The Oceanside City Council has denied a request by residents to overturn the Planning Commission’s approval of a 199 all-affordable apartments proposed for vacant property near the College Boulevard Sprinter Station.
Many of the project’s opponents live on Olive Drive, a short street off College Boulevard, that will provide the only access to the apartments. Many of them pushed for the city to require the developer to include a second access road to the development called Olive Park Apartments.
“We think this is something that should be looked into,” said Meg Ley, an Olive Drive resident representing the group MiraCosta Neighbors for Responsible Development.
The project also will add traffic to the already crowded College Boulevard, Ley said. She and others said they have trouble turning from Olive onto College at busy times of the day, and that more cars will increase the hazard for residents and emergency vehicles.
The developer, Brian Mikail of Capstone Equities, said the possibility of a second access route has been studied.
Any second access point would be impractical for a number of reasons, he said. Among them, it would require buying additional private property and building a bridge across the North County Transit District’s railroad.
Mikail said his company has worked with the city and residents nearly three years on the proposal, which meets or exceeds all applicable city and state standards.
The Oceanside Planning Commission unanimously approved the project Jan. 27, and residents filed their appeal Feb. 6. The City Council unanimously denied the appeal Wednesday.
The project has been downsized at least twice from earlier proposals.
A preliminary plan presented to the city in 2023 called for up to 400 seniors-only apartments at what was then called Oceanside Trolley Place. That was reduced to 282 apartments in a draft environmental impact report filed with Oceanside building officials in October 2023, then to 199 apartments late last year.
On June 6, 2024, the City Council authorized the use of up to $6 million of the city’s affordable housing funds for the project.
The complex will have two buildings with a combination of one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments on less than 11 acres of the 43.5-acre parcel. Most of the property, including parts too steep to build on, will be preserved as native habitat.
The development will include a public walkway to the nearby Sprinter train station.
NCTD’s Sprinter hybrid rail line began service in 2008 and has 15 stations on its east-west route between Escondido, San Marcos, Vista and Oceanside.
