City set Friday deadline for developers to formally request
share of 191 building permits
Gilroy – Developers are waiting until the eleventh hour to apply for their last chance to cash in on the high end of Gilroy’s lucrative real estate market.
The city has set a Friday deadline for developers to formally request a share of the 191 building permits for market homes – the last such permits that will be doled out for the next six years. Officials expect between six and 10 applications, but so far have received only one.
City Planner Melissa Durkin said it’s standard practice for developers to file on the last possible day.
“It’s like a paper in college,” she said. “You tend to submit them at the last minute.”
The city is typically greeted with a number of surprises whenever it holds a competition for building permits in Gilroy’s lucrative real estate market. Officials hold a major permit competition, governed by the Residential Development Ordinance, every 10 years. The last competition was held in 2003 and dispersed more than 2,000 market rate permits.
The 191 units available this winter are left over from the last competition and various projects that required fewer units than expected. They represent the last permits for market-rate homes officials will dole out until the next major RDO competition in 2013.
The one application submitted so far seeks to monopolize all the units as part of a 236-unit project along Luchessa Avenue and Monterey Road.
Council members have said they would judge projects against a list of priorities, with preference going first to partially finished projects that require additional units for completion. Top consideration will also be given, in order of decreasing value, to projects:
– surrounded by existing development
– located in near the city center
– help complete a public infrastructure project
–Â with transit-oriented designs
–Â preserving open space
–Â offering affordable housing
Developers angling for a share of the remaining permits must pass through a lengthy review at the hands of city staff, planning commissioners and city council members. The entire process is expected to last between six and nine months.
Once the market-rate units are snapped up, only permits for low-income and senior housing will remain. Despite freeing such units from the delays and uncertainty of the competitive process, officials have had a tougher time getting developers to build affordable housing.
The next major housing competition in 2013 is expected to be judged under a new set of criteria that give preference to developers of affordable units, eco-friendly designs, and other socially desirable projects.
