Council to hold hearing on Village
When the Oroville City Council meets on Tuesday night, It will hold a public hearing on the Veterans’ Village Project and will also receive a presentation on the city’s Gateway project.
Additionally, the council will get a project status update on State Route 162 and consider a request for additional funding.
The Veterans’ Village Project is a proposed new subdivision with 12 two- story townhomes to be owned by Veterans at 711 Montgomery Street. According to the agenda, if approved it will fi ll a 0.64-acre vacant property on the south side of Montgomery St between 6th and 7th Avenues. The townhomes will be developed in four phases of three units each with landscaping, off-street parking, and associated site improve
ments. The project is in the Downtown Historic Overlay District.
The vacant property is owned by the city and previously housed a development with small cottages that the city demolished. The agenda notes that as part of the approval process, the city council will have to approve the transfer of ownership from the city to Veterans Housing Development Corporation. The price, terms of transfer and any phasing of the sale will be negotiated separately and brought to the city council for ratification at the appropriate time.
The planning commission voted 5-1 to recommend council approval. According to the staff report, the commission discussed the project and that parcel is at the city’s gateway to downtown, and a positive design and image would be important there. After that meeting, the project the applicant re-worked the facades and colors to better represent Downtown Oroville’s “Turn of the Century” historic design theme.
The applicant also addressed a concern that the subdivision becoming poorly maintained rental units over time by saying their project funding source will require the homes to be deed-restricted and only available for purchase by veterans as owner- occupied, and that they could only be re-sold to veterans and there will be a formation of a Homeowners Association for common property maintenance and security long term.
The council may receive a presentation from Mark Mendez regarding his interest in concluding a development agreement for city commercial property assets commonly referred to as the City’s Gateway Project.
The city owns four commercial properties at the northwest corner of Montgomery Street and Feather River Blvd. in Oroville commonly referred to as the Gateway Project. Two of the four larger parcels are former Oroville Redevelopment Agency (RDA) properties that have been transferred to the city while the other are city- owned lots that the RDA never owned. In total, the Gateway project is approximately 12.9 acres. In 2012, the city entered into a Master Disposition and Development Agreement with Snyder Real Estate Holdings, LLC for the Gateway project properties but that was terminated for non-performance on July 18, 2019.
Since then the city has desired to enter into a new development agreement with Mendez who staff says is very interested in being that developer and would like to present his ideas for the Gateway Project to the council. If the council finds his ideas satisfactory, they would be drafted into a development agreement that would come back to the city council for consideration.
The council will get a status update on the State Route 162 project and a description of elements needed to complete the project as agreed to under a grant cooperative agreement with Caltrans that was signed in December of 2018.
Staff will recommend an allocation of additional transportation funds to support the project completion and enable the delivery team to maintain the extended schedule milestones for full use of available grant funding under the deal.
The council will be asked to budget $500,000 to $600,000 of transportation funds in the 202½022 fiscal year pending finalization of an agreement with Caltrans and commitment of support from BCAG.