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Home My WebLink About2019-04-04 Architectural Review Board Summary MinutesCity of Palo Alto Page 1 Call to Order/Roll Call Present: Chair Wynne Furth, Vice Chair Peter Baltay, Board Members Alexander Lew, Osma Thompson and David Hirsch. Absent: None Chair Furth: ... City of Palo Alto. Could you call the roll, please? [Roll Call] Oral Communications Chair Furth: The first item on our agenda is oral communications. That's the time for people to talk to us about matters that are within our purview but not on today's agenda. Do we have any cards for oral communications? No? Is there anybody who wants to speak during oral communications? Seeing no one, agenda....Oh. Shani Kleinhaus: (inaudible) but since I’m here anyway. My name is Shani Kleinhaus, I'm the environmental advocate for Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society. Chair Furth: Good morning. You need to spell your name for our... Ms. Kleinhaus: I have a card there. [spells name] Chair Furth: Great. You have three minutes. Ms. Kleinhaus: Okay. One of the things that the Audubon and the Sierra Club actually have been working on in this region is bird safety in terms of design of glass and other features, like suspension bridges. You maybe remember, there was one in Palo Alto a while ago. And other structure elements, and proximity to a natural area. And we have been working with a lot of different cities. I gave a presentation in Palo Alto a few years ago. One of the emerging issues are these coming in as... and we find that nationwide... And as Audubon, I participate in a lot of conversations about that, is the issue of lighting. Because LED, because of the wavelengths, because of the brightness, is causing huge problems for every living thing. The light interferes with our circadian rhythms, and those of all living things. Even trees, and even seeds in the ground. And it also attracts birds. What people don't usually know is that birds migrate at night, so most of the birds that we see around us come in at night. Light attracts them, and when they land in the places that are lit, they hit the buildings often, or they are attracted to very urban areas that are not good for them to be at. There's no food, and they can't refuel. So, we have seen quite a decline in (inaudible) and songbird populations everywhere. The biggest problem for birds are manmade structures and lighting. Obviously, habitat changes and loss of habitats, including loss of trees and loss of water resources, and then, cats. I think that the issue of lighting and what wavelength is used and when lights are on or off is really, really critical. One of the things that I would like you to always look at is what time can we turn the lights off, and how much light is really needed for security. And if ornamental ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW BOARD APPROVED MINUTES: April 4, 2019 City Hall/City Council Chambers 250 Hamilton Avenue 8:30 AM City of Palo Alto Page 2 lights are included in any design, those should be off. Depends on where you are. If you're near the Baylands, early. If you're downtown, maybe midnight or 1:00 a.m. But really look at lights-out programs that turn the lights off when they're not really, really needed, and leave the minimum, and even control the wavelengths and the spread. Even if it doesn't project into the Baylands, the amount of light everywhere. Even nice trees. I go out at night, and there is no more night. I can't see the stars. And I live in Palo Alto. I didn't say that. But please start to look at that very deeply. Thank you. Chair Furth: Any questions of the speaker before she leaves? I have one. In your advocacy... Thank you for coming. We do have an earlier report from you, I recall. In your advocacy for turning lights off at night, what are you using as a criteria relative to sundown, say? Ms. Kleinhaus: I have basically referred people to the International Dark Sky Association and their recommendations. Chair Furth: Thank you Ms. Kleinhaus: Thank you. Chair Furth: Anybody else? Ms. Kleinhaus: Also, sorry. The National Audubon has, on their website, lights-out program recommendations, so that's another thing. Chair Furth: Anybody else I missed who wishes to speak at this point? This time really seeing no one. Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions Chair Furth: Agenda changes, additions and deletions. I will say one thing. That if anybody wishes to speak on Board Member Questions, Comments or Announcements and those two items that we have listed under there, which we are going to talk about, just write that specific thing - "ARB Annual Report" or "Review of Draft Letter to City Council" - on your speaker card. I've got a question, in that maybe in the future we can number that item so that it's clear to people. All right. City Official Reports 1. Transmittal of 1) the ARB Meeting Schedule and Attendance Record, and 2) Tentative Future Agenda items. Chair Furth: City official reports. Staff? Ms. Gerhardt: We have, just on the schedule, we have noted when vacations are going to be, so if you could review that, that would be helpful. And then, as far as April 18th, just wanted to go over the schedule for that. And it looks like those items, it will be the same items. Seem to be still on schedule for the 18th. We do have... Actually, the 233 University will be continued to May 2nd. Chair Furth: Remind me what 233 University is. Ms. Gerhardt: The Mills Florist. Downtown. Chair Furth: We have Pacific Catch, the shopping center, a new proposal for 565 Hamilton for mixed use...? Ms. Gerhardt: Correct. City of Palo Alto Page 3 Chair Furth: And subcommittee meeting on 190 Channing Avenue. Have I appointed a subcommittee for that? Ms. Gerhardt: We have not, so, actually, that would be good to do. Chair Furth: Remind me what the project is? Ms. Gerhardt: One-ninety Channing is in the SOFA (South of Forest Area) area, the Ken Hayes mixed-use project. Chair Furth: Right. Alex, would you be willing to do that? Board Member Lew: Yes. Chair Furth: And David? Board Member Hirsch: Yes. Chair Furth: Thanks. Ms. Gerhardt: Thank you. Action Items 2. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 1700 & 1730 Embarcadero Road [18PLN- 00186]: Consideration of a Site and Design Review, and Design Enhancement Exception to Allow the Demolition of an Existing 18,000 Square Foot Vacant Restaurant Building and a 15,700 Square Foot Audi Service Building and the Construction of a Two-Story 84,900 Square Foot Automobile Dealership That Combines two Brands (Mercedes/Audi). The Applicant has Also Requested Zoning Amendment to Change the Zoning of the Site From CS(D) and PC to CS(D)(AD). Environmental Assessment: An Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration was Circulated for Public Comment From March 15, 2019 to April 15, 2019. Zoning Districts: CS(D) & PC-4846. For More Information Contact the Project Planner Sheldon S. Ah Sing at sahsing@m-group.us Chair Furth: Under Action Items, we have one hearing today. It's a quasi-judicial public hearing on 1700 and 1730 Embarcadero Road, better known as Ming's and the existing Audi dealership. It's a consideration of a site and design review and request for a design enhancement exception to allow the demolition of an existing 18,000 square foot vacant restaurant building and a 15,700 square foot Audi service building, and the construction of a two-story 85,000 square foot automobile dealership that combines two brands, Mercedes and Audi. The applicant has also requested a zoning amendment to change the zoning of the site from Commercial Service Design Overlay and PC to Commercial Service Design Overlay Auto Dealership. There is an initial study under CEQA that is being circulated for public comment until April 15th of this year. The Planner is Sheldon Ah Sing. Mr. Sing? Mr. Sing: Yes, good morning, and thank you for the introduction. This project's site does have a lot of history and background, so I'm going to go into that a little bit today, as well as talking about the site context and its relationship to the Baylands. And then, go into details about the project comparisons from what's proposed now versus the project that was through the City in 2016. And then... Chair Furth: Thank you. Mr. Sing: ... try to summarize that as much as possible. The 4.82-acre site, to put it into perspective, there are two separate parcels. It is not being combined. There will be two separate buildings. Obviously, City of Palo Alto Page 4 the perception is that it looks like one building but there are two separate parcels. There is an existing former restaurant at 1700 Embarcadero, the Ming's restaurant, with 17,000 square feet. It will be demolished. And there is an existing Audi dealership at 1730 Embarcadero, where the showroom -- which was recently built -- would remain, and the balance of the building would be demolished. The request included a zoning amendment for both sites. You have a CS District at the corner for the former Ming's property. They'll be adding the Automobile Dealership overlay. And then, the Audi dealership has a PC designation, and that's changed to be CS with the site design review, as well as the automobile dealership. Both sites would have the same zoning. Then you have a site and design review, and that's to look at the architecture and the sensitivity with the Baylands area. And you have design enhancement exception with respect to the build-to line setbacks that come with the CS District, as well as shading for parking lots. We'll go into more detail about that. The first site is 1730 Embarcadero. That is the Audi site, which has the planned community zoning that was established in 1970 for the dealership. And then, it was revamped several years ago to take into account the new Automobile Dealership overlay that was going into the zoning codes. With this new PC at that time, it brought over some of those standards. It does include the Audi dealership, which is also the showroom, which was recently constructed. The project at that time that established that PC-4846 did include a newer in the back, but they chose not to exercise that part of the project. The existing showroom is 18-19 foot setback there from Embarcadero. There's a 21-foot ceiling within that building. That building will not be changed, so that part of it with the zone change ends up being legally non-conforming. But they are not changing the actual room. With 1700 Embarcadero, the existing zoning is CS with a D, site and design. As I mentioned, it has an existing former restaurant with a surface parking lot around it. There's also a former plan for a hotel, and that was the change from the PC to a CS District. You'll see that design there. That approximately is 50 feet tall for that building. And then, there was also a prior attempt for the dealership prior to this one that went through the process in 2016, and the Council had a number of concerns here. But this is the site plan for that former proposal, as well as the elevations.... Chair Furth: Just a second, Sheldon. That's the one that the ARB recommended approval and the Council overturned it and said no. Mr. Sing: That is correct. Chair Furth: Thank you Mr. Sing: This orientation here does not include the Audi site at all. It is independent of that. The showroom is oriented towards Bayshore, with deliveries occurring along Embarcadero. The service entry was towards the rear, and the building was 50 feet tall. The three stories. The Council had concerns about compatibility, with surroundings, they thought it was too tall. They wanted to evaluate the FAR (Floor Area Ratio) more. They had concerns about bird-safe windows. They wanted TDM for the site - Transportation Demand Management. They were concerned about the landscaping palette. They wanted more Baylands type of plants. They were concerned about lighting. They also wanted to include the Baylands General Design Guidelines for evaluation. And then, they wanted to understand more about the cost implications of intersection improvements because the project had an impact at the adjacent intersection. With all that culminating, they said the direction was to bring it back to the ARB, and the applicant decided to give up on the project. Therefore, we have a new project. Here is the site context of the area. You can see 101 there. You can't see the project site from 101. There is an overpass, Embarcadero, as you go down, you can see in the distance the hills across the bay. But as you get down, it's very flat. When you're in that area, you can't see the horizon or anything. Surrounding the site are all LM, Limited Manufacturing. The buildings are 35 feet in height. They are large buildings surrounded by large surface lots. They have big setbacks. And then, also, in the area of the airport and Baylands, immediately is adjacent to the Audi site, and the Renzel Trail is there. You can see the property from there. Photographs that I took at the site, there are three eucalyptus trees that are, they are at the boundary of the Audi site. Those would be removed and replaced with nine oak trees, so there will be some screening there. As we go through the presentation, we are recommending that at the rear of the City of Palo Alto Page 5 building, there's more landscaping that's put on the building, or some other interface there. This is project summary. Now we're transitioning to the new project here. As I mentioned, the properties will remain separate. The major constraint of the site, especially with respect to 1700 Embarcadero, is an 80- foot utility easement along Bayshore. It includes overhead utilities from PG&E, as well as underground utilities from the City. The limitation is that no structure is permitted, and vegetation can't be taller than 15 feet within that. Part of the project, the first phase is that the Ming's building will be demolished and replaced, and the Audi showroom would remain. The service building will be demolished, and then, the new Audi service building and carwash would be constructed. There is a carwash that is five feet from the property line, and there are some public comments about that later, but there were some comments about that. The buildings are separate but there will be ability to drive between the buildings, so there is some synergy because the dealerships are adjacent to each other. With this design, the operations will be able to keep traffic on the site as they're trying to move cars around internally, rather than going onto the street and making a bunch of U-turns. That is why the circulation is set up the way it is. Except for, like, test drives, for instance. The ARB did ask the applicant to move the orientation of the building, the showroom, from Embarcadero to Bayshore. The applicant responded and will have a presentation later, but primarily, customers are coming from Embarcadero. The other dealerships are already facing Embarcadero, so it makes sense for their dealership to orient themselves towards Embarcadero. As part of the project, the project will have a bike path that's along Bayshore and Embarcadero Road. I'll go into more detail about that, but I just wanted to mention that's on the site plan here. There's some complications in the way it's proposed in that the trees that exist along Bayshore would need to be removed and the placement of those, of course, is limited by the easement. This is a comparison. The top is the project that went through in 2016. You can see that is a 50-foot tall dealership. And now, you see the building, the proposal at the bottom, which is about 40 feet; 35 feet is what's being proposed. Here, the rendering is between what you saw last time at the bottom, and then proposed today, and the changes there. The biggest change is changing some of those colors to more muted colors. The branding is more dark colors, but they limited those. The applicant will talk a little bit more about that. This is just from Embarcadero, and you can see again some of the color changes that they have done, as well as I mentioned that from the side, there were doors, and they wanted to make sure those were glass, and those are glass doors for the entry of the cars there. This is taken from Bayshore. On this drive here (inaudible) Bayshore, that's where you have some of your surface parking for the Mercedes site. You have some display. You have some customer parking. This is a direct shot taken from the Bayshore side. There was some comment about the horizontal band here being too thin. This is something the applicant looked into, but it is an integral brand feature that's consistent amongst Mercedes-Benz dealerships. But yet, you can see this along Embarcadero Road, so, there isn't a direct.... While there is an entry there, it's not a direct stairway that leads up from Embarcadero Road. Someone would have to walk from the Bayshore side to get there. This is taken from the intersection. That tower is there, it's not going to move, but that is the view that you would get. And then, this is the bike/pedestrian pathway that you'd see there. There is a rest area as well as a fountain there. Some site issues and constraints. The Audi site, as I mentioned, is adjacent to the Baylands, and there's sensitivity to that regarding wildlife, lighting, noise. There is an 80-foot utility easement that restricts any building to be located along Bayshore. The height limit of 50 feet, they can go up to 50 feet. As the concern was from the Council that that was too tall for this iteration, brought that down to around 40 feet. And the vicinity context, these buildings are limited manufacturing type of buildings, so a dealership or car dealership is going to look like a dealership, and it's going to operate like one. It is going to be different, and I think there's some consideration for that. It can't be something else. It's not going to look like a hotel or be a hotel. And then, we have the build-to line, which is something that makes a lot more sense in the context of having more pedestrians along El Camino Real. In this case, they can't meet the build-to line because of the easement, and that causes some issues along Embarcadero. Although they could meet the build-to setback along Embarcadero, but it does affect the operation of the site and in keeping some of the cars on site, if they're moving cars around. This went to the Planning and Transportation Commission last week. They had concerns. Their review was regarding the use, and they also had the site design and City of Palo Alto Page 6 looked at the Baylands. They had some concerns about the compatibility of the project. It was a 4-3 vote, so it was fairly close, to recommend the project to the Council. They added a condition regarding migratory birds and replacement of mature trees, and that affects the bike path. They didn't see the benefit of removing the trees for the sake of having the bike path. They had a condition on lighting, regarding light levels to be in comparison to existing levels, so there was some sensitivity there. As I mentioned, there was discussion about the appropriateness of the use. They thought maybe the ROLM was a better designation because of the height considerations. They kind of went on about other aspects like compatibility with the Baylands. We heard from members of the public, saying this was a gateway site and its designs didn't fit. Going to the bicycle path, there is a gap in the formal bicycle plan along the frontage of the project to Geng Road trail. This is a component that we think is very important. There are connections out there by the 101 overpass and it makes cyclists go out of their way to go north from the overpass. It's effectively penalizing them for choosing a, sort of cleaner way to go. This is a street view. This is there along Bayshore, on the right side there is a little stripe for the bike path, the bike lane. It kind of ends there, and then it kind of picks up again past the Audi site. There is definitely a gap here, and there are constraints to this corner. Depending on site design, the target design would include an eight-foot path, in some cases a two-foot shoulder, with a five- to 10-foot planter strip. It would cause at least some separation between the roadway and the bike path. The path would be on both right-of-way as well as establishing a public access easement. Board Member Thompson: I have a quick question. Mr. Sing: Sure. Board Member Thompson: Can you point out where the bike path is in this drawing? Mr. Sing: It's right here, this tan... Board Member Thompson: It's the tan thing? Mr. Sing: Yeah. Along both streets, and it kind of hugs the inside, as best as you can... Chair Furth: And it's a combined bike path/pedestrian way, right? Mr. Sing: That is correct. Yes. Chair Furth: Thanks. Board Member Thompson: I see. Mr. Sing: Yeah, there were other talks about having something go through the Audi dealership, but there were some problems with security. This is another alternative that staff had come up with. It was agreed to by the applicant. Board Member Thompson: Thank you. Mr. Sing: This is in the packet of the plans, but there... Board Member Hirsch: (inaudible) Chair Furth: I’m sorry, David, we should probably let him finish. I set a bad precedent here. Board Member Hirsch: The bike path, how does...? That connects up to the bike bridge that crosses over? Is that what happens with it right there? I'm trying to remember where you get of the bridge on this...? Chair Furth: It doesn't. Mr. Sing: The bike bridge is further south. City of Palo Alto Page 7 Board Member Hirsch: Further south. Yes. But does this bike path continue to the bridge? Chair Furth: No. Board Member Lew: But there's a bike lane. Chair Furth: Why don't we continue that part of the discussion. I think we're going to have a lot of discussion about the bike paths. Mr. Sing: With the bicycle path, there's some opportunity to bring some elements of the Baylands to the site through the landscaping treatment of the rest area. That component, that was part of the 2016 project, so I think there's some, maybe opportunity here to bring that forward. The design has exception for two items. There's a build-to line, and the project simply can't comply with East Bayshore because of the easement. The project could comply with the Embarcadero side, but as proposed, there is some better on-site circulation with a larger setback, and we think that kind of makes sense. The other issue is with the parking lot tree canopy. By putting the bike path the way it's proposed, trees will be removed, and they can't replace those to the extent to have the canopy. If they didn't have the bike path, they would be able to meet the requirement. The PTC did not want to have the trees removed, but potentially there is an opportunity through further evaluation to get both. We just don't know what that looks like at this time. The Baylands Master Plan, these are some of the design considerations. To use muted colors, natural colors; preserve the horizon line with low and horizontal elements; mount fences and enclosures and signs, regulatory signs, and design for practicality. Some of these are really for, types of projects are within the preserve itself. Some of these do apply for projects that are in the private lands. But to make it very clear, this is within the private lands and not in the preserve property. And just provide a building there. And an example across the street from Bayshore, one that was cited in the design guidelines, something that included some on-site landscaping. There's some muted colors. This one happens to have a lot of glass. I don't know what was a consideration there. This project does, in its response to the Board's comments from last year, uses more muted colors. Has some darker colors just to keep the integrity of the brand. The height is consistent with the CS District. Understand, that's a 50-foot height limit; they brought it down to 40. It is taller than the surrounding buildings that are maximum 35 feet. The project does have integrated sales, inventory, and customer parking, so you kind of internalize a lot of things that you typically would think are part of an automobile dealership. You think of a smaller building with a sea of parking around it, so kind of internalized all that into a building. The lighting for the project are addressed through the conditions and further enhanced by the PTC. We think those are a good way to address the lighting issues. The project does include bird-safe windows, and we can have the applicant describe the exact applicability of how they're doing that. That's included in the plans. The project does include oak trees along the urbanized edge, which is the Audi dealership. The Mitigated Negative Declaration is being circulated. We've actually extended a week out for it, so we have from March 15th to April 22nd for people to provide comment. The document did identify potential significant impacts to biological resources, cultural resources, geology and soils, noise and transportation. All those issues can be mitigated to a less-than-significant level. We are seeking some input from the Board on the document. We also have the consultant who drafted the document here, in case you have any questions for her. Chair Furth: Thank you. Before we hear from the public and the applicant... Mr. Sing: I have a couple more slides. Sorry. [crosstalk] Mr. Sing: It's important, and I think people would appreciate it. Chair Furth: Go for it. I just forgot to ask people to disclose before the... Go for it. City of Palo Alto Page 8 Mr. Sing: Thank you. We had some public comment. I don't want to forget that people have expressed interest in this. There was concern about massing, about it being too big for the area, about the FAR calculations, about the height being inappropriate. There was concern about noise from the carwash from the neighbor. Those are all good comments. The noise, we have a mitigation measure within the environmental document that would address that operation. We also heard about compatibility with the Baylands and the project site being the gateway. The next steps here is the ARB to review the architecture, review the design enhancement exception, provide comment, recommendations to the City Council. We want to complete environmental review, respond to any comments, and then, moving on to City Council. I think here, we're targeting going to the Council the end of June. Maybe that is aggressive, but understandably, if the Board is not feeling comfortable about moving the project forward today, we have an opportunity for another meeting to address some issues. I think what we're looking for here is some really clear direction, if that's the case, on whatever it is - the color's not right, the building is too big, whatever it is - I think it would be very helpful that we provide very clear comments to the applicant. With that, we want the Board to consider the environmental document, consider the draft record of land use action, and if you feel like you can make a recommendation, please do so to the Council, based on the findings and subject to the conditions in my presentation. Thank you. Chair Furth: Thank you, Sheldon. My first question to my fellow board members is, have we all had an opportunity to visit the site? Board Member Thompson: Not recently, but I've been there, a bit ago. Chair Furth: Alex? Board Member Lew: I have visited the site twice, once at night and once at five o'clock. Vice Chair Baltay: Yes, I visited the site. I spent quite a bit of time in the Baylands side, looking at the building. Chair Furth: And I visited the site yesterday in the early evening, before sundown, actually. Does anybody have any conversations to disclose concerning this matter? Board Member Hirsch: No. Board Member Thompson: No. Vice Chair Baltay: Nothing outside the public record. Board Member Lew: I have had a phone call with Karen Holman, and also, I exchanged emails with Shani Kleinhaus over the past several... I'd say over the past three months. Chair Furth: All right. Both of those people have either spoken with us or filed a speaker card. We also received an email comment from former mayor Holman. Is that in our packet of materials that are available? I think so. Board Member Lew: It's on the top. Chair Furth: It's on the top. Well, what do you know? All right. Ms. Gerhardt: You do have a significant amount of comments. Many of those are for the wireless item. Chair Furth: Yes? Board Member Lew: (inaudible) was that I watched the PTC hearing regarding this item. Chair Furth: And I will disclose that when I tried to do it, it wasn't up yet. But that's good to know. And we have had a summary from staff, which is a little more extensive than the one in the newspaper. If we City of Palo Alto Page 9 could hear from the applicant. You have 10 minutes for your initial presentation, and then you will have time to respond after the public has spoken. Lyle Hutson, Architect: Good morning, Board Members. My name is Lyle Hutson [spells name]. I am the architect for the applicant, Holman Automotive. Very pleased to be here today. This is our second visit here with the ARB board. I realize that all the people that were here last time are here now, so we're going to treat this as getting you used to the project and understanding what we're doing. My apologies to the previous members if you have seen this before. I want to, again, start by saying thank you very much. This is a project that we extensively looked at, the previous approval, not only the hotel, but the previous automotive facility that was proposed here. Not this group. It is the same manufacturer, Mercedes-Benz, but now this owner is also the owner and dealer of the Audi dealership next door. They have been members of this community, they have been around for some time, and our goal here is to certainly be respectful to the existing architecture, the uniqueness of the brand for Mercedes-Benz, and tying that in with, certainly the use in the neighborhood and the Baylands, finally. Important to note that we've worked tirelessly with staff, and again, thanks to Sheldon and Jodie for putting on a very nice presentation today. I'm going to go a little bit further with this, so you understand a little more about what we're proposing to do. This is a facility that did not work for the previous applicant. We are proposing something very unique here, with an opportunity to have a modern automotive facility that does not have a sea of cars out in front, is not your typical automotive dealership, and combines the current use of, whether it's internet sales or specialty sales, that our new-car inventory is basically housed in our main building. The building is composed of the front area, which is the showroom, which is 20 feet tall at that point. We're no taller than 20 feet at our showroom. We have a second floor area that sits back behind that where we have office space and support restrooms and things like that, on the second floor. And then, the upper level is our car-vehicle stacking system. These vehicles are stacked between five and seven feet tall for each individual spot. We hold a significant number of cars which we anticipate to be the entire new-car inventory for this facility, so that there are no sea of cars out in front for either new or used vehicles. These are all housed inside the building, which gives us the opportunity to have just a single drive lane out in front and customer parking along Bayshore. I'm going to ask that Sheldon help me and let's play the main movie, just real quick. This is one that was played before. It does have the dark colors I think you've seen in Sheldon's presentation. We took to heart the Board's comments about the black materials and finishes and have muted those. We do have one area that has our Mercedes logo and sign on it, but this movie still has some of the black. But, I encourage you to look at the interior and how it functions with the exterior as we go through this. It's a very short movie. [The applicant played a short video, with Mr. Hutson making brief comments throughout.] Mr. Hutson: This black has been changed to a much more muted color and the white wall facing Embarcadero is now black. That's in your package and part of our submittal. This is the Bayshore elevation. Again, took to heart, making this more of an attractive elevation. The interior of the facility/showroom. As you can see, that's the maximum at 20 feet in our showroom. Stairs up to the second level, and you can see vehicles in the automotive stacking facility, but it's not accessible from the second floor at that point. I have another short movie that shows how the stacking system works and how it integrates with the retail environment for the automotive facility. And we've actually tried to be very realistic about our lighting levels and what we're showing. This has been of a major concern from the very beginning, even before we went to the Board and our discussions onsite with members of the public regarding the Baylands, the birds, and the lighting levels. And in the back of our presentation, there is a photometric that will basically lay out the fact that we have less than one foot candle at all property lines, including the Baylands. That's not including any shade that the trees that are on the site would provide. This is truly without any tree shading. Sometimes we do light level photometric studies with the tree canopy, and sometimes without. We chose in this situation not to utilize the trees at all and to give you a true calculation of what it would be. The upper deck, I think it's important to note as we saw in that last video, at the twilight hour, that our upper deck has no light poles on it. We did discuss City of Palo Alto Page 10 this last time with the Board. We had 15-foot short poles on the parking level up above, and that's been completely removed, and we are on wall-mounted four-foot-high-mounted wall pack units. It's not for displaying cars. It's purely for getting through the, circulating at night. We think that we can do it with that without having poles, so there is certainly no spillover from the upper deck onto either the building or to, certainly, the Baylands next door, or our adjacent neighbor. Sheldon, would you play the parking system movie? This is a simulation of how this parking system works, both onsite and within the building. [The applicant played a short video, with Mr. Hutson making brief comments throughout.] Mr. Hutson: We have this area on Bayshore that allows our vehicles to be off-loaded on site so they're not off-loading on site. They are off-loaded, they are brought into the building. There is a tag placed on the dashboard that gets scanned so the system knows what vehicle it is. The door closes. The vehicle is scanned again inside the bay to make sure nobody is in there, and that the car is off, and it's ready to be put away. The vehicle gets closed off. One more scan again to make sure. It rotates, if need be. Goes into the system. There's a center aisle that is for circulation only. It's a lift that goes up and over. It will slot the car in a predetermined spot. It will also move other cars out of the way like a puzzle if needed to be put in a deeper spot. To retrieve a vehicle is kind of the reverse of that. A salesman would be with a customer. They would select the vehicle that they want to look at or to test drive. This can be done prior to or directly at the entry and exit door for the vehicle system. The car gets requested. The sled will go - of which we have two. We have a redundant system in case one fails. We do have two lifts. Go grab the car, bring it down, deliver it to the bay for the customer to either go for a test drive, or into the showroom and ultimately for delivery. This system is unique in that it's never been done before in this retail environment. We've adapted this special for this facility and the way that this facility can and will operate for both selling and storing new vehicles. We certainly acknowledge that it does have challenges, but it also gives us the opportunity to make sure our cars aren't out on the lot, we're not washing cars every day, we're not wasting water. We do have a carwash on site for service vehicles, but these cars will stay clean, dry and preserved for customers. We don't have, again, a large sea of cars where you have to jump in a golf cart and go find a car for a customer to look at. We're responding not only to the site, but as well as the opportunity for the sales environment. I have a variety of slides addressing the issues that we had before, so I'm here to basically answer any comments, and try to work through this. Our goal here today certainly is to get comments from you. We ultimately want to get in front of City Council. We did have a meeting last week with the Planning Commission that we dealt with the planning aspects of it with regards to... Chair Furth: Great, thank you. Mr. Hutson: Okay. Chair Furth: Any questions of the applicant before we hear from other members of the public? Vice Chair Baltay. Vice Chair Baltay: Yes. Good morning. I'm noticing in your presentations that the car storage facility seems to be enclosed with glass. It's quite transparent. Mr. Hutson: That's correct. Vice Chair Baltay: And yet, when I look at your drawings, it seems that it's got some sort of firewall around it. Can you say for real, what is the enclosure? Mr. Hutson: The enclosure down below is fire protected in that loading bay, but there are other portions that are glass. And I do want to mention that I do have samples, both of our bird glass, the glass, the materials, the finishes, the plaster, as well as the... City of Palo Alto Page 11 Vice Chair Baltay: If I could stick to the question here. I'm looking at Drawing ZA502. My eyes aren't what they need to be, but your key seems to show a one-hour fire barrier, and that seems to be what's enclosing, that's the ground level corner. I just want to understand what your presentation really is. Mr. Hutson: Sure. Vice Chair Baltay: Because I would imagine there are some significant separation requirements. Mr. Hutson: ZA502 is the automated system. Vice Chair Baltay: If I'm reading your plans right, that corner, top-right corner of the automated system is that glass corner your video was showing us. Are those solid walls or transparent walls? Mr. Hutson: This is the ground floor, and it is solid. Vice Chair Baltay: And did I misunderstand the videos you showed earlier, then, that show it transparent? Mr. Hutson: That was the, I think you were looking at the second floor area that is not open to the showroom where we had... And I can call your attention to.... [looking for image]. Vice Chair Baltay: I don't mean to take up a lot of time in this. I just want to be clear as to what the enclosure really is. Mr. Hutson: The enclosure on the bottom level where you drive the cars, where the cars are driven into and off-loaded, that is not glass. Those are solid and need to be that to provide that enclosure. Similarly, the walls along the back of the showroom are not glass, as well. Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you. Chair Furth: Anybody else? Board Member Thompson: Yeah, I've got one. Can you clarify which light fixture you're planning to use on the roof level? I'm looking at the second to last page. There's pictures of four light fixtures. It's a little hard to read which one is going to be... Mr. Hutson: The picture for the... [looking for image.] Chair Furth: It's the next to the last sheet in the presentation you have. It's not labeled or numbered in a way that we can read. Mr. Hutson: The surface - and we provide two here - the TMWP and the XWM are both surface-mounted on the side of the wall. I'm sorry. Surface-mounted on the parapet wall. And it would be either one of those two. Board Member Thompson: It won't be both, it will be one or the other? Mr. Hutson: One or the other, unless we're trying to... We have a situation where we have aisles, that we're trying to light down the aisles, and that picture is different than right at the edge. Board Member Thompson: Okay. Thank you. Chair Furth: Anybody else? Board Member Hirsch: Yes. This is a service facility, as well? Mr. Hutson: That's correct. Board Member Hirsch: Okay, and service for both Audi and Mercedes enters from that door in the middle between them? City of Palo Alto Page 12 Mr. Hutson: No. The service for Mercedes enters at that location, and the service for Audi is from the Audi service drive and the Audi entrance. The entrance to Mercedes is one; the entrance to Audi is adjacent, and it is the existing curb cut that is there now. We do have the opportunity to have a door between the two, deeper into the facility in case there needs to be some cross-circulation. Board Member Hirsch: Have you studied the number of vehicles you expect to come into that service area at any one time? Is there a rush period, or a time in which the cars might still be outside of the door? Mr. Hutson: If you look at the drawings, we have a deep service drive, not only for Audi and for... Excuse me, the queuing for Audi is outside, not inside. The queuing for Mercedes is intended to be entirely inside and not stack up on the outside. There's no projected number of stalls that would take us even close to having that many cars stacked up past the service drive. We have a number of lanes, and it's quite deep to go in. Board Member Hirsch: Got it. Chair Furth: I had a question, which is, could you take me through your plans for the Audi dealership? Mr. Hutson: Sure. Chair Furth: A couple minutes. Mr. Hutson: Certainly, at the request of the staff and the presentation, that we have this as two separate parcels, and it's divided between Audi and Mercedes. I'll ask Sheldon if he'll go through the, when we get to the Audi floor plans. Chair Furth: We are reviewing both of them today, Sheldon. Thank you. Mr. Hutson: Sheldon, if you would go to ZA101, that's the... Ms. Gerhardt: Just to clarify, there are two legal lots, but it is one project, so we are reviewing them together. But they will remain two legal lots. Mr. Hutson: The permit phase and phasing will be two separate projects, but we are here today to go through this as a single project, for expediency and for the ability to understand how this works together. It is important that we have the circulation, and we talked about this with the traffic commission last week, about circulation for fire trucks and for servicing the equipment in the back, and getting cars in and out, and not having that on the front of the building. So, all that's done... Chair Furth: We believe it is important. What is the proposal? Mr. Hutson: Okay, so, the proposal is the existing showroom that is there now, that you're seeing in the pink area. That is existing now. We are expanding to have a pre-owned portion of that showroom expand to the back a little bit. It's separated by the three-lane service drive that goes into the Audi dealership. That's the -- Sheldon, if you'd point to where the service drive is, right here -- we have two in and one out from that location. And then, as you go in, you're written up for service. That car is taken and delivered to a spot to be serviced on the ground level there. If you do keep going, you go into the service drive for Mercedes. That can either be closed or open, but we do have access at that point. If you go back again. The second floor is for, we have office space and support for the showroom that's existing, and to make a connection between the new service building that will be removed and replaced. The heights are exactly the same between Mercedes and the Audi so that they can share drive and parking on the upper level, if needed. There is a ramp in the back of both buildings. They don’t share a ramp. And each one of those goes up to the level, which would be at 40 feet above the ground. That's our parking deck. We basically, it's a two-store building. We have 20 foot floor to floor, essentially, on this. We have a higher area just for the convenience of connecting between the two, storing parts, and being able to City of Palo Alto Page 13 service vehicles on the ground level. I don't know if that answers your question or not on how Audi works. Chair Furth: And what's the phasing of this project? Mr. Hutson: Phasing is that the Mercedes dealership would be built first, in its entirety. There is no Mercedes here now, so there isn't the need to have ongoing service. Once the Mercedes dealership is complete, the shops will be shared for Audi as we tear down the Audi building and do it in its entirety. It is a two-phase project, Mercedes first, then Audi second. And Audi would utilize service bays in the completed Mercedes building to allow... Chair Furth: And what are you tearing down? Mr. Hutson: Tearing down, for the Mercedes, the main... Chair Furth: No, no, for the Audi site. Mr. Hutson: For the Audi site, it's the building that's behind. That's their existing service building now. There is a service drive that angles, very similar to the way it is now, and anything to the east of that towards the Baylands will be removed. It's a single-story [crosstalk]. Chair Furth: I have been on site, and I have backed up between two rows of brand-new Audis, and lived to tell the tale. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Hutson: You're welcome. Ms. Gerhardt: Just to clarify, the front showroom, the new showroom for Audi, would remain, and all the back service areas would be demolished. Chair Furth: Right, and that will be the non-conforming use under the requested zoning. The non- conforming development facility. The showroom will now be non-conforming if you rezone. Mr. Sing: Yes, based on the build-to setback, and there's a ceiling height within the showroom, and... Chair Furth: It's too high and too far? From the street? Mr. Sing: Too far away by about eight feet or so. Nine feet. Chair Furth: Thank you. I don't think there are any more questions now. I have a number of cards. The first speaker Eric Hoo, to be followed by Shani Kleinhaus. Mr. Hoo: Good morning. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak. Chair Furth: Thank you. You have three minutes, and if you could spell your name for our transcriber. Mr. Hoo: My name is Eric Hoo, and I represent the owner of the building next door, 2479 East Bayshore Road. [Does not spell name] We have a concern of the carwash being built. We are concerned that it's too close to us, and also, the noise level and all of that. And on top of that, the back side of the building where the carwash is located, aesthetically, you know, it's not appealing, it's not good-looking, but it's also facing us, so that is a big concern to us. Chair Furth: Excuse me. You represent the adjacent property owner on East Bayshore? Mr. Hoo: Yes, 2479 East Bayshore Road. Chair Furth: Thank you. Right next door. Mr. Hoo: To the Mercedes dealership. Chair Furth: Got it. Thank you. City of Palo Alto Page 14 Mr. Hoo: So, yeah. The carwash being too close, and the back side is aesthetically, to our opinion, not very appealing. And wonder if they can change the design to make it nicer and see if there is anything they can do with the carwash. That is pretty much, you know, one of the big concerns for us. Thank you. Chair Furth: Any questions for Mr. Hoo? What's the current use of your property? Mr. Hoo. It's just office building. We have tenants, you know, law firms, accounting firms, start-up companies, software companies. Chair Furth: Office uses, basically. Mr. Hoo: Yes, office use, yes. Chair Furth: Thank you. Shani Kleinhaus. Shani Kleinhaus: Thank you. Shani Kleinhaus with Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society and a resident of Palo Alto. I wasn't able to get into the actual plans. Somehow the link wasn't working for me, so I'm just going to say things in general. Embarcadero east of 101 is a scenic corridor and this site is the gateway to the Baylands. To some extent, to me, this looks incompatible with the Baylands Master Plan. One thing is that the Baylands Master Plan calls for a planting strip and a bike lane, so just choosing one over the other and putting little trees because of the PG&E in the corridor is not justified. They should be in a significant planting strip. And if it can't be under the power lines, then a little further. And may mean that this project needs to be a little smaller. Also, they are asking a lot of us. They are asking us to change zoning. They should give a lot in return. And the Master Plan calls for enhancement of the Baylands, if possible, so I would look at the back side of it and add another two layers of trees and create a barrier of trees between the Baylands and this project. The bird-safe glazing, I was unable to see where it applies, so I don't know how good it is. They provide some comment to look at the North Bayshore precise plan and see how they did that. Bird mitigation, bird surveys for nesting birds, are looking at only trees, but most of the birds in the Baylands, they nest on the ground. So, looking at the area behind the building, and really looking at ground-nesting birds and not only tree-nesting birds is really important here. And a general comment. The Baylands Master Plan calls for preserving the horizon line with low and horizontal elements. This looks a little too big. But I think it's an irony that in times that we're talking about sustainability and sea level rise, we're looking to put a car dealership as a gateway to our Baylands. This is an iconic building. This is going to be a gateway to the Baylands. First, there should be no sign indicating the Baylands on site because that would look like they're sponsoring our Baylands in some way. But to bring a car dealership to be the symbol of the Baylands is a little weird, especially if it increases the car traffic in the Baylands area, which is aimed to be minimal if you look at the Baylands Master Plan. I don't think this project mitigates all the impacts to below significant level. I will provide comments in writing. I think the deadline, though, is the 22nd and not the 15th. I think you said the 15th and I think the letter we got said the 22nd. Chair Furth: You are correct. Ms. Kleinhaus: Thank you. Chair Furth: (inaudible-off microphone) Wayne Kumagai, to be followed by Suzanne Keehn. I'm sure you know who you are. Wayne Kumagai: Hi, good morning. My name is Wayne Kumagai [spells name]. I'm a real estate broker with Newmark Commercial. I sold the building to the adjacent building owner, 2479, which is a 100,000 square foot office building. And they are very concerned about this project. Chair Furth: Excuse me, could you tell us, 2479...? Mr. Kumagai: East Bayshore. City of Palo Alto Page 15 Chair Furth: East Bayshore, which is...? Which building? Mr. Kumagai: It's the adjacent building, 100,000 square foot building to the south. Chair Furth: I'm sorry, I'm still lost. My colleagues are completely clear, but what building are we discussing? Ms. Gerhardt: This is the [crosstalk]... Board Member Lew: We're talking about the same neighbor as the previous... Chair Furth: Got it. Board Member Lew: ...speaker. Mr. Kumagai: And they are very concerned about this project, from the standpoint of devaluing their building, you know, and attracting tenants. They get rental income from tenants, as Eric mentioned, from attorneys, software developers, accountants, other professionals, and they are very concerned about the potential noise from the carwash. And where it's located on the site, they'd like it to be located to the east, more towards the other dealership, if possible, away from their site. Also concerned about the general aesthetics from the rear view because their tenants will be looking towards the building. That's all. Chair Furth: Thank you. Any questions of the speaker? Now that I finally understand what he was saying. (inaudible-off microphone). Ms. Keehn: Yeah, it's Keehn, although it's kind of a funny spelling. Yes. Chair Furth: Could you spell your name for our transcriber? Ms. Keehn: [spells name]. Chair Furth: Thank you. Ms. Keehn: From everything I've read and understand, this is spot zoning. That is different from all the other buildings in the area. I really think this property should be turned back to ROLM-E, and in alignment with what is there, and that we have said that's what we wanted. Apparently, I just read that there originally was supposed to be a hotel, which didn't work out. Well, I don't think this one should work out. I'm very concerned about climate change and all the things that the Audubon lady said, about the rising seawater, etc. But, first of all, I think we as humanity have to start putting nature as important as everything else. Actually, she's more important. Without nature, none of us would be here. Or able to survive. And one thing that we have done here in the West is just building over her, not listening, and not caring about our natural beauty. I truly believe that an area can only hold so many people, cars, etc., comfortably, and I think we've about reached that, if not more so. So, I really hope you'll put the Baylands first. I, too, think this is way out of bounds and pretty huge and obscene for what is already out there, and to have that as the gateway to our Baylands doesn't seem compatible at all. Thank you. Chair Furth: Thank you. Terry Holzemer, to be followed by Karen Holman, to be followed by Jeff Levinsky. Terry Holzemer: [spells name]. Board members, I'm here today as a Palo Alto citizen, someone who loves deeply the Baylands preserve. I visit this area often, and I love the environment. It is close to my home, but I feel like when I am there, I'm a hundred miles away. I'm here, not to be against an auto dealership on this site, but to express my concerns about this massive auto dealership development that is truly out of place and out of character with its surroundings, and that truly threatens the Baylands environment that surrounds it. The proposed CS zoning that the applicant is seeking is truly meant for commercial zones along El Camino and San Antonio Road, and it's not for a facility that, as other people have already City of Palo Alto Page 16 mentioned, is the gateway to one of Palo Alto's most important ecological and environmentally-sensitive areas. Ideally, the zoning should be changed to ROLM-E, which would allow for an auto dealership in this area, but be consistent with the zoning that already exists in the Baylands. It's also important to note that all developments in this area that are east of the Baylands freeway should be subject to the site and review provisions that are in Chapter 18-30G, and should include performance criteria that include, but are not limited to, lighting, noise and landscaping. The site assessment and guidelines that have been developed for the Baylands natural preserve, which were developed in 2005, are intended not only to review projects that are part of the Baylands, but include projects on privately-owned land that border the Baylands. I highly encourage you to look at the Baylands Master Plan, which advocates for unification of the Baylands. Recognizing and maintaining the relationship between the urbanized Embarcadero Road corridor and the area in the Baylands is very important. The design of new or redeveloped buildings and landscaping, particularly northeast of the Bayshore freeway, should reflect the area's location near the Baylands. I don't think that this project does that. I think this project is too massive, too large, and really is obscene for the gateway to the Baylands. I urge you to reexamine the site, help to redesign it so that it is more compatible and more ecologically sound for the Baylands. Thank you. Chair Furth: Thank you. Karen Holman? Karen Holman: Good morning, and thank you for hearing us. Chair Furth: Good morning. Ms. Holman: I provided four pages of just summary notes from the Baylands Master Plan that have to do with, really this location and the design components. The Baylands Master Plan does not distinguish between what's in the more natural area of the Baylands and the commercial area that's on Embarcadero, which all needs to be addressed as one unified vision. And it's very clearly stated in the Baylands Master Plan. The Baylands is so important, it's had a whole book written about its importance, and how important design is, and what the ecological and environmental mission is of that area. This site, as other people have mentioned, is the gateway to the Baylands. Embarcadero Road is a scenic route. The PTC, as was mentioned, this project just squeaked through the Planning Commission on a 4-3 vote, with one hedging. They had concerns about lighting, size, massing, the bike paths versus the trees. The zoning here really is an anomaly, and I know zoning isn't your purview, but it is an anomaly. It was changed, I think unfortunately, to CS to accommodate a hotel. CS is the zoning that's found on El Camino Real. So, I urge you not to address this site and the CS zoning as if this project were on El Camino Real because, indeed, it is at the gateway of the Baylands. Permeability -- I'm just going to hit some points here - permeability, I see no relief within the building footprint for permeability. The Baylands Master Plan talks about being able to restore the Baylands where possible. I think there is no permeability within... The large footprint of this building is counter to that. The carwash, I just did a little bit of looking last night on line, and DePaul University has a study about noise and dB, which I think is what this carwash is proposed to be, is consistent with a vacuum cleaner sound. A carwash, interestingly, was mentioned at 80 dB, which is two times 70 db. And at 20 feet... I’m sorry. At 20 feet, it's 80 dB, which actually, at eight hours -- and I don't know how much the operation is going to be. Maybe you want to condition it, whatever. Is actually potentially damaging with eight hours of exposure. What are the hours of the carwash? Are they going to use reclaimed water? Lighting is not an insignificant issue in the Baylands. I have a video that isn't quite ready for prime time yet that goes through the Baylands at night. The amount of glaring light in the Baylands is, from my personal perspective because I'm sensitive to this, is, like, it looks like a corporation yard. When you drive up 101 and get near Embarcadero, it really looks like a corporation yard or prison yard. There's so much inappropriate lighting out there, where the source of light is just glaring out at you. The Audi dealership, while I think it is a very handsome building, I think it's inappropriate for this location. But I think it's a very handsome building. But the Audi dealership itself is a source of great light intrusion. And I hope because this is such a discretionary project, you will be able to do something about the lighting at the Audi dealership. Dark Skies program is not something new. Light should always be downcast. The rear and side elevations, I agree with the City of Palo Alto Page 17 neighbor. Bike path versus trees. At the Planning Commission, it was said that PG&E could come along and make those trees be removed because they are under the power lines. I find that possible, but hardly likely, because it's not a big fire safety area. I think we could have both. The height of the buildings, it's unclear whether the height of the buildings are measured from four feet up because of the flood plain there, or if they're mentioned from grade. The bird-safe, I saw one of the board members trying to see the bird safety aspects of the glass. If you can't see it at the dais, birds aren't going to be able to see it at light. Chair Furth: Excuse me. Could you wind it up in a couple sentences? Ms. Holman: Oh, I'm sorry, yes, yes, yes. Okay. There's a lot of public interest in this project, as you can tell, so I hope that you won't rely overly on a subcommittee to do things. And the Baylands and the environment can't speak for themselves, so I'm hoping you will kind of be the Mama Bear for the Baylands and the environment in this case. Thank you. Chair Furth: Thank you. Mr. Levinsky. Jeff Levinsky: Good morning, Board Members. I hope you do decide to continue this project so there can be more public input and such. I sent you a letter with some information, but I want to point out some other things. Right in your description of the public hearing, it says that this building is 84,900 square feet, but the staff report itself shows larger numbers if you add up various things. Just adding up the things on Packet Page 17, it comes to about 104,000 square feet, and that still doesn't include all the garage space and other space they're not counting. One of the spaces they're not counting at all is that second floor part of the automated car area. And the explanation for not counting it that we've heard is, well, it's only automated there. So, apparently, if you have in your house an area that only a Roomba goes into, that's no longer floor area. This is a whole new concept in our city planning and I would like to see it stamped out. And I hope that you can help do that. As you probably all know, the rules for floor area is that if you have a floor and it's used for storage and there's a permanent roof above it, it's floor area. There's no robot exemption in our code. The showroom. There's lots of the showroom that exceeds 20 feet in height. The rule is you only get the extra showroom FAR if the showroom is 20 feet in height, or less. The argument that, well, it's grandfathered in, is incorrect, because they're switching zoning. You don't get grandfathering when you voluntarily switch zoning. No law has changed. You, the applicant, decided you wanted different zoning, so that area counts as floor area if it's over 20 feet high. It’s not showroom, it's regular floor area and should count against their limit. The building is too tall, it's too massive. Last time, I was the speaker here who asked for comparison charts so you could see the relative volume of this building versus others in the area. Because I think volume is a good way to understand what the public will perceive, what, frankly, birds will perceive, what anyone who goes out to the Baylands will perceive as the size of this building. We didn't get any of that, so I sent you my best attempt... And you can see that the building is approximately three times the mass of both of its neighboring buildings, including the folks who came here today. I'm hoping that somewhere in our City government, there are people who are going to stand up and say, "Let's apply the laws correctly. Let's not forget about thousands of square feet on the second floor just because the applicant doesn't want it counted." Let's look, when the words say a building has to be low to match the, you know, the Baylands nature, that that word "low" has a meaning, and it doesn't mean, oh, it can be the tallest building in the Baylands. So, I ask you today to please help guide our city back to following their laws, and insisting that when this comes back another time or goes on to City Council, that the numbers are right, and that we count all the areas of the building that we should. Thank you very much. Chair Furth: Thank you. Anybody else? Applicant? Mr. Hutson: Again, Board Members, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity here to maybe rebut a little bit some of the concerns, and I'm going to do that. The first one regarding the carwash -- Sheldon, if you could show that last slide that shows the carwash, and the distances away? The carwash is required for us to meet the city requirement, which is the 70 dB at the property line, and we will City of Palo Alto Page 18 comply with that. We have some mitigating factors that will assist in that, but we absolutely intend not to be over the City guidelines. And if we can't meet that, we won't have a carwash. But I can tell you right now, what you're listening to is probably about 70 dB for us speaking and talking here, amplified. It's a significant chore for us to do that, and we will have to do a noise study, and to prove that. And I can certainly appreciate, this is some 81 feet away from the neighbor. That's not an excuse. That's just a fact, that we are quite a ways away. We're not counting that dimension, but I can assure our neighbors that we want to be good neighbors and do not want to affect the noise in their building. Regarding the Audubon Society, we have a, the City's consultant is here today to answer questions on some of those areas. I certainly will say that we are respectful of the birds. You have a sample of the bird glass that we intend to put in every glazing location, not just in the front or the sides, but everywhere where we have glazing, it's bird-safe glass, which has been noted to alleviate that. Regarding the real estate broker who does not want to have the value of their property reduced, I can absolutely respect that, and I can tell you that we're actually trying to do the opposite and increase his value. The main restaurant has been abandoned for a number of years, and by removing that and putting something in place, I think we're significantly going to increase the value of the property in that neighborhood. The zoning issue is exactly that. We've followed staff's recommendation on this to try to make sure that we're consistent with other buildings of the same type, the same car dealership, and absolutely want to be respectful of that, and what we've done previously with the CS zone. We're allowed to go up to 50 feet. We have a couple areas where we have a stair tower and an elevator tower that do reach the 50 feet. It constitutes one percent of our roof area. I can tell you that we have a 20-foot height limit, we have a 30-foot height limit for the second floor, and we have a 44-foot height limit at our highest point, other than the two stair towers. I think we are complying with what was discussed in previous projects, as well as trying to keep this as a CS project, to take advantage, certainly, of the automotive overlay that's allowed to us. I think that the Baylands, certainly where Audi is directly adjacent to the Baylands, we want to take particular care, and we did that on all the elevations towards, not only to our neighbor, but to the Baylands, where we have proposed new trees, a significant number of trees. We have above-podium planters that are on the wall that will capture all the water from our roof deck and treat that water before it even hits the ground. We're actually putting our BMPs (Best Management Practices) up higher, which you can actually partially see from the Baylands, to increase the green. There's no need for a green screen wall because the bulk of that is covered by trees, but we do have those up four feet from the top of our parapet so that the water can flow into the planter and be treated before it ever gets down. We've had extensive review with staff and with our consultants regarding the Baylands and the Baylands Master Plan, and while it is not indicated that the guidelines are for private property improvements, we certainly respect the lighting requirements and the site lines and things of that nature. But I think if you read thorough that document, a significant part of it is for projects being done in the Baylands itself regarding small structures, restrooms, things like that. But we absolutely are not turning our back to the Baylands and the significance it has to this are. Finally, regarding the volume of the building. I think that there's been some misrepresentation, treating these projects as one great big mass, which from the air it is, but we step back from the street. We're probably the most street-respectful height at that point, and certainly be able to provide our building volume, which isn't the way the code reflect, and evaluate its facilities. Finally, on the FAR issue, we are counting the ground floor as floor area. We are not counting subsequent levels, of which we have six other levels of wrapped parking. We are not counting those. They are not floors. People don't walk on them. There is no access to them other than a catwalk that we're providing around the outside for the fire department. That's something we're working with the fire department on, so that they have access to take care of any issues that would be inside. It is not a walkable surface. The ground floor is being counted, as it should be, regarding our FAR and our volume. With that, I'll answer any questions. Chair Furth: Thank you. Mr. Hutson: We do have our landscape architect here as well, and I did want to show the Baylands visuals that didn't get shown. The very last pages of the document. I'm sorry about that. City of Palo Alto Page 19 Chair Furth: All right. Mr. Hutson: Thanks again. Chair Furth: If you could introduce yourself for the record. Ken Puncerelli, LAI Design Group: Absolutely, Madam Chair, members of the ARB. My name is Ken Puncerelli with LAI Design Group. Chair Furth: Which you're going to spell for the transcriber. Mr. Puncerelli: Yes. [spells name] Thank you for the opportunity to speak. As part of the team, some of the commentary that I've heard today is not unusual on a site development type of applications. To that end, we have, once we pull up the site master plan, as well as landscape plan, one of the things that we've worked extremely hard to accomplish is to put in a very strong and intensified landscape buffer with canopy trees that are native, live oak, along with understory shrubs that are also native. And then, back adjacent to the Baylands area where the Audi dealership abuts, we have a much more intensified landscape treatment there, where we have not only shade trees, which are the live oak, and they get about 20 feet tall. And then, as an understory to those, we have western redbuds, and as an understory to that, we have large shrubs that grow to five to seven feet tall. And then, below that, we have grasses and sedges that are incorporated into our stormwater management plan. Those help filtrate any of the impervious surface runoff that's directed in that area. We have a number of those LID ponds around the site. But to that end, we spent probably about two to two-and-a-half hours on property with the City arborist and Sheldon, when we were talking the property to kind of learn what the City wanted and what was a concern about the Baylands. That's why everything that is proposed for landscape treatment within our property, that abuts the Baylands, is all native species, drought tolerant, and friendly to the wildlife species. If you could bring up, Sheldon, the site plan of the landscape. The colored one. [Locating slide] If you look along the right-hand side of the screen... Chair Furth: This is sheet L-2 in our packets. Is that right? Mr. Puncerelli: I believe it is. Yes, it is. If you look along the right-hand side of the drawing, what you'll notice is a tree buffer that is along the fence line there, between the dealership and the office building. That extends around to the northeast and wraps around the site adjacent to the carwash, and then, adjacent to the Baylands on the upper right-hand side of the screen. You can see the canopy trees, the large green circles. Now, the light-colored green or the lime green circles are existing trees that are on our neighbor's property. What we're doing is just adding to the canopy mix. Lastly, I think one other point that's important in everything here, relative to the Baylands, this Audi dealership, our property boundary is over 500 feet from the Baylands Trail itself, which is on an aerial slide, Sheldon, if you could bring that up. The neighboring office building is about 160-some-odd feet from the trail, and a number of the other office buildings are quite a bit closer to the trail. Chair Furth: Thank you. If we have more questions, we'll ask you. Mr. Puncerelli: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Chair Furth: I do have a question before you leave. In going through the plant list, it seems to me I see a lot of non-native plants - a Chinese pistachio, (inaudible), callistemon. They go on and on. Are those plants that are not adjacent to the...? Mr. Puncerelli: That's correct, yes. Those would... Many of those are out in front along Embarcadero, but along... There are one or two Chinese flame that are adjacent to the office building, but all the rest that's along Baylands are all live oak, Western red bud. They are all natives. Chair Furth: Thank you. City of Palo Alto Page 20 Mr. Puncerelli: Thank you, Madam Chair. Chair Furth: Okay. I will bring this back to the Board. Vice Chair Baltay: I just had a question for the landscape [crosstalk]. Chair Furth: Okay, more questions for the landscape architect. If you could return. Sorry. Vice Chair Baltay. Vice Chair Baltay: Yes. When I was out at the Baylands side of the site, looking at all these trees, there's a number of, I guess they're old eucalyptus trees or something. They seem to provide a fairly decent amount of screening for the potential building. When I'm looking at your plan, though, it seem those are trees you're removing. Can you confirm if that's the case? At the back of the Audi dealer I see four [crosstalk].... Mr. Puncerelli: Yeah, so, a number of those are being removed, unfortunately, because of site grading and [crosstalk]. Vice Chair Baltay: I just wanted to confirm; those are indeed the big mature trees right [crosstalk] providing. Mr. Puncerelli: But there are a number of those also on the other side of the fence. Chair Furth: Thank you. Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you. Chair Furth: Any other questions of the landscape architect? Okay. Questions of staff? Mr. Puncerelli: Thank you, Madam Chair. Chair Furth: Thank you. First of all, I just had a clarifying question. Since we've had anxiety that we don't think about the Baylands-specific plan, we do have it, we do read it. And I read the document to say that the Baylands design guidelines are intended to be used when designing or reviewing projects located in any part of the Baylands, while the more specific guidelines are primarily applicable to the dedicated parkland. The design principles and concept should be applied in the service and commercial area when designing or reviewing projects for compatibility, with special aesthetic qualities and environmental conditions unique to the Baylands. So, we do not expect signage to be the same as within the park, but we are supposed to think about these things. In my view. It's not a question. I guess that's a statement. Does staff disagree? Staff does not disagree. Okay. Alex. Board Member Lew: I have a question for staff. Is a conditional use permit required? Mr. Sing: No. We have the site and design review. Chair Furth: Any other questions of staff? Board Member Thompson: Yes, I have a question. Chair Furth: Board Member Thompson. Board Member Thompson: Do we have a material board? Mr. Hutson: We had sent a very small materials board previously, but today I have actual physical samples that you can pull... One was the bird glass, and for the other pieces. I'll give those to staff for you to have. Board Member Thompson: Thank you. City of Palo Alto Page 21 Chair Furth: Thank you. Any other questions of staff? Vice Chair Baltay: Yes. Sheldon, could you explain, please, the logic in counting the automated vehicle storage system only once for floor area purposes? Why do we do that? It seems a very large, bulky thing. Mr. Sing: We did, early on, kind of look at how this is a unique system that they have. For instance, in the single-family zone, you would use a, for equivalency, for height over 17 feet, even though there is not a floor, you would say, "Well, everything over 17 feet will count." In commercial areas, you don't do that. It's for consideration of, say you have, like, a Costco building, and they have high-pile storage of merchandise. You're only going to count the ground floor. You're not going to count the space, the volume in between. And the case here, the cars are merchandise. There are no floors. Therefore, we didn't count those. Vice Chair Baltay: How tall is this space in volume? The vertical dimension of it? Mr. Sing: It's approximately 43 feet. Vice Chair Baltay: I want to be sure I understand this. It's a 43-foot-tall volume that's discounted once for the purpose of FAR. Is there anything else in town that's similar to that? Anything else that big that's only once? Ms. Gerhardt: We do have, in the Research Park, there are several lobby spaces that are vaulted in this same way. Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you. Chair Furth: Any other questions of staff? Okay. This is a complicated project. It's a site and design review. I wanted to put down the things that seem to come up. And maybe there are other issues that we could address as we speak. There's the issue of zoning propriety, the appropriateness of the zoning, FAR calculations -- not our call generally in terms of the zoning. The whole issue of environmental impacts, and if anybody has comments that are specific to the mitigated negative declaration, we should be sure to make them before the close of our remarks. I think we can do that separately. The identified impacts seem to be about noise, be about lighting, where the most sensitive receptors of the individuals flying over the structure, which is not our usual point of view. Plantings. Visibility from the Baylands park itself. When I was there, it seemed to me I could see water from the back of the Audi properties, so it's going to be visible the other way. Impacts on the neighboring property. Concerns particularly about the... What am I trying to say? Carwash. I will see, the existing one seems to be very noisy. And perhaps most of all, the location of the bicycle/pedestrian walkway in relationship and its impact on trees. Are there other things we should be sure to address? I'm not even dealing with the aesthetics of the design, which actually (inaudible). Board Member Thompson: I was just going to suggest that it seems like all the board members visited the site at really unique times, so just any observations that they noticed when they were there at certain times, given that other board members weren't there at that time. That might be helpful for us to know what you observed. Chair Furth: Thank you. Alex, would you start? Since you observed it at more times of day than anybody else? Board Member Lew: Okay, so, like, at five o'clock, commute time, a lot of times, the traffic is backed up, trying to get to the Dumbarton Bridge, so you will see bicyclists riding on the sidewalk as it is currently configured. Because you can't, there isn't enough room to squeeze through between the cars and the sidewalk, so they ride on the sidewalk as it currently is. Also, I think at five o'clock, I did hear that the carwash, the existing carwash is outdoors, and it is very noisy, and it was going on relatively late for business hours. I did visit at night. I think that there is, in the vicinity, on the neighboring properties, City of Palo Alto Page 22 there's a lot of very unattractive lighting, like security wall-mounted lighting, up two stories high, shining outwards towards parking lots and Baylands. Some of the older dealers have very tall light pole fixtures that I don't think we would allow today. I think we would require them to be lower. Also at night, maybe like at eight o'clock, I've seen cars being unloaded from delivery trucks, at night. And then, I would also say, I don't completely understand what's going on, but there are people out there, like along East Bayshore, at night. I don't know what they're doing, but there are people out there. More than you would think, I guess I would characterize it. And I do go out by the, on the Renzel Trail, too, as well. And it seems like that, the renderings that they're showing are accurate. The existing buildings and the new buildings will be visible from one point on the trail, so we should pay attention to that. That's in the comp plan, you know, how the site looks from the Baylands side to the west, to the (inaudible) direction. Vice Chair Baltay: Osma had asked a question about perception of the site. Should we be addressing that? I think I can pick up on what Alex was just saying, that it astonishes me how many people are out there. You'd think this is a sparse, natural environment, but it's really, every parking space was full. I came into quite a few people walking on the trail and on the sidewalk, and I think we need to focus on the fact that this is very visible. It really is a gateway of sort. There's a lot of citizens walking past this building. More than you would think. Chair Furth: Okay. Alex, why don't you start off with your comments on the project. And if you want to do the mitigated negative declaration now, fine. If you want to do it later, also fine. Staff will, I'm sure, keep notes. Board Member Lew: Okay, so, I have some comments on zoning, even though that's not really our purview. But since the public has mentioned it. Some people are proposing that the zoning be the ROLM, which would be more consistent with the existing zoning. But when I look at the zoning map, many of the neighboring properties are ROLM with an Automotive overlay. I think their hope is to get the smaller building with the 35-foot height, but the Automotive overlay increases the height to 50 feet. So, we're back at the height limit for CS, right? It would be the same height limit. And I look at ROLM, it has 20- foot setbacks on side setbacks, street-side setbacks and rear setbacks. CS zone has zero setbacks, but it has context-based design criteria and build-to line requirements. It seems to me that having 20-foot setbacks makes more sense in the Baylands type of neighborhood. I think I understand that the applicant wants the zero setback so they can put the Audi and Mercedes dealer together. And my recollection is that when we had the previous hotel, we had a very awful-looking interior side yard, and it seems to me this proposed line helps reduce that sort of ugly, kind of alleyway aesthetic by putting the buildings together. I think I understand the logic there. The CS zone does require us to meet the context-based design criteria in the CS zone, and I don't see enough drawings in here to make the case that it's compatible with the neighbors. You're missing street elevations and any text to explain how the building window patterns, materials and massing sort of make design linkages to the neighboring buildings. That's something that we had mentioned on the previous Mercedes-Benz proposal, and they did do those street elevations. It helps give the public and the Board a sense for the scale of your building relative to the neighbors, so I think the drawings are not adequate at this point to move it forward to the Council. I'm concerned about the carwash noise, and I read the mitigation item in the analysis, and I think I do understand, if there are any solid fences that are proposed for the site, that might help reduce the noise levels to neighbors. On lighting, I did mention previously about the existing conditions in the Baylands, and I think that we need to address that, and I don't think the Baylands design guidelines actually talk about it all. We do have our performance standards in the zoning code. It seems to me when I look at the photometrics, I'm seeing foot candle levels around 60, 85, 105, which are way, way, way out of line. I think that's Fixture E along east Bayshore, and I'm seeing light spill on East Bayshore at, I think it seemed, like, a 17 foot candle. I think you're doing better along the back side of the property, but I do think we need to look at Fixture #E, which is near the sidewalk. Also, in the landscape plans, there's a note that says that in the PG&E easement, that the light fixtures also have to meet the 15-foot height requirement as the trees. And I think you're showing 20-foot-high light poles in the easement area. I City of Palo Alto Page 23 think we need to circle back and look at that again. I do appreciate the effort to remove the light poles on the parking roof deck. I think that helps. I think there's a light fixture cut sheet that is missing. It's the ones that are above the garage doors facing East Bayshore, so I'd like to see that come back to us. I do appreciate doing 100 percent bird-friendly glass, and I think my understanding is that this is etched. It's not any sort of film or anything like that. I think I do understand from reading the New York City Audubon guidelines that Shani Kleinhaus provided to the ARB on previous occasions that birds feed differently than humans. These patterns that are less than two inches apart can be detected by birds. Also, Shani did point me to Mountainview's North Bayshore specific plan, and it does have a chapter 5 on bird-safe design. Some of the things they've done in their plan is to limit the amount of untreated clear glazing to 10 percent of the building surface area, so I think I understand the applicant is proposing 100 percent. Using occupancy sensors on all non-emergency lighting at night. No glass skyways or freestanding glass or transparent corners. I do want to say that this project does have a transparent corner, so it will definitely need the bird-friendly glass. There's another item in there that talks about no funneling of the bird flight paths along buildings and trees into a building façade. I think I would like somebody with more qualifications than myself to see if this funneling effect is present in the proposed design. It's like an L-shaped building, and you've got a building façade and trees, and does that constitute a funnel where the birds will fly between the building and the birds [sic] into a blank wall. Also in the Mountainview-specific plan, they recommend window coverings on all windows, and that they are closed at the end of the day. On some other projects near residential areas, we've required the use of automatic window shades that close in the evening hours. That might be a way of bringing down the light levels to the neighboring Baylands. With regard to the bike path and the trees, ideally we should have both. I think staff wants us to weigh in on that. I think the bike path is important. We do understand that there is another path, there is the Renzel trail. The way I see it is that other cities have done more to get people out to the Baylands than Palo Alto, and I think we're a little bit behind. Do we want to make it useable for all sorts of bicyclists? There's the 20 percent die-hard cyclists, and then the 80 percent who might want to get on a bike with their kids. I do think we want to address that other 80 percent with the path in the sidewalk. In regard to landscape, I do see that there's a lot of bay-friendly and native plants in there. I think my take is I'd like to see it match more of what is happening at the other side of the street, at the Terry [phonetic] area of the building. I think that's all I have. Oh, on floor area, I do understand there is a lot of concern about the bulk of the building and the 43-foot-high height of the car stacking areas. There are other areas, too, that I would like staff's input on. Let's say the Audi dealer service area. That's covered, and it's walled and roofed, and would that not be counted as an equivalent area? It's adding bulk. Effectively, it's adding bulk. Technically, I don't know how the code reads, but it seems like there might be room to make this smaller. Mr. Sing: Specifically, I think you're referring to the service drive? Board Member Lew: Yeah, the service drive. Mr. Sing: Since the 2016 project, there was a code amendment that exempts that area. Board Member Lew: Interesting. Okay. Thank you for that. I will take a look at that. I think that's all the comments I have today. I'm thinking that the project is headed in the right direction, but it's not there yet. Chair Furth: Do you have any comments on the DEE (Design Enhancement Exception) request? Board Member Lew: Well, I can support that. I think trying to put the CS zone in here is for the wrong... It doesn't really make sense in the larger sense. Because it's making us do this DEE, right? I can support setting the building back further from the street. I think we've gone through that exercise in the City. I think generally the Council has already weighed in on that. I think generally we're okay with pushing buildings back in this kind of context. Board Member Thompson: I just have a quick question for Board Member Lew. City of Palo Alto Page 24 Chair Furth: Yes? Board Member Thompson: For the bird-safe glass, I missed a little bit of your comment. Did you feel like the sample that we saw is sufficient? Board Member Lew: I haven't analyzed this completely, but my understanding is that this is the right type of thing to do. Films can be removed. But the biggest issues is trying to get fairly small-spaced vertical lines, like, around two inches. So that the birds see it and they know they can't... They'll see the lines, and they're going to think that they can't get through it. Board Member Thompson: Okay. Just wanted to clarify. Chair Furth: For staff, before we see it again, it would be good to know that this is bird-friendly certified, or whatever the standards might be. Osma? Board Member Thompson: My turn? All right. So many things. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you to the public for your comments. There's a lot more to unpack here than I initially realized. I'll start with the aesthetics because I think that's sort of the first thing that I noticed about the design. While I appreciate that there was a change in color to do something more compatible, unfortunately it seems to somehow maximize bulk of the building, making the design a little difficult to swallow because of how massive it is. In the future, you know, after seeing your material samples, the bird-safe glass breaks down the scale of your elevations quite significantly, and what we're looking at is a big wall, would seem a lot more articulate and smaller with that smaller applied on there. It might make your renderings and the other representation that you've shown a bit more friendly to the environment. The main aesthetic issue I think with this project is that there isn't a lot of discussion about how this building relates to the environment and to the place around it, especially with something as wonderful as the Baylands. There's a lot of stuff to respond to. There's a lot of nature, there's a lot of aesthetic features that define that area that is ripe for good architecture, and something like choosing a sample that has a lot more articulate nature to it, something that has a tree, it kind of feels like there's a bunch of vines, or something... There's a specularity that kind of comes with that sample that's not being shown here. And you could make an argument that your building relates to the environment because you're using something small- scale, but I don't see that in your argument. I'm kind of making it for you. Design-wise, I think there needs to be a greater story about your partee and what relationships are you creating with the environment, with the people on the street. At the moment, it's this object that has no relationship to anything around it, and I think that's part of the reason that it is sort of difficult to swallow for the public, because it seems like there's very massive thing that's not doing anything to enhance the surrounding environment. I have a hard time making that finding because aesthetically, at the moment, I don't think the current design is actually palatable. And I understand that there are other automobile dealerships and other buildings around that have a modern aesthetic, but even those, I think, have a bit of design sway to them. Even the existing dealership has some nice slants and curves that I think is missing. Not saying that you should add curves, not saying that you should add slants, but just that the design intent of your building is missing for me in this story. And I think there's a lot of ripe material around you. There's nature, and there's no many things you can do. Even creating that pattern in your drawing, in your designs that kind of show that, yes, we're doing something small-scale, we're doing something really special. And given that there's so much pedestrian activity there, we're going to need something small- scale. And also, given that you're not going to expect a lot of cars out front because of the design, you're going to need architecture to make up for that lack of activity in the front. At the moment, design-wise, I'm having a really hard time with this project, and I don't know that just changing the color was enough. I think there's a bit more to be done. In terms of the mitigated negative declaration, there's an aesthetics chapter that I looked at, about how it's sort of compatible with the area. And I would say it’s not. It has a less-than-significant-impact noted, and I think it is a pretty significant impact. Lighting-wise, I agree with Board Member Lew. I think the foot candles are too high. I like the suggestion of automated shades to cover things up at night. But this thing looks like it's going to shine like a big bright lantern in the middle City of Palo Alto Page 25 of the night, just by the way it's being shown here. That's a bit of a problem, I think, especially because in a nature preserve, you want darkness, and you want to be able to see the stars as much as you can. Even if currently we don't have that, we're trying to go for something better, we're trying to make our future better. Even if what's existing is not great, there is an opportunity to do something better right now. In the staff report, there was a note about the planting on the back side. While I appreciate there being green, I think staff noted that staff feels that it's insufficient to screen, and I will agree with that. It does seem insufficient, and it seems quite small. It would be nice to integrate, again, more nature into the design. It's a good location to do it. There are other locations, as well. In terms of your material choices, I only had a quick second to look at the nature of your panels. In general, in terms of palette, ACM-2, which is the main light-colored metal panel -- this color? I think this color might not be right, just looking at it all together. I also couldn't find where this one STU shows up on the elevations. Probably a small part. I like the precast color, the concrete color. I don't think it's precast. But I think these need to match better in order for your palette to work. And at the moment, it seems like this is brighter, and this might be the better choice. This seems just a bit off in terms of palette. Just a little bit more to look at for the color. Have I covered everything? Chair Furth: We'll give you another round. Board Member Thompson: Yeah, I'll stop there. Thanks. Chair Furth: Board Member Hirsch. Board Member Hirsch: Well, I'm certainly more conflicted after hearing all the comments by fellow board members than I was prior to this, not so much because of the comments, because of the conflict that I see between the commercial zone and Baylands. I spent a good bit of time there this past week, noting that as you look at this site, you're coming over 101. You get to feel more of the mass of the building. And when you get down at the bottom and you're at the intersection, you're more concerned about safety and how to cross the intersection. And then, you pass a whole line of other commercial buildings before you really get to know that you're on your way to the Baylands. This is a real conflict, I think, in planning, but what can you do about that? You have so much already existing commercial usage of the part of the street on the way to the Baylands. It seemed to me that somehow our audience ought to consider this as well. Those who are interested in emphasizing the Baylands really ought to look to, I think, beyond this commercial zone as the beginning of the Baylands. Directional signs seem reasonable to me, but if we're going to be up here as architects and judges of a building like this, we shouldn't ask it to be the Baylands, after all. It isn't going to be the Baylands. It's part of the commercial zone. So, this is a larger subject, not having to do so much with the building, but with understanding the environment in which this is. I think there were some fantastic comments made about sensitivity to the Baylands, but is this the building on which you judge that? You get a very different building, I think, if that's where you have to go. Maybe you're asking the developer here, and the architect, to provide a building that is a natural building, some other kind of a building. I don't know where you go with all of that. Maybe the top of the building should be part of the Baylands and be planted in some way, rather than just a storage area for cars. I'm more concerned about the general environment and how you describe an area that's for everybody to go to, and where does it begin? I don't think it begins at this corner. I went into the middle of the Baylands and looked back, and I didn't see any trails leading close to this, but they might be there. I looked back and I saw a lot of trees, and I couldn't really see any of the building area behind them. I think it's a different kind of a corner that way. There's actually a lot of planting now, and whatever you're going to replace is going to enhance the separation between the Baylands and that commercial zone. In that respect, I don't think there's going to be a problem looking back. I think the bike path issue is a very serious one. I'm very concerned that you make that turn and find a better way to get across the 101 and the present bridge that's there, and that connections are going to be made with bike access to the Baylands, which is really very critical. I, too, spend a lot of time there, as well, and it's a wonderful environment. The plantings seem to be pretty adequate all the way around the building, in my opinion. But I agree with Alex; there are lighting issues. And I agree with comments that City of Palo Alto Page 26 have been made about the carwash. I was on-site, I walked on the Audi site, to the back of it, and it's a very noisy facility. I think technically, you can figure out something to moderate the sound of the carwash so it doesn't disturb the neighbors. I actually thought about the building. If you're going to accept the fact that that's kind of a dealership corner, then I really don't agree that somehow muting all the colors on the building and making them look like they might belong to some other kind of a facility, like the Baylands nature preserve, that's a non-sequitur there. There's no relation between that building and the Baylands. It's a car service building, it's a car sales building, and technically, it's quite exciting to imagine all those cars moving insider of it. And it's certainly a grand improvement over a restaurant surrounded by vehicles. I think it gets the car out of the public view, and a tremendous improvement to that neighborhood for both of those facilities that are there. But, my major concern is really planning for the Baylands. Should there be some kind of an indication, a monument to say, "You're here. You are in the Baylands now." And then, all of those other issues about doing things that, within the Baylands that relate to it, will make some sense. But to ascribe those requirements to this particular building, to me, doesn't make any sense. In fact, just to state my concern, if it's going to be a car corner, as it seems to be, then it really ought to emphasize that in some way. Frankly, I like the first way because the massing, with the black around the top of it, was certainly much better than a washed-out-looking building the way it is now. You pick up the element, the Mercedes elements at the bottom, it's beautifully detailed. I think I would have preferred the first scheme that you put together. But it isn't going to be Baylands scheme. There's going to be a Mercedes/Audi kind of look to it, and it's going to be high-tech. I think that's a better way to treat that corner, frankly, but we seem to be beyond that because we're more concerned about the Baylands than we are about what the architecture of this particular building looks like. I think you've actually made good relationship in staging the massing along Bayshore there, and I would have appreciated it more if it were a stronger building. It would say something about that commercial piece, rather than watered down as it is now with the colors. Once again, if it's not going to be that -- because the Board appears to be interested in a different view of it -- I don't object to the massing because it takes the car and turns it inside the building. I do think that the issue is really not that corner. Just to add one note to that. It's a very busy corner. It's a car corner, whether you like it or not, because all of the access roads off of 101 seem to end up right there at that corner. Very, very busy and hard to manipulate it, even in a vehicle. And certainly as a pedestrian. Therefore, I think that it's an appropriate building for the commercial part of that zone, and that the Baylands should be a separate issue. Chair Furth: Thank you. Peter. Vice Chair Baltay. Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you. I find myself in agreement and appreciate the intelligent comments Alex made about the zoning, that it's not just a matter of which zoning. It should be, the ROLM zoning would also allow this height. It's more nuanced than that. I appreciate those comments. I certainly appreciate what Osma is saying about the building not really being compatible, and find that’s quite true. It seems compatible with itself, but even then, there's some design inconsistencies. I'd like to address what David is talking about. Yes, this building does have a couple of masters. It needs to address this busy urban corner. It needs to address the fact that it's right off the freeway, and that certainly these Baylands design guidelines facing this inner part of it don't work so well. In fact, one of the earlier designs we had, I think even on a previous proposal, had a series of weathered timbers and rope barricades at the front, and a Baylands-looking, Baylands sign, and it looked ridiculous, frankly. At the same time, from the back side, from the Baylands, this building is visible. It's very much there. And I think it's not a matter of just saying it doesn't belong in the Baylands; it is in the Baylands. Additionally, we have laws to follow. We have design guidelines to follow. And this is part of that zone, and we just ignore that at our peril. Because other buildings have been allowed to develop outside of those guidelines doesn’t mean we should allow that to happen. I think the guidelines are real, and serious, and carefully documented. It's a real stretch to say that this is meeting the Baylands design guidelines. On the last building we approved, I remember distinctly that we were trying to rationalize this as having two faces. One face was the shiny Audi dealership in the Mercedes part of town, and the other side was the Baylands, and that architect City of Palo Alto Page 27 had managed to split the building and make it look more compatible with both sides. And, the architect should take note -- They went through quite a bit of trouble to demonstrate that to us, and to the public. I don't see that effort in this set of drawings. But I think that maybe what we need to say, David, is that, yes, this is a big building on a corner, facing Palo Alto area, but even then, just being quite this bulky and quite this tall seems inappropriate. Yes, it's not really the gateway to the Baylands in the sense that you go another quarter mile down the road. But still, it sets the tone. And every other building there has just a lower energy feel to it. It has a roof; it has muted colors. With the exception of the Audi dealership, they're all more low-key. And it seems to me that this is not. It's not low-key. It's very dramatic. And that's sort of what's missing, is some sense of, perhaps humility, as you come over the bridge and start to go into the Baylands. And even though we should allow brighter colors and a more contemporary finish on the side facing the city, it's just too bulky-looking. As I tried to parse out the design a bit, honestly, it looks like an automobile factory with a dealership plugged onto one side. If my colleagues were to look at renderings, Sheet ZA407, for example, there's a view from Baylands, right next to the neighbors property, of which they were so politely speaking about. And it's just wildly inappropriate for a frontage on a busy street in town. It's really quite busy and important. And it's not even a matter of Baylands here. It's just huge-looking. This is what I mean by a factory. And then, look at the entrance on, two pages further back. The front of the Audi dealership. ZA413. This is visible. This is very visible. This is a very tall wall with very little design enhancement to it. And it really could take some cues from Osma's concept of just finding something in the Baylands. And most of the buildings there have some kind of a corniche line, or a roof line. The bright color. The lightness of that color just enhances the bulk of it. I don't want to get too much deeper into it, but I don't think it's even close yet, honestly. It really needs a little more work on it. Okay. I remember being very excited at the first hearing about the vehicle stacking storage. The first time it's been done. It's a very clever idea, to fit a condensed car use, put the cars inside. Somehow, the first time around, it also looked a lot more exciting. You had the Mercedes logo right in front of this glass window where I can see all the stackers. As we get to a more finished design, it just seems to be lost now in the new renderings, as much as I can tell. You're not really celebrating it any more, and it seems to me the biggest thing you have going for you is this really neat idea of how to store the cars and put this thing into a dense, urban environment. The first ones doing it, but, boy, you need to really celebrate that. Make that the thing you see. You're just not doing it here. You're going backwards on your design. And maybe it's Mercedes, and the black colors, and the town wanting lighter colors, but you're an architect. You've got to solve those problems. And I don't see it happening here. Again, I find that problematic. I find your site circulation problematic, that the main front entrance, that big curved piece, also has a railing in front of it, and it's a foot or two above the ground. There's no way you can walk to that door without sort of sidling along the entire façade of the building. It's like it's made to be seen from a freeway, like the Mercedes dealer up the road a little bit. And it's not. This is a street with a lot of pedestrians and people, and yet, if I wanted to drop somebody off to go in the front door, well, I'm going to drop them off, walk 50 feet along the building before you get in. Doesn't make sense. The same kind of circulation thing at the back of the Audi dealership. You really need more landscaping and more buffering, and instead, you have a pretty substantial amount of space dedicated to some sort of drive lane for the cars. I'm sure there's detailed needs for how vehicles circulate on a site, but to give that much space to the automobiles and only leave, looks like less than 10 feet of landscaping buffer for the most critical buffer zone you have, it seems sort of insensitive, at best. The fact that you're just cutting all those trees down that are there, rather than just staying farther away from it, seems insensitive. It seems...I don't know. Not like you're really trying to pay attention to the back side of it, as well. And all of that just sort of comes out of the site development. I agree with my colleagues' comments about the noise from the carwash. I agree with the comments about the lighting. It's really important to get that really muted. I don't understand why we can't have both the existing trees along Bayshore and the bicycle path if we have an 80-foot-wide easement. You're asking for a change in zoning. You're asking for a building that the town is very delighted about. Why can't you also put a real bike path on your side of those trees, so that we have at least one amenity coming out of this large project? Again, I can see, you guys are pushing hard to maximize your space and efficiency, and City of Palo Alto Page 28 get your drive aisles and your parking up to the line. But say, okay, we're also going to give you a bike path by cutting down the trees. I mean, you're cutting down almost every tree on this site. You need to be more sensitive. That would be one way that I think would make a big difference. There's a genuine need for a real bike path there. It's obvious just walking around. You can't cut those trees down or you're really, just make yourself naked. It's even worse. I'd like to see that solution, or something like that, coming along. Lastly, if you could, please try to make a presentation for us in the future that's a little bit more coherent and organized. All of our comments are a bit disjointed, and I feel terrible about that, but your presentation was also so tough to figure out. What is it going to look like? What are the parts to it? So, if you could focus on that a little bit. Thank you. Chair Furth: Thank you, and thank you to the applicant, and thank you to the public. This is one of those meetings where I learn a lot by listening. Thank you to my colleagues, each of whom focuses on particular aspects of the project and leaves me enlightened, dazed and confused. The City Council has indicated that they think this is a good place for an auto dealership. An auto dealership is not inherently what you think of when you think of Baylands compatible uses, but that is not our call. And one way of thinking about this building and its neighbors is that it provides a certain buffering of the Baylands Park from the freeway, and a huge PG&E overhead line, and a lot of other very intense, rather disruptive uses. If we think of you as a gateway in a protective sense, I find it easier to think about it. And I certainly agree with our earlier comments on an earlier project, that mock docks and what-not are not appropriate. This is a car dealership, and it's freeway-adjacent if not freeway-visible, and it's surrounded by what's really an office park. This is not light manufacturing. This is a bunch of lawyers and doctors and software engineers. And this is also a fairly intensively occupied area. This is one of the City's employment centers, right? Under the old general plan? Is it still? I don't even know if we have that designation. But it's heavily used, and it should be more heavily used because it's an access to a major local and regional recreational resource. When I think about, how would you be a good gateway? One of the things is, you'd have really clear, emphasized access for pedestrians and bicyclists around what's now a terrible corner. And I don't mean that necessarily in risk to life and limb, but I'm in the 80 percent of cyclists, and after I finally make it over that bicycle bridge, it's confusing as to figure out where do I go, how do I get around that corner, and am I willing to do this with my young grandchildren? I think if this site can be imagined as having this great auto dealership with this beautiful glass, and this really clever car storage facility, which I think is so much preferable to the quite ad-hoc arrangement there right now, with a really lovely bicycle and pedestrian way that the landscaping emphasizes. It's not something that's almost invisible, but it's something eye-catching that could work for both the Baylands and your project. If you think of "gateway" in terms of access and protection rather than invisibility, I think it works better. I spent a lot of time looking at the general design principles. The one that I think is most applicable to commercial things is design for practicality, design for the fact that you're near the bay, and there's going to be marine air. Think about materials that either weather well or... Well, that weather well. And I would say that are beautiful. I mean, it seems to me that your glass is going to be beautiful. That may be in conflict with seeing the... You know, originally, we thought, well, you bring your kids down to watch the lift work, sort of like watching airplanes take off. Maybe the glass makes that impossible. But the more beautiful materials, the better. Design principles, which are suggested, talk about using only muted natural colors. I agree that neon shades are not appropriate here, but I wouldn't particularly be wedded to the one identified Baylands color on the frontages that face the streets. I think it's more important to have a design that works. And I do think that your elevations aren't doing justice to your plan, and that most lay people -- which includes me -- put a lot of emphasis on what those drawings look like, and it takes somebody with more skill and talent and experience to understand what it would actually look like. I also think that we're doing design overlay because this is a very sensitive environment. That's why we're doing the mitigated negative declaration, which at the moment, I don't agree with. I think we need really good noise protection, really good light protection, and really thoughtful planting, to reflect the fact that the Audi parcel in particular -- Well, for the lighting, it's all of them -- backs up directly on the open space and is visible there. And we need better, more intense landscaping that is geared to the fact that this is adjacent to an open space preserve. And I really don't see a need for any non-native plants on this City of Palo Alto Page 29 site. You've got a lot of space; you've got a lot of options. Right now, there's very exuberant Ceanothus across the street that looks gorgeous, just to the, what I think of south of the office building. I think that this area needs big, visible, dramatic, flowering, carefully-thought-out, year-round, indigenous landscaping. It's a classy and fashionable thing to have, and I think it would enhance your brand. I think, staff, for lighting, I want to know that, if this deviates from the Dark Nights policy, why? When we get to a later agenda item I'm going to suggest to the Council that one of the items to be considered is the abatement of the existing light facilities on other sites in this area that we would never approve now. And we do not have an obligation to maintain them forever. We have the right to say phase those things out. And I think your application has made it clear why that would be desirable. In terms of FAR calculations, one of the things this demonstrates are that statutes or ordinances never keep up with reality. And what we have here is not a factory, but a very large parking structure, and a compressed very large parking structure. And it seems to me the environmental good things that come out of that are considerable. At the same time, if you think of floor area ratios, it's designed to limit perceived mass. This doesn't do that. That's going to be a call for the City Council. But that does mean that in design senses, you kind of need to minimize the mass. I don't think that the Audi facility in particular looks at all okay. I think it is going to be visible for a while, and it needs further greening, further landscaping, further something, and further detail. And I agree also that as you go down Embarcadero, and as you go down East Bayshore, you've got these big walls that are opportunities for something wonderful that relates to the Baylands. Probably some kind of art. We had earlier art proposals, and I think something may work. One of the things you pointed out is that you no longer have the sea of cars around your facility. Instead, you've sort of got this jewel box display of one car. I guess two. There's one in the window at Audi. But again, you're going to have (inaudible) glass. Maybe that doesn’t happen. That leaves room for other kinds of visual embellishment without being overly busy, and I think it would be a good idea for that to be about the Baylands and not about automotive wonderfulness. I've got some other notes here. I think the point about ground birds is important, but I don't know what it means. Staff, it would be helpful to have further information on that. It concerns me that the carwash, which appears to be a bit of a nuisance, is located so close to your neighbor and the Baylands. I'd like it more internalized to your own operations. I don't think that the 70 dB standard, I don't know if it's appropriate here, staff. This is a special design review, and what I'm concerned about is I don’t want to hear a carwash when I'm walking on those trails, if I have an option not to. And I don't know, you know, freeway and car noise is already so big that it won't be apparent, but generally, our ears are aware of different kinds of noise. So, if it's not drone- like, we're probably going to hear it, and that's not a good thing. One of the questions that Alex asked is whether there's a conditional use permit, and I don't know what he was thinking about, but what I'm thinking about is night operations. How late, and how long? What are the noise-producing things going to be going? I know that traditionally with auto service, we've been very worried about the sound of pneumatic guns and what-not. Are we right in thinking that won't be a problem in this facility? Because the main thing I think about in terms of thinking about the Baylands, thinking about compatibility, is how does it look and sound from the Baylands, and how does it affect its wildlife? And this site... I think one of the things the applicant has going for them is it's not a very happy site right now, so a lot of the things they do are bound to improve on existing reality. But, good access for pedestrians and bicyclists through the Baylands in a way that ways, "Here it is, come this way." Compatible planting that enhances the environment. And trapping the adverse consequences that emerge from light and sound on the site. I think this is actually a pretty good use for this site. This is a difficult, complicated piece of land. It's sort of sunk. It's got that huge electrical pylon on front of it. So, I don't think this is a bad use, per se. I think it's a good use. I also think you probably have relatively little traffic compared to a restaurant, a popular restaurant. I may be wrong; you're nodding your head. That's another thing that's desirable here. The other thing I'd say, you're going to get a lot of slow drive-by. You're on a very congested corner, so people have a lot of opportunity to study your site. And I think that that is something you can use to your advantage. I hope that this does succeed, and that you and staff can make sense of what we’re saying. Osma, did you have other comments? City of Palo Alto Page 30 Board Member Thompson: I didn't really conclude at the end, but I would say, just to agree with Vice Chair Baltay, that I don't think this project is close in terms of its design. And I agree with what you said, that there is a lot of good opportunity here, but I don’t think the current proposal is taking advantage of it. Chair Furth: Can you be a little more specific in telling people what you're looking for? Board Member Thompson: Yeah. I think, in general, it would be good to see a design that has a better relationship with the environment, with not just the Baylands, but also have a level of pedestrian-scale design elements. I'm okay with the setback, how far away you are from the sidewalk, but there's still a lot of blank walls, and a lot of, sort of plain corners that are not being buffered by landscape or any other kind of architectural embellishment. Whatever that may be. I think also, you know, you have this big rooftop parking lot. We didn’t talk about what that material is, but if it's a dark asphalt material up there, that's a heat island. That would need protection. I really like David's idea of planting part of the roof, but also having that kind of visibility at the top would soften your edges, soften your corners, and make this otherwise very massive building a bit more palatable. And I agree that providing a bike lane should be possible, you know, given the size of the site. Was that clear? Chair Furth: Thanks. Any other closing remarks? David. Board Member Hirsch: I've listened to a lot of very good comments from fellow board members. One of the ones was Peter's idea that we somehow see that machine inside. It would be great to actually express that somehow on the outside. It just seems to me, looking at the renderings here, that it's possible to do something with that. You know, it could be visible around the corner. You'd have to work hard on that one, I'm sure, but somehow if it could be brought out, or at least you indicate those car uses moving up and down within. Just like the computer museum, or one of those... The airplane museum further down 101. Kind of want to go there and see those things happen. Well, you're creating an incredible machine for moving cars, and it's not known, you just go into the sales department and... I don't think you even see it in there. I haven't looked at it that closely. And I think the bike ideas are very important, coming around that corner and making the turn. It should hopefully be improved on the way down, towards the Baylands. But moving it inboard I think is a terrific idea. And then you can save more of the trees, which I think is something that's missing on the front. It still needs some tree canopy, street-feel to that corner. That would be vastly improved if you managed to keep the oak trees and just moved the bike path around there. I've taken that trip by bike. I couldn't find the bridge the first time, had to ask a policeman who happened to be there. I'm hoping that Palo Alto someday will do a real bridge that connects. I think it's in the works, but who knows when it will be done? I kind of feel that maybe the idea of the front of this building could turn the corner better, and I'd like to ask you to study that a bit. It could make a softer corner to this building and start to begin to reduce the sense of mass. I like the step-back, both in the front and at the top, but I think something of turning the corner with a circular feel to it could be a vast improvement to reducing the sense of mass. And that might also take care of the entry issues, which Peter commented on. You know? Chair Furth: Anybody else before we...? Vice Chair Baltay: On the mitigated negative dec...? Chair Furth: Oh, mitigated negative dec. Anybody have any comments on that? You can, of course, submit them later. Vice Chair Baltay: I was hoping to point out, in my opinion, Category 10, Land Use and Planning, item B, does the project have any conflict with applicable land use, etc. I think the project has a potentially significant impact in its conflict with the Baylands design guidelines. It's not clear to me that it's a less- than-significant impact right now with the design we have, so I think that should be a potentially significant impact. That's item 10-B. It should be changed one column over. City of Palo Alto Page 31 Board Member Lew: I previously commented on the carwash and the noise item in the report, and I didn't really see the follow-up in the drawings. Right? The issue was trying to reduce the carwash noise with use of fences, or what-not. Chair Furth: And I had an item, a comment -- and I don't know what the answer is, but -- this is in a 100-year flood plain, and it' s designed with six inches of freeboard, to the current federal level? Ms. Gerhardt: Correct. The flood zone level is 11 feet, and the finished floor of the project will be 11 1/2 feet. Chair Furth: Okay, so, City Council has just, I believe, directed preparation of a (inaudible) study to implement the Comprehensive Plan, so I guess I'd like some discussion in the negative dec about why there's no risk to persons or property on this site, as it relates to this development. Which I think is still a CEQA finding because of sea level rise. But if it's not, that will be fine. But I think it is. That's it, I think. MOTION Chair Furth: Do you want this continued, to when? A date uncertain? Ms. Gerhardt: I think continued to a date uncertain is best. Chair Furth: All right. I will say, if we have to choose between seeing the car lift and not killing birds, I'd vote for not killing birds. Vice Chair Baltay: I want both. Chair Furth: If it's possible to square the circle, I'm sure they will. All right. A motion, please. Vice Chair Baltay: I move that we continue this project to a date uncertain. Chair Furth: Is there a second? Board Member Lew: I will second. Chair Furth: Motion by Vice Chair Baltay, second by Board Members Lew and Hirsch, to continue this to a date uncertain. All those in favor say aye. All opposed? Hearing none, that motion passes 5-0. MOTION PASSES 5-0. Chair Furth: Thank you all for coming. We will adjourn for five minutes. [The Board took a short break.] Subcommittee Items 3. 695 Arastradero Road [18PLN-00333]: Subcommittee Review of a Previously Approved Project That was Conditioned to Return With Project Changes Related to the Building Orientation, Bicycle Parking, and Landscaping. Environmental Assessment: Exempt From the Provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in Accordance With Guideline Section 15303 (New Small Structures). Zoning District: RT-35 SOFA II CAP (Residential Transition). For More Information Contact the Project Planner, Claire Hodgkins, at claire.hodgkins@cityofpaloalto.org Chair Furth: Okay, before we have our subcommittee go off to deal with 695 Arastradero Road - and that subcommittee is Peter and Osma - we have two discussion items. (See below for Subcommittee approval memo) Board Member Questions, Comments or Announcements City of Palo Alto Page 32 Chair Furth: The first one is the Architectural Review Board Annual Report to City Council. The second was a review of the draft letter to City Council regarding small cell telecommunication facilities. Let's flip those and look at small cell telecommunications facilities first. 2. Review of Draft Letter to City Council Regarding Small Cell Telecommunication Facilities Chair Furth: You received an email of a revised version of... Board Member Lew: (inaudible-off microphone) Chair Furth: You don't need a bunch. There's only one version. And we have a member of the public, Jeff Hoel, who wishes to comment. And we also received a letter from Dr. Fleming, right? Vice Chair Baltay: I'd also like to disclose that I had a conversation with Mr. Hoel about our statement, and I also had several email requests for correspondence from various members of the community, which I did not engage in. Chair Furth: Okay. Mr. Hoel. Jeff Hoel: [spells last name] I had some comments, pretty much following from your discussion on March 21st. First, it seemed to me like staff was trying to say that the applicant wasn't even permitted to ask for an exception unless the objective rules said there were no available options. And I think that's too restrictive. I think the applicant should be allowed to ask for an exception, and that would get them back into the subjective aesthetic standards realm, which I think you're more comfortable with. Second. I would say don't worry about excluding some legitimate aesthetic designs if that's what you think is necessary to exclude designs that you think are not aesthetic. And then, third, don't allow staff to hijack the process for the sake of making life simpler for staff. This is what's important to the City. This is not what's important to staff. Next, I want to mention, staff construction of the objective aesthetic rules was in the form of a menu, where the applicant gets to select anything that's on the menu. And then, there's an undergrounded thing on the menu, but there's nothing that compels an applicant to select that. There was an experiment during your discussion last time about how, if an undergrounded solution is feasible, then you have to pick it. And only if undergrounded is not feasible are you allowed to look at the other things on the menu. Another thing you could think about is maybe, if a streetlight pole is feasible, then you're not allowed to look at any options on the menu that don't use streetlight poles. One reason to consider that is the City has this multi-decade program for undergrounding everything, and if they should ever completely execute that, then antennas on utility poles will not be possible anyhow. So, why start going in that direction? Finally, as a possible option, you could say if an integrated pole is feasible, don't allow anything that isn't an integrated pole. Thanks. Chair Furth: Thank you. Questions of Mr. Hoel? Thank you. No questions. At our last meeting, we had two items. One was commenting on the staff proposal and change regulations, and we did have comment, which Mr. Hoel's comments are addressing as well. And then, a statement drafted by Vice Chair Baltay to send to City Council, and what you have is a largely subjective... sorry, largely... It's a matter of form, not content. It deletes sections that we didn't get consensus on, with the hopes that this could be a consensus statement. There is a copy of it over at the table. We received at least one comment, saying please add to this that you think the ARB should be more central to the process. I myself am not, don't want to add that to this. Is it okay as it stands, or does anybody want to change it? Vice Chair Baltay: I'd like to express my gratitude to Chair Furth for revising the document. I think it's very good the way it is. Board Member Hirsch: Are you looking for comments on...? Chair Furth: No, I'm looking for "yes" votes. Board Member Hirsch: A "yes" vote on it, without comments? City of Palo Alto Page 33 Chair Furth: Yes, but you may comment. Board Member Hirsch: Okay, I will. On the issues, the 1 through 5, I think under "Antennas," it should say, "of a minimal size to perform their function." After "shroud." There's a lot of good comments made by City Planning, I think, about locations of and dimensions of things, but it would be important for us to state a minimal dimension size to perform their function. Under 3, I think it's a better word to say, "or not appropriate," rather than "adequate." Chair Furth: How about "good?" Board Member Hirsch: That's too subjective, in my mind. Why wouldn't "appropriate" be a good word for [crosstalk]. Chair Furth: [crosstalk] "adequate." [crosstalk] However, I'm not going to wordsmith. Board Member Hirsch: And then... Vice Chair Baltay: You're talking "appropriate" instead of "adequate?" Board Member Hirsch: Yeah. So... Vice Chair Baltay: Sure. Board Member Hirsch: Also, then under the equipment mounted horizontal cables, wires, are also not appropriate. Under 4... Just one moment. I have to look where I am here. Under 2, radio power equipment concealed by simple well-designed shroud and mounted at the top of either an existing streetlight pole, either within the antenna and... Chair Furth: I'm sorry, I'm lost. I'm looking... Board Member Hirsch: Okay, I'm going back up to 2 now. After utility pole... Chair Furth: Yes. Board Member Hirsch: ...either within the antenna enclosure or immediately below it, but also contained within a well-designed shroud. Insert it there. Chair Furth: I don't find that helpful. Vice Chair Baltay: It sounds like you're making that one more complicated, David. Say it again, please. Board Member Hirsch: Yup. Either within the antenna enclosure, so the radios would be either mounted within the antenna enclosure or immediately below it, but also contained within a well-designed shroud. Vice Chair Baltay: I think that's covered just by saying "concealed by." Don't you? That leaves you the option of mounting it inside or concealing it outside. We're trying to keep it simple. Board Member Hirsch: Mounted [crosstalk]. Chair Furth: Trying to make this very short. Board Member Hirsch: ...existing street (inaudible), or acceptable design. Chair Furth: What is it that you want to add? Board Member Hirsch: Well, the radio equipment, you know, depending upon the size of it, it either fits within the existing shroud... Chair Furth: Right. City of Palo Alto Page 34 Board Member Hirsch: ... or the antenna... Chair Furth: Right. Board Member Hirsch: ... or it's going to be separate from it in some way. Chair Furth: Right. Board Member Hirsch: Perhaps it might even be on the pole. But in that case, if it's somewhat bigger enclosure, whatever, without getting into the detail, it should be contained within a shroud. Chair Furth: That's what this says. Board Member Hirsch: But it should also... suppose it... It wouldn't be either in the same shroud, or in its own shroud. Which could be a different shape. Chair Furth: That's true. But I don't think that is precluded by what this sentence says. Board Member Hirsch: "Acceptable design." Well, all right. Okay. Moving on. I really have a problem with 4, talking about the underground issues. Reality is that they're not likely to be very many of those ever approved, because there is so much conflict between underground utilities. It's very expensive, and it's very disruptive, as well, in construction. So, if space and functionality permits it, what I would add here: "If space and functionality permits and the above conditions 1 or 2 cannot be met, then radio and power equipment can be located in the vault in the street.” Vice Chair Baltay: David, you're making it way too complicated. Board Member Hirsch: No, I don't think so. [crosstalk] Board Member Hirsch: You really can't state it the way it's stated there. Radio and power equipment should be, normally be installed below grade. You can't say that. Chair Furth: Well, we can, but if you believe that's poor policy, then I understand. Board Member Hirsch: Yes, no, I think we can't create that policy. In the first place, it's not physically possible in most locations, and secondly, I... Chair Furth: How about, "should be installed below grade where possible?" Board Member Hirsch: I'd go along with that. No, I don't know. I think that you're going to have... Chair Furth: Where feasible? Board Member Hirsch: ...tremendous backlash on that one from the company, installation companies. No, it's... Chair Furth: They have all said they would do it where feasible, but it's not feasible, so why are they going to backlash against this? Board Member Hirsch: If they cannot put it on the pole, then they can [crosstalk]... Chair Furth: That's a policy difference, so that's not the position Peter was taking at our last meeting. So, I think that's a policy difference between the two of you, but I could be wrong. Vice Chair Baltay: Aren't we saying, David, it can be either below the ground or up on the top? And why fight against putting it below the ground if they can find a way to do it? I mean, it seems to me there's plenty... This is very clearly saying it can also go on the top. City of Palo Alto Page 35 Board Member Hirsch: Well, I'm saying that if space and functionality permits and the above conditions cannot be met. Chair Furth: You're saying your preference is for putting it on the pole. Board Member Hirsch: My preference is that, if you put it underground, there's a whole lot of other things that happen, too. Chair Furth: I get that. You're saying your preference is [crosstalk]. Board Member Hirsch: [crosstalk] put it on the pole and... Chair Furth: Got it. Okay, so, that's a difference of opinion. Vice Chair Baltay: But we're looking for a compromise, David. My preference is that you put it underground, but we're trying to find a way to say something that leaves room for everybody and still puts all of us behind something. Isn't it fair to just leave both in there? Board Member Hirsch: No, I mean, you're making it as a... Vice Chair Baltay: Just put it down below [crosstalk].... Board Member Hirsch: ... requirement that it should be put in the ground, primarily. That's the... Chair Furth: Or making it as a preference, where it's feasible. [crosstalk] Vice Chair Baltay: It's an "or." Board Member Lew: It's an "or." Board Member Hirsch: "Or sufficiently above the ground." Vice Chair Baltay: It really doesn’t weight one over the other, I don't believe. Chair Furth: It doesn't. [crosstalk] Vice Chair Baltay: I think the Board has been clear that we don't agree [crosstalk]... Board Member Hirsch: ... line of site. Well, I mean, you said "out of the line of site." What's the "out of line of site?" What does that mean? Vice Chair Baltay: I've offered various ideas, but we don't have consensus on that. We're trying to at least [crosstalk] that we think there's an issue. Board Member Hirsch: If you want to say that radio and power equipment should be, normally would be installed below grade, which I don't agree it should normally be installed below grade. Chair Furth: But that's not what the sentence says, David. The sentence says it should normally be installed below grade or above ground. Ms. Gerhardt: What if we remove the word "normally?" Board Member Hirsch: I'm sorry? Chair Furth: I'm... "Normally," it would be fine. Ms. Gerhardt: We could remove the word "normally." City of Palo Alto Page 36 Chair Furth: That would probably make it read better. I always like removing words. Board Member Hirsch: Well, I certainly would take out [crosstalk]... Chair Furth: (inaudible) Board Member Hirsch: ... below grade, or I would say as per 1 or 2, you know? Because 2 or 2 says not just out of the line of sight, but it says at the top of the pole. Chair Furth: They're cumulative. Vice Chair Baltay: What if you flip the order, David. Should be installed sufficiently above the ground, etc., or below grade? The same meaning, but if you feel better about it. Chair Furth: And then, if you make that 1, and then 2, 1 becomes 2, and 2 becomes 3, and 3 becomes 4. Then that's probably a better way of thinking about it. Board Member Hirsch: Well, I go along with, but I'd like 1 or 2 to be the primary requirement here. Chair Furth: Yep. Board Member Hirsch: One and 2. Vice Chair Baltay: I agree. Those are the likely solutions, and that's why they are there. Board Member Hirsch: I don't like the word "sufficiently out of line of sight." As per 1. Chair Furth: You don't... I mean... You're sounding more (inaudible) than I. But you don't, if I'm trying to write a short document, I don’t want to reference things that are already true. Because these statements all have meaning. They're not contradictory. You have to meet all of them. At this point, I'm getting over- invested in [crosstalk]. Board Member Hirsch: Okay, well, those are my comments on that. There's also one other aspect of this. It's a disconnect switch. It's a small element, but it's not part of this at all, yet. Chair Furth: We did not address disconnect switches in this policy. I agree. Board Member Thompson: Does it not fall under equipment? Board Member Hirsch: Well, it shouldn't because the disconnect switch could be... Chair Furth: It's down low. Board Member Hirsch: ... down low, could be down low. There are some limitations, I gather, on it, as well. But it should be separate from the others. Vice Chair Baltay: Well, I think the policy staff already put forth required the disconnect to be underground in almost every case. That wasn't something we even addressed. I hate to get into that level of detail in a letter to the Council. Board Member Hirsch: Okay. I'm fine. Chair Furth: Which of the five statements would you like to have lead off, David? What's now 4? Board Member Hirsch: Yeah, uh-huh. Chair Furth: Okay. I'll move it up. Okay. Board Member Thompson: I have a question. Is this...? We've been asked by the public repeatedly to insist that we continue to review. Is this letter going to talk about that? City of Palo Alto Page 37 Chair Furth: It's not designed to talk about that. Board Member Thompson: Okay. Chair Furth: On our next item, you might want to bring it up. Vice Chair Baltay: I've given thought to that, Osma, and I guess that's really a policy issue for City Council. And for us to weigh in as the ARB seems inappropriate. As citizens, we should have an opinion, but as the ARB, I’m not sure we should be... Chair Furth: Our job is what they want us to do. Vice Chair Baltay: ... discussing what we should do. That's why I didn't feel it was... That was sort of the beauty of the changes Wynne made, is that we got away from that. I think. Board Member Thompson: Okay, so you're saying that we shouldn't express a position on that? Vice Chair Baltay: As a board, officially, I think it's inappropriate for us to do that. It's like weighing in on the zoning on the previous project. We're not supposed to sit in on zoning. Chair Furth: One of the things.... Yeah. We'll talk about the other stuff later. Board Member Thompson: Okay. Do you have any comments, Board Member Lew? Board Member Lew: I’m fine with the letter. MOTION Chair Furth: Could we have a motion, please? I have notes for staff. Vice Chair Baltay: I move that we accept this letter, as amended by our discussion, and direct staff to present it to Council. Chair Furth: Is there a second? Board Member Hirsch: I'll second that. Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you, David. Chair Furth: All those in favor? All those opposed. Keep silent. Board Member Thompson: I'm going to abstain. Chair Furth: Thank you very much for your graciousness, and here for staff is a copy of the mark-up. Vice Chair Baltay: (inaudible). Board Member Thompson: I don't know... Chair Furth: Oh, I missed that. Board Member Thompson: I guess what I'll say is I... Chair Furth: (inaudible-off microphone) Board Member Thompson: Oh, did we all have to be unanimous on it? Chair Furth: Yes. Board Member Thompson: I guess I'm okay with it. I think it's one of those... I haven't had a chance to read the new one, up until it was just presented to me. It seems fine. City of Palo Alto Page 38 Chair Furth: (inaudible) your email. Sorry about the delay. Board Member Thompson: The only... Okay. Yeah. It seems fine as a letter. I don't know what it means in terms of... I feel like the important thing here is if we still have purview over this stuff. I know we're not supposed to talk about it, but it seems like this letter is sort of hinting at, if we did have purview, this would be our opinion. Right? Chair Furth: I think it's also, what have we learned through these long and painful hearings? We gave them a lot of comments in terms of comments on the staff proposal, and the proposed ordinance, and this is just some other stuff. Thank you. Board Member Thompson: Okay. You can change me to a "yes" then. Vice Chair Baltay: Thank you. Chair Furth: So, that is [crosstalk] unanimously. Thank you very much for your graciousness. MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY (5-0) AFTER BOARD MEMBER THOMPSON VOTED YES INSTEAD OF ABSTAINING FROM THE VOTE. 1. Architectural review Board Annual Report to City Council: Review of Draft Letter. Chair Furth: Okay. Next item is item 1 under this, which is the annual report. You should have a copy of some notes that were just distributed to you. Did everybody get a copy? This one sheet? Bullet points. Alex Lew and I met yesterday. Had a wide-ranging discussion. And the Architectural Review Board is supposed to send a report not less than once a year to the Planning Commission and City Council, for the purpose of communicating the concerns of the Board with respect to the City's plans, policies, ordinances and procedures, as these affect the projects which the Board reviews. We looked at a couple of things. We looked at a list that Alex had prepared of all of the items we covered in the last calendar year. We looked at some previous reports. And Peter also, you will recall, prepared a report on the projects we looked at, and their fate when they went on to City staff to review. And we tried to sort of group the kinds of issues we saw arising. Not everything is on this list that we thought about, but most of the things. And I propose that whatever we send, we attach an exhibit at the back with a little more detail about what we saw and what we did. In terms of uses, we thought we'd heard concern about the loss of spaces for small business services. Also, the loss of housing units as small apartment buildings become larger, detached structures. In terms of parking standards -- and I sometimes think every difficult decision we have is about, where do you put the cars? Certainly, we heard that today. One was the tree loss that happens when you have a CS District, and you replace surface parking lots, which, whatever their vices are, did have landscaping requirements, with underground parking, with no setback, which can lead to no space for significantly-sized trees. And the adequacy of shopping center-wide parking standards. This is a terrible sentence, but as they shift to more person and visit-intense, traffic-intense uses. Alex pointed out that there is probably a big decline in the demand for retail space throughout the country, as well as the region, so they replaced them with your-body-has-to-be-here uses. Restaurants, day spas, soul cycle, things that do two things. One, they create a big peak hour demand for restaurant seating, and they also create a continuing demand for getting your body there for other kinds of uses. I'm trying to think; how would you qualify (inaudible) can't be under that. Also, the importance of monitoring TDM plans that we're increasingly relying onto address parking issues, which takes significant City staff time. And City staff time is at a premium. They could spend their entire lives just doing things that Planning and Transportation and ARB brought up as interesting things to think about. If we shift to TDM plans that require a different kind of and more-intense monitoring than parking lot space requirements. I mean, it's sort of similar to when we've got a big inventory of below-market-rate units that weren't located in completely dedicated projects, then you have this big inventory of intangible assets that somebody has... You have to police the collateral, or they turn into something else when you're not looking. It's an expense that the City needs to figure out how to fund. Nothing is that easy. City of Palo Alto Page 39 Some issues were about curb management. Maybe there's a better way to put this, but one of the things that we've noticed is that when we look at designs, we have to think a lot more about accommodating ride service pick-ups and drop-offs. That can conflict with dedicated bike paths, for example. And also about accommodating new modes of transportation, scooters and things. Alex had some thoughts about places where they've done some thinking about it. Mobility. I'm mobility-impaired for the next two weeks, so, once again, this is basically the benches issue, about pedestrian mobility. And maybe there's a plea, basically, for thinking about setting and implementing street future standards that combine private and public seating, and that make possible walking for those who need to rest. Because often, it seems to me, we have a block on a downtown side street, for example, and there's no place to sit. And this may be true even though there's extensive city-owned parking lot perimeters. So, we wouldn't always have to impose this burden on a private building, but when we are doing these sidewalk-thinking, it would be good to have some kind of standard that staff and the public and we could work with. SOFA-2, we've had more projects that we've turned down in SOFA-2 than anywhere. Right? Vice Chair Baltay: (inaudible-off microphone) Chair Furth: Only one in the last year, but Corner Fourth, as well. Two projects that have not gotten through us. The old drive-through... Board Member Thompson: Which projects are these? Vice Chair Baltay: Dave Kleinman's project... Chair Furth: Dave Kleinman's project. Vice Chair Baltay: ...which we said no to. Chair Furth: We said no to. Vice Chair Baltay: Yes. Chair Furth: And then, the project adjacent to the recently-approved project. Vice Chair Baltay: I think they just stopped coming back to us. I don't think we gave them a no. Chair Furth: Well, we have not been able to recommend approval. How's that? Vice Chair Baltay: Yes. Chair Furth: And I don’t know what we could say about that, but it seems to be an issue that... To really look, meet the standards in that area. The height limit doesn't permit the kind of development that would sustain below-grade parking, and trying to meet the existing parking standards. That would give us a very bulky building when it's an interior. I don't know. And then, El Camino Real, I know we've had discussions about repetitive designs. I don't know if there's anything to say about that, but we do hear from the public about continuing loss of places to go. We know there's a disincentive for social spaces in new hotels, and once again, the zero setback lines and the higher FAR lead to no really significant landscaping. Might want to phrase that differently. This was an issue-spotting memo. I didn't mention the fact that, which I suppose we ought to say something about, which is that we get the biggest public turnout on telecom. If they want to know what we've been doing, that's what we notice. Vice Chair Baltay: Do you want everyone to talk? Chair Furth: Yeah? Comments about things to come off, things we should add? Vice Chair Baltay: I think [crosstalk] Alex for going through this list, it's great. If we can pair it down a bit... Chair Furth: Sure. What's important to you? City of Palo Alto Page 40 Vice Chair Baltay: ... it might help. As I go through the list, looking at it, the second one, loss of housing units as small apartment buildings, etc., I'm not sure that that's... Chair Furth: We're not ready to go on that one? Vice Chair Baltay: That's really something to say about that. I think the first comment is a very astute one, that we are observing that there are numerous small businesses being displaced, and the Council should be aware of that. They may not be seeing that. Chair Furth: And Alex has got some examples of approaches from other cities. Alex, is that right? Which we could include as a reference. Vice Chair Baltay: The second thing, parking standards. I think the bottom two are critically important. The first one is true, but I’m not sure there's much we can say or do about it. That's just... Chair Furth: I think it's important to tell them that this one of the byproducts that they probably weren't aiming for when they adopted the standard. Vice Chair Baltay: Fair enough. Fair enough. Chair Furth: That's my guess. Vice Chair Baltay: I think the second one, about the shopping center, is something that the Council really needs to be aware of. The fact that the parking ratios are based on strictly retail and the uses are changing. That's probably what's driving the parking, but it's pretty tight there. The third, curb management, the first item there is something, I was at a Council meeting the other night and they were starting to notice that, it was on the Parmani Hotel project, the guy was saying that almost everybody come to his hotel by Uber or Lyft. The hotel was sold out, and there were five cars in the parking lot. It's an astonishing number. The City needs to, the code needs to start thinking about how these drop-offs are going to take place. It's a good thing for us to point to, the county. The SOFA thing, I think those are so detailed, complicated projects. Chair Furth: Let it go? Vice Chair Baltay: Just let it go, yeah. On El Camino Real, I think the zero setback line and higher FAR leads to loss of landscaping is true, but the other two, to me, I don't know what you mean by that. Loss of places to go is just... Chair Furth: Well, the bowling alley is gone, Rickey's Hyatt is gone. As it redevelops, there are fewer social spaces. Vice Chair Baltay: But isn't that a planning issue, not an architectural review issue? Chair Furth: It's things that have come to our attention that we should think about when thinking about planning [crosstalk]. Vice Chair Baltay: Okay, okay, coming to our attention, it's true. And then... Chair Furth: And one of the things... When the failed plan for the redevelopment of the Hyatt site went through years ago, one of the plusses was there was going to be a big, like, destination lobby. Not quite the Ahwahnee, but... First of all, there was a big public meeting room there, and many local social and community/public service groups met there. But, there was going to be practically a destination lobby, where you could go meet somebody. Have a drink, have some tea. And your kids could play in the playground to the rear. Didn't happen. And it seems that as it redevelops, we're getting fewer social spaces. We get complaints from neighbors that they're getting all these hotels, and they do nothing for us. And one of the ways that they could do something for them is if they have good places to meet somebody. You know, go get a cup of coffee, go sit with your kid in a stroller while you meet somebody City of Palo Alto Page 41 else with a kid in a stroller. But our zoning is so worried about traffic impacts that the owners don't have an incentive. In fact, they have a disincentive to provide those spaces. Maybe that needs more thought. Vice Chair Baltay: We should probably make it clear that it's probably coming about through parking requirements. Chair Furth: Okay. Vice Chair Baltay: Just to be clear. Chair Furth: It goes under parking. Vice Chair Baltay: Well, however you put it, but I think you're right. Because of parking, people don't want to put in a coffee shop. We want coffee shops. Chair Furth: And we want social spaces. At least we hear that. Vice Chair Baltay: Lastly, I don't know if it's the right place to put it, but I hear a lot of feedback, and as a practicing architect in town, just the review process, how is it going? How are we doing vis-à-vis getting feedback from people going through the ARB process? Are we doing sufficient public outreach so that people understand what we're doing? And should the ARB be involved in different ways? I have opinions about that, but I’m not sure if the annual letter to Council is the place to address that. I'm just throwing it out there as something on my mind. Chair Furth: I certainly have had people come, you know, make coffee dates to talk about our process. Vice Chair Baltay: I spoke to Chop Keenan, a big developer in town, the other day. He said he's not doing any more Palo Alto projects, period. He's too sick of the process. I don't know what to say to that, but that's just feedback. Chair Furth: Well, he didn't put a bench in front of the theater, but, didn't ask for it. Other people's comments? Something we left out that you think we should mention? Do you want to do something on process? One of the things that I heard was, you know, why don't we ever approve anything on first hearing? That's not true, that we don't. We get things that we say they did a great job. But they tend to be the simpler projects. Are there any statistical analyses that we want to put in? What I mainly hear is that it's a long time between iterations. I mean, the project this morning was particularly complicated and difficult. A difficult site, complex use. Board Member Lew: I think we should include some statement about how we, about the review process. Chair Furth: Okay. Board Member Lew: Just brief. Right? Chair Furth: You can write it. Board Member Lew: Oh. Chair Furth: Seriously. Board Member Lew: And I think I would probably include outreach, as well. Just a statement that we're paying attention to it. Chair Furth: Yeah. And also that we are hoping, one of us has undertaken to create a kind of community workshop to help with it. If we put it in here, you'll have to do it. Vice Chair Baltay: Put it in there, yeah. Chair Furth: That would be Peter. City of Palo Alto Page 42 Board Member Thompson: Peter's is willing (inaudible-off microphone). Chair Furth: He's been willing for months. Is it next year we do architectural awards? You'll do architectural awards? Ms. Gerhardt: Correct. On the... 2020. Chair Furth: Do we want to say anything about what worked really well? One of the things I really noticed about the Mayor's State of the City speech is it really cheered me up. He listed accomplishments. Anything we want to say? Do we really think it was great that you did thus-and-so because the process went well? Vice Chair Baltay: That's what the awards program does. Sort of pointing all that out. Chair Furth: Right. I just was wondering if we had anything else. Or we could say that the removal of the retail requirement in SOFA-2 made it possible to approve projects that formally couldn't be approved. But that may be very small. I mean, the fact that you now have discussions and not require on-site commercial loading zones in these small parcels. I mean, those were all minor things, but probably nothing we need, we don't need to tell them what a great job they're doing. We'll tell staff. Those are good changes. So, should Alex and I go back and...? Vice Chair Baltay: What's the next step? You guys draft up a real letter? Chair Furth: We go back and draft something, yes. And we will get it to you not 10 minutes before the meeting. Vice Chair Baltay: Thanks. I think this is great. We're going to get there with something that's useful. Chair Furth: Okay. And short. All right. Vice Chair Baltay: Wynne, I wanted to quickly add one last thing under this section here. This is to staff, really, but in my poking around for the Mercedes project, I happened to take a good look at the sewage treatment plant that we approved a few years back. I wonder if staff could check if that really is the way that we approved it. The building is entirely visible from the road. I remember going through a lot of trouble to get some landscape screening and stuff, and nothing whatsoever has been put in place. And the building is just a concrete box. Again, I remember doing quite a bit of thought about the design and the detailing, how the parapet was going to be done. Could staff investigate that and get back to us, what was actually built? Is that really what we approved? Ms. Gerhardt: We normally, on most projects, have a final inspection to do exactly what you're saying, so I will double-check if that's been done and get back to you with details. Chair Furth: Thank you. Vice Chair Baltay: Thanks. Board Member Lew: My recollection is that the Board deleted all of the trellises and that's why I voted against the motion. You're talking about the landscaping in front, like, at the gate? Vice Chair Baltay: No, no, on the other side. Whatever the main road is that goes between the airport and what used to be the landfill. As you drive by, there's just absolutely no landscaping whatsoever. And they had all kinds of renderings, showing, once we plant these trees, and how you're not going to see this building... Board Member Lew: Oh, I see. Chair Furth: If you could put it on our next agenda, we'll talk about it. I remember that project well, too. I'm always fascinated by Alex's extensive knowledge of Palo Alto history and procedure, including his City of Palo Alto Page 43 ability to remember every single "no" vote. None of which he regrets. Most of which we think, "Oh, yeah, you were right." Anything else? Thank you all. Let the record show we almost made it before noon, Osma, which is our goal. Thank you to the subcommittee. See you in two weeks. Adjournment