The applicant behind the proposed 259-unit Seaside Ridge project in Del Mar is urging the city to “put down its sword” in their more than two-year standoff after a small city in Los Angeles County has abandoned its legal challenge in a similar conflict.
Planners in Del Mar rejected the Seaside Ridge application in October 2022 as incomplete because the proposed site on the city’s north bluff property isn’t zoned for multi-unit housing. The applicant, property owner Carol Lazier, argued that the project should be allowed under the Builder’s Remedy, a state law that overrules local zoning if the city does not have a state-certified housing element.
Del Mar drafted its housing element in time for a state-imposed 2021 deadline, but a series of revisions requested by the state Department of Housing and Community Development delayed its certification until May 2023.
Lazier filed a petition in San Diego County Superior Court last year to allow construction of Seaside Ridge to proceed. Last summer, she and the city agreed to postpone the court hearing while a potentially precedent-setting case unfolded in the small, wealthy city of La Cañada Flintridge.
La Cañada had rejected a 77,000 square-foot mixed-use development, but a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled about a year ago that it could proceed under the Builder’s Remedy. The city took the case to the Court of Appeal, but announced recently that it will withdraw because “the financial cost associated with the appeals process outweighs the potential outcomes of further litigation.”
A hearing for the Seaside Ridge petition is scheduled for June.
Seaside Ridge spokesperson Darren Pudgil said in a statement that La Cañada’s decision “bodes well for our case against the city of Del Mar and any other affordable housing proposals that have been wrongly denied in violation of the Builder’s Remedy law – including those in the state’s coastal zone.”
“Given the likelihood that Seaside Ridge will prevail in court, the city of Del Mar should follow La Cañada Flintridge’s wise decision and put down its sword,” Pudgil said. “Prolonging their two-year standoff will only increase the legal fees that Del Mar taxpayers are paying the city’s outside attorneys, as well as legal fees for which they will have to reimburse Seaside Ridge.”
Pudgil added that Seaside Ridge would make Del Mar less reliant on a planned 61-unit affordable housing development at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. The city is counting on those units to fulfill more than half of a state-mandated 113 new affordable housing units. But the board of directors that runs the fairgrounds still hasn’t decided whether it wants to accommodate any housing at all, and has already paused negotiations with the city twice over the last year.
If the housing plan at the fairgrounds fails, the city would have to allow multi-unit housing on the proposed Seaside Ridge site, as well as on a south bluff property, as a backup plan that the state would enforce.
Del Mar City Manager Ashley Jones declined comment on the case, but pointed to a page on the city’s website that says the Seaside Ridge application was deemed incomplete by the city because the developer did not submit necessary documents to seek an amendment to the city’s local coastal program. The city has said that state housing law cannot overwrite the local coastal program.
“The Seaside Ridge project is wholly inconsistent with the City’s certified Local Coastal Program, and without an amendment to the Local Coastal Program, the Project could not be approved under the California Coastal Act,” the city’s website says.
[updated with a response from Del Mar City Manager Ashley Jones]
