San Juan Capistrano : City Clears Way for Development of Farm

Backing off from the city’s strict agricultural preserve program, the City Council has approved General and Specific Plan amendments that will allow a local farmer now prohibited from using his land for anything but crops to develop part of his farm.

The amendments, passed Tuesday night after months of public hearings, also allow farmers whose lands are zoned for agricultural use to sell the potential development value of their land to developers building in other parts of the city.

Shigeru Kinoshita, who with his two brothers farms 58 acres on the northwest corner of Camino del Avion and Alipaz Street, told the council last year that he and his brothers were contemplating retirement and asked for permission to develop the land.

The council devised a plan that would allow the Kinoshitas to develop 10 acres, but only for non-residential public institutional uses such as a school, church or health-related facility. They would also be able to sell the rights to build about 280 residential units--the number that could be built if the land were not agriculturally zoned--to developers, who would then be allowed to build more homes than would normally be allowed at projects in other parts of the city.

Each project would be a three-way deal between the Kinoshitas, a developer and the city, City Planner Thomas Tomlinson said, and would have to undergo the public hearing process and obtain city approval. He said he did not know what each “development right unit” might cost.

Bob Kinoshita, 53, said the family is basically satisfied with the plan. “It sure beats what’s going on now. Anybody who’s worked for 30 years has the right to retire. Now maybe we won’t have to drive around like crazy to make ends meet.”

About 220 acres owned by a handful of farmers are zoned exclusively for agriculture under the city’s preservation plan, Tomlinson said. While the development transfer option is open to the other farmers, the city’s permission to actually build on the farmland extends only to the Kinoshitas, he said.

In other council business, an ordinance was introduced and approved on first reading that would tighten the city’s control over fortune-telling studios, massage parlors, adult bookstores and other adult businesses.