SCA has received so far to an invitation to communicate concerns about environmental aspects of the project.

“The comments arranged themselves neatly into some of the categories that were already to be studied in the draft EIR process,” Dacus said. These included concerns about neighborhood security, noise, pool hours, drainage, aesthetics, diversion of traffic onto residential streets as a result of changes to Boulevard Way, and traffic and safety issues associated with the bar or nightclub. (Mark Hall, HEG’s president and CEO, told SCA board members at a project update April 3 that the bar or nightclub is no longer part of the Saranap Village plan.)

There were nine people in the audience today, including Dacus and Huddleston, Michael Smith, HEG’s vice president and director of development and forward planning, and a representative of the City of Lafayette, who explained later that the city’s circulation committee would be meeting tonight to consider any impact the project might have on Lafayette.

The meeting took place at the county Department of Conservation and Development in Martinez. It was chaired by Zoning Administrator Aruna Bhat. Also there from the county were Will Nelson, one of two planners assigned to the project, and planner Daniel Barrios.

The meeting was over in five minutes.

The county will accept written comments about environmental impacts of the Saranap Village development through April 18. (See our original article on the meeting for information.) Alternatively, you can communicate concerns you may have to the SCA’s Application Review Committee by using the form at the end of that article, and we’ll relay them to the county prior to the deadline.