similar plans<\/a> last year for a parcel on Santa Catalina Avenue, subdividing a property housing Grace Baptist Church to accommodate the development of 26 market-rate townhomes.<\/p>\nWorking with a different developer this time around, officials opened a public hearing on bringing more than two dozen market-rate units to the Iglesia de Cristo and Cross Country Vietnamese Christian Church sanctuary.<\/p>\n
Council members considered making the necessary zoning changes to allow the housing project to become shovel ready in the future.<\/p>\n
The church site, which also includes a preschool, was not included in Garden Grove\u2019s housing element plan. But the property owner sought to go in a different direction, seeing the space as suitable for residential development.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s additional land that somebody just wanted to develop as housing,\u201d Priit Kaskla, a senior planner with the city, told the council. \u201cWe\u2019ll take the credit for it, but we\u2019re not requiring them to do any sort of affordable housing on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although nobody spoke in opposition to the development at Tuesday\u2019s meeting, one individual raised concerns about parking and traffic when the proposal came before the city\u2019s Planning Commission on May 21.<\/p>\n
Kaskla informed councilmembers that the proposed plan met the minimum parking requirements.<\/p>\n
Chad Brown, a represenative for Irvine-based developer Melia Homes, noted that considerations for the surrounding neighborhood whittled the Spanish revival-styled townhome plans down from three to two-stories. He called the project a \u201cfantastic fit for the neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown also addressed questions about the lack of any affordable housing units for sale.<\/p>\n
\u201cAffordable housing in the for-sale market is somewhat inappropriate,\u201d he said. \u201cAffordable housing opportunities really belong in the rental market, where you can reduce and subsidize part of the rent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melia Homes did previously offer a select few townhomes at affordable sale rates at its Breckyn project in Garden Grove, through the city\u2019s affordable housing program.<\/p>\n
Brown revealed the community coming to the church site property would be branded the \u201cLandon\u201d and estimated townhomes would likely be priced somewhere around $850,000.<\/p>\n
Council members agreed that the Landon, nestled near Little Saigon and Orange County Koreatown in Garden Grove, would offer meaningful homebuyer opportunities in the city. The vote to support the project going forward was unanimous.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Garden Grove, we build really strong relationships with our developers,\u201d said Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing [a lot of these church properties] grow and change. We appreciate the continued partnership and the work on this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another house of worship is on its way out in Garden Grove to make way for more housing.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[380,163,165,164,153111,153114,153112,1409,32453,3021,1335,11078,290,3230,153113,1506,114929,68],"class_list":["post-378343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-affordable-housing","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-chad-brown","tag-church-ground","tag-church-site","tag-city","tag-council-meeting","tag-developer","tag-development","tag-garden-grove","tag-neighborhood","tag-plan","tag-priit-kaskla","tag-project","tag-townhome","tag-tuesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}