Gilroy
– Robb Alonzo has threatened to sue the city if his Miller
Avenue neighbors are permitted to construct six houses on land
where two now stand. If that doesn’t work, he wants to create a
historic overlay district to prevent others from joining lots to
allow higher-density development along the sce
nic street.
Gilroy – Robb Alonzo has threatened to sue the city if his Miller Avenue neighbors are permitted to construct six houses on land where two now stand. If that doesn’t work, he wants to create a historic overlay district to prevent others from joining lots to allow higher-density development along the scenic street.
And if that doesn’t work? He’ll tear down his house, divvy up his property, and build a bunch of houses.
“My family has made the choice that if the city allows them to build next door, since we have a larger amount of square footage, we’ve proposed to do this with our own lot,” said Alonzo, a real estate agent and developer.
His 1.3 acre home at 7841 Miller Avenue lies on the western side of the road, just south of First Street. Alonzo’s two neighbors to the north received City Council approval to create a 1.16-acre parcel by joining their lots, at 7861 and 7891 Miller Avenue. The 4-3 vote, which clears the way for six new homes and a cul-de-sac, comes after planning commissioners unanimously rejected the proposal as running afoul of the area’s character.
Alonzo has taken center stage in a debate over whether city officials should do more to protect the large lots and deep setbacks – the distance homes lie from the street – that are credited for the sweeping views along Miller Avenue.
He claims city regulations inadequately spell out “in-fill” development. The city has no strict definition for infill, but rather describes the circumstances under which it occurs. It reqires, for instance, that infill projects occur on lots with existing water, sewer, and storm drain services.
City Planning Manager Bill Faus characterized infill lots as “leftover pieces that are scattered throughout the city, defined as undeveloped lots, or lots that haven’t reach their full potential.”
But for Alonzo, the neighboring lots are from underdeveloped.
“We feel it’s unjust to combine the two particluar lots for infill because these two lots have homes on them that are relatively fine,” he said. “They’re not in a dilapidated condition.”
In fact, without council permission to join the lots, the Miller Avenue project would not qualify as an infill project and be in a position to bypass the city’s annual competition for building permits. Their decision essentially created “underdeveloped” lots by joing parcels, according to Alonzo.
“We want more specific verbiage in the policy to protect homes that have history in Gilroy,” he said, pointing to streets like Carmel, Hannah, Princevalle, and Rosanna.
“The older homes in the core need that sort of protection,” he said. “What’s to stop a developer from coming in, buying up lots and destroying homes?”
To remedy the situation, Alonzo has hired a business consultant to work with the city’s historical society on designing development guidelines for Miller Avenue, as well as coming up with more specific definitions for in-fill development.
City Planning Manager Bill Faus distinguished between “in-fill” in general, which is designed to encourage growth within the city and prevent sprawl, and the practice of joining lots. The latter, he said, is far more rare.
“We might get one or two per year of lot joining,” he said.
The most recent examples include the joining of lots on Kern Avenue, although Faus said the north Gilroy area is more rural with larger lots. The Miller Avenue development will involve six homes, with two facing the street and the remaining four located at the back of the 300-foot-deep combined property. Each new lot will range from 5,000 to 7,000 square feet, a fraction of the current lot sizes the two homes now occupy.
“One of the key criteria is how well does that proposal blend in with the neighborhood,” Faus said. “We’ll look at building setback, height, style, the amount of open space and landscaping. How closely do they parallel that neighborhood? It wasn’t an identical fit, but it was a close fit.”
Mayor Al Pinheiro, who voted to approve the lot joining, felt the council handled the project in an appropriate fashion. He does not believe the recent Miller Avenue decision sets a dangerous precedent for the city’s historic neighborhoods, as Alonzo has claimed.
“Mr. Alonzo has all the rights in the world to bring whatever project he wants to bring in,” Pinheiro said, referring to Alonzo’s plans to develop if all else fails. “It’s up to us to determine if that project has merits or not.”
He felt the city does not need an ordinance specifically dealing with the joining of lots for subdivision, or a historic overlay district for Miller Avenue.
“I think that we as a Council need to have flexibility,” he said. “If you were to bring that project in the middle of Miller Avenue, I would have been the first to say no.… I don’t believe that it’s that big of a deal where councils and commissions are going to turn neighborhoods in this area into higher density areas.”
Developer Neil Mussallem originally planned to create an 18-unit apartment on the joined lots, but over the course of the last two years scaled back the project five times. Earlier in the year, City Council members asked the developer to reduce the project one last time from eight to six units, and to reposition the homes along Miller Avenue to face the road. The council’s recent approval included those changes.
“I believe we mitigated the impacts,” Pinheiro said.
Planning Manager Faus said such decisions are largely based on a project’s “continuity” with the neighborhood.
“Can they co-exist?” he asked. “I think they can co-exist, and they do throughout the city. We have a new kid on the block, he looks a little different, and people are uncomfortable with it. But I think it can be something that blends in very nicely with the neighborhood.”
But Alonzo felt more must be done to protect the city’s older neighborhoods.
“I’m not saying the city is favoring the developer,” he said. “The only thing the city can enforce is policy. That’s why I’m saying the city needs to change the policy.”
