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Volume 172 • Issue 31 | $1.00
mtdemocrat.com
Monday, March 20, 2023
Residents fight EDH warehouse behemoth Sel Richard Staff writer
Mountain Democrat photos by Odin Rasco
The Carriage Trade Shopping Center on Broadway will soon get $11 million in improvements and a new name.
More than 200 residents made clear their alarm regarding the recently filed conditional use permit application for two warehouses that would rival some of the largest in the nation. The project, located just south of the El Dorado Hills Business “If it had been Park on the west disclosed to us side of Latrobe Road and southeast of the that a megaInvestment Boulevard distribution center intersection, proposes was going to be two buildings with a total footprint of roughly built, we would 1.7 million square have had serious feet, accommodating approximately 2,000 reservations employees. Building 1 is a 3,410,399-square-foot, on buying our five-story warehouse retirement home with 57 loading docks. there.” Plans for parking include 417 stalls for — Roger Bailey, Heritage trailers and 1,750 stalls Village resident for cars. Building 2 is a 1,366,046-square-foot, single-story with 98 loading docks. Outside parking would accommodate 475 trailers and 1,160 cars. Guard houses, pump enclosures and other accessory structures bring the combined square footage total to just under 4.8 million. Plans for the 208-acre property, owned by Winn Ridge Investments LLC of Winn Communities, were presented at last week’s El Dorado Hills Area Planning Advisory Committee meeting. Referred to as Project Frontier, the tenant has signed NDAs requiring that their anonymity remain intact for the time being, though residents speculate an Amazon facility is planned for the site. County General Plan codes allow “wholesale storage and distribution” use within the parcel’s Research and Development Industrial zoning but puts a 50-foot cap on building heights. At 110 feet, Building 1 exceeds this limit and is the main subject of the project’s application. George Condon of Dermody Properties indicated that the excess height is mitigated by existing topography, significant setbacks, sound walls and landscaping that includes more than 1,500 trees. “We’ve tried to position the buildings so that the trucks’ courts are shielded from the school nearby and from the residents as well,” he said, describing setbacks of more than 500 feet, despite zoning ordinances of only 20 feet. The topography of the site slopes down from Latrobe Road, putting the
PLACE ADDRESS LABEL HERE
n See behemoth, page A3
Betting big on Broadway Odin Rasco Staff writer
T
here’s an old — think 700s A.D. — farming technique that leaves a field unplanted, or fallow, for a season or two to increase crop output in the future. If the same holds true for business, the Carriage Trade Shopping Center on Broadway in Placerville is soon to exit its fallow era, with big changes poised to take root. The shopping center, currently home to Grocery Outlet and Dollar Tree, has played
Developer Leonard Grado is aiming to bring more business to upper Broadway. Renovations are expected to be completed by spring 2024.
n See Renovations, page A6
Courtesy graphic
An elevation plan depicts a new look for the shopping center. Harbor Feight is expected to arrive in September.
Winter storms create promising conditions for salmon survival California Department of Fish and Wildlife Anticipating good conditions for the survival of hatchery-produced Chinook salmon throughout the Sacramento River and tributaries, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will release both spring and fall-run Chinook during the historic rain and snowfall the state is experiencing.
Several releases have already happened and others are planned over the next few weeks to utilize good in-river habitat conditions for these young salmon. On Feb. 23, with a series of latewinter storms building, CDFW staff released approximately 1.1 million fall-run Chinook salmon fry into the American River at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery below Folsom Lake. These Chinook
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salmon are part of a pilot study testing new genetic-based tagging techniques that if successful, will allow more flexibility in fish release strategies to take advantage of natural high-flow events in the future. It was the first release of fall-run Chinook into the American River in more than three years. Since n See Salmon, page A6
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