PLACERVILLE, Calif. — The El Dorado County Fairgrounds is located in Placerville, just off of highway 50 at the western edge of the city.
Used for a large number of activities, the official name of the venue is El Dorado County Fair and Event Center. Approximately 235 events per year are held there, including gun shows, animal events, meetings for various groups, trade shows, concerts, and other events.
It is also home to the high-banked, quarter-mile Placerville Speedway, a dirt track that has been active since 1965. Promoted by Scott Russell and Kami Arnold, the track is one of the top-tier facilities in California.
But a major construction project adjacent to the fairgrounds could lead to problems for activities at the fairgrounds and the speedway.
Scott Russell was recently asked if a proposed low-income housing project is a significant threat to the fairgrounds.
“We feel it is,” said Russell, “with the fairgrounds as a whole, not just the race track. It’s literally going to be right on top of the fairgrounds and the corner of one building is going to be about 300 feet from the top of turn four. All the livestock people from the fair, 4-H, FFA, Grange, all these people are concerned and we’ve seen this happen at other fairgrounds.
“We’re not against building low-income housing, we feel we need some of that around here, we just think there is a better location than being right there,” Russell continued. “And they’re kind of cowboying this thing in. We have plenty of property within our county that is eligible for this and there’s got to be a better location.
“They’re not doing any EIR (environmental impact report) stuff, they are bypassing that, CEQA is another process you have to go through when proposing a project, but that’s being bypassed,” Russell continued. “All these things you or I would have to do, all the hoops we’d have to jump through, are all being bypassed by our governor.”
Local politicians, city officials and county supervisors, seem to be in favor of the project but Russell feels they are more focused on the monetary value of the project than other aspects of it.
Meetings with community leaders from the city have been held to work on a game plan to understand the potential problems of building a housing project so close to an active fairgrounds.
Russell believes there are other things going on behind the scenes.
“Our state put out SB 35 which states you cannot build projects like this in a high fire danger area,” explained Russell. “The fairgrounds is level one, highest on the list for fire danger. This whole area up here is level one. They just shut down a project in Cameron Park that was to be a 170-unit apartment complex because of SB 35 and it being a high fire danger area. So there are already some shenanigans going on with this project and recently the California State Fire Marshall took that piece of property next to the fairgrounds out of the high fire danger area.”
Placerville has not allowed buildings over three stories because there isn’t a city fire department ladder truck that will reach over three stories. The Cary House Hotel is four stories, is an historical landmark and is the only building in the city taller than three stories.
Russell noted, “This planned building is four stories, but what they did to try and sneak it through was measure from where the ground is going to be to bottom of the top floor, not the roof line. But Red Hawk Casino is building their hotel, but they are on a reservation and they can do whatever they want. But they donated $600,000 to the El Dorado County fire district to buy a ladder truck to assist them at the casino.
“That kind of shot us in the foot because now they can claim the county has a ladder truck that can go to the fourth floor.
“They are putting 83 units on 2.5 acres with 96 parking spots,” Russell continued. “I don’t even know how it is going to fit. We are trying to come up with a game plan, get people to write letters about what the fairgrounds means to them and how this project would be better built in a different location.”
Russell stressed the fairgrounds is for the project, but not the proposed location overlooking a facility that has numerous activities drawing large crowds, creates, noise, dust and traffic. The fairgrounds is concerned that building 83 housing units in the currently planned location could put the fairgrounds and its variety of events at risk.
No date for the beginning of construction has been announced.