Don’t fall for Dana Reserve ‘sales pitch.’ Nipomo housing project is poorly planned | Opinion

Herb Kandel
·4 min read
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Photo looking north toward proposed Dana Reserve housing project. There has been intense opposition to the removal of 3,000 oak trees, though pro-housing organizations are advocating for the project.

The proposed Dana Reserve housing development needs to be re-designed to align with the existing South County General Plan to preserve the existing oak woodlands. In the upcoming public process, the community’s voice will be loud and clear on this issue, refuting John Fowler’s recent sales pitch that ran in this paper: “The Dana Reserve project in Nipomo deserves community support. Here’s why.”

It’s not just 3,000 mature oak trees that would be bulldozed in the developer’s plan, it would be permanent and irreplaceable loss of the largest remaining oak woodland on the Nipomo Mesa.

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The plan also dictates that the habitat around the remaining trees will be scraped bare of the unique white sage, local manzanita and rare and delicate endangered Pismo Clarkia flower. From the fungi in the soil that helps trees nourish and communicate with each other, to the insects in the acorns that feed the acorn woodpecker to the burrows that host small mammals, the oak woodlands host more species than any other terrestrial ecosystem in North America.

The oak woodlands were central to the lives of the Chumash people for thousands of years and remain an iconic part of our California identity today. Approximately two-thirds of California’s oak woodlands have been lost. Poorly designed urban development, as well as disease accelerated by climate change, are the biggest culprits today. About 1,000 oak trees were removed adjacent to this project to build the Willow Road extension a decade ago, and the offsite mitigation is widely seen as a failure.

Mitigation site is not under threat of development

If there is one thing to learn from this project, it’s that better planning avoids unnecessary removal in the first place.

For example, let’s dispel the deception in the developer’s proposal to remove just 3,000 oaks but preserve 17,000 oaks elsewhere. The developer, Nick Tompkins, bought a property on the hill across the freeway to use as a proposed “mitigation” site, speculating that this would give him a pass. That property is not under any threat for development now or in the future, and it hosts a different plant community on different soil.

This proposal provides no replacement for the losses. If this were approved, it would set a terrible precedent in the county, discouraging community-focused conservation planning and encouraging developers to twist the mitigation program in service to their own designs.

Preserving forests is critical to slowing climate change. Recent independent calculations suggest that, each year, 3,000 trees (the very number proposed for removal) capture and store 596,220 lbs. of carbon from the atmosphere. Oak habitat absorbs heat, helps to percolate water which replenishes aquifers and provides cool micro-climates for species — including humans — for climate resilience.

Affordable housing and habitat protection are not mutually exclusive, but we must challenge the developer’s narrative that clear-cutting oaks and building million-dollar homes is a requirement to fund the rest of the project.

‘Generational Segregation’

According to the developer, 417 homes that will cost between $1-$1.2 million are reserved exclusively for seniors, a generational segregation within the development. This significant design change from the draft Environmental Impact Report correlated with a Lucia Mar Unified School District letter stating that impact fees would not come close to covering the cost of new classrooms for the additional students generated by the development.

Taxpayers must not be saddled with subsidizing the developer’s project.

Currently, 290 homes are in the $750,000-$800,000 market range. Another 124 homes on 3,600-square-foot lots are reported by the developer to be in the mid $500,000-$600,000 range.

The approximate 160 acres of open space without oak trees is enough to significantly contribute to the need for true affordable housing in our county. This could help meet the county’s own Regional Housing Needs Allocation production goals for housing for low-income and very low-income homes. As of now, the need for above-moderate-income homes has already been surpassed by over 1,500 homes.

Only 104 units would be in the very low-income category, with additional units in multi-family. That means that only about a third of the project addresses the target affordable housing needs. Furthermore the proposed “affordable” housing is price-restricted only the first time the house is sold, providing no long-term solution for affordable workforce housing in SLO County.

UCLA Professor Stephanie Pincentl, a leading authority on urban planning, summarized problems in the project when she spoke at Nipomo High School two weeks ago: “The proposal … will generate absolute vehicle miles traveled, destroy oak habitat that is not substitutable or mitigatable … and perpetuate segregation and exposure of lower-income populations to higher sources of emissions.”

Let’s not subscribe to the false narrative pitting precious natural habit against critical affordable housing. Let’s insist that this project be redesigned to keep climate-stabilizing habitat in place and build a better project — one the community can fully support.

Herb Kandel, a volunteer with the Nipomo Action Committee, has followed various development proposals for the 288-acre property now known as the Dana Reserve for over 30 years.