The significantly revised housing project, proposed for 831 Water Street, will be the subject of a public hearing at the Santa Cruz Planning Commission meeting on Thursday, December 19. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers at 809 Center Street.

(For a second consecutive public meeting about this project, the City mailed out paper notices to a large number of residents that incorrectly stated the day the meeting was scheduled to take place. Please note that City Planner Ryan Bane has clarified that the Planning Commission meeting is not taking place on Tuesday, December 10, as inaccurately indicated in the mailing sent out last week; he also said that the meeting is an in-person session without a Zoom option. If we learn something different than that, we will update this post page.)

While the members of our 831 Responsible Development group (seemingly to a person) continue to strongly support the development of new housing in the city — including on this site — we nonetheless continue to be VERY concerned about the many, many health and safety issues that would stem from this project as proposed. Worse yet, it appears that some of these issues would be made much worse by the developer’s latest very significant revisions, which include reducing the total number of on-site vehicle parking spaces from 136 to 43, reconfiguring the project into one massive building, and significantly reducing the commercial part of the project.

As we’ve previously acknowledged, we recognize that new state laws can tie the city’s hands with respect to reviewing some aspects of housing proposals. But that recognition doesn’t mean the City shouldn’t do everything possible to prevent projects from creating health and safety issues for its citizens.

• Given the number of significant new changes to the project, we strongly believe that the Planning Department, Planning Commission, and/or City Council should require that the developer submit a new, complete application for this project so that all of the new impacts can be appropriately reviewed, analyzed, and to the extent possible, mitigated. That only seems reasonable.

In the meantime, as a concerned citizen, please try to do one or both of the following with respect to this upcoming virtual meeting:

• Email a letter in advance, expressing your concerns, to the City Planning Commission (cityplan@santacruzca.gov).
  • Please copy the City Planning Department’s representative, Ryan Bane (email: rbane@santacruzca.gov) and the City Council (citycouncil@santacruzca.gov) on your correspondence.
• Attend the Commission meeting on Thursday, December 19, to express your concerns.

Whatever your views or concerns are about this project, please make every effort to share them with Commissioners before and/or during this meeting. Some of our group’s existing and new concerns can be found in this document, prepared in advance of the most recent community meeting last month.

As always, a very big THANK YOU for staying engaged.

Info on 831 Water Street project proposal:
Project page (City of Santa Cruz)