Putting Action into the Open Space Element:
Land banking involves the acquisition of land in advance of expanding urbanization. The price of an open space parcel not yet subject to urban development pressures will probably be more closely based on current rather than speculative land uses. Land banking may therefore result in considerable savings to a jurisdiction seeking to preserve open space.
A city or county might use this technique to develop a greenbelt or simply to preserve key open space or agricultural tracts. The jurisdiction should have a definite public purpose for a land banking project.
A local government can recover its land banking expenses by leasing purchased property back to a farmer. Cities and counties may also recoup at least part of their costs by reselling the acquired land with deed restrictions that guarantee the property's continued open space use. To date, land banking is not widely practiced in California. There are a number of examples, however.
Redlands is using land banking as part of its open space preservation plan. The city purchased a 20 acre dairy which adjoins a historic property at the city's western extreme. The city also owns and operates extensive orange grove acreage.
Dixon and Vacaville are cooperatively banking agricultural land to preserve a greenbelt separator between the cities. Nearby, the city of Davis is land banking to create a greenbelt around its boundaries.
San Luis Obispo County uses Transfer of Development rights (TDR) for land banking. This regulatory approach allows land owners to sell credits which comprise the development potential of a restricted site. Those credits may be used to increase development intensity elsewhere. The County of San Luis Obispo has passed an ordinance allowing the San Luis Obispo Land Conservancy, (a nonprofit land trust) to sell the development rights to the land it is conserving. Initially, the trust received a grant of $200,000 from the State Coastal Conservancy for the purchase of environmentally sensitive land for open space in the coastal community of Cambria. The county designated a portion of the town of Cambria as the receiving zone for development credits that are transferred from the environmentally sensitive lands. Property owners in the receiving zone may purchase development credits (in the form of square feet of building area) from the trust in order to increase the square footage of their homes above the normally permitted limit.
An interesting feature of this transfer of development credits program is that it costs the county nothing, since the sale of credits is administered by the trust. Development is distributed over the whole community rather than in just a small number of large projects, because homeowners may purchase just the portion of development credits needed to make additions to their homes rather than having to purchase all the credits assigned to a parcel owned by the trust. Proceeds from the sale of development credits are used to purchase additional lands for open space.
Next: Conservation and Preservation Organizations
State of California
This report prepared by:
Governor's Office of Planning and Research
1400 Tenth Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 445-0613
Revised November 1997