by Mark Anderson Staff Writer (bizjournals.com)
The United Auburn Indian Community has resumed negotiations to buy and
conserve at least part of Clover Valley, a rural Rocklin property
strewn with Indian artifacts up to 7,000 years old.
The tribe -- which owns the popular Thunder Valley Casino -- and the
developer-owner of the 622 acres are talking about preserving the areas
most sacred to the Native Americans.
The discussions come as the city starts to prepare a new environmental
document that still allows a custom-home development in the valley, but
with about 20 percent fewer houses than was proposed last year.
The tribe has talked about buying the land before, but the discussions
were informal and combative. Sources said the price had gone up every
time the tribe inquired, to $90 million as of last fall. Talks broke
down until this summer, and seem more serious now.
Owner Clover Valley Partners wants to build homes on the property, a
trophy location including two ridges and a creek in the Sierra
foothills. The developers plan to build luxury homes in the ravine,
which is studded with mature oaks and other trees.
The partnership has been working for two decades to get the land to the
point of development, and has signed up hundreds of potential
homebuyers interested in buying lots.
Reasons to settle
"There are discussions -- some are productive -- toward protecting a
significant portion of the ranch, including the majority of the
important sacred sites," said Howard Dickstein, attorney for the
tribe.
If the discussions succeed, the tribe would buy some of the land for
ceremonial, cultural and housing uses, and to preserve the sites.
Neither the tribe nor Clover Valley Partners would discuss their
negotiations, except to confirm they're talking. The new subdivision
plans shown in this week's notice of preparation of a new EIR do not
reflect any discussions with the tribe.
With 2-year-old Thunder Valley paying out around $200 million to the
tribe annually, the United Auburn Community can seriously negotiate
terms.
This week the city said it's preparing a new environmental report for
the project. The official notice signals all agencies and interested
parties to suggest what the report should study. A draft environmental
report prepared in 2002 was never completed.
Clover Valley Partners is still pursuing the development through city
planning, but has scaled back from 689 custom homes proposed last year
to 558 today. The total was nearly 1,000 in 2001.
Some 366 acres would be left as open space and another 5 acres would
become a neighborhood park.
The developers may have good reason to negotiate with the tribe. The
Sierra Club and a determined group of people organized as Save Clover
Valley oppose them.
Either group could stall development for years with lawsuits, and their
strongest legal point is probably the preservation of 33 recorded
Native American sites in the valley. Settling artifact and ceremonial
issues would remove that argument.
Some hills would flatten out
The valley is the last and largest undeveloped section of the former
Whitney Ranch, which stretched from Rocklin to Lincoln. It is also the
last and largest undeveloped site of ancient Maidu and Miwok Indian
habitation, likely ancestors of the United Auburn tribe.
The succession of villages on the site span several native cultures,
and the site was used as a regional trading center for hundreds of
years, according to archaeological findings at the site. Artifacts,
arrowheads and bones turn up on the surface from natural erosion, and a
three-foot-deep dig showed habitation at all levels.
The site has numerous native grinding stones bored into granite, where
people prepared acorns for food. There are beaver dams, dense oak
stands and some wetlands.
The site has more than 28,200 trees. Development would take out 7,422,
of which 1,632 would be removed for major road construction.
The latest estimate is that the construction would require moving 1.6
million cubic yards of dirt. The developers expect that most of it
would remain on the site, with cut-and-fill techniques creating flat
land out of hillsides.
The construction of Valley View Parkway -- a major connector road on
the northwest side of Rocklin between Park Drive and Sierra College
Boulevard -- would require cuts of 60 feet into steep slopes, and fills
of 60 feet into the valley floor.
