Board of Supervisors — 2024-03-19

All right, good afternoon everybody. I'd like to call to order the March 19th 2024 Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors workshop on potential rezone sites for the county housing element. Madam Clerk can we please get a roll call?

Let the record reflect that Supervisor Nelson will be joining our workshop today around 3 p.m. and he will be participating from the Santa Maria hearing room

All right, so we're going to start today's workshop of potential rezone sites for the county housing element where owners and agents for some of the potential sites will present the board with their visions for development of housing and community amenities on their sites. In addition, the public will have an opportunity to dialogue with the owners and agents during a 30 minute recess following the conclusion of the presentations.

Please note, this is an information only workshop and the board will not be taking any actions today. I would now like to turn it over to the Planning Development Department for their opening remarks.

Good afternoon Mr. Chair, members of the Board. To provide a little context, there we go. This is a workshop as you mentioned to talk about the potential rezones to help meet our arena allocation that we described in our housing element and this has been a two-step process. We are on our second step now. So just to remind everybody, we adopted the housing element in December of 2023 and we are on the second step which is the rezone component.

The board had a discussion of rezone criteria in January of this year We're having the workshop now. We will then have the PC rezone hearings, they are scheduled for March 27th and April 1st and then we have board rezone hearings and we are still working on finalizing those dates And then following that we will have implementation of the housing element and that'll be quite a bit of work for the department.

Next slide. So, the purpose of the workshop is as you described Mr. Chair an opportunity for the developers who have developed concepts for sites for potential rezone to present those concepts to the board, talk about how those projects conformed to the rezone criteria that the board identified in January. And then it informs not only the board but we have planning commissioners here as they enter into decision maker hearings in this month and in April. Next slide please There it goes. So this is just a summary of what the board rezone criteria was identified in January, and it was looking to sites that provided more than the bare minimum of the affordable units that are required. Partnering with non-profit organizations like People Self Help or The Housing Authority to provide lower income units.

Partnering with local employers or offering right of first refusal to employees so we could house our local workforce Conformance with the community plan that your project might be in. On-site recreation and or community spaces being provided within the projects Forgoing builders remedy applications if they were to get a rezone through the actions of the PC and the board.

Sites that are located along transit corridors near jobs, and include mix of uses on the site. Projects that include a mix of for sale and rental units. And then projects that price restrict affordable units for extended period. And lastly pending projects which are different than reason projects because these were already applied for At the time we were initiating the housing element, but then providing low and in low and modern income units in exchange for a rezone as part of the housing element process.

Next slide. So as I indicated at the beginning of this presentation, we have the Planning Commission hearings coming up March 27th which is a Wednesday and April 1st which is a Monday. And then we will be advising people when we settle on the board dates but that should be coming soon. That's it! So our next step is to have the development teams come up and Jacqueline would you like me to introduce them or would you like to?

I'll go ahead, I'll start. So we set the order of the presentations just geographically. We went from east to west on the south so the first team to present is the Baylord Team this is a pending project that is in the Carpinteria Valley just outside the city boundaries and we have Redtail here and they are here to present please come on up and the Housing Authority

Is this on? Okay. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name is Brent Little and I'm here today on behalf of the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Barbara and Red Tail Multifamily Land Development. Joining me today is Bob Havlicek of the County Housing Authority and Tony Tomasello of RRM Design Group. So the Baylord site is located about 900 feet west of the, or north of the intersection of Baylord and the 101 freeway.

The road right-of-way is about 75 feet in width and this is important because that right-of way up till 2016 used to accommodate up to four travel lanes and all the utilities were designed in the road to accommodate future development At one point in time, Baylord was proposed to extend all the way up to Casitas Pass Road and development was contemplated in this area of the county.

There's a common misconception that the property is zoned agriculture. As you can see from this slide, the zoning for the property is actually 3E1 and res 0.33. This is consistent with the City of Carpentry zoning for the projects just across the street which below us is zone PRD 20 and medium density residential. So a little history about the property and the development. The Carpinteria Unified School District acquired the site around 2000, and about that same time, the City of Carpinteria amended their general plan to make the site designated for public facilities or a school And so when we put forth our application, the city approached us about annexing into the city and doing an affordable project there.

And we declined. But what we did do is we started a discussion between the county, the city and the development team that would discuss RENA credit sharing, fee sharing as well as an improved access. We worked with the city for about two years but ultimately the city decided they did not want to move forward with that So the this is a snip from the housing element map and you'll notice the the Baylor sites in purple.

This is a unique property because it's really the only site in this area of the county that's both pending site and a potential rezone site. We've had a number of conversations with Coastal Commission and what's important to recognize in discussing with coastal staff is that they gave us their indication that this would be a project they could support because it's not agriculturally zoned, which I think is what differentiates us from the sites shown in green which are also part of the coastal zone but they are zoned ag.

We think that this site makes a lot of sense both from equity and from function. Equity because there really isn't anything much else available that's not ag in this area of the county, and function because the last point in time count identified that there were roughly 15 people that are in the carpentry area that identify themselves as Carpentarians and want to remain there but are homeless. There's also a significant number of people that are housing insecure in this area, so we feel this is the right location for this type of facility and development.

Okay, it's animated. So we looked at a number of different alternatives as we were studying the project. The first one is the city's land use and that's for a school site and it generates significantly more housing or more traffic than housing would. And then we have our pending project which is 173 units and 41 very low But today we're here to ask you for the rezone. And one of the things we're offering is to increase the affordability from 41 units to 50 units, which would be a net increase from 23 and a half percent of the site to 28% of the site.

So in terms of the community benefits, we feel that there's a number of community benefits but none of those really more important than the affordability that we're bringing to this area of the community. But we would also ask that you not overlook the market rate housing that we're providing to the people that are commuting into this area of the city from great distances This is a little snip of how our site plan fits within the community there and you'll see we have a roundabout entry roughly where the park is.

This is from that entry, to the right is looking at our project and to the left is the existing townhome community And we have a number of different property amenities out here. Resort style amenities including dog parks, two outdoor kitchen areas, of course a pool, rec center, open space and this is an image of one of the outdoor kitchen areas And here we have, on the top image is the market rate housing. That's a three-story building and below is the Housing Authorities Building and that would be also three story.

And all of it is in the farmhouse design. We have done a significant amount of community outreach throughout the process and we pledge to continue that outreach. In November, we held an open house for area residents and received a lot of comments from them. It's our goal to re-engage the city. We would love to see them come back to the table but in the meantime, we're going to keep pressing forward with our design.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bob Havlicek of the Housing Authority.

Thank you, Brent. I'm Bob Havlicek with the Housing Authority and I serve as Executive Director Just a little bit of information about the Housing Authority. We were formed in June of 1941 by a Board of Supervisor resolution. We own and manage currently over 1,500 units of affordable housing. We have over 120 employees. Six of our developments serve homeless and individuals who both individuals and families.

And that includes homeless, chronically homeless and other special needs populations. We partner with over 50 different non-profit organizations throughout the county. And I should mention that the Housing Authority's footprint is the entire county except for the City of Santa Barbara because they formed their own housing authority back in 1960. So we cover all of the jurisdictional area outside of the city of Santa Barbara We currently have over 9,000 folks on our wait list. Those are non-duplicative names.

So obviously there's a huge need. So those 1,500 units is roughly 41 developments and I think it's important to note that we serve families, seniors, homeless and veterans. For this particular project, the point in time count reflects that there's really roughly about 20 persistent homeless in the City of Carpinteria area. And this project would be designed to accommodate and house those individuals. In addition to those that are homeless, there are some that actually live in their vehicles as well.

In affordable housing terms, we express things in terms of area median income. 30% of area median income is considered extremely low and 50% is considered very low. And so most of the folks that we would serve would be low-income and would qualify under those percentages. The Housing Authority has a history of working with the Coordinated Entry System. The Coordinated Entry System does outreach for the folks who are homeless and then they also provide the referrals for our developments.

So, the project will feature robust on-site supportive services to meet the needs of those individuals And it's a wide variety of services, mental health, life skills, health and wellness. And all of these services are to help stabilize the individual and provide housing retention to keep them off the street. So we have quite a few partnerships. Good Samaritan, the Department of Behavioral Wellness and others will also have an onsite property manager.

Oh, sorry. We're a little bit over your time. Okay so just one final comment we're funded likely will pursue low-income housing tax credits and the key piece of information that's important there is we need a separate property in order to secure the funding necessary it's not really practical for us to integrate with market rate units Anyway, we appreciate your time and thanks for the opportunity to present.

The next development team is Tatum.

You get us again. It's different information though. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. At first blush it would seem that the Tatum and the Baylor site have a lot of dissimilarities but they actually have a lot of commonalities between the two projects First, they're both residentially zoned. Second, they have utilities stubbed to the site. Third, they're infill or adjacent to development so they're clearly not leapfrog and fourth, they'r either using water such as a case in Baylord with the farm or they've had the water rights adjudicated I know that's not such an issue right now but historically water has been an issue so we just wanted to point that out So the Tatum site is located just below the 101 and west of Turnpike.

It's well situated in this area of the county to capitalize on jobs and services nearby. Our design for the project includes multiple different product types out there, multiple different sorts of rental product. And interspersed in the community we have a number of different open space amenities so we have dog parks, we have barbecues, pools, paseos that go through there. Also as a part of our project we will help to complete San Simeon which is shown in the general plan circulation element and this will continue to provide the safe route to school that currently exists there.

Our pending project is for 344 units and the proposed project we're increasing it 545 so a significant increase from 69 affordable units to 110 affordable units But what's inside the project, the multiple different product types that we have there from a rental standpoint is going to provide a wide spectrum of housing for this community. In particular, we're exceptionally pleased with a townhome a product that is up at the top of the project because it isn't a product that you see everywhere. And so, the concept with this townhome product is it allows for as household size grows, it allows for people to stay within the community until such time as they're ready to become home buyers.

One of the advantages about having a sizable project is we can have, I said before in Baylor it's resort style and you could also call it master plan community style. It's more significant in-depth amenity program than you'd normally find at an apartment project so we're very pleased with that. In general, our design approach for this is to create a lifestyle design that capitalizes on the outdoor living that we all love here in California.

So this image is looking into the project from San Simeon And our planning intent was to work from less dense to more dense in the core of the project. So you're looking into that core right now and at the very back of the project is where the townhomes are, the two-story townhomes. In the middle on either side, just past the circle on either side are the recreational facilities. We have dual recreational facilities on either side so that we're appropriately scaled for the amount of people in this community and that's wrapped by four-story buildings and then at the perimeter will be three story apartments And this is an example of the townhomes that I referenced.

And again, you know, the goal is to provide family opportunities, family living opportunities. Our three-story perimeter apartments have a variety of roof lines and pitches and articulation along the front to provide relief and movement along that in modern Spanish architectural design. This is the four-story central apartments and again you'll see we have arches, awnings, heavy timbers all the things that are characteristic of a Spanish modern design.

And this is a sample of the affordable, and the thing I'd like to point out is it's really indistinguishable from everything else on the project. So there won't be any way to tell this any differently than any other market rate product. So when we began our design of this project, we obviously looked at the urban oak woodland that's along our western boundary and spent a significant amount of time with biologists, with our landscape architecture team, with our arborist studying everything.

every tree out there that was larger than six inches in diameter. So we have a real good understanding of the biology out there. Our current plan for that area is a passive trail system together with bioretention water feature and we've worked significantly with SBUSD, this is an important asset for them and we understand it's important for them from a housing perspective as well as a capital perspective, and will continue working and collaborating with them.

So with that I'm going to turn it over to Tony Tomasello.

Thank you so much and good afternoon. Just a few regulatory and contextual items I want to expand upon a little bit. First, the existing zoning in general plan designations again noting that this is not a currently zoned ag site there's dual zoning and dual general plan designations on this site The western roughly two-thirds is designated Residential 20 or DR20, and the western third is zoned essentially Low Density Residential or 10E1.

And there is a current policy in The Eastern Goleta Valley Community Plan, which stipulates that this site shall receive land use designations appropriate for residential neighborhood development. Again, this is a site that's been in the works and planned for this type of development for many years and so we're looking forward to continuing that and achieving that goal.

A little bit on context here, you can see an aerial image of the site as Brent alluded to. The site abuts Highway 101 and the railroad near some significant corridors in the area. These green sites represent the local schools and parks and rec facilities. The red represents commercial shopping centers in the vicinity. Purple are some of the institutional uses. You see Cottage, Goleta Valley Hospital down on the bottom left-hand corner and some additional institutional uses there.

And then these kind of brownish sites are essentially the only other DR20 zoned properties in eastern Goleta Valley as it stands currently so this site is well situated again to for the proposed development and to for the proposed rezone that's included in the housing element. Hollister Avenue is a high quality transit corridor. This is a map from SB CAG, it shows the quarter mile buffer around Hollister Avenue.

It's served by MTD routes 6 and 11 that have a combined service frequency of 10 minutes or less. Obviously those direct linkages to downtown SB and UCSB as far as public transit goes within This portion of the county, this is probably your best bet for catching a bus. Again the pending project, 344 total units includes 69 affordable and 9.2 acres of private open space which was consistent with that existing general plan policy.

This was a builder's remedy project we received a deemed complete application last May and we're pending CEQA analysis and moving forward with the project however in discussions with County staff about this housing element, we've sort of put push pause as we've considered how we can further the goals of the county with respect to housing and meeting its RHNA share.

So the proposed rezone project would be 545 total units increased to 110 affordable maintaining that open space Oak Woodland on the western side of the site allows us to have a little bit more of a cohesive character and neighborhood form with respect to the site planning in introducing more diversity in terms of the units and opportunities to collaborate with the adjacent site to the south.

I want to leave you with this. This is the RHNA surplus table from the housing element. Again, this site is a pending project. It's included in that third row down. If rezoned, if we move forward with the proposed project, we could add an additional 41 affordable units and an additional 160 above moderate units as well so increasing that surplus and taking some pressure off.

Planning Commission mics. All right, perfect thank you.

The next team is for San Marcos Growers

and Chair Lavinino members of the board I just wanted to make a quick note that Supervisor Nelson has joined us from Santa Maria so for all those in Santa Maria Supervisor Nelson is in attendance thank you

Good afternoon, Chair, Supervisors and Planning Commissioners that are here. My name is John Blair of Presidio Capital Partners, and I'm part of the development team for San Marcos Ranch, a rental community proposed to be built on the site commonly known as San Marcos Growers. I'll be joined by Tom Jess of Aris Studios, our project architect. Bob Havlicek who you heard from earlier from the Housing Authority and Fuller Apartment Homes who is our property management company and the owners, the Hodges family. Thanks for inviting us to speak today.

Next slide please. The Hodges family acquired... Oh, I do. Where is it? The Hodges family acquired the properties in 1979 and 1981 with residential zoning. The family has owned and operated the San Marcos Growers Wholesale Nursery for over 40 years, and will be closing business operations at the end of 2025. In 1993, the property was down zoned to agriculture And in 2022, the county contacted the Hodges family and asked if they were interested in rezoning the property back to its original residential zoning.

As a result of the call, the Hodges family assembled this local development team. Why rezone this site? As you'll see in an upcoming aerial view of the property, it's surrounded by residential, educational, and commercial uses. Residential zoning is consistent with the neighborhood, and the site offers excellent walkability to nearby services. In addition, the site meets all of the County's policies and objectives as identified in the Programmatic Environmental Impact Report known as the PEIR.

The Sandmarkers Grower Site was included in every proposed bundle of rezone sites in the PEIR. Lastly, this site is very straightforward to develop with no topographical or biological issues. Has utilities nearby and is as shovel ready as you can get for a development site which means it can be delivered in this arena cycle. In short, residential zoning on this site is good land use planning.

The aerial view shows the infill nature of a site and its compatibility for residential development. We have El Camino School across the street and San Marcos High School, a short walk away via the bike path which when the Tatum properties develop will become a one lane road but it provides easy access at the north end of We are next door to the Turnpike Vaughn Shopping Center and plan to have a pedestrian walkway from the project into the center.

Magnolia Plaza is also very close by, both offer a variety of goods and services all within walking distance. Outside our front door on Hollister Avenue are bus stops for the number 6 and 11 MTD lines which can get you to Western Goleta and Eastern Carpinteria. We have class 1 & 2 bike paths that surround the site to enable easy access to cycle-to-work and other activities.

We have quick access to major arterial roads that border our site, Hollister, Turnpike and Patterson as well as easy 101 freeway access. All these transportation options add up to low vehicle miles traveled, VMTs associated with this site as detailed in the PEIR. Another advantage of being an infill site is you can use existing infrastructure and not be required to create it. We have two neighborhood parks nearby, and El Camino and San Marcos schools offer after-hours access for recreation.

When you consider all these attributes, the site is ideal for our local workforce given its proximity to thousands of jobs within a few miles. Our partnership with the Housing Authority will provide 200 homes for our South Coast families most in need and our projected rental rates will not exceed the county's published upper moderate rates. With this plan, we believe San Marcos Ranch can provide rental housing for our missing middle residents.

Additionally, we have partnered with the South Coast Chamber to promote local employee housing through their employer-sponsored housing consortium. Lastly, we are a 100% local team that plans to build a great project and manage it over the long term. Now I'd like to introduce Tom Jess to speak about the project design.

Good afternoon. I'm Tom Jess with Aris Studio Architects, and I just wanted to build off of what John's described and explain a little bit of the thinking in the thought process that went into the project itself. Initially we were asked to design a project that responded to the clear need for more housing in the community by including as many housing units on this parcel as would comfortably fit while still being a positive addition to the existing neighborhood So what we arrived at is 996 for-rent apartments. 100% of all the apartments will be below or at the upper moderate income bracket, and 200 of the apartments will be deed restricted to very low and low income residents.

The deed restricted apartments are being developed in partnership with the Housing Authority and on their own separate parcels to facilitate this. When we're designing these types of communities We work really hard to make sure that these are as pleasant and livable for the residents as possible. Some of the things I wanted to point out that we incorporated into this design are that we kept the buildings small, they're smaller buildings juxtaposed with each other at angles to encourage privacy so you don't have a lot of windows looking into other windows.

Another little small step that we did is we put the parking around the perimeter which allows for easy walking between the apartments. It promotes a sense of community where you get to meet your neighbors. We also scattered outdoor amenities throughout the site rather than just being centrally located around the site. There's a community garden, shade structures, barbecues, dog park and there's actually a one-mile long walking trail around there that's going to be very popular with the residents as a form of outdoor recreation And then located in the center of the site are the main outdoor amenities. They include a pool, spa, barbecue areas, a fitness center, an indoor lounge and community kitchen.

Those are all located there in the center of the site. We've worked with the Housing Authority on several projects. They have a wealth of knowledge, and they have very well-run projects. I think Bob's spoken to a lot of that with one of the previous presentations. The deed restricted apartments will have there's going to be catered to families, and there's going to be a good mix of two and three bedroom units within the deed restricted apartments The amenities will be tailored to that and they'll include a tot lot for the young children, computer labs for the older children to be able to do homework and also be used for entertainment. There'll be outdoor amenities and indoor amenities, which are going to include barbecues, shade structures, a library, community kitchen, and space for those support services that Bob mentioned.

And then one of the things that we find with these communities in particular is that the laundry rooms and the mailboxes become centers for congregations where people tend to meet their neighbors, tend to gather around. So we pay a lot of attention to those and make sure that we locate them either near a lounge or an outdoor deck And those are the types of areas where people can get to know their neighbors and really find that support from one another.

Another part of this project that we wanted to make sure we did was make sure that we are a good neighbor, and fit into the community. So in order to do that, we limited the buildings to three stories in height. We used residential materials and detailing that's consistent with the neighborhoods And that includes horizontal lap and board and batten siding, stone wainscoting and sloped roofs to make it tie in with the existing neighborhood. As well as you can see in this little rendering that every one of the apartments is going to have a large outdoor private space that they can have some outdoor space that's to their own.

This is a bird's eye view of a similar project, and you can see how the buildings are juxtaposed next to each other at angles. The green space that happens in between, how easily walkable it is. One thing I wanted to mention is that these apartment communities and what we've designed are going to be environmentally friendly. All the buildings are going to be all electric. The landscaping is going to be drought tolerant, there will be onsite electrical generation and water conserving fixtures throughout.

In fact, these types of projects use so little water that the last one that we did, the water bill averaged between $10 and $14 a month per apartment. There's just very little water use when we incorporate all these features. This is just a sampling view of the outdoor amenity area with the pool and the spa. You can see that little building in the foreground, the dog washing area for those pet friendliness. The little building next to it is a bike storage room where we'll have community bikes to promote alternative modes of transportation rather than just relying on the car. You can also see the barbecue area and the fitness center.

So in conclusion This truly is an infill residential project. Includes 996 for rent apartments, all of which will house between very low and upper moderate income. It's located next to services that the residents will use and close to significant employment centers. The project is compatible with the existing neighborhood and will make a positive contribution to the community. Thank you for your consideration. We appreciate the opportunity and are happy to answer any questions at a later time.

Thank you. The next team is the Montessori Site Team.

Do I have to do something and bring up the presentation? I

think Jacqueline's working on bringing it up for

you. Good afternoon, my name is Greg Reitz. I'm a principal with Rethink Development, a local Santa Barbara-based development company and I'm here with Montessori Center School and two of the trustees representing the school and I'll let them introduce themselves as well.

Good afternoon supervisors. My name is rain Han, I'm a trustee representing Montessori center school. I have two children who are currently enrolled in the school three and three quarter year old who we want to mention that and a five year old and I myself am alumna of the school. Montessori Center School was founded in 1965 and is currently serving 220 children ages 18 months through 6th grade.

We provide a whole child education program that's child-directed, blending rigorous academics with a robust social emotional learning platform and as I can attest we cultivate independent lifelong learners We're best known locally for our early childhood program and we're getting ready to expand our toddler program from 36 to 60 children this coming school year, to meet growing demand among the local working families here in Santa Barbara.

We're also the owners of 5050 Hollister Avenue and we're proposing to develop the site for residential use with a mix of low and moderate income as well as fair market value units for lease To that end, we're seeking rezoning for residential use by the County Board of Supervisors and we're here today to learn about ways we can envision the project to best meet the needs of the broader community.

We purchased the 50-50 Hollister property back in 2008 with the intention of building on the 11 1⁄2 acres a permanent campus for Montessori Center School. Over the last 15 years as we worked on the project, we've faced myriad challenges with that vision. Ultimately it was determined that because the land is currently zoned for agricultural use, we could potentially build and operate a farm school.

However when you study this more closely or realize that would be prohibitively expensive option for our school and the portion of the lands that would be appropriated for school use was going to be pretty minimal. We've been leasing property since our inception in 1965 and at our current location on Fairview Avenue, we've developed a beautiful Montessori garden campus.

However, we are outgrowing our space. As I mentioned, we're working to expand our toddler program to serve the growing Santa Barbara community and it's long been a goal of ours to have a permanent location to do so. We've determined the best thing we can do is develop the 50-50 Hollister site for residential use and then to sell the property. Our intention is to use the sale proceeds to acquire a piece of property locally that's better suited for our school's use.

We believe it's a win-win for the Santa Barbara community, an opportunity to increase access to low and moderate income housing in Santa Barbara County, raise funds to develop a permanent campus for our school, and in turn expand the program access to serve more families who are seeking high quality early childhood education for their toddlers. As a Montessori School trustee, an alumna, a current parent, and a longstanding community member I sincerely thank you for your consideration Natalie?

Good afternoon Supervisors. As Reign shared, our ultimate goal and purpose is to build a permanent campus for MCS befitting of our school's mission and vision. And we're eager to work together with the community to ensure that this project, this is a project that benefits everyone. We understand that there's a desire to ensure that as many of the units in this development as possible will be low and moderate income housing. And we have a plan for this, that our development partner Greg Wrights will speak to momentarily.

We've also begun to reach out to local employers to assess their appetite for setting up master lease agreements and other structures that can help ensure that we're part of the housing solution for local Santa Barbara families working in our community. Part of our vision includes setting aside a portion of these units for our MCS teachers, roughly 15% of whom including our head of school are currently commuting in from Ventura and San Ynez Valley for work each day. And many more of whom face challenging housing market here in Santa Barbara and Goleta.

Ultimately, again our goal is to build a solution for the school where we can sell this property and invest the proceeds into securing a permanent home for our school. We're eager to learn today how we can approach this in a way that can further the broader community's goals and objectives. Thank you so much for your time and consideration

And now I will talk a little bit more about the site. You've heard a lot of the benefits of this location from the previous presenters. We're next to the San Marcos proposed project and across from the Tatum Lot, so a lot of what you've heard about the location with Hollister as a corridor and access to the 101 with El Camino School in San Marcos being opportunities for outdoor recreation. I'll talk a little bit more about it But you're familiar with the location.

As was mentioned by by rain and Natalie. We have multiple crises that we're dealing with. We're not only dealing with the housing crisis that they touched on, we also have a child care crisis and then globally we have a climate crisis and with the proper selection of locations and with the project that we are presenting, we are going to try to address all of those.

One of the ways is to reduce the impact from traffic, right? So one of the things that we hear most when we're proposing developments is how much traffic is going to be created. Well because of the location of this site people can get most of their daily needs met by walking, biking or riding on the bus lines. Walk, lots of things you can walk to, you've heard about that. Bike, you can bike to work.

There's an extensive network of bike trails. The Maria Ignacio Bike Trail connects throughout the region and goes all the way down to UCSB for people that work there, and then you've heard about the line 6 and 11 MTD lines. We think there's an opportunity with this cluster of housing to improve on that and create some express lines so people are more likely to use the bus to get to their employment Recreation is important, you heard about the local recreation access.

On our site we plan a myriad of opportunities for recreation, a pool, dog park, barbecues, places to play, places to relax. This shows some of the green areas that are accessed and can be accessed largely through the Maria Ignacio Bike Path but other bike accessible locations as well and then talk a little bit about the project. This is the site plan from the Builders Remedy application we spent the last couple weeks, including today getting feedback on how we can improve our plan so this is continuing to evolve one of the important things about this site plan is that we are clustering the project towards the center to make least impact on our neighbors There, another important thing about this is we do have an historic farmhouse and a historic barn that will be preserved as part of the project.

And it creates a nice park-like atmosphere in the lower left of that site where we have the pool and other recreation. We're going to preserve some oak trees in that area. These are some inspiration images, the kind of feeling that we want to create with the development which is very Santa Barbara. That includes smaller and wider paseos, places for people to meet and gather, and places for passive and active recreation.

It's really important that when we build the housing we're not attracting people who don't already live here but don't already live here, but people that work here that want to live here and address our traffic problems and create opportunities for people to live and work in our community. So we've reached out to the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce about the program that they're developing to include local employers and to give priority to local employers for the housing that we're creating on all different affordability levels.

And then finally, the most important thing and a thing to address the housing crisis and housing affordability crisis in our neighborhood. And for our teachers and for all of our service providers is to provide the maximum amount of affordability as we can and as Montessori Center School can afford to provide on the site. So with our Builders Remedy application, we had proposed 69 low-income affordable units.

With the rezone, our intent is to increase that to 25% of the total units over 115 or about 115 units at various levels of affordability from low income to above moderate with a big focus on moderate income housing, which is the hardest to address in partnership even when in partnership with the Housing Authority because there's no subsidies for that. So all the moderate income units would be internally subsidized to address a need that is really hard to meet and that is becoming part of our plan if the property is rezoned.

So I'll leave it at that and open for questions later. Thank you.

Thank you. The next presentation team is for the Caird Elwood property.

All right. Good afternoon, Chair Lavagnino, Supervisors. I'm Laurel Perez with SEPS Planning and Permitting. It is a great honor to be a part of this important county effort to bring housing to our community and I'm especially proud to be representing the Caird family and the Chadmar group. Our proposal is first and foremost a means to bring diversity in housing, including a great deal of affordable housing to the community. And it is nearly all for sale housing which is so desperately needed by employers to keep mature workers here in our community. We accomplish that first and foremost through partnerships, a partnership with People Self-Help Housing and partnerships with large local employers who will purchase a good portion of the non-designated affordable units, and subsidize their employees' ability to purchase these homes to make home ownership affordable for their employees.

That is at the core of our project. So let's take a look at where it is located and quickly share our story. You're all familiar with the Goleta Valley and as you see here, the Caird Equal Property is located off of Hollister Avenue on South Patterson Ave in the heart of the urban center of the Eastern Goleta Valley. I'd like to share what makes the Caird property an ideal location for new for sale homes. In short, public water supply meeting 100% of the project demand has been allocated through the Mary Wright court suit involving Goleta Water District. The property is also connected to the Gleda Sanitary District with capacity to serve development. The property does not infringe on the urban-rural boundary, it is outside of the high fire and the high fire interface zones, it is located in a high transit area with bus service and a class 1 bikeway adjoining the property It is located near public services, shopping and schools.

And importantly it is within walking distance to some of Goleta's largest employers. I think many of you may have gotten to know Ron Care during his decades of volunteerism with the county's Agriculture Advisory Committee His service on several nonprofit boards and his involvement with local planning advisory committees over the years. This is a local legacy project for the Caird family, and it means far more to them than any other project would to an out-of-towner. Three generations of Cairds live right next to the project site, and the Cairds family has been operating the Port Lamar Nursery since the 1970's. Now in its third generation The nursery has grown over time to include greenhouses and hoop houses that grow plants in pots above the ground.

Today, the greenhouses are antiquated with asphalt surfaces and concrete pads as everything is grown above ground due to the high water table. Much of the infrastructure is 50-70 years old and requires replacement. That means relocating elsewhere in the community, and creating needed housing on a portion of the property. The old greenhouses could be replaced on half the land area with state-of-the-art greenhouse infrastructure.

The Caird family looked across the state for a responsible developer to partner with and did not have to go far other than the Gleta Valley to find the model project, the bungalows, the hideaway bungalows which was developed by the Chadmar group. Chadmar is one of the most respected local and state developers known for their high quality projects and attention to detail with design and landscaping The Caird property is an ideal location for new homes. It is less productive ag land located outside of the restricted airport safety zones, outside of the coastal zone within walking distance to thousands of jobs and designed with significant public open space and avoidance of sensitive habitats which I'll touch on next The Santa Barbara airport has development standards identifying what can safely be built nearby.