Compromise defined the City Council’s decision Monday to reward
its last 191 housing allocations until 2013.
Gilroy – Compromise defined the City Council’s decision Monday to reward its last 191 housing allocations until 2013.
This means there are no more market-rate housing allotments until 2013 – only affordable and downtown housing units remain – but the council also voted to “borrow against the future” by guaranteeing Oak Creek and Uvas Gardens additional units come 2014. This decision took place even though the council hasn’t determined the future of the allocation process.
The majority of allocations went to Oak Creek, an expansive development at the corner of W. Luchessa Avenue and Monterey Road that will bring new roads and sidewalks on the south side of town as it turns 26 acres of farmland into a new subdivision. Coming in second was Uvas Gardens, a large, eco-friendly neighborhood project that straddles Hecker Pass Highway on the more pristine west side of town. In third-place was Rancho Meadows IV, a 7.8-acre residential project on the north side of town that will complete development to the west of Santa Teresa Boulevard.
While the Planning Commission has consistently recommended Oak Creek and Uvas Gardens, Planning Division Manager Bill Faus said Rancho Meadows made it by catering to the council’s “infill” desire, a term for projects that “fill” the city’s undeveloped pockets.
“Infill took the day,” said Gerry De Young, a land-use consultant who represents Rancho Meados. “[The 39-unit Rancho Meadows] is like a gangly adolescent: It’s too big for a small project exemption (awarded to projects with 12 units or less), and it’s too small to compete with larger projects (like Oak Creek or Uvas Gardens).”
The three projects sit within the city’s boundaries, with Oak Creek squeezing in after the city annexed the southern parcel in April. Another sticking point for the council is that the three projects agreed to offset their projects’ pressures on the educational system by trippling their “impact fees” that help finance schools.
Councilmen Peter Arellano, Paul Correa, Craig Gartman and Mayor Al Pinheiro consistently voted for Rancho Meadows, but Councilman Dion Bracco voted for it only after his star infill project at 9325 Monterey St. lost out.
“After the first cut, all the small projects were off the board,” said Bracco, referring to the first of three rounds of voting that whittled away at the nine contestants until three remained. “It was basically a choice between Oak Creek or Uvas Gardens.”
Each councilman awarded 191 points to their favorite projects each round, and Bracco, who ended up rewarding the majority of his points to Oak Creek, denied that the project’s allegedly aggressive lobbying got to him. But he cautioned that although the council approved Rancho Meadows, which had been vying for housing allotments since 1992, the other much larger projects at the city’s edge set an unwelcome precedent.
“Now the next developer will want to bring in the property [on Hecker Pass] to the west of Gilroy Gardens,” Bracco said. “It’s never going to stop. It’s going to keep going out and out and out.”
Outskirts projects like Masoni Ranch “could wait five years,” Arellano said. Although Masoni Ranch is technically outside of the city limits, it offered to pay school impact fees and sits just southwest of Oak Creek and immediately south of the failed Thomas Road project, which drapes the city’s southern border.
Councilman Russ Valiquette worried aloud about committing to southside and west side development this early since it means “the next time we start looking, we’ll have no choice but to go north.”
This buttressed Arellano, who kept returning to the failed Silver Leaf project on Kern Avenue in north-central Gilroy, which would have filled in the area with 24 rental units.
“The infrastructure’s there. It will finish the neighborhood. It’ll look nicer.” Arellano said. “All the parks, the schools, they’re already there. These apartments are fulfilling a need. Why didn’t anyone choose them?” Arellano asked rhetorically. Correa was the only other councilman to vote for the small project.
Arellano stuck to his guns as long as possible throughout the “democratic process,” but he eventually compromised and rewarded nearly half of his points to Oak Creek.
“We looked at growth and infill, and I think it came out as a draw because the only project I thought was a little expanding was Oak Creek,” Arellano said, “But the other two were already planned.”
Arellano did, however, see eye to eye with most of the council over the fact that Uvas Gardens already had the ball rolling as part of the Hecker Pass Master Plan, an extensive set of guidelines passed by the council in January 2005 for building neighborhoods, parks and recreational facilities, agricultural tourism, agricultural commercial, and maintaining open space in the area.
The Uvas Gardens project, which had already received 427 allotments for its three residential pockets on either side of Hecker Pass Highway, won 25 units Monday night, with the promise that it’ll receive another 36 “in the future,” a phrase councilmen tossed around Wednesday night to assuage developers fearful of building part of their projects and then not receiving enough allotments to finish after 2013.
Mayor Pinheiro introduced the successful motion to use future allocations, but Bracco and Arellano voted against it. This allowed the council to hand out all 191 allotments Monday night while promising another 89 to Oak Creek and Uvas Gardens starting in 2014.
While the Oak Creek project will simply counter “a loss of prime agricultural lands” with a picnic area, according to the commission’s scoring sheet, Uvas Gardens’ emphasis on park space and hiking trails convinced the Planning Commission to reward the project with the highest “preservation” score. Despite this, Oak Creek developers will expand Luchessa Avenue from two to four lanes, pleasing councilmen who want to create, for free, easier access to U.S. 101 for future residential neighborhoods in west Gilroy.
Officials have said eco-friendly designs will play a large role in future housing give-aways, but Arellano lamented the current lack of “green” projects. He also joined other councilmen like Roland Velasco – who had to recuse himself from most of the voting since he received commission on a house near Rancho Meadows in saying that the entire housing process needs restructuring.
“We need to totally reformat,” Velasco said. “We also need to have a serious conversation with the school district about what numbers they feel comfortable with.”
The school district wasn’t the only stressed out party last night, though.
“I feel worn out,” said Richard Barberi, the farmer who plans to sell his land to Oak Creek. “I think the mayor did a good job of keeping things from getting out of control, and I want to thank him and the rest of the councilmen, but the process needs to be revamped because it’s archaic and not very efficient.”
But Bracco remained skeptical about the future.
“In 2014, some other big dog’s going to come in and push the smaller projects out again, and smaller area’s of town won’t get developed,” he said. “I think within a year we’re going to have a big shortage of apartments.”
