Buellton Council approves racquet club

 

Members of the Buellton City Council voted to approve a resolution and ordinance permitting construction of the Santa Ynez Valley Inn and Racquet Club in Buellton during a nearly four-hour council meeting Feb. 14, at council chambers, which was filled with interested residents of the Santa Ynez Valley, including high school youth and coaches.

The 3-0 vote — Mayor Russ Hicks and council member Diane Whitehair recused themselves because they own property near the proposed project — came toward the end of the meeting after the council had a long discussion, which included a presentation by the developer. The vote, after the introduction and first reading, included a waiver for further readings of the ordinance.

 

Santa Ynez Valley Inn and Racquet Club, a facility planned on 17.2 acres behind Builders Hardware Inc. at 82 Industrial Way, has an easement through the hardware store’s property. It includes four hard tennis courts and four clay courts, two swimming pools, a spa, a clubhouse, a river trail connection and a jogging path, and an inn with 120 units that will be sold as partial-use condominiums.

Club memberships will be available to local residents as well as to condominium owners and inn guests.

The clubhouse will include a lobby, a full exercise and fitness center with men’s and women’s luxury locker rooms, an aerobics studio, child care services, a pro shop and a sports bar with a restaurant.

Twelve persons, some from Buellton and others from Solvang and Santa Ynez, spoke in favor of the project, while three speakers, all Buellton residents, asked the council to table the project and look for another location.

 

The three, Karen Keller, Peggy Brierton, and Cynthia Taylor, agreed that a similar project might be good for Buellton but raised questions about flooding, the high water table, the industrial zoning, methods for collecting the tax revenue from individual condo owners, traffic issues, and housing for those who perform the 55 service jobs that could be available when the project is completed and in operation.

All the issues raised were answered by Buellton Planning Director Marc Bierdzinski, Buellton City Engineer Rose Hess, developer Karl Pope, and John Knight, the principal planner for the project by RRM Design Group of San Luis Obispo.

Hess said the project is well within the guidelines given by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a 100-year flood and that they do not anticipate any problems in the future, even during years of heavy rainfall.

 

The traffic light scheduled for installation at Industrial Way and Highway 246 was planned before the club project was even proposed, Mayor pro tempore Dale Molesworth said. Bierdzinski said that the traffic survey recently completed in the area showed there would not be any traffic situations that would be different than those anticipated in the Buellton General Plan and that traffic anticipated for the club was within the guidelines outlined in the plan. He added that many of the questions submitted by the three speakers already had been addressed by the developer and Buellton City staff and were listed in detail in the council’s report, which was available to the public before the meeting started.

Those speaking in favor of the project included Jake Kalkowski and Jenele Martin, water polo coaches at Santa Ynez Valley Union High School, and Larry Popkin, tennis advisor at the high school. All complimented the developer and the planning commission.

 

Pope has offered to build a deep-deep pool at the new racquet club — as opposed to the shallow-deep pool now in use at the high school. The new pool would be available to the school’s water polo teams for practice and could be used for tournaments, which the school cannot now host because of the lack of a competition pool in the valley. Pope told council members that there would be no user fees for school use of the pool for practices and tournaments.

Pope also has offered the facilities at the racquet club to the high school tennis teams, which was applauded by Popkin, who said it now costs more than $20,000 to build a tennis court at the school, an expense that is “almost out of range if we want to ever expand the school’s facilities.”

High school youth and interested parents who addressed the council in favor of the club included Sarah Millard, Cheryl Lastra, Rayna Jensen, Elisabeth Sweet, Brent Underwood, Jennifer Connolly, and Richard Hallerman.

 

Hallerman, a resident of Buellton and the last speaker before the council discussion, told the council to take note of how many young people “gave up their evening” to come to the council meeting to give support to the project. “This should give a reflection to the council about how important this issue is to the kids,” he said. “It would be nice to have some type of water facility in Buellton, something that would bring water sports to the community.”

He added that he witnessed the amount of rain during January and how, in the past, similar amounts had caused flooding in the region but that this year, few, if any, flooding problems existed. “It seems the flood issues have been addressed,” he said.

Kit Nirenberg, a resident of Rancho de Maria, a new housing development that is situated next to the proposed project, said all of his issues with the project have been resolved and he encouraged the council to adopt the resolution and pass the ordinance. He said he appreciated the decision to limit the lighting of the tennis courts to 8 p.m. and that he also liked the fact that none of the buildings would be higher than two stories. He asked that the resolution include a requirement to revisit the situation about the emergency exit into his neighborhood within six months of when the club opened for business to make sure it was in compliance and being used for emergencies only. The council agreed and this stipulation was added just before the vote. The emergency exit also will be landscaped to make it less inviting and a closed-circuit television system will be monitored to make sure the exit is not used to access the club.

 

Council member Victoria Pointer also questioned the in-lieu affordable housing fees, which staff has advised against because the club is a hotel and not residential, even though the individual units can be purchased as condos. Knight showed statistics for future income from the Transient Occupancy Tax, which should amount to approximately $300,000 annually. The council directed staff to bring up the issue of affordable housing during future budget sessions and the use of a percentage of this TOT income for the city’s affordable housing fund.

Kalkowski, afterward, in an e-mail, thanked all the parents and students who attended the meeting and added “the club will be a beautiful addition to our valley and the pool will be outstanding. The long awaited dream is almost here. Deep water in the valley will soon be a reality!”

In other matters the full council heard the first reading and a staff report about an ordinance seeking to control the parking of vehicles, recreational vehicles, boats and trailers within the city limits. The motion to vote on the ordinance initially died for lack of a second — most of the council members seemed to disagree with the statute as it is written — but it was finally brought back by councilmember Ed Andrisek, who asked that it be reworded to omit the requirement for paving underneath such vehicles placed in backyards. This motion was passed with a vote of 5-0.

 

The council discussed the staff-suggested wording of the ordinance and directed Bierdzinski to rework the ordinance and bring it back to a future meeting for a second reading. City Manager Steve Thompson also asked the council to please complete its work on this ordinance because people in the community were tired of the “lack of consensus.”

The biggest problem with the ordinance, Mayor Hicks said, was the city-wide wording, which meant some neighborhood covenant and code restrictions, which prohibit any such vehicles in front or on the sides, would be in conflict with the city ordinance. This could create neighbor-against-neighbor situations and would be almost impossible to enforce, Andrisek pointed out.

Chris Polito, a Buellton resident, chided the council for continuing to bring up the RV problem, saying it has been two years of headache for residents and they would like it to be over. “The council has used this office to take care of personal issues,” he said. “Why are some of you using your seat for your own personal agenda and personal gain?” he asked.

 

At the beginning of the meeting a presentation was made to the Santa Barbara County Firefighters Department, Station 31, in Buellton, for their work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Mayor Hicks declared February as MDA Firefighter Appreciation Month and gave a plaque to the department for the volunteer service they provided to MDA and the more than 300 families in the region afflicted with muscular dystrophy.

Buellton Parks and Recreation coordinator Kyle Abello gave a video presentation showing the progress his department has made, in conjunction with Solvang’s Parks and Recreation Department, during the past year.

The video showed the city’s parks, celebrations and programs, the camps organized for children, and anticipated projects that will enhance recreation for city residents.

During the public comment session, Ron Zell asked the council to hear his complaints about the salary contract negotiations now going on between the teacher’s union and the Buellton Union School Board. He said that while the superintendent has voted himself a raise of over $10,000, teacher salaries increased only two percent during the same period and now Buellton is the second lowest paid district in the county.

 

Mayor Hicks replied out that the council does not have any jurisdiction over the school board and that while it appreciated the work the teachers did in the schools, the matter could not be considered or settled at a city council meeting.

The next meeting for the Buellton City Council will be held Feb. 28 at 6 p.m. at the City Council Chambers, 140 W. Highway 246, Buellton.