When a Vacant Building Becomes a Housing Policy Question

How SUTIL’s attempt to revive a historic Fullerton property became a lesson in zoning, housing mandates, and what makes a city worth living in.

There is something difficult about standing in front of an old building and being able to see, almost perfectly, what it could become.

The building we found for SUTIL was originally constructed in the 1930s as a print shop. It was made for commercial activity. It has history, character, and a location along one of Fullerton’s important corridors. Yet today, it sits vacant. For months, our goal has been simple: bring it back to life.

We imagined SUTIL here as more than a coffee shop. The idea was a destination for coffee, bakery, and design — a place serving thoughtful coffee and pastries while also bringing together furniture, art, interiors, heritage, and creative work. A place where someone could study in the morning, meet a friend in the afternoon, look through design materials, or simply spend time somewhere that felt distinctly Fullerton.

The location seemed to make sense. Fullerton is surrounded by a substantial student and university population, nearby neighborhoods, workers, faculty, and residents. Rather than another empty building, this could become a place to study, work, meet, and gather.

Then we ran into a problem that had very little to do with coffee.

The building is commercial in its history, but residential on paper

Today, the property is zoned R-3 residential.

Why not simply return it to commercial use?

The answer leads into one of the most complicated parts of modern California land-use policy.

Every California city and county must periodically adopt a Housing Element showing how it can accommodate its share of regional housing needs. California’s “No Net Loss” law also requires local governments to maintain enough suitable sites to accommodate their remaining housing allocation. If a jurisdiction reduces the residential capacity of land being relied upon to meet that allocation, it generally must demonstrate that adequate capacity remains or identify additional sites to make up the shortfall.

In other words, changing one property on a zoning map can potentially implicate a much larger housing plan.

That is why something that sounds as simple as, “Let a coffee shop open in an old print shop,” can become a process involving property owners, planning staff, public hearings, zoning amendments, General Plan considerations, and potentially the city’s Housing Element.

For Fullerton, the pressure is not theoretical

This part of the story matters because Fullerton has recently experienced California’s housing-enforcement system firsthand.

In January 2024, the State of California and Fullerton entered into a court-enforced agreement after the city failed to adopt a compliant Housing Element for the 2021–2029 planning cycle by its statutory deadline. Under the settlement, Fullerton committed to planning for 13,209 housing units, including 5,187 units for low- and very-low-income households, and to modernizing its zoning code. HCD said it referred Fullerton to the California Attorney General’s Office after the city remained out of compliance.

There were also consequences built into that agreement if Fullerton failed to meet its commitments. That history helps explain why seemingly small zoning decisions can carry considerably more weight for a city than they appear to from the outside.

Fullerton has since moved forward. HCD reports that the city's Housing Element was found to be in substantial compliance in February 2025.

That distinction is important: Fullerton is not currently in the same position it was in during the enforcement dispute. But the experience is recent enough to illustrate the environment in which local zoning decisions are now made.

When a city has already gone through state enforcement over housing compliance, caution around anything that could affect residential capacity is understandable.

And that is where the SUTIL story becomes about much more than SUTIL.

California needs housing. But what makes housing a neighborhood?

We want to be very clear about something.

California needs housing.

Fullerton needs housing.

The purpose of this conversation is not to argue otherwise.

But housing alone does not create a neighborhood.

A city also needs coffee shops. Bakeries. Restaurants. Small businesses. Parks. Creative studios. Places to work. Places to meet. Places where you unexpectedly run into someone you know.

It needs old buildings that are actually being used.

Our original vision for this property was never about fighting housing. It was about asking whether housing and neighborhood businesses really need to be treated as opposing goals.

Good cities need both.

There is even recognition of that principle within California housing policy itself. HCD identifies mixed-use development — including housing above commercial space — among the tools cities can use while planning for housing growth.

The larger question, then, is whether our planning systems can become flexible enough to distinguish between preserving meaningful housing opportunities and preserving residential zoning on a property whose physical history and present reality may tell a different story.

The cost of doing nothing

Land-use debates often become theoretical very quickly.

Units.

Density.

Capacity.

Zoning designations.

Housing allocations.

But there is also a physical building sitting here while those questions are debated.

It is empty.

Imagine instead opening the doors in the morning. Espresso running. Pastries coming out of the kitchen. Students working at tables. Someone meeting a friend after class. A design client looking through materials. Furniture, art, and objects giving an old building another chapter.

A property that currently contributes very little to the street could once again become part of the daily life around it. That is the future we have been trying to create.

And that is what makes this difficult emotionally.

The alternative immediately in front of us is not a completed apartment building filled with families.

It is the building as it exists today.

Vacant and deteriorating.

Maybe preservation is also about purpose

Historic preservation is usually discussed in terms of architecture: façades, materials, windows, roofs, and architectural details.

Those things matter.

But there is another kind of preservation worth thinking about: preserving purpose.

Buildings survive because people have reasons to use them.

Neighborhoods become meaningful because different kinds of uses exist beside one another.

Housing gives people somewhere to live. Small businesses give them somewhere to go.

We believe there should be a reasonable path for cities to satisfy their housing responsibilities while also allowing long-vacant, historically commercial properties to return to productive community use where the circumstances make sense. That is ultimately the question our experience with this building has raised.

Not whether California should build housing.

It should.

Not whether Fullerton should accommodate housing.

It should.

But whether good planning can acknowledge that cities are ecosystems — and that protecting the opportunity to build homes and creating the places that make those homes desirable are both part of building a healthy city.

Because the choice here does not feel like coffee shop versus housing.

Right now, it feels like a choice between an old building continuing to sit empty and giving it a reason to matter again.

That is what we hope SUTIL can eventually do.

SUTIL
Coffee · Bakery · Design
Trying to bring a piece of Fullerton back to life.