Vacaville staff seek public input on East of Leisure Town specific plan

Vacaville city planners on the evening of the presentation described the draft East of Leisure Town Specific Plan, outlined the environmental review process and asked residents to weigh in at four workshop stations.

"We're gonna hold some workshops. We need to know what the public thinks about this," said Albert Enolt, a senior planner with Vacaville's Community and Economic Development Department, who led the presentation. He told attendees the specific plan aims in part to address "missing middle" housing and to analyze potential environmental impacts before entitlements proceed.

The project sits within Vacaville's East of Leisure Town growth area. Enolt said the larger growth area totals roughly 1,300 acres; about 508 acres are currently proposed to participate in the specific plan, and about 93 acres inside the growth area are not participating in the specific-plan process. He identified three property interests involved in the proposal: a Racens/Chen parcel in the north, the Donaldson Ramos property, and an AMP Children's investment site at Fry Road and Leisure Town Road.

City staff described the list of entitlements that would be required if the plan advances, including general plan amendments, pre-zoning, a development agreement, water supply assessments and annexation. Because of the scope of those changes, staff said an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is the disclosure document identified for the project; technical studies under way include traffic, water, sewer and stormwater analyses.

Enolt said the draft EIR will be circulated for public review with a standard comment period (described in the presentation as 45 days), and staff plan to respond to public comments before hearings. He outlined a tentative schedule: staff expect to have an environmental document ready for circulation by summer of this year and anticipate planning commission and city council hearings in winter or spring the following year; any council approval would then proceed to the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) for review.

Consultants assisting the city include Stantec, MAS Consulting and Daulin; developer representatives named in the presentation included Todd Chambers (representing the Donaldson Ramos property) and Greg Brown (AMP Children's investment). Enolt encouraged attendees to sign in, visit each of the four stations—land use, parks and open space, transportation and circulation, and environmental review—and to submit written comments via comment cards, post-it notes or email. He said contact information and the project webpage (presented during the meeting as cityofakville.gov/growthareasplanning) would be posted for follow-up.

The presentation concluded with staff dismissing attendees to the breakout workshops; the city is collecting workshop input to summarize for council as the plan and draft environmental documents are finalized.