Add The California Post on Google California’s beleaguered, over-budget high-speed rail line now has one more thing to worry about: a city and housing developer wants to build homes right in the train’s projected path.
Shafter, a city near Bakersfield, and developer Lennar Homes are plowing ahead with 1,200 homes in the same area off Highway 99 where the state’s rail authority plans to build tracks.
The development, called Gossamer Grove, is a “master-planned community” that will be equipped with a picnic area, playground and dog-walking trails, according to Lennar’s website.
The homes planned by Lennar, one of the largest builders in the Central Valley, will have three to four bedrooms, with prices in the high $300,000s.
“It’s raw land, we own it, we plan to develop it,” Walter Diamond, Lennar’s director of entitlement, said at an April city planning meeting.
Shafter officials have a history of opposing the high-speed rail project, calling for the tracks to be built outside its boundaries.
Mayor Chad Givens said the housing project may force the high-speed rail authority to moves its trains, telling The Fresno Bee the city would go to court to defend the planned property development.
“You’ve got a city and a pretty high-volume developer willing to fight against high-speed rail,” Givens said.
The rail authority opposes Lennar’s map of the development. It told the Bee that the rail’s plans to run through Shafter were decided after a 2018 environmental lawsuit from the city was settled. The authority could sue over the development, but the agency told the Bee it would be open to negotiations.
Lennar said at the April meeting that it was done trying to negotiate.
“We made the attempts,” Diamond said. “We’re looking forward to moving forward.”
City officials said they’re legally obligated to approve the project, pointing to housing laws and the fact the rail authority has yet to buy land in the area.
Any actual construction of the rail in Shafter is likely a long ways off.
A risk analysis of the rail project projects completion of the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment in September 2034. But officials warned that even that deadline may not provide enough breathing room because the authority is relying on “overly optimistic assumptions.”
The project is far from complete since workers broke ground in 2015. Only this year did the ill-fated project enter what officials called the “track-laying phase.”
Republicans have criticized the rail line as a fantasy project that’s wasting taxpayer money. Costs for the original plan have ballooned past $200 billion, though the rail authority insists the reassessed project cost is $126.3 billion.
“I’ve been saying this for years now, but this is the most wasteful government project in probably world history,” state Sen. Tony Strickland (R) told The Post.
