There is a movement to turn Fresno into a Central Valley version of Manhattan. Slums, crimes, shoulder to shoulder dense housing populations.
“The controversial 45,000 home proposed mega-development in southeast Fresno is now on its second round of environmental review. Environmental and labor critics are lining up to stop the project, which they say will exacerbate urban sprawl and drain public resources from older neighborhoods, but public officials are determined to stay competitive with Clovis and Madera County in the race for new suburbs.
Start over. That’s the message from City Hall to scores of residents and legal experts who spent a summer crafting comments for Fresno’s controversial 45,000-home mega-development on the outskirts of southeast Fresno, known as SEDA.
Nearly 400 pages of public feedback from 2023 are being tossed by city officials after a court ruled the city’s environmental review process for air pollution violated state law. Now, the city “will only” consider new comments on the recycled plan, according to the environmental review, effectively erasing months of public input.
You read that right—they are NOT ALLOWING the public to be heard on this project. I will not use fancy words—THIS IS WHAT CORRUPTION LOOKS LIKE. I would hope that the public Recall any member of the city council or Mayor that approves a massive project and not allow the public to be heard. That is how they operate in totalitarian nations, not Fresno.
Will southeast Fresno’s proposed mega-development be denser than New York City?
“Clearly the 80% [reduction in vehicle miles] seems ridiculous under any circumstances,” one of California’s preeminent environmental attorneys told Fresnoland.
by Gregory Weaver, Fresnoland, 3/3/25 https://fresnoland.org/2025/03/03/will-southeast-fresnos-proposed-mega-development-be-denser-than-new-york-city/?utm_medium=email
What’s at stake?
The controversial 45,000 home proposed mega-development in southeast Fresno is now on its second round of environmental review. Environmental and labor critics are lining up to stop the project, which they say will exacerbate urban sprawl and drain public resources from older neighborhoods, but public officials are determined to stay competitive with Clovis and Madera County in the race for new suburbs.
Start over. That’s the message from City Hall to scores of residents and legal experts who spent a summer crafting comments for Fresno’s controversial 45,000-home mega-development on the outskirts of southeast Fresno, known as SEDA.
Nearly 400 pages of public feedback from 2023 are being tossed by city officials after a court ruled the city’s environmental review process for air pollution violated state law. Now, the city “will only” consider new comments on the recycled plan, according to the environmental review, effectively erasing months of public input.
Critics are calling the city’s new plan a carbon-copy of the failed version – same numbers, same conclusions, just new paperwork.
“…[T]hey must submit new comments on this Recirculated Draft,” said Fresno planning director Jennifer Clark in an email to Fresnoland.
The city’s new environmental review admits the project would “increase the frequency or severity of existing air quality violations; cause or contribute to new violations; or delay timely attainment” of air quality standards in one of America’s most polluted cities.
And yet, like the old version, officials are still punting the problem of even more pollution downstream to developers.
“It’s a troubling approach,” said John Buse, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity and one of California’s most prominent environmental attorneys. Buse’s precedent-setting Newhall Ranch case is why the city’s environmental review got overturned by courts last summer.
“What they need to do at this stage is a framework mitigation for the whole thing. They can look at a specific project later, when they know the specific volume and mass of the emissions. But shouldn’t they have a framework in place now that doesn’t allow them to evade the cumulative analysis and mitigation?”
At the heart of the controversy is Fresno’s attempt to avoid costly mitigation for the massive development’s environmental impacts, particularly regarding greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
According to city documents, SEDA would increase Fresno’s annual carbon emissions by approximately 500,000 tons – effectively wiping out the city’s progress on climate goals for the next two decades. The project’s estimated emissions could carry a hefty $25.5 million annual price tag to clean up emissions, according to standard federal accounting measures.
To avoid these and other mitigation costs, Fresno officials are making an extraordinary claim: due to the area’s planned 1-to-1 jobs-to-housing ratio, residents in this car-dependent suburban development will drive over 80% less than standard planning models predict — somehow making them even less car-dependent than downtown San Franciscans, according to official data from the state’s air resources board, and even New Yorkers.
Buse was skeptical that city officials will be able to turn a suburban Fresno neighborhood into a place twice as car-free as Manhattan.
“Clearly the 80% [reduction] seems ridiculous under any circumstances,” said Buse. “They don’t justify how they’re getting to 80% by showing their work, maybe because they can’t.”
Under state law, key claims such as an 80% reduction in car driving must be backed by “substantial evidence”. Studies on “smart development” typically show much more modest driving reductions of about 20%. In northeast Fresno, where Riverpark and other job centers have improved walkability, reductions haven’t approached what officials claim SEDA will achieve and are close to 15-20%.
“As with all projects, the City endeavors to ensure all environmental analysis is compliant with State Law,” Clark, the city’s planning director, wrote about the environmental review.
City officials hoped that the 9,000-acre development would be shovel-ready by the end of 2023. Instead, the mega-project is mired in legal challenges and haunted by potential multi-billion-dollar infrastructure costs that could make or break the project and the city’s coffers. Officials have yet to publicly disclose a cost estimate, despite consultants delivering one to city manager Georgeanne White last December.
Last summer, the Fifth District Court of Appeal hammered Fresno for its environmental sleight-of-hand. Rather than analyzing the general plan’s actual climate impacts, the city simply declared that if California met its climate goals, Fresno would automatically be compliant too.
The claim about reduced driving defies data from the Fresno Council of Governments showing the land eyed by the city for SEDA – with the region’s existing transit infrastructure and jobs geography – is in the worst location for vehicle miles in the entire city. According to COG models, residents there drive over 30 miles daily — four times more than those near transit corridors near Shaw Avenue.
In a now-discarded comment letter, Caltrans noted SEDA would increase vehicle miles traveled in the area by 162% and asked the city to fund public transit elsewhere as mitigation.
The SEDA environmental review is available for public comment through March 24, 2025 at 5 PM. Comments can be emailed to [email protected].
So far, only 12 pages of public comment have been submitted.
