Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I think we are ready. The time is 5.30. All right. Good evening, everyone. I am now calling the September 23rd, 2026 regular meeting of the City of Ventura Planning Commission to order.

All right. The City of Ventura acknowledges that we are gathered on unceded Chumash land and the full City Council adopted Chumash land acknowledgement is available on the City's website. Will the Clerk please call roll?

Thank you. Before we begin, I just want to do a few quick items for the agenda management for this evening. Unfortunately, I will have to be departing the meeting early this evening. So in order to maintain quorum on all of our items this evening, pulling 211 first or after the approval of the minutes we'll get through the approval of minutes and then we'll hop into 211 and then we'll move on to project 26 1199 of the alley and then our final project 26 1195 for the evening thank you okay we will now move on to our public communications this is the opportunity for members of the public to addr

I'd like to request, Ellie, if you have your notes written down, if you could submit them in writing through the portal so it could be part of the record, it would be easier for us to grab that and then be able to forward it to a council member or to staff with questions or what have you.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. All right. Any more public comment?

All right. We're going to move on to the consent calendar and approval of our minutes. On tonight's approval, we have the August 20th, 26 draft minutes and the August 20, 26 draft minutes up for approval. I did have a question for staff. in the August 2026 draft minutes, I believe it says that we approved the August 20th minutes, so it's double approving is what I had captured, but now I just exited out of the agenda. Did anybody else catch that? No.

Okay. That's the delineation? Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Any other questions for the commission? Okay. Yes, Commissioner Zuckerman.

Any other comments or questions? If there are none, I'd entertain a motion. Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

We have a motion by Commissioner Abbey and a second by Commissioner Winnegar.

Thank you. Okay, as noted earlier, we will move on to project 261155, 211 condominiums, condominium map 211 East Thompson. Yeah, I was gonna, I'll read through and then I'll ask for, yes, thank you. Project 26-1155-211 condominium map at 2011 East Thompson, a coastal development permit, a tentative track map, and one density bonus concession and seven waivers to merge three lots into one parcel and convert the approved 75 unit rental project to for sale condominiums. The Planning Commission is the decision body this evening. Because this is a quasi-judicial item, I will ask the Commission to d

Thank you. We will come get you at the conclusion of this project. And with that, I will invite staff to proceed with the presentation this evening.

Thank you. For modification, does the applicant have a presentation tonight or is this available for questions?

Thank you for that. Then we can first start from questions from the Commission. And if there's questions to the applicant when I open public comment, we can address those as well. But first, questions to staff on the project.

Thank you, using our Commissioner Comden.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. Is this the project that had a lawsuit attached to it? And since it is, because we haven't officially gotten any, at least I don't remember us getting any update on that, can you walk us through what happened, please?

That's fine. Ms. Farley, you mean the city council upheld the denial?

to give us some information on the conversion from rental units to for sale units. Is this common these days? Do we have a disposition as a city on what we would prefer? Walk us through that, if you would, please. I can go for it.

Okay, so doing the math, you said 10%. This new proposal is for eight moderate. If I'm reading it correctly, eight moderate is less than 10% of 94 total units. Or we're down to 75 units now. I see, okay, very good. Yeah, those are my questions, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Boussa. I think most of my questions were already asked by Commissioner Comden and answered. But I did want to know, when they change it to four cell units for affordable housing, is it implemented by the developer or is it implemented still through the housing authority?

Yes, I was curious, the lawsuit, did it, so apparently it required the building to go down from 69 feet to 63, four feet, four inches, 63, four inches, at least that was the settlement, correct?

Okay, did the lawsuit require this to go from apartment to condo?

Okay. Going down to 63.4 inches, that Was the impetus for reducing the number of units from 94 units to 75 units I Would defer to the applicant in the decision-making and their settlement agreement Those were not particularities that I have all the details for okay, and then one of the things when this came through the Planning Commission and the City Council that was of great interest to some of the planning commissioners and city council members was the fact that there were going to be 13 very low income units. That was a big selling point in the argument to approve this project, and now we

Okay, yeah, that was the IHO ordinance. I remember that went through the inclusionary housing ordinance.

Just one clarification question on the for sale versus for rental. Since we have the for rental that steps down into the very low and low, when we have the for sale at the moderate, is there a band beneath that or is that the lowest band in the for sale?

thank you for that clarification I believe our further questions are for the applicant unless you have any further absolutely Commissioner Comden thank you chair so moderate does not have a resale restriction as very low income for sale units would like a 50-year Horizon capping the acceleration of The value or the resale value of a unit when it's.

All right. I see there's no more questions from staff. I think our questions are now for the applicant. As a rule of order, just a point of clarification, do I need to open it up to the public hearing, or can we ask questions of the applicant before opening up that public hearing? Mr. Clerk?

All right. I'm going to kindly ask the applicant to step forward. I think we can start with just the main question. Why did we go from rental to condos? Could you help us understand that a little bit more?

And then the other concession that you had was there was the requirement for the affordable that they, maybe not the same surfaces and so forth, but have generally the same Similar layouts being throughout, maybe some on the fifth floor, the first floor, the second, third, fourth, a mixture. And I understand under density law, density bonus law, you've elected at this point to invoke that concession. And so I just wanted to note that.

Walk us through, you've gone from six studios to zero. I don't know much about the resale or for sale studio market, but I do know that modern living for younger adults is way downsized from my generation. Speak to why you made that change, please.

Commissioner Winninger. Question for the applicant.

Vince, I have a question. Do you have any ADA units, or are you required to do any ADA units?

Any other questions for the applicant? Commissioner Cromden.

Thanks again. What does adaptable to ADA mean? Usually it's door widths and things like that. Will these automatically be within that realm or?

But the bathroom is naturally large enough for a wheelchair to turn and all those things?

Okay, any other questions for the applicant? the commission okay seeing as there are none i will now open it up to the public hearing um and as i understand there's no uh formal presentation uh so mr clerk do we have any public speakers or written comments on this item thank you chair we do have two public comments on this item our first speaker is vince daly followed by natalie broughton thank you i've already spoke so sorry i apologize uh one speaker natalie brotnik

Okay. Thank you. All right. That concludes our public comment, our public hearing. We can close our public hearing unless there's any responses back to the public speaker. Okay. Then we can bring it back to the Commission for Deliberation. Commissioner Comden? Correct. Commissioner Comden?

Okay, let's cut to the chase. What if we deny this? What happens?

I just want to ask the city attorney. So the developer or the applicant has invoked bonus law. And so the applicant is taking advantage of state laws that are mandated upon cities that we have to follow. And if we like them or not, it is law. It is legal. And so those changes that I was asking were asked about. are legally appropriate changes that the applicant can ask for.

Commissioner Whitaker. Yes, we're still allowed to ask the applicant Things if we have it something that just came up with the with the public speaker, right? I can ask the applicant to come up I'd actually like that your attorney if you could you said you have your attorney Did you see it your name for the record of course commissioner Todd Nelson ran pastor Nelson here on behalf of the applicant I Thank you. The new design that is before us, does it meet the settlement agreement that you have with the neighbors?

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Commissioner Winninger. Myself, in terms of my comments for this evening, I am leaning in support of this project. We need more housing. This has been a project that has been delayed for a lot of reasons to get built. We want to see more units in our housing stock to help support our community. am amenable to the the concessions that are being asked for to in order to continue to provide affordable housing units at the moment I will also state that you know I think the I'm not going to speak on behalf of the applicant but I can imagine the holding costs that ha

Thank you, Chair. I'm very disappointed that we're converting from rentals to for sale units. I had envisioned this project as being part of the solution for the people that work downtown. I'm disappointed at losing the studio apartments because a lot of people that do work downtown are single and that would have been a very nice solution. for them. I respect Mr. Daley's comment about comps, but there's a vastly different scenario being two blocks from one of the best surf spots in the world, and the freeway adjacent empty buildings in Oxnard, they are not comparable. So I don't know. I haven'

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Whitaker? Thank you, Chair Boussa. I'm going to echo Chair Boussa's comments. I think this project meets all of our standards. They've come in and they've redesigned it so that they can answer the neighbors' concerns. I'm excited about the for sale component of it, actually, because there's so much rental apartments being built, especially some that we've approved in the last year that I've been here. So I'm excited about the for sale. I also have young adults living with me still. And maybe they can't afford these per se, but maybe someday they can. And a

So trying to make the best out of the situation. It is lower in height. It responds to what the group that was looking at that and was concerned about. And there's an agreement. So that speaks for itself. There's an agreement. There are things that I could point out that I've already pointed out in question form that I won't repeat now that are disappointing. But I understand that the applicant is taking advantage of the law, state density bonus law. And for Venturans who aren't happy with the fact that sometimes we have to approve projects that even we or at least me recognize aren't necessar

Thank you, Commissioner Abbey, and thank you to the commissioners for your insights and comments this evening. It seems as though we are moving in a direction in favor of approval of this project, and if it pleases the commission, I would entertain a motion at this time to approve the project as conditioned.

I'll move to approve with the new resolution that was presented to us late in the day today.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? I'll second.

Thank you. I'm going to go get Commissioner. Okay, thank you. I will also hand over chair duties to...

Thank you to staff for that report I'd like to ask You why is this at Planning Commission and City Council because I do know other streets have been named without Planning Commission and City Council approval

So thank you, Assistant Director Clancy. Was it named before?

OK, but because it was requested by the city council. Correct.

I got to know Ivor Davis over 20 years because he would be a contributor to our newspaper, and he was one of the most remarkable people I've ever met. He lived a witness of history that most of us have only read about. He attended the Manson trials. He was there when the Beatles met Muhammad Ali. He watched in the Ambassador Hotel as RFK took his last few breaths. He was the most incredible person. You know, they say one in a million. He was one in 10 million. And his joie de vivre is really hard to describe. He just made you feel great. He made you feel alive. He made you feel like you wanted

I'd like to say that I had originally proposed a different alleyway, which has an unofficial name, but the adjacency to the Rubicon, for which he was a major contributor and donor, as well as the Ventura Music Festival, I think is apropos.

I enthusiastically move that we approve this resolution. I would like to second that. For naming the alleyway Ivor Davis Alley.

Let's rewind here. I watched the three and a half hour discussion from council on June 9th, not on June 9th, that's my wife's birthday, but recently. And it was mentioned that these changes had been spoken about in prior councils years ago. Do we have any understanding of what prompted this? Why council has been thinking about it for a number of years?

Why is this before us now? Normally it comes before us and then it goes to council. This is in reverse. They spoke about it, they came to a conclusion, they asked staff to come back for something they could review and either approve or modify if they chose. Why is it coming to us?

Okay, very good. I just want to... I don't know. Can you confirm that the director at that time, who's no longer with us, said that having these meetings can add two to three months to a timeline of a project's approval and in combination sometimes up to five to six months if both advisory bodies are consulted and have hearings? And I also heard that in 2025 that there were 25 such meetings between these two bodies and the cost number of $195,000 or thereabouts was offered at that June 9th meeting.

Okay. Thank you. Those are my questions. Commissioner Wiener.

Thank you, Vice Chair Zucker. I have a couple questions for staff. First is, and I'm going to kind of direct this towards planning staff. If this does get merged in the historic preservation and the design review, will staff have to create staff reports? I've worked in jurisdictions where they don't have design review. that the Planning Commission has had to do it. But then you see staff reports from staff that have a lot more architectural review in them. And of course historic preservation, if it applies, is that kind of what would happen in this situation? That we would get, the Planning Co

Thank you, Vice Chair Zucker. I wanted to ask staff or Mr. McDonald or staff, community development staff. Yeah, that's actually where I want that question to go. Will staff need to take on additional staff members as a result of, we have currently a design review committee, panel of architectural and landscape architect experts, and the council is proposing that we eliminate that altogether So will staff have to take on some of that slack? Will staff have to hire architects? Will there have to be additional training of community development or planning staff to take on some of that expertise?

Commissioner Comden, you have another question? Thank you, Vice Chair. Could you pull up slide eight, please? So in a self-preservation question, planning qualification changes, no change is listed here as it was on June 9th. Now could you pull up slide five? This says current planning commissioners continue to serve out remainder of term before transitioning to refined district-based appointment process. those two things seem to be not the same to me.

Right, but at some point they would change.

OK. Point of clarification, the objective design standards, the draft is available now online, correct? I've seen them. OK. I know a lot of people don't know that they're out there yet. I just wanted to remind people that the draft is out there and available for you to look at.

Thank you, Vice Chair Boussa. I wanted to ask... staff. Rather than disbanding the DRC altogether, was there any discussion at the Committee on Committees or at Council regarding a suggestion that I saw in the letters to us for this meeting? Did the Council consider at all a compromise of limiting the DRC to one meeting? I know they're concerned about too many meetings. but did they have any discussion about possibly limiting them to one meeting?

Mr. McDonald. Could you pull up the know this is a big ask the City Council meeting notes from that June 9th discussion item 10 page 13 if it pleased the body I would like to suggest that we talk about HPC first because that might be the easiest for us to get through and then move on to the DRC, and then, which I think will be the most difficult, and then finally the second motion that's before us, all the mechanisms of things. I have a couple. Sure, do it.

Yes, I'd like to ask staff a couple things. First, other cities have what's called a development advisory committee, which consists of people in the other departments, like public works and traffic, and sometimes they have an architect that volunteers to sit on that committee. Do you have something like that?

And how many DRC meetings are there currently a month? One.

Let's go back to Commissioner Calden. Okay. So can we start with HPC?

I'll wait. I'll wait till after everyone has okay Go next to Commissioner Whittinger.

Mr. Abbey Okay, so we're doing comments right now

I understand we're here tonight because city council wants to move ahead with their recommendation and we did not have, we weren't asked to provide an opinion prior and that's of course city council's prerogative so I understand that. It would have been good if we could have had that chance to provide input, so it's a little awkward to provide feedback when you know this is coming from the city council, but I think We're being asked for our recommendations, so I'm gonna give my honest opinions on this and then I'll be glad to hear what my colleagues think. And I know we'll take these in a diff

Yes, but I think it would be disjointed to do. Frankly, I think we should stay on topic, make comments about that topic, come to some conclusions, and then wrap it up is how I see it.

Thank you, Vice Chair Zucker. I have another question of staff, if you will. You mentioned, Vice Chair Zucker, about possibly supporting one committee, one hearing for the DRC for a project. Do they typically go back, keep going back to DRC to finally get an approval, or is that the volunteer, or is that a volunteer, do developers volunteer to go back and

And is that because staff has requested that to keep going back to DRC until they get a recommendation from DRC?

OK, thank you. So if staff didn't rely so heavily on the DRC making a recommendation for approval or denial, and there was only one meeting required for an applicant to go to the DRC, and the one meeting was, these are our suggestions, make them or don't make them. Do you think staff would rely less on the approval denial, they would just be able to give those recommendations to Planning Commission?

I have to say as a practicing planner, I'm sometimes going to design review committees and it's a lot, two or three meetings because you are getting an approval or a denial that basically staff is wanting you to get before you go to the next body. However, I do think that there is a benefit to it with the community, but it also is a benefit to the developer, even though developers are kind of like, ugh, I gotta go. I think they appreciate the feedback, especially on the massing or the materials. And so I do think that, you know, it is a benefit to the developer as well. I do think if we didn't

I'm reading right here that says director may forward any application that does not require any review by design review to go to design review committee.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Okay, so running through the three items. The governance updates and related matters. We have not heard any speakers speak against it. I don't know how carefully everybody has reviewed it, but I don't have a problem with it being recommended there. So that's one of the items. The second item is the HPC, which I believe should be retained. This is a historic city, much more so than many other cities. And the residents obviously care a lot about keeping that. The bones of the city are very important. And so to have experts chiming in to us and the council is invaluable. An

Yeah, because I think this is part and parcel to what the main discussion item is here about DRC. Council took the initiative to go with option one, which is to disband. But I think option two and three are worthy of our consideration and discussion.

Yes, but I want you to see them if at all possible. Just give us a second. Okay, very good. I'll continue. And I think it's important to have the DRC continue on because architecture is the unavoidable art that we all have to live with. And this is the new art city, I heard. And so we have to keep that in mind. I can't tell you how many times I've driven by places that I just shake my head and go, how did that? How in the world? And on the other hand, I've driven by places that say, that's pretty nice. That's a nice addition. Well, that unavoidable art is controlled by the decisions we recomme

Thank you, Vice Chair Zucker. I want to throw a monkey wrench also, and I agree with Commissioner Comden. If we can get to look at what the city council did, maybe we could choose another option for them to consider. But I do want to also throw out, just for the idea, just for the clarity of putting it on the record, I do think the council should consider also possibly adding an architect maybe even a landscape architect to the DAC committee because that is something that the development community always has a city of Oxnard has that but the development advisory committee is required usually r

I will say that there was an alternative motion on the DRC issue that was seconded, but it failed. And so it resulted in going with option one, which was the recommendation to eliminate DRC.

I understand your point. I think that any project that goes in front of DRC is made better, and I haven't heard anyone say that it is made worse by that reviewing body. Objective design standards, while good and necessary, will not be able to cover every single option available to improve projects, whether they be commercial or residential, whether it's the placement of a tree or a consideration of a window shade. You just can't cover it all. Someone mentioned that Santa Barbara has an over 200 page document. Ours is just beginning and it's 25 pages of meaningful stuff which we will expand on

I'm generally in favor of that. I wish the DRC weren't limited to just one meeting. I would want it to be with the caveat that the applicant is ready. for the DRC meeting. I saw a, I'm not going to name a specific project and so I'm not going to identify which one I'm thinking about, but within the last few months there was a project that came out and they went to DRC and there were too many variables left. There wasn't a defined project. There were a lot of suggestions, a lot of maybe we do this, but there weren't a lot of specifics. And I would hate to think that the one meeting that we limi

Right. The other thing that I'm concerned about is right now with DRC, you have the opportunity, it's optional, and I don't, tell me a state law would or our current city ordinance would rule this out, but if an applicant wants to come to the DRC for a conceptual review, is that allowed? Does that account against the five meeting rule? Is that something that the applicant pays for that so city staff's reimbursed so that's not a cost to the city?

well that was the last part of the question it was basically is conceptual review still allowed yes okay and uh and and then who who pays for is there a fee to the app there is an application fee for the conceptual review yes and does that pay for the city staff time

Does staff find that useful or helpful to the process?

take the time to get it to that level usually I see it less and less than I used to conceptual review requests thank you thank you vice chair so how would that look if someone comes in for a conceptual is the DRC involved in this or just staff

But that wouldn't be a public hearing. That would be a first look feedback in preparation for the one public hearing meeting that they would have.

Go ahead, Commissioner Abbey. I had another comment. It hasn't been brought up yet. It's related to the process, but it's not something that's been discussed, so I won't spend much time on it. I always thought the process was sort of out of order. It used to be that Design Review did all the designing and basically the The big stuff that the Planning Commission votes on heights, setbacks, all that, that waited to the very end. So you had all this work done and then finally Planning Commission is at the point where it's really hard to say no because everything else happened. And it just seemed

Commissioner Cobb, did you have a? Yes, I have a friendly amendment for consideration, which is that... the application be complete in preparation of that DRC hearing.

And that wording, HPC, would continue to review.

I would like to also offer a friendly amendment. I still am not comfortable with the fact that city council voted unanimously to eliminate DRC and give responsibility planning commission. I feel like we are going to recommend option two to them and they're still possibly going to eliminate it. But I think if we could offer them You know a couple of other things and I don't want to be here all night, but I do think that if we could restrict the DRC to what the DRC is described in the ordinance as reviewing and instead of like I said in this item see that the director may may direct projects to

I didn't ‑‑ Commissioner Winnegar, I didn't catch the full gist of what you were suggesting just now.

If you look on page 7 of the amendment to the code ‑‑ of the ordinance city council for titles two and 24. It's the redlined ordinance that I'm looking at for the HPC and DRC.

If you look at C. Yes. it's there they're proposing to delete it because they're proposing to delete the entire DRC but it says that the basically this see item C allows for the director to forward any application that does not otherwise require review of the design review committee or historic preservation committee to their design review committee or historic preservation committee for a recommendation meaning that projects that aren't prescribed generally in the code to go to design review can be forwarded by the director if he or she does not, you know, thinks it needs design review. So I'

It probably is too late. Is it appropriate, or is it totally out of order at this stage of the game to ask someone who's in the room to ask a question, or have we gone beyond that point?

I don't mean to quibble. Let's see. Nominating counsel. Okay. Okay. Okay, so if we retain the DRC, I'm just trying to think, it would be a seven member, if we keep it, it would be a seven member body decided by, I just, I think that's interesting. I don't know if, I would personally would rather see the ARC make those decisions. And I don't expect that I will prevail, but I'll at least voice what my opinion is. Let's see, DRC, HPC duties, we're not changing qualifications if we keep them as we've described. Naming all advisory bodies as commissions. I always thought a commission is you're comm

Yes, I'd like to make a motion to approve the governance ordinance changes.

I agree with most of the governance, but because I have some difference of opinion on a few points, I will be voting no on this, even though I'm totally for this. We're adding CEQA, right? For CEQA, I'm adding for most of the governance, but I'm just explaining why I'm going to have a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Four acres of batteries. What is that? What's the purpose of having the batteries? They're backup for what? Do we know?