Santa Barbara County Planning Commission Approves Sueno Road Project in Isla Vista

Commissioners Votes 3-2 to Approve Project; Concerns on Parking and Traffic Impacts Dominate Discussion

A rendering of the updated proposed development on Isla Vista’s Sueno Road | Credit: Courtesy

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Santa Barbara County Planning Commissioners were split on whether to approve the proposed housing project on Sueno Road in Isla Vista on Wednesday. The major sticking point? How the project may impact the already severe lack of on-street parking in the community.

“This project has become a focal point for the long-standing frustrations that residents have regarding inadequate parking enforcement,” said a public commenter, speaking for themself but with ties to the Isla Vista Community Services District.

Developers Ed St. George and Isla Vista Church are planning a trio of three-story buildings for a total of 16 apartments in the entire complex. Two of these units are marked for very low-income tenants, and two will be moderate-income units, meaning density bonuses, under the Housing Accountability Act, can apply. For this project, that includes a bonus that allows the developers to increase the number of bedrooms above the area’s zoning limit by five. The property is set in a medium-density student residential zone.

Isla Vista is dense, and students pay high prices. In this sense, more housing would ease the crunch while also potentially putting more cars on the street.

The commission ultimately approved the Sueno Road housing project in a 3-2 vote. This approval comes after the developers attended a hearing at the South County Board of Architectural Review (SBAR) on March 21 and voluntarily made adjustments to the project, including reducing the massing of the project on its third level and providing green walls in the complex that will hide staircases.

The development team also agreed to incentivize tenants to go car-free by providing transit vouchers if and when tenants do not already have access to them, marketing the building as public-transit accessible, and evaluating the use of spaces for Zipcars and ride-share cars in the 24-space parking lot. Because it is located within a half-mile radius of a major public transit station (the El Colegio and Camino bus stop) it does not need to include any parking under state law.

Chair Laura Bridley and commissioners Roy Reed and Vincent Martinez all expressed reservations due to the project’s impact on neighborhood parking but ultimately voted “yes.”

Bridley said that while she has sympathy for those with parking concerns, she would support it, given state policy and law. The state says that local governments cannot disapprove projects that fall under the Housing Accountability Act, as this one does, if they meet objective standards, unless they pose a significant, unavoidable impact to public health and safety.

Developers Ed St. George and Isla Vista Church are planning a trio of three-story buildings for a total of 16 apartments in the entire complex. | Credit: Paul Wellman (File)

“To provide more housing — this is the goal of the state and the county also. I think that this is a good project and again thank the applicant for making those adjustments [after going before SBAR]. I think it’s improved,” she said during the meeting.

The apartments will be two- and three-bedroom units, for a total of 45 rooms. Given this complex is in Isla Vista, where 86 percent of the population is college-aged, it is likely that tenants will share rooms. Double and triple occupancy is common in I.V. A major concern from neighbors is how many cars this will add to the area.

“Parking congestion has demonstrably compromised first-responder access,” one public commenter said, giving examples of cars parking in red zones and handicap zones, on sidewalks, and in front of fire hydrants.

Parking in Isla Vista is a longstanding problem. Reports from more than 50 years ago, such as the 1973 Trow Report and the 1973 Preliminary Planning Studies of Isla Vista, mention the community’s narrow streets. The preliminary planning studies details how, in the 1960s, the county approved zoning regulations that allowed tandem parking on Del Playa, and granted further variances to developers so they could maximize density on their lots.

The project on Sueno Road is several blocks from Del Playa in a quieter portion of I.V. Nevertheless, on a given day, cars line the street in front of single-family homes and small apartment buildings. An extensive study conducted by the Isla Vista Community Services District and Dixon Parking Unlimited, its contractor, showed that across Isla Vista, on-street parking often exceeds 100 percent capacity.

Commissioner Martinez said that while the parking issue was clear, and that he did not want to dismiss concern over it, blocking this project would not alleviate an already ongoing problem.

“I believe it will have an impact. I don’t think there’s any denying that, but I think there already exists an impact on this neighborhood,” he said, later adding, “There has to be some alleviation, but this project is not the means to alleviate it.”

Commissioners John Parke and Michael Cooney voted “no” on approving the project on Wednesday. Parke said the project would have a significant adverse impact on the surrounding community, and that impact was both quantifiable and unavoidable, which met the state requirements to deny it.

“We’ve got an area where people can’t walk up and down the street without worrying about cars shooting out of here and there, and they can’t see anything because of the cars parked everywhere,” he said.

Lonny Roy, the project’s agent, said that the development team followed the state’s parking requirements for projects following the state’s laws.

“There have been previous projects in Isla Vista that utilize state density bonus parking ratios that have been approved, built and constructed,” he said. “So we don’t feel like we’re pushing the envelope on this.”

After the hearing, developer Ed St. George told the Independent that the team expected this outcome, as the Planning Commission doesn’t have much choice on approving projects under the state mandate.

“The state has tied everyone’s hands,” he said.

He said that actions of the County Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission have deterred the development of housing in Isla Vista in the past and present by causing delays to developers that cause them to spend more money to keep their projects alive.

The Isla Vista Community Services District completed a parking action plan last November, wherein it outlined initial short- and long-term strategies to address the parking problem in I.V. Those strategies include establishing a parking compliance program, developing a residential permit parking program to limit the number of cars from a single household that can park on the street, and expanding the Safe Parking program, which provides unhoused students a safe place to park overnight, rather than illegally parking in Isla Vista.

As for the Sueno Road project, the public may appeal the project to the County Board of Supervisors in the next 10 days following Wednesday’s decision.