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Thursday, Jan. 24, 2008

Residents, leaders caught in fiery, and often strange, battle over air facility plan

West Side WAR: Analysis

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A full-scale political war is raging on the West Side of Stanislaus County, complete with organized citizens' groups, stealth propaganda campaigns, video hit pieces and heated rhetoric from elected officials.

Ground zero in the battle is 7½ square miles of some of the best farmland in the country surrounding an abandoned naval air station near the town of Crows Landing.

At stake is hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions -- and competing visions of what the county's West Side should become.

Located 17 miles southwest of Modesto and nestled at the foot of the Diablo mountain range, the old air base doesn't look like much now -- two large concrete runways, an abandoned air traffic tower, some Quonset huts, all amid thousands of acres of farmland.

To the northwest is Patterson, once a sleepy farm town known primarily for its Apricot Fiesta and the line of stately palm trees welcoming visitors from the east along Las Palmas Avenue.

Today, Patterson is Stanislaus County's fastest-growing city. It's a commuter bedroom community of about 21,000 residents, with subdivisions and commercial businesses sprouting up along Interstate 5. A new industrial park sports two major distribution centers, and city officials openly discuss the prospect of 100,000 residents in the next 40 years.

About 4½ miles southeast of the city is the old air base, now called the Crows Landing Air Facility. It was used to train Navy pilots during World War II and after, and was used by NASA in later years. The county acquired the deed to the base from the federal government in 2004.

If county officials and Sacramento developer Gerry Kamilos have their way, the air facility and 4,800 acres around it would become a sprawling business and industrial park. As many as 12 trains a day would run between the park and the Port of Oakland within 30 years. An estimated 37,000 jobs would be created in that time.

The formal name for that plan is PCCP West Park LLC.

It was the size and scope of Kamilos' vision that ignited the firestorm on the West Side.

The county had asked for proposals to develop the 1,527-acre air facility. Instead, the soft- spoken Kamilos, a former petroleum engineer, saw an opportunity to link the air facility with the Port of Oakland, potentially solving a number of freight-transportation and air-quality problems for Northern California as well as bringing jobs to Stanislaus County.

But to pay for the rail improvements, expanded roads, sewer and water service needed, Kamilos said the business park had to be three times bigger than the air facility.

Many residents of the West Side, farmers in particular, weren't sure they wanted the original 1,527 acres developed. The West Park proposal was out of the question, and the battle was on.

Many voices in the fray

Sorting out the combatants is a daunting task -- concerned residents, paid community activists, farmers who are threatened or stand to make money selling their land, county politicians, developers who don't want the competition or may want to step in and pick up the pieces should West Park fail, economic development gurus, and regional transportation and air quality officials.

The war of words is intense.

West Park frequently mails out expensive, glossy brochures to residents throughout Stanislaus County, extolling the benefits of the development, then follows up with telephone calls.

WS-PACE, a citizens' group formed to oppose the development, has filed complaints with the Fair Political Practices Commission and the State Bar Association alleging conflicts of interest against a law firm and a transportation consultant for representing Kamilos projects while working for public agencies considering West Park.