Top image: Morgan Hill from Nob Hill. Photo: Cristiano Tomás / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
At the Cochrane Road exit off U.S. 101, Morgan Hill is about to show what California’s “builder’s remedy” looks like when a city decides to settle rather than fight. The result is not a high-rise. It is 105 detached single-family homes on land the city had hoped to keep for freeway-front commerce.
The recommendation
On Tuesday, Oct. 13, the Morgan Hill Planning Commission unanimously recommended plans for 105 market-rate, two-story detached homes on 15.8 acres just east of the Cochrane Road exit, San José Spotlight reported. The project now goes to the City Council. The developer, High Street Residential, a subsidiary of Trammell Crow Company, filed its application in October 2023. That was one month before the state certified Morgan Hill’s housing plan, which allowed the company to use builder’s remedy, the state-law provision that lets projects bypass local height and density limits when a city lacks a certified housing element.
The settlement map
The developer asked to convert commercially zoned land to residential. The city partly agreed through a settlement, which officials said was meant to avoid costly litigation with the developer and the state. The roughly 28.5-acre site was divided into three parcels, according to San José Spotlight:
- 15.8 acres for the 105 homes, ranging from 2,147 to 2,615 square feet
- 7.8 acres along Cochrane Road for a shopping center anchored by Sprouts, slated to open in late 2027
- 4.7 acres to be transferred to the city for affordable housing
The project’s environmental impact report identifies significant, unavoidable impacts, including the loss of nearly 11 acres of farmland and per-capita vehicle miles traveled nearly four miles above the city’s threshold.
Voices
“In the end, what the city has gained overall is a project that is going to advance the city and is within the character of the city,” Edith Ramirez, Morgan Hill’s assistant city manager for development services, told San José Spotlight.
Brian Pianca, High Street’s Northern California principal, thanked staff for “a collaborative process.” He said the company, which mainly builds rentals, is still deciding whether to build the homes itself or hand the project to another developer.
Commissioner Steve Adamo voted to recommend the project but objected to it. “You follow the law, you try to do the right thing and you end up in a situation like this where that freeway front of commercial properties we were hoping to try and preserve ends up in housing,” he said. “I don’t like its location.”
The long view
Morgan Hill must plan for 1,037 homes by 2031. Builder’s remedy was designed as a penalty to force cities to comply with state housing law. Here it produced a negotiated suburban subdivision, plus a city-owned affordable parcel that may matter more in the long run than the market-rate homes. The case is a reminder that state housing law can decide whether something gets built far more easily than it can decide what. In South County, where farmland and job centers meet, that distinction will shape the region’s footprint for decades.
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