Santa Maria’s revised plan for a housing development at the corner of Blosser and Stowell roads increases multi-family housing and adds 200 more homes than the original nearly 30-year-old blueprint.
The update to a draft specific plan was released earlier in May and details changes to zoning for a housing development for Blosser Southeast Area 5B. The original plan, first written in 1994, proposed a housing development that would build 976 homes. The current plan would increase that number to 1,168—nearly 200 additional homes.
“It changes the layout and the zoning a bit,” city Planning Division Manager Ryan Hostetter said. “It increased the multi-family housing and swapped around some of the units.”
The original plan proposed 82 acres of single-family homes; 12 acres of medium-density homes; and 8 acres of multi-family, higher density homes. The new plan, Hostetter said, eliminates medium-density homes, decreases single-family homes to 58 acres, and increases multi-family homes to 32 acres. A school, a large park, and some commercial development are also in the plan.
“It’s really market driven. Developers are in the business of building housing, and some types of housing are just more lucrative now as things are changing,” Hostetter said. “Land values are higher, so multi-family housing in our area is better for a developer. They get more units versus single-family.”
While the original plan was adopted by City Council years ago, Hostetter explained that the updated one will eventually need to get re-approved by City Council with the new changes.
“This updated plan will go to the Planning Commission, and they will make a recommendation,” she said. “The next step is City Council, and then they could approve the changes. But they don’t have to approve it—they can deny it, they can make changes. So there’s lots of different avenues this could go.”
Hostetter said Blosser Southeast Area 5B is the last of three portions of land that the city annexed in the early ’90s; 5A and 5C are already developed.
“This is just the last remaining piece,” she said. “Everything else is already all built out, so it’s part of a larger plan.”
Currently, the land’s owners use it for strawberry farming. However, Hostetter emphasized that the land is not zoned for agriculture.
“It’s always been slated for development,” she said. “It takes a lot of time for those [plans] to come to fruition, based on the economy and all that. In the interim, the owner has been using it to grow strawberries and for agriculture until it’s able to be picked up and developed. But it’s always been planned for a residential development with a school and a park.”
Claire Wineman, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, told the Sun in an email statement that her organization was “sad to see the permanent loss of farmland.”
“The land use decisions resulting in the development of that particular location were already made years ago. We also recognize the need for housing on the Central Coast,” she wrote. “At the same time, the permanent conversion of farmland highlights the importance of good land-use planning in protecting important farmland and minimizing predictable land-use conflicts at the ag-urban interface.”
While Hostetter didn’t have a exact dates for when groundbreaking on the project might occur, she explained some of the conditions that could make it happen.
“It’s a blueprint planning document for a future developer to come in. It depends on the market conditions,” she said. “If a developer wants to pick it up and proceed with a project, they would come in and apply for permits and we would go through that process. That isn’t happening yet.”
As far as the pandemic goes, Hostetter said only time will tell the exact effects COVID-19 will have on the development market.
“It’s affecting everybody, so the whole market. We have yet to see what kind of impact,” she said.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 4, 2020.