Oroville Sold City Land for $1. It's Now Listed at $5.3 Million
Summary
A Butte County civil grand jury found that the City of Oroville, California sold 12.9 acres of city-owned land to a single developer for one dollar in 2022, with no competitive bidding and with the contract's performance-guarantee exhibit left blank -- and that the Mayor signed the incomplete agreement anyway. The land has sat undeveloped ever since. The buyer has since borrowed $1.5 million against it and won't say how the money was spent, while relisting the same parcels for $5,338,704.
A no-bid deal to the developer who "walked on water"
The City had tried this before. In the summer of 2012 it signed a similar agreement with Snyder Commercial Real Estate, keeping ownership of the Gateway parcels -- three lots along Feather River Boulevard near Highway 70 -- while Snyder was supposed to build them out. Almost nothing got built. By April 2021 the Council was ready to try again, and turned to local developer Mark Mendez. A fact-finding investigation the Council itself later commissioned found that City staff had been in contact with at least three other developers interested in Gateway -- Margetich Development, Location Arts, and Pajouh Automotive Center among them -- but concluded that reassigning the existing Snyder contract to Mendez's company was "more expeditious and beneficial to the City's interests" than opening the project to competitive bids. No Request for Proposals was ever issued.
On May 17, 2022, the Council paid Snyder $10,000 to release its claim on Gateway to Mendez's company. Three weeks later, it authorized the actual transfer: 12.9 acres, sold to CMG Project 1200, LLC for the total sum of $1.00. Buried inside the signed contract, Exhibit 5 -- the Milestone Schedule that was supposed to lock the developer into deadlines, and give the City a right to take the land back if he missed them, was never filled in. The page that made it into the executed agreement instead read "TO BE ATTACHED BEFORE SIGNING ... FOR FORM ONLY -- DO NOT SIGN." It was signed anyway, with no date next to the Mayor's signature. The grand jury calls the sale price "far below fair market value" -- intentionally so, in service of getting the parcels developed -- but says the missing exhibit and reverter clause meant the City gave up its only leverage to make sure that development actually happened.
View data as table
| 2012 | Agreement with Snyder | City retains ownership |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | No RFP issued | Council directs staff to negotiate with Mendez alone |
| 2022 | $1.00 | 12.9 acres sold to CMG Project 1200, LLC |
| 2026 | $5,338,704 | Listing price, still undeveloped |
The land as collateral
Nothing has been built on Gateway since 2022. What has happened, according to the fact-finding investigation Municipal Resource Group completed for the City in September 2025, is that Mendez borrowed $1.5 million against the land the City gave him for free. Asked how he used the loan, he told the investigator it was "none of their (the City's) business ... they don't own the property, I do." None of the current or former City staff interviewed could point to any of that money going into Gateway itself. By January 2026, the same undeveloped parcels were listed for sale -- not by the City, but by Mendez's company -- for $5,338,704.
- Finding F1: the missing exhibit and the resulting "loss of City land and the resulting legal fees to pursue a solution negatively impacts all people paying taxes to and receiving services from the City."
- Recommendation R2: the Council should pursue the contracted law firm's professional malpractice insurance, since the City Attorney signed the agreement "approved as to form and content" despite the blank exhibit.
- Recommendation R1: Council members should read every page of every agreement and delay votes until contracts are complete -- effective immediately.
- Under Penal Code Sections 933 and 933.05, the Oroville City Council must respond to Findings F1-F7 and Recommendations R1-R7 on the public record within 90 days of the report -- by early September 2026.
A civil grand jury's findings aren't a court judgment, and its recommendations aren't orders -- the Council can respond to any of them by simply disagreeing. What the law does require is that Oroville answer, on the public record, within 90 days of the report. Whether the Council pursues its insurer over the missing exhibit, and whether either the $1.5 million loan or the $5.34 million listing ever traces back to anything built on Gateway, are questions this outlet can check against that public response once it's filed.
Sources(4) ▾
- 2025-2026 Butte County Civil Grand Jury (filed with the Butte County Superior Court), "City of Oroville: Good Intentions Gone Awry" — chapter of the Fiscal Year 2025 to 2026 Butte County Civil Grand Jury Report (2026-06-05) — The Oroville chapter (report's own internal pages 23-41, master-PDF pages 27-45 of the 84-page consolidated FY2025-26 report) of the impaneled county civil grand jury's annual findings, dated June 5, 2026 on its own title page and published by the county as part of the full report in late June 2026. Covers the Gateway Project: the City's 2022 sale of 12.9 acres for $1.00, the missing performance-milestone exhibit, and the resulting findings (F1-F7) and recommendations (R1-R7). Fetched directly and converted with pdftotext -layout; page citations below use the master PDF's own page count. buttecounty.net · original document
- Municipal Resource Group, LLC (Fred Deltorchio, Esq. and Mary Egan, private investigator), commissioned by the City of Oroville City Council, The Gateway Project — Confidential Administrative Fact-Finding, City of Oroville (2025-09-01) — A 188-page third-party fact-finding investigation the Oroville City Council itself commissioned in 2025 to determine how the Gateway parcels were transferred to CMG Project 1200, LLC, and how developer Mark Mendez used a loan taken against the land; the Council later made the report public. Contains direct witness and Mendez interview transcripts. The Butte County Civil Grand Jury lists this report among the source documents for its own investigation. Title page dated 'September 2025' with no specific day; accessed via the CDN mirror actionnewsnow.com used to publish the City-released report (the city's own agenda-packet posting for this document was not independently located). Fetched directly and converted with pdftotext -layout; page numbers below are the master-PDF page count. bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com · original document
- City of Oroville, City Clerk's Office — City of Oroville (2026-07-19) — The City Clerk's official contact page, re-fetched to source the office address and phone number used in this article's call-to-action; the Oroville City Council is the body the Grand Jury requires to respond in writing to F1-F7 and R1-R7, and the Clerk's office is the Council's public point of contact. orovilleca.gov · original document
- Action News Now (KHSL/KNVN), Grand Jury finds Gateway project agreement failures cost Oroville valuable protections (2026-07-14) — Secondary local news coverage of the Grand Jury report's release, used only as a pointer to confirm the report's public release date and that the City Council's 90-day response window was still running as of publication; not used to source any dollar figure (those are cited to the Grand Jury report and the MRG fact-finding report directly). actionnewsnow.com · original document
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On June 7, 2022, the Oroville City Council voted unanimously to sell 12.9 acres of city-owned land -- the Gateway parcels -- to a single developer, CMG Project 1200, LLC, for one dollar. The 2025-2026 Butte County Civil Grand Jury -- a panel of citizen volunteers California counties impanel each year to investigate local government on the public's behalf -- found that the signed agreement's performance-guarantee exhibit, meant to set the developer's deadlines, was left as a blank page marked "do not sign." The Mayor signed it anyway. Four years later, the land sits exactly as it did the day of the sale -- undeveloped, and listed for resale at $5,338,704.