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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-03-20 Retail Committee Summary MinutesRETAIL COMMITTEE SUMMARY MINUTES Page 1 of 7 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/20/2024 Regular Meeting March 20, 2024 The Retail Committee of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Community Meeting Room and by virtual teleconference at 9:00 A.M. Present In Person: Lauing, Kou Present Remotely: Absent: CALL TO ORDER Council Member Lydia Kou called the meeting to order. The clerk took roll with all present. PUBLIC COMMENT None STAFF UPDATES 1. California Ave Business District a. Updates on 3/12 Workshop on barriers, signage and branding b. Updates on immediate term improvement activities c. Presentation and discussion on Car-free Streets progress and next steps Bruce Fukuji, Assistant to the City Manager, gave a slide presentation discussing updates on California Avenue including an agenda, project timeline, project status, proposed signage, barrier replacement, access planning, bollard types, planter types, Urban Field Studio 1st impressions and initial feedback. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 2 of 7 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/20/2024 Public Comment 1. Jessica wanted to hear what the third party thought on designing this if it was the appropriate place for a bicycle thoroughfare. She was excited that there is economic development help coming. 2. Roxy was bothered that the entrance looks temporary. He discussed how California Avenue was a thriving area before being closed off. He suggested making it a one-way to lead people to the new parking garage. He talked about the importance of aesthetics. 3. John S. spoke about the reasons for vacancies. He discussed the need for safety and cleanliness of the area. 4. Saalick thought the orange signs communicate a construction vibe and feel. He talked about Dashers taking a lot of the nearby parking spaces and leaving garbage. He thought public restrooms would be a good idea. Vice Mayor Ed Lauing explained the formatting of the meeting structure. Council Member Kou asked for some clarity on what Council decided in terms of California Avenue being closed. Vice Mayor Lauing discussed the decision Council made in November of last year that California Avenue would stay closed. That plan starts Staff in a firm direction on how to put up everything in terms of what Mr. Fukuji described. He thought it was worth spending money to get the signage right. He was interested in what was being done to stabilize and unify the regulations on the tents around the parklets on cold nights. Brad Eggleston, Director of Public Works, explained a walkthrough had been done recently and sent letters to permittees asking them to remove tents that were out of compliance. He stated their regulations do not allow sidewalls so they were asking to have those to be removed, also. Kiely Nose, Assistant City Manager, clarified in order to change those standards they would need Council action. Council Member Kou thought the retail owners and businesses need regulations in place that they know what to expect. Having the sidewalls and tents is a barrier to some of the businesses so they should move toward enforcement. Vice Mayor Lauing agreed it should be consistent one way or the other. He said if they wanted to look at roll-down walls at nighttime, it would have to come to Council and be adjudicated across the board to every retailer. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 3 of 7 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/20/2024 Mr. Eggleston stated he would defer to the Assistant City Manager on the ways that could come forward. He added that they have talked about how there are no staff dedicated to this program and it has been an ongoing issue to try to develop and enforce these requirements. Council did approve a new half-time position during the budget process last year and it has taken a while to get to the recruitment for that but he thought they would bring some new dedicated resources to this program soon. Council Member Kou indicated they are still getting business owners stating that they are not receiving the notices early enough. She asked for an idea of how these notices are sent out. Lupita Alamos, Assistant to the City Manager, explained they have a Cal Ave and other business district distribution list and have received feedback on getting it updated. They will look into their business registry to augment and beef up their emailing list. For the upcoming workshop, Staff will be walking Cal Ave to distribute flyers to notify businesses. They will continue to send out email invitations and will be publishing a monthly newsletter to businesses. Council Member Kou asked if Cambridge is included. Ms. Alamos confirmed Cambridge could be included. Council Member wanted to know approximately how long it would take for signage to be produced and installed once a design is in place. She provided input on her preferences for the signs. She thought the businesses might want to participate in the signage coming out from the surface parking areas or coming out of the garage on California Avenue. She questioned if it was possible to have signal lights like the schools have for the California Avenue pedestrian and bike crossing past El Camino. She thought economic development was something they need to go forward on. She thought the public commenter’s question about this possibly being the right place for a bicycle thoroughfare warranted exploring. She had talked to business owners who are tenants and not all property owners keep their rents low or work with their tenants. She found that regulations are important and enforcement needs to take place. She wanted to hear more about the Door Dashers in the parking lots and wondered if there are any regulations about that. She wanted to be sure the landlords and merchants know that there is the El Camino Real Caltrans’ proposal of putting in bicycle lanes on El Camino and taking away all parking. She said if that is an important matter, business and property owners need to start commenting and making sure Caltrans know this will impede their businesses. She would like the business community as well as Staff to start talking about a welcome spring or welcome summer event for California Avenue businesses. Mr. Fukuji described the process and timeline for the different types of signs. They were working on expediting the timing and looking at other suggestions around the language. He agreed to give an approximate timeline at the next meeting. He confirmed they could explore having the lights for the California Avenue pedestrian and bike crossing past El Camino. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 4 of 7 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/20/2024 Mr. Eggleston noted that on Council’s tentative agenda, they are set to the discuss the Caltrans proposal and hear from Caltrans on April 1 so that is a relevant date for businesses that might be interested. Vice Mayor Lauing agreed with Council Member Kou’s reminder that this is not talking about Cal Ave, it is the district, surrounding district and things that happen outside the district that is crucially impactful on Cal Ave. Public Comment 1. Brad E. expressed a need for expediency on this matter. He stated the vacancies were not about rent but about creating the environment so the retailers can thrive. 2. Jessica (Zoom) brought up the left hand turn lane from El Camino Real that used to go onto California Avenue. She thought it was important to turn that into a U-turn only. She agreed that they would not attract anybody new with the state the streets are in. 3. Lisa R. (Zoom) mentioned lack of enforcement of the parking lots, cleanliness issues and safety issues. She thought the delivery drivers needed a dedicated space. 4. John S. thought Council did not need to think this committee was responsible to make every detailed decision and they need to move forward. He expressed a need to enforce the rules. Council Member Kou wanted to see if it was possible to have Transportation and Street Sense included into the discussion for next month for some presentation of where they are and their thoughts on comments and feedback. Mr. Fukuji explained they are in the contracting process with a national expert on ground floor retail issues who has agreed to participate in a discussion about strategies. Ms. Nose said Staff can bring a dialog about both the transportation details of California Avenue as well as the economic development strategies. She noted they are calibrating to a Brown Act public body with public comment so would look at agenda timing. 2. Downtown Business District a. Presentation and discussion on University Ave Streetscape next steps b. Update on pre-approved designs and Ongoing Parklets Program timeline SUMMARY MINUTES Page 5 of 7 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/20/2024 Ashwini Kantak, Project Manager, brought a slide presentation covering the agenda for the University Avenue Streetscape presentation. Casey Case, Consultant, Gates & Associates, presented slides discussing the project background, engagement process, a timeline of outreach events, their vision, goals and priorities, finding consensus on key points, Council direction from December 18, 2023, potential long-term improvement focus limits, concept sketches and images and a summary of their goal to create University Avenue as a destination. Ms. Kantak continued the slide presentation discussing a tentative project timeline, stakeholder and BCC engagement strategy, community engagement and Council direction, near-term improvements related to enhanced cleaning and other proposed improvements and the immediate next steps. Vice Mayor Lauing thought the Near-term improvements – other improvements slide needed more detail. He thought they could incorporate that as a recommendation from the Retail Ad- Hoc to Council at their next meeting if input from the retailers was received in the next month. He thought it was prudent to call out the fact that a long-term complete refurbishing of downtown would take four or five years. Ms. Kantak agreed to try to bring more detail. Council Member Kou asked who the project ambassadors are reaching out to. She thought a parking study would be needed since parking spaces would be eliminated on the long-term improvement. She wanted to make sure that the art work on the corner sites would take families with young children into consideration. She mentioned the stakeholder working group communicating with Palo Alto neighborhoods. Ms. Kantak answered it is now being called Stakeholder Working Group and it is broader in terms of including more interest. Public Comment 1. John S. expressed the importance of expedience moving forward. He begged to have the safety and cleanliness ordinances that were approved four years ago enforced. 2. Brad E. described how he thought the project needed to be expanded. He stated if parking is going to be reduced, it needs to be replaced. He declared the process of getting permits needs to be easier. He suggested revisiting the Retail Protection Ordinance. He reminded that the Parklet Program is temporary. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 6 of 7 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/20/2024 3. Stephanie (Zoom) agreed with both John S. and Brad E. She echoed the issue with the delivery drivers. She talked about a need to consolidate and clean up the unsightly and hazardous newspaper racks. She discussed a lack of cleanliness in the garages. Vice Mayor Lauing commented the City is very active on retail changes and the reason this committee was instituted was to be active and hands on. In his judgment, it was working. He noted they could not legally have full dialog back and forth with the comments. He acknowledged the angst in the last four years on stuff that did not get done. He stated this is a new starting point and they would take it forward, address the retail things in all the districts and make changes. 3. Midtown Business District a. Update on Midtown Merchants meeting Ms. Alamos spoke about a meeting held on February 28. Representatives from the Office of Transportation, Public Works, Parking and Public Art were present. She stated there was a low turnout in attendance. Since then, Staff has been reaching out to engage stakeholders who are helping with coordinating communication efforts and business engagement to see whether it is a time/date or engagement topics that might bring businesses out for discussion and engagement with the City. They would also be meeting with another merchant that afternoon to talk about engagement strategies. They hope to restart the monthly meetings and make progress in that district. She stated they would find additional ways to build and cultivate the business relationships at Midtown. Council Member Kou hoped their current business registry is the one that is being used and added onto the website. She announced that every business and resident is invited to this meeting. FUTURE MEETINGS AND AGENDAS Ms. Nose announced Steve Guagliardo would be taking over the staff administration of this committee. She recognized they did not get through everything on the agenda for that day. They have an update about the preapproved parklet designs as well as more discussion about the University Avenue Streetscape. She planned to speak with Council Member Kou offline on how they want to handle that to make sure they cover those topics in a timely fashion. Steve Guagliardo, Assistant to the City Manager, advised that this is a public meeting that would be held the third Wednesday of every month as scheduled. He advised they had work to figure out exactly what scope they wanted to cover in each meeting and what cadence they want to be receiving updates on certain things. As a Brown Act body, the agenda would be SUMMARY MINUTES Page 7 of 7 Retail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 3/20/2024 going out in advance. He recognized that notice to businesses was not as proactive as it may have been for this particular one. He stated they would be advertising this meeting in advance and aligning the release of the Business Connect Newsletter to be the first week of the month which will be just in time to include the packet for this meeting in that newsletter. They will also include various other updates relative to the business community in that and making sure people are kept aware of various meetings that are happening and progress on each of these items. He noted March is the audit month for HDL. They will be incorporating that data and those contacts into their outreach for Business Connect. He announced the next meeting for this committee would take place on Wednesday, April 17 followed by Wednesday, May 15 and tentatively Wednesday, June 19. He hoped to encourage more participation from the stakeholders going forward and urged the attendees to spread the word. Council Member Kou wanted the community to know there are a lot of working meetings that take place directly with the business districts and the merchants. She hoped the business community would note that and participate in the community stakeholder meetings. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 11:00 A.M.