Workbench claimed that the city violated the law by excluding the storage spaces from the final project, and the city claimed that it followed the law by approving the project’s 48 listed units.

State density bonus laws prevent local governments from denying or changing housing proposals with a certain amount of affordable units, so long as the projects meet local development objective standards.

Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Rebecca Connolly decided the storage units were not protected under the density bonus law.

Connolly cited case law that found cities cannot deny basic amenities in a project, like storage space, but wrote that “the ‘storage’ amenities were never intended to be storage, and to approve them as such would have exceeded the density allowed.”

Another Workbench project, the Clocktower Center, was approved by the city council this week. The eight-story, 178-unit project next to the Town Clock on N. Pacific Avenue has the potential for up to 46 additional ADUs, according to a planning commission staff report.

The city council discussed the potential additional units at its Tuesday meeting, but did not vote to block them. 

Because the Clocktower plans were not explicit about whether they intended to convert to ADUs and were described in plans as a steam room, a chef’s kitchen and a music room, Santa Cruz City Attorney Tony Condotti said the city could not force a redesign that effectively blocked the building as designed. 

Condotti said at the meeting that Workbench “obviously learned its lesson from the Food Bin case.” In the Food Bin project, the storage spaces were described in the planset as future ADUs. 

When asked about whether the Food Bin project informed the amenity descriptions in the Clocktower project, legal counsel for Workbench Ryan Patterson said “one project informs the next.” 

Wallace, the Food Bin co-owner, said he wasn’t taking a leading role in the Food Bin lawsuit, and wouldn’t comment on ongoing litigation.

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