STORY PUBLISHED BY VOICE OF SAN DIEGO Coastal residents have for years hated that developers can tear down small homes in older neighborhoods and build much bigger ones in their place.
\nThey say the new homes are big and ugly, block the sun and the breeze and strangle the sensation that you\u2019re on the coast. The catch-all complaint is that the new, big homes are destroying the “community character” of established neighborhoods.
\nOne specific loophole in the city\u2019s development regulations makes it a relatively easy process \u2013 at least easier than the alternative \u2013 and a handful of local developers have turned it into a lucrative business.
\nDevelopers can acquire permits to tear down and rebuild a new home in as little as a day, if they keep 50 percent of the existing home. Otherwise, they\u2019d have to get a coastal development permit, which requires a political process developers say adds $100,000 to a project and delays it by about a year.
\nThe law as written is intended to make it easy to remodel a home, but developers have learned they can usually figure out how to keep enough walls to build a new home from scratch and qualify as a remodel.
\nIt\u2019s a way of circumventing a permit only required on the coast, thanks to the 1976 Coastal Act, which intended to control development on the coast and protect coastal resources.
\n“The reality is that the CDP process is so onerous and broken that everybody does everything they can to avoid a coastal permit,” said Mark Morris, an architect with Oasis Architecture and Design, which is active on the coast.
\nHe\u2019s not kidding. According to city data, nearly 10 permits receive an exemption from the coastal development permit requirements for every one that goes through the standard process.
\nThe loophole has swallowed the rule.
\nThe 50 percent rule is enticing all over the coast, because it saves significant time and money. But it\u2019s become especially controversial in Bird Rock, where there\u2019s been a rash of rebuilds in recent years. Old, small beach bungalows there have provided a ready-made supply of chances to buy, demolish and rebuild them into big, modern homes.
\nWhat isn\u2019t clear is whether the Coastal Commission, the state agency that oversees coastal development and signed off on the\u00a0city\u2019s regulations that exempt certain projects\u00a0from getting a coastal development permit, cares about any of this.
\nA Coastal Commission staffer said the Coastal Act was meant to protect coastal resources from new development \u2013 and that “community character” is one of those resources.
\nEvery five years, the commission is supposed to check in on whether the plans it approved to let cities exempt certain projects from coastal requirements are being implemented in the spirit of the Coastal Act.
\nIn practice, that basically never happens.
\n“Unfortunately, the commission has never had the funding to carry this out in a systematic way. We\u2019ve only done three or four in 40 years,” said Sarah Christie, legislative director of the California Coastal Commission.
\nAfter years of growing discontent, a group that started in Bird Rock is now pushing the city to adopt a new set of rules.
\nThey\u2019ve barnstormed community planning groups in Point Loma, La Jolla, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach and Torrey Pines looking for support. The groups have now\u00a0sent letters\u00a0of support to the City Council members who represent the coast, Barbara Bry and Lorie Zapf.
\n“We\u2019re concerned about developers, flippers, coming in, developing homes of large bulk and scale, out of character with the neighborhood, out of character with the community plan,” said Sharon Wampler, a leader of the group, at a meeting last year of the Peninsula planning group.
\nThey hope the city will pick up their list of changes to pass an\u00a0anti-mansionization ordinance, as Los Angeles did last year when confronted with the same types of community concerns.
\n50 Percent, Times Two
\nDave Ish was alarmed watching the construction across Linda Rosa Avenue from his Bird Rock home.
\nA green fence went up around the small, unassuming house across from him on Linda Rosa Avenue, and he figured there was another 50 percent project on the way.
\nThe developer was Ben Ryan, of Tourmaline Properties. He builds about 15 projects a year, up and down the coast.
\n“Ultimately, our goal is to achieve the best design,” Ryan said. “If it\u2019s possible to achieve a great design by using the 50 percent rule, we do, and if not then we get a coastal development permit.”
\nIn this case, he had indeed figured out how to build the new home he wanted within the loophole.
\nHe used the loophole twice, though.
\nFirst, he used it for something that resembles a remodel: He added a closet to the side of the house that expanded the home\u2019s footprint.
\nThen he used the loophole again, tearing down what he had just built but maintaining the new walls\u00a0so he could build the new, bigger home\u00a0that he wanted.
\n“Doing a sequence of 50 percents allowed us to do a better design,” he said.
\nThe new home will be quite a bit bigger than the one it replaced, but still within what\u2019s allowed by the city\u2019s zoning.
\nBut that project has run into a series of problems, as Ish has kept track of the rebuild and repeatedly contacted the city\u2019s Development Services Department with what he thought were problems.
\nFirst, he noticed the shoddy craftsmanship of the first addition \u2013 expecting that the intent was to tear it down. The city signed off on the final inspection of that work, until Ish\u2019s badgering led them to revoke the approval in January. In an email, a Development Services official acknowledged that was because Ish alerted them to violations.
\n“It\u2019s a joke,” Ish said. “The city is complicit in this. They just go along. They could make it so that once you get a permit, you have to wait a period to get another one. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, but it\u2019s really outrageous.”
\nRyan, though, simply needed to improve the work and pass final inspection again, which he did. His request for a second permit was on hold until that happened. He has since received it and construction has resumed.
\nBut Ryan used another clever interpretation to his advantage. City zoning stipulates that homes can be a certain square footage, relative to the size of their lot. Car ports \u2013 defined as anything with three open walls \u2013 don\u2019t count toward that square footage, while garages do.
\nRyan turned the garage into a car port. A DSD official confirmed that meant the garage\u2019s square footage could then be redistributed to the new home. Ultimately, it\u2019s the size of the new homes that the neighbors dislike. Unlike most other neighborhood-developer fights, this isn\u2019t about density; these are old single-family homes getting replaced by new single-family homes. But neighbors think the bigger homes are outside the “bulk and scale” of the neighborhood.
\n“The property rights of the person developing the property outweigh the property rights of everyone in the surrounding neighborhood,” Ish said. “That doesn\u2019t fly. If anything, I think the property rights of the existing property owners outweigh, and they should at least control what the person can develop.”
\nOne developer once told him that putting strict regulations that limit new development would simply hurt the value of everyone\u2019s property, in some cases as much as $500,000.
\n“I don\u2019t really give a damn about you, or the guy who wants to build a mansion \u2013 I don\u2019t care about his bank account,” Ish said. “But look, if these things go up next to you, they don\u2019t increase your property value.”
\nEmpty Promises
\nJoe LaCava is a Bird Rock resident and veteran of community planning in San Diego. He\u2019s been a longtime member of the La Jolla Community Planning Association, and the chair of the Community Planners Committee, the umbrella group for planning groups citywide. He\u2019s also a land use consultant.
\nHe\u2019s not convinced the mansionization problem \u2013 a term he doesn\u2019t like in the first place \u2013 is as big an issue as many of his neighbors think.
\nMainly, that\u2019s because he isn\u2019t so sure the point of the Coastal Act was ever to regulate single-family home-building in single-family neighborhoods.
\nIn other words, why not forget about the loophole, and just let developers tear down and rebuild homes on the coast?
\nThat\u2019s a perspective Morris, one of the active coastal architects, shares too.
\n“It seems to me their larger concerns are power plants on the beach, or digging into a hillside that threatens a coastal bluff,” he said. “That\u2019s why the requirement exists. If you look at the entire coastal zone, and look at properties in the flats of PB, why would they need a coastal permit?”
\nThe\u00a0coastal zone\u00a0extends outside what you might consider close to the coast. Homes that are west of the closest roadway to the ocean aren\u2019t eligible for exemption \u2013 they all get reviewed. But the coastal zone extends all the way to I-5 in Pacific Beach. Want to rebuild a single-family home near the Wienerschnitzel\u00a0on Garnett? Find a loophole, or get ready to wait.
\nKnowing Where the Line Is
\nBob Vacchi, director of Development Services, said the city has figured out how to police the most creative interpretations of the 50 percent rule.
\nFor instance, developers have tried to maintain half of the walls as they were, then move them to the edge of the yard and lean them against a fence and claim that they\u2019ve maintained half of the structure. That doesn\u2019t fly.
\nBut others realized they can dig out the foundation of a house, leaving nothing but a hole in its place, and suspend the old walls in the air\u00a0exactly\u00a0where the walls used to stand.
\nThat\u2019s perfectly legal.
\n“So the frame wall would be sitting 20 feet in the air, on a single brace, but it\u2019s exactly where it was before, so that would fly,” he said. “We\u2019ve gotten better and better as we\u2019ve gone along because people have tried different things and we\u2019ve always tried to enforce it in a consistent way, and now it\u2019s pretty routine and pretty common.”
\nThe city relies on a\u00a0memo spelling out how\u00a0it has decided to interpret what it means to keep 50 percent of a home.
\nIt\u2019s complex, but dependable. To the handful of developers who\u2019ve done it dozens of times, it\u2019s second nature. But to an out-of-town developer, it\u2019s not only confusing, but absurd.
\nThat\u2019s also opened up a business model local developers have been able to exploit.
\n“Getting around the 50 percent rule is so difficult that you need a local architect to understand it,” Morris said. “If you change it, you\u2019ll have architects from outside the area coming in.”
\nBut the city says it has the process dialed in and is comfortable that developers simply can\u2019t fudge it. They measure to the inch.
\n“We\u2019ve had neighbors call us and say they moved a wall six inches, and we go out and measure. Once they do that, it\u2019s gone,” Geiler said, meaning developers lost their exemption mid-project and had to halt construction and start the coastal development permit process.
\n“It\u2019s been years and years now, so the builders are getting pretty savvy in terms of knowing where the line is,” Vacchi said.
\nTwice last year, Geiler said, developers had to stop midway and go get a coastal development permit.
\nOne of those, in March of last year, was a house in Torrey Pines caught by neighbors who sent photos and an outline of their issues to city staff.
\n“I have conducted a site inspection with the field supervisor and agree that the methods were improper,” DSD senior planner Duke Fernandez wrote in an email. “The movement of the walls resulted in the loss of their coastal exemptions, the applicant is now being required to obtain a (CDP).”
\nTo Ish, it all feels a bit silly \u2013 and not reassuring \u2013 that neighbors keep catching things that Development Services is supposed to be on top of.
\nThis week, Development Services sent him an email saying that Ryan was going to be forced to remove some of a deck and make the house a bit smaller due to additional issues Ish had pointed out.
\n“Should I send my bill for being a developer COP to the DSD or Police Department?” Ish wrote in an email.
\nThe New Neighbors
\nLucas and Marie Rotter are a married couple in their 30s. They just moved to San Diego, opting for the laid-back lifestyle of Bird Rock over the frantic pace (and traffic) of Los Angeles.
\nThey happen to have bought one of the new, big mansions that pissed off so many neighbors.
\nLucas Rotter, who runs a software company, said he understands the complaints, but thinks it\u2019d be counterproductive for the city to make it harder to build new homes.
\n“What\u2019s the alternative? A neighborhood of dilapidated homes,” he said. “This neighborhood used to be a bunch of little bungalows, and now that\u2019s changing. It\u2019s part of life.”
\nMarie Rotter said they chose the neighborhood because it wasn\u2019t too touristy. She said the new homes people are building are inevitable given the increasing property values on the coast.
\n“There\u2019s still height and (square footage) restrictions,” she said. “I don\u2019t see what\u2019s wrong with letting people build what they want, within the constraints of zoning. People just don\u2019t want change.”
\nMorris, one of the active coastal architects involved in ongoing discussions over the proposal, said the city needs to be careful if it tries to rewrite the requirements.
\n“The community group heading up this push is a small nucleus from La Jolla and they\u2019re trying to push on everyone what they think the character of their community should be,” he said. “I don\u2019t want the coast of San Diego to look like a single development.” Although LaCava doesn\u2019t take issue with the city\u2019s exemption process, he thinks it is still responsible for the anger among neighbors, because of how it sells community plans.
\nCity planners and elected officials describe community plans as contracts between neighbors, the city and developers about how and where an area will grow.
\nIn practice, plenty of new developments get approved without anyone ever checking them against the existing community plan.
\nFor example, when a developer gets a coastal development permit, city staffers determine whether the project meets the subjective criteria in a community plan.
\nTake\u00a0La Jolla\u2019s plan. One of its guiding policies for residential development says the city should “avoid extreme and intrusive changes to the residential scale of La Jolla\u2019s neighborhoods and to promote good design and harmony within the visual relationships and transitions between new and older structures.”
\nUpset neighbors could point to that policy as evidence that a new proposed home doesn\u2019t meet match the plan, and pressure the developer to make changes.
\nBut a project that uses the 50 percent rule doesn\u2019t require anyone in the city to ever glance at a community plan. City staff simply checks to make sure it meets the hard-and-fast rules outlined in zoning \u2013 how tall, how far from the sidewalk, what type of project \u2014 and cuts the developer a permit.
\n“The city needs to stop making promises it can\u2019t keep,” LaCava said. “If they don\u2019t intend to follow through with all the descriptions and renderings they put in community plans, they should stop doing it.”
\nGary Geiler, a program manager with the Development Services Department who is the guru of the city\u2019s zoning code, confirmed that city staff doesn\u2019t consult community plans when granting what are known as “ministerial” permits.
\n“We don\u2019t look at those things against a community plan,” Geiler said. “And right now we\u2019re making more and more things ministerial. The only possibility is the hope that the zone itself will control bulk and scale.”
\nThe Proposed Fix
\nResidents, led by Wampler, are optimistic they can work with the city and developers to put a new, clearer system in place.
\nDevelopers themselves are even open, if cautious, to potential alternatives.
\n“An incentive-based zoning has the potential to be a really good thing for the community if executed well, and I\u2019m hopeful a proposal could be developed and fine-tuned that promotes good design,” Ryan said. “I\u2019m interested in being helpful in that process and being part of that process.”
\nThe\u00a0thrust of the proposal is to incentivize developers\u00a0to build a certain type of home. For each characteristic they meet \u2013 setting it back from the curb by a certain distance, or keeping it below a certain height \u2013 they\u2019d earn more square footage to disperse through the home.
\nIdeally, they\u2019d want those standards to be clearly defined, so residents could forget about creative interpretations, and developers could have some predictability.
\nThey aren\u2019t there yet. A handful of developers sent the group a letter outlining problems they had with the proposal as written. Mostly it was that the new standards were either subjective, or overly onerous.
\n“The problem we have with the incentive-based code is they\u2019re using it to restrict homeowners\u2019 rights \u2013 people buy a property with an expectation of rights, and the value is based on the right to build to a certain-sized home,” Morris said. He estimated that most of his clients build to over 95 percent of the allowable square footage, maximizing the value their zoning allows.
\nBut an incentive-based code that lets his clients get to that same point, he said, would hypothetically be fine.
\nWampler and five others in La Jolla started their group back in 2015 and conducted a year and a half of meetings and information-gathering before issuing a final report that summarized their problems. That\u2019s the basis of their proposal, which they then took to other coastal groups looking for buy-in.
\nWhen Wampler presents the group\u2019s proposal to those planning groups, though, she\u2019s talking to a receptive audience.
\n“What we found is, the root cause and underlying issues of vacation rentals, bulk and scale, community character and lack of enforcement from the city are happening everywhere,” she said. “And we\u2019re not against change, or new builds, but we live in a community, not on individual islands, so it\u2019s important to pull together. The left hand doesn\u2019t know what the right hand is doing, even though we\u2019re all fighting common issues.”
\nThey\u2019ve now got sympathetic letters in hand from all the coastal groups.
\nThe city might not be so eager to jump back into the issue. It already went through the public process of crafting a “categorical exclusion” that would eliminate all the loopholes and interpretations and simply allow developers to demolish non-historic homes and build new ones in their place. That\u2019s been stalled with Coastal Commission staff since 1997.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STORY PUBLISHED BY VOICE OF SAN DIEGO Coastal residents have for years hated that developers can tear down small homes in older neighborhoods and build much bigger ones in their place. They say the new homes are big and ugly, block the sun and the breeze and strangle the sensation that you\u2019re on the coast. […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":269415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Thanks to a loophole, remodels along the coast are actually new homes","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}