Grant and Steve Alvarnez had hopes of already seeing homes being framed in their Whitmore Ranch subdivision project in east Ceres. But nothing has happened to date, largely due to the high turnover of the city’s management team and the ever changing requirements being asked of the father-son development team.
Now the Alvarnez’s are trying to find a builder after Texas based D.R. Horton Construction Company decided to pass on their project.
“There are a couple of builders out there looking at it,” said Grant Alvarnez. “It is moving forward.”
He said the $60 million project involves a lot of environmental details left to figure out.
“There’s some mitigation measures that have to happen,” he added. “It’s basically paperwork.”
Exactly when construction starts depends on when a selected builder closes on the project but Alvarnez is hopeful this year.
According to Alvarnez, the project became entangled with the changing demands from various city officials who came and went in that time. Since the property was purchased 10 years ago, Ceres saw the turnover of four city managers, five city engineers and three Community Development directors and two senior planners.
“So every new individual who came in made changes. They actually required us to redesign the subdivision which kicked the can down the road about a year and a half and added a ton of expense to our project costs to redesign the sewer line,” Alvarnez said. He called the experience “very frustrating” and added “now you can imagine why houses in California are so expensive.”
Alvarnez commented that former Community Development Director Christopher Hoem – who was let go by the city in February 2024 – was “very inexperienced.” He was replaced by Lea Simvoulakis whom he terms “great and very knowledgeable.”
“She knows what she’s doing so we’re confident we’ll eventually get this done.”
“Now we’ve got everything buttoned up and ready to go so we’re just packaging it up into a nice bow that we can deliver to home builders.”
The 94-acre Mitchell Ranch annexation has been in the works since 2014 with the site annexed to the city of Ceres five years ago. Two school campuses – that of La Rosa Elementary School and Cesar Chavez Jr. High School – were part of the annexation, leaving about 50 acres for development south of Whitmore Avenue east of Moore Road.
A total of 19 acres will be developed for 196 single-family homes with an average lot size of 5,000 square feet.
The city has already approved two single-family residential subdivisions. Whitmore Ranch Phase 1 was approved in 2021 to create 107 residential lots.
Phase 2 consists of 8.4-acres consisting of 46 homes and its subdivision map was extended to March 31, 2026.
An additional 6.4 acres will be filled by high-density apartment or condominiums that could result in 160 living units.
The remainder of the project includes 5.2 acres of open space, including a bike and pedestrian corridor leading to the junior high’s western boundary.
The low-density single-family residential lots will range in size from 5,000 to 8,727 square feet with the average lot size being 6,863 square feet; while the medium-density parcels will range from 2,211 to 2,648 square feet, with the average lot size being 2,429 square feet.
