PROJECT AND SITE DESCRIPTION:

SUBJECT: Continued Public Hearing for Consideration of General Plan Amendment DRC2018-00533 and Zoning Map Amendment DRC2018-00534 – Alan Smith for Arbor Express Car Wash – A Request for General Plan and Zoning Map Amendments to Change the Land Use and Zoning Designation for One Project-Specific Parcel of Land (APN: 0208-291-03) from Low Medium (LM) Residential District to General Commercial (GC) District and for Two Non-Project Specific Adjacent Parcels of Land (0208-291-01 and 0208-291-02) From Low Medium (LM) Residential District to Medium (M) Residential District Related to a Proposed Car Wash Located Approximately 200 Feet East of Archibald Avenue on the North Side of Arrow Route . (RESOLUTION NO. 2021-045) (CITY) (Continued from June 2, 2021 City Council Meeting)

RECOMMENDATION:

Staff recommends the City Council adopt Resolution No. 2021-045 denying General Plan Amendment DRC2018-00533 and Zoning Map Amendment DRC2018-00534.

BACKGROUND:

On March 10, 2021, the Planning Commission voted 4-1 to approve Design Review DRC2018- 00535, Conditional Use Permit DRC2018-00536, and Tree Removal Permit DRC2019-00218 for the site plan, design review, and operation of a 5,078 square foot car wash and 1,296 square foot detailing center on 1.36 acres of land. The Planning Commission also recommended City Council approval of the Related General Plan and Zoning Map Amendments that are necessary to permit the car wash use and to rezone adjacent land to accommodate the loss of residential density on the parcel where the car wash would be located. The Planning Commission’s approval of the Design Review, Conditional Use Permit, and Tree Removal Permit are contingent upon the City Council approving the proposed General Plan and Zoning Map amendments. One Planning Commissioner voted in opposition to the project based on their determination that a car wash and detailing center were not the highest and best use for the project site. A timeline for this project is attached as Attachment 3. Correspondence received by Applicant supporting their request is attached as Attachment 5.

PROJECT AND SITE DESCRIPTION:

The project site is comprised of two parcels totaling 1.36 acres of land (59,300 square feet) located on the north side of Arrow Route, approximately 200 feet east of Archibald Avenue. The DATE: August 4, 2021

TO: Mayor and Members of the City Council FROM: John R. Gillison, City Manager

INITIATED BY: Anne McIntosh, AICP, Planning Director

“L” shaped project site is approximately 266 feet (east to west), and approximately 280 feet and 170 feet (north to south) along the east and west property lines, respectively. The westernmost parcel of land that makes up the project site is vacant (APN: 0209-291-06) and the easternmost parcel is developed with a single-family residence (APN: 0208-291-03).

The proposed car wash project would be known as the “Arbors Car Wash.” It would be an automated express type of car wash. The car wash would comprise two parcels (APN 0209-291- 06 and APN 0208-291-03). One parcel is currently zoned General Commercial (GC) with a General Plan land use designation of General Commercial (Parcel 1). Parcel 1 is currently vacant.

The other parcel is currently zoned Low Medium (LM) with a General Plan Land Use designation of Low Medium Residential (Parcel 2). Parcel 2 is currently occupied by a single-family residence.

Parcel 2’s zoning and land use designation do not permit car washes. In order to accommodate the car wash, the applicant has applied for Zoning Map amendment and General Plan amendment to change Parcel 2 to General Commercial so that both Parcel 1 and Parcel 2 would have the same zoning and General Plan land use designation.

The proposed General Plan and Zoning Map amendments would also change the zoning/land use designation of two separate parcels (APNs 0208-9-01 and -020), one of which is currently occupied by a single-family residence and the other which is vacant (Parcels 3 and 4, respectively). These parcels are currently zoned Low Medium with a General Plan land use designation of Low Medium Residential. Parcels 3 and 4 would not be developed with the proposed car wash. Instead, Parcels 3 and 4 are proposed to be rezoned to accommodate higher residential density for purposes of satisfying a State law referred to as “No-Net Loss,” which effectively precludes the City from reducing the residential density of sites within the City unless it offsets that loss on other sites. In order to offset the loss of 6.8 potential units on Parcel 2 due to its change from Low Medium to General Commercial, Parcel 3 and Parcel 4, which total 1.21 acres, must be upzoned to accommodate an equivalent number of units, going from a potential residential density of 9.68 dwelling units per acre to 16.94 dwelling units per acre, an increase in density of 7.26 dwelling units per acre.

The existing Land Use, General Plan and Zoning Designations for the project site and adjacent properties are as follows:

Land Use General Plan Zoning

Vacant General Commercial General Commercial (GC) District Site Single-Family

Residence Low Medium Residential Low Medium (LM)

Residential District (4-8 du/acre) North School Low Medium Residential Low Medium (LM)

Residential District (4-8 du/acre) Commercial Center

General Commercial General Commercial (GC) District South

Family Resource Center

Public Facility/

Civic/Regional

Low (L) Residential District (2-4 du/acre)

East Single-Family

Residence

Low Medium Residential Low Medium (LM)

Residential District (4-8 du/acre) West Service Station

General Commercial General Commercial (GC) District

1 – “Beverly Hills House” (designated a local historic landmark on January 18, 1989) on APN: 0208-291-03;

2 – Non-operational but approved for reactivation August 15, 2018 and undergoing building plans review to reopen

ANALYSIS:

In order for the conditional use permit, design review, and tree removal permit approved by the Planning Commission for Arbors Car Wash at the subject (project) location to take effect, a General Plan amendment is required, as well as a corresponding zone map amendment. This is needed specifically to redesignate the land use on the easternmost parcel (Parcel 2) from Low Medium to General Commercial. Land use entitlements such as conditional use permits must be consistent with the General Plan and Zoning Map. Therefore, the entitlements for the Arbors Car Wash were made contingent upon the City Council’s approval of the proposed General Plan and Zoning Map amendments.

In addition, the Zoning Map must be consistent with the General Plan, and so the requested Zoning Map amendment cannot be approved unless the General Plan amendment is concurrently approved. Therefore, staff’s analysis focuses on the General Plan amendment, although many of the same issues would apply to the Zoning Map amendment. Staff has identified the following issues with the proposed General Plan amendment that inform the recommendation to deny these applications.

Issue 1: Importance of the General Plan Land Use Element and Map to the Planning Process Staff believes an amendment to the general plan from one land use type to another is a weighty decision that should not be taken lightly. Since our early years, we have been known as “the City with a plan” and that commitment to being a well-planned city has returned great dividends in the areas of health, prosperity, and overall quality of life. The 2010 Rancho Cucamonga General Plan is the City’s legislative document that guides land use and development decisions with such a long-range view in mind. Many cities call their General Plan the “road map” or the “constitution”

for the city. The adoption and amendment of a General Plan is a legislative action. The City Council has wide latitude in amending the General Plan, subject only to the limitation that its decision-making not be arbitrary or capricious. It is the prerogative of the City Council to make the decision whether or not to amend the General Plan.

Typically, staff believes a General Plan amendment is appropriate when a project will advance a significant and important goal of the City that could not be met without the amendment. The City has numerous goals that might merit a General Plan amendment, such as the provision of new housing, especially affordable housing, a business that would generate a significant number of high-wage jobs, a business that would provide critical neighborhood services such as a grocery store, to diversify the city’s economy, to provide for numerous, high wage jobs, and/or to provide for a substantial revenue stream that helps the City provide services. In summary, staff believes General Plan amendments are appropriate for new development or investment that improves neighborhoods and quality of life in the city.

As an All-America City, Rancho Cucamonga has long been mindful about the type and locations of businesses in the city. District 2 tends to have more automobile-oriented uses, including a majority of both the city’s car washes and the city’s gas stations. The City’s recent measures to further study such auto-related uses, which have historically dominated the economic development of District 2, indicate the opposite of a justification of a General Plan amendment for a car wash. It is not that car washes and other automobile-oriented uses are not important and do not have a role in the city’s business mix; it is that they create impacts such as noise and traffic that are not compatible with certain uses such as residential uses and schools.

Staff analysis: General plan amendments are only appropriate when an amendment furthers

important goals of the City. The establishment of a new car wash does not rise to this level. There

is no documented shortage of car wash facilities in Rancho Cucamonga at this time. Car wash facilities do not provide numerous jobs, high-wage jobs, bring a needed amenity to the neighborhood, bring a unique business to the city, provide affordable or attainable housing, or otherwise further the City’s overarching goals.

Issue 2: PlanRC Comprehensive General Plan Update

The City began a two-year comprehensive General Plan update in January 2020. When adopted, this new long-range vision for future land use development will close the chapter on the 2010 General Plan and establish a vision for the next ten or more years. As an All-America City, one of our core community values is listening to the community. Extensive community outreach was conducted through meetings, discussion groups and surveys to better understand the community’s land use and development goals. Through this process, the community articulated three core values to help guide community development: health, equity, and stewardship.

Additionally, the community has identified five critical priorities for the city:

1. Design for people first

2. Provide connectivity and accessibility 3. Create destinations

4. Establish Rancho Cucamonga as the cultural and economic hub of the Inland Empire 5. Address environmental justice

The public review draft of PlanRC reflects the goals articulated by the community. It has been released in draft form prior to public hearings and adoption, which are scheduled to take place in Fall 2021, and staff has conducted extensive public engagement around the draft plan. While community feedback is still ongoing at the time of this writing, feedback on the draft thus far has been very positive. The draft plan indicates that the Archibald and Arrow intersection, including the subject property is intended to be designated “Neighborhood Corridor.” This designation was chosen with care to help address the community’s values and realize the community’s priorities.

This designation discourages auto-dependent land uses in favor of commercial businesses that serve the local community and can be accessed without requiring an automobile. Improving walkability helps address health, equity, and stewardship. In addition, this commercial corner is adjacent to the proposed Cucamonga Town Center Focus Area, which envisions enhanced commercial and industrial uses at a walkable, neighborhood scale. Together, these proposals help to create a people-first destination that is connected to and accessible by the surrounding neighborhoods. Furthermore, as stated above, car washes and many other auto-oriented businesses are predominantly in District 2. Further saturating certain types of businesses in one area of the city is both inequitable and a fragile approach to economic development that is not in line with the community’s values or the ideal of an All-America City.

There are other locations in the city which are identified as potential locations for any increased demand in auto-related uses that might result from a growing residential population.

Staff analysis: At the time of the Planning Commission’s review of this application, PlanRC was still being prepared and the community’s vision had not yet been fully translated into a land use plan or policies. Additionally, staff did not yet have the benefit of hearing from the community to understand whether the draft PlanRC would be well received by the community. Staff now has both and can more fully assess the proposed General Plan amendment in the context of the community’s vision as articulated by PlanRC.

While PlanRC is but a draft plan, the requested General Plan amendment conflicts with the

community’s stated values and priorities. The community’s future land use vision for Arrow and

Archibald neighborhood, as proposed in the draft PlanRC Land Plan does not include auto-related

uses. The General Plan update community engagement effort indicate the community greatly desires walkable, destination-oriented retail developments. The subject property will no longer be designated as LM Residential but is not proposed to accommodate a car wash use in the future designation either. Furthermore, as the comprehensive General Plan update is in process, staff asserts that this amendment to a single parcel of land is not timely. A project that is compliant with the current land use and zoning designation could be considered, but any reconsideration of land use on these parcels should only be considered as part of the comprehensive update.

Issue 3: Legal Limit on the Number of General Plan Amendments

As a way of signifying the importance of the long-range planning process, State law limits the number of amendments to mandatory elements of the General Plan a City can approve to four a year. The Land Use Element is a mandatory element of the General Plan. For 2021, the City has multiple General Plan amendments to the Land Use Element under way: the PlanRC comprehensive General Plan update (including the Land Use Element), as well as three major industrial projects (all of which are 500,000 SF to 2,200,000 sf and represent hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs) that will require General Plan amendments to calibrate zoning designations for very large sites. In addition, the Housing Element update is contingent upon an amendment to the Land Use Element to designate sites on the housing inventory for residential development. In the absence of any other requests, these projects alone exceed the use of all four of the City’s allowed amendments.

Staff analysis: As stated above, staff does not believe a car wash is a land use that warrants the consideration of one of a limited number of allowable General Plan amendments. It is appropriate for the City Council to consider the application before it without comparing the relevant merits of other General Plan amendments. However, should the City Council approve the requested General Plan amendment, one more of the listed General Plan amendment requests would have to be delayed until 2022. Delaying the update of the City’s Housing Element and General Plan until 2022 would impact the City’s ability to regulate new residential development. Delaying the approval of any of the property owner-requested amendments for the referenced major industrial projects risks hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs for the city.

Issue 4: Redesignating Land Use from Residential to Commercial

In 2017 the California Legislature approved California’s 2017 Housing Package, which, among other housing bills, included Senate Bill No. 166 (SB 166). SB 166 prohibits a City from reducing, requiring, or permitting a reducing a site’s residential density to a lower residential density that is below the density on a site that was used by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) in determining compliance with housing element law unless the City makes written findings supported by substantial evidence that the reduction is consistent with the General Plan, including the housing element, and that the remaining sites identified in the housing element are adequate to accommodate the City’s share of the regional housing need.

In addition, the “Housing Crisis Act” adopted pursuant to SB 330, prohibits the City from enacting

a “development policy, standard, or condition” to change the use of property to a “less intensive

use” or reduce the intensity of land use from that allowed by the General Plan or zoning as of

January 1, 2018. Under this law, a “less intensive use” would include changing the land use

designation or zoning of property to prohibit residential development. However, there is an

exception to this prohibition. When the City amends the General Plan and zoning to lower the

intensity of use on one parcel, it must be offset by increases on other parcels “to ensure that there

is no net loss in residential capacity.” This provision applies City-wide and is not listed to sites on

the City’s housing inventory used by HCD.

Taken together, two laws mean that the City may only reduce or eliminate residential density for a parcel if there is a sufficient replacement of residentially zoned land so that there is “no net loss”

of residential development capacity. When the City prepared the 2013 Housing Element Update only vacant parcels were analyzed to address the City’s regional housing need (underutilized parcels and those with active development applications were not included) and the City identified an adequate number of vacant parcels to meet the regional housing need. The easterly 0.85- acre parcel of land was identified by the capacity analysis of the Low Medium (LM) Residential District. To overcome the loss of housing capacity as a result of this project, the applicant is requesting to amend the General Plan land use and zoning designations for Parcels 3 and 4, which are non-project related parcels (APNs: 208-29-01 and -02) as described previously.

The subject 0.85-acre project-related parcel of land (Parcel 2) has a maximum potential residential density of 6.8 units under the current Low Medium (LM) Residential District (4-8 dwelling units per acre) zoning designation. Rezoning Parcels 3 and 4 (a total of 1.21 acres) from Low Medium (LM) Residential District (4-8 dwelling units per acre) to Medium (M) Residential District (8-14 dwelling units per acre) will increase the potential residential density from 9.68 dwelling units per acre to 16.94 dwelling units per acre, an increase in density of 7.26 dwelling units per acre. This change in the General Plan and zoning designation will overcome the potential loss of housing opportunities created by the rezoning of the project-specific parcel of land (7.26 vs 6.8 dwelling units per acre) and will, in turn, make the project compliant with the “no net loss”

provision in Senate Bill Nos. 166 and SB 330.

Staff analysis: Although the applicant has been able to identify residential capacity on other sites in order to avoid a net loss, as discussed above, such a re-designation is not without potential neighborhood impacts.

Issue 5: Car Wash Use Adjacent to Low or Medium Density Residential Housing

As stated in Issue 4, the General Plan Amendment requested would require a re-designation and re-zoning of the adjacent property to the east to a higher density residential land use and zone.

If developed to its full potential, these residential properties would be located immediately adjacent to a car wash use. The noise of equipment, vehicles, and patrons at the site during operating hours as well as the environmental conditions of water spraying and air blowing, while not found to have significant environmental impacts under CEQA, with mitigation, are still conditions that are not ideal in a residential neighborhood or adjacent to a school. For the City Council to approve this General Plan Amendment, the Council would have to concurrently increase residential density immediately adjacent to the proposed car wash. Staff does not believe these are compatible land uses and so the amendment exacerbates a future conflict of land uses as more residents are allowed to be placed next to the car wash. Furthermore, while CEQA does not consider how impacts may disproportionally affect disadvantaged communities, introducing land use conflicts such as new sources of noise adjacent to an existing school and housing sites can create new environmental justice and equity issues.

Staff analysis: Car wash uses are not compatible with residential neighborhoods. There are many other locations in the city of Rancho Cucamonga where a car wash could be located at a much further distance away from neighboring residences and schools.

Summary

In summary, staff cannot recommend the requested General Plan amendment and zoning map

amendment to accommodate the development of a car wash due to the lack of consistency with

the City’s current and future land use goals, the lack of a demonstrated need for the use, and the

lack of a clear community benefit that would be achieved by the project as well as the impact on other, larger projects currently in process.

FISCAL IMPACT:

The Fiscal Impact Analysis (Stanley R. Hoffman Associates) prepared for the project estimates that the project would provide a net annual recurring impact of $4,862 to the City upon completion of the project. This figure has not been peer-reviewed or confirmed. New recurring general fund revenues include property taxes, property tax in-lieu, residential derived sales taxes, commercial derived sales taxes, business license fees, and franchise fees. Even assuming the $4,862 figure is accurate, this amount is so minimal that within 2-3 years it will be eclipsed by costs and the project will go negative. Generally speaking, a commercial use on 1 acre or more should be contributing at $20,000 per acre or more to be comparable in average revenue to the City’s other commercial uses, even on the low end of the analysis.

COUNCIL GOAL(S) ADDRESSED:

The request to make an amendment for a single property and for this proposed development project does not meet the Council’s vision or core values. Additionally, this proposal does not address the community’s core values or priorities as articulated through the PlanRC community outreach process.

CORRESPONDENCE:

This item was advertised as a public hearing with a regular page legal advertisement in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin newspaper, the property was posted on April 28, 2021, and notices were mailed to all property owners (135 addresses) within a 660-foot radius of the project site on April 28, 2021. To date, no comments/correspondence has been received in response to these notifications.

EXHIBITS:

Attachment 1 - Planning Commission Staff Report Dated March 10, 2021 Attachment 2 - Planning Commission Minutes Dated March 10, 2021 Attachment 3 - Correspondence Received

Attachment 4 - Draft Resolution No. 2021-045

Attachment 5 - Project Timeline