Council approves Scotts Valley Drive development

After a contentious and at times emotionally charged session, the Scotts Valley City Council voted to give the go-ahead to developer Jim Sullivan to proceed on an amended Woodside Project proposal.
“I am very happy with the outcome,” Sullivan said of the 3-2 approval by the council. “I really like Scotts Valley.”
Sullivan said that he found working with the city of Scotts Valley during the planning stages to be a pleasant experience, and he praised the city for its community, citing the large public turnout at City Council meetings regarding the project.
“(Scotts Valley) a great community,” Sullivan said. “People obviously care a great deal about their community.”
The revised plan now calls for 50 single-family homes to be built, along with three commercial buildings totaling 16,500 square feet, with 66 spaces of commercial parking and 80 designated guest parking spaces for the residential area.
The decision to green-light the development on the old quarry and the former site of the RVs of Merritt on Scotts Valley Drive came nearly a month after the council’s Dec. 15 meeting on the matter ended without a vote.
Citing the potential benefits the project would bring to the city, Mayor Dene Bustichi and Councilmembers Donna Lind and Stephany Aguilar voted in favor of the proposal.
Councilmembers Jim Reed and Randy Johnson dissented. They cited among their reasons the density of the houses, parking issues and the unusually high number of exceptions to the city’s building standards for which the plan called.
“The project got a fair hearing, and it was approved fair and square,” Reed said.
In a motion proposed by Aguilar, the modified development plan eliminates much-debated side yard easements, meaning that the single-family homes will be planned with 3 feet of space on either side, rather than each house having at least a 10-foot yard on one side that the plan originally called for.
“I think (the proposal) is easier to deal with without the easements — both for getting decisions made (in the City Council) and for the homeowners,” Aguilar said.
Aguilar also successfully motioned for the removal of one of the homes from the plans, to ensure walking access to the planned park area without the need to walk in the street.
“I still obviously had problems with the project,” Reed said. “But getting rid of the easements was a good thing.”
Reed successfully argued for placing language in the new homeowners’ paperwork specifically addressing the parking situation, stating that aside from each house’s two-car garage, homeowners would have to seek alternative and offsite parking for any additional vehicles.
“(Placing the specific language) will go a long way to minimizing the parking problems the police have foreseen,” Reed said.
The next step, the developer said, is to finalize the plans with the council’s modifications, to prepare the land for grading and putting together architectural plans for the actual buildings to be reviewed by the city’s building department.
Sullivan said that while the delay in the council’s decision pushed his timetable back a month, he would like to break ground on the project in late April or early May.
“I’m looking forward to the project getting started,” Aguilar said. “We’ve had a lot of development projects lately that have never broken ground.”
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