Will ‘The Orchard’ Housing Proposal Take Root? (2024)

This week, the county Board of Supervisors will move forward with a plan to rezone at least 16 sites to accommodate more than 7,600 units of housing on the South Coast, including some former agricultural land, school properties, and vacant lots. But a proposal by a Goleta family to transform 60 acres of orchards into a 1,200-unit mixed-income housing development — complete with its own parks, daycare, café, and pharmacy — was nixed from the list of potential rezones by the county Planning Commission at the last minute. It was a shock to many, including the family that has owned the property for decades, and leaves a large question mark as to the future of “The Orchard” development on Hollister Avenue.

Family Business

The Giorgi family has owned and farmed the piece of land at the corner of Hollister Avenue and Ward Drive for decades. Its rows of lemon and avocado trees are one of the last bits of undeveloped land left on Hollister Avenue, sandwiched between Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital and Old Town Goleta, technically outside city limits in the unincorporated area of the county.

Stan Giorgi, the latest in a long line of family farmers, now owns the property with his four siblings, all of whom were born and raised in Goleta. After graduating from Dos Pueblos High School, Giorgi studied agriculture management at UC Davis before he returned home to work with his father.

When Giorgi heard from the county that his property might be a prime site for rezoning to accommodate more than a thousand units of housing as part of its Housing Element plan, he began to envision a new purpose for his family’s land, as a potential “legacy” project that could provide the much-needed housing but in a responsible way, created by people who lived in and cared for the Eastern Goleta Valley.

Giorgi reached out to father-and-son duo Jeff and Jason Nelson of The Oak Creek Company, a Goleta-based development group that specializes in transforming traditional family properties into new housing communities that they themselves actually want to live in. Their previous projects include the Tree Farm, a former Christmas-tree lot off Patterson Avenue that was owned by the Cavaletto family for decades.

Jeff Nelson arrived in Goleta in the mid-’60s, when the valley had almost nothing but farmland. After getting into construction, he naturally moved into real estate, then land development. His son Jason, who was also raised in Goleta and graduated from San Marcos High School, joined the family business after studying land use and planning at UC Davis. The first project he developed with his father was the Tree Farm, where he now lives with his family.

A New Vision

Giorgi says that this isn’t the first time that the family has considered the switch from agriculture to housing for their property. There had been a few half-attempts in the past, though the county and Goleta residents were not ready to accept the thought of a large swath of housing in the spot of a lush, green orchard. But in recent years, as the fifth generation of Giorgi family members spread across the state, they are “simply not interested in farming” anymore, Giorgi says, and since the state is pressuring the county to provide at least 4,000 units of housing on the South Coast over the next eight years, the site began to look like an ideal situation.

The Nelsons got to work on putting together a team of nationally renowned architects and planners to design exactly what the county wanted: a mixed-income development with plenty of amenities for the diverse population of families and residents it would attract. This planning effort was unlike any other project they had worked on, with the team doing years’ worth of work in months to refine the proposal.

In November 2023, they filed an application under the “builder’s remedy,” which would allow the project a quick trip through the county review process as long as it promised at least 20 percent affordable units. This application, Jeff Nelson said, was to ensure that the development wouldn’t sit in review limbo like their previous projects, which took up to a decade from application to construction. It would also keep the project alive even if the county refused a rezone as part of the Housing Element.

When the county hosted a developer workshop in March, which amounted to a beauty contest for the potential rezone sites, Giorgi and Nelson presented their latest vision for “The Orchard,” a 1,177-unit mixed-income development promising 250 affordable units. Since then, the developers have bumped this number to. This includes 444 units below market-rate, with 264 offered for low-income renters, 120 for moderate-income households, and 60 “workforce” units that would be administered through the South Coast Chamber of Commerce’s housing consortium.

Renderings revealed a new neighborhood of different types of housing — apartments, courtyard flats, live-work lofts, and townhomes — and every type of community amenity imaginable, including a preschool, market, café/deli, and several publicly available parks throughout.

Jeff Nelson said that “placemaking” was an important part of the process, something he described as a community that people would want to spend time and raise families in. “We wanted something to be proud of,” he said.

They were confident that of all sites under consideration, theirs was in the best spot, surrounded by already developed land and an urban center with Old Town Goleta. They also had water rights accounted for, checked all the planning boxes, and had proven themselves willing to be flexible with the county’s requests. After the developer workshop, it seemed that “The Orchard” was a frontrunner for a county rezone.

Feeling Left Out

On April 1, the county Planning Commission held its final meeting to decide which of the South Coast sites would be recommended for a rezone. There were 18 properties considered, including a wave of properties all near the same stretch of Hollister Avenue in the Eastern Goleta Valley.

The county had received dozens of comments from Goleta residents concerned about the prospect of more than 3,000 units of housing on the edge of town, and after much deliberation, the commissioners felt that they could not recommend moving forward with every site. The Giorgi family property was one of only two sites left out of the list.

This last-minute rug pull took the team by surprise. “We want to be included,” Jason Nelson said.

But even prior to the meeting, local leaders and county residents had expressed reservations about rezoning too much land in the name of housing, especially agricultural space that, once developed, would never return.

Supervisor Laura Capps, who represents the district in which the project sits, has been encouraging all the developers to include a larger percentage of affordable housing. Most of the projects offered only 20 percent of units as affordable, with a few offering up to 30 percent. The Giorgi property promised 37.8 percent.

Goleta City Councilmember James Kyriaco has been vocal about his opposition to The Orchard project. Despite the promise for hundreds of affordable units, the Giorgi development would be too much of a strain on Old Town Goleta’s resources, he argued in a letter to the county, and it would “disproportionately” benefit from the city without contributing toward it.

This stems from the fact that one of the reasons The Orchard is ideal is its location next to a Goleta roundabout that will be constructed using city and federal funds — a project that required a bit of the Giorgi family land to complete. According to Kyriaco’s March 28 letter, the Giorgi family “took advantage” of the situation, and the City of Goleta had to pay $160,000 to complete the roundabout.

“Which their representatives now tout as a key reason to pick their project,” he said. “We had to pay them to make their project more feasible.”

“As of right now, I would ask that this one project come out,” Kyriaco said, pointing out that even without the development of the Giorgi property, the county would still be zoning for more than 1,400 units right outside Goleta city limits. “While still a lot of housing for such a small area, the other projects provide community benefits and diverse housing options that will enhance and support Old Town without as much risk of gentrification.”

Not Dead Yet

Despite the Planning Commission’s decision to leave The Orchard off its list of recommended sites, the project still has a future. The county Board of Supervisors has the final call during its final rezone hearing on May 3, and it is possible that the county will eventually have to rezone all the potential sites if the developments aren’t producing enough affordable units to meet the state’s eight-year goals.

Even if the supervisors snub the development, the Giorgi property still has a pathway through the “builder’s remedy,” though the Nelsons would prefer to work with the county toward either a rezone or development agreement, as the Senate Bill 330 process is still a convoluted and untested process.

But if the county refuses to grant a rezone for the property, it might come at a cost. The Orchard could be built anyway, albeit with 180 fewer moderate-income units.