A good cross section of Chino residents have expressed discomfiture with the city council’s indulgence of the Newport Beach-based Orbis Development Company in what they anticipate will be redound to the disadvantage of existing residents in the Euclid Schaefer District.
Utilizing a limited liability offshoot, Orbis and its principals, Grant Ross and Tom Money, were able to successfully obtain the cooperation of the city’s planning division to get its acquiescence in conceptually accepting the subdivision of 10.3 acres at the northwest corner of Euclid and Schaefer avenues into a 267-apartments on 5.1 acres, a 1.4-acre fast food restaurant site, a 1.5-acre fast food restaurant site, a 1.5-acre storage facility and a 0.7-acre 18,600-square foot retail complex with an accompanying parking lot.
Orbis’s intended use of the property is of far greater intensity than that on the surrounding properties. The projects have been presented to the city as a package deal under the guise of a single project. Dubbed Eden by Orbis, the project signals a wave of development proposals by investors and development companies now on the drawing boards which will seek to use the leverage of state efforts to facilitate the construction of affordable housing, which is to ultimately manifest as densely packed multi-story structures. This has run head on into the expectations of those who in recent years and decades have located in Chino and are now residing in neighborhoods built upon wide swaths of land previously utilized for agricultural purposes and which currently feature suburban bungalows and two-story single-family residences.
On September 19, 2022, Orbis Real Estate Partners of Newport Beach acquired the 451,281.6-square foot – 10.36 acre – Zivelonghi property at the northwest corner of South Euclid Avenue and Schaefer Avenue within the confines of the now-defunct Chino Agricultural Preserve. Orbis paid Margaret Zivelonghi $12,100,000 for the acreage, translating to a cost of $26.59 per square foot or $1,158,301.16 per acre for the property. The sale did not invite the scrutiny of, nor alarm, the vast majority of those living in the area. A handful of residents, however, were aware of the transaction, and several of those understood the sale’s implication. Those more informed and sophisticated with regard to real estate and land development issues recognized that the price paid and other considerations such as zoning and pressure the State of California through its Department of Housing and Community Development is putting on cities throughout California to facilitate the creation of low income housing to ease the perceived housing crisis in the Golden State meant that the property was destined to be developed to a greater density than other property in the general vicinity and the property within the former Chino Valley Agricultural Preserve that had already been built upon in general.
One resident in particular, Robert Nigg, looking closely at the suspension of development standards that city staff appeared to be engaged in during its early dialoguing Orbis Schaefer, the limited liability company Orbis had formed to bring the project to fruition.
Nigg and a fair number of other Chino residents were alarmed at what appeared to them to be City Hall’s willingness to sign on to a development frenzy that was bringing with it the prospect that the less intense historic utilization of land in historically agricultural Chino and which has for decades been making a gradual transition toward becoming a sprawling suburbia was about to escalate into an urban dystopia indistinguishable from inner city settings overrun with tenements.
There were multiple factors at play in what was occurring. One was the escalating price of land, and the never-ending imperative on the part of the development industry to maximize the return on its investment.
Another pressure was a mandate originating in Sacramento, where the California Legislature, acting at the behest of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, had enacted laws, rules and strategies aimed at easing both the homelessness and housing crises. One part of that strategy was conducting what is termed a Regional Housing Need Assessment Survey and then mandating that individual jurisdictions throughout the state – essentially counties and cities – make accommodations to allow the development of the number of housing units determined through the survey to be their fair share of the housing statewide needed to adequately house the state’s burgeoning population. In the case of Chino, the number arrived at by the California Department of Housing and Community Development was that during the eight-year October 2021-to-October 2029 planning cycle, it needed to make way for the construction of 6,961 housing units, including 2,107 for very-low-income homebuyers and 1,281 for low income homebuyers.
The State of California’s order to its constituent cities that they accommodate more and more people on smaller and smaller lots was out of step with a vast number of Chino residents’ vision of what they wanted their community to be. In 1988, the city’s residents had voted overwhelmingly in favor of Measure M, which prohibited the Chino City Council from increasing residential density (that is, the number of units per acre) of any land in the city (as of 1988) without the majority approval of the voters. Measure M also disallowed the rezoning non-residential land for residential uses likewise without voter approval. In compliance with resident sentiment, the city council at various junctures since 1988 had layered into the city code and its zoning regulations further restrictions to control growth and prevent runaway development. Consequently, the development of residential property in Chino to a density greater than 16 units per acre was prohibited.
City officials, understanding that there was a clash between what state officials were telling them to do and what the city’s local standards were, placed Measure Y before the voters in the June 2022 Primary Election. Measure Y was intended as a means of giving city officials a workaround to Measure M. Measure Y, while not undoing Measure M per se, essentially allowed for the conversion of some property within the city not previously zoned for residential purposes to be placed into so-called overlay zones where the property could be developed for residential purposes. Under Measure Y, land could be designated for “mixed-use,” such that the ground floor of multi-story buildings would house commercial enterprises and the second, third, fourth and perhaps even fifth and sixth floors would serve as apartments.
The voters gave passage to Measure Y. Pursuant to the passage of Measure Y, the city council took action to adopt land use standards which suspended the city’s normal development standards in 91 sites designated into two types of overlay districts. One of those categories was a mixed-use zone or mixed use overlay, referred to by the acronym MUO. The other was an affordable housing overlay zone, or affordable housing overlay, referred to by the initialization AHO.
Measure Y’s passage opened the door for Orbis and developers of a like mind. Three months after Measure Y’s passage, Orbis moved to acquire the Zivelonghi property, which was scheduled to be abstracted into one of the mixed-use overlays.
Simultaneous with City Hall to revamping Chino’s municipal, zoning and development codes to make clear what sort of intensity of use and density standards were to be in place to govern ongoing and future building in the overlay zones, the city set to work on determining the incentives it would provide the development community with regard to helping it meet the goals set down in the Regional Housing Needs Assessment process. This translated into, essentially, creating a hierarchy of density levels and letting developers know that in order to be able to construct a project at a given level of density, they would need to preserve a specific number of the units they were building for buyers of an income level specified by the state. In this way, for example, the city arrived at a trade-off standard by which, if a developer wanted to construct a project that would entail 20 units per acre, 10 percent of the units therein would need to be earmarked for very low income residents who would be charged a monthly rent affordable to them and that if the developers wanted to build apartments with 26 units to the acre, 16 percent of the units would need to be reserved for those with very low income, followed by similar gradations of density and corresponding density.
As it turned out, by early 2023, city officials had accomplished some of the preparations they had to engage in to put Measure Y into effect but not all of them. Most pointedly, the updating of the zoning and development codes across the board had not been completed. The zoning code was not updated until April, 2023, nearly 9 months after Measure Y was approved in June of 2022. While the citizens of Chino voted to pass Measure Y, they were not informed on how the zoning code was to be amended until after the fact.
For Chino residents such as Nigg or Greg Duncan, who were well informed and sophisticated enough to recognize the impact the liberalizations of the city’s building regulations were to have on the character of their city, what was happening was enraging.
In its five-pronged Eden proposal, not only was the density Orbis was asking for on the order of roughly four times that of any existing residential neighborhood in the area, the storage facility was completely incompatible with the surroundings, according to nearby residents. Of importance, they say, is that on-street parking is not permitted on any of the three main thoroughfares articulating with the project site. Thus, overfill parking at the commercial site, which is proposed to feature 75 parking spaces, will likely move onto the nearby residential streets.
One aspect of the city’s seeming open-armed acceptance of the Eden project was that when the city sought to enforce its own standards relating to the density concession incentives to be provided to Orbis in exchange for offering units to renters at rates that will allow the city to meet the state requirements laid out in the Regional Housing Need Assessment Survey for the October 2021-to-October 2029 time period, Orbis balked, claiming that providing 16 percent of its units to low income or very low income residents was not economically feasible. With the city under the gun from the state to allow the construction of 2,107 housing units for very-low-income homebuyers or renters and 1,281 units for low-income homebuyers or renters, Chino asked that Orbis reserve 42 of the 267 apartment units for low income and very-low income renters. The company demurred.
That refusal, those who question whether Orbis is acting in good faith say, should have been the end of the city’s consideration of the Eden project. The city claimed it was accommodating Orbis because the company was going to help Chino meet the state mandate, they say. But when the city asked Orbis to do just that, it did not meet its obligation. If Orbis is not assisting the city with meeting its goals, these critics argued, the city should not help Orbis meet its goals.
For many Chino residents in the environs of Euclid and Schaefer who are being imposed upon to accept a development they do not feel is compatible with their neighborhood, Orbis’s unwillingness to hold up its end of the bargain that justifies allowing residential projects that exceed all previous existing density standards was incomprehensible. Still, the situation was worse than that, some residents pointed out. Orbis was seeking, and with the assonance of city officials, is on the verge of getting, they said, permission to build a project at twice the density the company was claiming the project was to entail.
In December 2024 Chino Development Services Director Warren Morelion made public his calculation of the floor area ratio on project’s to be built in the city’s mixed-use overlay areas. It so happened that the number Morelion came up with – 1.25 – meaning that by constructing buildings of more than one story on a particular piece of ground a builder could construct up to 1.25 acres (54,450 square feet) on a single acre (43,560 square feet), matched, almost perfectly, what Orbis wanted to do on the 10.3 acres it had at the corner of Euclid and Schaefer.
Nigg took the lead in questioning the validity of Morelion’s interpretation of the city code, which is to say he was contesting, by extension, the Eden Project. In an appeal to the Chino Planning Commission filed on December 13, 2024, Nigg challenged, among other things, Morelion’s calculation of the floor area ratio permissible for a project within a mixed-use overlay district.
It was Nigg’s contention that Morelion’s calculation of the floor area ratio was either in error or that the development services director had misinterpreted the standard. This miscalculation/misinterpretation, Nigg maintained, was in conflict with the Chino General Plan, the city’s housing element, the Chino Zoning Code and is a flawed, illogical and inconsistent interpretation of the city’s reasoning in advocating for the passage of Measure Y. Nigg also argued that the high density floor area ratio represents an imposition upon the homeowners in the district where the Eden project is to be built, in that the structures that are to be erected will be at a mass and scale incompatible with their surroundings. He made an official challenge of Morelion’s action by appealing it to the Chino Planning Commission.
The planning commission heard that challenge on February 19, before which its members were provided with a report by Chino City Planner Andrea Gilbert. In that report, Gilbert recommended that the commission “[d]eny the appeal and uphold the interpretation of the zoning code made by the director of development services regarding the calculation and enforcement of the floor area ratio in the mixed use overlay district.”
Gilbert contended in the report that Nigg’s assertions that the city’s general plan, zoning code, and overlay zoning are in conflict was incorrect and that density calculations are consistently utilized to control intensity of use in residential uses, while floor area ratio is consistently utilized to control the intensity of non-residential uses. Though Gilbert asserted that Morelion’s “interpretation of the floor area ratio limitations in Section 20.09.090 is consistent with the city’s general plan,” she did not address how it was that the city was preparing to allow Orbis to utilize the full 10.3 acres as the divisor in calculating the residential density when approximately 5.2 of those acres were not being used for residential development but rather commercial uses and a large-scale storage facility.
Among the exhibits presented to the planning commission on February 19 was a letter from Morelion to Nigg dated December 5, 2024 in which the development services director attempted to address Nigg’s “reservations about how the mixed use overlay standards allow for development within the overlay.” In the letter, Morelion rejected Nigg’s challenge of his calculation by claiming that “mixed use overlay is intentionally structured to exclude floor area ratio requirements for residential uses within the overlay.” Morelion in the letter propounded that as an incentive to developers to construct housing stock in areas zoned for mixed use, the city provides an additional 0.25 floor area ratio for the nonresidential portion of mixed use developments, thus allowing a total 1.25 floor area ratio, and stating that the city was striving toward “balancing the goals of development with community needs.”
Nigg contends that the city zoning code allows for an increase in floor area ratio to 1.25 when affordable rental units are included in the project. Nigg argued that since the increase in floor area ratio and density bonus was contingent on residential affordable housing being included in the project, the floor area calculation should include the residential units.
The planning commission, based upon Morelion’s letter to Nigg and Gilbert’s assertions in her staff report denied the appeal in a 5-to-1 vote with Chairman Jimmy Alexandris and commissioners Kevin Cisneroz, Lissa Fraga, Brandon Blanchard and Steve Lewis voting to deny the appeal, Commissioner Lawrence Vieira voting to sustain the appeal and Commissioner Vincent Lopez abstaining.
The commission collectively and the commissioners individually cited no specifics or rationale for denying Nigg’s appeal.
City officials also insisted that they were not addressing the issue that was driving the controversy: the Eden Project. The Eden Project has not yet been scheduled for an analysis and approval by either the planning commission or the city council. As such, either panel going on the record with regard to project before it is officially under consideration would be inappropriate, prejudicial and illegal. They insist that Nigg’s appeal/appeals extend only to generic questions with regard to development standards related to the implementation of Measure Y and the development/land use standards that are to attain in mixed-use overlay zones.
Nigg, citing the commission’s failure to make any findings of fact, as he said was required in the city’s zoning code, appealed the planning commission’s denial of his appeal to the city council, which had 60 days to take up the matter. The council heard that appeal this week, on Tuesday April 15.
It is Nigg’s contention that both the city’s development services staff and a majority of the planning commission have “become a rubber stamp for the demands of the developers.” He said Morelion and other members of the planning division have changed the city’s development code to accommodate Orbis.

“The ordinance amending the city’s zoning code in the aftermath of Measure Y’s passage approved by the city council on March 4, 2023, did not include giving developers the right to build a massive four-story storage facility in mixed use overlay districts,” Nigg said. “Just two weeks later on March 20, 2023, the planning division recommended to the planning commission that the zoning code be amended to include storage facilities, to increase the height of the buildings and to increase the number of residential units per acre from 20 to 30 units per acre, while reducing the required number of affordable units by over 50 percent.”
The zoning code for mixed use overlays was ill-advised and poorly written, Nigg said, resulting in numerous illogical contradictions within the zoning code. Nigg further contends that the 10.36-acre site cannot support the intensity of use Orbis is intent on proceeding with. He referenced Government Code Section 65583.2(c)(2)(B), which states “A site larger than 10 acres shall not be deemed adequate to accommodate lower income housing need unless the locality can demonstrate that sites of equivalent size were successfully developed during the prior planning period for an equivalent number of lower income housing units as projected for the site or unless the locality provides other evidence to the {California] Department [of Housing and community Development] hat the site can be developed as lower income housing.”
The city did not abide by these requirements, Nigg said.
Nigg contends that the zoning code for mixed use overlays was ill-advised and poorly written, resulting in numerous illogical contradictions within the zoning code. Nigg further contends that the 10.36 acre site, with no on-street parking in the area, is not suitable for the development as planned by Orbis. He referenced Government Code Section 65583.2(c)(2)(B), which states “A site larger than 10 acres shall not be deemed adequate to accommodate lower income housing need unless the locality can demonstrate that sites of equivalent size were successfully developed during the prior planning period for an equivalent number of lower income housing units as projected for the site or unless the locality provides other evidence to the department that the site can be developed as lower income housing.” Nigg said, “The city has never provided an intelligent and logical explanation as to why the Orbis project is being allowed to be developed.”
Tuesday night, Chino Mayor Eunice Ulloa left it to Morelion, essentially, to refute Nigg’s disputation of Morelion’s December opinion with regard to the permissible floor area ratio within development projects in the city’s overlay zones. In doing so, Morelion, on occasion, took to referring to himself in the third person.
According to Morelion, he had interpreted the city’s codes accurately in December, whereupon Nigg took issue with his reading of the law, and went over his head to take the matter up with the planning commission in an appeal to that body. That appeal was heard by the planning commission in February, which Moreton said had acted correctly in sustaining his interpretation.
“On February 19, 2025, the day of the planning commission hearing for the appeal, the appellant submitted a second narrative reiterating his arguments from the first appeal, and introduced new arguments not previously raised,” Morelion told the city council on April 15. “This submission articulated arguments and offered evidence not previously provided with the original appeal and therefore was not considered with the original appeal. Ultimately, the planning commission voted five for, one against, and one abstention to deny the appellant’s appeal and uphold the director’s interpretation of FAR [floor area ratio] in MUO [mixed-use overlay] districts Following the February 19 planning commission hearing, the appellant submitted two appeals. The first appeal was requesting the planning commission issue specific factual findings. The second challenged the planning commission’s decision to uphold the director’s interpretation of the calculation and enforcement of the FAR in the MUOs.”
Morelion went on. “Staff reviewed with the city attorney and determined the appellant is incorrect,” Morelion said. “Because the appeal to the planning commission did not relate to an entitlement or project application pending before the city, the planning commission is not required to make specific factual findings. In this case there is no required finding of fact.”
Morelion said that the adjustment the city made to its development codes with regard to overlay zones after the passage of Measure Y trumped the land use standards in place in Chino previously. He displayed a large projection of 20.09.030 of the city code, with the heading “Conflict Between Provisions.” The body of that code section stated, “In the event of any conflict between Chapter 20.09 (Overlay Districts) in Part 2 (Zoning Districts) of this code, the requirement specified in the overlay district shall apply. In the event that the overlay district is silent, the requirements of the base zoning district shall apply.”
Moreton continued, “In the second portion of his appeal the appellant challenged the interpretation by the director that the FAR limitations applied to non-residential uses in MUO districts and cited a wide variety of information to support the argument n that the FAR should be applied to both residential and nonresidential within the MUO district. Staff also reviewed this issue with the city attorney and determined that the appellant is also incorrect as it relates to this issue. The city adopted a standard to regulate residential development that does not utilize any FAR requirement in an overlay district for affordable housing. Those standards apply to overlay districts, regardless of any city code requirement. Standards adopted in the zoning code for the MUO supersede other codes or requirements.”
Both Nigg and members of the public who had come to support him were disappointed in the way in which city officials sought to divorce the Orbis/Eden Development from the issues with regard to the development standards in mixed use overlay zones.
At the outset of the council’s hearing of the appeal, City Attorney Fred Galante said, “The applicant has raised issues beyond what was presented in his appeal. The council legally cannot consider those items and it would be inappropriate for the applicant to address outside what was considered by the planning commission. It also is imperative that no specific project be described and the council cannot consider any specific project because of this appeal.”
While Galante and Mayor Ulloa said that there would be an opportunity for the applicant to weigh in with regard to the Eden Project when the planning commission or city council officially considers Orbis’s application at some future date, Ulloa called upon Galante to intervene if anyone sought to mention the Eden Project directly.
“There is a great deal of complexity here,” Nigg told the council on April 15. “Back in 2023, when Ordinance 2308 came before the planning commission, the then-director of community development, Nick Liquori, put on a power point presentation. It had to do with adding stories into the mixed use overlay district. He basically says the maximum FAR [floor area ratio] is 1.25 percent for all residential and non-residential units. That was his interpretation. That was the one given to you, when you voted on it, this ordinance. I’m not saying if there’s only non-commercial in there there’s a FAR of 1. But if you add residential housing, it increases the FAR. But you don’t want to count that, so when you said we want more open space and instead of a three-story building we’re going to allow a four story building, but then they move it over to a 5-acre spot, and then put in a storage facility that takes up all the open space. That’s contradictory and hypocritical to why we allow four-story buildings. That makes no sense. I’m looking for common sense answers.”
Nigg told the council it was not getting the straight scoop from city staff on the issue of intensified development under the auspices of Measure Y and mixed use overlay zone development standards.
“I’m asking you to not make a decision without the facts,” he said. “If you look at the law, it says affordable housing is a FAR requirement. Government Code 65917.2bq basically provides up to a 20 percent increase in maximum allowable floor area ratio for affordable housing projects. Then you go to another Government Code – 65917.2 – where it says when you have a housing development like the one in theory in the city that has a FAR of 1.25 on a ten acre parcel – roughly 430,000 square feet – then state code requires you to have at least 50 percent affordable housing. So, now you have almost a million square feet of floor area space being crunched in, because the state made you put in a correction to the ordinance that at least 50 percent of the project must be for affordable housing. So, if you are allowing the FAR to go up to 1.25 without counting that, now you have a 2.5 FAR on that lot. That has no common sense. Whoever came up with that idea is contradicted by Nick [Liquori], the previous development director.”
It was further revealed that Orbis Schaefer is actually going to seek permission to build 275 units on the five-acre site.
Galante indicated that if the council granted Nigg’s appeal and overturned the planning commission, the next logical step would be to alter the ordinance that created the 91 multiple use overlay and affordable housing overlay sites around the city, which has served to satisfy the California Department of Housing and Community Development Department with regard to the city meeting the Regional Housing Needs Assessment mandate to allow the construction of 6,961 housing units during the current eight-year cycle.
The full council, putting more stock in what Morelion had to say than Nigg and not wanting to get in Dutch with the California Department of Housing And Community Development, denied the appeal and upheld the planning commission’s upholding or Morelion.
Nigg said the city was erroneously blaming the state for not being more exacting with Orbis with regard to the land use standards it should be applying to its project.
“The State of California is not requiring the city to allow this developer to build a 45-foot-high storage facility next to houses,” he said.