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Following a marathon meeting on March 26 lasting more than four hours, Hollister planners recommended the City Council approve the latest draft 2040 General Plan, which serves as the blueprint for growth.
However, the recommendation included two suggestions for the city: 1) to allow project applications already submitted to the city to move forward under the current general plan approved in 2005; and 2) add density alternatives for projects proposed in mixed-use land use designation areas.
The recommendations reflect the concerns voiced by planners and community members who said requiring mixed-use projects to build at least 30 residential units per acre density was not feasible.
The planners also approved other elements of the General Plan such as the Climate Action Plan and zoning maps as well as the 6th Cycle Housing Element, the only part of a general plan that is required to be updated every eight years.
The Housing Element is a document that requires jurisdictions to plan for the state’s allocated housing goal, known as the Regional Housing Needs Assessment.
Community Services Development Corporation Executive Director Sonny Flores questioned why city officials were approving a document that allows up to 8,364 units when Hollister is only required to plan for 4,163 units through 2031.
“If it does get approved, you are approving up to 8,364 homes,” he said. “That’s the opposite of what the council said they wanted, right?”
The majority of the City Council ran on slowing residential growth because of concerns about infrastructure capacity in the community.
According to the presentation by consultant David Early with Placeworks, densities for all land use designations, from residential to mixed-use, are proposed to increase. The density for mixed-use development and the requirement to develop residential housing was also a point of concern for the Planning Commission and property owners. The density for mixed-use designations increased in the revised version from 25 to 40 units per acre to 30 to 65 units per acre.
“In Hollister we do want to encourage business, commercial,” commissioner Carla Torres De Luna said. “We have a lot of housing, probably too much for us to handle, so requiring that seems hard and fast.”
Flores, who builds affordable-restricted housing through his nonprofit organization, said the minimum density for mixed-use developments should be 20 units to keep the rural feel of the community.
“I am a local developer and I can build 30 units in an acre,” Flores said. “It’s going to go up and you’re going to have just one tall building with a tiny parking lot. That’s not what we want.”
Early said projects proposing high density and mixed-use will have to build multistory buildings in order to meet the minimum required units.
Planner Eva Kelly said the minimum of 30 units per acre reflects the community’s designation as a metropolitan area.
“The state law says if you’re in a metropolitan area that has over 2 million population the minimum is 30 units per acre.”
San Benito County has been included in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Metropolitan Statistical Area since 2023.
She said though the population currently is about 30,000 below the 2 million threshold, the city opted to cover that minimum so it doesn’t have to make changes to the General Plan when that threshold is met.
Lee Shahinian, who owns the vacant property on San Felipe Road between Santa Ana Road and Maple Street, said a developer had previously walked away from a $350,000 deposit because of the proposed 30 units per acre density.
“John Schultz, vice president of CBRE, represents our property,” Shahinian said. “He has presented to dozens of developers and none have been willing to work with 30 dwelling units per acre. They all state that at 30 dwelling units per acre, construction costs are much higher and that there is no market in Hollister for that housing density.”
While Early said property owners have an opportunity to request changes to the General Plan after it’s adopted, property owners said those are limited to four a year and are costly.
Hollister began updating its General Plan in 2020. After approving it in December 2024, the local activist group Hollister Guardians successfully ran a referendum leading the new City Council to rescind it in March 2025.
Hollister Guardians primarily opposed an extended sphere of influence—a planning boundary that defines the city’s probable future boundary and service area—arguing it would lead to additional residential growth. The current draft general plan reduced that area from 4,068 acres to 1,645 acres.
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