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Friday, November 27, 2020Colonies Partners Principals Burum &Richards Aggressiively Pursued Project OnUndevelopable Land In Upland, Along TheWay Purchasing Influence From MultiplePoliticians Or Removing Ones Who ProvedResistant To Their Plans from front pageserve as his assistant assessor, Biane’s one-timebest friend and chief ofstaff Matt Brown, Biane’s assistant chief ofstaff Tim Johnson anda public relations guruwho worked for Burum,Patrick O’Reilly. Thatmisadventure revolvedaround Burum’s andRichard’s effort to develop 489 acres of whatwas previously considered undevelopable landin north Upland.The property in question was highly problematic. Owned by the SanAntonio Water Companyfor more than a century,the land lay just south ofthe foothills at the easternextension of the San Gabriel Mountains. It wassubject to flooding evenduring moderate rain, asthe water would cascadedown the south face ofthe mountain topped by8,696 foot-elevation Ontario Peak, which towers to the north aboveUpland and San AntonioHeights, and inundatethe property. During amajor deluge the entiretyof the property – what isreferred to as an alluvialcreek – would becomea raging river. A fewquarries had been sunkinto the property, fromwhich gravel had beenextracted during theearly decades of the 20thCentury. Those quarrieswere utilized as catchbasins and recharge basins, into which the floodwaters would pour andthen gradually settle intothe water table. In 1933,1934, 1939 and 1962, theSan Bernardino CountyFlood Control Districthad recorded flood easements on the property.Beginning in the1970s, well prior toRichards’ and Burums’effort to develop theproperty, four highlyreputable residential development companies insuccession had exploredthe same idea. OrangeCounty-based PennhillLand Company andOrangeCounty-basedKohl Company seriouslyexamined all of the requirements to get an actual entitlement to buildwhat would eventuallybe dubbed the San Antonio Lakes project. Thatincluded redressing theoverwhelmingdrainage issues on the prop-erty, which would entailbuilding a contrivanceto carry rainwater awayand meet the statutoryrequirement of ensuring that in the face of theworst flooding that couldbe expected to occur statistically in a 100-yearperiod the houses builtthere would remain onefoot above the level of theaccumulated water. Thatwas too daunting, thePennhill Land Companyand the Kohl Companyconcluded, and their incipient plans for the project were abandoned. TheWilliam F. Lyon Company, then took a run atbuilding a planned community on the property,slightly reworking thename into “The Lakesat San Antonio.” Ultimately, the Lyon Company came to the sameconclusion as the KohlCompany before it. ThenLewis Homes took up theproject concept. Lewis,too, forsook proceedingwith the development ofthe property.In 1996, four yearsbefore Postmus had beenelected to the board ofsupervisors,then-44year-old Dan Richardsformed the ColoniesPartners with then-33year-old Jeff Burum.Prior to that, Richardshad been one of the owners of Stephen DanielsCommercial Brokerageand a former member ofthe Foothill Fire DistrictBoard of Trustees, whichceased to exist after thedistrict was absorbedby the City of RanchoCucamonga in 1989 andbecame the Rancho Cucamonga Municipal FireDepartment. With thebacking of 21 other investors, Richards andBurum raised 16 million to purchase fromthe San Antonio Liquidation Trust 489 acreslong owned by the SanAntonio Water Companyand utilized for purposesof groundwater rechargeand flood mitigation located in the northeasternquadrant of what is nowUpland.It was Richards’ andBurum’s intention toconvert that land into aresidential subdivisionwith some order of acommercial component.Richards was undaunted by the challenges pertaining to the prop-San Bernardino County Sentinelerty that had convincedPenhill, Kohl, the William Lyon Company andLewis Homes to desistwith their developmentdesigns there. Richards,as a former public official, understood that obtaining project approvalinvolved a relativelysimple formula of securing majority support onthe governmental decision-making panel thathad jurisdiction and landuse authority over theproperty upon which theproject was to be built,which in this case wasthe Upland City Council. Through a shrewdinvestment of less than 25,000 in political contributions to the mayorand city council, Richards and Burum gainedinfluence over that body.It so happened that Upland, at that time a cityof 68,570 population,had recently downsizedits municipal operations,dispensing with its assistant city manager, itscity engineer, its engineering department anda significant portion ofits community development/planning divisions.With Richards havingarranged for the project’sacceptance on the political level, he and Burumovercame the practicalissues relating to gettingcity staff acquiescencein the undertaking byagreeing to pay for thecity to hire contract engineering and planningprofessionals to monitorand guide the municipal approval process forthe proposal, includingmeetingdevelopmentstandards and passing inspections. Withthe money in their paychecks originating withthe Colonies Partners,those contract planningand engineering professionals enlisted to workon the project by the cityacted accordingly, ensuring that the project couldproceed.As the old hand whoknew the political layof the land, Richardsworked almost invisiblyfrom the backroom, wiring the deals politically,while the younger andhungrier Burum, whowas more steeped in theins and outs of the building industry, along withhis brother Phil, took ona more public role in thepromotion of the project.A major issue was theneed for infrastructure toaccommodate the project, in particular floodcontrol. Accounts varyas to what the ColoniesPartners proposed to thecounty, the county floodcontrol division and JonMikels, who was then thesupervisor for the SecondDistrict, which included all of Upland at thattime, as well as adjoiningRancho Cucamonga andSan Antonio Heights.According to county officials, the Colonies Partners wanted the county,through its flood controldivision, along with theArmy Corps of Engineers, to pay for the lion’sshare of the flood controlchannelization and retention basins as part of adeal that would involvethose water-holding-andconveying facilitiesbeing built on propertywithin the original 489acres or on another 22.3acres the Colonies Partners had tied up south ofthe project area. Mikels,however, was adamantthat neither the countynor its flood control division should defray anypart of the cost of providing the infrastructurethat would be requiredfor the project to proceed. The supervisor became further entrenchedin that view when helearned that the Colonies Partners had sold for 17 million 40 of the 489acres at the northern fifthof the property to theCalifornia Department ofTransportation as rightof-way for the 210 Freeway. By closing the dealwith CalTrans, Richardshad made for the Colonies Partners almost 1million more than theconsortium had paid forthe entirety of the acreage. That 17 millionincluded payment for theproperty and what wasreferred to as “severance damages,” meaningany encumbrance on theproperty that remainedin the possession of theColonies Partners as aconsequence of the construction of the freeway,including paying forneeded flood control facilities.Mikels was highlycognizant that the placement of the freeway alongthe north-lying portionof the Colonies Partners’property had transitionedwhat was empty andunimproved land intoprime commercial acreage, greatly enhancingits value. Given that theproperty had been designated on zoning mapsas open space and wasshown as undevelopable without the stormdrains, basins and channels required to preventthat property and otherproperties next to it fromPage 2The San Bernardino CountySentinelPublished in San Bernardino County.The Sentinel’s main office is located at 10788 CivicCenter Drive in Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730A Fortunado Publication in conjunction withCountywide News ServiceMark Gutglueck, PublisherCall (951) 567-1936to learn of locations where the Sentinelis available or to provide news tips10808 Foothill Blvd., Suite 160-446Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730SBCSentinel@yahoo.comLegal Notice Department 909 957 9998Message Line 909-276 5796being inundated duringheavy rains, Mikels insisted that the project beheld in abeyance untilsuch time as the ArmyCorps of Engineers gotaround to constructinga regional drainage network that would alleviateflooding there or the Colonies Partners itself tookup the construction of thewater diversion systemneeded. At one point,according to the Colonies Partners, Mikelssaid he was unwilling toput up 1 million towardthe project the ColoniesPartners was proposingas the county’s share ofthe infrastructure burden. Similarly, accordingto the Colonies Partners,the county was unwilling to throw 3 milliontoward the constructionof the 67-acre holdingbasin to be located on theColonies Partners’ property. Richards has morerecently maintained thaton one occasion whenhe and Burum had metwith Mikels, they offeredhim a three-ring binderwhich contained drawings, specifications andother details relating toa 25 million basin theywere proposing to havethe county flood controldivision construct ontheir property, towardwhich they were willingto provide the land at nocost and cover 12.5 million of the constructionprice. Mikels, Richardssaid, refused to even lookat the binder.Ultimately, in 2002,the Colonies Partnerssued the county and itsflood control divisionover the outstandingdrainage and flood control issues relating to theproject. That same year,Richards engineered apolitical coup to removeMikels, whom he andBurum considered to bethe primary obstructionto the project, from office. They did so by de-livering, either directlyor indirectly, 70,000in political donations toPaul Biane, then a Rancho Cucamonga councilman, who challengedMikels in the 2002 election for the Second District supervisorial position. Also running forreelection that year wasDistrict Attorney DennisStout.There had been a longstanding previous political alliance betweenMikels and Stout. WhenMikels had been electedin 1977 as a charter member of the Rancho Cucamonga City Council,he had appointed Stoutto serve as a member ofthe Rancho CucamongaPlanning Commission.Thereafter, when at thattime the mayor was appointed from among thecouncil ranks by a voteof its members, Mikelshad acceded to that post.In 1986, when Mikelsstepped up to run, ultimately successfully, forSecond District count

whose wife, Angelique Bonanno, is currently a member of the San Bernardino Symphony Board; San Bernardino City Councilman-elect Damon L. Alexander, a retired federal law en-forcement officer and the founding president of the 100 Black Men of