Residents from the City of Cypress may be asked on this fall’s ballot to choose where 700 new residences should be built.
According to Alicia Velasco, the city’s planning director, the choices are to build them on the property at the Los Alamitos Racecourse or along North Lincoln Ave., both areas identified and approved as part of the city’s eight-year, state-approved housing element.
Velasco held two workshops with interested residents last week at the city’s Community Center to discuss where to build 676 new units as part of Cypress’s new housing unit allocation of 3,900 units.
Velasco said when voters approved the zoning change at the Racecourse a few years ago, it came with an approval of 1,250 units to be built at there, the city is getting credit for an additional unit in the pipeline and a later series of public hearings resulted in approval of more than 1,200 to be built along Lincoln at 30 dwelling units per acre.
“Then that left a balance of 676 units after allocating those 1,200,” said Velasco, and thus, the public workshops were being held with residents because the city Council will consider a resolution in July to allow voters to vote on whether to build the additional 676 units on the Los Al Racecourse’s Town Center project.
If voters reject the measure, “they still have to allocated somewhere,” said Velasco.
“Why did we pick these locations,” Velasco rhetorically asked herself to explain to residents.
“The state has very strict requirements on where you can place opportunity sites for housing.”
She explained that successful businesses with commercial property cannot be used for these purposes because generally, business owners don’t want to sell and that such property used for housing “doesn’t make financial sense.”
In short, the choice for city residents comes down to building these 676 allocations on Racecourse property, which would require voter approval or back on Lincoln Ave.
“The state wants this (housing element) to be not just an exercise on paper, but feasible development sites in the future.
Not directly connected but related to the housing element, Velasco said business owners have told the city they need “top talent.”
“Businesses have told us that we need more options for their employees, more amenities such as shopping and dining, because we’re competing with south Orange County.”
A housing analysis done by the city to “see if we could require developments to provide low income housing, and the analysis came back that the rents and sale pricing in Cypress do not support requiring 20% of low-income housing,” the city official said.
“That’s really like a tax on development,” said Velasco.
Following her presentation, Velasco entertained questions from a room full of residents.
Although there was no formal vote taken, many residents seemed skeptical of building more housing units on Katella, even after Velasco explaining that housing units “were not traffic generators.
The planning official said commercial operations like Costco’s and other big box retailers were more traffic generators than retail units.
Bob Youngsma suggested commercial properties can be used for housing.
“You just told us that you can’t develop on a commercial property, but I will tell you in Anaheim, they took a whole complex of commercial buildings and tore them down, and guess what they built? Exactly what you’re saying we can’t do.”
Velasco said her comments were based on an analysis “where we rate every single property, and it is given a grade based on what’s there now and how willing the property owners are to sell and the business park owners come to us and said ‘we will not sell’ and we tell the state and so we can’t use that.”
“And the Racecourse has already had a residential measure permitted,” she added.
Another resident wanted to know how was the 3900 unit measure calculated.
Velasco said Cypress is considered to be a job rich city, meaning there are more people commute into the city for work “than live here every single day. So, when the state sees that…we got an extra 1,000 (housing units) out of that.”
“We challenged it to the extent we could,” she said.
Velasco noted during the state’s last eight-year cycle, the city’s allocation was 400 units. This time it is nearly 10 times that amount.
“The economy goes in cycles,” she said.
One resident said unless the government widens Katella, adding another 1400 cars to the mix would not be advantageous for residents. In addition, she said with an 8 to 10-hour wait at local hospitals, “where are the people who are going to move here going to go?”
“I can’t answer the hospital question,” said Velasco, “but we have analyzed the traffic and projected that Katella would still actually operate at a level of service even with the additional houses at the Racecourse,” the city official said.
Many residents who seemed to favor sending the 676 units to Lincoln, asked about whether the much smaller street would be able to handle the traffic.
“Lincoln will have a slightly more traffic impact…but it still drops to a level of service which is passing,” said Velasco.
George Pardon, a nonprofit advocate for “Responsible Development” of Cypress, suggested the city “literally gave away” the 13 acres to Shea on a price per acre basis to “get some commercial,” and said if residents approve any more residential development to the Racecourse, “the prospect of having any Town Center goes away.”
“I understand that we have to plan for it, but I don’t know if anybody in this room wants to add 3,900 homes in our city. I don’t think so.”
Some residents wanted to know why the former Mitsubishi Bldg. on corporate was not being transformed into housing to help with the allocation.
Velasco said “Amazon has a 20-year lease on the property and would never allow residential on their property. She said the building is maintained as a barrier between the public and the last-mile facility run by Amazon and Pro-Logis at the site.
In effect, the city official told residents there was no way the building would ever become anything but a privacy barrier.
Cypress resident Blaze Bhence asked Velasco about the ramifications of voting no if the Council authorizes the measure and voters reject the construction at the Racecourse.
“Are there any ramifications that could happen depending on if we say no to this measure,” Bhense asked?
In short, Bhence asked if denied new property tax increases, would the city support an increase in sales taxes, as Cypress now enjoys the lowest sales tax rate in Orange County at 7.75 percent.
“The city has a healthy budget and as far as I can see, the city has not even considered any idea for a sales tax measure,” said Velasco.
Finally, Bhence wondered aloud why with all of these planning issues floating about, why doesn’t the city have a planning commission.
“Well the city doesn’t have a planning commission and that was decided long before me,” said Velasco, saying the city has long rejected such an idea. “Items go straight to the city council as a pro-business process,” she told the group.
The Council is expected to discuss the ballot issue on July 8 so that if they decide to order a ballot measure, there is time to meet the registration timeline.
