Santa Barbara County is looking to remove some of its subjective language from its local coastal plan, implementing objective design standards that would take the place of the Architectural Board of Review for multifamily and mixed-use housing projects. It would also update its Density Bonus Program, supportive housing, and shelter standards in the coastal zone to align with state laws.
But the county’s proposed amendments will need revision. On December 12, the California Coastal Commission rejected Santa Barbara’s current proposal, voting to approve if it makes two changes to protect the Coastal Commission’s rules.
Currently, Santa Barbara County’s local coastal program has both subjective and objective language that outlines what developers can build in the coastal zone. That means the County and Coastal Commission can evaluate things like a project’s impact on the public’s view based on objective factors, like a building’s setback, as well as subjective factors, like the magnitude or significance of a change in a view’s appearance.
State laws mandate that for many housing projects, including mixed-use and multi-family housing projects, only objective standards apply. According to a report from the Coastal Commission’s staff report, Santa Barbara County’s revisions will “flesh out” some of these subjective guidelines, clarifying them. Part of the proposed changes to the local coastal plan would establish numeric standards for things like parking screening and landscape requirements.
But the commission’s staff found that the county’s amendment only includes objective design standards, not objective development standards, which cover things like building setbacks, floor area ratio, height, and more.
“As proposed, the County’s language removes the ability to apply subjective development standards to all qualifying housing projects and thus does not sufficiently protect coastal resources,” commission staff wrote in their recommendation.
The commission asks that over a three-year period, the county review the entire plan, adding objective language to all resources and protection policies, and working with the Coastal Commission in developing these changes. This would ensure that housing projects are as consistent as possible with the Coastal Act.
It also requests that the county clarify that where there is both subjective and objective language in the local coastal plan, the objective standards still apply to housing projects.
These changes would impact how affordable housing projects in the coastal zone are evaluated. For example, with these changes, the Miramar expansion project, a housing and retail project that includes affordable housing, may have been evaluated differently. The project, which is located in the coastal zone, received input from the Architectural Board of Review, as well as members of the public, in October 2023 about the “mass,” “bulk,” and “scale” of the original proposal. The Miramar team changed its project after these recommendations, removing an entire story. The project received approval from the Board of Supervisors on December 10 after several contentious public comment sessions. Under the proposed changes, the project would instead have been evaluated by design standards that quantified its bulk and scale.
At the December 12 meeting, the Coastal Commission unanimously approved the staff’s recommendation. Now, the amended proposal will go back to Santa Barbara’s Board of Supervisors for a vote.
