Gurdwara Expansion Stalls
We covered the El Sobrante Gurdwara expansion — and the subsequent PR fallout — a while ago. Earlier this week, the county halted expansion plans pending a further environmental review. Local residents filed a petition for re-review, claiming the “regional service area” proposed in the expansion documents underestimated projected population growth/use in the area:
The appellants, El Sobrante Valley Planning and Zoning Advisory Committee and Quail Hill Homeowners Association, say the mitigated negative declaration does not adequately address their concerns regarding traffic, parking, noise, possible landslides, drainage, wildlife and emergency vehicle access.
Gurdwara leadership says that community members have it all wrong, though, and that they are off the mark in understanding how regional is defined and what it means for the future of the center.
Sikh leaders said they have spent the past 10 years fine-tuning the project to satisfy the county as well as neighbors.
“We have spent more than half a million dollars” — not including volunteer time and effort — “to comply “… and keep our neighbors advised…”
When we discussed this last time, I asked about the challenges we face explaining our presence and integrating into the fabric of religion in the U.S. We could revisit that conversation, but this time I thought it was curious that the project has been stalled in the face of a staggering economic slowdown in this region. Could this have generated jobs and funding at a time when the area could benefit from economic development? Or was this not worth the end result?
Camille,
NIMBY mentality. Not-in-my-backyard. The people that will be hired are definitely not the people that live near El Sobrante Gurdwara.
But they would most likely live in the region. I’m not talking about the 0.5 mile radius around the Gurdwara Sahib, but rather, the larger economic fabric of the area.
I think the NIMBY-ism was covered in the last post on this topic, but I’m more than happy to revisit.
My last memory of this particular Gurughar is seeing HUGE numbers of black trash bags awaiting pickup on the hillside. The amount of waste generated alone might cause failure of the environmental reveiw…