The commission chair has twice failed to report private on-site visits with developers of the massive Newport Banning Ranch development up for approval next month, and he also urged the staff to reconsider its designation of the property as an environmentally sensitive habitat area.
HOW MUCH: $700,000 PER SQUARE FOOT: $346 SETTING: The house is in the Hoback Ranches development, about an hour from Jackson Hole.
At Gardenstone, part of the Bellevue Ranch development, the doors of the sales office are covered with plywood, as if a big storm were coming.
Its most important purchase came in 1997, when it picked up the Mission Viejo Co. and, with it, prime land parcels including the massive Highlands Ranch development.
"You cannot ranch economically in the desert without devastating the ecology," Suckling says....After ranching comes development.
The changes to Chincoteague, including the sale of the Beebe Ranch for development in 1989 and the destruction by fire of the ranch house in 1996, brought local soul-searching.
That vision led to Sea Ranch, a development that set a standard for environmental preservation.
The executives say they have no further plans to carve up the ranch for development.
"Bob had many offers over the years but he insisted on someone who will preserve the ranch from development," Mr. Williams said.
It was she who had pressed the architect William Pereira to develop a master plan, it was she who had seen the collateral benefit in a U.C. campus and been willing to give one, and it was she who had insisted, above all, on maintaining an interest in the ranch's development.
Small wonder, in the face of this kind of ignorance, that citizens of the Western United States are willing to sacrifice wolves, grizzly bears, bison, prairie dogs and sage grouse to ranching and energy development.
