This story was originally published by Fresnoland.
The Dyer administration has orchestrated a December showdown over the Southeast Development Area, pushing the 9,000-acre mega-project toward final approval despite a $3 billion infrastructure shortfall that has residents preparing for political war.
Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer now has a potential majority at the Fresno City Council to approve the Clovis-sized mega-project, known colloquially as SEDA, according to interviews and statements by councilmembers at a Nov. 6 workshop. The project is scheduled for a city council vote next month on Dec. 4.
The potential majority includes Councilmembers Nick Richardson, Brandon Vang, Mike Karbassi and Tyler Maxwell, who have signaled support of the project. Richardson and Maxwell say they are open to supporting the project’s $4 billion in infrastructure costs with public funding sources if it appears “responsible,” ranging from the general fund to new trail and public transit programs.
“If it comes to general fund money, on extending utilities [to SEDA], I’m willing to do that,” said Richardson, who represents northeast Fresno. “In order to spur development of housing and economic growth, that is something I’m willing to talk to my colleagues to use general fund dollars for.”
On Wednesday evening, the city planning commission will take the first steps on this controversial approval process. The commission’s vote is likely to pack City Hall with residents, who are fearful that with $100,000 in infrastructure costs per home, SEDA could lead to service cuts across the city and overwhelming debt.
Despite a vote being just days away, the Dyer administration has not released a financing plan to pay for this infrastructure, nearly six months after quietly releasing a report laying out that special financing districts and developer fees will cover only 20% of the infrastructure costs.
The road which set this collision course in motion between the mayor and city residents ran through many meetings. Perhaps the most significant took place in a City Hall conference room on May 21, when Dyer huddled with major developer Darius Assemi of Granville Homes, and publisher of GV Wire, amongst other major builders.
There, at the moment in which the plan appeared dead in the water, the developers laid out to Dyer why SEDA needed to stay alive. Since then, Dyer has launched his plan to bring his mega-project back from the brink of political collapse.
‘They’re winning’
Dyer’s meeting with the major developer families in town – the Assemi and Bonadelle families – offered a rare glimpse into how the mayor works with developers to overcome resident’s opposition.
“They’re winning…I’ve done a good job. We’re on the defense,” Dyer told the room of developers about the latest efforts to stop SEDA during the meeting, which Fresnoland attended.
Over the past year and a half, a group calling itself the Greenfield Coalition – composed of unions, neighborhood groups, and education leaders – has hammered SEDA for its combination of financial uncertainty and lack of affordable housing.
Dyer was hours away from pulling SEDA from the agenda of the planning commission. The future of the project was more uncertain than ever.
But one voice rose above the rest in telling Dyer what SEDA was truly about: Building new homes which could command six-figure premiums, compared to other school districts.
“Clovis Unified has a gorgeous, brand new toy,” said Assemi. “We have the new Terry Bradley Center Complex, which is going to create a lot of buzz and a lot of demand around that.”
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on all of us to provide housing in that vicinity.”
Assemi owns land all across SEDA, including a $3.4 million parcel just up the road from the Terry Bradley Center, according to county tax rolls.
Dyer sat at the head of a long conference table that spring afternoon, flanked by his City Manager Georgeanne White. The project lacked political support, Dyer said.
“I’m fearful today I wouldn’t have the votes,” Dyer said.
Dyer and Assemi could not be reached for comment about the meeting.
It was just the latest in a month of setbacks for the mega-project. The previous month, Dyer told the city council that the bulk of the project would likely saddle city residents with higher utility bills for years.
“The potential for it [the costs of SEDA] to fall on the general fund and ratepayers, I believe it’s all true,” Dyer said in May. “That return on investment would have taken so long, it would have been on the backs of ratepayers.”
Now, the project was under further attack by his own team. The full extent of SEDA’s financial risk was becoming clearer to the public.
SEDA was a potential financial albatross, a consultants’ report released the previous day by White showed. Over 20% of the project’s future revenues would be burdened by infrastructure costs – a major red flag for investors, the reports’ authors noted.
“Phase 1 of the Project may not be financially feasible,” the report said. “[Full] development may not be feasible in terms of the total infrastructure cost burden.”
At the meeting, Dyer had more bad news for Assemi and the other developers. There was no way to get the basic infrastructure costs of SEDA down.
Even for the first phase, the upfront costs to extend water and sewer lines to the rural area totaled $250 million – as much as the Newsom administration’s much-touted downtown revitalization investment.
Assemi suggested that a different sewer disposal scheme used in Madera County could bring costs down to $50 million. But Dyer’s team told the developers such a cheaper solution wouldn’t meet the city’s “robust infrastructure and redundancy” requirements.
“We have ruled it out,” said Planning Director Jennifer Clark about the Madera-style sewer plant.
At the meeting, nobody offered to pony up the cash to pay for SEDA’s full infrastructure costs. But Dyer insisted the mega-project was one of his top priorities.
SEDA wouldn’t move forward again until he knew he had won over the city council, he said.
“My timing is going to be dictated….by whether we can get this thing passed. I don’t want to fail. It’s too important,” Dyer said.
That afternoon, Dyer laid out his plan. Southeast Fresno councilman Vang would be the linchpin vote on SEDA, potentially bringing in northeast Fresno Councilman Richardson into the fold along with northwest Fresno Councilman Karbassi and a wildcard fourth councilmember.
“I need to get a fourth vote. Quite frankly, we have a new council member in D5 [Vang] who, man, he comes into office….I’m sure he’s got his share of anti-SEDA because of the falsities that have been out there. So we need time to educate,” Dyer said.
“If Brandon is not on board, I could lose D6. I could lose Nick Richardson on this thing.”
Dyer said getting SEDA approved would have to be a team effort with the developers.
“We will need help. As you’ve helped in the past.”
The education campaign
Outside the public eye, Dyer’s team quietly set in motion a six-month sprint to make SEDA appear as a winner to the handful of people in the city with the power to say no.
Vang and Richardson, the two key votes identified by Dyer, have been attending private biweekly “training sessions” with the planning department about SEDA, according to Richardson.
“We’ve done a lot of our homework together,” said Richardson about the meetings with Vang. “Just me and Vang sitting in there with the planning department working through all the questions we have.“
“That combined planning and education process has been very eye-opening,” he added.
After months of these sessions, Richardson said the city’s newest safer streets program can help address his biggest concern: paying for SEDA’s infrastructure costs.
“The new VMT program, right there we have an incentive for us to continue to building south SEDA [Dyer’s proposed first phase] because the costs are going to become more recuperable.”
Richardson is referring to the city’s newest program that charges developers a fee based on how much car traffic their new projects cause. Typically, every project that receives VMT program funding has to be proven to reduce total driving.
SEDA’s infrastructure is not currently listed on the city’s approved list of VMT-reducing projects, likely because the project will massively increase the total amount of driving in Fresno, not decrease it.
However, Richardson said the VMT program can be changed in the coming years by adding SEDA’s infrastructure to the approved list of projects that the fees can be used for.
“Once businesses go in there and they start pitching into this VMT program…the city is going to be able to recoup a lot of the money from the infrastructure investments,” he said.
“Things like that were a little more reassuring than the previous payment plans that the planning department pitched to me.”
Richardson said he’s now close to a yes vote on SEDA.
“There’s still some improvement to be done, but that was a big one.”
The swing vote
The wildcard councilmember – the swing vote – to emerge in support of SEDA is Maxwell, representing central and east Fresno.
When he was originally elected to the council in 2020, Maxwell said, in an interview with Fresnoland, he would not have supported a huge suburban sprawl project like SEDA.
But Maxwell has shifted sides, saying he is now disturbed by the notion that residents are organizing to stop the mega-project in its tracks.
“Five years ago, I would not have been as interested in poking our heads into SEDA,” he said. “I think it’s wrong and I think it’s absurd that there is this coalition building around never SEDA no matter what.”
One major reason for his shift, said Maxwell, who hasn’t ruled out a campaign for mayor in 2028, is his feeling that Fresno’s focus on inner city infill has become detrimental to suburban real estate developers. The promise of Clovis Unified has helped him change his mind, he added.
“[Now,] I feel like our city steered hard in the other direction where we’ve made it really difficult to build more suburban housing,” he said.
At first glance, Fresno, home to the FBI sting Operation REZONE, would probably be the last city in America to be accused of undervaluing single family homes.
For the last 30 years, over 90% of new residential buildings in Fresno have been single family homes. Even a consultant for the Dyer administration concluded that Fresno overbuilt single-family homes, resulting in a “glut” of them today. Last month, Maxwell voted to approve tens of thousands more single-family homes in west central Fresno – enough land to last 50 years at the city’s current building rates.
But even with 80,000 homes in the West area, Maxwell said it’s not where developers really want to build. One of the biggest appeals for SEDA which other parts of town lack is that future families can aspire to live outside of Fresno Unified.
“There’s a bigger market for folks wanting to be in Sanger Unified or a future Clovis Unified than perhaps Fresno Unified. I think that’s a big answer that can’t be ignored that definitely adds to the marketability of that part of town [SEDA].”
The typical Fresno household won’t be able to afford a house in SEDA. Pegged at a $400,000 average cost by the Dyer administration, purchasing a house in SEDA would require more than Fresno’s median household income under a typical financing scenario.
But Maxwell insists that the project could warrant public support just like any other neighborhood project.
“I think that’s true for a lot of projects that the city does – there’s a lot of public investment that goes into these sorts of projects.”
“There may be some risk at the end of the day,” he said about the potential for SEDA to be financed with public subsidies. “That’s going to have to be up to the council to decide whether that risk is worth moving forward in a serious manner.”
‘We may get to a point where we’re like Europe’
The most consistent supporter of SEDA at the city council is Karbassi. He is a frequent guest of the podcast Unfiltered, hosted by developer Darius Assemi.
What most concerns Karbassi about resident’s opposition to SEDA is the potential for Fresno to become more European, he said.
“We may get to a point where we’re like some of the European countries where they don’t want to own anything anymore. It’s just rent,” he said.
Karbassi said he has not discussed how to pay for SEDA with Dyer.
“I am pro-growth – there’s no secret about that,” Karbassi said. “The issue of financing has not come up.”
Which is why he was surprised at Dyer’s request to approve SEDA next month.
“Even though I’m the council president, I didn’t even know [SEDA] was going to be on the agenda on the 4th. That’s something the administration is pushing forward,” he said.
Maxwell said the Dyer administration may pull back this Thursday on the December 4th council vote if councilmember Vang feels that further research is required on how to add buffer zones for schools in SEDA located near new industrial uses.
“I’m going to review what they give the planning commission as a preview,” said Karbassi. “Because I’m curious to see what their plan is.”
