This is a big one.

A Los Angeles County developer has proposed building 255 apartments in an 8-story building near Santa Barbara’s Old Mission.

The project, slated for 505 E. Los Olivos St., would include 51 low-income units and 434 parking spaces beneath the apartments.

“We are looking forward to working with the government and our neighbors to bring this project to Santa Barbara,” said Ben Eilenberg, chief operating officer for So Cal Industrial Equities, doing business as The Mission LLC. “It provides much-needed low-income and market-rate housing for an area that desperately needs more housing.”

The formal application was submitted July 22, but the preliminary application was submitted a year ago when the city’s Housing Element was not certified, which makes it a Builder’s Remedy project.

The city of Santa Barbara late Tuesday submitted a response to the applicant and deemed their project incomplete. The letter, obtained by Noozhawk, states that the city is requesting elevation drawings, specifics on the affordability of the housing, and more data on the parking, open yard, site plan, lighting, and other specifics related to the application.

The applicant has 90 days to respond.

The city has less discretionary review with this project. The maximum height allowed for residential projects in the downtown core is 48 feet, unless the city grants an exception. In this area, the maximum height is 30 feet.

The developer, under a separate entity, is also behind a 30-unit project nearby on Grand Avenue, which is currently in court.

The site is across a driveway from the Mission cemetery and diagonal to the Rose Garden. From the street, it is covered by trees, hedges and a stonewall. The property is the former site of the Mount Calvary Monastery.

A marketing brochure for the property, which sits on five acres, states that it “rests at the top of a gentle slope from the ocean to the low hills of Santa Barbara, perched optimistically and peacefully over the city landscape, and looks back reverently toward the towering mountains behind. This location is the spiritual and civic heart of Santa Barbara, and the Mount Calvary Monastery property will forever hold this unique distinction.”

The property previously was the St. Mary’s Retreat House and was purchased by Mount Calvary Monastery in 2013.

The City of Santa Barbara is reviewing the application to determine whether it is complete.

“This application still needs to be reviewed, so I can’t comment on the specifics of this project at this time, but I can generally say that any project in the vicinity would need careful consideration of historic and cultural resources in the area, consideration of the fire hazards, and particular attention to the tight pinch point of a major evacuation route out of Mission Canyon,” said Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon, who represents the district the project is in.

In 1885, a well-known textile industrialist and philanthropic family from Rhode Island led by Rowland II and Margaret Hazard were vacationing in Santa Barbara and decided to purchase property here to build a winter home. They bought the parcel owned by Dr. Knox adjacent to the Mission, and subsequently tore down the main house (but kept the cottage) and constructed what is now the monastery house.

The site became “known as ‘Mission Hill,’ and their new home soon became a center of Santa Barbara cultural life and philanthropy,” according to the marketing brochure for the site.

The Hazards also funded the construction of the stone bridge over Mission Creek in front of the property. The buildings on the site are about 11,570 square feet, and the overall site is about 41,000 square feet.

Some neighbors are not happy.

“Who the heck are these people to come into our very beautiful and very beloved community and think they can screw it up?” said Shelley Bookspan, acting president of the Riviera Association. “I don’t get it. I don’t know why they would want to.”

She called the proposal “appalling.”

Bookspan, who said she was speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the Riviera Association, said there’s no doubt the city has a housing crisis.

“This is clearly not the solution,” she said. “It would ruin Santa Barbara. There is no way it would pencil out to be affordable housing. To destroy the value of being in Santa Barbara by putting housing where it doesn’t belong makes no sense to me.”