After extensive opposition to a proposed expansion to the Saratoga Retirement Community, the city council voted 4-1 to advance the proposal at a June 5 meeting.
The council’s decision, which only council member Tina Walia opposed, marks the culmination of a conflict between the developer for the project and residents of the retirement community that has been brewing since the project was first proposed in 2018.The expansion will consist of 52 new housing units in three new buildings on the retirement community’s campus, but residents have argued that the process of construction will take away from their quality of life and the new buildings will take away from the campus’s rural feel.
Residents of the retirement community and their supporters, clad in bright green “preserve SRC campus” shirts, turned out at the meeting in droves, filling most seats in the Saratoga Civic Theater at the June 5 meeting.
Though some appeared to have dozed off during the three-hour agenda item, roughly 20 public speakers who urged the city council to vote against the proposal.
A resident identified by city staff as Betsy brought a large pink wand to the podium during the public comment period as she implored the council to turn down the proposal. “My wand here doesn’t do a damn thing,” she said during public comment. “You have the magic wand. I beg you to use it with reason and wisdom, and to use it humanely.”
Council members who voted in favor of the project said they did so because of their desire to facilitate the development of more senior housing in Saratoga despite what some called the “short term impacts” of the construction process for the expansion. Council member Kookie Fitzsimmons spoke first in favor of the project, resulting in an audible groan from the crowd in attendance in person.
“This project creates 52 new units for folks to live here in Saratoga,” Fitzsimmons said. “We have a responsibility to provide opportunity for different age groups, this is what this project does. City council has to look at the present and the future, we have a responsibility so that seniors have opportunities as well. This has been a long process and at the end of the day, it’s the long-term, long lasting benefits for the community of Saratoga that has my support.”
Walia, the sole dissenting vote on the item, said she had concerns that the expansion will take away from the campus’s central green space, detracting from the character of the space and the residents’ quality of life. But even Walia spoke in support of the need for senior housing in Saratoga, saying she was fine with the proposed 52 units but was hoping for a different placement of the units.
“It says the standards of development will result in an aesthetic asset to the community — in my mind, it won’t,” Walia said of the environmental impact report.
Members of the city council went on a tour of the space just one day before the meeting, and the item arrived on the city council agenda on June 5 after the planning commission approved the proposal with five yes votes and one abstention in May.
The residents also filed an appeal on May 20 to the planning commission’s May 8 vote, arguing that city staff incorrectly told planning commissioners that they could not approve the project “piecemeal” – as commissioners had expressed an interest in during their meeting. But city staff responded to the appeal saying the planning commission’s decision was only a recommendation and not a final decision, and as such could not be appealed.
The residents of the retirement community who had been advocated against the proposal said in a statement on their website that they were “deeply disappointed” by the outcome of the meeting.
“It seems that considerations of the state-imposed mandate that the city increase its housing capacity, and the fears of losing control if the city fails, weighed more heavily on the councilors than the destruction of the quality of life for three hundred Saratoga citizens in their retirement and the desecration of the SRC Campus with loss of open space and many mature and protected trees,” the website reads.