Granite Bay MAC reviews county height limitation amendment for Project 8 Winery

The Granite Bay Municipal Advisory Council (MAC) received an overview of a proposed height zoning text amendment (ZTA) during its Thursday meeting. The amendment would allow for a structure for a winery, tasting room or accessory-use restaurant to exceed the height limit of a zone if it is authorized through a conditional use permit process, which would include an analysis of visual impacts including photo simulations, Jennifer Byous, a supervising planner for Placer County, said. According to Byous, the code currently allows public buildings and structures to exceed 50 feet as long as the property setbacks are increased a foot for every foot of additional exceeding height. Byous said the proposed language for the amendment is also currently allowed for hotels, public buildings and structures. Height exceptions that are allowed to be 15 percent higher than the limit include chimneys and vents. Byous said height for towers, poles and water tanks must be established through a minor use permit. Byous confirmed the amendment is being proposed as part of entitlements for the Project 8 Winery in Penryn. The proposed project is slated for a 17.96-acre portion of a 44.14-acre site at 7615 Callison Road and would include a 26,000-square-feet warehouse for the agriculture operation and a multi-level, 75-foot-high octagon structure with space for production, a caretaker unit, commercial kitchen, tasting room, gravity filtration system and an accessory restaurant that would rotate on a turntable on the fourth level. Byous said next steps include taking the zoning text amendment and proposed Project 8 Winery to the Horseshoe Bar-Penryn and Newcastle Ophir MACs and holding a virtual town hall meeting in March. Byous said the items are also anticipated to go before the Placer County Planning Commission on March 23 and before the Board of Supervisors in May. Byous' presentation focused on the zoning text amendment, as she said it is not common to bring projects outside of the Granite Bay area to the MAC, just as she would not take Granite Bay projects to the Horseshoe Bar-Penryn MAC. Although the focus was not on the Project 8 Winery, Byous encouraged Granite Bay residents to participate in the public forums to provide input. Comments provided during the meeting noted the need to have the ZTA undergo a full California Environmental Quality Act process so residents will know the impacts of the height, concern for missing chances to provide input due to the project being outside the area and concern the passage of the ZTA would allow other wineries and restaurants to exceed height limitations. "It looks like an attempt to accommodate an illegal 80-foot rotating restaurant that would typically not be allowed," Penryn resident Patty Neifer said. "There was originally a variance requested as part of the winery proposal … it wasn't looking good, so now the next step is to propose a zoning text amendment that would include the possibility of these towers all throughout the county." Said Donna Delno, a resident of Penryn, "The people that are taxpayers that own properties, have worked hard to get here and stay here should vote on something so radical that's going to change our county forever." The Granite Bay MAC took no action on the item.