HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-03-15 Architectural Review Board Summary Minutes
City of Palo Alto Page 1
Call to Order/Roll Call
Present: Chair Wynne Furth, Vice Chair Peter Baltay, Board Member Alexander Lew, Robert
Gooyer, Osma Thompson.
Absent: Chair Furth: (Video started mid-sentence) and welcome to the March 15th hearing of the Architectural Review Board. Thank you all for coming. Roll call, please.
Oral Communications
Chair Furth: This is the time for oral communication for any member of the public to speak on a matter
not on the agenda. Do we have any requests to speak during oral communication? Seeing none, we will
continue.
Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions
Chair Furth: Staff have any changes you wish to make?
Jodie Gerhardt, Manager of Current Planning: None. Chair Furth: Board? Okay.
City Official Reports
1. Transmittal of 1) the ARB Meeting Schedule and Attendance Record, 2), Administrative Staff-Level Architectural Review Approvals, and 3) Tentative Future
Agenda items.
Mr. Lait: Just the transmittal that you have in your packet.
Chair Furth: And I understand that we are going to have the need for a subcommittee on two items at
the next meeting. Could you tell me a little more about that?
Jodie Gerhardt, Manager of Current Planning: Yes. We will have 3001 El Camino Real, which is a mixed-use project that was approved. There will be a subcommittee item for that. The second item, we're not aware of quite yet, but there will be proper notification.
Chair Furth: To be determined.
Ms. Gerhardt: Yes.
ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW BOARD
MINUTES: March 15, 2018
City Hall/City Council Chambers
250 Hamilton Avenue
8:30 AM
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Chair Furth: When did we last hear 3001 El Camino Real? Was it before Board Member Thompson was
appointed?
Ms. Gerhardt: I believe so. I'd have to double-check for you.
Chair Furth: Would anybody who did hear that matter like to volunteer to be on that subcommittee? Robert?
Board Member Gooyer: Pardon me?
Chair Furth: I'm looking for volunteers for a subcommittee next week on the return of 3001 El Camino.
Board Member Gooyer: In two weeks? Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem.
Chair Furth: Alex?
Board Member Lew: (Inaudible)
Chair Furth: All right. Those two members will participate. Thank you very much. All right.
Action Items
2. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL: 250 Hamilton Avenue [17PLN-00169]: Consideration
of Tier 3 Wireless Communication Facility Permit Applications for the Deployment of Small Cell
Wireless Communication Equipment on Utility Poles in the Public Right of Way. While the Original
Application Included 18 Small Cell Nodes Within the Mid-Town, Palo Verde, St. Claire Gardens,
and South of Mid-Town neighborhoods, the Current Request is for Approval of 11 Small Cell
Nodes. One Viable Alternate to Node 133 Node (Node 133-E near 949 Loma Verde) is Also Presented for ARB Consideration. The Applicant Removed Seven Small Cell Nodes (Nodes #127, #139, #146, #136, #140, #141, and #147) from ARB Consideration at This Time. Environmental Assessment: Exempt pursuant to CEQA Class 3, Guidelines Section 15303. Zoning: Within Residential Districts. For More Information, Contact Planner Rebecca Atkinson at
rebecca.atkinson@cityofpaloalto.org. 11 Nodes the Architectural Review Board will Review March
15, 2018: Node #129: CPAU Pole# 3121 (near 2490 Louis Road APN 127-30-062) Node #130:
CPAU Pole #2461 (near 2802 Louis Road APN 127-28-046) Node #131: CPAU Pole #3315 (near
891 Elbridge Way APN 127-26-067) Node #133: CPAU Pole #2857 (near 925 Loma Verde APN
127- 24-023) and Node #133E (as an Alternate to #133): CPAU Pole #2856 (near 949 Loma
Verde APN 127-23-009) Node #134: CPAU Pole #2964 (near 3409 Kenneth Dr APN 127-09-028)
Node #135: CPAU Pole # 3610 (near 795 Stone Ln APN 127-47-001) Node #137: CPAU Pole
#3351 (near 3090 Ross Rd APN 127-52-031) Node #138: CPAU Pole #2479 (near 836 Colorado
Av APN 127-27-063) Node #143: CPAU Pole #3867 (near 419 El Verano Av APN 132-15-017)
Node #144: CPAU Pole #1506 (near 201 Loma Verde Av APN 132-48-015) Node #145: CPAU Pole #3288 (near 737 Loma Verde Av APN 127-64-039) Chair Furth: The first hearing is the consideration of a Tier 3 wireless communication family permit application for small cell wireless communication equipment on utility poles in the public right-of-way.
This is approval for 11 of these facilities, including one viable alternative to Node 133 near 949 Loma
Verde. The environmental assessment is that this is exempt pursuant to CEQA Class 3 guidelines. There
are some more details here, which I will not read because it won't be helpful. If we could have the staff
report, please.
Amy French, Chief Planning Official: Thank you, Chair Furth. Verizon Wireless proposes to deploy wireless
communication facilities called small cell nodes in Palo Alto. Today, the ARB is requested to review 11
locations and an alternate location. The map on the screen shows these locations. They are Mid-Town,
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South of Mid-Town, St. Claire Gardens, and Palo Verde neighborhoods. This image shows five designs for
the antennas to be installed at the top of nine existing poles and two replacement poles. The middle
design -- the tapered bayonet shroud -- is recommended. The equipment for the facility is to be attached
to these poles. Five designs are shown here. The box shroud on the left is proposed and recommended.
This is the mock small cell node reflecting the proposed antenna and equipment shrouds. It is located
near the corner of Hopkins and Newell Road, across from the Art Center. The applicant studied vaulting
for these 11 nodes that the ARB is hearing today. The link to the vaulting studies was provided in the staff report. Six nodes are located in the flood zone and five nodes had other site conditions that made vaulting infeasible. The applicant is studying the vaulting potential for the four nodes removed from this application following the December 2017 ARB review. These designs are recommended to be approved based on findings shown on packet pages 16 through 19. These findings are found in the Palo Alto Municipal Code. Wireless communication facilities have 11 permit development standards that must be
met. Then, there are two CUP findings and six architectural review findings that you're familiar with. The
findings require a comprehensive plan conformance review, and this included review of street scape and
design of the right-of-way goals and policies, pedestrian and bicycle plan, and urban forestry master
plan. Additional considerations for making these findings were noise standards and policies of the Federal
Communication Commission radio frequency emission standards. There are seven pages containing
conditions of approval relating to all of this. There's been a great deal of correspondence from the public.
The link to the correspondence received through March 7th is on package page 14. Comments received
after March 7th are provided to the ARB in hard copy at places. Staff seeks the ARB's recommendation
today after public testimony and board discussion. The recommendation will be shared with the Planning and Community Environment Director, who will have five working days to make a decision that is appealable to City Council. The deadline for appeals is 14 days following the director's decision. The contact information is shown on the screen. The decision letter will be posted on the City's webpage. The easiest way to see the letter will be to enter "wireless communication facilities" into the search box at the
upper right part of the City's main webpage. The letter will appear under the latest news in March 2018
category. Just to remind the board, the applicant did study vaulting for the 11 nodes and the link was
provided in the staff report. That concludes my presentation. I will return this for the next -- unless you
have questions, or you want to move to public testimony.
Chair Furth: Thank you. First of all, I wanted to say that we probably have more correspondence on this
topic than anything else in our recent history. It's obviously a matter of great concern in the community.
Before we start the public hearing, I wanted to remind us all of what the scope of our review is. Federal
law establishes that we are not permitted to make determinations about the dangerous -- or lack thereof
-- of the radiation emitted by these facilities. Federal government has declared that that's a matter of
interstate commerce importance that is regulated by them, and not by us. The ARB itself has no power to determine whether or not these facilities are needed by the applicant. That's outside of our scope. We are permitted to exercise our discretion in making a recommendation to the board on more site-specific esthetic and environmental issues, meaning environmental not in the technical sense, but environmental in terms of the impact on those in the area walking by, listening, and so forth. I will begin a request for a
consolidated presentation --
Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director of Planning: Excuse me, Chair, if I may interrupt. Typically, on these
quasi-judicial matters, we hear from the applicant first. And before we hear from the applicant -- Thank
you.
Chair Furth: Does anybody have any extra outside-the-meeting disclosures, discussions that presented
them with evidence or information that's not on the record, they wish to disclose at this time?
Vice Chair Baltay: Yes, I do. I spoke with numerous members of the community as I walked around,
looking at these various cell nodes. I don't have any individual names, but many people spoke to me on
both sides of the issue.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Okay, if we could hear from the applicant. You have 10 minutes, and if you could give us your name and spell it, for the record. Thank you.
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Jennifer Haas: Good morning. My name is Jennifer Haas. I'm a Verizon network representative. Thank
you for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. I'd also like to thank staff for all of their support
and work on our project. I know I haven't presented in front of you before, but I have been working
behind the scenes on this project since it started back in 2016. I wanted to let you know that our whole
Verizon team is here today to answer any questions that you may have. In our time this morning, we are
going to review our past ARB hearings, the work that Verizon has done in response, and the decisions
that are in front of you today. The Palo Alto small cell project has done through a significant evolution since we began back in June 2016. First, the Palo Alto City Council voted in favor of our master license agreement, allowing Verizon to attach to the City's existing infrastructure. After the agreement was signed, Verizon spent close to six months working with multiple City departments to understand the City's ordinances, and to establish a process to best facilitate the manageable review of the entire small cell project. We developed three design options and brought them to a preliminary ARB hearing in May 2017,
to listen to your feedback. At our preliminary ARB hearing, you asked us to make some design
improvements. On the screen is the original version of the mock site that we built in the last year. Over
the last half of 2017, our team worked with CPAU and Planning to work on the design elements that you
requested. We returned to formal ARB hearing in December 2017 to show what we've developed.
Together with staff, we made four significant improvements to our design. We reduced the stand-off
distance between the equipment bracket and the utility pole, decreasing the overall cubic volume; we
worked closely with Urban Forestry and Miss Naegele, our arborist for this project, to identify
opportunities where Verizon could provide amenity street trees to the city to better screen pole-mounted
equipment. We worked with CPAU to develop a custom shroud to cover the bayonet, and we developed custom shroud options for the pole-mounted equipment to have a more streamlined, cohesive look. These designs are shown on the sheet CT 6 of your plan set. Left to right they include: The box, the bare equipment, the sunshields, the cake shroud, and the saber cage. These options provided a reduction in the overall cubic volume, which was a significant improvement to the designs we presented at the
preliminary ARB. We also removed all ground equipment and, therefore, there will be no noise with any
of these designs. At the December 7th hearing, two ARB members expressed a preference for the box
shroud. However, you requested an option for the equipment to be placed underground to the greatest
extent feasible. We looked into the issue of vaulting our equipment very seriously, and I want to walk you
through our analysis and what we've learned. Placing radios in an underground vault requires a great
deal of engineering review, and because of this, Verizon has very few approved vault designs available
for our use. On the screen is an example of a vaulted right-of-way site in the city of Santa Cruz. The
interior dimensions of this vault are 4 by 6 feet. This is the smallest vault currently available to hold the
equipment proposed in Palo Alto. This photo highlights the fundamental challenge we face when trying to
vault in the right-of-way -- limited space. An underground vault needs a significant amount more equipment than if the radios are installed outside. It must include fans to keep the radios cool, there must be venting to allow the hot air to exit the vault, and pumps in the event of water intrusion. Most importantly, the vault must be large enough to meet OSHA standards for a worker to fit and work safely inside the vault. As we investigated the possibility of vaulting sites in Cluster One, Verizon worked with
City staff to establish parameters for feasible vaulting locations. If any of these criteria were present at a
certain location, it would not be feasible for vaulting. On the screen are the six criteria for evaluating
vault placement. These include: Interference with existing underground utilities; if the vault would
encroach on private property; location within a flood plain; unable to comply with any state, federal or
city standards; if they would disturb the existing trees protected in a tree protection zone; or, if it was
unable to comply with the City of Palo Alto Comprehensive Plan Noise Standards. Using this criteria, we
went foot by foot down the sidewalk to determine if a vault could physically be installed. On the screen is
an example of this analysis from Palo Alto 137. In your packets, you should have site-specific vaulting
reports showing the analysis we completed for each node location. We have thoroughly evaluated all the
sites in Cluster One and determine that there are 11 sites where vaulting is not feasible. These are the 11
sites in front of you today. The four remaining sites from the original cluster have been removed from consideration at this time. As you can see in the summary, the major challenges we face in trying to vault in Palo Alto are narrow, sloped sidewalks, a street tree program with an extensive underground root system, and codes that limit the placement of underground utilities in flood zones. We are prepared to
talk about any vaulting question that you may have today. Because we have six sites where the vaulting
was not feasible due to location within a flood zone, I wanted to take a minute and explain this specific
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issue. On the screen is an elevation page for Palo Alto 130. The ground elevation at the base of this pole
was measured at 8.98 feet. This pole is at a location within a FEMA-designed flood plain level of 10.5
feet, due to the potential over-topping of the Bayfront levies. You can see that in the event of the flood,
the entire underground vault would be submerged. Using the Santa Cruz vault as an example, the way
that the vaults are designed, there must be a way to expel both the warm air and the water out. Looking
at the Santa Cruz vault on your screen, the hot air comes out of the vents in the sidewalk, and the water
is pumped out through the vault discharge pipes and into the gutter. In the event of a flood, the water would enter the vault through the vents on the sidewalk or the slightly lower discharge pipes, so the inside the vault would completely fill with water and the equipment would stop operating. In the event of a flood, due to the technical requirements and design, there is no way to flood-proof these vaults, which is a requirement by the City of Palo Alto due to the location within a flood zone. I'm going to move on, but please let me know if you have any further questions on this topic. At the request of staff, we've
completed a further update to the mock site, as you'll see on the screen. We've just finished construction
late last week, so I hope you've had an opportunity to visit and see how we further addressed your
feedback. We've installed the box shroud to hide the equipment. We've added the custom-designed taper
shroud to cover the wooden bayonet extension, and since we last saw you in December, a new radio
model became available, and we were able to swap out an older model with a new, smaller radio. This
also decreased the size of the design. We've reduced the stand-off from the pole to four inches, and the
battery cabinet has been removed. If you compare this design to what we presented back in May 2017,
you can see it's a significant reduction in cubic volume, and in the overall bulk of the designs. As you
requested, the cables are hidden, the pole has a consistent shape from the top to the bottom, the equipment design is streamlined, and there is no ground equipment. This arrangement of stealthing options on the mock site is the preferred design as recommended by staff, but there are other options available to you today. On the front CT [phonetic] pages of your plan set, you can see a menu of stealthing options available for the top or the bottom of the pole. On these slides, we have circled staff's
recommended design, as Amy covered. The staff report includes a copy of our project description. In this
document, we explain our pole selection process on packet page 35. We also review what alternate sites
were evaluated on packet page 38. We are prepared to go through any of that information today.
Throughout the course of this project, Verizon has hosted four community workshops, participated in
numerous site walks with members of the public, responded to hundreds of emails and phone calls,
providing information and learning about what is important to this community. You directed staff, for us
to explore the option for the equipment to be placed underground to the greatest extent feasible. As we
have demonstrated by our analysis, it is not feasible for these 11 locations. Staff has provided a
recommendation for approval, including the taper shroud and the box shroud. Verizon concurs with staff
and requests you make a recommendation to the Planning Director to approve these 11 sites as proposed. The sites presented today are an accumulation of close to two years of collaborative work between Verizon, City staff, the ARB, and the Palo Alto residents. We've created custom designs to meet the unique needs of this community. We've listened to your feedback to develop a state-of-the-art small-cell network designed for Palo Alto Thank you.
Chair Furth: Are there any Board questions before we go to public comment?
Vice Chair Baltay: Yes. Through the Chair, is it possible to have the staff go through site by site again,
why the vaulting is not feasible?
Male: Can't hear you.
Vice Chair Baltay: Through the Chair, is it possible to have the staff or the applicant go through site by
site, to explain in more detail while the vaulting is not feasible? Is that acceptable?
Chair Furth: What's the wish of the Board?
Board Member Gooyer: That's fine, but it looks like they've got that list that we just saw a minute ago.
Vice Chair Baltay: I feel like the list flashed in front of me and I wanted to really --
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Chair Furth: Okay, we'd like to go through that.
Vice Chair Baltay: -- think about each site, and I just don't feel like we had a chance.
Chair Furth: Why don't we, if you've got the materials, let's go through it --
Board Member Gooyer: The slide that had the 11 sites on it.
Chair Furth: -- side by side and see if there are any questions about specific ones. Thank you.
Board Member Gooyer: Yeah, that one.
Ms. Haas: This is the summary slide of the 11 sites. Six were located as a flood plain, which I explained. The other five sites were not feasible due to a variety of issues. What questions can we answer?
Chair Furth: If you could concentrate probably on the ones that you have not, you've described reasons other than presence of the flood plain.
Ms. Haas: Sure.
Chair Furth: Starting with number six.
Ms. Haas: In the back of our presentation, we have a visual, so I'm going to try and bring it up quickly.
Chair Furth: Thank you. And could you give us the address for number six, staff?
Ms. Haas: We have an address for 135.
Chair Furth: We appreciate that you provided the information to us in packets, but we have hundreds of
pages of documents --
Ms. Haas: We understand.
Chair Furth: -- today, so it's helpful for us and for the audience to get it from --
Mary Diesch: It's located at 795 Stone Lane.
Chair Furth: Okay, we're talking about 795 Stone Lane. Thank you.
Ms. Diesch: Good morning. My name is Mary Diesch, and I'm the site acquisition manager for this project.
Chair Furth: Great. Could you, once again, spell your name for our transcriber?
Ms. Diesch: Yes. [spells name] Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to present again and take
the time to review our project. In terms of vaulting, I'm going to talk with the non-flood plain nodes. This
is Palo Alto 135, again, 795 Stone Lane.
Chair Furth: What page is that in our plan packet?
Board Member Gooyer: Looks like 32.
Ms. Haas: You can also see an image on packet page 43 of the original alternative analysis for Node 135.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Are we in agreement about which site we're talking about and where it is?
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Ms. Diesch: This is 135. You'll see the photo of the storm drain channel.
Chair Furth: Okay. Okay.
Ms. Diesch: Okay. There's a handful of reasons why a vault is precluded from being placed in this
location. The first is that it's located adjacent to the Santa Clara Valley Water District storm drain channel,
and we're not allowed to place anything within their easement, either above ground or underground.
That takes up a significant length of this sidewalk. In addition to that, we're not allowed to place a vault
within five feet of the existing pole. Additionally, this area has a sloped sidewalk and rolled curb, and vaults need to be placed in a level plain. There is no way, technically, to do that. Rolled curbs do not allow for sump pumps to discharge into the street as required. Additionally, there is a large Modesto ash tree that is protected, and it has a 36-inch trunk and a 30-foot tree protection zone. The Tree Technical
Manual and the Palo Alto Municipal Code preclude us from doing any sort of construction or excavation
within that tree protection zone. We've noted that there on the left. If you add all that together and look
along the sidewalk, there is just really nowhere to place a vault underground.
Vice Chair Baltay: Could I ask a question, please? Across the street on that particular site is another pole
that seems to have a lot more facility nearby to fit a vault. Did you consider that?
Ms. Diesch: We did consider that, and we don't have a slide to show you, but it's actually more -- the
Santa Clara Valley Water District channel is actually wider on that side and covers almost the entire
length of the 60 feet available to us. We have maybe five feet on the end, and it is also near a protected
street tree. About 25 feet of the entire length on one side and 30 feet on the other side of the pole are all
storm drain channel. There's really nowhere we would be allowed to place anything above ground in
terms of ground equipment, or below ground.
Vice Chair Baltay: And a question to staff. It seems to me that the right-of-way is really the city road, Ross Road, rather than the drainage channel. When you have two rights-of-way crossing each other, which one supersedes? Why is this not in the road right-of-way, not the Santa Clara Valley waterway right-of-way? When I look at the map here, it seems to be squarely in the road right-of-way.
Albert Yang, Senior Deputy District Attorney: Yeah, that's not something I can speak to without seeing
the instruments that establish the rights-of-way. In those cases where there is some, an apparent
conflict, we would try to harmonize the two documents. It appears in this case, though, that the storm
channel passes underneath our road, so we likely would not be able to authorize construction that might
jeopardize the storm channel.
Vice Chair Baltay: But there does exist right now City infrastructure in that same right-of-way, yes?
??: (Inaudible)
Chair Furth: Thank you. Any more questions on this one before we go to the next? Go ahead.
Ms. Haas: Next we'll bring up Palo Alto 137.
Chair Furth: You want to confirm the street address for that, so that --?
Ms. Diesch: Palo Alto 137 is located at 3090 Ross Road.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Welcome.
Ms. Diesch: This is one of those situations where, again, the existing conditions just preclude us from being able to put a vault of almost any size anywhere here. The pole we've selected here is located
between two private driveways. It is adjacent to an existing street light. Both the existing pole and street
light require five-foot setback -- that's a CPAU requirement -- on each side where a vault can't be placed,
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and that's for safety and the structural integrity of that existing pole. You'll see as you look at the — as
Jennifer noted, we went foot by foot. If you start at the pole, we can't go out five feet, and then, we run
into a street light, and then, it's another five feet. And then, we have a resident's driveway to the right,
and obviously we can't place a vault in the sidewalk in front of a resident's driveway and prevent them
from accessing it. Additionally, at the end of the 30-foot search area, there is, again, a large Modesto ash
tree. In this case, it has a 22-inch trunk and a tree protection zone of over 18 feet. Again, if that
driveway weren't there, that would still preclude us from excavating in that area. If we go to the left down Ross Road from the pole, again, we have five feet distance setback that's required by CPAU. And then, there is a driveway -- again, we're located between two private driveways. To the left, there's a private driveway, and between that, again, there's another, even larger Modesto ash that has a trunk of 32 inches and a tree protection zone of over 26 feet. That would preclude us from doing this kind of excavation in this area. Additionally, this is another situation where we have a slope sidewalk and a rolled
curb and, unfortunately, vaults need to be placed in a level plain and have somewhere for the sump
pumps to discharge, and it really should be a standard sidewalk. For all those reasons, Palo Alto 137
could not be, the equipment could not be placed underground.
Chair Furth: May I ask you a question?
Ms. Diesch: Of course.
Chair Furth: Are you essentially saying that in any street frontage with a slanted sidewalk/rolled curb, you
can't place an underground vault, whether or not there are trees there?
Ms. Haas: We received comments back from City of Palo Alto Public Works, expressing some concern that
a vault could not be placed on the transition area of a rolled curb, and that it must be placed on a flat plain. On a flat plain. These are comments we received.
Chair Furth: Translating that, does that mean if there is a curbed sidewalk, there's a slanted sidewalk/rolled curb, you cannot place a vault on that block?
Ms. Diesch: Correct.
Ms. Haas: Correct.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Haas: Are there any other questions on 137?
Chair Furth: No.
Ms. Haas: Okay. The next site is 143 with an address of 419 El Verano Avenue.
Ms. Diesch: At 419 El Verano Avenue, our pole is located adjacent to, again, a street light and a
resident's private driveway and entrance, and all of that to the right precludes the placement of a vault.
We have trees along here, as well. We've got a Southern Magnolia with a tree protection zone of over 16
feet. And again, this is a location with a very sloped, this one is a very sloped sidewalk/rolled curb. In
addition to that, the landscaping that the residents have planted has actually grown over the sidewalk, so the width of the sidewalk in this area from the roll to the landscaping is actually only about three feet, total. We just don't even have enough width for something without cutting out a... Even if the sidewalk were level, we would have to cut out a significant amount of landscaping.
Vice Chair Baltay: Let me interject on this one. I think this is emblematic of what I'm seeing on many of
these. This photo is a pretty good example of many, many sidewalks in the district we're talking about.
When I look to the left of that utility pole, it seems to me that you easily have space in that sidewalk.
Yes, the sidewalk is slightly sloped, but there must be some way to get a lid to a vault to fit that.
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Otherwise, you're making everything infeasible. Many of these homes have sump pumps that discharge
through the rolled curb. Again, those don't seem -- to me -- really infeasible reasons. Is there anything
I'm missing? Is there something (inaudible) than that? This is just small bushes overgrowing the edge of
the sidewalk. Again, that's a common situation. What am I missing? What is really infeasible about this
site, please?
Ms. Haas: The width of the proposed vault would protrude into the sloped edge of the sidewalk and it
would not be at grade. These are direct feedback that we've received from City staff, precluding us from placing a vault in these locations.
Board Member Gooyer: I don't mean to interject, but the reality of it is, I mean, let's face it, if we really wanted to, we could change the design of the sidewalk for that area where the vault is and make it just a
straight six-inch-drop sidewalk. That's not really the point. It's a matter of what it looks like, as having
read these things. The City itself has put so many regulations on the various requirements that, if we're
representing the City, it's the City fighting the City as to, as far as the placement of the trees, and as far
of the placement of the rolled curbs, or all the other stuff. If you really wanted to, it could be done. It's
just a matter of how much effort wants to be put into it. I get the impression that the City doesn't really
want to put the effort into it.
Chair Furth: Well, let's continue with the presentation and our questions and we'll debate the alternatives
and possibilities. I'm finding this helpful, to see the case-by-case analysis. Thank you.
Ms. Haas. Okay. Moving on to Palo Alto 144. This is located at 201 Loma Verde Avenue.
Chair Furth: Yes?
Ms. Diesch: One-forty-four. It's 144. Just threw me off a little, that's all. One-forty-four, we've done in two pieces -- the analysis -- because it's on a corner, and it's just going to be easier for you to see 30 foot along one side and 30 foot along the other. We'll go along Loma Verde first, where the pole is actually located. Again, you can see that we cannot locate the vault within five feet of the existing wood pole. As we move along the sidewalk, we have an entrance to the apartment building that's located
there, and that precludes us from placing a vault in the sidewalk because we need to be able to open and
access these, sometimes for long periods of time. In addition to that, again, we have a tree that prohibits
us from any excavation within that tree protection zone. In this case, it's just over 10 feet. That's just
along Loma Verde Avenue. Toward the end of the 30-foot search area -- we are sort of getting outside of
the search range -- you can see there is a, I guess you would call it a storm drain channel. Technically,
it's listed on the utility plans as a 12-inch diameter PCC pipeline, which I believe is used for storm
drainage. That is along the entire curb. That precludes us from vaulting along Loma Verde. When you
turn the corner, you can see --
Board Member Gooyer: I just have one quick question.
Ms. Diesch: Sure, of course.
Board Member Gooyer: I keep seeing that the vault is not allowed to be placed within five feet of the existing pole. Who created that requirement?
Ms. Diesch: The City of Palo Alto Utilities did because of how far we have to dig down. They have to ensure the structural integrity of the pole and its foundation and its embedment in the ground. My
understanding, it's a five-foot around each of the poles. And street lights.
Board Member Gooyer: Nobody's ever thought about strengthening the --? Never mind. I'm pushing
water up hill.
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Ms. Diesch: We'll get to that. I think that would be a question better suited for Utilities. That is definitely
the dimensions they gave us.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Diesch: Again, as we turn the corner along Emerson Street, what automatically comes into your view
is that there is a high-pressure fire hydrant. The same is attaching to poles. When we use
telecommunications equipment underground, it is regulated by the CPUC. That is called General Order
128, and the pole tops is General Order 85, which you've probably heard that thrown around a little. We have to maintain setbacks from things like high-pressure water service and the lateral that serves that fire hydrant. Again, this is a situation with a rolled curb and very sloped curb, but in addition to that, we have an ADA ramp on the corner by the pole. There's just no way to locate a vault in that rolled
transition slope of an ADA ramp and maintain the integrity of the ADA ramp.
Ms. Haas: The next site is Palo Alto 145, with an address of 737 Loma Verde Avenue.
Ms. Diesch: This is one of those with just a lot of existing utilities, and you can really even see it. There
are large apartment complexes located along Loma Verde here, and each one of them is served by large
utility laterals. We've noted that with the red lines. And can see all the way down the sidewalk, there are
large utility laterals. Some are sewer clean-outs. They may be water, gas. What it adds up to is that we
have an entire length of sidewalk filled with utility laterals that would preclude placement of a vault. In
addition to that, we do have large trees here or there. It's on private property, but there is a Redwood
tree that is a protected species in Palo Alto, and those usually have large and wide root systems that
would come out to the sidewalk area. There are two other protected trees, as you can see, also along the
length of that sidewalk. If the utility laterals weren't there, we would be having some problems with the trees.
Vice Chair Baltay: Excuse me one second. Again, across the street, there seems to be a pole with many fewer obstructions. Why did that not get chosen instead? Please.
Ms. Diesch: I can take a look at that for you. Across the street is 145 G, is probably the one you're
speaking of. F and G are both located across the street, but one is a small metal street light, and there is
a wood pole across the street. It has a primary riser on the pole, and CPA does not allow attachments
when there's a primary riser. It's high voltage.
Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you.
Ms. Diesch: You're welcome.
Ms. Haas: Do you have any other questions at this time?
Chair Furth: Yes. Commissioner -- Board Member --.
Board Member Thompson: I'd also like to note that I came in before the staff report began. You
mentioned that there are going to be some extra trees that are included. Could you show us which sites
you guys are doing that in?
Ms. Diesch: Our project arborist is here, as well, Katherine Naegele. She would be more prepared to answer any specific questions. The proposed amenity trees came out of, sort of a collaboration between Planning, Urban Forestry, and our project arborist, to just help screen general areas. If any of...You know, when you go through these alterative site analyses, what you'll really see is that there's usually
only, maybe one or two viable poles that would cover a node. We usually choose the one that is most
well-screened, most hidden, would have the least impact on the surrounding area. In this case --
City of Palo Alto Page 11
Chair Furth: Just to untangle this a little bit, for my understanding. I've lost count. Have you finished
going through this site-by-site, pole-by-pole analysis?
Ms. Diesch: Yes, there were five nodes that were infeasible --
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Diesch: -- due to reasons other than flood zone.
Chair Furth: Now we're on to tree questions.
Ms. Diesch: Wherever there is sort of blank space along the street, Urban Forestry and our project arborist worked on each node to find where we could plant and donate additional street amenity trees to the city of Palo Alto. Palo Alto 130 is the first one we've proposed, and two forest pansies are proposed on either side of the pole. They're shown here more at planting stage, and obviously they would grow
and fill in. On Palo Alto 131, we've proposed a Blue Atlas cedar on the corner there. It's not in the
picture, but on 133...Well, it depends on what the ARB chooses. On 133, we have two available to you.
As you know, there's an alternate that Planning has recommended, so we have submitted materials.
Either node is acceptable to us, so if ARB has a recommendation, we obviously would like to hear that
today, and I'm sure the director would, as well. For this primary node that was originally selected, there's
a hop bush that would be proposed adjacent to the pole. And for the alternate, Urban Forestry helped us
propose a Crepe Myrtle in that space you see right in front of the equipment, to help screen the
equipment. I don't know the name of this tree. I can't remember the name of this one. This is 143 on El
Verano, and you can see that our proposed tree is just to the left of the pole. It is opposite the
equipment, but again, it's just the idea of generally, sort of filling in the street trees where possible
around the poles. We propose two live oaks for this one where vaulting was infeasible on the corner of Emerson and Loma Verde. Here you can see our proposed amenity tree. This is a Hackberry, just to match. That entire street is lined with Hackberries, so that's why it was selected. You can see it's not just a one-size-fits-all. Each one has been looked at and selected carefully.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Any more questions before we go to public comment?
Board Member Lew: I have a question about the bayonet shroud. I did look at the mock-up, and then, I
did review your plans. On some of the plans, it looks like you're placing the utility pole, the existing utility
pole, with something taller, so you wouldn't necessarily have a bayonet, right? You could just make the
pole taller. Is that under consideration for all of the poles, or was that just --? Were you showing --? I
think it's maybe two of the locations.
Ms. Haas: Correct. We had two poles where, due to structural reasons, the pole needed to be replaced.
Board Member Lew: Okay.
Ms. Haas: In those instances, a bayonet is not used because a larger pole can be installed.
Board Member Lew: Right.
Ms. Haas: Any of the design options are available to you today.
Board Member Lew: Okay. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Anything else?
Board Member Gooyer: Let me just clarify. On your options here, on sheet CT-3, the way I saw this was you were giving us five options, basically, and the last one says, "Cap mount on new pole." Does that
mean that's only viable on those two poles, or can we require new poles to be placed everywhere?
City of Palo Alto Page 12
Ms. Haas: I would like to ask staff for CPAU to address that question.
Mr. Lait: Full replacement is an option. We would have to do a site-by-site analysis for pole replacement,
working with our utilities department. The ones that are in need of replacement because of the structural
issues are proposed, but all these options, again, are on the table for the Board to consider.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furth: Just to clarify for us and the audience. That's cap mount on new pole, it's picture number 5
on sheet CT-3.
Board Member Gooyer: Right.
Chair Furth: Thank you. All right, thank you for your presentation. We'll now go to the public portion of the hearing. I have 24 speaker cards, and a request first from Jean Fleming, Barbara Lilly, Annette Ron,
Ruth Ellen Dickenson, and Karen Thorne, for a consolidated presentation by, I should say J. Fleming, is
what it says here. You may have up to 15 minutes for your presentation.
J. Fleming: Thank you, and good morning. I'm very low-tech here. In December, you directed Verizon to
abide by Palo Alto ordinances and locate underground at each proposed cell tower site its hundreds of
pounds of ugly equipment. Verizon has responded with a resounding "No." There is not a single site for
which Verizon has come back to you with a plan to vault its equipment. Why not? Their excuses for not
vaulting amount to one of two things. Either they claim there's an unacceptable risk of flooding at the
site, or they claim there's some kind of physical impediment; something's in the way. In fact, it is feasible
for Verizon to locate its commercial equipment underground at every site in this residential neighborhood.
And the reasons it puts forward for not doing so are disingenuous and misleading. Let's start with
flooding. Verizon’s own environmental assessment worksheets -- the documents they prepared and they submitted to you to support their application to install these cell towers next to people's homes -- say there is not a single one of these sites in a special flood hazard area. Zero. Ms. Diesch, who was just speaking to you, signed each of those worksheets. None of them are in a special flood hazard area according to Verizon. Could some kind of flooding one day occur in the Cluster 1 neighborhoods? Sure. All
of Palo Alto is at a low elevation. So what? For example, as Verizon acknowledges, and as Jonathan Lait
confirmed here in December, the City of Palo Alto is going to put its utilities underground at all of these
sites. So what? What Palo Alto can engineer, Verizon, a company with revenue well in excess of $100
billion, can surely engineer. Moreover, no matter where Verizon installs its equipment, periodically some
of that equipment is going to fail and have to be replaced. Yet Verizon acts as though water in an
underground vault is the only possible threat to its service. This is absurd. Here is another absurdity.
Verizon takes the position that with these new cell towers, it is providing an essential service, service that
cannot risk interruption. This neighborhood already has cell service without a single one of these new
towers. The new towers will not be providing an essential service. They are simply intended to support
additional high-speed data traffic in the future. The capacity to download cute cat videos is not an essential service. In other words -- and again -- so what if Verizon's service is interrupted once in a blue moon? Electricity is an actual essential service, and electricity is going underground at all of these sites. The bottom line is this. So what if Verizon has to replace a few radios every now and then because of water damage? That is simply a cost of doing business. A New York Times piece on March 3rd says this:
Telecommunications companies hoping to cash in on what is predicted to be $250 billion in annual
service revenue from 5G by 2025 -- within seven years -- are pushing to build the system as quickly and
cheaply as possible. Truer words were never written. We think these guys can afford to pick up the tab
for water damaged equipment once in a while if they have to. We also think there is no good reason why
Verizon should be allowed to shift the cost to us in the form of lower quality of life, lowered home values,
and increased taxpayer liability, by putting its ugly commercial equipment on poles right next to our
homes. To turn to Verizon's there's something in the way arguments for not vaulting its equipment.
These two are disingenuous and misleading. Verizon could easily vault its equipment 50 feet from the
pole, not the 30 feet it says it has, and that is more than enough distance to be able to work around any
true impediment. In fact, they just submitted a design for a tower in Palo Alto that has a 47-foot distance
City of Palo Alto Page 13
from a pole. In fact, even the 30 feet with which Verizon says it has to work is plenty. In particular, using
street vaults with drivable covers alone would give Verizon all the flexibility it needs to accommodate any
real impediment near a pole. Verizon states that when the City undergrounds the utilities at these
proposed cell sites, it will remove its equipment from utility poles. That means one of three things. Either
Verizon knows it can fully underground its own equipment when those poles leave, or it knows these
towers are strictly optional when it comes to providing Verizon service, or it knows there are alternate
ways to deliver service that work just as well as installing equipment next to people's homes here. If Verizon can remove the equipment from the pole later and still provide service -- and it says it can -- then why must it install the equipment on the pole now? I'd like to add one small but telling detail, I think, about how disingenuous Verizon is being here. I started drafting my remarks at the end of last year when Verizon had already submitted its re-submitted plans. I'm not expressing that very well. I was surprised to discover that Verizon apparently had never heard of sump pumps. This is, again, a company
with revenue of over $100 billion a year, it is quoting its engineers all the time, and yet, when you look at
those documents, they couldn't vault because they had never heard of sump pumps. Now, somebody
apparently gave them a head's up and they since have resubmitted their plans to you, and they actually
now seem to be aware of the concept of the sump pump. But, the point isn't the sump pumps. The point
is that this company is disingenuous and misleading. The truth is that Verizon can easily do exactly what
you ask them to do -- put their equipment underground. It just doesn't want to go to the expense. On
behalf of united neighbors, I ask you to please deny approval to any proposed cell tower for which
Verizon's plans do not specify that all equipment -- except the antenna -- will be located completely
underground, and will comply with Palo Alto's noise ordinances. A small point with respect to noise. Verizon says it has removed the back-up batteries from its design, but it does not say that it will never add back-up batteries. That is what we believe Verizon must commit to. This concession that they have made right now is meaningless because they have not made a commitment to not come back and add batteries to the pole. Others from our group, many other people are speaking today, but I want to flag
just a couple of people who will be talking. You will be hearing about the economics of neighborhood cell
towers and how that favors Verizon at our expense. That will be a letter from Stanford economist Jim
VanHorne. Sites such as these are dirt cheap for Verizon, but they saddle municipalities like ours with
liability, and of course, they saddle homeowners with decreased home values. We also will be talking a
little bit about an environmental review. We know that's not your purview, but we believe that the City
should reverse course on that one, so we have a couple words to say about that. We also have Kaori
Shuji here. She lives at 2409 Louis Road. What she has to say is a case in point for why Verizon's refusal
to locate its ugly, bulky equipment underground violates Palo Alto's ordinances. Finally, Jerry Fan is going
to be talking about significant gap. On that point, I have a photograph. This is a photograph of the
Verizon store on University Avenue. Not a very good photograph. I'm not planning to be much of a photographer, but it is a photograph. You probably all have gone by this store any number of times. My question is, is there something surprising about this photograph? I'll tell you, there is something surprising about this photograph. There is no sign on the Verizon store that says, "Sorry, we can't offer you an account. Our service in Palo Alto has significant gaps." Thank you very much for listening.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Fleming: Ma'am, may I give these to you?
Chair Furth: If you'd give them to staff, that would be great. In view of the large number of people who
wish to speak to us and our desire to hear everybody this morning, I'm going to ask that you limit
yourself to two minutes. The first speaker will be Amrutha, to be followed by Dr. Ann Lee, to be followed
by Roopam. Amrutha, please.
Dr. Ann Lee: Hello. I've provided some references, as well, for the Board.
Chair Furth: What is your name?
Dr. Lee: Yes. My name is Dr. Ann Lee. I'm also speaking on behalf of Roopam Bell [phonetic] and Marianne Jacobi. I have some references for the Board to preview. Hello, my name is Dr. Ann Lee. I'm a
City of Palo Alto Page 14
physician. I am here to request the ARB to reject the small cell residential expansion application. Allow
me to be among those to mention the elephant in the room regarding 5G wireless expansion. I'll begin by
using the words of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in their May 1998 -- I repeat, 1998
-- issue of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology magazine, where they state, "The past few years have
increased reports that medical devices such as pacemakers, apnea monitors, electronically-powered
wheelchairs, have failed to operate correctly because of interference from various emitters of radio
frequency energy. The consequences of these failures range from inconvenience to serious injuries, and death." This was back in 1998. According to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, there were approximately 58,000 cell towers in the United States at that time. By 2016, there were 308,000, more than a five-fold increase of RF-emitting cell towers. Please understand that this could become a major liability issue for the city, which Amrutha will expand upon in a moment. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the United States Department of Labor, on their
website regarding radio frequency and microwave radiation state, "Natural low-frequency (inaudible)
fields come from two main sources; the sun, and thunderstorm activity. The man-made fields, at much
higher frequencies, have altered this natural EMF [phonetic]. At sufficiently high-powered densities, RF
microwave energy can cause thermal effects that can cause blindness and sterility. Non-thermal effects
such as alternation of the human body circadian rhythm, immune system, and the nature of the electrical
and chemical signals communicated through the cell membrane have been demonstrated." [Buzzer
sounds.] I'm speaking on behalf of two more people.
Chair Furth: Excuse me, who are you speaking on behalf of?
Dr. Lee: Roopam Bell [phonetic] and Marianne Jacobi.
Chair Furth: Excuse me. Yes? I'm sorry, are --?
Dr. Lee: Roopam and Marianne. Two different people.
Chair Furth: Okay. Our rules actually are a little complicated here. They require that if you want extended time, you have five people that you're speaking on behalf of. I believe that is correct. I'll give you another
minute.
Dr. Lee: Okay. Susan Foster is an honorary firefighter for the San Diego Fire Department, and a medical
writer. She writes in September regarding Senate Bill 649: "The state's firefighters have a history of,
dating back to the 1990s, of fighting cell towers [sic] off of their stations." "The wireless
telecommunications facilities' bill is essentially a telecom takeover giving wireless carriers the right to
force cities and counties to lease available lampposts, right-of-way and public buildings, with the
exception of fire stations." Why are California firefighters adamantly against cell towers being installed on
their stations? Because according to their Resolution 15, many firefighters who are living with cell towers
on or adjacent to their stations are paying a substantial price in terms of physical and mental health, and
a study not affiliated with the wireless industry has showed brain damage found on SPECT scans. The burning question here is that legislation should ask themselves: If we exempt fire stations to protect firefighters, why are we allowing cell towers throughout neighborhoods, [Buzzer sounds] in front of preschools, schools, hidden in church steeples --
Chair Furth: Thank you, Dr. Lee. (crosstalk) Excuse me.
Dr. Lee: -- for fire stations. Thank you.
Chair Furth: I would like to note that a lot of the material that you provided to us in your oral
presentation has also been provided to us in written materials, submitted to us and read by us. Thank
you. Bill Straka? To be followed by Marianne Jacobi, to be followed by Tom O'Connor. Excuse me. Yes,
staff?
Staff: (Inaudible)
City of Palo Alto Page 15
Chair Furth: She has ceded her time to somebody else?
Mr. Lait: Chair, just before the speakers begin, I want to clarify this issue. It is true, it is the Board's rules
that if you pool five or more speakers together, you get to speak for an extended period of time. In this
particular case -- one second. In this particular case, the last speaker -- If I can please continue. Dr. Lee
officially sort of spoke on her behalf. While she indicated she was speaking for others, the Board didn't
recognize that as a pooled time. Those two other speakers that were referenced have an opportunity to
speak before the Board. I would just encourage the Chair to allow everybody to speak for two minutes, and where there are some pooled cards of five or more, that you speak for 15 minutes.
Chair Furth: Excuse me, is this another requested speaker? The first person that I called is listed here as Amrutha. I did not hear from her. She did not speak.
Amrutha: Yes, that's --
Chair Furth: Okay.
Amrutha: Yes. I was going to speak after Ann.
Chair Furth: All right, why don't you proceed?
Amrutha: Hi, my name is Amrutha, and I'm a Palo Alto resident. My background is in computer science
and mathematics. I'm speaking on behalf of my neighbors, Jyothi and Lakshmi. I'm here to request the
ARB to reject the placement of these privately-owned, extremely powerful, close-proximity microwave
radiation-emitting antennas -- the so-called small cells -- on public utility poles and facilities. It is
unconstitutional for these close-proximity microwave radiation-emitting antennas to be erected in
residential zones close to 15 to 50 feet away from homes where people sleep, live and heal, because
doing so would be a health, safety and liability hazard. I will list the reasons why the ARB must deny these applications. According to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, local governments have the authority and duty to regulate the operations of these antennas, including power levels and hours of operation, to protect its residents' privacy and safety, because operations of cell towers were not pre-empted by the 1996 TCA. Because operations were not pre-empted, considerations of environmental effect and health
effect is clearly on City's shoulders for how much power these antennas output, and for what hours of
the day. It is obvious that the 1996 Telecommunications Act confers a great favor on the wireless
industry, but destroying the power to surmount any opposition to their plans of erecting an indiscriminate
number of cell towers in utter disregard of the health hazard these antennas pose to the public,
especially to children. This provision of the 1996 TCA threatens the rights to life, safety and privacy
guaranteed by US and (inaudible) constitutions. Re-insurance industrial giants like (inaudible) and Lloyds
of London announced in 2015 that they would not re-insure for personal injuries caused by RF microwave
radiation exposure. As a result, the telecom companies are acting to transfer their massive liability to
another entity or entities. If this application is approved, that liability would shift to the Palo Alto public
because the melding of private microwave-radiating antennas on public property creates a dangerous condition of public property. It is appalling that the residents of Palo Alto [Buzzer sounds] have not been made aware of the significant fiscal liability.
Chair Furth: Thank you for your presentation. All right. The next card I have is Roopam? To be followed, again, by Bill Straka.
Roopam: I don't have any additional comments (inaudible).
Chair Furth: Thank you. Appreciate that. For the record, that was Roopam speaking. Next, Bill Straka. My
apologies for the earlier confusion.
Bill Straka: My name is Dr. William Straka. I'm a PhD that has worked in the aerospace industry for a
number of years. Currently, I'm a volunteer with the Office of Emergency Services, as it's called here. I'm
City of Palo Alto Page 16
a ham radio operator, and one of the things that I want to point out is that we do have a weakness in
the communications...We don't have uniform radio contact throughout the city of Palo Alto. We have rain
out here, and I've noticed that we've had a fair amount of flooding on the streets as we drive around.
Those of us in the OES have to go out and report on what the levels are of the water, and so on, and it's
necessary to have sufficient communication, which needs to be improved in the city. I'm not going to
spend a lot of time on this, but I will make a comment. Those of you who are complaining about all of
the radiation, I wonder how many of you have your big-screen TVs and use your cell phones, and so on. You want to avoid it, why don’t you shut off your cell phones and your TV sets? We need communication for emergency purposes. We live in an area where we have a major fault, so we're likely to have something bigger than Loma Prieta. We need to be able to have something like the Office of Emergency Services being able to communicate to where it is needed, to have the medical community to be out there to help with the people who have been injured in these situations. [Buzzer sounds] The flooding,
and so-on. Thank you.
Chair Furth: All right. Next, are we expecting to hear from Marianne Jacobi?
Marianne Jacobi: Yes (inaudible).
Chair Furth: Come speak. To be followed by Tom O'Connor.
Ms. Jacobi: Hello, my name is Marianne Jacobi.
Chair Furth: And if you could spell it for our transcriber.
Ms. Jacobi: Yes. [Spells name.]
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Jacobi: I was part of Dr. Lee's pool, but since we were not five of us, we're now splitting up, so there is no pool. I just wanted to say that I do understand that we need communication, and that it is very important, as Bill mentioned. But, I also think it is very important to note that there are health effects that have not been studied yet, and that are coming forth. Therefore, we have to consider how important it is to have super-duper communication, or actual sufficient communication. Therefore, I think before
things are approved, we should have more studies looked into.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Next, Tom O'Connor, to be followed by Lakshmi.
Tom O'Connor: Good morning. My name is Tom O'Connor. I am and have been a resident of this
beautiful city of Palo Alto for approximately 25 years. I'm also a licensed contractor in the state of
California for over 30 years. Therefore, I think I can possibly give a different perspective on this from a
construction point of view. I'm intrigued and perplexed as to why Verizon Wireless claims its radio
equipment cannot be installed in flood-proof vaults. Their words, not mine. They -- and I quote --
"There's absolutely no means of flood-proofing a vault." Their argument doesn't hold water, so to speak.
That is factually incorrect. For Verizon to claim there's no such thing as flood-proofing a vault is factually
incorrect. It is merely a matter of engineering. I repeat, there does exist, flood-proof vaults, and with engineering, one should be able to adapt for any specific purpose of job. Again, I repeat, there is such a thing as a flood-proof vault, and there's even 100 percent waterproof vaults, also known as submersible. First of all, there are multiple electrical transformer vaults located in the flood zone and they appear to work quite well. I know this because I have seen them and it has been verified to me by at least three
personnel in the Utilities Department. Secondly -- and even more importantly -- we are (inaudible) about
the possibility of water, and probably more specifically during the wet rainy season only. There is such
things as submersible vaults, which basically means underwater 24/7/365 days a year. We know that's
not the case here, but the fact is that they do exist. Again, I know this because I factually have worked
on them, at least three of them. Also, if Verizon has to install these boxes with the equipment on the
poles, we have two issues. One, they are ugly and not aesthetically pleasing. Two, as the City converts
City of Palo Alto Page 17
each district from over to underground utilities, we are now district (inaudible). Eventually, that
equipment will need to be installed underground anyway, as well, or will we make special allowances just
for cell phones? I ask any resident to compare the neighborhood or a street with underground utilities to
one where all of them are exposed and see for yourself the difference. I end where I began. This is a
wonderful city, as well as beautiful city. Let's keep this underground. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you, Mr. O'Conner. Lakshmi, to be followed by Jyothi. Lakshmi?
Dr. Lee: I'm just checking something for them.
Chair Furth: Then...I'm sorry. Where's Lakshmi?
Dr. Lee: Yeah, I'm planning on talking on behalf of Lakshmi --
Chair Furth: No, I'm sorry. Jyothi, please?
Dr. Lee: Yeah, both of them.
Chair Furth: I'm sorry, you are not authorized. Our procedures don't let you speak on behalf of other
people. They need to speak for themselves.
Dr. Lee: Okay. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Does either Jyoti or Lakshmi care to speak? While you're considering that why don't...Would
you like a minute, or would you like to speak now?
Lakshmi Deepak: Hi, my name is Lakshmi Deepak. I'm going to continue with what (inaudible).
Chair Furth: Thank you. If you could spell your name for our transcriber --.
Ms. Deepak: [Spells name.] Continue with where (inaudible) left off. It is also appalling that the residents
of Palo Alto have to pay a stiff fee to (inaudible) business in order to discuss these financial issues with
the City Council. I have been entering into the public record many independent peer-reviewed and non-industry funded scientific studies about the extreme health hazards of (inaudible) radio frequency microwave (inaudible), especially on developing children, and the most vulnerable population. The ARB and the City Council have the duties to examine this substantial evidence that has been placed in the public record. It is me who has been entering into the public record. Therefore, keeping this close-
proximity microwave radiation-emitting antennas away from the residential areas and directed them in
commercial areas would clearly be in the best interest of warding off liability and protecting health, safety
and well-being of all the residents of Palo Alto. I don't have time to read all of these questions, but they
have been emailed to all of the City staff and City Council members, and they have been published online
for months. (Inaudible) and (inaudible) about these antennas CUP (inaudible). Thank you for your time.
Chair Furth: So that, let's see. Am I missing anybody else from that group? Jyothi?
Female: (inaudible)
Chair Furth: All right, thank you. Appreciate it. Next we have, I believe it's Barbara Criner, to be followed
by Celia Chow. Thank you. Could you spell your name for the record?
Barbara Criner: [Spells name] For 50 years, I have lived at the intersection of Vernon [phonetic] Terrace and Loma Verde Avenue, where you intend to install Node 133-E. Incidentally, I've gotten yearly notices from some government agency that my home is located within the flood zone. I don't know how this reconciles with whatever the lady said this morning, about not placing certain things within the flood zone. We are in this neighborhood and we are already being subjected to whatever hazards the PG&E
City of Palo Alto Page 18
substation that is located on West Bayshore and Colorado, whatever it poses. We're located by the 101
Freeway, and we're already exposed to vehicle emissions from many thousands of cars and trucks each
day. We also have been lucky enough to have the city dump sitting up on the hill near us, which in the
future may be emitting its own gases, at some point. My question to you is: Do we need additional
potential environmental pollutants or hazards in our neighborhoods, in the form of Nodes 129 through
145, which are designed to benefit Verizon. I say no, we don't need it. Shame on all of you that you've
gotten this far in your planning. Some of our neighboring communities have said no, not here, and have been heard. Apparently, our no's are not being heard. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Celia Chow, to be followed by Francesca Kautz, I believe.
Celia Chow: Good morning. My name is Celia Chow. I'm here to read a letter to you from James
VanHorne. He's unable to make it today. Dear Chair Furth, Vice Chair Baltay, and Board Members Gooyer,
Lew and Thompson. I'm unable to come to your next meeting, but wanted to convey to you my concern
with the Verizon latest proposal to install heavy equipment on City telephone poles. This equipment will
not be buried as proposed because Verizon does not wish to bear the cost. Yet, the City is to give them
use of the poles at an insulting low cost. I'm a financial economist at Stanford, and the pricing of a
product or service can be cost plus profit over value priced. The value to Verizon is what it will cost to
acquire land or land access and construct cell towers. This cost is many (inaudible) of the low yearly fee
the City proposes 20 or more, depending on the location, and assuming cost amortization. The City bears
all liability for faulty equipment, kids climbing the poles and falling, etc. For Verizon to argue that it is too
costly to bury equipment, given the extremely low yearly cost, is hard to understand, as it is to
understand why the City would allow this to occur. Apart from the very large cost advantage to Verizon and the liability the City faces, I'm concerned with the health hazard of radiation, the noise to homes nearby, the unsightly presence of equipment added to our poles. So, thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you very much. Frances (sic) Kautz, to be followed by Ryan Polich.
Francesca Kautz: Francesca Kautz.
Chair Furth: My apologies.
Ms. Kautz: That's okay. That's all right.
Chair Furth: And again, if you could spell your name for your transcriber.
Ms. Kautz: Okay. [Spells last name]
Chair Furth: I will just tell you that we should probably say Francesca is F-R-A-N-C-E-S-C-A.
Ms. Kautz: Thank you. Thanks.
Chair Furth: Our transcriber never actually sees our meeting.
Ms. Kautz: Okay. All right. Okay. I'm very concerned about the aesthetics, noise and safety of the small
cells, and the impossibility of undergrounding our utilities in the future. If Verizon wants to increase their
network coverage and capacity by locating their wireless communication facilities closer to the user, they must put their cellular networks underground. Or, better yet, there are many City-owned structures, commercial and industrial buildings in Palo Alto, where Verizon can rent space for their nodes and not destroy our residential neighborhoods at our expense. There's nothing small about the 200-pound cells, and they are not architecturally compatible, nor do they blend in with the neighborhood. The bayonet
placed on top of the telephone poles looks like it could easily fall down and spear someone in an
earthquake. Have these small cell configurations been seismically tested on earthquake shaking tables?
How many more wireless communication companies will want to install their small cells? Will our city turn
City of Palo Alto Page 19
into an antenna farm? The quality of life in Palo Alto and home values will diminish. Please deny Verizon
request to put cell nodes on telephone poles in our neighborhoods. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Ryan Polich, to be followed by Jerry Fan.
Ryan Polich: Hi, there. My name is Ryan Polich. I live near site 144, within about 1,000 feet. I'm here to
confirm with you that yes, cell phone service is terrible. I have lots of calls internationally work. I'm
continually and regularly apologizing to folks about Palo Alto's terrible cell phone service. It's a little bit
embarrassing. I walk by the site daily. I think the shroud looks great. I'd be happy to have it there. There's a train running within a block that I don't mind either. Generally, just asking for support. It would be great to have it for emergency service. It would be great to have it so I could work for home and not commute regularly. And, it would just be great to have regular cell phone service. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Jerry Fan, to be followed by, I believe Lorraine Parker.
Jerry Fan: Hi. My name is Jerry Fan.
Chair Furth: Excuse me, your first name is Jerry with a J?
Mr. Fan: Jerry with a J.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Mr. Fan: I'm here to say that there is no significant gap in coverage in the residential neighborhoods for
Cluster 1, because we actually went to every single site and was able to play a streaming video. I don't
know why users have been complaining that there's no coverage. If you can't make a phone call, then
get wi-fi in your house. You could easily make voiceover IP calls. There's one thing that's really
interesting about Verizon's coverage maps. The maps they say prove that a significant gap actually
exists. But, I think it's actually created to make it seem like they are actually coverage gaps. One is that they arbitrarily picked what it means to have low coverage. The standard for low coverage is different between Fremont -- which they're also proposing -- than us. I think the biggest point in the pack that you received is this map. This map is what they have submitted. It actually does not include a macro tower that will offer coverage to most of these clusters. The macro towers that they've submitted and was
approved by us, by you guys, on January 22nd, this was submitted on February 5th, so they have full
knowledge of that, that it's not included in this coverage. The macro tower has a coverage radius of 1.5
miles, and it covers most of these clusters. I find it really confusing why it's not represented accurately.
Verizon has repeatedly said that they need to, they don't need to actually provide evidence of significant
gap, but I think that's actually wrong, because Palo Alto's position is that we actually support SB 649. I
want to make sure that we retain municipal control of public right-of-way. If Verizon thinks that it has an
enforceable agreement with the City that would allow it to install cell towers next to our homes without
proving these towers are needed, it is mistaken. Such an agreement would not be in the interest of
residents, and would therefore be unlawful and unenforceable. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Lorraine Parker, to be followed by Barbara Straka.
Lorraine Parker: Hello, my name is Lorraine Parker. I have been a resident of Palo Alto all my life, almost. This has become an essential tool for all of us, including many elementary school children. Go to a school and look around. Most children have phones. I would like to address the issue of radiation, which many people are worried about. You will get more radiation from holding your phone to your ear, searching for
a tower with which to connect, than you will from having a tower close to your home. And I think people
are needlessly worried about having towers very close to their houses. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Barbara Straka, to be followed by Kathleen Martin.
City of Palo Alto Page 20
Barbara Straka: My name is Barbara Straka. I live in Mid-Town, and very much favor the Verizon proposal
of small cell towers because coverage inside my house is lousy. You have to go outside to get a
connection. We are now looking at reverse 9-1-1 in case of emergencies, and I want to receive those
calls. If I do not have these cell towers, I don't think I will get those calls. More and more people are
dropping their copper-line phones and going completely cellular, so this issue of the 9-1-1 reverse calls, I
think becomes more and more critical, to have the coverage inside a house, not just next to the towers
where people have tested. The Palo Alto Emergency Services needs better and more dependable coverage. They've stated that. I'm a volunteer with the Emergency Services and use my cell phone and ham radio to provide this support. These services are important to the community safety. In addition, we need more cell towers to support the ever-growing use of cell phones and computer and other devices. Verizon's informative open house and other material that they provided addressed the issues of health and noise issues. They demonstrated there is little or no impact. They had an outside consultant who
demonstrated that at their open house. As the previous person just mentioned, we get more RF
emissions from our cell phones and other home devices than our cell towers. The FCC has strict
guidelines, and Verizon outside consultant tested the small cell and found they were within those
guidelines. I recommend that you guys push forward with this and approve it. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Kathleen Martin?
Kathleen Martin: Hello, my name is Kathleen Martin. I live near Colorado. I've talked to my neighbors,
and I have concern about having these towers present 24/7, while I'm awake, while I’m asleep. I can
choose whether I use my cell phone, or not, and I hardly use it. I use it when I pick a friend up at the
airport, maybe once a year. I still have a landline, and I hold onto that as long as possible. I vote that please just don't put the towers in at all. And, any extra time, I would like to give to Dr. Lee, if she wants to (inaudible).
Chair Furth: I'm sorry, our procedures don't let us do that. Thank you for your own statement.
Ms. Martin: Oh, okay, well, then I'll continue to talk and say that I really am very much against this
project. I'm on Sevyson Court. I talked with --
Chair Furth: I beg your -- You're on Stephenson [sic] Court?
Ms. Martin: Yes. I've talked with two of the neighbors, and they said, "We didn't even get the cards."
They weren't aware that the cards were sent out, and they were quite upset about the thing. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you for letting us know that. Cathie Foster? To be followed by Kaori Shuji.
Cathie Foster: My name is Cathie Foster. At the Architectural Review Board meeting in December,
someone suggested that the Verizon towers were not being proposed for safety reasons. I beg to differ. I
spoke with someone in the fire department to find out what would be gained for our first responders by
having these towers, and how it would benefit the members of the community. In Palo Alto, the coverage
is not adequate for our first responders to actually receive and transmit information needed in emergencies. That is why we need the cell towers being proposed by Verizon. Every first responder vehicle, whether it be police, fire or EMS, is equipped with a dispatch computer that provides important information when responding to an emergency. This information includes where they are going, what type of call they are going to, and where that incident is located. To be able to see all the available
information they need, better Verizon coverage is necessary. The AT&T coverage is currently adequate,
but without Verizon coverage, it falls short of what is necessary for the first responders. Many people are
replacing landlines with cell phones. When a call comes in to the dispatch center, the number of cell
towers needed to triangulate the call from a cell phone, to find the caller's exact location, is currently
inadequate. If the triangulation can only identify a general area, it will impede the response time in
emergencies. The lack of Verizon cell towers also affects the communication between dispatch and
responders. There is at least one fire station in Palo Alto that has a lag time of up to two minutes. Two
minutes doesn't seem all that long unless you're the person waiting for the responder. Personal cell
City of Palo Alto Page 21
phones of first responders are used for situational awareness. They need to have better coverage. The
City should be ensuring that our safety personnel have the most up-to-date coverage that is possible. It
could be their life, or yours, that is put at risk. One last thing. I believe it was stated that the noise from
these towers was approximately three decibels. That is the sound of a -- [Buzzer sounding].
Chair Furth: Finish your sentence.
Ms. Foster: What I really wanted to say is that these are not the high-power cell towers others are talking
about, and we need to get on with this and make sure that our citizens and first responders are safe, by approving the cell tower design. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you. I beg your pardon? So sorry. Kaori Shuji, to be followed by...? I am really having trouble with this, but the surname is Nimkar.
Jerry Fan: I'm just speaking for her, sorry. So --
Chair Furth: I'm sorry, who are you?
Mr. Fan: Jerry Fan, I'm speaking for --
Chair Furth: Sorry, I'm not remembering faces better than I am.
Kaori Shuji: Good morning. My name is Kaori Shuji.
Chair Furth: I'm sorry, but under our procedures, a speaker needs to speak for herself and not cede her
time to somebody else, unless you get a group of five people.
Mr. Fan: (Inaudible), and then, I can help if --
Ms. Shuji: Okay. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Unless you needed --
Mr. Fan: Just for enunciation purposes (inaudible).
Chair Furth: All right.
Ms. Shuji: Yeah. I'm from Japan. I (inaudible).
Chair Furth: All right then, if you wish to present her presentation, that's fine.
Mr. Fan: Okay, thank you.
Ms. Shuji: Thank you.
Mr. Fan: Please deny approval to the cell tower Verizon wants to install next to our home at 2490 Louis
Road. Verizon has not made a good-faith effort to do as the ARB has directed, namely comply with Palo
Alto's ordinances and locate underground the hundreds of pounds of ugly equipment it proposes to install
next to our home. Verizon claims that underground vaulting is not feasible. That is not true. For example,
our home is not in a special flood hazard area. You can see the attached email from September 30th,
2015, from the City to our architect, which states, Flood hazard condition regulations do not apply for
buildings such as yours in a flood zone." Yes, Verizon pretends it is. In fact, Verizon's own environmental
assessment worksheet, which it prepared and submitted with its initial application for this site, for our
site, shows that it is well aware that 2490 Louis Road is not in the special flood hazard area. The City of Palo Alto is committed to underground utilities. If Palo Alto can do it, Verizon can do it. Our neighbors
City of Palo Alto Page 22
have success with underground utilities from the poles to their homes, so there are examples of
successful undergrounding within the neighborhood, which means that, if you think about the distance to
the poles, it is very possible that they could also underground the equipment for their homes. The reason
Verizon does not want to locate its equipment underground is vaulting equipment is more expensive to
install, and more expense to maintain than equipment on a pole. If...Okay, thanks. If Verizon installs
equipment on the pole next to our house, it will violate Palo Alto's aesthetic ordinances. Verizon's
photograph and simulated photos are completely misleading. We've attached photos of what the proposed site next to our home would actually look like. There's no tree screening to reduce visibility to the proposed cell tower's ugly, bulky, crude equipment, except to the southeast side. It is in full view of the second story window of our home. And as I shared, her daughter's room, so it's very important. It has full view of the great room on the first floor home. It's full view of the home across the street from our home. It is in full view of the second story of our home at 897 Marshall Drive. It is in close proximity
to an intersection and in full view of cars turning west onto Louis Road from Marshall Drive, or east onto
Louis Road from Warren Way. Thanks.
Chair Furth: Now I have managed to misplace my stack of cards. That was our 18th speaker. I'm having
trouble reading the first name. Jyotsna Nimkar?
Jyotsna Nimkar: Yes, Jyotsna Nimkar.
Chair Furth: And if you, like everybody else, would please spell your first name.
Ms. Nimkar: Right.
Chair Furth: And last.
Ms. Nimkar: [Spells name.]
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Nimkar: Hopefully that's not counted towards my two minutes.
Chair Furth: No.
Ms. Nimkar: I'm here from the united neighbors. Here's the question we are asking ourselves: Where is
the environmental impact report on the cell towers Verizon is trying to install next to our home? At least
four of the California Environmental Quality Act -- CEQA -- 17 environmental factors are relevant to
neighborhood cell towers -- aesthetics, home values, hazards and noise. Neither CEQA nor our Municipal
Code precludes requiring an environmental review, and it's only two weeks ago that the Planning
Department announced it had decided against requiring one. The Telecommunications Act doesn't
preclude requiring an environmental review either. In fact, last December, a federal judge ruled that the
City of Rye, New York, did not violate the Telecommunications Act when it required Crown Castle to
conduct an environmental review of towers just like those being proposed here. Why is it necessary? Why
is this environmental review necessary? Here's one reason. Hammett & Edison, in the report they
prepared for Verizon on these 15 Cluster 1 cell towers, warns workers not to get within 20 feet of a cell tower at antenna height. Yet, our homes, our two-story homes, are only a few feet further away, and the antennas -- Hammett & Edison said -- are tilted down. Hammett & Edison goes on to warn workers to carry a personal radiation meter, and I quote: "To be aware of possible hazards." Should we be carrying personal radiation meters, too? Hammett & Edison's warnings to workers is opposite of what they and
Verizon have been telling residents about their cell tower safety. Then, there is the fact that Verizon has
never taken baseline radiation measures at these sites. Never. There are existing towers all over Cluster 1
area, and one of them could be malfunctioning. In fact, in 2015, the Wall Street Journal article reported
that Verizon employees working at cell towers routinely were finding radiation levels far in excess of FCC
guidelines.
City of Palo Alto Page 23
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Nimkar: For all these reasons --
Chair Furth: I'm sorry, you need to wind up.
Ms. Nimkar: Thank you for listening.
Chair Furth: Raj Mathur, to be followed by Bryan Chen.
Raj Mathur: Good morning. My name is Raj Mathur. I'm with Hammett & Edison. We're an independent
consultant engineering firm located in Sonoma. I am a licensed professional electrical engineer in the state of California. Our job as engineers is to evaluate sites like these for radio frequency exposure -- or RF exposure -- compliance with the FCC standard. We've completed that evaluation for the 11 nodes and the alternate node for 133. The maximum calculated RF exposure level anywhere at ground or at any of
the nearby homes for any of the nodes is 6 percent of the FCC limit. What that means is that the levels
are 16 times below the FCC limit. There's three main reasons why the levels are so low. The first is that
these are lower-power facilities, so they are lower in power than a typical full Verizon, what's called a
macro site. The second reason is that the antennas are directional. What that means is that the energy
from the antenna is directed in a narrow beam out towards the horizon, about 50 feet up where the
antennas are. Well above ground level, and any of the nearby homes. The third reason is that the energy
from the antenna falls with the square of the distance. What that means is that when you get twice as far
from the antenna, then, as you go forward by four times square of two. When you go 10 times as far
from the antenna, then as you go forward by 100 times the square of 10. I'm happy to answer any
questions you may have on that.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Mr. Lait: Chair? Sorry, just a question on that last speaker. It's unclear to us whether that speaker was speaking on behalf of Verizon as applicant, or as another community member. It might be helpful for us to understand that, as that might affect Verizon's speaking time in rebuttal.
Chair Furth: Are you speaking as part of the Verizon team?
Mr. Mathur: Yes. I'm asked to come here by the Verizon team.
Chair Furth: Thank you very much. Sorry. Bryan Chen, and I don't believe I have any other speakers. If
you think I missed you, let staff know.
Mr. Chen: Hi. Bryan Chen. I live in Midtown in Palo Alto. I wanted to echo the sentiments of many of the
members of here, to ask you to deny Verizon's application for this project. One comment. Predictions of
RF modeling for wireless small cell sites have been very inaccurate. Based on the previous installation in
Palo Alto, downtown Palo Alto, the predictions were off by over tenfold when wireless scientists came out
to actually do the actual measurement. That's at ground level. But, I wanted to touch on two things.
One, in the application, I did not see any specific modeling for safety of the towers in terms of (inaudible)
bending, the weight capacity. There were no specifications in that application. I don't know if it's incomplete. The other thing I wanted to mention was, I believe a lot of these photographs are misleading in terms of aesthetics. When you walk down a street, you don't just look at one telephone pole. You look at the entire street. When you walk down Louis Road, there is one example of this sort of bayonet installation. Just two or three blocks away, this one telephone pole just sticks out like a sore thumb.
When you look down the street, you see the canopy of trees, and you see the nice line of the telephone
poles, all the same height, and suddenly, there's one that's 10 feet taller. It just destroys the entire
aesthetics of the street. I believe that it's really important to take that into consideration, that we look at
the entire context of the street, because it destroys 50 years of beautiful canopy-lined streets that we
have, just to have one pole kind of sticking straight up into the sky. Thank you very much.
City of Palo Alto Page 24
Chair Furth: Thank you. Anybody else? Thank you all for your participation. We are going to take -- Let's
do rebuttal first, a response from the applicant, and then, we'll take a break. You now have nine minutes.
Paul Albritton, Outside Counsel for Verizon Wireless: Thank you, Chair Furth. I hope to take less than
that.
Chair Furth: We're going to give you the extra 18 seconds.
Mr. Albritton: My name is Paul Albritton, outside counsel for Verizon Wireless. Thank you so much for all
your time devoted to this project. There's going to be more, and I appreciate your future time, as well. Chair Furth, I appreciated your comments right at the very beginning, that you're focusing on environmental issues in your review as the Architectural Review Board. In the criteria that you have, there's 15, but I think staff said six are relevant to you. One is, does this comply with the Comprehensive
Plan. I think the staff, the staff report, just clearly indicated this complies with the Comprehensive Plan.
The second is, are these compatible with the environment? We think, when you think of a utility pole, the
access, people in wheelchairs, or pedestrians, bicycles, these are all mounted close to the pole, now four
inches away from the pole, eight feet up. They're integrated vertically with the pole, along with the
antenna towards the top. Is the design appropriate for the function? We think absolutely the design is
appropriate for the function. I'll get back to it, but this is telephone equipment on telephone poles, and
under state law, a couple state laws, we're allowed to put telephone equipment on telephone poles. In
most circumstances, PG&E is putting up transformers and the cable companies are putting up big boxes,
and you don't get this kind of aesthetic review. What you have here...And you've done something, I
think, which is terrific, which is to encourage us to put it in a thin box. We've narrowed it. It's the same
proportions of the pole. We think it's absolutely designed and appropriate for the function of what we're trying to do. Is it screened? Yes. That's your fourth criteria. Is it appropriately landscaped? Yes. You heard the arborist and the careful selection of all the trees that are going to be used in this particular property, or these particular poles. I think in terms of your architectural review, you've done your job. We've worked with you, with worked with the City over the last year and a half, I think, to come up with
a better product. These are telephone poles, and I think many people, if they had a choice, they would
not have a telephone pole in front of their house. But, it's a utilitarian pole that's designed, and there are
state laws that require it be able to accommodate, not just our utilities, but other utilities in the future, in
terms of its structural strength, and in terms of its integrity. I think that with respect to the architectural
review of the design of telephone equipment on telephone poles, that you absolutely can make those
findings. The other findings are with respect to the wireless code, and have we minimized the footprint.
Absolutely. We've taken away the battery boxes. There is no footprint. We're in the utility pole. If we had
a vault, there would be a footprint, but in these cases -- I'll get to vaulting in a moment -- it's not that
we're trying not to vault. We've eliminated those sites where we think vaulting may be feasible. And
those are going to come back to you on another day, and we're still working on that. We started out with 18 poles in this cluster. Three were removed through our communications with the community. There have been four notices the community leading up to this meeting. We've had four community meetings. We've sent out mailings. We've actually sent a particular package to each residence that's adjacent to a utility pole, to explain the project to that pole. Three have been eliminated. Another four are gone
because of the potential for vaulting. We're down from 18 down to 11. That's where we're asking you to
approve these without vaulting because with staff -- and review of the third party -- we feel that these
are appropriately not to be vaulted. Have we minimized the bulk? I think absolutely we've minimized the
bulk. We've gone from almost 70 cubic feet to less than 20 cubic feet, from our original design to the
current design. That's, in part, due to your good direction. Have we camouflaged? Yes, we have
camouflaged. I think we meet the architectural review standards, we meet the wireless standards, and I
hope that you can follow the staff's recommendation to approve. There are, as I mentioned, state laws
that allow us to put telephone poles, telephone equipment on telephone poles, and there are also state
laws related to the master license that's been signed by the City Council in 2016, to place these facilities
on the utility poles owned by CPU Electric. I can't step down without discussing vaulting. I mentioned
that we've reduced the number of sites, particularly because of your direction regarding vaulting. There was comment about a flood-proof vaults. There are flood-proof vaults, but they don't require cooling of radios. That's the problem, is that we have venting. We have to combine venting, which makes noise. I
City of Palo Alto Page 25
mentioned in our prior meeting that we still can't figure out a way to vent without violating your CNEL
noise standards, environmental noise standards under your Comprehensive Plan. So, flood-proof vaults?
Yes. With cooling? No. That's the problem that we're obviously facing. You mentioned City versus City.
Yes, we follow your codes, we follow the directions and requirements that were given by the departments
here, and we can't step out of the line and say, "Hey, we'd like to put a vault in the street," when that
really isn't feasible. Cars driving over it, and it's not recommended, and not by, by your City. We follow all
these careful guidelines regarding rolled curbs, slanted curbs, and everything else. Those were the requirements that the City imposes to keep the environment that you protect through what you do. I want to point out, the staff has recommended -- it's in your report -- that vaulting may not be the aesthetic solution that's preferred. You saw that Santa Cruz vault, where you probably noted that somebody's front yard was cut into in order to put a vault. We tend to concur that in many situations, the equipment on the pole is the aesthetically preferred solution. In many communities, it's the aesthetically
preferred solution. It just has...There's no noise, because we have eliminated any moving parts. The
battery is gone. It's placement of equipment on a utility pole within a screen, as I've mentioned,
integrated architecturally with the pole. A vault creates a number of aesthetic impacts that you should
consider in simply thinking about the fact that the equipment is no longer on the pole, but in the ground.
And staff, I think, follows there. There was a suggestion of why, what happens if you underground.
Verizon is all in favor of undergrounding, and we move facilities generally from utility poles onto street
lights, which are replaced when utilities go underground. That's not an impediment. That's why we agree
to that condition of approval, that in the event there is undergrounding in the future. A couple of points
that came up. I can say more about vaulting, but a couple of points I want to quickly address that came up. Noise, as I mentioned, there are no moving parts. We understand from the prior iteration of small cells in Palo Alto, noise was a big issue, so, there is no noise generated from this equipment. Regarding structural strength, those two situations where we're replacing the poles, that's for structural. All of these go through careful structural analysis. The bayonet is an approved design from PG&E, that you know
that's why it's difficult for us to come up with a way to make it look good, because that's the PG&E-
approved mounting bracket and bayonet for structural purposes. It (inaudible) to maintain the integrity of
the site. As I mentioned, we've had 430 text messages in support of the facilities. We encourage you to
help us move forward with these 11, with some direction on design. If you'd like to tell us. Last time, two
Architectural Review Board members preferred the box. If you have recommendations regarding the
bayonet or the box, let us know. We think this is a much-improved design due to your efforts and due to
a year and a half of working with the City and the community, and we encourage you to recommend
approval to the directors so that we can move forward. I can answer any questions, and our team is here
to answer any questions.
Chair Furth: Thank you. I would suggest that we do our questions to the staff and the applicant after we take a break. It is -- What is it, officially? It's 10:25. We'll come back at 10:35.
[The Board took a short break.]
Chair Furth: Okay, the Architectural Review Board is back in session. We are still on item number 2, which is the public hearing to consider Verizon's proposal -- all right, guys -- 11 small cell towers. All
right. We had reached the point in our presentation -- First, thank you to everybody for your participation
and your succinct and informative presentations to us. Everybody. All sides. Do we have questions of the
applicant or staff? Starting at the left.
Board Member Gooyer: Sure. One of the applicant. I keep hearing that one of the things that you did was
to remove the battery and, I guess, the battery charging system off the poles to eliminate any noise. I
guess the biggest concern that people seem to have is that, just because you volunteered not to do that
right now doesn't mean you can't come back sometime in the future and add it at a later date. My
question is: If we go that route, you know, is there anything --? I mean, I don't know how the rest of my
panel would...I mean, I'd like to see it, that it's confirmed in writing that they are not allowed to ever put
batteries on the poles.
Chair Furth: Your response? That's the question for staff or the applicant?
City of Palo Alto Page 26
Board Member Gooyer: I don't care.
Chair Furth: Let's hear from the applicant. What are your thoughts on future battery installation
Mr. Albritton: I have to tell a quick story, and that was when I was here for the other small cell network
that went into Palo Alto five, six years ago, this Board removed the batteries, and the City Council put
them all back on. And they required the batteries as a condition of approval. I think that led to noise
impacts, that now make sense that it doesn't make sense to put batteries...They put the batteries on the
poles themselves. Battery backup, believe it or not, Verizon doesn't make a lot of money for the few hours that this network is on during a power outage. The intent is really to provide for emergency services, and to provide a service. Verizon is not in the business of retrofitting equipment with batteries. If we were to put in street boxes -- as was originally proposed here -- we would have to come back and
get permits from you in order to do that. There is a federal law that allows for modifications of existing
wireless facilities. Those require that we can't defeat the camouflaging, defeat the concealment that's
already part of the pole. That's why we have concealed the equipment the way it is, and we've included a
statement in the application that says we consider that to be concealment, and that any new installation
can't defeat the design that we've already placed onto the pole. We think that would greatly limit any
modifications to the pole itself. I think that any modifications like that are going to have to go through a
process with the City, likely come before you for some level of design review, and it will be up to you to
make a decision whether we install batteries in the future. Currently, there would be no plans for doing
that. Frankly, I think there's going to have to be a revolution in battery technology, or something, to
allow us...or, a revolution in the radio technology with respect to the amount of energy it consumes. But,
at this point, no plans to do so. I think we'd have...Staff can confer, we'd have to come back to you to do that. We've included that statement so that you can use it in the future to show that what we've shown are concealment elements, and that you're adequately protected.
Chair Furth: Just to summarize, you're telling us that, given the current design of batteries, you do not believe that Verizon could install batteries without coming back for further discretionary review by the
City.
Mr. Albritton: That's right.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Mr. Albritton: If you put a condition on that says that we'd be coming back to modify the condition. It
would be the same thing, coming back.
Chair Furth: Staff, anything you want to add?
Board Member Gooyer: I was going to say, that's an impressive lawyer-speak answer. All I was looking
for was a yes-or-no answer, actually. But, thank you.
Chair Furth: There's a reason we go to school for years. I continue to practice. Anything further from
staff on that? Other questions, Robert?
Board Member Gooyer: No.
Chair Furth: Alex?
Board Member Lew: Yes, I have a question for staff. One of the public speakers, Kathleen Martin, had said that there was a notification issue with some of her neighbors, and I was wondering if the staff
could, if staff was aware of any issues. And then, if you could explain how the notification went, what is
our notification standard for this type of project?
City of Palo Alto Page 27
Rebecca Atkinson, Project Planner: The notification standards are in the wireless code specifically, and
what our GIS analyst did was take a look at where the pole was actually and did a verification, and
actually did a little bit of over-noticing relative to, by that 50 feet. Basically, the distance in the wireless
code plus a little bit more to be conservative, and within the radius of every proposed location, plus the
alternate. I'm not sure exactly where Stephenson Court [sic] is relative to the closest node, but I can look
that up if you need further clarification.
Chair Furth: Could you introduce yourself for the tape, for the transcriber?
Ms. Atkinson: Rebecca Atkinson, Project Planner.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Mr. Lait: And just to add to that, Board Members. In addition to the 600-foot radius around each node --
Chair Furth: I beg your pardon, what foot radius?
Mr. Lait: The 600-foot radius around each node. We also had the agenda posting, it was posted in the
paper. We have a mailing list that has been created as a result of this project. Everybody received email
notification. If there's been any notification issues, it's not anything that we're aware of.
Chair Furth: And you're double-checking on Stephenson [sic] Court. Thank you.
Vice Chair Baltay: For the applicant, please, could you explain why you're limited to 30 feet from the base
of the pole for location of a vault?
Mr. Albritton: We have an expert on that who could come up, but I'll tell you, because I talk too much --
no I don't, I'm going to be very brief -- that the antennas can only be a certain distance from the radius
before you get line loss. You have fiber coming into the radio, and from the radio to the antenna is
coaxial cable -- you're probably familiar with it -- and you have a decrease in signal from the radio to the antenna. These are low-wattage radios, and the maximum is about 100 feet. If you take the 50-foot pole, approximately 50-foot pole, when we go, we take the line down underground, under the pole about 12 feet, required by your regulations, and then, come back up to the vault itself. You take 100 minus 50, minus 12, minus 10, leaves you about 30 feet radius around the pole, and it's because of the line. Further
than that, the radios won't function. They're too far from the antennas. In many circumstances -- San
Francisco, for example -- the radios are mounted right next to the antenna in order to avoid that line
loss. I'm going to let Rommel Angeles, I don't know if you have any addition to that? Introduce yourself.
I'm sorry.
Mr. Angeles: Good morning, my name is Rommel Angeles, I'm with Verizon Wireless, as well. In addition
to what Paul mentioned, the signal coming up from the radius significantly decreases with the distance of
the coaxial cable. Based on our engineering requirements, that 100 feet kind of, is the threshold that we
have where, if you go beyond that, then the performance of those particular nodes are going to start to
deteriorate significantly, and it will change the complete design of the network. The distance limitations,
as Paul mentioned, 50 feet from the height of the pole, we have to go 12 feet underground based on the requirements. We have to allow slack inside the vault to be able to connect the bend radius of the coax, plus the radios. That leaves us with about 25 to 30 feet from the distance of the pole.
Vice Chair Baltay: If I could, it sounds like to me like the real restriction is the 100-foot cable, not the 30-foot horizontal measurement. Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Angeles: That is correct.
Vice Chair Baltay: Is there no other types of cables that allow a greater distance?
City of Palo Alto Page 28
Mr. Angeles: That cable that we have is the one that we're using for our design.
Vice Chair Baltay: But, the question is: Are there other cables available that allow a greater distance? It's
a yes-or-no kind of question.
Mr. Angeles: We have to look and see what's out there, but this is what's standard that we're using for --
Vice Chair Baltay: I understand you're a radio frequency engineer?
Mr. Angeles: We are (inaudible) engineer, yes.
Vice Chair Baltay: Are you aware of other cables available? This is a simple question.
Mr. Angeles: There are different sizes, yes, but there's an impact to that, to the design.
Vice Chair Baltay: Must be true, if the cable is larger, perhaps it lets a signal go a longer distance?
Mr. Angeles: It's possible.
Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you.
Chair Furth: Board Member Thompson, Osma.
Jerry Bascom, Verizon Wireless: Excuse me, I'm sorry. My name is Jerry Bascom, and I work for Verizon
Wireless. To answer your question, you can go with the larger coax cable, but then what happens is, is
the conduit on the side of the pole is going to get much bigger. So, instead of a three-inch conduit or a
four-inch, you're going to go to a six- or eight-inch conduit on the side of the pole, going up the pole, all
the way up to the antenna. It's going to look like you have two poles next to each other. That's the
reason why we're trying to limit the size of the coax.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Would you mind giving us, spelling your name for our transcriptionist?
Mr. Bascom: My name is Jerry Bascom. [Spells name.]
Chair Furth: And are you Jerry with a J or Gerry with a G.
Mr. Bascom: Jerry with a J.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Mr. Bascom: Thank you.
Board Member Gooyer: I'm sorry, that just floors me. We're talking the difference between, maybe a
quarter or half inch cable, up to, let's say, for sake of argument an inch cable, and you need an eight-
inch conduit to run a --?
Mr. Bascom: No, it all depends on the distances that we're talking about. Right now, what we spec'd out
for a 7/8 inch -- was it 7/8 or half inch? -- for a 7/8-inch cable, we're at 100 feet. If we start to go
beyond that -- and I'm not an RF engineer, I'm just telling you the size that we have to go to. If we go to
a larger coax, the next largest one is an inch and a quarter or an inch and five-eighths inch coax cable. If
we go up to those larger ones, then what's going to happen is, as you get the number of cables that we'll
require -- which is going to be four, okay? -- the diameter of those and the fill rate and all the bending
that we have to, going from the vault up into the pole, and being able to pull it, those conduits are going
to get bigger.
City of Palo Alto Page 29
Board Member Thompson: Okay. I have a couple questions. I haven't seen any images of what this might
look like from underneath, at pedestrian level. Do we know if it's blocked off? I mean, the shroud, you
kind of see that it comes down, but I was wondering if there was more information about what it looks
like at pedestrian level when you're underneath it. If you can see any equipment. That's really what I'm
asking, if you can see equipment on the ground level. This is a question for the applicant.
Mr. Albritton: We're looking for our photograph from ground level. If you've been to the mock site --
which I hope you have -- then you'll be able to see. It's eight feet up, so you have to look up at it, and that's why we've, as much as possible, tried to locate these within street trees, so that the equipment begins to get absorbed within the street trees. There as a comment about the canopy and seeing over the canopy. Part of the aesthetic criteria -- placing them near street trees -- is that when you do look up, you're looking at trees, you're not looking at the...But the mock-up provides that. And we do have a
photograph from below. If you give us a moment, we'll try and dig it up for you.
Chair Furth: Okay.
Mr. Albritton: But, can you see it if you look up? Yes. I mean, you see the pole, there's a four-inch gap,
and then, it's about 11-inch box by 11-inch box that goes up about nine feet. It is mounted flush, well, as
flush as possible. Four inches away from the pole. Again, we've told you the four inches are required so
that a lineman can get his belt between the pole and the box if they have to climb up in an emergency.
Chair Furth: Thank you. While you're waiting to look for your photograph (inaudible), and whose last
name I can't read, who misunderstood the hearing time. We haven't -- excuse me. We haven't formally
closed the hearing. I would suggest that we allow her two minutes to speak, unless the applicant objects.
The applicant does not object?
Mr. Albritton: Absolutely, we do not object, yeah.
Chair Furth: Sure. Come on up. You have two minutes. And if you would spell your name for our transcriber.
Susan Downs: I'm a physician and an MIT electrical engineer, and I've researched this area a lot. Now, I
know in 1996, they passed a law that we can't stop cell towers for health reasons. I suspect they knew
something. But, I interviewed a lot of Swiss farmers in Switzerland who got sick, their animals got sick,
their plants got sick. Farmers having issues with this. But, I don't know if anybody's concerned about
that. I've also heard recent reports from some engineers that these things are so powerful, that they're a
hundred times the power they need. What is that used for? According to the expert I spoke to, they can
use it for snooping, to see whatever we're doing, and they can use it for crowd control. Do we really
need a hundred times more power than is necessary? That's my comments.
Chair Furth: Sorry. Is the applicant ready with their continued response to Osma's question?
Mr. Albritton: I'm sorry, we're looking for a photograph, is that --?
Board Member Thompson: I have another question while we're waiting for that. I'm sorry, I've been looking at this picture in front of us for a while, and I just had a question, also. On the left there's a white box that is attached to the pole, and in the left [sic] it's gone. So, I guess my question is -- Hmm?
Mr. Albritton: It's not a box. It's actually the public notice for the pole.
Board Member Thompson: Oh, it's the public notice. Okay, thanks. I was going to ask if you're cleaning
up extra equipment with this. Okay, great. There was a comment about the height of the antenna. Have
you guys looked into having it a little lower? Is it as high as it can, or can it be lower?
City of Palo Alto Page 30
Mr. Albritton: We wish it could be lower. The antenna itself is four feet. It's got a one-foot bayonet
mount. General Order 95 in the state regulates the placement of equipment on a telephone pole, and in
particular, requires a six-foot separation from the electrical transmission lines, actually from the, to the
antenna itself. The only reason we're required to put that bayonet on is because of state law, and it's,
again, frankly, it's the Lineman Union. They want adequate space between themselves and the lines
when they're working on it. It's the same thing that requires us to put the equipment four feet from the
utility pole, so that the linemen can climb it. Telephone poles are extremely, heavily regulated.
Chair Furth: I ask everybody to be as concise in their responses as they can. I realize we ask for a lot of information, but we have a time constraint because Osma needs to leave at 11:30. We're going to try to deliberate efficiently. Any other questions? Okay.
Mr. Lait: Chair, if I may, I think --
Chair Furth: In a second, we'll get to that.
Mr. Lait: Well, it pertains to Board Member Thompson's question. I just want to get something on the
record, if I may.
Chair Furth: The fact that we have a photograph --
Mr. Lait: Yes.
Chair Furth: -- should be mentioned in the record? Let's do that.
Mr. Lait: Great. Board Member Lew, I think, presented a photograph to Board Member Thompson, which
I believe is a photograph of the cell site, maybe viewed from the pedestrian view. That's just something
that we're going to have to get on the record.
Board Member Lew: Yes. It's a view of the mock-up on Newell Road, from eye level looking up to the base of the shroud.
Chair Furth: Thank you. We'll make that part of the official record. Meanwhile, can I see it? Hold it up for everybody. I don't think I have any questions. I realize none of you can see this, but it is looking up at the equipment.
Board Member Lew: I have one more question, too. One more (inaudible).
Chair Furth: Yes, Alex.
Board Member Lew: The various tree species that I think the City Urban Forestry Department has
selected for screening of certain sites, did the City review that with the adjacent property owners? Do we
know?
Ms. Atkinson: The City did not do communications with adjacent property owners in regard to those
trees, but definitely is open to public comment on tree species and so forth. All aspects of the design.
Board Member Lew: Okay. My take on it initially was that the tree species were very, the selection was
very varied. Like, from a relatively small Crepe Myrtle to the, I think there's a cedar, like a blue cedar. It
seems to me, that's has a big impact. The neighbors have to take care of the tree in terms of maintenance, and droppings, and stuff. Okay, thank you.
Chair Furth: Okay.
Katherine Naegele: My name is Katherine Naegele, I'm the project arborist. May I comment on that?
City of Palo Alto Page 31
Chair Furth: Yes, please.
Ms. Naegele: [Spells name.] I worked with Dave Dockter to select those tree species, based on what was
already at the site. If there were already large trees, we selected a large tree. If there were no trees or if
there were constraints, we selected a small tree. There was some reasoning behind that, and still, the
neighbors would have different impacts from different species, that's true. But, it was to be consistent
with what was present.
Chair Furth: And you work for --?
Ms. Naegele: For Anderson's Tree Care. I am here on behalf of Verizon.
Chair Furth: As part of the Verizon team. Thank you.
Ms. Diesch: I just wanted to note -- I'm Mary Diesch again, for the record, and I'm with Vinculums. I just
wanted to note for the record that these trees are located in the public right-of-way, so they will become
part of the City's inventory of street trees long term, and they will be gifted to the City. They won't be
owned by Verizon or the private neighbors.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Diesch: With that said, we are open to, of course, talking with neighbors about what we're planning
to install.
Chair Furth: I'm sure the variety of trees is the least of your concerns. And we appreciate your flexibility.
All right. I think we're at deliberation, unless there's something staff wants to add before we do that.
Let's begin with you, Alex.
Board Member Lew: Okay. Thank you for all the members of the public who sent emails and came to
speak today. It was really a record. I think I counted well over a hundred, maybe it was, like, 110, 120 emails over the past few months. I think you guys raised a lot of questions. I think on my side of this, I have a very narrow focus. We have our findings in Attachment A, and I'm really just going to stick to that. I can make the findings for this particular project. I do think there are a whole bunch of issues that maybe should be raised at the Council level. I'm not going to address those at this time. On the drawing
packet, I do want to say that I think that there were some inconsistencies, just in the drawings and the
site plans. I relied on a lot of site visits to look at things like driveways, and fences, and screening. I used
that more than the drawings. The drawings were helpful, but I actually found that they weren't that
accurate. Enough, at least for my purposes. I did review the mock-up. I think that Verizon has made
substantial improvements to that since the last time we looked at the mock-up. I think putting the
cabinet, the equipment closer to the pole, just having one single shroud covering the three units, is
significantly better than the last time we looked at it. I also looked at, when I looked at the mock-up, I
reviewed an AT&T, their DAS system, which is, I think it's maybe two poles away from the Verizon mock-
up. I did compare the two of them, and I think that the Verizon is much sleeker than what we have
previously approved for the AT&T project. I think staff, you have asked us for comments on the shroud, on the lower shroud. I did address that. On the upper shroud, I think the recommended shroud for the bayonet, to me, it looks a little top-heavy. I think it's because the bayonet shroud is a little bit wider than the pole. In my mind, I actually don't mind the bayonet quite so much. But, if it's gone through the process and the staff like the tapered bayonet shroud, I'm okay with that. I do not object to that. I think
it would meet the findings. But, when I look at the AT&T one, where the bayonet is exposed, it's not as
attractive, but it's smaller. To me, it's acceptable. That's where I am on this particular project. I'm curious
to see what my other board members think.
Board Member Gooyer: I just have a quick question for you. Which of the lower --
Chair Furth: And if staff could put that picture --
City of Palo Alto Page 32
(crosstalk)
Chair Furth: -- of the alternatives up on the screen, please.
Board Member Lew: -- box shroud. Yes. And I think previously there were two different sizes. Like, it was
narrow, narrow, and wider. Also, previously, they stuck out farther from the pole, so some of the wires
were exposed. But when I looked at the mock-up on Newell Road, it seems like all of those things have
been improved.
Chair Furth: Robert.
Board Member Lew: And then -- Yes.
Chair Furth: Excuse me. Is that it, Alex? Robert.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay. Well, it's one of these things that, everything that I've read, and everything
I see, it seems like the City is its own worst enemy as far as getting these things undergrounded,
because all the requirements seems to be coming from the City. If this was something that the City really
wanted and was willing to work through, you can do the modifications of the sidewalk to get a straight
curb to let the box be installed. Also, let's face it, a mature tree isn't going to be thrilled about having
some work done around it, but it's not a killer for the entire tree. It's beginning to look like that's just not
going to be a viable option that even the City itself is going to want to accept. Having said that, if I have
to pick one of the things, probably -- where are they here? -- the box was probably as valid as anything
else. To me, you know, it's pug-ugly versus ugly. It really doesn't make a whole lot of difference. As to
the antenna, from an engineering standpoint, I just have a real problem with sticking a substantial
amount of weight on top of a 50-foot pole that is questionable at best, and then use a mechanical
fastener to assume that everything is going to be fine. My gut feeling would be is all the poles ought to be replaced with new poles, which would then allow the item 5 to be put in there, which is less of a visual barrier. It's a much safer response than it would be of any kind of mechanical fastener.
Chairman Furth: Thank you. Peter?
Board Member Baltay: Thank you to everybody for the input and effort. This is clearly a very important
subject to many, many people. I'm going to come to Architectural Review Board findings number 2 and 3
-- specifically two items, a. and e. -- and basically say I cannot make those findings with the
presentation, with the project we have proposed in front of us. I do not think that these are a desirable
element in our environment. I do not think they enhance the living conditions. I think they're -- Robert
said it -- butt-ugly. And then, I don't think they're a high-quality design. I just don't think it does it. In
more detail, I believe it's not the issue of the antennas, but if we could come back to the photo of the
equipment on the pole. I'm afraid I just can't make the finding that any of these are an acceptable
solution and enable me to make the findings that the architecture findings are. None of them are
acceptable visually to me in the neighborhoods we're talking about. I think that it is feasible to put these
elements in vaults. Even if we don't have an exact answer, I just can't find that they're acceptable the way they are. The only way I could accept this proposal, to move that we approve it, is to do it with the condition that the equipment is mounted in vaults underground.
Chairman Furth: Thank you. Osma?
Board Member Thompson:: Hi. Thanks to everybody for coming out. I actually had a quick question. If
we, for the pole-mounted one, if we go with number 5, that means there will be two poles -- is that
right? -- for a time?
Mr. Lait: Yeah, for a period of time. There are a series of service providers on the different poles, and as
I understand it, it's AT&T, I think, that would have to come and eventually remove the pole. Yes, there
City of Palo Alto Page 33
would be a period of time, I think up to a year, where there would be two poles, but ultimately that
second pole -- the stubbed-out pole -- would be removed.
Board Member Thompson:: Do you know if there would be some limitation as to how close that next pole
has to be? Are we looking at two poles that are -- ? In the drawings, they look right next to each other.
Mr. Lait: I don't have an answer for you. I think it would be a site-by-site sort of assessment, but I think
they'd be relatively close to each other.
Board Member Thompson:: Okay, thanks. After sort of listening to all, to everybody's viewpoints, actually seeing the image of the underground vault in Santa Cruz, is leading me to believe that underground vaulting is not desirable in many ways. That sidewalk is very unaesthetically pleasing. I don't know that it belongs in our community. I know that we want to try to keep this out of sight as much as possible.
Even, also, the underground, with the noise, is also something that is not okay, either. And given that
these are supposedly noiseless, I'm leaning towards a pole-attached equipment. From there, I'm not a
huge fan of the box shroud. I think I gravitated more towards the sun shield, the middle option, a bit
more. That said, it's true they're not all too different, so in that sense, I could be swayed either way. The
tree mitigation is something that is important to me, so I appreciate that you've looked into that. The
renderings do make it seem as if the trees don't make so much of an impact, at least the ones that
you've picked, and I understand that you're being site-sensitive. I would encourage or perhaps ask my
Board to think more about taking that a bit more seriously, and actually using the trees to shield what we
have there.
Female: (inaudible)
Board Member Thompson: Yeah, yeah, when we were looking at, I think it was three sites that had trees added to it, it didn't really look like the trees did anything to actually camouflage the equipment. It looks like they were sort of low and off to the side. I mean, it's great that there's more vegetation, but the point is to actually cover that. All that saying, I think I could approve the project as it is now.
Chairman Furth: Thank you. A couple of clarification questions to staff. We had conflicting statements on
whether these areas were or were not in flood zones. Could you tell me what the City's position is on
that?
Mr. Lait: Some of these sites are on the boundary. I don't know that I have any specific information that
would...It's one pole, and it's a boundary of a 100-year flood. There's some element of imprecision in
that. The way it's been presented, we don't have any significant fault with what's been presented.
Chairman Furth: The proposed installations, which are in areas defined by the applicant as within a flood
zone, would we say under our City standards that they are within a flood zone?
Mr. Lait: Yes. Yes. Again, I think the conflicting piece of information you heard was one resident
providing testimony that she received some governmental letter, saying that she was in a flood zone. We
have no idea what that flood was.
Chairman Furth: No, it was not that that I was referring to. I was referring to the comments that Verizon's information was internally inconsistent, in some cases saying it was not, these installations were not within a flood zone, and in other cases, saying that they were.
Mr. Lait: That's right, that's right. There was the FEMA standard of a special hazard zone, I think is what
you're referring to, or something to that, a special hazard assessment area, or something to that effect.
Rebecca can correct me if I'm wrong on this. The City has its maps, which have the FEMA boundaries,
and I believe that each of the poles that have been identified are located within that boundary zone.
Chairman Furth: Is that correct, Rebecca?
City of Palo Alto Page 34
Ms. Atkinson: I'd have to go through every one of those environmental assessment worksheets, which I
actually do have on line here, to see the latest version that was submitted. But the plans themselves
have flood information for each node, and so forth, for those particular nodes that they're saying are in
the flood zone. I would refer to the plan site also for confirmation of --
Chairman Furth: I was hoping for a really simple answer here.
Mr. Lait: I think I provided you with, you know, we believe that these are located in the flood zone.
(crosstalk)
Chairman Furth: Thank you. That's helpful. Clearly, a lot of thought and effort has gone into this. Clearly, there is a high level of mistrust. Clearly, there is a high level of unknowns. But, again, focusing on what we are tasked with focusing on, I agree with my fellow Board member's comment, that what seems to
preclude placing this equipment underground is either the difficulty of having vented vaults in areas
prone to flooding, or the City's own standards and public improvements. I think that one of the things we
learned today is that under the City's rules, the only way to have an underground vault in areas with
rolled curbs is to put it in the street. Is that right?
Board Member Gooyer: Well, unless you change the design of the curb.
Chairman Furth: But, under present City standards? Staff? Is it the City's position that if you have rolled
curbs in the neighborhood, you cannot have sidewalk vaults? The only thing left for underground vaults
would be the street.
Mr. Lait: Is it feasible for the City to have a new, designed sidewalk to accommodate a vault system?
Probably.
Chair Furth: I'm asking a much more simple question.
Mr. Lait: Well, but --
Chair Furth: Assuming -- Okay. Answer the question you wish to answer.
Mr. Lait: Okay. We've identified that the rolled curbs are somewhat problematic, but they're not, you know, it's not...I would say it's not an unsolvable problem, but there are other design aesthetic
considerations that sort of go into the mix of issues that we are considering with undergrounded vaults.
Chair Furth: Thank you. The reason I was asking these questions is because I think that it wasn't clear to
me when we started this process that, given the way we design much of -- what was it? Post-war -?
Immediate post-war Palo Alto, with rolled curbs, and sidewalks that drain a bit. Under our present Public
Works and Utility Standards, what we think of as underground vaulting for this kind of facility is not really
a simple approach, unless you -- as Jonathan was suggesting -- you undertake redesigning the sidewalk,
and making other significant changes. And I think this is something that is going to drive our decision-
making, because we can talk about not damaging trees too much; we can even give people -- including
ourselves -- the choice of replacing a tree if we need to, to do this; we could theoretically give people the
option of saying, "You want to surrender part of your front yard, instead of having an overhead facility?" That's a deal that could be made. But for much of the city with rolled curb design, unless the Council decides to change the utility rules or the Public Works rules, underground vaulting isn't feasible in those areas.
Board Member Gooyer: Wait a minute. I mean, a rolled curb, just because a section has rolled curb, it
doesn't mean you have to replace 800 feet of rolled curb if you want to put one vault in.
Chair Furth: I agree.
City of Palo Alto Page 35
Board Member Gooyer: Okay.
Chair Furth: But that would require the City changing its standards for curbs in that area, right?
Vice Chair Baltay: Can I --? Could I address that, please? I'm a practicing architect in Palo Alto. I've built
numerous homes, dealt with many utility situations, and these particular types of sidewalks. The question
is not the rolled curb. There's a five-foot-wide concrete sidewalk. The vault is four feet wide. We're
talking about putting the vault in the sidewalk, not the curb. The question that they're raising is, if the
sidewalk is slightly sloped -- just ever so slightly -- so rainwater rolls into the curb, the question is, can you design a vault with a lid that's slightly sloped to fit this? I don't believe that requires redesigning the sidewalk. What that requires is rethinking how you make a vault. We can put a rocket on the moon, we can build cell phones with more power than the Saturn rockets. Surely we can figure out how to make a
vault with a slightly sloped lid. That's all it is. It's nothing about redesigning everything. And I don't even
believe it's about redoing the utility regulations. I think if Verizon came forward with a vault with a
slightly sloped lid, Utilities would be find with it. I've done this many times, on many projects, trying to
find answers to the myriad of regulations we have in this town. It's a matter of trying.
Chair Furth: Staff, any comment?
Mr. Lait: The application is before the Board to consider the proposal, and if the Board feels like vaulting
is something that needs to, is required to move it forward, you can recommend imposing a condition to
address vaulting in that rea.
Chair Furth: Well, this isn't a new issue, obviously. The last time this came before the Board, we asked
them to, we asked the applicant to pursue vaulting, if feasible. And the answer that came back -- as I
understand it -- is that either it's not feasible because of flooding problems, potential flooding problems, or it's not feasible because of our curb design. I'm just asking if we have rules that would preclude installing a slightly-slanted, lidded vault in these sidewalks. Not having any engineering skills myself.
Mr. Lait: We have all kinds of rules, and we have all kinds of preferences as to how we set this urban design component relative to...There's different types of vaulting that takes place. There's different sizes.
We've heard 4 by 6 is the interior, I think, dimensions of the proposed vaulting. I suppose anything could
be engineered to accomplish that. There could be another examination -- if the Board were to condition
in that regard -- to look at vaulting on these sloped sidewalks and rolled curbs. There are other issues
that come into play, of course, and that's the, you know, the design considerations with having such, you
know, the proposed vaulting equipment, that's another design aesthetic. Also, we come across the issue
of the noise, and Verizon's proposed equipment -- as they have it currently designed -- appears to be in
conflict with our CNEL regulations for how much decibel levels is produced by the fans that are required
for the venting, and so forth. Even if we do come up with a design solution for the vaulting, we still have
this noise ordinance issue that we're having to remedy, as well. Yes, there probably could be a design
solution for that, too, and Verizon is working on that relative to some of the other nodes. But, right now, at present, with the application before you, it appears we do not have a compliant vaulting system that meets the noise requirements.
Chair Furth: Any vault that they're proposing now would not comply with our noise level ordinances?
Mr. Lait: The vault design that has been presented does not appear, based on their reporting, to meet
our CNLE [sic] (inaudible).
Chair Furth: Thank you. Okay. Anybody wish to make a motion, or make other comments before we have
a motion?
Board Member Lew: I'd like -- Nobody on the Board has commented on, like, the 133 versus the 133-E
alternate location that the staff is recommending. Are there any thoughts about that?
City of Palo Alto Page 36
Vice Chair Baltay: The alternate location allows for an easier vault location.
Board Member Lew: My take on it was that 133-E allows for, has more space for a screening tree. The
other one, I don't think has that much space. I don't think the drawings are accurate based on what I
looked at in the field.
Vice Chair Baltay: I share what Alex is saying about the drawings, and caution everyone. They're not
perfectly accurate. In many places, driveway placements with the planting zones were not accurate. It is
important to look at each situation. It's understandable. There's a lot of information here.
Chair Furth: Are there any responses to Robert's suggestion that all the poles should be replaced with new poles?
Board Member Lew: I thought about that, too. I'm not opposed to that. That may be the best option.
Chair Furth: Okay.
MOTION
Vice Chair Baltay: I'd like to make a motion and see where it goes: That we recommend approval of this
project, with the condition that all pole-mounted equipment be placed underground.
Chair Furth: Is there a second?
Board Member Gooyer: I'll second that.
Chair Furth: Discussion?
Vice Chair Baltay: Yes, I would like to speak to my motion. It's a difficult call because Verizon has worked
hard to get the pole-mounted equipment looking better, and indeed, as Alex mentioned, what's on the
pole now outside of Newell Court or Newell Street is much better. I won't deny it. You guys have taken it
a long way, and compared to previous installations, this is a much better installation. I'm really concerned. This is the first 11 out of what will be hundreds of similar installations around Palo Alto. It's just very hard for me to accept that we would put these on pretty much every block in town, I believe, will end up having a utility, a micro cell tower like this, with the pole-mounted equipment. That's where, to me, it's just too much. I just can't make that finding in my heart, I can't make that finding looking at
the regulations about not a desirable environment. That's what the regulations say we have to find. Does
it enhance the living conditions in the community? I find it, visually, it really does not. I just keep coming
back to that. I'd love to say, if it was just these 11 poles with these brown boxes on it, sure. It's not that
big of a deal. But, I think we're looking at what's going to be much more. Honestly, within the
Architectural Review Board, what's going to happen is that this will wind up in front of City Council, and
what we need to be doing is giving City Council aesthetic guidance on what's the best way for Palo Alto
to move forward. And I believe the best way, in the long run, is to come up with a solution where you
don't have pole-mounted equipment. This is just the beginning. That's why I think we should set a strong
direction and recommendation to City Council.
Chair Furth: And I forgot to ask you to be specific in your motion as to the findings you cannot make, and the facts that are the basis for those findings, your inability to make those findings. I think you said earlier, but --
Vice Chair Baltay: Architectural Review Board Finding #2, items A. and items E., I'm unable to make. And then, Architectural Review Board Finding #3, that it's of high aesthetic quality, I'm unable to make.
Board Member Thompson: I have a question for Vice Chair Baltay. Given that it's possible that this will be
rolled out to other blocks, does it not bother you that potentially, if this is vaulted, that it will be
City of Palo Alto Page 37
undesirable from a pedestrian point of view? That people with strollers will have to hear the sound,
people with wheelchairs will have to bump over it; that it would actually, fundamentally affect our
streetscape if there are so many vaults in Palo Alto.
Vice Chair Baltay: Yes, it bothers me tremendously. I wish we didn't live in a world where we needed so
much broadband access, cellularly. Given that we want that, what I'm arguing for is a good aesthetic
solution. That's what the Architectural Review Board should be finding. I believe that putting them in
vaults will ultimately produce a better solution than having them be pole-mounted. I think vault design can be worked on the way the pole design has been worked on. If you think about it for a second, Verizon has gone through tremendous lengths with us, with this application, to improve the shroud on the pole. They made a point themselves. They went from 70 cubic feet of equipment to 20. Have we seen a similar effort on the vault design?
Board Member Thompson: I think, regardless, you're still going to have to deal with a bunch of
pedestrian potential hazards when a vault is introduced. I think with something that is pole-mounted,
there is, I think you're right. The ability to minimize it, but then, also, forget it after a while. Because
these are meant to be invisible after a while, but you can't make invisible the bump that you walk over,
and the bump that you roll over in a wheelchair, or in a stroller, or whatever. I'm unconvinced that this is
a better choice.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Okay, Robert, do you want to speak further?
Board Member Gooyer: Yeah, I agree the same thing. The two items -- 2 and 3 -- I just have a hard time
being able to...They're an eyesore. I'm sorry, but they really are. And the thing is, the vaults aren't really
bump-overs. I mean, if they're done properly, they're flush with the sidewalk, and other than maybe a material change, it's -- And even that's not always the case. I do want to mention one thing. Now, how about, if we're going to make this motion one way or the other, how about the situation of the poles? We said as far as -- Oh, we're doing two separate motions? Okay.
Chair Furth: Would you like to make a friendly amendment to your motion that --?
Board Member Gooyer: No, I was going to say, if we're going to do two motions, that's fine.
Chair Furth: Well, wait a minute. We've got, we've got a motion to deny.
Vice Chair Baltay: No, no.
Chair Furth: I'm sorry, to require -- Sorry. I'm not paying any attention here. We've got a motion to
approve, subject to requirement that the equipment be placed underground.
Board Member Gooyer: Right.
Chair Furth: Is that right?
Vice Chair Baltay: Yes.
Chair Furth: Do you want to add that all antenna --?
Board Member Gooyer: Well, my question is, then, if we're going to make one motion, we ought to address both issues.
Chair Furth: Both issues meaning...?
Board Member Gooyer: Meaning the handling of the equipment and the situation of the antenna.
City of Palo Alto Page 38
Chair Furth: Yes, I agree.
Vice Chair Baltay: Can I address that, then? Could we bring the photograph of the antennas up again,
please? What I’m afraid, Robert, is that, as much as I think the pole all the way up makes engineering
sense, I can't find any architectural review finding that supports that. Aesthetically, when I look at the
recommended one in the middle versus the pole on the side, I'm hard pressed to say that it's significantly
worse.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay.
Vice Chair Baltay: I feel that requiring a replacement of the poles is not something that we should be requiring. It may be an engineering requirement, and I would trust Utilities to back up on that. Maybe --
Board Member Gooyer: That's fine. I just wanted to have it one way or the other.
Chair Furth: And what about --
Vice Chair Baltay: Well, I don't think we should do that.
Chair Furth: And what about the recommendation of the staff alternative for 133-E? Do we support that?
Would you support that?
Board Member Gooyer: That's the change in location, right?
Chair Furth: That's right.
Vice Chair Baltay: I think staff's recommendation (crosstalk).
Chair Furth: Incorporating staff's recommendation.
Board Member Gooyer: I just want, if we're going to have one motion, I'd like to have it complete.
Board Member Thompson: Board Member Lew, which one did you feel had better ability for tree
screening?
Board Member Lew: I think 133-E.
Board Member Thompson: Okay.
Board Member Lew: From what I saw on 133, I think there's, like, a driveway, and a pole, and there isn't
really that much space between the driveway and the pole.
Board Member Gooyer: Right.
Board Member Thompson: Okay, thank you.
Chair Furth: You want to incorporate selection of alternative 133-E?
Vice Chair Baltay: I'd like to add that we recommend approval of pole 133-E, rather than 133.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Board Member Gooyer: Yeah, that's fine.
City of Palo Alto Page 39
Chair Furth: Before we vote, I'll just say that we have two sets of standards here. One is specific to this
kind of facility, and the other one our general ARB standards, which are clearly not designed to think
about utilities very carefully, which present extra challenges for us.
Mr. Lait: And as you get ready to vote, just to be clear on the motion. This is with the bayonet shroud,
the staff recommendation for the antenna? Bayonet?
Vice Chair Baltay: Taper shroud (crosstalk).
Mr. Lait: Tapered shroud, thank you. As recommended in the report.
Vice Chair Baltay: Yes. The motion is to approve the taper shroud.
Chair Furth: All those in favor? All those opposed?
MOTION FAILED WITH A VOTE OF 2-3 WITH CHAIR FURTH, BOARD MEMBER THOMPSON, AND BOARD MEMBER LEW OPPOSED.
Chair Furth: All right. We need a different motion.
SECOND MOTION
Board Member Thompson: Okay. I move to recommend a taper shroud, alternate 133-E, and the box
shroud.
Chair Furth: You're recommending approval, subject to the staff report findings, recommending findings
and conditions, with alternative 133-E, the taper shroud, and -- What am I forgetting?
Board Member Thompson: The box shroud.
Chair Furth: The box shroud. Taper and --? Say that right. I said it wrong.
Board Member Lew: The tapered shroud. I will second.
Chair Furth: Any further discussion. All those in favor say aye? All those opposed?
MOTION PASSES 3-2 WITH BOARD MEMBER BALTAY AND BOARD MEMBER GOOYER OPPOSING.
Chair Furth: Okay, that motion passes 3 votes to 2 votes. Would the dissenters care to say more?
Board Member Gooyer: No, I pretty much said how I felt.
Vice Chair Baltay: Yeah, it's democracy in action.
Chair Furth: Reasonable people can obviously differ. Thank you for your attendance, and we'll take a
five-minute break.
Mr. Lait: Chair, just for our transcriber, the "No" votes were Board Member Baltay and Board Member
Gooyer.
Chair Furth: Thank you very much.
[The Board took a short break.]
City of Palo Alto Page 40
Chair Furth: I'd like to call the meeting to order, if the staff is ready. I'd like to note for the record that
Board Member Thompson has had to leave and will not be participating in the rest of the agenda items
today.
3. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 2755 El Camino Real [16PLN-00464]:
Recommendation on Applicant's Request for Approval of a Site and Design Review to Allow
Construction of a 57 Unit Multi-family Residence at the Project Site. The Project Also Includes a
Request for a Zoning Code Text Amendment Ordinance to Create a New Workforce Combining District and a Zoning Map Amendment Ordinance to Apply the New District to the Project Site. Council Will Consider These Ordinances Along With the Site and Design Review Application. Environmental Assessment: An Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration (IS/MND) was Published for Public Comment on January 19, 2018 and Circulation Ended on February 20, 2018.
Zoning District: Public Facilities (PF). For More Information Contact the Project Planner Claire
Hodgkins at Claire.Hodgkins@cityofpaloalto.org.
Chair Furth: This is a request for approval of site design review to allow construction of a 57-unit
multiple-family residence at the project site commonly known as the VTA lot. The project is not
consistent with current zoning, so it includes a request for a zoning code amendment to create a new
workforce combining district and a zoning map amendment to apply that new district to the project site,
which the City Council will consider. The Planning and Transportation Commission has already reviewed
this proposal. There is a mitigated negative debt that has been circulated. The present zoning is public
facilities. Does anybody have any outside-of-board contacts, information contacts on this project to
disclose before we begin?
Board Member Lew: I don't, but I will disclose that I visited one of the architect's other projects in San Francisco, called Knox.
Chair Furth: Called what?
Board Member Lew: Knox Dogpatch.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Vice Chair Baltay: Nothing to disclose.
Chair Furth: I will disclose that I listened to the five-hour deliberation of the Planning and Transportation
Commission on this project because I was confined to bed anyway. As they pointed out, they weren't
doing fine-scale design, though they did see advance plans because of the timing of this project. I was
really impressed by the discussion of the suitability of using pros-zone [phonetic] distributions when
analyzing queuing behavior, but I think that's beyond our purview, probably. But, they did raise a number
of comments on the design, which I wanted to mention for the applicants and commentaries, public
commenters' benefit. One was they were concerned about the adverse effects of the project on living
conditions of persons on the lower floors of Sunrise, both in terms of curtailing light, and perhaps providing unattractive views. There was an assertion that the ground floor units on Page Mill were substandard and would have their blinds lowered at all times; concern about problems during construction because of inadequate protection of neighbors from excessive noise exposures; and the importance of keeping streets and sidewalks open as much as possible; concerns about the adequacy of
guest parking; the lack of pedestrian amenities that would be expected under the South El Camino Real
guidelines; need for very good data on the effectiveness of the TDM programs in terms of user
satisfaction; neighborhood spill-over, especially considering that parking restrictions in nearby RPP
districts end at 5 p.m.; and also, on the utilization of the garage. Many questions about parking lifts, and
the need for more landscaping. Could we hear from the staff? Glad to know that sexual harassment
training is so entertaining.
City of Palo Alto Page 41
Claire Hodgkins, Project Planner: Good afternoon. My name is Claire Hodgkins, I'm the project planner.
The project before you today is 2755 El Camino Real. Just a quick overview of the project. It's demolition
of the existing former VTA parking lot and construction of a four-story multifamily residential building
with 57 residential units. As noted, the project also includes a zoning code amendment to create a new
combining district, and a zoning map amendment that would apply the new combining district to the
project site. These legislative actions will be considered by Council following this recommendation on the
project site and design from the ARB. A brief overview of the background process, and process moving forward. There was a Council prescreening for this project in September 2016; study sessions with the PTC and ARB in June 2017; PTC recommended approval of the project in January 2018. Today, we're looking for the ARB's recommendation, and Council is tentatively scheduled in April 2018. The MND was circulated on January 19th, and the circulation ended on February 20th. Key project changes addressing ARB comments included revised open space design, specifically the podium open space has been
removed and revised. The Page Mill streetscape revisions, specifically there was a large blank wall on the
Page Mill streetscape at the ground level that has been revised to be more pedestrian-friendly through
the use of vegetation, planters and window placement. Bicycle and vehicle parking. The project was
revised to include all the bicycle parking at grade, to add more parking, and to include a better circulation
design. Massing and FAR. There was a reduced FAR. Originally, it was 2.4 to 1, and it was reduced to 2.0
to 1. The applicant also broke up the massing of the building through better articulation, as well as color
and material changes. Daylight and air. The vent tower was removed and much of the building has been
set back further from the property lines than originally proposed. Some key items for the ARB's
consideration today. As outlined in the staff report, consistency with the South El Camino Real design guidelines and El Camino Real design guidelines; consistency with the context-based design criteria; prominence of the corner entrance design; relationship between the building and the street; and the overall massing and articulation of the building. Staff recommends that the ARB take the following actions: Consider the Mitigated Negative Declaration and the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Plan,
and recommend approval of the site and design application to City Council based on findings, and subject
to conditions of approval in the Record of Land Use Action. With that, I'll turn it back to you. I believe the
applicant does have a presentation.
Chair Furth: Okay. Claire, just to confirm. Even though this is a site design, we use our standard ARB
findings in reviewing this project.
Ms. Hodgkins: Correct, yes. As part of the site and design review, the Architectural Review Board uses
the AR findings. The PTC uses additional findings for site and design review.
Chair Furth: Thank you. (Inaudible) applicant's presentation? Good morning. You have 10 minutes, and if
you could spell your name for the record.
Tod Spieker: [Spells name.] [Setting up slides.]
Chair Furth: We have a brief technical delay.
Mr. Spieker: Thank you. My name is Tod Spieker with Windy Hill Property Ventures. Thank you, Claire and staff, for all the work you have put into getting this project where we are today. And, thank you Board Members for giving our project thoughtful consideration and feedback. Windy Hill Property
Ventures is a small Palo Alto-based development company. We primarily work in San Mateo and Santa
Clara counties, with a strong focus on amenity-rich sites close to transit. This slide illustrates the time we
spent working with staff and the community to come before you with this project today. This was the
former VTA site, purchased by Pollock Financial in 2014. They proposed a primarily office project. As part
of the feedback during their September 2015 prescreening, a majority of Council members mentioned the
need for more housing on this site, or being an appropriate location for more housing in Palo Alto. Based
on that feedback from Council, Windy Hill and Pollock Financial formed a partnership in 2016, where
Windy Hill would propose to entitle this studio and one-bedroom housing project. We submitted our
application for a City Council study session in the summer of 2016. In September of 2016, we had a prescreening with City Council, where the majority of councilmembers gave positive feedback for a
City of Palo Alto Page 42
housing project on this site. In December of 2016, we submitted a formal application with the City. We
were then asked to go to PTC and ARB for further study sessions. During this time, we did extensive
community outreach, meeting with neighbors, respected community members, elected officials and
appointed officials. Based on these study sessions and community meetings over the past almost two
years, we have made significant modifications to our original proposal. We know that we did not make
everybody happy, but we hope that it can be appreciated that we gave thoughtful consideration to the
concerns and made changes and compromised where we could. In January of this year, we received unanimous approval to move forward with our project from the Planning and Transportation Commission. A few highlights of our TDM plan. Caltrain Go Passes, VTA Eco Passes for all residents. Unbundled parking. Pricing separately for all parking makes the rent more affordable to those who do not want to own a car, while placing a premium on those who want guaranteed parking a transit-oriented environment. Bike parking, bike kitchen, information kiosks, information boards, showing VTA, SamTrans,
Marguerite Shuttle and Caltrain schedules. On-site transportation coordinator. With the implementation of
these measures outlined in the TDM plan, it is anticipated that this project would result in a 35 percent
reduction in trips. If this project moves forward, it will be the first project in Palo Alto to be GreenTRIP
certified by TransForm, a local nonprofit aimed at reducing traffic congestion here in the Bay Area.
Another important part of our project is the right-hand turn lane. As part of our proposal, we will be
deeding a portion of our property along Page Mill for a future right-hand turn lane. The City has said they
need to help traffic flow at this busy intersection. The following is an overview of the changes we have
made: size, density, affordable housing, parking, number of stalls, guest parking, Uber, DoorDash, and
Amazon drop-offs and bike parking. We originally proposed a 60-unit project and a 2.25 FAR. A concern we heard was it was too dense and too big. We decreased the number of units to 57 and reduced the FAR to 2.0. We heard the concern about the lack of affordable units, and we determined after meeting with the Palo Alto Housing Corp that they could do more with the in-lieu fee than we could, and that we could make a difference by addressing the missing middle. By deed-restricting 12 units -- or 21 percent
of the project -- at levels of 140 and 150 percent of the Santa Clara County area median income. These
next changes were suggestions and concerns brought up at the last ARB hearing. Parking. We heard the
concern of not enough parking, no guest parking, where are Uber and Lyft going to pick up and drop off,
where are DoorDash and Amazon going to park while dropping off meals and packages? How is the
circulation going to work in the garage with the mechanical parking system? To address these concerns,
we added 23 parking stalls. We moved the drive aisle to the back of the parcel, and we were able to add
four guest spots on grade, and space with Uber, Lyft and deliveries. We reconfigured our garage layout
to improve the circulation. In moving the drive aisle and the garage access to the back of the parcel, we
needed to replace the open space, which we now have as part of a rooftop deck on the fourth floor. Bike
parking. We heard the concern about bike parking in the garage, how we are pushing for a car-light project but making our bike storage difficult to access. We now have all of our long-term bike storage easily accessible on the main level. This slide shows the previous garage and the previous first-floor plans, and what we are now proposing. I think you will see that we addressed the concerns brought up at the previous ARB. Why? There are more people working in Palo Alto than live in Palo Alto. We've all
heard it a thousand times -- the job/housing imbalance, and that voice is getting lower. Per the City's
most recent data, there are 3.05 jobs in the city of Palo Alto per one employed resident. That means on
any given day, we have over two people coming from outside Palo Alto, into Palo Alto, causing traffic and
parking congestion. In 2016, the City of Palo Alto conducted a poll of residents regarding a variety of
issues, and one of the questions was regarding housing. Seventy-six percent of those polled said housing
was a problem here in Palo Alto. Obviously, this project will not fix the problem, but it can help bring 57-
plus people working in Palo Alto, looking for a place to live close to where they work. There are more
than 23,000 jobs across the street at Stanford Research Park. We are looking for 57 of them. In closing,
we feel we are implementing what Palo Alto leadership has asked for, and what the general plan and
comp plan call for. The comp plan has identified sites with an amenity-rich in transit-approximate areas
that would allow for adding up to approximately 5,000 housing units over the next 10 years. Our site is within the area identified in the comp plan. There may be debate about how much housing Palo Alto should be responsible for building, but there is consensus that some level of housing is needed. So, why not here? Thank you. We have the following people here with us, should you have any questions: Our
architects, Jon Ennis and Ian Murphy from BDE Architecture; and our mechanical lift expert, David
LoCoco, from Watry Design. Thank you.
City of Palo Alto Page 43
Chair Furth: Thank you. Any --? Let's see, I have no cards from the public. Anybody wish to speak to this
project? Hearing none, we'll go on. Any questions of the applicant or staff? Robert?
Board Member Gooyer: No.
Chair Furth: Alex?
Board Member Lew: I have a question, I guess maybe start with staff. There's an existing wall on the
Silverwood condominium, or this housing project next door, and there's a Linus Pauling tile mural on it,
and it turns the corner, and there's some tiles on that wall. Do you know, on the wall with the property, with the proposed project, are those tiles being proposed to be moved? As I understand it in the plans, they're proposing a new fence, which would cover everything up. Have there been any discussions about that?
Ms. Hodgkins: There haven't been any discussions, to be completely honest. I guess I'd...Yeah. We
hadn't discussed what would be happening with that, on the tiles.
Board Member Lew: Thank you.
Ms. Hodgkins: I don't know if the applicant has anything to add about what their plan is for that.
Chair Furth: Yes?
Mr. Spieker: This is the first we're hearing about this being a concern. It was never brought up, so we
haven't even thought about it.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Discussion? Robert. Oh, all right. Start on my right hand. Peter.
Vice Chair Baltay: Robert always gets to start.
Chair Furth: Absolutely. He always does, yes.
Vice Chair Baltay: In principle, this is a great project, and something that Palo Alto desperately needs, and we want to push forward. In practice, I'm afraid I'm finding that this design is just, it's just not there yet. I'll put out some issues I see with it as far as the architectural side of it. The site planning just doesn't work. You really need a way for people to come and go easily, to catch an Uber, to take a delivery, for the Federal Express truck to stop -- all those things. Right now, as I see it, you make a hard
right off of Page Mill and you have to turn into the building, and these four spots you're providing are
sort of under the overhang of the rest of the building, with a large blank wall. And you only have exactly
20 feet, so you've got to know what to do, pull in, know how to get out, not conflict with other things. If
you have 50-something units here, you're going to have a lot of deliveries at five o'clock. I mean, more
and more, especially when you're trying to go transportation-light and have fewer cars, you've got to
solve that problem in a real working way. What I see here is that you sort of took our comments last time
about the parking, where you had this, what I'd say, ridiculous arrangement of stack that's so jammed
together, to something that's closer. But, you're not really embracing what I think we're mentioning,
what the Planning Commission mentioned, what staff is telling you guys: That it needs to work. It really
needs to work, that you can easily pull off of El Camino, have a place to stop your car and run in and make that delivery, to pick up your friend when you're going to do something together -- all these things, all these parts of our daily life just don't work in this building. And when you combine that with trying to increase the density and get rid of the parking, it really doesn't work. It's really sad because this is the building we all want to look to and say, "This is what we're capable of doing." It's just not...The basic site
planning of it doesn't quite work yet. Same comment to you about the bicycles. Yes, you heard us. You
took the bikes out of the basement -- and what were you thinking? -- and put them, now, square front
and center in this windowless room, which is sort of awkward, to carry my bike through the lobby. What
I'm really left thinking is that you're not thinking about it a lot. You're thinking about the minimum you
City of Palo Alto Page 44
can to get through. What I'm really wanting to see happen is that you embrace this as a new paradigm.
This is a new way to build multifamily housing, in this town, especially, and bikes are important. They're
really important. Just, think for yourself. You're coming home, it's a rainy day, you've got wet gear. Are
you going to slog through the main entrance of the building? Are you going to have a separate door
where you go, and then go into the lobby? These are basic architectural things. And I don't know why,
but you're not thinking about it. I'm confident that you guys are good architects. Somebody's just turned
off the switch and it's not happening, and it needs to. Especially if you want the City...You're asking the City to change the zoning on this property, to double the density, and yet, you're not dealing with these basic functional issues. It just doesn't work. I'll address the issue of the building massing. Yes, when you have an FAR of 2.0 or 2.5, as you mentioned, the building gets bulkier, and I think that the corner can easily support that. Your designs, the bulk of the building, the neighbors, all work. That’s fine. But, again, where do you come off with this box with no top on it? Everything around it has it. The El Camino
guidelines call for the building to have a base, a middle and a top. We mentioned it to you last time. Staff
mentions it to you. You didn't change the basic design. This looks like some of the other multifamily
housing down El Camino that have been widely criticized. Are you listening? Are you really looking at the
environment? Buildings on both sides of this have really pronounced roofs. We have a contextual-based
design criteria, and yet, you just ignore it. I'm flabbergasted, why? And it's not complicated architecture.
It doesn't have to be Frank Lloyd Wright here, but, it's just, you need a roof on the building. The
guidelines require it. You just don't have it. This is twice we've asked for it. For example, you have a roof
deck on the top floor. That's a great idea. I think that's going to have a wonderful view. That's a good
change. Maybe consider putting a trellis on it. A trellis will give you really nice shade in the hot afternoon sun. It will make a roof form. It will help you meet the guidelines. These are basic architectural things. Did you guys just stop thinking about it to get the application done, or are you really wanting to accomplish something? I'm also concerned about the corner. This is the most prominent corner in Palo Alto now, shy of what's downtown, and you have this recessed feature, and you've added now some sort
of, I guess you always had this, this solar canopy, or something. But, it's not the strongest corner I've
ever seen, and I think it could be a lot better. It's just unfortunate that it's not there. You have ground-
level apartments along Page Mill Road, with about five feet of, now what you're saying is landscaping. Go
back to Architectural 101 again. You raise the grade. Put it up two feet above the sidewalk. Put a small
balcony, a terrace. There's all kinds of things you can do to make it tolerable for the people who are
there. How would you want to live in an apartment five feet from the sidewalk on the busiest street in
town, at grade? Tell me you're not going to have those windows locked shut with shades every second of
every day. That's not good design. And, you're asking for a zoning change to double the density? I'm
sorry. I'd suggest that you consider raising the building, or, it's hard to pull it back more, but something
else. Lastly, I'll address the issue of the material selection. Again, I find a number of things just aren't quite there. Perhaps you're still working on that, and I understand it, but you have sort of wood slats vertically on the side of a building where you originally had just a white element next to the brick, at the entrance, at the corner. I just, I don't know what you're thinking, but it doesn't work. It screams to me of somebody that's not really pushing hard enough to figure that out. I'm sorry to be harsh on you guys,
but think of it as tough love. This is a building I want, the Board wants, the City wants to succeed
desperately. Really want to approve it. You're going to be the poster child for future residential
development in Palo Alto. It's got to be great. It's got to really...Up your game on the architecture here,
so that we can really be proud of something. I'll leave it at that. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Okay. Moving left. Alex.
Board Member Lew: I'm think I'm more supportive of this project than Board Member Baltay. I would
say, though, I do have some concerns. I do thank you for trying to address the Board's comments from
the last hearing, and I do want to thank staff. I think the staff report got everything correct. I think that
my take on the project is fairly closely aligned with the staff's thinking on this one. I generally am in
support of the project. The concerns that I have are with respect to the El Camino Design Guidelines. I
think it is that, some sort of top or corniche. I think I disagree to a degree with Board Member Baltay. I think you're asking for a roof, a pitched roof, and I think our guidelines sort of discourage that. Well, they discourage decorative roofs. They sort of recommend, like, flat roofs, generally. But, we do ask for some sort of top, some sort or corniche. Something. I have some concerns about, I guess we call it the
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driveway entrance, the portico? I guess you would call it, like, a portico (inaudible), or a portal, the first
part of the driveway portal, with the balconies. I do like that you added the balconies, but I'm concerned
about how that's going to look from below, and that the columns along the side are going to look too thin
and spindly. On the Page Mill façade, I'm concerned about the, I guess you would call it, like, bay
windows, out of stucco, and then you have thin areas of brick in between them. I'm worried that that's
going to look too much like veneer. On the north façade facing Silverwood, you have some very large
blank walls, and I was wondering if you could add very small windows, if that's feasible. On landscaping, I think that the entry plaza and the roof terrace could be nice spaces. I think the plans are looking too diagrammatic for me, at this time. On landscaping, I'm not sure that I could meet, from what I've seen so far, I don't think I can make the native plant finding on there, although I would acknowledge that this is a very urban site and you have limited planting area. I think consideration would be given to that. As I mentioned in the questions section, I am concerned about the fence and the walls surrounding the
neighbors. They're actually fairly low, from what I could see. I think they can, may be, like, 5-feet-6 high.
The existing walls are masonry walls, or CMU walls. And then, the plans are showing a wood fence in
front of that. I think the plans are showing vines on the north wall facing the Silverwood project, and I'm
curious to see how that will work. Most vines require full sun, although there are some -- like ficus -- that
don't. On findings, I have some comments on the findings. Finding #3, I think staff, there you had some
draft language in there. For Finding #3 -- Let me get the page. Finding #3, which is page 91 of the
packet. I would actually... Staff's language is that the design of high aesthetic quality, using quality
materials and incorporating greenery. As a design person, I think I would try to argue that, I think I
would propose saying that the, something more like the project uses a varied palette to create visual interest and to break up the massing. Something like that. I'm not sure that the project is getting there yet. And then, you could itemize things, like that there's a stucco veneer, metal railings, metal sunshades and awnings, to give a sense that there are design elements on the building itself. On Finding #4, which is about pedestrian and bicycle elements, I think I might add that the County is proposing to add a
bicycle lane in front of the project, which would connect to the existing bicycle lane on the other side of
El Camino. On Finding #5, which is about our native plants, the draft language said the extensive number
of proposed trees would provide desirable habitat for avian species, as well as screening. I'm a little bit
hesitant about that. There are organizations like Audubon Society, and the National Wildlife Federation,
and they have whole checklists of things to do for habitat for birds, or butterflies, or whatever, and it's
not just putting in a tree. It's more than that. It's, like, water, fruit, food, nuts, shelter, cover, water,
nectar, no pesticides. So, there's a whole range of things, and we don't really have that in any of our
design guidelines, or whatever. I think those are pretty standard things that even some of my neighbors
do. They have certified habitat gardens. So, I don't think it's really that far out there. I would
recommend, I think, maybe striking that, that it would...maybe that sentence in there. That's where I am on this one. Again, I guess I'd say, I think I do agree with Peter, that this project needs to be great. In the past on some of our other low-income projects, I've felt pressured to move it along and get a housing project approved, and I do support that politically. I mean, but that does make sense. But I have been disappointed in some of our recent affordable housing projects with regard to things like landscaping,
and details, and what-not, and the size of windows. I think it's important. And I think when we don't do
it, we get blowback. For example, like on the 801 Alma project. There was a lot of blowback on it, so I
think I agree with Peter, that it does need to be great. We'll see where the rest of the Board is on this
one. I'm generally supportive of the project.
Chair Furth: Robert?
Board Member Gooyer: Okay. I'm definitely in favor of the type of project, everything else. I love the idea
that you can take your bicycle right to the train station, that sort of thing. The zoning, all the changes,
I'm definitely for. I'm not a big fan of having 60 out of the 64 parking spaces be mechanical system. But,
again, because this is somewhat of an experimental project, I'm willing to even let that go and, you
know, figure that, hopefully, the residents are going to be using their bicycles more often than their cars.
The cars are going to stay there a while, so it's not really that big a deal. Now, having said that -- And I guess one benefit about going after, not first, is that, I have to agree with pretty much everything that Board Member Baltay said. I mean, I'm sorry. The design is really not up to par. I mean, it's the same sort of thing. It's not that you have to put a roof on it to match the two adjacent buildings, but, I mean,
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it's -- as you put it -- sort of Architecture 101, that a building like this has a base, a middle and a top.
This has a base, and a middle, and there's no top to it. It just sort of ends. And it looks massive and
bulky without really getting any benefit out of that. The corner is actually recessed. If you want to
accentuate the corner somewhat, and then, has a cavity in the body of it. I agree that it would be murder
for the average UPS driver to try and remember that he has to stop right after he makes the turn. It's
just a lot of work needs to be done. Based on time, I think pretty much I'm in the same camp as the
other two people, that this project, I'm all in favor of it, but...And I wouldn't even say it needs to be perfect, but I think it needs a long way to go for me to give it an approval.
Chair Furth: Okay. We have materials boards here. Is it accurate that there's a gate at the entrance?
Ms. Hodgkins: No. That piece has not been updated. I shouldn't have put it in there. The materials are
generally, it's the same materials, but that was the original design, and it's been revised to have a porte-
cochere.
Chair Furth: Thanks. It's a terrific project. It is a joy to see something that the City wants, as opposed to
a whole bunch of antenna that, people may want the service, but not the antenna. It's great to have
housing proposed here, and be designed for housing. I think our concerns from the beginning have been
three. One is, how does it work with its neighbors? I think particularly concerned about the rather
vulnerable people at Sunrise. Secondly, how does it look? And, thirdly, how does it work? So, I have
three concerns. One is, I don't literally understand how I arrive with my bike, and what I walk through to
park it, and to unload my bike bag. And, I don't understand, when I drive up with my child, my stroller
and my groceries, how it works. I guess I need a little more information like that. And I'd like to hear
from my colleagues on how you feel about the design of the units that face Page Mill Road. I've listened to you in the past. We've looked at a lot of projects on El Camino that raise this issue on the side street, about grade separation or design, and whether you think the project as presented has adequate, I mean, has acceptable units on the ground level, and if not, what might be done. And then, from the staff, whether it would still comply with the proposed zoning if they did raise the level. I'm concerned about
whether we need to have shade structures of some kind on the rooftop social space, and also, how you
think it will be for people in the lower units on Sunrise after this is built. So, any guidance you could give
me, I would appreciate.
Board Member Gooyer: I’m not as concerned about -- I was initially, but because the building is pushed
considerably towards the main streets, I think it's not that bad for the Sunrise residents. That actually, I
mean, theoretically, if this was against a couple of commercial buildings, I'd say flip the building around
and have more of the cavity facing the street. That part works. I definitely think there needs to be some
sort of a grade separation between the ground floor, the first floor. And the thing is, if you look at just
the height of it based on how many floors, you could easily lose, you know, six inches, nine inches from
each floor, and get that grade separation, and still fit within the limit of height. That sort of thing. Let's see, what else was it?
Chair Furth: I'm concerned about circulation. I don't understand. I ride in with my bike. Where do I go? Where do I leave it?
Board Member Gooyer: You're right. And I agree, that's part of what --
Chair Furth: I mean, I literally don't understand it.
Board Member Gooyer: Peter was saying the same thing. The whole circulation pattern, I think, needs to
be worked out a little better than that. It just, I agree with you. The entry system with your bicycle and
everything else just really doesn't work, and I think maybe we need to have, either a bulb-out or
something, and then the roadway come back in. And even if there's a parking area or something in front
of the building, even if that means the building has to be scooted back a little bit, because right now, to
make that quick turn into the parking area, especially with, like a UPS truck, or something like that, is
never going to work. They're either going to park on the street, which is going to irritate everyone,
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especially when you come around. You don't want to all of sudden run into the back of a utility truck, or
a truck of some sort. I think that's the thing. I love the potential, but it definitely has a lot of
improvements that are needed.
Chair Furth: Anybody else have a comment?
Vice Chair Baltay: I want to just follow up what Robert was saying. When I looked at this and staff
explained to me, there's intended to be some sort of a drop-off area just adjacent to this property, along
El Camino. If you were to go to a better 3D image...One of these, I saw earlier. [Looking for image.]
Ms. Hodgkins: Yeah. I was going to note that. It's not shown very well on the plan set, but on C-7 of the plan set --
Vice Chair Baltay: Right there, right there. This image here. I'm coming off the freeway, coming down
Page Mill Road, and I turn right onto El Camino. You need to have some place where I can comfortably
pull out of the traffic. Anybody who's gone through this intersection knows that it's really tough. There's a
lot of people, a lot of vehicles there.
Male: (inaudible)
Vice Chair Baltay: In this age of Uber, I can't tell you how annoying it is. Every time I'm driving home
from my office downtown, there's always some Uber guy, just stops in the middle of the street to pick up
a vehicle [sic]. What will happen here is exactly that. You'll just have one lane of the traffic along El
Camino, will end up being blocked all the time.
Board Member Lew: I disagree, because this block is actually wider than the other blocks. If you actually
look on an aerial photo, you'll see that this block has a wider right-of-way than the next block up. It's
already wider.
Vice Chair Baltay: That may be correct, Alex, but I'd really like to see that shown and figured out. How is it --?
Male: (inaudible)
Ms. Hodgkins: Excuse me, can I just note one thing? There is going to be a bus stop on the corner.
There is already a bus stop, and as Board Member Lew noted, this is a much wider street, and there's
actually parking along this street. I wanted to also note, it could have been shown better in the plan set,
but on C-7 of the plan set, you'll see that there is a planned, in the location of the existing bus stop,
which is, if you look on here, kind of where the bench here, there is a planned loading zone that's going
to be located there, that would allow for temporary drop-off, or Uber pick-ups, or something like that.
Board Member Gooyer: Then maybe that ought to be shown here.
Chair Furth: Yeah, I think we're missing --
Ms. Hodgkins: Yes, it could have been shown on the renderings. It is shown on C-7 of the plan set, but it
could have been shown better on the (crosstalk). I apologize for that.
Vice Chair Baltay: Don't apologize, Claire. It's not you. It's the applicant not making enough effort to answer these questions that have been asked twice now. These are very legitimate concerns. I suggest that the applicant look for a way to have vehicles stop along Page Mill somehow. Alex might well be right. That's a wide street. It's possible to do it without pushing your building back. But, please, think it through, and demonstrate it to your own satisfaction. I think you also need some place on the property
for the mother and the child and the groceries and the stroller, to come home. I just don't think it's
realistic for that person to go into a parking lift and somehow, miraculously, park their car, and then take
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the kids out. Or, do you put the kids in the parking lot and then parked the car, and leave the kids sitting
in the parking lot? I mean, how does it work? And the reality is, I think you need a better parking design.
Board Member Gooyer: Especially with a machine. You can't just put them in a parking spot, then empty
out everything there, because you end up putting the thing...You have to park it somewhere before you
can actually put it in the machine and tuck it away.
Vice Chair Baltay: Yeah. We said that a long time ago.
Ms. Hodgkins: Board members, if I may, we do have the applicant here that can answer some of these questions. They do have their lift expert, as well.
Chair Furth: I appreciate that. Claire, just to clarify -- so to speak -- looking at C-7, the intention would be that if somebody...This is a passenger loading zone in front of the adjacent property. Is that right?
Ms. Hodgkins: Yeah, it's just a, I guess it would be a temporary loading. I mean, if something were to be
dropped off or picked up very briefly --?
Chair Furth: I'm not very knowledgeable about white curbs. This works for Uber, this works for Lyft, this
works for my friend picking me up; it doesn't work for the UPS truck. Is that right?
Mr. Lait: There's a street sign that allows for 30-minute loading activities.
Chair Furth: Three minute or 30 minute?
Mr. Lait: Three-zero.
Ms. Hodgkins: It says three-minute here. I think it should be 30, though.
Mr. Lait: I'm looking at the...Unless Google's wrong.
Chair Furth: I'm looking at C-7.
Mr. Lait: It's possible.
Chair Furth: It says three.
Ms. Hodgkins: Yeah.
Mr. Lait: The street view map talks about loading commercial...Actually, I should clarify this, now that I
look at the sign more closely. This is a loading zone for the Sunrise facility, and its patient loading, or
passenger loading. It's 30-minute parking, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. I don't know if that's the intended loading
zone that's shifting.
Ms. Hodgkins: I think it's potentially extending this existing loading zone. I think that they would still
have what's needed for the -- Yeah. And we're able to extend it because the bus stop is being moved
closer to the corner.
Board Member Gooyer: I guess it's the type of thing that, if I'm coming around the corner from Page Mill,
it's one thing having a bus there, which you figure, okay, you have to put up with that, but if there's a
UPS truck or a couple of Uber drivers, you're going to get a lot more people that are going to be a lot
more irritated.
Ms. Hodgkins: I mean, there's sufficient space on the street, such that it would not block traffic. I mean, the same way they currently have passenger loading, they currently have a bus stop there.
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Board Member Lew: I've drawn all the blocks on El Camino -- I'm working on my own little master plan --
It's a whole lane wider than the other blocks on El Camino. I think you guys are just way off on this one.
Chair Furth: Looking at this drawing on C-7, there are three traffic lanes -- Is that right? And then, there's
a fourth lane for parking/loading/bus stops? Is that correct?
Board Member Gooyer: If that's the case, maybe that has to be designated as not drivable. Or at least
more so.
Chair Furth: I'm confused.
Mr. Lait: There are three lanes heading northbound, and there's room for parking on the shoulder without impeding --
Board Member Gooyer: It says four here.
Chair Furth: It's drawn showing something a little bit different, but I will take your word for it. It would
be great to hear from the applicant about how I arrive with my child, stroller -- in my case, grandchild --
and groceries, and get home.
Mr. Spieker: I'm going to let the architect comment on that. I just want to assure you guys, there's been
a lot of time and thought put into this project, and to kind of insinuate that we haven't is, frankly,
offensive. We have put a lot of time into this project. It's been almost two years --
Chair Furth: I do not doubt that you have, and I would love an answer to our question.
Jon Ennis, BDE Architecture: Thanks for all of your comments. I'll try to go through a few of them. As far
as I know, there are three lanes of traffic, and a fourth full lane for parking, loading and drop-off, which
we think -- We got the comment that we needed to have that near the project to make this project work,
and we think we have it, and we think it's been fully vetted by staff and by us. We think it works. That's for drop-off. We also added parking spaces behind the building for your friends to come and know to pull in and park. Not on the street. We think we've accommodated package delivery in the lane that's designated for parking only, and loading. We've think we've taken care of Uber because they can pull off and park in the lane designated for short-term parking. We think we've accommodated visitors and
vehicles to pull into the project and park in the guest parking area on site. We heard those comments,
we worked very hard to accommodate those. I don't think at this time the building could be built with an
additional pull-out on Page Mill to satisfy all the traffic concerns, the proximity to the light. I don't think
there's room to do that. I think it might kill the project. With respect to Page Mill and the units, we had
the units set up a little bit higher before, but there's a 50-foot height limit. We need to have some
rooftop equipment, we need to have OSHA-compliant guardrails at the top of the building for exterior
building maintenance, which are a requirement now. We have hot water heaters, we have solar hot
water on the roof. We have all kinds of manner of equipment on the roof, so we have a little bit of a
higher parapet. The higher parapet was worked into the top of the building, I know not to your
satisfaction, but that pushed the building down a little bit. It used to be a little higher, so there's a little bit of grade change between the sidewalk and the units. I think Commissioner Lew visited our project in San Francisco, where we have residences right on the sidewalk. We're very familiar with that type of design. We build a project that has to be livable and useful for our tenants and owners or we don't get hired back again, and those things don't work. We understand those issues. We don't promote projects
where the blinds are pulled 24/7 because it's an untenable situation. We do have the units set back from
the back of block, we do have the units set up from the sidewalk, and we do have a significant amount of
planting, stormwater planting and traditional planting, along there. I would like to say I believe we heard
that comment, and I believe we have addressed it, and we think those units are livable and functional,
and the shades won't be drawn all the time for privacy.
Board Member Gooyer: Just a question, then. You said there is a grade separation between --?
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Mr. Ennis: One-foot-six.
Board Member Gooyer: One-foot-six. Okay. And, if I look at these, you can see that, you've got a four-
story building, the Sunrise next to it is also a four-story building, but it's a whole lot lower. What do you
have on floor-to-floor height?
Mr. Ennis: Ten-foot-two.
Board Member Gooyer: Ten-foot-two. Okay. That's, what? A six-inch concrete slab system?
Mr. Ennis: It's a wood building. It's not a concrete --
Board Member Gooyer: It's a wood building. Okay.
Mr. Ennis: Traditionally, this would be a not possible, economically-viable as a concrete building. I wanted to go through a few more items. I have to apologize in advance for what I’m about to say. I am totally
confused about the comments about bikes. I don't know if you have the plans, but I’m looking at, my
plan says it's called 13. So, if I'm riding a bike, I live here, and I'm riding a bike, I pull into the corner of
the building. There's a door to a room called "Bike Shop." I don't have to walk through the lobby. That's
called "Bike Shop." That's for the bike -- I shouldn't say bikers -- cyclists, to come in in their wet gear.
There would be bike equipment there. You can hang your bike on a rack, fill your tires with air, do your
thing. There will be tools there, things like that, to accommodate cyclists, directly off the corner of the
building, because we think there's going to be a lot of cyclists in the building, and it's going to be a lot of
activity and energy there. That's why we located it there with a separate door, not through the lobby.
Through that Bike Shop is a bike room with Class 1 bike storage. That's lockable, outside of the weather,
very accessible to cyclists. There's another bike room located, you would pull in the entrance of the
project through the curb cut, and come in the back. There's a striped loading zone with another door -- not through the lobby -- with a separate secured storage area. We've even accommodated a cargo bike storage, so if you have kids and you want to put them in the back, we made room to make sure that cargo bikes could be accommodated in our bike room. I think a lot of bike rooms leave that detail out, and because we do a lot of projects, we've learned that, and we now build that in. I'd like to say, I am
confused how we have not thought about the person approaching the building on a bicycle. I do not
understand that comment. I'd like to address if I'm coming home with my children, with the groceries
and a carriage. I would walk to the project, I would walk through the front door at the corner of the
building. That's covered, so, if you need a minute to fumble and get your umbrella out, you need to get
kid strapped in, you need to put them in, take them out, put the groceries down -- You're not in the rain.
You're covered because the building steps out over you. It's kind of a nice, actually environmentally-
friendly place to hang out if it's sunny, if it's rainy -- whatever. You enter directly into the lobby where
the mail room is, and there's an elevator there. I think we have addressed the moms and dads coming
home with the kids through -- Yes? [off-microphone comment.] In a car. I'll do that now. This is a TDM
project, so we really wanted to make sure it worked for walkers and cyclists and their cargo bikes. I will say, I think about three or four years ago, we started to accommodate stacked parking in our projects. It's environmentally very friendly. If you want to save polar bears, you should do stacked parking, because your excavation, the amount of dirt you're moving and the amount of dirt --
Chair Furth: I think, at this point, we're not asking for philosophical approaches, so much as just answers
to fairly-focused questions.
Mr. Ennis: Okay. In terms of metrics, there's vastly less excavation on a site when you do stacked parking
because you reduce --
Board Member Gooyer: All we'd like to know is where do you park --
Mr. Ennis: I'm getting there.
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Board Member Gooyer: -- and get the kids out.
Mr. Ennis: I'm getting there. Multiple questions were asked, so I want to know why we're doing stacked
parking. I need --
Chair Furth: I accept that you are doing stacked parking. I'm just asking how it functions in a particular
situation (crosstalk).
Mr. Ennis: Okay. I just --
Chair Furth: I hope everybody could feel less distressed and more willing to believe these are good-faith questions about, how would I do X?
Mr. Ennis: Right.
Chair Furth: This is a tremendously-desirable project, with fabulous goals and interesting techniques, and
we're all anxious -- as you are -- to have it work well, and we need to understand. And some of us --
namely me -- read plans less expertly than others. It was not obvious to me that a room designated as a
bike shop is intended as an always-open pass-through to a bike storage area.
Mr. Ennis: I would like to just give you a 90-second description of a story, my first experience with
watching a mom get into a car stacker. I had a client from out of town, we were doing a very large
project. He said, "I'm not doing stackers. I don't understand it. It's not my project." We went to a project
in San Francisco -- And I know I’m not in San Francisco. I know that. We stood there. I said, "These
stackers are amazing." People tend to, when they park in them twice, the third time to infinite time, they
love them, for many reasons. I'll try to explain some of that. I know I came to it from the same
perspective -- How the heck does this work? As we were talking, standing in the garage, a mom pulled
in, with kids. It wasn't a set-up. She came in, she parked in front of the gate, pushed her button, the door opened. Her kid got out. She put her groceries down. She pulled into the machine, parked, and it worked. This is happening all over the state. Our firm was the first firm to get stackers approved in the city of San Jose ten years ago. They're functioning there. The people who park there have written to the owner to say, "We like stackers because when we put our car in a stacker, it's secure. No door dings. You
can leave your computer or whatever kind of equipment in your car, because no one can get in it,
because it's secured and it's put away." We find families of all types learn to use the stackers.
Remember, you're parking in the same spot every single day. It's not like you're going to Target or a
store where you're looking for a parking place. It's the same one. You learn how to pull that turn
perfectly every time you come home. And families park in them without -- we have a specialist here to
talk a little bit more about the stackers. I just wanted to say, personally, they're working. We're putting
them everywhere, and we have no complaints. People prefer them. They are safer, they're more secure,
and they're more compact.
Chair Furth: I drive in, I'm at the last, the one that I know is mine. I pull up, and I hit my key fob, or
whatever, or it recognizes me. And then, basically, I unload before I drive into it? Or do I have a choice?
Mr. Ennis: You have a choice.
Chair Furth: There was a discussion at the PTC about, they're more like single-car garages. Just tell me how it works.
Mr. Ennis: You push a button, the door would open, you would pull in, you would get out of your car like
you're getting out of a car any other time.
Chair Furth: I can swing my door out, all the way open.
Mr. Ennis: Yeah.
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Chair Furth: Thank you.
Mr. Ennis: Sorry about that. Same as a normal parking place. It's roughly the same size. There's space
between the cars. If two people open up the doors at the same time, it would hit, but, just like when
you go to the movies or the grocery store, your door overhangs the striped space a little bit, you get out,
and you shut your door. It works basically the same way. I can't speak to the native plants. The
landscape architect will certainly comply with the conditions of the native plants, without exception. On
the base-middle-top. I'm glad you visited the Knox. It's a similar type of setup. What we tried to do is use -- I guess you could maybe go back to the rendering, it might help me. The sheet I was referring to that might help you. [Locating slide.] There's a lot of things going on, on these roofs. There's tons of codes. We have, very likely, (inaudible) tanks, or solar hot water collectors. We have air conditioning units. We have OSHA compliance that require five-foot walk spaces around all this equipment. We have parapet
requirements. The building can now be maintained per OSHA requirements over the parapet, has to be a
42-inch parapet. All these things come together. They're very difficult. These codes are new. I used to do
buildings 20 years ago when OSHA didn't have any requirements. Sloped roofs are very difficult, for
people from the roof to go down and maintain the building, because there's an OSHA-compliant way to
go over a sloped roof. It's almost impossible. Buildings over three stories, we really don't do those
anymore. It's very difficult to make that work. Only in really super circumstances where a project was
maybe approved 10 years ago with a sloped roof, and it's been on hold because of economics not
working, it's being done now. We have a lot of difficulty getting those projects to comply with OSHA.
Pretty much buildings that you can't clean and maintain with a ladder from 30, 35 feet. We try not to do
sloped roofs anymore. OSHA really gives us a hard time. In fact, we don't have any approvals on those type of projects. You have to build window washing into the eves, and it just becomes kind of a crazy thing. What we tried to do is work within the confines of all the different building height requirements, OSHA requirements, design requirements, to try to create a very -- you're familiar with the Alma building. We tried to create a varied massing in plan, with recesses and changes in material, and changes in
parapet heights, so when viewing the building roughly from this perspective on the street, the top of the
building is stepping in and out, stepping up and down, trying to create a more enhanced, energetic roof
line to the building, not just a stucco box, you know, a hundred feet long and 45 feet high, 50 feet high.
We tried to do that. We could go a little further with the top of the building. I acknowledge that. I think
that's a fair comment. But I think putting a sloped roof on the building right now is extremely difficult,
and I think would cause other problems down the road with life safety and OSHA, things like that that I
tried to talk about before. When you do a sloped roof, you rob area on the roof. Those areas now are
used for solar collection, so it makes the flat roof area a little bit smaller. I know those things aren't all
easy to glean from looking at this plan set, but those are some things that we thought about. I
appreciate the opportunity to answer some of the questions. I think I tried to write them all down. In terms of the loading, moms and dads coming to the building on bikes or in cars, with kids, through the front door, through the back door -- I think we covered that. The guest parking accommodates visitors, friends, things like that. El Camino has a whole extra lane designated for parking, for loading. I think we covered that. I think we've tried to cover the windows on --
Chair Furth: I think we're good.
Mr. Ennis: Okay, great.
Chair Furth: Anybody have --? Oh, roof terrace. You have a question?
Board Member Lew: Yeah, you had a question.
Chair Furth: Oh. My question was about shading on the roof terrace, what the idea was going to be. Just
the feeling that it's often not great to be sitting out.
Ms. Hodgkins: Is the question, could that be added?
Chair Furth: Yeah. Because often, we don't want to be sitting exposed to the sun.
City of Palo Alto Page 53
Mr. Ennis: I think the trellis would be more umbrellas and things like that right now. We don't have it
built in, but if that's a comment, we can work with the landscape architect to build in some shade. That's
a great (crosstalk) we're happy to do that.
Chair Furth: Sure, we'll find out if it's a comment. I'm partly trying to figure out how often are you just
being constrained by the height limit?
Mr. Ennis: We're not, in that case.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Mr. Ennis: Our roof terrace is on the floor below. It's not on the roof.
Ms. Hodgkins: Can I just note for the record that the only thing that could be added would be umbrellas. Any permanent structure would start to count towards floor area. But, umbrellas could be added, if the
applicant was open to that.
Chair Furth: You don't like questions which make you feel attacked at your motives, which I certainly
understand, and I don't like answers that make me feel attacked as to my intelligence. But, I still don't
understand where the UPS truck goes.
Mr. Ennis: It goes on El Camino, in the loading zone.
Chair Furth: Thank you. I will then ask staff to explain, are we talking passenger loading zone, or
permanent loading zone, or both? Thanks, but I think that's outside the scope of your proposal. Anything
else you'd like to add?
Ms. Hodgkins: We can talk with Transportation. I think my understanding would be, is that it's both.
There is no loading requirement for multifamily residential uses.
Chair Furth: I don't think we're really asking about what the code requires at this point. We're trying to get to our functionality finding.
Ms. Hodgkins: Absolutely, yeah.
Chair Furth: And I --
Board Member Gooyer: Would it be worthwhile to be, like, a bump-out on the corner, so you actually
create --? I mean, a bump-out onto El Camino, if you want. It actually creates an area that is still paved,
but is obviously much more indicated as a loading area.
Chair Furth: As I understand it, you come around the corner from Page Mill, and the first thing that
happens is a new and improved bus stop. Is that right?
Ms. Hodgkins: Correct.
Chair Furth: And then, there's the driveway.
Ms. Hodgkins: Right.
Chair Furth: And then, there is some kind of loading zone.
Ms. Hodgkins: Correct.
City of Palo Alto Page 54
Chair Furth: Which, if it's short-term passenger loading, would really be helpful for the short-term things,
but less helpful for drop-offs, perhaps.
Ms. Hodgkins: It would be an extension of the existing loading zone in that area, which is a 30-minute
parking.
Chair Furth: Okay, and is there...I guess what I'm asking you -- Go ahead. I guess my question was, we
seem to be fortunate in that this is a block that has an unusual amount of right-of-way, so we have more
flexibility in providing a variety of curbside options. But, isn't one of the things that we have in California a really short-term passenger loading and pickup zone? Or am I confused? Are we driving you nuts?
Mr. Lait: No. Just trying to choose my words. There are three full lanes of through-put traffic that are not impacted at all by passenger loading, UPS traffic, on the right side shoulder of the road.
Chair Furth: And I'm asking you --
Mr. Lait: And, yes, we've already established a 30-minute time limit for passenger loading for the Sunrise
facility. The proposal is to extend that and have a portion of that also apply to this property, as well.
Chair Furth: Yeah, because I was more concerned, not about -- I accept the argument that there's no
problem interfering with traffic. I'm just trying to figure out what the law-abiding driver can do along this
block.
Mr. Spieker: Just past our drive aisle, just past that, there's going to be the loading and unloading. UPS,
or the Uber and Lyft, all can park right there for a short period of time.
Chair Furth: And you think it's 30 as opposed to the three that's in the plan.
Mr. Spieker: It's 30.
Chair Furth: Okay, so we should ignore what it -- Ignore what the plan says. That's not a proposal for a change.
Ms. Hodgkins: I think there must have been...The only thing I can think, based on the fact that it is a 30, it's just a typo, and it said three instead of 30.
Board Member Gooyer: Then, basically, the way I understand it, the loading for this building is adjacent
to the other property.
Mr. Lait: Just so we're clear, there is no loading requirement --
Board Member Gooyer: I didn't say that.
Mr. Lait: But I think that's important, because there's multiple areas of loading. There is the public right-
of-way, which has loading. There are parking spaces as you pull in that are available, that could be used
for ride-sharing services or guests of the building. Frankly, even people who live there could park there.
And then there's --
Board Member Gooyer: Where? On El Camino?
Mr. Lait: No, on the project site as you pull in --
Board Member Gooyer: On the project site.
Mr. Lait: Right.
City of Palo Alto Page 55
Board Member Gooyer: I'm talking about on El Camino.
Mr. Lait: The only parking --
Board Member Gooyer: You've got the bus stop that pretty much covers most of the property. Then
you've got the entry into the site. And then, the UPS truck has to park in front of the Sunrise for dropping
something off to this building. I'm just trying to get it clarified.
Mr. Lait: Yep. It's in that sort of in-between area, and it also extends in front of the building.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay.
Chair Furth: I sometimes think we're reading too much into our questions. I think that we understand that this is a public right-of-way and the City can use it within the extent we can get CalTrans, or whoever it is who has jurisdiction, to support things it wants to support, like this project. As much as we
can. I don't think that's a question. Anything else we want to ask?
Vice Chair Baltay: I'd like to clarify that. I used the word "roof" metaphorically, and I certainly don't
support your trying to put a sloped roof on this project. Not at this stage. I just wanted to be clear that it
needs to have a cap, a top, a roof in the common sense of being the top of a building.
Board Member Gooyer: I agree completely. I use the term "a base, a middle and a top." There's no top
on this building, so, whatever you want to call that. I didn't say it needed to have a sloped roof.
Mr. Spieker: Can I say with regards to the families? I mean, I realize we're going to follow Fair Housing,
and we are not going to discriminate for any reason whatsoever. But, we have put thoughtful
consideration into how we laid out this project, and we are two-third studios, and one-third one-
bedrooms. While we may have 57 units with kids in this project, being in this business, that would not be
my experience as to what we would get at this project.
Chair Furth: I think we understand that. We just try to look for, sort of universal design in these regards.
Mr. Spieker: That's fair.
Chair Furth: We have a famous project which paid student impact fees for 53 children, which so far, over 15 years, has had zero. Okay.
Vice Chair Baltay: Can I throw out maybe what might help us here, to get closure on all this, is to get a
better set of drawings, explaining these ideas. I believe -- and I hear very strongly -- what Board Member
Lew says about El Camino being a wide boulevard, with having plenty of place to address these issues. I
don't see it on the plans, and I haven't heard it from anybody Board Member Lew, that it's possible. The
onus is on you guys to demonstrate it, to show it, to make it really clear. I hear what you're saying about
a mother driving in and being comfortable using these stacked parking garages. Well, these are a new
thing, and really, the onus is on you guys to make that argument, to demonstrate, to present it. I'm just
pleading with you. Please don't take me being critical in a negative way. I'm pleading with you because
this building is going beyond what's usually allowed. It's going beyond the zoning standards. The burden
is on you to prove beyond that, that you can do these things. I'm just not seeing it. Maybe it's --
Mr. Spieker: If you have a question for David LoCoco, he's done thousands of these.
Vice Chair Baltay: I would like not to get into the nitty-gritty anymore. What I’m trying to say is that the drawing set doesn't really explain these ideas very well. I really just want to see more answers and more thought put into these kind of questions we're raising. How is the top of the building made? How is that
apartment in El Camino working? Well, make a sectional detail, showing that apartment in relation to the
sidewalk. I'm sure you can make it work.
City of Palo Alto Page 56
Chair Furth: Okay. Thank you, all. One of the more interesting comments that the Planning and
Transportation Commission was a commissioner saying he wished the building were 100 feet tall so that
it would accommodate more housing. Which is certainly an approach. But, one of the things that's
happening is that the zoning is being changed on this site, and it's being changed to a very open kind of
envelope. Maybe not so open from the point of view of the property owner, but it's got no density limits,
right? It's got a maximum unit size. It's subject to daylight planes. It's subject to a 50-foot-height limit,
generally speaking. It has minimal setback requirements. Is that right? And, if the difference between 50 and 52 feet means that you have significantly better ground floor units on a project like this, then I would recommend more feet.
Board Member Gooyer: I knew you were going there. I was going to recommend 55, so I actually prefer to see it a little bit higher, but (crosstalk).
Chair Furth: I think this thing is maybe too squashed.
Mr. Lait: We can certainly forward that on to the City Council as a recommendation, that the ARB thinks,
for design reasons, that the PF zoning that they will be considering when they review this project, be
allowed a little bit more height for consideration.
Board Member Gooyer: This is just for this one parcel, right?
Mr. Lait: It would apply to the PF, it would apply to this, sort of workforce housing overlay. So, this
property and any other PF zoned property who met the standards would be able to also apply for that.
Chair Furth: I mean, we've been going, twisting ourselves in knots, trying to untangle so of the knots
we've twisted ourselves into by having density standards that, when you combine them with our
development standards, are impossible to achieve. Part of the reason for this is to cut through the -- sorry about this -- cut through the Gordian knot and say, "Fine. Dump the standards and look at the building." My concern is that we often hear that we're just trying to -- Our 50-foot height limit gets in the way of functional, attractive units and good design.
Mr. Lait: What I might also suggest is that the Board even schedule a discussion, an agendized discussion
to talk about the 50-foot height limit, and to what extent should an incremental increase in height be
permitted, so that we have that flexibility to deal with these issues. I think we're talking in the order of
four or five feet, something like that. That could be a valuable discussion that could be forwarded on to
the City Council.
Board Member Lew: The Board has done that in the past.
Chair Furth: We've tried. What is the pleasure of the Board today? The matter of the zone change is not
in front of us. We are evaluating this project, which clearly violates existing zoning. In light of a proposed
zone change, my view, that gives us a certain freedom to suggest to City Council that they modify their
proposed zone change. But, I don't know what convolutions that might involve. Does somebody want to
continue the discussion, or make a motion? I know Peter needs to leave --
Vice Chair Baltay: No (inaudible).
Chair Furth: Okay.
MOTION
Chair Furth: Anybody want to make a motion? Or a proposal that we can try to shape into a motion?
Board Member Lew: I'm going to leave it to you two because I'm more inclined to approval, with some
things coming back to subcommittee.
City of Palo Alto Page 57
Vice Chair Baltay: Is there we could get there, Robert, to put --? In a discussion with staff the other day,
it was brought forth that we could approve something with conditions that require coming back to the
Board. For example, the roof element. We could approve it conditional to the building being redesigned
to have a top on it.
Board Member Gooyer: I guess I see it that, if we're bringing it back to the Board for an issue like that,
why not just bring it back to the Board? I'm sorry. This is the design. I don't like the design. I don't think
it works. I think it needs a lot of help. I'm not ready to approve it at this point, and not to the point where I want to do it in subcommittee, where it's like, "Yeah, close enough." I think it's a big enough element. As you said, we both talked about the fact that this is -- And I'm willing to even give them two or three feet, or whatever, four feet, so you can lift the ground floor up three or four feet, to make those kind of things work, and put a top on the building. But that kind of thing is not a subcommittee-type
issue. Bring it back to the Board and just look at that one item. I think a lot of these things -- We're
talking about complete, basically, overall look of the building. That's more than just see what the trellis
looks like, or see what the fence looks like.
Board Member Lew: The other problem we have sometimes with subcommittees is, when we do that,
then it comes back unchanged. It happened on 800 Alma.
Board Member Gooyer: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Board Member Lew: It's actually better, if you really want the change --
Board Member Gooyer: I want it back to the Board to a date either certain, which is probably the
quickest way to do it, or uncertain. I'll leave that up to the applicant. I can't approve it like this. Or, we
do a straight-up vote and see what happens.
Chair Furth: Okay. Alex, I have a question for you. Tell me how you think the ground floor units on the Page Mill frontage are acceptable. That they work.
Board Member Gooyer: (inaudible).
Chair Furth: Alex (inaudible). No? Are you ready to approve?
Board Member Lew: Yes. Because there is some vertical separation, and there's the raised planter, and
then, there's a planter in front of the raised planter. I generally don't like ground-floor units. We have
ground-floor units at grade, in back of the sidewalk, right over here. I think they're awful. I don't think
we should repeat that exercise. I've lived in New York City. I generally like more vertical separation than
18 inches. But, it does cause complications when you raise the building, and you have a lobby, and you
have accessibility issues. It's not an easy solution to solve.
Board Member Gooyer: You could keep the lobby the same, and then, a ramp or three steps to go up to
the main living areas. I mean, it's doable.
Chair Furth: Okay. My concerns were functional bicycle access; we really appreciate the cargo bike space.
We've been lobbied on that, frequently. At least I do. I think it looks to me like the bicycle circulation will work. I wouldn't call something a "Bike Shop" if I'm going to walk through it. Partly, after listening to the PTC tape, I'm willing to accept the premise that puzzle lifts can work, or that mechanical lifts can work. One of the things I forgot to ask was: What happens during a power failure? What's the backup? That's a question, if somebody is willing to answer it.
Mr. Lait: As their consultant comes forward to speak to this, I'll just note that --
Chair Furth: I know we have requirements in our code.
City of Palo Alto Page 58
Mr. Lait: We do, yeah, as part of the lift parking. And lift parking is a permitted --
Chair Furth: Right.
Mr. Lait: -- right. Okay.
Dave LoCoco, Watry Design: Good afternoon. The systems can lower a vehicle whether they have power,
or not, as far as trapping a vehicle within. Again, it would be battery back-up or some type of generator if
power is out. That would let the system still work.
Chair Furth: We have a back-up required in Palo Alto, is that right? There will be one. Thanks.
Mr. Lait: That's part of the plan. Yes.
Chair Furth: I think the City Council has made a decision that under the specified circumstances, lifts are fine. I'm willing to accept that. I don't have a big problem with the design. I think it would be nice to
have a finishing element. I can't envision it myself. I am concerned that, particularly on Page Mill, having
units that close to the curb is not as desirable as having units that are higher. I try not to tangle myself
up in the findings. But, what's driving me is the question of, under the set of constraints you gave us, is
this an acceptable project? I say yes. I think the burden is on the City to figure out how to allocate curb
space along El Camino, so that this works. If it doesn't, we'll never hear the end of it. It won't help
additional development of this kind that, if we're going to meet any of our housing goals we need. There
are four of us here. It takes three people to pass a motion. Anybody want to try one?
Vice Chair Baltay: If I could, before we do that. I'm actually, frankly, concerned with -- to my colleagues -
- if these drawings are just really inconsistent. I think we'd better be careful. If we approve something,
that's it. I'm looking at sheet C-1, the civil engineering drawing. I wanted to get a sense of the elevations
of the various things. I'm seeing the lobby area -- at finish -- for 33, with the curb being at 32-something. and the building being at 37 feet elevation. Yet, when I look at the elevations, that's clearly not the case. I noticed many places in the elevations the windows aren't correct as compared to what's on the floor. There really is no floor plan for these ground-floor units. I couldn't find one, anyway. It's just too many little things, and I'm afraid that, I mean, I really want to make it work, but we're doing it
on faith. It just seems to...There's a lot of places where it's not quite clear what's actually happening.
Chair Furth: What is the best thing we --
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible) page 7.
Vice Chair Baltay: Page 7. Oh, the small scale.
Board Member Gooyer: Yeah.
Vice Chair Baltay: I was looking for the enlarged unit plans, where I could really read it. Fair enough. It
seems that the civil plan at least shows a four-foot difference in elevation, with a staircase inside. Maybe
that's just a change between different sub-design consultants.
Mr. Lait: It looks like the civil plans were dated January 25, 2016, and the plans have gone through a
revision since then.
Chair Furth: (Inaudible), right? Go ahead.
Mr. Ennis: The civil plans show when we had a higher-grade difference between sidewalk and the units in question. The City asked us to meet code by lowering the building to the right height. Some steps were removed from our plan to make that work. His background, it shows a few too many steps. It's not really
a gigantic change. We could make that, easily.
City of Palo Alto Page 59
Vice Chair Baltay: Where does it show what the height of that main floor plate is? What is the elevation
of that, and where is that shown?
Mr. Ennis: It's three six-inch steps, so it's 18 inches. In our plans, it's consistent. We would need to have
the civil engineer change the spot elevation --
Vice Chair Baltay: Where does it show in the drawings that we're asked to approve, that that's the case?
Mr. Ennis: On sheet 13. And in the elevations. And in the sections. The floor is called one-foot-six on
sheet 21, for example. Eighteen inches. And on sheet 25 in the building section. Any sheet other than the C-1, which is the civil engineer sheet. Any and all are consistent.
Vice Chair Baltay: I’m afraid, Wynne, in my opinion, this needs to come back for one more visit. I support what Robert is saying.
Chair Furth: Okay, so we have an alternative. We can try a motion to approve or disapprove, or we can
do a motion to continue to a date certain. Or uncertain. What's your preference?
Board Member Gooyer: The way I see it right now, looks like it's going to be a vote of 2 to 2. I mean, I
don't mean to speak for everyone, but --
Chair Furth: (Inaudible)
Board Member Lew: Not necessarily. Try a motion.
Board Member Gooyer: All right. My motion would be to not approve it.
Board Member Lew: You mean, to recommend denial?
Board Member Gooyer: Right.
Board Member Lew: Recommend denial? Okay.
Board Member Gooyer: I mean, if you're going to do that, I'd rather just say bring it back to a date uncertain. Okay? If you want a motion, I'd say bring it back to a date uncertain.
Chair Furth: I'm going to ask staff, is there a date certain --
Board Member Gooyer: Or certain. I don't care.
Chair Furth: -- that the applicant would like to have?
Board Member Gooyer: Either way.
Chair Furth: Or the staff and applicant believes is feasible?
Mr. Lait: Well, I think it depends --
Board Member Lew: I think the Board has to say what is not acceptable, and then, they can figure out
how much time it takes to work on it.
Chair Furth: I would suggest that somebody make a motion, suggesting that we continue this matter,
and that it be brought back to us with -- What is it we're looking for?
City of Palo Alto Page 60
Vice Chair Baltay: Okay. I move that we continue this application to a date uncertain, to request that the
applicant reconsider, or at least demonstrate more carefully, how the site circulation works. That means
passenger drop-off along El Camino and temporary parking on site, as well as how the permanent
parking downstairs is to be used. Secondarily, I think they need to add some sort of element to create a
top to the building. What was the --? Alex, you said landscaping wasn't --?
Board Member Lew: I was saying that the, I think my take on it was that the entry plaza and the rooftop
terrace were diagrammatic. They weren't really well--
Chair Furth: A more detailed landscaping plan.
Vice Chair Baltay: We'd like to see a more detailed landscaping plan, specifically for the rooftop terrace and the entrance lobby. And we'd like to see --
Chair Furth: I'd like proposed shading for the rooftop terrace. Is there any support for that?
Board Member Gooyer: I'm guessing, if you use a trellis, that it's not considered covered, so it doesn't fit
with the FAR.
Vice Chair Baltay: Well, I'd like to see something --
Board Member Gooyer: That's a, yes, you agree, or --
Vice Chair Baltay: Some sort of roof shading mechanism for the garden upstairs to work. And then, I
think you need at least one-foot-six grade separation for these apartments, but it also needs to be
designed very clearly, and demonstrated to us very clearly, how these apartments work.
Chair Furth: A clearer demonstration of the interaction of the ground-floor apartments. A cross-section?
Vice Chair Baltay: Yeah.
Chair Furth: Okay.
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible) the unit to the street, or the sidewalk.
Vice Chair Baltay: The motion is just to study that more carefully. How does that sound.
Chair Furth: I think you're good to go.
Vice Chair Baltay: Did I miss anything that we talked about?
Chair Furth: Anything you had a concern with?
Board Member Gooyer: How about the idea of elevating it a little bit more?
Vice Chair Baltay: I think that would help, but if it really is one-foot-six, I believe that could be designed
to work.
Mr. Lait: Presently designed at one-foot-six, right? Over the sidewalk, right? That's the current --
Board Member Gooyer: Yeah, according to the drawing, they do have the steps up, the three steps up.
Chair Furth: We need a cross-section.
Mr. Lait: There is one, and it shows one-point-six, or one-point --
City of Palo Alto Page 61
Vice Chair Baltay: No, no, I mean some sense that the design works with -- One-foot-six is a very
minimal amount. If you want to do it really tight, you've got to design it a little bit better. (crosstalk)
happening.
Mr. Lait: I'm just seeking clarity as to what you want because they're showing one-five, so, if that's not
working, what else needs to be added to address that?
Chair Furth: That would be one-point-five, Jonathan, or a one-six.
Mr. Lait: Yes.
(crosstalk)
Vice Chair Baltay: I suggest that you consider, for example, a recessed balcony on those units. That would give a little more space to it, an outdoor space. I'm not saying that has to be done, but that's a
trick an architect uses to get there.
Chair Furth: Okay, one more --
Vice Chair Baltay: I'd like the motion to have thought given to the design of the ground-floor apartment
units --
Board Member Gooyer: Along --
Vice Chair Baltay: -- along Page Mill. I do not want to specify a certain height distance.
Chair Furth: Alex, was there anything else that you were concerned about, that you would want to see?
Board Member Lew: I did not mention this previously, but I would like to see a planting plan.
Chair Furth: Right.
Board Member Lew: For all of the ground-floor, the street-side plantings.
Chair Furth: Complete landscape plans, including planning plans. Okay. Is there a second?
Board Member Gooyer: I'll second that.
Chair Furth: Is there a staff comment?
Mr. Lait: Of course.
Chair Furth: We need all the help we can get.
Mr. Lait: No, I think this is great. This will be a familiar pitch that you've heard from me before, but I'm
wanting to offer some staff perspective, which you can do what you will with it. One, the motion includes
continuing to a day uncertain. I'd like to have at least a moment to have a conversation with the
applicant, to see if we can get that scheduled for a date certain.
Chair Furth: I'm sure we will grant that request.
Mr. Lait: Thank you. Some of the issues that we've flagged here I think probably could come back to a
subcommittee, or as Board Member Baltay was suggesting, even come back for the full board, for
consideration. Things like landscaping plans, terrace shading, potentially even this issue of how you, if
you're going to keep that minimal 1.5-foot separation from the adjacent grade, how that might be able to
City of Palo Alto Page 62
be addressed through a recessed balcony. The parking, I think we've heard from the applicant about the
circulation and parking layout. You've heard from staff, our comments about that. Unless they have
something more to add on that, I don't know what else is going to be re-presented to the Board that
hasn't already been articulated here today. I do not think that the applicant's in a position where they're -
- and I don't want to speak for the applicant, and they can certainly do this -- if we're looking for a
redesign on site planning for parking or circulation in a way that has some significant alterations to the
site planning building design, I don't think that's...I guess we would need to know if that was your impression or intent on that. To conclude, I'm wondering out loud if there is an opportunity to modify this motion to some degree, so that there can be a determination on the project, with a continuation to come back to the Board.
Chair Furth: Thank you, staff. We don't have a second. Is there a second?
Board Member Gooyer: Wait a minute. The main thing --
Chair Furth: Robert seconded? Sorry. I wasn't paying attention.
Board Member Gooyer: The main thing I didn't hear was the redesign of the elevation to put a cap on the
building.
Mr. Lait: Right. I was considering that, and I think as articulated at this point, we would need a little bit
more clear objectivity as to what it is the cap design, how it would need to be modified to accomplish
that. But, again, I think that's something that could come back to the full Board if we're very clear about
what we're trying to achieve, so that there's a sense of closure on the project action relative to the
building, but there's a detail that needs to be modified and approved by the Board.
Board Member Gooyer: I guess it's, maybe it's semantics. I'm not looking at just a cap detail, or a trim detail, or the top. This thing has a -- the way I see it -- base, and a middle, and it just sort of ends. I don't like that. And we use the term cap, roof -- whatever you want to call it -- we sometimes sit up here and we use the term "cap," and then you end up with a nice little trim detail that's three inches. I mean, that's technically a cap detail, but that's not what I'm looking for.
Mr. Lait: And I guess --
Chair Furth: Okay, Jonathan, if we could get it back to the Board for a minute.
Mr. Lait: Okay.
Chair Furth: Alex, where are you on this?
Board Member Lew: On the whole motion?
Chair Furth: I suppose -- Well, there's two things we're trying to do. One of them is adopt a motion, and
staff has suggested that we do an approval subject to conditions. The motion is to continue. And then,
the other question is, have we been clear enough -- as staff asks -- on what we're asking for? I guess I'm
asking my colleagues, Robert clearly is quite unhappy with the top/bottom/middle issue, and I'm asking
Peter and Alex where you are.
Vice Chair Baltay: I'm trying to craft something that we can get Alex's support. I'm also unhappy with the design of it, and I'm concerned, Jonathan. It's not just adding a detail. It's not a corniche trim. It needs architectural effort. I don't want to be designing from here, and I believe these architects are perfectly capable. I think they understand what we're talking about.
Chair Furth: Okay, and I'm trying to find out what Alex (crosstalk).
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Vice Chair Baltay: Alex, if I leave it vague enough, does that make it better for you?
Board Member Lew: One is, I think there's room for improvement on the project, and I think we should
fight for that, fight to make it better. And, if staff or the applicant wants some sort of reassurance that
they're actually going to get a project approved, I would say I'm in support of the project. I'm not trying
to stonewall the project and nitpick it to death. That's where I am on it. I think we've had other
affordable housing projects where the Board has wanted something better, and we never got it. And
when the projects get built and they're not great, it makes it harder for the next housing project. That's what's been happening in Palo Alto for as long as I've been on the Board. Other cities don't do it that way. Berkeley has amazing high-density, multifamily buildings downtown, and they go through the process, you know, through the Berkeley process, which is worse than ours, but they get through.
Chair Furth: One thing we didn't discuss at all was materials. Are you guys okay with the materials? I
guess there was some (inaudible).
Board Member Lew: They're okay. Right? I would say the brick makes a design linkage with Mayfield
housing, as well as Sunrise. Adding different color stucco, I think helps. There's some, like, paving tile
that don't look so good on the entrance. And then, as I mentioned, in some of the places, the brick can
look very thin and very veneer-like, and you do need to...For example, on the corner, where you have
brick, and then, you have to look at the soffit below it. Otherwise, it could look like 2-D printed brick on a
three-dimensional building.
Chair Furth: It seems to me, listening to us -- and I'm sorry there are only four of us, even if that feels
like four too many -- I think this needs to come back. I don't think it makes sense to say yes, and come
back to us. I like the project. I don't feel as strongly as some of my colleagues about the design, meaning that it looks okay to me. I do want to be shown how we have good, functional ground-floor units.
Mr. Lait: April 19 would be the date to continue to.
Chair Furth: Would you accept April 19 as the date?
Vice Chair Baltay: Yes, I accept April 19th.
Board Member Gooyer: Sure.
Chair Furth: Any further discussion before we vote? All those in favor say aye? Opposed, none? Thank
you.
MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY 4-0. BOARD MEMBER THOMPSON WAS ABSENT FOR THE
DISCUSSION AND VOTE.
Chair Furth: We will look forward to seeing this next month, when we will hope to have a full board. We'll
be sure our colleague watches the tape, or at least reads the minutes. Thank you. We're going to take a
five-minute break. I'm sorry?
Mr. Lait: (Inaudible)
Chair Furth: All right. Sorry to the next applicant. Let's see, what do we have left on our agenda? We have the butterfly building. Okay. We have 3223 Hanover, and 3226 Hawthorne. We will take a 15-minute break.
[The Board took a short break.]
Chair Furth: The Architectural Review Board is back in session. It is still March 15th. It is, according to
our clock, 1:35 in the afternoon. We are now on Item 4.
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4. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 3223 Hanover Street [17PLN-00225]:
Consideration of a Major Architectural Review to Allow the Construction of a new two-Story
67,200 Square Foot Office / R&D Building. Environmental Assessment: An Initial Study is Being
Prepared in Accordance With the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Zoning District: RP
(Research Park) and RP(L) (Research Park with Landscape Combining District). For More
Information Contact the Project Planner Graham Owen at graham.owen@cityofpaloalto.org.
Chair Furth: This is a public hearing, it's quasi-judicial, it's on the property known as 3223 Hanover Street. It's consideration of a major architectural review to allow the construction of a new two-story, 67,00 square foot office R&D building. An initial study is being prepared but is not yet complete, so we cannot take action on this today. The recommendation is a continuance to a date uncertain after we hear from the applicant and anybody from the public who wishes to comment, as well as staff, of course. I
would note that this is a large parcel, and we looked at this parcel previously. We recommended approval
of a project in March of 2017. Is that correct? Which included a wildflower meadow in this portion of the
site. A few months later, the applicant filed with his present proposal. Could we hear the staff report,
please?
Mr. Graham Owen, Project Manager: Yes, thanks. Graham Owen, I'm the project manager that's been
working on this application from the get-go, and I've been working with the applicant since July on this
Phase 2, as it's being called. This is 3223 Hanover Street, which is, as you mentioned, a 67,000 square
foot office/R&D building. This is located in the research park, on the eastern edge of the research park,
and adjacent to some residential zones, up against Matadero Avenue. This was previously reviewed, as
you mentioned, at a couple of hearings in 2016 and 2017. The Board recommended approval of a 115,000 square foot office/R&D building in March of last year. The Director approved that application in April. The current application was filed in July. This is RP zoning, and you also have an RP(L) landscaping combining district along the rear, and it's a 50-foot buffer. This application is for office/R&D, but it's not subject to the office limit that we have citywide as Stanford Research Park projects are exempt. As you
mentioned, an initial study is being prepared, and we will have that before the next hearing. This is the
site plan showing the first phase of the project to the left; it's in the lighter color of yellow. The darker
structure is the Phase 2 building that is before you today. The Phase 2 building is going to be located on
the garage. There's a two-level parking structure that's built into the hillside of the site. The site is
terraced, as you'll probably remember, into a lower terrace and an upper terrace. Both of those
structures would be located on the upper terrace. As you also mentioned, Chair Furth, the previous
application had included the vast majority of the parking in those two levels of underground parking, and
also had a wildflower meadow that was on the lower terrace. That was to replace the existing parking lot
that's on the site currently. The current project requires additional parking, of course, as that's 67,000
square feet. The additional parking for the site would be now provided in that area that had previously been proposed as a meadow on the lower terrace. Here's the site axiom, showing the site, showing the lower terrace parking level and the upper terrace. There's no a lot of changes in terms of the parking structure or the upper terrace parking lot, which houses about 26 parking spaces behind the structure. The biggest change is obviously the new structure. Here are building elevations; there's another slide, as
well. This shows the new structure adjacent to the one that's already been proposed, following the same
butterfly design that was previously proposed -- inverted gables, glass curtain walls, blue bands along the
gables, and concrete elements, as well. This is the façade that's facing Matadero Avenue. With the
previous proposal, a number of the neighbors had concerns about lighting and noise, in particular. As a
condition for approval for the first phase of the project, we had automatically-timed window shades that
were conditioned. This proposal, as part of the project description, includes that with this Phase 2
building. As you mentioned, we're recommending that the application be continued at this time. There's a
couple of reasons for that. One is functional, which is that the environmental study is currently under
review. The second is that we're -- at this point -- unable to meet Finding #4 with regards to circulation
and design for pedestrians. There's two main reasons for that, which I'm happy to briefly explore.
Pedestrian circulation as it relates to the site, you have basically two ways to get to the site from Hanover Street right now. One is at the lower level along the drive aisle, which leads into the parking structure below grade. The other is to travel slightly uphill on Hanover Street, and that takes you into the courtyard. So, those are the two main entrances if you're walking to the site. However, there isn't -- in
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our view or in Transportation's view -- sufficient circulation between the two levels of the site, especially
along the frontage. There is currently -- or at least there was, it may have been demolished at this point;
I'm not entirely sure -- a staircase that's located approximately where the dashed arrow is located, which
achieves the circulation that we think would be a desirable element to replicate on the site. The other
element to this is that the parking on the lower terrace, in particular, follows basically the same design
that's been there since the 1950s or so. The site would be re-graded in that lower terrace to allow for a
more gradual slope from the front to the back. That was to do a couple of things, but one was to make so that the grade change wouldn't provide for engines that are trying to access the rear, or trucks that are trying to access the rear, having to make a lot of noise, gunning their engines and downshifting, that sort of thing. With this application, you would have a new lower-level parking, surface parking lot, so, in our mind, there's a lot of opportunity to design a parking lot that meets the findings and has additional open space. The applicant is proposing to do some offset improvements on the adjacent ballpark bicycle
path. They have some slides that they'll want to show you about those improvements, as well. Lastly,
with the parking lot that they're proposing right now, one of the other things that we thought was
important was that the proposed design has a number of modules. I think we're counting seven modules
for parking. There's a pedestrian path, a bicycle path, to that, that connects from the front to the back,
where you would have several conflict points between each of those modules and the path. One of the
things that we are looking at, if there's a way to minimize the number of conflict points by minimizing the
number of stalls, that we would want to see that as a positive circulation amenity. At this point, as we
mentioned, we recommend that it be continued to a date uncertain, so that we can...Hopefully, the Board
can provide comments to the applicant on how better to meet Finding #4, in particular.
Chair Furth: Okay. Just to confirm, Sheet MP 1.2 shows what we previously approved? For this site? Just trying to --
Mr. Owen: That's correct.
Chair Furth: -- overlay it with what we're now being asked to approve.
Mr. Owen: That's correct. I think there's also another sheet in the set. Yeah, MP 1.4, as well, shows the
previously-proposed site plan.
Chair Furth: What is lost, and what is gained. Okay. Any questions of staff before we turn to the
applicant? All right, if we could hear from the applicant, please. Could you introduce yourself and spell
your name for the record?
Bob Giannini: Yes. I'm Bob Giannini, Form4 Architecture. Thanks very much. Good afternoon, Board
Members. Again, I'll go as quick as I can on this. We've organized the presentation into really what's
different from last time, talking a little bit about our thought to upgrade the city's bike paths, and also
touch on sustainability and energy model. Again, here's the site, sort of in the middle of the Research
Park. This was the project as it was approved a year ago. This is, again, the axiom that you saw before of what we had, and this is the new design that you just saw. And as Graham said, it's exactly true. Really, the only difference is the addition of the new building on top of the garage, and then, the lower parking lot. And, as he mentioned, it will be built new. The old parking lot is definitely substandard, so this is actually built new. I wanted to pull out a few of the slides from what we had talked about in Phase
1, where we had worked quite a bit on the site circulation. The only thing I would add is, nothing is
changed here, and it all actually still works the same. If you come up Hanover, you're level into the
courtyard. If you come in from one of the two bus stops, you can come in on this side of the street and
go into the garage, and go up through the central light well without crossing traffic. You can actually go
onto the other portal, as well. That works the same. We have a bike path that comes up back here. And
then, we can show the difference when we add in the parking lot. This was the solution we all kind of
worked out together last time, where we put a light well in the garage, to really make that experience
very nice as you come in from the lower level, and if you choose to use this way to get up the hill. Going
back, I should also mention, there would be no objection to recreating the stair that was put here. It's sort of a garden stair that creates a little shortcut. At first, we were having a hard time doing that
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because we couldn't figure out how to get it through the heritage trees, and with the slopes and
everything else, but we think we've worked that out. We'd be happy to work with staff on that. Again,
just as a reminder, this how that sidewalk works. You come down from Hanover, go through the garage
and enter the -- It's the drop-off area. It's the light well we just looked at, the vertical circulation, and the
bike room. We also, in Phase 1, studied screening for our neighbors. We've met with them a lot, and
actually worked out most of the strategies for that in Phase 1, and it's all being built in Phase 1 to allow
the trees as much time to grow as possible. We can show that. As you'll recall, part of the thinking was also to add hedges and things back there, to make sure there was no light spill through the buffer in the back of the project. We had also increased the buffer from 50 feet to 90 feet, and with the new building, that's almost double. We haven't really changed any of those strategies, and they all continue to still work in this configuration. Here's an image from Hanover, when you come in. This is that sidewalk I was just talking about, that brings you to this portal. The request was to put another little stair in right here,
which we can do. The other purpose of this slide is to point out that the architecture matches the other
buildings. All the vocabulary is the same. All the materials are the same. This is the view up at where
Hanover flushes out with the project. This is the little central pavilion that comes up from the garage.
This is the light well. Phase 1 buildings on this side, and this would be the new Phase 2 building.
Materials are all the same as in Phase 1, and it's a combination of wood, not very much aluminum, and a
couple different types of glass. And then, I think a lot of the conversation is probably about the lower
parking lot, and what that's all about. We have studied, we have worked with Planning and
Transportation on the parking, and we've actually developed the option that was requested to be looked
at. I have that in the slides that I can pull up later, if you'd like. This is the scheme we're proposing. The advantage to this scheme is we do have collector sidewalks now on both sides of the entry drive, and they're flat in the sense that you don't have to go up and down over curbs. The sidewalk is recessed down and you can walk from Hanover right into the building without any tripping hazards, which I think is the most important differentiation of this parking lot design, as opposed to the alternate that I can
show you. Also, this parking lot gives us the required number of cars, where we actually can meet --
Chair Furth: Excuse me, you can have an extra 30 seconds. Could you say that again? I didn't quite
follow.
Mr. Giannini: Where was I on --?
Chair Furth: Talking about sidewalks, and no steps going up and down and --
Mr. Giannini: Actually, I have better slides to show that. I don't think I could fit them in my 10 minutes,
but I have those slides, and we'd be happy to explain that more. But the idea here is, there are no
tripping hazards in this scheme because you can walk from your car to the collector sidewalks without
having to climb up and down curbs or go between cars, and all of that. In the other scheme, it's exactly
the opposite. You have to climb up and down curbs and walk through landscaping to get where you want to go. I can demonstrate that. With this scheme, we do realize we're taking away the meadow that we had just given. That's not a small matter. But, there are several things that make this parking lot, sort of a pretty well-behaved parking lot. Number one is, we have huge buffers on this parking lot that you normally wouldn't have, partially because we were providing the extra screening for the neighbor. So, we
have 90 feet on this side. We have, of course, the 50 feet on Hanover. And, because of slope and
existing trees, we also have a large buffer with the bike path. With that large buffer, we thought what
would be nice would be to actually offer to completely redevelop the bike path, all the landscaping and
lighting, take down the fence that's there, and make it all kind of part of an open, really pleasant kind of
thing. Also, with trail heads at either end. I can show that. We were asked to double-check our shading
calculations because we had included the garage portals in them. These drawings just show that, if you
looked at Phase 2 by itself, the parking lot is at 50.9 percent shading. If you were to look at Phase 1 and
2 together, we would be at 65.9 percent shading, which exceeds the City's requirement of 50 percent
shading in the parking lots. That was just a double-check. This is looking at the bike trails. One of the
nice things about the bike trail is - and we do have our landscape architect here, Rich Sharp, who could talk in more detail about it. But, we put a trail head at Hanover, so, right now, the bike path ends at Hanover, kind of unceremoniously. Again, we take down all the fence to keep it from being, sort of this
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dark, kind of scary place that it is now. Open it up. You won't be able to see the cars because there is
about a four- or five-foot grade differential between the bike path and the parking lot. And then, we
propose to build a hedge on top of that. So, when you're on the bike path, it would feel very pastural.
The nature of the landscaping would be a little bit like we did at 1400 Page Mill, where we do kind of a
natural California landscape there. At the other end, we're doing the same thing, and what's nice about
that is, when you come to that, you can look up where the bike path goes up the hill, and sort of get that
- as Rich says - sort of this borrowed view as you look up the hill. So, really using the bike path, putting all our energy into really enhancing the landscaping and the public bike path, as well as providing the required parking within the parking lot itself. This is a little bit of the character. We would light it with bollards rather than poles. This is our light study to show how that would work. Finally, we did run the preliminary energy calcs on the building. We're at 10.3 right now, so that also exceeds Palo Alto's Reach Code. So, again, as the other building, the shading strategy on the building sort of handles the
sustainability aspect of the project. Unless you'd like me to go right into the alternate parking lot
configuration, that concludes my presentation.
Chair Furth: Thank you. What would the pleasure of the Board be? Do you want to see the alternate
configuration? Go for it, please.
Mr. Giannini: Okay. This is pretty straightforward. Again, here's what we have. What I did is I did an
overview first because this is kind of the most important point, to me, is if you look all the parking lots
around the project -- here's our project right here -- all of the parking lots generally do this, where you
can walk between the rows to get to the building. We've all been in parking lots where you have to kind
of cross each median as you go. The only project in this slide that doesn't do that is our neighbor up the hill, the Lockheed building. There, you're asked to walk sideways to the collector sidewalk, then do a little jog and go up their big stair. But, I know that most people actually, if you're parked here, you're probably just going to make a beeline for the stair. So, knowing how human nature is, we've always kind of taken that into account when we design parking lots. In this parking lot, the way it works is, wherever you
park, you can walk through to the collector sidewalk on this side of the street. And what I meant by "flat"
is, this is down at the paving level, so that when you walk on this and then you get onto the collector
sidewalk, you aren't climbing over any curbs or anything to get onto the sidewalk. And then, there's a
second parallel collector sidewalk on the other side of the street, so at any point, you can cross this
driveway and get onto that sidewalk. These are the two collector sidewalks. This is the stairs, sort of our
new grand stairs that goes up the side of the embankment. That's about a 20-foot embankment right
there. It goes underneath the overhang of the building, and then, brings you out at the center courtyard.
This is a little bit of a blow-up view of that. This is where you can come across, go up the stair, go
underneath the building and enter the courtyard. Or, you can go in either of the garage portals.
Additionally, we'll create this other small stair down at the other end. This slide, you've already seen. It's really just what we think the advantages of this parking lot is. Of course, the great advantage of this parking lot is it actually gets us enough cars to meet City minimum. This is the alternate. We were asked to study what would happen if you rotated the parking so that it would give you the option of long medians. Unfortunately, as you all know, it's kind of the dimension you have, so when we rotated the
parking, all of a sudden, there wasn't enough to get three rows of parking in there, just two double rows
in parking. It does create this huge landscape median in the center of the parking lot. But, the problem
is, if you were parked anywhere on this side of the project, that becomes an obstacle for you to get over
here. And, unfortunately, also, this layout doesn't give us the required cars. We can squeeze a few more
cars here on the ends, but even that won't quite make up the shortfall we have. We're close, but on this
site, there's really not a spot to get another car. We do have that problem, too, so we need a little bit of
a parking variance to be able to do this scheme. I particularly am extremely sensitive to putting tripping
hazards in parking lots because I have fallen on them, so this kind of scheme would be tough. If it was
me parked here, I would definitely head diagonally across this, to head to the stair, and squeezing
through cars and everything, which just doesn't seem quite as gracious. That's as far as we studied this
scheme. That's all I have. Thank you.
Chair Furth: Thank you. I forgot to ask anybody, if we had any disclosures to make about outside-of-hearing information. I forgot to report that somebody - whose name I don't know - advised me that he
City of Palo Alto Page 68
would not be speaking because he was confident that the Board itself would do enough due diligence on
the project. I have two speaker cards, neither of which I can read. Sharad Patel [phonetic]? That was the
person. And Trum [phonetic]? I think we have no speakers. Thank you. Okay. Any questions of the
applicant or staff? Robert? Alex? Peter? I thought when I was reading the staff report at some point there
was a reference to a lot providing more than the number of required parking spaces. Could you take me
through that?
Mr. Owen: I believe that there's currently about 46 parking spaces on the site that are in excess of the minimum that's required.
Chair Furth: You mean in the existing lot, or in anything that's proposed?
Mr. Owen: With the proposal. Including --
Chair Furth: Which sheet? Which version?
Mr. Owen: Including landscape reserve. They have, along the left-hand side of the drive aisle, if you're
looking at the site plan, there's a row of landscape reserve parking spaces.
Chair Furth: Tell me which page I'm looking at.
Mr. Owen: One second.
Chair Furth: There's too many moving parts.
Ms. Gerhardt: We have the zoning numbers listed out on packet page 337, if you just want the numbers.
Chair Furth: No, I don't want the numbers. I want to know the plan, which was submitted, which shows
67 surplus spaces, if that's correct.
Mr. Owen: It's Sheet A 1.1. That shows 29 parking spaces that are in reserve. This is just based on my
count. I believe that 45 or 46 -- I can't remember the exact number -- is specifically shown as excess parking. When you do the actual counts of the number of parking spaces that are included on the site, inclusive of those that are in the landscape reserve, it's about 45. Forty-six.
Chair Furth: Surplus?
Mr. Owen: Correct.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Vice Chair Baltay: I have a question for the applicant about the, there's an oak tree, I believe, on the
corner of the proposed drive entrance into the property, on the right-hand side as you're going in. It's a
very large, important oak tree, and I don't see that in your 3-D rendering here. I'm wondering what your
intentions are with that tree.
Mr. Giannini: I think it's this right here, correct? Yeah. There is -- exactly -- a large, important oak tree
right there, and we worked hard to preserve that in Phase 1. That had to all be sorted out in Phase 1
because the garage actually extends beyond the building, so we had to make sure that this oak was
outside of the influence of any construction we were doing. The new building. The short answer is, the
oak tree is there, and it's protected, and it's been vetted.
Vice Chair Baltay: I'm talking about a second oak tree. The lower drive aisle, where you turn in to access the garage. Once you've turned in on the right-hand side, there's an oak tree there. To the right of the staircase that was demolished.
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Rich Sharp: Correct. My name is Rich Sharp, landscape architect with Studio5. There's actually two oak
trees there, and we're keeping both. They're just not shown in the rendering so that everyone can see
the building.
Vice Chair Baltay: To be clear, this drawing here, I'm holding up --
Mr. Sharp: Has two oaks.
Vice Chair Baltay: -- has two fairly substantially oak trees right on the corner here.
Mr. Sharp: Correct. And those are the oaks that we're trying to work the staircase around so we don't damage the roots for the, the quicker access down off the podium that Graham was speaking to earlier.
Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you.
Chair Furth: Any other questions? Okay. Comments. Alex, you want to go first?
Board Member Lew: Thank you, Bob. I did want to congratulate you on the 500 University project. I
walked through that a couple weeks ago, and I think that came out fabulously well. When I visited this
site yesterday, I also looked at the 1050 Page Mill, and I think of the landscaping there, has really come a
long way since it was installed. It's looking fabulous. I can recommend approval of the project. I know
we're not going to make a motion today. I think the drawing set is complete. I guess my main question
would be changes to the bike path, and then, screening of the parking lot from Hanover. It's above
grade, right? And I think you're showing some shrubs in front of the trash enclosure, and some oak trees,
but I didn't see shrubs or other screening. Maybe you have a final planting plan. I was looking for that
kind of thing. And then, also, I think my last question would be the, I think you're purposing a second art
piece along Hanover. I was wondering, why is it there, as opposed to, like, in the courtyard, or another
location?
Mr. Giannini: Yes, because this is a new project and has a new art requirement, we're doing a second piece of art. But, it's designed by the same artist, and it's meant to complement the other piece of art. They actually work together. It's out on the street because, again, that's what the Art Commission likes best, when you put them right out on the street.
Board Member Lew: I'm in support of the project.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Robert?
Board Member Gooyer: Yes, thank you. I agree. I think you've done a nice job at complementing this
with the existing, or almost-existing building. I agree, obviously, that it would be nice to get more
landscaping in the parking lot, but that's an awfully big sacrifice of spaces, as far as using the other
alternative option. I think this is the way to go. But, I do agree that the connection between that and the
campus itself is a bit weak. You might want something that enhances that a little bit, as far as either
striped paving, or different paving, or something to make it a little bit more user-friendly, rather than just
meandering through the middle of a parking lot. Other than that, I can support the project the way
you've presented it.
Chair Furth: Peter?
Vice Chair Baltay: I'm afraid I have a diverging opinion here. When we reviewed this building the first time around, I was under the impression that the building was to be seen across a large public plaza with two groups of significant oak trees. I feel that putting this building in that space just changes -- in a
serious way -- how I view the original approval. These buildings are -- as they're presented -- not really
creating an outdoor space between them, but rather, just an ad-hoc clustering of spaces. I don't feel it's
appropriate. On this site, that building could be put down into where the lower parking lot is instead. It
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would be a much better site development. I feel that, really, there should be a building with a different
design in the area where the lower parking lot is. This is not good site planning. I think that the design of
the building, if they had presented both of these in this configuration to us when we first approved it, we
wouldn't have gone this way. This is a light, airy, like a butterfly -- which is the architect's term -- and
yet, they're jammed together, especially at this one corner. I find that visually jarring and inappropriate.
It's really unfortunate that it's sort of piecemeal coming to us this way. Either one of these buildings is
very attractive, and we've gone through the process; it will be fine. Secondarily, I support staff's opinion about the circulation and transportation. At a minimum, the building on top of a parking lot should have a stair coming up from the parking lot, rather than having to go outside, and then back in again. It just doesn't make sense. This large-surface parking lot is quite separated from the building now, so I can't make Finding #4, that this works from a circulation/functional point of view. I also look at the Comprehensive Plan, Policy L 9.2, which essentially encourages us to develop parking that's behind
buildings or underneath buildings. This is a classic case of where a new building, developing the entire
site, you would not keep that surface parking lot. You'd reconfigure it differently. For those reasons, I
can't support this project as it's proposed. Thank you.
Board Member Gooyer: Question. If you put the building in the, if you want to call it the parking lot, then
where would the extra parking --? Underneath, or --?
Vice Chair Baltay: Probably underneath. I don't know.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay.
Vice Chair Baltay: I'm not the architect, and I was surprised at this coming at us this way. Just recently,
having looked at the whole thing and making a big effort about that large plaza, and the way you can walk across it, and the way you see the trees from the building, and the building through the trees. Even your rendering here, where you don't show those oak trees. Those oak trees will be very close to the building. Again, too tight, together. This type of architecture needs breathing room, their lightweight wings, floating. I don't believe you would have designed this -- architect Bob -- this way if you'd know
you're having these two buildings close to each other.
Chair Furth: Thank you, all. I confess that, after you devoted so much energy to having us fall in love
with your previous proposal, it's pretty hard to have the rug pulled out from under us so quickly. And
that's not about motive, but certainly, we spent a lot of time looking at the design of the plaza and
thinking how it worked. I think we always knew that a wildflower meadow could be a temporary feature.
I had a couple of...It is startling to see a new, big, surface parking lot, even though -- a big surface
parking lot proposed in connection with the new building. That's not what the trend seems to be lately,
which is to use surfaces for landscaping and buildings and hardscape for people, and not for parking lots.
I would be interested in seeing a parking lot that has the minimum required number of spaces, and more
significant landscaping areas. Very small landscaping areas aren't particularly useful as habitat, and I think...As it sits here, it looks like a heat sink, but I realize it's intended to meet our requirements. But, I would like to see it -- I think it's necessary to see it -- as the minimum number of parking spaces that would accommodate this site, rather than excess asphalt.
I also had a question about the pedestrian experience going up and down Hanover. Are there places to
rest? Are there places to sit? I know there's a bus stop. I couldn't find them, looking at the site plan, it
may simply be a case of my eyes and the scale. I would be looking for more knowledge on how that
works. I'm glad to see the trail improvements. I would look to those people who bicycle it more often
than I do, to say if they like the new design, if it's as good as it appears to be in the proposal. Certainly,
as it exists, it has a number of infelicities. I agree with the proposal for an additional staircase. Do I
gather that the parking lot is at a higher grade than the street, and that's why you don't go up and down
to get to the sidewalk? There's a grade difference between the sidewalk and the street?
Mr. Giannini: Hanover is continuously sloped --
City of Palo Alto Page 71
Chair Furth: I actually meant your driveway.
Mr. Giannini: Oh, our driveway. What our driveway does is - let me see if I can go back to that -- what
the driveway does is it comes in at the street. It actually goes up fairly quickly. And then, it goes up at
about, I think a three percent slope, or so. Right now, it's flat. You enter the lower level of the garage
here, the upper level of the garage here, and then, you come up onto the small drop-off.
Chair Furth: I was actually asking a different question. I was trying to figure out how something is a
sidewalk, which provides the kind of pedestrian safety you expect in a sidewalk, if it's at the same grade as the street.
Mr. Giannini: I'm sorry. You mean the street being Hanover.
Chair Furth: No, I mean the street being your driveway.
Mr. Giannini: Oh, the entry driveway.
Chair Furth: The entry drive.
Mr. Giannini: No, the sidewalks follow, generally, also go up hill. However, they're at a different grade,
actually, than the entry drive at this point, just because that was what was needed for ADA, and because
people need a more gradual slope than a car does. So, the car's making, actually, a fairly, more
significant climb right at the beginning, than people are going up at ADA.
Chair Furth: If I leave the sidewalk on the downhill side of the drawing from the parking lot, and I walk
into the driveway, do I step down, or is it --?
Mr. Giannini: No. I understand now. Okay. The sidewalks and the asphalt are all in plane. They're all level
with each other. But, together, they're all slightly sloping up toward the back of the site.
Chair Furth: There's no grade separation between the cars and the pedestrians. They're all on the same level. They're not curbed to put you back.
Mr. Giannini: Correct.
Chair Furth: Interesting. Thank you.
Mr. Giannini: Could I also answer your question about the reserved parking? The location of the reserved
parking is right along here, and the intention is that would all be landscaped. The only parking we would
build at the outset is City minimum. But then, on some of the sites in the Research Park, if there were
parking problems, people would go out into the neighborhoods. We started thinking that it would be
good just to have a place on the site that, if you got into trouble on parking, there was at least a spot
reserved on the site to park.
Chair Furth: Now I'm totally confused. The lot you're showing us brings your parking up to code, or
beyond code?
Mr. Giannini: Everything we're showing brings it up to code, plus we're reserving landscape area that
could be converted to parking in the future. That would pick up an extra -- Actually, I don't know the
exact numbers, but it picks up somewhere around 40 cars more.
Chair Furth: That's not the answer I thought I got from staff. I'm confused.
Mr. Giannini: Our intention is only to build the minimum parking at the outset, but to have landscape reserved for about another 45 cars.
City of Palo Alto Page 72
Chair Furth: I understand about landscaping. I'm just trying to figure out what the present proposed
build-out is.
Board Member Lew: We usually use the term "landscape reserve" for it. We have the minimum required,
and then, sometimes people want to build less than that. The landscape reserve is that, is the
differential. Everything that you're talking about is in excess of --
Mr. Giannini: That is correct.
Board Member Lew: -- the required zoning.
Chair Furth: Thank you, Alex. That's very helpful.
Mr. Owen: I can provide a little bit of clarity on that. Sheet A 1.1, that kind of illustrates most closely what we're talking about here. The current proposal provides for 29 spaces in a landscape reserve.
Chair Furth: Twenty-nine future spaces.
Mr. Owen: Correct. That would be landscaping currently, with the ability to convert it to parking at a later
date.
Chair Furth: At will.
Mr. Owen: At will, correct. In terms of the number that the project is in excess of, that number is 46.
There's a slight number of additional spaces that are currently proposed in the actual surface lot.
Board Member Gooyer: Forty-six over and above the 27? Or 29? Or the 29 are included?
Mr. Owen: Inclusive of the 29.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay.
Chair Furth: Stanford is asking for an entitlement to 29 future parking spaces, in what we shouldn't really
call a landscape reserve, because they're extra spaces. Right? And then, they're proposing to build some surplus spaces now?
Mr. Owen: Right. Right now --
Chair Furth: Another 27?
Mr. Owen: -- it's 17 spaces that they're over, that they're proposing today. With the ability to convert an
additional 29 at a later date.
Chair Furth: Seventeen spaces over now, plus an additional 29 spaces -- it would be nice if I could do
arithmetic -- over now. Okay. Thank you. Do you agree with that?
Mr. Giannini: I agree with that, yes. It was more just the geometry of the site. We just made one whole
strip landscaped. That's why we're building a couple more extra.
Chair Furth: Appreciate it. Okay. Discussion? Anybody want to start?
Board Member Lew: I support the project. And I think, on Phase 1 we debated your basic-partis, and I
think you were very up front about where the future phase is going to be, and advantages of putting the
building on top of the parking garage, right? You basically have a smaller footprint. And the neighbors
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didn't like the entrance in the back of the property. Anyway, we hashed all of that out. From my point of
view, is that we've made that decision, and it's done.
Chair Furth: Okay. My point was that they had a very nice design, which they persuaded me was quite
lovely. Even though I knew it was temporary, I didn't know quite how temporary.
Board Member Gooyer: That was the only thing I was saying, that the first phase was approved in March,
and I can't imagine, considering this was an application that came in in July, that you didn't pretty much
already know where you were going to put this second phase. You could have been a little more clear about what Phase 2 would have looked like. I'm disappointed in that aspect of it.
Chair Furth: Okay, so, we know that at least one of us feels that this design doesn't work, and one of us does. Robert, where are you on this?
Board Member Gooyer: It's one of these things that, having been involved in various projects like this,
it's, from an aesthetic standpoint, it probably would be better if they were separated a little bit more. But,
the poor guy who has to walk from one building to another building would, you know, hates the fact that
he has to walk all the way across the entry road and everything else, to get to the second building. From
a pragmatic standpoint, this probably works better as a campus as a whole, and the reality of it is, there's
some pretty good separation. It's not like there's a 30-foot aisle between the two. I would have preferred
that maybe the idea of being, that this building was set another, say, 30 feet to the right -- if you want to
call it -- to get a little bit more separation between them, and have the entryway redesigned a little bit.
But I don't think it needs to be in the parking lot. I don't think that would be -- They'd have a hard time
selling it as a complete campus if those two buildings were that far apart.
Chair Furth: Okay. I have an -- It is becoming startling to see a surface parking lot like this unless it's got a solar canopy over it. A meadow of asphalt is not particularly appealing to me, so I'd like to see it, if possible, down to a minimum required number of spaces, with supplement landscaping. I certainly prefer the design that has more significant clumps of landscaping, rather than little teeny spaces, little narrow spaces, which I think don't really fit in with a lot of what we're trying to accomplish in landscaping. They
probably permit some shading of the parking lot, but they don't permit the other things that are desirable
in landscaping.
Board Member Gooyer: Could I just --
Chair Furth: Sure.
Board Member Gooyer: -- interject one thing? Bob, that second scheme that you showed us, does that
meet the minimum?
Mr. Giannini: It does not.
Board Member Gooyer: By how --?
Mr. Giannini: It loses it by at least 10.
Board Member Gooyer: By 10?
Mr. Giannini: Mm-Hmm.
Chair Furth: That's 67 fewer spaces.
Board Member Gooyer: The other alternative is to say, you know, you're happier with the revised scheme that has the much larger landscaping area in the middle, which breaks up the large acreage -- if you
want to call it -- of asphalt. Because you do have the 29 spaces, whichever way you do this parking lot.
City of Palo Alto Page 74
Mr. Giannini: No, actually, we need to use all those to be 10 under.
Board Member Gooyer: Can you put the other one back on again?
Mr. Giannini: Right. In this one --
Board Member Gooyer: You are using those, then. Okay.
Mr. Giannini: Yeah. It takes all of these. And you can see why we're losing, basically that huge
(crosstalk).
Board Member Gooyer: Right. No, no, no, I understand that, I understand that. Okay. That would make a pretty big difference, yeah.
Mr. Giannini: For me, too, the negative, that would even not be the negative for me, the loss of cars. It would be --
Board Member Gooyer: Right, no, I understand. I thought those --
(crosstalk)
Board Member Gooyer: -- I thought those were still covered in this scheme.
Mr. Giannini: No, no.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay.
Chair Furth: I clearly don't know what is possible. My family's history includes a spiral fracture in the
Fashion Island parking lot at Christmas. Since this has to come back to us, I would like to see a design
which has the minimum number of spaces, and the maximum functional landscaping.
Board Member Gooyer: Is there some way to put more of a, eliminating the 17 spaces pretty much right
in the middle, so it turns this larger parking lot into two smaller parking lots?
Chair Furth: There may very well be. I don't know.
Board Member Gooyer: Something like that, where you don't get the --
Chair Furth: The acreage.
Board Member Gooyer: -- you actually can plant some decent-sized trees in there that would physically
break the two into two separate parking lots. Much smaller parking lots.
Chair Furth: Just roughly, what is the square footage of the parking lot? The area?
Mr. Giannini: Oh, gosh. It's large. The site is 10 acres, so it's three, three and a half --?
Board Member Gooyer: One hundred and fifty thousand square feet, probably?
(crosstalk)
Mr. Giannini: It would be 180 feet wide by the length of it.
Chair Furth: It's acres of asphalt.
City of Palo Alto Page 75
Mr. Giannini: It is.
Chair Furth: I think that's something to be avoided. It's interesting. We talk about the sustainability of
this project, and then, we have a very large heat sink. I don’t see how those two things fit together.
What am I missing here?
Board Member Lew: I think if you look at the numbers, you've got a lot of ground coverage unused. Is
that correct?
Mr. Giannini: Well, one thing that's important is, a good chunk of the parking is all underground.
Chair Furth: I understand. I appreciate that.
Mr. Giannini: This is the amount that would be on the -- From a relativity point of view, it is a lot of asphalt, but when you look at it --
Board Member Gooyer: From a total scope.
Mr. Giannini: -- but when you look at some of these other projects that surround us, that's all asphalt.
Chair Furth: I'm looking at them, and they're not what we would permit these days.
Mr. Giannini: That's true. I wouldn't (crosstalk)
Chair Furth: And it's not what we would find desirable in the community.
(crosstalk)
Chair Furth: It's not what we would find desirable in a community which we're trying to make cooler, not
hotter.
Mr. Giannini: No, no, and I do agree. That's why we do hit the shading, you know, we do exceed the
shading in the parking lot. We'd be definitely willing to look at ways to relieve some of that. I would just
like to avoid a configuration that creates tripping hazards and makes it sort of uncomfortable for people to get through it.
Chair Furth: I don't think any of us is going to argue for something which makes people trip or is hazardous to pedestrians. I don't know what's optimal, but I’m suggesting that eliminating the extra
spaces may give you some more freedom to figure that out.
Board Member Gooyer: Just for curiosity, if you do rotate the parking in the other direction, and you put
a band of landscaping in the middle to separate the two -- you bring them all toward the center, and
then, in -- if you could do something like that, it would probably go a long ways to visually eliminate that
massive parking lot.
Chair Furth: Did staff have a comment?
Mr. Owen: I did. I just wanted to restate, reiterate one thing that our Transportation Division had a
concern with. It's ultimately regarding the number of intersections and potential conflict points between
pedestrians and vehicles that's resulting from the seven (inaudible) different parking modules.
Chair Furth: What that means is seven access points to the parking lot, right?
Mr. Owen: Correct.
City of Palo Alto Page 76
Chair Furth: That's the conflict.
Board Member Gooyer: What you're saying is you'd prefer one access point, or something, and then,
spread out, once you're in the parking lot.
Mr. Owen: Just less. It doesn't have to be, I don't want to be overly prescriptive. It could be --
Board Member Gooyer: Or less than --
Mr. Owen: Less than seven, for sure.
Board Member Gooyer: Right.
Chair Furth: I find that somewhat compelling. I don't know how the rest of you feel.
Board Member Gooyer: What I was saying sort of goes towards that. If you do a landscape strip in the middle and make that your main entry point to get from the two parking lots into the building.
Mr. Giannini: Right. I think the idea of maybe compartmentalizing it so it would appear to be two parking
lots, that's something we should absolutely explore. Rotating the cars, though, and closing these off,
though, would just make it (inaudible) --
(crosstalk).
Board Member Gooyer: If you bring them all to the one side and then do a walkway or something, that's
doable, also.
Mr. Giannini: Right. I think just knowing how people walk through a parking lot, to walk over to a central
sidewalk --
Board Member Gooyer: I agree.
Mr. Giannini: -- people just don't do that.
Board Member Gooyer: I agree. Right.
Chair Furth: I don't have to raise my own hand, do I? I'm chairing. I was just thinking about my experience in the Nike parking lot up in Portland, which is huge. What they have is they have covered walkways, and the visually signal where to go, and they're extremely attractive, and they're covered
lattices, basically. And they're landscaped. What do we permit? Do we permit that kind of thing?
Mr. Giannini: Trellis? Absolutely.
Chair Furth: So, I think it's possible to make something that people want to go towards and use. I know
I’m always seeking out places where I can -- Of course, there, it's nice because you can get out of the
rain, more for what happens to your shoes than what happens to your head. But, I think you could
design something that would accomplish our goals. Habitat-friendly, hummingbird-attracting, people-
channeling, not so asphaltic.
Board Member Gooyer: Bench locating --
Chair Furth: Bench locating. A charming place to be. Bird baths, complete habitat. The Audubon Society -
- Alex pointed out -- would make it --
Board Member Gooyer: You get the idea. Yeah.
City of Palo Alto Page 77
Chair Furth: I think you could do a whole lot better, and should. As you have in so many other aspects of
your project. Is that enough? Oh, I was going to ask staff. What do we do about solar canopies? I've
spent a lot of time at an institution in town which built this solar power plant over its parking lot, and we
all thought we'd hate it, and everybody loves it, because there's good downlighting, and it's shady. But,
how does that interact with our shade requirements?
Mr. Owen: We allow PV -- solar carports, for example. They can't be counted towards our 50 percent
shade requirement. That has to be living shade, so to speak. Trees. To the degree that you have additional spacing in your parking lot in excess of the 50 percent, sure. And you have the additional coverage. That's something that we (crosstalk).
Chair Furth: That sounds impossible, to both have a solar carport, and then, 50 percent -- 100 percent of
the remaining space, covered? Anyway, okay. That's not a feasible alternative, as I understand it. Am I
misunderstanding? Is that too hypothetical?
Mr. Owen: I think it would be challenging.
Chair Furth: I think it would be perhaps something we could look into. All right.
Mr. Giannini: Could I add a quick item there? When we did the solar carports at 1400 Page Mill, that was
kind of a trick because what we forgot to think about is, we loaded it with trees and the solar carports,
but the trees shade the solar panels. So, we actually had to lower a couple of trees to keep the sun off. It
is a conflict.
Chair Furth: But you made a noble effort. That's good to know. Okay, motion from anybody? Or further
conversation? The motion is basically to continue to a -- date certain? Or uncertain?
MOTION
Board Member Gooyer: Continue to a date uncertain.
Chair Furth: Do you have sufficient clarity on our comments or would you like more specificity?
Mr. Giannini: I think we're okay. Thank you.
Board Member Gooyer: The main thing is this, sort of a re-thinking of the parking lot.
Mr. Giannini: That's true. And actually, to respond to one of Peter's comments, there is a very large grand
stair that goes up the side.
Board Member Gooyer: It's not a little three-foot-wide (inaudible).
Mr. Giannini: No. You can see it here. There's special paving across the entry drive. It links into both
collector sidewalks. It goes up the side of the hill, and then, it's protected underneath the building until
you get to the courtyard. We can continue to look at that, and I think the special paving comment is a
good one, and all of that. We'll look at all those things. We did give many ways to get up the hill.
Board Member Lew: Who made the motion, and who seconded it?
Board Member Gooyer: I made a motion, to continue this to a date uncertain.
Chair Furth: I didn't hear a second. Did somebody make one? Would somebody second?
Board Member Lew: I will second.
City of Palo Alto Page 78
Chair Furth: All right. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Thank you very much.
MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY 4-0. BOARD MEMBER THOMPSON WAS ABSENT FOR THE
DISCUSSION AND VOTE.
Chair Furth: Do you need time to set up for your next item, or are you ready to go? We'll take a --
Vice Chair Baltay: Can I excuse myself from the meeting now?
Chair Furth: Sure. We'll miss you. Okay. Commissioner Baltay will be leaving the meeting, so we'll have a
quorum of three for the next item.
[The Board took a short break]
Chair Furth: All right, we'll reconvene. The item before us is a slightly different scale.
5. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 356 Hawthorne Avenue [17PLN-00367]:
Recommendation on Applicant's Request for Approval of a Major Architectural Review to Allow
the Demolition of an Existing Four-Unit, 4,032 Square Foot Multifamily Residential Development
and Construction of a new 4,561 Square Foot, Multi-Family Development Comprised of Three
Detached Residential Units Each With an Attached Single Car Garage. Environmental Assessment:
Exempt From the Provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in Accordance
With Guideline Section 15303 (New Construction). Zoning District: RM-15 (Low Density
MultipleFamily Residential). For More Information Contact the Project Planner Phillip Brennan at
phillip.brennan@cityofpaloalto.org
Chair Furth: This is a quasi-judicial matter, a public hearing -- Excuse me. Could those of you at the back
of the hall --? We have very odd acoustics here. Three fifty-six Hawthorne Avenue, three residential units,
this is the first formal hearing, although we did look at this some time back. We are asked to make a recommendation on the applicant's request for approval of a major architectural review to allow the demolition of an existing four-unit, 4,000 square foot multifamily residential development, and construction of a new 4,500 square foot multifamily development, comprised of three detached residential units, each with an attached single-car garage. It's exempt from CEQA. May we have the staff
report?
Phillip Brennan: Thank you, and good afternoon to the Board. My name is Phillip Brennan, I'm the project
planner for this multifamily residential development. As you may already be informed, I was contacted by
the applicant late yesterday. Unfortunately, he's not able to attend today due to some personal
circumstances. Before I get started with my presentation, I want to bring your attention to a public
comment that was submitted to me after the packet was delivered to you. It's a public comment from Mr.
Jack Hullmann, who lives at 210 Waverly, expressing his concerns regarding the proposed two-story unit
creating a canyon effect on his lot. He is requesting that the Board consider having the one-story unit,
flip-flopping the one-story unit to the middle and the two-story unit to Bryant Court.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Mr. Brennan: With that, I'll begin my brief presentation, a little bit about the project. This is a 4,000-square foot existing four-unit multifamily residential development. The applicant is proposing three detached condo units, each with an attached single car garage. It's comprised of a one-story and two new two-story units, ranging in size from 970 square feet to approximately 1,800 square feet. The
density for this lot is three units. This is a 9,500 square foot lot located in the RM-15 zoning district. The
surrounding neighborhood is a mixture of one- and two-story homes, as well as low-density multifamily
apartments. The surrounding environment is an eclectic mix of architectural styles. The lot itself is
bounded by Hawthorne Avenue, and Bryant Court along the southeast rear lot line. As you noted, this
item was, a previous iteration of this project was presented before the Board in a prescreening in July of
City of Palo Alto Page 79
2017. Non-binding feedback was provided to the applicant. The applicant took some of those primary
take-aways and incorporated it into the site design and architecture of these proposed plans included
with this formal application. I just wanted to touch on some of those primary takeaways and how the
applicant has responded. One of the concerns that came from that prescreening was the applicant's initial
choice in materials. The applicant at that time was proposing T1-11 siding, as well as stone veneer
exterior treatments on each unit. The applicant has since abandoned the use of those materials and is
proposing now Burall [phonetic] channel and nickel-gap siding which, to my understanding, is a higher grade or higher quality material. As you can see here, the applicant has incorporated horizontal siding, which better harmonizes with the adjacent unit at 351 Bryant, and some of the other homes that incorporate siding, while still maintaining vertical siding to help define those volumes. Another concern was the building mass and proportion of Unit 1 and Unit 2 that were presented before the Board back in July. As you can see here, these are effectively the same units, with slight changes. The applicant sort of
re-defined Unit 2 by removing the pop-out stairwell on both units, as well as adding a dormer on Unit 1.
As you can see, they've relocated the main entry of both units to be street-facing. There are some slight
changes, but I think enough to distinguish each unit as its own style and design. There was concern
voiced by the neighbor to maintain the driveway at its existing location on the left side along Bryant
Court. The applicant was more than willing to do that. As you can see in this photo here, the location of
the driveway at 357 Bryant is on the left, which helps break up the potential of a number of cars being
parked bumper-to-bumper along that alleyway. Concern was also voiced -- or interest was voiced --
regarding the landscape detail with the formal application. The applicant has responded by providing
extensive landscaping throughout the parcel along Bryant Court and Hawthorne Avenue. You'll see four-foot-tall fences, as well as the inclusion of nine 24-inch box trees, or nine trees of at least 24-inch box in size. Finally, concern was expressed regarding egress for Unit 2 onto Hawthorne Avenue. In discussion with the staff from the Transportation Division, they looked at this layout and this driveway exit proposal, and they don't have any issues with it. While it's not ideal, it's not uncommon in Palo Alto with some of
the older narrow and deep lots to have vehicles exit onto streets in reverse. For low-density
development, the code doesn't speak to efficiency of exit or ingress or egress. There are no issues as far
as from Transportation. Some key considerations. Staff may want to further investigate this first bullet
point regarding the rear setback. There is some thought that there is some allowance to reduce that
setback as close to 10 feet from the rear property line, since that is not, Bryant Court is not technically a
street. There may be some allowance there. Staff will have to further investigate that. In terms of
consistency with Performance Criteria 18.23,020, which speaks to trash disposals and recycling areas
being located as far from the abutting residences as reasonably possible, currently, the applicant is
proposing the trash enclosures for Unit 2 and Unit 3 along the shared side yard property lines that abut
the adjacent residences. I think to be more compliant or consistent with the guidance from the Performance Criteria, those enclosures should be located towards each unit, or relocated on the lot somewhere away from the neighboring residence. Staff's recommending the ARB approve this multifamily development, based on findings and subject to the conditions of approval.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Any questions before we ask for public testimony?
Board Member Gooyer: I just have a quick question. In the literature, it indicates that the windows are
designed to not have any muntins, and every drawing shows muntins. That makes a big difference.
Mr. Brennan: Yeah, I do see that. We can ask that clarity be provided on that, and those --
Board Member Gooyer: Put it in writing.
Mr. Brennan: For sure.
Board Member Gooyer: Make it (inaudible) so they don't (inaudible).
Mr. Brennan: Right.
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible) on the assumption that there aren't going to be any?
City of Palo Alto Page 80
Mr. Brennan: I think that's the safe --
Ms. Gerhardt: (Inaudible) We would be looking to the drawings to the plan set that shows the muntins
when we're reviewing this project. I think where there's discrepancy, we would defer to the elevations.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay. I'd like to know which --
Chair Furth: I don't even know what they want.
Ms. Gerhardt: Yeah, and unfortunately, the applicant is not here.
Chair Furth: I know what a muntin is. I don't know what the applicant wants.
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible)
Chair Furth: Right. They've submitted contradictory information.
Board Member Gooyer: Right.
Chair Furth: It needs to be resolved. And I don't think we can make any assumptions that their drawings
mean more than their text. Even though that's what architects generally feel. Any questions, other
questions? I had a question. Explain to me about the 10-foot setback from Bryant Court.
Mr. Brennan: Right. As it's defined in our code, a street is defined by a minimum width of 25 feet. Bryant
Court is approximately 19 feet in width, and therefore, would not qualify as a street, and therefore, the
interior rear yard setback would apply, which is 10 feet.
Chair Furth: And what is it presently?
Mr. Brennan: It’s presently at 16 feet.
Chair Furth: And what's the development pattern on that side of the street? The Court?
Mr. Brennan: It's between 10 and 13 feet for the properties immediately to the left of 357 Bryant. And
then, there's a few units that move closer to the 15, 16-foot setback. Further from the setback.
Chair Furth: In other words, they are further back as if this were a street, rather than closer.
Mr. Brennan: Right. No. The --
Chair Furth: They have a greater setback.
Mr. Brennan: Some of the neighbors do. Some of them are built toward the 10-foot setback. It's a
variety.
Chair Furth: And the adjacent ones? On one side we have a wall, don’t we?
Mr. Brennan: The adjacent property -- 351 Bryant Court -- is built to, I believe 11 feet.
Chair Furth: I remember looking at this in great detail last time. Another issue that I know we discussed
last time, I think this was my first encounter with Palo Alto's definition of private usable open space, or
whatever. It looks to me that the open space makes more sense with respect to the individual units at
this time. Is that correct, or am I just --?
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Mr. Brennan: I would agree. We initially brought it up as an issue at the prescreening, but I think we
agreed, we all agree that it's better applied to the individual units.
Chair Furth: Okay. Comments or a motion? Excuse me. Do we have any public testimony? There you are.
Sorry. Mr. Hullmann.
Jack Hullmann: My name is Jack Hullmann. I live at 210 Waverly Street. My property butts up against the
width of this development. I've got a couple of things here I'd like to pass out, if I could, to just kind of
illustrate the point that I'm going to be making. [Distribution of document by staff.] On the first page is basically a picture of the back yard, my back yard, with the current structure. If you go off to the left, you see an existing two-story structure that is built straight up. I don't know how it arrived there, but it's been there for many years. What I don't show on this is the existing tall, two-story home that's off to the
right side, but out of the picture. The second page, then, is the sight line of what we're looking at in that
picture. You see the arrow coming out of my home, back toward the development back here, and the
placement of that, of the new buildings. Then, in the third page, what I've got is a current versus
proposed. The area shaded in green is all the existing structure of the current building. The rest of it is
what it's going to look like now. My basic concern is, this is going to be three walls around me. I mean,
it's going to be a complete box. And what I'm trying to advocate is, if the one-story building - Building
#3, I believe it is -- 2 and 3, if they were swapped, Building #3 -- the two-story -- would be on Bryant
Court, and it's very consistent with two-story architecture that's there right now. There are apartment
buildings there, there are parking structures. Across the street is a two-story house. Adjacent is a small
cottage. And virtually all new construction along Bryant, is all two-story. What I'm trying to request here
is switching those two. Under the current design, my box is complete. If we switch those two things, everybody gets half a box. It kind of spreads the load in a little bit different way. That's what I'm asking for.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Does anybody have any questions to ask Mr. Hullmann? Thank you.
Mr. Hullmann: Thanks.
Chair Furth: I had one question. The single-story shed-roof structure, that is your structure, to the right
of your garden, or is that --?
Mr. Hullmann: The single story to the right, yes, that's my garage.
Chair Furth: Thank you. And this.
Mr. Hullmann: Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry?
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible)
Mr. Hullmann: Yes.
Chair Furth: You keep forgetting your microphone, Bob.
Mr. Hullmann: The two-story off to the left. The left is the adjacent property with the two-story.
Chair Furth: Right. To the right is your garage.
Mr. Hullmann: Right.
Chair Furth: Thank you. Any more from staff?
Mr. Brennan: No.
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Chair Furth: Okay. We can either make a decision, or make a recommendation on this today, or we can
continue it. What's your preference? Does somebody have a motion, or a discussion item? Staff, what
comment do you have on Mr. Hullmann's suggestion about flipping those two buildings. I'm sorry,
switching those two buildings.
Mr. Brennan: I think the applicant is sort of hamstrung by the limitations of this parcel. I think if you
place a two-story at Bryant Court, then you're impacting the small single-story 351 Bryant. The proposed
two-story is relatively short. It's not tall. I think it's proposed at 23 feet tall.
Chair Furth: What can you tell me about the windows that appear to overlook the garden?
Mr. Brennan: Those windows, if you look on the elevation, a few of those window are called out as obscured.
Chair Furth: You need to tell me what sheet.
Mr. Brennan: Sure. Sheet 0302.3.
Chair Furth: Got it.
Mr. Brennan: The north elevation.
Chair Furth: If it says something, you're going to have to read it to me.
Mr. Brennan: Yes. It says, "obscured privacy glazing to afford neighborly privacy."
Chair Furth: Got it. With or without mullions.
Mr. Brennan: Yeah, I'll get a determination on that from the applicant.
Board Member Lew: I think the other issue, too, with regard to the middle lot, is that the neighbor has an
oak tree. The next one down has an oak tree. So, having a two-story there in the middle allows a smaller
footprint. If you're trying to fit a one-story in there, you'd be more in the canopy of the oak tree.
Chair Furth: Thank you. I do recall our previous discussions and the competing points of view and issues. For myself, I do think that it's an improvement to have the driveway relocated. I think the impact of the original proposal on the adjacent house was unfortunate. How much is this square footage compared to
the maximum allowed?
Mr. Brennan: For grand total, or the --?
Chair Furth: Grand total.
Mr. Brennan: They're allowed a 50 percent FAR; they're at 48 percent. Roughly 200 square feet below
that threshold.
Chair Furth: And the largest unit is under 1,500 square feet, right?
Mr. Brennan: No. The largest unit is 1,800.
Chair Furth: Okay, I'm looking at the wrong thing. I'm looking at open space. How silly. Okay. Motion?
Comment? Discussion?
Board Member Lew: I was sort of anticipating Mr. Hullmann's comment because you came to the
preliminary hearing, and I've been thinking about it a lot. I guess, in my mind, there were two things.
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One is the oak tree, and I think the second is that the zoning is RM-15, so it's multifamily housing,
including your property. I looked on the zoning map myself, and I do understand that downtown to the
north is a patchwork of different zonings, and I don't really understand the rationale of how they picked
the zonings in the different blocks. Some of it is, like, RMD Neighborhood Preservation; some of it is this
multifamily; some of it is single-family. My inclination is, because it's RM-15, is to allow this particular
configuration. The third factor, I guess, is that the second, in Unit 2, that second floor isn't directly
aligned in the center of your back yard. It's slightly offset, so that there is some potential for more screening between the two properties. I'm not opposed to -- Robert, that particular elevation is out of date, so if you look at the drawings, you'll see different window patterns.
Board Member Gooyer: Oh, okay.
Board Member Lew: Yeah. There must have been some revision at some point.
Chair Furth: What should we be looking at?
Board Member Lew: In the drawings, if you look at 3.23, and the north elevation --
Board Member Gooyer: Which sheet is it?
Board Member Lew: Zero-three-oh-two-point 3. We were just looking at a north elevation. You'll see the
window pattern is different. You'll see in Mr. Hullmann's rendering, there's, like, a dormer -- yeah.
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible)
Board Member Lew: It's probably, maybe a previous iteration.
Mr. Brennan: I just want to bring attention to the Board, Sheet 110, provides some perspectives from
what would be the second story. Detail 3 looks onto 210 Waverly.
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible) standing on the second floor of the new unit.
Mr. Brennan: Yeah.
Chair Furth: Where the windows are, in fact, obscured. Is that right?
Mr. Brennan: Correct.
Board Member Lew: Right, and there's no existing screening trees.
Chair Furth: Certainly a very pretty garden.
Board Member Lew: I actually photographed your house yesterday. It's really beautifully maintained. It's
really a --
Chair Furth: It's a lovely house.
Board Member Lew: -- lovely house, and you face the park, and it's really pretty amazing. And the
neighboring two-story addition in the back yard is really pretty awful, but it looks like it's been there
forever. I mean it's, yeah, it's really awful.
Chair Furth: Softened a bit by that oak tree, yeah?
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Board Member Lew: Yeah. I'm generally supportive of the project. I appreciate the material change. I'm
not familiar with that. It's some sort of plastic fly ash, recycled fly ash kind of product. But, it seems to
meet all these fairly high bars of sustainable design criteria.
Board Member Gooyer: Is there a materials board, or something?
Mr. Brennan: Yes, he was to bring that today. The material board.
Board Member Gooyer: So, there isn't one.
Chair Furth: Not here.
Board Member Lew: I did want to give the architect some kudos for adding rigid insulation around the framing, wood framing of the house. That's not normal construction, and that takes away useable square footage inside the house.
Chair Furth: What's the upside?
Board Member Lew: More insulation. If you look at some of the net-zero houses, they actually build two
sets of walls, the equivalent of two sets of walls to get that high-energy efficiency.
Chair Furth: Like those old Danish houses, where they needed circulation because they were so air-tight.
Board Member Lew: Yeah.
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible)
Board Member Lew: They have a wall section, I believe. It's on landscaping. [Looking for sheet] Sheet
0402. There's a wall detail. You'll see, they've got two-inch rigid insulation all around the wood framing.
Which is pretty (inaudible) unusual. And usually I'm counting every square inch on a project to get the
rooms to work. On landscaping, I think all the plants were selected to be, sort of low-maintenance and
(crosstalk), low-maintenance, drought-tolerant. I think they're all proven garden plants. I would suggest that some of them could be substituted with relatively low-maintenance native plants. I would say, like Pittosporum tobira, which is from Japan and China. I would say that that could be one of the smaller coffee berries. There are some compact versions of coffee berry, which is a native plant that provides berries for birds. Also, they've got some of the Chinese fringe flower. I think that that could possibly be
replaced with something like coyote mint, which is, like a butterfly nectar plant that's native to California,
and it does well in sun and shade. I think there's some room for improvement, but if we have to vote
today on this, I guess I could say it's approvable, knowing that, like, these are speculative projects, and
once they are sold, usually the owners upgrade the landscaping. That's what I've seen on the other
three-unit projects that have happened downtown. I think I can make the recommendation.
Chair Furth: There's no technical reason not to vote today if you all believe it's an approval project.
Board Member Gooyer: Well, I can't find that, but I'm just not happy with it. Obviously, I guess the siding
here is better than what, T1-11. But, all three of them are exactly the same. I don't like this white with
black trim, basically, or -- It doesn't fit with the neighborhood. I would have preferred three buildings
that were totally different, so that would just blend in a bunch of small, little areas in there. I just don't find the -- what is it? -- Finding #3, design high-quality or aesthetic quality. I just can't see that.
Board Member Lew: The modern farmhouse is quite popular. I've seen them appear all over.
Board Member Gooyer: To go a little further, I started with a, the modern farmhouse, yet, it doesn't have the steep sloped roof that they describe. If it was a modern farmhouse, I would expect to see, maybe
standing seam metal roof rather than comp shingles. To me, this is a cheap ranch-style. I'm sorry, but
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that's -- I don't care what you call it, but it just doesn't meet the requirement. The last one we had that
was sort of that style, I wasn't a big fan of, either. But, it was better done than this one.
Board Member Lew: I wouldn't disagree with that.
Chair Furth: Well, should we continue this to a date when the applicant can be here and we can have a
full complement of board members?
Board Member Gooyer: It's one of these things, it's probably fairer to him or her if they're here. And
then, maybe there's an argument, or, why did you do this, or the whole thing about the muntins, for instance -- There's a distinct difference whether they're there or not there. That sort of thing.
Board Member Lew: I think we should be clear, if you really want...I think others may want more distinction between the units, and I think we should be -- If we're going to do it, we should be clear now.
(crosstalk)
Chair Furth: I will tell you that prior to his departure, Board Member Baltay -- this is why I call you by
your first names --
Board Member Gooyer: I'm sorry, it's Peter.
Chair Furth: -- indicated that he supported the project.
Board Member Gooyer: He would what?
Chair Furth: He supported the project.
Board Member Gooyer: Okay.
Chair Furth: I have no idea what Board Member Thompson thinks. It doesn't bother me that they're
uniform. I'm used to the idea that there are a whole bunch of, a bunch of --
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible)
Chair Furth: Let me finish my sentence. I am a little concerned about the black-and-white color scheme. In many ways, I'm more concerned about the Bryant Court frontage than I am about Hawthorne. Hawthorne can handle anything. It's a big street, it's got all kinds of things happening. But, I care a lot
about what it does on Bryant Court, which is very charming in its own way, but super-eclectic. I would
suggest we continue this, that the applicant should know that --
Board Member Gooyer: Well, what we're looking for (inaudible) --
Chair Furth: First of all, can you tell me muntins from mullions.
Board Member Gooyer: -- three distinct styles. Or colors, or something. That they look, rather than all
three of them exactly the same -- which, from a distance, if you're standing at one elevation, it looks like
a massive unit because they all blend together.
Chair Furth: Enough distinction so that they don't appear as a single structure from either end? I
personally think that high-contrast black-and-white --
Board Member Gooyer: I agree.
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Chair Furth: -- is not desirable in this neighborhood. Do we believe there's really no more screening to be
done between Unit 2 and Mr. Hullmann's house? That planting a tree isn't going to help?
Board Member Gooyer: The new design appears --
Chair Furth: It's better.
Board Member Gooyer: -- that most of the windows aren't really looking down on his back yard.
Chair Furth: No, I think we took care of the privacy issue. It's the looming building problem.
Board Member Gooyer: I understand. Well, maybe --
Chair Furth: I didn't see that there was a space to do anything that would ameliorate this, but I'm asking you all. You read plans better than I do.
Board Member Gooyer: Maybe some more consideration needs to be given to move the second story a
little closer towards Bryant Court.
Chair Furth: I think we have the tree problem. Oh, you mean that way. Sorry. Move it to the left on the
plan.
Board Member Gooyer: Right. Right.
Board Member Lew: The landscape drawings show an olive tree there. L-4.0. They're proposing an olive
tree, which would provide screening between the second floor, the second story, and Mr. Hullmann's
back yard. Those are evergreen. They're generally vertical branching.
Chair Furth: You did say L-4, right?
Board Member Lew: L-4.0. It's the second to last sheet.
Board Member Gooyer: Yeah, I saw that.
Chair Furth: My plan set doesn't go that far. It's not here. It's missing. Mine stops at 3.
Board Member Lew: Okay, well, I think you know what an olive tree looks like.
Chair Furth: I do. I raise them. When I got their feet in the aquifer, got huge.
Board Member Lew: I would say on the colors, also, normally when I try to make something recede, use
something like taupe. That might help make Unit 2 less visual, less visually pop out. I think I would
support that. I'm not sure you'd ever see all three units together. I don't see you'd see Unit 3 with 1 and
2.
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible)
Board Member Lew: Right.
Board Member Gooyer: That's big enough. If you're standing (crosstalk)
Chair Furth: Sure. I think there are some attractive developments. There's some attractive developments
of uniform materials, you know, three in a row, that look great. But, I do think that another approach
that works is for them to clearly present those units that were designed together, but which used
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different colors, or different -- I think often effectively. It's an opportunity to use different colors to good
effect. Because Bryant Court is a pretty playful street, to put it mildly.
Mr. Brennan: If I could just, in regards to the color, if you notice, I just want to mention this in case it
was overlooked, because it's a little hard to distinguish on the plans. But, in those sections of each unit
that have the horizontal siding, the applicant is using gray to tone down -- not enough?
Board Member Gooyer: (Inaudible).
Chair Furth: And I'm suggesting, I hate the phrase "earth tones," but somewhat warmer colors. I mean, this is an eclectic, lovely, beautifully-gardened neighborhood, and a certain lightness of spirit is in order.
Board Member Gooyer: Is that enough to give you an idea of --?
Chair Furth: Okay, is it "muntins" or "mullions?" It's "muntins," right?
Board Member Gooyer: Well, it's two different things. (Inaudible) These are muntins.
Chair Furth: Okay. And those are the things that divide the panes in a window. And we want them to be
real, not fake, at a minimum, right? Or do we not care?
(crosstalk)
Board Member Gooyer: -- that the design didn't have them. That's why --
Chair Furth: Do we care whether they're in or out?
Female: Is there a preference from the Board of having the divided lights, or not?
Board Member Lew: She needs to propose exactly what it is, because there's a range of products
available, ranging from nice to tacky. We need to know what --
Board Member Gooyer: Inside the glass --
Board Member Lew: Yeah. He has to show us what he wants. Anything is possible, so it's really just what (crosstalk).
Board Member Gooyer: What brought it up is that his --
Board Member Lew: I understand.
Board Member Gooyer: -- description didn’t even have them, so it --
Chair Furth: Okay. I think our intent is clear. We need to know what he would like, and that it's a suitable
quality. And, of course, we need the materials board.
Board Member Gooyer: Who made the --
Chair Furth: Do we have a motion on the floor?
Female: I don't believe we have a motion at the moment. I think you were looking towards continuance,
but there wasn't --
Chair Furth: Does staff have a date in mind for this?
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Female: I think we would do a date uncertain at this point, to ensure that the applicant could be here.
MOTION
Chair Furth: I'll move that this matter be continued to a date uncertain.
Board Member Gooyer: I'll second that.
Chair Furth: Any discussion? All those in favor? The motion carries.
MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY 3-0. BOARD MEMBER THOMPSON AND VICE CHAIR BALTAY
WERE ABSENT FOR THE DISCUSSION AND VOTE.
Thank you for coming, Mr. Hullmann. You had a long morning with us. And quite a bit of an afternoon. Thank you. All right, what do we have left?
Approval of Minutes
Chair Furth: No minutes. Thank heavens. Are there?
Ms. Gerhardt: Yeah, sorry.
Chair Furth: Oh, I missed that page.
Ms. Gerhardt: The pages are little off.
Chair Furth: I need to tell you that, unfortunately, I have not read the minutes. Is it crucial that these be
approved?
Ms. Gerhardt: No, it's not crucial. We can continue (crosstalk) --
Chair Furth: Would you mind if we did these at our next meeting?
Board Member Gooyer: Yeah, no problem.
Chair Furth: I literally overlooked them.
Ms. Gerhardt: If you have any, sort of minor spelling corrections or something of that nature, if you could please send those to me.
Chair Furth: We will send you clerical errors off line.
Ms. Gerhardt: And then we can get them fixed before the next hearing.
6. Draft Architectural Review Board Meeting Minutes for December 7, 2017.
7. Draft Architectural Review Board Meeting Minutes for February 1, 2018.
Subcommittee Item
Chair Furth: Now, you don't know what the other subcommittee item is, but we do have a subcommittee,
and we will assume, in the absence of a conflict, that the two board members who are handling the first
item, will handle the second. All right?
City of Palo Alto Page 89
Ms. Gerhardt: Yes. You had Board Member Lew and Board Member Gooyer, were going to be on the
subcommittee for the next hearing, correct?
Board Member Gooyer: Right.
Chair Furth: Thank you.
Ms. Gerhardt: Thank you.
Board Member Questions, Comments, Announcements
Chair Furth: Anything else before we adjourn? We are adjourned.
Adjournment