Monterey Turns to Creative Zoning to Boost Housing Supply
- Sarah Klearman
- Feb 4, 2020
- 4 min read
The oldest city in California, Monterey dates back to 1770. But it’s population has declined 10% since 1990 and water restrictions placed on the city have substantially curbed its ability to develop new housing. According to the state’s Demographic Research Unit, Monterey has only added 110 housing units – less than 1 percent – since 2010. Consequently, it’s failed to meet the mandate of the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) program.
Soon, though, the Monterey could see a change in pace in its residential development. After stagnant growth over the last nine years, Monterey City Council in December approved three projects that could allow the city to approve over 600 new housing units.
The three projects are spread through the city of Monterey; one, on Garden Road, could accommodate up to 405 multifamily units; another, downtown, would allow for approximately 200 multifamily units. A third, at 300 Cannery Row, would create an additional eight units. Twenty percent will be designated as low or moderate income housing, according to Community Development Director Kim Cole.
Those kinds of numbers would constitute a breakthrough for a city in which new development is heavily burdened by local and state regulation on water use, according to Community Development Director Kim Cole.
“We can’t set a new water meter in the City of Monterey, meaning there must be adequate, existing water units on development sites,” Cole said.
It’s been that way since the late 1990s, she added, when the California Public Utilities Commission found that the city’s water provider had been pumping water from the Carmel River illegally.
“We cannot just take a vacant lot and build,” Cole said. “We have vacant lots, and it’s an absolute no.”
That’s one of the reasons the city’s population has dropped from 32,000 in 1990 to 28,000 today. And it means the city has had to get creative when the popular tourist town seeks to build new housing for its growing workforce population.
For example, Cole said, a shuttered nightclub on Alvarado Street was successfully converted into a 33-unit residential structure because the property already had water credits. Empty commercially or industrially zoned plots of land create a critical window for residential development
The 405- and 200-unit projects are also the product of working with existing water credits, according to Principal Planner Ande Flower. The 405-unit site, located near the Monterey Regional Airport, was made feasible by an overlay that changed the area’s zoning from industrial to residential – what the city is calling a “multifamily overlay.”
The overlay is critical, Flower explained, because it allows existing water credits once intended for industrial use, to be repurposed for new residential developments.
The site with approximately 200 units was made possible by a density cap overlay, Flower said. The overlay allows the project flexibility in that it would not have to conform with Monterey’s 30-unit-per-acre restriction for residential developments. Instead, Flower said, the project will operate with a 30-unit-per-acre average. That could allow for developments of 60 or more units in some portions, while other portions may go empty, give developers flexibility when it comes to unit type.
“It’s not like it’s doubling the number of units, but it’s allowing people to have a diversity of housing options,” Flower said. She added that the city lacks studio and one-bedroom apartments and believes the density overlay could foster more of those kinds of units.
The third project, at 300 Cannery Row, was approved by the City Council at its December 17 meeting. That approval marked the end of a 12-year process for the mixed-use project, which will add eight top-floor dwelling units over bottom-floor commercial space.
Twenty percent of the new units will be designated as affordable housing, Flower said, for which there is high demand within the city.
“We have developers reaching out to (employers) like the (Monterey Bay) Aquarium,” she added, noting that community support for the additional housing has been profound. “When news of the multifamily overlay first came out, we had folks show up that we had no idea would be there, including the superintendent of schools.”
