Notes from the 11-6-06 Master Plan Hearing

November 9th, 2006

Montecito Planning Commissioners have made a tentative decision to consider approval of the entire Westmont College Master Plan Update, but have yet to determine which conditions they will apply to their final approval. The commission set a special hearing date of Monday, Nov. 20 at 9 a.m. to continue and possibly finalize their deliberations.

Other positive developments included the commission’s informal approval of the size and height of the proposed chapel. The new 45- to 49-foot chapel is the only proposed building which did not meet current Montecito height guidelines.

Much of the remaining discussion focused on the number of cars entering and leaving Westmont and how the commission would like to regulate traffic during the academic year and while construction is taking place. The technical term for this traffic is average daily trips (ADTs). Every time a car travels on Cold Spring Road to or from the Westmont campus it counts as one ADT.

Traffic and parking can be complicated issues. Currently, Westmont operates under a conditional use permit (CUP) which limits the number of permitted cars parked on campus to 600 at any one time. The college is allowed to have a select number of large events on campus, such as commencement, where it can exceed that parking limit.

As one of the conditions for approval, Westmont has offered to replace the parking condition with a cap on the number of ADTs allowed on Cold Spring Road. This is a better control mechanism for neighbors since it’s the actual traffic on Cold Spring Road that they witness, not the number of cars parked at Westmont.

The current debate centers around Westmont asking for 3,500 ADTs on weekdays during the semester. For non-academic days (more than 200 days of the year) Westmont has offered to cap the number of ADTs at 2,500. The college has also introduced a number of penalties if it fails to keep under the cap. The county’s environmental impact report shows that these numbers accommodate a level of traffic on Cold Spring Road that is well below the appropriate threshold for this class of road.