The city council will consider a rezoning request for a site in
east Morgan Hill without the benefit of a planning commission
recommendation that typically precedes such decisions.
The city council will consider a rezoning request for a site in east Morgan Hill without the benefit of a planning commission recommendation that typically precedes such decisions.
The planning commission Tuesday considered the proposal to change the zoning on a vacant 18-acre site near the intersection of Condit Road and San Pedro Avenue from commercial to single-family high-density residential.
The owner of the property, Evergreen Investment Group, requested a general plan amendment and zoning amendment to make the ordinance changes that would allow them to build up to 102 single-family detached homes on individual lots.
When the commission took up a motion to deny the changes, they voted 3-3 with chair John Moniz recusing himself from the issue due to a financial conflict of interest.
City planning staff recommended denying the request for several reasons, planner Terry Linder said.
Primarily, the residential classification requested was not compatible with other land uses in the area, and there are no distinct boundaries between the property and the commercial properties surrounding it, the staff report said.
The property is bound by San Pedro Avenue, Condit Road and Murphy Avenue, and sits about 750 feet south of Dunne Avenue. Properties abutting the site on the west and north are commercial. To the south is the city’s Outdoor Sports Complex which contains several soccer fields. And to the east is residential property, across the street from Murphy Avenue which Linder noted is a distinct boundary.
“You would have a peninsula of residential property surrounded on three sides by non-residential land uses,” Linder said.
John Telfer, representing the developer, said the owner has tried to attract a commercial project to the site for more than 30 years, but with no success. The developer would also employ a number of mitigation efforts to control or minimize the development’s impact to surrounding properties.
Commercial development is virtually nonexistent in Morgan Hill now anyway, and likely will be for the next “10 to 15 years,” according to planning commissioner Susan Koepp-Baker.
The property also abuts the southeast quadrant, a 1,200-acre patchwork of farms, orchards and sports fields that the city wants to eventually annex in an effort to control development there better than current county guidelines can.
The planning commission’s lack of a recommendation “opens up more questions” about the city’s plans for the quadrant and land uses on the east side of the freeway in general, according to Julie Hutcheson, environmental advocate for Committee for Green Foothills. The tie vote suggests half the commission “brushed aside” the staff report recommending the zoning remain commercial.
While the developer said the property is not viable as a commercial site right now, down Condit Road is a “similar” property adjacent to the Aquatics Center which city staff have identified as a future sports retail site, Hutcheson said.
“How can we turn that (18-acre) piece into residential and say it’s not commercially viable, when just down the street something that’s very similar is commercially viable?” Hutcheson said after the commission meeting.
Hutcheson also wonders why the developer wants to build the desired level of density on the property, when there is vacant land nearby that’s already surrounded by similar uses.
Plus, if the state chooses to build the High-Speed Rail system along the east side of U.S. 101, that would affect any development plans for the property.
Voting in favor of keeping the property zoned commercially were commissioners Bob Benich, Joe Mueller and Wayne Tanda. Voting against the current zoning, in favor of the change to residential, were commissioners John McKay, Jerry Dommer and Susan Koepp-Baker.
In addition to agreeing that the classification desired by Evergreen there contravenes a number of general plan policies, Mueller thought that any residential development at that site, which is next door to the popular soccer fields, should be even higher density “to make sure we are getting every dollar we can out of people using” the fields.
Plus, he noted the requested classification was meant to be used as a “transition” between neighborhoods of differing densities, and applying it to the site in question would not fulfill that purpose.
Benich and Tanda agreed that the lack of commercial viability for the site does not justify a significant change to the general plan.
McKay, Dommer and Koepp-Baker cited this commercial stagnation in support of their desire to grant the rezoning request.
The city council will consider the rezoning and general plan change at the Oct. 5 meeting.
