“One thousand members and I are not going to go away.”
— Claude Delphia
WS-PACE vice president
“Everyone brings different perspectives to the table, and they should all be addressed.”
— Mike Lynch
West Park consultant
A group opposed to a 4,800-acre industrial project at Crows Landing’s former naval airfield has gathered more than 1,000 members during the past 10 months.
Group leaders say membership continues to grow, and they plan to continue fighting the project as long as Stanislaus County leaders consider it.
“We’re not going to drop the battle,” said Ron Swift, president of WS-PACE.org.
The local group, which gets its name from the acronym West Side-Patterson Alliance for Community Environment, has grown since formed in May 2007.
Swift said some members spend 40 hours or more each week placing phone calls, continuing letter-writing campaigns and making appearances at public meetings.
“We’re doing what we can to get the point across that the scope of this project is so large,” Swift said.
Like the cities of Patterson and Newman and other local jurisdictions that have publicly opposed West Park, the group has taken issue with the project’s size, its use of trains and potential impacts on traffic.
West Park’s project would include an inland port at the 1,527-acre Crows Landing Air Facility that would be linked to the Port of Oakland through a short-haul rail line. Cargo containers would be shipped and returned from there to the Oakland port.
West Park advocates say trains would remove pollutants in the San Joaquin Valley by taking trucks off highways and roads, but WS-PACE members say that pollution would just be shifted to the West Side.
Swift said the group also believes there would be better places for an inland port in parts of San Joaquin County that already have rail access.
WS-PACE member Howard Sword, a Patterson resident who was involved in real estate for Pleasanton’s Hacienda Business Park as director of on-site development for Callahan-Pentz Properties, said Tracy would be a more logical location for West Park’s project. That city has more distribution centers and is at the hub of the “Golden Triangle,” where Interstates 580, 5 and 205 meet.
He has worries about placing the project in Crows Landing.
“Without a doubt, I have concerns about trains and … truck traffic,” he said.
United in opposition
Sword said he contacted Swift after reading about West Park and about WS-PACE’s efforts in the newspapers.
Other members have gotten involved through a variety of ways. About 60 to 70 are private members who do not want their names listed. The reasons could be varied. Often, they are business people with acquaintances in favor of West Park, Swift said.
“We don’t ask why,” he said.
Swift said most of the group’s not developers.
“I can pride the group from the beginning of being above-board as to who we are and what we do and what we stand for,” Swift said.
So far, the group has raised close to $20,000, Swift said, to pay for advertising, postage and transportation to public meetings, among other expenses. It also could be the foundation of a war chest if the West Park master development plan is approved by the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors next month.
Still, the group’s board meetings and donor list are not open to the public.
WS-PACE Vice President Claude Delphia said he does not want donors to be known, because the group’s “enemy” — West Park — could use that information against the group.
Swift said board meetings are private because executive committee members want to sort out the facts before releasing statements to the public.
A different perspective
Mike Lynch, a consultant for West Park, said he does not see WS-PACE as West Park’s enemy. He said the group has actually provided some input that has been useful in the planning process.
“Everyone brings different perspectives to the table, and they all should be addressed,” he said.
Still, he said he had concerns about the group sharing information without providing proper context, one of the reasons that West Park’s development team recently met with WS-PACE.
For instance, Lynch said, the group regularly touts figures from a traffic study that said the business park would generate 141,000 daily car trips. However, he said, the group often fails to mention that those trips would come at the end of the project’s 30-year build-out. In addition, the group has not probed into the traffic impacts of development plans for the cities of Patterson and Newman, he said.
WS-PACE has similarly accused project officials of skewing statistics in favor of the project, such as those regarding air quality, though Lynch said the development group’s reports are all in writing.
Business park advocates also active
WS-PACE is not the only group gathering support. West Park consultants and supporters have collected nearly 1,000 signatures of people in favor of the proposed industrial park, and West Park has received more than 700 cards and e-mails supporting the project, Lynch said.
Lynch said West Park will contact people who have sent in cards or e-mails in favor of the project to let them know about related meetings. A slew of West Park supporters showed up at a December board of supervisors meeting to speak on behalf of the project.
In addition, Newman resident and project consultant Laroy McDonald has helped organize advocates in his hometown.
“We haven’t been shy about asking people to support us,” Lynch said.
Still, Lynch said developers have not hosted regular meetings for supporters as WS-PACE has.
The passion on both sides of the debate indicates there will likely be plenty of letter-writing campaigns and heated public meetings to come.
WS-PACE members say the group is here to stay, even if the board of supervisors approves West Park’s master development agreement in April. If that happens, the group will become involved in the Environmental Impact Report process, in which state, federal and local groups review development plans.
“One thousand members and I are not going to go away,” Delphia said.
To reach Jonathan Partridge at the Irrigator, call 892-6187 or e-mail him at
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The above information needs clarification. We have not spent any money for transportation.
Claude Delphia, vp WS-PACE.org
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