Encinitas council denies appeal and upholds approval of Melba Road project

Plans for a 30-unit housing project on Melba Road and a nearly 200-unit apartment complex on Clark Avenue can both proceed as planned, the Encinitas City Council decided Wednesday.

After hours of public debate and discussion, the council voted 4-0 against the Melba Alliance for a Safe and Healthy Environment’s call against a city Planning Commission decision in September to approve permits for the controversial Melba Road project.

Opponents of the project, including a dozen public speakers at Wednesday’s hearing, raised a number of topics worth discussing, such as contaminated land issues and landscaping concerns, but the information they provided was inadequate not meeting the high state standards required to prevent the project from moving forward. said council members. Councilor Joy Lyndes, who lives near the site, did not participate in the vote or discussion due to a conflict of interest. Other council members said they regretted that the appeal was rejected.

“At this point I see no reason to deny the project, I wish I could,” Councilman Bruce Ehlers said before the vote.

Councilor Kellie Hinze said Wednesday’s hearing was something “I wasn’t looking forward to” and said she has enjoyed seeing wildlife at the proposed development site since she was a child.

Property developer Torrey Pacific Corp. proposes to place 30 homes, three of which are reserved for people with low incomes, on an estate of almost 6.5 hectares. The former greenhouse complex is known as the Staver site and is located near Oak Crest Middle School in the 1200 block of Melba Road.

Brian Staver, whose family has owned the property for decades and whose father was born there in 1954, called it an “environmentally responsible place to put 30 homes,” and said it is close to many schools and other amenities. He said the developers had “repeatedly revised” their plans based on requests from opponents, noting that the developers are now proposing to retain a row of trees along Melba Road – something that required special council approval because there an exemption from city pride was needed. -building standards.

Preserving the roadside trees is the only area the two groups agree on, both sides said. Many other mature trees on the site will be removed as part of the development plans, and this has been a huge source of conflict with neighbours. Some of them said on Wednesday that developers plan to plant thin ‘sticks’ to replace large, wildlife-friendly trees.

The developer also receives exemptions from city development standards because the project includes three low-income housing units. Staver said these will be deed-restricted homes, not small apartments like some other state-approved housing density bonus projects, and the city will benefit greatly from that. Opponents said the site contained three lower-priced units before the development plans were implemented and they say Encinitas really isn’t getting anything out of this development deal.

“We are not against the project,” said Bernard Minster, one of the members of the Melba alliance. “We just want to make it better so it doesn’t have as much impact on our neighborhood.”

Later Wednesday, the council voted 5-0 to grant a one-year permit extension requested by Western National Group, developers of the proposed 199-unit Clark Avenue Apartments project. A city report prepared for that topic stated that the company “has seriously pursued the project” but needed the time extension because neither the demolition permit nor the construction permit had yet been issued, and the city permit approvals were expiring.

A new state law, set to take effect in January, would have allowed that time extension anyway regardless of what the council did next, Lyndes noted as she made the motion to approve the time extension. This is the second time the council has heard an appeal of Clark Avenue project-related decisions. In September 2022, the council rejected an appeal filed by project opponents, who sought to overturn a city planning commission decision approving the development permits. The apartment project is proposed to be located just east of Interstate 5 in the 600 block of Clark Avenue.