Ventura Hillside Trade-Off

Ventura officials are considering a plan that would offer incentives to allow more high-density development downtown, provided developers contribute money to help preserve the city’s hillsides.

The proposal calls for creating a special district that would allow pre-approval of mixed high-density housing and business projects in the designated zone. In exchange, developers would give money to a local land conservancy to purchase and preserve hillside properties.

The plan will be discussed at a meeting tonight of the city’s Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations to the City Council.

“I think what’s elegant about this is, the buyers and the sellers don’t have to find each other,” said Bill Fulton, a statewide planning expert and a recently announced candidate for City Council. “The landowners [downtown] can just buy their way into density and whoever is managing the money gives it to a conservancy.”

The proposal is the brainchild of Councilman Brian Brennan, Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett and Marc Beyler, an official with the California Coastal Conservancy.

It would lower the cost of building in downtown areas by eliminating the need for special permits. Projects would not require Planning Commission approval either, helping to speed up development in the special district.

Brennan envisions an ocean-side community that could combine pedestrian-friendly storefronts with pedestrian overpasses and four- or five-story buildings. But many details remain to be ironed out, including the exact boundaries of the district.

“Everything is conceptual; nobody knows what it looks like,” Brennan said. “We’re basically taking all the words people are throwing out and trying to put it on a canvas. If you’re trying to design a really functional seaside village, what would it look like?”

Peter Brand, the South Coast director of the California Coastal Conservancy, said the agency has explored for years programs in which development rights are transferred from one party to another. Such programs are already in place in Malibu.

Bennett, an architect of the county’s growth-control laws, helped defeat a controversial initiative last November that would have allowed the construction of 1,390 homes on Ventura’s hillsides.

Despite the support of Brennan and Bennett, there are still some questions over exactly what advantage the plan would offer over the city’s existing measures that promote high-density development, or whether the public would buy it.

“It needs a clear nexus,” said Community Development Director Susan Daluddung. “But I guess it’s a good idea to get out there.”

Councilman Jim Monahan took a different view of the proposal. He said there are no legal grounds for forcing developers to give money to purchase private hillside land.

“That should be against the law. Putting those kinds of conditions on other people’s property is the highest form of extortion I could think of,” he said. “I won’t vote for it.”

Fulton said that such plans only work when there is strong economic momentum to build dense housing projects. Because of Ventura’s booming housing market, it may be feasible.

“In the long run, the demand is here for pretty much anything we build,” he said. “That gives us a great deal of flexibility in choosing what we build and how to manage it.”

The advisory committee only makes recommendations. Changes to the city’s comprehensive plan must be approved by the Planning Commission and the City Council.

If the council approves the proposal, Fulton cautions that any change to the city’s comprehensive plan could still take a couple of years. The plan would have to be altered to include revisions set in place when voters passed the city’s growth-control law in 1995.