From the listing agent's brochure:

"The World Renowned Shamrock Ranch 17,050 Acres

Shamrock Ranch Laytonville CA

Price: $23,950,000

Property Type: Rural Residential, Farm & Ranch, Land (Acreage), Vineyard, Vineyard Estate, Estate, Luxury Home, Waterfront

County: Mendocino

Wine Region: Mendocino

Bedrooms: 7

Bathrooms: 8

Home sq. ft: 8,951

Lot Size: 17,050 Acres

View: Vineyard, River, Lake, Mountain, Hill, Forest, Valley, Pastoral, Panoramic

The ranch is known world-wide for its hunting opportunities, and enjoys a profitable hunting guide business. Phenomenal wildlife abounds: Tule Elk, Blacktail Deer, Wild turkeys, Boar, Quail, Grouse, Bears & more. It has a very large, professional grade equestrian facility, as well as carrying a profitable cattle operation with its own hay production. It has abundant water with approx. 2 miles of Eel River frontage; year around creeks and lakes - some stocked with trophy size bass. There is a fully outfitted hunting lodge enclave; a 2100' turf airstrip & more. The improvements are spectacular: The main, Mediterranean Style 7 bedroom, 8.5 bath home reflects superior craftsmanship throughout and is very appealing. It overlooks the beautiful 25 acre vineyard in full contract production. There are several other homes and outbuildings...call for a brochure with more details and maps."

 

Plenty of potential for an eco-community college centered eco-village set within a 17,000 Nature Preserve. The sales of eco-village homes will pay for the property. The eco-community college students will fund the operation of the school and village systems. A green industrial park will add to the funding as will a world-class horse facility and educational camping, farm crops, and cottage industries.

An Ark Park where endangered species are raised and released would be a featured attraction for eco-tourists. And a well designed natural landscaping eco-village community for people who who want to live in a sustainable manner so as to relieve Mother Earth of the heavy burden of carrying humanity that cares not enough for Her.

 

My inquiry to the Mendocino County Planning and Building Commission re Shamrock Ranch eco-community subdivision development potential:

My query is about how your Planning & Building Commission would view a proposal for creating an eco-community technology teaching college centered-eco-community planned unit development, everything planned with state-of-the-art green technology modeling the college's instruction, all set within a large wildlife preserve, a 17,000 one to be specific, the Shamrock Ranch, which we think may contain perhaps one of California's most concentrated collection of wildlife to be found due to the ranch's professional hunting club operation for years.

We would reverse the hunting club policy to nature preserve and that would be a major focus of our eco-community, human beings learning how to live in close proximity with wildlife as we learn more and more how wildlife health and human community are co-joined.

We would be planning for a fairly large scale community of 2400 units, set in clusters of 4, 8, 16 (two-story) in appropriate site situations within the low-lying hills with the college and agricultural lands closer to Hwy 101.

Any commercial enterprise would be situated closer to 101 as well and these would be all eco-community related businesses as the community as a whole would be a teaching model for green community promotion to offset global warming, pollution and over-consumption of natural resources.

In line with this eco-philosophy we would not be aiming for high-end homes but co-housing as the general rule and as inexpensive as cost-effectiveness would allow. In other words, we think we can offer low-income housing qualification yet be quite quality constructed homes for people, teachers, even retirees as the prices would be comparable to low cost co-housing and could qualify for FED support. As a elder and should be retired person myself in the eco-community world I live in a senior rent-subsidized complex and these kind of places will be needed more and more as the whole population shifts. The incomes are guaranteed, the units are always filled so they are stable community anchors even in rural communities.

The eco-college operation will be another main economic anchor for the whole community. The land is large enough that we can have some light eco-technology industry too in a green industrial park type of situation. There would be some substantial farming to make the whole community as self-reliant as possible food wise. The same with energy production, wind, solar, water. We want to become a working model for how to plan eco-communities that interface with wildlife so that we can reverse the so-far inevitable destruction of wildlife habitat by human community invasion.

This is a general outline of what we are thinking in a planned unit eco-community development on the Shamrock Ranch. What would you people think about such a development there viz a vie your Planning & Building requirements?

Response from Mendocino County Planner Andy Gustavson was positive. The Planning Commission's main concern is with taking land out of the Williamson Act for community development. They liked our eco-village green development goals and so I think we would have a cooperative relationship with Mendocino County Planning.

 

Shamrock will be a "eutopia", that is, a "good place" and a place where we all can build and live our best communitarian dreams.

Here are some things I would like to see in this Shamrock Community:

A low-income housing retirement community for aging hippies like myself.

A real village atmosphere, not commercialized tourist stop.

A town Theater.

A Cottage Hospital.

A small airport with air ambulance service.

A Communergy Room with IT and everything for community members to plug into the world and know what's going on at any time.

Large-industrial scale 3-D printing plant for making our eco-village homes and buildings, stoves and refrigerators, household appliances, robots, and as income producing industry.

Traditional Ecological Culture: TEC or Native American ways of environmental living.

Barn Dances in a big old barn.

World-class race horse raising: "Super Horses" specializing in creating a breed of race horse that has strong ankles that do not break when pounding hard down the track like today's over-bred Thoroughbreds are prone to. Breeding Thoroughbreds with tall Shires or other large draft horse to produce a very tall horse that can outrun Thoroughbreds yet doesn't break ankles.

Culture Exchanges with foreign land communities. Also Trade Exchanges too.

An Eco-Dude Ranch operation and Photo Hunting instead of the old Hunting Club operation Shamrock used to have.

 

I'm sure you all have eco-village communitarian dreams too.

Shamrock can be a place to realize them!

 

 

If you're interested in the Shamrock Eco-Community Project, please contact me, Steve Lewis, at: arielmessenger@gmail.com