Canyon Ranch

An example of pressure for excessive development in Butte County was the 1987 Canyon Ranch project. The project site is located southeast of Chico, east of Highway 99, between Skyway and Neal Road in Nance Canyon. Blakeley-Swartz, a Los Angeles-based development company operated by partners Gerald W. Blakeley and Don Swartz, proposed to build a university research park of computer, biomedical and other high-technology industries that would provide as many as 10,000 jobs on 6,392-acres of Nance Canyon. Adjacent land to the research park would have been zoned residential for 4,200 homes. These homes would have been built over a 20 year period and would eventually have housed some 15,000 residents.

BEC opposed the project because of the potential impacts of the project including:

• the significant impacts caused by creation of mini-city outside the county's urban areas, which is not equipped for high population densities,
• a section of Neal Road would have to be turned into and eight-lane thoroughfare and all of it would have to be widened between Highway 99 and Paradise,
• a large new sewer plant would be needed,
• an interchange would have to be built at Highway 99 and Neal Road, and
• impacts on the local school, groundwater, wildlife, downstream drainage, county service levels and south Chico traffic would be significant.

After 32 months of discussions, hearings, environmental issues and proposals to both the County and the City, the partnership and the project of Blakeley-Swartz dissolved. In 1994, two smaller developments were proposed separately by Blakeley and Swartz and were both denied for many of the same reasons. BEC will continue to monitor and give input on further proposals.