Valley titans John Harris and Ben Ewell team to pitch riverfront planned community

A high-end developer and one of the central San Joaquin Valley’s most prominent businessmen are in the early stages of pitching Fresno County officials on a plan for housing, businesses and possibly a college campus in a mostly undeveloped area along the Kings River.

The plan is being put together by water rights attorney and developer Ben Ewell and race horse breeder and entrepreneur John Harris. Ewell was behind the pricey Brighton Crest community next to Table Mountain Casino near Friant and the overall Millerton New Town venture nearby. Harris, one of the region’s most generous campaign contributors, owns the sprawling Harris River Ranch along the river due east of Fresno.

Ewell and Harris quietly submitted papers to the county last year seeking to have the riverfront property inserted into the county general plan as a special study area. The county Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed last September to apply that designation while the county is in the process of updating its 22-year-old general plan.

Among other things, a county general plan divides various areas into residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and other designations, which are used to guide future planning decisions. The current general plan labels the Harris River Ranch property as agricultural. Unless the revised general plan earmarks it for development, converting it to residential and educational uses would require a general plan amendment, which is usually more difficult to obtain than a rezoning.

While the development plan has generated no known resistance, that could be because it has received no publicity. It has been an action item on the supervisors’ agenda a couple of times, but it didn’t generate public discussion.

Harris says he envisions 400 to 500 homes near his horse-breeding ranch, “nice but not so nice that people couldn’t afford them.”

He said he’s hoping construction could begin in five years or so.

He said he has discussed the plan with some of his neighbors and they are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

“Nobody seems to oppose it,” Harris said. “It would enhance the value of their property.”

A third-generation ranching magnate, Harris is probably best known as the former operator of the Harris cattle and meatpacking operations that he sold in 2019. He is also one of the Valley’s most significant political players, having supported a long list of Republican candidates nationally and regionally over the years. He’s also known for hedging his bets. He has been a consistent supporter of Democratic Congressman Jim Costa of Fresno and he hosted a fundraiser for California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, in 2019.

Harris also has contributed regularly to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, helping Valley growers maintain her ear on water issues.

Asked if he had contributed to most of the current Fresno County supervisors, who could ultimately rule on the development plan, he replied, “Probably.”

While paperwork submitted to the county proposes commercial uses and even a college, Harris said decisions on those aspects remain in the distance. The paperwork stresses the relative lack of educational attainment among valley residents and proposes to address that with a four-year college campus but no specifics are included.

A project of that magnitude would almost certainly be criticized as “leapfrog” development that could induce growth toward the foothills and away from existing development. Residential developments away from developed areas can drain government budgets because property taxes generated by the housing often don’t cover the cost of extending utilities, police and fire protection and other urban services.

Ewell and Harris are working with an Orange County land use planning company, PlaceWorks, which has contracts with several California cities to prepare general plans and perform other planning services. Its closest office is in San Luis Obispo.

Significant development along the river also obviously would create environmental concerns. However, the head of the Kings River Conservancy says his group would likely not be opposed as long as there was no construction in any of the riparian flood plain.

“Let me be cautious,” said Vern Crowder, executive director of the conservancy. “Formally we have not as an organization taken a position. But we don’t see, since most of that property is in farming right now, we don’t see development having a direct water impact on the area.”

“We do assume that the riparian areas near the river, that are natural, we’re assuming the county would probably want them preserved because they are too low for any development,” he continued. “Preserving the habitats along the river would be very important.”

Crowder, a retired Bank of America executive, mentioned that he was once Harris’ banker.

Harris River Ranch on the Kings River

The ranch is a showplace of white fences, green pastures and grazing horses surrounding Harris’ stately home. He bought it in 1978 from the Russell Giffen family. It was rumored at the time that Jane Fonda had been on the verge of acquiring the property, which sits between the river and Trimmer Springs Road. Harris said recently, however, that he had never heard that.

The horse ranch makes up about 4% of Harris’ riverside holding of more than 6,000 acres. Portions of the Patrick Swayze movie “Road House” were filmed there in the 1980s.

Of the property, a Harris Farms website says, “The rich, sandy loam soil and underlying limestone work with ideal water conditions to nourish 240 acres of large, expansive pastures conducive to the proper growth and development of weanlings and yearlings.”

Harris is one of the most substantial race horse breeders on the West Coast. Until 2019 he also owned one of the region’s largest beef cattle operations, Coalinga-based Harris Ranch Beef, which was sold to Central Valley Meat Co. of Hanford.

In a 2021 letter to the county, Ewell thanked county planning officials for meeting with the project proponents and dangled the prospect of a college campus. It said he was “in the process of exploring potential implementation strategies for bringing an additional higher education campus to Fresno.”

Ewell wrote that the property could accommodate an unspecified amount of housing, commercial and recreational uses and hiking trails in areas not now open to the public.

He said that designating the property as a special study area would not obligate the county to take any future action and that moving ahead with development would require rezoning and an environmental assessment under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Ewell said the project’s location would create opportunities for new hiking trails in areas not now open to the public. He said it also could provide space and facilities for police and fire services in the area.

Said Harris: “We’re not going to do anything to jeopardize the area. We hope to enhance it.”

Royal Calkins is a former Bee reporter and editor. He later was editor of the Monterey Herald. He writes regularly for Voices of Monterey Bay news magazine website and lives in Coarsegold. He can be reached at calkinsroyal@gmail.com.