EIGHT-STORY APARTMENT BUILDING PROPOSED FOR NORTH COAST HIGHWAY

A national developer has filed an application with the Oceanside Planning Division to build an eight-story, mixed-use development with 362 apartments and 62 hotel rooms on North Coast Highway.

The 1.72-acre site is occupied by an old Motel 6 at the end of two Interstate 5 access ramps and the western terminus of state Route 76, just south of the San Luis Rey River and the Oceanside Harbor.

John Colletti of MCRT Investments LLC, the Mill Creek Residential Trust, is the applicant, according to documents filed Dec. 13 with the city. He did not respond to email and phone messages asking about the Oceanside project. Mill Creek is based in Florida and has offices in San Diego and other cities across the country.

Word of the apartment project is making the rounds in Oceanside’s coffee shops and diners, said Shawn Ambrose, owner of the Real Surf Shop on South Coast Highway for 20 years. People are skeptical.

“You can’t stop progress ... but you have to do it smarter,” Ambrose said Friday. “It should be growth that looks like Oceanside, that has our feel, that’s not like everywhere else.”

The best-selling T-shirt in his shop says, “A sunny place for shady people,” he said. People often say “Keep Oceanside gritty,” and just down the coast in Encinitas the popular slogan has long been “Keep Leucadia funky.”

Oceanside has grown a lot in the last two decades and most of it has been good, he said. There are new restaurants and a few outstanding hotels.

“Most of the change is for the better,” Ambrose said. “We have the best food in San Diego. There is a real strong business community here. The city should not lose sight of that.”

Mill Creek Residential Trust had 98 apartment communities across the United States with more than 26,700 rentals as of March 31, 2021, according to the company’s website.

The Oceanside proposal, called Modera Neptune, includes 35 apartments reserved for low-income qualified households, which is the minimum affordable housing required by the city.

The project’s density will be 209 dwellings per acre, according to the application. A three-level underground parking garage with 499 spaces is planned. As the name reflects, the site is at the corner of North Coast Highway and Neptune Way.

Vehicle access would be primarily from a driveway on Neptune Way. A transportation study done for the project estimates it would generate 1,966 daily trips with 157 trips during the peak morning hour and 177 trips during the peak afternoon hour.

Similar high-density developments have been widely opposed in Oceanside and elsewhere across San Diego County, often by longtime residents in already crowded areas or in neighborhoods of older single-family homes that would be overshadowed by the new buildings. Yet state law encourages the denser development because of the widespread housing shortage, and it’s difficult to deny the projects.

Planners say concentrating apartments in older areas near public transportation, jobs and services makes communities more walkable and reduces pollution, traffic congestion and time wasted in long commutes. The practice is often called “smart growth.”

MCRT Investments built the seven-story, 368-unit Modera San Diego that opened in 2021 on K Street near Petco Park in downtown San Diego.

Modera San Diego has studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments averaging 783 square feet. The complex includes a rooftop pool, bowling lanes, a fitness studio, clubhouse, lounge areas, storage lockers and workfrom-home features, according to the Mill Creek website.

At eight stories, the Modera Neptune would be one of the tallest buildings in Oceanside. The downtown area also has several six- and seven-story hotels and condominium buildings.

Despite widespread opposition, the Oceanside City Council approved construction of an eight-story building with 115 studio apartments topped by 64 hotel rooms in January 2022 for a 1/3-acre lot at the corner of Seagaze Drive and Nevada Street.

The only taller structure is the 16-floor Marina Towers condominiums built in 1972 at the Oceanside Harbor. Today the city and the California Coastal Commission would prohibit anything that high.