Laetitia Winery plan to build 82 homes on its property is denied

A proposal to add 82 new homes to the Laetitia Vineyard & Winery property near Arroyo Grande was rejected Thursday by the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission in a decision that capped more than six months of debate over water availability and the size of the project.

The project will likely be appealed to the county Board of Supervisors.

“I think the applicant here has made a very good faith effort here to design a project that fits with the land,” Commissioner Ken Topping said during discussion. “I would like to be able to recommend an approval of this project, but, at this time, I’m driven to make a motion for denial.”

The commission voted to deny the project 3-1, with Commissioner Jim Harrison dissenting and Commissioner Eric Meyer abstaining.

After months of hashing out the intricacies of water availability and smart growth in the county, as well as countless hours of public comment from disgruntled neighboring homeowners, the straw that broke the Laetitia agricultural cluster’s back came down to a dispute between state agencies over road access.

Janneck Limited, which owns the winery, originally called for a portion of the 1,910-acre property to be divided into 102 1-acre lots — called an agricultural cluster. One house already exists on the property. About 1,787 acres would be preserved in open-space agreements.

The primary access to the homes was through a neighboring residential area, via Upper Los Berros and Dana Foothill roads.

County planning staff recommended denying the project with its original scale, saying it violated several planning standards, specifically residential density. Several neighbors also questioned whether the project would endanger already stressed water resources in the area.

The project was then scaled down to 83 homes (including the existing house) and with one fewer well. Revised plans for that project were brought before the council Jan. 14, but a decision was delayed until Thursday after commissioners raised concerns that they had not received some of the staff’s complete findings before the meeting.

After touching on continuing water availability concerns Thursday, the commission fell onto the issue that would terminate the cluster proposal: road access.

Throughout the planning process, Cal Fire and Caltrans have been at odds over the best way to ensure access to the property.

State code requires that the property have a secondary access route that can easily be used in emergencies to evacuate residents from the property, or to gain access to it from the highway. The winery’s entrance off Highway 101 was proposed as the best route for this.

Caltrans opposed adding any more car trips at the intersection, however, and called for a barrier between the winery’s driveway and any roads connecting it to the agricultural cluster. This would prevent people from using the winery’s driveway to get to the homes.

Janneck Limited eventually proposed a fence, guarded 24 hours a day, to prevent residents from using the driveway but would still allow emergency access into and out of the property.

On Thursday, a representative of Cal Fire said that option was still not acceptable to Cal Fire, because secondary access routes are intended to be used by residents on a daily basis — not just in an emergency.

Because no compromise could be found beyond building a frontage road along that stretch of highway — an option that was dismissed because it would require years of work through regional government agencies, a substantial amount of money and would have to cross several environmentally sensitive areas — the majority of the commission said they could not support the project.

“I think what we have here is a conundrum in which safety is being sacrificed for legal compliance, and I don’t know what the best solution for this is,” Topping said. “To me, it is to a significant magnitude that it raises questions for me whether this project should be approved.”

After tabling the topic until after lunch so that staff could draft findings of denial, the commission officially voted to deny the project at 2:20 p.m.

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 3:39 PM with the headline "Laetitia Winery plan to build 82 homes on its property is denied."