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Home My WebLink About2024-09-11 Planning & 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 ten (10) 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: September 11, 2024 2 Council Chambers & Virtual 3 6:00 PM 4 5 Call to Order / Roll Call 6 6:00 PM 7 8 ROLL CALL 9 Chair Chang: Welcome everyone to this regular meeting of the Planning and Transportation 10 Commission for Wednesday, September 11, 2024. Ms. Dao, could you please call the roll? 11 12 Administrative Associate Veronica Dao: Chair Chang? 13 14 Chair Chang: Present. 15 16 Veronica Dao: Vice-Chair Reckdahl? 17 18 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Here. 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 ten (10) 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: Commissioner Hechtman? 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Here. 5 6 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Lu? 7 8 Commissioner Lu: Here. 9 10 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Summa? 11 12 Commissioner Summa: Here. 13 14 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Here. 17 18 Veronica Dao: We have a quorum. 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Okay. Our first order of business is public comment on items that are not on the 1 agenda tonight. Ms. Dao, do we have any speaker cards? 2 Oral Communications 3 The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 4 5 Veronica Dao: I have none for oral communications. 6 7 Chair Chang: Okay. Let me just check – and nothing on line? 8 9 Veronica Dao: And not on line. 10 11 Chair Chang: Okay. Great. And we have a new staff member here today. Welcome. So are there 12 any agenda changes and – or – and Agenda Changes, Additions or Deletions? I’ll let you 13 introduce yourselves. 14 15 Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 16 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 17 18 Planning & Development Services Dept. Director Jonathan Lait: Yeah. No changes to the agenda 19 and we’ll have Ms. Armer introduce herself under the Directors Report perhaps. 20 21 Chair Chang: Okay. 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 ten (10) 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 Jonathan Lait: Your next item or… 2 3 Chair Chang: Okay. 4 5 Jonathan Lait: [Yes 10:10]. Next item. 6 7 Chair Chang: All right. Next item then. 8 9 Jonathan Lait: Should we launch into it? 10 11 Chair Chang: Yes, let’s launch into it. 12 13 Jonathan Lait: Okay. So let – maybe I’ll first start by introducing Jennifer Armer. She’s our 14 Assistant Director of Planning and has joined the City now – this is day three. And it’s already 15 been a bit of a whirlwind to her, I think, in the first few days here. But we wanted to bring 16 Jennnifer here to introduce her to the Commission. She will be the Planning and Transportation 17 Commissioner liaison. I’ll continue to support until the appropriate transition but I’ll give 18 Jennifer a moment maybe to just introduce herself. 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 ten (10) 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 Director/PTC Liaison Jennnifer Armer: Good evening. Is that working? 1 2 Chair Chang: You need to speak really close to these microphones. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: I was going to say we’re going to have to adjust the wires on this a little bit. 5 Each time you’re in a new room, you got to understand what the – how the microphones work. 6 So my name is Jennifer Armer. I have about 20 years – approximately 20 years of experience in 7 the planning field. The last nine years of that have been with the Town of Los Gatos, but it 8 actually started 20 years ago as part of an internship with the City of Palo Alto and was 9 previously for four years a planner with Palo Alto as well. So I’m very excited to be back and 10 looking forward to working with you all. 11 12 Chair Chang: Welcome. We are thrilled to have you. All right. Do you want to go ahead with 13 the… 14 15 Jonathan Lait: Sure. 16 17 Chair Chang: …staff report, Director Lait? 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 ten (10) 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. City Official Reports 1 1. Directors Report, Meeting Schedule and Assignments 2 Jonathan Lait: Yeah. So just a couple of updates then for the Commission. You have it here 3 before you on the screen. We have a few items that are scheduled for your meeting on 4 September 25. We’re excited to bring the Housing Incentive Program, a discussion for the 5 Commission. This is a result from the housing element and one of our key programs as a means 6 to further produce housing production in the City. And then our transportation office will have 7 a couple of updates related to some items that are on their schedule to present to you. And 8 then in October, we will return with the Stream Corridor Ordinance and you will have a hearing 9 on – we anticipate that you will have a hearing on the Planned Home Zoning application for 660 10 University and an update on the Safe Streets for All Safety Action Plan, also from our Office of 11 Transportation. 12 13 Chair Chang: Question for you, Director Lait… 14 15 Jonathan Lait: Yes. 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: …about September 25. In our packet it mentioned that there might be potential 1 amendments to regulations for the Affordable − the AHIP, the Affordable Housing Incentive 2 Program. Are we only going to be considering the HIP or are we also doing the Affordable 3 Housing Incentive? 4 5 Jonathan Lait: Yeah, this is abbreviated here on the screen. But yes, we will be taking into 6 consideration the HIP and the AHIP… 7 8 Chair Chang: Great. 9 10 Jonathan Lait: …and in the future, something even hipper… 11 12 Chair Chang: Okay. 13 14 Jonathan Lait: …still. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Thank you. 1 2 Jonathan Lait: You think I’m joking. 3 4 Chair Chang: Are there additional questions from the Commission? No? All right. I guess you 5 wanted to cover this too. I’m sorry. I interrupted you. 6 7 Jonathan Lait: No worries. Just a couple of other updates. The Commission may recall its 8 discussion related to retail and retail-like land uses. That’s going to go to the Planning – or the 9 City Council’s Ad Hoc – Retail Ad Hoc Committee next week to consider those 10 recommendations. In fact, I think a report has been published. I will send an email to the 11 Commission so that you have that for your records or just to see what’s going on with that. And 12 then again the Office of Transportation will provide an update to the City Council’s Finance 13 Committee on the Parking Program Financial Review, and then lastly, a Stream Corridor 14 Ordinance to the Council in November – scheduled for November. So that concludes the report. 15 16 Chair Chang: Okay. 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Jonathan Lait: Thank you for your attention. 2 3 Chair Chang: Now are there any questions from the Commission for Director Lait? Okay. Oh. 4 Sorry. Commissioner Hechtman. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. The – two questions. First, the retail study is going to the 7 Council on the 18th, which is next Monday. I’m the Council Representative − or representative 8 to Council this month, and so is that something that a PTC representative is anticipated to be 9 at? 10 11 Jonathan Lait: So this meeting is actually on Wednesday, I believe. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Oh. Yeah. 14 15 Jonathan Lait: Yes, it’s a – it’s the City Council’s Ad Hoc – Retail Ad Hoc. 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Jonathan Lait: And representation is not needed at that meeting. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, got it. And then the other question, do we have a 6 representative of the Transportation Department here tonight? 7 8 Jonathan Lait: I believe on line is Mr. Rius. Okay. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Oh. He’s got his hand up. 11 12 Jonathan Lait: Okay. Very good. Rafael. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: There you go. Maybe he wanted – he has a report for us too perhaps. 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Engineer Rafael Rius: Sure. Thank you, Chair and Commissioners. Rafael Rius, Senior 2 Engineer. I just have a couple of updates for the Office of Transportation. On one, the El Camino 3 Real Repaving Project that’s being done by Caltrans has started this week. This week, they’re 4 working between the Menlo Park City limits, down to Stanford Avenue. It’s anticipated to take 5 up to two weeks to finish this segment and then they’ll be moving south. My other update is for 6 the next Rail Committee meeting is next Tuesday, September 17th. That’s all I have, but if you 7 have any questions, I can try to answer. 8 9 Chair Chang: Hang on. We’ve got a question from Commissioner Lu. 10 11 Commissioner Lu: I wanted to confirm the overall timelines for El Camino repaving. I notice on 12 the Caltrans project website, the updated timeline is fall 2025. So I just want to confirm what’s 13 in scope for the near future and what’s in scope for 2025. 14 15 Rafael Rius: It’s – I don’t think I’ll be able to answer that in detail tonight. I can try to get more 16 details for you and send it through email. I know they are doing the paving. The 2025 date – so 17 that’s new to me but I haven’t been keeping too close of tabs on it about the fall. [I thought it 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 17:00] was supposed to be summer but I guess it’s been updated. I would anticipate like that’s 1 probably when the final striping – I believe they’re going to try to stripe the [inaudible 17:09] 2 lanes first kind of where they would – the bike lanes will [inaudible 17:15] and then the bike 3 lanes to follow presumably next year. 4 5 Chair Chang: Mr. Rius, this is in line with what I was asking you at pre-meeting too. 6 7 Rafael Rius: Sure. 8 9 Chair Chang: It’d be really helpful for us to understand exactly what this means. We understand 10 that we’re start-, they are starting at one end of El… 11 12 Rafael Rius: Yes. 13 14 Chair Chang: …Camino and then moving forward. But what we don’t understand is are they 15 going to repave everything and then we’re going to get the parking back temporarily before we 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. get bike lanes or how does that all work? Because we’re getting lots of questions from 1 businesses. 2 3 Rafael Rius: Sure. So my understanding is that the parking was not going to return. So right 4 now, the parking is removed north of Stanford Avenue. It’s just – it’s still in – I believe it’s still in 5 place south of Stanford Avenue. When they – for the next two weeks, they’ll be working on that 6 northern segment, then in two weeks from now – or approximately two weeks from now, 7 they’ll restrict the parking south of Stanford Avenue for, I believe, another mile segment, and 8 then so forth. The last I was updated, there wasn’t going to be like temporarily returned − the 9 parking wasn’t going to be temporarily returned but I know that was being discussed, so I’ll try 10 to get a more-detailed update to you this week. 11 12 Chair Chang: Thank you. Commissioner Hechtman has a question. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. I wanted to find out, Mr. Rius, if you had been able to 15 start your dialogue with the Police Department about having fatalities and significant injuries 16 included in our monthly traffic incident reports going forward. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Rafael Rius: I did forward that – I mean I did send your request to our liaison that gets – in our 1 Office of Transportation that collects – gathers the data. Basically, I get – I – the person I receive 2 it from and pass it on to you – to this Commission. I didn’t – I’ll follow up with them. I 3 personally, myself, have not had a dialogue with our Police Department on this but I’ll follow up 4 on that previous request. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. 7 8 Chair Chang: You might give Ms. Star-Lack a heads up that when we get that update on Safe in a 9 couple weeks from now, that we’ll be asking that same question as well then. 10 11 Rafael Rius: Sure. 12 13 Chair Chang: All right. Commissioner Templeton has a question. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Yes. I was asking a follow-up question based on our comment based 1 on the discussion of El Camino, so I’m sorry to go back to it. But just to say that our timeline and 2 milestone estimates are probably subject to weather. So depending on how the winter storms 3 go, they may have to redirect resources unexpectedly in the winter and that may change 4 whether it’s summer or fall or whatever. So we should just keep checking in on it and I think, 5 Mr. Rius, it’d be nice for you to expect that we’ll ask for updates on the timeline at the Planning 6 and Transportation Commission meetings. So if you are able to, in your regular check-ins with 7 Caltrans, just check in on the milestone dates. That’d be helpful. Thank you. 8 9 Rafael Rius: Definitely. I mean – and yeah, I would [expect so 20:45]. 10 11 Chair Chang: Okay, I don’t see any other lights. So I think we can move on to our one and only 12 action item tonight. This is a Public Hearing Quasi-Judicial for 70 Encina Avenue. It’s a 13 recommendation to forward a Planned Home Zone Application to the ARB to rezone two 14 contiguous parcels and to redevelop the site. I guess I should take disclosures first. So if we can 15 start − and just start with Commissioner Lu and just move on down the line. That would be 16 helpful. 17 18 Action Items 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 ten (10) 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 Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker. 1 2 2. PUBLIC HEARING/QUASI-JUDICIAL: 70 Encina Avenue [24PLN-00095]: 3 Recommendation to forward a Planned Home Zone (PHZ) Application to the 4 Architectural Review Board to Rezone two Contiguous Parcels and to Redevelop the 5 Site. Site Work Includes Demolition of a Surface Parking lot and Construction of a 6 new Three-Story, 22,355 Square Foot Building with Ten Residential Condominium 7 Units. Environmental Assessment: The Project is Being Reviewed for an Exemption 8 under CEQA Guidelines Section 15183 (Comprehensive Plan Consistency). Zone 9 District: CC (Community Commercial). For More Information Please Contact the 10 Project Planner, Emily Kallas, at Emily.Kallas@Cityofpaloalto.org. 11 12 Commissioner Lu: I visited the site but I have no other disclosures. 13 14 Commissioner Summa: I have no disclosures. 15 16 Commissioner Akin: I visited the site but no other disclosures. 17 18 Chair Chang: I have no disclosures. 19 20 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: I visited the site but have no disclosures. 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 ten (10) 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: I visited the site and had a video meeting with the applicants on 1 August 27, during which they showed me the renderings that are in the staff report and helped 2 me understand sort of the proposed layout and also gave me a little background on their 3 previous application with the City Council, which is also part of our staff report. So really no 4 additional information obtained in that meeting that is not presented in the staff report and in 5 the attachments to the report. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: No disclosures. 8 9 Chair Chang: Thank you. So I think we’ll start with the staff report then. Ms. Kallas. 10 11 Project Planner Emily Kallas: Thank you. Good evening. My name is Emily Kallas. I am the 12 project planner for 70 Encina. This is a Planned Home Zoning project and this the first hearing 13 for this project with the Planning Commission. Next slide, please. This slide shows the process 14 for the planned community or Planned Home Zoning process. This started with a pre-screening 15 with the City Council in September 2022. The project that was presented at that time was a 5-16 story, 20-unit building that received a mix of feedback, and between the feedback received and 17 discussions that the property owners had with the operators of Town & Country, they 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. reformatted the project to the 3-story, 10-unit project that is before us tonight. They submitted 1 that for preliminary architectural review in December of last year. This was followed by the 2 formal application submittal in March of this year. It has since gone through two rounds of staff 3 review; one round in March, the second in August in preparation for this meeting. And so 4 tonight, we are having the initial PTC hearing. As a reminder, the purpose of this meeting is for 5 the PTC to provide preliminary comments and move the project forward to the Architectural 6 Review Board, and then after it goes to the ARB, it returns to the PTC for your recommendation 7 to the City Council and the City Council will make the final decision on this fully-discretionary 8 project. And, of course, public comments are accepted at all public hearings and any time 9 throughout this process. Next slide, please. This project is located adjacent to the Town & 10 Country Shopping Center and its parking lot with access off of Encina Avenue. In terms of 11 surrounding neighborhood, it is near a Palo Alto Medical Foundation Office and other offices. It 12 is also near the LifeMoves Opportunity Center, and it is close to the Palo Alto CalTrain Station 13 on University Avenue. This is perhaps the most relevant context because that means this 14 project is subject to State Assembly Bill 2097, which means that no parking can be required for 15 this project; however, as you’ll see in the plans, this project does provide some amount of 16 parking. Next slide. This project includes 10 condominium units each with a garage, some are 17 one-car, some are two-car, in a 3-story building organized around a central driveway; two of 18 which will be affordable provided at below-market rates to meet the 20 percent BMR 19 requirement of a PHZ project. Again, as a PHZ project, they are requesting exceptions as they 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 ten (10) 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 not able to meet the zoning code requirements to provide housing units that we need in 1 the City. And the exceptions they are requesting include a 1.86 floor area ratio where 1.25 is 2 allowed as this is a housing inventory site; 58 percent lot coverage where 50 percent is allowed; 3 a zero foot, 3-inch rear setback where 10 feet would normally be required. The provided usable 4 open space varies for the private open space from 79 square feet to 155 square feet where a 5 150 square feet per unit is required. And lastly, the project does not meet the ground level 6 landscaping requirements. Next slide. This slide shows the site plan and the floor plan. On the 7 site plan, I would like to just point out and explain that the project has 5-foot side setbacks 8 along each side, but the site is surrounded by a residential fence on those sides as well as an 9 entry gate at the front. Because of where the entry gate is located, staff has some concerns 10 about cars queuing entering into the gate area. The proposed solution from the applicants were 11 to add bulb-outs that could hold both some of the utility boxes as well as street trees; however, 12 staff does not support this design as it removes street parking. Additionally, although this is a 3-13 story building, I only included the second-story floor plan on this site and that was to show 14 where the private open space is located on second-floor balconies that overlook the central 15 driveway courtyard. Additionally, to the rear of this site − so the bottom of the site plan is, as 16 you can see, is what is currently a delivery and parking corridor for Town & Country. Next slide. 17 This shows two of the renderings of the sides of the building. The top image is the front entry as 18 seen from Encina Avenue with the gate and the view into the central courtyard. The bottom 19 image is the left-side view as you would view from the Town & Country parking lot entrance. 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 ten (10) 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 photo – or the image on the left is a rendering of the rear of the proposed project showing 1 Town & Country, one of those buildings in the foreground, and the delivery and parking 2 corridors. And the final image on the right is the view from Encina Avenue on the other side of 3 the building. The key considerations for the PTC to discuss this evening include the proposed 4 land use, the site development regulations, the relationship to Town & Country as it relates to 5 building scale and architecture as well as the relationship to Town & Country for operations and 6 land use of the current shopping center, the proposed bulb-outs on Encina Avenue, and the 7 reduced usable open space proposed in this project. We have received public comments from 8 Ellis Partners who is the operators of Town & Country. These letters are included as an 9 attachment in the staff report. But a summary of their comments include concerns about late 10 night and early-morning operations that are a standard part of their current operations, 11 including site maintenance, such as power washing, refuse pick up, which starts at 4 A.M. on 12 some days as well as deliveries to the shops and restaurants. They are also concerned about 13 parking, such as guests of residents and the new project parking and the Town & Country 14 parking lot as well as the overall architectural compatibility between the two sites. The staff 15 recommendation is for the PTC to provide comments on the draft project plans and to 16 recommend that the applicant move the project to the Architectural Review Board for review. 17 Thank you. This concludes my presentation and the applicants also have a presentation. Thank 18 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 ten (10) 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. Jonathan Lait: Chair. 1 2 Chair Chang: Yes. 3 4 Jonathan Lait: Sorry. So just one clarification or distinction from the report. AB 2097 is a state 5 law that this property is within 100 – or a half mile distance but the project itself is not 6 necessarily constrained by that because it is a Planned Home Zoning application, and therefore, 7 a legislative process. In this particular project, it may not be consequential as they are providing 8 parking but I just wanted to note that distinction. This is a legislative action before the Council. 9 10 Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. 11 12 Jonathan Lait: I mean before the Commission. 13 14 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Just quickly, I see a light from my colleague, Commissioner Templeton. Is that a 1 ghost light or no? Okay. Question. Do we want to wait to wait until after we hear from the 2 applicant or do you want to ask right now? 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: I want to ask [inaudible 31:01]. 5 6 Chair Chang: Okay. Go ahead. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: I noticed in the packet, on Packet Page 15, you had different 9 numbers for the floor area ratio than you had in your presentation, can you speak to that? 10 Thank you. 11 12 Emily Kallas: Yes. So the .5 that is mentioned on page 15 of the packet was the standard CC 13 zoning floor area ratio; however, because this is a housing inventory site and a housing 14 element, it is subject to the floor area in 1814, which is 1.25. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. 1 2 Chair Chang: Thank you. Any other quick questions right now before we hear from the 3 applicant? Okay. Ms. Dao, do you want to change the timer so that the applicant has a… 4 5 Jeff Galbraith: Full ten minutes. 6 7 Chair Chang: Thank you. 8 9 Jeff Galbraith: Fantastic. Thank you very much, Commissioners. My name is Jeff Galbraith. I’m a 10 partner at Hayes Group Architects and am excited to be here to present the project to you 11 today and hear your feedback. So as Emily reviewed, we’re proposing a townhome project on 12 Encina Avenue. The site, as she summarized, is located south of Palo Alto Medical Foundation, 13 just north of the Town & Country Shopping Center and between the Caltrain line and El Camino 14 Real. There are some really significant benefits to this site for multifamily. First among them is 15 that it’s a tremendously underutilized site, right? It’s been surface asphalt parking for 50 to 70 16 years and it’s also been confirmed by both Town & Country and the City of Palo Alto that these 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. two parcels, which for decades had been leased by Town & Country, are no longer required to 1 meet their parking requirements. And I think as a City we can do and should do a lot better with 2 them than surface parking. They also benefit from proximity to a wide range of services as well 3 as transportation opportunities. Here’s a graphic map of that. You can see the small white 4 square in the center of your screen and concentric rings around it. The first ring is a quarter 5 mile distance. It’s very easy to walk out your door and access whatever’s there, which includes 6 Town & Country and all the wonderful amenities that are there as well as Palo Alto High School 7 and the Medical Foundation, and even gets you into the edges of downtown. Go a half mile, 8 still a very walkable distance, and you’re well within downtown Palo Alto University Avenue. 9 You start to pick up parks, other schools. Everything green is a park. Everything orange is a 10 school, right? Purple is public facilities and of course you have Stanford University and the 11 hospital. So hard to beat really in terms of proximity to services that people would need. Also 12 significant is that in this area, there’s no adjacent single-family residential opposition. And what 13 you’ll have seen over the last 5 or 10 years is many housing projects try and come forward and 14 get knocked down when they try and wrestle with, “Okay, how do we deal with the scale and 15 the implications in zoning that happen when you’re within 150 feet of single-family 16 residential?” In this project, as you know, we have opted to bring the scale down for other 17 reasons. But I think in general, this area is right for housing for all of these [regions 34:35]. And 18 in the case of this lot, the alternative you have to understand is a small office building, 19 [inaudible 34:42] based on the zoning that we have in place. Retail doesn’t make a lot of sense 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 ten (10) 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. in this site given that there’s so much next door, right, with Town & Country. So it’s office or 1 housing. Just a brief overview and Emily already covered some of this. But we’ve been at this 2 for 2½ years already. We submitted our first package in May of 2022. Had our first City Council 3 hearing in September of that year. Based on the feedback we got and primarily objections from 4 Town & Country, we went back to the drawing board. We made as much revisions as we felt we 5 could with that concept and came to them and it wasn’t deemed sufficient. So we had to really 6 go back to the drawing board and start completely over. And we looked at a number of 7 different ways to try and get housing on this site and we worked with general contractors to 8 price them, structural engineers to help us find efficient ways to build them, and ultimately, we 9 came to the solution that we have before you today. We’ve been to preliminary ARB/DRCs, a 10 lot of back and forth with the City, and we’re thrilled to be here with you today. The key 11 challenges for the project have been just the financial feasibility. There are also a lot of existing 12 utilities on this site, far more than you find – that we find in a typical project that we’ve had to 13 work around and of course the objections from Town & Country Village. So the concept that we 14 came to was the 3-story townhomes. There’s just – there’s a lot of efficiency in the 15 construction, the elimination of elevators and stairs and things you have to build in a podium-16 style project that help offset the loss, right, when you reduce the number of units. So we’re 17 proposing a project with 10 units overall, 20 percent of which would be below-market rate per 18 the PHZ requirements. Again brief, [inaudible 36:38] plan, you can see how everything is 19 organized around a central courtyard. The orange 2 units are the BMR units. We’ve parked 2 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 ten (10) 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. cars in as many of the units as we could. Each unit has its own private garage as well. And that 1 central courtyard space, although because of the way the municipal code is written, we cannot 2 count it towards usable open space. It is space that we envision as being very much used by the 3 tenants and there are projects – one we have on the screen here is a great example of that. 4 There are things you can do. Enlarging that space a little bit, bringing in landscaping, changing 5 the materials and making it a space that’s usable, particularly when you have so few units, 6 right? And less cars coming in and out. So yeah, just a quick run through of the images. This is 7 the front façade facing Encina Avenue. The corner of the building there looking from – looking 8 sort of eastward down Encina, you pick up the rhythm of the individual units expressed in the 9 pitched roofs. This building really lays along a current ingress into the back side of Town & 10 Country, and so actually creates an element that brings you in and relates to that path. This is 11 the front view coming into the gates into the central courtyard and the courtyard itself as we 12 envision it. And then back out to the exterior. The side yards are also space that initially was 13 usable space but was required by Fire Department to be provided for access for firefighting 14 activities. Okay. And lastly, to touch on the objections that we’ve worked through with Town & 15 Country. In the initial 2022 submittal, their letter outlined a primary objective as quote − really 16 being about the scale as I said, quote, “We would support a thoughtfully-designed 2 or 3-story 17 structure. Our objection is to the height and massing of this proposed development.” Following 18 a more recent and the current submittal design concept, they’ve raised some additional 19 concerns. One is about the lack of setbacks and they implied issues around noise, which relate 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 ten (10) 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 trash, recycling, compost, maintenance, and tenant activities. And frankly, these are things 1 that we deal with in every multifamily project. We’ve done many mixed-used projects that are 2 close to sources of noise. The CALGreen, which is a code that we’re all subject to, actually 3 dictates noise levels that are allowed within a residential unit. And so as a matter [of course 4 39:27] on this project, we will and always would hire an acoustical engineer to come to the site 5 to take measurements of the actual noise levels throughout usually several days. And then they 6 would make recommendations on facades, acoustical glazing, things needed in order to 7 maintain that noise limit within the residential units. So we don’t see that as a concern or a 8 unique problem of this site. And also frankly, the Caltrain and El Camino truck traffic are 9 probably as much or more of a noise [contribute 40:00] as anything else. They’ve also raised 10 some concerns about parking and about our potential tenants’ use of Town & Country lot. I 11 think it is important to understand that there is street parking available on Encina Avenue. And 12 even if you take the portion east of the Opportunity Center, there’s room for roughly 40 cars 13 along that space. So having a visitor or two come, I think, is certainly within the realm of reason 14 that they could use some of those spaces. And lastly, there was some concern raised in their 15 most recent letter about congestion on Encina Avenue driving people to – or our residents to 16 go through Town & Country rather than go around it. And we love Town & Country. I think 17 we’ve all driven through it. It’s efficient, but it’s not necessarily the fastest way to get where 18 you’re going and there’s not a lot of traffic on Encina. So very happy to hear any questions you 19 have and really anxious to hear your feedback. 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Thank you. So I think now would be a good time for clarifying questions from the 2 Commission. All right. Go ahead, Commissioner Akin, then Commissioner Templeton. 3 4 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair. So I have questions both for the applicant and for staff. 5 Perhaps I’ll start with the applicant if that’s acceptable. There is concern about the bulb-outs, 6 so one thing that I would like to know is where else could the transformer be placed? For 7 example, could it be put in a vault under the driveway or have you considered other options? 8 9 Jeff Galbraith: Yeah, we’ve looked at a lot of options. So under the driveway – so we can’t put it 10 underneath building. The Utility Department needs to be able to − in the event that the 11 transformer fails, right, be able to crane or lift out and replace that unit. And so the options that 12 we have currently − if we can’t fit in the bulb-out, right now we’re looking to see if there’s a 13 way to bring it closer, maybe get it onto the sidewalk. There are clearances required around it. 14 Usually it’s about 3 feet past the size of the vault box itself. So whether we can make that work 15 overhead, I’m not entirely sure yet, but we’re looking at that. We have studied potential ways 16 to carve out a corner of the site in the project itself to accommodate an above-ground 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. transformer. It’s really disruptive, right, on the project. It sort of takes out a corner unit and 1 really breaks down the rhythm of the façade. So we’re hunting to find a better solution to that. 2 3 Commissioner Akin: Okay. Thank you. Next. Is there an elevator in the accessible unit? I might 4 have missed it but I didn’t see one in the drawings. 5 6 Jeff Galbraith: No, there is not. 7 8 Commissioner Akin: Okay. 9 10 Jeff Galbraith: So there’s a potential for a tenant if they move in and they need to add 11 something there − some products that could be used to move you up a stair. Technically 12 though, by the letter of the code, that unit is not required to have an elevator in it to be – to 13 qualify for the Chapter 11A requirements for accessibility. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Okay. And my last question is about I’d like some help understanding how 1 the BMR units will be priced. So I don’t know who might be the right person to ask about that. 2 For example, the low-income unit is supposed to be affordable for households at 51 to 80 3 percent of AMI. So is this priced so that the expense fits 30 percent at the high end of the range 4 or the low end of the range or the income of the household that buys it or something else 5 altogether? 6 7 Jeff Galbraith: So – and [inaudible 43:37] certainly would love to hear from Jonathan Lait as well 8 on that. But the PHZ language that was established years ago kind of outlines a few different 9 approaches to that and there are clear targets established for low income − lower income and 10 those target ranges of the AMI. And so then there are calculations that work backwards to 11 figure out what price fits within that salary range. 12 13 Commissioner Akin: Okay. My remaining ques-, two questions are for staff. Thank you. About 14 the equivalence of market rate and below-market rate units, I don’t quite understand from the 15 packet how the parking would have to change in order for the units to be considered equivalent 16 to the market-rate units. Could you enlighten me about that? 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Emily Kallas: So essentially, the below-market rate units need to be considered equivalent and 1 shouldn’t be essentially less than the standard market rate units. And so in this case, although 2 probably one of the two could be one of the units that has less parking − at least one of them to 3 be like equal distribution would need to be one of the two parking units − two parking space 4 units. 5 6 Commissioner Akin: Okay. Thank you. And last question from me is does the location of this 7 new residential use trigger any provisions of the noise ordinance that don’t already apply? And I 8 was wondering about 9.10.040, which is the commercial noise ordinance – commercial noise 9 section. Previously, we had no one to issue a complaint if the decibel limits were not being met 10 by the activity around the back of the Town & Country buildings. Now, we do. So is there 11 anything we need to watch out for there that we haven’t evaluated? 12 13 Emily Kallas: I’m taking a quick skim through the code to make sure that the answer that I’m – 14 yes. So the PMC 9.10, the noise ordinance 030 is residential property noise and 040 is 15 commercial property noise. The way that it is written, the noise limits are for the use on that 16 site. It’s not regulated by what it is adjacent to. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Okay. So the issue there was the equipment noise has a distance constraint 1 applied to it. I don’t want to get into this in too much detail at this point. I really just wanted to 2 flag this as something that would be worth checking up on. Okay. 3 4 Emily Kallas: Thank you. 5 6 Commissioner Akin: Thank you. 7 8 Chair Chang: Okay, we’ve got Commissioner Templeton, then Lu, then Hechtman. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you to staff and to the applicant 11 for good presentations. I have a couple of context questions that will vary about who answers it 12 but I want to start with the applicant’s answer. What is – my understanding of reading through 13 the letters and the previous engagement with the Council and things like that is that part of the 14 Town & Country Village frustration is that – I don’t expect you to answer for what’s happening 15 to them but just to provide the context. That they’ve been subjected to a tremendous number 16 of constraints and even though this property is considered technically within Town & Country 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Village, we’re seeing a different set of constraints for this project. So one, I just want to 1 understand wh-, to what extent is – are these like design constraints − because this looks very 2 different than Town & Country Village − part of your consideration and your negotiations with 3 Town & Country Village that you can share. 4 5 Jeff Galbraith: Well in terms of constraints that they’re subject to, I don’t think – I mean I think 6 it’s fair to say that if they wanted to, right, and if [they’re 48:22] land lease – because [inaudible 7 48:24] ground lease, right, the property that own it directly. But if the owner was amendable, 8 they could develop the whole backside similarly, right? They could build a parking structure to 9 replace the parking and they could put forth their own PHZ that would fill the entirety of that 10 back parking area. That isn’t of interest to them it doesn’t seem and doesn’t fit within their 11 business plans. That’s fine. But I think in that incidence, you can see that the regulations that 12 apply would be actually the same, right? It’s a question of what you want to do with the land. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: So there’s not – and maybe this is a question for staff. So there’s not 15 some constraint that says you have to make Town & Country properties look like Town & 16 Country looks right now, which is a certain style that’s different than this style. Can you speak 17 to that? 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: The City does not have a city-adopted set of design guidelines for Town & Country; 2 however, there are other considerations, such as if the Town & Country Shopping Center got 3 evaluated for being a potential historic resource. That could identify character-defining features 4 that the City may have an interest in preserving. 5 6 Commissioner Templeton: So in Mr. Popp’s letter, when he’s talking about the constraints of 7 making sure Town & Country looks the way it does, that’s not happening? 8 9 Emily Kallas: It would be a subjective process if Town & Country were to apply to make 10 architectural changes to their building. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: But his claim is that those architectural constraints would apply to 13 any thing within the property, including this new development. So can you clarify that? It’s 14 confusing and we’re being asked to make a decision based on that. So just as clear as we can 15 be, that would be helpful. 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Jonathan Lait: So maybe just a process question and I’ll ask Emily to follow up on the other 1 piece. So just… 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. 4 5 Jonathan Lait: …for tonight, we’re not asking the Commission to make any decisions about 6 anything other than to con-, either decide to move the project forward to the Architectural 7 Review Board for more review and then back to the PTC for additional review. And we’ve heard 8 a couple of comments already that we’ll come back to and be able to respond. And this may be 9 one of them as well but I want to give Ms. Kallas a chance to respond. 10 11 Emily Kallas: The way that the zoning code… 12 13 Jonathan Lait: Maybe we can take that question and have a quick little powwow on that as we 14 hear some other questions, okay? And come back to you on that? 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Sure. Yeah. And the reason I think it’s relevant is what we want to 1 recommend is something that can go forward and is harmonious with the site and that means 2 including and understanding better the frustrations of the neighbors. And so it is relevant for 3 that reason. The other thing I wanted to understand is the reduction of the height and maybe 4 you have an answer and maybe you don’t. It’s okay if you don’t. What is the driver there from 5 your negotiations? Is that something that has occurred because of fear of using nearby parking 6 spaces that could be used for Town & Country or other reasons? Do you have any sense of what 7 was driving that? I know 2022 is a while ago. We’ve had a lot of changes and a different 8 understanding of our housing needs since then. So I just was hoping to understand that better. 9 10 Jeff Galbraith: Yeah. So there’s two pieces to that. One is after our initial meetings with Town & 11 Country, after we scaled it down a little bit, we carved out two units and tried to sort of step 12 the building back and that just wasn’t seen as being enough of a cut back. And so then you start 13 to have to grapple with the financial realities of a project, right? The – any project that has – 14 like many of our projects are what we call a podium level of the ground floor, right, where 15 oftentimes you’d have your parking, maybe some retail area, and then residential units on top. 16 There’s a significant cost in building the podium. It’s… 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: Oh. 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 ten (10) 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 Jeff Galbraith: …more expensive construction. It’s concrete. You have to have shared stairs that 2 go to the roof. You have to have an elevator. You lose space for a lobby. And so in order to 3 overcome those costs of a project, you have to have enough density to offset it. And as soon as 4 you take out a couple of units, the equation falls apart, and now you need a whole new 5 strategy… 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 8 9 Jeff Galbraith: …to work. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: And that’s why you had such a big change? 12 13 Jeff Galbraith: Yeah. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Are you satisfied with how it’s shaping up now? 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Jeff Galbraith: We’re still excited about the project. 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Good. 4 5 Jeff Galbraith: We think… 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 8 9 Jeff Galbraith: …it’d still be a great project. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. Have you received – well okay – it’s the last question and then 12 we’ll see if Mr. Lait is ready. Have you received any stylistic feedback from Town & Country 13 about the design being so different? 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Jeff Galbraith: Everybody has their opinions… 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah, of course, they do. 3 4 Jeff Galbraith: …about what it should look like. I think – yes, they ‘ve had some feedback but 5 everybody is going to have a different idea about what makes it compatible, right? I think one 6 thing to be cognizant of is you wouldn’t want to try and make these look like Town & Country, 7 right? 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Right. 10 11 Jeff Galbraith: Because (a) you’d be making houses look like retail, right? Which they aren’t. 12 And then you immediately have some programmatic incompatibilities between long, slung-out 13 terraces, right, with a lot of glass at the ground floor [inaudible 54:26] looking into residential 14 units. There’s just – it makes sense that the units read like residential units, right, rather than 15 commercial space. And I think we’ve made a number of moves whether it’s using similar 16 materials and color, the board and batten in sort of a dark gray, the use of some heavier timber 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. frame elements around the ground level, especially that kind of tie in to that frame that’s 1 visible, right, surrounding Town & Country. So I think we’ve made a lot of gestures in that 2 direction. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Thanks for sharing that and giving us an additional context. Thank 5 you. Director Lait, did you have anything you wanted to add at this point or do you want to 6 move on and come back later? 7 8 Jonathan Lait: Yeah, I’ll maybe answer it partially so. But maybe enough to get you some 9 perspective. Through this particular process – through the Planned Home Zoning process, 10 there’s the requirement to go to the Planning Commission and then on to the Architectural 11 Review Board. And the – through the Architectural Review Board’s review for – of the project 12 relative to its setting, there could be some guidance from the Architectural Review Board to 13 either be distinguished from the Town & Country design or to become similar to – design 14 similar to the Town & Country design. So that is an element of discretion that could apply in this 15 process. And… 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: And it could happen at the ARB. 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Jonathan Lait: But it would likely happen at the Architectural Review… 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 4 5 Jonathan Lait: …Board. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: Last question is for staff probably. The discussion around the Encina 8 parking. I have been there frequently and it’s always full. Do we have any concerns about the 9 availability for visitor parking there? 10 11 Emily Kallas: Can you clarify if you mean on the street or… 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Emily Kallas: Okay. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: I’m referring to on the street because I don’t believe that there’s any 3 building off of Encina where we can park. We only have the lot that we’re discussing. 4 5 Emily Kallas: So there is the number of public parking spaces on the street that exist. 6 Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly what that number is but that is why we are not 7 recommending that the bulb-outs be provided since that would further reduce street parking. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Are you anticipating street parking being part of the project because 10 both of you guys mentioned it. So I was just trying to understand. 11 12 Emily Kallas: Street parking is not part of this project. And no street parking would be required 13 towards the required number of parking spaces… 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: [I see 57:10]. 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: …when we are looking at a project that has a more prescriptive number of parking 2 spaces that are required. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 5 6 Emily Kallas: The street parking is separate. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Thanks. 9 10 Chair Chang: Commissioner Lu. 11 12 Commissioner Lu: Yeah. Thank you. Commissioner Akin already asked most of my questions, so 13 I’ll just have a couple questions. One follow-up on a question that Commissioner Akin asked. In 14 the staff report it says that two of the BMR units have reduced parking. So they’re the units 15 with one space. I think in the applicant’s proposal presented here tonight, there were – there’s 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. one 3-bedroom with 2 parking spaces and also the other 3-bedroom in the bottom right corner. 1 So I just want to confirm that has been updated and that the staff report – that that reference 2 to parking is no longer accurate. Is that right? 3 4 Chair Chang: If the applicant could just – can we pull up the applicant presentation again that 5 highlighted the BMR units and see if that is staff’s understanding of which units would be the 6 BMR units? 7 8 Jeff Galbraith: Yeah. And if you have the packet there handy. The plan as we have it here is that 9 this unit here – both the two units in orange. So one of them would be a 2 parking space and 10 one of them would be a 1 parking space. 11 12 Chair Chang: And how many bedrooms is the top one? 13 14 Jeff Galbraith: The top one is 3 bedrooms. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: And the bottom? 1 2 Jeff Galbraith: The bottom one is 2 bedroom. 3 4 Chair Chang: Okay. So staff, is that your understanding as to what was included in the 5 application? 6 7 Emily Kallas: I believe this is a change from what was… 8 9 Jeff Galbraith: Is it? 10 11 Emily Kallas: …submitted in August. 12 13 Jeff Galbraith: Okay. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Emily Kallas: Yeah. 1 2 Jeff Galbraith: Well there may be a mismatch there. We can circle back and make sure we’ve 3 got it synced out. 4 5 Chair Chang: Okay. And then while we’re on that topic – because I had a clarifying question 6 about that too. So staff, when you are trying for equivalency, are you then averaging − like how 7 do you – given that some units have 2 spaces and some units have 1 and then the bedroom 8 sizes are also different, how do you determine equivalency in terms of parking spaces for a 9 BMR unit? 10 11 Emily Kallas: So this is something that will continue to be refined as a part of the design. The 12 intent for this initial PTC meeting is for the plans to be conceptual and they are expected to 13 come closer to staff recommendation and conformance with the code and that sort of thing. In 14 terms of that level of technical detail, we do have another planner on staff who is the housing 15 planner that helps us determine that it’s meeting all of those regulations. So I can’t quite 16 answer that level of specificity but I don’t know if Jonathan has more information on that. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Jonathan Lait: I’ll just note that the code has some guidance for us on that. I’m sorry. [Inaudible 1 60:29]. The code has some guidance on that, so I’m actually trying to look that up right now. 2 But it’s – in addition – so we’ll look at those standards. But you raise a point that there’s an 3 element of art, I guess, that’s involved in it if the code isn’t so specific about it. But again, I want 4 to acknowledge that this is a Planned Home Zoning application and a legislative project, so it’s 5 something that is part of the discussion that the Commission and ultimately, City Council could 6 have about it. Our goal and intent is to have it be aligned with the code in terms of that rough 7 proportionality of being similar to other units in the development. 8 9 Jennifer Armer: And just to add a little bit of context based on codes that I’m familiar with in 10 other agencies rather than specifically here, when you have a housing development that has a 11 variety of different houses proposed – different sized-houses. If you find that the BMR units are 12 just the two smallest ones or the ones with the least parking, then that stands out as a concern 13 that you – if you’ve got more than one BMR unit, then you’re going to want to have them in 14 different categories in terms of unit types. 15 16 Chair Chang: Commissioner Lu, did you have more questions? 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Yes. I had a couple of hopefully quick questions. So on Packet Page 15, the 1 staff recommend − or the staff guidance is that while the PTC can discuss setbacks and how it’s 2 adjacent to the delivery corridor or how we can discuss open space, that that is potentially not 3 recommended in the scope of the ARB. I just want to confirm what is productive for us to 4 actually discuss on those topics and just get context on that staff guidance. 5 6 Emily Kallas: We would like the PTC to be able to provide comments in terms of making some 7 recommendations to the ARB for what they can consider. The intent is that − because the 8 project does evolve between now and the next time it comes to the PTC, we want to make sure 9 that any comments you have and like some of your intents are captured and considered as it 10 moves forward to the ARB process. But we don’t – the certain level of detail − if the 11 recommendation is for them to be 6 feet wide instead of 5, like that might not necessarily – it 12 might be too granular for this time. 13 14 Jonathan Lait: Yeah. And if I could just echo that. Yeah. So absolutely if the Commission has a 15 concern about setbacks or open space or any of those items, you should flag that for at least – 16 whether it’s a concern or something that you want a further study, provide that note to us and 17 we could also discuss that with the ARB. What I wouldn’t want the Commission to do is have a 18 concern about something and not flag that until later because the project is going to continue 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 ten (10) 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 get refined and − as it goes through the process. But I agree with [inaudible 63:53]. You don’t 1 have to get down to a level of specificity. 2 3 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. And I will not. One last question. With bike lanes coming to El 4 Camino and terminating at Encina and of course the Embarcadero Bike Path being right there, 5 Encina will be a significant bike corridor. And I think it’s mentioned in the staff report but not so 6 much in the presentation tonight that there are also bike lane concerns about the bulb-out. Can 7 you talk about any planning or any discussions that might currently exist on potential bike 8 connectivity between El Camino bike lanes and Embarcadero? 9 10 Emily Kallas: I – yeah. I do not have that information right now. It is my understanding that 11 there is a bike lane – yeah, at the end of Encina running near this site, but I’m not sure that was 12 part of your question. 13 14 Jonathan Lait: Yeah. We can − I know that the Office of Transportation is looking at updates to 15 its bicycle plan. And I think what we could do is – we’ve written that note and we can examine 16 how this project is either inconsistent with that or where there might be some concerns relative 17 to that. 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Lu: Yeah, it makes sense. Just wanted to confirm there weren’t any extra 2 discussions that we could be aware of. Thank you. 3 4 Chair Chang: Commissioner Hechtman. And then after that, Commissoner Reckdahl. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: So this one is to staff. Packet Page 15, top of the page, states that 7 improvements could be made with regard to the amount of green space and circulation. And 8 I’m wondering if that’s just a general impression comment that this project can do better or 9 does it reflect that staff has some ideas about how things might be improved, and if that’s the 10 case, has that been part of a dialogue with the applicant? 11 12 Emily Kallas: So that comment was also something that came up when this went to preliminary 13 architectural review in December. And so I anticipate that ARB will continue to have that 14 comment as this project progresses forward. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Okay. Further down, same page, Packet Page 15. I was just trying to 1 understand the bicycle parking. And I couldn’t exactly tell but it looks like maybe there are bike 2 parking racks in the bulb-outs that were proposed. 3 4 Emily Kallas: I can take a look at the plans. I know that some of that – the bulb-outs were not a 5 part of the initial submittal. They got added in cycle 2. And so there had always been bike racks 6 proposed as part of the project but their location may have changed. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. But the – I think the concern staff is expressing here whether 9 they’re in the bulb-outs or in the sidewalk, which is city property right in front of the parcel, 10 they need to be – a space needs to be found for them on the private property. I think that – is 11 that the gist of what… 12 13 Emily Kallas: Yes, minimum… 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Emily Kallas: …sidewalk widths need to be maintained. 1 2 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Let’s see. The equivalent BMR – actually I thought this was – it 3 sounds like this is – if it was a problem, it may have already been solved. It’s just getting some 4 clarification between the applicant and staff as to what’s being proposed. But the discussion of 5 whether parking is part of the equivalency analysis is kind of interesting in this era where we 6 are seeing state legislation about unbundling parking. And so I’m wondering if in looking at this 7 issue, if staff is thinking about whether parking needs to be bundled with the unit for the 8 purpose of the equivalency analysis. 9 10 Emily Kallas: It is my understanding that for condominium units providing individual garages, 11 the bundling does not apply. 12 13 Jonathan Lait: Yeah. And I would say – so that’s the state law provision where there’s the 14 unbundling from apartments and things of that. But for the – I think what we would – to 15 answer your question, we would look at the project that’s being proposed and what amenities 16 are being available to each of the units there and we would base it on that as opposed to 17 broader local or regional state policies related to parking. We just want to see that the BMR 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. units are being treated in a similar context to the rest of the units that are there. That are being 1 proposed as part of the development. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. All right. Let’s see. The next question. I saw there was a 4 concern from the owners of Town & Country, Ellis Partners, about guest parking occupying their 5 retail parking spots. And I wanted to ask – so this is going to be a condominium project – there 6 typically with a condominium project is a requirement that they have a set of CC&Rs. Is that 7 something that would be required of this project? 8 9 Emily Kallas: Residential CC&Rs are handled when the project applies for the tentative map for 10 condominium purposes, which we do not yet have on file for this project. 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: Right. 13 14 Emily Kallas: But would be required as a condition of approval before it moves to building 15 permits. 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Okay. So… 1 2 Emily Kallas: If it gets approved. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. So eventually if this project goes forward, they’ll have a set of 5 CC&Rs. And is a prohibition of resident or guest parking on adjacent private property of Town & 6 Country something that the City could condition – could require be included in the CC&Rs? 7 8 Emily Kallas: Yes, although it is a private parking lot. So it already wouldn’t be able to be used 9 for public parking use. 10 11 Jonathan Lait: Yeah, we could – we – there could be a condition added and there could be a 12 condition that requires it to be incorporated into the CC&Rs. So that when people are 13 purchasing those units, they would understand that that’s not an area for parking. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Okay. Because it seems like that might be a pretty simple solution to 1 what seems like a legitimate concern. All right. My last – let’s see. My last question is really − 2 are the City regulations associated with Town & Country really a constraint for this project? And 3 this is – it’s kind of a variation on what Commissioner Templeton was talking about. So on 4 Packet Page 23, we have four Town & Country policies from our Comp Plan. And when I look at 5 this parcel, while it has been used as a part of the parking for Town & Country, it’s separate 6 ownership and now it’s not being used. It’s proposed to not be used or to have really any 7 relationship to Town & Country. And when I look at the language of the four policies, 412 says, 8 “At this site,” 413 and 14 say “In Town & Country Village,” and B6.6 says, “Retain Town & 9 Country.” And the staff comment is this property is adjacent to Town & Country. And so − 10 which I think is accurate. And so what I’m wondering is did staff – and well I’m wondering two 11 things. First, we have other developments in our not too distant past that are adjacent to Town 12 & Country. I think the Opportunity Center is not so old. And so I’m wondering if these four 13 policies were applied in its development as an adjacent property or any other kind of newer 14 construction along Encina because I think there’s at least one other newish building. But I’m 15 wondering if staff considered whether these policies were truly applicable to this parcel, and if 16 so, what led them to decide that, yeah, that we really should include them because this is part 17 of Town & Country. 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 ten (10) 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. Emily Kallas: So we did consider that. In both the Comprehensive Plan and in the zoning code, it 1 defines Town & Country as the parcels bounded by Encina, El Camino, the Caltrain right of way, 2 and the fourth street that I should recall the name of but – yeah. Embarcadero. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 5 6 Emily Kallas: There we go. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. And then… 9 10 Emily Kallas: And because of that reason – sorry to interrupt. But… 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. 13 14 Emily Kallas: …the parcels on the other side of the street, such as the Opportunity Center are 15 not included in that. 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Understood. Okay. All right. And then so that being – I guess one 2 suggestion is maybe change that word “adjacent” as this moves forward through the process in 3 your analysis to avoid anyone else who is as nit-picky as me being confused by that. But then if 4 that’s the case − if it’s part of Town & Country, I guess staff has decided that residential isn’t a 5 non-starter here because B6.6 says, “Retain it as local-serving retail center.” So this project 6 that’s being proposed isn’t local-serving retail. So – but as staff decided that – and again, I’m 7 not remembering the housing element in whether housing is a possibility on Town & Country – 8 a mixed use in the foreseeable future. But staff has decided that housing can happen here 9 consistent with policy B6.6. 10 11 Jonathan Lait: Correct. 12 13 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. All right. Those are my questions. Thanks. 14 15 Chair Chang: Commissioner Reckdahl. 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Reckdahl: Okay. So all these units are either 2-bedroom or 3-bedroom and one of the 1 goals of our housing element was to encourage larger units that can support families. Has the 2 applicant considered adding a fourth floor to park or all of the development to add more 3 bedrooms? 4 5 Jeff Galbraith: I assume that’s to me. There’s two challenges with that. And one is now you’ve 6 got a 4-story townhome, right, with more floors to go up and down. Then you have the 7 implications of potentially more cars to park even though AB 2097 doesn’t require it. And then 8 you have the height problem, right? We felt compelled to come down to a 3-story project to get 9 past the objections of Town & Country. 10 11 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. Does Town & Country have a legal constraint on this or are you just 12 trying to be a good neighbor? 13 14 Jeff Galbraith: No. So we – when we went to City Council for our pre-screening hearing, our 15 mandate from City Council was to work to find a solution that would be acceptable to both 16 parties. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Reckdahl: Okay. But it doesn’t come for free in that we’re giving up housing for this. 1 All right. 2 3 Jeff Galbraith: [I don’t quite follow 76:09]. 4 5 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: We’re giving up bedrooms for this. And so the housing element really 6 wants to have a wide variety of different units. Could you have just the part near Encina be four 7 stories and have a step-up? 8 9 Jeff Galbraith: So another challenge that we have is firefighting access. So along Encina, there 10 are power poles and there are two elevations of power at something like between 30 and 40 11 feet, there are the regular distribution lines that feed the buildings in the area. And then up 12 about 50 feet or more, there are what we call transmission lines that are carrying power at 13 much higher voltages to farther distances. And so in working with the Fire Department – we’ve 14 had several meetings with them. They were willing to back off on having what’s known as ariel 15 access, right, to reach certain heights, which they often use a truck that has a ladder on it. 16 [Inaudible 77:03] it’s not safe for them to push past three stories, right, and get too close to 17 those transmission lines. So as part of our project, we’re undergrounding the lower lines, which 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. allows them to reach a third story. There’s also frankly − because they’re not using the ariel 1 truck, they’re limited to ladders that they stand on the ground and there are codified limits of 2 how high the window sill can be that they would need to get to to rescue someone. And so that 3 really does limit us to three stories. 4 5 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. So it’s not as trivial as it seems. 6 7 Jeff Galbraith: No. Yeah. 8 9 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. Can we go to Slide 7? 10 11 Chair Chang: Is this Slide 7 of the applicant presentation or of the staff… 12 13 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Of the staff report. 14 15 Chair Chang: Okay. 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Reckdahl: Thank you. Okay. On that right-hand view there, we have some street 2 trees and then we also have some trees along the front side or closest to us. Are those part of 3 the development or are those just artistic? 4 5 Jeff Galbraith: So the – if you sort of read the corner of the building, right, there’s the façade 6 facing the parking lot and all of the trees that are in front of that façade really live within the 7 Town & Country parking lot. And then all of the trees on the right half of the image that are on 8 Encina… 9 10 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. 11 12 Jeff Galbraith: …those would have – those would live in the bulb-outs. The sidewalk in Encina is 13 6 feet, right, between the street curb and the property line. And so with that amount of space, 14 there really isn’t room to host street trees and maintain the required 4-foot sidewalk width. So 15 if we lose the bulb-outs, we’d probably lose the trees on that façade. 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Reckdahl: Okay. So the only trees that are part of this are the ones along Encina? 1 2 Jeff Galbraith: Yeah, and the ones internal of the courtyard. 3 4 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. Yeah, that’s a little deceptive because it makes it look like this is – 5 one of my concerns here is that this isn’t – oh. I’m sorry. Okay. Have you considered other ways 6 of increasing trees whether – I guess roof decks are the same problem as four stories. Okay. 7 And then my only other, I guess, question was about bike parking. And visitor bike parking, I 8 think is important. Okay. Thank you. 9 10 Chair Chang: All right. Commissioner Summa, questions please. Clarifying questions. 11 12 Commissioner Summa: Yes. This is a question for staff. So this is kind of in the middle of the 13 park-, in its parking lot for Town & Country on one side and parking lot for Town & Country on 14 the other side. Are those necessary parking for Town & Country to operate − the two remaining 15 parking lots once this is built and does Town & Country lease those or are they – does that 16 make sense? 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Yes. So we have looked at the parking for Town & Country and currently there are 2 spaces in the lots on either side of the subject property that are counted towards their required 3 parking. 4 5 Commissioner Summa: Okay. 6 7 Emily Kallas: The owners – I believe I included some of that information in the report and we 8 don’t believe at this time that the parking is likely to change in the near future. 9 10 Commissioner Summa: Okay. Thank you. 11 12 Chair Chang: Okay. I think that brings us to an end for our clarifying questions. So − I don’t see 13 any others from – all right. So we are onto the public comment portion of the program. Are 14 there speaker cards, please, Ms. Dao? 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Yes, I have three cards. First is from Dean Rubinson. 1 2 Chair Chang: Please come up. 3 4 PUBLIC COMMENTS 5 Dean Rubinson: Thank you. How much time do I have? 6 7 Chair Chang: You got 5 minutes. 8 9 Dean Rubinson: All right. My name is Dean Rubinson. I’m the director of development for Ellis 10 Partners. I’ve been overseeing all planning, design, and construction of Town & Country for the 11 last 19 years. And I’m deeply concerned about the impact of this project on Town & Country. 12 For the last two years, we have consistently raised our concerns about the project that has 13 landed from out of nowhere essentially onto a quarter acre in the middle of our north parking 14 lot. We clearly understand the need for added housing in Palo Alto and throughout the region 15 and we really do appreciate the reduction in height proposed by the applicant. But we remain 16 with many concerns as noted in our letter focused on architectural compatibility and the 17 serious operational conflicts that will occur if this project is built. You’ll be hearing shortly from 18 Randy Popp, who has been advising us on the architectural impacts, and we have provided a 19 letter outlining our concerns about the myriad of noise and parking conflicts that the project 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 ten (10) 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. will create. Commissioner Hechtman mentioned that parking may occur on our property − 1 overflow parking, and we have rules that overflow parking or public parking who are not our 2 constituents can’t park there. That doesn’t stop it from happening. CC&Rs within their condos 3 are also not going to stop it from happening. We’re going to end up having to enforce it and 4 [inaudible 82:58] people and we’re trying to avoid creating more conflict and constraint by 5 suggesting that there be more parking on this site. In short, their zero-lot-line approach offers 6 inadequate buffering from early-morning truck noise and provides only 16 stalls of parking for 7 28 bedrooms with zero guest parking. As we mentioned, overflow parking will naturally become 8 our problem as Encina is generally full with PAMF workers and others – of the times of the day. 9 Given the setting, this project is just too dense. We believe it may be okay to put housing in this 10 location but only with the appropriate setbacks and buffers to accommodate these two 11 adjacent uses in a more harmonious manner. We think the ARB’s direction to reduce the 12 density and increase the setbacks should be followed and feel that it can be achieved with 13 limited impact on their unit count and unit sizes. But perhaps ten 3-bedroom condos at $2M 14 each just isn’t the right approach for this one-quarter acre lot. It is certainly not worth taking 15 the risk on the vitality and attractiveness of our neighborhood treasure for which the City and 16 its constituents have established five specific provisions in the Comp Plan to protect. Lastly, I 17 would like to clarify that staff’s intended use of a CEQA exemption for infill projects that are 18 deemed consistent with the Comp Plan is wholly inappropriate. There are ten Comp Plan notice 19 – [inaudible 84:32] policies noted in the staff report; five of which specifically relate to Town & 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 ten (10) 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. Country. It is plainly clear that this project is not consistent with them. The obvious issues relate 1 to the lack of compatibility with surroundings in scale, the lack of new greenery in [plazas 2 84:48], prohibiting conversion of Town & Country to residential, lack of preservation of Town & 3 Country and its pedestrian scale, lack of maintaining and enhancing its vibrant retail use and 4 urban greening, and maintaining and adding trees at Town & Country. They’re removing eight 5 thriving trees, paying in-lieu fees to support the trees that they don’t have adequate room for, 6 and then putting additional trees on city property and bulb-outs. The City may choose to 7 approve this project hopefully after major revisions, but to say that it is currently consistent 8 with the Comp Plan to allow a notice of exemption by virtue of that consistency is certainly not 9 appropriate. Furthermore, the site is designated commercially – community commercial in the 10 Comp Plan and not residential, meaning that the impacts of a dense residential project at this 11 location have not undergone environmental review. We ask that you require major revisions to 12 the applicant that they perhaps return to PTC after the revisions or at least return to the ARB 13 after making such revisions and we ask the staff to revisit the legality of applying such a CEQA 14 exemption. And so I’ve got 30 seconds left. I just want to make a couple of clarifications. So we 15 do have adequate parking in the remaining spaces to meet the code. We’ve leased this site, this 16 quarter-acre site, since we bought it in 2004. We have offered to continue to lease the site for 17 parking, which while we don’t need it for code reasons, we would happily spend the money 18 continuing to lease it to ease the parking demand and to make it more efficient for customers 19 and the community. So thank you very much. 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Thank you. 2 3 Veronica Dao: Next is Randy Popp. 4 5 Randy Popp: Good evening. My name is Randy Popp. I live at 375 Monroe Drive in Palo Alto and 6 I’ve been practicing as an architect in Palo Alto since 1987. I worked on commercial and 7 residential projects throughout Palo Alto and the region. My resume extends from many small 8 ADUs to being the architectural project lead for the Taube-Koret Campus For Jewish Life, 9 including the Jewish Community Center and the integrated housing it surrounds. I’m briefly 10 sharing this information to give you some context from my experience relative to the 11 comments I’ve been offering regarding my concerns about the project you’re considering 12 tonight. I am a housing advocate and I am generally in favor of almost anything we can do to 13 increase the stock and variety in Palo Alto. That said, this project has been challenging for me to 14 support from the onset. It will exist as an isolated building in the midst of a parking lot adjacent 15 to one of our most valued and successful retail centers. When I served as chair of the ARB, I 16 understood my role to be an interpreter of our regulations. I also appreciated the obligation 17 entrusted in me to protect the aesthetic which makes up the fabric of our town. This project is 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. far from being capable of meeting those standards. In my letter dated July 3, included at the 1 end of your packet, I illustrated my continuing concerns for the character and scope of this 2 project. It is out of balance and needs to be fundamentally modified to meet the goals of our 3 regulations and to satisfy the necessary findings as I understand them. To summarize, zero-lot- 4 line [inaudible 88:12] creates tension and pressure at every edge. The interior courtyard is so 5 tight, restricting vehicle movement and likely creating an echo chamber for both internally 6 generated and off-site sound. The impact of the current configuration cannot be understated to 7 those who might reside in the units. Issues surrounding privacy, logistics for trash disposal, fire 8 access, and guest parking all seem to be an afterthought that are not yet resolved. And they 9 must be. Finally, I find the required compatibility of the materials and colors to the adjacent 10 context of Town & Country Village to be unresolved. Feedback provided to the applicant by the 11 ARB has been largely ignored. I hope you’ll carefully consider what I – what a project like this 12 means to our town. Every approval sets a precedent and we must be critical and careful to 13 maintain the standards that have been so thoughtfully crafted by staff and debated by you and 14 your predecessors. The value of this project does not yet offset the concessions you are being 15 asked to grant. I also want to just quickly, with a couple minutes left here, address a comment 16 that came up from Commissioner Templeton and Commissioner Hechtman. I want to restate 17 that the Comp Policy L412 states that the proposed development should, and I quote – sorry. 18 My phone just jumped. Give me just a second. I’m sorry. I have to reopen this. I have two 19 minutes. I’ll do it quickly. Do you have it 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 ten (10) 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 Male: Yeah, I think so. 2 3 Randy Popp: It states that it should recognize and preserve Town & Country Village as an 4 attractive retail center serving Palo Altoans and residents of the wider region. Future 5 development at this site should preserve its existing amenities, pedestrian scale and 6 architectural character while also improving safe access for bicyclists, pedestrians, and 7 increasing the amount of bicycle parking. I just don’t see how this project satisfies that 8 requirement. This project is within the Town & Country boundary. It absolutely is. And the 9 staff’s interpretation differs from my understanding. And although I respect them and I’m not 10 often at odds with them, in this particular case, I disagree with their interpretation. Thank you. 11 12 Chair Chang: Next speaker, please. 13 14 Veronica Dao: Yes. Next and last speaker is Bob Taylor. 15 16 Bob Taylor: Good evening, Commissioners. 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Mr. Taylor, could you please move the microphone closer to your – thank you very 2 much. 3 4 Bob Taylor: Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Bob Taylor. My residence is at 480 5 Marlowe Street in Palo Alto. And I really appreciate the opportunity to advocate for the 6 development proposed on this site. I am here both as a representative of myself and also the 7 owners of the land. First, as a long-time resident, I am keenly aware of the need for housing in 8 the downtown core. Lack of available housing causes increased traffic and parking issues in the 9 neighborhoods. Addressing these needs starts with approving projects like this that provide 10 BMRs and housing stock in a location that has been unproductive for 70 years. There aren’t too 11 many of those in Palo Alto. When a residential and commercial lot sells downtown and the 12 structure is demolished, often we get just a larger and newer version of what was torn down. 13 This project gives the community a chance to create housing on land that has never been 14 developed in an ideal location close to transportation services and employment opportunities. 15 While at the same time, not impacting any residential community. This project provides a 16 corresponding positive impact on neighboring properties by increasing retail sales, providing 17 housing potentials for owners of the businesses in the vicinity and those who work at Palo Alto 18 Medical Foundation. The family that owns this land has done so for three generations. The 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 ten (10) 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. family still lives in Palo Alto. From the 1950s until just a few years ago, the land was rented as a 1 parking lot to Town & Country Village. And that’s to the previous owners, the Williams, and to 2 the present operators under a lease hold, the Ellis Group. I represented two generations of the 3 family as their family attorney and negotiated a dozen or more leases between the family and 4 Town & Country Village. And contrary to what has been represented in the press, in 2022, the 5 leaseholders operating Town & Country told me and the owners that they no longer needed to 6 rent the parking lot implying that they had sufficient parking without renting the parking lot 7 they had rented for over 60 years. The leaseholder made a low offer for the land when it was 8 offered for sale. The offer was the lowest of offers we received. I suspect the owner’s rejection 9 of their offer of the land and subsequent termination of the rental of the parking lot by the 10 leaseholders was connected and not a coincidence. As someone working in the real estate 11 industry in Palo Alto for the last 40 years, it is deflating to see that it takes over two years to 12 develop a property in the City where the change in use seems so obvious. The last thing the 13 downtown needs is another small-boutique office building occupied by venture capitalists. This 14 medium-density, residential project seems to check all the boxes for what the community 15 needs and wants. I strongly urge you to support the development as it is presented to you 16 today. Thank you. 17 18 Chair Chang: Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Okay. [I wondered 94:54] if my colleagues want a very 19 quick break or do you want to keep going? No break. Okay. All right. Then let’s bring it back 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 ten (10) 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 Commission for comments. Light them up. I’ve got Commissioner Akin, then Templeton, 1 then Hechtman. 2 3 Commissioner Akin: Thank you, Chair. I think I’m going to approach this as sort of the bad news, 4 good news, and then on balance. I’m really unconvinced about the location of this project. 5 These residents are going to be isolated in a housing desert and subjected to a lack of green 6 space, a lack of privacy, and a lot of noise. The structure seems overbuilt for the lot, which 7 makes it interesting for fire safety and it creates problems for any future projects nearby. And I 8 strongly suspect that if this project is successful, there will be future projects nearby. At the 9 very least, I could see Town & Country developing a parking structure, and then more 10 substantial mixed use or housing or even more retail developments in the remaining space. 11 With regard to parking, of course, we’re in an AB 2097 area here, so there’s no parking re-, that 12 we can require but it’s still really interesting that 80 percent of the parking that would have 13 been required is still being built in this project. And that tells me that there’s demand for 14 parking here. And that suggests that we will have problems with parking overflowing both onto 15 Encina and into the Town & Country lots, so there will be an enforcement issue. The bulb-outs 16 look like a no-go to me both because of issues like potential bike lane use, which I think is a very 17 serious one, and as establishing a precedent for other developments. And lastly on the negative 18 side, I keep making this point but I want to make sure that it’s understood well. Our RHNA 19 requirements are for 40 percent of new units to be affordable to households at the 80 percent 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 ten (10) 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. AMI level. This project offers us 10. So we can have a lot of projects like this and come nowhere 1 close to meeting our affordability requirements. We have to be very careful about using the 2 available space, the sites that we have, and not making full use of those. All right. Now for the 3 positives. The applicant has been responsive to the several requests from Town & Country and I 4 trust that will continue. I feel pretty good about that. I think the present height is a good 5 compromise. I really appreciate that one unit is accessible. And as Commissioner – Vice-Chair 6 Reckdahl mentioned, these units are 2 and 3-bedrooms, which are configurations we really 7 want. So those are all pluses. And finally, just an aside. I’m always happy to see provisions for 8 PV panels on the roof. So where I’m coming down at the moment is I definitely think we should 9 forward this project to the ARB for further review. So I feel pretty comfortable with that. But 10 when this comes back to us the next time, I’d really like to see more of those negatives 11 addressed. So you have a good list from me now and I will defer to my fellow Commissioners 12 for what their thoughts might be. 13 14 Chair Chang: Commissioner Templeton. 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you so much, Chair. I appreciated some of the comments that 17 Commissioner Akin started with about his concerns and I won’t rehash those here but I’d like to 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. say – well I have a quick question for staff. Do we need to find – make any findings in the 1 Comprehensive Plan? It wasn’t listed as a need. I just want to confirm. 2 3 Emily Kallas: No, not at this time. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. If that – if we had needed to do that, I would not be able to 6 make the findings. I don’t agree with your interpretation of 412 and 66, so L412 and B66. As per 7 your own definition, this lot – these lots are within Town & Country. And it’s very confusing and 8 I hope that you can make it clearer in the future why you differ from that. But the definition 9 you provided of what is “Town & Country” includes this property. So with that said, the part 10 that Commissioner Akin mentioned that I appreciated was that it doesn’t yet feel comfortable 11 to have this type of development in this space. And what I agree with on that – I mean it does 12 have restaurants, it does have shopping, it does have grocery stores, it does have transit. So in 13 one sense, it doesn’t feel like a desert but the isolation of living in that community would be 14 extremely unattractive to myself or many other people with families. Think about where the 15 nearest school might be and how many large roads you might have to cross to get to them. It 16 concerns me. So what I would love to see is some kind of vision that this would be a part of. So 17 if this – if the Encina Road were somehow – had several other plans in the queue and we could 18 envision it fitting in, it might have a different resonance with our Commission. But right now, 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 ten (10) 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. what I’m hearing is as an isolated project and without any kind of encompassing vision other 1 than Town & Country nearby, it’s difficult to get onboard with the development of this as a 2 housing space. So that’s my feedback. Would I − in looking at the request from staff on what 3 you’re looking for from us, you’ve had my comments and whether it would go to the 4 Architectural Review Board, I’d like to hear my colleagues’ opinions on that. I’m not entirely 5 sure that we’re ready to move forward because we do still have some open questions. So I’m 6 looking forward to your comments on that. Thank you. 7 8 Chair Chang: Thank you, Commissioner Templeton. Commissioner Hechtman, then Lu, then 9 Summa. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. So recognizing this is really, even though it’s been two 12 years, an early stage of commenting at least for the PTC. We’re going to see this again. And I 13 think importantly, it’s going to the ARB or should and I’m supportive of that being its next step. 14 And I am conceptually supportive of this project. I wish I were looking at a 20-unit project but 15 the Council looked at that and that ship has sailed, so we’re looking at 10 units. And I 16 appreciate that that in part reflects an effort to reach some kind of compromise with the 17 owners of Town & Country. So this is in our housing element as a housing inventory site. It says 18 so in our staff report and so we have elements of our Comp Plan that promote housing on this 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 ten (10) 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. site even though it’s inside the geographic boundaries that define Town & Country. But we also 1 have these policies that are stated in our staff report that might suggest there shouldn’t be 2 housing on this site. So that’s not at all unusual in our Comp Plan because a comp plan is trying 3 to address a variety of goals and policies, and often those can be in conflict, and you have to try 4 to harmonize them. And listening to staff’s answers to my earlier questions, recognizing that 5 this is in the housing element as a place where housing should go, I think staff is trying to do 6 that. They’re really trying to thread the needle and harmonize these competing interests that 7 are reflected in our Comp Plan. And so I think when we get to it with a refined product here 8 that we’ll be able to make the findings that relate to the Comp Plan. While it’s true that this 9 project would initially be isolated, I think that’s kind of the short view. Because in the longer 10 term, more things are going to get built and we may well see the owners of Town & Country, of 11 the current or future owners, condensing their parking into a multi-level parking lot and 12 building more. And that could be mixed-use residential over retail. And so I don’t know that this 13 would be out there alone forever. I do have concerns when we talk about any market-rate 14 development and wave around the 40 percent overall affordability requirement of the RHNA 15 numbers because I recognize that that 40 percent is a blending that necessarily includes a fairly 16 good chunk of 100 percent affordable projects. Because no project like this can pencil out and 17 provide 40 percent affordable. So they’re providing 20 and that’s what we require, and so on 18 that issue, I’m satisfied. There are a lot of details to be worked out and – but I think a lot of 19 those really relate to the ARB. I’m – we need to find a way – you need to find a way to green 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 ten (10) 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 up somewhat. I was wondering about green walls, right? Living walls. And whether 1 those have – I see them from time to time and I wonder if they live or if it’s a good idea. And 2 you come back the next year and everything is – it’s a brown, dead wall. But I’m trying to think 3 creatively. I understand the site constraints and, of course, we all recognize that to shrink this 4 project without shrinking the number of units means you’re shrinking the sizes of the units. And 5 so we have to find the right balance and I think some of the Commissioners’ comments here 6 suggest that we’re not quite there yet because there needs to be more space, more scale, and 7 greening. The gate issue, I think, is – again, it’s a problem that’s going to need to be solved 8 before we come back. Because my understanding is the gate wants the – the applicant wants 9 the gate to be at the property line but that creates a queuing problem on the street, which the 10 applicant tried to solve with these bulb-outs but the staff isn’t supportive of those, so we need 11 a Plan B. And I don’t know if that gate has to move farther in. If it does, you’ve got the conflict 12 with that first parking stall on each side and so I’m not going to try to design from the dias, 13 particularly as a non-architect. But I think that’s something you just have to wrestle with some 14 more and find a solution to it. Let’s see. When I hear about the early-morning noise, this is not 15 unique to have residential right next to retail, and in fact, it’s becoming the model throughout 16 California that you have residential over retail. And so when I read this, I guess my first thought 17 was how does Santana Row handle this because they’ve got a backside with garbage trucks and 18 deliveries and all that stuff. And right on top of that, they’ve got residential. And so there have 19 to be solutions out there but we just haven’t heard them yet. But maybe when this comes back 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 ten (10) 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 us, we’ll understand that. In terms of the no parking on the Town & Country parking lots, I 1 appreciate the Ellis Partners representative’s comments on that. It’s an enforcement issue. But 2 one of the nice things about a set of CC&Rs is generally because the City is requiring them − the 3 City can require that they provide that they can be enforced by the City. And so if it becomes a 4 problem, Town & Country has an ally generally in the City to enforce a condition of approval 5 that they made. And so that maybe softens the responsibility. It’s not a perfect solution. Cut-6 through traffic, Guilty. I’ve done it a number of times when I’m going to PAMF and I get stuck at 7 the light. I’ve never – and I spend a lot of time in Town & Country by the way. It’s fantastic. I 8 love that center. But I’ve never – in all the time I’ve spent there, I really haven’t perceived that 9 – I’ve always perceived cut-through traffic exists but I’ve never felt that it really is disrupting the 10 flow of the Center and I don’t believe that 10 units at this location would have that effect. Let’s 11 see. The last thing is architectural compatibility. And this is really the purview of the ARB, so I’m 12 just going to share my thoughts for what it’s worth. First of all, Town & Country is charming but 13 where this project is located is not the charming part of Town & Country. This is the backside. 14 This is the tuckus of Town & Country. And when I did my site visit, I actually never even noticed 15 the backside before but it’s a wall back there. And if you’re standing by that wall, the only way 16 you might know it’s Town & Country is if you looked at the roof overhang above it. And so 17 when I – I mentioned that I did a video meeting with the applicant and when they showed me 18 the front façade of that building on Encina, what I thought was, “Well that’s interesting because 19 it doesn’t look like classic housing.” It has a little bit more of a commercial feel, which I thought 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 ten (10) 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. tied nicely with what’s across the street from it. And so that was kind of – my impression is that 1 that’s really what they were trying to accomplish. And then when you’re at the sides, you get 2 more of this feel that is less commercial office like and I thought that was the nod of some kind 3 of Town & Country. And I’m wondering if maybe there is some color scheme issues that could 4 work there. But I don’t think it’s a fair bar to set that this should somehow look like the front of 5 Town & Country when this is on the backside of Town & Country. So I will be supportive of a 6 motion to forward this to the ARB and I’m looking forward to further refinements of the project 7 consistent with their comments, which are already in the – the last [inaudible 111:57] in the 8 staff report. Thank you. 9 10 Chair Chang: Commissioner Lu and then Commissioner Summa. 11 12 Commissioner Lu: Thank you. I think housing is a good use here. It is a surface parking lot next 13 to two amazing bike paths, near Caltrain, right by the buses. I am also excited that there’s 14 family housing. These are mostly 3 bedrooms. The unit sizes are 14 to 1600 square feet. It’s like 15 2000, I think, including the parking garages. These are really substantial units like comparable to 16 a single-family home. And looking at the affordability levels for 3 or 4 occupants, these are 17 actually relatively affordable. The affordable units are certainly affordable for a couple of Palo 18 Alto teachers, for example. So I want to give some context that I could dig up on the housing 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 ten (10) 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. element. The housing element speaks to two above-market rate units on this site. So we are 1 pushing for more housing than the housing element actually commits to. I’m also 2 correspondingly not actually sure like what the consequences would potentially be if we really 3 push back on housing on this site since it is a housing element site. But I’ll also add that there 4 are five housing element sites with frontage on Encina and actually a sixth lot in the housing 5 element that abuts one of those other five lots. So while I’m not actually convinced that those 6 lots will actually develop into housing soon, there is some element of planning or there is some 7 general direction that these are in our housing element inventory at least for the cycle and 8 potentially next. Yeah, in general, I think this is the kind of housing we want to make use here. 9 It's human scale. It’s 10 units, so also kind of community scale. It’s infill on a surface parking lot. 10 It’s 35 dwelling units per acre, which is not massively or intimidatingly dense, though I do wish 11 there were more setbacks and more opportunity for greenery and would want to watch out for 12 that. On the negatives though, I am worried – I am definitely worried and opposed to the bulb-13 out. I think it’s a risky precedent given the other housing element sites that we have adjacent to 14 Encina. I really care about bike connections. I think we should just rethink Encina more 15 generally and not do it piece by piece bulb-out and set that precedent. So I’m really grateful for 16 Town & Country. I think this is a compatible use adjacent to Town & Country though and I 17 would want to forward this to the ARB with those reservations that I would want to maximize 18 green space, I would oppose the bulb-out, and I would also like more clarity about – or more 19 commentary from staff about the definition of Town & Country in a future hearing. 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Commissioner Summa. 2 3 Commissioner Summa: Thank you. I want to thank the applicant for being so responsive to 4 Town & Country’s concern with regards to the massing and scale of the building. And I do think 5 it’s odd because I do think this is potentially a really great place for housing because of its 6 walkability. You can walk to restaurants. You can walk to a grocery store and pharmacy. But it 7 just feels too tight on the lot. So that’s a problem with setbacks and not enough green space. 8 And I’m also concerned that the courtyard is very constrained. I think a member of the public 9 mentioned that. And that the site will become – it could be hard to live in actually. There is 10 housing there already because the Opportunity Center has housing − I did want to mention. So 11 that’s a plus side. The bulb-outs are a no-go for me because of taking the public right of way 12 and possibly preventing future bike lanes. The gate sounds pretty problematic. And without the 13 bulb-outs, there’s no green at all. There’s no trees on this site, so that’s problematic. But it’s 14 tricky because it’s actually a great place for housing in terms of its walkability. So I guess I don’t 15 see how this – I think there need to be a lot of changes for this project to work in this location. 16 So I don’t know if we get that by keeping it here at PTC longer. It seems – it feels like we get 17 that by sending it to the ARB, so they can make those changes because we are not a group of 18 architects. But I am very concerned about how tight it is on the site. And I think the lack of 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 ten (10) 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. green space and without the bulb-outs, I don’t even see – well a lot of changes need to be 1 made for it to work and the bulb-outs are a no-go for me. 2 3 Chair Chang: Thank you, Commissioner Summa. And then we’ve got Vice-Chair Reckdahl and 4 then I’d like to say something for our first round before we go onto the second round with 5 Commissioner Templeton. Okay. Go ahead, Vice-Chair. 6 7 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. I have a question about the trash pickup. So we have the trash room. 8 It – will the trash be hauled out to the curb or will the trash collectors be picking that up? 9 What’s the ConOps here of this? 10 11 Jeff Galbraith: [Inaudible 118:18] very close to the curb. I think what has to be worked out with 12 them directly is whether they would come in and bring the bins out or whether they would 13 require. I believe in our correspondence with them, they will come and bring it out because 14 we’ve got it really close to the sidewalk. It’s within the distance that they will service. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Reckdahl: Okay. That would be good. I’m worried about the bike lane out there being 1 cluttered with big trash bins. And this is in the middle of a parking lot and I’m worried about the 2 heat island effect. We’re putting – we’re cutting down some trees and we’re building almost to 3 the property line and that’s a good thing from a housing standpoint but a really bad thing from 4 a heat island standpoint. And I don’t like the bulb-outs because of the bike lane. So now we’re 5 talking about perhaps not having any trees on the site. Something like a green wall would be 6 better than nothing. I’m not wild about shrinking the units to add trees but I’m also not wild 7 about not having trees. And so this is a dilemma here. What’s the best route? But that bothers 8 me; both the fact that we are getting rid of trees and not replacing them. The in-lieu for like 9 downtown developments, is that standard? Like we have the 30 percent landscaping 10 requirement. That’s, I think, on Slide 4. Downtown, does anyone do that? Get 30 percent of an 11 area being ground landscaped? 12 13 Emily Kallas: So the – that standard is specific to the community commercial zone. It is likely 14 that downtown, which are the CED – C zones, would have a different standard. 15 16 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Okay. I have not looked [inaudible 120:15]. Okay. That’s all for now. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Okay. Before I start with my comments, I did have a quick kind of follow-up 1 because Commissioner Akin asked the question in the clarifying question section about how 2 pricing would be determined for the BMR units. And I know that staff can’t give us specifics but 3 then Commissioner Lu referenced that the 50 to 80 percent unit would be affordable for two 4 teachers. So I was wondering if staff could provide a little bit more information about how for- 5 sale BMR works, specifically answering the question of something – the question that 6 Commissioner Akin raised, which is if something is covering a range − if it’s 50 to 80 percent or 7 80 to 120 percent. We know that for rents, there is a maximum rent set on that unit that 8 effectively means that 80 to 120 percent is really using the 120 percent AMI number. So I 9 wanted to understand for for-sale units, is that the same or is it different? We haven’t seen 10 much for-sale BMR in the recent past here at the PTC. 11 12 Jonathan Lait: Yeah. So the requirement for our Planned Home Zoning is 80 percent AMI. And I 13 know – and so – I don’t know if − Mr. Yang, if you have that answer. I know this is something 14 that was – that has come up recently and I think it may be at that top at 80 percent but there’s 15 also some scenarios where we work with the – where we require it to be like at 70 percent, so 16 that there’s room. But Mr. Yang – I see you’re on camera. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Albert Yang: Yeah. I would want to confirm this with our housing 1 planner but my understanding is for income eligibility, the income can – of the household, can 2 go up to that 80 percent but that we require the rents to be calculated based on 70 percent. 3 4 Chair Chang: Is – what does that mean for “for sale” then? Is it a mortgage payment or – I mean 5 because the… 6 7 Albert Yang: Yeah. 8 9 Chair Chang: …dimension becomes much more complex at that point. Mortgages depend on 10 amount down and… 11 12 Albert Yang: Yes. 13 14 Chair Chang: …all of that. Right. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. Albert Yang: Yeah, so it is more complex and it is about the total monthly payment. And so 1 that’s going to depend on interest rates and if there are any HOA fees. All of that gets taken 2 into account and the total payment every month needs to come within the – whatever the 3 amount is for affordability. 4 5 Chair Chang: Okay. So then the total amount for affordability whether it is a rental or whether it 6 is a for-sale unit would be the same – that same formula that’s used. Is that correct? 7 8 Albert Yang: Right. It’s just there are a lot more inputs on the for-sale side. 9 10 Chair Chang: Understood. Thank you. That’s good. And I really hope that when this comes back 11 to us – if it comes back to us, that we have some really solid numbers on this and – I know that 12 it depends on interest rates but we can do a hypothetical interest rate like if the interest rate 13 were X percent, 5 percent, or 10 percent and this is what it would mean. Because I think we 14 need to educate ourselves as well as the public on what this really means in terms of 15 affordability. It’s an important issue that City Council has been looking at and when we look at 16 our own affordable policies and the waivers that we give there. And it’s also important as we 17 look at trying to really understand how we’re going to meet these RHNA requirements for 80 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. percent. Okay. Now onto this project specifically and my thoughts on it. So when I first looked 1 at this, I concurred with Mr. Galbraith, which is like this is a fantastic location for housing, right? 2 You could walk out your door, go to Trader Joe’s. Like how many other places in the City could 3 you actually do this? And that is phenomenal. It’s also right next to the transit center. The 4 schools may be a bit of a problem. I agree with Commissioner Templeton there. There’s little 5 impact on existing residents, which is fantastic. I mean truly fantastic because our city is so built 6 out. It’s really close to some great bike lanes. There’s a big bike lane right behind Town & 7 Country. Stanford has a ton of bike lanes. El Camino is going to have bike lanes. So this is all 8 great. It’s also not office. So that’s absolutely fantastic. On the other hand, when I look at this − 9 I will note though that despite – this is me on my soapbox. Despite this fantastic proximity to 10 services, there’s a lot of parking that the developer is proposing here, which indicates to me – 11 and we’ve heard this actually from a number of landlords and people in the real estate 12 business, like parking is needed in this area. We wish that it weren’t but even in a transit-rich 13 environment, parking is needed. So it – now on the other side, I just feel like this is potentially 14 trying to do too much given this really tiny parcel. And we heard from Mr. Galbraith when Vice-15 Chair Reckdahl asked, “Have you considered looking higher?” And I too am very appreciative of 16 the applicant for the amount of revisions that they have made and their efforts to work with 17 Town & Country in bringing down the height. But you can see that even if they wanted to go 18 higher, there’s actually significant problems there. So this all says to me – and we have to – 19 there’s not enough green space, there’s no setbacks. So this just says to me that this is – we 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 ten (10) 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. might be asking too much for such a small site. There’s the tree replanting issue, the green 1 space issue. It is true that eventually there may be many other residents in this area but right 2 now, there’s not going to be a lot. And if we’re saying that their recreational space is the little 3 parking lot, essentially between their garages, behind the fence, that just sounds really 4 unpalatable. So I think that maybe – I mean again I also hate to reduce the size of the units or 5 reduce the number of units but this is a tiny little postage stamp piece of land and it seems 6 evident that we can’t [inaudible 127:28] tons of stories high here, not just because of the 7 neighbor’s objections but because of fire safety. So maybe it’s too much. I do wish that the 8 applicant had had been able to address some of the aesthetic concerns raised by the ARB in the 9 pre – in the kind of ARB pre-screening – pre-hearing, whatever you call it. And I certainly hope 10 that those things are addressed because then we wouldn’t have to all be talking about it today. 11 So I hope that if we hear it again, that things like materials will be addressed. And then for me 12 also, the bulb-outs and using the public right of way for a private development is just a non-13 starter. What we have going on here is the gate put up at a certain location in order to allow 14 the residents to access their private parking. The effect of that gate and the bulb-outs as a 15 solution is the removal of public parking. So we’re literally in this case, taking like public parking 16 spaces and transferring them to a private ownership and that seems wrong. And so we’ve got 17 to figure out something there. And if we can’t put the trees there, then I think that we’ve got to 18 shrink the footprint of the building and bring it back in somehow. I do really wish that there 19 were a more comprehensive plan for this area. I don’t know if this is what a specific plan would 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 ten (10) 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. do because if that whole parking lot were turned into a housing development with adequate 1 parking built somewhere else – I mean we could have some really phenomenal housing there. 2 So those are my thoughts. I think there’s a lot of work to be done. I would like to hear from my 3 colleagues about what we think is the best way to continue with this because our options are to 4 move it on to the ARB given all the very strong feedback that we have given or we could keep it 5 here and see if some of these things could be addressed now. So I’m going to tee it up for 6 Commissioner Templeton. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you, Chair. And thank you all for the comments so far. I feel 9 validated that we do need to understand the future context of this street in order to be 10 comfortable with developing this parcel first. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t like the 11 project. I mean you’re hearing a lot of positive things about the project. But you’re also hearing 12 some concerns about how it fits and how it will be developed in the future, which is not 13 necessarily your problem. But it’s definitely a City question that we need to have a little bit 14 more insight on. So yes, I also would like to see how we plan to develop the space and I don’t 15 know if that means that it would include all of Town & Country or just Encina. It’s a question for 16 Council. So regarding whether we move it on to ARB, your – the comments of my colleagues 17 has convinced me we should go ahead and do that and see if we can make some progress 18 through their expertise before getting back to us. So I think the only thing I haven’t commented 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 ten (10) 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. on is bulb-outs, but I would just repeating yes, we don’t need those and they would be a bike 1 hazard. Thank you. 2 3 Chair Chang: I see no lights. So we may be ready for a motion because I’ve heard sort of – I’ve 4 heard a bunch of my colleagues up here suggest that it’s time to move it onto the ARB but if it 5 looks the way it does right now, we won’t be approving it. One more from Vice-Chair Reckdahl. 6 7 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yeah. I looked up CN and CN actually is – has higher. It’s 35 percent ground 8 level landscaping requirement. This was a 30. So what would be useful is [inaudible 131:41] as a 9 PHZ, so they don’t have to follow anything but it would be nice to know what kind of 10 precedence when we have – particularly if you look down the road, this probably will be 11 something equivalent to a downtown area from a density standpoint. So what’s our standard 12 protocol downtown? How do we deal with ground floor landscaping downtown? And that 13 would be good information to have. 14 15 Emily Kallas: Just to iterate. The CN is neighborhood commercial… 16 17 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Reckdahl: I’m sorry. 1 2 Emily Kallas: …and not the downtown zone. 3 4 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: CC is – yeah. 5 6 Emily Kallas: Yeah. 7 8 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: One of them is 20 and the other is 30. So – by the way, big picture, it’d be 9 nice to know we have this requirement for 30 percent ground floor landscaping. What do we do 10 other areas of the City and do we routinely waive this or is this something that is enforced 11 elsewhere? 12 13 Chair Chang: All right. Yeah. No more lights. So would somebody like to make a motion? 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Summa: I can make a motion. I think with all of our reservations, I still think the 1 motion would be to send this to the ARB, so they can work on improving the project. 2 3 Chair Chang: Second? 4 5 Commissioner Akin: Second. 6 7 Chair Chang: Further discussion from the Commission? No lights. Okay. So Ms. Dao, could you 8 take the vote, please? 9 10 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Templeton? 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 13 14 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Hechtman? 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Yes. 2 3 Veronica Dao: Vice-Chair Reckdahl? 4 5 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Yes. 6 7 Veronica Dao: Chair Chang? 8 9 Chair Chang: Yes. 10 11 Veronica Dao: Commissioner Akin? 12 13 Commissioner Akin: Yes. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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 Summa? 1 2 Commissioner Summa: Yes. 3 4 Veronica Dao: Commissoner Lu? 5 6 Commissioner Lu: Yes. 7 8 Veronica Dao: Motion carries 7-0. 9 10 Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you, everyone. So our next agenda item tonight is the approval of 11 minutes. So we’ve got three sets of minutes from April 10, April 24, and then on June 12, we 12 have the draft verbatim and summary minutes. Would anybody like to make a motion? And 13 maybe we can even roll them all into one. 14 15 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Yeah. And I − unless Mr. Yang tells us otherwise, I think tonight we 1 can. 2 3 Chair Chang: Yeah. 4 5 Commissioner Hechtman: We had an issue with that last time. So I’ll make a motion and Mr. 6 Yang can cut me off if I’m doing something that we can’t do. I will move approval of the – well 7 actually, before I do that – this doesn’t work if anybody missed any of the meetings because 8 they would have to abstain as to that. 9 10 Chair Chang: We have to take them one by one. Somebody thinks they have to abstain. So… 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 13 14 Chair Chang: …let’s do them one at a time. 15 16 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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. APPROVAL OF MINUTES 1 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 2 3 2. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Verbatim Minutes of April 4 10, 2024 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. All right. So I move approval of the PTC Draft Verbatim Minutes 7 of April 10, 2024 as revised. 8 9 Chair Chang: I second. Discussion? Ms. Dao, please call the vote. 10 11 Veronica Dao: I think we can also do voice votes since we’re all… 12 13 Chair Chang: Okay. Yes, let’s do that. All in favor? 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Aye. 16 17 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Aye. 18 19 Commissioner Summa: Aye. 20 21 Commissioner Lu: Aye. 22 23 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: Aye. 1 2 Chair Chang: Aye. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Aye. 5 6 Chair Chang: Any opposed? None. Any abstentions? None. All right. So the motion passes 7 unanimously 7-0. 8 9 4. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Verbatim Minutes of April 10 24, 2024 11 12 Commissioner Hechtman: I move approval of the PTC Draft Verbatim Minutes of April 24, 2024 13 as revised. 14 15 Commissioner Summa: Second. 16 17 Chair Chang: Discussion? All right. All in favor? 18 19 Chair Chang: Aye. 20 21 Commissioner Lu: Aye. 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 ten (10) 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 Summa: Aye. 2 3 Commissioner Akin: Aye. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Aye. 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Aye. 8 9 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Aye. 10 11 Chair Chang: Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. That passes unanimously 7-0. 12 13 5. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Verbatim & Summary 14 Minutes of June 12, 2024 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: Move approval of the PTC Draft Verbatim & Summary Minutes of 17 June 12, 2024 as revised. 18 19 Commissioner Summa: Second. 20 21 Chair Chang: Discussion? All in favor? 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 ten (10) 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: Aye. 2 3 Commissioner Akin: Aye. 4 5 Commissioner Lu: Aye. 6 7 Vice-Chair Reckdahl: Aye. 8 9 Chair Chang: Aye. 10 11 Commissioner Hechtman: Aye. 12 13 Commissioner Summa: Aye. 14 15 Chair Chang: Any opposed? Any abstentions? Oh. We could have done them all together. All 16 right. That passed unanimously 7-0. All right. Our final item of tonight is Commissioner 17 Questions, Comments, Announcements or future meetings and agendas. 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 ten (10) 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 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. I was wondering if I could swap October on-call duty with 2 someone else. Is there anybody who would like to be the City Council on-call representative in 3 October? If not, I can work it out with my backup, but I know that she’s going to miss some 4 dates as well. 5 6 Chair Chang: [The backup 136:53] is going to be out of town for one of those also. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. 9 10 Chair Chang: So… 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: So I think we may need to… 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: So… 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: …think about coverage. 17 18 _______________________ 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 ten (10) 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: So I have September, and so far, it doesn’t look like there’s anything 1 to do in September. I’m around in October, so I would swap with you and you may have very 2 light duty in September if that works for you. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: What an angel. That sounds like a plan. 5 6 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. 9 10 Chair Chang: Thank you so much, Commissioner Hechtman. As you know, many of the people 11 up here are running for office and so October is going to be a little hectic. So thank you. 12 13 Jonathan Lait: And I’ll just note that this wasn’t in the report but October 21 is when we’re 14 going to have the PTC workplan actually presented to the City Council. So… 15 16 Chair Chang: So I’m on duty for that one? 17 18 Jonathan Lait: I think you will – yes. The Chair, I think, at a minimum will also be there. 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: I’m concerned that I’m not here. 1 2 Jonathan Lait: Or Vice-Chair. 3 4 Commissioner Templeton: [Inaudible 137:48] push that until after the… 5 6 Jonathan Lait: Or Commissioner Hechtman. 7 8 Commissioner Hechtman: Just a couple more – first, I wanted to welcome our new Assistant 9 Director of Planning. We’re all excited to work with you. Absolutely. And then I just thought we 10 should close tonight in remembrance of those who lost their lives on 9/11. 11 12 Jennifer Armer: Yes. 13 14 Chair Chang: Before we do that, I didn’t know if staff had any – we had discussions in pre-15 meeting about potentially rejiggering some meetings but I didn’t know if we want to discuss 16 that now or wait a little bit. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Thank you for that question. We will bring that to your next meeting. 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 ten (10) 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 Chang: Okay. 1 2 Jennifer Armer: When we bring the full schedule forward. 3 4 Chair Chang: Okay. All right. Yeah. So maybe we just take a moment of silence. Okay. Thank 5 you, everyone. This meeting is adjourned. 6 7 Jennifer Armer: Thank you. 8 9 Adjournment 10 8:10 PM 11 12 /ls 13