Before a mostly hostile crowd at the Chino Senior Center, all six of the seven members of the planning commission present gave approval to what has been dubbed the Eden project, a plan by Orbis Schafer, a division of Newport Beach-based Orbis Real Estate Partners to construct on 10 acres at the northwest corner of Euclid and Schaefer avenues a four-story, 264-unit apartment building, a 132,438-square-foot self-storage facility, a five-story parking garage, two drive-through fast food operations and a 20,800-square-foot retail center.
While 18 orange-vest or orange-shirt clad members of the Western States Carpenter Union, some of whom addressed the commission four individuals in plain clothes accompanying them and seven individuals associated with Orbis Real Estate Partners or the Allen Matkins Law Firm representing it were in favor of the project, virtually all of the remaining 108 people in the room who were not city staff or members of the press appeared to be opposed to the project.
Many of those opposed to the project did so on the basis of the contention that by both its density, height and use, it will prove incompatible with the existing residential neighborhoods it borders. Some expressed the concern that its approval will set a precedent with regard to the development of property in the Chino Agricultural Preserve that was annexed to the city roughly a quarter of a century ago. While Chino is no longer the largely agricultural and slow-paced small town that it was in the first half of the 20th Century or the progressively more suburban community it was in the latter half of the 20th Century, its 29.7-square miles, with a population density of 3,205 are far less crowded than other parts of the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area. If the standards in Orbis’s Eden project are replicated in the development of the remainder of the remainder of the property in the former agricultural preserve, they pointed out, Chino will be on trajectory to become indistinguishable from the expanse of wall-to-wall houses and accompanying commercial and industrial uses present in central and western Los Angeles County, such as Alhambra with its 10,887 residents per square mile, West Covina and its 6,674 residents per square mile, Monterey Park and its 7,970 residents per square mile, Whittier with its 5,823 residents per square mile and Baldwin Park, with its 11,369 residents per square mile.
In 1999, then 18.18 square mile Chino annexed 5,300 acres of the 15,200 acres in the Chino Agricultural Preserve at the same time that Ontario annexced 8,200 acres and Chino Hills took the remaining 1,700 acres. In one fell swoop, Chino grew to its present 29.7 square miles. The intensity of development that has occurred and will continue to occur in the 11.52 square miles of the agricultural preserve now within Chino’s jurisdiction will have tremendous bearing on the pace and quality of life in the city. That impact on the quality of their lives going forward was very much on the minds of those residents attending the meeting. They were acutely conscious that the degree of latitude that the planning commission was going to give Orbis, which acquired the ten acres from Margaret Zivelonghi in September 2022 for $12,100,000 or at a cost of $26.59 per square foot or $1,158,301.16 per acre, intends to make as intensive use of the land as it can. In certain measurable ways, that intensity of use will impact, in many ways negatively, the space in which they reside.
The actual tenor of the meeting involving the presentation by city staff and the discussion by the planning commissioners, such as it was, deviated significantly from development proposal hearings in the past which in good measure dwelt on land use issues. Rather, the specter of legalisms hung over the hearing when City Attorney Fred Galante at the outset of the hearing referenced a letter from the Allen Matkins Law Firm, written on behalf of Orbis Schaefer. That letter asserted Orbis Real Estate Partners is entitled, under the Housing Accountability Act and Senate Bill 330, to proceed with the project as it is proposing without interference by the city or the limitations some residents want to impose on it.
The Housing Accountability Act, put in place in 1982, prohibits a municipality from disapproving, or imposing impractical conditions on the approval of, a housing development project intended for very low, low-, or moderate-income households or an emergency shelter that meets the city’s zoning codes unless the local agency makes specified written findings based upon substantial evidence in the record.
Senate Bill 167, passed in 2017, prevents a city from applying a zoning code that has been altered after a project application is made to prevent the approval of the project when it is ultimately considered for approval. The Housing Crisis Act of 2019, created with the passage of Senate Bill 330, through the declaration of a statewide temporary housing emergency which has not been rescinded, is intended to preserve existing and exourage future affordable housing . The act inhibits local jurisdictions’ ability to engage in so-called downzoning, i.e. decreasing allowable densities, while encouraging or even guaranteeing the liberalization of the development approval process and limits fee increases on housing applications.
Senate Bill 1893, passed into law in 2023, further empowered developers with a “remedy” if a local jurisdiction is not accommodating of that company’s intention to construct low income or very low income housing. Under the law, a local jurisdiction cannot deny a low-income or very-low-income housing project proposal approval even if it is inconsistent with the local general plan and zoning ordinance if that jurisdiction has not adopted an updated Housing Element in substantial compliance with State Housing Element Law, that being Government Code § 65580.
“As the city is aware, when a project qualifies under the Housing Accountability Act, the city must approve the project unless it can make very specific, narrowly defined findings related to unmitigable health or safety impacts,” Jonathan Shardlow, an attorney with Allen Matkins stated in the letter.
While there was nothing said publicly or otherwise on the record to the effect that Orbis was contemplating suing the city if it did not approve the Orbis Schaefer project as it is proposed, members of the public indicated the belief that the commissioners had been told as much in private by Galante. This explained, some said, why the planning commission was unmoved by the overwhelming sentiment against the project.
In this way, the commission was dismissive of arguments various residents in the area that surrounds the project site to the north and west have been making since last year that the project will place an inordinant burden on them in terms of traffic offloading into and driving on their streets. Some existing residents express concern that their privacy will be compromised as a result of the four-story apartments that are to go up immediately adjacent to their yards.
Residents opposed to the project reference Measure M and the public sentiment in Chino against allowing excessively dense projects to proliferate in the community. Measure M was passed by the city’s voters in 1988, and it prohibits 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.
Several residents stated their belief that both Orbis Schaefer’s and city staff’s rationale for permitting the project to proceed stood logic on its head in that the entire justification for the project and suspending the land use standards that have been a central element of the community since before the passage of Measure M. That would imply, they argued, that a substantial number or even all of the units to be built by Orbis Schaefer would be reserved for low-income or very-low income renters of the apartments. Only 24 of the 264 units are being preserved as affordable to those meeting the low-income or very-low-income.
Indeed, city officials have stated that they were facilitating the Orbis Schaefer project because it would assist the city in complying with a state mandate that Chino, as all other cities in the state, pull its weight in ending the statewide housing crisis by making accommodations to allow the development of the number of housing units determined through a statewide housing needs assessment to be its fair share of the housing needed to adequately house the state’s burgeoning population. That number is provided as part of what is referred to as the Regional Housing Need Assessment Survey.
According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the Regional Housing Need Assessment Survey pegs Chino’s fair share of the number of housing units that should be allowed to be developed within its confines during the eight-year October 2021-to-October 2029 planning cycle at 6,961 total, including 2,107 for very-low-income homebuyers and 1,281 for low income homebuyers.
Given the sheer number of affordable units the city is under the gun to allow, certain residents say, city officials should be insisting that Orbis Schaefer devote far more of the units the city is allowing it to build for low-income and very-low-income housing. They point out that 24 units of the 264 units is only 9.09 percent of the total. Since the state is mandating that 3,388 or 48.5 percent of the 6,981 units it is supposed to allow to be built in the October 2021 to October 2029 are to designated as affordable to low-income or very-low-income renters, the city should be holding Orbis to the same standard. In this way, the city should insist that 48.5 percent of the 264 units – 128 units – to be constructed at Eden be reserved for low-income or very-low income renters.
The planning commission, however, gave no consideration to that application of reasoning.
When Shardlow said the residential component of the project accounts for upwards of two-thirds of the total floor area in the project, meaning that in the case of the apartments the footprint will be multipied by four, one time for each story, he meant his statement to be interpreted that Orbis Schaefer should get credit for developing the entire 10 acres as a housing development project. Most of those in the audience, however, interpreted that as meaning the other uses of the property – the storage facility, fast food operations and the commercial component – should not be permitted.
Orbis Schaefer’s Grant Ross said his company was to be complimented for reducing the number of apartment units from 590 to 264, complying with resident requests such as agreeing to reduce the apartment complex from four stories to three along Fern Avenue and adding artistic touches to the project’s design.
Members of the Western States Carpenter Union called upon the commission to approve the project.
With Lissa Fraga absent from the proceedings, the commission voted 6-to-0 to approve the Orbis Schaefer Eden proposal.