Real estate management software technology company Yardi Systems wants to build housing on a portion of its Goleta property.

Yardi wants to convert an existing 100,000-square-foot commercial office building into 374 apartments and a childcare center. The building is at 490 S. Fairview Avenue.

“Repurposing an already developed and underutilized property to help address the local housing crisis makes all the sense in the world,” Ben Romo, a political consultant who represents Yardi, told Noozhawk. “We hope this project might help begin to address our community’s critical need for additional housing.”

The City of Goleta has scheduled a meeting for July 20 to review its Housing Element update. The latest version of the Housing Element will include a plan to rezone the commercial property, which is in a business park, to build the housing.

“If included in the city’s Housing Element, we expect it will take the city a year to rezone the property,” Romo said. 

Once the land is rezoned, Yardi is expected to submit its formal proposal. In the meantime, the company has begun to reach out to surrounding neighbors, businesses, and community stakeholders to get their input.

Yardi intends to set aside 60 units as below-market for low-income residents and another 25 as affordable for moderate-income residents. The units will be available to the community at large, not just Yardi employees.

One-bedroom and two-bedroom units will be the focus of the project.

Most of the development be within the footprint of the existing 100,000-square-foot office building, “allowing for ample parking, a substantial amount of green space, and the preservation of trees already located on the property,” Romo said.

Goleta and the rest of the county is currently under pressure from the state of California to build more housing. The city has been going back and forth with the state on revisions to its Housing Element, a document laying out plans for more residential development. Officials with the Department of Housing and Community Development criticized the city’s original plan in September 2020 for not doing enough to specifically and realistically identify commercial sites for housing.

Goleta’s mandate from the state is to zone land to build 1,837 units between 2023 and 2031

The Yardi project, however, is a sign that Goleta is now serious about finding commercial land to build housing, after its initial pushback from the state. The county has proposed rezoning wide swaths of agriculture land, mostly on the edges of Goleta, to address its state mandates for housing.
The county, by contrast, wants to rezone the Glen Annie Golf Club to build 1,500 units and the San Marcos Growers site to build another 1,000.

There’s been widespread opposition to the Glen Annie proposal.

At Yardi, about two dozen employees work inside the existing building and there is also conference space for trainings and a warehouse. Office employees would be moved to Yardi’s other buildings in the same business district.

Like a lot of tech companies during the pandemic, Yardi saw many employees move to remote work, so there’s less need for commercial office space.

Goleta City Councilman James Kyriaco said the proposal is exactly the type of thinking a community should have when it comes to housing, because it eases the jobs-housing imbalance.

“Converting an office building to residential use transforms something that worsens our housing crisis into the one thing that helps solve it,” Kyriaco said.

Kyriaco, a longtime advocate for more childcare facilities to help working families, is optimistic.

“I am excited to learn more about how this project can address both our local housing and childcare needs and how the community responds to it,” Kyriaco said.