City OKs 38 new homes, 10 granny flats
Developer: Most homes will sell for nearly $2M
The Milpitas City Council this week approved a proposal to build 38 new homes, including four smaller ones that will be priced below the market rate, along with 10 studio-style granny flats on a nearly 5-acre plot of land at the base of the city’s hills.
The vote was 4-1, with Councilwoman Karina Dominguez voting against the project, saying she wanted to see more affordable units built on the land at 1005 North Park Victoria Drive, which city officials said is one of the last vacant lots of its size in the flat areas of the city.
“I cherish these units,” Mayor Rich Tran said of the four homes, which include four bedrooms each and will be required to be sold at prices affordable to moderate-income level families.
In Santa Clara County in 2019, a five-person household can earn up to a maximum of $170,300 annually to be considered part of the moderateincome bracket, according to city staff and the state’s housing and community development department figures.
“We’re going to be on the news one day because of these units,” Tran said at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, comparing the homes with the media attention one price-restricted home in Los Gatos recently received.
“Los Gatos! I don’t know if they hear me. Can you hear me?” Tran said from the dais.
“They had one, I think. We’re doing four. And then the news stations are going to come to our little town, to this ranch neighborhood, and they’re going to say, ‘Four.’ ”
The four moderate-income units will be built in two buildings that share rooflines but not interior walls, city staffers said, and will be roughly 1,600 square feet, with four bedrooms, according to the developer, Mark Robson of Robson Homes.
The other 34 homes also will be four-bedroom units but will range in size from 2,500 to 2,900 square feet, according to city staff reports, and 10 of them would include granny flats, about 485 square feet in size, located above detache, two-car garages.
In response to a question from Dominguez, Robson told the council the market-rate homes likely will sell for nearly $2 million each.
“I’m not here to make the news about four,” Dominguez said. “I want to make the news about building a community that’s going to put Milpitas families first.”
In approving the project, the council granted Robson a general plan amendment to increase the allowable density from three to five homes per acre to six to 15 homes per acre, and a zoning amendment to reduce the required minimum lot size for each home from 6,000 square feet to 3,000 square feet,
allowing Robson to fit in more homes.
The council also granted a special permit to decrease the required setbacks from the streets.
The plot of land is bounded by North Park Victoria Drive to the east, Creed Street to the north, Rankin Drive to the west and another residential subdivision to the south.
The four moderate-income units still fall short of the five required by the city’s affordable housing ordinance, but the council also granted Robson an exception to allow him to pay in-lieu fees of roughly $780,000 to compensate for the missing unit.
When the project initially came before the council in November, Robson asked for the project to consist of
36 market-rate homes, with no below-market rate units, but the City Council pushed back and asked for some to be included in the project design.
During the hearing Tuesday, much of the council lavished Robson with compliments on his company’s reputation for building “high-quality” homes and for addressing the concerns of the council and residents, such as widening streets and including a couple of speed feedback signs on surrounding streets to alert drivers to slow down.
“Mr. Robson’s designs are very wholesome,” Tran said. “Mr. Robson is the first applicant that I’ve seen that addressed all those concerns, but more importantly he’s creating a neighborhood for families.
“You couldn’t ask for a better applicant,” Tran added.
“At the end of the day, whenever housing projects are approved, it’s difficult to please everybody. It’s very difficult,” Councilman Anthony Phan said at the meeting.
“But something that we can appreciate is the applicant has made very sincere efforts to address a lot of the concerns that are brought up by the residents,” he added.
Vice Mayor Bob Nuñez also said he liked the development for the inclusion of the granny flats, sometimes called accessory dwelling units, which staff reports suggest would be “affordable-by-design” because they are small.
However, the units only “have the potential to be affordable to renters,” as there won’t be any restrictions on the rental pricing for them, so they are not considered affordable units, staff said.