HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-12-15 Architectural Review Board Summary Minutes
City of Palo Alto Page 1
Call to Order/Roll Call
Present: Chair Robert Gooyer, Vice Chair Alexander Lew, Board Members Peter Baltay, Wynne
Furth, Kyu Kim
Absent:
Board Business: Election of Chair and Vice Chair
[The Board heard this item after approval of minutes.]
Chair Gooyer: The final item is election of new Chair and Vice Chair. Can I get a motion from someone?
Vice Chair Lew: In the past, we've done it separately.
Chair Gooyer: Separately what?
Vice Chair Lew: The Chair and Vice Chair separately.
Chair Gooyer: All right. Let's start with the Chair then.
NOMINATION
Board Member Kim: I will nominate Board Member Lew as Chair of the Architectural Review Board.
Chair Gooyer: Can I get a second?
Board Member Furth: Second.
Chair Gooyer: All those in favor.
Board Members voted unanimously to approve Vice Chair Lew as Chair.
Chair Gooyer: Opposed. You want to take the second part?
NOMINATION
Vice Chair Lew: I will nominate Board Member Kim for Vice Chair. Somebody has to second.
Board Member Furth: Second.
Chair Gooyer: All those in favor.
ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW BOARD
DRAFT MINUTES: December 15, 2016
City Hall/City Council Chambers
250 Hamilton Avenue
8:30 AM
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Board Members Gooyer, Lew, Furth and Baltay voted to approve Board Member Kim as Vice Chair.
Board Member Kim: I'll abstain.
Chair Gooyer: Congratulations. I think that's it.
Oral Communications
Chair Gooyer: Is there anyone in this audience who would like to address the Board on an item that's
not on the agenda today? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the Board.
Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions
Chair Gooyer: Are there any agenda items, additions or deletions at this point?
Jodie Gerhardt: We would just like to move the elections of the Chair and Vice Chair to the end of the
agenda to clarify that those positions would start in the new year.
Chair Gooyer: That's what I thought. Thank you.
Board Member Kim: Chair Gooyer, I don't know if it matters, but I've noticed the "on air" light is not on.
Chair Gooyer: Quite right. There we go. Somebody asleep at the switch.
City Official Reports
1. Meeting Schedule and Assignments
2. List of Staff Approved (Minor) Architectural Reviews
None.
Action Items
3. 233 University Avenue [16PLN-00302]: Request for Preliminary Architectural Review of a
Proposed Renovation and Addition to an Existing Approximately 9,481 Square Foot Commercial
Building. The Proposed 11,728 Square Foot Mixed Use Project Includes use of Seismic
Rehabilitation Floor Area Bonus and Transfer of Development Rights Floor Area, Creates a New
Second Story Office Space, and a new Third Story Rooftop Garden and Balcony. Environmental
Assessment: This Preliminary Review is Not a Project Pursuant to the California Environmental
Quality Act (CEQA) and, Therefore, Exempt from CEQA. Zoning District: CD-C (GF)(P). For
more information please contact Rebecca Atkinson at rebecca.atkinson@cityofpaloalto.org.
Chair Gooyer: Why don't we start with the first item, being classified as Item 3, which is 233 University
Avenue. A request for a preliminary Architectural Review of a proposed renovation and addition to an
existing approximately 9,481-square-foot commercial building. The proposed 11,728-square-foot mixed-
use project includes use of seismic rehabilitation floor area bonus and transfer of development rights
floor area, creates a new second-story office space and a new third-floor rooftop garden and balcony.
Environmental assessment: This Preliminary Review is not a project pursuant to the California
Environmental Quality Act, CEQA and, therefore, exempt from CEQA. Zoning district is CD-C(CF)(P).
Staff.
Rebecca Atkinson: Thank you very much and good morning. The purpose of this agenda item is to
provide the applicant an opportunity to present their conceptual project for 233 University, which also has
a companion address of 235 University, to the Board and receive initial comments. The basic and major
components of this project include a seismic rehabilitation of the existing circa 1905 brick commercial
building, removal of the existing interior mezzanine, remodeling and expansion of the basement, removal
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of the rear circa between 1920 and 1940 addition, construction of a new ground-floor retail space,
construction of a new, single-tenant, second-story office space, and construction of new stairs and an
elevator to the new second story and a new third story. Here's a basic site plan. The project site is at
the corner of University Avenue and Ramona. The two tenant spaces are generally outlined and look as
shown in these lots. I'd like to point out that there's an existing rear access door that leads onto the
neighbor's adjacent property, and there isn't currently an easement for that, but we're looking into that.
In regard to the proposed demolition associated with the project components that I just mentioned, I'd
like to point out a few different things that also helps understand the existing building. The original
building only extended midway to the property, and you can see where that original building ended by
this view of the existing basement. The addition that happened between the 1920s and the 1940s is this
portion of the back of the property right here. This is where the entrance to the Hookah Lounge Nites
business is. This is the entrance to Mill's Florist. There's also a café use, and then of course The Tap
Room. The applicant has proposed two different design options. The lintel option, and I'll show you
later the arch option for their proposed project. The similarities and differences of the project design are
outlined in the staff report. The lintel option, I just wanted to show that briefly, with Ramona Street at
the top. The arch option. Key items to consider in this project is that the existing building is a Category
1 unreinforced masonry building. The project team would like to utilize a seismic rehabilitation floor area
bonus. They also have purchased transfer of development rights floor area credits, which is how they're
able to propose expansion of the building envelope. Other key items include Comprehensive Plan
conformance and consistency with the Downtown Urban Design Guidelines and, of course, zoning
compliance as outlined in the staff report. There may be additional or changed zoning items depending
on any Code updates by the Council relative to when the applicants submit their formal application. Next
steps include this discussion today here on the preliminary Architectural Review application. The next
step after that is to peer review the draft Historic Resource Evaluation to determine if the building is a
historic resource per CEQA, and then also submittal of a formal Architectural Review application. There
was some requested clarifications in the staff report. On page 4, in the very opening paragraph the word
"historic" was mentioned a couple of times. I'd like to clarify that those comments were prepared by our
former Historic Planner, Matt Weintraub, in his review comments of the project plans. In the authorship
of the staff report, I should have changed the word "historic" to "original," because the peer review of
the draft Historic Resource Evaluation has not been completed yet. The applicant mentioned that the
design of the ground-floor retail space could be single or it could be two retail tenants. They'll be
prepared to speak about that further. Also since publication, I learned that the rooftop deck, public
access component warrants multiple sets of stairs and, therefore, possibly a little bit more bulk at the
third floor. If possible, staff would appreciate feedback on the topics outlined on page 10 of the staff
report. To date, I have not received any public comments on this project; although, two members of the
public did call and were very interested in learning more about the project plans and so forth, but they
did not provide any formal comments. Happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Are there any questions of staff? You know the drill, Ken. You've got 10 minutes.
Ken Hayes, Hayes Group Architects: Let me first have staff put the presentation up. Good morning,
members of the Board. My name's Ken Hayes with Hayes Group Architects. Good to see you this
morning. I'll be presenting the project on behalf of my client, the Mills family. They're here this morning
if you have any questions about the building. They've owned it for quite a while. I'd like to thank
Rebecca also, Planner Atkinson, for helping us bring this project before you this morning as a preliminary
review. As we know, the site is the western corner of University Avenue and Ramona. It's about a
4,500-square-foot site located right here. It's in the CD-C(P) (GF) overlay district in the Downtown,
requiring ground-floor retail and pedestrian amenities. It's completely surrounded by the same zone, so
there aren't any adjacent zones that impact it. This is a view of the existing building today and an
historic view. It is an unreinforced masonry building. We'll be utilizing the seismic bonus. It is on the
City's seismic hazards list. It is in this condition today; however, we had a historic assessment done.
This came out as a result of that. The conclusion in the HRE was that the building is not historic. As
staff said, they're having that reviewed by a third party currently. Our historic consultant is here,
Johanna Street, if you have any questions that you'd like to address with her. The building in the 1970s
had the stucco removed. For a long time, the building looked like this. This is from the '30s, where it
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had stucco. You can see around the top there is a little bit of the exposed brick. The old wooden awning
has since been removed, but the remnants of that wood, the outriggers for that, are still there today,
that you can see. The building is in very bad shape in terms of masonry. There was a report done in
1930 or '36 that said that the mortar has lost its cementing qualities, which is a very interesting
comment. This part of the building was remodeled multiple times as has been many parts of the façade.
Today this does not look like that any longer; it looks like this right here. There is an historic building
next door, and then next door to that is the Stanford Theatre. Just to give you an idea of the context,
sort of (inaudible) our site for flexibility, energy efficiency, daylighting, etc. Create a third-floor, roof
terrace as an employee amenity and provide some outdoor opportunities, and then enhance the working,
living and pedestrian experience in Palo Alto. As I said earlier, we'll be using the 2,500-square-foot
seismic bonus and then the 1,600-square-foot TDR that they have purchased actually from the City. This
is the ground floor, just some site constraints. We're keeping more than 50 percent of the existing brick
wall, which is a requirement to get the seismic bonus. This red line here indicates the masonry wall that
we're keeping primarily. We need to make some modifications to the front. We are trying to create new
window opportunities on Ramona to open that side up, create an entrance over on the Ramona side.
Contrary to the staff report, there is an entrance on the Ramona side. Main entrance here. If the
building is subdivided into multiple ground-floor retail tenants, we could add an entrance here as well.
It'll be flexible in that regard. Entrance to the office space around the corner on Ramona; we felt like
that was more appropriate and to keep University Avenue and the corner dedicated more towards the
retail uses. Some imagery that we're working with. We have the brick as a given, a very solid material,
firm, lots of sculptural qualities to it. We want to just play with the idea of steel and glass and sort of a
light material and the tracery of the steel in kind of a classic way, lots of glass as well. We're thinking
around the second floor it would be a rear glaze system, so it's primarily glass-like, but the detail would
all be in this dark steel. Basement on the ground floor—I'm sorry. In the basement, on the bottom, that
would be subdivided potentially into two spaces. The first floor, we're not showing how that would be
subdivided, but certainly capable of that. This would be the office level. Staff said one office user. It's
designed so it could be multiple office users. We're always aware of that and try to create spaces that
are flexible. We do have two means of egress and the two stair elements there. There's a terrace at the
front we've set back, trying to defer a little bit to the historic building next door, to keep the cornice line
the same and also to acknowledge that the Stanford Theatre, also an historic building, is just one door
away. At the rooftop terrace, the setback continues. This would all be outdoor terrace space, some
green space. This would be mechanical well. We have an elevator that would go all the way up
obviously to that third floor area. It's just amenity up there; there's no office space or anything, just a
place to get out. Existing Ramona. One proposal—this is the lintel option—would be we keep the brick,
rehabilitate it. We may have to replace this portion of it, maybe using the old bricks from the building,
but then take that tracery of the steel and the glass and bring that down through the building and create
this large opening here that would be the new retail opening. We have the second-floor office. You can
see the balcony setback here. At the third floor, in this case we're showing a glass railing to reduce the
scale of the building. Here on the far right would be the office entry with the canopy, and then the
stairway is here. It's a two-story lobby inside. The second-floor height would be at, I think, 15-foot-9 so
that we can use the brick as the guardrail at the front of the building here. This is the existing. The idea
would be to—this actually existed prior. You saw from that historic shot it used to be a lintel building.
We've gone up inside the building. Those windows, the openings are in fact there, if you go on the
inside, in the attic, and look back at the University façade. That's what we're showing here. Very simple
massing and organization of the second-floor setback and then the third-floor terrace beyond that. This
would be the arch option. If we kept the existing arches or maybe modified them to try to raise them a
little bit, everything else would be pretty similar. I think we've introduced some awnings, sun shades, on
that. The two options indicated here from the corner, and then a more straight view just to give you a
direct comparison between the two options that we're exploring. There are currently two existing arched
openings here. The original building had these lintel-type openings here and here. The University
streetscape. We're trying to relate to 251 University here in terms of the height of the second floor. It's
a nice complement there. Along Ramona Street, the building steps back here to the roof terrace. At this
location where the office entry is, it relates a little bit to sort of this accent that the Comerica building has
there, and that is not unlike some elements that you see throughout the Downtown context. Now, we
focus more on the two options. This has an optional railing on the second floor—I'm sorry—the roof
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terrace, either a glass rail or continue with that tracery of the black steel perhaps. You can see the nice
size of the openings now on Ramona Street. A view from the office side, down Ramona Street, looking
at the office part of the building. This is all cement plaster, brick, and then the rest is steel and glass.
The arched option, very similar again with what's happening above. Although, we've treated the
overhang a little bit differently in its extension on this side. The ground floor here is pretty much the
same. The option with either glass or again a metal railing at the top. The materials would be the same
again on this side. That's it. Thank you, and I look forward to your comments.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Are there any questions of the applicant?
Board Member Baltay: Hi, Ken. I wonder if you could address for me what you're thinking of doing with
the existing brick. When I look at it, it looks like it's in pretty bad shape. It seems to me that you plan to
keep it there.
Mr. Hayes: There is this diagram that I wasn't going to show, but staff had the same diagram. On this
property line wall, that's all masonry. We're going to probably end up shotcreting that. Across the front,
yes, you've identified what's going to be a struggle trying to work with that existing brick. We've had a
structural engineer out there. We think we can treat it from behind. If we went with really either option,
the brick that is the arch right now, that defines that little awkward arch, is a newer brick. We wouldn't
want to have that new brick with the old brick. Trying to remove that is going to be a challenge. We're
not quite sure how it's attached on the inside. When you do go on the inside, you can see that the old
structure of the former lintel opening is indeed there. We're hoping that that brick can be removed. For
this part of the building here, I have the same concern, but that's being demolished. We would like to
save the brick that we can from that, and then mix it with—if we need any kind of new brick that would
be similar in size and color, this is being removed, save what we can and use that to reconstruct that wall
on the Ramona side, so we don't have two different kinds of brick happening on that building.
Board Member Baltay: Could you show me on this diagram here where the existing 1905 brick actually
remains?
Mr. Hayes: Up to this point here.
Board Member Baltay: It looks to me like the whole Ramona Street façade, you said, is going to be new
brick or replaced brick, rework.
Mr. Hayes: From here back, Peter, it's mostly wood-frame windows and doors. The original building
stopped here. That will all be removed. We think it's just going to be impossible to try to shore it up.
Board Member Baltay: I think so too. On the University façade as well, the original 1905 brick is only at
the very top of the building now. The rest of it's been concealed by this …
Mr. Hayes: It's been concealed. It's there, but it's been covered over with that arch.
Board Member Baltay: The last question. I don't want to belabor the point now. All the brick seems to
me to have lost its tempered face. It's been shotcreted or sandblasted or something. Why do you think
that brick can be reused? The existing brick.
Mr. Hayes: We reuse brick all the time. It's going to be a matter of what kind of condition that it is in.
What's deficient right now is the mortar that's holding the brick together.
Board Member Baltay: I see. You think the brick itself is still okay?
Mr. Hayes: Right. There was no comment about the brick being of poor quality.
Board Member Baltay: Thanks.
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Chair Gooyer: Wynne.
Board Member Furth: Could you show me the retail access from Ramona again?
Mr. Hayes: Sure. Let's see. Right there. In one of the existing openings here, we could easily put a
door. We could do the same thing, in fact, here. We could do the same thing here. The idea is that it
could be flexible. For that matter, you could have a doorway here. The windows go down to the
sidewalk, so we should be able to provide for flexibility for that ground-floor retail tenant.
Board Member Furth: (inaudible)
Mr. Hayes: This opening is probably 5 feet, 5 1/2 feet. It would be a single door.
Board Member Furth: (inaudible)
Mr. Hayes: It would most likely be divided …
Board Member Furth: Sorry. This is two retail spaces. How would that work?
Mr. Hayes: If it were two retail spaces, it would be most likely subdivided this way. That's how we have
sketched it. This would be one. The other would be on this side. Now, one could also envision the retail
space that subdivides like this. This business gets these wonderful new windows here, and this space
would get the University Avenue exposure.
Board Member Furth: There would never be more than one entry point from University itself?
Mr. Hayes: No, no. I think there could be. I think you could. There's no reason why we couldn't have a
door here. We were just thinking for showing it as a window right now.
Board Member Furth: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Anyone else? Is there anyone in the audience who would like to address the Board on
this issue? I'll close the public portion and bring it back. Peter, do you want to start?
Board Member Baltay: Thanks for the nice presentation, Ken. It's welcome as always. I'm struggling
with what makes this building historic. It seems to me that you're going through some effort to preserve
what we're thinking of as a historic brick building. The more I look at it, the more I don't see it there
really. What I see is pieces of an original building that wasn't terribly special, that wasn't even brick,
then covered over with some arches and newer brick that, I think, most of us find to be the historic
component. That's what people would say looks historic, those 1970s brick arches on University. Yet,
when I think about the logistics of you doing what you need to do to make the building safe and bring it
back to speed, I think you're going to be using mostly new brick. When I looked at the brick, Ken, on
Ramona Street it's been somehow sandblasted to remove that original stucco. In doing so, somebody or
something took a chisel or something to the face of all those bricks. It's been kind of gouged away. The
brick doesn't have that original hard-fired clay surface on it.
Mr. Hayes: It's a double-width wall, so it's an actual structural brick wall. It's not just the veneer. It's a
double width. There is brick on the inside.
Board Member Baltay: I think the brick that we're going to see, that's being exposed, has been so badly
damaged on the face of it that I just can't see it making sense to rebuild a building with reusing that
material or trying to somehow replicate it. I guess I'm just seeing a lot of difficulties trying to replicate a
brick building there. I don't really have an answer for it except to say that I think it's going to be
challenging. I'd like to see more detail of how you propose that. That said, my second big, driving idea
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is that, I think, more than ever we want to encourage pedestrian-friendly, retail environments. In this
case, it'd be nice to try to get more of that on the Ramona Street side. That would mean changing the
existing building even more, opening up big openings like you have there. Again, it just comes around to
me thinking why are you even trying to save this building. It really is so little of it going to be left and it's
going to be so difficult that I just question this. I suppose we'll let the Historic Review Board take a look
as well.
Mr. Hayes: No, it's not historic.
Board Member Baltay: I just really have some big question marks about us going through so much work
to do that.
Mr. Hayes: If I may?
Board Member Baltay: Yeah.
Mr. Hayes: It's a URM; it's on the City's seismic hazards list. Around 2014, the City Council determined
that in order to be eligible for a seismic bonus, which is the incentive to get the owners to do something
here, you have to maintain 50 percent of the existing brick.
Board Member Baltay: I'm well aware of the forces driving the economic decisions. The comment I'm
making is that this is, in my opinion, one of these cases where the building has just gone beyond its
useful life. The effort we're going to see you go through to do that in order to get this seismic bonus
upgrade seems pretty convoluted to me. I'm just questioning whether it really makes sense.
Mr. Hayes: It's not historic.
Board Member Baltay: The building is not historic, I think most of would agree. I think most people in
Palo Alto like the idea of an old brick building on main street or University Avenue.
Ms. Gerhardt: If I may just confirm that staff has made no determination on whether this building is
historic or not. We need to do some further analysis.
Board Member Baltay: Thank you. I'm just sort of musing aloud. This is a preliminary review. I just see
a lot of question marks in my mind about how historic this thing is and then what we're doing. To me,
that just brings a red light. What we're going to wind up with, I'll predict, is more or less a brand new,
brick building made to look like an old 1905 commercial building in Palo Alto. What we're really doing is
creating history. We're recreating what we think it was like then. To me, that's not historic preservation.
That's not preserving the old; it's just sort of creating another Disney Land on main street effect. I throw
that out there again as food for thought. I don't see enough of this old building to survive what we're
thinking of doing. All that said, I like the idea of having a marked vertical entry feature off of Ramona for
your office stuff. I think that can be a nice complement to the brick horizontal or box in the front.
However, I'm concerned that the new second-story office component is a little bit too tall in my mind. As
I read the plans, it's almost 15 feet from floor to top of roof. I think you could pull that down a couple of
feet, and that would help a lot in having the second floor not feel like it's overwhelming the brick box
below it. The same thing applies to the amount of setback or lack thereof from the second floor to the
brick wall along Ramona Street. It would be really nice to get a 5-foot setback or so there. Have a
balcony of some kind, again just to keep—if we're going to preserve this brick building as the original
thing, then the new piece above it has to be less dominant. It has to pull back a little bit more. I would
like to see you explore that at least and see if that's possible. I'm concerned that you need to come up
with a good solution for the service at the back. It'd be great if you can keep that door off of the private
alley from the movie theater. If you're not able to, I think you need to find some way to get trash in and
out, bicycle storage, things like that. It does also come back to my way of thinking that bike storage in
the basement is just not realistic. That's not going to be used as a bicycle locker. It's sort of skirting the
intent of the Code. We want to have bike storage on the main floor off that alley where it can actually be
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used by people. The same thing applies to the trash storage in the basement. I'm skeptical that it will
actually be used in that capacity. Again, a better solution to those two needs. I think you'd have to just
find a little bit of space in the back to get a long-term bike storage. Also in the vein of trying to find
some sort of pedestrian amenities, as long as I've been in Palo Alto the corner of that building has been
this sort of flower market stall, but it's always been open. You can sort of see through, even walk
through, the corner. I'm wondering if there's some way you could activate the corner more by pulling
back the glazing, leaving an open spot at the corner that you might walk through. We were talking about
this at the meeting the other day, pedestrian/public space off the sidewalk. I know it takes up square
footage, but it might be a nice gesture to the past. I think that's what you're going to be looking at more
than actual historic preservation. If you could somehow open up that corner, I think that would be a nice
gesture. One last comment has to do with the third-floor balcony or what it's purpose is. It seems to me
you're going through a lot of trouble to make a space that's quite a viable outdoor entertainment space
or a restaurant almost up there with full-service from the elevator, a nice covered access to it, two
staircases. I just wonder if I could get on the record from the applicant what the purpose of that terrace
is. It just seems a little bit too much of an amenity for an office. I'm wondering if there's something else
that it's intended to be used for.
Mr. Hayes: That's my story. That's all I know. We've been asked to have that as an employee amenity.
We have some area left over from the TDRs. We see that as a benefit. It could certainly go away too.
There is no desire at this point to do a restaurant.
Board Member Baltay: Is there any better statement than just employee amenity of what that space will
be used for? Is it going to be rented out as a public space that you might throw an office party at or
something?
Mr. Hayes: No, I don't think so. (crosstalk) let the owner respond to that.
Board Member Baltay: I mention it to the Board because this building is already under-parked, and it's
sort of squeezing into the limits there. If this upstairs space were to become some sort of event space,
then it just further exacerbates that parking problem. Really the upstairs space, the third floor, is what's
driving the tall elevators and sort of the appearance of height. I'm just looking for clarity on that.
Enough. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Just one more thing. They did ask in the report to, I guess, give us your particulars about
the lintel version versus the arch version.
Board Member Baltay: You're absolutely right. Yes, Robert. I think I prefer the lintel version.
Chair Gooyer: Kyu.
Mr. Hayes: Thank you.
Board Member Kim: Thank you for the presentation. I kind of look at the building a little bit differently.
I kind of take the whole possibly historic component out of it, realizing that we're simply looking at a
building that is unreinforced masonry. That's driving the bonus square footage and what have you. I'm
not too concerned that the brick is historic or that it rings true to what it used to be or what have you.
I'll start maybe by commenting on my preference. I think it was Lou Kahn that said a brick wants to be
an arch. I kind of went back and forth, knowing that the lintels are existing there. Originally, I felt that
maybe it's best to go back to what was there originally. Kind of what Peter said, it's going to be a new
brick building in some sense. I think it's fine to have that arch. I think the arch kind of represents the
brick in a more traditional way. Perhaps, we're creating history or recreating it, but any building is kind
of creating history. I'm okay with that. In addition to that preference, on the rooftop area, the railing
preference, my preference would be for an actual railing as opposed to the glass guardrail. I also
preferred the arched option with regards to the office entry. I know that in the lintel option the office
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entry is kind of framed as a full rectangle, but in the arched version the frame is kind of left open towards
the brick side of the building. Do you follow what I'm saying?
Mr. Hayes: I'm trying to. I don't see it, but …
Board Member Kim: That vertical component to the left of the office doors.
Mr. Hayes: Here.
Board Member Kim: That seems to kind of disappear and open up in the arched version. I prefer that. I
think that's kind of a subtle gesture that makes the building feel a little bit more connected. All in all, as
we walk down University Avenue or California Avenue or even Lytton and Hamilton, there are
underdeveloped buildings. I think this is an example of one that, with the addition of this bonus area,
could bring some more vitality to this part of Downtown and to the building. I admire the previous work
that you've done, that does something similar, where you're incorporating past components of a building
and adding onto that. In closing, I have a few questions. Where are the possible locations for the public
art and what are you intentions for signage?
Mr. Hayes: We're going to be talking about the public art as soon as we get back on this subsequent to
this hearing. We have not at this point discussed where it would go. I know once we engage with Elise
DeMarco [sic], she's going to help us sort through that. I don't know if it will be onsite or if we're going
to pay into the in-lieu for the art. Signage, I would think that with the fascia—sorry. What did I do?
There's plenty of opportunity for signage at the—whatever I did. Here we go. If they wanted to have
signage here—there are some awnings that we're proposing. We could do some signage on the awning
itself. I haven't given it a whole lot of thought. I don't necessarily have signage expectations this early
in a project.
Board Member Kim: Speaking of awnings, I did realize that the arched option had some additional
awnings on that second-floor office space as opposed to the lintel option. I also preferred that.
Mr. Hayes: You did? Great.
Board Member Kim: Thank you.
Mr. Hayes: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Alex.
Vice Chair Lew: I have a question for staff. On the seismic bonus, what would happen if they actually
have to tear the whole building down and they're not able to meet the 50 percent threshold of retaining
the walls? What happens with the bonus floor area?
Ms. Atkinson: There would be no bonus.
Vice Chair Lew: They have to redesign the building or buy more TDR or … There's a limit on how much
TDR you can transfer. It's a redesign. They have to go there.
Ms. Atkinson: Yes.
Mr. Hayes: The limit's 5,000 square feet for this size site.
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you. With regard to the brick, I don't really have a strong preference, with
regard to reuse or reconstruction or the arch versus the old lintels. In my mind, it's all part of the
character of Downtown. Whatever you can retain is preferable. There's several projects in South Market
in San Francisco where new housing is incorporated into the façade. To me, it all looks great, and it
City of Palo Alto Page 10
helps keep some of the character of the downtown. I would just say reusing more is better. I'm not
really picky about which brick or if it's old brick or if it's new brick. In my mind, I agree with Board
Member Baltay about the second-floor height seems a little high. I would like to bring that down a little if
you can. I do agree with the setback for the office. You did that on the …
Mr. Hayes: On the street.
Vice Chair Lew: You did that on the Ellison's project on Forest. I think that looks great.
Mr. Hayes: Yeah. Thank you.
Vice Chair Lew: I realize that's a different size site and everything like that. I do know that on your
project on Bryant, the 278 University, the setback between the second and third floor was only like 18
inches. I know you don't necessarily have to have a huge setback. It seems like a tricky design detail to
have the windows come down to the …
Mr. Hayes: To a deep sill?
Vice Chair Lew: … brick as you have here. It seems like a very tricky thing to do. I don't have a better
suggestion.
Mr. Hayes: That second floor along Ramona is probably 18 inches.
Vice Chair Lew: 18 inches, yeah. Peter had a comment about the trash and bikes in the basement. I
know you've done that before in other buildings. 278 University has all the trash in the basement.
Maybe staff could, if you have an opportunity, if we know if it's come up—I think we can analyze it if it's
causing problems.
Mr. Hayes: If I may just take a second?
Vice Chair Lew: Yeah.
Mr. Hayes: The trash facilities that they use currently, they're not in the alley immediately adjacent to
that door that leads out the back of the building. They're actually down the street further, where that
alley cuts through to the City parking lot. I think we need to get an initiative going to try to create a
common trash facility in that other parking lot, that would accommodate not only these businesses along
Ramona but all of them into a nice facility. This is Palo Alto, and it's just a disaster over there.
Vice Chair Lew: It looks terrible. I did mention that on another project. The senior center, there's some
money to redo the parking lot. I did mention that the trash trailer looks terrible. I would say for the
trash, though, if there's a restaurant use here, then I think the trash can't be in the basement. It has to
be above. I know that the way our parking is configured, the parking ratio, it's all blended. It could be
retail or …
Mr. Hayes: It's all 250.
Vice Chair Lew: I know that there's a whole other thing for buildings. If you have a restaurant use,
there's a whole other component of building design that has to be incorporated.
Mr. Hayes: Right now our program is retail and office.
Vice Chair Lew: I would say also too if it were a restaurant use, I think what Peter had mentioned,
having an open corner at University and Ramona would be important. At the Paris Baguette, having that
open corner does wonders for attracting people. If that's not in the program, then this …
City of Palo Alto Page 11
Mr. Hayes: It would be great to get feedback from the Board regarding if we did set—I already see it
coming in the staff report, retail preservation. We're setting back the façade on Ramona Street. That's a
net reduction in retail area. If we set back the façade, let's say—I know right now they sell out of that
front vestibule area. That's considered floor area then. As soon as we set that back and if it's not for
sales, service and display, that's also a net reduction of retail area. How do we maneuver around this?
Vice Chair Lew: We don't know exactly what the retail ordinance is going to be going in, because that
could change possibly. Those are all valid points. I would say, though too, it seems to me that the
existing brick arches, which are kind of low, don't serve—I think it works for the florist currently, but I
don't think it's worked that well for the restaurant and the space on the left. I think it's a bar now. I
think that space would be better served by larger windows as you're showing now. I'm going to keep on
going. The third-floor deck, I just wanted to say that our Downtown Guidelines—I did look it up
yesterday—do encourage those spaces. I discussed this yesterday with the staff. It's page 58. We are
encouraging those spaces. There is visual massing concern with them. It's just you're bringing up the
stair and both towers on a small footprint. That's a concern. The Stanford Theatre is a lot taller, but
there may be views that aren't so flattering from some points on University Avenue. I think we just want
to be cautious about that. With regard to all the design, I think the staff was asking us to comment on
all this Design Guidelines for Downtown. As you're showing it, the recesses are good especially on
Ramona, because Ramona has a smaller sidewalk. Actually getting a little bit of extra space there would
help. As we've seen for Paris Baguette, just adding a couple of large windows on those long, blank side
street facades does wonders. Even if you just have one or two, it makes a huge difference. On the
colors, the dark steel and the brick, I think those are all very handsome. With regard to the art and
signage, I think it's too early for the art, to comment on it. On the signage, I think we have had issues
with some of your buildings in the past, with putting signage on—meaning they just need sign
exceptions. Having things like canopies makes it a lot easier to do signs, pedestrian-oriented signs
underneath the canopies. I think that's where I am. I generally am in support of the project. I think the
biggest thing for me would be trying to set back the glass on the second floor a little bit more. Thank
you, Ken.
Mr. Hayes: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Wynne.
Board Member Furth: Thank you, and thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the very helpful
staff report. It's 30 years now that we've had seismic retrofit bonuses. It would be thrilling to have this
building, which I've walked by thousands of times, frequently thinking, "Can I jump fast enough if the
bricks start flying?" This in a house of foam. It will be great to have a new building there and to have a
safer building there. How long as the florist use been there?
Mr. Hayes: I think since the 1970s, 1960s.
Board Member Furth: My husband tells me he bought flowers there then. I don't think they were for
me. I had completely forgotten that it was stucco. When I've been looking at this, what I've principally
thought about is that Ramona, between—that really the florist part of this building is about the most
attractive thing on that face of Ramona, which is a sad one. It's an uncomfortable place to walk. You
fall into the tree wells or you trip over the roots. It's not a well-designed sidewalk. I think the City needs
to think about how we would change that in connection with the development of this building, because it
doesn't work very well right now. All you need is one stroller, and you're in the tree well. That's
primarily what I've been thinking about. I've also been thinking about the fact that, if you look at the
Guidelines, it goes on about the tree-lined ambience of Downtown Palo Alto. We do not have a tree-lined
ambience on this street; we have some damaged, pathetic trees and then some nicer trees. Of course,
we have quite lovely park trees at the other end of the block. In looking at what happens on Ramona,
I'm going to want to know how the City and perhaps the applicant intend to rework those tree wells. The
tree roots are above the sidewalk level, so I don't know if that means you put in fences, I don't know if
that means you put in benches. You all know how I feel about benches. If we don't think that through,
City of Palo Alto Page 12
it's not going to be a success. It's going to be even worse, because people are going to be looking at
interesting windows. I'm also concerned about the second story when I look at the one healthy camphor
tree. One of the things we've discovered is that when you put second stories in and you don't set them
back, you don't leave enough room for healthy trees. We need big, spreading trees on this street if we're
going to have a tree-lined ambience that's traditionally what we've had here. I want to be sure that the
proposed addition accommodates that rather than getting little—I do not want it all looking like an Italian
graveyard with nothing but vertical trees. I'm wondering if it's possible to extend the balcony along the
Ramona frontage and otherwise use that space differently. Generally I like the idea of having outdoor,
accessible, lived-in spaces upstairs, but I too am very concerned that you've got a great deal of support
structure with the double access to accommodate a lot of folks up there. I'm already concerned that the
access to the office and the roof take up a lot of the Ramona frontage and a lot of the visual impact of
the building. There are lots of very small access points to upstairs offices Downtown. I don't know if it
can be designed to be smaller, but I would hope so. I'm also concerned that the recessed areas seem to
be primarily the doorways; that's not giving us enough passageway and stepping out of the passageways
if you're just in the doorways or next to the doorways or where the doors are opening if they open out.
I'm looking forward to learning more about that. What I'm looking for is a better passage along that
space, which is going to involve, I think, working on the City's land as well as the private property. I
hope that can be done. A concern that I think the retail access from Ramona should be bigger. It looks
too small to me. It doesn't look inviting enough, particularly if it's a separate space. On that point, it
would be good to have the notice of the proposed project on the University frontage of the building as
well as the Ramona frontage of the building, and maybe not with a black hand over it. I realize you have
two, and it's perfectly readable. In thinking about whether this building is historic and what aspects of it
might be historic, I don't think that's particularly important in this case. What's important about it is it's
distinctive. You really know that you're at this corner; you know because of the use, you know because
of its open-to-the-public selling space that you can just step into without going through doors. You know
it because it essentially is the landscaping for the site. When and if the floral use goes away from that
corner, we lose the good smells, the good beauty, the welcoming that goes so very well with the florist
use and also with people dashing for the train. I would like to see some kind of open corner treatment.
I of course would like you to be selling ice cream cones or flowers out of that corner. I don't know if
that's possible in the modern era, but I'd really like you all to think about it. I think the distinctive thing
about this building is that it's charming and whimsical. It's also lethal, and that needs to change. It's got
this Pirates of the Caribbean ambience on the Ramona side in particular. That may not be what your
market's looking for now. One of the things that concerns me about the quite elegant windows and
steel, which I like, is that it doesn't seem very whimsical. I know that what's there is in many ways a bit
silly. I don't think they ever needed those interesting high windows and what not. I would like to see a
bit more sense of fun and play. I'm very concerned about having a completely unparked social space on
the top floor. It would work in the Research Park, but I'm concerned about an area that's already very
short of parking. I do like the brick. I like the fact that it's quite, as you say, sculptural. This is a sea of
stucco. There is actually a brick façade across the street and up a little ways, but it's not a very
interesting one. This one is. This one feels good. I hope, if you do keep brick, it's as you say textured.
I'm fine with partially blocking the view of the upper reaches of the theater. I went out and looked at
that; it looks fine to me. I'm also concerned about floor-to-ceiling windows on the retail side on Ramona
so close to pedestrians. This may not concern the rest of you. Maybe this is how retail now operates.
When this street was developed, of course, the windows started more higher up on the body, knee
height. I would prefer that approach. It would give us more brick perhaps. What I'm most concerned
about is an open corner, less tower massing for the second-floor access, and setting it back so we can
have serious street tree experience, because that really replaces onsite landscaping Downtown. The
characteristics of Palo Alto's Downtown is that it is a suburban Downtown, which means you have
greenery. I'm thrilled that you're doing this project. Thank you.
Mr. Hayes: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. I've sort of struggled with this a little bit too. We were talking about the
whole thing of historic preservation and that sort of thing. There's a difference between historic with a
capital "h" and historic with a lower case "h." I think this building has been around for a long time as it's
City of Palo Alto Page 13
mentioned here, before the whole idea of the flower shop at the corner. I understand Peter's comment
about it might be difficult for the brick, but you've made a financial assessment as to the pluses and
minuses of keeping 50 percent of the wall. I think it's fine. I have no problem with the sort of textured
wall. Let's face it; it is a façade, and the structure is going to be behind it. In fact, already is behind it.
I'm fine with leaving the brick and just extending it down the way you show. I do agree with my
members here that I'd love to see that corner open up a little bit. I'm sort of torn between two things.
Initially my thought was, as was brought up here also, that setting the second floor back a foot or so
along the Ramona side. I don't want to sit here and penalize you by shrinking the second floor and the
first floor. It's more I'd like to see one or the other. I think if I had my druthers, I would prefer to see
the corner set back somewhat on the lower floor, so you can literally walk through that diagonal, and
keep the second floor where you have it. As far as the arches versus the lintel, again it's sort of that
whole concept. I wasn't born and raised here, but my wife was born and raised here. It's one of these
even though it's not historic, she still calls it that historic building on the corner, which probably she's not
the only person who does that. Because of that, I'd like to see the lintels even though they were
probably put in the '30s or whatever. That's what every one perceives to be the historic appearance of
that building. I doubt if there are too many people around who remember what it looked like when it
was built, that sort of thing. Based on that, I agree that probably the second floor could drop a bit. I do
also agree that that tower element in the back is probably higher than it needs to be. I don't have a
problem with it being there but, if you could knock that down a foot or so, I'd be happier with it. Other
than that, do you feel comfortable enough you've got a general synopsis of what we're looking for?
Mr. Hayes: Yeah, except one clarification. You were talking about what most people's perception of the
historic quality of that building is. For the entire time that I've been in Palo Alto, it's been an arch. You
said, "I have no problem with the lintel." Did you mean you had no problem with the current arch or do
you prefer the lintel?
Chair Gooyer: No, no, no. I'm saying keep the arch. That's what I'm saying.
Mr. Hayes: Keep the arch. Your preference is the arch.
Chair Gooyer: I said the brick is perceived—I said that the arch may not be the original version, but
that's what people perceive to be what the building has always been. I mentioned that I don't think
there are too many people around who remember it before the arch. That's pretty much what is
perceived. I would favor the arch design.
Mr. Hayes: Thank you for that clarification. Thank you all very much.
Chair Gooyer: Anything (crosstalk).
Board Member Furth: Just to make it totally complicated, I prefer the lintel.
Mr. Hayes: I'm sorry?
Board Member Furth: Just to make it further complicated, I prefer the lintel.
Mr. Hayes: Let's see. All raise your hand … We'll make a decision.
Chair Gooyer: Thanks, Ken.
Board Member Kim: Did we want to get any input from Mr. Dockter while he's here regarding those
street trees?
Chair Gooyer: Sure, why not, seeing as how you're sitting there. As far as the whole expansion of the
canopy when you go above the first floor, have you had a chance to review that?
City of Palo Alto Page 14
Dave Dockter: Correct, yeah. Staff has reviewed it. I would like to ask actually for a clarification from
Board Member Furth, to define serious street tree experience, because we'll design for that.
Board Member Furth: If you stand on University and look down Ramona, you don't see a series of large,
healthy trees.
Board Member Kim: We lost two of them.
Mr. Hayes: Here's the site elevation right here.
Board Member Kim: We lost two huge trees on Ramona, if I recall, in the past year or 18 months.
Board Member Furth: Right. We have one that's been quite—one of the larger ones is quite eccentrically
pruned. I don't expect it to be all wonderful soon, but I'd like us to be planning so that it will be
wonderful. I love camphor trees; I know they're very difficult trees to live with. That's my ideal shape
and filtered light and green much of the year except if you don't want it to be. We have good tree wells
as you approach Lytton. That really helps the sidewalk. We do not have good tree wells as you get close
to University. This is where people line up to go see the Harold Lloyd movies. This is where people who
live Downtown North come with their children on bikes and scooters and prams to get to Downtown or
the farmers market or University. A good street tree experience means that I see trees with healthy
canopies, that don't look like they've been tortured by living in an urban environment. Stressed, let's put
it that way, as the one on the right is. That their roots are managed in a way that lets us have the best
use of an already functionally narrow sidewalk.
Chair Gooyer: Before you get started, we do have a large agenda today. What I'd like basically is maybe
to answer Wynne. Do you feel the trees are in serious—is there going to be a problem as far as putting a
second story at that location?
Mr. Dockter: It would be helpful if the second story stepped back a bit, whatever extent it could. It
would allow balancing branching from the new street trees in the future. The second-story step-back
would definitely be helpful, because the whole building is going to be a shaded experience for these new
trees. We can come up with a whole new streetscape scenario for the three new trees. We were looking
for direction from the Board on how important the streetscape was and whether to take the existing
camphor and say maybe we need to start all over new with it or keep the mature tree on the corner,
because it's something left of the old days. It's a green, mature tree. Do we take it out now? Hearing
the Board's emphasis, I think, we should be looking at a whole new streetscape. Redoing the entire
sidewalk frontage is the only way to get new street trees in responsibly even with that large camphor
tree. Removing that and starting out with a whole new frontage on the side street there, we can get
away with three new street trees. If we have the opportunity to do underground Silva Cells or
engineered soil mix, we can get away with that. Lastly, the open corner, there is a way to establish at
the foot of the post, if you had an open corner, a green pillar to restore that floral suggestion to the
corner for everybody in the future. If you planted a little horsetail, a narrow seat-wall planter against the
post with a vertical vine, you might be able to get away with greenery changing the shopping behavior
aspect of an area. We can restore the streetscape. That's the end of my comments. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Go ahead.
Board Member Furth: I inadvertently sentenced trees to death. What I want is us to have word from the
City on how, now that these are becoming two-story buildings, we should think about the trees. I don't
care whether you decide they're short, little trees that are going to give us tree experience lower down or
taller ones. I don't want something that's going to fail.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you very much.
City of Palo Alto Page 15
4. PUBLIC HEARING/QUASI-JUDICIAL MATTER. 240 Pasteur Drive [16PLN-00362]:
Recommendation to the Director of Planning and Community Environment for a Requested
Approval of an Architectural Review Application to Allow the Construction of the a new Biomedical
Innovations Building for the Stanford University School of Medicine. The Approximately 215,000
Square Foot Building was Previously Entitled in 2011. The Proposed Project Includes
Architectural Modifications to Reflect Updated Internal Program Needs, Surrounding Pathways,
Heritage Trees, and the Architecture of the Adjacent Hospital. Environmental Assessment: An
Environmental Impact Report was Previously Certified for This Project Pursuant to the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Zoning District: HD. For more information please contact
Rebecca Atkinson at rebecca.atkinson@cityofpaloalto.org
Chair Gooyer: Next item on the agenda. A public hearing for 240 Pasteur Drive, the recommendation to
the Director of Planning and Community Environment for a requested approval of an Architectural Review
application to allow the construction of a new Biomedical Innovations building for the Stanford University
School of Medicine. Approximately 215,000-square-foot building was previously entitled in 2011. The
proposed project includes architectural modifications to reflect updated internal program needs,
surrounding pathways, heritage trees and the architecture of the adjacent hospital. Environmental
assessment: an Environmental Impact Report was previously certified for this project pursuant to the
California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA. Zoning district: HD. Staff. Hang on.
Vice Chair Lew: We have to do disclosures.
Chair Gooyer: Pardon me?
Vice Chair Lew: Disclosure. I met with the applicant, Zach Pozner, on September 6th of this year to
review the project.
Chair Gooyer: Actually I was going to do the same thing but later. I also met with the applicant. Staff.
Rebecca Atkinson: Thank you very much. This project begins with the 2011 approval of the Stanford
University School of Medicine Master Plan. Here you can see the footprints of the approved three
buildings, FIM1, FIM2 and FIM3. The School of Medicine Master Plan includes demolition of four existing
buildings listed here and replacement of those buildings and subsequent associated floor area with three
new Foundations of Medicine buildings, which was the title at the time. FIM1 received Architectural
Review approval. FIM2 and FIM3 did not yet receive Architectural Review approval. You could see those
two buildings coming forward at some time in the future. Here's the proposed site plan for the nearer
term. We would have the existing Edwards, Lane and Alway buildings, Lucas is to the other side of the
proposed FIM1, recently retitled to Biomedical Innovations building. This is the proposed footprint for
BMI. I'd like to walk you through the proposed elevations as well as the previously approved elevations
to just do a basic comparison. Otherwise, you have two sets of project plans that were delivered with
your staff reports. You could do a comparison in the booklets, and hopefully you'll be able to utilize
those project plans as the project moves forward into subsequent hearings. One of the main goals for
staff at this time, at this first hearing, was to disseminate quite a lot of background information that you
would need in order to thoroughly review this project at this hearing and also at subsequent hearings.
The proposed elevations are on these next two slides; which side of the building is indicated northeast
and so forth in the corner of the slide. The north elevation …
Board Member Furth: In lay terms too, which street we're looking at.
Ms. Atkinson: I was going to go to it. Sorry. The north elevation faces Pasteur, for reference. The east
elevation faces the Edwards building, and the west elevation faces Lucas. The proposed elevations have
a height of basically 72 1/2 feet to the roof, basically 84 feet to the top of the mechanical screen, and 92
feet to the top of the proposed exhaust stacks. The floor area for this building is between 197,000 and
216,000 square feet. The reason why that has not been finalized yet is that staff is still doing a co-
compliance review in regard to floor area. In the hospital district, certain types of storage rooms are
City of Palo Alto Page 16
"exempt" from floor area calculations. We're working through the internal programming to see what
counts or what doesn't. The original building was approved at 168,000 square feet, and the increase in
floor area is largely due to the internal programming of the basement, which was previously considered
mechanical, equipment room and exempt in the first round. The building itself is larger in terms of
height, and the footprint has increased somewhat. The actual bulk of the building to the tune of about
30,000 square feet is largely in the basement. The proposed ground-floor plan has entrances facing
Lucas and also facing Edwards and primarily—sorry—with a lobby area that focuses more towards the
internal Biomedical Innovations plaza, opposite of Pasteur. The previously approved elevations had
extensive glazing. I believe the applicant called it a saddlebag approach to the building design. The
previously approved ground-floor plan had entrances off of Pasteur as well as an inviting space with a
connection between the protected grove of oak trees. The interior of the building also had entrances and
a public plaza in a location similar to what's proposed. Key items in this review include the urban design
questions and insights about how the building relates to the larger School of Medicine campus, how the
project design has evolved in order to avoid environmental impacts as identified in the previous
Environmental Impact Report including in regard to footprint changes to retain the one set of protected
trees, which serves as a grove, and then another Group 1 protected tree also facing Pasteur, more on the
Edwards side of the building. We have a wide variety of Municipal Code items that we're reviewing for
conformance. Staff is still in the process of doing all of that background analysis and so forth. The
Stanford University Medical Center Design Guidelines are also at play in this project. I think it's fine to
propose a different skin of the building and massing, floor area and so forth. We do have the Design
Guidelines that are in effect for the entirety of the Stanford University Medical Center project. Some of
those Design Guidelines are outlined in your staff report. Staff recommends a motion to review the
project and continue the project to a date uncertain. There are also other motions that are available to
you. Staff has not received any public comments on the project to date. The applicant does have a
detailed presentation for you and additional materials that they would like to present. I believe they're
outlined right here. Thank you very much. Happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Would the applicant like to—let me ask first are there any questions of staff?
I don't think so. Would the applicant like to make a presentation? You have 10 minutes.
Justin Brooks: Good morning. Thank you to the Board for the opportunity to share our project with you.
Thank you to staff for your review comments. I'd like to take you through the Stanford Biomedical
Innovations building project. By way of reminders, the key drivers in this project. This project was
previously approved by the Council in 2011. In large part, we are seeing the changes as revisions and
modifications to that process. The building program is generally the same as the 2011 project, that being
primarily laboratory spaces, work spaces and associated support spaces. The building size is in general
as noted in the staff presentation, roughly the same with the exception of the changes to the lower-level
floor areas. We've taken great strides to improve protection of the protected tree areas and have
adjusted the building footprint thusly. There have been refinements to the exterior skin; that will be one
of the primary talking points today. Those are in large response to changes in the building program
allocations within the building footprint. Not changes in amount, but changes in arrangement. That
exterior design has been refined to respond to some of the four key takeaways from the previous
hearings. First and foremost is this idea of gateway entry to the School of Medicine. The revised exterior
elevations and massing do seek to improve that sense of gateway and welcoming composition to the
campus. We've also modified building entries and entry articulation to improve visual hierarchy and
improve visual prominence to pedestrians circulating around the building. There was additionally a
request for final landscape plans, which have been included with the submission package. We are
working closely with the City to move those forward, particularly in relationship to the protected trees.
Lastly, final photometric plans have been included in the package, and I will share with you an illustrative
approach of that photometric layout. As an orientation, the project being discussed here is labeled as
proposed FIM1. As projects change, we are now calling that BMI. Campus Drive is to the south of the
project. The body of the main campus is to the south and to the east. The new building footprint is
largely in line with the previous proposed building footprint. Those modifications that have been made
really are intended to provide greater opportunities for survivability of the heritage trees. We've also
modified the building footprint to increase the visibility and visual hierarchy of building entry. In terms of
City of Palo Alto Page 17
adjustments to the project landscape plan, we have really limited the amount of work that we're going to
perform. In fact, we've essentially eliminated it under the canopy, the drip line of those protected
heritage trees, again with an eye towards giving them opportunity for maximum survivability. We've
programmed the spaces around the site in a way that integrates a different sort of range and scale of
public and individual uses for collaboration, outdoor meetings and events. The previously reviewed and
approved FIM1 plan indicated on screen shows an arrangement of laboratory modules to the exterior
perimeter of the building. That was really the biggest driver in the proposed previous massing. We
certainly want our buildings to tell the story about what's going on inside and telegraph that program
through to the exterior. As the program requirements from the University and the School of Medicine
have shifted, there's been greater prominence placed on the importance of work areas and an increased
look at a culture of lab safety, which has asked us to move work areas outside of the laboratory
environment, which in that process has begged some questions about allocation of those desk spaces
near natural light areas. The revised floor plan shows those laboratory environments to the interior of
the building and those work spaces to the exterior of the building. The intent there is really to drive
natural light access for folks who are working within the building on a day-to-day basis. We're also trying
to create spaces that have a high level of transparency through the floor plate, so that that natural light
can be utilized deeper into the building including into the laboratory spaces. This change in the
disposition of the program within the building is really one of the largest drivers for the exterior design
changes. You can see the comparison of the previously approved building footprint in red over the
revised footprint plan. There is highlighted in yellow the changes we've made based on the more well-
understood tree location and size of the foliage and canopy. We've moved the building away from those
trees as much as we can while maintaining the programmatic requirements. You'll also see some
adjustments to the building entries. Those are to create visual hierarchy and welcoming senses of space.
Inside the building floor plan, you'll see in the center of the building are the laboratory environments,
which were previously pushed to the exterior. We've now located those central to the work spaces and
support spaces. The intent here is really to drive natural light as deep and as far through the building as
we can. On the exterior, we'll be seeing larger areas of glazing in front of those office and work spaces,
showing that program through to the exterior. Revised landscape plan indicates that most of the, in fact
all of the planting and modifications will be occurring outside of the heritage tree footprints. The site will
be programmed in a number of different scales and ways including incorporation of what we're calling
the BMI plaza. This will be part of future development. The building presents itself with a sort of front
porch, which we see as a welcoming, active environment for pedestrians and users of the building to
interact with the public space. We've also incorporated a secondary entry on the west side of the
building, along Governor's Lane. That entry is located farther south from Pasteur, and the intent there is
to draw connections from faculty and staff who are parking on campus at places like the Stock Farm
parking. There are amenities around the edges of the site and around the edges of the heritage trees.
We're really trying to create these small composed spaces as a way to celebrate the heritage trees and
sort of create spaces around them without interrupting their root structure or their growth patterns. In
concept or illustrative plan, this is the photometric approach. We've really tried to dial in the lighting to
the places where it will be the most used and use fixtures that don't draw great attention to themselves
or are extensions of the existing lighting strategy on campus. If you want more detail on the
photometrics, it is included in the ARB submission package. In terms of the building exterior, we
certainly are looking to the Stanford kit of parts, which is defined in large part by the buildings done on
campus to date. In 2011, there was a particular suite of buildings which were referred to for defining
that kit of parts. As we've moved forward in the intervening years and this is part of the development of
the exterior, there have been other projects that have evolved that Stanford kit of parts. Rather than
distinct design parameters, this is really an evolving language. We're seeking to update the building in
some ways to reflect that kit of parts as well as the programmatic changes. Not the least of which is the
possible project directly across Pasteur. Building elevations are composed, borrowing elements or at
least nodding to elements within the historical structures or the more referential structures around us as
well as looking at the more current projects that have gone on campus, including the hospital, with large
areas and expanses of glazing and metal panels, which is a little bit of a departure from some of the
more traditional university palette and something we've chosen to respond to. Looking at the elevation
along Pasteur, the building is generally oriented in an east-west direction and horizontal in nature in
keeping with Lucas and Edwards and what will be in future developments. In looking at the section
City of Palo Alto Page 18
coming from the new hospital down through our site onto the Medical Center campus, you can see that
we are trying to respond to a stepping in scale. Across Pasteur, the hospital is a fairly large building, so
we are trying to meet that intermediate scale where some of the articulation in the fenestration picks up
on a few of the formal moves but at a finer grain as you move into the campus environment. As I
mentioned before, there is really a drive to try and connect building program, view, daylight needs to the
exterior fenestration and articulation. While we still do have what was referred to as sort of a saddlebag
strategy, that is representing those work places on the outside of the building. It's very much more
about gathering light and pushing them through the building now. The kit of parts that we have defined
based on our research and looking at the campus around us and the developments of the newer projects,
we're defining entry through the use of red terracotta tile as a rain screen application. We're defining the
work spaces in stone and metal and glazed volumes, which are represented as the "saddlebags." There
is what we're calling the collaboration arcade, and that is a glass-fiber-reinforced concrete construction.
That represents circulation and collaboration spaces within the building. We think of that as a
reinterpretation of the typical Stanford campus arcade, a place where interaction occurs outside of
laboratory or working spaces. On the south side, you can see that we are additionally telegraphing
through that language of the exterior articulation of the programmatic elements inside, which have
shifted since 2011. In greater detail, the elements of the exterior here in the case of the BMI porch or
the front of the building, we have that Rocamat limestone which is a traditional part of the Stanford
campus vocabulary, a combination of glass and metal window wall and that red clay terracotta rain-
screen tile, which comes to visually signify building entry, trying to respond to the comments about visual
hierarchy and clarity of entry.
Chair Gooyer: If you'd finish it up.
Mr. Brooks: Previous renderings show a very highly glazed building, which would have been difficult, I
think, to push through Board approval. We currently do have Board of Trustees approval on the revised
design. In meeting that approval, we have increased the amount of stone and balanced that with the
glazing. We've also introduced this large, overhanging canopy element, which serves to provide the idea
of gateway to the Stanford School of Medicine campus. A much larger entry feature there. Again,
looking from the south, that overhanging gateway canopy with the idea of aperture or building entry. In
terms of building entries and the language of very transparent, low iron glazings, highly transparent,
combined with terracotta clay rain screens, we have, I think, increased the transparency and the visual
hierarchy of the building entries, particularly at the main entry. In this case, viewed from BMI plaza.
Highlighted there. Looking from Pasteur, you can see the clear articulation of what we're calling the
interactive arcade, the collaboration arcade, punctuated with a sort of rooftop or fourth-floor rather
terrace as a visual perch and sense of arrival and give some compositional breakup to the building.
Looking from the other direction, we can see that secondary entry, which is still using this language of
terracotta rain-screen tile to signify and indicate entry but at a smaller scale because it is secondary
entry. With that, I invite your comments and questions. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Are there any comments of the applicant?
Board Member Kim: I have a couple of questions. I don't know if I missed it, but could you just
introduce yourself very quickly?
Mr. Brooks: I'm so sorry. Justin Brooks from ZGF Architects presenting on behalf of Stanford School of
Medicine.
Board Member Kim: Kind of a side question. How old is the CCSR building? Do you know by any
chance?
Mr. Brooks: I couldn't myself answer that offhand, but I can see if my (crosstalk).
Board Member Kim: Do you know if there are any campus plans for …
City of Palo Alto Page 19
Mr. Brooks: 2001.
Board Member Kim: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Anyone else? Go ahead.
Vice Chair Lew: I have one architectural question and then also one landscape question. On the
architecture, the previous building had sunshades on the south side, and now I don't see any. I was
wondering how are you handling the solar control.
Mr. Brooks: Solar control is being handled internally through roller mechanical shades. That will be tied
to the building management system, so those will be operated through a computer system which will
control glare and solar heat gain onto the building. We've eliminated those exterior filigree elements.
Vice Chair Lew: There are window shades on the inside of the …
Mr. Brooks: That's correct.
Vice Chair Lew: It's allowing the heat in the building, so you have to change the glass.
Mr. Brooks: The driving loads in this particular building are really driven by the fume (inaudible) exhaust
and the requirements for air changes within the laboratories. In our analysis, there actually isn't an
incredible amount of gain with the incredible amount of performance gain in the exterior sunshading
strategy. The other thing that we've done is move seating spaces or working spaces away from the
building perimeter. Largely circulation occurs at the building perimeter, which relieves folks sitting at
their desk from the thermal comfort issues. In a sort of energy analysis, it's actually performing at a
similar level.
Vice Chair Lew: To tie into that, it seems like you've changed the trees between CCSR and the BM …
Mr. Brooks: In terms of species?
Vice Chair Lew: Species, yeah. Was that also done for solar control?
Mr. Brooks: I think it's in large part as part of the sort of understanding a little bit better what the scale
of the space is between CCSR and this building and also with some reprogramming of the collaborative
and interactive spaces there, I think, more appropriately scaled to the current landscape proposal.
Vice Chair Lew: Has the proposed building been pushed closer to CCSR?
Mr. Brooks: The building has been set at an imaginary property line based on Code requirements that
allows us to meet the level of glazing we have. I think it's largely the same as the setbacks before,
because we were looking for a similar level of glazing. We have changed the setbacks on the north side
to increase the distance from the heritage trees.
Vice Chair Lew: I think my last question is on the street trees. At least in the Master Plan, it was saying
that everything in front of this building would be like an oak woodland, so new and existing oak trees.
That's changed. I was just wondering what the rationale was for that change.
Mr. Brooks: The oak groves that we're really celebrating are now the coast live oaks that we're
preserving. The street trees along the north side of the building, along Pasteur, are an extension of the
species and type and arrangement that occurs along Pasteur and other areas. Rather than stitching that
oak grove along in whole, we're really trying to make something special out of the preserved coast oaks
that we're keeping.
City of Palo Alto Page 20
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Anyone else?
Board Member Furth: I've just got a couple of questions about—thank you for introducing some of us to
this project. I was looking at your website and its discussion of how the existing hospital could not be
brought up to current seismic standards. It will still have beds or it won't? How will the existing hospital
building function?
Mr. Brooks: I'm going to have to defer to the hospital's owner on that.
Zach Pozner: Hi. Zach Pozner from Campus Planning at Stanford. The function of the hospital isn't
really relevant to this School of Medicine laboratory building. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on …
Board Member Furth: There's extensive discussion of the integration of this building and these buildings
not only into the medical school but the clinical parts of the program. I wanted to know what that
nearby building's function would be. If it's industry, we can …
Mr. Pozner: You're talking about the Edwards building, directly to the east of us?
Board Member Furth: I'm talking about the Edward Durell Stone building, am I not? I'm talking about
the—what's been the hospital for years.
Mr. Pozner: That's used for clinical offices and research right now.
Chair Gooyer: I don't think that's really that critical at this point.
Board Member Furth: Is it a mystery?
Chair Gooyer: To answer your question, obviously the one reason they're going through all this is
because that particular building needed to be replaced. The function will not be what it used to be. It
will no longer be classified as a hospital, if that's what …
Board Member Furth: The reason I was asking is because, in reading your statements, there's a lot of
discussion of the stitching together of the medical school and the clinical settings and having interaction
between various groups of people. I was trying to figure out how much interaction with people in that—
let me phrase it a different way. How important is interaction with people in that building to this building
as part of the plan?
Mr. Pozner: Thanks for clarifying. I thought you were asking about the old—not the Edward Durell
Stone building that the School of Medicine occupies but the hospital that's still a hospital. That's several
hundred yards away. Thanks for clarifying. I do think we still anticipate quite a lot of collaboration in
this plaza between the existing Edward Durell Stone building and our new building. I also want to remind
everybody that the plan is to decamp those buildings. This is the first large step to be able to decamp
those buildings and then demo them and then build another future lab building.
Board Member Furth: For me, of course, since I haven't been participating it's not a reminder. I've been
spending a lot of time in University of Washington Medical Center which, of course, integrates a huge
hospital with a huge research facility in a slightly different way. I've been thinking a lot about how that
works. Thank you.
Board Member Kim: Board Member Furth, if you flip to page 59 in the new packet, there's a graphic that
has some colors for the School of Medicine, showing its relationship to the hospital. I too originally was a
little bit confused. I thought that the whole Edward Durell Stone building was the hospital, but it actually
City of Palo Alto Page 21
turns out that the part of that Durell Stone building closest to here is currently being used as a clinical
building.
Board Member Furth: When I went to the website and it talked about how many beds would be in which
facilities, it looked like—I couldn't make the numbers work without having some of them be in that
building. Enough.
Mr. Brooks: Just to be clear, the facility that we're proposing is not a patient space. It's just purely a
research space.
Board Member Furth: My other question to you about the building was—as I understand it, there's no
change in the purpose or function of this building. It's simply how you want to allocate the spaces within
it. Is it intended to have restricted public access or will it be open?
Mr. Brooks: It will be in large part restricted to staff and faculty working within the building. There may
be functions at times which allow some level of public activity, largely at the lower level entry lobby and
conferencing space.
Board Member Furth: Would there, for example, be public access to the lobby and the adjacent
bathrooms?
Mr. Brooks: There may be.
Board Member Furth: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: At this point, is there anyone in the audience who would like to address this Board on this
project? Seeing none, I'll close the public portion and bring it back to the Board. Kyu, you want to start?
Board Member Kim: Thank you for your very detailed presentation. Overall I'm very impressed. I have
actually very few comments. I think the change from the mostly glazed building to introducing more
stone elements is actually very welcome. I think the programmatic changes that drive the overall
changes of the exterior of the building also make sense. I'm fine with that. I appreciate the fact that
you've set back the building a little bit differently to accommodate the trees. If there's one thing that I’m
still a little bit torn about, it's actually the building's relationship to Governor's Lane. I know previously
that you were following that diagonal and kind of respecting the parallelism to the Lane itself. However,
I do understand that CCSR and the Lucas building across the Lane do not currently conform to
Governor's Lane. I can see how this could also make it sense. I don't think it bothers me enough to
make it a significant comment. I think overall the choice of materials, you've done a great in explaining
the kit of parts and the evolution of the architectural language that the campus is taking. I need to
anticipate the more thorough review from Planning as far as some of the other elements that perhaps we
could comment on. Overall from a design standpoint, I think the building is very impressive. I think it
makes sense. The changes make sense. I don't really have too much other to say than that. Thank
you.
Mr. Brooks: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Alex.
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you. I was on the Board when the original building came through. To my
recollection, the original design got a lukewarm reception here. A lot of Board Members thought it was
too generic. I think the refinements you've done are really huge improvements to the building, especially
because it's such a long façade facing Pasteur Drive. Breaking it up and giving greater definition to each
of those elements has helped the building significantly. The only thing that I think is the (inaudible) on
the building is the corner facing the CCSR porch. The Norman Foster building has such a grand public
gesture, that it doesn't—you do sort of acknowledge it, but it's just a little, one-story arcade. To me,
City of Palo Alto Page 22
that's disappointing. The way I look at it is it's internal, facing the campus. It's not a public face to the
City. I think my second comment is maybe for Dave Dockter with regard to the oak trees. I've received
criticism on previous projects where we've saved oak trees, that the buildings were too close to the
existing trees. You have a great sense where you actually go out and look at all of those. I was just
wondering if maybe you could explain how much of the existing tree can be pruned and if having the
new building so close to the existing tree will affect its long-term viability.
Mr. Dockter: Thank you, Board Member Lew. The general tree protection guidelines that were
established in the Mitigation Measures have been longstanding. The siting of the footprint of the building
has really not changed too much. There's always been final updated tree report information that needs
to be submitted to us, that will really tell the tale on how close things are getting to the roots and
protecting the trees. Some of this is still yet to be determined in final as-built condition elements. The
biggest concern I have is the potential shading of the, on this graphic, right-hand tree. It is incredibly
close. The amount of foliage that can be removed off both of these trees is very, very little. There is a
few lower foliage bumps, if you will, on the future building side. That's about it. These trees have lived
forever with 100 percent solar access. This new building is going to absolutely create new shade impact
to the trees. There has been a shade study done on both of these. I would like to seek the Board's
direction for—perhaps another solar shade study needs to be considered to evaluate the top trellis that's
over-shading the right-hand tree. That was not in the original assessments, the shade study. I'm not
sure if louvers are needed. If solar access could be given back to the tree, that would be a little bit more
assurance. If we approved it just as-is right now, to me it's an unknown of 10 years from now we may
see shading the way Palo Alto Bol oak tree has suffered some shading die back from something it's not
used to. I'm just not sure. We're getting as close as we can. The trees would survive the building
project. Shading, I am unsure at this time with positiveness in trying to predict solar limitations.
Mr. Brooks: If I may interject. The study that we've done looks at a baseline comparison of the tree in
its current state—a baseline comparison of the building as proposed and approved in 2011 and the new
current proposal. What we find is that largely the shading impact is from the building itself as opposed to
the canopy, the massing of the building. The impacts from the canopy, which working with Mr. Dockter,
we have and are dialing in the shape and orientation and extent of the louver which has what we would
call a nominal impact on the shading in the given calendar year on the order of tens of hours. There is in
fact a detailed shading study, I believe, that's been submitted.
Vice Chair Lew: This is ongoing, that staff is reviewing. The next step, you're saying the staff is
recommending another shading study in addition to the one that's been done?
Ms. Atkinson: Staff just recently received the dimensions for where the building would actually be
placed. I think it's page 52 or whatever that was, the slip sheet in your plan set. With those updated
dimensions, we're going to be able to take a look at the prepared solar study a little bit more carefully to
see if all the numbers match up and so forth. We can do further analysis on that shade study, and
looking forward to that.
Vice Chair Lew: The other buildings in Palo Alto where we've saved oak trees were less than 50 feet.
They were probably like 45 feet. We're looking at a building a whole other scale larger than those. It
would be only worse as I look at it. Thank you.
Mr. Dockter: Just to conclude, we're okay in that the Mitigation Measures say that they will save this
tree. They have committed to saving this tree. The details will be left 'til later, which is now because the
building is going in. They've committed to saving and mitigating the tree. The only thing I think we
need to deal with is just the solar access aspect of it and the additional louvers and trellis. That's the
only thing, I think, that's within the Board's purview at this point. They're committed to having to save
the tree. If it dies, it will need to be replaced and mitigated per the conditions. We're set. If it gets
shaded out and dies 10 years from now, then there's a process for fixing that. Environmentally we're
okay. We just want to do as little harm in the beginning as possible. The shading is important to dial in
on. Thank you.
City of Palo Alto Page 23
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you, Dave. That's all that I have. I think the building generally is handsome. It
is a larger scale than the neighboring buildings, but that's part of the plan for the Medical Center. That's
it.
Mr. Brooks: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Wynne.
Board Member Furth: Thank you. To show you the source of my confusion, in the
www.SUMCRenewal.org/project space, it makes a statement that there will be 368 new beds for a total
of 600, which left me wondering where the others were.
Mr. Brooks: I honestly would have to defer to the School of Medicine in terms of the language on their
website.
Board Member Furth: What I'm just trying to figure out is when people are in hospitals, they and their
visitors want to walk. There's not only the clinicians and scholars and students running back and forth,
but you get families wandering around and looking for places to walk. I'm thinking about you saying this
is a gateway, which would invite the public generally. That means you want to know that they can find
the door—they're going to have to learn the code of the terracotta—and have access to bathrooms and
whatnot. You seem to have created a magnetic space with this tree. I thought that people would be
drawn towards it, and then how would they find their way into a place of shelter.
Mr. Brooks: When we're talking about patients or users coming from the actual Medical Center, the
hospital, we're sort of setting a bit of a coarse edge to what is actually the School of Medicine campus.
This is a bit of a delineation. The gateway aspect is really at a campus scale. That's what this sort of
overarching trellis is trying to do. I think what that's doing is really inviting people onto campus and less
so trying to invite people from the hospital or Medical Center into the BMI building.
Board Member Furth: That's why I was asking you the question about access. I understand that. I've
spent 50 years walking around the Stanford campus, which in some ways is very inviting. I think it's
helpful when people—as a matter of fact, people will be there; they will not all be affiliated. I'm happy to
know that if they find a door, they can find the facilities. It's a formidable building. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Is that it?
Board Member Furth: I'd like a drinking fountain somewhere too.
Chair Gooyer: Peter.
Board Member Baltay: Hi. I wonder if you could pull up the large 3-D perspective from Pasteur. I'm
looking at page 26 on your package. Is it possible to put that on the screen?
Mr. Brooks: Yeah. Is this the image you're referring to?
Board Member Baltay: That looks good. Thank you. I find the building to be a large, vaguely attractive
assemblage of what I call modern Stanford architecture. It's not bad; it's not ground-breakingly great
architecturally either. I think it's an improvement from what was approved in 2011. I think the use of
the limestone is nice. Overall I can support the project. I'm disappointed with this as with almost every
building on the new Stanford medical campus in that it needs visual cues for wayfinding. There's no
obvious entrances. There's no front door. There's no marking of where someone would go in. I pulled
this screen up because in my walking around the campus the other day, there's a tremendous amount of
pedestrian passage from the corner where the oak tree is, where Pasteur Drive is. A lot of people are
flowing into the campus, out of the campus. Wynne's comments about the hospital are on point actually.
City of Palo Alto Page 24
What's going to happen in the future is the old hospital, which is out that gate and to the left of this
image, is going to end up becoming related to the research taking place in this building and on campus.
There will be a lot of activity, pedestrian passageway through this corner, past this tree. I bring all that
up because I'm setting the point that this building doesn't have any obvious entrance or visual cue at that
corner by the tree. I think that's a real lost opportunity. When you look at this image, there's sort of a
one-story, terracotta enclosed area, which your plans call a common area. I could see that being a nice
space inside perhaps. To me it's a tremendously lost opportunity to allow the building to be entered from
this corner as well, possibly celebrating the oak tree by passing alongside it, underneath it, creating
outdoor spaces that are open and welcoming to all the researchers and public on the campus, coming in
and out off Pasteur Drive. When I read through your—there was an Initial Study done of the campus
flow and stuff. Again, this corner was identified as the most prominent and trafficked spot. I'm just
asking if there's any way you can adjust—perhaps make your entry porch lobby larger, stretch it along
the entire side of the building so you can come in from all those corners. Use the tree as a wayfinding
marker, as an obvious front door entrance. The other comment I make—it's probably just throwing it
into the wind. You have a four-story mass facing Pasteur with a limestone frame around it. That's on
this image right here. If that were only three stories tall and had a terrace on top of it where functions
could be held for the facility, you would get public activity up high, looking over a wonderful public,
almost like a mall for the whole medical facility, as you come in there. It would help to get more life on
the face of the building. I understand that programmatically that's probably not possible, but I'm just
pointing out to my way, just sketching on this thing, if you could lower that one piece down, you would
help the massing of the building and you'd bring more life and vitality to the façade. Those two
comments being said, I can support the project.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. I was fighting with initially the same sort of thing that you're talking about.
In a situation like this, I think the programmatic requirements sort of overshadow what's there. The
reality of it is the average person never needs to be in this building. If they don't know where the front
door is, I don't think that's a big deal. If it's an attractive-looking building as they walk by it, that's one
thing. Like you said, a patio or something like that just really is not the function of this building. I think
if it was a clinic or an MOB, anything where the general public or things like that would go in, then I
would say I agree with you. The only part that bothers me a little bit is I can see the whole thing about
the kit of parts, but it's one of the things that has always bothered me. Having been in the industry
forever, a lot of design these days is done based on a kit of parts. You've already pre-designed a
particular corner or this or that or whatever. You pull it out of the computer, and you throw 15 of these
pieces together. Voila, you've got a building. I'd hate to see the hospital come to that point where all
the buildings end up being. Anybody who has a sense of how to put something together just takes the
various pieces that are standard, and a building pops out. I think we see too much of that in a situation
like this where offices have these kit of parts and do it. Obviously Stanford is a little bit bigger scale than
the average architectural firm that does smaller-scale projects. Having said all that on my little soapbox
here, I like this design better than the previous one. It was interesting because—I wasn't on the Board
for the previous one. One of the initial comments on the previous one was it's too massive, break it up.
When you see the final result, it looked too broken up. It looked like a bunch of little pieces put
together. I like the size of this. It is a very large building, but when you look right across the square at
the size of the new hospital, it's very well-placed in size. It doesn't get lost beyond the hospital, but it
works well with the hospital. Based on that, I can approve it the way it is here. I could support it; let's
put it that way. Thank you.
Mr. Brooks: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Based on that, how do you want to approach this or how do you want to move it further?
Obviously staff still needs to do various things. Could I get from somebody just to have this forwarded to
a date uncertain?
Board Member Baltay: Sure, it's easy to continue it. I'm wondering if we can't find some way to move it
along more than that and approve it with conditions.
City of Palo Alto Page 25
Chair Gooyer: Is somebody comfortable with that? I don't think we can anyway. As far as the
applicant's concerned, they understand that …
Jonathan Lait: I would just say that we need to do our Code analysis before we can get that approval.
It would be helpful if there was a unanimous or at least a majority of the Board …
Chair Gooyer: That's what I was going to say, a consensus that we can support the design as ...
Mr. Lait: If there's things that need change, it would be helpful to know what those precise items are.
Chair Gooyer: If we go that route, is there anything that anyone would like to add on a specific basis?
Board Member Furth: I just need to say that I don't understand yet the changes in the landscaping along
the front of Pasteur. I have no comment on them, but I will be looking more closely. I hadn't realized
what the change was from the previous design.
Chair Gooyer: Anyone else?
Board Member Baltay: I don't know if we have enough support for what I was talking about, changing
the way the building is entered off the corner of Pasteur. That would be my condition. I'd like to see
that studied further.
Mr. Pozner: Can I respond to that? Peter, is that all right?
Board Member Baltay: Through the Chair.
Chair Gooyer: Go ahead.
Mr. Pozner: The issue relative to entry, you guys have really locked in on the two things we've been
struggling with, going through the entire design process, how to balance the idea of a gateway entry
between hospitals and School of Medicine which, as Robert said, function as two really separate mini-
campuses. To be really clear about wayfinding for the people that come and go to this building every
day, we studied ways …
Chair Gooyer: (inaudible) front door.
Mr. Pozner: Yeah. The introduction of the terracotta has been the main thing. Using low-iron glass,
which is a very clear, transparent glass will have a pretty strong contrast with the curtain along the rest
of the building. These are visual cues that have worked for us really well. There's a real challenge at
Stanford in that there's no back door. Every face of the building is seen as a primary elevation. There's
a subtlety to that exercise. We've studied options for having a smaller canopy at the main entrance of
this building, and it just looked like it was competing too much with this gesture at the cornice. It's a
great question; we've definitely studied it a lot of different ways. At this point, this is the option we think
is the best.
Board Member Baltay: I'm pushing for what I was referring to earlier mostly because I'm offering you an
opinion of somebody who's both familiar with the built environment but also entirely unfamiliar with the
Stanford medical campus. I consistently find myself lost. Even driving there the other day, I didn't know
where to turn, where to stop, which building to look at. That's because no building has a front. No
building gives you a visual clue of what it is. That's something we've lost in what we call modern
architecture. Really it's this kit of parts that Robert has talked about being thrown together. There is no
front to this building. There is no primary façade. There is no sense to the public of what it is. That's
what I'm talking about; trying to create this sense of entrances, of courtyards. I grant you that
functionally there's no reason the public should be flowing into this building, even if that changes in the
future with more researchers going back and forth. Visually, I find the building to be not welcoming in
City of Palo Alto Page 26
the sense of it being a civic contributor to the overall medical campus. This is our role in the campus,
this is how you do or don't come in or pass by.
Chair Gooyer: I think that's probably one of the downfalls, that it is just a part of a larger campus. They
have a tendency to blend together.
Board Member Baltay: Absolutely. I fully temper my comments in that this is not just one building, it's
the whole medical campus. Ask Wynne; she's been up in Seattle. The way medical things are done
these days, I think the function is so powerfully overriding everything that almost every hospital has this
problem. It's not a comment just about you at Stanford. That's why I was saying I don’t want to see
this project held up by us causing more review and delay over something that probably isn't going to
change too much anyway.
Mr. Pozner: I'd really like to bring back the landscape in more detail. I think that's the good move, that's
going to help tell the story a little bit better.
Chair Gooyer: Go ahead, Wynne.
Board Member Furth: One of the really striking things about Seattle and UW is that they sell themselves
to the public and themselves as patient-centered medicine. The first thing you find is the coffee when
you walk into the medical center. It's heavy emphasis—this is a clinical research building, I understand.
Their clinical research buildings get a little grim. It would be possible to put a front on this building. You
have this huge, stone, multiple-story thing which, in an earlier era if this was a court building, it would be
a 50-foot tall copy of the Statue of Justice or something. You could put significant art by that section of
the building, and we would know that's the front and that's the entry. I'm not going to hold up your
project. The fact that something is serious science doesn't mean that it has to push the public away or
that it has to suggest that this is only an intimidating place. I'm hoping that your very transparent glass
will help on that. Maybe you have lovely, shallow steps that invite me into that doorway. I do think you
need labels on these buildings, something that conveys front and entrance. I think you could do it
without messing up your basic building. I leave it to you to figure it out. I do think that there are going
to be a lot of people coming through there, and they're not all going to be people who work there. I
hope that Stanford is trying to bring us in. One of the things that concerns me about buildings at this
scale—I don't read these drawings well enough to know how it will happen—is that whatever you think
about Richardson, the scale is very human. Except for the actual entry off Palm Drive, it's not an
intimidating building. It doesn't have any (inaudible) presence. It's hard for me to tell how this is going
to be experienced, whether it's going to be dwarfing and make me feel insignificant. Maybe it's going to
make me feel, "What a great place humans have created here." Thanks.
Chair Gooyer: I'm hearing two different things. I'm hearing we don't want to slow this building down
and, yet, I'm hearing concern on both ends as far as an entry.
Vice Chair Lew: Can I maybe suggest that the Board Members who aren't familiar with the new Medical
Center maybe meet with Stanford? We went through all of these issues before with the hospital. The
new hospital is going to have a café right on the ground-floor corner. They've made an effort to make it
more pedestrian-friendly and to put things where they know that the pedestrians are going to be.
They've done that for the whole center. Maybe that piece of information is missing from …
Chair Gooyer: Which sort of matches Wynne's comment about when you walk into the medical center in
Washington, the first thing you see is coffee. This is not the Medical Center again.
Board Member Furth: I understand.
Chair Gooyer: Again, if you want to do it that—Yes.
City of Palo Alto Page 27
MOTION:
Board Member Baltay: I'm happy to make a motion that we continue this project to a date uncertain
with the request that we see a more complete landscape plan along Pasteur Drive. I would like to see
some studies made of possible changes to the entrance of the building on the corner of Pasteur next to
the oak tree.
Chair Gooyer: Can I get a second on that?
Vice Chair Lew: I will second.
Chair Gooyer: All those in favor. Opposed. There you go. We would like to see some thought given to
enhancing that concept.
MOTION PASSED unanimously
Mr. Pozner: Sounds good.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. We're going to take a 5-10 minute break, and then we'll be back.
5. 3265 El Camino Real [15PLN-00312]: Request for Architectural Review for a new Four-
Story Mixed Use Project With 1,843 Square Feet of Office and Three Residential Units (4,492
Square Feet). The Applicant Also Seeks a Design Enhancement Exception to Reduce the
Required Driveway Width From 20 Feet to 18 Feet and may be Required for Modifications to
Standards that Require 50% of the Building Frontage to be Constructed at the Front Property
Line. Environmental Assessment: Pending Further Review. Zoning District: CS. For more
information please contact Adam Petersen at APetersen@m-group.us
Chair Gooyer: I will bring the Board back in session. We will start with the next item. That being 3265
El Camino Real. Request for Architectural Review for a new four-story, mixed-use project with 1,843
square feet of office and three residential units that total 4,492 square feet. The applicant also seeks a
Design Enhancement Exception to reduce the required driveway width from 20 feet to 18 feet and may
be required for modifications to standards that require 50 percent of the building frontage to be
constructed at the front property line. Environmental assessment pending further review. Zoning
district: CS. Staff.
Adam Petersen: Good morning, Chair Gooyer and members of the Architectural Review Board. I'm
Adam Petersen from the Planning and Community Environment Department. As Chair Gooyer noted, I'm
here today to present a project that proposes a mixed-use building comprised of approximately 1,800
square feet of office uses, three residential units and a mechanical lift parking system. The entitlement
request for the projects include a major Architectural Review, a Design Enhancement Exception to permit
a reduced width to the driveway standard and a Director's level exemption to permit a stop sign to serve
as an encroachment into the clear vision triangle when exiting the site. However, I do want to
emphasize that this meeting is merely to solicit the Board's comments about the architectural design and
about the entitlement requests. There's no formal action being taken by the Board, no formal
recommendation to the Director at this time. This project has previously been reviewed by the Board.
This is the project site. It's located on El Camino Real next to the existing hotel. The site is currently
undeveloped and does contain some street trees and a large mature tree towards the rear of the site.
This lower picture demonstrates that it's predominantly surrounded by office and commercial buildings.
There is one residential unit located in the back. Again, the entire zoning of the area is in the CS zone.
This is the proposed site plan. On the left-hand side of the site plan, we have an entrance to the site
from El Camino Real. You enter this site through a portico. Again, this driveway is 18 feet; the
requirement is 20 feet. There is a first-floor office in the front with a second-story office above the
portico here. You enter the site; this is an auto court followed by landscaping and open space with a
deck area. This is the tree in the back that's being retained. There's the ground-floor office located at
City of Palo Alto Page 28
the rear of the site. The applicant notes that there is the option of providing an internal staircase to
connect the first-floor office to one of the residential units on the second floor. The lift parking is located
here. It uses lift parking for the office use and for the residential use. There's six spaces in the garage
for a total of 12 spaces, and then two service or pad-level spaces located basically just to the side of it.
These are individual garage doors too, that the applicant's proposed. This is the rendering of the project
and also the elevation along El Camino Real. As you can see, you enter here off of El Camino Real
through the portico. This is the auto court area or the drive area. The applicant proposes using
permeable paving in this area, again followed by landscaping with a deck area. The building materials
consist of a stucco building with a wood paneling finish, a Spanish tile roof and recessed windows. As
mentioned, staff is requesting the Architectural Review Board's comments related to a number of issues
with the project. Number one, we're requesting the Architectural Review Board's comments related to
the design of the building. It is subject to numerous design guidelines and standards, namely the South
El Camino Real Design Guidelines and then also the Architectural Review findings and the Context Based
Design Criteria. As noted, there is the Design Enhancement Exception requested to reduce the driveway
width from a 20-foot requirement down to 18 feet. There is the Director-level exemption to permit a
stop sign instead of meeting the clear vision triangle requirements. Historically in terms of parking, the
City's treated the use of mechanical systems as being tandem parking. This has been permitted for
residential uses, but historically hasn't been permitted for an office use. I will say last night the Planning
and Transportation Commission is evaluating that standard and is hearing that standard. Also, the
project description notes the use of a live/work unit on the back office building. This use isn't defined in
the Palo Alto Municipal Code, but the staircase is noted as optional. I do want to say the staff report also
called out that the project wasn't meeting its landscape and open space requirements. The applicant
came back, and in their presentation they have a revised site plan that shows the project is consistent
with that. However, staff hasn't had an opportunity to review that thoroughly at this time. The applicant
does have a revised site plan in their presentation. Based on this information, again staff's
recommendation or request is that the ARB review the proposed project, provide comments to the
applicant and continue the project to a date uncertain. Thanks. I'm available for any questions that the
Board may have.
Chair Gooyer: Are there any questions of staff?
Board Member Baltay: A quick one, yes. I'm confused. Is this project a preliminary review or is it a
formal hearing requesting a motion and action?
Mr. Petersen: It's not a preliminary review. There had been a preliminary review on this, but there is no
formal action. I guess the only action is to continue it to a date uncertain.
Mr. Lait: If I can add a little more clarity to that. The reason it's before you this morning is because this
is a project that has been on file for some time. We're interested in seeing it advance through the
process to a conclusion. As I understand it, there's been some back-and-forth between staff and the
applicant about some design changes. It was my perspective that rather than send the applicant back to
make some other revisions to the plans, it'd be helpful to get the Board's feedback. Spending 4 more
months with staff and then coming to the Board to get some additional design direction that might be
counter to what the staff is suggesting seems like it's prolonging the application process. The intent here
is to see if the staff concerns are aligned with the Board's and to get Board feedback so that the applicant
could be working on both of those edits at the same time.
Board Member Baltay: That makes sense, but I'm concerned. We're told we have three chances to hear
a project. Is this one of those chances?
Mr. Lait: You're correct. The Code does talk about three chances to review a project. I would say in a
situation like this there has been an opportunity to consider a fourth hearing, and that would be a
collaboration of the applicant's interest and the Director's support. I wouldn't see in a situation like this a
problem with having an additional hearing if that was necessary.
City of Palo Alto Page 29
Chair Gooyer: We have had projects where there have been more than the three. Mainly that's been
something that's not ironclad. It's something that's in the best interest of the project to go ahead and
have a fourth one. Based on staff, I suspect they've been going back and forth, and they want our input
to get a little bit better direction as to what to tell the applicant.
Board Member Baltay: I'm sure we'll be happy to provide that.
Chair Gooyer: With that, is the applicant here? You have 10 minutes.
Bob Iwersen: Board Members, thank you for having us here and listening to our project. My name is
Bob Iwersen; I'm with Hunt Hale Jones Architects. I'm here on behalf of the DeNardi Group who is the
ownership group on this project. As staff has mentioned, it's been in for a while, and we've been going
back and forth. That's why it is nice to see if we can align your views and their views on a final approach
to this project. As was mentioned, the site itself is in the South El Camino Real Design Guidelines. It's in
a corridor area, the Cal-Ventura corridor area. Directly in front is El Camino. It's not one of the
pedestrian nodes, but it does have—the requirements are still to create some pedestrian feel for the
project. Where we've kind of run into some of the issues is street frontage. It's only required to be 50
percent, but we've been pushed towards trying to get it closer to 100 percent. Yet we still have, as you'll
see, some of the issues. It's a long, narrow site with very limited access. We have to retain the curb cut.
We have to retain the street tree, and we have to retain the heritage oak. There are some constraints,
but within these constraints we're hoping there's lots of opportunity as well. One of the things that—
we've done quite a bit of effort and engineering at this point to try to figure out how to maintain the
heritage tree during construction and how the project would fit around the tree. We don't want to go
down too many of those paths with a lot of heavy engineering to solve some of these issues if the project
itself needs any major renovation. That said, with these constraints, that heritage oak also offers what—
I just recently heard a term called wabi-sabi which is beauty in imperfection. I think we have an
opportunity here in this tree's slightly towards the edge of the property line. Within the project itself, it
can enhance the project as a mature element as well as something that we can see as we walk down, for
those pedestrians, and have a view through the porte-cochere to the tree beyond. As you can see on
there, some of the major issues we have are the 12-foot sidewalk, which gives us a 4-foot setback from
our property line. We're going to require two exits for our project as well as a drive aisle. Here's the
heritage oak in the back with its tree protection zone. The residential setback of 10 feet. The Travel
Lodge at this point is fairly low density, but it's anticipated that everybody contextually would like to see
the whole area change. INDO Restaurant which is a small, single-story restaurant next door, right along
the property line. One of the items that you'll see is the planning requirements are fairly limited to us.
This is the maximums we're going to be able to get as we go along. The ground-floor commercial space
uses up 30 percent of our lot coverage. As we move forward, the parking becomes a major issue as far
as how to make that happen. If we were to maximize every element of this project, theoretically we'd
need 19 parking spaces. On a 150-foot by 50-foot lot, that would extend well beyond the property line.
How are we going to handle and how can we get to what we need to create both a commercial and
residential aspect? This KLAUS parking system, which is in use in the Bay Area—what we selected was—
they have a few different options. This stacked parking system is manually operated. It is something
that the owners can do themselves; they do not need a valet. It takes probably about 2 minutes to go
the longest travel distance. It is no different than just shuffling the floor, the ground up and down. You
just pull in and park like you were parking in a regular, residential, two-car garage. The issues with this
is it does not—they do have another type called a puzzle lift, which can handle every type of car. This
one can handle on the upper level the taller, more trucks or SUVs. We cannot handle oversized
Escalades, that kind of thing, from a weight standpoint only. From width and height and length, we can
handle everything except for the larger SUVs and the larger pickup trucks on this site. With that said,
what we're able to do is come through the site at the required curb cut and come down and create an
auto court for our parking area, over which we will put the two residential, getting that off the street and
leaving the commercial leg fronting the street and stepping over the drive aisle. It's just a simple game,
which is not going to be surprising from the requirements of the site. What we can do—I know one of
the major issues is the visual aspects of this at the time, if nothing happens for quite a while on the
Travel Lodge site, of a fairly extensively long building. What we're able to do is maybe create some
City of Palo Alto Page 30
knuckles along here, a circulation knuckle, a service knuckle, that would allow us to break up the massing
as well as the programmatic elements will also vary the height of the project as you see. With the two-
story commercial, the 25-foot minimum along El Camino, the 50-foot maximum along this side, we don't
hit that. We're quite a bit under. With a pitched roof we're still under. Our circulation aspect. Down at
the other end, we're able to step down to this commercial area and a townhome above. We would like
to propose possibly turning this into a live/work because it could be internal at that point. In which case,
right now, one of the issues that's driving the height here is if we're trying to get to this floor and align
the next flight of stairs up, we have to push this parking up higher than it actually needs to be to access
this townhome from our common stair. That said, we're able to get 14 parking spaces in this as opposed
to the 19, which would maximize the lot, and three residential spaces and our required commercial
space. As far as precedent studies and how we would go about—one of the main issues that came up,
how do you deal with a long wall and that kind of thing. Santa Barbara's City Hall seems to be a good
example of a fairly long project with some massing breaks and some bundled windows in a Carthusian
way. We'd like to take advantage of these kind of concepts at the residential portion especially, along
that long edge. At the commercial side, this image is quite nice as far as the simplicity of the street
front. Going to that whole idea of wabi-sabi, when you walk by and you see this porte-cochere and you
look back, what do you see? You see a fairly usable space with the paving and such, the mews
themselves and the auto court and the oak tree in the back with the deck protecting it as an amenity for
the residents and the office users of the space. It's going to be an urban situation, this kind of urban
condition that I'm familiar with. It can be a very elegant solution along the mews or the auto court.
Chair Gooyer: If you could speed it up, it's …
Mr. Iwersen: How we ended up with—basically we kind of stuck with a more traditional aspect and tried
to deal with some of the solar issues and such with large overhangs and deep, recessed windows to give
a little texture to the street façade. At this point, just trying to get some—one thing we will take
advantage of is a fire access along here and get some lighting throughout so we can have light from both
sides and air and circulation on both sides of all the units throughout the project and create some nice
actual views into the interior courtyard and access to the tree. This would be limited access for the
windows, but we can bundle them and get some larger openings in that space. With that, I guess I can
answer questions and we can go forward on this.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Are there any questions of the applicant?
Board Member Kim: I have a couple of questions.
Chair Gooyer: Go ahead.
Board Member Kim: I'm just asking for some clarification on the loft condition at the office space in the
very back. If it were to become a live/work space, that stair would essentially lead to the residential unit
that's directly above?
Mr. Iwersen: Yes, it would.
Board Member Kim: I noticed on the floor plans when you're describing with different colors the square
footages and associated with what they go to, it seems to me that on the third-level plan for Unit 2
there's a powder room and some additional area there that perhaps should be yellow, that's shown in
brown right now as circulation space.
Mr. Iwersen: That can easily be a mistake on—the calculations are correct. The graphics might be a
little bit off on that one.
Board Member Kim: Do the calculations then …
Chair Gooyer: The foyer and the bathroom should be part of the …
City of Palo Alto Page 31
Board Member Kim: Do the calculations take into account the foyer as circulation space or as residential
space?
Mr. Iwersen: The foyer is circulation space.
Board Member Kim: Those …
Mr. Iwersen: That's not part of the unit.
Board Member Kim: Those are my questions. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Anyone else? Alex, go ahead.
Vice Chair Lew: Could you explain the rationale for not including an elevator in the project?
Mr. Iwersen: At this point, we think it's maybe only serving two units. Therefore, it would be a budget
issue. If we want to put one in, we could go back and do that. At this point in time, servicing just two
units, we didn't know if it was necessary.
Vice Chair Lew: If you're not familiar, Palo Alto does have a very large elevator requirement. (crosstalk)
Mr. Iwersen: The gurney. I am familiar with that. I know that we'd have to use a gurney elevator in
this particular case. There is a spatial aspect to that one too. We are tight throughout the whole site.
Adding a fairly large elevator might—we could probably squeeze it in, but we'll see.
Vice Chair Lew: One last question. You did talk a little bit about the stacked KLAUS lifts versus the
puzzle lifts. I did see in the packet some of the rationale for that. I was wondering if there was a reason
not to use the puzzle lifts.
Mr. Iwersen: There's a couple of reasons. One is these stacked parking systems are more reliable.
From a user standpoint, if the puzzle lift breaks down, you have 11 people who don't have access.
Apparently, they break down a little bit more often. The other aspect of it is we'd lose one space with
the puzzle lift.
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you.
Board Member Baltay: Robert.
Chair Gooyer: Yeah.
Board Member Baltay: One more question just occurred to me. Have you explored putting an
underground parking garage of some kind in here? Have you sketched it out to see what's possible?
Mr. Iwersen: Yeah. It's the same issue. We did look at that. How would we have the oak tree, for one,
at the other end? Trying to get down anywhere in that distance without the oak tree is not feasible or
possible.
Board Member Baltay: Can I ask a question of staff, of Dave Dockter? Dave, the oak tree in the back, as
I can tell, is about a 30-inch diameter valley oak tree. That's considered to be a heritage tree by the City
ordinance. Is it possible for the applicant to petition to remove that tree and what would the process be?
Mr. Dockter: There's an existing process to remove a healthy valley oak. It needs to meet the criteria.
Generally it would need to be dead, dying or hazardous, ready to fall apart or wreck something.
City of Palo Alto Page 32
Chair Gooyer: Can I interject one question I had while you're talking about that anyway? The thing
looks pretty butchered up on one side at the property line. Has that affected the longevity of the tree?
Mr. Dockter: I'm not sure of any current changes to the tree. I've heard that it has been recently
pruned. We need to look into that. As of this meeting, we should be looking at the tree with how
they've designed and engineered their whole site plan to accommodate the tree. If the tree were to
remain, they've come up with an engineering solution to protect it. That's their first obligation. Garages,
site planning, all of that would come outside of that first obligation, which is to preserve, keep the tree,
with their designs. Back to Mr. Baltay's question. To remove the tree, we would have to evaluate if
pruning ruined and killed the tree. That's a whole separate issue from the development project. We'll
deal with that separately from this project. I think we should strategize for that. For the tree
protection—let me have you rephrase it, Mr. Baltay. Where are you going with this?
Board Member Baltay: If the applicant wanted to remove the tree or if we felt removing the tree was in
the better overall interest of the project, it allowed other parameters that we're concerned about to
happen, is that possible? Is there room in the Code for that tree to be removed with certain conditions
being met?
Mr. Dockter: Yes, it is possible.
Board Member Baltay: Thank you.
Mr. Dockter: They can apply for that, and it would be evaluated on its own merits with the state of the
tree, the way it is now. We would have to follow up with Code enforcement and other issues. If the tree
were condemned and somehow went missing, that's a violation to the City Municipal Code that affects
the entire community, not just this property owner.
Board Member Baltay: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Any other questions? Is there anyone in the public that would like to address this Board
on this project? Seeing none, I'll close the public portion and bring it back. Basically you're saying that
even with the tree being sort of drastically cut on one side, it seemed like the part that hangs over the
property line is in healthy condition at the moment?
Mr. Lait: If I could just … We haven't observed the tree in the condition that you've described. We
learned about that yesterday. I think today Dave was going to go out there and do an inspection. Our
analysis up to this point has been based on what the applicant has submitted, which is a …
Chair Gooyer: At this point, you're assuming it's a good healthy tree?
Mr. Lait: That's correct.
Chair Gooyer: That would change if you make some other determination. Thank you. Let's see. Why
don't we start with—who's next? Wynne.
Board Member Furth: I was hoping you would start with somebody who has more experience with
mechanical lifts for parking. I had one question for staff. When we're figuring out how many jobs office
space generates, how many jobs would this office space generate? It's 1,800 square feet. I forget what
it is, 1 per 250?
Mr. Lait: In terms of parking requirements, it's based …
Board Member Furth: No, it's not parking. I'm talking about people.
Mr. Lait: I don't have the jobs number. I don't know that off the top of my head.
City of Palo Alto Page 33
Board Member Furth: Parking is 250 is the assumption, right?
Mr. Lait: Yes, but that's employees of all sorts.
Board Member Furth: You understand what I was trying to figure out, what this does to the famous
jobs/housing balance. I'd like that information at some point. It's a very difficult site. Was this owned
under the same ownership as the Travel Lodge?
Mr. Iwersen: I believe it was.
Board Member Furth: It's left us with a fragment here. I feel that it's hard for you and it's hard for the
City to get a good project on a major street with such a narrow frontage, with your other constraints.
I'm concerned about the narrow driveway. One of my questions is how would, which seems to be a big
issue today, trash collection work? Would this involve the trash trucks coming in off the street and
backing out? Can they turn around? How would that work?
Mr. Iwersen: They would be pulled out for service. We could set up a staging area for them.
Board Member Furth: This would be on El Camino? I'm trying to figure out how that actually works. We
keep coming up against this on projects which are on heavily traveled streets and sidewalks.
Mr. Iwersen: Currently there are two locations. There's the residential. They would be only carts. This
obviously is not a large project. We wouldn't have bins. Let's see if I can find the site plan. The
residential garbage are carts right here.
Board Member Furth: Just like any residential user.
Mr. Iwersen: We would assume we could pull them over and stage them possibly right here. They'd
come in and pick them up and pull them in. The other garbage for the commercial is right here or one of
these spots. They could also just come in, grab them and go on out.
Board Member Furth: You're not talking about the bigger bins that we see in …
Mr. Iwersen: No, no. We're talking carts, carts only for this project.
Board Member Furth: It's just small. I'm also concerned about the clear vision triangle. I think it's a big
issue here.
Mr. Iwersen: We've solved that one actually since …
Board Member Furth: Good. Tell me about it.
Mr. Iwersen: I think that's going to go to the front façade a little bit. It's not resolved yet. From a
planning standpoint, the 18-foot exception they're talking about is just right here. That's to give a little
bit of wall to the project on this side where the curb cut comes in. We're really kind of taking from the
20 feet right along this edge. If we pull back our pedestrian corner here, we can actually get the vision
triangle to here. It's still within our property line. We originally had it out here on our property line and
some planters over here. Apparently we were told that, even though planters are allowed in the South El
Camino Real Design Guidelines, Public Works does not allow them. We were going to use the vision
triangle outside; now we've moved it back into here. That would affect the front façade to a point.
Board Member Furth: Thank you. I find myself concerned about what I think of as toward San Francisco
frontage, that it's not softened as far as I can tell by landscaping at all. I'm interested in my colleagues'
City of Palo Alto Page 34
comments on the practicality of the parking approach. If I were driving in as a customer to the office,
where would I go? I would use one of these lifts?
Mr. Iwersen: Yeah, you'd use one of these lifts. Those lifts are really no different. It's really just
changing the ground level. You turn a key, and they go up and they come back down. You just pull in
as if you're in a residential garage.
Board Member Furth: There's a number to call if something goes wrong?
Mr. Iwersen: There is. They service them twice a year. Like I said, these apparently are—my
understanding is they are very reliable as opposed to the puzzle lift, which can be a little less reliable.
Board Member Furth: I also was struck by the long distance between the bedroom and the fire egress,
the staircases. Explain to me the sprinklering in the project, the fire safety.
Mr. Iwersen: (crosstalk) 13, but we meet the exit access requirements.
Board Member Furth: I know you do. I just want to understand—is the building fully sprinklered?
Mr. Iwersen: It would be.
Board Member Furth: I'm the non-architect member of the Board.
Mr. Iwersen: It'll be required. It's an NFPA-13 system, which is the higher-end system. It'd be required.
Yes, it would be in this building.
Board Member Furth: The windows that face on El Camino Real, are they fixed, are they casement, how
do they work?
Mr. Iwersen: This would be operable and casement in this particular case.
Board Member Furth: I'm interested in hearing from my colleagues—I'm sorry I went first—about how
you think this actually would work. It's terribly parking driven. I am always happy …
Chair Gooyer: Let me do this for you. Would you prefer that …
Board Member Furth: Send it to you? Yes, you guys go first, and I'll chime in later.
Chair Gooyer: That's what I figured. Sounds good.
Board Member Furth: (inaudible) information.
Chair Gooyer: No problem. Peter, why don't you …
Board Member Baltay: Thanks. I have a number of problems with this project, I'm sorry to say. I don't
see the pieces fitting together. I think it's not entirely the applicant's issue. I think some of the
regulations the City has are just making it next to impossible to develop this project in any reasonable
way, not to mention what he wants to do. I also think there's some issues with the architecture itself.
The palette of materials is just not working and the overall massing, which is probably driven by the
parking and the tree, isn't working either. Let me start with the issue of the tree and the parking. I think
the lifts don't work. I don't think it's realistic that somebody is going to wait 2 minutes for their car to go
up and down and hope the machine doesn't break and figure out how to get a key, do all these things. I
find that's right now not in the Code, certainly not for office work, even for residential stuff in this
environment. I don't buy it, and I find it very difficult to support that. In addition, the three-stack lift
requires a two-story space for the parking. That fights against all desires to have pedestrian-friendly,
City of Palo Alto Page 35
residential access. The houses are then three stories up before you start, because of a parking garage.
There's no way you can make the building look nice towards the Travel Lodge, as you showed in the
pictures of Santa Barbara, because you're not going to have windows where the parking is. It's just the
parking is driving too much. I think the answer is to put the parking underground. It's been done many
times in Palo Alto. Consistently when we get a project back where you put it underground, it lets you
develop the site in a humanly friendly way. I think unfortunately with the oak tree that we have right
now, it's not possible. The tree removes the possibility of putting the parking underground. Therefore,
your hands are tied as an applicant because the City has these fairly strict requirements. In this case,
when I was out looking at the property—we'll have that confirmed by Dave Dockter I think—the tree has
been badly pruned on one side. It may not be that healthy right now. I would think as an applicant it's
the kind of thing where it's incumbent upon you to put forward a stronger statement to the City. In
order for us to develop this properly, we need to get the parking below ground. In order to do that, the
tree has to go. We're letting an old oak tree in the back corner of this property, which has been badly
pruned—it's not visible from hardly anyone except the people on this property—drive what is a very large
development on El Camino. I think the City needs to think about whether that's a real balance that we
want to have. If we can reconsider that, I think the project can be better developed. The same thing
perhaps applies to the number of parking places required. As Wynne mentioned, this is a difficult lot to
develop. Any one of us would say it's really tough to scratch your head and see how it comes together.
For us to request that he have so many parking places here in order to get these housing units that we
so desperately want, maybe it's also room for the applicant to petition for some relief from some of the
parking. There are mechanisms within the Code that you can do that. I'm pushing for at a high level—
you're asking us how do we feel about this. At least from my point of view, the City needs to grant him
some relief on the tree and the parking. The applicant needs to consider putting the parking
underground for me to see this project coming together. Otherwise, I just don't see the pieces working
for us to make those findings. I'm trying to be forceful about it because I know that you just want to
hear what we really think, rather than wait for four hearings and a year of time and architect's fees going
by, to find out the same thing. I really feel strongly that the tree is a condition where it should not be
allowed to drive the entire project.
Mr. Iwersen: We have been told numerous times throughout here that there will be no variances allowed
on any conditions. We've tried to work with what the Zoning Code has put forth.
Board Member Baltay: I'm a practicing architect in Palo Alto. I know exactly what you've been hearing.
My comments are as much directed to the staff. Without some flexibility, we're letting an old oak tree
drive a new building on El Camino in a way that's detrimental. If you think about that façade next to the
Travel Lodge, it's next to 40 feet tall right next to a parking lot. That will be seen from a quarter mile
away. It's not a matter of architectural trickery to make it good. We need to allow him a chance to step
the building back from the property line, to modulate it, to do all these other things that our Codes and
design guidelines want. It is impossible without changing the way the parking is done, which is driven by
the tree. The staff needs to consider a larger, holistic approach as we evaluate what can be done. The
applicant doesn't even know that he can try to push for that. You want our opinion; that's what we're
here for. All that said, I think that it's very important for residential stuff to have a pedestrian-friendly
sense about it. I just can't imagine my wife bringing our kids home through this arcade, looking up at
two stories of blank wall where there's a garage past another door to get into this lobby and go up two
sets of stairs to the residences. It just doesn't work. It's not residential feeling. It's not designed to be
pedestrian-friendly. So much of that comes from modulating the architecture and modulating the site
plan, the way you do the parking. It's just not working here. There's no sense for people walking along
El Camino, where you could sit down for a second, where you could take a breather, understand where
you are. All these pedestrian-friendly things we keep talking about, we have in our design guidelines
now and need to be considered. I'm afraid I don't see them happening here. When I look at the
architecture itself, I understand that you've picked some sort of a vaguely Mediterranean architectural
style. Yet, I see a hipped roof, a gable roof. I see four or five different types of façade treatment. Up
above is a band with some wood battens and a flat piece of stucco. Another middle piece of the
entrance with more articulation. It's just all over the map. You've got so many architectural styles going
on. I find it really dissonant. The way you're treating the windows is not in the least bit Mediterranean.
City of Palo Alto Page 36
These are large, single-pane pieces of glass as best I can tell, fairly flush out to the surface. It's really
just not working from a basic architectural vocabulary. You've got too much going on without enough
understanding of where it's going. Lastly on the landscaping side of it, I just don't see how you could
even propose to us a project without some buffering along the property line where the Travel Lodge is.
That poor facility here will have a 40-foot blank wall right next to it. If you've been following at all what
we're doing, we pretty much gave a hotel a tough time where they were proposing—this is over on San
Antonio. They were too tall next to the rest of the community. This is a much larger violation of that. I
don't even see any evidence of landscaping or any efforts to modulate that impact.
Mr. Iwersen: From a practical—excuse me.
Chair Gooyer: I tell you what (crosstalk).
Board Member Baltay: I think that the landscaping just has to consider that.
Chair Gooyer: We don't need responses. He's just giving you …
Board Member Baltay: The landscaping just really needs to consider the impact on adjacent properties.
In this case, there's just nothing here. I'll leave it at that. I'm eager to hear what everybody else thinks.
Chair Gooyer: Kyu.
Board Member Kim: I also really question the parking in addition to everything Board Member Baltay has
just mentioned about the parking. I just don't see how—let's say a neighbor and you get home at the
same time, and they're on a different floor of the lift. I'm not even convinced that the garage door is
going to work with the lift system. I think too much of this has been based upon the parking design. I
also agree that there just has to be something done to make it more feasible. With regards to the overall
design of the architecture, I agree. There needs to be a total look at the project as a whole. Throughout
the drawings I found several inconsistencies, through the roof plan and the elevations. I also think that
the building really has to be designed in 3-D as opposed to just doing two-dimensional drawings. I say
that because there are several missing views that we need to see and be convinced that this building is
going to work. Such views as a pedestrian perspective through the porte-cochere, through this mew that
you're telling us that you're creating. I don't think the elevation of that façade straight-on is enough for
me to be convinced that that's an elegant and pedestrian-friendly façade that people will see as they're
entering the building. Overall from the street, from El Camino, I just don't see how this building is much
different than, let's say, something like the Stanford Motor Inn across Lambert. It's got the car entry and
an office to the left. Palo Alto deserves something a little bit nicer than what the standard examples have
been. Again, that's not necessarily your fault, but it's the parking that's driving that. In addition to that,
with the elevations, with these bays that are sticking out, there doesn't seem to be a real rhythm to
them. I think they're a little bit arbitrary, and they're just based upon the width of the room. Perhaps
there could be a little bit more attention paid to making those bays the same width to set a standard
rhythm. I'm also looking at the elevation from the auto court. My eye doesn't necessarily draw me to
the entry. Something that was said by another Board Member on the previous project was that we need
to have these visual cues for wayfinding. I'm just not convinced that that's happening right now. I'm
also concerned about the pedestrian walk from El Camino. It sounds like you're perhaps redesigning that
to make it work with the view triangle. If you have a guest or if you're walking home, that just seems
like an awfully dark, little tunnel or passageway that's not even open to the drive aisle right next to it.
There are a lot of things that need to be looked at. I know that the process can be grueling, but perhaps
there can be an overall review of the project in-house by your design team. I'm sure there can be things
that can be re-thought. This is another one of those sites in Palo Alto that's way underutilized. I really
look forward to a nice building on this site. This is part of the passage in getting there, but I encourage
another overall look at the design and the layout of the project. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Alex.
City of Palo Alto Page 37
Vice Chair Lew: I also have problems with this project. The 50-foot wide lot is a huge issue. You show
in your photos a picture of a Dan Solomon project. I used to work for him.
Mr. Iwersen: Of who?
Vice Chair Lew: Dan Solomon. I think you're showing the Fulton Grove project. He did some really
amazing projects on 50-foot lots, but in San Francisco there's no parking requirement. They have a
parking maximum, not a minimum. You have a challenging … Our South El Camino Design Guidelines
suggest that some of these lots are not usable unless they're merged together to form a larger lot.
That's probably the case. I would say there are projects that are recently built, mixed-use projects on El
Camino that are narrower, that have worked and have gotten approval. There's a Ken Hayes project in
the 1800 block of El Camino. I would encourage you to take a look at that one. That one did not have
to deal with an oak tree. I think it had driveway issues with the width. We also have some projects
Downtown. In Downtown we have a shared parking assessment district. We have some projects here
that use turntables. We have projects that use car elevators so that they can get rid of the ramp. There
are other things that I would hope you would consider. I don't know if they're viable options or not. I
would want to see them just to see what other possibilities might be possible. I've seen the parking lifts
used in Berkeley. I do understand there's some issues with some of the puzzle lifts. I think I have a
preference for the puzzle lifts if you're going to use the lift system, mostly because you can bring the
overall height of the building down. All that extra space that you've got—it's almost like a residential
floor. You would be able to bring the building from a perceived mass of four floors down to three. I
think that would help. I think I'd want to at least see a study of that. I think that could help a lot.
Again, the next time we meet with staff, I want to see an opinion about that valley oak tree. I share the
other Board Members' comments about the architectural style of the building. I've seen some of your
other work, and I don't have an issue with traditional styles at all. I think you've done nice, very fine
projects. I think the awkwardness of the parking lift is driving some odd things. The actual height is
causing you to do some unusual things there. The interior of the units isn't really so much the ARB's
purview. I would just say that we have other units in Downtown, tall, three-story townhouses. They all
have private elevators. That's sort of the market. The prices here are staggering, and people do expect
amenities. Having a four-floor walkup unit, to me, is not desirable. You've got a challenging project, for
sure. I don't think it'd be able to meet the findings as it is currently proposed.
Chair Gooyer: Wynne.
Board Member Furth: Thank you. Now that I've had the benefits of your commentary. It strikes me
that every time we've seen a mixed-use project, which solves a parking shortage as defined by the City's
Codes with above-ground parking, we end up saying no because you get a building that's too large for
the site, if they're going to accommodate the desired use. I trust that we haven't zoned these properties
so they're completely unusable. That would be inverse condemnation. I agree that it's not possible to
get even close to the theoretical maximum as long as we're requiring this kind of parking and you don't
go underground. Is the legal analysis that this would be a form of tandem parking that can be approved
if it works well?
Mr. Lait: The City doesn't have any standards for parking lifts. They have …
Board Member Furth: Which means that we essentially don't allow them, right?
Mr. Lait: They have been allowed. They've been approved by this Board and also City Council on appeal
and also through a site and design. Last night, the Planning and Transportation Commission considered
an amendment to the Code so that we can have some clarity on that issue. That's going to go forward to
the City Council in January or February next year, so that we can get some standards in place.
Board Member Furth: Right now, we must be sort of bootstrapping with the tandem definition, which is
fairly vague. It does require a finding that it will work conveniently. I find the idea of unattended
mechanical parking systems in a project of this size not convenient or reliable or feasible at this point. I
City of Palo Alto Page 38
also think by pushing the residential units up high, you do two things. One is you get that great big wall.
The other one is you don't get the kind of residential, close-to-the-ground uses we're looking for. I'm
also concerned about effective, usable outdoor space and landscaping. We've looked at some other
projects—I think of the one on Forest—which have residential uses and the need for a lot of car access.
Where is the safe place for a child, if I have to leave a child outside for 5 minutes while I run back to get
something up the stairs? Where is the area that is gated, fenced, at least minimally set apart so that that
residential use is supported? I wouldn't be able to approve it as it's presented. I tend to agree that it's
to be hoped that the City's thinking through of its zoning standards might get us some better results.
The sad thing is that this property has been split off for another and is leaving a very difficult remnant.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. I guess I'm pretty much in agreement with pretty much all the other
members here. When I first saw this, without even looking at any of the literature, to me it looked like
an addition to the Travel Lodge. There are just sometimes sites that—I understand the criteria you have
are very difficult. There are sometimes just sites that are not able to be developed. Unfortunately, I
have a feeling that this, at least the development you have here, just isn't going to work. You show us
things; you say the Santa Barbara City Hall gave you sort of the design criteria. I'm looking at the front
sheet of this, C-1, that has no reminiscence of the Santa Barbara City Hall at all. It was mentioned
before. There are four or five different architectural styles, all kinds of roof framing—I should say
variations. I think the parking is what's killing you, the whole use of the ramps. I have seen elevators
for cars work. Even those get to be difficult. This is just a very complex site. Having said that, I pretty
much have to agree with my fellow Board Members here. There need to be some major changes made
on this. Maybe that even means that the whole concept of the project gets changed, where it isn't mixed
use, it's just housing or something or just commercial or something. The development that I see here,
there's no way I could support that. Do you have some questions?
Mr. Iwersen: Yeah, I do have some questions. I'm just wondering as far as contextually what's going to
happen down the road. I know we're concerned about the height, and we're concerned about it not
being a more suburban residential feel. Is it acceptable to go down the road of it being a more urban
situation? In the future there will be another building next to that, that is going to rival the height of it.
Therefore, the height is not going to be an issue, and the blank of that wall is not going to be an issue on
the lower part. If that's the goal—if the design guidelines are allowing us to go to 50 feet and we are
allowed to go property line to property line, is this going to be something along those lines, an urban feel
down the line? What is the goal of …
Chair Gooyer: To answer that, it's usually—I've used that here before. I agree completely there may be
at some time in the future three or four buildings in a row that are all 40-plus feet high or 50 feet high.
That may be the case. The problem is this one is the first one on the block. The reality of it is if this
goes up, for instance, just the way it is, the person next to you wouldn't be able to do 40 or 50 feet,
because it would basically block off every window that you've got. It would be a difficulty right there.
This is not really attuned to being the first one of a large urban portion with the assumption—if that's the
case, you'd make that a whole blank wall. Let's face it, nobody would let you build that even with the
concept of saying theoretically 20 years from now there may be a building right next to it that would
eliminate that blank wall. That just isn't going to happen. If it's an infill, that's different. This isn't; this
is the first one of its kind. Like I said, I think all of us are sympathetic to the fact you've got so many
things working against you at this point. We're not saying it isn't a decent attempt at it. You could
improve the architecture to make it much more residential in feel. Let's face it, there are plenty of
projects, even what you've showed us, that are in an urban environment but yet have a residential feel to
them. Unfortunately, this isn't really in a "urban" setting at the moment, because it's the tallest thing in
the area. Yet, it still doesn't have a residential feel to it. I'm not saying that we wouldn't look at
anything that you do on this project—I should say we're not telling you this is not developable. All I'm
saying is you've got so many things that you need to work at that it's very difficult. Unfortunately, we're
not going to accept something that isn't up to what we feel are certain standards just because it has a lot
of problems developing it. I understand that makes it difficult for you, but that's not our purview.
City of Palo Alto Page 39
Mr. Iwersen: Is it possible that simply through a more coherent skin and design elements that a project
of this scope and size could work?
Chair Gooyer: I'm not saying that a project of this scope and size couldn't work. It's just not in this
format. I'm not saying that you couldn't put three residential units and two office spaces on a property
like this, but not if it looks like this.
Vice Chair Lew: Can I make a suggestion? We do have a huge number of projects in the works in this
vicinity. We have a new hotel coming up right at the Parmani Hotel site. We have the big mixed-use
project at the Foot Locker site as well as a big mixed-use project on the Mike's Bikes site. They're not
adjacent to this particular project. Maybe we should see these altogether in a streetscape elevation or
something, so that we can accurately gauge how it looks with the neighborhood.
Chair Gooyer: Then the average person in the City would be able to understand what it would look like
when they're all finished, and it doesn't all of a sudden—also maybe it'll give you some idea 5 years from
now of the context of what's been approved or will be built. Unfortunately the only thing to relate to it at
the moment is the Travel Lodge. Let's face it, that's not the ideal thing we're looking for as something to
relate to. It does unfortunately just because it's the only thing there. That's at least better than the
restaurant next door, which is just a box. It's difficult on your part, but I'm sure the City would be able
to let you look—it's online—to be able to see what those buildings look like. Seeing as it's in the process,
it's public record at this point. You can get a relationship to see what would be there 5 years from now.
Yes?
Board Member Furth: If we're talking about design, we have some fairly successful both commercial and
residential buildings further north on El Camino and on Alma, which do use vaguely Mediterranean
elements in the sense that they have heavy stucco, dark metal windows, recessed windows that give a
lot of interest to the surface of the building. They have red tile roofs. I think it can be done. They seem
to have more significant landscaping, and they have a lot of curve, I guess you'd have to say. They tend
to be a bit simpler. Maybe pastiche is an unfair word, but I have a sense of too many elements that
don't, at least in these drawings, convince me that there's …
Chair Gooyer: They fight each other.
Board Member Furth: … a coherence here. Some of them are simpler. This is a high-speed road, so
people read this building fast. I guess it's a moderate-speed road. I think the El Camino elevation does
unfortunately look way too much like a motel as it presently exists. I suspect it could be a lot more
successful.
Chair Gooyer: I think all of us will probably tell you the same thing. If you came up with something that
looked very Mediterranean but was done nicely and all the four sides relate to that, I would have no
problem approving something like that. It's not the issue. It's not that it has to be modern or it has to
look just like the hotel that's going up a block down the street. That's not it at all. I'm just saying maybe
that will give you some concept. If this did end up looking, as you said, like the Santa Barbara City Hall
on all four sides, I wouldn't have a problem with it, but it doesn't. That's the difficulty that you're having.
There's just way too much. Sometimes simple is the best solution.
Mr. Iwersen: I agree with that. My question is then if we come back with something that is more
architecturally appealing and coherent, are we still fighting a battle of scale and the lack of the residential
units being in a more ground-floor, yard aspect kind of thing?
Chair Gooyer: Maybe you're a bit gun shy at this point, which I can understand. Having lived in a lot of
urban, densely populated areas, there's some very residential-looking high-rise buildings that I've lived in,
that I would have no qualms. This is actually very small in scale. I have no problem with a 50-foot
building if it's done well. If it's done well, then it becomes an impetus for the neighbors to go, "Look at
that. They built something a little bit bigger, and it's a nice looking building. It was approved to do
City of Palo Alto Page 40
that." I don't think that's the issue. It's just only one of the items. The first thing that people are going
to respond to is what it looks like. Obviously the problem you have is there are a lot of other issues that
are affecting what it looks like. If you conquer what it looks like, that's a big step in the right direction.
Mr. Iwersen: One of the comments that came up was the feel as you walk towards the residential
entrance, as you go by the garage doors and go by the parking areas, that that didn't feel quite right.
That possibly could never go away.
Chair Gooyer: Think of it this way. I've been warned of that before. We're not here to design it for you.
We're just telling you basically that we don't like what's here. If you come back with something totally
different, not just changing the color or the roof slope a little bit, I'm talking about a major redesign, I'm
not saying that we wouldn't approve it. Like I said, I'm also not going to sit here and design it for you
and say, "If you do this, I'll accept it." With that …
Vice Chair Lew: I just wanted to …
Chair Gooyer: Sure.
Vice Chair Lew: … rebut a couple of things that Board Members have said. One is you were suggesting
maybe an all residential project. Our zoning doesn't allow that.
Chair Gooyer: I understand that. I'm saying that would make it look more residential. I'm not saying,
again that that's the right thing for this.
Vice Chair Lew: We don't need to beat a dead horse, but that was what I heard. I just want to make
sure—they have to have a commercial component as required by our zoning. Wynne, I think you had
mentioned how would an office visitor use a parking lift. Our design guidelines suggest that visitors park
on the street. I actually don't have an issue with office—if it's a small office and really one office, I think
they can figure out how to use a lift. If you have a multi-tenant building and what not and there isn't an
organization about how people use the lifts, then I could have issues with it on a larger scale. I think it's
viable on a small project, especially if it's just one tenant. I did want to mention on the live/work, it's
sort of my experience here in Palo Alto that whenever we have the live/work, the live disappears and it's
just all office. That's sort of the general sentiment in this town. I would just say be careful on that going
forward. I know other cities do it, Emeryville. I've seen it in Oakland and whatnot. We've tried it on
some projects here. In the end, all the live—there's one on El Camino, in the 1800 block. All the living
got converted to work.
Chair Gooyer: We've still got one more item. Thank you very much.
Mr. Iwersen: Thank you. Appreciate it.
6. PUBLIC HEARING/QUASI-JUDICIAL MATTER. 2600 El Camino Real [16PLN-00022]:
Recommendation to the Director of Planning and Community Environment for Approval of an
Architectural Review Application to Allow the Demolition of an Existing Six-Story Commercial
Building and Construction of a New Four-Story, 62,616 Square Foot Commercial Building; no new
Floor Area is Being Requested. Environmental Assessment: Consistent With the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) the Project is Exempt From Further Environmental Review
Pursuant to Section 15302 (Class 2), Which Allows for the Replacement of Structures With
Substantially the Same Purpose and Capacity. Zoning District: CS. For more information please
contact Sheldon Ah Sing at SAhsing@m-group.us
Chair Gooyer: The next item, also a public hearing. Recommendation to the Director of Planning and
Community Environment for approval of an Architectural Review application to allow the demolition of an
existing six-story commercial building and construction of a new four-story, 62,616-square-foot
commercial building. No new floor area is being requested. Environmental assessment: consistent with
City of Palo Alto Page 41
the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA. The project is exempt from further environmental review
pursuant to Section 15302, Class 2, which allows for the replacement of structures with substantially the
same purpose and capacity. Zoning district CS. Staff.
Sheldon Ah Sing: Thank you. Just about good afternoon. I'll try to be as expeditious as possible.
Thank you for your time this morning on these important projects. The gist of it is the existing building
there onsite is nonconforming with respect to parking, height and the size of the building. You have a
new project that's coming in, that's using the City Zoning Code's nonconforming section to replace the
building. In doing so, they're allowed to replace the building in the same size and floor area ratio, but all
other aspects of the Zoning Code needs to be met. That's what the case is for this project. Some of the
issues for the project would be the architectural design and the context of the surrounding and meeting
those architectural findings and also meeting the South El Camino Real Design Guidelines. The project
did go before this Board previously as a preliminary item. There were several things that the Board had
mentioned for direction. There was a height exception to the building; in response to that, the height of
the building was reduced to meet the Code for that zoning district. There's some concern about ceiling
heights. The ceiling heights that are proposed are 10-foot ceilings. There is some opportunity at the first
floor—if you leave the ducts exposed, then you have maybe 12-foot-6 for that small retail space that's
being proposed there. There was some concern about a relation to the street and also to the adjacent
building. The overhangs—I'll illustrate that in the next slide—were reduced along the sides adjacent to
the new mixed-use building that's just about completed as well as they've created a plaza area in the
front, which is consistent with the South El Camino Real Design Guidelines, trying to activate that
pedestrian area. Finally, there's some concern about pedestrian circulation on the site. The applicant
has made some changes with the plaza and will in their presentation discuss a little bit more about how
they can improve even upon what they proposed today with their circulation. Here's what I was
demonstrating. The image above shows that overhang that the comment was it looked a little excessive.
Below, what's proposed now. It's not as extensive there. The relationship to the mixed-use building, you
do have those balconies on the side that kind of create—instead of having glass, for instance, are all
stone. It's sort of some setback there. You can see the difference between the front of the buildings
from the previously proposed in the bottom, where they are creating that build-to setback as well as
creating that plaza area in the front. What's worth mentioning in the site plan is they are maintaining the
basement parking. They're not touching that. This is an area that is over the hazardous plume area, so
that is a barrier that will be kept in place. There are four mature trees that would remain on the site.
That was something that we had worked hard with the applicant on. That caused the project to have
some other onsite parking changes. Some of those would be to create a two-level parking deck in the
back. They did accommodate a loading space as required by the Code. With these changes, the site
meets the landscaping and also the parking requirements. With maintaining those trees at the front,
there was some concern early on about the sight distance; there are a lot of pedestrians going through
there. It does meet the Code. There was a traffic memorandum that was created and demonstrates that
it does meet the Code there. The recommendation of the traffic study was to include a stop sign, and
that would be the result of that. There will also be a median improvement for El Camino just to
discourage people from making that left out of the site. That would be an improvement. There's also
public art that's being proposed on the site as opposed to paying an in-lieu fee. The project does include
about 1,400, 1,500 square feet of amenity space that's not counted towards the gross floor area. That is
a gym and locker amenity for the employees. This is just some brief elevations—the applicant does have
more substantial—just to show you what the new proposal is with the front as well as the rear. The
context, having the soccer fields nearby and the new building next door. For an environmental review,
this would be considered under the replacement exemption, because it is replacing at substantially the
same size, substantially the same use. Therefore, we can make those findings. There are no impacts to
the cultural resources. There's a Cultural Resource Evaluation as part of this report. No impacts with
respect to any hazards. The motion here is to recommend approval of the commercial project based on
the findings and subject to the conclusions of approval. That concludes my presentation. Be happy to
answer any questions. The applicant's also here with their presentation. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Are there any questions of staff? Go ahead.
City of Palo Alto Page 42
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you, Sheldon. With the stop sign requirement at the driveway, is there any
consideration of how that would actually work? There's the big planter there. How do you get a stop
sign in on the easternmost driveway if there's this big planter and there's nowhere to put a pole and the
driveway is already the required width? It seems like you can get it on the west side; towards the
Mayfield housing there's space, but it doesn't seem like it's going to work on the other side.
Mr. Ah Sing: I think it's going to be based on the particular detail of the site. It may not be a standard
configuration of the pole maybe directly into the ground, but maybe some other way that a stop sign
would work.
Vice Chair Lew: The existing conditions have a speed bump. Is that allowed? Is that an option? I think
there's a speed bump there now.
Mr. Ah Sing: There wasn't any comment to remove that.
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Anyone else? Seeing none, the applicant would like to give a presentation. You'll have 10
minutes.
Applicant: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: That's all right. We'll hold off until they get the … Go ahead.
Applicant: Thank you, Sheldon. Thank you, ARB members, for hearing us again. When last we met,
there was a good conversation. You guys had a lot of good suggestions. Those suggestions have been
incorporated into the plans after a lot of deliberation. There's a lot of positive things that have come out
of those suggestions. We've also been working with staff, all the departments and also been meeting
with College Terrace and the neighbors. Some good changes have come out of that, out of the
development of the plans. I just want to orient some things real briefly that are important to the design.
We've got the Page Mill intersection and the soccer fields, which are the large-scale items of the urban
fabric. To the left we have the almost completed Stanford housing, which is a three-story project
adjacent to us, and then office in the back. I want to remind everybody that this is a replacement
project. We are coming in with exactly the same FAR and actually all the same uses, which include
office, institutional financial services or bank, and retail. We're actually increasing the square footage of
retail space. We are also doing some things that are changing for the project. The project right now is a
six-story high rise which does not comply with the height limitations. We're coming in with a four-story
building. This diagram here also diagrams some other deficiencies. Right now, they're 56 stalls below
the actual ordinance, and we're going to be fixing that and actually accounting for the food use in the
retail parking. We are 31 feet above the height limit. We're obviously going to be down to 50 feet. That
was one of the comments. We went from 52 feet to 50 feet. That will be in full compliance. Also,
currently we have single, one-way drives around the project, which basically dumps traffic—if you can't
find a space, you've got to go back into the street. It's causing congestion there. We're fixing that with
two-way parking. The end of all that is we're coming in with a very refined project that is completely
compliant with all of the Codes for the City ordinance. This site plan showing our project with the
adjacent Stanford housing. The building now relates to the street except, in addition to that, it's also
creating a public courtyard facing the street that's going to house the food retail use that's right off the
lobby. In back of the building, where there's currently just parking, we're placing another publicly
accessible space. You can either go around the building or you can go through the building to access
that space. If you add those two spaces together, those public access spaces are actually larger than the
current plaza spaces that's currently there on the second floor with obviously the added benefit that this
public space, especially the one towards the street, is completely integrated and adding vibrancy and
activity to the street. Behind that space in the back, we've got the two-level parking structure. I want to
describe a little bit more into that. When we saved the four planters, that was at the request of Dave
Dockter. We thought that was a beneficial item. I just want to point out that those are not protected
City of Palo Alto Page 43
trees, and those are not heritage trees either, but we do think it's a benefit. That made us reorganize
the site entirely. The other big changes is we came in—the minimum landscape is 10 percent; that's
required. We came in last time with 20 percent; we're now at almost 30 percent. We've increased that
because we knew that was going to be beneficial to the project. We've got additional planting, additional
trees and landscape. The other item is—let's see. Moving on to the garage. As Sheldon mentioned,
we're leaving the garage as is, but we have additional bike storage both down in the garage and up on
the plaza space. This is a plan which shows on the left side the financial services, bank. On the upper-
right corner, that's where the retail would be. We've increased that to 1,000 square feet and parked it.
That added an additional seven stalls. We went from 251 stalls to 258. The red-hatched item is our
amenity space, which will help keep people onsite. This is going to be a very positive item located next
to the restrooms. We've added showers, lockers and an area for a gym to keep people onsite. Second
and third-floor plans, very similar. Just want to point out that we've got a lot of decks on this building.
We've added more since the last time that we came forward to you. That's because we want this
building, being next to the street, next to the public way, to breathe. We want this to interact. We want
it to be a very extroverted building, where you can see in and people can meet and collaborate outside
and have connection with the street. The fourth-floor plans, as you can see, have even more deck that's
facing the street and the soccer fields. This is the front view coming from Page Mill. Again, a very clean,
modern architecture that's very sculptural. We have a combination of white metal panels, which create a
ribbon effect, different planes and different organizations, which start at the top, wrap down and actually
become a three-story element, which lends itself to the scale of the Stanford housing to the right.
Urbanistically we've caught that scale. As the building tracks to the left, we're more to the scale of Page
Mill Road and the soccer fields. We did lengthen, since the last time we met, that three-story element
about 50 feet to the left, and we added more of an entrance portico so that there's a real strength in that
entrance. As you can see, we've got some decks which overlook and some canopies there. The main
planter we have in the courtyard and then the planters to the left and right, which are the existing
planters for those Chinese elms, we're going to face them in limestone so that creates a cadence of a
very nice material, which then grow into the columns of the building. One of the suggestions you had
last time was can we get a little bit more texture into the glass, especially on the third and fourth floors.
I thought that was a good suggestion. We added some glass fins, because that will add some texture to
it, even some shading on the northeast exposure. That kind of continues throughout the project.
Coming from the side that the Stanford housing is on the right, you saw that bulky overhang that we had
before. We've pulled that back, so it's actually about 8 feet behind the massing of the first three floors.
What ended up happening is it actually tied in with the massing on the back side very well, so that ribbon
can continue on back and transition towards there. This is just a view to the back, where we see the
limestone actually coalesce into the three-story element in the back with a very dramatic deck
overlooking the soccer fields. We just don't think that—part of the reason we spent the expense for the
limestone there is because we want to make that back area public plaza very nice, very scaled and an
intimate, high-quality space. These are some views into the front courtyard with the limestone planter
that's going to buffer some of the traffic. This is the view into the rear area, showing that seating. Now
that we've got a food use, that can be a very active area, but then also protected from the noise of El
Camino. We've got a variety of public spaces going on. Paul Lettieri is also here, landscape architect, if
there's any questions on the landscaping. We have …
Chair Gooyer: You need to speed it up.
Applicant: I'm done. That's our public artwork. Thanks.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to address this Board on this
item? Seeing none, I'll close the public portion and bring it back. Alex, you want to start?
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you for your presentation. I think the improvements look very good. In general,
I can support the project. I have a whole bunch of nitpicky comments. I think the two comments I have
that I've been most concerned about was just the pedestrian connection from the above-ground garage
to your building, from the staircases and also from the parking, the surface lot. If you're walking from
the surface lot to the building, how do you get there? We have some recent other projects at Stanford
City of Palo Alto Page 44
where they provide one sidewalk from the back up towards the front of the building. They didn't do
them on both sides of the building. I would think some consideration of that would be appreciated. My
second concern was just on the sidewalk on El Camino, just what's happening with that sidewalk. We
don't have a hardscape plan. Ideally I'm thinking maybe it's best to match what's happening in front of
the Mayfield housing, ideally. They're not doing tree wells; they're doing something different. Maybe if
you could resolve that with the—coordinate it with the staff to see what's viable. The driving force is to
try to get more area for the trees. The tree wells were limited to a smaller size. I think you have a
condition of approval to replace the sidewalks, which are existing brick. Also, just for staff, I think the
conditions of approval, Number 75, is mentioning Lytton Avenue. I know it's cut and paste, so we should
fix that. My nitpicky comments were fixing Condition of Approval 75. I think you're missing the light
poles at the garage. I think they're shown in the plan, but we don't have them in the photometrics, and
we don't have the cut sheets. I think they're showing them 3 feet high, which seems sort of unusual.
Normally they're on a pedestal or something. I think I do need to see the light poles. With regard to the
landscaping, I think they're showing planters in gravel. I just wonder about the viability of that on El
Camino. Is it just going to become an ashtray? I think you've got planters in gravel in the courtyard,
and that's fine. It's relatively private. In some of the renderings you were showing trees on the fourth-
floor balcony facing the Mayfield housing. They're sort of ghosted in, but they're not in the plans. I
would like clarification if that's happening. Also for staff, on buildings that have a lot of glass, we
normally have been incorporating some recommendations from the Audubon Society about fritted glass
to prevent bird strikes. It seems like this is a very good candidate for that, given the proximity to so
much landscaping along Page Mill Road. Also, you've got a lot of ledges and recesses. I like that
architecturally. I do wonder if that's just going to become a giant pigeon ledge. I wonder if any thought
has been given to pigeon proofing for there. I just have a comment. I don't think this requires revision
at this time. I would say that the landscaping has a huge percentage of nonnative plants. I just want to
mention that the Council's interest is in going with more native plants in the future. I don't know. The
Council just voted on that, but I think we're looking at more habitat-friendly plants. I think all the plants
that have been selected are architecturally interesting, but we may be trying to do something different in
the future. I have one last thing. You have canopies shown for the retail space, on that side of the
building. We don't have any details for that. I think that's a critical design thing. I just want to make
sure that gets done correctly. Just one last comment. Your renderings aren't showing all of the street
trees properly. I understand that happens on architectural drawings, because you want to show the
building.
Applicant: Didn't want to hide anything.
Vice Chair Lew: In general, my take on it is that there will be a more uniform tree canopy in front of the
building than the renderings show. It will look better and more contextual than what we see in the
renderings.
Applicant: That's right.
Vice Chair Lew: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Wynne.
Board Member Furth: Thank you. For staff, I could out nitpick Alex here. On Figure 25 in the historic
preservation report, that is not the First Unitarian Church. That is the United Methodist Church.
Unitarians have had two churches here, one on Maybeck and one on (inaudible), but not that one. I also
wanted to say that I continue to find the project description misleading for the public, because it's so
focused on Code-required things or Code-considered things like FAR, that it continues to not discuss the
removal of what has been a quite attractive, privately owned, publicly accessible space, namely the
second-story terrace, which supports the existing café. I had some questions—I realize this is the
streetscape. This is all, of course, Stanford property subject to some serious leases. This is the
streetscape that the Mayfield—is it plaza, the housing project is designed to, 2500 El Camino? Of course,
it was designed for this big, tall building set way back. Now we have a building of a similar height but
City of Palo Alto Page 45
radically closer. The use on that side of the residential building is on the second and third floors. I think
it's just second and third at that end is residential. They have bedrooms facing this building. How do
those relate in height to the terraces that come off 2600 El Camino Real? In other words, how big of a
loss of privacy is there from somebody on that much closer balcony, if there is a balcony on that side,
that was not considered at the time the housing was designed?
Mr. Lait: I'm sorry. Is this a question to staff about the terrace height and privacy?
Board Member Furth: Anybody who could answer it. Basically, I don't think I have—maybe you should
just refer me to the correct exhibit which explains to me how those balconies relate to those windows in
those residential units. I want to know that they don't look into them, that they don't substantially
decrease their privacy, that they don't require them to have curtains closed more often. It was designed
for a very different relationship. This was what they designed for. Of course, the City and Stanford
worked very hard to get those 70 units of housing, reallocated a lot of commercial space, so it's an
important public resource.
Mr. Lait: We can look for section drawings; if the applicant has any additional information. If you want
to continue with your other questions.
Board Member Furth: I would like to know—I would like to be reassured before voting to approve this
that those balconies don't provide views into those residential windows. I don't think a balcony facing
those uses is appropriate if they do. In other words, it should be up to the residential use to screen
themselves for privacy, for something that reasonably anticipated wouldn't exist. I'm also concerned
about safety on the sidewalk. I understand I had it completely wrong last time. In fact, bicycle traffic is
permitted along this sidewalk. In fact, this is the bike path for access for primarily the College Terrace
neighborhood to the park, also provided by Stanford as part of the Mayfield agreement. I do not support
retaining those Chinese elms in those planters. I was walking the site again last night. I was thinking
about children who move very quickly on scooters, on bicycles or just darting out ahead. I don't think
there's adequate vision. I don't trust the stop sign to prevent disaster. Drivers tend to anticipate
walkers. They don't anticipate bicyclists on sidewalks because that's not our normal pattern in Palo Alto.
They certainly don't anticipate children on scooters. I do not find the pedestrian circulation adequate or
safe now, as it's presently designed. I could not support that. I would like to see a more detailed
hardscape plan, because presently it's pretty chaotic out there. There's multiple shifts of level. The
sidewalk kind of undulates and occasionally drops. I would like to see how that's going to work, that it's
going to be flat enough, wide enough. It's so wide I even wonder if it can be protected a bit from El
Camino, but I realize there's parking some of the time. I would like to see some sort of protective
plantings or what not, if that's feasible, on that wide space between the pedestrians and El Camino. I
stood in the area last night as I was on my way to dinner somewhere else. It was about 5:00, 5:15. It
was too loud for that to be a useful outdoor space. Every time I've gone to sit at one of the outdoor
spaces we've approved on El Camino, even when they're somewhat sheltered by berms or partial walls,
they do not appear to me to be functional outdoor spaces. They appear to be too loud. I believe,
Sheldon, the noise contours show above acceptable outdoor noise levels along that street. Do they not?
That requires particular treatment when you're designing.
Mr. Ah Sing: I would have to look at those. The standards for commercial are higher than they are for
residential.
Board Member Furth: This is supposed to be an outdoor amenity. I'm concerned that it isn't because it's
too noisy. I couldn't support that without evidence that we're going to have good sound attenuation that
will work. I do not share the view that this essentially replaces the existing terrace because that's set
back. It does incidentally support bird life. It seems to be a friendly habitat at the moment. I'm
concerned that the area to the back—I'm glad it's added. I'm glad there are tables. I'm concerned that
I'm essentially sitting in a parking lot, very close to circulating traffic and parking spaces. I may be
misreading it; I may not be understanding it in terms of going up and down. At present, I would not
support—there are tables back there as well. I gather there is a sidewalk that connects the two, which is
City of Palo Alto Page 46
great. At present, I couldn't vote to support it with the present alignment—what do we call this? The
addressing of the circulation at the front of the side along El Camino, and also I couldn't support the
balconies facing the residential unless it turns out that they're so high they're not a problem.
Chair Gooyer: Peter.
Board Member Baltay: Thank you. I've been looking at this and scratching my head for quite a while
now. This is the first time I've been on the Board to look at this project. I'm trying to put my finger on
why I feel uncomfortable about it. It is a handsome—has a sculptural quality to the architecture. I think
you've done some interesting things with the materials and the folds and the glass and stuff. Talking to
the rest of my Board Members, we're missing the boat a little bit on El Camino. We have an El Camino
design guideline which requires buildings to be civic. I'll use that word civic. Civic means the buildings
work with each other. They create a common cornice line. They don't just try to be sculptural. I'm
using your own words. I think that's what's bothering me, that this building is sculptural. It's sort of
calling attention to itself in a way that I'm finding is uncomfortable. I'm actually getting pretty concerned
as I drove up and down El Camino. We have two projects this week; I've pulled out three other projects
in the past year all on El Camino. When I look at the housing development right next door, I think it
doesn't meet the Design Guidelines. I think we're actually heading the wrong direction. We need to step
back a little bit and make sure that what we're putting on El Camino works with each building up and
down the avenue and helps to create a grand boulevard. Those are all words coming out of the Design
Guidelines. That's a civic neighbor, that's appropriate for the community. Unfortunately, I just don’t see
this building doing it. I see the architectural style not heading that direction. I see you having a strong
sculptural image, which is beautiful indeed, but I can't support it as meeting the necessary findings for
contextual compatibility and for the El Camino Real Design Guidelines. Let me step back from that then.
I find it unfortunate that you've been asked to keep those planters with the trees in them. They just
serve to make it harder to make it pedestrian-friendly at the ground level. When the trees up in about a
4-foot-high concrete planter, you can't even sit next to it. You can't relate to it. It's strictly related to by
an automobile, which is why it's the way it was. It was designed as part of this larger parking garage. I
understand that along El Camino you're not going to have a café table right on the curb there. I play
soccer; I've played on those fields many times. My office used to be on California Avenue. I've walked
up and down that street more times than I can count. Right now, it's incredibly unfriendly. It's cold and
windy all the time. It wouldn't take much more landscaping, get the trees down lower, chairs, a berm.
You're going in the right direction. I find that the planters hurt not help. My next comment has to do
with that parking structure in the back. I find that an unfortunate addition. It doesn't seem to be
designed with nearly the care or even presented with any care whatsoever I think it won't look very
good. You will see it a lot more than you're not showing us in these renderings. Right now, it just feels
like an add-on to meet some parking requirement. I guess that leads me around to my thinking about
feeling uncomfortable that we're allowing such a large building here. This is a very large building. I
agree the Code allows a 1:1 replacement on the FAR. What you're also proposing to do is preserve all of
the existing parking structures, and that's driving a bunch of site planning things that might not otherwise
be designed this way. You might have concentrated your parking more in a two-story garage on a new
building, which would let you have more site development and things like that. I just throw that out
there as food for thought. Bringing this up to current standard is not just the objective Codes but the
subjective standards. That's where I'm finding I have trouble with this. Let me reiterate, though. I
don't think I can make the findings to approve this, because I don't think it fits the El Camino Real Design
Guidelines. Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Kyu.
Board Member Kim: Thank you for coming back to us with the project. I also found that the parking
structure in the back was not presented clearly enough. I think we need to see some site sections or site
elevation at least that shows the building in relationship with the parking structure. I couldn't find that
throughout the presentation. If you have a slide of that, feel free to bring it up. I also found that the
traffic study perhaps missed the parking structure in and of itself. It doesn't seem to mention it. Where
it does mention surface parking, it says that there's good circulation through the surface parking lot and
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underground garage. Then, it says that there are no dead-end aisles. When I see the underground
parking garage, I actually see two dead-end aisles. I don't think that the traffic study was particularly
accurate. The parking structure, I'm actually pretty concerned about that. The drive aisle to drive up
that structure is very narrow. As you make those turns around the structure itself, you're going to end
up hitting corners of cars, if not corners of that parking structure itself. I think it was A1.1A that shows
the plans of the structure. I'm just not convinced that it's going to be okay without there being any
mention of it in the traffic study. I don't know if the City plans on having a third party review that as
well. That's kind of my biggest concern. I think overall the building—I've liked it from the start. I think
the choice of materials and the sculptural components of it actually are very nice and kind of refreshing
for this area. In relationship to the Mayfield housing next door—maybe it's not the Mayfield housing, the
David Baker project right next door. It's going to make for a different sense of character along that
portion of El Camino Real. Some other nitpicky things with regards to the plan of the building. I know
it's not necessarily within our purview, but I noticed that you weren't showing the access from the lobby
to the office spaces on the ground-floor, if there's a wall between the office and the retail, and some
other things. There may be some privacy issues with the lockers and the gym space that you have. I
don't know why the men's locker room was 100 square feet larger than the women's. Just some nitpicky
things that I caught. Also the decks, while I think it's a nice idea in concept that you want to extend
these decks on each floor, I question if the majority of these decks are actually usable. It seems to me
that the ones off the sides are only accessed by a single door. Most of the decks in and of themselves
are only maybe 4 or 5 feet deep at most. I don't see how you could actually go out there and sit at a
table and have a meeting. It seems more like a smoking balcony or just a telephone balcony. With the
traffic sounds, I don't know how quiet it's going to be. I think everything else has been touched upon. I
don't think I need to reiterate them. Thank you for addressing a lot of the comments that we had
previously. I wish you luck.
Applicant: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. I agree. I think the modifications you made are very handsome. I also do
agree, though, as you said as far as the balconies or the access on the side facing the residential. I've
heard both of your concerns. The ideal situation would be if we just eliminate them in the sense of keep
the recess but just remove the access to them. That would be more advantageous to what Wynne's
looking for, as far as not having somebody stand there. Just from a practical use standpoint, most of the
people are going to be in the office building from 8:00 to 5:00, and the people are going to be out of the
residential units from 8:00 to 5:00. I don't see the two mixing all that drastically. Going to a couple of
things of concern. I agree that the parking structure in the back literally looks like an afterthought, in the
sense of—I'm not saying it can't work and all this sort of thing. It was definitely "oops, we don't have
enough parking, we need to put something here." I'd be willing to have that come back as a
subcommittee item. I don't think it's that drastic. There's some minor items that are here, that I don't
think can be—I should say could also be brought back to the subcommittee. I think a couple of us on the
panel now have said that those two trees—it's a shame as far as—I should say it'd be a shame to get rid
of those two trees, but they sure do seem to cause a big pain in the neck as far as … I'd be tempted to
say allow those to be removed so you could better enhance those two entry points or entry and exit
points. I think it would be to the betterment of the—even though I don't like losing mature trees, I think
in this particular case it would be to the benefit of the project. Having said that, I've heard a little bit of
everything from various people, from not being able to support it, to sort of supporting it, to liking it.
Can I get a motion from someone?
Board Member Kim: Chair Gooyer, with respect to the parking structure that's behind the building, it's a
pretty serious concern of mine. I just don't want to push that to subcommittee and then find out it
doesn't work, and now they have a parking problem that could affect larger site issues.
Vice Chair Lew: I would agree with that.
Board Member Furth: I would agree with that too. One of the things that I realize now is that while of
course the applicant had every right to reconstruct the building as a low-slung model, what really is
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making this a bit of a mess is trying to keep the parking approach that it had before and to not put that
all underground and out of the way, and then provide some really significant open space onsite. That's
screwing up the project. I would like it to come back. I would support the notion of getting rid of the—
what am I trying to say? Balconies.
Chair Gooyer: Go ahead. Staff has a comment.
Mr. Lait: I think that's an important design consideration. If there's a majority of the Board that feels
that way, I think it would be good for staff and the applicant to understand that aspect of the project.
They are clearly trying to retain the existing subterranean garage for probably a variety of reasons,
environmental but also perhaps costs and so forth. If the Board is suggesting that that approach is
problematic—I don't know if I'm hearing that—that's obviously a major redesign and has implications.
It'd be helpful for us to know if that is what the Board is saying as a majority.
Chair Gooyer: I agree. Let me go back to …
Vice Chair Lew: My take on it was just the above-ground part of the garage and not the existing
underground garage. I was thinking it could be revised and not necessarily complete—not changing the
organization of the building.
Chair Gooyer: I think what you're basing it on is that Wynne mentioned the idea would be, if this was
starting from scratch, to put two floors underground. That would be an ideal situation, but there's not
only cost in digging a hole but there's also now cost in going through the first perfectly acceptable
parking structure to put a second one underneath the first one. The cost would be astronomical, I would
suspect. Are we in agreement that we could—if there was some more thought given to the above-
ground portion, that it worked better with the building or, if nothing else, we got a better look at it and
got a better comfort level, we would be okay with that?
Vice Chair Lew: Our El Camino Design Guidelines really suggest that parking is behind the building. It
allows it to be above ground. We have diagrams of the …
Chair Gooyer: I agree.
Board Member Kim: I agree with everything you just said. I wasn't looking for an overhaul of the
structure. I just don't feel quite comfortable without it being addressed in the …
Chair Gooyer: That's fine. I don't have any problem with reviewing that. Go ahead.
Mr. Lait: What I'm hearing is that a majority of the Board is not looking at the subterranean garage as
being in play.
Chair Gooyer: We're not modifying the subterranean garage. That's correct.
Mr. Lait: The other part for the onsite circulation are the two trees. Staff has been really, I would say,
doing what it could to preserve those mature trees. Are we hearing a majority of the Board say that staff
should not be pursuing that interest with respect to this project, that the trees are in play?
Chair Gooyer: Let me ask. Like I said, I don't like getting rid of trees, but in this particular case those
two aren't doing anybody any favors.
Board Member Furth: I think it's not compatible with safety. It's not attractive either.
Chair Gooyer: I see at least three heads shaking yes, so that's the majority of the Board.
City of Palo Alto Page 49
Vice Chair Lew: I think I'm a no on that. I think I support the staff trying to keep the tree. I think the
pedestrian thing is an issue, but there may be other ways of solving it. The applicant's been very good
about setting back the building more than they have to. We have some room to play with. What I don't
want is a pedestrian walking right along the planter. If they're closer towards the curb, then the drivers
can see them. That's my take on it. I think I'm in the minority; I'm the only one on that one.
Chair Gooyer: I guess the majority would accept the removal of those. I don't think any of us would
think that's the number one criteria or the one choice. If that's the only practical solution—there is
definitely a problem there. Yes?
Board Member Furth: I simply may be in the minority when this project finishes off, but I'm still
concerned that the noise levels haven't been considered or addressed properly and that we will have
another not really functional outdoor space. The existing one—I think we talked about this in the earlier
meeting. The existing outdoor plaza has, in my experience, always been deserted because it's windy,
glary and noisy. This one will definitely look better. It's vastly smaller. It's got more landscaping, I
think.
Chair Gooyer: In that particular one, I would have to argue the point because …
Board Member Furth: I'm going to be concerned about open space.
Chair Gooyer: … I've been in outside urban spaces where it's all kinds of noise level, and they're used
extensively. I don't know if that's really—I'm not that concerned about that issue. Can I get a motion
then, I'm guessing, to bring it back to—yes.
Mr. Ah Sing: One more thing that maybe we can get a majority or at least a pulse of the Board is having
to do with the balconies adjacent to the residential project, the mixed-use project. Whether or not it's …
Chair Gooyer: Seeing as though I agree they're only about 4 1/2 feet or so wide. They're pretty much in
shade most of the day. They're not going to be a wonderful place. It seems like back in the days when
everybody went outside to have a cigarette, that would be the ideal spot for it. Seeing as though not too
many people do that nowadays anyway, I would say almost where we make them as a compromise. The
design still stays the same, but they don't become functioning balconies. Is that …
Vice Chair Lew: The Mayfield housing project was very—they consciously kept the existing trees on that
property line. This project is proposing to keep, at least in the drawings, two of the Chinese elm trees. I
guess I would like to see how much of a buffer do the trees provide between the two buildings
(crosstalk).
Applicant: Keep in mind there's quite a bit of distance between the building and the housing and a row
of trees in between.
Vice Chair Lew: I don't necessarily object to restricting access to the balconies. There's one other thing
that we've done in the past to provide privacy to the residential units. We've required automatic window
shades in the evenings, so that we minimize the light going into the units. That doesn't address the
balcony, but that addresses the office.
Chair Gooyer: I agree. It does address light pollution or (crosstalk).
Vice Chair Lew: We've done that as a condition of approval.
Chair Gooyer: I think that's a reasonable addition, but we're not really ready for that at this point.
Vice Chair Lew: I just mentioned it so staff can put it in the …
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Chair Gooyer: Right, staff can put that in. Am I hearing bringing it back and basically focusing on the
above-ground parking structure in the back?
Board Member Baltay: Can I throw out on the parking—I'm just clarifying my own thoughts now. If this
had been a blank slate to us, we probably wouldn't be looking at parking stalls at the actual property line,
which is the way this has been developed. We wouldn't be looking at two major drive entrances into the
building. We'd be looking at one. Both of those are things that could be redesigned at the expense of
redoing the parking, which is what they're trying to avoid.
Applicant: That's not a true statement. I thought I heard you say that the parking stalls are parked right
up to the property line. That's not even allowed by the ordinance.
Board Member Baltay: That's what I'm looking at on the site plan.
Chair Gooyer: I think what he means is just the layout, the way it currently exists. Maybe he misspoke
in that sense.
Applicant: Not this project, but the existing.
Chair Gooyer: The thought being that—I see where you're coming from. If we redesign the parking lot,
you wouldn't need as big a parking garage, for instance.
Board Member Baltay: You'd put a row of trees between the housing development and an office
building. We don't have room for that now. You've got parking stalls.
Applicant: On their property, there's a whole row of trees.
Board Member Baltay: For some of it. It's clear on your renderings that there's some windows looking
right at this building. In general, we would be looking for using a large site like this to meet other
objectives of the Zoning Code. What I see us doing is not requiring that because we're allowing them to
keep this parking situation, which is not something they're just entitled to do. It's something that they're
choosing to do. That's a problem with this. I'm just putting back to you guys that it's that kind of stuff
that drives creating a sculptural building in the middle of a sea of stuff. You put alleys on both sides.
That's what we do in the Research Park, but this is on El Camino. We have guidelines to make this an
urban thoroughfare. By keeping some of these other elements, it just generates that type of
architecture. I'll leave it at that again.
Chair Gooyer: I'm open to a suggestion.
Vice Chair Lew: I have a question for Board Member Baltay. Aside from the parking, are there things on
the building design that could be—is there anything that could be revised to make it more in keeping with
the El Camino Design Guidelines or you think it's not feasible at all?
Board Member Baltay: If you were to take the piece facing El Camino and not have the drive axis there,
but rather do some more landscaping to offset the dramatic corner of the building and perhaps downplay
the architecture so it's not quite so much in your face, it would come closer. I find the side facing the
housing, when you're coming south on El Camino, to be doing that more. The massing does relate to the
buildings next to it. The applicant spoke about making an urban nod. I think that's coming closer to
what I'm talking about. From the other side, it really doesn't do that. The site development just
exacerbates that.
Vice Chair Lew: (inaudible)
Board Member Baltay: I don't know if it's realistic to do that level of redesign without a very strong
statement from us, which I don't hear. I think I’m in the minority. That's where I see it.
City of Palo Alto Page 51
Chair Gooyer: At this point, I don't see the need to redesign it in that sense. I wouldn't have a problem
with even eliminating one of the drive aisles.
Board Member Baltay: That's a big redesign, I bet.
Chair Gooyer: I meant in the sense of for the building. It would be a redesign of the parking lot or the
parking layout.
Applicant: The fire department won't allow that, because you can't circulate around the buildings and
service them. There's quite a bit of cars …
Chair Gooyer: That's the other thing. I'll guarantee that the fire department would be very upset if they
didn't have this ring around the building.
Board Member Baltay: I'll guarantee you if this building came to us on a blank slate, we wouldn't have
two drive aisles like this.
Chair Gooyer: I can't guarantee that. On a building this size …
Board Member Baltay: That's all hypothetical.
Chair Gooyer: … the fire may say they want to have access to both sides.
Applicant: Keep in mind that—sorry to interrupt. Keep in mind that there is an existing easement that
Stanford has. You see it on the lower left-hand corner. Their cars have the right to come through,
because they have no access from California. They're landlocked. They've always had this easement
through this site, coming through. If we minimize to one entrance/exit …
Chair Gooyer: The one between the two buildings, the housing and the …
Applicant: They actually have the existing easement to use either one. They can come in off California,
but they can't go out. There's all sorts of restrictions on this.
Chair Gooyer: Which was one of the reasons why you left the parking pretty much the way it was.
Applicant: Yeah. There's a lot of reasons that that parking structure is there. It defines that courtyard
space. Can you imagine if it weren’t?
Chair Gooyer: Rather than beating a dead horse, why don't we do this? We're looking for a redesign of
that parking structure or at least something to make us more comfortable that it'll work.
Applicant: We think it works, but if you need some information …
Chair Gooyer: We don't, and that's the important one at the moment.
Applicant: Let me understand. That's okay. You're questioning the materials and its consistency with
the other building or …
Chair Gooyer: Based on what I'm hearing from the Board is just the flow of it, the fact that the drive
aisles seem tight, and not everybody's Mario Andretti when they're driving around, or maybe they are
and that's the problem. It just doesn't seem like it flows well. Is that what I'm hearing from people?
Vice Chair Lew: And pedestrian connection all around, through it and around it.
City of Palo Alto Page 52
Chair Gooyer: And also the pedestrian connection.
Board Member Furth: And how it relates to this café seating in the back. If there is that access
easement, can that be your alternative exit? Fire exit?
Applicant: No, we can't. We can't use that as an exit. We don't have any easement over their property.
Board Member Furth: I don't know what the—this gets back to Stanford's original decision not to allow
for this possibility, because they told us that this building would never be modified. The fact that that
lack of access is—the not very flattering description of the original building keeps talking about it being a
building in a sea of car uses. It's disappointing that we still have so much of that happening here. If it is
indeed impossible for Stanford in relationship to its tenants to provide the secondary access along there,
even assuming that would be a legal secondary access, I don't know if it's wide enough or short enough.
That is regrettable and a self-inflicted wound.
Chair Gooyer: Rather than the history, I'm interested in what do we need to do to go forward. What do
you need to see?
Board Member Kim: I think we need to see a clearer presentation of the parking structure.
Chair Gooyer: Shown in relationship (crosstalk) …
Board Member Kim: Shown in relationship to the building.
Chair Gooyer: … so it's not semi-disappearing, so you see the building. We need something that focuses
on the parking structure.
Applicant: Okay.
Chair Gooyer: Is that pretty much …
Vice Chair Lew: If I'm counting votes correctly, then I think that gets you three votes. I think you'll still
probably get two no votes if we're just doing the garage.
Chair Gooyer: We're talking about bringing it back.
Vice Chair Lew: I know. If it's just that, I think you're still getting two no votes on the project. If I'm
reading the Board correctly.
Chair Gooyer: I'm not worried about that right now.
Vice Chair Lew: It seems to me Stanford is worried about that. I'm seeing a lot of agitation back there.
Mr. Lait: Just from a process …
Applicant: Does this need to come back formally? Can this be a subcommittee?
Board Member Kim: I wouldn't be comfortable with that.
Vice Chair Lew: The other option is …
Applicant: I honestly don't see where—I'm trying to see what you're seeing as too tight or a dangerous
situation. I honestly can't see it.
Board Member Kim: I'm looking at A1.1A.
City of Palo Alto Page 53
Chair Gooyer: Can you bring that up?
Board Member Kim: Just to access this parking structure, first of all, it can only be accessed from one
side of the building. There are no two-ways up and down. It's basically a one-way parking structure. As
you go up the structure, you can only make right turns. You cannot go left. Just the turning radiuses in
and among themselves seem very tight to me.
Applicant: On the structure.
Board Member Kim: On the structure, yes.
Applicant: I believe you when you think they're too tight. I can have Awtrey or somebody do an analysis
and show you that those are completely comfortable turning radii.
Board Member Kim: In addition to that, I think we also as a Board want to see the relationship back to
the building and the pedestrian circulation from the structure to the building itself as well.
Board Member Furth: I would like to see more detail on the front. I don't know whether you're going to
choose to redesign without the Chinese elm and their supporting structure. I would like to see how it
works all the way across the front. Thank you.
Vice Chair Lew: There are three ways we can do it. We can require modifications to come back to the
subcommittee, which is just two people on the Board. I'm hearing resistance to that. Another way is to
have the packet come back to the full Board. A third way, which we haven't used recently but we've
done in the past, is to approve the project today and have the revisions come back on the consent
calendar. We lose all leverage if we don't like the changes. Technically, there would be one last chance
to comment on the project. The full Board does get to do that.
Chair Gooyer: The problem with that is a design situation like this on a consent calendar is iffy. I've
been involved in enough parking structures, that I'm comfortable with this. Two of you obviously are
not. I don't mind having it come back. That's one of the reasons why I would feel comfortable bringing
it in under the subcommittee. Again, there's more of you that don't. Can I get a motion from somebody
and let's take it from there? Otherwise, we can—somebody come out with something, and it can go up
and down from there.
MOTION
Board Member Furth: I move that we continue this to a date certain to be provided by staff or, if they
prefer, a date uncertain.
Board Member Kim: I'll second that motion.
Chair Gooyer: All those in favor.
Board Members Furth and Kim voted aye.
Chair Gooyer: That's doesn't pass. Let's try something else.
MOTION FAILED
Mr. Lait: I'm sorry. How many were in favor?
Board Member Furth: Two.
City of Palo Alto Page 54
Mr. Lait: How many were against? It would help for us to see the hands, so we can do the official
voting.
Chair Gooyer: It was two for, three against.
Mr. Lait: Who was for it please? The three of you were against?
Board Member Baltay: I'm opposed to that motion, yes.
Mr. Lait: I'm sorry, Commissioner Baltay?
Board Member Baltay: I'm opposed to continuing it the way Wynne presented it.
Mr. Lait: I just need to understand what the vote is.
Board Member Kim: 2-3-0-0. Sorry. Yes, 2-3-0-0, two for, three nay.
Board Member Furth: No motion to continue.
Mr. Lait: Vice Chair Lew, Chair Gooyer and Commissioner Baltay are noes on that last motion. Thank
you.
Chair Gooyer: Somebody have something else?
MOTION
Board Member Baltay: Let me try. I move that we continue this project subject to the applicant
completely redesigning the parking layout including only having one drive aisle and reworking completely
the parking structure in the back to allow for more landscaping on the property perimeter and allow the
building to be somewhat modified from the front as I mentioned in my earlier comments.
Chair Gooyer: Can I get a second on that?
Board Member Furth: I'll second for purposes of a vote.
Chair Gooyer: All those in favor?
Board Members Baltay and Furth voted aye.
Chair Gooyer: Opposed?
Board Members Gooyer, Lew and Kim voted nay.
MOTION FAILED
Chair Gooyer: That doesn't fly either. Somebody else?
MOTION
Board Member Kim: I will move that this project come back for another formal hearing with another look
at the parking structure and also that the elevated trees along El Camino be considered for removal.
Chair Gooyer: Can I get a second on that? I'll second that.
Board Member Furth: (inaudible) friendly amendment if it fails (inaudible).
City of Palo Alto Page 55
Board Member Kim: I will accept that.
Chair Gooyer: All those in favor.
Board Members Kim, Lew, Gooyer and Furth voted aye.
Chair Gooyer: Looks like we got that finally. So that's what, 4-1?
MOTION PASSED
Board Member Baltay: I oppose that too.
Chair Gooyer: That's basically redesign of the parking structure in the back or a second look at the
parking structure in the back, the possibility we would allow the two trees to be removed. That was for
the betterment of the project. Just a look at the entire interrelationship of the sidewalk and the project.
Mr. Lait: There were a number of other comments about balconies and things of this nature.
Board Member Furth: Privacy.
Chair Gooyer: Those aren't in it right at the moment.
Mr. Lait: It doesn't sound like that was included. It sounds like it's looking at the parking structure at
the rear and removing the elms and looking at the paving.
Chair Gooyer: Probably if that comes back, if there's one or two minor items at that point that we want
to add, that's one thing. As of right now, I think the emphasis would be on those items.
Mr. Lait: Thank you.
Chair Gooyer: Is that correct?
Board Member Furth: I would find it helpful to hear from staff on the privacy questions, so we
understand what impact there is or isn't.
Mr. Lait: Sure. This was continued to a date uncertain.
Chair Gooyer: Thank you. I guess that's it.
Study Session
None.
Approval of Minutes November 17, 2016 and December 1, 2016
Chair Gooyer: The final item we have then …
Vice Chair Lew: (inaudible)
Chair Gooyer: Let's vote on the two minutes. That would be November 17th and December 1st. Are
there any comments on either one?
Board Member Furth: I won't vote on December 1st because I wasn't here.
City of Palo Alto Page 56
MOTION
Board Member Baltay: I'll move that we approve the minutes from November 17th.
Vice Chair Lew: I'll second.
Chair Gooyer: Can I get a second? All those in favor.
Board Members unanimously voted aye.
MOTION PASSED
Chair Gooyer: That's one. How about the December 1st?
Board Member Baltay: I'm afraid I haven't seen those minutes. They were only emailed to me
yesterday.
Chair Gooyer: They came in via email to me at least yesterday or the day before.
Board Member Baltay: I haven't reviewed them, so I can't vote either way on them.
MOTION
Vice Chair Lew: I will make a motion that we approve the minutes for December 1st.
Board Member Kim: I'll second that.
Chair Gooyer: All those in favor.
Board Members Lew, Kim and Gooyer voted aye.
Board Members Furth and Baltay abstained.
MOTION PASSED
Board Member Furth: I abstained.
Board Member Baltay: I'm abstaining. I'm just not voting on it. I haven't read them.
Chair Gooyer: That'd be 4-1 then.
Vice Chair Lew: Three and two abstain.
[The Board returned to election of officers.]
City of Palo Alto Page 57
Subcommittee Item
7. 252 Ramona Street [13PLN-00431]: Subcommittee Review of a Previously Approved Project
That was Conditioned to Return With Project Changes Related to Setbacks/Automobile Turning
Radius, the Color Palette, and Upper Level Balconies. Environmental Assessment: Project was
Previously Approved With an Exemption Pursuant to Section 15303(b) of the California
Environmental Quality Act. Zoning District: RMD(NP). For more information please contact
Ranu Aggarwal at RAggarwal@m-group.us
Board Member Furth: For the public record, on the subcommittee item, I have a conflict of interest.
Although I'm the standing member for this month, I will not be participating.
Chair Gooyer: Do you want to sit in?
Board Member Baltay: I've offered to sit in or the Chair has appointed me to sit in.
Board Member Questions, Comments, Announcements
None.
Adjournment