SANTA ROSA VALLEY : Board Tentatively OKs 2 Subdivisions

Saying two proposed subdivisions for the eastern Santa Rosa Valley warrant consideration, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors has voted to permit landowners to continue processing their projects through the county’s planning division.

Voting unanimously Tuesday, the board authorized John and Carolyn Nicholson to continue to pursue their request to change the designation of their 55-acre parcel from open space to rural. Los Robles Bank of Thousand Oaks is making the same request for its 44-acre parcel.

The properties are south of Santa Rosa Road in the eastern end of the valley.

If the applicants succeed in getting the change, it would mean that the minimum allowable lot size on the parcels would shrink from 10 acres to one. With the change, the Nicholsons hope to build as many as 50 homes, and the bank officers envision the construction of about 37 homes.

The idea of changing the land designation has raised the concerns of many Santa Rosa Valley residents who say increased development would inundate the area’s lone elementary school and overtax the valley’s only thoroughfare, Santa Rosa Road. They also said they believed such development would bring increased pollution to the valley.

The applicants were members of the Caston Trust, a group of Santa Rosa Valley property owners who sought unsuccessfully to get county officials to change their properties’ use designations. That effort was denied by the board in 1991.