Marge Handley, the prominent Willits heiress and Republican philanthropist, owns a modest new home in a struggling subdivision off East Hill Road in South Willits called Haehl Creek.

Mrs. Handley, 70, can retreat to her Hearst Road ranch out east of town when her Haehl Creek neighborhood seems unpleasant.

Which it is lately for Mrs. Handley.

According to court documents filed by Mrs. Handley, her Haehl Creek neighbor, retired anesthesiologist Gary Bodensteiner, also 70, has not only been harassing her, the doctor informed mutual acquaintances that he had purchased a gun.

There are many real estate nightmares in the naked city. This is only one of them. — Ralph Wein­stein

* * *

Malibu, California — Call her Joni. She’s 75. She’s my father’s widow, his second wife, as good a woman as my mother was, and that says a lot about her, and how lucky my father was to have married two ten’s in one lifetime. Joni and my father lived together in Malibu in a beautiful contemporary home originally designed and built by a man with an Italian light fixture fetish, a well lit mountainside aerie with a stunning sea eagle’s view of the ocean between Zuma and Trancas. It’s a 3500 square foot, two story residence that became too much for Joni to maintain living alone there after my father’s death. Since Malibu’s real estate market was (and still is) depressed by the eco­nomic meltdown, she wisely decided not to sell but rather to lease the property until hopefully it would appreciate again to a semblance of its previous pre-crash value, which in the golden years of Malibu real estate values was something in the four million dollar range. She engaged a real estate firm, one of Malibu’s biggest and oldest such egregious vulture-like enter­prises, to draft and negotiate a lease contract that specified a fee of $12,000.00 per month, which was a fair figure given the property and the neighborhood (the “comparables” as they say in real estate lingo), and so it wasn’t long before an interested family showed up to consider engaging it, which they promptly did. Our story begins as I sat down with Joni to discuss what followed:

This fast-moving and gripping story, summed up in the subtitle, recalls an epic battle waged by a woman without credentials and no college degree, against a very powerful bureaucrat with very special and powerful interests behind him. Robert Moses “was responsible for 13 bridges, two tunnels, 637 miles of highways, 658 playgrounds, 10 giant swimming 17 state parks… cleared 300 acres of land and constructed towers that contain 28,400 new apartments… built Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Shea Stadium, Jones Beach and the Central Park zoo… the Triborough and Verrazano Narrows bridges, the Long Island and Cross Bronx Expressway.”

At one and the same time Robert Moses held 12 different state and city offices. He saw his proposed lower Manhattan Expressway as the capstone of his career to remake New York City, completing a web of high-speed roadways up and down and across Manhattan and eliminating “ unsightly slums“ with high-rise residential towers. He had had his way for decades, through five mayors and six governors.

Jane Jacobs was an amateur. How would this “little old lady” from Scranton even dare to stand in his way? To Robert Moses the very idea seemed ludicrous. But Jane Jacobs and the people she mobilized saved our neighborhood, Little Italy, Chinatown, the lower Eastside, as well as Greenwich Village, starting with Washington Square Park. And she turned the orthodoxy of city planning on its head.

Our pastor at that time, Father Gerard LaMountain, of Most Holy Crucifix church on Broome Street, first approached Jane Jacobs with a plea to do for our neighborhood what she had done for Washington Square and the West (Greenwich) Village. Our parish church became the meeting place for plans to protest and turn back the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Father LaMountain gathered the most diverse coalition, including Communists, Socialists, Democrats and Republicans, Catholic Workers and Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), an extreme right wing group. Anthony Flint mentions Rosemary McGrath of YAF as particularly effective. Rosemary and her husband Bob, a surgeon, are particularly fond of Catholic worker. They disagreed with almost everything we advocated, but Rosemary said, “You’re not like the liberals. You never know where they really stand. We know where you stand. You don’t hide a thing. You’re honest!” It was nice to hear her say that because we are careful never to blow our own horn.

Anthony Flint is kinder in his judgment of Robert Moses than Robert A. Caro in his massive 1974 study “The Power Broker: Robert Moses And The Fall Of New York.” After all, New York City, like any city, outgrew its original scheme and horse and buggy roadways. But Robert Moses’s main interest in the city was traffic control, to facilitate private vehicular traffic for cars and trucks even at the expense of public transit and the loss of neighborhoods with historical value and unique character. He intended to extend Fifth Avenue south through Washington Square Park right down to Broome St., essentially destroying the park, then to link Brooklyn with New Jersey by a ten-lane east-west highway 350 feet wide above ground level at Broome Street.

Robert Moses was also intent on eliminating those neighborhoods which he and the modernist school of architects and city planners saw as congested and unsanitary, and to replace them with sleek high-rise towers, open space, air and light. Sounds grand, but it doesn’t work. The Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Robert Taylor complex in Chicago were prime examples. The open spaces were empty. People felt, and were, vulnerable in them, and in the corridors and elevators, alone in a crowd. Crime burgeoned. Pruitt-Igoe and Robert Taylor were both blasted down to be “replaced by Greenwich Village style streetscapes of smaller individual houses with front porches.”

In our old Catholic Worker neighborhood, Little Italy, there was hardly any crime on the street because Grandma, somebody’s grandma, was always looking out her window, ready to sound the alarm. People knew each other. They looked out for each other. Jane Jacobs looked out on her very similar neighborhood at the west end of Greenwich Village and saw a similar vibrant mix of apartment houses, small businesses, a bakery, a drugstore, grocery stores, churches, synagogues, a library, as well as a little park, and the White Horse Tavern (where the 50s happened: see Dan Wakefield’s “New York in the 50s”). So it is to this day. Except for gentrification, of course.

The law of unintended consequences (one might even say Original Sin) entered the picture. Those who were able to stay and chose to do so, who didn’t “escape” to the suburbs when the neighborhoods were still low rent, are sitting pretty now with rent control, or if they owned their own buildings, they are really cashing in. Renovated apartments that had gone for as little as $20.68 a month (my first rent) now go for $2,600 a month! The poor are squeezed out, and only well-heeled newcomers can think of living in what Robert Moses not long ago thought of as slums. Of course, a stratum of the very poor remains, more isolated than ever. That’s why we stay. And in the course of things, today’s prize is tomorrow’s trap. Re-gentrification eventually leads to degentrification.

Today, Jane Jacobs’ views are the new orthodoxy. Her major book, “The Death And Life Of Great American Cities,” is a classic. Jane left New York City and the United States in 1968, for Toronto. She feared that her sons might be drafted to fight in Vietnam, in a war she thoroughly detested. They might have qualified for conscientious objector status, but that is another story. She died in Toronto in 2006 at the age of 86. The story is one of personal responsibility, localism, decentralization, direct action, community organizing… Good to see how it all comes together and how it can work.

—

Tom Cornell is a member of the Most Holy Crucifix Church in New York and an active member of Catholic Worker in New York City.

Back in the early oughts (aka 2000-2001) there were a couple of high profile slides of vineyards onto roadways. The slides caused some people to ask why Mendocino County was the only county in Northern California without even a minimal grading ordinance.

After all, the County’s General Plan specifically required that a grading ordinance be developed and the usually cautious Grand Jury recommended that one be developed.

Napa County has a decent grading ordinance; Lake County has a decent grading ordinance, Sonoma County has a minimal “ministerial” ordinance, Humboldt County has a minimal ordinance. But not Mendo.

At that time local liberals noted that since there was a “liberal” majority on the Board of Supervisors — Hal Wagenet, Patti Campbell, and David Colfax, none of whom did or have done anything remotely liberal, but… Surely the liberals would be able to get a grading ordinance done with the two big slides, the General Plan, the models from other counties — why, it’s should be a piece of cake!

Mendo’s Board of Supervisors even replied to the Grand Jury with an empty promise:

“Mendocino County is working with a diverse group of stakeholders to develop a grading ordinance for the County. The need for a grading ordinance has long since been recognized. However, reaching consensus on the language of any such ordinance has proven difficult. The process is currently stalled, due in part to the County’s limited staff and financial resources. Additional financial resouces are needed by the County in order to complete the process.”

Notice the poison pill: “Reaching consensus.”

In the weeks after the Board set up the Grading Committee I wrote an opinion piece for the Ukiah Daily Journal when I first heard the composition and charter of the committee. It was all so familiar.

* * *

The Grading Ordinance Shuffle (Ukiah Daily Journal, April 2001)

Question: What do you get when you cross three ranchers, six government staffers, two builders, and four timid environmentalists?

Answer: I don’t know, but it will be an orphan.

The shotgun marriage created by the Supervisors a few weeks ago known as the Mendocino County Grading Committee isn’t likely to produce any decent offspring.

Remember Mendocino’s similarly oversized and unwieldy Forest Advisory Committee? A minority of its members successfully held it hostage for more than five years, and the watered-down, long-delayed result was voted down by the Board of Supervisors which impaneled it anyway. An even more watered down version was subsequently produced which (barely) passed the Supervisors, but got shot down 8-1 by the State Board of Forestry. Eight years wasted, while cut rates went up.

The Forestry Board said Mendocino didn’t need its own forestry rules because the County’s large timber companies would be required to submit “Sustained Yield Plans.” (They had used the years-long delay of the Forest Advisory Committee rushing to cut what was left of the County’s marketable timber; then sold out and left — A few plans were prepared, but later dropped in favor of “Option A” plans which didn’t require any notions of “sustainability,” much less public or governmental review.)

Mendocino County’s latest approach to long-delayed compliance with federal and state law and its own General Plan is clearly an attempt to stall some more. For more than a decade Mendocino County has scrupulously and successfully avoided enactment of the Grading Ordinance required by the County’s long-standing General Plan. The requirement was put in there 20 years ago under conservative county, state and federal administrations because the preservation of the County’s rivers and streams is popular with just about everyone. And you won’t find much support for erosion, sediment-clogged creeks, and the elimination of fish.

But now almost everyone agrees that’s what we’ve got.

At a joint meeting of the Planning Commission and the Supervisors I attended a few years back, a member of the public asked the County to consider enacting a Riparian Zone Protection Ordinance. County Counsel Mr. J. Peter Klein, heretofore not widely thought of as an expert in environmental matters replied, “Why do we need to talk about that? There’s nothing wrong with our rivers.”

Mr. Klein’s intentional blindness is apparently catching. Not only was the idea of a Riparian ordinance quickly spiked, there’s been no progress on even the basic grading ordinance. And, making matters worse, the County Planning Department isn’t even enforcing existing laws — quietly granting “exemptions” to grape growers so routinely that even the normally cautious National Marine Fisheries Service was recently moved to complain about the proliferation of dams and ponds. The “exemptions” are granted on the patently bogus grounds that certain large ponds and dams have “no significant environmental impact” — in the unilateral opinion of Director Ray Hall at the Planning and Building Department, anyway. Trouble is, when it comes to things that might affect endangered fish, Mr. Hall doesn’t get to set such blanket arbitrary standards. That’s what the law says Environmental Impact Reports are for.

And although Mr. Klein is supposed to see to it that the County complies with the law, he’s never complained about the lack of a legally-required grading ordinance or about the county’s abuse of exemptions.

Before the Grading Committee was finally formed, the County used the excuse that it was waiting for a “five county” approach (which no one took seriously — the other five counties don’t have endangered salmon and steelhead — yet — nor do they have large, well-funded grape growers ripping out large swaths of oak trees and putting in hundreds of acres of grapes, ponds, roads and dams; nor did those other counties have grading ordinance requirements in their General Plans). The five-county stall (combined with an irrelevant nod to the state’s building code) had served as the County’s preferred method of stalling for the last few years. But when that approached was challenged by a lawsuit, a new stall had to be developed.

Hello Grading Committee.

What’s amazing is that there’s no sensible reason to oppose an ordinary grading ordinance. Many grading projects are done right and will be unaffected. A decent grading ordinance and an ordinary EIR review of the larger grading projects would benefit everyone, as well as the few remaining fish. If an environmental impact report is done correctly and sensibly (also as called for in the law) the recommendations to prevent erosion or collapse are constructive and are frequently voluntarily accepted by the applicant. In addition, if minimal standards are required (and minimal standards are all that’s being proposed by anyone), the chance of erosion and sediment damage to downstream property owners is greatly reduced as well. Instead of opposing a grading ordinance, the stallers should be encouraging it.

Grading ordinances are not complex documents. A variety of workable ordinances are already in place in counties across the state and a decent draft could be prepared by the County’s Planning Department in a matter of hours. The various interests represented by the County’s newly formed Grading Ordinance Committee could review and comment and the results (with options) could be routinely presented to the Supervisors for a vote in a matter of a few weeks.

The Grading Committee is another transparent stalling maneuver and should not be supported. (Let me guess: the Committee will labor at great length and recommend that certain grading permit applications be signed off by an applicant-paid geologist. And the Board will eventually approve an even weaker version of that.)

Any similarly ineffectual orphan of an ordinance that this committee produces which also gets the support of a Board of Supervisors which has done everything in its power to avoid the issue for so long is going to face a legal challenge. And the sooner that happens so that the issue is at least resolved one way or the other, the better for all concerned.

* * *

That was 2001. Turns out even I was optimistic. The Committee labored for seven years, slowly leaking enviro members as it became more and more clear that the grape interests wouldn’t approve any draft ordinance that address “agriculture.”

By 2007 the Supervisors finally realized that the committee was unable to “reach consensus” — a requirement that doomed the committee from the git-go — so they asked nearly retired Planning Director Ray Hall to cobble together something. Hall’s draft was so cumbersome, confusing and potentially costly to enforce that nobody liked it. And it was voted down unanimously.

Rubbing salt in the wound when it came time to write the minutes of the meeting where everybody denounced what Hall had done, the minutes blandly said:

“May 15, 2007 – Board Action: Upon motion by Supervisor Pinches, seconded by Supervisor Wattenburger, and carried unanimously; IT IS ORDERED that the Board of Supervisors directs staff to discontinue processing of the Draft Grading Ordinance (and associated EIR) concluding that other programs, including construction/post construction standards as required in the NPDES Phase II program for Mendocino County, meet or exceed the protection measures identified in the Mendocino County General Plan.”

Nowhere in any county document is the acronym NPDES explained or referenced. It turns out that NPDES stands for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, a component of the National Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act says nothing about “construction/post construction standards” and even if it did the feds wouldn’t be bothering themselves with badly built vineyards and ponds on steep slopes in Mendocino County. If all that was needed was the NPDES, why do Napa, Lake, Sonoma and Humboldt Counties all have workable — if imperfect in several ways — grading ordinances?

The Board meeting minutes on this topic were written by Planning Director Hall who knew he could put anything in there and fantasy would become official fact.

Now, a new vineyard on a steep slope right above Highway 128 has been installed by a Napa-based winery. Lots of people think the entire affair will slide onto Highway 128 in the next big gullywasher/logroller of a storm — if there ever is one. (Some people think there’s a big one looming in the Pacific. We’ll see.) Some local newcomers who see the looming vineyard on the hill are asking: Why doesn’t Mendocino County have a grading ordinance? Why doesn’t the (again) “liberal” board of Supervisors empanel another Grading Committee?

Now, having read this, they know.

For an example of the vineyard mentality the grading ordinance advocates are up against (not the one referred to earlier), simply look at the text and photos at these two recent websites:

http://www.rhysvineyards.com/newsletter/summer2009.html

http://www.princeofpinot.com/article/701/

The state’s nearly $120 million plan to build a new Mendocino County Courthouse is shaping up to be the single biggest  investment ever in Ukiah’s downtown.

It presents an opportunity to rectify one of the county’s worst moves, the destruction a half century ago of an historic and beautiful brick courthouse and its replacement with a 1950s institutional blob in Ukiah’s center. That blunder ranks right up there with county leaders’ decision in the same era to pass on being the local sponsor of the federal project to build Coyote Dam upstream, an unwise choice that forever turned control over the bulk of Russian River water resources to the Sonoma County Water Agency in Santa Rosa. Some longtime residents might argue that the county decision to not buy the old Mendocino State Hospital – now the City of 10,000 Buddhas – for a measly $1 and turn it into a community college campus ranks high on the same list.

This time, let’s get it right. Who knows how long it might be before such a huge investment of taxpayer dollars is available.

A new courthouse, well-designed and located with the town’s future in mind, will do for Ukiah what no retail shopping complex could ever do. No, it won’t provide massive infusions of sales tax revenue or property tax dollars to city coffers. But the courthouse project can keep downtown alive, and serve as a reminder that sometimes the “public good” is a higher charge.

The site of the new courthouse is still uncertain, although the preferred location appears to be an 11-acre site along Perkins Street east of Main Street. The property surrounds Ukiah’s historic railroad station. The land is already owned by a public entity – the North Coast Railroad Authority.  State and federal agencies would have to sign off on any land sale among the public agencies. Also, how much it might cost to clean the site of potential contaminants from its railroad days is unclear.

City and county representatives will be meeting regularly with state officials over the next several weeks to resolve those and other issues before formally selecting a site. Presumably public hearings will be conducted on any project before dirt is moved.

The location of a new courthouse and how the site can be effectively linked to the downtown shopping district is paramount. It’s probably the only chance in the foreseeable future to give downtown a chance to survive the onslaught of big box retailers and other commercial ventures scattered throughout the Ukiah Valley. Already downtown is being battered by the the Wal-Mart-anchored Redwood Business Park, the Pear Tree Shopping Center with J.C. Penney’s, Kohl’s and the Home Depot, and a slew of smaller retail developments. What would a Costco or Target do?

No one expects major retailers to locate downtown as they once did. But for downtown to continue to evolve into the best alternative – a specialty shopping, dining and entertainment district – it must have a draw.

A new courthouse could not only help a congested local criminal justice system become more efficient, it could also serve as the “build it and they will come” incentive for local residents to continue patronizing downtown.

Naturally concerns about location will soon be followed by design issues.

The last thing Ukiah’s downtown deserves is a costly public showcase that doesn’t fit. Just stand across from the current courthouse on any side except School Street and take a look. Even coordinated color schemes, lovingly maintained magnolia trees and bushy camellia bushes still can’t hide the monstrosity that the building is. The fate of the current courthouse is unknown, but surely there won’t be a clamor among local preservationists over the possible demolition of this eyesore.

The public needs to closely monitor this rare investment opportunity. A huge amount of taxpayers’ dollars are at stake, as well as the fate of a downtown still worth saving.

You can contact Mike Geniella at mgeniella@gmail.com.

It presents an opportunity to rectify one of the county’s worst moves, the destruction a half century ago of an historic and beautiful brick courthouse and its replacement with a 1950s institutional blob in Ukiah’s center. That blunder ranks right up there with county leaders’ decision in the same era to pass on being the local sponsor of the federal project to build Coyote Dam upstream, an unwise choice that forever turned control over the bulk of Russian River water resources to the Sonoma County Water Agency in Santa Rosa. Some longtime residents might argue that the county decision to not buy the old Mendocino State Hospital – now the City of 10,000 Buddhas – for a measly $1 and turn it into a community college campus ranks high on the same list.

This time, let’s get it right. Who knows how long it might be before such a huge investment of taxpayer dollars is available.

A new courthouse, well-designed and located with the town’s future in mind, will do for Ukiah what no retail shopping complex could ever do. No, it won’t provide massive infusions of sales tax revenue or property tax dollars to city coffers. But the courthouse project can keep downtown alive, and serve as a reminder that sometimes the “public good” is a higher charge.

The site of the new courthouse is still uncertain, although the preferred location appears to be an 11-acre site along Perkins Street east of Main Street. The property surrounds Ukiah’s historic railroad station. The land is already owned by a public entity – the North Coast Railroad Authority.  State and federal agencies would have to sign off on any land sale among the public agencies. Also, how much it might cost to clean the site of potential contaminants from its railroad days is unclear.

City and county representatives will be meeting regularly with state officials over the next several weeks to resolve those and other issues before formally selecting a site. Presumably public hearings will be conducted on any project before dirt is moved.

The location of a new courthouse and how the site can be effectively linked to the downtown shopping district is paramount. It’s probably the only chance in the foreseeable future to give downtown a chance to survive the onslaught of big box retailers and other commercial ventures scattered throughout the Ukiah Valley. Already downtown is being battered by the the Wal-Mart-anchored Redwood Business Park, the Pear Tree Shopping Center with J.C. Penney’s, Kohl’s and the Home Depot, and a slew of smaller retail developments. What would a Costco or Target do?

No one expects major retailers to locate downtown as they once did. But for downtown to continue to evolve into the best alternative – a specialty shopping, dining and entertainment district – it must have a draw.

A new courthouse could not only help a congested local criminal justice system become more efficient, it could also serve as the “build it and they will come” incentive for local residents to continue patronizing downtown.

Naturally concerns about location will soon be followed by design issues.

The last thing Ukiah’s downtown deserves is a costly public showcase that doesn’t fit. Just stand across from the current courthouse on any side except School Street and take a look. Even coordinated color schemes, lovingly maintained magnolia trees and bushy camellia bushes still can’t hide the monstrosity that the building is. The fate of the current courthouse is unknown, but surely there won’t be a clamor among local preservationists over the possible demolition of this eyesore.

The public needs to closely monitor this rare investment opportunity. A huge amount of taxpayers’ dollars are at stake, as well as the fate of a downtown still worth saving.

You can contact Mike Geniella at mgeniella@gmail.com.

The state Department of Finance is expected to act by May.

The state is already moving ahead with new courthouse projects in Santa Rosa and Lakeport, expected to cost a combined $300 million or more as part of a statewide bond program.

But while smaller in scale, a new Ukiah courthouse is bound to have more dramatic effects given growing fears over the future of its historic retail hub. A string of freeway-oriented shopping centers, and on-going efforts to lure big-box retailers like Costco and Target, are hurting locally owned businesses.

Anti-development proponents celebrated the defeat last month of a ballot measure that Ohio-based developers had hoped would allow them to circumvent local planning review of a $700 million mall complex at the old Masonite mill site north of town. But they said little about the city of Ukiah’s efforts to buy up land in the Redwood Business Park south of town in a bid to lure big box-retailers there. Unexplained is how local merchants can continue to survive the onslaught.

Some city leaders envision downtown evolving into a specialty shopping hub along the lines of Healdsburg or Windsor in neighboring Sonoma County. But there have been few successes.

What remains strong are local businesses like Schat’s bakery, Mendocino Book Co., Habitat, Patrona’s and North State Café, and Savings Bank of Mendocino County.

A new courthouse site along the south side of Perkins Street seems to be the most favored, since county officials abandoned their efforts to secure construction of a sprawling criminal justice complex including a new jail and courthouse along the Highway 101 freeway about a mile east of downtown.

“That proposal is dead in the water,” said county Supervisor John McCowen. McCowen said the county simply doesn’t have any money to contribute to such a project’s costs.

McCowen said county officials have decided to step back and let Ukiah government leaders and a local courthouse advisory committee work with the state to select a new courthouse site, and finance construction through a $5 billion state bond program.

“If there’s a reason for us to get involved at some future date, we might. But right now, we’re on the sidelines,” he said.

Ukiah City Planner Charley Stump said city leaders are pushing for a downtown courthouse site. “It’s the highest of priorities,” said Stump.

A downtown courthouse is critical to the fate of the city’s historic retail hub, which relies on a steady parade of local attorneys and staffs, courthouse patrons and county employees, some local shoppers and curious visitors to fill its coffers. Any courthouse project outside the area could decimate the downtown core, advocates feel.

The Mendocino County Courthouse has anchored downtown since the 19th century. An ornate brick courthouse was demolished in the early 1950s, and replaced by a three-story courthouse that’s long been criticized for its squat, institutional-style architecture. Even its harshest critics, however, agree its presence has continued to anchor a downtown buffeted by retail development elsewhere in the Ukiah Valley.

Public debate has focused on competing big box, freeway-oriented developments proposed for the old Masonite mill complex at the northern edge of town, or a mish-mash of retail development within city limits at a site on Ukiah’s southern edge called the Redwood Business Park. Despite a nearly $1 million campaign to circumvent local planning review, Ohio developers in early November lost a bid to move ahead with a Masonite mall complex.

County voters’ defeat of Measure A was hailed by mall opponents, who rallied supporters by declaring the fate of downtown and local retailers was at issue. Little was made of Ukiah city efforts to buy up land in the competing business park, and lure some of the same big box retailers to that site.

With a straight face, Gonzalez listed his “accomplishments” at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting:

• The General Plan Update. An accomplishment? It took ten years and several million dollars to produce a document objectively worse than the pre-updated Plan. And it isn’t really complete yet (far from it, actually), but Gonzalez considers it “done.”

The White Ranch Property

Here we go again.

After sitting on the market for a year, the White Ranch property has sold. This time the buyer is not a predatory, out-of-town developer with his heart set on ticky-tacky boxes and a subdivision of half-acre parcels. Instead, the new owners—a small band of the Pomo nation—are local: the Potter Valley Tribe. As such, they come to the deal with shallower pockets and, they say, preservationist intentions.

The tribe’s realtor, Hai-Lee Sun, said that an economic development plan for the land is still being crafted, but there are no plans to build a casino on the sprawling 69-acre property north of Fort Bragg. According to Sun, the tribe hopes to restore the ranch’s historic buildings and to build an RV park to profit from the coast’s summertime tourist trade. The rest of the year, Sun said, the property will be for “their own use, as a tribe.”

But the tribe’s professed good intentions are not enough to quell fears over the land’s future, which has been uncertain since Sacramento-area developer John Reynen bought the property in 2005. Reynen hoped to build more than 250 houses on the White Ranch—a radical reimagining of the Mendocino Coast that was met with hostile opposition from many in the local community.

The development plan required Fort Bragg to annex the property, allowing access to water and other city services. But Reynen withdrew his application on December 1, 2006, after city staff determined the city was facing a water shortage that would be worsened by bringing such a large scale project into city limits.

A year-and-half later, the housing bubble burst, and the over-extended developer filed for bankruptcy. His failure to forge Fort Bragg’s suburban future was a small part of Reynen’s larger troubles. Having invested heavily in similar projects elsewhere—and collected multi-million dollar vacation homes like the rest of us accumulate kitchen appliances or soon-to-be obsolete tech gadgets—Reynen was $273 million dollars in debt, according to the Sacramento Bee. The Savings Bank of Mendocino took over the White Ranch, and the land—listed at $1.75 million—had been on the market since.

Now, with new owners and only a tentative plan for the property, the White Ranch is again raising questions about what Fort Bragg will look like in 10 or 20 years. This time, though, the community may have limited say in crafting that future.

As a federally recognized tribe, the Potter Valley Tribe can apply to have the White Ranch designated as a Federal Trust. That would mean the property, like a reservation, would be under the authority of the Bureau of Indian Affairs—not the local government. Development on the property, therefore, would be limited only by federal laws applying to Federal Trust land, not by Mendocino planning and zoning laws.

Whether the Potter Valley Tribe intends to pursue trust status for the White property isn’t known. Calls to the tribal chair, Salvador Rosales, were not returned. A representative at the Bureau of Indian Affairs says the decision to seek Federal Trust status is entirely up to the tribe.

One thing seems clear: Mendo’s native-fetishizing, eco-warriors—the well-intentioned sweat lodge and peace pipe crowd—are likely to find themselves overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance in the face of a landowner that’s as difficult to demonize as Obama is to parody.

How can one rail against the abuses endured by native peoples, embrace their shamanic ceremonies and celebrate their infallible stewardship of the earth while arguing against the RV park they hope to build on the land that was once theirs? How to idolize Native Americans while fearing their limited autonomous rights and exception from local government oversight?

Time will tell.