Council Hears Predevelopment Plan on Project Stalled by Fuller Master Plan

The City Council on Monday heard a pre-development plan for a 6-story residential building at 270 N. Los Robles Ave. with 105 multi-family rental units, but local housing advocates and some councilmembers appeared less than impressed.

The project would include eight very-low-income affordable on-site units, based on a 32.5 percent density bonus. The complex would also feature 162 parking spaces, with 70 at-grade and 92 in one subterranean level, along with a floor area ratio of 2.86.

According to Planning Department Director David Reyes, the project site is part of the 2006 Fuller Theological Seminary Master Plan. The site was originally envisioned to be developed in conjunction with the two properties to the immediate east — 285 and 303 N. Oakland Ave. — with two buildings for student housing.

Under that plan, all new housing owned by the seminary must be affordable housing, which has stalled the project until the plan can be amended. 

A number of Fuller Seminary students and local housing advocates urged the city to demand that the project contain more than the eight low-income units allowed.

Ruth-Angela Patten, writing to the council, said, “As a Fuller student, I am urging Pasadena’s City Council to ensure the current developer will provide at least 40 percent of its units at an affordable rate because too many low-income students and families are being unjustly pushed out of the community. We need the city to do the right thing.”

Housing advocate Sonja Berndt told the council, in an email comment, “The project at issue includes property clearly subject to the requirement of the Fuller Master Plan, that 100 percent of units built on the property be affordable. I understand that Fuller Seminary has submitted an application for an amendment to the Fuller Master Plan. … The proposal of the developer of 10 percent affordable should be rejected out of hand.”

Ed Washatka, representing Pasadenans Organizing for Progress (POP!), wrote, “According to the 2006 Master Plan and related development agreement, the development as proposed by CDB Investments LP does not provide for sufficient affordable housing units required for the plan area.

“Additionally,” added Washtka, “the development does not come close to meeting the crying need for affordable housing in Pasadena or sufficiently addressing the city’s professed goal of adding to its affordable housing stock.”

The Master Plan

According to Britt A. Vaughan, director of communications at the seminary, the 2006 Fuller Theological Seminary Master Plan envisioned several substantial construction projects and an increase in the number of graduate students enrolled at Fuller’s Pasadena campus.

Although Fuller expressly reserved in the planning documents the right not to construct any of the approved buildings, including new student housing, Fuller did agree that if it did, in fact, construct such additional housing in excess of its then existing housing stock, those “net new” units would be covenanted as affordable housing for Fuller students, faculty and staff use.

But as a result of a variety of factors — a major economic recession in 2008, the high cost of living in the Los Angeles area, the increased use of online learning in the

graduate programs, a declining interest in seminary education, limits on immigration, and now, the pandemic — Fuller’s residential student enrollment requiring housing in Pasadena has

plummeted to approximately one-third or fewer the number of students as originally projected and approved while its online student population has exponentially increased. Because of this reduced demand, Fuller did not build additional housing units that would have qualified as affordable housing.

“Fuller is in the process of evaluating and potentially downsizing its Pasadena real estate holdings. As part of that process, Fuller has applied to the city to amend its 2006 Master Plan and related documents, reduce its campus footprint to core properties, and terminate all remaining 2006 development entitlements. Fuller has been working with the city throughout the amendment process to develop an equitable proposal that will address the city’s crucial affordable housing needs and support Fuller’s vision for a new campus that accounts for the shift in student modality choices,” Vaughan said in a statement to Pasadena Now.

Great need

Added Councilmember John Kennedy, “The master plan and development agreement that exists for Fuller Seminary currently requires 100 percent affordable housing, and oftentimes when we talk about affordable housing with developers, we’re talking about moderate, and I want us to delve down lower than moderate because the need is so great.

Kennedy continued, “I think that any developer obviously needs to be able to take advantage of state law, but, in this unique situation, my colleagues, I believe we have the power to influence in a huge way what product will actually be built, and how that product could in fact help alleviate some of the housing difficulties we are experiencing.”

The city’s development agreement includes a Fuller-constructed parking area to be made available for public use and the construction of a 50,000 square-foot library addition. 

As the Planning Department’s report also noted, the site allows a maximum residential density of 87 dwelling units per acre — up to 79 units on this site.

Under density bonus provisions and state law, a project is eligible for a density bonus when a specified percentage of the base units are designated very-low-income. As the plan is now proposed, eight very-low-income units would be provided, which would allow a 32.5 percent, or 26 units, density bonus, for a total of 105 units. By providing 10 percent very-low-income units, density bonus law also allows up to two concessions or other incentives.

But in order to construct the proposed project, said a city planning staff report, the restrictions on the site by the Fuller Master Plan and development agreement would need to be removed, either by removing the site from the Fuller Master Plan and development agreement, or by amending both documents to allow non-Fuller market rate housing at this site.

The Planning Department staff report also noted that “the applicant has been encouraged to examine the city’s local Affordable Housing Concession Menu, whereby a project that complies with the Inclusionary Housing Requirement for on-site units may receive up to two pre-determined concessions without going through the Affordable Housing Concession Permit process.”

“One of these concessions is a FAR increase of 0.50,” the report continued. “The proposed increase is 0.61. As for Inclusionary Housing, the project as proposed does not satisfy the city’s recently enacted 20 percent inclusionary requirement and would need to be revised to comply.”