Developer filed housing project on Alamo Pintado Road under Builder’s Remedy
The S. Y. Valley Residents Association, a Santa Ynez Valley community group, has filed a lawsuit against the City of Solvang challenging the city’s processing of the application of the Wildwood development near Solvang’s eastern gateway, the corner of Highway 246 (Mission Drive) and Alamo Pintado Road.
SYVRA’s lawsuit contends that the City Planning staff acted improperly: 1) in processing the defective preliminary application for the Wildwood project, 2) in unilaterally revising the full development application, and 3) in ultimately finding the development application complete. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the application void and of no effect and to issue a writ of mandate requiring the city to cease processing the application. It also asks the court to vacate the determination of completeness made by City Planning and to deem the City Planning manager’s actions to unilaterally revise the application a violation of state law.
The Wildwood Project was proposed by developer Joshua Richman/Lots on Alamo Pintado, LLC of Oakland, California, to be constructed both on undeveloped lands northwest of the corner of Alamo Pintado Road and Old Mission Drive and on a portion of the open space area of the Mission Oaks subdivision. The developer filed the application as a “Builder’s Remedy” project, including a 100-unit multi-family housing development that includes seven buildings, reduced parking, and setback requirements. Current zoning on the site allows up to 56 units, 36 of which are planned for affordable housing.
Applications for Builder’s Remedy projects were permitted to be filed during the period that Solvang was out of compliance with the state’s Housing Accountability Act, whereby the city was required to update the Housing Element of its General Plan to identify affordable housing locations. The city’s Housing Element was out of compliance with state housing laws for eight months, from June 15, 2023, until Feb. 12, 2024. While the city was out of compliance, the developer filed a Builders Remedy “Preliminary Application” on Oct. 6, 2023. Once the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development certified the city’s revised Housing Element in February 2024, no new Builder’s Remedy projects could be applied for, but projects already in the pipeline that were compliant with the Builder’s Remedy law could still proceed.
SYVRA observed that the developer failed to submit a compliant “Preliminary Application” for the Builder’s Remedy project because it failed to include signatures from all of the landowners of the proposed project site, including the owners of the Mission Oaks subdivision lands, which is specifically required by the Builder’s Remedy statute. The city notified the developer of the omission, but the developer did not respond. The Builder’s Remedy law requires the preliminary application to be voided if defects in the application are not corrected within six months of submittal. SYVRA said the developer failed to correct the defective preliminary application in a timely manner, and when the Housing Element was certified, the developer could not amend or resubmit a Builder’s Remedy project application for Wildwood.
The SYVRA claims that despite being notified of the defects in the proposed Wildwood project’s preliminary application, the city and its planning staff then accepted and began processing the developer’s subsequent full application for the Builder’s Remedy project. The developer continuously refused to supply required information requested by the city and then revised its full project application to reduce the number of affordable housing units to 13, which further disqualified the Wildwood project from processing as a Builder’s Remedy development. The City Planning staff then unilaterally revised the application to conform to the affordable housing requirements of the Builder’s Remedy law, and determined the application for the Wildwood project was complete, a critical milestone in the city’s project review process.
“We are not opposing the project — we are simply asking that it be brought into compliance with the law,” said a SYVRA spokesperson. “We believe in thoughtful development that benefits the entire Santa Ynez Valley and provides needed affordable housing, while respecting our community’s rural character and the integrity of the city’s zoning and land use planning laws.”
