Plans to build a 38-home residential subdivision – first approved in 2002 – were kept alive two more years in Monday’s unanimous Ceres Planning Commission vote.

The commission met on Zoom and considered another two-year time extension for a Vesting Tentative Subdivision Map to subdivide 8.26 acres into 38 single-family lots at 1200 and 1206 Hackett Road. The project site is surrounded with residential uses to the west, south, and east, with Strawberry Fields Park and Sinclear Elementary School to the north.

GDR Engineering, Inc., represented the developer but was unable to get through on the Zoom site due to technical difficulties. In 2018 the firm told the commission that owners Surgit Singh and Ranjeet Talwana wants to sell the property to someone else to build the homes but needed the project to have a valid map.

Since 2002, the City Planning Commission has approved the map for the Cambridge Estates Phase II subdivision three times (2002, 2015, and 2018) involving the subdividing of a 7.5-acre site located at 1200 and 1206 Hackett Road. Since that time, the previous city approvals of these subdivision proposals expired except for the 2018 proposal considered by the commission on May 7, 2018, in which the Commission approved the subdividing of the 7.5-acre residential zoned site into 38 single-family lots (see subdivision map and minutes pages 20-26).

Approval of the 2018 entitlement was granted for a period of two years and would have expired on May 7, 2020, unless either a building permit was issued for the project or a time extension request was received prior to the expiration date and followed with approval by the Planning Commission. On May 4, 2020, the City received a time extension request from the applicant.

A staff report stated: “Approving the request will allow the applicant to continue working toward making the necessary preparations in hopes that construction of the subdivision improvements may begin in the near future.”