A bluff-top, 27-home development can proceed as planned.
The Encinitas City Council on Wednesday voted 4-1, with Councilmember Jim O’Hara opposed, to reject an appeal filed by a neighbor who argued that the project failed to meet city standards and needed more study.
As she made her case, neighbor Carol Wood said she believed Encinitas was processing the developing application in an unnecessarily rapid fashion that that didn’t promote public participation. She also mentioned that the Planning Commission had reservations about the development plans when it considered them last month, and said more research needed to be done on potential flooding and bluff failure issues.
While she and several other neighbors said the council ought to reject the development plans, others said they thought the project would be a good fit for the neighborhood and worried that if it didn’t proceed, something worse might end up on the site.
Councilmember Luke Shaffer and Mayor Bruce Ehlers said they made a good point, mentioning that there was a less attractive option about a decade ago. A multi-story, senior living facility was previously proposed to go on the 7.2-acre, bluff-top site, which overlooks Encinitas Boulevard just west of the Encinitas Self Storage business, they noted.
That project, which its backers ultimately didn’t pursue, would have extended down the cliff face and had its entrance on Encinitas Boulevard, while this new project only contains single-family homes and takes its access point from Ocean Bluff Way along the cliff top, Shaffer said.
“The 27 homes, in my opinion, are a good fit,” he said.
The mayor said the senior living proposal was “just horrid,” and this new project meets city requirements.
Read more Sugar Sweet Farm in Encinitas gains permission for paid goat yoga classes
“I would love to say no, but I can’t find a legal thing to hang my hat on,” he told project opponents.
Rincon Homes, which recently has built several housing projects in the city’s Leucadia region, is seeking permits for its Ocean Bluff development through the state’s Density Bonus Law. That law allows developers exemptions from some city standards, including lot setbacks and sidewalk-building requirements, if they agree to set aside some of their units for low-income people. Three of the 27 homes in the Ocean Bluff project will be sold to low-income families.
Rincon representative Jonathan Frankel told the council Wednesday the company could have put 36 homes on the site under the state law, but chose to go with 27. They’ve also set aside nearly 40 percent of the lot as open space, he said.
O’Hara, the council member who voted against the development plans, said he wanted to add additional conditions onto the project, including doing more soil testing, adding a pathway from the site to Encinitas Boulevard and planting native trees along the bluff edge. The city attorney told him that Encinitas would need to have the developer’s buy-in to add those items, and the Rincon Homes representative said his company was not supportive of making them conditions of approval, but would look into the tree idea on a voluntary basis.
The pathway is a definite no, Frankel said, mentioning that Rincon Homes already has heard from some neighbors who don’t want a pathway between their neighborhood and Encinitas Boulevard.
Read more Oceanside expects to get 45,000 more residents, and 17,000 more housing units, by 2050
