The California Court of Appeal for the Sixth Appellate District recently held, in Aptos Council v. County of Santa Cruz, 10 Cal. App. 5th 266 (2017) that environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) need only analyze environmental impacts of development resulting from a zoning amendment if the development is reasonably foreseeable. This decision provides helpful guidance to municipalities considering zoning and land use plan amendments that permit development at higher densities.
The court also ruled that separate CEQA review of three different ordinances did not violate CEQA’s prohibition against improper “piecemealing” because each ordinance operated independently, could be implemented separately, and served different purposes.
In Aptos, the Court upheld Santa Cruz County’s adoption of three new ordinances that (1) modified height, density, and parking requirements for hotels in commercial districts to allow some hotels to be developed at a higher density and height; (2) extended the applicability and scope of variances that could be administratively approved for minor exceptions to zoning standards; and (3) allowed administrative exceptions to sign regulations.
The appellants challenged the adoption of a negative declaration for the hotel ordinance’s modifications, arguing that an EIR was...
