The La Center City Council on Wednesday, Aug. 27, unanimously approved a rezoning ordinance for the proposed Juniper Ridge Subdivision, which will convert nearly 25 acres into 67 single-family lots while leaving more than 17 acres as open space.
The site, located north of Pacific Highway, had been zoned Low Density Residential (LDR-7.5). With the council’s action, it is now zoned Medium Density Residential (MDR-16).
The rezoning was already anticipated in the city’s comprehensive plan update, according to Bryan Kast, of Crescent Design and Engineering, who presented the proposed zoning change to the city council.
Councilor Myrna Leija said she supported the zone change after reviewing the proposal and attending the planning commission hearing earlier this month.
“You know, there's quite a bit of area that is essentially undevelopable or very difficult to develop,” Leija said. “I'm not a champion of high density, but I can see the need for doing it to medium density on this site.”
Resident Kimberlee Goheen Elbon warned the project would squeeze La Center even tighter.
“What we're gonna create here is a bottleneck community. We're already bottlenecked,” Elbon said. “The pollution, I could go on and on.”
She urged city leaders to resist pressure from outside developers.
“I'm so against developers. They need to stop,” Elbon said. “They're already multimillionaires. Keep out of Clark County and spend your millions of dollars somewhere else because our resources are depleting and people just don't know it yet.”
Community Development and Public Works Director Tracey Coleman said the city has studied the concerns.
“I'd just like to reassure everybody that we have had the planning commission hearing, and we also had a land use hearing last week, and we talked about traffic and the zoning and the environmental constraints and everything,” Coleman said.
After closing the public hearing, the council approved the ordinance unanimously.
