New documents offer the best view yet of plans to build 547 apartments, a 170-room boutique hotel, a multi-story office building, retail shops, a second parking garage and more at the Oceanside Transit Center. The redevelopment project is the largest of six or more proposals to build homes and commercial spaces at train stations across North County. Similar transit-oriented developments are in the works in Carlsbad, Escondido and two other sites in Oceanside. North County Transit District and city officials recently released the Oceanside Transit Center project’s draft environmental impact report, which examines its likely effects on things such as traffic, noise, lighting, utilities, air and water quality, and even tribal and cultural resources. NCTD owns about 10 acres on South Tremont Street, where the center is used by Coaster, Sprinter and Amtrak trains, and the district’s Breeze buses. The facilities there were built in 1984 to replace a 1940s-era Santa Fe depot. The draft report concludes there is a “less than significant impact” from most aspects of the redevelopment project. Mitigation is required for a few things, such as the noise that will come from construction. In that case, nearby residents will be notified in advance and work hours will be limited. Oceanside resident Diane Nygaard, president of the nonprofit Preserve Calavera, said she was surprised to see no mitigation required for traffic and no analysis of the “vehicle miles traveled,” or VMT, that would be generated by the development. “Whether required to do a VMT analysis by the city of Oceanside or not they should have done one,” Nygaard said in an email. “Shame on NCTD for not doing that,” she said. “And of course this highlights how flawed the Oceanside process is if a project of this size needs to do nothing about traffic.” Oceanside Principal Planner Rob Dmohowski said state law does not require a VMT analysis because the development is intended to reduce miles traveled compared to other developments without access to public transit. “A traffic study was prepared with the application and addresses project impacts tied into level of service (on nearby streets and intersections),” Dmohowski said. “Any traffic-related impacts would be addressed as conditions of approval for the project,” he said. “Common examples are signal installation, road improvements, or fair share contributions.” The transit district has been working since at least 2020 with the project’s applicant, Toll Brothers Apartment Living. The Pennsylvania-based company has built residential complexes in cities across the country, including San Diego. “NCTD played a key role in project design with the goal of creating a modern, efficient transit center with improved bus and train connections as well as bicycle and pedestrian circulation,” Dmohowski said. The transit district also is working to bring mixed-used developments to property it owns at Coaster stations from Oceanside to San Diego, and at Sprinter stops on the line from Oceanside to Escondido. Mixed-use, transit-oriented developments can bring multiple advantages to their communities and the district. Among them are badly needed affordable housing, new jobs for residents, more train riders for the district, and less highway traffic and air pollution. Fifteen percent of the Oceanside apartments, or about 82 units, will be reserved as affordable housing for people with low or moderate incomes. Apartments will range from studios to three bedrooms, all in two mixed-use buildings. A separate 64,085-square-foot building will house the NCTD administrative offices now in a former bank building at 810 Mission Ave. A new 1,868-space parking structure for residents and commercial activities will replace the transit center’s two open parking lots. The existing parking garage will remain. Anyone interested has until Oct. 18 to submit written comments on the proposal to the Oceanside City Clerk’s Office. All comments will be included with responses in the final environmental impact report, or EIR, which the Oceanside City Council must approve before construction can begin. John Gastaldo for The San Diego Union-TribuneThe Oceanside Transit Center on Thursday, where plans are under way for a redevelopment project with 547 apartments, a 170-room boutique hotel, a multi-story office building, retail shops, a parking garage and more. Plans also are under way to build mixed-use, affordable housing projects at two Sprinter train stations in Oceanside. The largest of the two is a proposal for 420 apartments at the Melrose Drive station, where the district owns 2.51 acres at the heart of a growing residential and commercial area. And the district is working with a developer to build 98 apartments on the 2.14-acre Rancho Del Oro station at Rancho Del Oro Boulevard. In Carlsbad, the district is negotiating with developers to construct multi-story apartment buildings on more than 14 acres it owns at the Village Coaster station, and on about 11.5 acres at the Poinsettia Coaster station. And in October 2023, the district granted an exclusive negotiating agreement with partners Toll Brothers Apartment Living and the Waterford Property Co. to plan the redevelopment of the Escondido Transit Center with 528 apartments, retail stores, and other commercial uses. The Escondido station is at the eastern terminus of NCTD’s Sprinter rail line and is the largest single property owned by the district. The development there could cover 12.69 acres of the 18.13-acre site.