The City of Paso Robles is considering rezoning the Olive Street area.
Officials want to determine if there are opportunities to add more housing in the area. But first, they want to know what residents think.
“Why that part of Olive?,” said Olivia Madrid, a Paso Robles resident. “There’s not a lot of space there.”
Madrid is one of many community members who live along Olive Street.
Many residents in the neighborhood attended an informational open house at Glen Speck Elementary School Thursday night regarding the Olive Street Rezoning that would potentially add accessory dwelling units to some properties.
“Rezoning for people that already have tons of property in here?” said Madrid. “I don't know. I just think it's a little bit of greed.”
“We like our quiet neighborhood,” said Steven Dritz, a Paso Robles resident. “We don't want to have increased population density. There seems to me better options in the city in the past 12 years for development than here and on our own street.”
The Paso Robles City Council adopted the Uptown/Town Center Specific Plan in 2011; most roads directly west of Olive Street were not included.
The city council formed the Housing Constraints and Opportunities Committee in 2016 to work with their staff to identify strategies to increase housing production in Paso Robles.
In 2017, the committee identified the expansion of the Uptown/Town Center Specific Plan east of Olive Street as an area that could be rezoned to increase housing production.
“The purpose the open houses gave everybody that lives in this district the opportunity to come in and kind of see what potential the changes could mean for their property,” said Warren Frace, community development director for Paso Robles “We're looking for public comments in terms of what they think about it and then that information is going to go back to a committee that'll give us some direction on next steps.”
Frace says most homes along Olive Street are single-family homes with one property on the lot.
“What we're talking about is different options to add either alley-loaded second units or ADUs or potentially small little courtyard projects of that sort,” said Frace. “There's a variety of different options depending on whether it stays in the R-1 zone or whether it converts to the Uptown three zone.
Frace says the Olive Street rezoning would cost $100,000.
The state of California has recently implemented a number of single-family residential zoning preemptions that now allow both ministerial lot splits and multiple ADUs on all R-1 lots.
It is now possible to have a similar number of units developed in the R-1 zoning district as in the T-3 zoning district.
“I'm in favor of progress,” said Michael White, a Paso Robles resident. “I'm certainly not negative on progress, but when it's in your face like this, where they literally want to change your neighborhood and who can build what in your neighborhood, it becomes a personal thing.”
“Perhaps on the east side of one on one that is more appropriate for high-density housing,” said Dritz.
City officials said no decisions would be made at the open house as the purpose of the event is only to provide community members with information.
