AGENDA PREVIEW: Twentynine Palms Planning Commission, December 17, 2024
Three more derelict properties face demolition, a new recycling center on the horizon and Reset Hotel utilities undergrounding redux
The Planning Commission convenes on Tuesday, December 17, at 5 pm for their final meeting of 2024. With Christmas Eve just one week away, Planning will consider granting the gift of a nuisance declaration to neighbors of three derelict properties. Also on the agenda is an Administrative Use Permit for a recycling center and the second time around for a request by the Reset Hotel to defer undergrounding utilities. The full agenda is here.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
After Planning Commission announcements, you can comment on items not on the agenda. Public comments on agenda items will be requested when the item is discussed. Fill out a green comment sheet for public or agenda item comments and hand it to the staff, usually sitting at the desk at the front of the room on the right side. You have three minutes to make your comments.
You may also email comments to Planning Commission members and Keith Gardner, the Community Development Director, and request that comments be read at the meeting. However, the City has a new policy on written public comments, and they are not always read into the record at meetings. Residents who cannot attend may want to consider asking a friend to read their comments on their behalf.
CONSENT CALENDAR
The Consent Calendar consists of the approval of the minutes for two meetings: November 5 and November 19, 2024. Residents speaking at these meetings may want to review how their public comments are paraphrased. The public can request for an item to be pulled from the Consent Calendar for corrections if needed.
PUBLIC HEARINGS
2024 saw the City move on several properties that have long been derelict and/or dumping sites. So far this year clean-up and demolition has been ordered for properties located at Twentynine Palms Highway and Wilshire, 72383 Twentynine Palms Highway, 6531 Mission Avenue, and 56756 Homestead Road.
The public hearings on the agenda are for staff requests that three additional properties be declared “a public nuisance and dangerous building.” All are single-family residences in residential neighborhoods, and the staff recommendation in all cases is that the “Planning Commission adopt a resolution that both declares the property a public nuisance and orders the owner to either (1) demolishing the entire structures within fortyfive (45) days or (2) Obtain Permits to fully rehabilitate the structures within six (6) months and authorize staff to demolish and remove the structure if action is not taken.”
An additional public hearing is being held for a recycling center, which is covered below.
3- Declaring the property located at physical address of 6664 Sahara Avenue a Public Nuisance and Dangerous Building
Owner: Helen G.B. Leighton (deceased)
First noticed or cited: September 16, 2009, Additional notices: 10, Citations: 1 administrative
Additional information from the staff report: “The structure has significant damages that were caused by squatters and has significant deterioration, damages and is in serious state of disrepair.” Property has been boarded up and cleaned by the City twice.
4- Declaring the property located at physical address of 7535 Sherman Hoyt Avenue a Public Nuisance and Dangerous Building
Owner: Evan Kaplan
First noticed or cited: October 19, 2022, Additional citations: 3 and 3 administrative
Additional information from the staff report: “The property is full of trash and debris including a large number of tires stacked throughout the fence line. The property appears to be unsecured, has become an illegal dumping site.” The large amount of trash has caused a vermin issue at neighboring residences.
5- Declaring the property located at physical address of 72083 Sunnyslope Drive a Public Nuisance and Dangerous Building
Owners: Richard and Cheryl Peddicord
First noticed or cited: August 27, 2024, Additional citations: 1 and 1 administrative
Additional information from the staff report: “The property was involved in a fire in which the damages were significant to the point that the structure is unsalvageable.”
6- AUP24-000003 Recycling Buyback Center/Small Collection Facility
Staff is recommending an approval of an Administrative Use Permit (AUP) for a “recycling buyback center/small collection facility,” located at 71747 Twentynine Palms Hwy in the Stater Brother’s shopping center (the former home of Wing n It). Per the staff report this is landing at the Planning Commission because the application was submitted for an AUP, when a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) would normally be needed for a recycling center to be the primary use at this location.
Residents may recall the rePlanet recycling center located in the Stater Brothers parking lot, which closed in August 2019, when the company went out of business. The closure was featured in an August 23, 2019, Los Angeles Times editorial, California’s bottle deposit system is broken — and poor people are the ones losing the most. The closing of the recycling centers was also covered in the Hi-Desert Star.
Pros Recycling on Bullion Avenue in Twentynine Palms opened in 2022, helping to fill the gap in local access caused by the failure of rePlanet.
DISCUSSION AND POTENTIAL ACTION ITEMS
7- Reset Hotel Deferral of Utility Undergrounding
City code requires that new developments place utility lines underground. However, the City sometimes grants deferments when the cost of undergrounding is excessive relative to the cost of the overall project. The developers of the Reset Hotel, also known as the “Container Hotel,” located at 7000 Split Rock Avenue near the Palms n Paws Animal Shelter, are requesting a deferment of the approximately $300,000 cost. This request is despite already agreeing to underground utilities as a part of the Conditional Use Permit for the project approved by the City in November 2021, "Utility lines shall be placed underground in accordance with the requirements of the City.”
This item was originally considered at the November 19, 2024, meeting and was previewed in-depth in our agenda report for that meeting. However, representatives of the Reset Hotel were MIA on the 19th, so when questions were raised by Planning Commissioners, no one was present to answer them. Per reporter Natalie Zuk:
Commissioners, leery of the developer’s request and with the smaller Oasis Car Wash development in mind, wanted more answers before proceeding further and agreed to “kick the can” (per Krushat) down the road to a later meeting.
As we reported back in 2023, the Oasis Car Wash was quoted $260,000 for undergrounding by Southern California Edison (SCE)—this for a project that is a fraction of the scale and, presumably, budget of the Reset Hotel.
The staff report includes a summary of the Commissioner’s questions as well as extensive responses from the applicant received after the November 19 meeting. Staff didn’t attach a name to the response but the deferral request was originally made by Adam Wininger. New Twentynine Palms Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID) Board member Benjamin Uyeda is also a principal on the project. One of the responses refers to a “3-4 person ownership team.”
The Commissioner’s questions were summarized by staff as follows:
1. At what point was the cost of the undergrounding made clear? Also—these conditions have been in place for several years—was this cost not anticipated?
2. The request was to defer the undergrounding of utilities until Phase 2; but during the request for the street vacation on February 6 of this year, Vickie from NV5 stated that Phase 2 is no longer planned to occur. Does this mean you’re asking for a complete forgiveness of this requirement?
3. How does the cost of the undergrounding compare to the total cost of the project? How is the cost of the undergrounding unreasonable?
In their response “the applicant” claims that undergrounding costs were given to them on November 5, 2024, by SCE and that they didn’t anticipate the size of the expense nor did they budget for it — their anticipated occupancy date is February 20251. They add that they do intend to complete Phase 2, which is an addition of 30 rooms to the initial 65 rooms:
Vickie Bridenstine from NV5 most likely meant that we are not committing our team's resources to phase II planning right now and NV5 is not currently contracted to work on design for phase II—however a phase II is still fully in our plans and we will hopefully begin planning phase in mid to late 2025.
The responder demurs from revealing the project’s costs, which are necessary for determining whether the undergrounding is excessive relative to the project budget. Instead, they discuss SCE being the only power option making competitive bidding impossible, also underestimating City fees, which drained their construction contingency budget, and not being able to get additional funds from lenders. However, they also state that the estimated $300,000 undergrounding cost is “approximately equal to our GC's [general contractor’s] entire project contingency.” Contractors’ contingencies are generally 5 to 10% of a project budget.
It should also be noted that the Wander Hotel (now the Reset) is listed as the owner of the 158 acres that sit between the development and the Joshua Tree National Park boundary. This is an area where undergrounding utilities has a potentially significant environmental impact as it protects young endangered desert tortoises from being targeted by ravens roosting on power poles.2
It remains to be seen if there will be more empathy for the request should the developers make their case in person.
The next Planning Commission meeting is Tuesday, January 7, 2025.
Also note that there is a City meeting double-header on Wednesday, December 18, with the TBID meeting at 2 pm and the Public Art Advisory Committee meeting at 5 pm.
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Correction of typo, the article originally stated a February 2024 date.
Timothy Branning, For Young Threatened Desert Tortoises, These Technologies Have Arrived to Help, Smithsonian Magazine, April 14, 2023
”…raven predation diminishes the number of juvenile tortoises by approximately 42 percent each year if any part of their core use area is within roughly 1,600 feet of an active raven nest and the local raven population consists of about six birds per square mile, a density that is frequently observed in the western Mojave. That bird count is vastly higher than the number of ravens the land could normally support. The animals are bolstered by human food and water supplies, and nesting in such structures as electrical utility towers and billboards.”
Regarding the Reset Hotel development:
The developers knew what they were getting into. They were aware of the codes. They are scheduled to open in February 2025. The cry-baby act to get around local codes requiring underground electrical infrastructure ought not to work -- neither with the planning commission nor the city council. The area 'was' an unobstructed beautiful and panoramic view of the Little San Bernardino Mountains and the Northern landscape of JTNP.
It is now littered with fugly shipping containers. The shipping containers have one window and a door -- builders call it "Reset Hotel". A shipping container is not a hotel, but it may lure prospective short-term visitors into thinking they are getting some sort of exotic lodging cuddled up to JTNP.
The pristine view of JTNP is weakened by these shipping container and above ground electrical infrastructure. Above ground electrical poles & hardware will only exacerbate blight upon the land -- and impede the day and night sky views of JTNP.
Is it prudent to be optimistic that the Twentynine Council and Planning Commission will not cave in to developers and their cry-baby lobbying efforts?
BTW Reset Hotel (Contaner Town) is adjacent to Palms N Paws Animal Shelter and Foothill Drive. It's a great place to walk your dog. Or volunteer at the animal shelter to be a dog walker. Those wonderful sentient beings need fresh air, wonderful desert scents and exercise.
[Palms N Paws (and their volunteers) are doing an outstanding job to that end.