Santa Ynez residents sue Solvang over Wildwood development

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A group of landowners filed a lawsuit against the city of Solvang on March 7 over a development that is still in the planning process. 

The Santa Ynez Valley Residents Association (SYVRA) is asking the court to vacate the city’s December 2024 determination that the Wildwood project application is complete, saying the city violated one of the state’s low-income housing statutes.

“We are not opposing the project—we are simply asking that it be brought into compliance with the law,” an association spokesperson said in a press release. “We believe in thoughtful development that benefits the entire Santa Ynez Valley and provides needed affordable housing, while respecting our community’s rural character and the integrity of the city’s zoning and land use planning laws.” 

Proposing 100 units of multi-family housing spread across multiple buildings on 5.45 acres along Alamo Pintado and Old Mission Drive, the revised project description states that 13 percent of the units will be restricted to low-income while the remaining 87 percent will be market-rate units. Initially filed while the city’s housing element was out of compliance with state housing rules, Wildwood is what’s known as a builder’s remedy project under state Senate Bill 330 (updated by Assembly Bill 1893)—which means it doesn’t necessarily need to conform with the city’s zoning rules and at least 13 percent of the units must be deed-restricted to low- or very low-income. 

The lawsuit takes issue with the way the city processed the project’s preliminary application in 2023, alleging that the developer failed to submit a compliant application because it didn’t include signatures from “all of the landowners of the proposed project site, including the owners of the Mission Oaks subdivision lands, which is specifically required by the builder’s remedy statute,” the press release said. 

Those signatures have been at issue for months, with a disagreement between Wildwood developer Josh Richman and some Mission Oaks homeowners over an easement to access the project’s parcels. 

In October, Michelle Neels with the Santa Ynez Valley Citizens Council told the Sun that Richman needed signatures from 18 residents who share the easement. Richman told the Sun that he owned the easement for ingress, egress, utilities, drainage, and landscaping—meaning he didn’t need permission from anyone to use it. 

Because the developer didn’t submit those signatures before the city’s housing element was certified by the state, the lawsuit alleges that the city can no longer process the application as a builder’s remedy project. 

“Despite being notified of the defects in the proposed Wildwood project’s preliminary application, the city and its planning staff then accepted and began processing the developer’s full application for the builder’s remedy project,” the release stated. 

Solvang City Administrator Randy Murphy told the Sun that the city can’t comment on pending litigation. 

Although the application was deemed complete, the project still needs to go through Solvang’s public hearing and the state’s environmental review processes, according to the city’s website for the project. 

This article appears in Mar 20-30, 2025.