Quick Take
A major Westside Santa Cruz development is moving forward — but without a clear plan. For the first time in years, city officials have the power to shape or reject the project, reigniting debates over housing, local control and UC Santa Cruz's impact on neighborhoods.
A major development proposed on Santa Cruz’s Westside, designed by local firm Workbench, is inching through the approval process. But unlike other recent housing proposals — in which state laws essentially require rubber-stamped approvals from local governments — the city council will have full discretion to reject this development, and thus influence the look and feel of the final product.
That’s because the developer is taking an approach rarely used in the city of Santa Cruz, reserved for innovative projects that go beyond the city’s land-use plans.
First submitted roughly 18 months ago, the initial plans for the 2-acre lot of unused warehouses at 831 Almar Ave. — just off Mission Street, behind the Parish Publick House — envisioned a six-story, 227,000-square-foot project with 120 residential units targeting UC Santa Cruz students, and commercial space. Known as “The New Fmali,” the proposal referenced the Fmali Herb Co. that long occupied the industrial lot.
However, a law change in September suggested some discomfort with the proposal from city leaders. By passing the Industrial Lands Preservation Policy, the city council prohibited conversions of industrial-zoned lots like 831 Almar Ave. into large, multifamily housing developments. The New Fmali, as initially envisioned, would now require the yearslong process of a zoning change.
Local architect Mark Primack, representing the property’s octogenarian owner, Louise Veninga, said they didn’t want to wait that long, but still wanted housing on the property. So, the team scrapped the plans and proposed an alternate development route rarely used in the city of Santa Cruz.
Veninga, Primack and Workbench are now pursuing what’s known as a planned unit development (PUD) application, a special kind of project that proposes to build something different from what the land-use laws allow. Approval of these projects comes through negotiations between the developer and the planning commission, and the city council, which maintains full discretion to reject it.
In other words, the city’s political leaders have to like the proposal, and thus can exercise great influence in shaping it. Amid a moment for California in which local control over housing has been stripped away from city councils and commissions, the zoning regulations mean the 831 Almar Ave. project represents a rarity. If that address is to one day host multifamily housing, the development team must subject the fate of its proposal to city politics, which means starting from square one.
Any renderings or unit counts associated with the New Fmali vision are relics and irrelevant, said Clay Toombs, a project developer with Workbench. “It’s all a blank slate at this point,” Toombs said. (Workbench is not the developer, and is providing only architectural services for the project.)
Primack said the only certainty about the project is that it will target UC Santa Cruz students, and aim to house more than 300 people.
On Thursday, the planning commission voted 5-1 to allow the development team to pursue a PUD application. The city council will also need to give the green light. Once the two boards agree to consider a future PUD application at that address, Workbench and the property owner will then begin drafting plans and designs for a new project, which they will eventually bring to the public for feedback through a pair of town hall meetings. The project will return to the planning commission and then to the city council, where the final shape of the development will likely be negotiated, as the council retains the power to reject any project it doesn’t feel benefits the community.
“We’re not afraid of the PUD process,” Primack said. “It is discretionary so it’s a crapshoot, but it’s an opportunity for innovation. If you do good work, it will be fine.”
The project will inject local politics back into the approval conversation, a vintage process that has largely been overridden by state laws that allow developers to sue cities that reject housing developments that conform with local rules.
Thursday’s planning commission meeting offered a little taste of what’s to come. Residents complained that the city was too focused on using local neighborhoods to house transient UCSC students.
One woman, who identified herself as Abigail, disagreed with the plans.
“I don’t think it’s our responsibility to build housing for UCSC students,” she said. “To put a dorm next to my house, I find that unacceptable.”
Most residents who spoke echoed Abigail’s objections, urging the planning commission to deny the project. One person said placing rental units in the neighborhood “was not healthy, and not what our community needs.”
Over the past few years, such resident objections amounted to shouting into the void as the city council and planning commission were powerless to reject a conforming housing project. The proposed 831 Almar Ave. PUD is something different, and residents Thursday night appeared to understand that.
“Your hands are not tied by state law on this one,” one resident said. “Deny this.”
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