The empty Garrison Elementary campus in Oceanside's Loma Alta neighborhood is officially getting a second act. On Wednesday, the Oceanside City Council signed off on a plan to build 140 for-sale townhomes on the former school site, closing the book on a campus that shut down in 2019 and clearing the way to rezone roughly eight acres from civic use to medium-density residential for developer The True Life Companies.
Project details and design
The Garrison Townhomes project is slated for about 8.3 acres at 333 Garrison Street and would stack 140 three-story units into 22 buildings. Floor plans range from roughly 1,364 to 2,093 square feet, and each unit is planned with a two-car garage and a private balcony. The layout shows around 280 resident parking spaces, 38 guest spaces and an approximately 10,900-square-foot pocket park that will be open to the public, according to a City of Oceanside planning staff report.
Traffic, park and the city's bottom line
Project documents estimate the townhomes will generate about 973 vehicle trips a day, fewer than the weekday traffic the area saw when Garrison Elementary was operating as a school. The developer will also have to pay for traffic-detection upgrades at El Camino Real and Oceanside Boulevard before anyone can move in, according to environmental filings on CEQAnet.
A fiscal analysis attached to the city packet concluded that replacing the idle campus with homes would flip the site from a small yearly loss to roughly a $115,000 net gain for Oceanside's general fund. On top of that, the builder is expected to pay about $1.8 million in in-lieu housing fees to satisfy the city's 15% inclusionary housing requirement, as reported by The Coast News.
Affordable housing and the density-bonus choice
Fourteen of the 140 homes, about 10% of the total, will be set aside for moderate-income buyers. The applicant chose not to tap into California's density-bonus law, which could have allowed extra units or development waivers in exchange for more affordable housing. Mayor Esther Sanchez praised the developer's community outreach and its decision to skip those state concessions, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Developer concessions and neighborhood concerns
After pushback from neighbors and community members, the developer agreed to add bike racks, boost native landscaping and prepare a transportation-management plan. The project also includes targeted street improvements to be finished before residents move in, according to a City of Oceanside planning staff report.
Still, some residents told planners they were uneasy about losing a civic site and questioned whether a pocket park and other promised public benefits were a fair trade for a longtime neighborhood school. That debate followed the project into public hearings, as locals weighed nostalgia and civic loss against the region's push for more housing.
What's next
With council approval secured, the project moves into the permit and mitigation phase laid out in its environmental review. The Mitigated Negative Declaration for the Garrison Street Project was posted in June on CEQAnet, and the developer now has to satisfy a list of conditions, from traffic-signal upgrades to inclusionary-fee payments, before the first occupancy permits are issued. Construction timing will hinge on those clearances and final design work.
How warmly the Loma Alta neighborhood ultimately welcomes the townhomes may depend on how tightly the city enforces those conditions and how well the new park and traffic fixes actually function once families move in. City officials say the project will bring badly needed for-sale housing near transit and existing parks while trying to respond to neighborhood concerns, but a portion of residents is still not convinced that trading a school for townhomes is a deal they wanted.
