Developers may one day have to slap solar panels on their homes
or foot the bill for a city park if they hope to secure building
permits from local officials.
Gilroy – Developers may one day have to slap solar panels on their homes or foot the bill for a city park if they hope to secure building permits from local officials.
Councilmen are considering giving “value-added” projects extra points in Gilroy’s building-permit competition, known as the Residential Development Ordinance, according to City Planner Melissa Durkin. The city’s RDO competition takes place at least once a decade and awards building permits for market-rate homes based on a 200 point scale.
“In the past we gave points (to developers) for doing what they had to do anyway,” Durkin explained, referring to road construction, land conservation, and other design features required of all projects. “We’re looking to allocate higher levels of points to developers who are going to give the city something beyond those basics.”
Councilmen Craig Gartman and Russ Valiquette have voiced support for giving extra points, for instance, to developers who finance public parks as part of their projects.
“The problem we have is here we have parks almost 15 years behind schedule,” Gartman said. “This way we can have parks put in ahead of schedule, so that when the first people move in, the park is already there.”
Points also could go to energy-efficient homes and high-density projects located near public transportation.
Connie Rogers, a former councilwoman and member of local environmental group Save Open Space, welcomed revisions to the city’s RDO ranking system.
“There’s no sense in giving points on the scoreboard for things that (developers) have to do anyway,” Rogers said. “I’m surprised to think that they’ve been doing that … I would like to see points given for environmentally inclined practices. Those kinds of things should count for a little more.”
But local developer Gary Walton, who has focused much of his time on downtown projects, warned that such changes will not be without consequence, as new regulations would further increase already inflated home prices.
“All these things cost money and people are already having problems buying homes in the area,” he said. “It’s really gotten to the point where they’re pricing everybody out.”
A revamped point system may come into play by July 2006, when officials are considering holding an RDO competition for the roughly 200 building permits remaining for market-rate homes.
“A lot of people are getting anxious because they know there aren’t a lot of allocations available,” Durkin said. “If they don’t do anything in this next round, they’re waiting until 2013, 2014.”
Developers may well have to wait, however, if local officials shift those permits to maintain momentum on downtown redevelopment.
The area has undergone a major resurgence in the he last two years, since councilmen waived up-front building construction fees to encourage redevelopment.
Today, the city has more than 20 downtown projects under way, and nine more under discussion. Councilmen allotted an additional 100 permits to the area earlier this year.
A proposal to issue a new set of building permits for the downtown area has met with criticism from those most wedded to the idea of preserving the city’s growth limit, which restricts citywide construction to 3,450 new homes through 2013.
Councilman Roland Velasco has been the most outspoken critic of additional allotments, saying he prefers to shift the remaining market-rate permits – and some from other special categories such as affordable or senior housing, if necessary – before resorting to an increase in the overall number.
Rogers agreed with Velasco, but said the city’s predicament is its own doing.
“One huge mistake was giving out 90 percent of permits in one period,” she said, referring to the 2001 competition.
Four years ago, when officials set the growth limit at 3,450 new homes, councilmen doled out all but 191 of 2,550 building permits available for market-rate homes. More than half of those went to the 1,400-unit Glen Loma project, the biggest single development proposal in the city’s history, while the remainder were divvied up among a dozen developers.
“It’s hard to predict what’s coming down the road, and obviously they didn’t predict what’s coming downtown,” Rogers said.
Walton, who has focused his energy on downtown redevelopment, said other considerations overshadow the growth limit figure.
“It’s how we develop that matters in the long run,” he said. “It’s how we grow – not how quick or how slow. It’s really the quality of what you build. That’s the test – is it still desirable 50 to 100 years from now?”
