Residents of La Canada Flintridge may have tired of the chain-link fence surrounding the former Christian Science Church on the town’s main drag, Foothill Boulevard, and of the seasonal — here come the holidays — pumpkin patch and Christmas tree lot that the otherwise disused property sports among the increasingly fancy restaurants and high-end grocery stores in the neighborhood.
But there’s an easy remedy for that — one that the City Council has literally been ordered by California’s attorney general to undertake.
And yet the council continues to painfully slow-walk the permit approvals it has been ordered to make for an attractive, design-appropriate, much-needed multi-family residential building with 80 units and 16 hotel rooms for visiting cousins and JPL visitors alike.
After much frustration in dealing with a city bureaucracy seemingly determined to keep any condos or apartments out of the bucolic town, Cedar Street Partners — whose managing member, Jon Curtis, is a popular former mayor — the developers won the first “builder’s remedy” legal case in California history.
It says that cities in the state that refuse to keep up even minimal efforts to add new housing during this literal housing crisis thereby forgo their rights to stall otherwise approvable projects.
In fact, the foot-dragging cities often lose their former rights to put more stringent height and square-footage limits on projects, which they could have negotiated if they had just played fair.
Primarily residential LCF will always be zoned almost entirely single-family. It’s only along bustling Foothill that a bigger residential project like this one will ever be built. And this is a chance to have very local, community-oriented developers — all three principals live in town — do it the right way.
Since the city wouldn’t do the right thing, in a key test case, citing the critical need for affordable housing in California, Attorney General Rob Banta ordered in 2023 that “Consequently, the State has a direct interest in ensuring that Respondent-Defendant City of La Cañada Flintridge … removes all impediments to lawful housing development, and ceases attempts to circumvent validly enacted state law.”
It’s mid-2025, and so far, the reply from City Hall is crickets. The council wanted to appeal, but would have had to back a $14 million bond to if need be make the developers whole. That didn’t fit the city budget, and so the council dropped the appeal. Now it simply refuses to agendize project approval for 600 Foothill.
I noted in this space in April 2024 how I was looking forward to seeing this key mixed-use development realized as a model for new housing in Southern California.
I’m still looking forward to it, and so joined former City Councilman and Planning Commissioner Jon Curtis for the traditional La Canada repast of tableside guacamole and iced teas at Los Gringos Locos, across Foothill from the property, on Monday afternoon to hear the latest.
“Well, the judge made it clear” in a final ruling this past March, Curtis said. “They were ordered by the court to approve the project. It also falls under the new CEQA exemptions signed by the governor. And so the legal recourse by the City Council is just not agendizing what the court has ordered.”
We went across the street so that I could get a better idea how the design by Noah Riley Architects would fit in on Foothill. The renderings show a variegated, unboxy design with balconies for San Gabriel Mountains views and a central courtyard. There’s some commercial space on the ground floor fronting the boulevard. It’s going to look nice, and be a boost for housing choice in the pricey town.
“Our legal battle against La Canada Flintridge has come to an end for now,” Bonta said in March. “It should not have taken them this long to follow the law. California desperately needs more affordable housing, and every city and county must be part of the solution — no exceptions. If La Canada Flintridge tries to illegally delay this project any further, we will not hesitate to hold them accountable once again.”
Maybe time to not hesitate, Mr. AG.
The whole state is taking notice. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Emily Hoeven quoted land-use attorney Dave Rand, who said California cities that are “resistance pockets” that want to baselessly deny housing projects are “going to have to think twice about doing this — because there’s an astronomical cost and burden to going down this road.”
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