On Friday’s Z1077 Up Close Show, host Gary Daigneault spoke with Chair of the County Board of Supervisors Dawn Rowe, who discussed larger scale hotel projects that are being considered for development within the Morongo Basin’s “rural living” zoning designation.
Dawn Rowe: “What we should have done, before we got more populated, is laid out industrial corridors, commercial corridors, so that residents knew when they built where it would be zoned only residential, and not just rural living. Now that we have a populated basin, nobody really wants to rezone to industrial or commercial in their backyard, so it leaves the county with the rural living designation, and it leaves folks to apply for what we call a “conditional use permit,” which we take on a case-by-case basis. They are taken to the Planning Commission, sometimes to the board of supervisors if they require a zoning change.
So the Wonder Valley Inn, or the Flamingo 640, those are operations that wanted to set up shop in the rural living zone, which is permitted by the law, and so they go through a review of environmental impacts.
What is the noise (considerations), traffic circulation, air quality? Our land use department will weigh in, our planning commission may disagree, or they may agree, and there’s an appeal process.
That’s what we’re left with in rural living. We’re trying to achieve a balance with the land use designation.”
You can hear the full interview with Supervisor Rowe by listening to the full interview below, or subscribe to that and all the other Z107.7 podcasts right here.
