Veronica Meadows Approved
by Nick Welsh
For developer Mark Lee, visits to the City Council chambers have
been occasions for genuine dread. During his first visit,
councilmembers pointedly told Lee to drastically redesign his
controversial housing plans, proposed for the Las Positas Valley
alongside Arroyo Burro Creek. The second time, the same
councilmembers told Lee they liked his original plans for Veronica
Meadows better. But this Tuesday, they gave Lee the five-vote
supermajority he needed not only to annex his property into city
limits, but to build 25 new houses.
Lee’s victory came in the face of a last-minute blitz
orchestrated by environmentalists, who dismissed his creek
restoration plans as nothing more than “channel stabilization” and
predicted that the entrance bridge Lee has proposed building across
Arroyo Burro Creek will become a highway to hell for all the
critters and wildlife that rely on what everyone agrees is a
seriously degraded channel much in need of improvement. Lee also
weathered a firestorm of criticism from affordable housing
advocates, who questioned why City Hall was bending over backward
to accommodate a developer who proposed building what they
characterized as oversized homes for people with oversized
incomes.