Railroad Trestle/Historical Resource.  In Friends of the Willow Glen Trestle v. City of San Jose, (6^th Dist. 2016) 2 Cal.App.5^th 457, petitioners challenged the City of San Jose’s decision to not to prepare a full environmental impact report (EIR) for a project to replace an old wooden trestle with a new steel bridge.  The trestle is a wooden railroad bridge that was built in 1922 as part of a “spur line” to provide “rail freight access” to “canning districts” near downtown San Jose.  The trial court struck down the City’s approval of the project, holding that petitioners had demonstrated that there was a “fair argument” that the project would have significant environmental impacts (thereby requiring an EIR), because there was a fair argument that the bridge was a historical resource.  However, the appellate court reversed, holding that the more deferential “substantial evidence” standard of judicial review applied to the City’s determination that the bridge was not a historical resource.

An effective way to add value to real property is to increase its development potential, and a good way to do that is to subdivide it so that a greater number of units can be constructed on it.

Legal Overview

Any division of a single legal parcel into two or more parcels is a “division of land” subject to the state Subdivision Map Act (“SMA”, Gov’t Code sections 66410 et seq.) and local regulation.