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Density too high, planners tell prospective developer

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By Karen Brainard

Ramona Community Planning Group members advised a developer who wants to build apartments on 16th Street that he needs to lower his density to comply with the town’s community plan.

The opinions matched those of the Ramona Design Review Board two weeks earlier when Casey Malone of Lansing Companies, San Diego, and his architect presented a preliminary proposal for a 60-unit apartment complex next to the Ramona Lutheran Church and School on 16th Street. Malone said the county’s general plan allows 24 units per acre at the 2.5-acre site, but design review board member Chris Anderson told him the Ramona Community Plan only permits 7.3 units an acre in that area. The community plan overrides the general plan, she said.

Anderson reiterated that information at the planning group’s meeting this month after Malone and his architect showed their ideas for multi-family housing with an Old California courtyard design.

The only way higher density would be permitted, according to Anderson, is to make the apartment complex affordable housing or senior housing.

The architect’s design includes some buildings in the interior section that would be three-story.

Planner Torry Brean, who is also a member of the Ramona Village Design Group that has developed a draft plan of custom zoning for the town center, said that document limits three-story buildings to certain parcels and this is not one of them.

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