Richards Ranch in Orcutt continues to move forward with two separate project applications for the same site, thanks to a recent Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors decision.
On April 8, the board unanimously voted in favor of Richards Ranch, upholding the developer’s appeal of the county Planning Department’s decision and subsequent Planning Commission vote to deem its application incomplete. The decision was narrow, according to staff’s presentation.
Slated for a 44-acre parcel on Union Valley Parkway, Richards Ranch’s application with the county asks to develop 750 housing units, 156 of which would be deed-restricted to low-income; self storage; and a car wash. The site developer has a concurrent application to annex the land into the city of Santa Maria. That application calls for 400 apartments, 95 townhomes, a grocery store, a gas station, mini storage, and restaurants. Santa Maria City Council approved the annexation application in November 2024, sending it to the Local Agency Formation Commission for a final determination. The Board of Supervisors weighed in on the county application.
Planning and Development Director Lisa Plowman said that new state laws are changing the complexities of processing development applications.
The initial appeal took issue with the timeline of the county’s response, the parts of the application staff said were incomplete, and staff’s determination that the project had forfeited its builder’s remedy application—filed when the county was out of compliance with state housing rules, which gives the project some flexibility with zoning rules if enough of the housing units are deed-restricted to low- or very low-income. Because the Planning Commission’s March 19 decision was specific to the application’s completeness, staff said that was what the board could weigh in on.
“These are complicated projects, and builder’s remedy is new to the county,” Plowman said. “My staff works hard to get it right. … we do our very, very best to make sure the applications are complete when they are deemed complete.”
While the application is technically now considered “complete,” it still has to go through a 60-day consistency determination period, when the county will look at whether it complies with its policies, as well as the California Environmental Quality Act process.
Richards Ranch attorney Beth Collins repeated claims she made in front of the Planning Commission, saying she felt that the project was being treated differently from others.
“It looks like staff was told to scour through our application and find reasons to justify finding this incomplete, which is frankly improper,” Collins said. “This nitpicking, it’s very unusual. I’ve been doing this over 20 years; I’ve never seen an incompleteness checklist like this. … It looks to be outcome driven.”
Staff pushed back on Collins’ assertions, including county Public Works Director Chris Sneddon, whose staff included several items on the incompleteness checklist such as road rights of way, driveway profiles, and landscape plans. He said that large projects like Richards Ranch have a lot of information to review and can impact what’s already a complicated transportation network.
“We are the ones that are going to be left with the traffic infrastructure,” Sneddon said. “Getting it right from the beginning is the way to do these projects. … That’s why we ask for this information up front.”
The California Housing and Community Development Department weighed in with a letter that was submitted late in the day on April 7, saying that the project shouldn’t lose its vesting as a builder’s remedy application. The county took issue with what it said was a 57 percent change to the proposed square feet of construction from the preliminary application to the full application.
“It is reasonable to assume this was a typographical error,” the state’s letter stated. “The preliminary application and the full application depict essentially the same project, with no difference in the size or configuration of the proposed construction. A clerical error is not grounds for the loss of vesting.”
The Board of Supervisors didn’t make a decision on the builder’s remedy issue. Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson—who Andy Caldwell with the Coalition of Labor Agriculture and Business insinuated was meddling with the project—said that he was invested in a project being built on the land in question.
“At the end of the day, my role as a supervisor … is to make sure that I’m doing everything in my power to ensure that we have the best project for the community,” Nelson said. “We need housing. … It would be a great spot for housing.”
Fellow North County Supervisor Steve Lavagnino said that he couldn’t think of an instance where one of his colleagues would call a staff member and try to “sabotage” a project. He added that he was glad that county staff pushed back on the assertion.
“The reality is that this is the most problematic or challenging piece of property in all of North County. Walmart walked away from it because they decided it was a headache,” Lavagnino said, alluding to water issues tied to the property that stalled a Walmart development in 2006. “It’s not just a slam-dunk development. This is going to be a very problematic development.”
This article appears in Apr 10-20, 2025.
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