While on the surface it may appear as if a major housing development has been blocked, according to land-use experts, a judge’s ruling this month will only slow an inevitable delivery of nearly 20,000 dwellings now in the pipeline near Gorman.Earlier this month, a judge ruled on the progress of the master planned mixed-use residential community Centennial at Tejon Ranch with both its developer, Tejon Ranch Co., and opposing environmental groups declaring the verdict a victory.L.A. Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff ruled earlier this month that the development’s environmental impact report did not adequately address the increased wildfire risk that the 12,000-acre development – which would include 19,300 homes and more than 10.1 million square feet of commercial space – could pose to the surrounding areas. The project was approved in April 2019 by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.Centennial at Tejon Ranch, a long-in-the-works development which intends to house some 57,000 residents, would be located along the border of Los Angeles and Kern counties in the Western Economic Opportunity Zone that has been designated in the Antelope Valley Area Plan and the L.A. County General Plan.“The court finds the county failed to proceed as required by law when it did not analyze wildfire impacts beyond the project site,” Beckloff wrote in the 62-page decision.Gregory Bielli, chief executive of Tejon Ranch Co., responded diplomatically to news of the ruling on the project, which has been in development since 2002.“We want to thank the judge for his careful attention to this case’s numerous issues, especially his affirmation that Centennial is a fire-resilient community,” Bielli said in a statement. “Environmental impact reports are extremely lengthy, complex documents, and it’s difficult to get everything perfect the first time out. With the judge’s direction, we will work with L.A. County to address the few remaining issues, just as we did in Kern County when a court ruled the EIR for our Grapevine community needed additional analysis. The analysis was completed, Grapevine was reapproved and the court affirmed the additional analysis was correct. We expect the same will be true for Centennial.”Wildfire issueTejon Ranch Co. sees the ruling as par for the course in its quest to develop the land and create its latest mixed-use development. The company has spent about $8 million on litigation defense of the project since 2019, according to its latest annual report.“The three issues that remain (greenhouse gas mitigation without the benefit of Cap and Trade, and further explanation/analysis of off-site wildfire mitigation) will require some additional work and analysis by Tejon Ranch and L.A. County,” Tejon Ranch Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications Barry Zoeller told the Business Journal.
“It’s a common occurrence in California, given the complexity of the California Environmental Quality Act.”But according to the Center for Biological Diversity, 31 wildfires larger than 100 acres have occurred within 5 miles of the proposed development, including four within the project’s boundaries, between the years 1964 to 2015. “The court’s rejection of the Tejon development highlights the danger of building in high fire-risk areas,” said the center’s Staff Attorney J.P. Rose in a statement. “The science is clear that developments like Centennial will literally be built to burn and our elected officials can’t continue to downplay these risks through inaccurate environmental reviews. This is a wakeup call for policymakers across California.”Rose later told the Business Journal that “Centennial is the wrong vision for L.A. County because it would exacerbate wildfire risk, disproportionately increase air pollution, traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, and destroy thousands of acres of irreplaceable wildflower fields and wildlife habitat.”Tejon Ranch’s Zoeller noted that, with Beckloff’s verdict, “the judge denied 20 of the 23 claims made in the lawsuits – including all those made by the Center for Biological Diversity and California Native Plant Society.”But Rose said the ruling could either delay or potentially end the project.
“Because the court’s ruling is clear that the development’s approvals must be set aside, Tejon would need to go back to the county and undergo a new environmental review if they wish to proceed with some version of the project,” Rose said. “Tejon must convince the supervisors that building a new sprawling city on fire-prone wildlands is in the best interest of the public. They will have an uphill battle.”Centennial’s fateOutsiders familiar with the legal rituals of massive undertakings such as Centennial appear unphased by Beckloff’s ruling. Fred Gaines, managing partner of Encino-based law firm Gaines & Stacey LLP, which specializes in land use and environmental law-related litigation, is not involved in the Tejon Ranch project, but he has seen other big development cases play out in his practice.“You go 21-2, and you lose,” Gaines told the Business Journal. “That’s the problem with CEQA.
The law requires a 10,000-plus page Environmental Impact Report, attorneys looking for a payday raise 23 challenges, they lose 21 of the 23, but the project is stopped while they go back and revise the EIR on the other two issues.
The millions of dollars this all costs get divided up and added to the cost of every housing unit built.”Brad Rosenheim, of Woodland Hills-based Rosenheim and Associates, a consulting firm on land-use entitlements and planning, arrived at a similar conclusion.“For a project the scale of Centennial at Tejon Ranch, it is not uncommon for CEQA challenges to have some degree of success,” Rosenheim said. “While anything is possible, the most likely consequence of the CEQA challenge will not be the owners walking away from the project but going through the process to address the deficiencies in the environmental document and perfecting that document based on the legal roadmap provided by the court.
The ultimate consequence will likely be desperately needed homes being delivered in a less timely manner and at higher prices to the future residents.”Likewise, Gaines noted a kind of futility in gumming up the works for the developer and slowing the delivery of much-needed housing.“Unfortunately, this kind of outcome is not uncommon for large developments in California,” Gaines said. “The developer and the county will now have to revise two sections of the EIR and reapprove them.
This will delay the project and add to the costs but is unlikely to result in any physical change to the project.”California Environmental Quality Act battles for large-scale communities are not uncommon and Tejon Ranch’s latest tangle with CEQA arrives in a month when another vast project, FivePoint Valencia (formerly known as Newhall Ranch), a 21,500-home endeavor in Santa Clarita Valley, comes online by the end of this month.Tejon Ranch’s Zoeller said that a timeline for completing Centennial is unclear; it took a year for a supplemental EIR for the company’s Grapvine project.
A Legal Delay For Centennial
