San Clemente : Builder to Try Again for OK on Seniors Housing

The developer of a proposed 91-unit senior citizens apartment building that was denied approval by the City Council this week said on Friday that he would appeal to individual council members who opposed it and resubmit the project.

The council rejected Santa Monica-based developer Dan Neveau’s plans for the four-story, Spanish-style downtown housing project on a split vote, with Mayor Robert Limberg, Councilman Kenneth Carr and Councilwoman Karoline Koester voting against it. Councilmen Scott Diehl and William Mecham supported the project.

In a series of public hearings on the Avenida Victoria project held over the last few months, city residents who opposed the project said that at 45 feet high, the building would not blend into the mostly commercial neighborhood, and that its requirement of only .75 parking spaces per unit would force some residents and their guests to park on already crowded streets.

Construction of high-density senior citizen housing in commercially zoned areas was made possible by a senior citizen housing “overlay” passed by the council in 1984. But Limberg, in introducing the motion to deny approval, said the overlay “was intended to provide a vehicle for housing of this sort but not by sacrificing the standards of the district.”

However, the council said it was rejecting the project “without prejudice” and would waive filing fees for a new set of building plans.

Neveau, contacted on Friday, said he would appeal to the council to rehear his application. “I’m going to resubmit the same project,” he said. “It has a tremendous amount of merit. I think there’s a lot of confusion over what the senior citizen overlay is, and I’m going to talk to them about it.”

Neveau said that 91 units--more than would be allowed in a standard apartment building on a similarly sized lot--were necessary to make the project economically feasible since 17 of the units must be rented below market rate.