Plans for a 30-unit housing development on Melba Road and a nearly 200-unit apartment complex on Clark Avenue can both proceed as planned, the Encinitas City Council decided Wednesday.
After hours of public debate and discussion, the council voted 4-0 to deny the Melba Alliance for a Safe and Healthy Environment’s appeal of a city Planning Commission decision in September to approve permits for the controversial Melba Road project.
Project opponents, who included about a dozen public speakers at Wednesday’s hearing, raised some topics worth debating, such as contaminated soil issues and landscaping concerns, but the information they provided didn’t meet the high state standards required to prevent the project from proceeding, council members said. Councilmember Joy Lyndes, who lives near the site, did not participate in the vote or discussion due to a conflict of interest. Other council members said they were sorry to deny the appeal.
“Right now, I do not see a basis for me denying the project, I wish I could,” Councilmember Bruce Ehlers said before the vote.
Councilmember Kellie Hinze said Wednesday’s hearing was something “I was not looking forward to” and mentioned that she has loved watching wildlife on the proposed development site since she was a child.
Project developer Torrey Pacific Corp. is proposing to put 30 homes, with three set aside for low-income people, onto a nearly 6.5-acre property. Known as the Staver property, the former greenhouse site is near Oak Crest Middle School in the 1200 block of Melba Road.
Brian Staver, whose family has owned the property for decades and whose father was born there in 1954, called it an “environmentally responsible place to place 30 homes,” saying it is near many schools and other facilities. He said the project developers had “repeatedly revised” their plans based on opponents’ requests, and noted that the developers now are proposing to preserve a line of trees along Melba Road — something that required special council approval because it needed an exemption from city sidewalk-building standards.
Preserving the trees along the road is the one area the two groups agree on, both sides said. Many other mature trees on the property will be removed under the development plans, and that’s been a huge source of conflict with the neighbors. Some of them said Wednesday that the developers are planning to plant skinny “little sticks” to replace large, wildlife-friendly trees.
The developer also is receiving exemptions from city development standards because the project includes three low-income homes. Staver said these will be deed-restricted homes, not small apartments like some other state-authorized, housing density bonus projects, and the city will gain a big benefit from that. Opponents mentioned that the site contained three lower-rent units before the development plans moved forward and they say Encinitas really isn’t getting anything out of this development deal.
“We do not oppose the project,” Bernard Minster, one of the Melba alliance members, said. “We just want to make it better, so it does not impact our neighborhood as much.”
Later Wednesday, the council voted 5-0 to grant a one-year permit extension sought by Western National Group, the developers of the proposed 199-unit, Clark Avenue Apartments project. A city staff report produced for that item declared that the company has been “pursuing the project in earnest,” but needed the time extension because neither the grading permit, nor the building permit had yet been issued, and the city permit approvals were expiring.
A new state law, which takes effect in January, would have granted that time extension any way, regardless of what the council did now, Lyndes noted as she made the motion to approve the time extension. This is the second time the council has heard an appeal of Clark Avenue project-related decisions. In September 2022, the council denied an appeal filed by project opponents, who sought to overturn a city Planning Commission decision approving the development permits. The apartment project is proposed to go on land just east of Interstate 5 in the 600 block of Clark Avenue.
