8041 Ellis Avenue, Huntington Beach
Starting back in 2010, the City of Huntington Beach enacted the Beach and Edinger Corridors Specific Plan which designated the area around the intersection of Beach Boulevard, Ellis Avenue, and Main Street as high-density housing. Huntington Beach would later revise the Specific Plan to half the number of units allowed to be developed, spurring extended litigation over whether the lower density violated Housing Element requirements. Fast forward to 2020 when THDT Investment proposed a modest apartment building at 8041 Ellis Avenue in Huntington Beach, a parcel within this Specific Plan. The proposed building is directly across the street from a six-story, 274-unit apartment building and compliant with all of the city’s own objective land-use standards for the site, in both the General Plan and the Beach and Edinger Corridors Specific Plan. Nevertheless, the city denied the project. Their reasons are predictable: the building did not “fit”, nor did it maintain consistency with the “spirit” or “vision” of the city’s plans. However, the Housing Accountability Act does not defer to nebulous feelings about “spirit” or “vision”; rather, it plainly states that only the objective, quantifiable zoning standards matter. THDT Investments appealed to the city with this information who, once again, denied […]