North Central Roseville Specific Plan to include a 360-unit affordable housing project

A parcel in the North Central Roseville Specific Plan is set to include a 360-unit affordable housing project after a rezoning was approved at Wednesday's Roseville City Council meeting. The North Central Roseville Specific Plan is 1,824 acres and is located between Interstate 80 and Washington Boulevard, according to the city of Roseville website. "The plan provides a diverse mix of residential, commercial and office uses. Included are regional commercial sites and significant wetland preservation/compensation area," according to the website. The North Central Roseville Specific Plan would house 11,397 residents and provide 15,633 jobs at completion. Five vacant parcels located at 540, 556, 564, 572 and 580 Gibson Drive were included in the rezoning. These parcels were initially intended to be an office park in 2008 but are now set to be affordable housing, according to Shea Properties Senior Development manager Jeff Melrose. "At the time, an office park sounded like a good idea," Melrose said, but now seems "like the right opportunity to get creative and work with the city on solving another problem," which is affordable housing. Roseville Planning manager Greg Bitter defined affordable housing at the meeting. "When we talk about affordable housing, we're talking about certain income thresholds based on the area median income," Bitter said. "So Placer County has an area median income for different household sizes. For us, we have three different affordable housing incomes that we're required to meet by the state." Affordable housing must serve those with low income, very low income and extremely low income. To allow for affordable housing on the five parcels, a rezoning was approved by the council to change the zoning from Business Professional/Special Area North Central Roseville Specific Plan (BP/SA-NC) to Multi-Family Housing/Special Area North Central Roseville Specific Plan (R3/SA-NC). According to the staff report, two new land uses were also recommended to be added to the North Central Roseville Specific Plan. In addition to the Community Commercial and Business Professional land uses, "Staff is recommending that the Community Care Facility and Long Term Care Facility land use types be permitted within the Community Commercial and the Business Professional land uses designations." Roseville Mayor Bruce Houdesheldt asked Bitter about potential traffic concerns that could arise with the new housing. "That had been looked at twice with the housing addendum," Bitter said, "The traffic circulation network is set up." Vice-Mayor Krista Bernasconi said the project shows "creativity in a lot of ways, from the landowner being open to it, the staff identifying opportunity sites, the rezone, ways to potentially reach our arena numbers, adding the new land uses on top of it." Roseville City Council unanimously voted and adopted the rezoning for the 360-unit affordable housing project as part of the North Central Roseville Specific Plan.