Green Coalition outlines City Hall campus master plan updates and wins council funding for programming

The Ojai Valley Green Coalition presented a concept-level update of the City Hall campus master plan at the Ojai City Council’s March 10 meeting, and the council voted to fund a short-term programming and restoration package.

Kathy Nolan, board president of the Green Coalition, told the council the master plan — scheduled for completion May 31 — retains the carriage house reuse proposal, proposes a new ‘garden house’ building (preliminarily sized from roughly 200 sq ft to as much as 1,500 sq ft), a public restroom near Kent Hall, and a pedestrian creek crossing. Nolan said she would like to preserve community access, add interpretive signage (including Chumash names), and repurpose wood from trees removed on site for benches and play features. She said the historic-preservation commission generally supported reuse of the landmarked carriage house and encouraged flexibility for replacing the existing pergola/trellis rather than strict replication.

Council members asked about structural assessments, tree die-offs, hours of operation and event permitting. Nolan said the plan relies on a structural engineer’s assessment of the carriage house (city authorization required) and a site tree survey; she recommended pathogen testing where trees recently died to avoid replanting with susceptible species.

Separately, the council approved a $41,352 allocation to the Green Coalition to run 22 public workshops and to contract invasive-plant removal and brush-clearing work in the Middle Stewart Creek restoration area. The approved professional-services agreement will pay local nonprofit partners and contractors for one week of heavy-equipment brush work, volunteer coordination, and educational programming (topics include ecological gardening, water-wise landscaping, composting, and native-plant identification). The package is explicitly intended both to reduce fire hazard near the campus and to build community engagement ahead of the final master plan.

City staff and public commenters praised the coalition’s outreach and cited the site’s value as a restoration corridor; some called for long-term funding plans and for clarity on how the campus plan and future construction would be funded and maintained. The council authorized the city manager to execute the agreement and appropriated the funds.

Next steps: the consultant master plan remains on a May 31 delivery timeline; staff will coordinate any required permits and structural assessments and will return with design-level plans if the council requests further action.