Santa Clara County planners on Thursday upheld a Department of Planning and Development finding that the formal application for the Almaden Road Housing Development Project was incomplete, denying the applicant’s appeal in a 5‑2 vote. The project seeks approval of a major subdivision and grading for 49 housing units and related amenities on an existing roughly 19‑acre parcel at 19780 Almaden Road, San Jose.

The incompleteness determination matters because it affects whether the applicant’s filing retains protections under the state Housing Crisis Act (SB 330) and related vesting rules. Senior planner Charu Alwalia told the commission the county issued five rounds of incomplete letters and that the fifth incomplete letter, dated Aug. 7, 2025, identified six outstanding items staff still needed to deem the formal application complete.

Staff said the six outstanding items were: an energy conservation plan; land cover mapping prepared by a qualified biologist; base flood elevations and finished floor elevations for structures proposed in the floodplain; a revised San Francisco Bay watershed questionnaire (impervious area/ stormwater info); fire hydrant flow data; and a geotechnical evaluation of liquefaction potential for soils under the proposed residences. “The sixth incomplete letter identified the six incomplete items,” Alwalia said in presenting staff’s recommendation that the commission deny the appeal.

The applicant’s representatives disputed portions of staff’s analysis and the legal interpretation of which application checklist applies. Kurt Anderson, the project architect, said the energy conservation requirement functioned like a “shadow study” that is not feasible without architectural plans and that a full geotechnical investigation can cost six figures and is difficult to justify until the project is assured. “We have no problem doing [the geotech], but we can’t recommend to our client that we spend $150,000 on geotech reports until we know we have a project that’s going to move forward,” Anderson said.

Appellant counsel Travis Brooks argued the applicant had vested under its October 2023 preliminary application and therefore should be judged against the checklists in effect at that earlier date. Brooks also cited changes in state law (including AB 1893) and court decisions he said limited a county’s ability to strip SB 330 vesting by repeatedly declaring an application incomplete. “HCD has rejected [the county’s] approach in at least half a dozen different jurisdictions,” Brooks told the commission. The commission, however, is limited to reviewing whether the application was complete as of the Aug. 7, 2025 letter, staff said.

Deputy county counsel Nicole Collins explained the county’s legal position on checklists: the department uses the application checklist that is in effect when a formal application is submitted, and many of the items staff sought were required by the county’s SB 330 checklist that was in place before the applicant filed the formal application in April 2024. “The department is taking the position [that] the checklist itself is not an ordinance, it’s a tool to evaluate conformance with existing ordinances,” Collins said.

Members of the public who spoke urged the commission to uphold staff’s determination. Denise Acum, an Almaden Valley resident, told commissioners: “The applicant ... repeatedly failed to provide the information required by the county in order to deem the application as complete. ... He had his many chances and he missed them. Therefore, I urge the planning commission to reject Mr. LaBarbera’s appeal.” Several other neighbors cited fire risk, traffic and septic/watershed concerns and said critical technical reports were still missing.

After discussion the commission voted to deny the appeal and uphold the Department of Planning and Development’s determination that the Almaden Road application remained incomplete. The motion carried 5–2 (Yes: Commissioners Heatherly, Cohen, Levy, Escobar and Chair Rausser; No: Commissioner Belska and Vice Chair O’Donoghue).

County staff reminded the commission that plan sets and many submittal materials are publicly available on the county’s SB 330 project page and that the department would continue to process materials the applicant submits. Counsel and staff also stated that the legal issue over whether multiple 90‑day resubmittal periods can be triggered remains contested in court and noted that separate litigation has been filed addressing that question.

What’s next: the application remains subject to county review; if the applicant supplies the missing checklist items staff will re‑review them. The commission’s ruling preserves the county’s current incompleteness determination as of Aug. 7, 2025; future filings or court rulings could change the project’s legal posture under SB 330.

(Reporting from the Sept. 25, 2025 Santa Clara County Planning Commission meeting.)