Baldwin Park : Sierra Vista Project

The City Council, sitting as the Community Redevelopment Agency, today will consider a recommendation from the planning staff to remove all single-family homes from the proposed Sierra Vista Redevelopment Project in Baldwin Park. The agency delayed making a decision at its meeting last week after more than 400 homeowners expressed opposition to the project. Today’s meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at the Sierra Vista High School gymnasium.

If the agency accepts the staff recommendation, about 1,500 homes will be deleted from the project area, which encompasses 830 acres along the San Bernardino Freeway, city planner Art Rengel said. Many homeowners had asked the agency to remove their neighborhoods from the project area because they feared that their property would be taken by eminent domain.

Rengel said the planning staff originally included the residential neighborhoods in the redevelopment area to make homeowners eligible for low-interest home improvement loans, not to clear the way for eminent-domain property seizures.

Under the staff recommendation, all property zoned for single-family homes would be exempt from the redevelopment plan, leaving only commercial, industrial and high-density residential property in the project area, Rengel said.