Earlier this month, the San Luis Obispo City Council reviewed and updated the Airport Area Specific Plan, a space that consists of 1,500 acres of land adjacent to the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport. The SLO Chamber’s advocacy work directly resulted in a change to the plan that will allow for more housing units to be built on a faster timeframe.
The Airport Area Specific Plan envisions a mixture of open space, agriculture, business parks and industrial development, and the initial 2025 proposed update would open up Commercial Services and Manufacturing Zones to residential units on a case-by-case basis. Each potential development would require a Conditional Use Permit, which creates more hurdles for developers to jump through in order to get approved (including an Administrative Hearing followed by Planning Commission approval), making it more likely for potential projects to not come to fruition.
The SLO Chamber advocated to streamline this process in order to make it easier to build more residential units. We suggested that projects with below 50 units go straight to the Community Development Director’s approval instead of needing a Conditional Use Permit, cutting out the step of Administrative Hearing and Planning Commission approval entirely.
The City took our recommendation and adapted it slightly, adopting the below 50 units threshold, but requiring a Minor Use Permit rather than Director’s approval. Getting a Minor Use Permit is a much more streamlined process for developers than the originally proposed Conditional Use Permit and only requires projects to go through an Administrative Hearing.
This is a big win for our housing advocacy work, and we’re grateful the City listened to our feedback and amended the plan accordingly. Streamlining the creation of new housing units is crucial to addressing our housing crisis, and the SLO Chamber is in support of building more residential units of all types throughout SLO.