Haskell’s Landing Tied Up in Goleta Planning Commission

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/1209_goleta_planning_commission/

By Sonia Fernandez, Noozhawk Staff Writer

With one commissioner absent, a 2-2 stalemate sends the project to the Goleta City Council for a decision.

[Note: The in-lieu fees for ten affordable units required by the city’s inclusionary policy total $806,500. An earlier version of this story was incorrect.]

After a grueling hearing Monday, the Goleta Planning Commission deadlocked 2-2 on a vote to approve Haskell’s Landing, a residential project in western Goleta. Commissioners Brent Daniels and Doris Kavanagh voted for the proposal, Commissioners Bill Shelor and Jonny Wallis voted against it, and Commissioner Julie Solomon was not present.

Because of the tie vote, applicant Chuck Lande of the Oly Chadmar Sandpiper General Partnership will be bringing his case before the City Council in the near future.

Haskell’s Landing is a 100-unit project proposed just north of Sandpiper Golf Course, south of Highway 101 and the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. It is the latest incarnation of a series of proposals for residential projects in that roughly 14.5-acre lot, the most recent of which was Residences at Sandpiper, which was the subject of a fierce legal battle between the applicant and Goleta’s charter City Council.

“The timing of the project is not right,” Wallis said of the Haskell’s Landing plan. Monday’s lengthy hearing came at a time when the City Council is hip-deep in General Plan amendments. The two amendments required by the project — changes to the affordable housing requirement and a buffer zone decrease from Devereux Creek, which runs through its middle — are the kind of amendments, according to Wallis, that generate a lot of concern in the community.

Kavanagh praised the project, however.

“I think this project fits the spot well,” she said. The project contains a range of housing styles from studios to three-bedroom units in what the architects are calling “California style.” The roughly 60-to-40 ratio of open space to built space, and the proposed green-building elements in the duplexes and triplexes were also attractive elements for her.

A big selling point for the project was the developer’s commitment of $1.5 million for a new fire station that would served the traditionally underserved western end of Goleta. The city has already begun the process of acquiring land for the facility.

Opinions were about evenly divided among the public in the hearing room. Environmentalists urged the commission to keep the current 100-foot creek buffer zone rule, while other community members argued that the work the developer proposes to do would improve the creek over and above its current state.

Meanwhile, others were concerned about the developer’s plan to include only 10 affordable units while paying in-lieu fees — about $80,000 per unit for 10 units — to compensate for the 20 percent affordable requirement that new housing projects in Goleta are supposed to have.

Those concerns were countered by the notion from the project’s supporters that housing could never be truly affordable in the area anyway, and that what was really needed were the kinds of housing this project offered.

“It’s a project we need in the area,” said resident Robert Rice.

Resident George Relles, meanwhile, expressed his discomfort with a “late-hit” memo that was distributed Monday on the project. He said the public had limited time to go over the lengthy document.

“There’s no reason to take action today,” said Relles, who urged the commission to wait until the General Plan could be used as a guideline instead of changing a policy for the project, and for the rest of the city.

With Solomon’s absence, the panel was at a stalemate and the applicant requested a denial so he could take the project to the City Council, in hopes it will overturn the Planning Commission’s decision.

Write to sfernandez@noozhawk.com

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