Having found the Santa Barbara Ranch Project‘s Final Environmental Impact Report to be adequate, and having chosen one of several design alternatives for the Gaviota coast property, the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission on Monday will start in on the first round of approvals the developer needs to get some homes on the ground.
“We’re pleased at the option they picked,” said Jim Youngson, representing developer Matt Osgood. “Matt Osgood’s gone through great effort in working with Rancho Dos Pueblos in carving out Alternative 1B.”
Alternative 1B, also known as “Alternative Prime,” was unanimously selected by planning commissioners on July 10, after a full day of discussion on the relative merits of several development proposals for the rural Naples area. The plan calls for 71 homes on 3,249 acres of land combined from the original 1888 Naples townsite and adjacent Dos Pueblos Ranch.
Not so pleased was the environmentalist Naples Coalition, which complained of the “rush” with which the commission considered the new Alternative 1B proposal, and the larger development footprint that would take up some current agricultural operations.
“The Naples Coalition would have preferred that the Planning Commission endorsed a smaller development project, which would avoid impacting sacred Chumash village sites and not introduce luxury housing into Gaviota’s agricultural foothills,” Naples Coalition president Phil McKenna said in a statement issued after the July 10 decision.
Naples Coalition attorney Marc Chytilo lobbied for more in-depth analysis of the new alternative and continued to urge the commission to consider other development alternatives contained within the 485 acres, including options that would cluster homes or even a “Grid” development of the original 125-homes-on-485-acres that would have the tracts developed individually.
“It’s my belief that should somebody seek to build on that bluff area, it would be a person with the capacity and resources to buy a number of lots in that bluff area,” Chytilo said.
While there wouldn’t be the comprehensive big-picture planning control the county has in the other development scenarios, according to Chytilo, prospective developers would have to deal with the California Coastal Act and its regulations.
Chytilo’s push to have the commissioners consider development on the 485-acre site raised some eyebrows in the Osgood camp.
“We thought Alternative 1B was a win-win,” said Youngson, adding that it was reflective of the environmentalists’ concern with the viewshed. According to the planning staff’s report, Alt 1 would decrease the visual impact of the development along the Gaviota coast, one of the reasons at least one of the commissioners chose the alternative.
“I think the Alt 1B does that best out of any of the alternative,” said Commissioner Cecilia Brown, who described herself as “a visual resources person.”
Speaking for herself at least, Brown commented that one of the biggest considerations she, and perhaps her commission colleagues, had was what Osgood attorney Stan Lamport called “the Naples Problem,” or the underlying rights granted by the original 1888 map of Naples to develop on that section of the Gaviota coast.
“That’s the Problem: they have the right to develop these lots,” she said.
The Santa Barbara Ranch Project inches its way back up to the Board of Supervisors later this year after a couple more rounds with the Planning Commission, which has yet to make certain land-use approvals and come up with a recommendation for the supervisors.
Noozhawk staff writer Sonia Fernandez can be reached at sfernandez@noozhawk.com.
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