At their regular meeting on November 6, 2019 the Rancho Cucamonga City Council heard the second reading of an ordinance to adopt the 4,400-acre Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood & Conservation Plan.
The ordiance was passed unanimously on a 5-0 vote, culminating a 4 1/2 year process of intensive community and environmental analysis, planning, and design, and extensive community outreach and engagement. The specific plan was prepared by a large multi-disciplinary team of City staff and consulting professional firms, led by Sargent Town Planning and directed by the City Manager's office and planning department.
The Plan provides a clear vision, highly customized development standards and design guidelines, and robust implementation strategies and procedures for delivering up to 3,000 housing units, a small neighborhood-serving commercial center, an extensive network of parks, trails and and new school within the 800 acre Neighborhood Area, and for systematically conserving approximately 3,600 acres of rural open space and natural habitat in the Rural/Conservation Area along the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, abutting the San Bernardino National Forest. The neighborhood development standards emphasize native landscape materials, a mix of housing options and indigenous architectural styles for the lower Neighborhood Area - consistent with earlier specific plans prepared for Etiwanda in 1982 and 1992 - and state of the art standards and incentives for habitat conservation and rural living in the upper Rural/Conservation Area. Following Plan adoption the City plans to submit an application for annexation to the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) of the County of San Bernardino, to gain local land use control of the future of this unique area for the benefit of future generations.