Planning Commission softens on housing alternatives

Should developers be able to skirt onsite housing requirements for their projects?|

The Sonoma Planning Commission is once again keeping its options open.

The commission met on April 28 to consider what, if any, exemptions and alternatives should be available for city officials to mull when commercial and mixed-use development applicants request a waiver to the city’s mandate that housing be built as part of any new construction, a requirement known as the “residential housing component.”

The commission was asked to reverse course on its March 10 recommendation to the Sonoma City Council to only allow in-lieu fees in place of fulfilling the housing component on a project site, after the council on April 6 rejected the recommendation’s lack of alternatives as too limiting and asked the commission to try again.

Commissioner Larry Barnett on Thursday described himself as “disheartened” by the council’s refusal of their recommendations.

“I was comfortable with the recommendations we made to the City Council and I was honestly disappointed and disheartened to see all of these things that we had rejected come back from the council,” Barnett said about the council’s request for more housing-component alternatives.

Commissioner Mathew Wirick, the only member to vote against the commission’s initial recommendation, said this time around he’d like his colleagues to avoid amendments that would “reduce or eliminate our discretion.”

“I want to stay away from rigid, overly ambitious and inflexible guidelines or language in the code that would have the effect of dissuading development,” Wirick said at the meeting. “(Any) that drives away the economic infusion that we know is necessary in order to create housing in the first place.”

The recent discussions to amend the housing component stem from city staff’s months-long effort to bring more objective language to certain city codes.

The city currently requires that 50% of a commercial or mixed-use project area “should normally” be built as housing. In an effort to clarify the requirement, city staff has proposed to change the language in the code from “should normally comprise at least 50% of the total proposed building area” to “shall comprise at least 50% of the total proposed building area.” Additionally, city staff is seeking Planning Commission direction on other potential amendments to the residential housing component, such as a menu of alternatives to building the housing on the project site, including allowing developers to instead offer land dedications, off-site construction, in lieu fees or acquisition and rehabilitation and conversion of existing market rate units to affordable units.

The commission on March 10 initially recommended eliminating alternatives for fulfilling the residential housing component onsite, except in commercial zones where in-lieu fees would be considered. Additionally, in mixed-use zones, the commission recommended requiring the residential component be 80% of the building area.

But with a council directive to reconsider its recommendation, Planning Commissioners last week directed staff to revert to the original 50% minimum balance for residential housing, and draft amendments that included a menu of alternatives to the onsite housing component, including the staff-recommended options for land dedications, off-site residential housing construction, in lieu fees or acquisition and conversion of existing market rate units to affordable units.

Barnett was among the voices most strongly in favor of narrowing the alternatives to in-lieu fees only. He used the option of a land dedication as an example of the difficulty in comparing the costs of onsite housing to the proposed menu of alternatives.

“How do you begin to figure out what the comparable value is in what (a developer) is required to (build) on their commercial parcel and what the appropriate compensation is in terms of land value to give to the city as an alternative?” asked Barnett. “An (in-lieu) payment into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund is the most simplified way of solving this dilemma.”

Still, Barnett and other commissioners skeptical of some of the alternatives said they’d be willing to consider additional options if such amendments are written with specifics to the true cost of building onsite housing and that stipulations are in place to ensure alternatives to the housing component don’t result in a net-loss of housing.

The meeting wasn’t entirely filled with compromise, however. The commission held firm to its interpretation that the ordinance’s language that “at least 50% of the total proposed building area” of a proposal be new housing means that, according to a city staff example, a 10,000 square foot project would include a commercial component of 5,000 square feet and a residential component of 5,000 square feet.

Some meeting attendees who had development projects in the planning process argued that the 50% language infers that a 10,000 square-foot project would result in a 10,000-square-foot commercial component and a 5,000-square-foot residential component, since that is 50% of the size of the proposed project.

Bill Hooper, of Kenwood Investments, which is proposing the Hotel Sonoma project for West Napa Street, described the city’s interpretation of the ordinance as “a rezoning.” (Darius Anderson, the founder of Kenwood Investments, is also managing partner for Sonoma Media Investments, which publishes the Index-Tribune.)

“What was a different interpretation of what 50 percent was is now half of our property,” said Hooper, who cited the Lynch Building on West Napa Street as an example of a building comprised of two commercial floors and one residential floor, or 50% of the commercial space. “So (under the city’s 50-50 split interpretation) we’ve now been downzoned to mixed use from commercial.”

Under direction of the Planning Commission, city staff will return with more detailed amendments to the residential housing component for further consideration at an upcoming meeting.

Email Jason Walsh at Jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.

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