Del Mar Times:
A controversial piece of city-owned land will be included in Encinitas' proposal to the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) after nearly four hours of debate between residents and city officials at the April 4 City Council meeting.
The council voted three to two, with Council members Tony Kranz and Mark Muir dissenting, to keep the “L-7 parcel,” at 634 Quail Gardens Lane, on the list of properties to be included in the city's draft Housing Element Update, which it will send to the HCD on April 13 for a 45-day review period. Also included on the list of 16 properties are the Dramm and Echter farm — which has been proposed as an "agrihood," a neighborhood built around an agricultural property, and was formerly suggested as a cultivation site for marijuana — and the strawberry fields on Manchester Avenue.
The council can plan whatever they want and the stakeholder developers can sneak in even more profit but it still has to pass in November. 500 petition signatures on a short-noticed meeting gives Blakespear some big trouble. No on this!
ReplyDelete501, and counting.
DeleteThis is so much better for every other part of town than measure T was. The parcels are more suitable for density and affordability. The 2 story height limit should be retained (as long as nothing is put in at the last minute). I think this passes. If it does not pass, the city council does not need to defend the law suits from the developers, and a judge imposes this.
ReplyDeleteL-7 is city owned. They city can put a deed restriction on the property with a required number of units.
It sucks to be Quail Gardens. What goes around comes around!
L7 and high density on Quail Gardens makes sense . It’s near the center part of town and all of those learning centers .
ReplyDeleteLearning centers? Maybe, if you are a student, but then again, you have to go back to school to get checked out for the day. So proximity doesn't count there. Botanic Gardens is nice, but I doubt an affordable household has the ability to purchase yearly passes. Its like saying that they are close to the golf course so they can get memberships there and play.
DeleteThe site is about a 3/4 miles away from important things, like CVS and Crack Shack and not near transit. This means that the site doesn't score well in various state programs that fund affordable housing development. So instead of giving the land away for free to have an affordable housing developer build the site, the City would actually have to fund its construction...millions of dollars. So, more General Fund money taken away from streetscape and pension obligation reduction. Things that the City needs to get on top of.
I'm gonna just say no.
Dear 11:55....You must not be a council member -I thought only council members posted here.
DeleteThe city will have to commit to actually developing the site as affordable housing. It has to show that two story development works to make things pencil out elsewhere. But...For so long, cities relied on designating city lands as future affordable housing sites and, then, would never do anything to facilitate its development. L-7 is Encinitas owned land, and HCD will read through this, and HCD will force the city into committing to release an proposal request to build, probably within this first couple of years. So we are actually talking about building the units, not just planning for them, like our council always says.
ReplyDeleteI'm no engineer, but I'm guessing that a traffic signal is needed with all the other development going on. Its crazy there now. So adding more housing would make it more crazy. I'd ask the city, but there are no more engineers left working at the city. So, now we are also talking about adding traffic signals on QGD. Is that what we really want? Okie-dokie. Now you have to do street widening 150 on either side of the intersection and remove the media. Good bye scenic passive drives on QGD! Now if you say that it is close to a school and not an after school program, then you're going to have pull out lanes in front of that site. The road has been destroyed at that point.
You are spending too much on something that is dead on arrival. Go watch sportscenter.
DeleteSimple future to preserve Encinitas as a nice surf town. Vote no and fire the manager. This whole whole thing is pathetic. Why not have a meeting with the residents and not invite the crooked ass developers.
ReplyDeleteCouncil fires the manager. Put the pressure on them.
DeleteNotice up on the dais Blakespear didn't blink when the speaker talked about the developer meeting? Anyone who thinks she and at least Mosca and Horvath were unaware of the meeting is living in fantasyland.
The meeting notes were in the agenda packet. Obviously, she would have been aware.
DeleteWhen was she aware, is the point. After, or before the meeting took place? My guess is before. That appears to be how she rolls, unfortunately.
DeleteCouncil is the one and only one that is ultimately responsible for not listening to the residents who are the only stakeholders that should be listened to.
ReplyDeleteVote them out. Enough is enough.
Apathy is why this monumentally stupid plan has gotten as far as it has. That, and the historical influencing of profiteering by real estate and developer interests who have worked the system to their bottom lines advantage.
Stakeholders? What a sad joke. Compromised representation is s o p.
Apathy is why. Perhaps the sleeping bear has finally been poked enough.
The sleeping bear was poked in 2013 with and the Prop A yes vote and it was awake and angry enough to give us the even wider-margin Measure T no vote.
DeleteBottomline, if the city and state wants us to give up some of the zoning rights that we all bought into than they are going have to sacrifice some developers campaign contributions. All these giveaways have not resulted in any actual affordable housing, just more of the same but without zoning. Those are the facts across the state. Affordable housing laws have actually produced a negative number of affordable houses since enacted. That is a fact. Our city leadership should be telling Sacramento that it residents have no interest subsidizing developers profits, we want actual affordable housing. As far as I am concerned every single home in Encinitas now has a grannyflat option via state law. Those are affordable units per every study on the subject. If we just have to have the zoning for the affordable housing than we should be more than covered with just grannyflats.
ReplyDeleteIs the a BIA moving forward with their lawsuit?
I’m dying to tell the story of the one guy who convinced his wife to take antibiotics for an “infection.” He got an STD from a hooker at a Vegas convention.
3:08 PM, did your wife get over her infection?
Delete3:08pm Spot on.
ReplyDeleteIf the state won't subsidize future housing demands by putting real money in, every city should band together and sue the state until they do.
That was easy to say and is worth as much.
I noticed at last weeks council meeting, that BIA hack was sitting in camera range for a while. It looked like he was dozing off a couple of times before he vacated.
At least we didn't have to listen to his usual threatening crap.
If the state won't help pay for every town degrading their community to try to meet these unrealistic demands, they should be sued.
Power to the people.
Who cares. We have been "updating" our Housing Element since the late 90s.
ReplyDeleteThe city has been trying to update the Housing Element for a very long time. It never succeeded. Lawsuits were filed by the BIA, David Meyer, and affordable housing advocates. The pressure is on.
DeleteMayor Blakespear and council members Joe Mosca and Tasha Boerner-Horvath are all in a tizzy over this. They are desperate to get something on the ballot in November, forgetting that at best the upzoning will produce only 10% affordable housing through inclusionary housing. The state is in Never Never Land with its unrealistic demands and lack of financial support. Builers won't build affordable housing because there's no profit in it.
We should all be in a tizzy over this. If we don't get something on the ballot, the developers will get judges to upzone where they please, and destroy community character. The currently selected parcels for upzoning are good choices, and will not affect most of our character. It's not just about "affordable" housing, it's also about taking our "fair share" of extra units as agreed to by Jerome Stocks.
DeleteWho is for dinner said the Donner Party. And if you are not on the menu for tonight then tomorrow may be your day. Eating a few of us to satisfy today's fat cats means that they will be back sometime for more!
DeleteMeasure T was the very picture of community-character destruction with its near 3,000 units vs. the "better plan" 1,600. Funny about that 1,400-unit difference. The city never does explain that, do they?
DeleteIf the city wants to untizzify and solve its problem it needs to stop playing games. Residents are just the messengers saying no to the city's developer-driven HEUs. Keep playing games, the city will eventually get itself in front of a judge.
Catherine can make that stop whenever she wants, but that would require her closing her ears to her good buddies Harrison and Gonzalez. And that ain't gonna happen.
Folks, bottom line is that enough affordable housing to satisfy the city's RHNA numbers will NEVER be built unless subsidized by the city, state, or federal governments.
DeleteDon't look now, but the Mayor and her 2 allies are allowing one of their major fundraisers, an environmental engineer who works downtown and, out of the blue began describing himself now as a 'Good' developer; because aside from his fervent attempts to turn the Ag property on the northwest corner of Leucadia Blvd into this Agrihood, which once pencilled-out by the very liberals they are attempting to fool will end up being voted-down this Fall because in reality the 'Good' Developer and friend of the Mayor has convinced the powers-that-be: according to TBH will become an easy idea for voters to understand: the property-owners and 'Good' Developer will, with assistance from Staff, claim that their idea will produce local housing that will be affordable, when in reality, it is only designed to make the owner and developer rich or richer. 250 units surrounded by a farm and farm animals: but by up-zoning one of the few flower-growing locations in Encinitas OUT of the Agricultural category; the density of the project coupled with the very-expensive price for an 800 sf living-space will flood the intersection of QGD and Leucadia Blvd with traffic, theoretically producing 50 units of 'affordable' while the other 200 units will be available only to the 1%. It must be great to be an environmental engineer by day and to be a 'Good' Developer by night: beloved by local liberals for raising a ton of money for his candidates who pretend to be GREEN: but who in reality, are working behind the scenes to produce a housing-project that they will present as being GREEN, but which in reality the only GREEN produced will be the green $100 bills the owner and 'Good' Developer stuff their pockets with.
ReplyDeleteIn kind donation of more than $250 requires recusal within 12 months of election. Look up Elections Code.
DeleteThis qualifies. Not good.
The "good" developer is Keith Harrison. No need to be coy, 9:03.
DeleteThe State does not give a shit about affordable housing. This is about tax revenue...period. All the bullshit terms like "smart growth" ect. come from a think tank designed to get the "liberals" on board. I'm a "liberal" and I am completely done with the California Democratic leadership from which our council seems to be getting their marching orders from.
DeleteYou are not alone, 1:24. I left the party over idiocy like this, as did several of my friends.
DeleteThere are two "good" developers here. Keith Harrison is the developer who wants to put the 4-5 story boutique hotel on the property across from the La Paloma overlooking Moonlight Beach. Brian Glover, ex-Dudek employee, is pushing the agrihood at Leucadia Blvd./Quail Gardens Drive.
DeleteWithout s viable third party, are you going to count on the spineless repugnicans to make a difference? Not gonna happen.
ReplyDeleteThe good developer? Not even close. Just look at the completely out of neighborhood character soviet chic concrete monstrosity across from the upper Moonlight Beach parking lot surrounded by beautiful maintained and restored beach cottages.
Travesty is the appropriate term.
Saving the Longboard Grotto for Surfy Surfy and Cafe Ipe was a good move on Keiths part. Thank you Keith. Allowing a bar to go in that same building, not so much.