Save Our Deserts’ organizer Justin Merino says most people, if given some crayons and asked to depict a campsite, would draw a tent, a camper, or a lake.

“You don’t see massive bars, massive restaurants, massive yurts, plumbing,” he said.

Merino is one of many residents engaged in a grassroots movement to keep a plot of the Mojave Desert from being developed into a “glamping” resort, offering guests a more luxurious alternative to traditional camping.

Just north of the Joshua Tree National Park, Flamingo Heights sits on Route 247 and is home to fewer than 1,000 people, and thousands more Joshua trees, interspersed with creosote bushes. Visitors, if they’re lucky, might see a burrowing desert tortoise, which has earned a spot on the endangered species list twice in the species’ history, and is now classified as “threatened.”

Merino lives in the neighboring town of Landers, just minutes from the development site. He wears many hats: president of the Landers Community Association, head of the Community Council for Flamingo Heights and former president of the Homestead Valley Community Council (HVCC).

He also runs Save Our Deserts, but stressed that “no one is really running anything.” Rather, “It’s a group of concerned citizens.” Merino also does EMT and firefighting work in the community. For Merino, his community work can be summed up by the titles “professional feather ruffler,” “agent of change,” or “pest.”

In his role as town “pest,” Merino often communicates with the San Bernardino County Planning Commission about Flamingo 640, named after the plot’s acreage. Concerned parties wrote “thousands” of comments about the project, which Merino compiled into two “massive” binders that he hand-delivered to the commission office, he said.

The Landers Community Association building. (Photo by Estelle Atkinson)

He has since donated the binders to the Landers Historical Society, an airy building affixed to a vintage store, in which he sat as he pointed, gesturing to the binders. Two men clambered on ladders behind him, painting the ceiling that holds the lights that Merino had just rewired: “I was up there, I ran the lines and just popped down here,” he said to them. Before sitting down to discuss Flamingo 640, Merino had just wrapped up his repair work, and every so often interrupted himself to speak to the men painting behind him.

The quiet Homestead Valley, which encompasses Landers and Flamingo Heights, experienced the effects of the lure of Joshua Tree National Park, said Merino: “Joshua Tree has seen an explosion since COVID of visitorship.”

The developers, he said, “are business people trying to capitalize on a very unfortunate situation,” that situation being the tourism boom.

The developer, RoBott Land, is a private real estate company specializing in “land acquisition, development, and financing,” according to their website. Flamingo 640 is the sixth project in the L.A.-based company’s repertoire. Steve Botthof, the owner of Robott Land, declined a request for an interview.

The development was denied without prejudice in March, which Merino said is a product of the Planning Commission neglecting to vote on the matter. This decision left the door open for an appeal, which RoBott Land filed just days after the decision.

RoBott Land initially appealed to the Board of Supervisors per county regulations, but Merino said that due to significant changes in the project, namely a reduction in its “scale and scope,” the appeal will have to be bounced back to the Planning Commission.

Flanagan said that the Commission has still not issued a new hearing date for the appeal.

Residents opposed to the project filed thousands of public comments with the commission. Leading their objections: Traffic issues, lack of community benefit and damage to the environment.

One particularly damning aspect of the development is it would be on what residents say is the wrong side of Route 247.

Currently occupied by a sea of Joshua trees, the plot in question lies in a Rural Living (RL) Zone, meaning only certain developments are to be permitted, including campsites.

North of the road, visitors to the town will see a restaurant, a market, a gas station, and a Dollar General. These businesses all sit in the town’s commercial zone. On the other side of the road, however, there are only a number of homes. This is because the land south of the road is designated as an RL Zone.

“What they’re building is not compatible with the area that it’s in,” said Merino.

“The county has a very broad and loose definition of what constitutes a campground, and this development is really a resort for all intents and purposes,” said Steve Bardwell, president of the Morongo Basin Conservation Association.

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors had previously considered the issue. Merino said that about a year ago, the HVCC asked for a review of the allowable uses in RL Zones. Since then, they “have not received any official or definitive responses” to this request for review, said Merino.

One potential solution was a tiered system for what a campground is, which, according to a letter sent to District Supervisor Dawn Rowe by Merino, was presented in a report by Rowe at a meeting of the HVCC on Dec. 19, 2022.

The “tiered” system involved cataloging a proposal as either boutique lodging, a minor campground, a major campground, or a resort. This version of the zoning ordinance would mean that resorts, which include certain amenities like restaurants, would not be allowed in an RL Zone.

However, Merino said there “was not bipartisan agreement with the other supervisors,” and so the proposal “disappeared and faded away.” Other concepts seem to have “set sail into an abyss,” said Merino, who has followed up with the county on several occasions but has not yet received a response. He said that he believes the county is “still trying to formulate and articulate the best response that they can.”

“There’s one streetlight on 247, which is right where the old dump used to be,” said Merino. “There are no turn lanes, there’s no center divider.” These factors make Route 247 “one of the most dangerous highways,” he said.

The highway is a single-lane road with limited space on the shoulders before the desert landscape begins. Sand drifts onto the road at several points along the route.

“The traffic is the BIGGEST issue,” wrote Yucca Valley resident Melvin Danny Ako in a public comment to the planning commission. “Nowhere on the plans show adequate turn-offs and space for backup traffic or ongoing traffic onto the highway,” he wrote.

In a memorandum to the county written by the Integrated Engineering Group, commissioned by RoBott Land in response to public comments calling for a VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled) analysis, the group wrote that “the proposed land use intensity qualifies the project to be exempt from preparing a full VMT analysis consistent with the guidelines set by the County of San Bernadino Transportation Traffic Study Guidelines.” As such, a comprehensive traffic study has not yet been conducted.

Bardwell said this is one aspect of the proposal that could be helped by a CEQA analysis. CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, generally requires that any proposal not exempt prepare an Environmental Impact Report. The county, Bardwell says, has not been receptive to requests for a CEQA analysis.

Upon visiting the site, the first thing that stands out is the number of Joshua trees. RoBott Land has identified 2,734 Joshua trees on the plot as a whole. The developer, in a response to public comments made at an August 2022 meeting of the HVCC, said that 34 of these trees would have to be relocated for the project to move ahead. However, there is some contention surrounding this mapping, said Merino.

The Center for Biological Diversity in Joshua Tree analyzed a map overlaying the development onto Joshua tree locations and said in a public comment to the Planning Commission that “it appears that approximately 200 western Joshua trees will need to be removed to make way for the various roads, pathways, parking lots, buildings, tent sites and other elements of the development proposal.”

“At this time, because the western Joshua tree is endangered, they would have to actually move them, the ones that they needed to dislocate, to someplace else,” said Flanagan. “Well, where?” she asked.

Another species of particular concern is the desert “burrowing” tortoise. While many residents have reported seeing tortoises on the land, a company review did not find any present on the site, said Flanagan.

In its public comment, the Center for Biological Diversity included a photograph of the desert tortoise on the southern boundary of the project site. “The fact that no live tortoises were observed above ground in 2020 in drought conditions that were the worst in a millennium is not surprising,” they wrote.

The bar and restaurant sported by the glamping site would not be open to the public. Community member Kathryn Shearer, noting that the facilities would all be private, asked in a public comment, “How does this project positively impact our community at all?”

Click for bigger version (Photo Courtesy of Save Our Deserts)

Merino said that although opening the amenities to the public would not have made a material difference to the community’s response, it would have at least shown “intent” by the developer that “they’ve worked with the community on a plan of what are the community’s needs.” “It’s very exciting to a lot of people to have a restaurant here,” he said. The bar was potentially less of an attraction, said Merino: “Everyone eats, not everyone drinks.”

The theme of community relations looms large. “What we’re doing is not to run the developers out of town. It’s their land, they own it. They want to build on it? Fantastic,” said Merino. “We’re the community, we’re the people that live here, we’re going to be the people that you have to hire to work there, and we’re the ones that are going to have to look at it 24/7.”

Bardwell said that “to his credit,” the developers – Bothoff, joined by Project Manager Nancy Ferguson of RoBott Land – did stand up in front of the HVCC at a council meeting on Aug. 15, 2022, in front of what was “not an agreeable audience.”

The pair heard public comments ranging from wildlife protection to traveling noise, issuing a written response describing the mitigating measures being taken on Sept. 7, 2022, following the meeting.

“That takes a bit of a backbone,” said Bardwell of Bothoff and Ferguson’s appearance at the Council.

(Photo courtesy of Save Our Deserts)