The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors ended a developer’s nearly 15-year odyssey to construct a subdivision of single-family homes in the San Mateo Highlands by voting 4-1 to approve the project.
The application first came to the county in 2002, was refined, reviewed, refined again and shot down by the county’s Planning Commission in 2009.
Dennis Thomas, president of San Mateo Real Estate, Inc., revised the plan again and resubmitted the application in late 2011. The new plan reduced the number of homes from 25 to 19 on 13 acres at the northeast corner of Bel Aire Road and Ascension Drive near College of San Mateo. The county’s Planning Commission finally approved the new application Oct. 28, 2015.
But members of the Baywood Park Homeowners Association, who have opposed the project since it was first proposed, appealed the commission’s decision based on the hillside’s steep terrain and its history of landslides.
They also complained that a proposed stormwater collection system for the subdivision is untested in residential conditions.
Privacy was also a concern for some neighbors as the new homes will be as close as 40 feet to the existing homes on Parrot Drive.
Thomas, in response to those concerns, agreed to have at least a 30-foot setback for six of the 19 homes that will make up the new subdivision.
Supervisor Dave Pine voted against the project. He was seeking at least a 40-foot setback to create a 60-foot buffer between the new homes and existing homes.
Jerry Ozanne, president of the homeowners group, urged the board not to support the project Tuesday, saying the dust and pollution from grading the hill will turn the neighborhood into Beijing, China.
“Despite the neighborhood input. The proposal is still seriously flawed,” Ozanne said.
He also said the new homes will not fit into the character of the neighborhood, which is in unincorporated San Mateo County.
Supervisor Don Horsley, however, said the county is in the midst of a housing crisis and that new homes at all levels of affordability need to be built.
He noted the 55,000 jobs the county has added to only 2,100 housing units constructed in recent years.
“We have to make progress toward building more housing,” Horsley said.
The Ascension Heights subdivision project was first proposed in 2002 and called for 26 houses and one 40-unit condominium on 97 acres. It was then scaled back to 25 homes on 13 acres at Water Tank Hill but that plan was also rejected.
Thomas said grading will take at least 45 days to complete and that the first home on the property won’t be constructed for at least two years.
(650) 344-5200 ext. 102
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