A broker has begun marketing townhomes planned for the long-vacant Aptos Par 3 golf course site, even as the broader project awaits formal approval from Santa Cruz County. The proposal, called Village on the Green, would bring market-rate townhomes and affordable apartments to 2600 Mar Vista Drive, on land that has sat empty since the golf course closed in 2000.
Kidder Mathews has been retained to market 178 for-sale townhomes at Village on the Green, according to Yield PRO, which reported that the overall development is planned as a 496-unit community combining those townhomes with 318 affordable apartments. The listing covers two parcels totaling 13.85 acres, a figure confirmed separately by TPG Online Daily, which also noted the site has been vacant since the Par 3 course shut down in 2000. The townhome portion itself spans roughly 11 acres, per the Yield PRO report, and is being marketed without a listed asking price.
Not every account of the project agrees on the exact numbers. The Yield PRO article, built on a press release tied to the Kidder Mathews listing, describes 178 market-rate townhomes and 318 affordable apartments for a 496-unit total. A separate water-service application described by TPG Online Daily instead pointed to 177 townhomes and 318 apartments, totaling 495 homes, while the Santa Cruz Sentinel has reported the plan calls for 177 three-story townhouses alongside two six-story affordable apartment buildings, each with 159 units. The discrepancy in townhome counts between 177 and 178 has not been resolved across the available reporting.
Who's Behind the Deal
Kidder Mathews senior vice president James Viso and vice president Bruce Matesso, both working out of the firm's San Jose office, represent the current property owners and developer Swenson in the offering, according to the Yield PRO report. Swenson is under contract to acquire the land and plans to retain and develop the affordable housing component itself. Viso said the project came together after more than eight years of work with the property owners and Santa Cruz County, crediting Swenson's creativity and commitment to collaboration with the county. He said he expects a homebuilder to come on board to help move the project toward construction.
Matesso said the property's conversion from recreational land demonstrates how evolving California housing policies create development opportunities, and argued that with land increasingly scarce in coastal markets, the 178 townhomes would expand homeownership options. Mark Pilarczyk, Swenson's president of development, said Village on the Green aims to address Santa Cruz County's housing needs while respecting Aptos, and that combining market-rate homeownership with affordable rental housing could serve more residents.
Design Details and Site Features
The proposed townhomes would be distributed across 21 residential buildings totaling roughly 432,562 square feet, per the Yield PRO account. The three-story residences are planned with private garages, pedestrian pathways and select rooftop decks, some of which may offer ocean views given the property's location near Highway 1, about 1.6 miles from Seacliff State Beach and 1.4 miles from Aptos Village. Plans also call for about five acres of landscaped and recreational open space and improvements to an existing wetland area. Swenson has said there will be no clubhouse or swimming pool, according to TPG Online Daily.
The land was previously designated for recreational and open-space use before Santa Cruz County identified it for residential development through its housing element planning process, which the Yield PRO report says left the property with residential zoning and land-use entitlements already in place. Even so, a future homebuilder will still need remaining permits and approvals to advance construction plans. County records list the project as Village on the Green under Application No. 251471, with Swenson Development and Construction as applicant and the status marked as a Development Review Group pre-application, per the Santa Cruz County Community Development and Infrastructure department.
Affordable Housing and Neighborhood Pushback
The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that Swenson Development and Construction, based in San Jose, submitted its pre-application in November 2025 to build townhomes alongside two affordable apartment buildings, with those apartments intended for households earning between 30% and 70% of area median income. The project has since received a conditional will-serve letter from the Soquel Creek Water District, though Swenson still faces numerous conditions before final approval, the newspaper's report notes. District staff have estimated the project would use between 33 and 68 acre-feet of water per year, according to the same TPG Online Daily account of the water application.
Neighbors have raised concerns about whether an influx of new residents would worsen traffic on already-strained Soquel Drive or put added pressure on hospitals, emergency response and water resources, per the Sentinel's reporting. In response, Swenson's updated pre-application reduced the affordable apartment buildings from seven stories to six and shifted them downgrade toward Highway 1, while also increasing setbacks between the townhouses and the neighborhood to the north from 10 feet to 16 feet.
The project's scale has shifted over time. TPG Online Daily reported the proposal grew from an earlier 412-home county figure to 495 homes in the water application, an increase of 83 homes, while the number of townhomes was trimmed from 197 to 177 as a second affordable apartment building was added. A previous development attempt at the same site fell through in 2008 with plans for just 230 homes, and the county's 2023 draft Housing Element had separately pegged the Mar Vista Drive site for 430 new homes, part of a broader plan to allow 6,431 new homes across unincorporated Santa Cruz County, according to Santa Cruz Local. State housing mandates call for 4,634 new homes to be permitted countywide in unincorporated areas between 2023 and 2031.
Kidder Mathews, which is marketing the townhome site, describes itself as the largest fully independent commercial real estate firm in the western United States, with more than 900 professionals across 20 offices in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona and Texas. The firm says it averages roughly $9 billion in annual transaction volume, manages 55 million square feet of space and completes nearly 2,700 appraisal, consulting and cost segregation assignments each year, offering brokerage, appraisal, asset services, consulting and debt and equity finance work in addition to its development sales arm.
