Goleta, CA · Case No. 25-0001-CUP
Protect the
Soil Now!
This permit follows the land, not the owner.
Learn More
Goleta, CA · Case No. 25-0001-CUP
This permit follows the land, not the owner.
Learn MoreOn July 13, 2026, the Planning Commission took up this application as the sole item on its agenda. After hours of public comment and detailed questions from the commissioners, the Commission did not approve the project. It continued the item to a future meeting this fall (no date has been set) and directed the applicant to go back and submit a further revised project description addressing the concerns raised.
Ahead of that hearing the applicant had already revised its project description (the June 2026 update, which is part of the record). At the start of the meeting it handed out an additional list of suggested changes and permit conditions, which are not yet formalized. Those revisions trimmed the proposal in a few places. But in the areas that matter most to this neighborhood (the size and frequency of events, amplified sound, how late events run, traffic, and where the housing goes), it still falls well short of a permit for a working farm.
Public pressure is working. The applicant has now conceded several points, but each is still only proposed. Intent is not a permit. Every one of these must be written into the Conditional Use Permit as a binding, enforceable condition, or it means nothing the day this farm changes hands.
Even with those changes, the revised plan still reads as a venue permit on farmland:
One of the clearest community benefits in the plan, a daily after-school program for local children five days a week, has been dropped from the revised proposal. At the July hearing, the applicant said it was cut because of the City fees it would trigger. But commissioners pushed back: other local non-profits pay those same fees, and there was a simple alternative on the table: partnering with a public library to run the program without them.
Yet the same revision keeps the annual festival at its full 1,500-person cap and preserves the full slate of fundraisers, open houses, and festivals. When the one program that most directly serves neighborhood families is what gets sacrificed, while the large public events are left untouched, it says a great deal about what this application is really built to do.
The project plans show a new agricultural service road running down the east side of the property, alongside the drainage channel, and then turning to run along the southern property line, right at the back fences of the adjoining homes. Even if the farm needs a service road, nothing requires it to run there: the farm already has a historic east-west service road that has served it for decades.
The new route has two problems. First, it’s barely documented: it shows up only as a graphic on a few pages of the City’s Notice of Exemption, and is never described or analyzed in the permit, the staff report, or the exemption findings. A new road pushing noise, dust, and vibration against a residential fence line is exactly what environmental review is supposed to examine, not something slipped in as a drawing. Second, it abandons the historic alignment for a route hard against the property lines with no setback. And if the farm means to run visitor tours on it, then it’s part of the event operation, and it should be counted in the acreage the City is trying to keep under five acres, not treated as invisible.
The road should stay on its historic alignment, be set back from the fences, and not be used for tours.
The road is analyzed in Section III.7 of our attorney’s July 12 letter.
The applicant says the project is too small to need environmental study, claiming it fits a “Class 32” exemption meant for in-fill projects on sites of five acres or less. But Fairview Gardens is 12.23 acres, more than twice that limit. The applicant gets under the line only by counting the new buildings alone (about 3.4 acres) and ignoring everything else the permit allows.
That’s not how it works. The permit doesn’t just approve buildings. It authorizes a new use of the whole farm: festivals of up to 1,500 people, amplified music, public tours, expanded animal keeping. Those activities don’t stay inside a 3.4-acre building footprint; they change how the entire 12-acre property is used. Under California law the “project” is the whole of what’s approved, and because a use permit runs with the land, what counts is the maximum the permit allows, not the applicant’s promise to do less.
The very case the applicant relies on proves the point. In the Tustin case, a court allowed an exemption for a gas station built inside an existing shopping center, but only because the work was confined to about two acres and nothing else on the property changed. Fairview Gardens is the opposite: the new use spreads across the whole farm, and its pieces aren’t even in one place: the housing sits against one property line and the event barn is elsewhere. A project that transforms how an entire 12-acre site operates cannot be squeezed under a five-acre exemption. The City should do the study.
Our attorney’s July 12 letter to the Commission makes this argument in full.
On a 12-acre parcel surrounded on three sides by homes, there is ample room to hold events without pressing them against the neighbors’ fences. Events should be restricted to a centralized, designated zone on the farm, with active monitors stationed along the north, south, and east borders to prevent trespassing, wandering, or boundary disturbances. The applicant already sites its festivals 200 to 440 feet from the property lines; a firm setback keeping events and amplified sound at least 200 feet from every residential property line is reasonable on a site this size, and the single most effective way to protect the fence-line families.
These are the standards we are asking the Planning Commission to hold this permit to:
The next Planning Commission hearing has not yet been scheduled, but the revised application is being written now and Staff is analyzing it. When it surfaces, things will move fast. Two things make a difference right now: send your comment, which becomes part of the record the Commission reads before the next hearing, and join Protect the Soil Now, with your signature or a financial contribution.
The City of Goleta is reviewing a Conditional Use Permit for Fairview Gardens, a permanent land use entitlement that binds every future owner to whatever uses are approved today. The Planning Commission will decide what this land is permitted to be for generations to come, regardless of who owns it. Nothing is approved yet: the permit is still only proposed, and it can still be changed or denied.
The application covers two distinct categories of use. The first includes the farm operations, educational programs, and community activities that Fairview Gardens has long been known for, and that this community broadly supports. The second is a large-scale event operation that the application describes in broad terms, with few definitions of how events are priced or what purposes they serve.
Figures below are the maximums the permit of record (the June 2026 update) would authorize if the CUP is approved in its current form. Amber numbers are reductions the applicant suggested at the July 13 Planning Commission hearing. They are not yet formalized.
| Use | Frequency | Max Attendees | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seasonal Farm Operations | Year-round | Staff only | Varies |
| Farm Stand | Year-round daily | Rolling | 9AM-9PM (July: 7PM, not formalized) |
| On-Site Employee Housing | Permanent | 9 units | N/A |
| School Tours | 3x/week, school year (July: 2, not formalized) | 100 (July: 50, not formalized) | M-F 9AM-3PM |
| After School Program | 5x/week, school year (July: eliminated, not formalized) | 40 | M-F 3:30-5:30PM |
| Pre-K Sprouts Program | 5x/week, year-round | 25 | M-F 9AM-3:45PM |
| Spring Break Camp | 1x/year | 50 | M-F 9AM-3:45PM |
| Summer Camp | 1x/week, summer | 75 | M-F 9AM-3:45PM |
| Kids Gardening Workshops | 4x/year | 25 | M-F 9AM-3:45PM |
| Adult Workshops | 20x/month (July: 4, not formalized) | 100 (July: 50, not formalized) | M-F 9AM-3:45PM; Weekends 6:15-9PM |
| Self-Guided Tours | Daily | 5/day | Daylight hours |
| Guided Tours | 3x/week (July: 1, not formalized) | 30 | M-F 9AM-3PM; Weekends 9AM-5PM |
| Total educational & agricultural sessions | ~1,324/year (July: fewer, not formalized) |
The applicant’s July 13 hand-out presents the project as cut from about 91 gatherings a year in the original application to about 33. But almost the entire drop is one thing: farm-to-table dinners, held up by the farmhouse and away from the neighbors, cut from five a month to one.
The gatherings that are the concern (the large festivals and events, with amplified music projected across the neighborhood) barely moved: from 31 a year to 26, and only as a suggestion that is not yet formalized. And the size never changed at all: the annual festival is still capped at 1,500 people.
Every one of these large events except Farm Field Days can run into the evening, and 19 of the 31 are weekend events. The applicant’s own hand-out lists the festivals as running Saturdays and Sundays. If most of them fall in the April-to-October outdoor season, that is a large event on roughly two of every three weekends.
| Use | Frequency | Max Attendees | Hours (of record) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Festival | 1x/year | 1,500 | Sat 10AM-10PM; Sun 1-9PM |
| Quarterly Festivals | 4x/year (July: 3, not formalized) | 800 (July: 500, not formalized) | Sat 10AM-10PM; Sun 1-9PM |
| Open Houses | 4x/year | 750 (150 at a time) | Sat 10AM-10PM; Sun 1-10PM |
| Fundraising Events | 4x/year | 500 | Weekdays 6:15-9PM; Sat 12-9PM; Sun 1-9PM |
| Seasonal Events | 4x/year (July: 2, not formalized) | 500 | Sat 10AM-10PM; Sun 1-10PM |
| Lectures | 8x/year | 500 (July: 250, not formalized) | Any day 6:15-9PM |
| Farm Field Days | 6x/year (July: 4, not formalized) | 250 | Weekends 9AM-5PM |
| Total large events & festivals | 31/year (July: 26, not formalized) | up to 1,500 |
The 1,500-person cap never moved, and the count barely did: 31 large events and festivals down to 26, a reduction of five that is not yet formalized. The dramatic “91 → 33” headline is almost entirely the farm-to-table dinners below.
| Use | Frequency | Max Attendees | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Farm-to-Table Meals | 2x/month (July: 1x, Apr-Oct, not formalized) | 250 (July: 150, not formalized) | Any day 6:15-9PM |
| Café | Daily | Rolling | 9AM-3:45PM |
Small dinners up by the farmhouse, and daily café patrons, sited away from the neighbors. Farm-to-table went from five a month in the original application, to two in the June update, to one (April–October) in the July 13 hand-out. That is the source of nearly the entire “91 → 33” reduction.
Even on the applicant’s July numbers, the plan would still authorize a single festival for up to 1,500 people, plus fundraisers, open houses, seasonal events, and quarterly festivals drawing 500 to 750 each, most of them running into the evening with amplified sound. None of that counts the daytime school programs.
The project description still allows these events to be “ancillary” to the farm’s educational mission, but it does not say how many Fairview Gardens itself will host versus how many outside groups may hold as fundraisers, using the farm’s grounds as an event venue.
Measured against a permit for a working farm, the gap is specific:
The Planning Commission has a choice: approve a farm permit, or approve a venue permit on agricultural land. What follows is our position on which one this should be.
We believe Fairview Gardens can be something extraordinary. A working farm, open to the community, rooted in education and agriculture.
We support the following uses at Fairview Gardens:
Turning the peaceful Fairview Gardens into a noisy and congested daytime and nighttime event venue.
As written, the application makes no distinction between events put on by Fairview Gardens and outside events that use Fairview's grounds.
These proposed evening events will bring a large number of cars – traffic – to a peaceful neighborhood and farm that has very little evening traffic. Proposed daytime events will bring significantly more cars to the area.
Concerns include:
The application includes nine units of permanent, on-site farm employee housing. We support housing for farm staff; it is difficult to run a working farm in Goleta without it. Our concern is narrower and more specific: where that housing is sited on a 12.23-acre parcel governed by an agricultural conservation easement.
Nine units of on-site housing, in two very different locations:
Eight of the nine proposed units, the large majority of new permanent housing, are sited toward the northeast of the property, away from the farmhouse, rather than consolidated near the site's existing development footprint. The June revision shifted the cluster slightly south and added a gated access, but left the fundamental question unanswered: nothing in the application explains why this location was chosen over siting closer to the farmhouse core, where housing would sit alongside other new and existing structures rather than extending permanent development into a currently active or less-disturbed part of the farm.
A conservation easement requires at least 88% of this parcel to remain in active agricultural production. Where nine permanent dwelling units go is not a minor site-plan detail. It is a decision about which part of this working farm becomes, forever, residential.
We are asking the Planning Commission to consider conditions that make this a farm permit, not a venue permit, and to require the applicant to justify, or reconsider, where the proposed farm worker housing goes.
The July 13, 2026 hearing was continued. The Planning Commission has not yet set a date for the next one, and comments are still open. Every comment submitted now becomes part of the record the Commission reads before it takes the project up again. Use the tool below to compose yours. You will have a chance to review and edit everything before it sends. It goes from your own email address, in your own name, directly to the City.
Prefer to write your own email instead? Send it directly to bhiefield@cityofgoleta.gov and PERmeetings@cityofgoleta.gov, and consider copying the Planning Commission Chair at amiller@cityofgoleta.gov and the City Council member for this district at lreyes-martin@cityofgoleta.gov.
Written comments enter the record. A room full of engaged residents sends a signal that no email can.
The July 13, 2026 hearing was continued, and the Commission has not yet scheduled the next one. Check cityofgoleta.org for the date, time, and Zoom details.
This is the hearing where the permit will be approved, conditioned, or denied. Your presence here is the most impactful action you can take.
Written comments submitted before the hearing will be distributed to the Planning Commission. Submit yours below.
Optional, but adding your address shows the Commission you are a local resident. Comments from nearby neighbors carry particular weight on traffic and noise.
This opens your email client with your comment pre-populated. Your comment is sent from your own email address and entered into the official public record.
This fight is won by neighbors showing up together. There are three ways to stand with us today. Do as many as you can.
Your comment becomes part of the official record the Planning Commission reads before the next hearing. It takes two minutes with the tool above.
Compose your commentJoin the list of supporters. We’ll let you know when the next hearing is scheduled and when your voice is needed, and a longer list of names carries weight with the City.
Add my nameProtect the Soil Now has retained an environmental attorney and commissioned an independent acoustics study, funded entirely by neighbors. Every contribution keeps the effort going.
The specific purpose of this association, per its official articles of organization:
Read the application for yourself. These are the primary source documents behind everything on this site.