23 three-story homes will be located between North Mollison Ave. and North 1st Street.

The El Cajon City Council has approved 132 new condos on a lot on East Main Street that could hold 209 units.

Lennar's townhomes are expected to fill a need for moderate-income workforce housing, which company spokesman David Shepherd told the city, "is really what we believe this market is."

While they aren't ready to release pricing, Shepherd said they intend to make the units attainable for many people, especially first-time buyers.

The city's median price for a single-family home is $979,000, making townhomes a perfect "in between step" for buyers, said deputy mayor Phil Ortiz.

The infill project, located between North Mollison Ave. and North 1st Street, is similar to recently approved townhomes on Melody Lane and 300 El Cajon Boulevard, where prices start around $669,990. The latter complex of 116 units, also built in a commercial zone, included 14 more units than the general plan allows.

While the 6.4-acre lot with its mixed use overlay is identified in the part of the city's plan called its "Housing Element" as anticipated to have 209 homes, senior planner Mike Viglione said the city has a surplus of planned housing at this density.

There are enough remaining sites in the housing element to comply with state law, so the project can be found consistent with the general plan, he said.

At 21 units per acre, the complex will consist of 23 three-story buildings. The housing element considers 10-29 units per acre to facilitate medium density housing in the moderate income category.

To keep prices down, Shepherd said there's no pool, but it will have a central recreation area, playground, barbecues and other amenities. Units will range from 1,200 to 1,900 square feet.

Since an eight-foot grade of soil at the north end wasto improve drainage (which will run through the high school and connect to North Mollison Ave.), the condos will be 47 feet high — for which the applicant requested a variance.

Happy Villa Mobile Home Park just 14 feet to the west will be the most impacted by the homes, given their fully transparent windows and upper story decks that look right out on the park. The city had asked the developer to change the proposal to better accommodate the neighbors, resulting in an eight-foot retaining wall with landscaping to face the mobile home park and a screening fence five feet back that "shrinks the building as it approaches the wall," Viglione said.

Other neighbors voiced "huge concerns" about parking.

"Parking is really bad on Main Street already," said Shannon Boyce, who owns a townhome in a 33-unit complex next to the trailer park, where there are three cars per home.

It's going to be "affordable family living," she said. "You're going to have 4-5 family members living in those homes. And it won't be just two cars per home."

Another neighbor said Main Street parking quickly fills up. "All the big rigs that live in the mobile homes — they park there."

The condos would have 292 off-street parking spaces where 307 are required, which staff said was similar to other new townhome projects; they encourage the use of public transit.

Council members said the project will help revitalize Main Street. 

"We do know this will be a large infusion of capital into the community," said city manager Graham Mitchell. "So we can imagine there's going to be some other redevelopment projects in the area."