Facing vastly different growth options, Riverbank considers its destiny

City leaders Tuesday will consider long-term growth scenarios ranging from modest to what some might call obscene.

Questions include:

▪ Should Riverbank be content to absorb the 380-acre Crossroads West area, at least some of which could become an extension of a successful shopping center across the road? Called Option A, this would add 14 percent to the city’s current size.

▪ Or should the City of Action go for maximum traction by ballooning 125 percent, challenging Modesto on the west and south, and Oakdale to the northeast? Option F would make Riverbank’s sphere of influence, or eventual growth area, larger than Ceres.

In-between options for Riverbank, now 2,663 acres:

▪ Pushing east, past the Riverbank Industrial Complex, or former munitions plant, to Eleanor Avenue, in what is known as Option B. That land could be attractive to more industry, especially if the future North County Corridor expressway brings thousands of vehicles past each day. Riverbank officials are worried, however, about access being limited to an interchange at Claus and Claribel roads, which they think is too far away.

▪ Adding Crossroads West on the west as well as future industrial land to the east, for a net gain of 25 percent. This is known as Option C.

▪ Taking that last option and adding land northeast of the current city limit to the point where Highway 108 meets Snedigar Road. This is called Option D and would mean growing 33 percent.

▪ Option E: Pushing past Eleanor on the east part way to Langworth Road and running all the way north to Highway 108, plus Crossroads West. That represents 48 percent growth.

At the center of this discussion is Riverbank’s sphere of influence, or the area where the city expects to grow in the next couple of decades. It’s an invisible line beyond the city limit, but it holds important meaning to leaders with visions big or small because sphere changes lead to annexations.

A sphere of influence “acts as a tool to identify the selected areas for consideration of future city services based on realistic growth projections,” a staff report reads.

Riverbank’s sphere of influence now includes 708 acres outside the city’s 2,663 acres, for a total of 3,371. The sphere has not been updated in 18 years; City Council members aim to change that, and today’s discussion could influence how much the sphere changes.

“It’s more of a conceptual discussion,” City Manager Jill Anderson said. “It’s way early in the process.”

For the record, Ceres – Stanislaus County’s third-largest city, behind Modesto and Turlock – has 5,989 acres; the sphere of influence for Riverbank, the county’s sixth-largest city, would swell to 6,010 acres under Option F as envisioned by council members in 2009.

Once the council decides what the sphere should be, City Hall would update environmental studies to satisfy state law and prepare a plan to address farmland that would be lost with development, to satisfy a requirement of the Stanislaus Local Agency Formation Commission. That panel weighs cities’ requests for boundary changes, including spheres of influence as well as annexations, and its largely untested farmland preservation policy has been controversial in recent times.

Tuesday’s City Council meeting starts at 6 p.m. in the chamber at 6707 Third St., Riverbank. For more information, go to tinyurl.com/RivAgenda.

This story was originally published August 10, 2015 at 5:17 PM with the headline "Facing vastly different growth options, Riverbank considers its destiny."