By Eric Engelbert
A $5 Million Land Buy. A Voter Rezoning. A 4-1 Council Vote. Now 62 Townhomes Are Coming.
Yorba Linda is not a city where apartment buildings go up easily. It is one of the more affluent, lower-density suburbs in Orange County, known for horse trails, hillside homes, and a political culture that has resisted state housing mandates longer than most. So when City Ventures paid $5 million for a 2.65-acre lot on Yorba Linda Boulevard in early 2025 and filed plans for 62 attached townhomes, it set off months of hearings, community meetings, an appeal, and a heated City Council debate that ended in a 4-1 vote to approve the project in March 2026. Here is the full story of how that happened and what it means. Browse current homes for sale in Yorba Linda.
The Site: A 2.65-Acre Flag Lot on Yorba Linda Boulevard
The property is at 19081 Yorba Linda Boulevard, on the south side of the boulevard, east of Ohio Street and west of Palm Avenue. The lot is described as flag-shaped, meaning it has a narrow entrance from the boulevard with a wider parcel behind it. The total area is approximately 2.65 acres, or just over 119,000 square feet.
The site had a single-family residence on it when City Ventures acquired the property. Adjacent to the east is a Chabad house, which plays a significant role in the conditions that came out of the approval process. To the north, across Yorba Linda Boulevard, is Jessamyn West Park, a public park with recreational fields and open space. The surrounding area is primarily single-family residential, the kind of established suburban neighborhood that tends to have the strongest opposition to new attached housing nearby.
The location is in the relatively flat portion of Yorba Linda near the western edge of the city. Yorba Linda Boulevard is one of the city's main east-west arterials, which makes this site a higher-traffic corridor than the deeper residential streets and hillside neighborhoods the city is best known for. That combination, flat land on a major road with a bus line, is exactly the type of site the state expects cities to zone for higher-density infill housing.
Who Is City Ventures
City Ventures is an Irvine-based homebuilder founded in 2009 by Craig Atkins and Mark Buckland. Atkins was previously the co-founder of O'Donnell/Atkins, described as California's largest land brokerage firm, averaging over $1 billion in annual land transactions. Buckland co-founded The Olsen Company, one of the early urban infill homebuilders in Southern California, and also worked as a development manager at Bixby Ranch.
City Ventures focuses specifically on infill residential projects in supply-constrained California markets. Their product is typically for-sale attached homes, townhomes, condos, and similar entry-level and move-up products built on smaller lots in established urban and suburban areas rather than greenfield land on the urban fringe. The company emphasizes solar-powered and energy-efficient construction.
This Yorba Linda project fits City Ventures' core model: find underused infill land on an arterial in a strong market, rezone it if needed, navigate community opposition, and build for-sale homes that sell at prices the local market will support. In Yorba Linda, where the median home price sits well above $1 million, the economics of a 62-unit for-sale townhome project on a site acquired for $5 million can work out to a reasonable land cost per door, roughly $80,600 per unit before entitlement, construction, and carry costs.
Measure JJ: How Yorba Linda Voters Enabled This Project
Before City Ventures could build anything, the site had to be rezoned. The property was zoned R-E (Residential Estate), which is a low-density, large-lot designation that does not allow attached townhomes. A standard rezoning through a city council vote would have faced significant political resistance. Instead, Yorba Linda took an unusual approach: it put the rezoning on the November 2024 ballot as Measure JJ.
Measure JJ, formally called the Yorba Linda Local Control, Residential Neighborhood, and Open Space Protection Measure, was placed on the ballot by the City Council to achieve state certification of Yorba Linda's revised 2021-2029 Housing Element. The measure rezoned a set of sites across the city to allow more housing, including 19081 Yorba Linda Boulevard from R-E to R-M-20, which allows residential development at up to 20 units per acre.
Voters approved Measure JJ by more than 90 percent in November 2024. The city framed it as a way for residents, rather than Sacramento, to control how Yorba Linda meets its state-mandated housing obligations. By passing it as a ballot measure with overwhelming voter support, the city also gave the rezoning a stronger legal foundation against future legal challenges. The Orange County Registrar certified the results in December 2024, and the city's housing element moved toward full state certification shortly after.
The 90-plus percent margin is striking but makes more sense in context. Measure JJ was also framed as protecting open space and local control, and many residents who disliked the idea of new housing preferred the city controlling which sites got rezoned rather than having developers file Builder's Remedy applications under state law to bypass local zoning entirely. Voting yes on JJ was, for many residents, a way of fencing in the damage rather than expressing enthusiasm for new density.
The Land Deal: $5 Million for 2.65 Acres
Public property records show City Ventures closed on the 19081 Yorba Linda Boulevard site via Grant Deed on February 18, 2025, for $5,000,000. The seller received full market value for what had been a single-family lot that, under the new R-M-20 zoning, was suddenly worth significantly more than its previous designation would have supported.
At $5 million for 2.65 acres, the land cost works out to approximately $1.89 million per acre. For comparison, residential infill land in similar locations in suburban Orange County typically trades in the $1 million to $2.5 million per acre range depending on entitlement status and proximity to commercial activity. This falls in the reasonable middle of that range for land that had already been rezoned for higher density through Measure JJ.
On a per-unit basis, the $5 million land cost spread across 62 approved townhomes comes to approximately $80,600 per door in raw land cost before any construction, entitlement, financing, or carrying costs. For a for-sale project in a market where finished townhomes will likely sell in the $700,000 to $900,000 range or higher, that land cost is workable but not inexpensive. City Ventures needed every unit it could get, which is one reason the three affordable set-aside units and the State Density Bonus Law provisions matter: they allowed the project to push past the base zoning unit count.
The Community Fight: 160+ Conditions, a 12-Foot Wall, and a 4-1 Vote
The Planning Commission approved the project on December 10, 2025. Within weeks, neighbors appealed the decision to the City Council. The central concerns were privacy, parking overflow, and traffic impacts on Yorba Linda Boulevard.
The most specific privacy conflict involved the Chabad house directly adjacent to the project site. Residents and the Chabad raised concerns about second- and third-story windows in the new townhomes looking directly into Chabad activities and the adjacent property. The approval process resulted in two design conditions specifically addressing this: a wall raised to 12 feet on the developer's side of the property line (approximately 8 feet visible from the Chabad side due to an existing grade change), and clerestory windows or similar treatments on units adjacent to the Chabad to block direct sightlines into the neighboring property.
Parking was the other major flashpoint. The existing neighborhood has limited on-street parking, and residents argued that 62 townhomes would push overflow vehicles onto nearby residential streets. City Ventures responded by adding two guest parking spaces to the site plan and agreeing to an enforceable parking management plan written into the project's CC&Rs with HOA enforcement requirements. The approval also included a condition requiring a parking impact evaluation at 18 months after the project opens.
On traffic, the City Council required a $75,000 surety bond to cover potential costs of reconfiguring the Yorba Linda Boulevard median near the project's driveway entrance, up from a $50,000 bond the applicant had originally proposed. City staff noted the city faces limits under state housing law on its ability to deny projects that meet the zoning code requirements, even when neighbor opposition is strong. The city's community development director told the council the applicant had accepted more than 160 conditions in total.
The final Council vote was 4-1 in favor of upholding the Planning Commission's approval, with Councilman Singh casting the lone no vote. The project moved forward with the full condition list in place.
State Law's Role: Why the City Could Not Simply Say No
One of the less-discussed aspects of this approval is how much state law shaped the outcome. City Ventures structured the project to take advantage of the State Density Bonus Law by designating three of the 62 units as very-low income deed-restricted affordable housing. That threshold, just three units at the very-low income level, qualifies the project for state density bonus incentives including additional units beyond what the base zoning would allow, reduced parking requirements, and development standard waivers.
The R-M-20 zoning, at 20 units per acre on a 2.65-acre site, produces a base of roughly 53 units. With density bonus applied, City Ventures reached 62 units, an increase of about 17 percent. The waivers also gave the project more flexibility on setbacks and building height than a standard R-M-20 project would typically receive.
Beyond the density bonus, once a project meets zoning requirements and includes affordable housing units above certain thresholds, California law limits what a city can use as grounds for denial. The city's community development director made this point directly at the hearing: the city cannot legally reject a project simply because neighbors object if the project otherwise complies with the applicable standards. The 160-plus conditions were the city's available tool for shaping the project rather than blocking it.
Yorba Linda's Housing Mandate and Why This Project Is Unusual
California requires Yorba Linda to plan for 2,415 new homes during the current 6th RHNA cycle running through 2029. For a small, predominantly single-family city with a long tradition of resisting density, that number has been a significant challenge. Most of what Yorba Linda has approved toward its housing element has been small single-family or townhome projects rather than the large apartment complexes that dominate new production in cities like Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Irvine.
The City Ventures project is significant within Yorba Linda's context precisely because it is not an apartment complex. It is 62 for-sale townhomes in the $700,000 to $900,000+ price range, aimed at first-time buyers and move-up buyers who want to own in Yorba Linda but cannot afford or do not want the larger single-family homes the city is mostly built on. That is a buyer who currently has very few options in the city and who will drive through Yorba Linda neighborhoods every day looking for product to buy.
You can see how Yorba Linda compares to other Orange County cities on the OC New Developments page.
What This Means for Buyers and Homeowners in Yorba Linda
For buyers looking at Yorba Linda: The City Ventures project will eventually bring 62 for-sale townhomes to a city that currently has almost no attached housing inventory. If you have been priced out of the detached single-family market in Yorba Linda but want to own rather than rent, this project is worth following. Pricing has not been announced but comparable new for-sale attached homes in East Orange County have been pricing from the mid-$700,000s to well over $900,000 depending on size and finish. The 1,300 to 1,600 square foot units should land somewhere in that range. Browse current Yorba Linda listings.
For existing homeowners near the site: The 160-plus conditions, the 12-foot wall, and the parking management requirements reflect the city's effort to limit impact on adjacent properties. The construction period will bring noise and activity to Yorba Linda Boulevard near Ohio Street. Once the project is built and occupied, the long-term effect on nearby single-family values will depend on how the project is managed and maintained. Well-run, owner-occupied townhome communities in similar suburban settings have historically had a neutral to slightly positive effect on surrounding values over time.
For investors watching Yorba Linda: This project demonstrates that infill townhome development is now legally viable in Yorba Linda in a way it was not before Measure JJ. If City Ventures succeeds here, other infill sites rezoned under JJ become more attractive to similar developers. The land costs in Yorba Linda relative to finished home prices are tighter than in denser parts of Orange County, but the market depth for for-sale product at the $750,000 to $900,000 price point is real.
Yorba Linda Is Changing, Slowly and On Its Own Terms
The City Ventures approval is not a sign that Yorba Linda is becoming a high-density city. It is a sign that even a city that strongly prefers low-density single-family development will eventually find a path forward when state law, voter-approved rezoning, and a determined developer all point in the same direction. Sixty-two townhomes next to Jessamyn West Park is not a transformation of the city. But it is the first meaningful attached housing project in a long time, and how it sells will tell developers and the market a great deal about what is next. I will update this post as construction timelines and pricing become available. If you have questions about buying or selling in Yorba Linda, reach out anytime.
