Redding council to discuss proposed Quartz Hill subdivision map after community opposition

The Redding City Council plans to discuss the fate of a proposed new Quartz Hill subdivision, slated to be located in a portion of the Carr Fire burn scar, at a special meeting this Thursday. The subdivision map was approved by the Redding Planning Commission in October, but a dozen community members are appealing that decision.

The Peaks is a proposed residential development that would site 120 new single-family lots on a 114-acre city-owned parcel off Quartz Hill Road. If the map for the proposed subdivision is approved by the council this week, the city will begin infrastructure improvements to the land over the next several years.

The city hopes to use $22 million in Carr Fire disaster relief money to fund infrastructure improvements at the site, which would include streets, sidewalks, stormwater drainage and electrical connections, as well as trails. The construction would be initiated beginning in 2026 and is estimated to take around 18 months to complete. Once the subdivision infrastructure is completed by the city, lots would become available for sale and then development. The project is intended to help increase available housing in Redding.

The site proposed for the subdivision is defined by the state as a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. To address this, the project plan includes special features in the subdivision’s structures that would reduce the risk of damage from wildfire. That hasn’t assuaged the concerns of some community members in the Quartz Hill area who carry the memories of evacuating their neighborhood during the 2018 Carr Fire. 

Several current and former Quartz Hill residents spoke at October’s planning commission meeting, recalling the chaos of evacuating during the fire due to limited escape routes, especially during unusual fire conditions referred to as a fire tornado. Community residents used their voices at that meeting to advocate against building more homes in the area, with some saying it took them over an hour to evacuate during the last major fire and expressing their fears that adding residents to the Quartz Hill area would increase escape times should another fire occur. 

This week, planning officials with the city are recommending that the council deny the appeals from local community members and uphold the subdivision plan approved by the planning commission — if that happens, the project will move forward. However, Redding Development Services Director Jeremy Pagan said there’s also an additional window of time after the council’s approval where opponents could sue the city to challenge its CEQA process, something that could further delay, or halt, the project.

The council could also side with the residents who are appealing the process, which would reverse the planning commission’s approval and send the planning process back to the drawing board.  

‘You’re setting us up for disaster’: Community members appeal new subdivision plan

After October’s planning commission meeting, a dozen individuals sent appeals to the city of Redding, advocating against the building of The Peaks Subdivision. 

The appeals largely took issue with the potential for traffic congestion and the likelihood of unsafe conditions during an evacuation, as well as concerns about failures to meet regulatory codes. Several pushed for another road to be added to the neighborhood, especially if The Peaks Subdivision is built, to provide an alternative escape route. 

One community member who filed an appeal, Theresa Elford, said when she was evacuating the Carr Fire, it took over 30 minutes for her to get down Quartz Hill Road because of the traffic jam. 

“If something like that happens again, with all these extra homes, some of us will not get out,” she wrote in her appeal. “You’re setting us up for disaster. We don’t need any more homes in the area until you build more escape routes.” 

Another, Mary Suzanne Hayes, said escaping the fire through Quartz Hill Road was “the most terrifying experience” of her life because of the traffic congestion, which already exists under high pressure conditions. She said she wants the city to look elsewhere to build a new subdivision. 

“It will be on the heads of all of you if you put us in the situation that Paradise was in with people dying because they had only one road to escape,” Hayes wrote, referencing the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people in in Butte County. 

Multiple residents brought up the need for the city to revisit the idea of a bridge linking the north and south sides of Buenaventura Boulevard over the Sacramento River to provide an alternative escape route in case of a fire, something which has been a topic of conversation for decades. One of those residents took issue with how the city was spending the $22 million in grant funds going toward the subdivision, explaining that the grant was obtained as a result of the significant damage caused by the fire, “yet it proposed to use none of those funds to mitigate against traffic impacts in the event of another.” 

Several of the appeals also claim that both CalFire reports and California’s regulatory code conclude that the project doesn’t have a required secondary access point, something the city addressed in a response to the appeals.

How did the city respond? 

In a staff report for Thursday’s meeting, the residents’ concerns were countered by Development Services Director Pagan, who is recommending that the council deny the appeals and uphold the planning commission’s approval of the map application.

In the section where Pagan addresses the residents’ concerns about fire safety and evacuating the neighborhood in case of an emergency, he explained that an evacuation study was conducted to evaluate how much longer it would take people to leave the area if another fire happened. The study, according to Pagan, found that adding an additional 120 residences would only add about seven minutes to the final vehicle exiting Quartz Hill Road. When this finding was presented during October’s planning commission meeting, it was met by laughs and exasperated sighs of disbelief by audience members. 

Pagan also responded to claims that the subdivision isn’t up to regulatory code when it comes to a secondary access point, stating that the project already meets state and local requirements for secondary access and explaining how the codes apply to the subdivision. He brought up the demands for a Buenaventura bridge, saying that while the bridge would be a benefit and improve circulation, “no additional infrastructure is required to deal with fire evacuation traffic nor is a new route triggered by the vehicle trips generated by the project.” 

The residents’ general traffic concerns are also countered in Pagan’s response, where he explains that a traffic study conducted for the project showed the subdivision can handle the increase in traffic without overloading capacity on Quartz Hill Road. 

The staff report also includes general information about the subdivision, including the fact that the project is funded by federal Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery infrastructure money, which requires at least 51% of the units built to be sold to income-qualified homebuyers. 

The special meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 4 in the Redding City Council Chambers at 777 Cypress Ave. Learn more about the project from the city’s perspective here.

Annelise Pierce contributed reporting for this story.

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