MIDDLETOWN — A planned 25-square mile luxury resort development in southeast Lake County known as the Guenoc Valley Project has been analyzed for the environmental impacts it would create, and a draft document on those impacts is being circulated for public comment until next month.
Lotusland Investment Holdings, Inc., the applicant, is seeking an amendment to the county general plan and a rezoning of the land on which the Guenoc Valley Project is to be located, in order to allow the 16,000-acre commercial resort development to proceed.
Leading the project’s development team, according to the Lotusland website, are Adrian Zecha and Jonathan Breene, each independently successful hoteliers who have worked together before: in 2019 they were reported by Newsweek to be planning to lead the operations of a hotel in Norway being built on the edge of a glacier. Zecha is the founder of the famed luxury resort brand Aman Resorts, as well as GHM Hotels. Breene is a leader of the Setai Group of hotels.
After buying the Guenoc Valley property in 2016, Lotusland reported that the 22,000-acre ranch is “among the largest contiguous private properties in all of California,” and that Lotusland’s purchase had been made by “Lotusland and a small group of minority investors without the use of any debt financing.”
During a public meeting last week in the Lake County Board of Supervisors chambers in Lakeport, county officials, developers and environmental impact consultants presented the details of the planned project.
Kirsty Shelton, entitlements manager for the resort’s developer, Maha, said that if the project is approved according to schedule, on-the-ground work could start this year.
Shelton described the project as an “ultra-luxury destination community with a unique residential component” that would use “a light touch on the land.”
The project’s first phase of development, which is forecast to take place over the next 10 years, would include thousands of acres of “open space,” “oak woodland preservation” and agricultural preserves mixed in among hundreds of hotel rooms, resort residential units, and residential “estates.”
The vast planned development would include more than 1,000 residential estates, a golf course, two polo arenas, a “farm community” with 12 acres of gardens, a spa area, a tent camping facility, hundreds of hotel rooms, and several hundred residential units that would house employees of the resort near central Middletown.
Shelton stressed the project’s “true commitment to sustainability,” noting that solar energy production is planned to reach “zero net electrical energy,” and highlighted the fact that wildfire management measures like roadway fire breaks are part of the plan.
Lake County Sierra Club member Victoria Brandon commented, “There’s a whole lot to like about the project,” including what she called a “respect for the landscape.”
“It’s obviously going to be done first-class,” she said.
But Brandon noted she is concerned about what appeared to her to be a “glaring inconsistency” with the Middletown Area Plan, noting that the Lake County General Plan appears to limit the number of dwelling units on the Guenoc Valley property to 450.
The Middletown Area Plan, she continued, had identified a way to increase the number of dwellings in the property area to a maximum of 800, by “clustering” units.
The proposed Guenoc Valley Project would allow up to 1,400 residences to be built, if the general plan amendment and rezoning being sought by Lotusland are granted.
“This is a really significant increase in density on the site, and I think it’s something that has to be addressed,” Brandon said. “Legally speaking, this becomes mitigated completely by just rezoning the property. But whether this is appropriate for an area plan that was prepared with such a high degree of community input, without also going back to the community and re-addressing this—I really question whether that’s an appropriate thing to do.”
Noting what he perceived as potential for “significant income” for Lake County via the Guenoc Valley Project, Middletown resident Fletcher Thorton urged critics to “look beyond the negative and think about how positive it’s going to be down the road.”
The draft environmental impact report for the Guenoc Valley Project can be viewed at the Lake County Courthouse in Lakeport (255 N. Forbes St.), at the Middletown Library, or online at www.lakecountyca.gov. The document is open for public comments until April 7 at 5 p.m. Comments can be emailed to guenocvalleycomments@lakecountyca.gov, or mailed to the County of Lake (Attn: Mark Roberts) at 255 North Forbes Street, Lakeport, CA, 95453.
More information about the Guenoc Valley Project can be found online at guenocvalley.com.
