OCEANSIDE OKS APARTMENT BUILDING

Mixed-use project approved for downtown despite density concerns

A six-story, mixed-use project with 180 apartments proposed for Pier View Way east of the Civic Center got the Oceanside City Council’s approval this week despite concerns about increasing downtown density.

The Sunsets development at the

APARTMENTS APPROVED FOR DOWNTOWN CARLSBAD

B4 • Four-story building will have 156 apartments with 20 reserved for very-low-income residents.

northwest corner of Pier View Way and North Horne Street will have shops, a plaza and other activities on the ground floor. The upper floors will have 50 one-bedroom apartments as small as 375 square feet, which is about the size of a two-car garage, and 130 two-bedroom units up to 750 square feet.

“I have really struggled with this project,” said Mayor Esther Sanchez. “I am having a very difficult time believing that these are livable spaces.”

The proposed box-like building reminds her of tenements in big cities across the United States, she said.

The “one redeeming value” is that it will include 18 apartments designated for “affordable housing” and only available to households with incomes below the area’s mean, Sanchez said.

Councilmember Rick Robinson defended the project.

“To compare this to the projects of New York, Chicago or any other large city is misguided,” Robinson said. “We can’t assume that every one-bedroom is going to be (occupied by) a family of six.”

The apartments are for “young people starting out” and for families struggling to find an affordable home, he said.

Dan Niebaum of the Lightfoot Planning Group in Carlsbad said the building will have amenities includ

ing pet washing stations, bicycle storage areas, co-working spaces and a rooftop deck with barbecue grills and a swimming pool.

Solar panels installed on the roof and outer walls are expected to generate at least half of the electricity consumed on the property. The building will include a threelevel parking garage with 315 spaces and an additional 15 spaces on the street.

As with similar recent projects, other City Council members said they must approve the development because of state laws intended to help resolve the region’s

housing crisis.

“I’m frustrated by these as well,” said Councilmember Ryan Keim, but if the city denies a project that meets state law it is likely to be overturned in court.

The 0.7-acre site is mostly vacant except for two singlefamily homes that will be demolished. The vacant portion was occupied by a West Coast National Bank office in the 1960s and later by a branch of La Jolla Bank & Trust Co. before it closed.

Twice previously the City Council approved development plans for the property, and both times those efforts stalled for economic reasons.

When the City Council signed off on the project in

2021, it had 76 one- and twobedroom apartments and ground-floor commercial space on slightly less than half an acre. Since then the developer, Howard Jacobs of Rancho Santa Fe, acquired a small adjacent lot to increase the size of the parcel.

Before that it was called the Portola project, approved for 15 condominiums and seven live-work units. The Portola plan expired in 2018 before anyone broke ground.

The project is one of many high-density projects coming to downtown Oceanside.

Earlier this year, the City Council approved a building with 64 apartments to be built a block to the west of Sunsets, at Pier View Way and

Street.

Also, preliminary plans have been submitted for two eight-story buildings with a total of up to 360 apartments along Pier View Way west of the railroad tracks near the Oceanside Municipal Pier. That project would occupy the last two vacant blocks in a nine-block master plan the City Council approved more than 20 years ago.

Both those buildings would include restaurants and retail businesses on the ground floor, with apartments above. Ten percent of the apartments will be available only to low-income tenants.

North Clementine