The Community

The Newcastle Infill Opportunity Area covers just under 820 acres including the historic center of Newcastle, the immediately adjacent neighborhoods, and areas to the north and east, beyond the highways and railroad tracks that help define the community’s geography. The topography of the area reflects the transition from the valley to the foothills, with increasingly hilly terrain. The topography combines with the highways and tracks to result in fragmentation that presents challenges to establishing community cohesion and convenient and comfortable transportation connections within the area. With the exception of the relatively tightknit community core, which has a traditional foothill town feeling, the development pattern in the area is scattered and diverse. The southwestern part of the area is dominated by Newcastle Elementary School District and Placer County Office of Education facilities, including Newcastle Elementary School/Newcastle Charter School, Harvest Ridge Cooperative Charter, the Onorato Education Center, and Secret Ravine Special Education Center. In the southeastern part of the area, north and south of Indian Hill Road, are a few highway-oriented commercial uses, a driving range, a California Highway Patrol office, and a small residential enclave featuring Chantry Hill Field, a little league baseball field that dates back to 1901. North of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and along State Route 193/Taylor Road are assorted heavy commercial/light industrial uses, including an aggregate extraction/mining operation.

The Newcastle area has excellent highway access, with ramps at State Route 93 and Newcastle Road less than a mile apart. Placer County Transit’s Taylor Road Shuttle provides local bus service, with connections to Auburn Station to the east and Penryn, Loomis, and Rocklin (including Sierra College) to the west. The Newcastle area is also popular among road cyclists, with Taylor Road and Indian Hill Road providing access to routes throughout the Sierra Nevada Foothills.

Land use and development policy in the area is covered mostly by the Countywide General Plan, with the exception being approximately 60 acres in the northeastern-most part, which is governed by the Ophir General Plan. This is the only one of the five infill opportunity areas that is not covered entirely by one of the County’s community or area plans, which means that there is very little County land use and development policy that speaks directly to Newcastle and the immediately adjacent areas.