ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT
MEETING DATE: February 19, 2025 AGENDA CATEGORY: Reports TO: Housing and Community Development Committee
FROM: Phillip Burns, Development Services Director
DATE: February 13, 2025
SUBJECT: Current Development Activity in the City of Bakersfield
[Document Description]
RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommends to receive and file the report
BACKGROUND:
OVERVIEW OF DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY
The City of Bakersfield Development Services Department continues to be very busy with both current and long-term projects. Our goal of this Report and presentation is to provide an overview of activity and showcase a few of the exciting projects coming through the development pipeline.
LARGE DELIVERABLES
The Planning Division has three huge deliverables in process that will impact the city’s fabric for years.
Staff are currently in our 4 th round of HCD comments on the 6 th cycle Housing Element. The largest push is on more affordable housing opportunities and programs to address aging housing stock within the city.
Some key statistics from our regional housing needs allocation are 37,461 total units including 18,211 lower income units. The housing element is an 8-year plan and tied to much of ECD’s affordable housing funds. The second large deliverable is the General Plan which is a comprehensive update with current schedule of developing a draft plan for circulation in the late 2 nd quarter of 2025. The policy framework is currently being scheduled for stakeholder meetings. Lastly, the development of a new Habitat Conservation Plan. Prior plan development resulted in a plan that was not well received. Staff have been in conversation with state an d federal wildlife agencies along with our consultants. Staff believe a proposal will be coming forward also in the 2nd quarter of 2025 to update the current draft plan to include a revised urban kitfox plan that will potentially be much different than previously proposed.
ANNEXATIONS
As part of the housing element, staff met with many property owners to find land to use in our site inventory. Staff struggled to find enough sites zoned R-4 and R-5 needed to address the low and very low- income categories. The state has equated affordability with density. Thus, our site inventory needs the ability to develop a certain number of units at 20 plus and 30 plus units per acre. This led staff to discuss pre-zoning and annexation with many landowners. Excitingly one of the annexations contai ned 1058 acres located in the area of Gosford and Taft Highway. This is annexation 711 and also known as Taft Hwy No. 4. This one annexation alone added 2586 units to our site inventory. Three other annexations combined added another 550 acres and 1576 u nits. These do not include other developer requested annexations.
COMMERCIAL PROJECTS
Two new shopping centers on opposite sides of the city along Coffee/Gosford Road. The first project is at Gosford and Panama Lane named Crossroads Plaza and consist of a 312,000 square feet new commercial center. This center has current active building permits. The second is located at the southwest corner of Coffee Road and Rosedale Highway. This proposed center is approximately 46 acres of the old PG&E site and will have around 380,000 square feet of related retail space. A consultant is currently under contract drafting an environment impact report for the general plan amendment zone change for this project. We anticipate this project to planning commission late 2025 early 2026.
SOUTHEAST BAKERSFIELD DEVELOPMENT
The Communities of Del Oro just had a first. Last week we did not just have a groundbreaking but a community celebration! This is the sentiment from both city staff, developer and residents. The ceremony was for a force main sewer line, but the reality is the ability to continue development south of white lane and cotton wood. The new community of Del Oro is over 440 acres and will contain over 7,800 housing units including 4000 single family residences. The upcoming commercial center is about 30 acres and will contain the much-needed grocery store for the area. I can’t wait to see what this area looks like in 2 -5 years.
CONCLUSIONS
City staff continue to be extremely busy promoting development withi n our city limits as well as setting the city up for a very bright future. Staff realizes this was a brief overview as there are many deserving projects like Cal Daries, new commercial developments west of town on Stockdale, several projects on Panama Lane and many others.
NEXT STEPS
Staff will take the direction of the Committee and Receive and file the report.
FISCAL IMPACT:
No fiscal impact is associated with the report on future development.
COUNCIL GOAL:
Community Character & Quality of Life
ATTACHMENTS:
Presenation