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Home My WebLink About2024-04-10 Planning and Transportation Commission Verbatim Minutes_______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Verbatim Minutes: April 10, 2024 2 Council Chambers & Virtual 3 6:00 PM 4 5 Call to Order / Roll Call 6 6:03 PM 7 Chair Summa: Okay. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call to order the Planning and 8 Transportation regular mi-, meeting of Wednesday, April 10. And if we could have roll call, 9 please? 10 11 ROLL CALL 12 Administrative Associate Veronica Dao: Yes. Chair Summa? 13 14 Chair Summa: Present. 15 16 Veronica Dao: Vice Chair Chang? 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: Present. 19 20 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 21 22 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Akin: Here. 1 2 Veronica Dao: Can you also confirm you're using Just Cause reason for attending remote and 3 state if there are any persons older than 18 in the room with you? 4 5 Commissioner Akin: I am using Just Cause provisions to be remote, and there are no other 6 persons in the room of any age. 7 8 Veronica Dao: Great, thank you. Commissioner Hechtman? 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Here. 11 12 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 13 14 Commissioner Lu: Here. 15 16 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Reckdahl? 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Here. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Here. 3 4 Veronica Dao: We have a quorum. 5 6 Oral Communications 7 The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 8 Chair Summa: Thank you so very much. And now we will go to the public comment period, 9 which is a chance for people to speak on items that are not on the agenda. Do we have any 10 speakers? I see a lot of… 11 12 Veronica Dao: Give me a second. No, I have no speaker cards or raised hands on Zoom. 13 14 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 15 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 16 Chair Summa: Excellent. We will move right along to s-, agenda changes, additions, and 17 deletions. 18 19 Amy French, Chief Planning Official: There are no changes. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Okay. Then it's time for City Official's r-, City Official Reports, so I will hand it back 1 to you, Ms. French. 2 3 City Official Reports 4 1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 5 6 Amy French: Thank you. One moment. Sharing my screen. This is just a preview of upcoming 7 Planning and Transportation Commission meetings. You all are aware that the April 15 meeting 8 is a joint meeting with City Council, and the packets of the revised – it says adopted on the 9 cover of the H-, that's adopted question mark, of the Housing Element revisions that you should 10 all have in hard copy tonight, and, so we're looking forward to that on Monday. Then we have 11 one more meeting in April. That is to handle the retail study, parking and retail strategies. We 12 do have an ad hoc meeting on April 16. We haven't had an ad hoc meeting since the last, PTC 13 meeting. And then we have our – we're going to have our work plan for the coming year. We'll 14 review our last – past – current year work plan accomplishments and the upcoming goals for 15 the next year. And then we'll have a study session on some state laws that we will need to put 16 into some ordinance, ordinances or one ordinance if we can manage that. In May, we have a 17 couple of meetings there. You can see we have full agendas trying to make it so we don't have 18 any more than three on each of those agendas. So we have the North Ventura Coordinated 19 Area Plan. Some of you were on that working group. And again, the retail strategies. That's our, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. our final meeting. We hope to have review and comments, and then we can bring that to the 1 Council in June. We have another housing project, 660 University, and then at the end of May, 2 we have an open space home. We have the dark skies and bird safe design draft ordinance and 3 an EIR f-, and proposed CIP to come on that May 29 date. Okay? And then in cou-, in this, this 4 month we're finishing up with, Doria as the PTC rep to Council with these items. And then in 5 May we have a couple of meetings already. We're looking toward – I can't recall who's the PTC 6 rep for May. Is that – who is that? I haven't looked. But I'll, I'll be putting those up on the screen 7 – that's… 8 9 Chair Summa: Commissioner Reckdahl. 10 11 Amy French: …okay. So we'll track those for you, Keith. Okay? And that's it for my report. I don't 12 know if Rafael is here with something to share. 13 14 Senior Transportation Engineer Rafael Rius: Yes, I am. 15 16 Amy French: Hi, Rafael. 17 18 Chair Summa: Thank you, Mr. Rius. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Senior Transportation Engineer Rius: Thank you. Rafael Rius, Senior Engineer with the Office of 1 Transportation. Just a couple of updates. It's been asked in past meetings about the El Camino 2 Real, Charleston, Arastradero intersection, and just to update the Commission, it was paved 3 earlier this week. New striping hasn't gone down yet, but it's anticipated in the next couple 4 days. So by the end of this week, we should have all the striping except for the textured 5 crosswalks, which will come in a few more weeks, but the lane lines and, and everything should 6 be complete by this week. Also, by request from the Committee, just some updates about the 7 Rail, the, the Rail Committee. The next committee meeting is April 16 at 2:30 PM. It's a hybrid, 8 online or in person at the Community Room at City Hall, where they'll be discussing the 9 alternatives for both the alignment as well as bike and ped crossings options for Kellogg and 10 Seale. After that, the Rail's also going to go to City Council on April 29 for a study session 11 workshop. That's all the updates I have unless there's any questions. 12 13 Chair Summa: Okay, do – does anyone have a question for Staff? I'm not seeing – I'm seeing 14 one light. Commissioner Hechtman? 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. I just wanted to acknowledge one of the slides. The last 17 slide we saw from Ms. French was the upcoming Council with PTC review, and I think that's a 18 new – I don't remember seeing that in writing before. And so maybe it's a new addition to your 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. staff report, but I really appreciate it, – you always tell us, but it's easier for me to see it and 1 note it that way, so I hope that you continue to do that in coming meetings. Thanks. 2 3 Amy French: Thank you. I do plan to continue that. One caveat, of course, is that items do 4 move, so this is all predictive of what the target dates are for the Planning Department. Thank 5 you. 6 7 Action Items 8 Public Comment is Permitted. Applicants/Appellant Teams: Fifteen (15) minutes, plus three (3) minutes rebuttal. 9 All others: Five (5) minutes per speaker. 10 11 2. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 3265 El Camino Real [24PLN-00012]: Request for 12 PTC Recommendation on the Applicant’s Proposal to Rezone the Subject Site from 13 Commercial Service (CS) to Planned Community/Planned Home Zoning to Allow the 14 Construction of a 100% Affordable, Five-Story, 44 Dwelling Unit Housing Development 15 with Ground Level Lobby and 26 Parking Spaces. Environmental Assessment: Initial 16 Study/15183 Exemption. Zoning District: CS (Commercial Service). 17 18 Chair Summa: Okay, if there's no other questions, we will go to our first action item, which is a 19 Public Hearing, quasi-judicial, on 3265 on El Camino Real and a request for a PHZ zone, and 20 should I do disclosures now? Yeah. So why don't we just start down the line and do disclosures, 21 please. 22 23 Commissioner Templeton: No disclosures. 24 25 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Hechtman: No disclosures. 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: No disclosures. 3 4 Chair Summa: No disclosures. 5 6 Commissioner Lu: I walked around the site, didn't observe anything notable worth reporting 7 back on. 8 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, I, I visited the site. No disclosures. 10 11 Commissioner Akin: No disclosures for me either. 12 13 Chair Summa: Okay, wonderful. All right, then we will go to the staff report. 14 15 Senior Planner Garrett Sauls: Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Garrett Sauls. I'm the 16 project planner working on this application for 3265 El Camino Real. This application is a PC Planned 17 Home Zon-, Planned Home Zoning application, so to give just a little bit of background on the 18 process of what those applications look like, you can see on the screen here with a PHZ or a PC 19 application, they are required to first go through a prescreening application with the City Council, 20 which this project did back in September of last year. Afterwards, the applicants are able to submit 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. a formal application, which Staff reviews, and then the first step of that application process when it 1 comes to going to a board or commission is to first come to the Planning and Transportation 2 Commission, Commission, which is what is happening tonight. Provided that the Planning and 3 Transportation Commission recommends the application to continue on to the ARB, Staff then 4 brings the project through the ARB process, which could lead to up to three separate hearings, 5 which the ARB then makes a recommendation for the project to return back to the PTC. At that 6 point, Cou-, PTC would make a recommendation to Council on the project. 7 8 During this whole process, any sort of public comment received via email, through any of the 9 meetings at public hear-, through the public comment period, any of the – any comments that are 10 received are, are available or, or provided during this whole process. So at any point any members 11 of the public can reach out to myself as the point of contact to ask questions or familiarize 12 themselves with the project or voice any of their comments or concerns on it. To give some 13 additional project overview specifically, the application in front of us today is about a 5-story, 44-14 unit residential rental project that is currently proposed on a vacant lot. In their application, they're 15 proposing 25 parking spaces; 23 of them would be in a puzzle lift vehicle stacker system with 2 16 accessible parking stalls. They also include 44 bike lockers, 4 short-term bike spots, which are 17 provided on El Camino Real, and 5 shared electric ve-, electric bikes. One of the key components of 18 this application is that 100 percent of the units that are proposed will be deed restricted to be 19 affordable. The target ratios are 20 percent low-income and 80 percent moderate-income AMI. 20 With that, in addition, after the Council prescreening meeting that occurred back in September of 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. last year, the applicant has further identified that they're looking to restrict those moderate-income 1 units to no greater than 110 percent of AMI, where typically the City will provide for a range 2 between 80 to 120 percent. So the applicant has pro-, provided that as a, an additional incentive for 3 the project that they are self-limiting themselves to. 4 5 In addition to that, one – this project does include a private agreement between the applicant and 6 the Palo Alto Unified School District and local teachers' org-, unions and organizations to prioritize 7 teachers as tenants in this project. There is not a, a requirement that there be a specific number of 8 teachers be in the pro-, be occupying any of the units, but there is this priority agreement that will 9 provide for an opportunity for local teachers and other individuals that are part of those 10 organizations to have an option or have, again, an opportunity to occupy these units first. The 11 applicant will be able to speak a little bit more on some of that process as well. These units would 12 be restricted for up to 99 years, so it would be for the life of the building, the life of the project, and 13 for a long period of time. Some of the specifics that are noted in the Attachment C of the staff 14 report, which is the Zoning Comparison Table, identifies where this project currently does not 15 confirm to the CS Zoning District requirements. You can see on the screen here, those relate to the 16 rear yard setback, site coverage, floor area ratio, the allowable height, the minimum landscape 17 open space as well as the minimum open space per unit, and the number of parking spaces that 18 would generally be required based on the CS Zoning District standards. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. As you can see on this map right here on the screen, this identifies the project and indicates its loc-, 1 location and proximity to a number of other larger developments that are occurring within this 2 corridor of El Camino Real between Page Mill Road and Oregon Expressway and Matadero Avenue. 3 With this project that you can see here – this is the project site. It fronts on El Camino Real. It is 4 adjacent across the street to the Stanford – to the entry point to the Stanford Research Park. And 5 you can see that there are a couple of other projects where there are surrounding densities that are 6 fairly significant, in, in context with much larger parcels, while you see on the right-hand side of the 7 screen that this – in context, if this property was built where the property size were an acre large, 8 the potential proposal would be for 252 units per dwelling – dwelling units per acre. You can 9 obviously also see that this is a fairly small site in comparison to what you see a lot of other larger 10 projects like 3150 El Camino Real is providing, 3001 El Camino Real. So 3150 is located right here, 11 3001 El Camino Real is located here, and just off the screen on the side over here is 3400 El Camino 12 Real, otherwise known as Creekside Inn. 13 14 The following screens are going to show a couple of the images – snip images of the floor plans for 15 the proposal. You can see here, as I mentioned before, here are the vehicle stackers that are 16 provided inside the parking garage. This is a puzzle lift system, again, which is a, a, a system that has 17 a parking space below ground, at ground, and above ground. You'll see a section of that in a couple, 18 couple of slides that shows that a l-, in a little bit more detail. You can see here the floor plan on 19 level 2, which carries forward a similar type of floor plan for levels 3 through 5, and then along the 20 roof here, you see this is where they're proposing their rooftop – roof deck – rooftop terrace. Here 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. are some elevations from the plan submittal. This is the elevation along El Camino Real. Here would 1 be the elevation along the backside of the property, which faces toward a parking lot for the 2 adjacent INDO Restaurant, and then as you're facing the property, this is the elevation on the left-3 hand side and the right-hand side of the proposed building. Here are the parking lift sections I was 4 just mentioning where you can see – again, this is a blown-up image of where the parking stacker 5 system is, and you can see here the – kind of a front-view section of what that looks like where you 6 have, again, a parking space below ground, parking spaces at grade, and parking spaces above 7 grade. With a puzzle lift system, they do have one space that is not used as that helps to circulate 8 and provide for vehicles to be pulled out and put into the actual stacker system itself. Then you also 9 see this kinda side view of what that would look like on the interior of the building. 10 11 One important topic that I'm sure we'll be talking about a little bit today is trash collection for the 12 site. The applicant has had a, a vari-, some variations of trash staging and, and trash collection that 13 Staff and the applicant have talked about for the last month and a half or so. In context, especially 14 with what the City Council discussed with what is – what Caltrans is looking to do on El Camino Real 15 in terms of proposing bike lanes that will eliminate parking along the street, the City – Staff and the 16 applicant have, have agreed that this appears to be kind of the most appropriate method to try to 17 address trash collection, where the bins are stored in the garage at the a-, at the backside of where 18 the parking lift system is. Their onsite staff would pull that out onto the sidewalk and bring that 19 over to the side street of Lambert Avenue, which you can see this is a Google Earth image basically 20 kind of representing – trying to represent roughly where that would be located. And the porpo-, the 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. purpose of this would be to try to address the conflicts with additional bike lanes, trash collection 1 occurring at them as well as conflicts at El Camino Real for conflicts along El Camino Real for, again, 2 vehicle and, and bicycle interaction. 3 4 What you see on the screen here are just a, a brief summary of what Council's comments were 5 provided at the prescreening hearing. They focused a lot on understanding a little – trying to 6 understand a little bit more about the parking lift system, the timing for vehicles coming in and out, 7 what type of parking will be provided and whether it will be unbundled from the units themselves, 8 what the average rent might be for these types of units as well as how the driveway will be able to 9 function for individuals coming in and out of the building themselves. Some additional 10 considerations for the project are that this application'll be satisfying what is considered Option 2 of 11 what Council approved in 2020, which talked about 4 different varieties or 4 different options for 12 the Planned Home Zoning application process to incentivize developers to come forward and try to 13 propose unique types of developments that will be able to both satisfy our inclusionary ho-, housing 14 requirements and also provide for development flexibility for developers. That Option 2 focuses on 15 what is called this weighted value of BMR units, the minimum requirement being a, a, a weighted 16 value of the varying units of 20 percent, which in comparison with that – those requirements, the 17 applicant is providing 72 percent, so it's fairly significant in comparison to kind of the minimum 18 standards of what is otherwise required. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. This project is on the outskirts of the draft North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan, and so part of that 1 Coordinated Area Plan as it comes forward, this project would be anticipated with this – with that 2 development plan. There is a protected valley oak that is on the site right now, and it does exceed 3 the 25-percent requirement for 25 percent of the buildable area within the site, so it is possible for 4 it to be removed per Urban Forestry standards. The applicant would be responsible for providing 5 replacement trees based off of the City's no-net-loss-of-canopy requirements. And lastly the roof 6 deck that is proposed will provide the majority of open space for the site. One of the last things I 7 wanted to touch base on is the City's Affordable Housing Incentive Program. The City has its own 8 program to try to incentivize these 100-percent affordable housing projects to come forward, and 9 what you see on the screen here are a list of comparison of what the CS Zone district allows for – 10 the base zoning district allows for, what the Affordable Housing Incentive Program allows for, and in 11 bolded you can see where I've identified where that project would be complying additionally with 12 those more lenient Affordable Housing Incentive Program standards in, in addition to – in 13 comparison to what the application is proposing. 14 15 And lastly, Staff's, Staff's recommendation would be for the PTC to take the following actions, which 16 is to provide initial comments and feedback about the project and recommend that it continue 17 forward to the Architecture Review Board. That concludes my presentation. 18 19 Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you very much. Does the applicant have a presentation? Okay. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse, applicant: Okay, sharing screen here. Okay. Good evening. Nice to be here with 1 you all tonight. I'm Isaiah Stackhouse of Trachtenberg Architects. We have Jason Matlof here as well 2 from [Hampton 20:16] Capital, the project sponsor. So again, we have – we're proposing 100-3 percent affordable housing project that is prioritized to local educators. We see a number of 4 community benefits that the project is offering. This is a very unique project, both for us and other 5 affordable projects we've seen where it's 100-percent privately financed, with no subsidies from 6 Palo Alto or other public funds involved. Again, we're creating 44 units of affordable housing, which 7 will help meet RHNA goals, and while the PHZ requires only 20 percent BMRs, the project is 8 providing 100 percent BMRs. We also see a, a, a minimal residential impact. We are – I'll show you a 9 map – 500 feet from the closest residential district. The project will improve jobs and commutes. 10 Eighty percent of Palo Alto teachers currently live outside of Palo Alto. This can strengthen – help to 11 strengthen Palo Alto's schools by increasing teacher recruitment and retention. It's transit-friendly 12 housing, and it's endorsed by Palo Alto Educator-, Educator's Association, California School 13 Employee Association, local chapter 301, the Palo Alto League of Women Voters, Palo Alto Forward 14 Housing, and the President and Vice President of the Palo Alto Unified School District as individuals. 15 16 So here is a context map. Again, we're, we're 5- to 600 feet from the closest residential zones. We 17 would also note that the, that the area across the street has recently been upzoned to 85 feet and 18 FAR of 4.0, both well above what the project is proposing. The – it's in a, a transit-rich area. There 19 are two bus routes and a bus stop on the block and seven schools all within the area. The project 20 also proposes onsite bicycle storage, shared E-bikes, and shared cars nearby. So again, we had a 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. study session with City Council in September. The Council was very supportive of the project. In 1 response to comments from Council, we've widened the driveway from 14 feet to 20. We've 2 increased the parking to 24 spaces or, or 25 as, as counted by Planning. We've added EV charging to 3 all spaces in the garage, and we've added 5 shared electric bike spaces. And then in January through 4 March, we've been working with City Staff to refine the plans with the Planning Department, 5 Building, Fire, Urban Forestry, Public Works, Zero Waste, and Transportation, and I would say we're 6 probably 95 percent of the way there with just o-, one item to resolve with, w-, with parking. 7 8 Here's a ground-floor plan, El Camino in the front here. We're proposing a 4-foot setback to create 9 a, a 12-foot s-, sidewalk in front. We have the main lobby entry here with an elevator up and, and 10 stair up. Mail and packages here. Moving back, there is the parking garage where we have been 11 working very hard with parking lift manufacturers and City Staff to maximize the parking to get as 12 much parking as we possibly can. Again, toward the back here, we're proposing the trash bins, and 13 then there is an exterior walkway along the side of the building, which comes back to the rear stair 14 and, and bike rooms with shared E-bikes and then also 44 secure bike spaces. Moving up to a typical 15 residential floor plan, we're proposing a mix of studio and one-bedroom units. These are all good-16 size units with bay windows or J-, and Juliet balconies. These are all very furnishable units with great 17 light and air. And here is the roof plan with a, a well-developed, well-landscaped area where 18 residents can, can gather and enjoy the outdoors and views. Here is a building section, again with 19 lobby and parking on the ground floor and four floors of residential above and the roof deck u-, u-, 20 up at the roof level. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Here are building elevations. We're proposing highly-articulated facades with bay windows and, and 2 Juliet balconies for shadow play. You can see the, the rooftop deck here. Here are the, the rear 3 elevation and the other side elevation. Again, here you can see the, the Juliet balconies o-, on the 4 sides here and roof deck up top. So we're proposing a rich palate of earth-tone materials, and what 5 we're trying to do is create a high-quality building that's very carefully crafted and designed to 6 stand the test of time. Here's a view looking northwest along El Camino Real. The lobby entrance in 7 the front here and parking entry. Again, bay windows on the front here. These create views for the 8 units and articulation and shadow play for the facades. You can see the roof deck up at the top, and 9 then along the side of the project here, we've got Juliet balconies, which also provide amenity for 10 the units, articulation for the facades, shadow play, and, and really a, a, a range of amenity for the 11 units and for the facades. Here's a view looking southeast back toward the building, and finally a, a 12 view of the ground level, close-up of a well-landscaped sidewalk, very inviting entryway here. And 13 you can see the preliminary concepts for the, the richly detailed bay windows up above. So that 14 concludes our presentation, but we are here for your questions. Thank you. 15 16 Chair Summa: Thank you, Mr. Stackhouse. Before we go to the public, I think I'll ask my colleagues if 17 they have any clarifying questions, and I see Commissioner Hechtman's light. 18 19 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. Thank you to Staff and the applicant for the presentation. I 20 did have a couple questions that might inform the discussion as we move along. The rooftop, it 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. looks like you have a couple things going on there. One is this rooftop garden, which will count as 1 majority of the project's open space, and then behind the elevator shaft, there's a large solar area. 2 3 Isaiah Stackhouse: That's correct, yes. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: So I was curious about that mix and whether – because relative to our 6 code, there's sort of a – some smaller amount of open space per unit – whether you looked at using 7 some of the solar area for additional rooftop open space and sort of how you arrived at this 8 particular balance and what you're trying to –are you trying to make the building run entirely on the 9 solar and so you need the biggest field you can? Can you just explain that… 10 11 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, that… 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: …[inaudible 28:05]. 14 15 Isaiah Stackhouse: …that – it's a fantastic question, and, and some of it – I, I think the, the major 16 decision really comes down to, to, to building life safety and the, the roof deck itself cannot exceed 17 a max-, maximum occupiable area of 750 square feet. Otherwise it turns into an A occupancy and, 18 and it can't be placed on the roof, so w-, w-, we can – w-, w-, we've got it up to 1155 square feet 19 through implementing lush planting around areas where large groups – where it can't end up with 20 say 100 people up on the rooftop. So it, it really comes down to largely the, the Fire Code and 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Building Code and limiting the occupiable area to 750. And then we've worked with a landscape 1 architect to try to create a, a variety of areas where, where several groups or an individual could go 2 up there and, and have friends over, meet up with other people from the building. And then that – 3 just based on our past experience, we're left with a solar area that we're quite comfortable with. In 4 terms of the actual solar design, that comes much, much later and, and gets tied into Title 24 calcs, 5 the MEP engineers working on those loads so that – the, the, the actual solar will come much, much 6 later in the process, but we feel very comfortable with the amount up there. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: All right. 9 10 Senior Planner Sauls: One additional thing to note just with that is that the C-, the City's code does 11 limit how much of a rooftop deck can be used or contributed toward open space. So like I 12 mentioned before, Attachment C shows the Zoning Comparison Table and it also identifies that the 13 maximum square footage that a rooftop deck could contribute toward that kind of total 14 requirement is only about 60 percent. even if it exceeded – say it was 1500 square feet, there might 15 be a portion of that – there would be a portion of that that would not be able be contributable to 16 that coverage – that requirement. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, that's useful. So thank you. Thank you… 19 20 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: …for explaining that. Did you have more? I mean, 'cause I had a quest-, 2 another… 3 4 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, yeah… 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: …question for Staff but unrelated to that, so I just wanted to make… 7 8 Isaiah Stackhouse: Okay. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: …sure. But your explanation was really helpful to me. Now I understand 11 why it looks the way it looks. 12 13 Isaiah Stackhouse: Okay. 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: So Mr. Sauls, the question I have for Staff is on the refuse loading area, 16 and you had a slide earlier that showed that around the corner on Lambert. And I just wanted to ask 17 – it looked from that slide like there was a fire hydrant – it looked like it was a fire hydrant near the 18 corner, and so – yeah, this is the slide. And so I was concerned about two things. Number one, I'm 19 not seeing, for example, a red curb painted here, so how would we keep the public from parking 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. where the wheeled cans are going? And do we have any issues with them being in close proximity 1 to a hydrant? 2 3 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, so to your second question first, there is a minimum setback of 6 feet 4 the Fire Department requires from anything around a fire hydrant, but in addition, to, to get to your 5 first question, there is a new state law actually that's coming to effect this – beginning of this next 6 year, which is going to require, at places like this intersection, that area to be painted, a red curb for 7 about 20 feet. So kind of regardless of whether there's a, a fire hydrant there, there is some 8 additional limits that would otherwise come into play at this specific location. And the point is so 9 that there isn't sort of stacking of parking vehicles. As bicyclists, for example, are coming out onto El 10 Camino or other areas, they aren't sort of interacting in a, in a way that pr-, that increases conflict, 11 so – but that, that additional – that new state law is AB 413, but it is coming into effect January 1, 12 2025. And so like I said, regardless of whether the fire hydrant were there, there would still be a, a, 13 a new painted curb that would be going in there as a part of this project. Because this is going to be 14 coming tied to this project, excuse me, we would be going out there and ensuring that there is that 15 red painted curb so that there would not be any vehicles parking in that space at all. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: All right. Thank you. 18 19 Vice-Chair Chang: So I had a quick follow onto that question. So you said there's a new state law 20 that's supposed to prevent an inter-, bad interactions at the intersections for bicyclists coming up to 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. that area, but what if there are – if it's a red curb, then are we allowed to use that for refuse and 1 refuse containers? 2 3 Senior Planner Sauls: I did speak with the Transportation Department about this because I can 4 understand where you're coming from. If it seems like nothing should be there, I can understand 5 the concern that – would that impact our, our trash collection or staging area? And, and they noted 6 that they didn't think that it would be an issue. I think the purpose of this new state law is specific 7 for, for vehicles, and so long as we maintain that 6-foot setback from the fire hydrant, the Fire 8 Department also communicated to me that they wouldn't have an issue with having the, the bins 9 staged there. And so as a part of this application, one of the things we would do is have a condition 10 of approval and communicate, of course, directly with the applicant, as we already have, to ensure 11 that they communicate that to their onsite staff that we're going to be moving that back and forth, 12 that they can't be putting them kind of right at that curb edge because if the Fire Department needs 13 to go out and access that fire hydrant, they need adequate space around it. 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: And these are large bins, though. Is that correct? Are they – or I guess, what size 16 bins are these? 17 18 Senior Planner Sauls: The bins – yeah, give me one second. It is in the plan set. I just need to look at 19 the cubic yardage of them. They're not – to my knowledge, they're not large bins in the sense of 20 the, I think like 5-foot tall ones that are like the large heavy metal ones, but let me just confirm that. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: I, I'm asking primarily because if state law has decided there's a safety concern 2 with visual obstruction, that then us doing that would – even if not technically prohibited by state 3 law might cause a safety problem, so that's like the angle of my question. 4 5 Senior Planner Sauls: Understood. 6 7 Isaiah Stackhouse: I, I believe they're 2-cubic-yard bins. I think they – they're either 1½ or 2. They're, 8 they're on the very smaller side. I'm looking up the dimensions of them now. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Maybe while we're waiting, can I ask a question about the rooftop area of the 11 applicant and then we can loop back to this? So I had a quest-, so I reviewed the City Council 12 prescreen, and this is a question for the applicant. I noticed that the rooftop open space shrank 13 from 1750 down to 1150 square feet in… 14 15 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: …between, and then I assume it has – can you just explain? I assume it has 18 something to do with what you already explained to Commissioner Hechtman, but that's a pretty 19 sig-, substantial decrease, so I just wanted to get… 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, yeah, th-, as we got further into the design and started running our, our 1 Building Code checks on the plans, we realized that really to make that work with life safety we 2 were going to have to reduce the size some. So th-, th-, that is the, the one and only reason for that 3 reduction. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. 6 7 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: I – Mr. Sauls, are you ready, or should I keep asking my questions? 10 11 Isaiah Stackhouse: Our plans are currently showing 2-cubic-yard bins… 12 13 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah… 14 15 Isaiah Stackhouse: …and that, that – I think we had originally shown 1½, and, and City Staff 16 recommended that we go up to, to 2 cubic yards. I think there are various manufacturers and 17 heights, but they are… 18 19 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, so on page A2.0, A-, A2.0… 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 1 2 Senior Planner Sauls: …of the plan set identifies that they are the 2-cubic-yard bin, so those are 3 about 4½ feet tall based on the dimensions that Zero Waste has. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah, and how many of those bins would be out there? 6 7 Senior Planner Sauls: It would be three. It would be for trash – normal trash, recycling, and then 8 compost. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: And then is it every day for… 11 12 Senior Planner Sauls: It wouldn't be for every day, no. It would only be on trash pickup days, so the 13 other component of it would be that they would really only be staged out there the night before 14 trash pickup occurs and then they would be promptly collected in the morning after that is 15 collected. So the trash pickup along El Camino Real occurs between 4:00 in the morning and 6:30 in 16 the morning. Given that they are three bins, there are three separate vehicles that are also coming 17 to collect them individually, and in addition to coordinating with the applicant about ensuring that 18 they are – the bins aren't placed too close to the fire hydrant for example, we would also 19 coordinate with the applicant and their onsite staff to ensure that they don't get left out there the 20 entire… 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 2 3 Senior Planner Sauls: …week for – I think what you're kind of alluding to – the potential that it 4 becomes kind of a, a constant or persistent issue. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: And, and so that's supposed to be sufficient for all 44 units, once a week, right? 7 Or… 8 9 Senior Planner Sauls: I don't know if it's once a week. I believe it might be potentially twice a week, 10 but… 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. 13 14 Senior Planner Sauls: …I'd have to confirm. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: I was thinking, "How is that possibly enough, enough, enough space?" Okay. 17 18 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, they can have smaller bins. That usually just results in more frequent 19 pickup, if they have smaller bins. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: And do you know – so you said they're about 5 – how high and how wi-, it's, it's 1 less the height and more how far they come out, right, 'cause that's when you're a bicyclist coming 2 up, you can't see around the corner. 3 4 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, and on Sheet A2.0, they also have the dimensions for the bins 5 themselves, so… 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: Sorry, I can't read it. 8 9 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah. I can share it on my screen and show you. Sorry. There you go. So… 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, there we go. 12 13 Senior Planner Sauls: So about 4 feet wide by about – I'm doing the math. 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: Five – oh, no, that's more than 5 feet, right? 16 17 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, about 7½ feet long. 18 19 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, but 5 feet wide, so like a car. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Senior Planner Sauls: Less th-, it'd be about 3½ feet wide. 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: Oh, yeah, 3½, okay. 3 4 Senior Planner Sauls: For-, yeah. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Thank you. Thank you. 7 8 Senior Planner Sauls: 41 is the width, 81 is the depth. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Got it. Yeah. 11 12 Senior Planner Sauls. Yeah. 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. I, I had – is it okay if I continue asking the rest of my questions? 15 16 Chair Summa: Yeah. 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. So how – so I wanted to ask the applicant about the rear setback. So it says 19 0 to 5 feet, rear setback. Can you explain what design constraints on the site led to that decision? 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse: Sure. Here, let me… 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: Like what would be the implication of trying to make this the standard setback of 3 10 feet? 4 5 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, so the – it really comes down to trying to provide as many affordable units 6 here as we can without needing to go higher than people are comfortable with and, and, and also 7 to not go higher in order to keep costs down. So i-, if we were to have a 10-foot setback across the, 8 the, the back, w-, we would lose at least four units. And so again, what we're trying to do here – 9 those are four units that provide affordable units for four individuals or, or households and – so, so, 10 really what we're doing here is kind of following the Building Code. We've got a, a, a 5-foot setback 11 here, which allows for good windows and exposure here. The stair can be placed closer to the 12 property line via the Building Code. So that's really the – the decision is sort of the, the tradeoff of 13 trying to provide those units, which not only provide units for RHNA numbers and units for real 14 people but they also help to make the project feasible. At a, at a certain point – let's say if the 15 project would be to reduce the lot, it still has the same number of stairs, the same elevators, the 16 same foundations, the, the same land costs. It just gets harder and harder to make it work if the, if 17 the numbers get cut down, and it, and it wouldn't provide as much housing as it is able to. 18 19 Vice-Chair Chang: Thank you. A question for Staff about how rent is set or what the rent would be 20 limited at for these two levels of affordability for, for the two types of units 'cause I did do some of 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. my own research, but I wanted to ma-, I, I, I think it's better for me to ask Staff to – for that 1 information. 2 3 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, on, on packet page 11 – at the top of the second paragraph on packet 4 page 11, we identified that HCD basically releases data that demonstrates this, this income 5 qualification, right, for single households or multi-, or multiple individual households. And so those 6 rates, the low-income and the moderate-income, would be based on what Santa Clara County's 7 area median income is. There's basically kind of a baseline, and then you take that lower ra-, those 8 lower ranges between the 50 to 80 percent, which is the low income, and then the 80 to 100 per-, 9 120 percent, or in this case 80 to 110 percent for moderate. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: So question about the 110 versus 120. Isn't it – doesn't state law require at least 12 110 and then the 120 – how does that work? Is it our local – is it a Santa Clara County thing? 13 14 Senior Planner Sauls: To my knowledge, what it does basically is it provides a range between 8-, 80 15 and 120. It doesn't say that it has to be – that it only has to be either 120 or it only has to be 80, so 16 there is a fluctuation with what the units are provided for that – but that achieves those kind of 17 targeted ratios. So by kind of self-limiting it to 110 percent, there is kind of the exclusion of a, a 18 higher rent that still meets that moderate-income threshold that they would not be able to, to 19 capture. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah, but I guess my question was about – so I went and read the state ordinance 1 to try and understand what rents would be allowed here, and it says that for moderate-income 2 households, that the maximum rent is supposed to not exceed 110 percent, so isn't the 110 already 3 required by state law? 4 5 Albert Yang, Assistant City Attorney: Yeah, so it, it depends on sort of which program is, is limiting 6 the rent, and 110 percent is considered sort of a best practice. In general, just like 10 percent above 7 the maximum for the income category is considered a best practice. It's something that we locally 8 have, have not done – asked for consistently in the past, but we are trying to institute more now. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, so then the 120 number that comes up as a local restriction, that was allo-, 11 that's allowed as vari-, as variability from the, from the base state law. Is that correct? 12 13 Assistant City Attorney Yang: Well, so there isn't – the, the moderate-income category is considered 14 80 to 120 percent of area median income, and so households that are making within that amount 15 are, sorry, considered moderate-income. And affordable rents are considered rents that are more 16 than 30 percent of your, of your income, right, and so there isn't a state requirement for how we s-, 17 we set our rents – maximum rents in regulatory agreements. And in the past we have allowed 18 affordability levels to go up to kind of the maximum of that – whatever the affordability category is, 19 and now we are trying to institute that sort of 10 percent below the maximum as the rule. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, and so for these units, how will the rent be set? Because my understanding 1 is – I just want to clarify like my understanding of how this works. If it's that the rent will be set to 2 be affordable for 50 to 80 perc-, so let's say it's the low-income for 50 percent to 80 percent of AMI, 3 but then that's a range. So then how – is it that the household is qualified and then rent is set based 4 on that specific household? Or is it that there is a rent that is set that is no more than 80 percent? In 5 other words, somebody could have 50 percent of AMI but they're going to be paying the 80 percent 6 of AMI rent. 7 8 Assistant City Attorney Yang: It's the latter. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, so then if I look at these charts – and I'd appreciate it if Staff could verify for 11 me. Doesn't have to be right now. We c-, but I'm looking at these charts that an efficiency studio 12 can charge $2538 for 80 percent and 30-, almost 3500, 3489 for 110 percent of AMI. And for a one-13 bedroom – it'd be 3987 for a one-bedroom and – at 110 percent, and 80 percent would be 2900. So 14 it – I, I – you don't have to do that right now, but I wanted to make sure I'm reading these correctly. 15 That's it for now. Thanks. 16 17 Chair Summa: Okay, thank you. We're going to go to Commissioner Akin and then Commissioner 18 Templeton. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair. I don't have much confidence in resident surveys as a way of 1 detecting spillover parking, so the question – I'm not sure whether this is for the applicant or for 2 Staff – is what other methods are available and were they considered for the project? 3 4 Senior Planner Sauls: I think you're talking about, Commissioner Akin, kind of the end part, right, of 5 once the program has been instituted and there's this kind of annual check every year to identify 6 whether or not the TDM program has been working effectively, and part of that is the resident 7 survey of how they're, how they're parking or how they're using spaces. Is that what you're asking 8 about? 9 10 Commissioner Akin: Yeah. The – we're condensing a lot of, important discussion that's in the TDM 11 portion of the plan, but the real question I'm getting at is how do you detect whether spillover 12 parking is occurring because, for example, if you do a survey of the stackers themselves and they're 13 not fully occupied, then you might assume that there's no spillover parking occurring because 14 there's space within the building, but that's not necessarily true. And one of the concerns people 15 have about this particular development is whether it's under-parked, and if so, how do you detect 16 that in order to be able to correct it? 17 18 Senior Planner Sauls: Okay. Yeah, let me look into that real quick. Gimme one second. 19 20 Commissioner Akin: I have packet page 39 as the place that triggered this question. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Assistant City Attorney Yang: I also just ran a few quick calculations, and I come up, in response to 2 Commissioner Chang's questions, with $2400 a month for a studio, affordable to low-income 3 households, and 3324 a month for a one-bedroom, affordable to moderate-income household at, 4 110 percent of AMI. 5 6 Senior Planner Sauls: And to get back to Commissioner Akin's question, that's one, one method of 7 trying to determine what parking is being done. I think the other things that happen is that the, the 8 consultant oftentimes will also be physically present there during those counts, during those 9 counts, so they'll be able to identify whether people are exiting from the building, visually being – 10 exiting from the building, walking out to a vehicle that they have parked on Lambert Street for 11 examp-, for example. So there are kind of other, other methods that they can use to try to val-, 12 validate – I think at the end of the day is what you're trying to understand also validate whether, 13 the entirety of the parking that's provided on site is being used or possibly being underreported I 14 think is another concern you're talking about? 15 16 Commissioner Akin: That's right. The, the common concern about under-parked developments is 17 that the parking simply moves into other areas around the neighborhood, whereas what we're 18 trying to accomplish as part of our sustainability goals is that there are actually no cars there. But if 19 you don't have a way to verify that that's the case, then you don't know whether the constraints 20 you've applied to the project are correct or whether you're meeting your sustainability goals. So for 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. example, I could see – you could check vehicle registrations, for example, to, to help validate 1 measurements you're – you've taken in other ways, but really the question I'm getting at is not how 2 do we design that tonight, but just what other possibilities are there and have they been considered 3 and can that be documented as part of the, the plan? Thank you. I think that's it for, for me for the 4 moment. 5 6 Chair Summa: Commissioner Templeton? 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. Let's see if I can get close to my mike here. I've got 9 three questions. One, going back to the trash bin question, I'm noticing that the bins are p-, the plan 10 is to place them in front of a restaurant. Will we be putting the trash bins, which may have the 11 possibility of being unpleasant there during – not, not during the hours that the restaurant's 12 operating? Or have we, have we talked to the neighbors about this plan? This part of the plan? 13 14 Senior Planner Sauls: We haven't had a meeting with the adjacent property, no, to talk about them 15 – talk about this project with them, but with the strategy that we've discussed so far with Zero 16 Waste, again, the idea is that these bins aren't going to be left out there for a prolonged period of 17 time. They're only going to be placed out there the night before and… 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: Right, and I was thinking the night… 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Senior Planner Sauls: …then picked up in the morning. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: …before, before during dinner service? Like… 3 4 Senior Planner Sauls: No, it wouldn't be occurring at that point. It would be occurring later on at the 5 night. So more likely than not… 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: So like 11 PM? 8 9 Senior Planner Sauls: Could be between 9 and 10, 9 and 11, which is pretty typical for most trash 10 collection services in a multifamily setting. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, so what I'm getting at is like be good neighbors and talk to those 13 guys because they may have opinions about having three very large trash bins right in front of their 14 lovely restaurant where somebody might be going to celebrate and not enjoy wak-, walking past a 15 bunch a dumpsters. If, if, if that makes sense. I'm – I – that was my concern, and I, I share that with 16 you so that you can resolve it before it comes back, right, because I think understanding how this 17 will interplay is important. Then the other question – I have two more questions. The next question 18 is when someone enters this residence, what is the length of their ability to rent it? So is it tied to 19 their income levels? Is it tied to the start date? 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Senior Planner Sauls: So some degree, yes, it is tied to their income level. That is an annual 1 certification that occurs. So for example, they may more likely than not have a, a year-to-year lease 2 in that case where, depending on their kind of financial success or, or lack of success, they may end 3 up staying within that space if they still qualify the following year or if they kind of earn out, I guess 4 is a way to say it, out of that kind of qualification if they aren't a-, say they're in the low-income 5 category. If they are able to qualify to the moderate-income category and there's a unit available, 6 they may be able to move into that, but if they disqualify themselves for both of them, then they 7 would be needing to, to move out of that spa-, out of the, out of that unit. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: What is the time frame of the, the notice? Is it just like one month or – is 10 it a planned transition? 11 12 Assistant City Attorney Yang: U-… 13 14 Senior Planner Sauls: I don't, I don't… 15 16 Assistant City Attorney Yang:…usually it's a period of about six months, I think, that's permitted. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: That's great. Thank you. And then this question is just for completeness, 19 and this is probably an architect question. So you mentioned a few times that the height limitations 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. have kind of constrained how tall this building can be. If those height limitations were somehow not 1 still in place, is this a plan that you could add another floor or… 2 3 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah… 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: …does it not work with the structure you have in mind? 6 7 Isaiah Stackhouse: …yeah, so on our end, w-, what we're tryin' to do is find the balance. We're 8 hearing everyone's concerns about parking. We've been working nonstop since September to see if 9 we – if there's a way to feasibly get more parking. Really, the, the parking is, is essentially limited to 10 what's, what's there… 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 13 14 Isaiah Stackhouse: …w-, w-, we could still build this as a wood-frame building at six stories. That can 15 be built in type 3A, fire-treated lumber, and it's still cost effective. The building would still function 16 well. All the exiting would work. It would essentially just be adding another floor to the, the plan 17 sheet would say levels 2 through 6 instead of 2 through 5. 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: Right. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse: It would function very well. It would help with project feasibility. It would add 1 more affordable housing, but it would increase the number of units without being able to… 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Increase the parking. 4 5 Isaiah Stackhouse: …increase the parking. And w-, we – our office does projects throughout the Bay 6 Area, and we see a huge range. We have lots of projects with zero spaces and projects in more 7 suburban areas that are parked at one to one, whi-, which is rare these days, but we, we do 8 occasionally see things that high. This is kind of right in the middle of what we typically see. But 9 we're trying obviously to find that sweet spot where we're providing as many affordable units as we 10 can to the community… 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Right. 13 14 Isaiah Stackhouse: …in a way that is comfortable – is the right balance. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. And I, I, I raise it not to, to stir up false hope, but I do know 17 how much the City is, is hungering for additional affordable housing and wanted to make sure that 18 they, because they have the power to change that, can consider all the options. Thank you. 19 20 Isaiah Stackhouse: Mm. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for the question. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu? 2 3 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. I – a-, a-, actually just to start with a very easy clarifying question. I 4 didn't quite catch this earlier. So there's staging for rooftop solar, but there is no rooftop solar on… 5 6 Isaiah Stackhouse: The-… 7 8 Commissioner Lu: …the outside or is there? 9 10 Isaiah Stackhouse: …there w-, there will be… 11 12 Commissioner Lu: Okay. 13 14 Isaiah Stackhouse: …rooftop solar. M-, my point was just that the, the number of panels or the 15 wattage and, and that type of thing happens much, much further down the road when we get into… 16 17 Commissioner Lu: Okay. 18 19 Isaiah Stackhouse: …construction drawings. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Lu: Okay. Thank you. 1 2 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah. 3 4 Commissioner Lu: I also wanted to confirm the setback from the sidewalk. So I understand you're 5 setting the project back 4 feet, and we're trying to get a desired 12 feet. I know the sidewalk there 6 is being reconstructed right now. Is it actually being widened in any way or will the sidewalk actually 7 be 8 feet wide on its own? 'Cause my understanding is that it's not, using like very rough Google 8 Maps measurements in several places along that block. 9 10 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, so you can see on the screen, Isaiah is sharing his screen here, so the 11 sidewalk would be widened just slightly to be able to provide a 6-foot clear sidewalk path. And then 12 in addition to that, in order to achieve that 8- to 12-foot sidewalk, there would be a, a public right-13 of-way access easement, basically, recorded against the property where you see the, the red cursor 14 or the red dot kind of running across, to be able to… 15 16 Commissioner Lu: Yeah. 17 18 Senior Planner Sauls: …achieve that 12-foot setback. So the code, the way it's set up is to say a 0- to, 19 to 10-foot setback… 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Lu: Okay. 1 2 Senior Planner Sauls: …which obviously then varies based on the site conditions to achieve that 12-3 foot setback – that effective 12-foot setback. 4 5 Commissioner Lu: Okay, got it. Yeah, my understanding is that the sidewalk right there – well, it's 6 not right there. It's like under construction right now – is generally closer to around 6½ feet, so it's 7 good to confirm where that 12 feet is coming from. There's just going to be an extra foot plus 8 tacked onto the existing sidewalk, I suppose. I also want to follow up on the discussion about costs 9 from Vice Chair Chang. Just to start actually, we said that the – or the presentation said that the 10 estimated rent would be 3150 per month averaged across all units. Is that calculation just based on 11 what's permitted at the income levels or is that calculation based on what the developer estimates 12 they would actually rent this out for? 13 14 Senior Planner Sauls: That was just provided from the developer, just the estimate what they're 15 possibly envisioning it could be. It doesn't necessarily mean that that's what every unit is going to 16 be because of course it's an average. 17 18 Commissioner Lu: Okay, so if the maximum permitted average rent were 3500, we could say that 19 the estimate right now is 3150 but then closer when the project is actually available, there's no way 20 to actually hold ourselves to that 3150… 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Isaiah Stackhouse: Well, a-… 2 3 Commissioner Lu: …estimate now. 4 5 Isaiah Stackhouse: …and those do get updated – the – those get updated every year as well, the, 6 the median incomes, the, the charts. 7 8 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, so, s-, so the, the in-, the number is there just as a general reference 9 point. It's not again… 10 11 Commissioner Lu: Okay. 12 13 Senior Planner Sauls: …to say that that's actually what the rent is… 14 15 Commissioner Lu: Right. 16 17 Senior Planner Sauls: …going to be. 18 19 Commissioner Lu: Right. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Senior Planner Sauls: It's that – I think as we talked about earlier, there's a range, right… 1 2 Commissioner Lu: Yeah. 3 4 Senior Planner Sauls: …for low income and, and moderate income, between 50 and 80 for low 5 income and 80 to 120. In this case, again, as I mentioned, 80 to 110 because of what the applicant 6 is, is not trying to do, which is not try to go to that 120 percent, so… 7 8 Commissioner Lu: Yeah. 9 10 Senior Planner Sauls: …it will range and vary a lot between those two categories. 11 12 Commissioner Lu: Okay. 13 14 Isaiah Stackhouse: And then I would say on our end, we're sort of doing two things. One is the, the – 15 this – the PHZ process requires only the 20 percent, so we're effectively volunteering… 16 17 Commissioner Lu: Right. 18 19 Isaiah Stackhouse: …the 80 percent. And then I, I think the other distinction we would draw, 20 because w-, again, w-, we do projects throughout the Bay Area. We do lots of affordable housing 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. projects, and it's, it's really, for us, an honor to be involved in this one, w-, which is all privately 1 funded. Most of those others, we would be here w-, with millions coming from the City as well to 2 help make this… 3 4 Commissioner Lu: Yeah. 5 6 Isaiah Stackhouse: …pencil, and, and, and we're doing a project here that is not making any 7 requests from a-, any – from, from Palo Alto or any other city agencies. It's… 8 9 Commissioner Lu: Yeah. 10 11 Isaiah Stackhouse: …100-percent privately funded. 12 13 Commissioner Lu: Y-, yeah. I, I definitely appreciate and understand that. Maybe one kind of other 14 way to get to the kind of same spirit of the question, could Staff double check the affordability 15 numbers that were decided, like 2400 for a studio or 3300 for a one-bedroom? I did look at a 16 reference sheet from SV@Home, and the numbers were actually higher. So I'm not sure if there are 17 different assumptions for how many occupants are per bedroom in the SV@Home versus what we 18 projected, but it would be good to land on a, a double-checked, kind of confirmed number. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Assistant City Attorney Yang: Yeah, so we're not going to be able to give you really definitive figures 1 tonight because i-, it really depends on sort of like the specific set of regulations that we – that end 2 up being applied. So there's, there's sort of the affordability calculation that Commissioner Chang 3 referenced in the Heal-, Health and Safety Code, which applies to certain types of financing, or 4 there is sort of the, the way that the City has done it in our kind of ad hoc approach over the years. 5 I-, it really is going to depend on what gets incorporated into the regulatory agreement at the end 6 of the day, which – and it can be very specific on, on how those calculations are made, so I think we 7 can give you ranges but we won't be able to, yeah, provide or figure out how other, other sources 8 came up with their numbers. 9 10 Commissioner Lu: Okay, so for now we could use a potential working assumption that something 11 between the numbers you cited and SV@Home's numbers and just kind of accept that there's some 12 wiggle room… 13 14 Assistant City Attorney Yang: Yeah. 15 16 Commissioner Lu: …for this discussion. Okay, something in that range? Just also a question about 17 costs but also related to parking. So parking is not bundled, right, with – like allocated to specific 18 units, and do we have a sense of how much parking would cost for these – like the spots that are 19 available? 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse: Oh, I don't know that at all. I don't know if… 1 2 Jason Matlof, applicant: Yeah, obviously we have a business plan at this point, but it's – like Albert 3 said, nothing is written in stone yet, but the, the idea, the kind of market rate is $100 to $200, so 4 call it 150 bucks. There needs to be a kind of a marketplace for these spots since not everybody's 5 going to have one. 6 7 Commissioner Lu: Yeah. 8 9 Mr. Matlof: So there has to be some incentive for those who do take them, but that's the, that's the 10 expectation. A hund-… 11 12 Commissioner Lu: Right. 13 14 Mr. Matlof: …use $150 as a… 15 16 Commissioner Lu: Right. 17 18 Mr. Matlof: …total exis-, expectation. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Lu: Right. And yeah, and I do understand that there's an incentive on your side that 1 once you've built the parking, you want to price it at a way that it basically all fills, but yeah, that's 2 good to confirm the rough range. Thank you. Those were my clarifying questions. 3 4 Isaiah Stackhouse: Thank you. 5 6 Chair Summa: Commissioner Reckdahl? 7 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: In the presentation, you mentioned that there are nearby shared cars. 9 Where are those at? 10 11 Isaiah Stackhouse: Do you know, Jason? 12 13 Mr. Matlof: Yeah. So there are shared cars in the California Ave corridor. I had these discussions 14 with Zipcar back in September of last year. I apologize, I don't have it… 15 16 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. 17 18 Mr. Matlof: …in fact, I facilitated a meeting between Zipcar and some city officials. The hope i-, in – 19 at that time – and we can pursue this further if it's of interest. It would just be facilitated by me, but 20 the hope was to be able to increase the population of shared cars in the area for obvious reasons. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. This is a high-density zone. I mean, you look at all the, the projects that are being proposed. It 1 makes perfect sense to try to reduce the cars. I think Commissioner Allen, I forget what his last 2 name is, was mentioning the hope is to try to get cars off the street. This is the right way to do it in 3 high-density areas. So there are some there, and we're trying to facilitate meetings to get more 4 where the City can potentially provide some of the available parking that's in those large lots that's 5 in the California zone that are very un-, l-, l-, l-, underutilized, let's… 6 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. 8 9 Mr. Matlof: …say. So anyway, hopefully… 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. 12 13 Mr. Matlof: …that answers your question. 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. 16 17 Senior Planner Sauls: The City also has its Palo Alto Link, which is not necessarily landlocked to a 18 specific location, that tenants could also utilize. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, they could, but if they want to go to San Francisco for the weekend, 1 they're going to want to rent a car. 2 3 Mr. Matlof: Yeah. And, and – yes. Yes. 4 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: And I know there was interest to get it downtown or in the Cal Ave area 6 and also in NVCAP, so I just didn't know if there was anything closer than that. 7 8 Mr. Matlof: Yeah, I can tell you that Zipcar's very interested to talk about this, this – if the City's 9 willing to provide – obviously it's gotta have dedicated parking spaces 'cause that's the way it 10 works, so… 11 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: Right. 13 14 Mr. Matlof: …there are some that are just generally parked on the street, but I think there's 15 limitations on that. But anyway that… 16 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay… 18 19 Mr. Matlof: …hopefully answered… 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: …thank you. 1 2 Mr. Matlof: …your question. 3 4 Commissioner Lu: I will briefly shout out that there actually is Zipcar with seemingly cars right there 5 – there right now across the street from El Camino in the Palo Alto Square development… 6 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. 8 9 Commissioner Lu: …so that's just an FYI. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: Is that a program operated by Palo Alto Square or S-, are they Stanford Zip Cars? 12 13 Commissioner Lu: I'm not sure. 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah, so – okay. 16 17 Commissioner Lu: It seems selectable kind of on the public Zipcar website, for what it's worth. 18 19 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. Go 'head. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. Okay. You also mentioned shared bikes. What's the logistics of that? 1 Is it – they said per use, and so if someone, say, rents a bike in the morning and drives to – bicycles 2 over to Gunn, do they pay per hour? Is it a fixed… 3 4 Mr. Matlof: Again, there's options on that. With the software that's available, fortunately it's very 5 flexible. There's an app and, and there's various vendors, but – I, I haven't yet decided, but it would 6 be something like either hourly – we obviously want – again, supply/demand. We don't want 7 people to take them for days and not return them or – so we need to come to some compromise. 8 It's going to be hourly, daily, half day… 9 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, so… 11 12 Mr. Matlof: …bundles of hours... 13 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: …TBD. 15 16 Mr. Matfof: Yeah, TBD. 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, thank you. And then – that's it for now. 19 20 Chair Summa: Okay, Commissioner Chang? 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: Question for Staff about parking. So with the parking unbundled from the actual 2 unit, does any affordable – affordability criteria come – like does – right, so normally, if they're in an 3 apartment building with affordable units, the parking spaces come with the units and people aren't 4 necessarily charged more for those parking spaces. So with it being unbundled, is there any like 5 affordability component in the calculation for the rent for the parking spaces? 6 7 Senior Planner Sauls: I, I guess to your first statement, it's not necessarily the case that the units are 8 – a lot of times with kind of traditional multifamily developments, the units are connected to a 9 parking space. Not all of them are, and even affordable units are not necessarily required – to my 10 knowledge at least, are not required to have that collec-, connected to them. And what this project 11 would propose basically is to unbundle all parking spaces from all the units, so there wouldn't be 12 any sort of dedicated space for an individual who comes in and says, "I want to rent Unit Number 13 5," and Unit Number 5 has Parking Space Number 5 associated with it. They would be able to, if 14 there's a space available pay into that, that either monthly fee or, or whatever sort of fee structure 15 they set up, if it's annual, to be able to rent that parking space. But to my knowledge as well, there's 16 not a, an affordability component tied to how much the parking space… 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: So that would be… 19 20 Senior Planner Sauls: …is going to cost. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: …over and above whatever the affordable rent was already. There – the parking 2 space would just be additional funds that the, that the resident would have to spend, correct? 3 4 Senior Planner Sauls: Correct. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: How does that work with the other affordable housing proposals that have come 7 before us? Like is that – do they – I, I understand that there are not required to have a parking 8 space, but our, our code does require a certain number of parking spaces per unit based on unit 9 size. And then beyond that, does our code require anything for… 10 11 Senior Planner Sauls: It, it does not require that the – like I mentioned in the example I gave before, 12 it does not require that units have a specific or dedicated parking space for them in the sense of, 13 like I mentioned before, Unit 5 has to have Parking Space 5. This is – to my knowledge, it's evolved 14 in the last couple – last decade or more to be a, a, a alternative or be an incentive or, or disincentive 15 in a way as well to drive individuals to not have a vehicle, right? And that's why it's a part of the 16 TDM plan that they have provided to us today is to use that as an incentive for individuals to use 17 their bike or use transit that might be nearby, like the VTA line or even the Stanford Marguerite 18 shuttles that run kind of across the street, so… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. So affordable housing law doesn't say anything other than about the unit. It 1 doesn't say anything about parking spaces? 2 3 Senior Planner Sauls: Not to my knowledge, unless… 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Mr. Yang? 6 7 Senior Planner Sauls: …Mr. Yang has any additional information. 8 9 Assistant City Attorney Yang: Yeah, so there is a requirement that affordable rent includes like a 10 reasonable utility allowance, right, and in the past, before – when – as you said, in the past, when 11 parking was more common and it wasn't – and it was bundled with the unit, we had, as a local 12 matter, also required that if there are fees associated with the parking, that that be included in the 13 total amount that's allowed for affordable rent. As unbundled parking has become more common, 14 there's been sort of a variety of approaches, and unfortunately I'm not, and I don't think Mr. Sauls 15 is, in the best position to kind of speak to the different approaches that have been taken. It's, it's 16 something that has sort of been the – in the realm of our housing planner when we've had one. So 17 yeah, I, I can't, I can't really say… 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, completely understand. If this does come back to us, I'm hoping that we 1 can have some resource that can help us answer some of these questions. And no problem. It's, it's 2 complex law. Thank you so much. 3 4 Mr. Matlof: I just want – if I could just add, the, the other additional component to build on what 5 Garrett was mentioning is that the underlying Affordable Housing Incentive Program that's available 6 for 100-percent affordable housing projects has a, a maximum – I'm sorry, a minimum parking 7 requirement of 0.75, so it expects, either explicitly or in-, indirectly or directly that there wouldn’t 8 be a one-to-one allocation, and so there has to be some mechanism for allocating it, so just wanted 9 to clarify with that. 10 11 PUBLIC COMMENT 12 Chair Summa: Okay, I'm not seeing an-, any other lights from my colleagues, so I'm wondering – I 13 didn't see any hands online. Do we have any – Ms. Dao, do we have any people that would like to 14 speak? 15 16 Veronica Dao: I did get one speaker card, but then I saw them leave the chamber so I don't think 17 they're here anymore. 18 19 Chair Summa: Okay, so if anybody wants to speak, now's the time to raise your hand and I am just 20 not seeing anyone so – I see one person online who wants to speak, so… 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Veronica Dao: Okay, yes, from Scott O'Neil. Go ahead… 2 3 Scott O'Neil: Hi… 4 5 Veronica Dao: …Mr. O'Neil. 6 7 Mr. O'Neil: …hi, can you hear me? 8 9 Chair Summa: Yep. 10 11 Mr. O'Neil: Okay, awesome, thank you. My name is Scott O'Neil. I'm the boar-, I'm on the board of 12 Palo Alto Forward, but I'm speaking for myself tonight. I strongly support this project. You never see 13 deed-restricted projects without subsidies. It's just very hard to achieve. My hat is off to the 14 applicant for making it work. There are compromises inherent in that approach. The applicant can 15 only go so far in terms of delivering parking and rents while still making the project happen. I'm sure 16 if the City wants those parameters to land someplace else, that could be possible, but if the City 17 wants to pursue such a direction, it should really be willing to pay for the difference. Such a decision 18 would obviously come at the expense of some future project. Nothing is free. I understand that 19 there is some anxiety about where these rent – these rent lands – these rents land in dollar terms. I 20 would encourage commissioners experiencing sticker shock to listen not to their own instincts but 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. to the teachers who showed up to comment in support of the project at the prescreen meeting. 1 These are people dealing with intense – the intense savagery of our housing market and facing very 2 difficult choices, trading off commute length against living space and budget. And I really want to s-, 3 stress, the teachers forced to super commute have less time to educate our children. This project 4 can be an amazing boon to the community, i-, i-, including our children. These teachers need relief. 5 This project provides some, so these teachers want it. Anyone who lets their perfect be the enemy 6 of that good is not serving our teachers or our – or their students and our children. Thank you. I 7 really appreciate it. 8 9 Chair Summa: Thank you for bein' our one speaker tonight, and if there's no one else, we will bring 10 it back to the Commission for comments. So is there someone that would like to start us off? 11 Commissioner Hechtman and then Commissioner Chang. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: So, so I think this project is a variation on a theme that we've started to 14 see and we're going to see over and over again as we move forward looking at developing more 15 housing in this city. Between the cost of land in Palo Alto and the costs of construction, which are 16 high in Palo Alto as they are throughout the South Bay, and the sort of box that our conventional 17 zoning, like the CS here, creates, projects that otherwise pencil out can't work. And so what we see 18 and what I'm expecting to see more of is projects pushing on the walls of that box, and what I 19 particularly like about this project is while it pushes on those walls, it doesn't blow up the box. I 20 think that this design is really sensitive to avoiding blowing up the box, so yes, we're seeing a little 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. more height but not a lot more height, going to 65 feet where across the street it's going to be 85. 1 We're seeing a pretty good bump in FAR but less than their neighbors across El Camino are going to 2 be. We're seeing now some amount of ground-floor retail, not as much as the draft NVCAP would 3 envision but I think two thirds of it. If I read that wrong, I'll hear about it shortly. I thought I saw 4 they went from nothing to, after Council comment, some amount, but maybe I got that reversed or 5 maybe I just wrote it for the wrong item tonight. Sorry, that, that note migrated up. Sorry about 6 that. 7 8 Senior Planner Sauls: Come back in two hours, I think you'll be good. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, weird. Oh, no ground-floor retail per draft. No, that's – the – my – 11 the note just was written illegibly by its author, so I apologize. Okay. And then of course, we've got 12 this somewhat reduced parking. And for reasons that some of my fellow commissioners have 13 expressed in their questioning, this gives us all a little bit of heartburn because it's – at least on the 14 Peninsula, it's theoretical that if we don't build it, it'll work. In other words, if we don't provide the 15 parking, that that will attract the people who don't need the parking. And so I think we have some 16 concerns there, but again, my view on the reduction sought here is it's not blowing it up. We've got 17 44 units. I think it's 25 or 26 parking spaces. And, and I also like that they have volunteered to max 18 at the 110 percent. I don't remember seeing that in a project that's come to us before, and I think it 19 just it makes it that much more affordable. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I expect that there is a mechanism the City uses to confirm the affordability of these projects as 1 they are built and tenanted and continue to be tenanted over time. There must be a mechanism to 2 do that, and so as this goes forward, I'd like to hear about that mechanism, but I'm going to trust 3 that that mechanism is going to work 'cause we need to. And the numbers in that mechanism are 4 going to change from time to time as the annual reviews are done and what it means to be 110 5 percent of AMI change year over year. So I'm going to trust that part of the system. I do like this 6 agreement with the teachers, but I will tell you – and I think it's terrific actually. I don't, I don't want 7 to de-emphasize that, but, but I'm attracted to this project even without that. Again, I think it's a 8 bonus and it's a very good thing, and I applaud the team for thinking in that direction, but this is 9 housing that would be useful to us even without that arrangement. And the fact that it's going to 10 teachers is so much the better, but my point is I would be supportive of this concept even without 11 it. 12 13 So the other, the other minor point is that this property isn't even a housing inventory site, and so 14 we have 44 units that don't count –or weren't anticipated in trying to fill the 6087. But if we end up 15 approving this, there's only 6043 to go and we have all of the housing inventory sites left to try to 16 pick those up. So that is another bonus. So I want to thank the applicant for conceiving this, bringing 17 it to us, and I hope ultimately it's in a shape that, that gets approved. 18 19 Chair Summa: Commissioner Chang and then Commissioner Reckdahl. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, I too commend the desire to build affordable housing for teachers. That's 1 something that we really need. However, when I looked in detail at this project, I don't think that 2 most teachers can actually – or almost any teachers could actually – actually have the salaries that 3 would actually allow them to live in these units. So while the – so my concern overall is that this is 4 being called affordable housing and is technically affordable housing according to our law, but in 5 practice, given the area median income and given what the teach-, the Palo Alto Unified Teacher's 6 Salary Schedule shows, these units are not, not really affordable to them. So I have in front of me, 7 the PAUSD Teacher's Salary Schedule where teachers' salaries range from 76,000, as a starting 8 salary all the way up to potentially 154,000, so it maxes out at 154,000. And then I also have the, 9 the income and rent limits and AMI charts from California Health and Safety Code that we were 10 referred to in the packet, Sections 552.5 and 553, and a hundred and – so these units are studios 11 that are 425 square feet and 1-bedrooms that are 500 square feet, and that would, based on the 12 housing law, assume 1 occupant. And then the salary at 110 percent is 139-, alm-, call it $140,000 13 and at 80 percent is 101,000. 14 15 So for example, somebody with a Master's degree who's worked in the district for 30 years makes 16 at most 122,000 a year, so they wouldn't be able to afford the 80-to-110-percent moderate-income 17 units. They could afford the 50-to-80-percent units, but the problem is that they would have 18 worked – somebody with a Master's degree, let's see, would have had to work seven years before 19 they could afford to live there, and not all the teachers have Master's degrees. So that's my 20 concern. The chart basically shows that there's a very small subset of people who could actually 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. afford to live in these units. Furthermore, I then went to Trulia and looked up rents in Palo Alto, and 1 blocks away are units that are available for rent right now that are larger at lower prices. And so my 2 conclusion is that, like other developments that we have seen in Palo Alto that are supposedly 3 affordable, because of the small unit size here, these are actually quite pricey units. They're market 4 rate if not higher, and so – and that's one of the kind of intricacies of housing law where the rent is 5 set based on the number of bedrooms rather than the square feet, so obviously it pencils out much, 6 much better for a developer if the units are really small, like the 425-square-feet and 500-square-7 feet units here. 8 9 So while these might – this might be a great market-rate development, I encourage my fellow 10 commissioners to look at this as a market-rate development when we think about kind of what 11 things we're willing to waive and the FAR that we allow because this is an affordable development 12 in name only, and it kind of bothers me that it's sort of being – I mean, the teachers' union has no 13 reason not to sign this. Of course it's wonderful for them to have right of first refusal for these units, 14 but I think that in actuality, most of the teachers won't be able to afford it. And so it bothers me 15 that we're sort of teacher-washing this project, making it kind of politi-, I don't want to be against a 16 project and then called against teacher housing because I'm certainly for teacher housing, but the 17 reality is that I don't think that most teachers can afford it and in fact, emailed a teacher of mine 18 who was – who spoke at the City Council – or a teacher of my child who was invoked at the City 19 Council prescreen and I emailed her and said, "Hey, what d'you think of these rents?" which are, 20 according to the chart, for a studio 2500 to 3500 depending on the affordability level and for the 1-21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. bedroom, 2900 to 4000, and she said, "Wow, that seems high, and much higher than the rent in 1 Pleasanton," which for a 1-bedroom would be 2551, lower than the studio here. Now obviously 2 that's Pleasanton. So that, that's my first concern. 3 4 My second concern is about the setback. So a 0-foot setback in the back seems inappropriate 5 because there is a parking lot there, which one day might become housing, and so we have the 6 setbacks for a reason. If there were a building there, I don't think we'd be proposing a 0-foot 7 setback, and so I think that we need to make that a, a little bit – set that back a little bit further just 8 for safety reasons. There's going to be another building there hopefully eventually. More housing, 9 right? So that's – those are my comments. Thank you. 10 11 Chair Summa: Okay, Commissioner Reckdahl? 12 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: To follow up on that, what does the Fire Department think of the 0-foot 14 setbacks? They're okay with that? 15 16 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, so the Building and Fire Department have fire rating requirements 17 basically for buildings. They – if you're, if you're asking what does the Building Department or the 18 Fire Department think about a 0-foot setback, they'd say so long as it's making – providing the 19 correct fire rating, then there's not inherently a, a, a problem with that because that's intended to 20 provide for appropriate life safety protection measures. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. In Downtown Palo Alto for example, we have buildings right up next 2 to each other. 3 4 Senior Planner Sauls: Correct. 5 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: And so for there, there's no setback requirement. 7 8 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, in, in, in many cases, yes. And there – also for the CS-zoned district, 9 there are, for residential development, 0-foot setbacks on the interior side and for commercial 10 setbacks – I'm just tryin' to pull that up, as it was being brought up as a discussion topic. The rear 11 yard setback for a commercial development is actually 0. So the City's current standards are actually 12 more restrictive, specifically for the residential compon-, residential portions of a building as 13 compared to the commercial portions of a building for a CS-zoned district. 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, and in general that seems to work or is – because my – when I saw 16 0, it kind of made me swallow hard. That, that seems – w-, w-, we've seen setbacks being pushed, 17 but pushin' all the way to 0 – but there are other cases in the cities where it seems like it's working? 18 19 Senior Planner Sauls: That's correct. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. As Commissioner Chang mentioned, these are really small units, and 1 one of the things that I'm – that concerns me is the open area. And I was lookin' at the old version 2 of 1700 up on the roof deck, and the fact that it's shrunk down to 1100, that's a big change. And 3 that's driven by Fire Code? 4 5 Senior Planner Sauls: What Mr. Stackhouse was talking about is that there's a, a, a different sort of 6 Building Code occupancy that's associated or tagged with those types of spaces, and so it does 7 require – and, and he can come speak to it probably a little bit more than I can, but it does require 8 additional sort of provisions to ensure that it's achieving whatever sort of life safety requirements 9 are tied to that additional – to that different occupancy classification, so… 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. Can, can I ask the applicant? Yeah, can you, can you add more detail 12 about… 13 14 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, so, so the, the Fire Department and Building Department will want the 15 area limited to 49 occupants up there, and so that equates to 750 square feet of occupiable area. So 16 that is the maximum occupiable area we could put up on that rooftop, and then we, we can add 17 additional planters, which we did, to get it up to, I think it's 1155 now with the planters there, which 18 provide green and, and, but aren't occupiable so that, so that there couldn't be a party up there 19 with 75 or 100 people, which would not be allowable under the Fire Code. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: And, and what's the concern? The concern is that if a fire occurs, people 1 would not be able to evacuate quick enough or… 2 3 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, I mean, it's th-, that's a nationwide code, right, so it's not even specific to 4 Palo Alto. It comes from the International – the ICC, which then gets translated to the State of 5 California Building Code and Fire Code. And so – yeah, so at certain occupancies – for instance, if we 6 have a community room and it gets bigger than 750 square feet, all of a sudden, it needs 2 exits, the 7 door swings have to swing out, and so there are a lot of these Fire Codes are based on the, on the 8 occupant load. So up on the roof deck there, yeah… 9 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: I mean, there are two exits up on the roof deck. 11 12 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, there are two exits from the floor, but again, those – at , at 49 occupants – 13 and, and this is very technical, but at 49 occupants, it's still an R occupancy. When it goes up to 50, 14 it becomes an A occupancy, and, and it's not allowable in wood-frame construction. It's not 15 allowable up on that roof deck… 16 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse: …and, and it's – again, it's not anything that could be waived by the Palo Alto Fire 1 Department or, or Building Department. It's something that is not only statewide but it's, it's 2 national, national code. 3 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: So we have other roof decks in the city, but those aren't wood-framed? Is 5 that the issue? 6 7 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, so, like we do also have high-rise buildings that are type 1 concrete. In 8 those buildings, we don't have the same constraint, so we could do a 4000-square-foot roof deck. It 9 would need two exits, but it's fine in that construction type. It doesn't matter that it goes to A 10 occupancy. 11 12 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, and would you be able to put a smaller roof deck – a second one 13 over in the other corner, or would that be considered a single occupancy? 14 15 Isaiah Stackhouse: We'd have to check on that, if they would aggregate the two. I mean, maybe if 16 they were entirely separate and there was no way to possibly circulate between the two. It, it… 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: If I look at the numbers, the 23 square feet of open space per unit seems 19 really small. And the people are going to be in an apartment, and the husband's going to be 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. bothering the wife and one's going to want to go to the roof and make a phone call. And I think this 1 roof deck adds a lot of functionality, and if we can do any way to expand it, I think that would be… 2 3 Isaiah Stackhouse: Okay. 4 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: …of benefit, benefit to the people who are going to live there. 6 7 Isaiah Stackhouse: I appreciate the comment, and I think we could certainly look into some creative 8 ways to try to expand it, maybe get it a little bit back, a little bit bigger, a little bit back toward 9 where it was in our early concept plans. 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, yeah… 12 13 Isaiah Stackhouse: I have a couple ideas in mind. 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: …if that could be worked out, I'd really appreciate it. 16 17 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah. 18 19 Commissioner Reckdahl: The second is unbundled parking. I, I, I love the concept of unbundled 20 parking. Building parking is really expensive, and if I don't have a car, why should I pay for it? 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah. 2 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: So it makes a lot of sense. I-, implementation wise, it really worries me 4 'cause… 5 6 Isaiah Stackhouse: Well, I, I, I… 7 8 Commissioner Reckdahl: …there's this… 9 10 Isaiah Stackhouse: …would say, I can't think of a project I've worked on in 15 or 20 years that had 11 bundled parking, so everything these days – and, and normally when I go to design review and city 12 councils and planning commissions, they all want unbundled parking because they, they don't want 13 – those spaces all cost, depending on the construction type and whether it's in lifts, anywhere from 14 40- to 80,000 per spot, right, so that, that's a big load that goes onto the cost of housing. And, and, 15 and for people who don't have cars, right, no one wants them to be having to pay for that par-, for 16 that parking to be built. That, that makes parking – that makes rent much more and housing much 17 more expensive for them. 18 19 Commissioner Reckdahl: I agree. I mean, in San Francisco, that makes sense up there. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah. 1 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: My daughter lives up there without a car and loves unbundled parking 3 because she doesn't have to pay for parking, so it… 4 5 Isaiah Stackhouse: Right, right. 6 7 Commissioner Reckdahl: …makes a lot of sense. But especially down here, it's more rare and it does 8 provide an incentive for people to not buy the parking and then park on the street and they can 9 save $100 or $200 a month, which is significant. So – and the, the TDM plan right now – as 10 Commissioner Akin brought up, a survey doesn't seem to be a very robust way of catching it. If I'm 11 parking on the street, I'm probably not even returning that survey. Car counts, we've tried to do car 12 counts, and it's really difficult to see where is this car coming from. And as Garrett mentioned, you 13 can go out there in the morning and walk – watch, but I could see a lot of people who bike to Gunn 14 – they're a teacher at Gunn, bike to Gunn but they have the car parked on the street for the 15 weekend. And so if you go out there on Monday morning and watch the people walk to their car, 16 you won't seem him because he's not usin' the car until Friday night or Saturday. And a DMV 17 registration seems to be the, the best option. I would think that that would be a reasonable way 18 'cause what we really want to do is, if you're not going to be fully parked, you want to attract the 19 people who don't have the cars… 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, yeah. 1 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: …and then it's a win-win. 3 4 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah. 5 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: Environmentally, it's better. Fiscally it's better for the people who don't 7 have to pay for the parking. It's a big win. 8 9 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, and, and… 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: But it, it does… 12 13 Isaiah Stackhouse: …and certainly our experience is it's not going to work for everybody. But, but 14 we're talking about roughly 20 units here that, that won't have a parking spot, and are there 20 15 people in Palo Alto who need housing who don't have a car? There, there probably are way more 16 than 20 people, right? 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Isaiah Stackhouse: And, and so we're seeing it more and more that both – in, in, in our home city of 1 Berkeley, there's – City Council has changed – there, there's no, no longer any parking requirement 2 anywhere in the City of Berkeley, and then at the state level as well, anything within half a mile of 3 transit, cities can no longer require parking for. And, and also big modal shifts too, in, in people, 4 people being able to take Lyft and, and Uber and, and… 5 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, I mean… 7 8 Isaiah Stackhouse: …E-bikes and… 9 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: …that's really good in, in theory, but Palo Alto still is car centric. Maybe in 11 ten years, it won't be, but right now it's still car centric that even people who bike to work still have 12 a car for weekends because if you wanted to go to San Francisco, just it's, it's much, much harder to 13 do that without a car. So – but – so I'm not sayin' that don't do the unbundled parking. I'm just 14 saying I would like to see a more robust way of enforcing it and… 15 16 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, yeah. 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: …attracting the people who don't have cars because there are people in 19 Palo Alto without cars and we want to attract them, but there's also a lot of cheapskates in Palo 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Alto who don't want to pay for parking and will park on the street for free. And so we, we want to, 1 we want to select the first group and not the second. 2 3 Isaiah Stackhouse: Yeah, yeah. Point taken. 4 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. And, and the other thing is, teachers – if we really do get a lot of 6 teachers, teachers are wonderful people and the self-selection of teachers is – you get really high-7 quality people. And so I think one of the biggest draws here is all my neighbors would be teachers, 8 and I think that would be a really nice environment to be in. This has a lot of potential, but it also 9 has some, some things that make me uncomfortable. I, I'd be inclined to support it just because I 10 think we have to take risks to get housing in Palo Alto, and as Commissioner Hechtman said, I don't 11 think this blows it up. It's close to what we want in zoning. If we could get a little better TDM plan, if 12 we could get a little more open space, then I think I'd feel much more comfortable with it. 13 14 Isaiah Stackhouse: Thank you. 15 16 Chair Summa: Commissioner Akin and then Commissioner Templeton. 17 18 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair. So I think I can echo some things that my fellow 19 commissioners have said. I have a lot of misgivings about the project. Remember that Santa Clara 20 County, the population – the percentage of the population that's at 80 percent AMI or below is 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. about 40 percent, so oddly, this project, which is offered as 100-percent affordable, gentrifies the 1 bottom part of the income distribution by building not 40 percent in the low-income category. The 2 units are really small, so the types of households that can use them are limited, particularly as 3 people progress through life. The open space is substandard. One other thing that occurs to me is – 4 that we haven't talked about much is this continues the pattern of loss of protected trees. I would 5 like to see something from Urban Forestry about how they would like to address that issue. The 6 parking, I have concerns about, but I think particularly Commissioner Reckdahl's already covered 7 those. I'm okay with the height. I don't think there's a significant problem given the location. And 8 given that this is in the NVCAP area, we might have asked for retail on the ground floor, but I'm not 9 greatly concerned about that given that we seem to have more retail square footage than we can 10 use anyway. 11 12 So overall I'm inclined to forward this to the ARB, but I do want to echo the concerns that these 13 units are unlikely to be either affordable or attractive to many teachers. And frankly, I'm a little 14 surprised, given the, the comparables, that there's enough market demand for this to be financially 15 viable so very interesting. To wrap up, yeah, Urban Forestry, tell us about trees, and I would like to 16 see a more realistic TDM monitoring plan. Thank you. 17 18 Chair Summa: Commissioner Templeton? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. I want to start by saying things I like about this project. 1 I think it's great that we're talking about 100-percent affordable building. I think it's fine to look at 2 different sizes of places to live in, and sometimes people don't want a huge place. It's a lot of 3 upkeep, so I can imagine that there are people who would appreciate the design and the 4 opportunities to live in a newer, nicer, slightly more compact living space. I don't think it's 5 unimaginable that someone would want to live in these. I think it's quite the opposite. it's beautiful, 6 so good job. We'll see what the ARB says. I'm sure they'll have much more detailed feedback on 7 that, but I think it's, it's very exciting to see what you've got in mind. 8 9 Regarding whether or not it's actually, actually market rate, I believe is the discussion, I don't 10 believe that we're the body that decides whether something's market rate. I believe that is set at 11 other jurisdictions, so I'm, I'm not going to consider it market rate if it qualifies under the law to be 12 affordable housing. So it's not market rate in name only. If people can't afford market rate, that's 13 something we need to lobby for as a city to the state and the county and wor-, work on improving 14 those numbers, but that's not something we have the scope of influencing. And so I think I'm very 15 concerned about that framing of something that is being planned, developed as an affordable 16 housing solution for teachers. I appreciate the response that the City would not approve a building 17 that would have an unsafe setback. Can you confirm that again? 18 19 Senior Planner Sauls: Correct. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: So I don't need to worry about that either because that's what you guys 1 do and you're working with other departments in the city to determine whether it's safe or not. I 2 also appreciate the, the discussion that recently happened around people living near trains and that 3 there's a radius of distance in which living near a train really reduces your dependency on a car. 4 Personally if I lived there, I'd be riding the train up to the city, and I did when I lived in Ventura, 5 right? Have any of you guys ridden the train up to the city? Yeah. Everybody has. So there are ways 6 to get to the city without a vehicle. So I am also ready to forward this, oh, to the ARB. Regarding 7 the trees, I believe the rationale for the tree removal was because the trees occupied more than 25 8 percent of the property. Is that correct? I see some nods in the audience… 9 10 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, it's the – the technical requirement now with – Urban Forestry's 11 updated code is 25 percent of the drip line, so it looks at even the tree protection, fencing, and tree 12 zone associated with that, and if it's 25 percent or more of the developable space of the property, 13 Urban Forestry has established that they can allow that removal to occur even with the protected 14 species. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: So we have rules in place in the city that allow that. 17 18 Senior Planner Sauls: Correct. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: So we don't need to fret about that either. That's the rules we've agreed 1 to as a city. Well, that's good to know. I, I think the, the commentary around seeing how far we can 2 push the outdoor space is really good. I think that's important, and, and we'll see how flexible we 3 can be and maybe you can get creative. But, but on the other hand, if we can't, if the law says we 4 can't do more or else it wouldn't be allowed, then we have to also accept that because those are 5 the rules that you're playing by, right? We have established set of rules and – in the city that we're 6 asking people to comply with, and you are doing so in this proposal. But I do agree, if you did find a 7 creative way around it, that would be very exciting. Personally I, I can't imagine not wanting to see 8 this go forward to the ARB because it is affordable housing, which we desperately need, and we are 9 trying to retain our teachers. We have more problems than, than, than people's commutes because 10 also that's, that's making turnover higher. It's making it difficult to attract teachers here, and we can 11 imagine that people who want to be a teacher here would be more comfortable if they could live 12 close to their work. So I'm, I'm excited about that possibility, and I appreciate you bringing this 13 project forward. Thank you. 14 15 Chair Summa: I'm going to go next to Commissioner Lu, but could I ask a question first? It was 16 related to the tree question Commissioner Templeton just asked, and I was unsure from the staff 17 report wor-, wording, whether the two trees together used up too much of the lot or just the 18 protected tree 'cause the black – go 'head. 'Cause the black – it was sorta unclear if it was both 19 trees together or if it was just the oak tree 'cause black acacias are not protected trees. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Senior Planner Sauls: Correct, black acacia is not a protected tree. The valley oak is the only one, 1 and it is just the valley oak that's included in that calculation. And I believe on sheet – I'm looking in 2 the plan set. Sheet A.06 shows that canopy, that, that TPZ area that's used to val-, to validate that 3 25 percent… 4 5 Chair Summa: Okay. 6 7 Senior Planner Sauls: …impact to the buildable area. 8 9 Chair Summa: Okay, I just wanted to make sure because the staff report was a little confusing. And 10 then I also wanted to ask, we have lots of rooftop usable space, whether it's a gar-, in a g-, garden 11 format or just like a patio, in the city, and it's like the whole roof with the exception of any HVAC 12 equipment, which is typically fenced off. Is that because they're lower buildings? The very strict 13 threshold that Mr. Stackhouse was referring to, is that for – does that kick in at a height of building 14 or what? I'm just curious. 15 16 Senior Planner Sauls: Mr. Stackhouse was referencing construction type as, as part of that trigger, 17 and so… 18 19 Chair Summa: Okay. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Senior Planner Sauls: …based on what they're trying to do in order for – it, it sounded as though as 1 he was describing – and of course he can clarify this, but it sounded as though in order for them to 2 have a larger rooftop deck, they would need to change entirely their type of construction in order 3 to support that, but… 4 5 Chair Summa: So it's the wood construction, but it – there's not a height component to that? And I 6 have no problem with the height of this building. I'm just curious how – or maybe the other rooftop 7 uses are grandfathered or something. 8 9 Senior Planner Sauls: Palo Alto separately has – like the Zoning Code, for example, separately has 10 other sort of specific restrictions on where those can occur. Generally… 11 12 Chair Summa: Right. 13 14 Senior Planner Sauls: …rooftop decks do not occur above the maximum height. Because this is a – 15 meaning in this instance above 50 feet. Because this is a PHZ application, to some degree they can 16 kind of set their own rules, set their own standards. Part of the process of a PC or a PHZ is that the 17 applicant can propose what they want to do, and generally when Staff presents to boards and 18 commissions, they try to just couch it as a, a comparison between what's normal and what they're 19 asking for to demonstrate how kind of either far or close to kind of the normal standards they are 20 or that their project is, is proposing. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Right. I, I appreciate that. I was just trying to understand why that – the code for this 2 building is based on the materials being used to build the building more than height, it sounds like 3 to me. 4 5 Senior Planner Sauls: For the rooftop deck, yes. 6 7 Chair Summa: Yeah. Okay. And then I just wanted to, while I was thinking of those as clarifying 8 questions, ask them, and then we'll go to Commissioner Lu and come back to me. 9 10 Commissioner Lu: All right, thank you. I just want to say that I appreciate this project. I think it's in 11 the ballpark of the Affordable Housing Incentive Program, which gives a lot of concessions to 12 projects that are 100-percent affordable based on 120 percent AMI. And so this project, while 13 bending some of those rules, is significantly less expensive than that standard at least that was set 14 by Council. I also think it's in the ballpark of the El Camino Focus Area. So it doesn't quite fit into 15 either one, but splitting the difference, it's generally in line with what we've want-, wanted in this 16 area or exceeds it in affordability requirements. So ultimately I'm really encouraged by that, and 17 that's one of the critical factors for me. A few notes briefly on some other points. I realize that the 18 Affordable Housing Incentive Program would require 33 parking spots, but we're actually not so far 19 off and we're also in an area with good walkability. We're fully bike parked. We have shared E-, E-20 bikes. It's – seems like there are reasonable mitigations, and I'm not actually so concerned about 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. parking. I asked some questions because I really want to understand,, but I think it's not to the 1 detriment of the neighborhood immediately. And I think in the medium term, there's options to 2 have residential parking permits, especially once the Fry site and offices there come on line. Maybe 3 that's something we'd want to do anyways. 4 5 I am willing to look at this as a project where it will not be majority occupied by teachers. I think 6 that's probably not feasible, but I think there are some portion of teachers and especially for those 7 20 percent of units that are more affordable where this is a pretty compelling proposition. I do 8 know people paying almost $2000 to rent a room in someone else's condo or someone else's 9 house, and it's competitive with a lot of options that young professionals, even young professionals 10 that don't make tech salaries, have to pay to live in this area. So while we're not ideally affordable, 11 we're at least in the ballpark of more affordable options. The one concern that I do want to echo is 12 just about the rooftop space. If we can work something out like figuring out extra space at the end 13 of the other stairway or otherwise just plant more trees. Like we said, we – as long as there's 750 14 feet of usable space, we can add more green space otherwise. I think that would be really ideal for 15 this project and would be really appreciated. 16 17 One last, last note, this is just a quixotic dream, but I'll mention it. I, I'm always concerned – or I'm 18 especially concerned about driveways on El Camino. As it is, El Camino's a horrible place to walk. A 19 driveway makes that a little bit worse. A dr-, with cycling lanes, it becomes significantly worse. I 20 know that right now the – this project shares – or this lot is kind of half a parking lot for the 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. adjacent hotel, and so people have been able to figure out arrangements where you kind of share 1 or enter or otherwise use parts of someone else's lot. If there were any pipe dream of avoiding the 2 driveway and having access through the back or through the adjacent parking lot, that would, that 3 would be my dream, so I'll leave it with that. Thank you. 4 5 Chair Summa: It's funny, I agree with your pipe dream. But anyway, I want to thank the applicant 6 for coming and for proposing something to help specifically our teacher population. I – and I, I share 7 many of the concerns that have already been mentioned by my colleagues, and I wanted to ask a 8 question. I don't really consider this – I, I have to disagree with Commissioner Templeton. I don't 9 really consider this an affordable project because the people it's intended for can't afford to live 10 there based on the data that we have about AMI and teacher salary and the junction of those two 11 things. And a lot of other people sitting up here and people – members of the public are better 12 mathematicians than I am, but I'm very good, if somebody does math for me, of grasping the 13 concepts, etc. And it was brought up – this was a big concern for the Council, and I believe it – back 14 last fall, I believe it was introduced by members of the public and they have resubmitted, maybe 15 with some tweaks 'cause there's some tweaks to the project, the same information now about how 16 this is really much more expensive than larger apartments a couple blocks away, some that have far 17 greater amenities. 18 19 And it's hard for me – we have one project that was kind of an experiment with a Workforce 20 Housing zoning overlay that I don't believe we feel we should use again because it did not result in 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. affordability, and, and I've heard that mentioned publically by senior staff, that we're not going to 1 do that. And I, I just feel like – I cannot reconcile the intent – the good intent of this building with 2 the fact that it's not doing what it said it was going to do, that it isn't – that it really is truly market 3 rate, out of reach of almost anybody – a tiny narrow portion of somebody who is a teacher, based 4 on their years and their hours of education after their Master's degree was achieved that they have 5 and years and years and years, like up to 30, could, could live here. And I also am troubled by the 6 fact that – and this is not – I'm not picking on this project for this. It's really true when we're dealing 7 with these ranges of AMI, that the, the – and I believe, unless I misunderstood our Assistant City 8 Attorney, that he confirmed this, that the person at the lower end of the range cannot possibly pay 9 what the person at the upper end of the range and that's what the rent – where the rent is going to 10 end up being. So it's very troubling to me, but I don't believe that is specific to this project. 11 12 I think the trend that we are seeing with creative ways to find ways to deal with trash removal – and 13 I'm not convinced this is – at all that this will be once a week and – for this site – is really troubling. I 14 mean, I think sites need to provide this so – because if everybody – if every development that's 15 new, especially in this area and along El Camino on both sides south of Page Mill where we're 16 seeing the most development except for San Antonio, it's going to become really unworkable and 17 unpleasant. And so I don't find that to be a really good solution. And I'm also troubled – this project, 18 which isn't providing affordability in the way it describes itself, is exempted from paying the City's 19 development impact fees like a project like Wilton Court that is providing that, so that is also very 20 troubling to me because I think the impacts here are the same. A project like Wit-, Wilton Court, 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. which had a, a high percentage, and I don't recall the percentage right now, of adults with 1 developmental disabilities living there, didn't need the place to park a car, and, and so it w-, it 2 worked out really well. 3 4 I'm also worried that there isn't a nexus necessarily between using a car every day to get to work 5 and owning a car, and one of my colleagues, I can't remember which, at least mentioned that we 6 should be using DMV records to get more of a sense of car ownership across the city instead of 7 guessing. And it's my observation about – by abo-, about – regarding this after nearly – well, almost 8 7½ years on this body, that that has been said since I've been on here, so that is really troubling to 9 me also. What was missing for me and what I had to do a lot of work on my own was an – a really 10 good analysis, which I know Staff can do, of the actual cost to– and correlating that to the teachers' 11 salaries. So I – and because that was a known problem in, in September, I felt it was a huge pie-, 12 important piece of information missing, so I don't think – I don't want to hold this project up, but I 13 don't think it's ready to go further in the public process without having some of that missing 14 information supplied. And it's hard to go on what the public says if it differs with what Staff 15 presents, but when Staff doesn't even present it, then we have to rely on the information other 16 than the work that our – that Commissioner Chang did and – in, in real time. 17 18 So I would recommend that – and I'm very interested in pursuing more open space. I mean, I cannot 19 imagine – people who live here, how can they even ha-, own a dog? They – there's not even – at 20 least the workforce housing project on the corner of Page Mill and El Camino had a little tiny plot of 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. land. It's, it's – it'd be hard to live here. And, and I agree that some people like to live in smaller 1 places and would appreciate the newer finishes, but when there's things two blocks away that are a 2 lot less money, a lot bigger, and have a lot more amenities, it's very hard for me to project who the 3 tenants are going to be here. And I'm a little troubled by all of those things, and I would like to see 4 some of those – I, I don't feel comfortable sending it along in the process until some of those detail 5 have been worked out a little better in – by Staff. So that's kind of where I am on it. 6 7 And, and the last thing I'll say, a lot of what the applicant said – he was hoping there would be 8 rideshare opportunities here in the area. He was hoping there would be bike share. I know if you're 9 Stanford affiliated, they have a huge rideshare program, and it's easier for people if they work or 10 live at Stanford to avail themselves of that. But I don't, I don't think we can hope that something's 11 going to turn up to help us solve those issues. And as to the train, I love the train. I specifically live 12 where I live 'cause I hate driving on 101. Very motivating factor for me. I'm not saying that's a good 13 thing, but, but the train goes one place and there's so many rich, beautiful places in the Bay Area 14 where you might want to go. And for many people, renting an Uber is not cost effective. It's just too 15 expensive a-, or renting a car for a day is really expensive for some people. So that's why I am not 16 ready to move this on quite a let – quite yet, but I am very pleased at – that the applicant has come 17 forward with this project, and let's see if we can get it a little bit more ready to go. And then I will 18 call on Commissioner Chang and Commissioner Templeton. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Hi, I realized I had some questions about the TDM that I d-, neglected to ask, so 1 on packet page 36, it talks about – the packet talks about subsidized transit passes, and so I wanted 2 to understand what those transit passes would be and how those – it proposes allocating nine, nine 3 transit passes because the units require – it's providing nine spaces less than it would otherwise be 4 required to provide. So how would those transit passes be allocated? Like for which tenants? 5 6 Senior Planner Sauls: Well, I think tonight we've heard some additional comments about wanting to 7 strengthen the TDM plan, and so at the moment, we're still reviewing this, this TDM plan and still 8 making corrections and comments to it. So this is not kind of the final TDM plan that's going to 9 ultimately be adopted, and so kind of with the comments we've already received, we'll continue to 10 work with the applicant on strengthening some of these issues and, and fleshing them out more as I 11 think Commissioner Akin has and Commissioner Reckdahl has asked some, some pointed questions, 12 I think, about kinda the validation component when you get further down and once it's been 13 implemented. 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, thank you. Because I think I would suggest that kind of – given that it is 16 being under-parked, that all tenants living there should have some sort of subsidized transit, 17 program. Furthermore, the – as presented, it says "either/or," either a transit pass or 18 reimbursement of Palo Alto Link fees. And first of all, Palo Alto Link is heavily subsidized actually by 19 Palo Alto, right, so a low-income person is only charged $1, but the actual cost – no, also low-20 income. I, I went back and read the packet from last week. So at least according to our packet last 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. week, low-income re-, residents are only char-, or low-income users are only required $1 per ride, 1 but it actually ch-, costs us $30 per ride. And it's a service that's very good for our city to provide, 2 and – but part of the TDM might be contributing to Link. And also there's – we can't rely on Palo 3 Alto Link's existence because much as we would like to see it continue, that's not written in stone 4 yet, and so for a TDM plan to be reliant on something that's just in the pilot phase is something 5 that's concerning to me. So I'd rather see – I, I would say, "and," so subsided transit pass and Palo 6 Alto Link. I think they kind of meet different needs for somebody who might not have a car. Palo 7 Alto Link will only go within Palo Alto. So that was the comment about the TDM. I had a few more. 8 Okay. Do you want to go 'head and ask your question? 9 10 Chair Summa: I forgot to ask a specific question and, and that – I, I don't think I asked this. That was, 11 what would the development fee be on if this was not – would the development fees amount to 12 approximately if this was a regular project? 13 14 Senior Planner Sauls: You mean the development impact fees? 15 16 Chair Summa: Yeah. 17 18 Senior Planner Sauls: It'll take me a minute to find out, but give me a little bit of time. 19 20 Chair Summa: Pardon me? 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Senior Planner Sauls: It's going to take me a minute to do that… 2 3 Chair Summa: Oh, yeah… 4 5 Senior Planner Sauls: …calculation, so… 6 7 Chair Summa: …yeah, I was just… 8 9 Senior Planner Sauls: …give me a minute. 10 11 Chair Summa: …curious. And then we had a letter that came later today from a neighboring 12 property owner that owned two properties, and they said to build this project, because of its 0 13 setbacks, they would have to have access to their property and they, they weren't interested in 14 doing that. And I was wondering if our Staff… 15 16 Senior Planner Sauls: We just got that email today too. 17 18 Chair Summa: So you haven't had a chance… 19 20 Senior Planner Sauls: No. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Okay, thanks for that. Go 'head. 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, so I think that was the last – so my last comment is that I don't, I don't 4 object to the height. I think this is the right place for the height. It's a great place for the height. I 5 don't object to the, the density. I just want to make sure that we understand that while it's being 6 called teacher housing, it in reality is not going to be mostly teacher housing. Like it just literally 7 can't be based on the pay scales. That's fine, but I also just – I'm making this comment because I 8 want to be clear what this is. In other words, as Commissioner Templeton mentioned, if we want 9 teacher housing, it's going to have to be deeper affordability. This is a PHZ, and certainly we can 10 only build what comes to us, right? It's – we as a city don't build the housing, so either we would 11 need to fund more or ask for more, and I've seen – so we're going to hear later tonight another 12 project that has inclusionary affordable housing and it's great. It has large units that are definitely 13 below market rate. 14 15 And since we are being asked to look at this as a PHZ, which is something that's discretionary, I 16 think that we should think about what we ask for. So my ask is, I really would like to see – like if this 17 is supposed to be teacher housing, I'd like to see something that could be affordable for more than 18 people who have worked at least 7 years with 30 hours, in other words a Master's degree, because 19 unless you've worked at least 7 years in the district and at least – and unless you have a Master's 20 degree, because if you've worked for 30 years in the district and you don't have those 30 units of 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. additional education, you can't afford even the 80 percent here. And so that to m-, that, that would 1 be my ask, and I'm hoping that when this comes back to me, we can maybe see a little bit more 2 movement on some of that. 3 4 Chair Summa: Commissioner Templeton? 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. I would love to see that too. I don't know if the project can go 7 forward with that, and it sounds like if there's a possibility to share your business plan and show 8 why you think that teachers can work this out, at least some of us might enjoy reading that. So the 9 – I appreciate your bringing up Palo Alto Link. I don't know what level of those affordability zones, 10 qualify for the discount on Link, so that's why I'm a little concerned about it. However, it does 11 address Chair Summa's concerns about how people might get around without a car if they didn't 12 want to go up and down the train corridor. It's local, but it's a thought. And I also was thinking 13 about the dog park, and I didn't bring it up because I thought that we have a dog park coming in the 14 NVCAP park improvement. Is that right? You guys remember? We had talked about it. Maybe, 15 maybe it's – it didn't, it didn't stay? Well, maybe that's something we should think about as part of 16 the NV-, yeah, yeah, I remember 'cause it was a cool thing. 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah… 19 20 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Reckdahl:...they are adding one over at Bulware Park. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: That's right. That's exactly right. Which is the nearest park and it's only a 4 couple blocks away from this building, so I think our doggies will be okay, hopefully. But back, back 5 to what, what are we doing here. We're, we're not responsible for making sure this pencils out for 6 the applicant. We're responsible for trying to build the affordable housing Palo Alto needs and 7 approving it, and we're responsible for giving feedback on how to make it better for the City, and 8 we're responsible for forwarding it onto the ARB to make additional tweaks. And I, I believe we are 9 safely able to do that b-, not because it's perfect but because we're going to see it again after the 10 ARB works it out and after the Staff and the applicant have an opportunity to act on our advice. So I 11 do, I do think we already have an opportunity for it to come back. I don't see any reason to hold up 12 affordable housing at all. I don't see any reason to hold up, housing intended for teachers, whether 13 it's reasonable or not. This is something that we want our teacher organizations that they're 14 partnering with to advocate for. 15 16 So a-, again, I, I just want to check our scope here and make sure we understand what, what our 17 mission is. And I think we've given tremendously positive, helpful feedback. We've indicated that 18 we are all interested in a project like this coming online and serving the purpose that it says it would 19 like to serve, and I don't see any reason to delay the ARB seeing it and getting their feedback so 20 they can make all these changes at once because if we're talking affordable housing, we, we do 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. need to consider the cost of making everything serial instead of parallel. So I would hope and 1 encourage us to send it on to the ARB, and I would make a motion to send – to, to do the Staff 2 recommendation provided that our feedback has been incorporated, specifically – and everybody 3 can add in something specific if they want to, but specifically looking at the open space feedback as 4 well as the Chair's feedback about including some justification for why this will affordable to 5 teachers in Palo Alto on the next time it comes back. Thank you. Anyone want to second it? 6 7 Commissioner Lu: I'll second. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. 10 11 Chair Summa: Okay, we'll put that on hold for a minute 'cause Com-, Commissioner Reckdahl had 12 his light on before you made… 13 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: I have… 15 16 Chair Summa: …the motion. 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: ….just one quick clarification. On packet page 39, it, it talks about what 19 happens if the TDM plan comes back and, and we find out that there's too much overflow parking, 20 for example, and it says the plan, which still hasn't been written, will address that when that 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. happens. But what can you do if you have too many people parking and they have cars. It seems 1 like at that point you're kind of painted in the corner. If you find out that you're using – that the 2 current tenants have overflow parking, how can we rectify that? 3 4 Senior Planner Sauls: Yeah, the TDM plans in general are usually fairly open ended, especially when 5 it comes into play for kind of future visions, right, of what might be possible solutions to the issue. I 6 think the point for that is because there are – there's no actual specific data of what the actual 7 problem is now, right? And so in some ways we can try to project what those potential solutions 8 could be, but they might not even be relevant in the context of whatever problems you ultimately 9 might face… 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, so in the past… 12 13 Senior Planner Sauls: …or, or may not… 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: …if we've had a TDM that limits overflow parking and we find out that 16 we're seeing a lot of parking elsewhere, what have we done? 17 18 Senior Planner Sauls: I, I don't have that specific answer right now, but we can certainly look into it 19 before… 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. 1 2 Senior Planner Sauls: …the next time we come back to have a more specific answer for it. 3 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, thank you. 5 6 Chair Summa: Okay. Commissioner Hechtman, did you have your light on to say something before… 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Only to… 9 10 Chair Summa: …we go ba-… 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: …only to second, which has already happened. 13 14 Chair Summa: Oh, okay. Okay. Would you like to speak to your motion? 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Yes, I think that it's really important for us to take plans that have 17 complied with all of our previously written and documented requests and who are trying to build 18 affordable housing here. It is complicated to build affordable housing without grants and other 19 outside funding, so I applaud the effort. And I think we should encourage this kind of proposal more 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. and more and not slow it down, so I think we can work in parallel and ask Staff to work in parallel 1 for our feedback while they get the feedback from the ARB. Thank you. 2 3 Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu, would you like to speak to your second? 4 5 Commissioner Lu: No, thank you. 6 7 Chair Summa: No, thank you. Any other discussion while we're looking at the motion coming up on 8 the screen? 9 10 Senior Planner Sauls: And feel free to correct what I have written. I'm just typing it as you all are 11 talking. Feel free to correct what I'm writing as needed. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: And a reminder, I'm open to amendments if you want to include some 14 special concern. 15 16 Chair Summa: I was attending to chair business when you were speaking. Can you repeat, repeat 17 the motion? 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: I move the Staff motion… 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Uh-huh. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: …and add to incorporate our feedback tonight. The one I specified was 3 around – two I specified was around the open space or whatever – is that the right word for it? And 4 also to provide the chart and data that you and the vice chair have asked for. Thank you. 5 6 Chair Summa: Okay. Commissioner Chang? 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: I think that Staff has already captured the information on, on the TDM because 9 that's what I would like to add to it, but I don't think that needs to be in a motion. 10 11 Senior Planner Sauls: It, it can be. It helps it in the future to… 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. 14 15 Senior Planner Sauls: …kinda come back… 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: So then I would say… 18 19 Senior Planner Sauls: …and just detail that. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: …that – I would add to the motion that we have the information that 1 Commissioner Reckdahl asked for, which is what we've done in the past or what teeth sort of we 2 can put into a TDM once it's discovered that there's a lot of – a lot more vehicles in the area than, 3 than intended. And I think that's good for – there's going to be a lot more development, so I think 4 this is just good information for us to have as well as some consideration of either funding – 5 providing some funds toward Palo Alto Link as well as subsidies to all the tenants in the building for 6 public transportation and Palo Alto Link, so some, some – consideration of some, some of that 7 mishmash. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Accepted. 10 11 Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman, is your light on? 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: No. 14 15 Chair Summa: No, okay. I k-, okay. 16 17 Senior Planner Sauls: And just to clarify, sorry, the subsidies you're talking about are the parking 18 passes or other sort of like alternative transit option? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Right, so it's Pa-, well, the two that were mentioned in the TDM thus far were 1 transit passes as well as Palo Alto Link reimburse-, fee reimbursement. And I think that like an 2 "and," both of them, not "or." 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Yes, we need responses on those things… 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: …yeah. Commissioner Lu, do you – you're the seconder. Do you agree 9 with these changes? 10 11 Commissioner Lu: Yes. 12 13 Chair Summa: Any other comments or amendments? I think we should just call the vote then. 14 15 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 16 17 Commissioner Akin: Yes. 18 19 Veronica Dao: Vice Chair Chang? 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: No. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Oh, after I accepted your amendments? That's not nice. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: So we could vote it down and go again without the amendments, but I'll 7 vote yes. 8 9 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 10 11 Commissioner Lu: Yes. 12 13 Veronica Dao: Chair Summa? 14 15 Chair Summa: No. 16 17 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Reckdahl? 18 19 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes. 20 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Motion carries, 5-2. 5 6 Chair Summa: Thank you. Would – Commissioner Chang, would you like you speak to your no vote? 7 I finally remembered. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: So it's not that I think this is overall a bad project, but I think that there's some 10 really serious problems with – the fact that it's a PHZ and discretionary is what makes me vote no 11 because I don't want to see more of these projects because it's essentially market-rate housing. I 12 think it – the reason why it's affordable is – or being labeled affordable is by virtue of the small – i-, 13 i-, sorry, I'm not being fair. So it could be built as market-rate housing. We've seen other 14 developments in the area that are built as market-rate housing. I am fine with the h-, the height 15 exception. I'm fi-, but as affordable housing, we as a city don't collect any development fees, and I 16 think that we need that. It's ex-, it's expensive. Where – we – the – I, I made some back-of-the-17 envelope estimate of how much we lose by doing this, but we could do a lot with that in terms of 18 our bike lanes and transit and everything. And we've had another project with similar rents that's 19 not full, and so I would – I have no problem with it being built, but it – I don't like that we're missing 20 out on these development fees. So that's – and, and based on – i-, yeah, that's, that's enough. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: And I'll just agree with Commissioner Chang and just go a little bit further that I think 2 it's better to have projects come to us with some of these things worked out. And I think 3 Commissioner Lu had a – has a problem with basically the circulation of this project also, which is 4 based on the size, which is an aspect of trying to keep it low, I think, which I appreciate that the 5 applicant did be-, because there's been in the past a lot of distaste for going over the 50-foot height 6 limit, but in the – a location like this, I actually think a little more height would be better and better 7 locat-, better circulation and functionality in terms of trash removal because I see this as a looming 8 pro-, problem in our future and more open space, private open space and shared open space on 9 projects would make'm be really successful. And this one has distance from other low-density 10 residential, so that's part of my thinking. But thank you very much, everyone who came in to 11 represent the project and Staff tonight, and I think with that, we can move on to the next item. 12 Thank you. 13 14 3. PUBLIC HEARING / QUASI-JUDICIAL. 800 San Antonio Road [23PLN-00010]: 15 Recommendation on Applicant’s Request for a Rezone from Service Commercial to 16 Planned Community/Planned Home Zoning (PC/PHZ). The Project is the Construction of 17 75 Residential Ownership Units Including 15 Below-Market Rate Units (20% of the Units) 18 in a Five Story Building with Two Levels of Subterranean Parking. Environmental 19 Assessment: An Addendum to the Previously Certified Housing Incentive Program 20 Expansion and 788 San Antonio Mixed Use Project EIR (SCH # 2019090070) was 21 Prepared. Zoning District: CS (Commercial Service). 22 23 Chair Summa: Okay, so the next item that we have up as we change staff is another Public 24 Hearing, quasi-judic-, judicial, 800 San Antonio Road, and it's a rezone to Planned Community 25 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. also. And so while everyone's setting up, I'll go ahead and – we've lost one. He'll be back – ask 1 for disclosure, and we'll start at Commissioner Templeton's end. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Nothing to disclose. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: No disclosures. 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: No disclosures. 8 9 Chair Summa: No disclosures. 10 11 Commissioner Lu: No disclosures. 12 13 Chair Summa: And we will ask Commissioner Reckdahl when he returns about disclosures, but I 14 don't know if we want to wait a minute to start staff report or – oh, here he is. Commissioner 15 Reckdahl, we're wondering if you have any disclosures on 800 San Antonio? 16 17 Commissioner Reckdahl: I, I went by the site, but I have not – I have no disclosures. 18 19 Chair Summa: Okay. All right, so we'll move on to the staff report please. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Emily Kallas, Planner: I need a minute to pull up my screen share as I was not in the Zoom 2 version of the meeting. 3 4 Chair Summa: Okay. 5 6 Planner Kallas: Okay, thank you for your patience. My name is Emily Kallas. I'm the project 7 planner, and this is the 800 through 814 San Antonio Road, Planned Community rezoning PHZ 8 project. Where we are in this process is pretty far along. This had its pr-, initial PTC hearing in 9 June 2023. Over the last few months, it has been going through the Architectural Review Board 10 process and received the recommendation for approval in March as well as last week had a ARB 11 ad hoc committee meeting that I will mention more in my presentation. today we are here in 12 front of the Planning and Transportation Commission, and the next step, if you provide a 13 positive recommendation for approval, would be to go to City Council. The location of this 14 project is on San Antonio Road in between Leghorn Street and Charleston Road. It is in the 15 Housing Incentive Program area. However, as a PHZ project, it is not choosing to use the HIP 16 Development Standards. Other nearby projects include the somewhat recently approved 788 17 San Antonio project. There is a senior housing project proposed and under planning review at 18 824 San Antonio, and we've also received two SB 330 preapplications, one at 37-, 3997 Fabian 19 and 762 San Antonio. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 The project proposed on this site is a 5-story residential building with 75 for-sale units, 20 2 percent of which will be affordable to a range of income levels. This building includes two levels 3 of below-grade parking. It also includes 1078 square feet of commercial area, and because it is 4 an ownership project, it will require a tentative map and a final map for that subdivision. As a 5 PHZ, it is requesting certain exceptions to the typical CS and HIP zoning standards. That includes 6 a 3.0 FAR where 0.4 to 1.0 is allowed; 65-percent lot coverage where 50 percent is allowed; 60-7 foot 8-inch height where 50 feet is allowed; the 1078 square feet of retail or commercial use 8 where 1500 is typically required. The below-grade garage projects slightly into the special 9 setback, and I will also show that later in my presentation. And typically park land dedication is 10 required for condominium projects with more than 50 units, but this project is requesting to 11 pay in-lieu fees instead. 12 13 As a PHZ, there needs to be proposed – or proven, yeah, public benefits for this project. In 14 terms of affordable housing, Council, in a prior 2020 council meeting, had considered a way of 15 assigning weighted values to the affordable units provided. And so this table here, which is also 16 in the staff report, shows that when you apply those weighted values, the affordable units 17 provided would be considered 26.4 percent affordable compared to the 20 percent of actual 18 units provided. Another benefit is that this is an ownership project. Most of the units are two or 19 three bedrooms, which will better accommodate families and larger households, and by being 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. fully located outside of the special setback, it does continue to reserve that space for the City to 1 do future improvements to the right of way, such as a bike lane. But there's multiple types of 2 improvements that could potentially go there. 3 4 As I mentioned last week , this project went to the ARB for an ad hoc committee. What this is 5 means is as a part of their recommendation, there were seven items that they included in 6 conditions of approval, and while those items are not required to be addressed prior, prior to 7 the planning approval, we were able to address some of them. And so those changes included 8 improving hallway circulation, which did add about 300 square feet to the total FAR, but that is 9 a very small amount. It took it from 2.99 to the 3.0 that you see in the plans this evening. They 10 clarified that the total open space provided does meet the 150-square-foot-per-unit 11 requirement, so there is no exception being requested for open space. However, as a part of 12 the special setback, one of the private outdoor patio areas doesn't meet the minimum 13 dimensions, but again, the total open space being provided does meet the zoning requirements 14 as we look at it in aggregate. The shared courtyard and roof deck designs and circulation have 15 been clarified and improved to the satisfaction of the ARB subcommittee. And obscured glass 16 glazing windows were added to the bicycle storage area to let in light and also provide more 17 articulation on the front façade. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. There are two items that the ARB ad hoc is still looking at, which, again, is more for your 1 awareness, which is an alternative to look at how refuse is circulated within the building. This 2 does not affect the actual city pickup of the trash and recycling. This is just how the bins are 3 brought up from the garage to the street. And then ensuring that the des-, design of the below-4 grade parking allows for landscape planting above. This will likely be facilitated just by ensuring 5 that we're able to put at least 3 feet of soil above where the concrete begins, to provide 6 adequate planting wells. These plans here, the one on the left shows what the plans looked like 7 the last time that this was before the PTC and the right shows what is currently being proposed. 8 One of the biggest changes is providing the commercial space. Initially the project was 9 exclusively residential, and so it is considered a great improvement that they are providing the 10 mixed-use commercial space to provide additional services to this building. The amenity space 11 in general was rearranged to be more centrally located on the courtyard and improve 12 circulation, and the floor plans overall were – additional detail was added, so that's why the 13 plans look more different than the ones on the left. The open space was also more clarified, 14 and the private open space for the units that are not fac-, directly facing San Antonio did get 15 larger. 16 17 This shows a typical floor plan and the roof deck plan. There was no roof deck proposed when 18 this initially went to PTC. That has been added, again, to help this project meet the 150-square-19 feet-per-unit open space requirement. This project proposes to be fully parked. It meets the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. standard parking requirements. It doesn't include a parking reduction, and for that reason, it 1 also does not include any sort of TDM because it's not required. The parking does include a 2 combination of typical parking spaces and stackers, and our conditions of approval contain the 3 requirement to maintain the stackers that we have applied to other projects. And as you can 4 see, there is the red dashed line that represents the setback in the front. So this project does 5 project approximately 7 feet at the top corner. I can see if I can – yeah, I don't think you can see 6 my cursor. Or maybe you can. Right here, it's a slight protrusion for this kinda slim triangle of 7 area. And so we do feel that providing the required parking is definitely a benefit and that this 8 encroachment shouldn't limit what we said earlier about the ability to use the special setback in 9 the future. 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: So these parking spots are under the setback potentially? 12 13 Planner Kallas: Yes, correct. 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. 16 17 Planner Kallas: This is all below grade. 18 19 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Planner Kallas: This slide just lists what the proposed materials are, and again, through the ARB 2 process, the design was improved to refine the front entry, add warmer colors and textures to 3 the building, and add some additional roof overhangs and the roof deck. This slide shows the 4 front façade with the designated residential entry separate from the entry into the commercial 5 space, the rear façade, and then we have the right and left façades. The left façade is the one 6 that is facing 788 San Antonio. This slide shows what the interior courtyard looks like, including 7 the proposed green wall in the amenity space. This streetscape shows the comparative heights 8 along the block with 788 San Antonio and an older rendering from the project that is proposed 9 at 824 San Antonio, though that one looks a little different in the more recent plans. Overall the 10 height is 60 feet, 8 inches and then 64 feet to the top of the mechanical closure and the roof 11 deck amenity. The allowable height in the CS Zone is 50 feet. That is the height that 788 San 12 Antonio was approved at and what 824 San Antonio is expected to be proposing. It's also 13 similar to the heights in the adjacent area. San Antonio has the two taller Marriott hotels that 14 are about 50 feet. It's also near the Center for Jewish Life, which is about 60 feet tall as well. 15 16 Because this is in the HIP District, projects that do use the HIP Development Standards would 17 be able to use an additional 12 feet for a roof deck as well as all projects within the city have an 18 additional 15-foot height allowance for mechanical equipment and enclosures. And there is no 19 daylight plane that applies to this site. In terms of tree replacement, there are ten trees 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. proposed for removal and seven trees proposed to be planted. Those trees being removed do 1 have a additional requirement equivalent to 24 trees for which in-lieu fees will be paid, and that 2 would be approximately $15,600. As I mentioned prior, this project is proposing to pay park 3 land dedication in-lieu fees as opposed to providing park land dedication on site. For the 75 4 units, park land dedication would be approximately 0.6 acres, and providing that on site is not 5 feasible since the project site is 0.88 acres. We had conversations and meetings with the 6 Community Services Department and were not able to identify a suitable location to dedicate 7 additional land and feel that paying in-lieu fees is appropriate. It's also potentially worth noting 8 that for rental projects, they would be paying these in-lieu fees as opposed to the dedication 9 requirement, and the in-lieu fees are estimated at over $4-million. 10 11 Another item for the PTC to consider is the below-market-rate allocation of the units. As I had 12 shown previously, there is the weighted look at how they are allocated amongst the income 13 levels. However, we also should look at how they are distributed by the bedroom count, and so 14 what this table is showing – and unfortunately this is not in the staff report as it came to Staff's 15 attention more recently is the – so what the table is showing is the number of units in the 16 building at each of the bedroom sizes. The second column is how many of each size is provided 17 as BMR. The third column is what that percentage is, so just for that first line, 2 divided by 7 is 18 29 percent. And then the last column is how many units would be provided if each one was just 19 20 percent of that size of bedroom. And so it would be 1.4 one-bedroom units, 10.4 two-20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. bedroom units, and 3.2 three-bedroom units, and so while the allocation presented here is not 1 inconsistent with the Zoning Code, the City does typically have a preference for it to be closer. 2 And so we would like PTC to consider if an additional three-bedroom should be allocated and, 3 as a result, one fewer two-bedroom, but that's something to discuss as the units have also been 4 evenly allocated between the floors, so for the five-story building, there's three BMR units on 5 each floor. There's a lot of considerations that we look at for making sure that the units are 6 allocated throughout the building and not clumped together and that sort of thing. 7 8 In terms of the California Enven-, Environmental Quality Act, the entire HIP expansion area was 9 considered in an EIR that was certified, and so for this project, an addendum was prepared 10 ensuring that this project is consistent with that EIR. There are no new or more significant 11 impacts that would occur as a result of this project, and all adopted mitigation measures from 12 that EIR will apply to this project as well. And so the recommendation is that Staff recommends 13 the Planning and Transportation Commission recommend approval of the project to Council 14 subject to the conditions of approval. And this concludes my presentation. The applicant is here 15 and has a presentation as well. Thank you. 16 17 Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you very much. Commissioner Reckdahl, do you have a question 18 right now? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: Can you walk me through the trash pickup process? 1 2 Planner Kallas: Yes. I would need an extra minute to pull up the plan. Oh… 3 4 Chair Summa: Do you want to take… 5 6 Planner Kallas: …well… 7 8 Chair Summa: …the applicant? Okay. 9 10 Planner Kallas: I have a short version of the answer if you want that. There is a – I believe it's 11 40-foot-long duck-out cut into the sidewalk at the front of the property. And so the garbage 12 trucks will pull over, take care of the refuse, and then continue down the street. 13 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: The trash is not being hauled out to the curb at all? 15 16 Planner Kallas: So it, it gets hauled from a staging area in the below-grade parking to a staging 17 area on the curb, and then there is a space designated for them to pull over and then take care 18 of the bins. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, but it's not blocking the sidewalk at all? It's not blocking any bike 1 lanes? 2 3 Planner Kallas: So there are no existing bike lanes… 4 5 Commissioner Reckdahl: But… 6 7 Planner Kallas: …on the street… 8 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: …it's not bik-, blocking the area where eventually there will be bike 10 lanes? 11 12 Planner Kallas: That is not known at this time, but this is an interior lot so there would not be an 13 alternative location. 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: But when they put the garbage bins out, is that land owned by the City 16 or is that land owned by the unit? 17 18 Planner Kallas: There's a staging area on the property, and then on – at the time of the pickup, 19 they'll be moved to the curb… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. 2 3 Planner Kallas: …and then put back in the staging area, so they will not block the sidewalk 4 during most of the time, just… 5 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: But if, if… 7 8 Planner Kallas: …when [inaudible 2:44:38]. 9 10 Commissioner Reckdahl: …there were a bike lane at the curb, then they would be blocking the 11 bike lanes then. 12 13 Planner Kallas: Potentially. 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. Okay, thank you. 16 17 Planner Kallas: Mm-hm. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Commissioner Chang, do you want to – well, maybe we can see a diagram of that 1 after we hear from the applicant. 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah, thanks. 4 5 Chair Summa: Okay. Okay, and that – it's – we'd love to hear from the applicant now. 6 7 Mark Donahue, applicant: Thank you. Emily, do you have the presentation? Thank you. Okay, so 8 Emily's really done an excellent job of explaining the project, so I'm not going to dwell a lot on 9 the s-, the things that she already talked about. Next slide. Do I have a – is there a clicker? No, 10 you're – all right. I think you know the details of where it is, and so we'll just skip over that. 11 There's the location. Next. Yes, on the border, Mountain View. Next. And HIP, so plenty of 12 future residential development. Next. And then of course you know it's a PHZ, so we won't 13 dwell on that. Yeah, I think we can keep going, Emily. Thank you. Here's a site plan, and then in 14 the tone that you see there, the warm tone, that's the special setback. And so that special 15 setback i-, exists on the property, but it is designated for potential future improvements to San 16 Antonio, which, as Emily pointed out, are unknown at this time and so somewhat difficult to 17 plan around. Next. Here's the lowest subterranean parking level, and I see that I have an older 18 version of it. We have thickened the foundation walls to reflect what is most probably the 19 actual dimension just to verify it doesn't interfere with any of the parking or the circulation. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Next. So this is the ground level, and you can see pointed out here that the staging area for the 2 garbage actually would leave some space for bike lanes. And so the intention was to be able to 3 stage the garbage. It would be brought up the parking ramp with a shuttle. That's a very 4 common urban infill strategy. Placed in that zone and then when Green Waste comes to pick it 5 up, they would actually roll it out to the truck. And so that is what's indicated there by the top 6 arrow – no, the second arrow from the top on the left. There's a small area also for Uber, Lyft, 7 and very quick DoorDash, that kind of drop-off, close to the lobby. And then there's the cutout. 8 You see the third arrow down is the cutout that would accommodate the trash truck. We did 9 try to fit it on the site. We tried several variations, and it's simply not possible to make the turn 10 on San Antonio to make its way to the trash pickup area. 11 12 Some of the other items that are different from when you last saw it, Emily pointed out we 13 have now 1078 square foot commercial. The community spaces, which formerly were on the 14 front façade of the building, have been moved to the courtyard. The circulation within the 15 courtyard has been expanded so that there's more direct access from the front lobby to the 16 back corridor. And the back corridor has been simplified and widened so that what effectively is 17 the service elevator is more useful, so there's space in the corridor where you can get your 18 couch out and move it into your apartment. Let's see. Yeah, next slide. Typical upper floor. This 19 one is the second floor, so this also shows the two-story lobby. Next slide. And then this is a 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. typical floor, third and fourth floor, and filling in that space. And also I think last time that you 1 saw this, it was really just demising walls and not the floor plans. Next slide. So we've got quite 2 a bit of detail for the internal planning, and, I'll just give you a second to look at those, take that 3 in. They are spacious units, and they're, I think, very appropriate for the target audience, which 4 is households. Next slide. 5 6 And then here's a landscape plan. We produced this kind of hybrid planting layout plan on 7 behalf of ARB. It just is meant to demonstrate where each of the plant types is. I've failed to 8 include a key, but I think at this speed, it would be hard to read. It is in the drawing set, and it 9 does show where the low plantings are, where the trees are. And we've been working through 10 with ARB the depth of structure needed to s-, and soil needed to support the trees. Next slide. 11 There's an enlarged plan of both the frontage – planting areas in the frontage, which are low 12 and are intended to be removable in the future if the bike lanes were to be built. Furthermore, 13 you can see that the path from the front lobby to the back corridor has been widened, and then 14 the community space is moving into the courtyard and diminishing the number of units that are 15 actually facing the courtyard. Next slide. 16 17 This is the roof deck, and I listened with interest to the previous applicant talk about the code 18 implications. There have been some changes to the code. There's like a temporary reprieve, 19 from what I hear, to roof decks in the Building Code, but there's, there's three, there's three 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. dimensions. One is the occupancy load. If you exceed 750 square feet, you have to have 2 exits. 1 The second thing is the amount of A3 assembly area that's allowed on a wood building. This is a 2 type 3A building, but that, that is where our code compliance would definitely need to get 3 down into the – where the angels are dancing on the head of a pin. According to the code as 4 we've read it, this use is allowed because the roof deck is not considered a story. Under the 5 current code, it's defined as just an open space on the roof, and that's the key is because it's 6 not considered a story, it doesn't count against the occupancy. It's therefore not an A3, and, we 7 just have to deal with exiting. So yeah, go 'head. Sorry, Emily. I don't want to take up too much 8 time. This just shows that all of the balconies are within the special setback on the front and 9 that they're at least 5 feet in depth on all sides, so they do qualify as private open space. 10 11 Okay, this of course is the view from San Antonio, so you've seen on the cover. Here's the 12 revised entry. The comments you see there pointed out, the notations, were part of our 13 dialogue with the Architectural Review Board, more texture, warmer colors. We went from 14 what previously had been sort of a 1-story frame embedded where it says 808 into a 2-story-15 high inviting entry that allows you see into the courtyard. There'd be an internal circulation 16 bridge crossing behind, so at night you'll see people moving back and forth. And then you can 17 also see in this view the retail, which has been added – or the commercial, I should say, that's 18 been added just to the right of entry. Next slide. This is just the elevation of the same, showing 19 first of all the – if you'll notice to the left of the lobby, those vertical windows, those look into 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the bike room, but they're not transparent because many bike owners are very sensitive about 1 their rigs, so we want to be sensitive to that. Next, this is really just intended to show the 2 degree of articulation and the texture of the front façade, a major concern of the ARB, and then 3 also the sort of distance between the buildings and the misalignment of openings between us 4 and the neighbors. Next slide. 5 6 And then this is actually, actually, Emily, this is hot off the press. In response to another ARB 7 comment, we added windows that would be approximately across from the elevator so that 8 that portion of the corridor was day-lit, and those are above the new double-door entry into 9 that rear corridor. So again, we took, took up their suggestion and have added it. Next slide. 10 Here is the view looking out toward the street from the courtyard through the two-story-high 11 portal, and you can see, very comfortable, nice space. And then back – we're out back to the 12 San Antonio Drive – San Antonio Road, rather, elevation. So that concludes the presentation. 13 Thank you, first of all, for your attention tonight and for you attention to the project, and I 14 would be happy to answer any questions. 15 16 Chair Summa: Thank you so much for that. Do my colleagues have clarifying questions or 17 questions for the applicant or – yes, okay. Commissioner Chang followed by Commissioner 18 Reckdahl. No? That's an old one? Okay. Commissioner Chang? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: So could we s-, I wanted to look at the trash circulation again. I know you 1 were – you showed it, but you don't have the ability to point with your arrow, so if maybe Ms. 2 Kallas could help us with that. I just wanted to understand it. So like if there were a future bike 3 lane, how the future... 4 5 Mr. Donohue: Yes. 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: …bike lane might be impacted. 8 9 Mr. Donohue: Yes, so I think that what you cou-, how we could describe it is that currently you 10 see on the far left is the driveway and the sidewalk and then there is a planting buffer with a 11 little ramp in there. The ramp leads from the staging area out to the sidewalk and then to the 12 cutout where the garbage truck would park. That planting area is sufficient width for a two-way 13 bike lane, and so should a bike lane be proposed, we would still be able to use that staging area 14 for trash. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: Perfect. Great. Thank you so much. 17 18 Mr. Donohue: Mm-hm. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, that's wonderful. And then a second question I have, it's some 1 combination of you and Staff, is regarding the distribution of BMR units. Is it – would it – I 2 mean, you guys have run the numbers, right, so would it be possible to have another three-3 bedroom – like to swap out one of the small-, smaller units for a three-bedroom, just because 4 we always like to see larger units and when this was here before us before, I think Ms. Kallas 5 had mentioned that there needed to be one more three-bedroom unit, but it sounds like that's 6 not quite the way it works. The weighted average is what is required, and then we have a 7 preference to see even distribution. Is that correct? 8 9 Planner Kallas: Yes. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: So, so then given that it's our preference, I wanted to understand from the 12 applicant, is that something that's feasible? 13 14 Mr. Donohue: So the… 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: And I know it's on the fly and you have… 17 18 Mr. Donohue: No, that's fine… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: …financial… 1 2 Mr. Donohue: …that… 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: …models, but… 5 6 Mr. Donohue: We, we actually got word this afternoon, or whenever it was, yesterday, about 7 this concern, and so I was able to address this with our owner, the sponsor. And we agree that 8 that switch is feasible, and we will make it. 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, do you know which unit would be changed because what's – this – I 11 love this project in comparison to the last one because it's truly a-, affordable when you look at 12 the charts and the square footage and everything and, and compare it to market-rate rents. So 13 do you – but, but at the same, I would hate to see one of the very-low-income units disappear 14 because those are so hard to come by here, and so I just wondered with the three bedroom – if 15 you're shifting one f-, of the smaller units, do you know which one you would be shifting? Like 16 at what level of affordability? 17 18 Mr. Donohue: I think that our plan would be to just pull a switcheroo, like take a two-19 bedroom… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: And make it… 2 3 Mr. Donohue: …and make it a, a… 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Like a two-bedroom moderate and make it three-bedroom moderate. 6 7 Mr. Donohue: Three-be-, exactly. So it… 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: Perfect. 10 11 Mr. Donohue: …would be one to one. 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay, can we – yeah, if I make a motion later on, I'd want to like memorialize 14 that. 15 16 Mr. Donohue: Absolutely. 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Donohue: We looked at it, and we tend to agree. 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: Thank you. 3 4 Chair Summa: Okay, I don't see any other lights, so thank you for your presentation. 5 6 Mr. Donohue: You're welcome. Thank you. 7 8 PUBLIC COMMENT 9 Chair Summa: And I don't see any lights, do I? No. And I'm not seein' any hands in Zoom. Do we 10 have any public speakers, Ms. Dao? 11 12 Veronica Dao: Yes, there's one hand on Zoom. 13 14 Chair Summa: Okay. Let's do that then. 15 16 Veronica Dao: From John Petrilla. You have five minutes. 17 18 John Petrilla: Thank you for this ability to, to speak. I have a couple concerns, one I, I made to 19 the Architectural Board. South Palo Alto is considered deficient in canopy coverage, and there's 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. projects – it's enough of a concern that they actually have a project to increase the canopy 1 percentage in South Palo Alto. So setting the requirement of no loss of canopy coverage or 2 allowing for some loss of canopy coverage, I don't see how that's consistent with the plans of 3 the City to increase the canopy coverage in, in South Palo Alto. So I strongly hope that you can 4 go back and, and look at that and, and see what you can do to add more trees, what other – 5 whatever other means that you have for increasing the canopy coverage. But I do have a 6 question for the Planning Commission is how – do you pay attention to the Urban Forest 7 Master Plan when you're going through projects? I'm also concerned with what I just heard 8 about the garbage pickup. I'm trying to imagine myself riding, riding a bike down San Antonio 9 Road. Garbage trucks are – have a lot of blind spots. They're big. They tend to hang over things. 10 I'm s-, I'm sorta concerned about – bicycle traffic while traffic – while garbage is being picked 11 up. 12 13 Another concern is there is in-lieu of park land f-, you're setting fees for in lieu of park land, but 14 there's – there seems to be no restriction set on that fee. Now if the purpose of that fee is to 15 maintain the quality of life for the residents, spending that fee somewhere outside the 16 neighborhood would be inconsistent with the spirit of the fee, fee. So it would be good to have 17 restrictions placed on the use or, or where that fee is actually being spent. And let's see. I guess 18 that's all from me. Thank you for your time. I do – would like… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Thank you… 1 2 Mr. Petrilla: …to hear, I would like to hear the, the commissioners say whether or not they pay 3 attention to the Urban Forest requirements when they are reviewing projects. 4 5 Chair Summa: Okay, thank you so much for your questions. It's a little off topic, but if anybody 6 wanted to share anything about concern for Ur-, Urban Forest, that's fine with me. But maybe 7 it's more appropriate to do it when we're having discussion unless somebody wants to do it 8 right now. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: I believe it's not our practice to… 11 12 Chair Summa: Yeah, I know… 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: …respond to direct questions like that. 15 16 Chair Summa: …but – okay. I believe we have one more speaker. 17 18 Veronica Dao: No, not for this item. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Really? Oh. Thank you for that. If the applicant would like, you could have three 1 minutes for rebuttal. I don't know – okay. All right, so we'll just bring it back to the Commission, 2 and I see Commissioner Reckdahl and Commissioner Chang have lights. 3 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yeah, I had a question about the commercial space. Was that added 5 by you or has the City requested that or… 6 7 Mr. Donohue: The commercial space was added at the request of the ARB. 8 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay. 10 11 Planner Kallas: It, it was also r-, at the request of the PTC in the prior PTC meeting. 12 13 Commissioner Reckdahl: [Inaudible 3:03:01]. Okay. That – I don't remember that. I, I remember 14 the concept or that we liked the concept of having commercial space there, but also this 15 isolated commercial space is very difficult to succeed at… 16 17 Mr. Donohue: Indeed. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: …and I'm afraid that this coffee shop or whatever will have a, a high 1 turnover. But have you looked at the feasibility of what k-, type of business you would rent to 2 or… 3 4 Mr. Donohue: No, we really haven't had a chance to do that, and – so my firm does a lot of 5 retail work, and there's two things. One is the market shifts so rapidly that it would need to be 6 near the time that you would actually be leasing it. there are some headwinds against a space 7 here, but we, we recognize that the ultimate vision for the street is that there's a lot of 8 pedestrian movement and certain kinds of businesses can thrive under those conditions. The 9 lack of parking is definitely difficult for most businesses. They – people like to pull up, stop, and 10 get out, and there's just no opportunity on San Antonio to do that, so I'm not – we – in our 11 opinion, it's not impossible, but it will definitely be a challenge that we'll look at when the time 12 comes. 13 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: And this would be run by the HOA then since this is a for-sale 15 development? 16 17 Mr. Donohue: Yeah, so it would also be a condominium, so I'm not sure what the, what the 18 involvement of the HOA would be after it was sold to a private entity, but I believe it would be a 19 separate commercial entity. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Reckdahl: Oh, so this, this commercial space would be a condo – you'd be selling 2 this commercial space to someone? 3 4 Mr. Donohue: Yes. 5 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: Oh, interesting. Okay. Very good. Thank you. 7 8 Mr. Donohue: Mm-hm. 9 10 Chair Summa: Commissioner Chang and then Commissioner Akin. 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: So again, I just want to commend you guys for coming forward with a really 13 amazing project. I'm really pleased that it's fully parked, that you've been cognizant of the bike 14 lane, that you're – that you are so responsive to all the feedback from us and the PTC. I'm very 15 grateful for that. I'm really thrilled to see the addition of the retail space because the best that 16 we can do – since we as a city have not made a plan requiring ground-floor retail, the best we 17 can do is project by project at this point to request that, and I'm very grateful to you for making 18 that change. So I am really excited about this project. As I said before, I appreciate the deep 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. affordability. I'd appre-, I appreciate the deep affordability for very livable units, and the project 1 is just beautiful, so this project has my full support. 2 3 Chair Summa: Commissioner Akin? 4 5 Commissioner Akin: I will echo Vice Chair Chang's comments about how much I like the project. 6 I also want to express my appreciation for the architectural changes that you made to the 7 courtyard area, which was a concern of mine the first time we saw this project. Coincidentally, I 8 do have a comment about tree canopy. this is again a project in which local tree canopy is being 9 lost and there's no obvious way to replace it in a way that's easily accessible to the residents. I 10 don't view that as a showstopper in any way for this project. It has far too many other positive 11 features, but just as a pattern that we're going to be seeing more and more of, that tree canopy 12 is going – distributed tree canopy is going to be lost. And we have to, to spend some time 13 paying attention to making sure that that tree canopy is restored in some way, and I hope that 14 we can get some feedback from Urban Forestry on how they would like to see that done. Thank 15 you. 16 17 Chair Summa: Thank you. Oh, I see Commi-, Commissioner Hechtman's light is on. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Hechtman: thank you. So I am also very supportive of this project. I am 1 appreciative of the listening that the applicant did, not only with this body when you were here 2 last but also with the ARB and with a very quick turnaround, and even with the issue of 3 changing one of the BMRs, your responsiveness. Really impressive. I do think we can praise this 4 project without derogating the project that we were discussing in Item Number 2. I think we 5 need to recognize that these are wholly different projects, having really nothing in common 6 other than they're both housing and they both have a component of BMR. This is a for-sale 7 product with 80 percent market and 20 percent BMR, so what that means in practical terms is 8 the 20 percent that this applicant is going to build for BMR, they are going to lose money on 9 that. They know they're going to lose money. It's going to cost them more to build those than 10 they can sell them for, and what they're banking on is that they can make enough money on 11 the other 80 percent to subsidize the loss they're going to experience on that 20 percent. And 12 because this applicant has decided that their best product to sell in the market is a large 13 product and our rules require them to mirror in the BMRs the product in the market, you're 14 getting large BMRs, which again contribute to the loss that is experienced when you are selling 15 those BMRs because they cost more. Of course in a 100-percent affordable project like our 16 second item, those are not the economics. You can't lose money on your affordable because 17 you're 100 percent affordable, and so that's why I think the economics are different. I'm sorry 18 to use this as an opportunity to do that, but again, this is a great project, and it's really an 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. example of what can be done in an 80/20 project. It's not an example of what can be done in a 1 100-percent affordable project. 2 3 Just a few other sort of minor items. One of the interesting issues that I saw in the staff report 4 is this park land dedication issue. Where typically we'd be requiring park land – actually onsite 5 park land for greater than 50 units, here we're not for reasons explained in the staff report. And 6 I support that, but I'm just going to plant this seed for Staff. We're going to see more and more 7 projects just like this where it'll be better for these plus-50-unit sites to provide money rather 8 than park land and so we can aggregate the money and buy larger 2-acre-plus park land. So I 9 leave it to Staff to see if in some work plan or something you're working on it, and that issue 10 can bubble to the top so that every time one of these comes, we're not looking at an exception 11 to the rule but rather the new rule. 12 13 And then finally just some very minor corrections in the ordinance that I'll just point out for you 14 to look at later. The first one's on packet page 60, Section 3A. You've got a reference to 1058 15 square feet of retail. I think it's 1078 as correctly stated in Section 4B. Next, in Section 6A, Public 16 Benefits, number one, in the last sentence, "Public benefits provided by the project include 17 BMR units," I'm wondering if you want to include the deed-restricted nature of those BMR units 18 in there. And also on page 55, you had listed a lot of other public benefits, and I was wondering 19 why those weren't included in this list. In Section 6B, Monitoring of Conditions and Public 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Benefits, I guess my question was, what is there to monitor here? So I'd ask staff to look at that 1 and whether – again, I'm not sure what its purpose is in this particular application with its 2 particular conditions, so if it's not necessary, if it's surplus here, we can get rid of it. A couple 3 more. Packet page 66, this is the Record of Land Use Approval. On 66 and again on 70, I think 4 you have a reference to 16 BMRs when it's 15, so fix those two places. So those are the 5 suggested changes. Again, I thank you for the work you've done on this project, and I hope you 6 have clear sailing from here. 7 8 Chair Summa: Commissioner Templeton? 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. I'd like to thank my colleague for his comments. I 11 think they were really spot on with how I'm feeling about this conversation as well. And I'm also 12 feeling concerned about the inconsistency with our pushback about moderate-income units 13 versus above-moderate and market rate units in comparing projects because this one only has 14 15 that are moderate income or lower whereas the previous one had 40-something, and this 15 one has 60 units that are above moderate and market rate. And so it's confusing to me when 16 we compare and we push back on 100-percent affordable project that ha-, is – no-, none of it is 17 above moderate and market rate according to those defined terms in state and the county. So 18 it's, it's confusing because I think both of these are excellent projects, and I think it's all right to 19 have different kinds of projects and to have some different kinds of housing for different 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. income levels, and that's okay with me. So I think it's really wonderful that this project is 1 coming forward, and I agree with my colleague that there's no actual need to compare, but if 2 we do, we should be consistent. Thank you. 3 4 Chair Summa: Thank you very much. I also want to thank the applicant who re-, who did 5 respond to many of our suggestions and it is a better project. I guess I'm not as happy about it 6 overall, and it's not the applicant's fault or the ARB's fault. I think the improvements are good. I 7 just feel we're creating something here – we're creating a very different type of neighborhood, 8 and I, I really, really think we should find a way to add trees in this area, a-, as many as possible 9 for every project. And that was sort of responding to the – our, our member of the public who 10 spoke because it's really going to be different than the rest of Palo Alto. And we do have an 11 acknowledged – Canopy has acknowledged that South Palo Alto's under-treed so to speak and 12 they're concentrating there on planting street trees, but I will note that it's – this wasn't a 13 neighborhood that existed so it was probably not on their radar, so we might want to 14 coordinate some with Canopy about what can be done there since they're such a good partner 15 with the City. And I would like to see a commitment to s-, somebody maintaining the trees. Too 16 often Canopy plants trees and nobody – they don't make it, frankly, because the buildings 17 they're near don't water them, and I think that's a real shame. So maybe we can make some of 18 these improvements 'cause this is a v-, going to be a very different-looking area. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I'm especially happy that the – of the possibility in the future of a reasonable bicycle path here 1 because I don't think you'll be going – it's not that you're maybe going many places toward the 2 highway from here, but I envision a lot of families living here with people of all ages, including 3 children, that might want to use bicycles. And I think there's no time like the present to start on 4 thinking about Safe Routes to School from the – this location. To just make – improve the 5 amenities in si-, in this area, I'm – I don't know how this area's going to work very well without 6 true retail. This is not a fault or complaint about the applicant in any way. It's really our fault 7 that we didn't plan here, but I, I know this kind of – I know this is going to happen and I do think 8 this was a project that was considerate of our interests and is going to provide housing and 9 should move forward. So I am in agreement, and unless Commissioner Lu wants to speak, I'm 10 looking for a motion at this time. 11 12 Planner Kallas: May I also add one more thing about the trees? 13 14 Chair Summa: Oh, yeah. 15 16 Planner Kallas: So earlier versions of the plans did include the architect – the applicant 17 providing more trees on site, but those trees were proposed in the special setback. And so we 18 have asked to maintain that area open for now with the expectation that trees will be able to 19 go there in the future. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Yeah, I realize that, and, and there's a lot of tradeoffs… 2 3 Planner Kallas: Mm-hm. 4 5 Chair Summa: …when you're not starting fresh with all the things we know now that we want. 6 So if no one else has any comments, I'm going to ask for a motion. 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: So I would like to move the staff recommendation but wanted to also 9 memorialize that change of moving one – have one additional moderate three-bedroom unit in 10 lieu of a two-bedroom moderate unit, unit that the applicant mentioned. 11 12 Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu? 13 14 Commissioner Lu: I, I was going to to make a motion too, but would you be open to including 15 Commissioner Hechtman's minor modifications… 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes… 18 19 Commissioner Lu: …to the language as well? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: …accepted. 2 3 Commissioner Lu: Okay, cool. 4 5 Chair Summa: Okay, so did somebody second? 6 7 Commissioner Lu: I'm sorry. I'll also second. 8 9 Chair Summa: Okay. l thank you. Any other comments or questions from – amendments, 10 suggestions? Okay. Let's go ahead and call the vote, please. 11 12 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Yes, of course I will support a project that has affordable housing. 15 16 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Reckdahl? 17 18 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Veronica Dao: Chair Summa? 1 2 Chair Summa: Yes. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 5 6 Commissioner Lu: Yes, it's a great project. 7 8 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. 11 12 Veronica Dao: Vice Chair Chang? 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 15 16 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 17 18 Commissioner Akin: Yes. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Veronica Dao: Motion carries, 7-0. 1 2 Chair Summa: Thank you so much. I think the Commission is going to take an eight-minute 3 break now, and we will be back for the next item. So thank you very much, and we'll be back in 4 about eight minutes. 5 6 7 4. 310 California Ave: Request for Conditional Use Permit (CUP) for the Expansion of an 8 Existing Commercial Recreation Use and Renovation of Eating and Drinking Space 9 10 Chair Summa: Okay, let's get started again. We are on Item Number 4, which is another quasi-11 judicial item, 310 California Avenue, and this is a request for a Conditional Use Permit. So I 12 would like to take disclosures on this also, but we'll start at this end. 13 14 Commissioner Reckdahl: Visited the site but no disclosures. 15 16 Commissioner Lu: I visited the site. I live more than 1000 feet away from the site but kind of in 17 the general Mayfield neighborhood. 18 19 Chair Summa: I also visited the site multiple times, and I did want to disclose that I also had calls 20 from several members of the public, including one who spoke to me specifically about murals in 21 the building. And I didn't think this was addressed in the staff report, but this member of the 22 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. public did tell me that the applicant had – in-, intends to keep the murals there. So that was a 1 piece of information that wasn't available, so – oh, and the other thing I made note of was the 2 location of nearby ADA spots. Okay. 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: No disclosures. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: I have visited the site dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and I 7 had one conversation with a concerned citizen three or four weeks ago. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: I don't know if this has any qualifying things or not, but I work down 10 the street at 230 California Avenue. So please let me know if that is any way needs me to step 11 aside. Thank you. No other disclosures. 12 13 Commissioner Akin: No, no disclosures for me either. 14 15 Chair Summa: Okay, thank you for that. We will then move on to the staff report. 16 17 Amy French: I'd like to introduce Nishita Kandikuppa. 18 19 Chair Summa: Welcome, Nishita… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Nishita Kandikuppa, Associate Planner: Thank you… 2 3 Chair Summa: …Kandikuppa. 4 5 Associate Planner Kandikuppa: …can you hear me? Okay. Good evening everyone. My name is 6 Nishita. I'm the project planner for this project. The application requests a Conditional Use 7 Permit for the expansion of an existing commercial recreation use at 310 California and 8 renovation of eating and drinking place at 320 California. A Conditional Use Permit for this 9 project is required as the project scope increases the size of the building or site containing a 10 condit-, a conditional use, which is a commercial recreation space fronting California Avenue. 11 CUPs can only be granted if a project meets all the findings of written code, and I will be going 12 over this later in the presentation. Typically CUPs are processed at the staff level. However, the 13 Director decided that the level of public interest necessitated referral of this project to PTC and 14 City Council. The project site is located at the intersection of California Avenue and Birch Street 15 in the Evergreen Park neighborhood within half a mile of the California Avenue Caltrain Station. 16 17 Within the building, there are two tenants, 310 California and 320 California. The existing use at 18 310 California is a commercial recreation space, and the existing uses at 320 California are 19 eating and drinking services and retail. The site is surrounded by retail and commercial uses on 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the north, south, and east, and the property abuts the Public Facilities District on the west. 1 There are five other fitness studios along this stretch of California Avenue, three of which are 2 located diagonally across the street from the proposed location of Palo Alto Fit. The applicant 3 requests approval of the CUP for first-floor expansion of the existing commercial recreation 4 tenant space at 310 California Avenue into a portion of the adjacent tenant space at 320 5 California Avenue. A 1150-square-feet addition is also proposed to the existing second story of 6 the building. The scope of work within each tenant space is as follows. Within 310 California, 7 this'll be occupied by the new fitness training studio, Palo Alto Fit, who is also the owner of the 8 building. The existing 774-square-foot mezzanine will be demolished to provide more training 9 area with a vaulted ceiling. The 320 California Avenue tenant space square footage will be 10 reduced as a portion of the first-floor tenant space at 310 California will expand to provide 11 more locker rooms for the patrons of the new fitness studio. The existing second story above 12 320 California will be expanded to provide new restrooms and staff offices for the employees. 13 14 There is a semi enclosed outdoor seating area that will be maintained, but the existing Printers 15 Café space will be renovated to accommodate a new café. This is actually where the murals are 16 as well, and although they're not included in the staff report, there's an email by Winter, who 17 had talked about the murals and has sent me images for it. I believe the applicant's 18 presentation includes some pictures as well of the murals. Per the site plan, there's no exterior 19 work proposed. The scope only includes interior remodeling of the two tenant spaces. The 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. existing square footage at 310 California is about 6700 square feet, which will be expanded to 1 just under 11,000 square feet. The proposed square footage of 320 California would be reduced 2 from 500-, 5800 to 2800 square feet. While the lot coverage stays the same, the FAR increases 3 by 1150 square as a result of the second-story expansion. There are existing sidewalks , street 4 trees, and bike racks that currently accommodate four bicycles. Refuse is provided in the rear 5 along Mayfield Lane as highlighted in green. 6 7 There's no parking provided on site. However, the subject site did pay into the former California 8 Avenue Parking District, equivalent to 47 parking spaces, and per Assembly Bill 2097, no parking 9 is required for properties located within a half mile radius of a major transit stop. In Palo Alto, 10 this will be our Caltrain stops, and there is one located to the north, which is the California 11 Avenue Caltrain Station. And there's also convenient public parking available to patrons within 12 walking distance of the site. The first-floor plan and the second-floor plan will be shown next. 13 The first-floor plan on the left is what is existing, and on the right is what is proposed. The area 14 highlighted in green will be removed to create a larger training studio as shown on the right. 15 New locker rooms and staff offices will be proposed on the first floor. The second-floor plan set 16 on the left is what is existing, and the plan on the right is what is being proposed. The 17 mezzanine highlighted in green will be removed to create a vaulted ceiling all the way to the 18 back of 310 California Avenue tenant space. New staff offices and bathrooms are proposed on 19 the second story. There are no exterior changes proposed as part of the proposed scope. The 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. mural that is currently painted on the right façade of the building will be maintained. New 1 signage will be proposed under a separate planning entitlement for the front façade. 2 3 The sections provide better context of the proposed interior remodel. Existing 1 shows the 4 vaulted ceilings for both tenant spaces. Existing 2 shows the training room in the front and the 5 staff offices and bathrooms in the rear. Proposed 1 shows the new and expanded second story 6 above 320 California, and Proposed 2 shows the entire width of the training studio with vaulted 7 ceilings. Given this information and context, Staff requests PTC to consider the high volume of 8 neighbor comments received during this project along with the CUP findings prior to the 9 recommendation to City Council. As of this meeting, 70 emails were received regarding this 10 project. The City has received significant input from the public with respect to the project 11 scope. 12 13 To summarize, Palo Alto residents have utilized the café space for social and professional 14 gatherings, community meetings, and leisure for over 40 years. There have been many such 15 gathering spaces leaving California in the last few years due to increased rents, which 16 diminishes the community feel of California Avenue and other downtown strips in Palo Alto. 17 The café and gallery have for many years attracted foot traffic along the closed portion of, of 18 California Avenue. More of our personal service-type businesses are taking over tenant spaces 19 where restaurants, cafes, and other gathering spaces should be. Lastly, some members of the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. public feel that while the city administration has contributed to the overall walkability of 1 California Avenue by closing off vehicular traffic along the main strip, they're also allowing 2 businesses like gyms to move into the vacant tenant spaces, which do not serve all community 3 members and are restricted-access only. The public also questions the new café that is 4 proposed and whether it will be open to everyone or if it will be restricted to the personal 5 training studio clients. I will note that of the three existing businesses, Printers Café closed last 6 week on April 6, while Moods Wine Bar is potentially relocating to Sunnyvale and Gallery House 7 is looking for relocation to Menlo Park. The exact locations are undetermined. 8 9 As mentioned previously, CUP applications are evaluated to specific findings. All findings must 10 be made with an affirmative to approve the project. There are two CUP findings listed in the 11 City's Municipal Code. The first one states that the project shall be – shall not be detrimental or 12 injurious to public health or wellbeing. As the project does not include exterior work, there will 13 be no detrimental effects on the adjacent properties or neighbors. The project will displace 14 existing retail businesses, but the proposed gym will improve community health and wellbeing. 15 The second CUP finding states that the project shall be located and conducted in a manner that 16 is in accord with Palo Alto Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning Code of Palo Alto. The proposed 17 use of commercial recreation and eating and drinking service is permitted as per both the Comp 18 Plan and the Municipal Code. Therefore, the proposed use will also operate in a manner that is 19 in accordance with code. The project has been reviewed by all relevant city departments to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. ensure conformance with applicable zoning regulations and the City's CUP findings. The 1 Director of Planning and Development Services has deferred the decision on the project to City 2 Council due to the high volume of public comments received by the Planning Division. 3 Therefore, feedback from the PTC is requested. This ends our – my staff presentation. The 4 applicant also has prepared slides and will go next. Thank you. 5 6 Chair Summa: Okay. Thank you very, very much. It – does the applicant have a presentation? 7 8 Amy French: Yes. 9 10 Chair Summa: Okay. 11 12 Amy French: I wonder if I can just intercede. We have an ability to start – begin a timer of five 13 minutes to begin receiving notice cards and raised hands to speak tonight on this item if that's 14 the pleasure of the Chair. 15 16 Chair Summa: Thank you so much. Yes, we were going to try something tonight at the request 17 of my colleagues, and that is to have three minutes for each speaker and we want people to 18 sign up in the first five minutes of the staff presentation, starting now, which is actually the 19 applicant's presentation, so that we may properly plan for how many speakers that we have. So 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. if we could all try to do that, and if you don't get in on time, since this is kinda new, we'll try to 1 accommodate one or two more people. 2 3 Amy French: I will raise my hand when five minutes is up so the audience will know. 4 5 Chair Summa: Thank you very much. All right, sorry to interrupt, and now we can hear from the 6 applicant. 7 8 Nina Nguyen, applicant: Good evening, Commissioners. My name's Nina Nguyen, the owner of 9 Palo Alto Fit, and I will present our Conditional Use Permit request tonight. First slide present 10 the building located at 310 and 320 California Ave with an existing café and existing gym use. 11 Today we are seeking approval to reconfigure and optimizing the existing floor, floor plans to, 12 to enhance the café and the gym use. We want to preserve the existing exterior. We are only 13 planning for an interior remodel. Next slide. Slide two showcases the specific area that we wish 14 to integrate into the café in dark blue and into the gym use in dark green. Highlighted in dark 15 green and dark blue is the existing art gallery space. This area is nested at the rear of the 16 building without any storefront. The rooms that service the café and the gyms, like restrooms, 17 laundry, and utility rooms, will be located in this space. By reallocating this space, we can 18 ensure the gym's training floor remains safe and can comply with health safety requirements 19 for training and health-focused activity. Our current training space is similar in size and shape, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. giving us the experience that this space require-, requiring all new safety requirements after 1 COVID. We also reallocated space for new accessible restrooms to the existing café space, 2 which is today on the rear of the building, accessible through the kitchen. 3 4 Next slide. Our third slide is a testament of our journey and dedication. I started Palo Alto Fit in 5 2014 with 2 dumbbells and a rope in the park in Palo Alto. Since then, Palo Alto Fit has grown, 6 moved, and evolved into the community it is today. Running a fitness and health business is not 7 easy. It's burned a lot of calories. Have many closed because of rising rent or redevelopment 8 plans. Our current location at 425 Portage Avenue will also be redevelopment adjacent to the 9 Fry's building, which triggered our search for purchase a building. This was a multi-year process 10 of preparations and planning. We have purchased the building at 310 and 320 California Ave for 11 our long-term business operation. Next slide. Slide four present a clear timeline to shed light on 12 the events that have – we have unfold with Printer Café and the community's response. In 13 August 2023, Printer Café request that the lease be end by April 6, 2024, and we agree to sign 14 [inaudible 3:46:04] amendment to the existing lease. Following this, this agreement, we 15 submitted our Conditional Use Permit application in November 2023, and in Jan-, January 2024, 16 a misunderstanding led to public comments re-, questioning why Printer Café had asked to 17 leave when they had actually request to leave – to end the lease – or lease termination. This 18 Committee concerned [inaudible 3:46:33] the Planning Department in February 2024 to bring 19 our Conditional Use Permit application before the Transportation and Planning Commissions 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. today. As of April 6, 2024, Printer Café had vacated the premises. A new café will be opened in 1 the existing space. Next slide. 2 3 I would like to summarize our long-term commitments and request. We are not a developer. 4 We are small-business owner that want to continue doing business for a long time in Palo Alto. 5 We're deeply committed to servicing Palo Alto at California Ave, not just as a business but as 6 community member investing in health and wellbeing of our neighbors. We're seeking your 7 approval and reconfigure and optimize the floor plan to enhance the community café and the 8 gym use. We would like to also preserve the existing exterior of the building. We are only 9 request an interior remodel. We're also committed to continue operate the café space with 10 updated kitchens and bathroom to meet the current standards. Thank you for your 11 consideration and support. Now I hand over to Ko Architects architect to present [inaudible 12 3:47:51] details. 13 14 Chair Summa: Thank you so much for that. Do my colleagues have any clarifying questions at 15 this point? 16 17 Amy French: I thought I would put up my hand. It's seven seconds and counting for speaker 18 cards. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Okay. And… 1 2 Amy French: [Inaudible 3:48:05] done. 3 4 Chair Summa: Okay. Colleagues? I don't see any lights. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: I, I think this is still part of the applicant's presentation… 7 8 Chair Summa: Oh… 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: …the architect. Is… 11 12 Laura Roberts, Ko Architects: Yes… 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: …that right? 15 16 Ms. Roberts: …yes, correct. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Oh, thank you. 1 2 Ms. Roberts: Yes, so my name is Laura Roberts. I'm here with Ko Aarchitects, and I want to 3 present the project from the design intent and architectural point of view. Nishita, if you can go 4 into the next slide. Yeah, thank you. So as you know we have a two-story building at the corner 5 of California Avenue and Birch Street. The building existing f-, footprint, o-, ex-, ex-, existing 6 square footage is 12,544. Next slide, please. And we are proposing no changes to the exterior of 7 the building. In the second slide, you can see the mural that is on Birch Street, and we are 8 completely for to maintaining and preserving these murals. In, in – further in my presentation, 9 I'll show you the other mural that we have on site. Next slide, please. S-, so here we're showing 10 the four elevations that will remain as they are today. We are – we might consider changing the 11 color of the awnings on California Avenue, but that's something that we have not completely 12 found yet. 13 14 Next slide, please. When we started this project, there were two main tenants on this property. 15 One was at 310 California Avenue, which was a gym using a c-, a – with a commercial 16 recreational use. Next slide, please. And the second main tenant was a café located at 310 17 California Avenue. Within the café space – next slide, please – there was, there was an art 18 gallery tucked in the back of the building with no storefront. This– the als-, the café operated a 19 wine bar, as was said before, in the evening hours. Next slide please. I want to show you here, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. this is the existing floor plan where the areas in green are showing the 310 space and the areas 1 in blue are showing the 320 space. The darker green is showing all the supporting uses that this 2 space has, like restrooms, utility rooms, mechanical rooms, offices, etc., that support the gym 3 use. On the blue areas, the dark blue is showing the art gallery and the supporting offices and 4 uses that are supporting the, the art gallery. Next slide, please. And on the second floor, we 5 have dark blue offices for the gym, dark blue offices for the art gallery. 6 7 Next slide, please. And here I'm showing you our proposal, yeah, our proposal in the light green 8 where we're expanding the café use – sorry, the gym use and we are locating the servicing 9 rooms for the gym use where the art gallery used to be. This includes – as we said before, it’s 10 the same things like restrooms, laundry room, some office space, and the – and you can see 11 that the footprint of the light, light blue for the café use has pretty much remained the same, 12 and we are adding accessible bathrooms right directly connected to the public so that they 13 don't need to cross through the kitchen to go to the, to the restrooms. From the, from the 14 same point of view, this allows us to create a comfortable space for training like exists today at 15 Portage Drive. The café space has also been reconfigured to comply with current accessibility 16 Building Code requirements and to meet the necessary health and safety standards. Next slide 17 please. And on the second floor what we are proposing is to add offices that support the gym 18 use. We will provide energy-efficient lighting and equipment to comply with all the current 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. regulations. This pretty much, yeah, finish my presentation, and I welcome any feedback or 1 comments that you guys might have. 2 3 Chair Summa: Okay, thank you for that. Colleagues do you have questions at this point? 4 Commissioner Akin? Yeah. 5 6 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair. So I have a rather potentially confusing question here 7 about what we are intended to find here. Let me try and approach it this way. We – we're th-, 8 we can think about this as we have two fitness centers today. We have Palo Alto Fit at 425 9 Portage, and we have Performance Gains here on Cal Ave. And we intend to replace those two 10 with one, updated. The finding asks us to accept that the proposed gym will improve 11 community health and wellbeing. Can we make that finding if the total amount of fitness center 12 space is actually declining, even though one of the one of the buildings involved is not part of 13 this particular project? So I'm not sure whether this is a question for Counselor Yang or for 14 someone else on staff. 15 16 Assistant City Attorney Yang: So I think the safest approach is to focus on the – like the property 17 that's the subject of this application and what is being proposed for that property. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Micro Horst, applicant: Yeah, I, I can clarify to that question. So Performance Gains and Palo 1 Alto Fit are two independent businesses, and they're not getting merged – I'm the owner as 2 well of that building, so it's my wife and I. So… 3 4 Chair Summa: Could you say that again into the microphone? You're not – you're a little… 5 6 Mr. Horst: Sure… 7 8 Chair Summa: …far from the – thank you. 9 10 Mr. Horst: …so Performance Gains and Palo Alto Fit are two independent businesses. So Palo 11 Alto Fit is right now at 425 Portage, and that building is being redeveloped in the future. So we 12 purchased a building to move Palo Alto Fit in the building, and Performance Gains is in the 13 process of finding a new building for their continuous business. So there's no merger between 14 the two companies. They will continue running independent. 15 16 Commissioner Akin: Okay, so I didn't assume that there was a merger of the two companies, 17 but what you're telling me is that both fitness centers survive into the future… 18 19 Mr. Horst: Correct. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Akin: …correct? 2 3 Mr. Horst: Correct. 4 5 Commissioner Akin: Okay. Thank you. 6 7 Chair Summa: Thank you. Commissioner Hechtman and then Commissioner Chang. 8 9 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. So I didn't see any indication of this in the staff report or 10 the plans, but I heard a suggestion that the new café could potentially only be open to, I guess, 11 members of the gym. I didn't see it in writing anywhere, so I'm going to ask the applicant is that 12 your plan? Is this a… 13 14 Mr. Horst: No, it's… 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: …members only… 17 18 Mr. Horst: …no, it's not a members only. It's, it's an open café. It's an independent business, 19 [inaudible 3:56:24] the entrance, are completely separate. So the, the, the buildings, even as 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. we start, yeah, reaching into 320, they're still completely independent entrances and 1 businesses, and there's no – y-, y-, you can't enter from Palo Alto Fit or from one side to the 2 other. And it will be op-, open to public, yes. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, so it will – it'll be open to the public, and… 5 6 Mr. Horst: Yes. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: …did I understand it, it, it's a separate business… 9 10 Mr. Horst: Correct. 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: … but will it be run by the same owners, or are you going to find a 13 new café tenant? 14 15 Mr. Horst: It's, it's, it's operated by us, but it's a different LLC. It's a different company, and it's 16 in, in, in cooperation with a grocery in San Francisco and a bakery in San Francisco. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Thank you. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Commissioner Chang? 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: I just had a quick question and wanted to follow up on a public comment that 3 we received about the murals on the inside of the building. Will those be – or what's the plan 4 for the murals that are inside the café? 5 6 Mr. Horst: Yep, that will be stay as is. It's actually inside that basically porch, which is covered, 7 so it's only visible really if you're inside the café, and that will of course continue. It actually fits 8 exactly the theme of the café, so there's… 9 10 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay… 11 12 Mr. Horst: …no intent to – yeah, it… 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: …thank you. 15 16 Mr. Horst: …it, it will stay as is. 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah, we could see them on one of the architect's… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Horst: Yes. 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: …photos. Thank you. 3 4 Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu? 5 6 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. I have two clarifying questions. Firstly, can you talk more about 7 the plans for the actual gym? Will it still be CrossFit-style training? Will there be programs for 8 kids? Will there be other kinds of classes? Just like what – yeah, what will the gym look like at 9 the end? 10 11 Mr. Horst: So it's, yeah, it's not CrossFit, to clarify. It's primarily… 12 13 Commissioner Lu: Yeah, I'm sorry, I, I – yeah. 14 15 Mr. Horst: …it's primarily one-on-one, y-, Palo Alto Fit is more specialized in, I think, helping 16 people to really, yeah, be fit, healthy and move better. That's really the focus. It's not a gym, so 17 that's why it's primarily one-on-one training. We also have a model that actually many clients of 18 us train with more than one trainer, so they have a multi-trainer model at the same time. And 19 it's primarily one-on-one, and that is all range. So we have as well more and more teenager, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. which actually come to us primarily before they go into high school so to get practice and, and 1 training. So it has a whole range from y-, young people to – yeah, all range of age. 2 3 Commissioner Lu: Okay. Is there an option for a monthly membership or something that is 4 generally maybe more affordable than one-on-one training? 5 6 Mr. Horst: It, it, it is a desire, but it will depend a little bit on occupancy class and all this. So that 7 will be, I think, further discussions when we go into the Building Permit. So we, we would like to 8 offer that, but it will depend on several factors like occupancy, building class, and other things 9 which might restrict us. So today we are restricted with the current building because of parking 10 limitations, so that's something we would like to offer, and – but we are not at that point that 11 we can, yeah, make any decisions. 12 13 Commissioner Lu: Okay, thank you. I had actually assumed that there'd potentially be some 14 kind of monthly option or something that is a little bit more accessible, and so I just wanted to 15 clarify… 16 17 Mr. Horst: It's… 18 19 Commissioner Lu: …that and that it's useful… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Horst: …it's our intent, yes… 2 3 Commissioner Lu: …yeah, I would… 4 5 Mr. Horst: …it's actually our intent, yes. 6 7 Commissioner Lu: …yeah, I would like to support that intent to the extent that… 8 9 Mr. Horst: Right. 10 11 Commissioner Lu: …we actually move forward with – y-, y- yeah. I was actually surprised to see 12 that – so you already found a tenant for the café space that operates a bakery and supermarket 13 in San Francisco. Do they have specific plans on the hours, what kind of cuisine café they would 14 actually operate? 15 16 Mr. Horst: Yeah, so the operating hours will pretty much from 8:00, and it has a little bit shifted 17 at California Avenue. It's actually more now an evening traffic than actually morning traffic. 18 That has shifted during – after COVID. So we will adjust and – basically test the market and then 19 adjust to the time what the potential clients will use the space. So – but the intent is to have 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. basically from the morning until the evening, similar to like Café Venetia. So that's a little bit the 1 envision of that concept, similar to Café Venetia in University Avenue. So that's the vision of 2 that new café. 3 4 Commissioner Lu: Okay, thank you. Those were my questions for now. 5 6 Chair Summa: I'm sorry. I didn't – I can't quite hear you, so if you… 7 8 Mr. Horst: Okay. 9 10 Chair Summa: …could speak into the… 11 12 Mr. Horst: Sure. 13 14 Chair Summa: …mike more. What were the hours you were intending and what kind of café will 15 it be? 16 17 Mr. Horst: So it's primarily café in a, in a way. There is no kitchen, so it's basically sandwiches, 18 pastry, healthy snacks, but there will be no cooking, so the kitchen is basically just a prep 19 kitchen. It's not a kitchen for full meals. And then primarily it will be coffee, juices, and drinks 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. and then, depending on how we evolve, getting probably as well a wine and beer license what 1 was before so that we can cater as well to some, yeah, wine and beer beverages in the evening 2 time. Like I mentioned, similar concept to Venetia, if that's familiar with, yeah, people here in 3 the room. 4 5 Chair Summa: I'm sorry, similar concept to Printers Café? 6 7 Mr. Horst: No, it's – Printers Café was only – there was two – so Printers Café had two 8 subtenants. So Printer Café was only operating basically from morning to until 3:00, and then 9 they had a subtenant, which was Moods Wine Bar, which took over on certain days, the wine 10 bar in the evening. So it was a subtenant of Printers Café, and now it will be combined in one, 11 offering both. 12 13 Chair Summa: So this is – you said 8 AM to what time? 14 15 Mr. Horst: Probably about like 8 or 9 PM, so California… 16 17 Chair Summa: 8 or 9? 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Horst: Yeah, California Avenue starts really slowing down after like 9:00, so 9:00 is – yeah, 1 the traffic is, is getting extremely low and it, it doesn't make sense to have longer operating 2 hour than probably 9 PM. But that's what we still need to try and find out, what is the sweet 3 spots in terms of traffic. 4 5 Chair Summa: And – okay. And it's open to the public… 6 7 Mr. Horst: Absolutely. 8 9 Chair Summa: …at all… 10 11 Mr. Horst: Yes. 12 13 Chair Summa: …all times. 14 15 Mr. Horst: It's open… 16 17 Chair Summa: It is open. 18 19 Mr. Horst: …to the public, yes. It's an independent business. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Okay, I have a question for Staff or maybe the architect. But it's an existing one-2 story building with a mezzanine or existing two-story building with a mezzanine in betwee-, I 3 don't – I, I thought the plans were kinda hard to understand, so if you could elaborate on that a 4 little bit. Some – and that's fine. 5 6 Ms. Roberts: I can answer that question. So there's an existing mezzanine in the back of the 7 building at 310 and as well as 320. We are calling it a second floor when we build the offices for 8 egress reasons. There's certain limitations in the Building Code when you call something a 9 mezzanine versus a second floor, and due to the square footage that we have, we are allowed 10 to call this a second floor. I hope that clarifies. 11 12 Chair Summa: So the me-, so the s-, existing second floor is… 13 14 Ms. Roberts: No… 15 16 Chair Summa: …between… 17 18 Ms. Roberts: …this is a mezzanine. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: …the first floor and the roof, but it doesn't go from wall to wall and that's why it's 1 a mezzanine? 2 3 Ms. Roberts: It's a mezzanine because the occupied area is only half of it right now. The other 4 half is just left open with no use. 5 6 Chair Summa: Okay, and the extra square footage that you're adding, is that filling in – I was 7 confused because it seems like it's filling in the mezzanine – I mean… 8 9 Ms. Roberts: We are… 10 11 Chair Summa: …filling in the second floor, but then you're opening some up, and I just… 12 13 Ms. Roberts: Yeah, so we're reconfiguring the second floor, expanding over where the art 14 gallery is currently. So that's a two-s-, like double-height spa-, that's a double-height space, so 15 we are covering the double height of the art gallery to develop our second floor over the area 16 and opening up the space at 310 to be fully open. 17 18 Chair Summa: Okay, all right. Thank you that was just a little confusing to me. If the-, I'm not 19 seeing any lights, so we will go to the public. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 PUBLIC COMMENTS 2 Veronica Dao: Yes, I have four speaker cards. And there were four on Zoom, and then someone 3 just raised their hand, so five on Zoom, if that's okay. First in-person is Bill Ross. 4 5 Bill Ross: Good evening. Palo Alto Fit was recommended to me after a neurosurgeon put 6 enough metal in my body so I can stand. Subsequently an orthopedic surgeon put more metal 7 in my body so I could stand. Both the neurosurgeon and the orthopedic surgeon are also clients 8 of Palo Alto Fit. The City, in 2015, articulated its first statement of health and wellness that has 9 subsequently been reinforced in provisions of the Comprehensive Plan. If there is a facility that 10 provides that, it's Palo Alto Fit. I haven't been in a gym in five decades. This is not a gym. It's a 11 total approach to health and includes diet, rest, the actual approach to facilitate movement, 12 which at my age is difficult. Palo Alto Fit deals with people that are 10 and 12 years older than I 13 am. I find myself agreeing with Exhibit D, the argument advanced by Mr. Lanferman, a lawyer. I 14 fail to understand what the public interest is that merits that this be before the Commission. It 15 seems there is a factual and legal misunderstanding about what can go there and what could 16 there. I would suggest that, notwithstanding that, substantial evidence is present to meet the 17 fa-, findings for the Conditional Use Permit. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. For six years, I've observed the, whatever you want to call it, clientele, of Palo Alto Fitness, and I 1 think I can represent right now that they access the current facility by bikes, electric bikes, and 2 if it's not 70 percent EVs, it's probably 75 percent EVs. Why is that important? I think you have 3 to look at where the location is and the prospective impact on how it would facilitate foot 4 traffic to existing retail uses. It's more than reasonable to assume that for security reasons they 5 would also park in the City's parking structure. I think the findings are present, supported by 6 substantial evidence. I'd encourage your approval. Thanks. 7 8 Chair Summa: Thank you. 9 10 Veronica Dao: Next is Wolfgang. 11 12 Wolfgang Dueregger: Good evening. My name is Wolfgang Dueregger. Better? Sorry. My name 13 is Wolfgang Dueregger. I live in Ever-, in the Evergreen Park neighborhood. And friends of mine, 14 neighbors, we have been frequenting Printers Café, Moods Bar, the gallery for many years. 15 These three businesses were there for – I think since the 90s. Not the Moods Bar but the 16 Printers Café. And it was just a very nice gathering point on Sundays during the farmer's 17 market, in the evening at the wine bar, during the week, during weekends. You made new 18 friends, you hooked up with existing friends, and California Avenue, as we all know, struggles a 19 little bit. And the three business, they were the quintessential melting pot what held actually 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. California Avenue so far together, and we kindly ask you – okay, things happen. The new owner, 1 they have new plans. All good. But when you approve this Conditional Use Permit, please keep 2 in mind. We agree with the finding of the staff report and in particular with Policy L4.1, which is 3 to encourage the upgrading and revi-, -vitalization of selected centers in a manner that is 4 compatible with the character of surrounding neighborhoods, without loss of retail and existing 5 small local businesses. And we should also not forget, one of them was [Monica 4:11:09], yeah? 6 She was there for many years. She has no job anymore, and it's not just a business; it's also the 7 employees. And we will also kindly ask you, maybe there's a way that the new café will need 8 new employees, that the former employees at least get the chance to apply for job there. That 9 will be really nice. 10 11 And the second point is regarding Policy B2.4, which is to recognize that the employers, 12 businesses of neighborhoods share many values and concerns, including preserving Palo Alto's 13 livability and the need to work together with a priority on neighborhood quality of life. So we 14 will kindly ask you for the following. The café must be open to the public, which supposedly it 15 will be. The café, the new café should be f-, a full-service restaurant, not just a juice and coffee 16 bar with snacks. To this end, the new facility should not expand so far into the café space that it 17 would limit the functionality and seating capacity of the existing – or the previous Printers Care. 18 The café should be open during reasonable hours, including evening hours when the gym may 19 be closed, and the café should continue to preserve an outdoor dining space, which hopefully is 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the pl-, the case as well. And we also strongly encourage the Commission to be more proactive 1 about implementing and enforcing the two policies that I just mentioned before more existing 2 bus-, businesses are forced out of the California Avenue area. Thank you so much. 3 4 Chair Summa: Thank you. 5 6 Veronica Dao: Next is Jeremy Shaw, and then followed by Odi-, Odile, yeah. 7 8 Jeremy Shaw: Good evening. My name's Jeremy. I've lived in the area about 35 years. I've been 9 going to Printers Ink, Printers Café for that long. In my view, it's a – it's been – always been a 10 hub of the community. I think it's the kind of business that is needed on California Avenue. I'm 11 happy to hear to that, that the applicant plans to operate a full-service café. I worry a little bit 12 about the focus of the business in terms of if the main focus of the business is as a gym, of 13 which there are a number around, whether they're dedicated to, to the café. And I'd also like to 14 point out that, that losing the art gallery is also not taken care of in the, in the application, so I, 15 I'm concerned about that as well. Personally I don't think a gym adds to the vibrancy of 16 California Avenue. I don't think it adds a significant community benefit. Sure, it adds personal 17 and health benefits, but it doesn't help to generate a sense of community on the street, which 18 is something which I think is, is lacking. So I just wanted to raise those concerns. Disappointed 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. to see Printers go, and I hope that whatever comes is a community-focused café and, and wine 1 bar. Thank you. 2 3 Chair Summa: Thank you. 4 5 Veronica Dao: Next is Odile and then followed by Winter on Zoom. 6 7 Odile Disch Bhadkamkar: Good evening. My name is Odile Disch Bhadkamkar. I've lived in Palo 8 Alto for 35 years. I have a special – Printers Ink is a special place in my heart. The day I got 9 married, it's where I had my cup of coffee in the morning, but I think the legendary Printers Ink 10 that used to be, to me ended when the bookstore closed. So now we have a café, and it seems 11 that everyone agrees the café's changing ownership but there's still going to be a café. I also 12 have trained with Nina at Stanford and also at Palo Alto Gym for about 10 years now. And like 13 Bill Ross, I have had multiple surgeries and the one-on-one training has allowed me – as my 14 orthopedic surgeon said, "I don't want to be the best friend with your, with your trainer" – has 15 allowed me to recover after multiple surgeries, and so I think it serves a, a purpose. So I'm he-, 16 some of the public comment I've seen in the paper, to me is horrifying because there's, there's 17 already a gym. So we all agree there's a gym, and there's a café, and we have new owners. And 18 people are going after the owners, and to me, it feels like we don't like'm and we don't like 19 their brand when we haven't even given them a chance. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 And I'm not talking about you, the commissioners, but I'm talking about the public comments 2 I'm seeing in the paper. Nina has been harassed by some members of the community to the 3 point that it feels like it's targeted to an Asian American woman who has built a very successful 4 business from scratch. And it really distresses me to see, not from the comments I hear tonight 5 but from what I've seen in the press, the tone that this discussion is taking. As a 6 businessperson, this is a valid real estate transaction. It's not even an investment. These are 7 two business owners who are trying to secure a location for their business for the long term. It's 8 been well documented. The issues about the lease and who extended what, to me are 9 immaterial to this particular consideration because what, what we're talking about is really a 10 space reconfiguration, which is being held up by community members who want the world to 11 stay the way it used to be. 12 13 And I, I don't deny that they have a nostalgia about this, but when I think about the backlog of 14 work that you as commissioners are facing with multifamily housing projects, with El Camino 15 Real, with getting the Housing Element approved, the fact that we're arguing here tonight close 16 to midnight about 2000 square feet, to me is mind boggling, okay? And I really thank you for 17 your service, but I, I really don't think that's the greatest use of, of our commissioners. I have 18 two seconds. I just want to say as good fiduciaries, I also would make sure that the City doesn't 19 risk any liability by making a decision with a very valid business transaction that is clean and… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Thank, thank you so much. 2 3 Ms. Disch Bhadkamkar: …incur some liabilities. Thank you. 4 5 Veronica Dao: Next on Zoom. First is Winter Dellenbach followed by Dorothy Bender. 6 7 Chair Summa: Go 'head, Ms. Dellenbach. 8 9 Winter Dellenbach: Hi, I'm Winter Dellenbach. I have a, a particular history with this property, 10 which I'm going to go into in a second, but before I do that I want to say I'm absolutely 11 delighted to see the previous speaker, although I – there's much I don't agree with her about, 12 but she was married at Printers Ink Bookstore, and the fact that she was is still talked about to 13 this day. And I just love seeing her, so thank you for being there. The history that I have is my 14 husband cofounded and co-owned Printers Ink Bookstore for 20 years at this site before selling 15 it. The bookstore owners established Printers Ink Café, now known as Printers Café. It was 16 renowned for its delicious espresso. That espresso decided – inspired the creation of a large 17 painted mural, which we've heard referred to tonight, the width of the café on its outdoor 18 overhang. The mural is a sort of ode to espresso from bean to roasting, brewing, and drinking, 19 showing its enjoyment by the store's book-loving customers. Painted in an art deco his-, heroic 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. style , a muscular barista is shown manipulating the espresso machine. A customer sits reading 1 at a table as a Dali-esque melting clock bends and slides off the edge, indicating that time 2 passing is easily forgotten when reading a good book. At another table, lovers kiss as bags of 3 roasted beans are carried past them into the café. 4 5 This is an entirely unique mural in our city, portraying the pleasure and dynamic duo of good 6 books and a good brew in the life of Palo Altans. It must be preserved. While it's my 7 understanding that the owner will keep it and I thank her for that, it should be made a 8 condition of approval to ensure that this happens. Please recommend this. This will prevent any 9 misunderstanding, such as already has happened with the café – former café operator. And 10 indeed it is a mezzanine and not a second floor currently, and that mezzanine had three little 11 offices that Printers Ink employees used and owners used. I'm very saddened that the-, there's 12 any gym at this site. I'm sad that the City Council didn't restrict gyms to the side streets off of 13 California Avenue. I think we're diminished by having this particular gym there because we've 14 lost three other businesses, although I'm delighted that there, of course, will be a public café 15 that is still having a, a – is sheltered. Please be very thoughtful about your recommendation on 16 this CUP. Thank you so much. 17 18 Chair Summa: Thank you. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Veronica Dao: Next is Dorothy Bender, followed by Jill Bicknell. 1 2 Chair Summa: Go ahead, Ms. Bender. 3 4 Dorothy Bender: I'm Dorothy Bender. Can you hear me? 5 6 Chair Summa: Yes, we can. 7 8 Ms. Bender: Okay, so I don't support a Conditional Use Permit for this project. Retail on 9 California Avenue has been a gift to residents. It does not need another gym. Who needs more 10 gym space there? I just heard that there're five other fitness studios on Cal Avenue. It sounds 11 like the café will be somewhat like Starbucks. It won't provide fresh salads and eggs and all the 12 other items that we have been, have been used to receiving. Cal Avenue has been a great 13 gathering place, and that is lessening with all the gym. A gym detracts from the community. Its 14 expansion will only threaten the w-, walkability of nearby streets. Due to this expansion 15 request, we have lost the gallery, Moods, and Prin-, and Printers Café. These have been 16 excellent community gathering spaces. They've been a real focus and part of what we want to 17 create and nurture on Cal Avenue. The City needs to focus on getting retailers into the walking 18 part of the street who really contribute to its viability. Please do what you can to send a 19 message preserving the precious gathering spaces on Cal Avenue. Thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Thank you. 2 3 Veronica Dao: Next is Jill Bicknell, followed by Roxanne. 4 5 Jill Bicknell: Hello, can you hear me? 6 7 Chair Summa: Yes, we can. 8 9 Ms. Bicknell: Yes. Thank you. Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Jill Bicknell, and I live 10 at 301 Stanford Avenue in Evergreen Park neighborhood about 5 blocks from the property in 11 question. I'm active in the Evergreen Park Neighborhood Association and participate in its 12 California Avenue Committee. However, I'm speaking on behalf of myself and the many 13 neighbors who share my views, including Wolfgang who spoke a, a short while ago. He's one of 14 my neighbors, and I support his comments. We're very concerned about keeping this area 15 vibrant and supportive of local businesses as well as providing services and entertainment to 16 the community. We particularly want to preserve and enhance California Avenue as a 17 pedestrian street with businesses which are oriented toward walk-in services. We believe that 18 the Commission should include requirements in Conditional Use Permits that businesses make 19 a contribution to the community and the atmosphere of the walking street. The 310-320 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. California Avenue project is a perfect example. I was pleased to hear that the owners intend to 1 keep the café. I was a little confused about exactly how big it's going to be, but at least it is 2 going to be open to the public with extended hours. We would like to see it continue to be 3 more of a full-service restaurant that operated more like Printers Café, which was a 4 tremendous neighborhood gathering place for many years. Unfortunately these three beloved 5 businesses are gone, but what we can do is ask you to include in the Conditional Use Permit 6 conditions for operating the café in a way that will make it very welcoming and viable to a 7 pedestrian and walking street. Thank you for your time. 8 9 Chair Summa: Thank you. Two more. 10 11 Veronica Dao: Next is Roxanne, followed by our last speaker, Deborah Grubbs. 12 13 Roxanne Leung: Good evening. My name is Roxanne – Dr. Roxanne Leung. I'm a Palo Alto 14 resident of 15 years, a practicing medical physician, and a joyful member of the Palo Alto Fit 15 community for the past 6½ years. My husband and daughter, a Gunn High School Graduate, 16 have also engaged in workouts with the gym. There was a question from the Committee about 17 young people, and I can assure you many young people have, have used their services. During 18 these past 6½ years, Nina and the Palo Alto Fit trainers have been a constant in my life and the 19 lives of many others. In, in fact, I was there this morning at 7 AM lifting weights. So I've 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. experienced firsthand the incredible supportive program crafted by Nina and her team that is 1 specific to each and every member, and I can honestly say this has positively changed the 2 trajectory of my health to allow me to be a better mother, wife, and physician to my patients. 3 In medicine, the greatest goal is prevention of disease, and wellness programs like Palo Alto Fit 4 are key components of keeping our community healthy. And f-, and finally, I'd like to share my 5 observations of Nina as a person so that people know who she is. She is warm, always positive, 6 full of energy, serves as a cheering section for all the members as well as her staff of ten-plus 7 trainers. She's built an amazing community, and I'm overwhelmingly grateful to her and her 8 team. I would love for her to have a permanent home in Palo Alto, and I look forward to 9 enjoying the new café. I want to thank the Planning and Transportation Committee for their 10 consideration. Thank you. 11 12 Veronica Dao: Last speaker is Deborah Grubbs. 13 14 Deborah Grubbs: Hello, can you hear me? 15 16 Chair Summa: Yes, we can. 17 18 Ms. Grubbs: Thank you so much. My name is Deborah Grubbs, and I am here to support Palo 19 Alto Fit. As the other people that have noted that Palo Alto Fit has changed my life. I came in 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 125 pounds heavier than I am right now, and Nina and her team saw something in me that I 1 could not see in myself. And I know that Nina cares not only for the people that are a part of 2 Palo Alto Fit, but she cares about her community. She cares about the people that support her 3 members. And I just want to mention too, during the COVID time, it was really hard, and I felt 4 like Nina really helped those of us that were members there that couldn't be there. You just felt 5 the support there, and she really thought outside the box, and she is a visionary. And I'm 6 excited to s-, to see the new facility, and I see people – I work on California Avenue on the other 7 side of El Camino, and I know how many people walk from the train to their offices and back. 8 And we pass so many restaurants, which I'm grateful for, but I like to have other choices too, 9 and I'm grateful that Palo Alto Fit may be there as a visionary to – vision just that there are 10 other things we can be doing than just feeding, feeding our body but we can also be doing 11 other things with our body. So thank you so much, and I support Palo Alto Fit. 12 13 Chair Summa: Thank you for that, and the applicant can take three minutes to re-, for rebuttal if 14 you would like to say anything. You don't have to, but – okay. All right, so let's bring it back to 15 the Commission and I'm not seeing any lights. Would anyone – ah, Commissioner Templeton. 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you very much, Chair. I'm really intrigued by this, a-, 18 application, and what I have learned here tonight is very helpful, so thank you for preparing a 19 good presentation, especially how well you have heard and responded to the feedback from 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the community. It's – it really tells a lot about what kinda business you want to run and what 1 your vision is for this space, so thank you for that. And thank you for the public commenter who 2 clarified the difference between this business and a gym because I, I also have felt a little bit of 3 fatigue about all the, the gyms moving into the space. And I, I think it's important to understand 4 that your commitment is to your community, and it's, it's important to understand that. 5 6 And I think also that we're, we're faced with a desire to hold onto something that needed to let 7 go itself because it wasn't a profitable business, because they wanted to leave, and as we think 8 about how to go forward and how to keep the things we loved about that and adapt to the 9 reality of the situation, I think that's also very healthy in a way for us to think about that. And 10 we don't have to, to make this café exactly the same as Printers Café, but we can keep the parts 11 we love, like our speaker Winter mentioned the, the murals. I love that you're keeping the 12 murals. I think that's so important because it has, it has been an important space in our city for 13 some time. I, I personally – I, I have differing opinions about whether we want to have a, a full-14 service restaurant there w-, when we do have so many other restaurants that serve that kind of 15 food on the, the street very nearby. And I'm also wondering if, if those other restaurants might 16 benefit from a scale-down in this location so that for, for those who want to want a f-, a full 17 meal, maybe they can get it at one of these other wonderful restaurants. We've been to them 18 all. There's a lot, but they're, they're great too. So I'm, I'm inclined to be supportive of this CUP, 19 and more interestingly, I'm, I'm int-, I'm, I'm curious about how having such a customer-centric 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. and community-centric business there might change the shape and the landscape of, of our 1 interactions on California Avenue. Like what if it's better? What if it draws people in? So that's 2 what's going on in my mind right now. Thank you. 3 4 Chair Summa: Thank you. Commissioner Hechtman? 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: So I have some history with this property, and so I actually have a fair 7 amount to say, so I'm going to break it into two pieces for two rounds. 8 9 Chair Summa: Okay. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: This first round, I'm going to sort of look back, and in the next round, 12 I'll look forward, but I want the context of looking back first. So like I said, I've, I've got a fair 13 amount of history with this site. We moved here in the early 90s, and, and at that point I think 14 310 was Zohar Dance Studio, which was not open to all of the public. It was a kind of a 15 member-only thing. You had to join and take dance classes, and it was considered a very nice 16 addition. My wife took classes there maybe twice a week, quite frequently. And next door to 17 that was Printers Ink Bookstore. What I can't remember is whether when we first arrived there 18 was already a café or did the café come later? In any event, there was Printers Ink, and my wife 19 is a voracious reader, and at the time I read more than I do now, and so we were in that 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. bookstore all the time. It was like Palo Alto's Kepler's, and, and we loved that place. But over 1 time, things changed. Zohar went away. I think they relocated to maybe like the back of 2 Cubberley or something, and a nice stationery store – stationery and gifts went in there for 3 quite a while. And we shopped there, and we liked it. Eventually it went away, and I think 4 maybe that Performance Gains was the next occupant of that space. 5 6 Meanwhile on the Printers Ink side, sadly, the bookstore went away, and again, by that point it 7 was in the back. They had condensed the space, and that was a very sad time, at least at in my 8 household and for a lot of people. But what sprung up there was really kind of a surprise. It was 9 the Gallery House. And the Gallery House – which you had to walk through the café to get to 10 the Gallery House, which made sense when it was all Printers Ink, but it was actually pretty 11 impressive that they could find a user for that in a way that really fit. And so at the Gallery 12 House, my wife hosted quarterly poetry recitals for the community four times a year for a 13 decade, and so four times a year, you'd come through the café, we'd have little snacks and 14 there would be a group of poets that she had lined up to recite. And we learned about all the 15 artists that were in that collective gallery because they would take turns – at every recital, one 16 of them would show their art and explain their motivations. 17 18 And so those were really great community activities, and we loved some of the artists there. 19 And in fact, we have a painting from one of them that is in my house and I see it every day. So, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. we have a deep history with that. And while we were doing those poetry recitals, Moods Bar 1 opened in the evenings, which created some challenge for us because Moods liked to have 2 some louder music and the cadence of that music wasn't always matching the rhythm of the 3 poet who was trying to recite their poem. I remember trying to put like Navajo blankets over 4 the open door to muffle the sound. We tried moving into the back, but, the point is, a lot of 5 people – and it's clear from the public comments we have, a lot of people have a lot of great 6 memories about these businesses that aren't there anymore. And I want everybody to know 7 that I'm one of those people that has great memories that I'm carrying forward. So again, I'll 8 look forward at the next round. Thank you. 9 10 Chair Summa: Commissioner Chang? 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: So I'm sad to see Printers Ink go, and I'm also – have been in Palo Alto a long 13 time. I remember, I remember all the businesses that Commissioner Hechtman mentioned. I 14 was younger then and so didn't have the cash to go spend it there. But that said, I'm really 15 pleased to see that the, the CUP continues the use of the café side, and my hope is that even 16 though it's – there's a new owner who's going to run this café themselves, that the, the, the 17 community-serving aspects of the business can stay, so that the hours can – that it can be open 18 as long as possible because it is hard to find a café in Palo Alto open past like about 6 PM. So 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. whether it's a café or whether it's a wine bar, but that it can be a gathering place that increases 1 the vitality of the street all day long. 2 3 But the way I look at this is, even though I'm very sad to see individual businesses leave, there's 4 also – it, it, it's the nature of what happens, that unfortunately some businesses are no longer 5 profitable or cannot – I, I mean, it's a, it's a problem that all of Palo Alto faces, that retail 6 conditions change and so we lose retailers. Like we don't have bookstores – as many 7 bookstores anymore because there's so many online retailers, and these are not things that we 8 can – I, I don't think that we as Palo Alto can legislate that rent stays low enough – artificially 9 low enough. And so even though I'm very sad about the loss of Printers Ink and the gallery and 10 Moods, I don't think that this is some – I don't – when I look at the conditions of approval and 11 what the Commission's asked to evaluate – or how the Commission is asked to evaluate the 12 condition of approval, this seems like a wonderful use for a business that is also a long-serving – 13 a, a, a business that has served Palo Altans for a long time. And if we need to do anything at all, 14 it might be to, ensure that the café stays ser-, has long business hours or, or, or something like 15 that, but other than that, I, I think I'm, l-, I would approve this condition of approval. 16 17 Chair Summa: Commissioner Lu? 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Lu: I will keep my comments brief since I think I largely agree with my fellow 1 commissioners. I am sad that great businesses are closing, but I'm also inclined to move 2 forward with the CUP, and I appreciate the applicant's responses today. I think that it clarified a 3 lot, and it sounded like it also addressed several community concerns as well. So stepping back 4 a bit, I think this is interesting timing since it comes in the middle of discussions about how we 5 make retail ordinance changes and how we preserve retail and preserve the vitality of our 6 streets. And the spirit of that conversation was that we want to support small businesses but 7 that sometimes the best way to do that is to be more flexible about uses, and I think in this 8 case, that largely lines up with these conversations. We're not dealing with a large developer 9 that has abstract plans that they aren't really sharing with us about like what the site will 10 actually be. We have a good picture of the café that'll emerge and the personal training/gym 11 facility. So given that the café and potentially wine/beer services into the night will continue, 12 it's really a tradeoff between potentially having an empty space and holding out for a bookstore 13 or an art gallery that we would love to have there or filling it with a gym, which – or a personal 14 training facility, which does have community uses. 15 16 So my potentially only main concern left is how to make the personal training facility as 17 successful as possible, how to help it have programs, how to help it have more members that 18 could have more accessible or like drop-in services and things like that. I'm not totally sure what 19 the restrictions are right now, and maybe potentially Staff could actually chime in on what 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. limitations would prevent a more accessible gym space in contrast to potentially a more 1 expensive personal training service. But yeah, barring that concern, I'm largely comfortable 2 with the CUP. 3 4 Chair Summa: Commissioner Reckdahl? 5 6 Commissioner Reckdahl: In looking through the, the public comment that we got, all the letters, 7 a lot of people were uncomfortable with losing all this retail space. Did you, when you bought 8 the building, consider just leaving the gym in, in the 310 and have 320 be still retail? 9 10 Mr. Horst: The, the plan was if we would not get CUP approval, basically just use the 6000 for 11 basically gym use. And, and unfortunately it's – the challenge with the size of the café, because 12 it's almost 5000, it's extremely difficult to make a profitable business out of 5000 square foot 13 on that street if you're not really into a restaurant business. So café tend more to have smaller 14 space, no sitting. Just because of the economics, it doesn't scale anymore. So it's, it's really 15 hard, that – particularly that, that space in the back, which is about 2000 square foot, to make a 16 profitable business. I was reading the comments about the art gallery, and even that complains 17 that it doesn't have any storefront. It's really hard even for the art gallery to have really 18 effective use out of that square footage, which is in the back side of the building, so it's just the 19 cost and making revenue out of it. It's extremely hard, so to answer your question, we wanted 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. to explore the options of expanding the café, but it would never have fully worked, but we 1 would have make it work, so… 2 3 Commissioner Reckdahl: And what is the square footage of your current location? 4 5 Mr. Horst: The current location is about 8000, so it's pretty similar size, but it has limiting 6 parking. So we have only eight parking slots, which, yeah, had limitations with how we can run 7 that business at that size at 425 Portage. 8 9 Commissioner Reckdahl: And what is the square footage of 310? 10 11 Mr. Horst: So 310 right now is 6000 plus the second story, so it's 6000 footprint – sorry, 6-, 12 yeah, 610 is 6000 plus the second floor, which is – I need to check. It's probably about 1000 on 13 the second floor. Eight hundred. So it's 6000 polus 800. 14 15 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, and so if you do the expansion but leave the café in the front, 16 how much gym space will you have in the combined area? 17 18 Mr. Horst: Yeah, so it would be about 8000. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: About 8000… 1 2 Mr. Horst: Yeah, and… 3 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: …and so you… 5 6 Mr. Horst: …and it's really the, the shape, which is very similar to what we have today, is that, 7 that rectangle, which really helps us to optimize the space of gym use. That's why we are trying 8 to make sure that actually we use that space for restrooms and bathrooms and showers, really 9 what is in the back side, so that we have that 6000 for full training space. 10 11 Commissioner Reckdahl: And how many clientele do you have in the gym at one time? 12 13 Mr. Horst: Today it's – I mean, rush hours is really in the morning. It's, it's probably about 20, 14 20, maximum 20 clients. 15 16 Commissioner Reckdahl: And if you just kept the gym in 310, would you have to scale that back 17 or could you squeeze it in? 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Horst: It would be difficult. But I mean, we don't have any options, so if we're not get CUP 1 approval, we have to work with what is today approved as commercial recreation, which is the 2 6000. 3 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: Okay, thank you. 5 6 Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman, do you want to go again or do you want me to go or – 7 okay. I, I, I think that – I'm very sympathetic – well, first of all I want to thank all the people who 8 took the time to write letters and emails and speak tonight, and I'm very sympathetic to the 9 notion. But I'm pretty sure Performance Gains in that space before must have had a Conditional 10 Use Permit as well, and this is a slightly different business. It's not really a gym. I'm, I'm glad to 11 be enlightened about that a little because there, there are personal services where you have to 12 make appointments on – that are legal uses on Cal Ave also, so it's not really a problem for me. 13 It's the size, and I asked, I asked Staff if they had any idea what the 1800 break was based on, 14 and maybe you weren't able to find out, but – and I would also note that the café is basically 15 the same size except it has nicer bathrooms. It's not going to be the same food offerings, I 16 think, but I think in terms of being a gathering space, it will be very similar. And if it's not nice 17 and if it's not open, it's not going to attract people the way our beloved old business did. But is 18 there any information about the history of the 1800? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Amy French: Yes, so several years ago, Staff came forward with a loosening of the Chapter 1 1816, and we were successful in loosening commercial recreation to enable no Conditional Use 2 Permits un-, until the threshold of 5000 square feet was reached in the CS and CN. However, 3 Council imposed greater restrictions on California Avenue to 1800 square feet, so that was a, a 4 Council imitative to lower that just on Cal Ave and at Town and Country. 5 6 Assistant City Attorney Yang: I can also add that 1800 had historically been a cutoff between 7 personal service fitness centers and what was – what would otherwise be considered 8 commercial recreation. And so we don't know why 1800 was chosen back then, but that 9 historically was the point where a, a use would go from being considered personal service to 10 being considered commercial recreation. 11 12 Amy French: And I can add some color to that since I've been here quite a few decades, is, is we 13 were seeing anecdotally that the ballet studios and other personal services that were fitnessy 14 coming in, and around that size seemed to be where it would be – pencil out somehow for 15 these smaller personal services that had a, a movement component. 16 17 Chair Summa: Okay, and maybe it had to do with parking assessment on Cal Ave too somewhat, 18 but – so that's established. I want to bring up one thing that is – well, before I do that, I, I also 19 support this change, and I'm very sad that the businesses left that were there. But somebody 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. new bought the building and seems like that they had a different vision, which is very similar in 1 use to what was there, and the building will not change on the exterior. And you can't force 2 someone to stay in Palo Alto and pay Palo Alto rents if they feel they can do better in another 3 city. So I am very sad about this, but I don't find that I'm probably going to be able to make the 4 findings to deny this. But I want to bring something else up separate with Staff, which has very 5 little to do with a CUP except I, I need to be reassured of the legality of this, and that is AB 6 2097. And Ms. Dao has a slide she can bring up. 7 8 So AB 2097 has always been – we've always been told that it – within a half mile, it's a state law 9 that applies, it waives parking restrictions, which I understand that, but there's a very important 10 clause in it, which I think I – unless I'm misunderstanding it, but it's very clear, plain writing and 11 I've brought it up. It's F, and it's – just so we'd know what we were talking about. And so this s-, 12 it reads, "This section shall not reduce, eliminate, or preclude the enforcement of any 13 requirement imposed on a new multifamily residential or nonresidential development that's 14 located within the ½ mile of public transit to provide electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), 15 installed parking spaces, or parking spaces that are accessible to persons with disabilities that 16 would have otherwise applied to the development if this section," meaning AB 2-, 2097, "did 17 not apply." And it was the first – I came across this, and it's the first I heard of it. And I think we 18 sh-, should address – not hold up a decision on the CUP this evening, but I am curious if my 19 interpretation is correct and how we are handling – if this development triggered any new – 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. because of the new square footage or because it's a different use – a new use it triggered a 1 consideration of ADA spaces and EVSV spaces and how we provide them on Cal Ave. 2 3 And I know we wouldn't be providing them on site, and – but I think we need to be thinking 4 about ADA spaces, especially since we are – we lo-, lost at least three, it's kinda hard to tell 5 when we closed Cal Ave. So I just want us to think about that, and I want Staff to let me know if 6 I'm interpreting this correctly and if this were to be compliant with state law 'cause this is a 7 requirement of state law, that we not lose those two types of parking in – by invoking the 8 parking elimin-, parking requirement elimination. So that's kind of what I'm worried about. 9 10 Amy French: So I'll, I'll just weigh in and say how we've interpreted this… 11 12 Chair Summa: Okay. 13 14 Amy French: …is that if parking is provided, then they must adhere to these percentages or 15 minimums for ADA and E-, electric vehicle charging. But if no parking is provided – in other 16 words in the radius of the train station on Cal Ave, if they are not providing parking, then, then 17 it's – there's no percentage of zero, right, to provide EVSE and… 18 19 Chair Summa: Okay. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Amy French: …ADA. 2 3 Chair Summa: So… 4 5 Amy French: And, and just to follow up to say when we talk about required parking that's in the 6 code that is now superseded by AB 2097 in these areas, that is for onsite parking. Our code 7 does not specify anything about parking on the street 'cause they're only in control of their own 8 site – private property. 9 10 Chair Summa: So do-, so is it also because of the Parking District? 11 12 Amy French: The, the Parking District is now defunct. I mean, it was… 13 14 Chair Summa: It's closed, I know. 15 16 Amy French: …it's – yeah, there was a, there was a parking assessment that ended. 17 18 Chair Summa: I – okay, I also see our City Attorney – oh. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Assistant City Attorney Yang: Yeah, I, I don't have much to, to add to what Ms. French explained 1 about the city's interpretation of this language. 2 3 Chair Summa: Okay, then I see that – thank you for that explanation. I do think we should be 4 thinking about how we're accommodating ADA parking then under these situations, but that's 5 not on this project. It's on the City, and I just wanted to make sure that we were doing 6 something entirely legal here. Commissioner Chang? 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah, my question isn't necessarily about it as it relates to this CUP since it 9 sounds like we're – it, it'd be legal for us to approve the CUP and not require additional EVSE or 10 ADA parking, but as a – as the Planning Commission and as a city, we really need to think about 11 this because we're going to – I mean, we hopefully are going to see more development in the 12 area since it's a transit-rich area, and yet none of those will require parking. And yet there will 13 be many more people in the area, and we're going to need more ADA parking and, and 14 electrical vehicle infrastructure. So I think it's something that we're going to have to solve. Like 15 it's, it, it's a pretty big problem because nothing going forward will ever require any parking, so 16 then we would have no additional EV infrastructure or ADA parking, and that's going to be a 17 problem. Thanks. 18 19 Chair Summa: Commissioner Templeton? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: I must have accidentally pressed the button, but are – have we 2 received all the comments from our – oh, so I don't have anything unless you're – I, I'll chime 3 back after Bart. 4 5 Chair Summa: Commissioner Hechtman? 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah, thank you. So this is part 2 if you will, sort of looking forward. 8 Businesses really adhere to the saying "To everything there is a season," like other things do, 9 and I think we see that reflected in this building, that they have this natural cycle. And 10 sometimes that cycle ends because the business isn't profitable enough. Other times it ends 11 because a new owner comes and your lease ends and they have a different idea. And so all of 12 the businesses that I mentioned the first time have come and gone through the cycle, and now 13 – and maybe it's just because it's sort of sudden to lose Moods and Gallery House and Printers 14 Café all at the same time, it feels like a lot, but it's really part of the nature of business in a retail 15 environment. And again, I'm grateful that we were able to enjoy those businesses while we 16 could. 17 18 When I look at the redesign here, the only thing I really see is – two things. One, in terms of the 19 bathroom for the café, we are replacing a bathroom – a single bathroom that I can't believe 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. was ADA compliant 'cause you had to go down this long like galley kitchen and around the back 1 and through some doors to that bathroom. We're replacing that with two more logically 2 located bathrooms right behind the café, really sort of where the art area started, so that's a 3 logical change. And then the other change is with what's left of the Gallery House, it seems like 4 that's being converted into some nice bathroom – I don't know if they're like locker rooms, but 5 a men's room and women's room that'll serve the exercise facilities that are in the 310 primarily 6 portion, and then you have some offices. So there's really not a lot of change other than sort of 7 a slightly improved café space because of the proximity of new ADA bathrooms and the loss of 8 this retail space behind it that – again, I think it was great that they were able to find Gallery 9 House to take a walkthrough space but those things are gone. I don't mind those changes. I 10 think this is a good next use. I'm excited about the café and trying a healthy sandwich. We'll 11 see what that's like. 12 13 One of the interesting things that Staff raised in the staff report and asked for our feedback 14 about was the interpretation of L1.6, does this benefit the community? And, really to answer 15 that question, we have to first think about, well, what is the community 'cause part of the 16 community is everybody who used to go to Printers Ink Café or the Gallery House, but I think 17 the community in the sense of this requirement is much broader. It's the whole of Palo Alto – 18 the part of Palo Alto that comes to Cal Ave, and it includes the other owners of businesses on 19 Cal Ave. I live over by Edgewood Plaza, and if you've been there, there's a workout place there, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. members only, called Orangetheory – I was going to say therapy. Orangetheory. Right? I've 1 never been inside, but every time I go to Bagel House next door, there are people in workout 2 clothes who are coming or going from that place. And every time I go to Starbucks on the other 3 end of that building, there are people in workout clothes coming or going. And every time I go 4 to the Edgewood Market, same thing. And so what I observe is having this business that draws 5 people for a particular purpose to the Edgewood Plaza has the effect of radiating business out. 6 And that is really my hope for this business and its café. 7 8 You're bringing new clientele, people who maybe went to Portage but they didn't come to Cal 9 Ave, plus we have new access from the train station. And so I'm hoping that this business is 10 going to bring customers to Cal Ave and that those customers of your facilities will radiate out 11 to the other uses. So, I'm supportive, and I do think we can make the findings for the use 12 permit. So if it's okay, I can make a motion? Yeah? All right, well, I think I can just move the staff 13 recommendation. Will that work? 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: And make the findings on page 103. 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: And make the findings on page 103. Thank you. 18 19 Chair Summa: Can I get a second? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: I'll do it. 2 3 Chair Summa: Okay. Would you accept an amendment that required the murals be retained as 4 a condition? I believe it's the-, their intention… 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah… 7 8 Chair Summa: …to do so, but to… 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: … yeahthere apparently are a number of murals. Do we need to 11 [inaudible 5:04:07]… 12 13 Chair Summa: There's a exterior one and the one on the inside of the porch. Yeah. 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: Right, so are there two murals? One is on the Birch wall, right, and 16 we've seen that. And the other is on an interior wall… 17 18 Chair Summa: Y-, if… 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Hechtman: …right? 1 2 Chair Summa: …you're s-, if you're sitting looking out at California Avenue on the porch… 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 5 6 Chair Summa: …it's up high. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah, okay. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Aren't there also a couple of like people, not just the train on the 11 outside? 12 13 Chair Summa: I think there's two murals, right? 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. And, and – all right, and I'm seeing that… 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: They… 18 19 Commissioner Hechtman: …the appli-… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: …were on the drawing so… 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: …yeah, the, the applicant is… 4 5 Associate Planner Kandikuppa: I can… 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: …comfortable with… 8 9 Associate Planner Kandikuppa: Sorry, I can clarify. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Oh. 12 13 Associate Planner Kandikuppa: There are – there's one big mural on the inside-facing wall 14 above Printers Café, which is in the outdoor seating area, and there is a second mural that's 15 painted on the outside of the exterior wall along Birch Street… 16 17 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 18 19 Associate Planner Kandikuppa: …and there's two murals overall. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. And, and I'm seeing the applicant is intent to keep those 2 murals and agreeable to being committed to that through a condition of approval. All right, so if 3 I make this amendment, can I count on your vote… 4 5 Chair Summa: I don't… 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: …to my motion? 8 9 Chair Summa: …I think in America you're not allowed to ask people how they're going to vote. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Well, then let me, let me do it differently. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Is this… 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: I will accept your amendment on the condition that you vote first. 16 17 Chair Summa: I, I think that's up to how Ms. Dao calls the vote, but I will tell you that I 18 expressed already my feelings about the CUP. I had reservations about this other issue and a 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. lost of ADA space, which I don't want to take up anybody – everybody's time talking about right 1 now, so is that a good enough answer? 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: I'm going to trust that asking for something you want is reason 4 enough for you to support this motion, and I will accept the amendment. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Me as well. 7 8 Chair Summa: Any other comments? 9 10 Commissioner Lu: Just to be clear, was the wording on the amendment just to preserve public 11 art in general on the pro-, yeah, both murals… 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Two murals. 14 15 Commissioner Lu: …not just one. Yes, the – thank you. Agree with that. 16 17 Chair Summa: Seeing no other lights, Ms. Dao can you call the vote please? 18 19 Veronica Dao: Yes. Chair Summa? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: I just very quietly said to myself, "Don't ask me first," but despite that, I will say 2 yes. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Vice Chair Chang? 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 7 8 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 9 10 Commissioner Akin: Yes. 11 12 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. 15 16 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 17 18 Commissioner Lu: Yes. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Veronica Dao: Commissioner Reckdahl? 1 2 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 7 8 Veronica Dao: Motion carries, 7-0. 9 10 Chair Summa: Awesome. Okay, so thank you all for coming this evening, and we look forward to 11 seeing you on Cal Ave. 12 13 APPROVAL OF MINUTES 14 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 15 Chair Summa: So – okay, so we have two items left. One is the decision on whether to vote now 16 for Chair or Vice Chair, which is Item 5, and then we have one little set of minutes to approve. 17 I'd like to, I'd like to approve the minutes if possible and then discuss the other item. 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: Are we allowed to go out of order 'cause we said earlier there was 20 no order changes. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Summa: Yeah, I think we're allowed to go out of order. 2 3 Assistant City Attorney Yang: Yeah, that's fine. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 6 7 Chair Summa: Thank you. Okay. So Item 6 is approval of PTC draft minutes of November 29, 8 2023. Do I have a motion and a seconder? 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Can I just clarify, the – is this verbatim and summary? 11 12 Veronica Dao: Yes, that says on the agenda… 13 14 Chair Summa: It says… 15 16 Veronica Dao: …right… 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm looking on the – Number 6. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: It says draft minutes. 1 2 Veronica Dao: Oh, oh, oh draft minutes… 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Sorry, sorry, I'm… 5 6 Veronica Dao: …yes. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: …just looking at the agenda. It – in the agenda, Item 6, it didn't 9 specify, so I just wanted to clarify. So I can make a motion to approve the verbatim and 10 summary minutes of November 29, 2023, as revised. 11 12 Veronica Dao: Yes, did I mess up the report and not… 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: The, the minutes just… 15 16 Veronica Dao: …put it in the title? Yes, but in the staff report, it did say verbatim and summary. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Veronica Dao: Yeah. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: And they are both the minutes of November 29. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Yes. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 7 8 Chair Summa: Okay, thank you for that clarification. Are you making the motion? 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: I did, as revised. 11 12 Chair Summa: And second? 13 14 Commissioner Lu: I'll second. 15 16 Chair Summa: Okay. Any comments? Okay, if we could vote on that, please? 17 18 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Akin: Yes. 1 2 Veronica Dao: Vice Chair Chang? 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 5 6 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. 9 10 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 11 12 Commissioner Lu: Yes. 13 14 Veronica Dao: Chair Summa? 15 16 Chair Summa: Yes. 17 18 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Reckdahl? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes. 1 2 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 5 6 Veronica Dao: Motion carries, 7-0. 7 8 5. Election of Chair and Vice Chair 9 10 Chair Summa: Thank you for that. Okay, so it's a little after 11, I think. 11:15 almost. 11 Commissioner Templeton? 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: I was going to move that we could punt this to next time. 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: Second. 16 17 Chair Summa: Okay, I, I was going to frame the issue for you, but I think that you all understand 18 what the issue is and that is that our process is out of alignment with the BCC handbook. So we 19 can either vote tonight for Chair and Vice Chair or, or move it to after the new appointment. So 20 if you want to make a mot-, motion, that's fine. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Do we have any sense of when the new appointment is going to 2 occur? 3 4 Chair Summa: Early May, we think. 5 6 Amy French: Sometime in May. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: To a date uncertain? 9 10 Chair Summa: S-, but I will say, there weren't a great number of applicants, and there in fact 11 were two, and one was Commissioner Hechtman. And as long as he is willing to ke-, stay and 12 serve until that time, we'd still be a quorum if he didn't, but it's entirely up to you. I think it 13 would be nice to go home. I don't – I have no policy or personal preference on this issue 14 whatsoever. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Okay, I'm going to move to a date uncertain and give instruction to 17 Staff that it be the meeting immediately following the appointment. 18 19 Chair Summa: Yeah. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: Second. 2 3 Chair Summa: Any comments? 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: I just have one. The appointment will happen on a Monday because 6 that's when Council meets, and if we happen to have a meeting scheduled that Wednesday – 7 well, maybe you'll know because the Council agen-, you, you'll be able to timely agenda it, 8 right? 9 10 Amy French: The packets for Council come out a week and a half or so… 11 12 Chair Summa: Yeah. 13 14 Amy French: …ahead, so… 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 17 18 Amy French: …whether – we probably won't advertise it in the newspaper, but we can still put 19 it on the agenda 72… 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 2 3 Amy French: …hours in advance or something like that, I think. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, good. 6 7 Chair Summa: Okay, anybody – any other comments? So we can vote. 8 9 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Man, I thought you were going to make Bart go first. Just as payback. 12 Yes. 13 14 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Reckdahl? 15 16 Commissioner Reckdahl: Yes. 17 18 Veronica Dao: Chair Summa? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Summa: Yes. 1 2 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 3 4 Commissioner Lu: Yes. 5 6 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Abstain. 9 10 Veronica Dao: Vice Chair Chang? 11 12 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 13 14 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 15 16 Commissioner Akin: Yes. 17 18 Veronica Dao: Motion carries, 6-0-1. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 1 Chair Summa: Thank you very much. Are there are any other comments, questions, or – no. 2 Okay, I will then – thank you, everybody, very much, and I will adjourn this meeting. 3 4 Commissioner Reckdahl: I thought we were going to be here till midnight. This is much faster… 5 6 Adjournment 7 11:16 PM 8 9 /ab 10