A plan for 7,500 new homes between Orcutt and Los Alamos, enough for a population twice the size of Solvang and Buellton combined, is under county review after months of intense lobbying by the developers.

The North Hills project is planned for 4,000 acres of grazing land and abandoned oil fields in the foothills of the Solomon Hills, south of Orcutt’s urban boundary. The property, purchased two years ago by Orcutt Fee LLC, a subsidiary of BreitBurn Energy Co. L.P., stretches west from Highway 101 to the vineyards along Highway 135. North Hills is easily the largest housing project ever to be proposed in Santa Barbara County.

Map by Mary Koenig / SBN

North Hills would supply about 1,500 affordable homes for low- and moderate-income workers, fulfilling a state requirement that the county provide zoning for 1,235 homes in the affordable range by 2008. To date, because of homeowner opposition, the county has been unable to meet that goal.

If it is approved, North Hills would represent a major change in the way the county grows — a change that coincides with high property values in rural areas, declining revenues from cattle grazing and a passing of the baton from a generation of farmers and ranchers to their children, who may not want to stay on the land.

The North Hills developers, Randy Wheeler and Jack Washburn, president of BreitBurn Land, are pitching it as “a master planned sustainable community of several villages with a focus on health and wellness.”

“The people are coming,” Wheeler said. “California is expected to take up to 25 million more people by 2040. You can’t just build a fence around the counties and say, ‘We’re never going to have another person here.’ North Hills is not a community of million-dollar homes. The idea is that people from all walks of life can live in this community.”

The North Hills project would build 7,500 homes on abandoned oil fields. Courtesy photo.

County officials have placed the project on a fast track, saying they want to find out early on whether it can pass the first hurdle or not. On June 7, the county Planning Commission will make a public site visit to the property. On June 13, the commissioners will vote on whether to recommend the review of a general plan amendment. And on July 10, the county Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to give North Hills a green light for consideration.

From start to finish, the review would take up to three years.

Project opponents, feeling swamped by the size and scope of the project, say North Hills would foster “leapfrog sprawl” on agricultural land, setting precedents that would push rural areas in the direction of the Los Angeles and San Fernando valleys. They don’t believe Wheeler’s assurances that North Hills would supply enough jobs for many of the people living there, and they predict major increases in commuting and highway building if it is approved.

“North Hills is for private profit and political expediency,” said Bob Field, former chairman of the now-defunct Santa Ynez Valley Planning Advisory Committee. “This is a place where you put homes and nobody will complain because there’s nobody’s back yard there. It does not meet any of the needs of Santa Barbara County, where we need low-cost housing on the South Coast and less commuting. It makes our problems worse.”

Some North County residents who attended presentations in recent months by Wheeler, Washburn and their architect, Peter Calthorpe, a pioneer in urban planning, say they like the pedestrian-friendly design of North Hills and the idea of Mom-and-Pop neighborhood shops. They’re just not sure it’s in the right place.

“North Hills could be the best thing that happened to the county, or it could be the worst,” said Joyce Howerton, the former mayor of Lompoc. “It will come down to: Is that the best location for a new town?”

SAVING FARMS AND RANCHES

Santa Barbara County is recognized as a leader for its strong policies protecting farmland, and agriculture is the No. 1 industry. Gross sales from crops and cattle operations broke the $1 billion benchmark in 2006.

The county’s general plan, a kind of constitution governing growth in unincorporated areas, discourages the breakup of agriculturally-zoned lands for housing tracts and frowns on urban development outside urban boundaries. The general plan states, too, that certain areas that are unsuitable for farming may have importance as wildlife habitat.

County boards of supervisors have sought for 30 years to protect farming and ranching in the county from urbanization. In one high-profile case in the 1990s, they turned down a proposal for cattle grazing on 100-acre lots for homes. The project went all the way to the state Supreme Court before it was finally defeated.

The present board has been looking at the “village center” concept as a way to place houses on marginal rural land and save the best farmland, the prime soils of the Santa Maria Valley, said Supervisor Joni Gray, who represents Orcutt and the Lompoc Valley.

The land proposed for North Hill once was the site of Orcutt Hill, an oil town of the 1920s. An old schoolhouse still remains on the property. Courtesy photo.

“I really hope that we can make this project happen,” Gray said. “This isn’t leapfrog. This is will be a self-contained city. It would be a gorgeous place to live.”

Mike Brown, the county’s chief executive officer, says that new village centers, modeled, say, on Los Olivos, could be replicated in places such as Cuyama, Garey and Sisquoc, in addition to the property south of Orcutt. “Why couldn’t we have a Tuscan village there?” he asked. “People love them.”

Willy Chamberlin, chairman of the county’s agricultural advisory committee, said that if North Hills were approved, the developers should be required to help preserve a “green buffer” around parts of Santa Maria to stop the march of urbanization there.

“I don’t give a damn how many houses they put up on the hill,” Chamberlin said. “But do I want growth continuing in the Santa Maria Valley like it is? No. We have an opportunity here for economic tradeoffs.”

Still others have noted that the North Hills property appears on regional maps as a hot spot of biodiversity, a home to mountain lions and the endangered California tiger salamander. They wonder why North Hills is needed, when 800 and 1,000 homes have been approved and are awaiting construction in Orcutt. The vacant land zoned for housing within Orcutt’s urban boundary would supply another 3,000 homes — in all, about 20 years’ worth of housing for the community.

“There’s a lot of neat features in North Hills that we would be very happy about if they were inside the urban limit line,” said Deborah Brasket, a Santa Marian and the executive director of SB-CAN. “We don’t need another bedroom community out there.”

Doreen Farr, president of the Santa Ynez Valley Alliance, agrees.