HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 366-07TO:
City of Palo Alt
City Manager’s Report
HONO~
FROM:CITY MANAGER DEPARTMENT: PLANNING
AND COMMUNITY
ENVIRONMENT
DATE:
SUBJECT:
SEPTEMBER 24, 2007 CMR: 366:07
PUBLIC SCOPING SESSION FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
REPORT FOR THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
EXPANSION AND REPLACEMENT PROJECT AND THE SIMON
PROPERTIES/STANFORD SHOPPING CENTER EXPANSION
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends that the City Council accept public testimony and provide feedback regarding
environmental issues and alternatives to be considered in the preparation of an Environmental
Impact Report for the proposed Stanford University Medical Center Expansion and Replacement
Project and the Simon Properties/Stanford Shopping Center Expansion.
BACKGROUND
Development applications were submitted on August 13, 2007 for the Stanford University
Medical Center (SUMC) and on August 21, 2007 for the Stanford Shopping Center. Phase II
(Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and entitlements) of the review process is anticipated to
extend through the fall of 2008, culminating with certification of the EIR and the City’s
decisions on the applications. A single E1R will be prepared for both the SUMC modernization
and expansion and for the Stanford Shopping Center expansion. The EIR will provide extensive
analysis of issues as required in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
During Phase l (Information Sharing and Preliminary SUMC Area Plan), information was
collected and synthesized to share with the public, the Planning and Transportation Commission,
and the City Council, and to identify the key benefits and challenges of each project. The Phase 1
activities will help to focus discussion on key issues of concern during the Phase 11 (EIR and
Entitlement) process.
Purpose of the Meeting
The purpose of the meeting is to allow the community and the Council, individually and/or as a
group, to provide comments regarding the scope of the environmental issues and alternatives to
be evaluated in the EIR. The meeting is scheduled from 6:00 - 7:30 PM. There will be a t0-15
minute staff presentation followed by public and Council comments.
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is a state law that requires California
agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and describe feasible
measures that can be taken to avoid or mitigate those impacts. An Environmental Impact Report
(EIR) is required by CEQA when an agency determines that a project may have a significant
effect on the environment. An EIR evaluates a proposed project’s potential impacts on the
CMR:366:07 Page 1
environment, and recommends mitigation measures or alternatives to reduce or eliminate those
impacts. Decision-makers use information in an EIR to help determine whether or not to approve
a project.
An EIR describes the objectives for a proposed project, the location of the project, and actions
proposed as part of the project. It evaluates how the existing environment would be changed if
the project were approved and provides feasible mitigation measures or alternatives to avoid or
reduce significant adverse changes to existing conditions. An important component of the EIR
process is to provide opportunity for public input regarding environmental issues and alternatives
to be addressed in advance of the E1R preparation and subsequent opportunity to review and
comment on the Draft EIR documents prior to certification.
The first step in processing an EIR is to issue a Notice of Preparation (NOP). The Lead Agency,
in this case the City of Palo Alto, issues an NOP to all responsible and trustee agencies and
persons who requested notification, indicating the City’s intent to prepare an EIR and soliciting
input regarding EIR scope and content. The NOP includes a project title, location, description
and a list of potential environmental impacts of the project.
On August 22, 2007, a NOP was made available for public review (Attachment A). The NOP
public review period wil! be open through October 1, 2007. All public input received during the
NOP period will be fully considered in determining the scope of the EIR. Comments can be
submitted in writing through October 1. Application materials have been made available at the
City’s Development Center and on the City’s website at:
lttp:iiwww.citvof’patoalto.oreiknowzoneicitv _proiectsiprivate development/stanford shoppi
n,.z, center_medical buildin~ proiect.asp.
Environmental Consultant Team
The City has selected the environmental consulting firm of EIP Associates, a division of PBS&J,
(PBS&J) to prepare the EIR. In order to provide expertise in specific areas, PBS&J has included
the following sub-consultants to help prepare detailed studies for the EIR:
¯Korve Engineering, a division of DMJM Harris (Korve): traffic and transportation
¯Architectural Resources Group (ARG): cultural and historic resources
¯Keyser Marston Associates (KMA): housing needs
¯William Kanemoto & Associates (WKA): visual simulations
DISCUSSION
The following issues have been identified and are included in the Scope of Work to be addressed
in the Draft EIR. A single, comprehensive EIR will be prepared for both applications and no
Initial Study will be prepared.
Land Uses, Zoning, and Adopted Plans
PBS&J will summarize existing land uses on and around the Project site. Maps in the EIR
will show existing land uses, proposed land uses, and current zoning. CEQA requires a
determination of the consistency of the proposed Project with applicable plans and
policies, including those outlined in the City’s Comprehensive Plan. Based on this
CMR:366:07 Page 2
assessment, measures to improve the Project’s compatibility with nearby land uses and
consistency with applicable policies will be recommended.
The analysis will also address the extent to which the Project would change the overall
existing or planned land use patterns in the area, or be incompatible with adjacent land
uses or with the general character of the surrounding area. Issues to be addressed in this
context include the density and heights of the proposed structures and the extent to which
the proposed development is compatible or incompatible with established residential,
recreational, educational, religious, or scientific uses in the area. These topics will be
addressed by cross-referencing relevant discussions in other portions of the ElR, such as
the aesthetics and noise discussions.
Aesthetics
The EIR discussion of the Project’s potential aesthetic impacts will be based on review of
aerial photographs, site visits, photographs, site plans, and visual simulations. Based on
close-up and long-range views from vantage points, zoning regulations, and visual
features of the Project site and vicinity, an assessment will be made as to how the Project
relates to the existing visual setting and the extent to which the Project may significantly
alter or degrade visual qualities, create adverse shadow impacts, create glare, or allow for
new development that could violate existing Comprehensive Plan policies.
Emphasis will be placed on view alterations along the City’s northern gateway at E1
Camino Real and along Sand Hill Road. Potential impacts as seen from residential areas
and recreational trails will also be addressed.
Traffic / Circulation
Korve Engineering, a division of DMJM Harris, will prepare the traffic analysis and
associated tasks for the CEQA review. As part of this task, Korve will establish the study
area for the traffic analysis, collect traffic data, and analyze existing conditions.
The study area for the Project is assumed to consist of approximately 35 intersections, six
freeway segments (northbound and southbound directions for each segment), and some
residential street segments. The study area will be finalized after initial meetings with
staff from the City of Palo Alto, City of Menlo Park, City of East Palo Alto and Santa
Clara County.
An Existing Traffic Conditions Analysis is being prepared, documenting traffic counts at
AM and PM peak hours, applicable transportation plans and policies, transit network data
from transit operators, information on bicycle and pedestrian facilities, existing related
Transportation Demand Management (TDM) programs, existing parking and parking
demand.
The traffic report will include: baseline traffic conditions, Project traffic projections,
traffic impacts and mitigation measures, transit impacts and opportunities, pedestrian and
bicycle use and impacts, site access and on-site circulation, parking, and construction
impacts.
CMR:366:07 Page 3
Air Oualitv
The EIR will present the most current emissions inventory and ambient air quality data
from the nearest monitoring station(s) in the area, a description of the Bay Area Air
Quality Management Plan, and a discussion of the meteorology and terrain of the study
area and the influence of these factors on the dispersion of pollutants emitted in and
around the area to be developed.
Impact significance will be determined using the criteria contained in the CEQA
Guidelines of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD). Regional
emissions based on vehicular trips will be predicted and localized carbon monoxide
analyses will be determined for certain congested intersections and proposed parking
garages. Emissions from operational equipment, health risks related to potential toxic air
contaminant emissions from routine operation of the proposals, construction-related
emissions, and an analysis of the Project’s contribution to global warming will be
provided.
Noise
A survey of the Project area will be made to determine locations for noise measurements.
Noise levels from both construction and operational activities will be projected, and
future noise levels will be determined based on standard acoustical analytical and
reporting methods. The EIR will evaluate project-related noise levels for their
consistency with Palo Alto’s noise standards and guidelines.
Hazardous Materials
Information will be obtained from Santa Clara Environmental Health Department, the
Cortese List, and the City Fire Department regarding hazardous materials incidents at the
Project site. In addition, background documentation already compiled by the Stanford
Medical Center and The Simon Group will be reviewed to assess the potential for
environmental contamination at the Project site.
Potential exposure to hazardous materials or waste during construction activities and
during long-term operation will be identified, including storage, handling, and disposal of
medical wastes. Applicable federal, state, and local regulations will be discussed in the
context of how these regulations apply to the Project and how they would reduce the
potential for impact.
Soils / Geology
This section of the EIR will be developed partially based on geotechnical investigations
prepared previously by the Project applicants. Information to be documented will include:
soil types, proximate active faults, wet areas, seeps, areas of active erosion, and the risk
of seismic hazards.
The impact assessment will discuss whether the Project would result in a fundamental
change in the geological/terrestrial framework, including significantly greater soil
erosion, and whether the Project would endanger future occupants by exposing them to
greater geotechnical hazards, with consideration given to SUMC compliance with SB
1953, which requires all hospital facilities to meet new seismic standards.
CMR:366:07 Page 4
Hydrology / Water Quality
Existing topography and drainage patterns will be described for each of the development
sites under both proposals. Changes in potential storm water runoff and water quality will
be qualitatively described for each of the development sites and for the Project site as a
whole. Changes in both runoff quantity and quality will be assessed. Also, the EIR will
include a qualitative discussion of the potential effect of global climate change on
flooding conditions associated with the Project.
Wildlife and Vegetation
An inventory of wildlife and vegetation on and around the Project sites will be included
in the EIR, based on site visits by PBS&J biologists. Field reconnaissance will focus on
and around sites where demolition or construction is proposed. Data from the applicants
and from EIP’s data collection effort will be used to analyze and quantify potential
impacts of the Project and related construction activities on biological resources.
Impact to individual community types and populations of sensitive species will be
quantified where possible. Loss of native trees will be documented, as well as effects
from Project development within the drip line of large trees. Indirect impacts to onsite
resources and adjacent habitats resulting from the proposed construction will also be
analyzed, including an assessment of drainage, runoff, and general human disturbance
impacts such as construction traffic, invasive non-native plant species, and increased
human use. Consideration will be given to the protection of the designated open space
buffer along San Francisquito Creek. The EIR will recommend potential mitigation
measures and potential permit requirements for all significant impacts.
Cultural and Historic Resources
In order to present an adequate description of the existing cultural setting, PBS&J and
ARG will perform a literature search and records check. Analyses will be conducted for
properties proposed for demolition or alteration to determine whether they might qualify
for state or federal listing as historically significant buildings, subject to further review
and mitigation. Based on a peer review and other analysis as needed for this research,
ARG will render a professional opinion on this determination.
Direct and indirect Project impacts will be identified for known cultural resources.
Impact significance will be determined using the criteria contained in Section 15064.5 of
the State CEQA Guidelines. Potential impacts will be evaluated in terms of degree of
severity. Possible mitigation measures will be provided for each type of impact and for
each category of resource type. As appropriate, ARG will recommend measures to
preserve any historic buildings.
Population and Housing
The Project could induce an influx of new residents as an indirect impact of increased
employment. An increased demand for employee-related housing could be experienced
within daily commuting distance of the Project site.
CMR:366:07 Page 5
To address this impact, KMA will prepare a Housing Needs Analysis that will determine
the regional housing demand by housing affordability level induced by the Project based
on long-term employment. KMA will also determine commute trends to determine the
additional housing demand from Project employment on various cities in the region, and
compare this information with the regional housing needs from the Association of Bay
Area Governments (ABAG), to determine the extent to which each city and county can
accommodate the demand. If housing shortfalls are determined, potential mitigation
measures will be identified.
Community Services
In accordance with CEQA, the EIR will assess the extent to which Project demands
would trigger the need for new community facilities whose construction might impose
their own physical and environmental effects. PBS&J will interview the various service
providers, including the City’s Police, Fire, and Community Services Departments and
the Palo Alto and Los Altos school districts to determine current service levels and
capacity to service increased demand.
Utilities
The net change in the demand for water, wastewater, solid waste, and power will be
derived based on consultations with the various utilities. The existing and projected
capacity will be compared against the existing and projected demand for these basic
infrastructure systems.
The combined Project size triggers the requirement for a Water Supply Assessment,
which will be prepared and incorporated into the EIR water supply analysis. This
assessment will review water supply plans, determine available water supplies for the
region, determine the future demand in the service area, develop an analysis of projected
water supplies over the next 20 years, identify reasonable alternative sources of water (if
available), determine the number and types of water service connections associated with
the Project and resulting water demand, and conduct an assessment of the potential
demand versus the available supplies as identified.
Other Statutory CEQA Sections
PBS&J will prepare other sections of the E1R required by CEQA that focus on long-term
secondary effects. These sections include cumulative impacts, growth-inducing effects,
unavoidable adverse effects, and irreversible and irretrievable impacts.
Proiect Alternatives
A set of project alternatives will be identified as part of the E1R and evaluated to provide
decision-makers with an understanding of the key environmental tradeoffs between development
options. Alternatives will be developed based on reducing significant impacts of the Project as
proposed while still attaining at least most of the Project objectives. The potential impacts that
the alternatives would be designed to reduce could include traffic, land use/visual quality,
housing, and/or historic resource impacts. At a minimum, it is likely that the EIR will evaluate
alternatives that represent lesser intensities (and/or lesser height) of development, as well as the
required No Project Alternative. Any alternatives that would be considered but determined to be
infeasible and thus rejected would be identified in the discussions.
CMR:366:07 Page 6
Planning and Transportation Commission (P&TC) Scoping
On September 5, 2007, the P&TC provided extensive comments regarding the scope of the EIR
issues, mitigation measures, and alternatives. Attachment B summarizes the P&TC comments
according to the relevant category of environmental issues to be reviewed. Three members of the
public also spoke at the meeting. The complete P&TC minutes are included as Attachment C.
NEXT STEPS
Interested parties have until October 1, 2007 to provide additional comments in writing. Written
comments may be mailed to the City’s Planning and Community Environment Department to the
attention of Steven Turner, and e-mail comments may be sent to
steven.tumer([i::citvofpaloalto.ora. The EIR consultant will then begin preparation of the Draft
EIR, expected to be complete in the spring of 2008. Upon release of the Draft EIR, a minimum
45-day public review period will commence, and a hearing with the P&TC to accept public
comments will be scheduled near the end of the comment period. The Council will need to
review and certify the Final EIR prior to action on the project entitlements.
PREPARED BY:
DEPARTMENT HEAD:
CITY MANAGER APPROVAL:
STEVEN TURNER
Sen!or Planner
STEVE E1VilSLIE
Director of Community and Environment
FRANK BENEST --/:~,
City Manager
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment A:Notice of Preparation
Attachment B:Summary of September 5, 2007 Planning and Transportation Commission
Scoping Comments
Attachment C: September 5, 2007 Planning and Transportation Commission Minutes
COURTESY COPIES
William T. Phillips, Stanford Management Company
Jean McCown, Stanford University Public Relations Office
Charles Carter, Stanford University Planning Office
Mark Totorich, Stanford Medical Center
Art Spellmeyer, Simon Property Group
CMR:366:07 Page 7
John Benvenuto, Simon Property Group
Trixie Martelino, EIP
CMR:366:07 Page 8
Attachment A
NOTICE OF PREPARATION
To:Office of Planning and Research, Responsible Agencies, Trustee Agencies, and Members of the Public:
Subject: Notice of Preparation of a Draft Environmental Impact Report
Lead Agency:City of Palo Alto Consulting Firm:
Agency Name City of Palo Alto Firm Name
Street Address 250 Hamilton Avenue Street Address
City/State/Zip Palo Alto, CA 94301 City/State/Zip
Contact Steven Turner Contact
PBS&J
PBS&J
353 Sacramento Avenue, Suite 1000
San Francisco, CA 94111
Trixie Martelino, Project Manager
The City of Palo Alto will be the Lead Agency and x~ll prepare a single environmental impact report (EIR) for two
separate projects: (1) Stanford University Medical Center Facilities Renewal and Replacement Project, and (2) Simon
Properties-Stanford Shopping Center Expansion, herein considered the "Projects" identified below. The City needs
to know the views of your agency as to the scope and content of the environmental information that is germane to
your agency’s statutory responsibilities in connection with the proposed Projects. Your agency will need to use the
EIR prepared by our agency when considering your permit or other approval for the Projects. Members of the
public also are invited to provide their views as to the scope and content of the EIR.
Brief Project descriptions are provided below and a figure illustrating the Project sites and vicinity is attached. A
copy of the Initial Study ([~] is [] is not) attached (no Initial Study was prepared). A single, comprehensive EIR
will be prepared to address all the potential environmental impacts of the Projects.
Due to the time limits mandated by State law, your written response must be sent at the earliest possible date but not
later than October 1, 2007. The agency and public comment period for this notice will extend from August 22,
2007 to October 1, 2007. The City will also hold an agency and public scoping session to receive oral and written
comments on the scope and content of the EIR from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. on September 24, 2007. The agency and
public scoping session will be held at the City of Palo Alto Council Chambers, located at 250 Hamilton Street in Palo
Alto.
Please send any written response to Steven Turner at the address shown above. The City will need the name for the
contact person in your agency.
Project Titles:Stanford University Medical Center Facilities Renewal and Replacement Project and Simon-
Properties Stanford Shopping Center Expansion
Project Locations:The Projects generally are proposed to be located on three sites, as shown on Figure 1,
attached. The Stanford University Medical Center (SUMC) Facilities Renewal and
Replacement Project is proposed to be located at the main SUMC site at 300 Pasteur Drive
and 725 Welch Road in the City of Palo Alto in Santa Clara County. As shown on
Figure 1, a small portion of the area within the Project boundary on the main SUMC site is
located in unincorporated Santa Clara County, and is proposed for annexation to the City of
Palo Alto. The Project boundary within the main SUMC site generally is within the area
bounded by Welch Road to the north, Campus Drive West to the south, Quarry Road to the
east, and Sand Hill Road to the west, and is within the SUMC Area Plan coverage area.
Additionally, a portion of the SUMC Facilities and Replacement Project is proposed to be
located at the Hoover Pavilion site at 211 Quarry Road, also within the SUMC Area Plan
coverage area. The Project boundary at the Hoover Pavilion site generally is located within
1
A/72164787.3
Project Descriptions:
the area between Arboretum Road to the south, Palo Road to the north, Quarry Road to the
west, and the Stanford University campus to the east. The Simon Properties-Stanford
Shopping Center Expansion is proposed to be located at Sand Hill Road and E1 Camino
Road, within the Stanford Shopping Center property. This Project’s boundary is within the
area bounded by E1 Camino Real to the north, Vineyard Road to the south, Quarry Road to
the east, and Sand Hill Road to the west (refer to Figure 1). In addition, the Projects may
include off-site improvements, such as roadway and intersection modifications and utility
improvements.
The proposed Projects consist of two distinct development proposals, prepared by separate
applicants requesting separate entitlements. The proposed Projects include replacement and
expansion of hospital, clinic, medical office, administrative office, research, laboratory and
related facilities and improvements for the Stanford University Medical Center (SUMC) and
expansion of retail and related facilities and improvements and the addition of a hotel at the
Simon Properties-Stanford Shopping Center. Entitlements would include rezoning,
Comprehensive Plan amendments, exceptions, architectural review and design
enhancements, and Development Agreements. The SUMC Project also requires annexation.
The entitlements being sought by the applicants of the Projects are considered part of the
proposed Projects and will be analyzed in the EIR for their effects, along with those of the
specific development proposals.
Stanford Hospitals and Clinics (SHC), Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH) and the
Stanford University School of Medicine (SoM) request a zoning amendment to create a new
hospital zone(s), which would change and increase the development standards for properties
within the Project boundaries at the main SUMC site and at the Hoover Pavilion site.
Height for the facilities at the main SUMC site is proposed to be up to 130 feet and height
for facilities at the Hoover Pavilion site is proposed to be up to 60 feet. Floor area ratios
and site coverage percentages are proposed to increase at both sites. A Jurisdictional
Boundary Change is also requested for a minor adjustment to the boundary between the City
of Palo Alto and Santa Clara County for an area within the main SUMC site proposed to
accommodate SoM buildings.
SHC, LPCH and SoM are proposing improvements to their facilities that would be
implemented in multiple phases over a 20-year period. In total, the SUMC Facilities
Renewal and Replacement Project would result in a net increase of approximately 1.3
million square feet, including approximately 186,000 square feet of new medical office
space, clinic, research and administrative space at the Hoover Pavilion site. More
specifically, SHC, LPCH and SoM are proposing the following:
Demolition, renovation and construction of SHC facilities, providing a net increase of
approximately 725,000 square feet.
Demolition, renovation and construction of LPCH facilities, resulting in approximately
400,000 additional square feet.
¯Demolition of four existing School of Medicine buildings and construction of three
replacement buildings, with no net increase in square feet.
¯Net addition of approximately 186,000 square feet of new medical office, research,
clinic and administrative facilities at the Hoover Pavilion site for SUMC-related medical
offices, clinical research facilities, and support uses, as well as space for community
practitioners.
¯Addition of approximately 3,250 new parking spaces and replacement of approximately
1,000 parking spaces, through construction of above-ground and underground parking
structures and provision of surface parking.
¯Construction of a new road connecting Sand Hill Road and Welch Road, and provision
of interior driveways and improved circulation connections.
¯Related onsite and offsite improvements.
2
A/72164787.3
As proposed, the Simon Properties-Stanford Shopping Center development includes an
expansion of up to 240,000 square feet of retail area throughout the shopping center site, a
120-room hotel, and parking to accommodate a net addition of approximately 1,234
vehicles. The location and design of the Project improvements is subject to modification
through further environmental and design review. As shown on the illustrative site plan, a
total of 12 new buildings are proposed, with three of the 12 new buildings located on 8,000
square foot building pads fronting E1 Camino Real. Four new two-story retail buildings are
proposed immediately east of the existing mall buildings. These new buildings on the north
side of the mall would create a new retail street. Two additional two-story structures would
be constructed at the eastern terminus of the new street. The Project would add three
additional parking levels to the existing three-story parking structure. The height of this
renovated parking facility would exceed the maximum allowable height limit by 4 to 6 feet:
Simon Properties is requesting an exception to this limit. In addition, an existing single-
story (above-grade) parking structure would be demolished to accommodate two new retail
buildings, as well as a five-story, 120-room hotel with a new parking structure having five
raised levels. An exception would also be required for the height of the hotel to exceed the
maximum allowable height limit by 4 to 6 feet. The location of the hotel will be reviewed
and may be moved to a different location within the Shopping Center.
Potential Environmental Effects of the Projects:
It is anticipated that the proposed Projects may have the following significant environmental
effects: land use, transportation, population and housing, noise and vibration, air quality,
climate protection, hazardous materials, public services, hydrology, biology, cultural
resources, geology and seismicity, aesthetics, utilities and services, and energy.
The EIR will also analyze the additional housing demand generated by increased
employment from the Projects. If housing shortfalls are determined to result from the
Projects, mitigation measures will be identified. Also, should the Development Agreements
for the Projects require construction of additional housing, then the EIR will address the
potential for impact resulting from the housing construction.
Telephone
Reference: California Code of Regulations, Title 14, (CEQA Guidelines) Sections 15082(a), 15103, 15375.
Revised October 1989.
3
A/72164787.3
SourCe: PBS&J, 2007.
FIGURE 1
Project Site Location
D41357.00
Stanford University Medical Center Facilities Renewal and Replacement Project
and Simon-Properties Stanford Shopping Center Expansion
Attachment B
MEMORANDUM
To: Curtis Williams
From: Trixie Martelino
CC: Steven Turner, Whitney McNair
Date: September 18, 2007
Re: Comments from Planning/Transportation Commission Scoping Meeting - Stanford Projects
Comments provided during the September 5, 2007 Planning and Transportation Commission Scoping
Meeting for the Stanford University Medical Center Facilities Replacement and Renewal Project and
the Stanford Shopping Center Expansion are summarized below. Also, relevant comments by the
Commission at the June 11 meeting regarding the SUMC Area Plan are incorporated. Comments are
divided by environmental topic and wil! be considered in the preparation of those sections of the EIR.
Project Description
1.
2.
10.
11.
12.
Describe employee shifts/flow throughout the day. (Comm. Lippert)
Provide information on increase in beds, as well as increase in space/bed. (Comm.
Butt)
Verify that employee projections make sense. SUMC claims no increase in doctors and
medical staff, but janitorial/maintenance staff should increase with increase in square
footage. (Comm. Keller)
Define how many people will be employed by each project. (Comm. Sandas)
Identify pedestrian connections and describe pedestrian circulation in and around
SUMC. (Comm. Garber)
Describe patient flow from the Emergency Room to Children’s Hospital. (Comm. Keller)
Address all new roads and easements in application. (Comm. Lippert)
Describe number of inpatients vs. outpatients and how patient counts relate to number of
required staff. (June 11 meeting)
Provide data on how facility has grown over the years, along with increased capacity.
(June 1! meeting)
Clarify which surface parking lots are to be removed. (June 11 meeting)
Include information on capacity of facility. (June 11 meeting)
Include an expanded discussion of why this project is necessary and why the proposed
amendments are necessary. (June 11 meeting)
13.Use the maps as requested by the Commission and Council for the Area Plan to provide
clarity when preparing the EIR.
14.City goals should state benefits to neighboring communities and sub region as a whole.
(June 11 meeting)
Land Use, Zoning & Adopted Plans
15.Would project preclude options at site across El Camino Real? (Comm. Garber)
16.Understand why Stanford is proposing reduced setbacks even with increase building
heights. (June 11 meeting)
17.If land is available, how much additional land would be needed in order to conform to the
existing density rules? The difference is the amount of open space that should be
preserved permanently (or more, if in the foothills). (June ! 1 meeting, Comm. Keller)
Aesthetics
18.Prepare visual simulations from where proposed structures, especially the tower, will be
most visible. (Comm. Lippert)
19.
20.
Address impacts of the Shopping Center site plan on El Camino Real streetscape. If
adverse, should buildings be sited closer to El Camino Real, as recommended
elsewhere in the City? (Comm. Garber)
Address visual impacts d new buildings on Hoover Pavilion; ~he proposed layout
appears to obscure views of the pavilion. (Comm. Garber)
21.Provide simulations for all sides of buildings and from all angles, and from taller buildings
like City Hall and 101 Alma. (Comm. Holman)
22.Evaluate if design impacts of buildings can be ameliorated outside design review
process; consider mitigation measures from other EIRs and mitigation prior to design
considerations. (Comm. Holman)
Traffic/Circulation
23.Address spillover parking impacts within residential neighborhoods, especially those with
access to Marguerite, such as Downtown, College Terrace, Southgate, and Evergreen.
(Comm. Sandas)
24.
25.
Because Stanford compensates staff to not park on campus, address what impact this
"incentive" has on spillover parking in the neighborhoods. (Comm. Sandas)
Compare increase in parking supply to increase in staff/patients; does proportional
increase in parking exceed the current ratio of spaces to staff/patients? Understand that
the City’s objective is to not increase parking spaces proportionately. (Comm. Burr)
26.
27.
28.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
Distinguish hotel trips (both peak hour and daily) separate from those associated with the
medical center; consider if hotel trip generation rates should be adjusted because it
would be adjacent to the hospital. (Comm. Burr)
Analyze ambulance traffic separately from other project-related trips. Identify actual
routes used by the ambulances (perhaps tracked via GPS), rather than the designated
routes that they are supposed to use. (Comm. Lippert)
Allow trip credits for increased Palo Alto shuttle use and transit trips on the Marguerite
elsewhere, through in-lieu traffic mitigation funded by project. (Comm. Keller)
Show all AM and PM peak hour trips in the traffic analysis. (Comm. Sandas)
Analyze traffic impacts beyond the immediate neighborhoods, considering entrances to
the City, such as interchanges along US 101 and 1-280. (Comm. Garber)
Address impacts from cut-though traffic within residential neighborhoods. (Comm.
Garber)
Address pedestrian-related impacts within SUMC, as the plans do not appear to indicate
any pedestrian paths. (Comm. Garber)
Identify the location of the offices needed for the increased number of community doctors
that will work at SUMC and the traffic impact of their commutes. (Comm. Keller)
Identify where existing doctor office space will be relocated and the relative impacts.
(Comm. Holman)
Review the entire circulation system, including pedestrian and bicycle linkages both
within and outside the project sites, the location of parking garages and whether they are
conveniently sited, and the need for transit. (Comm. Holman)
Address future potential road closures under the projects, such as Welch Road at
Campus Drive. (Comm. Keller)
Describe arrival and departure of staff, considering the effect of shift changes as well as
the fact that some staff would stay on-site beyond the end of their shift. (Comm. Lippert,
Comm. Keller)
Analyze how overall circulation within SUMC site will change, considering alterations to
patient entrance and drop-off, and ingress and egress. (Comm Lippert)
Include pedestrian linkages throughout the Shopping Center; they are one of the most
cost-effective ways to decrease traffic impacts. (Comm. Burt)
Address peak traffic impacts from simultaneous holiday shopping and Stanford Saturday
sports games. (Comm. Lippert)
41.Determine how ambulance service would be timely during rush hour. Consider that
Welch Road and Pasteur Drive are narrower than Quarry Road and Campus Drive.
(Comm. Keller)
42.Determine if use of buses will diminish due to increased rush hour traffic. (Comm. Keller)
43.Address impacts from transport of construction material. (Comm. Keller)
44.Determine current parking utilization vs. parking requirement for SUMC. (June 11
meeting)
45.Determine baseline for number of beds, employees, parking spaces, and parking
utilization rate. Extrapolate this data for the project but include increased use of
alternative means of transportation. (June 11 meeting)
46.Design d project should not include a parking garage between two points where people
often go. This is not a safe design. Instead consider a through-road from Pasteur Drive
to Campus Drive and Roth Way. (June 11 meeting, Comm. Keller)
47.Provide an accurate count of the square footage loss of space for local physicians.
Provide data on what percentage of the physicians work at the hospital. With increased
hospital size and capacity there will be a need for increased number of local physicians
to service their patients. If they are not located nearby there will be additional car trips.
(June 11 meeting)
48.Provide regional transit map to describe which routes serve this project. (June 11
meeting)
49.Include a no net new trip requirement for projects and award credit for trip reductions,
such as by expanding shuttle service. (Comm. Keller, Comm. Sandas)
50.Look at pooling resources from transit agencies to effectively mitigate auto trips and
create a transit corridor, or spine, not just to the hospital but to the core of Stanford
University. (Comm. Burt)
51.Contact the City of Santa Cruz to ask about their successful permit parking program near
UC Santa Cruz. (Comm. Sandas)
52.Address pedestrian linkages from SUMC to Shopping Center; proposed plans do not
seem to maximize pedestrian opportunity. (Comm. Burt)
Air Quality
53. Explain how project contributions to global warming will be measured. (Comm. Sandas)
54.Quantitatively address air emissions from all vehicles, including helicopters. Address
related health impacts, such as asthma. (Comm. Holman)
Noise
55.Analyze all noise sources, including ambulances, sirens, and helicopters, and mitigate
impacts. (Comm. Sandas)
56.Measure noise impacts from helicopters, ambulances, construction, etc. against actual
ambient noise today, not what’s typically acceptable for urban settings like this. (Comm.
Holman)
Hydrology/Water Quality
57.Address impacts on San Francisquito Creek. (Comm. Garber)
58.Address permeability, storm drainage, runoff, flooding, and impacts on San Francisquito
Creek. (Comm. Holman)
59.Address and mitigate impacts on natural resources. (Comm. Lipped)
60.Address roadway erosion due to increased wear and tear from additional traffic,
including construction trips. (Comm. Holman, Comm. Keller)
Cultural and Historic Resources
61.Analyze impacts on historic Governor’s Lane. (Comm. Lippert)
62.Identify the impacts of demolishing the Edward Durell Stone Building, particularly if it is
determined to be a historic resource. Identify mitigation if Stone Building is significantly
impacted. (Comm. Burt, Comm. Sandas, June 11 meeting)
63.Include the existing height of the Hoover Pavilion for context and for consideration of
historic impacts. (June 11 meeting)
64.Consideration should be given to impacts of development surrounding the Hoover
Pavilion as it is a likely historic resource. (Comm. Holman)
Population and Housing
65.Consider what kind of mitigation will be imposed if housing shortfalls are identified, since
SUMC does not want to construct housing. (Comm. Sandas)
66.Identify types of housing demand (low-income, high-income, etc) created by new project
employees. (Comm. Holman)
67.Consider housing needs of project-related middle-income employees. (Comm. Sandas)
68.Address where employees commute from. (Comm. Lippert)
69.In reporting by zip code where employees reside, separate East Palo Alto and Palo Alto
portions within zip code 94303. (Comm. Keller)
70.Review the housing sites that are governed by the GUP to determine if they were
counted to mitigate the proposed building increases on the Stanford campus or if they
can count towards helping reduce the jobs/housing balance in Palo Alto, if they are
annexed to Palo Alto. (June 11 meeting, Comm. Keller)
71.Add provision for affordable employee housing. (June 11 meeting)
72.Better understand in-lieu fees for development of housing and the timing associated with
medical facility construction. (June 11 meeting)
Community Services
73.Consider indirect impacts; for example, impacts on schools that result from the induced
housing demand. (Comm. Burr)
Utilities
74.Address opportunities to reuse debris from demolition, especially on site. (Comm.
Garber, Comm. Holman, Comm. Burr)
75.Apply water reuse and conservation techniques and on-site energy generation as ways
to reduce utility demand. (Comm. Holman, Comm. Lippert)
76.Explain what LEED standards are in terms of energy conservation, relative to Title 24
standards (Comm. Lippert)
77.Determine if projects would exceed water allocation for City. (Comm. Garber)
78.Identify mitigation if water demand cannot be met. (Comm. Lippert, Comm. Sandas)
79.Implement waste-reduction methods in keeping with the City’s zero waste policy.
(Comm. Holman)
80.Look beyond a 20-year time horizon in the Water Supply Assessment since water is
such a scarce resource. (Comm. Holman)
Growth Inducement
81.Address to what extent non-retail use, such as parking garages, hinders future
opportunities to accommodate more retail space. (Comm. Garber)
Alternatives
82.Do not limit alternatives to those that satisfy sponsors’ objectives; alternatives to be
considered but rejected can include those that do not address sponsors’ objectives.
(Comm. Holman)
83.Include a "village" concept alternative that would include a mixed of uses and schools.
(Comm. Holman, June 11 meeting)
84.Because the Shopping Center parking structure takes up a lot of space, consider
alternative configurations if it affects the overall usability of the site for future retail uses
and accessibility for the community. (Comm. Garber)
85.Include a Shopping Center alternative that reduces the number of parking spaces and
includes paid parking to help pay for more transit. (Comm. Lippert)
86.Include a replacement hospital project alternative and a reduced project alternative,
which involves and/or which could include location of some medical functions off site.
(Comm. Holman)
87.Develop an alternative that just replaces those portions of the hospital that need to be
replaced to comply with SB 1953, retrofits those portions that can be retrofitted, and then
resite new portions of hospital in a manner that allows for better contiguity with LPCH.
(Comm. Keller)
88.Change layout of medical buildings around Hoover Pavilion structures to maintain open
space at that site. (Comm. Holman)
89.With new technology that allows hospital to operate 24 hours, consider a reduced sized
medical facility alternative. (Comm. Lippert)
90.While the reduction of visual, traffic, and utility impacts are important in formulating
alternatives, keep in mind the reduction of natural environmental impacts as a basis for
the alternatives too. (Comm. Sandas)
91.Consider alternatives that alleviate direct and indirect impacts on public services.
(Comm. Lippert)
92.In arriving at a correct size project alternative, consider patient/bed increases against
daily census, discharges, etc. (Comm. Keller)
93.Apply automobile mall overlay on a portion of the site as an alternative. (Comm. Lippert)
94.Consider use of Hoover Pavilion as a hotel. (Comm. Keller)
95.Identify alternatives early. (June 11 meeting)
Other/General
96.Designate baseline as 2006 conditions, when first phase of SUMC and City discussions
commenced. (Comm. Keller)
97.Designate baseline for LPCH as 216 actual beds, not 257 licensed beds. (Comm.
Keller)
98.Since construction will be phased for 20 years, mitigation should also be phased; need to
understand the timing of impacts so that mitigation measures are in place to deal with
the impacts. (Comm. Holman, Comm. Burt)
101.
102.
103.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
99.Address impacts from annexation and from the Development Agreement. (Comm.
Holman)
100.Address impacts on neighboring cities/counties and recognize that mitigation may affect
areas not adjacent to the project sites. (Comm. Holman)
Ensure that document is consistent in data presentation. (Comm. Keller)
Consider dedication of open space land as mitigation for increased density. (Comm.
Keller)
Reflect three emerging themes in the environmental analysis:
a.Local improvement to regional benefits
b.Challenging established ideas (height vs. open space; congestion vs.
environmental concerns)
c. Energy and sustainability. (June 11 meeting)
104. Include an analysis on impacts of demolition. (June 11 meeting)
105.Include an analysis of mitigation measures. Use as point of reference the PAMF project.
(June 11 meeting)
106.Address impacts of increased helicopter trips on usage of Palo Alto Airport. , and
associated air and noise impacts on and off site. (Comm. Holman)
Minimize or mitigate financial obligations on City as much as possible. Demand for
additional community services could be a potential show stopper. (Comm. Keller;
Comm. Sandas)
If projects exceed water/energy contract entitlements for City, what impacts would this
exceedance have on ratepayers? (Comm. Garber)
Consider use of renewable energy and photovoltaic cells in building design, based on
future cost when technology will be less expensive, not current cost. (Comm. Burt)
Address long-term design flexibility of proposed buildings; some structures can be taken
apart and reassembled in other ways. (Comm. Holman)
Consider underground parking for Stanford Shopping Center, at least for
staff/employees, to create more space to accommodate additional retail.(Comm.
Garber, Comm. Burt)
Update Commission of changes in EIR timeline. (Comm. Burt)
Consider annexing County land on which housing is built to get credit for meeting City’s
housing goal. (Comm. Keller)
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
!26.
127.
128.
Recognize the financial impact on Downtown, California Avenue, Mid-Town and other
commercial areas from expansion d Stanford Shopping Center. (Comm. Keller)
Will soils and geology allow more of hospital tower to be undergrounded? If so, by how
many stories? (Comm. Lipped)
Consider use of telemedicine to reduce project size. (Comm. Keller)
Consider requiring SUMC to donate land for schools as a way of mitigating school
impacts. (Comm. Keller)
Consider feasibility of using photovoltaic cells to cover par[ of parking areas for power
generation and shading. (Comm. Keller)
Consider making Lytton Avenue and Hamilton Avenue one-way routes with timed lights
as a mitigation for impacts on Downtown traffic. (Comm. Keller)
Consider capturing sunlight and funnel it underground via fiber optics as a way to place
more stories underground using "hybrid solar lighting.". (Comm. Keller)
Prepare cost benefit analysis of facilitating bike use as means to avoid auto uses.
Consider a comprehensive bikeway pathway design throughout campus that includes
maintenance of off-road trails in the area. (June 11 meeting)
Review tax implications of all proposed annexations. (June 11 meeting)
When determining energy costs, use anticipated cost at time of construction. (June 11
meeting)
Hire high-level planner to review design of project. (June 11 meeting)
Include an analysis of intrinsic benefits and public benefits. Use as point of reference the
PAMF project. (June 11 meeting)
Use conditional use permit to control development and look at the project’s impacts.
(June 11 meeting)
Evaluate the impacts of fill for the projects. Where, how much, and associated impacts.
(Comm. Holman)
Identify all other projects that are foreseen within the timeline of the life of the
development agreement. (Comm. Holman)
Attachment C
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ROLL CALL: 7:03 PM
Commissiott ers:
Karen Holman - Chab"
Daniel Garber - V-Chair
Patrick Burr
Paula Sandas
Arthur Keller
Lee Lippert
Samir Tuma - absent
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Special Meetb~g at 7:00 PM
Council Conference Room
Civic Center, 1st Floor
250 Hamilton A venue
Palo Alto, California 94301
Staff."
Curtis Williams, Assistant Dh’ector
Steven Turner, Senior Planner
Lisa Green, Admin. Associate
AGENDIZED ITEMS:
1. Commission Scoping Meeting for Stanford Projects Environmental lmpact Report
Chair Holman: Good evening. We would like to welcome you to the Special Meeting of the
Planning and Transportation Commission for Wednesday, September 5, 2007. Would the
Secretary call the roll, please? Thank you.
This is the time on the agenda where anyone who would like to speak to an item that is not on
the agenda my do so. 1 see no cards so we will move to item number one.
ORAL COMMUNICATIONS. Members of the public may speak to any item not on the agenda
with a limitation of three (3) minutes per speaker. Those who desire to speak must complete a
speaker request card available from the secretary of the Commission. The Planning and
Transportation Commission reserves the right to limit the oral communications period to 15
minutes.
AGENDA CHANGES, ADDITIONS AND DELETIONS. The agenda may have additional items
added to it up until 72 hours prior to meeting time.
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Chair Holman: It is as always in this room I need to ask everyone including members of the
public if you please be conscientious about not rattling paper, not whispering because these
microphones are sort of adequate and in some cases they pick up all kinds of noises so they are
highly sensitive. So 1 would please ask everyone’s assistance with that. Also, because of the
causal environment it is easy for people to just start talking. So please make sure you have a
microphone before speaking and wait to be called on too because it is too easy for this to become
just a causal conversation and impossible then for the Secretary to transcribe minutes.
With that said we move to agenda item number one, Commissioner Scoping Meeting for
Stanford Projects Environmental Impact Report. Would Staff care to make a presentation?
NEW BUSINESS
Other Items:
1.Commission Scoping Meetin~ for Stanford Prqiects Environmental Impact Report:
Stanford University Medical Center Expansion and Modernization/Stanford Shopping
Center Expansion Projects: Meeting to provide input and comments on environmental
issues to be considered in the Environmental lmpact Report that will be prepared for both
projects.
Mr. Steven Turner, Senior Planner: Yes, I will just be making a brief presentation. Good
evening Commissioners. The purpose of tonight’s meeting is to receive comments from the
Commission and members of the public regarding the environmental issues and alternatives to be
considered during the preparation of the Environmental Impact Report for the Stanford projects.
As you are aware we have been in Phase 1 of the project review since November or December of
2006. During this Phase 1 it has been an informational gathering and sharing phase where we
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have gone out and held public workshops, we have presented information both to the
Commission and to the City Council, and we are doing all of this preparation of Phase II. We
are taking that information that we gathered during Phase l and applying it towards Phase II. 1
am happy to announce that we are in Phase 1! at the moment.
Phase II was started with the submittal of the formal applications by Stanford and the Simon
Group to the City for their entitlement requests. Also, we at the end of August submitted the
Notice of Preparation to state agencies. An important part of the Notice of Preparation process
and overall the environmental review process is a scoping session where we solicit comments
from the Planning Commission, and City Council, and members of the public regarding what the
scope of the EIR should include. So we are at that point right now and that is the purpose of the
meeting tonight.
Actually, we are having our official scoping session for the project at the City Council on
September 24, however, the Commission and Staff felt it was important to get some early
comment in from the Commission and members of the public and therefore we went ahead and
scheduled this meeting for tonight.
For the rest of the Staff presentation l am going to hand it over to EIP Associates, they are the
City’s contractor who will be preparing the Environmental Impact Report. Tonight since we are
in the Council Conference Room we do not have a slide show projector for a PowerPoint
presentation. However, you do at your places have copies of the slides that we will be referring
to and they are also at the public table for members of the public who wish to follow along as
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well. After E1R Associates have concluded their portion of the Staff presentation I will talk
about next steps and resources for additional information. So right now I would like to hand it
over to Rob Jeung and Trixie Martelino from E1P Associates.
Mr. Rod Jeung, ElP Associates, San Francisco: Thank you Steve, Madam Chair, members of the
Commission, and members of the public, good evening. Thank you very much for inviting us
tonight to participate in your scoping session.
As Steve mentioned we are in Phase lI, hooray, but we are still collecting information. As Steve
mentioned the whole purpose of scoping is to collect additional input and insights onto the
environmental document. The program that we have tonight is intended to be relatively brief so
that we have the benefit of your comments as well as those from the public. What we hope to do
and accomplish is first just to explain in a little bit more detail for everyone’s benefit the purpose
of scoping, kind of elaborating on what Steve has already mentioned, to provide an overview to
the projects to describe the t}~es of environmental issues that are going to be addressed in the
environmental document, and then as Steve said to talk a little bit about process, in that regard
we are going to talk a little bit about the schedule, opportunities for additional public input, and
how the public can access and find out more about this particular project.
So 1 am going to start the discussion of the overview to scoping by first describing the California
Environmental Quality Act, hopefully in 25 words or less. The California Environmental
Quality Act or CEQA as it is known is a state legislation. At its heart it requires an
Environmental Impact Report be prepared for those types of projects that might have significant
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impacts. The purpose of the Environmental lmpact Report is to provide decision-makers such as
yourselves with environmental information, with environmental understanding, and
environmental awareness of the implications of adopting the project. It is but one piece of the
decisions that you will have to make. There are other factors that come into your decision in
your decision-making process such as fiscal impacts, and land use compatibility, and design, and
design review. The Environmental hnpact Report really zeros in on those physical
environmental changes and so it doesn’t really begin to address some of the other critical factors
that you need to consider such as financial or fiscal implications. Again, the focus is on physical
environmental impacts.
For the benefit of the public let me just read how scoping is defined in the California
Environmental Quality Act. It is the process of determining the focus and content that is the
scope of an Environmental hnpact Report. Towards that end what it does, as Steve says, it really
initiates the environmental document preparation. It is our flag going up and the racecars
starting. When we prepare an Environmental Impact Report we bring a certain amount of
technical expertise i.e., what is required by the law, how to do the methodological assessments
that have to be preformed, how to use the different models, but that doesn’t replace or substitute
for local knowledge and an appreciation of those issues that are going to be most important to
you and to the public. Every single comprehensive Environmental lmpact Report has anywhere
from 14 to 15 different topics that have to be addressed and for which you have to identify
impacts and recommend mitigation measures if you have identified a significant impact. Not
every Environmental lmpact Report has to have the same emphases so if in a particular
community visual issues, or traffic issues, or public services are preeminent it is the scoping
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process that allows us to discern what is of critical importance to the community and to place
greater emphasis on those particular topics in the environmental document. So what the scoping
process does is makes sure that we don’t overlook some of those key issues that are germane to a
community.
Scoping also allows the public to come forward and say there are possibly mitigation measures
that you should be considering as part of your environmental document. We all know that traffic
is very, very prominent and is a big concern. There may be ideas about how to mitigate some of
those traffic impacts. There may be ideas about other alternatives once we have heard a little bit
on the overview of the projects. That is all fair game and all desired input as part of the scoping
process. So not only do we want to hear from the public and yourselves about which issues are
most important but if you have suggestions or ideas about mitigation measures or alternatives we
would like to hear those as well.
The scoping goals are basically to ensure that the most important impacts are reflected in the
environmental document as 1 have said already. It also allows us to make sure that we are
preparing a document that is going to be responsive to the concerns that are raised by the
community. Again, if we went straight by the CEQA guidelines and reported on all 14 or 15
topics without necessarily reflecting the values of the local community it is not going to be a
particularly useful document to you. The purpose of an Environmental Impact Report is for full
public disclosure. So again if we hear over and over that traffic or whatever topic is important
that needs to get reflected and will allow us to be much more efficient in preparing the
environmental document.
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It is important to understand that the Environmental Impact Report does not focus on the merits
of the project. We are not going to come out as part of the environmental process and say
whether this is a good project or a bad project. The focus is to say there are certain ramifications
of going forward with this project. Those ramifications could be significant physical impacts but
we won’t come out and place a value judgment. It will all be a sort of objective technical
analysis.
So with that as kind of a backdrop l am going to give the mike over to Trixie and she is going to
give you an overview to the project.
Ms. Trixie Martelino, EIP Associates, San Francisco: Thank you, Rob. I am going to be
presenting an overview of the projects and I am going to be going through the environmental
topics that we will be addressing in the EIR.
First I went through the City’s decision we are preparing a single comprehensive E1R for two
separate but adjacent projects that are being proposed by separate applicants and require separate
entitlements. The first project is the Stanford University Medical Center Facilities Replacement
and Renewal. For simpler purposes I will call this the hospital project. This project is being
proposed jointly by the Stanford Hospital and clinics, the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital,
and the Stanford University School of Medicine. The second project is the Shopping Center
Expansion, which is being proposed by the Simon Property Group.
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Due to the large scale and level of controversy that may be associated with the projects we are
foregoing the initial study step in the EIR process. As you know the initial study scopes out
certain topics that need not be discussed in detail in the EIR. The EIR will thus be a
comprehensive document that will address all environmental topics that are under the City’s
adopted Significance Criteria.
The hospital project, the first of the two, will result in a total increase of 1.3 million square feet
in its campus. This is broken down into 725,000 square feet of the Stanford Hospitals and
clinics, 400,000 square feet of the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, 186,000 square feet of
new medical office facilities at the Hoover Pavilion site, and also the School of Medicine
buildings will be demolished and replaced with newer structures with no net increase in square
footage. Accompanying this will be an increase of 3,250 new parking spaces.
In terms of activity, the hospital project would result in 1,900 more employees upon build out,
144 additional beds at the Stanford Hospitals and clinics, 104 additional beds at the Lucile
Packard Children’s Hospital, and accompanying the square footage is a projected 33 percent
increase in helicopter trips and 32 percent increase in ambulance trips.
l won’t be going into further detail regarding the projects since there have been previous
presentation components previously. If the Commissioners have any questions on the project
components the project applicants and Staff are available to answer questions.
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Just an overview of the second project, the Simon Property Shopping Center Expansion. That
will result in an increase of 240,000 square feet of retail sites, distributed in 11 buildings
generally located at the El Camino Real frontage of the shopping center. There will also be a
new 120-room hotel at either Arboretum Road and Quarry Road or at El Camino Real and
Quarry Road as an alternate site. There would also be 1,234 more parking garage spaces, 4,400
more employees, and a project occupancy rate of 78 percent.
We have a couple of slides in our presentation that show the locations of these projects and the
locations of these projects are also depicted on the poster boards that are on the wall behind the
Commissioners. Sorry about that. We have the hotel project map on the slide that you have as
well. If you go to number 11 slide it depicts the hospital project. It is roughly in the vicinity of
Sand Hill Road, Quarry Road, and Pasture Drive. It depicts Stanford Hospital and clinics
construction, the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital construction at buildings 6 through 9,
buildings 12 to 14 on the map show where the School of Medicine construction will occur, and
buildings 15 and 16 are where the new medical office spaces will be constructed at the Hoover
Pavilion site.
Slide 12 in your packet which are depicted as well on the poster boards shows the location of the
Shopping Center Expansion. As you can see most of the retail buildings will be located along E1
Camino Real with new parking facilities to be constructed along Quarry Road and a potential
hotel site are Arboretum and Quarry, which also may be located at El Camino and Quarry.
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I would like to get into the environmental issues that we are discussing in the EIR. As 1
mentioned earlier we are forgoing the initial study step and will thus address all environmental
topics that are under the City’s adopted Significance Thresholds. Slides 13 and 14 of your
packets list down the environmental topics that we will be discussing. These are also discussed
in the Staff Reports that you have. Some examples include land use and visual quality, and
traffic and air quality. To explain the approach we will also be using technical studies to support
the analysis, for example the traffic analysis will be supported by a traffic report that will address
increases in traffic flow on local streets and freeways, impacts on transit and alternative
transportation, onsite circulation, and impacts related to parking. Another item we will be
addressing includes global warming which is an increasing item of concern. The EIR will
address the project’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
Aside from these environmental topics an EIR must include a discussion of alternatives to a
proposed project. The alternatives developed are 1) reduce or avoid significant impacts from a
project, while 2) achieving all or most of the basic project objectives. In developing alternatives
to be analyzed in the EIR the City will consider input from the public as well as input from the
Commissioners. Comments on alternatives can be made after this presentation or in writing to
the City, as Steven will explain later.
1 would just like to give an overview of environmental review process prior to closing. As
Steven mentioned earlier the City had issued the Notice of Preparation for the Environmental
Impact Report on August 22. Issuance of the NOP or the Notice of Preparation kicks off the
CEQA process and announces to the responsible agencies that an EIR is being prepared for this
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project. The public review period will last from August 22 until October 1. It should be noted
that this public comment period goes beyond the 30-day requirement under CEQA.
As Steven mentioned earlier we also conducted public scoping meetings to solicit comments.
This meeting satisfies an objective but the main public scoping meeting will be held later this
month. After the scoping process the Draft EIR is prepared and distributed for a public review
for approximately 45 days or more. The tentative release date of the Draft EIR is in the spring of
2008. During that time, during the review period, the City will solicit comments from the public
and agencies on the content of the EIR. After that a Final EIR will be prepared that responds to
the public comments. After that hearings to certi~ the EIR will be held. Once the EIR is
certified the City will make a decision on the projects whether or not to approve them. If one or
both of the projects is approved then a Notice of Determination will need to be filed which
announces the City’s decision. With that 1 would like to hand over the mike to Steven Turner
who will discuss the next steps in the process.
Mr. Turner: Thanks Trixie. Just one clarification for you regarding the Stanford Shopping
Center project, on one of the slides it indicates that there would be approximately 4,485 more
employees. That is a bit shocking. In fact that would be a total number of employees for that
site not 4,000 additional employees for the site.
Chair Holman: Can l remind people of the shuffling of papers, please?
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Mr. Turner: The additional employees would be approximately 1,000 new employees for that
site.
In terms of the next steps as I mentioned previously we will be going to the City Council on
September 24 for the official scoping session with the City Council. Certainly the comments
received during this meeting and the meeting minutes would be forwarded to the City Council
for their review as part of the CMR.
We are also holding our three issues workshops in early October. 1 believe we have some
tentative dates it would be the first three Thursdays in the month of October. At each of those
meetings we are going to be focusing on a specific issue or set of related issues as requested by
the Commission earlier this year. So we will have separate kind of issue meetings revolving
around land use and housing, a second meeting on transportation and linkages, and a third
meeting on open space and sustainability. The Planning Commission would be invited to those
meetings to participate and hear from members of the public. Again, we will send out notices
when we have those dates confirmed but 1 believe it is the first three Thursdays in October.
Finally in terms of project notices and updates there are a couple places where you may obtain
information regarding the project as well as members of the public. Probably the easiest, the
central repository for this information is on the City’s website. I am not going to say it is the
easiest way to get that information at this point but it is there. If folks enter in the address that is
listed on the handout you would be able to get directly to the project. If you also kind of follow
the links as described in that address you can find that infornaation pretty easily as well.
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Secondly if folks have questions they can certainly email or contact myself, Steven Turner, as
the Project Manager for this and my contact information is there as certainly 1 can provide a
telephone number and email as well for anybody who may want additional information. I think
with that I will send it over to Curtis who might want to follow up.
Mr. Curtis Williams. Assistant Planning Director: Yes, just a couple of concluding comments.
So what we are looking for from the Commission, because this is really an evening for you to tell
us or reiterate to us what your key issues are that you would like us to be sure that we cover in
the EIR. So we are looking for particularly if there is something we haven’t identified in the
Staff Report or in the presentation that you think you would like to be sure we look at that is one
category. Secondly, areas of emphasis as Rob was indicating, there are a lot of issues out there
to address; we know that, you know that, the public knows that. But if there are things you
individually would like us to focus in on let us know that. Thirdly, alternatives, if there are
variations of what the project as proposed might !ook like that you would like us to explore let us
know that. We have had a question about mitigation measures versus alternatives, kind of when
is it an alternative, how substantive do changes have to be to be alternatives versus mitigation
measures, which are measures that attempt to minimize the impacts that the project would have.
Alternatives, the purpose for them really is also to minimize the impacts or to avoid impacts that
might occur. 1 don’t think the Commission needs to worry about making that distinction or
fitting them into a box. lfyou think it is substantive enough to bring up as something you would
like us to look at tell us that and we fit it in as appropriate when we get underway with the EIR.
So l don’t think you need to be concerned about whether we call it an alternative or call it a
mitigation measure, lfyou think it is something that is key that you think we should look at as a
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possible way to maybe minimize impacts that you anticipate would occur then let us know that
and we will take it down.
1 also wanted to let you know that we did email to you today and made available to you at your
places tonight copies of some handouts that we had at the Lucy Stem community meeting where
we identified some of the issues that were on the table at that time as well as the lists that were
presented to the Council at their last meeting when they considered the Area Plan that came out
of the Commission’s meeting of some items specifically related to the Area Plan and some issues
that were outside of sort of the boundary of the Area Plan but many of those may be
encompassed in the EIR analysis too so it is kind of a starting point for you. All of those we will
pass along to the consultants so they do have that list of issues as well.
Then my last comment is just from a procedural standpoint. I think rather than having people
walk up to the microphone and speak it would probably work just as well for us to hand it around
and let them speak from their seats unless somebody particularly wants to stand at a mike.
Thank you.
Chair Holman: Thank you. Before l ask Commissioners if they have any clarifying questions I
have but one card from members of the public and 1 would suppose there are more people that
wish to speak. If you would give your cards to the Secretary we will get them up here and take
you in the order that we receive them.
Commissioners, do you have any clarifying questions? Commissioner Keller.
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Commissioner Keller: Yes, the first clarifying question 1 have is with respect to the baseline and
in particular for the Stanford Medical Center.
Chair Holman: If I could, at this moment 1 would like and it is my fault l wasn’t clear enough,
what l would like to do is focus on procedural clarifying questions if we could so we can just
make sure we are all clear on what the procedure is and what we are to be discussing and what
we are not to be discussing.
Vice-Chair Garber: This evening?
Chair Holman: This evening, yes and if there are any kinds of questions - my apologies for not
making it clear what the intention was. So if there was anything in the presentation that we
didn’t understand or need more clarification about then that would be the focus of the clarifying
questions. That is agreeable to everybody? Commissioner Butt.
Commissioner Burt: I think this falls within that scope. Since our last meeting the applicant has
actually submitted an application. Staff didn’t really clarify for us whether there were any
changes from what we had previously seen in documents of what was anticipated to be in the
application and what was actually in the application, lfthere are changes could those be
summarized?
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Mr. Williams: l will give that a shot and then Steven let me know if I have missed anything. I
believe that the only change that we have seen is that I believe the last time you saw the Medical
Center project there medical offices proposed on both the Hoover Pavilion site, like 100,000
square feet, and on the site where the existing psychiatry building is of another 100,000 square
feet or so. That latter site no longer has medical offices or any new development proposed on it
and the Hoover site has 186,000 square feet of office space. So it has basically been
consolidated onto the Hoover site, which is where 1 think we started offsome time ago as well.
Other than that 1 don’t think there are any changes in either project different than what you have
seen before.
Chair Elolman: So as a follow up to that would you say then that what we have on this output,
the presentation that was given to us, is this indicative of what the application is, these maps?
Mr. Williams: That is where we took them from, yes.
Ms. Martelino: That is taken from the application. It is one of the maps shown in the
application. It shows the buildings to be constructed but it doesn’t indicate the buildings to be
demolished.
Chair Holman: Thank you. Commissioner Sandas and then Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Sandas: Just to clarify, tonight’s meeting is basically an extra session for us, is
that pretty much correct?
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Mr. Williams: Yes.
Commissioner Sandas: The public has about an extra week to review and contribute anything
before the Council meeting on the 24th.
Mr. Williams: Not only before the Council meeting on the 24th but a week after that meeting
also is open for written comments to be provided.
Commissioner Sandas: This meeting was publicly noticed in the usual way?
Mr. Williams: Yes, newspaper notice.
Commissioner Sandas: Well, thanks for the extra opportunity I appreciate that. l am glad to see
that there are members of the public here because 1 really feel strongly that the Commission can
make more informed decisions, ask more informed questions when the public has had a chance
to give some input as well. So thank you.
Mr. Williams: I should add that we have now a pretty extensive mailing list that we will be
getting to all of you just in case you think of somebody else we should include on that list. You
can let us know and we will add to it. This meeting was not noticed to all of those people
because it primarily a Commission input session, the 24th Council will be, everybody on that list
will be noticed of that meeting.
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Chair Holman: Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: We also received some supplemental documents on electronic media.
How are those documents going to be provided for members of the public?
Mr. Williams: Those documents are on the website currently. So all of that material is on the
website that is on the CDs that you received.
Commissioner Lippert: Great.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: In follow up to Commissioner Burt’s question about differences l noticed
for example that in one of the earlier documents there was some open space being proposed for
the triangle area and that seems to be outside the scope of the project boundary. So I am
wondering about issues like that. There was originally some open space there that seems not to
be defined as open space now. So are there other issues like that that are different?
Mr. Williams: I will let the Stanford folks respond if that is a change from what you have seen
before. 1 am not aware of other ones but there might be some very small differences like that
that 1 am not aware of. Charles or Bill, can you respond?
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Mr. Bill Phillips, Stanford Management Company: I believe that the open space triangle that
you are referring to is in the Area Plan and the project application has a boundary that is
narrower than the Area Plan. So 1 don’t think anything has changed from the project application
to the latest iteration of that. 1 think what you are referring to was in the Area Plan.
Commissioner Keller: So that relates to the question, which is what is the relationship between
the scope of the Area Plan and the EIR process and the applications for two developments?
Mr. Williams: The impacts of the project can be very wide. So the Area Plan boundaries and
the impacts are much broader than even the Area Plan. So l think your comments can go to any
area that you think there are impacts. The Area Plan is somewhat part and parcel of this project
but it is showing some areas adjacent to but not within the project boundaries but that may be
affected by and may require mitigation associated with the project. So certainly if you feel that it
there is something there that you want to specifically have addressed that we don’t already
anticipate being addressed that is fair game for your comments and input as well.
Commissioner Keller: Thank you.
Chair Holman: Any other clarifying questions for procedure for this evening? Seeing none l
have at this point only one member of the public speaking. We have three speakers. The first
speaker is Edie Keating to be followed by Tom Jordan. You will have five minutes.
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Mr. Edie Keatina, Palo Alto: Hello. I am hopeful that the scope will include information for the
public and for the Council, the ultimate decision-makers, about the nature of the services that the
Stanford Hospital provides. I would like to know the geography of who is served there and
treated there, are they local or are they far away? I would also like to know some about the
income and the charges and to what extent are Medicaid patients served and how many are
served? When ambulances arrive at Stanford do they accept everyone or not? l am asking all
these questions to have the information to see how much of a public benefit the hospital is truly
providing.
I think that part of the reason for that is l have heard many members of the public and it is my
general understanding, you can correct me later if I am not correct, that the normal impact fees
that we would expect from commercial development are up for consideration here, somewhat to
be negotiated as the project goes along. The extent to which Stanford is serving the uninsured
and the extent to which Stanford is providing for some people of lower income affordable
healthcare is relevant in my mind to considerations of should we be waiving fees for the
University as they ask for these increased development rights. So I would like that documented.
Also I think it has potential, I can’t give specifics on this, but as a potential mitigation to my
mind Stanford doing more than what it does today in a significant way to serve those who don’t
have private insurance 1 think that is something 1 would be interested in hearing about as possible
mitigation or as a possible increase in a sense in the public benefit that the hospital is providing.
I think l am done, thank you.
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Chair Holman: Thank you Ms. Keating. Tom Jordan is our next speaker to be followed by M.
Griffin.
Mr. Tom Jordan, Palo Alto: My comments are rather general. One alternative that should be
clearly studied, or it may not come through as an alternative but it should be made clear in the
EIR that the impacts that come from simply replacing the seismically required buildings because
logically if they simply replace the same square footage and so forth 1 don’t know why there
should be any impact other than that arising from the construction period. That is very important
because broadly in the public they really think that everything is because of seismic and it isn’t.
It is my understanding that all of the Children’s Hospital expansion is entirely simply expansion.
It has nothing to do with seismic. Most of the Stanford expansion is obviously something they
want it is not seismic. So that should be made clear however you do it as an alternative or
however you do it by, explanation or a chart as to what impact the public is going to be receiving
because of seismic work and what is simply because Stanford wants to be bigger.
The second think is 1 believe since this is an E1R it will fall short of truly giving you the
economic analysis of some these impacts and that is appropriate. But you should and of course
the Council will make the decision but you can advise them, the City is going to need an
economic analysis. In other words, we are going to need a dollar figure attached to these. I will
give you an example. To the extent it is traffic and there are intersection improvements and so
forth the EIR will tell you there need to be improvements, it might even suggest what they are,
but it won’t put a dollar figure on them. Before the City starts waiving fees or letting Stanford
build things that are going to cost a lot of money to the public there should be a specific dollar
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figure on it. So whether our Auditor can do it or you need a supplemental economic report but
there should be a dollar figure attached to these impacts.
Of course the next point is that there are some impacts that you really can’t attach a dollar figure
to. An example of that would be the impact on community facilities like libraries, recreational,
and so forth. It is hard to attach a specific dollar figure to that. Breaking the height, it is hard to
attach a dollar figure it is simply going to be broken. So you are going to need some
supplemental analysis on what are the appropriate mitigations and here the EIR firm simply
won’t have the local knowledge of what are the appropriate mitigations to make up for these
things that cannot be lessened and cannot be compensated by dollars, l don’t know how that will
be done but you should give some careful thought to it and definitely recommend that it be done.
Once again, before the community starts giving these pemaissions communities should know
what is going to happen to it, and what can be paid for in dollars, and who is going to pay it, and
what can’t be paid for in dollars, what is going to be done by it.
It is important to bear in mind through all of this because it gets blurred that the Development
Agreement Stanford has no right to. The Development Agreement - they do have a right under
California land use law for you to act on their application for land use. They have no right to
make you sign a Development Agreement. Similarly the Development Agreement has no
timeline. In other words, once they get their zoning and their permit to build they can meet the
deadline for seismic retrofit. The Development Agreement can follow. So just be very, very
aware that the Development Agreement, which is the document through which you are going to
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get most of your or all of your mitigations, does not have to be signed until you are happy with it
and it is not on the same timeline as their construction schedule.
Then just a few other short notes. It is very important because of the past history of some
friction between the citizens of this city and Stanford that this process be kept open fully and
beyond any suspicion of it being manipulated. It is very important because no one in the city
wants referendums but it will go that way if it appears that that this is a manipulated process. So
1 hope it is kept open by the City and by Stanford.
The last two comments are that the mitigations really must precede the impacts. That is not
necessarily this study but it is important to keep it in your mind and it may come out in the study.
Then it is very important to learn from Stanford’s experience with the County that
noncompliance by the applicant must have prompt, clear, enforceable consequences. Those are
all very, very important. The last point be a little beyond the EIR’s point but perhaps not. It may
go more over into these outside consultants or these outside advisors recommending things.
Thank you.
Chair Holman: Thank you, Mr. Jordan. Michael Griffin will be our next and final speaker. Mr.
Griffin.
Mr. Michael Griffin. Palo Alto: Good evening Commissioners. I would like to draw your
attention to the Stanford project’s community roundtable checklist dated June 21. 1 am in strong
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agreement with the key issues that are listed under paragraph B.
having to do with ....
l would like to expand one
Chair Holman: Mr. Griffin, is that on Transportation and Linkages or Land Use?
Mr. Griffin: Transportation and Linkages, thank you for that clarification. The item on new
grade separations, the one here on this listing of June 2! talks about specifically bicyclists and
pedestrians and l would like to add that we explore or the EIR explore automobile accessible
grade separations at the railroad tracks as possible mitigations to potential gridlock.
Also, l would like to, over and above this list, advocate for the EIR investigating solving the
issue of keeping Highway 101 source traffic and Highway 101 destination traffic out of the
Downtown neighborhoods specifically Downtown North. This would be over and above the
measures already in place and 1 am thinking ofphysica! improvements to Lytton Avenue for
example, signal light synchronization, and 1 am sure there are additional items that wil! be
explored by the traffic consultant.
I also have a question again relating to some of the remarks that Steven Turner made. I would
like to know where exactly on the City’s website members of the public can obtain a copy of the
application in preparation for the September 24 scoping meeting? l should say in addition to that
obtaining a hardcopy is that sort of thing available so that the public can do a better job of
prepping for the City Council presentation?
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Mr. Williams: Ill could just respond to that point. On the last slide you have there in that
presentation that was made there is a specific link to the website. So that will get you to the
project page and if you scroll down there is a section that has applications on it and breaks out
the application materials.
Chair Holman: 1 think Commissioner Burt had a question for Mr. Griffin.
Commissioner Butt: Yes. Michael, when you spoke about automobile grade separations were
you suggesting that we link Sand Hill and Alma?
Mr. Griffin:
separations.
l am suggesting that all of the railroad crossings be investigated for grade
Chair Holman: Okay. So Commissioners we have a number of ways that we can go here. What
I would like to suggest is we will of course have individual comments to make but it would be
nice if we could send a tidy little package to Council. So I think the list is going to be lengthy so
how best to encapsulate all that in the forn~ of a motion. Mr. Garber would you be able to be
note-taker? Cutis.
Mr. Williams: If I can clarify, l don’t think a motion is really necessary or appropriate. A
motion sort of implies that some things somebody said might not be relevant and everybody,
every comment is to be considered that you make.
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Chair Holman: So is it Staff’s intention then that every comment that will be made will be
forwarded to Council? What I was trying to come up with was some way of capturing those
issues at least that had a majority concern. Is it your intention to encapsulate, which would be
preferred, every comment?
Mr. Williams: Well, we are not going to as far as the Staff Report. The minutes would be
attached to the report to the Council so they would have the minutes but they wouldn’t have
something that necessarily summarized the comments.
Chair Hohnan: l guess where I am going is it would seem that it might be easier, as 1 read the
Commission’s role it is sometimes our role to best inform and maybe make the Council’s job
easier so 1 was thinking if we had literally a list of the issues that we raise, issues, mitigations,
alternatives that we raise that they could refer to that as opposed to fishing through minutes and
having to refer to those during the meeting. 1 am trying to find an efficiency here and maybe
Commissioner Sandas has that method.
Commissioner Sandas: I just have a suggestion. I am responsible, I am the liaison attending the
September Council meetings and I would be willing to work with Staff sometime between now
and then to kind of organize and encapsulate and 1 would actually make a brief presentation to
the Council before they start their discussion if that makes sense.
Chair Holman: That would be much appreciated, l see Curtis shaking his head in the affirmative
too.
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Mr. Williams: That would be great.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Butt.
Commissioner Burt: Maybe in this context it would be helpful if Staffwould again review what
the Council action will be in their scoping function. Maybe that will help give us some sense
and focus.
Mr. Williams: Right, their action or what we anticipate is that they will first take public
testimony, all the public comments as the comments we heard here tonight will be entered into
the record as issues to be addressed, alternatives to be addressed in the EIR. Then the Council
will individually make its comments as well. We don’t anticipate any motion or any action by
the Council that is not generally what we see. They will all have their own issues to get on the
table and will be considered by the EIR consultant as we get into the development of the EIR.
Commissioner Burt: So their comments will, like our and like the public’s, be reviewed in the
EIR process as essentially individual comments.
Mr. Williams: Right. This creates a laundry list of issues for us to be sure that we address
everything. Now if the Commission sort of at the end of your discussion would like to say
something like the three things we think are most important to address are A, B, C, l think that
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would be fine to try to do that to try to get at least that level of consensus to pass along to the
Council. Rob, did you have any other thoughts? You do this all the time?
Mr. Jeung: Nope, that is exactly the process we go through. 1 was just going to say that the
process Curtis outlined is essentially what we go through with most other communities. It is
intended to be an open forum so not only do we have the benefit of the minutes but both of us
take comments and notes. As we go through later and we begin to prepare the individual
sections of each environmental document we handout those comments to our team. We say not
only do you have to address the issues that we typically do as part of an Environmental Impact
Report but be mindful of these comments that you have received on this particular section.
Chair Holman: Great, thank you. Commissioner Lippert and then Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Lippert: I was just going to say and I don’t want to belabor this but Attachment A
that we received is a summa~ of comments that we made June 13 and July 11. It is arather
lengthy list. 1 think it is pretty clear and it breaks it up in bullet points that are easy to understand
when you are digesting it. So my assumption is that the list that we compile this evening will be
just as easy to understand.
Chair Holman: Great. Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: It seems to me that in some sense all of the comments that are made by
anybody including those that are submitted post the Council scoping meeting are considered as
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part of the preparation of the Draft EIR. But the term considered is an interesting one. We, a
couple of weeks ago went through a review of the Draft EIR for the Public Safety Building.
What happened there were some of the alternatives were explored in great detail and some of the
alternatives were explored in much more cursorily, quickly, sort of in summary form. So the
issue is how is the judgment made for which items are explored in detail and which items are
explored in summary form? I think that judgment is something for which 1 think the
Commission might wish to weigh in and the Council might wish to weigh in. 1 notice that in the
Draft EIR of the Public Safety Building that when the Notice of Preparation was put forth and
there were two alternatives that were considered that the two alternatives that were considered
subsequently in the process of preparation in the DEIR were not quite the same. There had been
evolution in that process and part of what we did in evaluating it is to make sure there were an
adequate number of alternatives that were considered so that a decision could be made ensuring
that all the alternatives have been properly vetted and that was what we were trying to do.
Because there is a judgment call of which ones have which level of treatment l am wondering to
what extent we will weigh in on that versus the Council weighing in on that versus Staff
weighing in on that versus the EIR preparation consultants weighing in on that.
Mr. Williams: That is one of the reasons why we are having this meeting is for you to indicate to
us what range of alternatives, what type of alternatives you would like us to look into, which you
did not have the opportunity to do on the Public Safety Building as I recall. That was not
brought specifically to the Commission it was an open session and we had very few people show
up to that scoping meeting. So 1 think number one, bringing it to you now and getting that early
input is important. Number two, projects and EIRs will necessarily evolve through the process.
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The alternatives are intended to address impacts that are defined and identified in the EIR
process. So we can generally know what some of those are going to be but we don’t really know
quite the magnitude of those and which alternatives might address them and which in the end
might not, and whether something changes in conditions that another alternative become viable
that we never would have thought of. So there is going to be that evolution but I think this is a
good opportunity for you to indicate kind of the range of alternatives you would like us to look at
and then hold us to that when we come back with a Draft EIR that we told you this is what we
expected and we have it on record now, which again is not the case with the Public Safety
Building.
Mr. Jeung: Maybe to address Commissioner Keller’s point in greater detail. When we invite
public comments in a venue like this we expect basically everything under the sun. A perfect
example is in terms of traffic analysis where someone might believe that a particular intersection
perhaps three or four miles away from the project site deserves to be evaluated and should be
addressed in the environmental document. When we look at each of these comments we have to
go through some sort of judgment and we have to exercise some technical knowledge about
whether or not we believe that intersection would be affected by the proposed project. We won’t
do that unilaterally. We will sit down with Staff and say here are two or three other intersections
that were suggested, based on our understanding of the traffic patterns in Palo Alto, the
distribution of where those trips are coming and going, and what the level of service is at those
existing intersections it is our judgment and we can demonstrate that it is really not going to be
materially affected. So that might be an example where we would go through this exercise and
come to the conclusion that even though someone suggested that intersection be considered we
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are not going to have it in the environmental document. There should be somewhere in the
record an explanation of how we came to that conclusion though so that someone isn’t left
wondering what happened to my suggestion, was the process flawed?
A second example just to further the point is on alternatives. A number of people can for
example suggest a reduced size hospital project or a reduced size retail facility. In our
discussions with Staff we may come to realize there are different ways of packaging some of
those different suggestions so that an individual’s specific suggestion of changing the location or
size of this particular building might be combined with other suggestions that in total represent a
reduced size alternative or a reduced layout for that particular portion of the project. So again
the individual may not see his or her specific suggestion but it will have been considered in how
we address those aspects in the environmental document.
Commissioner Keller: 1 appreciate those responses. 1 think that as l interpret one of the roles of
the Commission as a deliberative and recommending body is to partially vet these issues and
obviously since all the issues that are brought up by anybody will be considered one role that we
can do through a consensus process and perhaps by motion might be to identify specific
alternatives to be considered and identify specific mitigations to be considered as well identify
specific project goals that might be considered in greater detail and emphasis than the totality of
all of the suggestions and comments that are made. To that extent it might make sense for the
Commission to prepare a motion, l would like your thoughts on that.
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Mr. Williams: l think that is up to the Commission to make that determination but I would
suggest that you go through and make all of your individual comments first and then at the end
sort of see where you feel you are and whether you think that that feels appropriate for you to
make some kind of a consensus suggestion like that.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Garber.
Vice-Chair Garber: My sense of what this evening is about is for the Staff and the team to begin
to get an understanding of where the sensitivities are within the community of what has real
impact and what has lesser impact to the community and the things that they need to focus on
and spend time and energy on. The way that 1 understand that this information is being collected
that they are doing a series of different sessions with different parties to be able to consolidate
what those sensitivities are. Because of that, and 1 think our tasks this evening are to identify
gaps that may not have been addressed by Staff thus far, tell them where different pieces that are
being considered already should be emphasized, and then where it is appropriate to describe
ranges of alternatives or mitigations that might be appropriate. 1 am hesitant to try and
consolidate all that because we don’t know it all yet. I think we will get much more out of just a
sort of free-flowing sharing of ideas here because it is going to come together not only with our
comments but with others in addition. I would hate to get in front of that process.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
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Commissioner Sandas: I agree with Vice-Chair Garber in that respect. 1 would like to spend our
time this evening on the actual scoping details rather than spend two hours trying to figure out
how we are going to come up with a motion as we are often wont to do. So I think that our time
is better spent creating this list rather than trying to come to consensus because 1 don’t think that
is what you are looking for at this point.
Chair Holman: Did you have another question Commissioner Keller?
Commissioner Keller: Yes, just one quick thing. Since the three meetings that you were
referring to on the first three Thursdays of October are coming after the close of the scoping
period 1 am wondering how the issues that come up in those three meetings will be considered in
the process.
Chair Holman: Curtis.
Mr. Williams: First of all, my understanding of those meetings is that we have had six months of
defining issues and we are having this meeting now at which there may be some additional
issues. If something does come up during those meetings as additional issues to address we will
take them into consideration. They are early enough in the process to consider. 1 would be
pretty surprised if anything of real significance comes up there that we haven’t thought of you
guys haven’t enumerated already.
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The real purpose of those meetings is more to start exploring those issues and what possible
solutions there are and that kind of thing to start moving into this review process and getting
some ideas out there on the table for benefits that the community might be looking for associated
with those issues, and approaches to dealing with some of those problems that are identified
there more so than identifying issues at that time. I think we will have moved past that into a
stage of analyzing and proposing some or at least brainstorming some solutions and responses
and benefits that we might be looking for.
Commissioner Keller: Thank you.
Chair Holman: l have just one or two quick questions here. It was stated in the presentation that
alternatives must satisfy most project objectives. So in reading at this point in time a few EIRs
when alternatives are analyzed sometimes they cycle back to say that it is not a reasonable
alternative because it doesn’t satisfy the project’s goals. So how do we avoid that so that we
really can come up with true alternatives, but also alternatives that may be acceptable but may
not actually satisfy all of the project’s goals? How do we balance that so we don’t jus spin our
wheels in looking at alternatives that don’t satisfy most of the project’s goals? 1 know it is a bit
of a conundrum but I would appreciate whatever answer you can provide.
Mr. Jeuna: I will start off by saying it is a conundrum because we do have a number of
situations where a community for example will be very highly desirous of having a much smaller
project. The scale, the heights, the intensity of the development is in their minds too large for the
community. It gets into a real gray area of what constitutes a feasible alternative because there
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are a number of different aspects that go into feasibility. One of the inputs that comes in in
making that determination comes from the project applicant and they will come back and often
times say the suggestions that you have made we can under where the community is coming
from but that is not going to allow us to achieve our purposes.
One of the things that we have run into with hospital projects in particular is that there is a very
special body of expertise associated with hospital planning and making sure that you have the
right size facilities and the right adjacencies for various departments and services and programs.
That is why the City has gone on and engaged an independent healthcare consultant. So that as
we begin to develop these alternatives perhaps being responsive to the community, and the
public, and it is a smaller size facility, we may very well have a situation where Stanford may
come back and say we don’t think that is acceptable. We have the benefit of an independent
healthcare consultant who is saying there are ways that this can be done. That is exactly the
process we just went through for some other hospital projects. So it is very much a balancing
act. What you want to be able to do is read closely the objectives that have been identified for
the project, almost put yourselves in the shoes of the project sponsor and say can 1 reasonably
meet most of these project objectives with a different project? Can l accomplish those objectives
in a different way and benefit the community by reducing some of the impacts?
It does have a cycle-back effect, l will just give you one other example. For projects that
involve historic resources there is often a long, long tussle about saying we can adaptively reuse
that building without tearing it down and somebody can come back and say the cost of
rehabilitation and designing that to meet historic standards is very much burdensome for me as a
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developer and l can’t make that work. We get down into these very nitty-gritty details of internal
rates of returns and financial feasibility a lot of which almost has to reside with the Council in
being able to make that kind of a judgment to say well, l am hearing this from the applicant, it is
one of the pieces of information 1 am accepting, and 1 am hearing this other information from the
community. So, sorry 1 can’t be more definitive than that.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: 1 have a follow up to Chair Holman’s questioning. In terms of looking
at alternatives Mr. Jordan has mentioned looking at simply rebuilding the hospital with the same
square footage on the same site. Another alternative would be to look at building a new hospital
under the current development regulations and zoning. Then another alternative would be
looking at the rezone and the change in zoning. There are no development regulations for the
new zone, but what those might be. So would that be three alternatives right there?
Mr. Jeuna: Yes. One way to look at that is we have to evaluate as part of the environmental
document a no project alternative. The no project alternative has different components to it.
One basically necessarily needs to be done without expanding the facilities, very much what the
commenter said. That would mean what has to be done is seismic retrofit so there has to be
some upgrades to the facilities without necessarily any kind of expansion. So that would be one
dimension or one variant of a no project alternative. The other variant could be if the existing
zoning allows for floor area ratios or an amount of development that is greater than what
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currently exists on the site. So that would be a second variant of a no project alternative because
either of those two conditions could occur.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas, you had something?
Commissioner Sandas: Yes, l have a question. We are not at the stage where we are looking at
or discussing alternatives. All of us in this room are here to talk about things that are of concern
to us relative to environmental impact. As l am understanding it as you gather these comments
and thoughts and ideas for the next month give or take you will be able to incorporate those into
the alternative that Stanford is proposing, check and see whether what they are proposing is
going to work out, and then you will come up with alternatives if what they are asking is not
adequate environmentally. So we want to stick to the ....
Mr. Jeung: Yes, we want to stick to the program, which is basically for us to receive input.
Commissioner Sandas: Right, and talk about alternatives.
Mr. Jeun~: You are exactly right because the alternatives as we said earlier there are two
purposes. One is to as best we can meet the project objectives and second to reduce the impacts
that are identified.
Commissioner Sandas: Right.
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Mr. Jeung: We don’t know what the impacts are going to be until we go through the analysis.
Commissioner Sandas: We are working on identifying those impacts as we speak.
Mr. Jeung: Exactly.
Chair Holman So we are hopefully just about wind down this part of it but I think it is good for
us to get this information so we know what to expect and how to frame our conversation.
Commissioner Keller and then Commissioner Butt.
Commissioner Keller: In terms of understanding the project objectives or if you will the goals of
the project, and the size of the project let’s take a look at for example the Stanford Hospital.
They are talking about increasing it to somewhere on the order of 600 beds, an increase of about
one-third from the current number of beds. The question is whether that increase of one-third is
actually necessary and 1 am wondering is there is an evaluation of that. 1 notice that in Section 7,
page 2, that the increase in admissions of the Stanford Hospital is listed at six percent. So only
an increase of six percent in admissions on the other hand in Section 5 elsewhere it says an
increase of 12 percent of admissions.
Chair Holman: I think if I might, the hospital peer consultant will be evaluating those things.
Mr. Williams: That is not an issue that the EIR is responsible for addressing. It is whether the
project is necessary or not. That is an issue for the City, for the Commission, and for the Council
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to consider and that where their peer review consultant is aimed straight on towards some of that,
there is other information in terms of economic benefits and such that you will probably want to
know about that will factor in that, some of the things that Edie was mentioning before are
pertinent relative to that but those are not components of the Environmental lmpact Report.
They will very tangentially touch on some economic issues and the basis for the request is not
the job of the EIR.
Commissioner Keller: Well, to the extent that the EIR considers alternative projects and the
impacts of those alternative projects a project that would increase by say 10 percent of the
hospital rooms rather than 33 percent of the hospital rooms and understand the impacts of that
whether that kind of scope of project would be considered as part of the EIR, in other words
whether the process of the hospital consultant coming in and saying 10 percent is enough and
meets almost all the needs, would that as an alternative then be studied and understand all of the
impacts of that so that the Commission and the Council might have the opportunity to
recommend that?
Mr. Williams: 1 would suggest at this point that that is a good starting point to suggest how you
turn that around and make that a comment to us. That is what you want us to look at is
alternatives that do - we are going to look at alternatives that reduce impacts. So one of those is
logically, if we all assume that traffic is a major impact then the size of the facility is going to
impact that and so we may have that. So if you can tell us that you want us to look at a reduced
size alternative, if you want it to relate to something in specific that is fine, but I don’t think we
can continue having this kind of dialog about trying to answer those questions here tonight. We
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just want to hear from you what those issues are so we can take them down and get on with
analyzing them.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt, did you have a question or did you want to start with your
comments?
Commissioner Burr: 1 want to ask a question. So as I have listened to the statements regarding
the limitations placed upon alternatives that they must meet the project goals and objectives it
returns me to the importance of making sure that we have clarity on those goals and objectives.
Do we have an update other than what was in the June 27 Area Plan Draft Update, Attachment B
at that time that defines what in this report is using what 1 think of as a synonymous term of
objectives and it was stated goals? 1 want to make sure that we are on the same page there that
goals and objectives are the same thing and then what are stated here as the objectives that are
those agreed upon between the City and Stanford, those that are Stanford’s objectives, and those
that are the City’s objectives. Does this still summarize the goals by which we will look at
alternatives as being feasible?
Mr. Williams: I think you made some tweaks to that and we haven’t completed those yet. l
think substantively yes that those do. What 1 want to say as far as goals go is that we do need to
consider what the City’s goals are as well. l know Rob and Trixie have dealt with this issue
before but we will see the best way to get that worked in. Sometimes there is a separate list of
these are the City’s project goals and these are the applicant’s project goals. Sometimes they get
meshed together but we do want to be sure that all of these are considered.
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Commissioner Burt: So as it was stated to us a few minutes ago alternatives are only viable if
they meet the applicant’s goals. If the applicant’s goals --- is that not the intention?
Mr. Jeung.: We are sort of getting into a lot details.
Commissioner Burt: To me this is not detail this is fundamental conception.
Mr. Jeung.: I think the actual language says that the alternatives should feasibly obtain most of
the project sponsor’s objectives. So you don’t have to meet all of the goals you just have to
demonstrate that you feasibly obtained most of them.
Commissioner Burt: That is a different standard than what 1 heard a few minutes ago and I by no
means consider that a detail. That is fundamental. So if there is a conflict between the City’s
objectives and what you just stated as the sponsor’s primary objectives, 1 forget you exact
language, what occurs if there are alternatives that don’t meet that threshold for the applicant and
meet the objectives of the City are those alternatives dismissed from consideration?
Mr. Jeung: It is hard for me to anticipate at this point how those are going to shake out.
Typically when you go through the alternatives discussion you will consider a whole range of
different alternatives. Those that best satisfy the project sponsor’s objectives, the City’s
objectives are typically the ones that get carried forward for the analysis compared to the
proposed project. There is another section of the environmental document that talks about
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alternatives that are considered but withdrawn or rejected. So that may be a repository for some
of the those alternatives that are suggested through a process such as a scoping where it ends up
as something that has been withdrawn or rejected because it doesn’t satisfy certain objectives.
Just like with any kind of a development project when your Staff puts together a Staff Report and
talks about how consistent that project is with the general plan policies or goals typically in our
environmental documents we will include a discussion of how we!! a project conforms to the
various goals and objectives. So for those alternatives that get carried forward and are evaluated
there will be a table that says here are the five or six City goals and here are the five or six
project sponsor objectives and here is how each of these different alternatives fare against those
particular objectives. Again, the purpose is really to provide information to the community and
to the public. It is not to say this one does the best job of meeting these goals and objectives and
therefore should be accepted. It is part of the information package that goes onto the decision-
makers so they know the environmental impacts and how well it conforms with those objectives.
Chair Holman: What l would like to do is move onto comments, lfthere is something really
major then okay, but l would like to move onto making comments. 1 will start with one and you
don’t need to respond to this. It is my view of this. Just nod your head yes or no, Curtis
Commissioner Lippert: He has to respond verbally, it has to be on the public record.
Chair Holman: This is true. I would suggest that we shouldn’t limit what we perceive as
alternatives based on whether we think it satisfies the goals or not because there will be a
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determination of that. If it comes back that something is deemed as not a feasible alternative we
can certainly take issue with that. So if that maybe puts this to bed it is an excellent question and
I think maybe we can ....
Mr. Williams: Yes.
Chair Holman: Okay. We are going to go to comments.
Commissioner Keller: Can l ask two questions about baseline?
Chair Holman: We will get to that.
Mr. Williams: l think that is a comment ] don’t think it is a question.
Chair Holman: Okay, we will get to that. So what l would like to do is go round robin here and
everybody make two or three at the most comments at a time, and these are comments we are not
looking for responses. This is input to Staff and consultants on preparation of the DEIR.
Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: lfyou will excuse the pun, the most obvious one which is the height of
the proposed new structure. I am speaking specifically of the medical center tower and where
those visual impacts are going to be seen the most from. 1 think that could be done in a radius of
various distances from the proposed tower.
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The second one is looking at your presentation here it talks about an increased number of
employees for the medical center and then also for the shopping center and those are not meant
to be that all those employees are coming there at the same time. So I think an understanding of
at what hours the flow would be.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
Commissioner Sandas: So we are allowed two at a time?
Chair Holman: Two or three.
Commissioner Sandas: Okay. One the things that concerns me greatly is the traffic conditions
and parking, existing parking and the parking demand, l am wanting to make sure that the
investigation includes parking in the neighborhoods especially the neighborhoods that have
access to the Marguerite. That would include Downtown and College Terrace, and 1 am
assuming to a lesser extent South Gate and Evergreen Park.
Tangential to that is I would like clarification, l have heard what l believe is a rumor that
Stanford pays people not to drive their car on campus. So if that is true there is an incentive not
to put your car on campus and it is also an incentive to put your car in the neighborhoods. So 1
would like some investigation of that.
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I also am concerned about - I note that you are looking at available housing in commutable areas
it sounds like to me and you are looking for potential shortfalls. 1 am wondering what kind of
mitigating measures you will be identifying considering that Stanford is pretty clear, at least
from the last meetings we have been to, they have been pretty clear that they aren’t interested in
providing housing. 1 believe that housing near worksites has a different kind of an
environmental impact but there is an impact of housing versus traffic. With housing comes
traffic because people drive their cars home but it at a different way. So I would like to see how
traffic of greater residences on campus compares with the traffic coming from outside of the
campus. 1 would like to be pretty clear that we need to - 1 am pretty clear that you are going to
find that there is a need to develop more housing, l know we are not coming to conclusion
before the end but it is my intuition that is telling me that and l would like to get some
information on that.
Additionally, in ternas of the housing one of the things I think we have a real problem with in our
community as a whole, and I think that it would translate very easily to the hospital and medical
center area and that is not only is there a need for lower income housing, and we are really good
at building housing for higher income people but there are people of middle income who will
also be working on campus as well l would assume, my intuition is telling me that. So 1 would
like to know about that. 1 am done.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Garber.
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Vice-Chair Garber: I will take two. First ofatt l would like to emphasize and/or add to the list
any impacts that may occur to the creek that is essentially adjacent to the project site. No sense
about what the mitigations are I just don’t know if the impacts have been evaluated and that
should be in there if they have not been already categorized.
Another potential issue is the amount of material that will be generated through the demolition.
Obviously there are many requirements for mitigations regarding that but there are also
opportunities for reuse, which 1 think deserve emphasis and attention. Those are my two and l
will come with more.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: Thank you. First 1 think 1 will correct Commissioner Lippert’s pun, it
was the highest impact is the height. With respect to Commissioner Sandas it is true that
Stanford does pay money or incentives for not driving onto campus and that is partly to do with
the Stanford GUP.
My two comments are regarding baseline. 1 believe that the baseline should be based on 2006
when Stanford started the discussions with the City for this project and should not start from
2007 but should really be from when the process started of this whole Phase 1 and Phase II.
Secondly, that part of the justification for this project was based on numbers based on the 216
beds at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, which is the amount that currently exists. I have
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seen a bunch of numbers about 257, which is authorized, and in fact an additional number of
rooms are being built now but they are not in service. The baseline should be on the 216 beds
not the 257 beds.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt.
Commissioner Burr: I wanted to ask that we have an evaluation of the proportion of the increase
in parking to the increase in beds and staffing, really the proportionality of all three of those
things. As we increase beds how many additional employees will occur versus the current bed to
employee ratio and how many parking spaces are being proposed versus the current ratio of beds
and employees to parking space, l heard l believe the Stanford representative in the public had
said recently it was only their intention to increase the parking in proportion to the project. My
concern is that that’s not one of the City’s objectives. Our objective is to minimize that impact
not allow proportionate increase in parking and trips to the beds and square footage increase.
1 would also like to make sure we look at the trip impact of the hotel separately from the other
retail in addition to being separate from the medical center development. That is both total trip
impact and peak hour trip impact.
Chair Holman: Okay. l will jump in with phased impacts. This is going to be I presume a 20-
year Development Agreement so how will the mitigations be linked to - I think it is akin to what
Mr. Jordan said, how will the mitigations be linked to the impact? In other words, so we don’t
have a project that is built one-third of the way out but none of the mitigations are put in place.
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So how those can be linked and also measuring those phased impacts and how that might be
possible at this stage.
The village concept that the Commission had supported before l would like a project alternative
to be to consider the village concept with a mix of uses including schools. Commissioner
Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: In your presentation you measured increased ambulance trips. Those
should be identified separate from traffic impacts, specifically what 1 am getting at is that what 1
am interested in looking at what are the routes that ambulances take, the actual routes that
ambulances take not the ones that they say that they are supposed to be taking, and the frequency
of those routes. Just as a thought it might be possible to actually track those routes using GPS
technology today. So they could be monitored without them knowing that they are being
monitored.
The other one is Governor’s Lane. It is an identified asset to the community as well as Stanford.
I think that as well as the historical impacts the Governor’s Lane needs to be looked at in terms
of its significance.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
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Commissioner Sandas: To piggyback on the ambulance issue since there will be so many more
ambulances there will be a lot more noise and I would like to know what some of the mitigating
measures from sirens will be put in place and the same thing with the helicopters as well.
Since we get two questions at a time 1 will ask another one. These noise issues about
ambulances and helicopters reminds me to ask you about the project’s contribution to global
warming. How is that measured? l know that is a question but if you can offer up an
explanation of how contributions to global warming are measured, l know number of airplane
trips that people take contribute to some measurement of global warming. So ! would like to
know what the impact more helicopters would be.
Chair Hohnan: Commissioner Garber.
Vice-Chair Garber: l don’t have the images in front of me but the layout of the two potential
hotel sites and its adjacency to the parking in particular the parking structure itself takes up a lot
of footprint. If that has an impact relative to the usability and accessibility of the overall
Stanford site evaluating what those impacts are and potential mitigations in my mind can range
from different configurations to taller buildings to create smaller footprints to parking
underground, who know.
The second one is in the same line, and that is that there is significant area taken out by parking
and parking structures. We know that the potential for additional retail demand to occur not only
in the near-term but the mid-term and the long-term is probably high. To what extent does
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putting a non-retail use on that property, parking, inhibit that potential opportunity for the City
versus finding other places for that parking, again building higher, building under, what have
you.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: First I think that there should be a no net new trips requirement on these
projects and credit for reduction of trips should be allowed by expansions of shuttle services so
that taking cars off the road in Palo Alto would be credited against cars added to the road from
the shopping center and from the medical center, l think there are a lot of opportunities for doing
that.
The second thing is that as much as possible the financial obligations of the City as a result of
these projects, the impacts on them financially and service-wise to the City should be minimized
or mitigated as much as possible.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt.
Commissioner Burt: We have both an increase in number of beds and an increase in square
footage per bed because of changes in the nature of hospital services. Can we have a breakdown
to clarify whether the increase in square footage per patient translate into increase in employees
and an increase in impacts separate from the impacts that occur as a result of additional beds and
the commensurate increase in employees from the additional beds? So breaking up those two
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aspects of the hospital growth, the average room size versus the number of beds, and do they
each have an impact?
Also, l still didn’t see something that 1 think I had asked about previously which is under
Historic Impacts, the consideration of the impact of the demolition of the Stone Building.
Chair Holman: Okay. One on noise. There are a lot of potential noise impacts here from
equipment to helicopters to road traffic, all manner of possibilities there. Ambient noise is
something 1 am as concerned about as I am onsite impacts. So what 1 would like addressed or
evaluated is the ambient noise compared to today not the ambient noise compared to what may
be acceptable for an urban area, which is what 1 have seen stated in some EIRs. So 1 would like
it compared to what exists today.
As far as utilities are referenced and utilities are certainly going to be impacted, l would like to
see consideration as a mitigation of water reuse, water reduction measures, and as far as energy
is concerned about generation of energy onsite. Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: Yes. I think that Chair Holman started on something that I was getting
ready to add on which is an analysis of under current Title 24 there is energy use of a building
and that is easily calculated based on square footage and what is permitted. Since the new
medical center is going to be considered a LEED Certified building it would be helpful to know
what those baseline standards are but also then in evaluating what those LEED standards are in
terms of coming forward. The reason is that 80 to 85 percent ofa building’s lifecycle costs are
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really in the operations of that building, the energy usage, etc.
had to say was very important.
So I think what Chair Holman
Then also, 1 don’t know if it is appropriate here but I think it is worth considering or thinking
about, is co-generation. Co-generation is the reclaiming of energy that is spent off from a
building, l don’t know if people know it but Stanford l think has a program right now where
they actually chill or refrigerate or make ice at nice which is used in cooling those buildings
during the daytime.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
Commissioner Sandas: 1 wanted to just piggyback on what Commissioner Keller had mentioned
about generating no net new trips. I think 1 saw in another document somewhere that that was I
think actually a goal. So I would like the EIR to address a plan for how the increase in the
number of employees, patients, and shoppers. I would like to see some plans for no net new trips
and an increase in employees, patients, and shoppers.
The other thing is I still have my needle stuck in the traffic. An existing traffic conditions
analysis is being prepared documenting traffic counts at AM and PM peak hours. Now, l know
that Stanford is required to do that by the County and I am wondering if this is going to be
handled separately. Is this something that the consulting teams are going to be doing? I would
like to see that, the consulting teams doing that.
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Chair Holman: Commissioner Garber.
Vice-Chair Garber: At the moment much of the retail that is in the shopping center there are four
buildings which are just off of E1 Camino, there are three buildings which are on El Camino. My
question is what impact does that do to the support of the streetscape of El Camino? Elsewhere
in the city we have requirements for getting buildings closer to the street as opposed to further
away to support that streetscape and the life of that street. Are there impacts that result from this
approach that should be mitigated or alternatives pursued that would mitigate those impacts if
those impacts were there?
An emphasis on the traffic, much of the conversation about traffic has been about impacts to
surrounding neighborhoods be they parking or be they cut-through traffic through the
neighborhoods. Presumably there could be impacts that go beyond those immediate adjacent
neighborhoods that could impact traffic that comes off our major conduits from 101 or down
from 280. What those impacts are would be good to know if they exist and what mitigations are
possible to be enacted.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: In follow up to something Commissioner Burt said I understand that
Stanford Medical Center has said that there would not be an increase in nurses or doctors as a
result of right-sizing the patient rooms but there would be an increasing number of patient rooms.
I also noticed that there are things like cleaning rooms, there are people who clean rooms and 1
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assume that the number of people who clean rooms is based on the square footage that they
clean. So I would expect an increase in number of orderlies and cleaners and people like that at
least. That figure cannot be zero. So there are some assumptions in there that 1 question.
The second thing is I would like to with respect to something that Vice-Chair Garber said about
expansion of the shopping center at some point and also about the impacts of the shopping center
parking is to consider when new buildings are being built to put underground parking which
would certainly be feasible for at least for worker to park, people who work in the shopping
center could park there even if shoppers don’t like parking there. That would allow for less
visual impact and also would allow for more flexibility in terms of future development in the
shopping center.
Also, one of the things is that with the increase of the shopping center and the increase in size of
the medical center there may be an increase in energy and water use. The impact of the increase
in energy and water use may impact the City of Palo Alto utility’s ratepayers as a result of
increasing the incremental energy and water that they have to buy. There is a certain amount of
water that city gets and we buy energy through long-term contracts and to the extent that the
energy exceeds those long-term contracts and the City of Palo Alto has to buy on the spot market
to accomplish that or to the extent that the water use exceeds the amount of our water allocation
and that results in penalties those impacts on the ratepayers may exist.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt.
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Commissioner Burt: 1 actually have a question that would help guide me on whether I need to
make some additional comments. As 1 have gone back and forth between the June 27 Area Plan
Update and the summary of our comments from our June 13 and July 11 meetings 1 am having a
little difficulty being clear in what is already intended to be included and what we need to
comment on. 1 don’t want to be repetitious of what Staff already has identified but 1 am
struggling. 1 will give you just one example. In the June 27 Area Plan Update on page 1.12
there is a box that includes two Comprehensive Plan polices and Comprehensive Plan program.
The third program has to do with an assessment of school impacts. 1 was searching and l
couldn’t find where Staff had stated clearly, although 1 assume it is the intention to look at school
impacts if this project generates demand for additional housing in Palo Alto and increases the
ABAG mandates in the future in Palo Alto then are those school impacts intended to be studied?
So this is first a clarifying question and if I get an answer to that then 1 can know whether l need
to comment. So is that already the intention and l am just not finding it?
Mr. Williams: Yes, it is part of the Community Services in our Staff Report. Part of that is
police, fire, recreation, emergency response, etc.
Commissioner Burt: Is that the Staff Report from June 27?
Mr. Williams: Today’s Staff Report. It talks about the various impact categories. The one with
Community Services includes the schools as part of that analysis.
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Commissioner Burt: It is not clear whether that is referring to direct or indirect. This project
generates no housing. So 1 don’t have any clarity as to whether the intention is to look at the
indirect impact or just the direct impact. This project will have zero impact directly on
generation of housing and consequently the impacts of that housing but it may have tremendous
impact on the indirect. So that Staff Report doesn’t answer the fundamenta! question.
Mr. Williams: Rob can correct me if I am wrong but we are required to look at indirect impacts
if we identify a certain housing need we need to also discuss at least at a program level what
those impacts are on services or traffic or whatever the potential is if those primary impacts are
generated. So there is a level of that, l can’t tell you right now what would be, and also we have
some restrictions by state law about how much we can get into schoo! impacts as l think we have
talked about before. It tends to relate to whether actual facilities are necessary but it also
generally there is a lot of latitude provided in state law that as !ong as schools have the authority
to require impact fees so there is a certain level of CEQA analysis that isn’t as rigorously
required as in other impact categories too. We certainly will add that to our consideration to look
at the indirect impacts of potential housing generation on schools.
Commissioner Burt: So is it already the intention that if this project would cause a future ABAG
mandate, not the pending one but a future one, for Palo Alto to rise that you would have already
anticipated that as best as possible and included the impacts on community services and housing
as part of the impact of this entire project? That sounds like you are two steps removed from the
direct impact of the project and yet it may be among the most significant impacts of the project.
So I couldn’t find anywhere in any of the documents that answered such a fundamental question.
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Mr. Williams: Well, 1 think we need to address it. 1 don’t know right now and the ABAG thing
is a very big issue. We are trying to address the whole issue of how do these projects fit into
ABAG and that is another hour discussion to try to talk about where we are with that. I think we
can look at that and see. We can to some extent address those indirect impacts at this point l
don’t know how far we can go with that there are some limitations.
Commissioner Burr: My other question is when you refer to any limitations on school impacts
when we have a Comprehensive Plan program that is explicit that says an assessment of school
impacts prior to the approval of development projects that may require legislative acts, which is
exactly what we are looking at here, and that is in the Area Plan draft. Are you saying that from
that standpoint there are no limitations on our ability within this plan or our authority within this
plan to include school impacts as part of the environmental impacts?
Mr. Williams: l can’t speak to the legal authority of it but I can say that that is apart from the
E1R that even if the EIR doesn’t do that we should be doing that and assessing those impacts as
part of this. Now we may have some limitations as to how much we can require based on some
state laws still but we should be doing that analysis if not in the EIR then we should be doing it
separately.
Commissioner Butt: Okay, and because of the complexity of my clarifying question I won’t
even offer any comments.
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Mr. Williams: If I could just mention one thing. This discussion, actually before Pat brought
this up, I was thinking about the fact that you have the Area Plan, you have these documents we
handed out to you today, and I think it would be appropriate as part of your input to at least note
that by reference you are incorporating all of the issues and suggestions that you made in those
documents in the record basically as part the issues we need to discuss here. So you don’t have
to go back and reiterate all of those or feel like they are going to get lost.
Chair Holman: So noted. It was on my list so thank you, Curtis. Air Quality, pretty much akin
to what I said about noise. All the vehicles, no matter what kind of vehicle they are going to
have potentially some kind of air quality impact, helicopters certainly, and again I know the
requirements of an environmental document are to put it in technical count and that is
appreciated. If it can also be addressed in ways that could say what the environmental impacts
are relative to -asthma is a huge issue. So how that might relate to those people who are
respiratorally challenged, let’s say. So that is one.
The effects of any proposed annexation should be addressed. You know what the range of those
could be.
Also, this one I am not going to look for an answer necessarily tonight but separate from the
project there can be impacts as a result of Development Agreements. There might be something
agreed to or potentially agreed to in a Development Agreement that could have an impact that
isn’t analyzed because it is not part of the project. So 1 am not sure how to get that in there but 1
would like to see that those are included. With that I will pass it onto Commissioner Lippert.
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Commissioner Lippert: l am going to take a couple of steps back to go back to alternatives, l
think that when it comes to the Stanford Shopping Center and the parking lots there an
alternative might be to look at reduction of parking spaces and look at market rate parking. So in
other words it is paid parking and the paid parking offsets additional public transportation or
subsidizes additional shuttle buses. That is one aspect.
Then another piece of information 1 think would be particularly helpful but I don’t know how
easy it would be to come about is an understanding of where current employees of the Stanford
Medical Center currently commute from. That would be done geographically based on zip code
and you might congregate zip codes if it is from far off communities.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
Commissioner Sandas: In our next iteration l would like to see a pretty clear estimate of how
many more people we are talking about. We are dancing around this issue. We don’t know how
many more people are going to be employed at either site and 1 hope that we can hone in on that
sooner rather than later because l think that is a guiding factor in determining most of the
environmental stuff. So l would like to see that.
Another thing is l am looking at the Cultural and Historic Resources section and there is going to
be a literature search and records check performed and analyses will be conducted for properties
proposed for demolition or alteration to deternfine whether they might qualify for state or federal
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listing as an historically significant building. I would like to have outlined what some of the
mitigating measures will be if the Edward Durell Stone Building turns out to be historically
significant. What then? Those are my two for now.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Garber.
Vice-Chair Garber: The area in the Stanford Hospital that is composed with the Children’s
Hospital at one end and the Foundations of Medicine at the other end has no major pedestrian
paths through it. l don’t know if that has impact in terms of providing and allowing access to
and through the buildings. It may be simply that whole complex of buildings simply absorbs and
expels people and doesn’t need to let them through but 1 really don’t know. It strikes me unusual
for such a large parcel at least in this diagram. So if there are impacts are there mitigations?
My second one has to do with the Hoover Pavilion. The original structure was built prior to
more modern ways of heating and cooling it and has a different planning strategy than is
exhibited by its proposed neighbors here. So this is, is there an aesthetic impact here? It is also
not clear to me one of the buildings could be understood as overlapping it. It don’t know if there
is any issue with it obscuring part of that building for some reason or if the planning of those
buildings had something more to do with the layout and the axiality of the Hoover Pavilion but if
those are aesthetic impacts the mitigations for them are probably fairly obvious.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Keller.
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Commissioner Keller: In order to mitigate or consider alternatives for the height of the hospital
consider whether four towers rather than three towers would allow the reduction by one or two
stories worth of patient rooms.
The second thing is it is unclear to me the distance between the newly placed emergency room as
part of the new hospital and the apparent no enclosed connection to the Children’s Hospital or at
least you have to go a long distance if there is an enclosed connection to the Children’s Hospital.
1 am wondering how pediatric patients that are admitted to the hospital would actually get from
the ER to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and 1 question whether the current plan
satisfies the objectives with respect to that.
The third thing l am going to say with respect to community doctors as you increase the number
of patient rooms there will be an increase in the number of doctors needed to serve those
patients, patient beds. Therefore those doctors will have to have offices somewhere. They will
have to commute from their offices to the hospital in order to serve the patients and the impacts
of where those doctors will be and how they wil! get between their offices and patients and then
back to their offices needs to be well understood. Thank you.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt.
Commissioner Butt: Given that this will be a long construction project 1 want to make sure that
the potential mitigations that would occur to minimize the traffic and transportation impacts are
looked at in a sequencing manner so that they also are mitigating the construction impacts at the
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same time. We, I think to date, have been talking about impacts after the project were complete.
We would have these mitigations that would reduce the impact of the new trip generators but we
have an interim phase which is the construction phase. So if we began those mitigations at the
inception then they would also mitigate the very long, we are talking about decade long,
construction phase.
Second, early on 1 had asked about hotel trip impacts. I neglected to include within that a request
that we look at the hotel trips that are generated or lack thereof when a hotel is located adjacent
to and serving a medical center. There are a number of examples that exist in the country and
iny sense is that the trip generation from that type of hotel is even lower than from many other
hotel uses because the occupants of the hotel often are either people attending medical
conferences or they are families of patients or they are outpatients of the medical center. All of
those are very low trip generators and we should look at that distinction when we look at those
trips as well.
Chair Holman: Alternative projects and l apologize if these have been stated previously by
others, a replacement project, a reduced project where some of the services are provided offsite
in other locations obviously those being two alternatives. Also, for something that
Commissioner Garber mentioned the Hoover Pavilion, again l am not sure if this is a mitigation
or an alternative but certainly one possibility would be to not surround the likely historic Hoover
Pavilion with buildings but rather move those medical buildings to another site and have one of
the open space components be around the Hoover Pavilion, those being two alternatives.
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Also, linkages, there are numerous. There is intra and inter and Commissioners have mentioned
some of these before in terms of intra and those all exist whether it be pedestrian, bicycle, by
way of vehicle and what kind of vehicle, all of those linkages need to be considered again within
the site and outside the site. One that particularly concerned me is where the parking garages are
located I am not really sure those would be used and so are we merely instituting the need for
some other means of vehicular transportation to get people from parking garages to the shopping
facilities.
Why don’t we go to 9:15 and then l could really use a three to five minute break. Commissioner
Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: In one of the previous hearings 1 had alluded to new technology being
used in medicine, l think today you can see that airports are basically 24-hour a day facilities.
All the planes are in the sky at once and they land in a city and they are immediately turned
around and sent back again. 1 think in terms of this facility one of the alternatives that would be
worth looking at is square foot reductions or an analysis of square foot reduction in terms of the
hospital being used 24 hours a day. l will give you an example, l was called up and asked to
have my MRI at 8:30 or 9:00 at night, which I thought was a bit unusual but that was a couple of
hours where they actually ran that machine at night. So with new technology and having surgery
done with your doctor in Mambi over the lnternet and you are in an operating room somewhere
in North America it isn’t unreasonable to look at an alternative of a reduction in terms of square
footage and the same facility being able to meet the demand by having a 24-hour facility.
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Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
Commissioner Sandas: I am just harkening back to a comment that Mr. Jordan made about
financial impacts. 1 realize we are not here to discuss that tonight so l am wondering if we have
a parking lot where we can put issues for the future. Do we? Can we?
Mr. Williams: Well, those are issues that I think also are on these other lists as far as you did
make comments about considering fiscal impacts on the City, fiscal impacts on Downtown, etc.
Commissioner Sandas: Okay, well under Community Services we were talking a moment ago
about the extent to which the project may trigger demand for additional City services. I can see a
demand for more schools and more City. services, etc. being a potential showstopper unless we
have some kind of fiscal impact report or something that explores alternatives to keeping it from
being a showstopper. So l would like to stick that in the parking lot for the future.
One other thing about the project alternatives. Alternatives that are mentioned are alternatives to
design to reduce or mitigate traffic, land use, visual quality, housing, and/or historic resource
impacts. 1 am sure you meant to but didn’t articulate that there are natural environmental
impacts like the air quality, the water quality, enough energy, enough water, using/reducing, how
we can minimize the use of resources, and what to do if we are losing some native trees in some
places. I know Stanford happens to be really good about their tree care and maintenance and
placement and replacement but 1 would like to see some mitigating issues for that. We are
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talking about global impacts, impacts on global warming, and I would like to see that scaled
down to the local project.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Garber.
Vice-Chair Garber: The Comprehensive Plan speaks to the use of the property adjacent to the
project area across El Camino between the project area and the Caltrain Station and its potential
use for any number of things, i.e., housing, performing arts, retail. 1 am curious if there are
impacts relative to the ~vay the projects have been planned that would reduce the opportunities
for the City to develop those areas. The obvious alternative to that is are there opportunities to
mitigate those that would create greater opportunity for the City to realize in the future?
Chair Hoh-nan: Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: Thank you. I think that in terms of right sizing the appropriate increase
of the Children’s Hospital and the Stanford Medical Center is to compare the proposed patient
bed increase versus the expected average daily census, the expected discharges, and the like, and
understand whether a one-third increase in the number of beds in the medical center and a two-
thirds increase over the current 216 beds in the Children’s Hospital before the current increase is
actually warranted based on the expected increase in census.
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The second thing is I would like consideration of the Hoover Pavilion as a hotel considering it is
about the same size as the proposed hotel and it is a gorgeous building and I think that that would
be a wonderful use for it.
The third thing 1 would say now is there are current rules for density for the Hoover Pavilion and
for the medical center. As I understand it we are at those limits. If the increase in buildings were
done at the currently allowed density more land would be required in order to accommodate that
increase in building. So one of the mitigations that can be considered for the increase in density
is setting aside the foregone increase in land required at the currently allowed density for that
amount of land that wouldn’t be used to be dedicated as open space either in the flat lands or in
the foothills to have an increase in dedicated open space in the foothills because the foothills
would be larger than that acreage, l think that that should be considered a mitigation for the
increased density.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt.
Commissioner Butt: 1 think it is time for a break.
Chair Holman:
right back.
1 would appreciate that.So we are going to take a four-minute break and be
Okay, let’s reconvene. Commissioner Burt, we left off with you.
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Commissioner Butt: Yes, there were two comments that I think l made at the last meeting one,
which 1 couldn’t find reference to in the Attachment A, and the other that there is kind of an
allusion to but I want to make sure is more clear.
So the first one had to do with as we looked at the energy impact of this development and all
related impacts from energy use. I wanted to make sure that the evaluation of the feasibility of
photovoltaic solar was being made based upon projected costs of or future costs ofphotovoltaic
rather than present. So if we are looking at a phase that is a 2015 or 2020 build anticipation we
have reasonable expectations based upon best current economic analysis of photovoltaic versus
fossil fuel costs in the year 2015 or 2020. We should be making our evaluation of the extent to
which photovoltaic or other alternative energy sources are integrated into the project design
based upon future costs not present costs. That could go into the entire building design model
and consequently 1 want to make sure that we are looking at it not backwards in our rearview
mirrors but for~,ards at where we reasonably expect these things to pan out.
The second there was a reference in the summary of our last meeting, the final bullet under
Chapter 3 talking about jurisdictional issues including transit and traffic. 1 want to make sure
that we were going into adequate depth there. We had looked at and l believe Stanford has even
spoken about a willingness to look at other ways, indirect ways, or not fully direct ways in some
cases that we can help mitigate automobile trip generation for this project. The ones that l was
alluding to are looking at how we might be able to pool resources on transit between the different
agencies that are currently providing transit in the area. Also to look at how better use of our
various transit resources of Samtrans, and VTA, and Marguerite, and Palo Alto Shuttle could
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work together more effectively and not only potentially go from East Palo Alto where many of
the service employees live who actually badly need transit, not just our looking at using transit as
progressive environmental approach but they also have a social need for it and an economic need
for it. To provide that transit not just to the hospital but all the way to the Stanford campus core
where we have a high concentration of jobs already. That is an under-served way corridor of
transit and that it may be a way to mitigate trips that are on this projects both a supply and
alternative for trips that would be generated here, and also mitigate them by continuing that
transit spine right into the core of campus. That is a long way of saying it but 1 wanted to make
sure that is fully evaluated.
Chair Holman: As far as the scope, as Curtis mentioned earlier, certainly the area of impact
could be much larger than certainly the Area Plan or the projects. So to be clear on that the
scope should include neighboring cities and both counties that are potentially impacted. In
regards to mitigations, mitigations might also affect a part of town that certainly is not adjacent
to the project. So when looking at mitigations and the scope of the project to consider the larger
area rather than the smaller area.
Since we are going to be looking at the CO2 and global warming issues as communities have
become more conscious, and needfully so, having to do with the long-range environmental
impacts 1 would like to say that design flexibility within the buildings should be considered and
looked at. 1 am not quite sure how to incorporate this 1 will leave it to you. Again, I am not
talking about the impacts for the next 10 years or even 20 years l am looking at the impacts
much longer range than that. So what is the projected life of these buildings? So what is the
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long-range impact? I know some buildings are built now and I have no way of knowing if it
could be done for these but I know some buildings are designed such that they could be taken
apart and reconstructed in other ways. 1 am not suggesting that but 1 am saying because we are
looking at long-term impacts consider that or certainly the flexibility within the buildings.
I will go onto Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: It is a relatively minor point but I just want to bring this up. Looking at
the documents that we received electronically, the maps here, between parcels 142-03-037 that is
sort of a mid-rise building between Sand Hill Road and Welch Road and parcel 142-03-008 there
is proposed new road in there that is connecting up. I think traffic impacts on that road are
important in terms of how that is fitting into the plan. Those two parcels are not in the study area
so to speak. They are not part of the EIR and taking that making that into a street easement or a
dedicated street does in terms of the development regulations for those sites is an impact that
should be at least looked at and understood. Those sites might be redeveloped in the future.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
Commissioner Sandas: 1 don’t remember if this was already discussed or asked but in looking at
the water supply and 1 would like to see what mitigating measures can be taken if the potential
demand is greater than the potential supply especially since we are in a drought now. We may
not always be in a drought but we can be in one again. I think that is it for me. 1 think my list is
done.
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Chair Holman: Commissioner Garber.
Vice-Chair Garber: l am passing.
Chair Holman: You are complete at this moment. Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: l would like to understand any potential closure roads in the future in the
vicinity of the project. 1 understand that Stanford is considering closing Quarry Road in the
vicinity of Campus Drive. If such closures occur what impacts there would be from such
closures, l think we need to understand Stanford’s time horizon at least the next 20 or 30 years
in respect to that.
When there is a shift change at the hospital at seven o’clock in the morning and three o’clock in
the afternoon arrivals occur before rush hour, the departures occur during rush hour particularly
when nurses stay late beyond their shift. 1 understand the seven o’clock in the morning shift can
end as later as seven o’clock at night, or a 12-hour shift, or an eight hour shift ends at three in the
afternoon, but a 10 hour shift ends at five which is smack in the middle of rush hour. So
understanding the departures of staff is certainly important.
Maybe it is too much to ask for consistency but l would like to see as much consistency as
possible in Chapter 4 of this medical center document. On page 2 it says that the Stanford
Hospital increase in admissions is six percent and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
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increase in admissions is 17 percent. In Chapter 5 on page 3 it says that the Stanford Hospital
increase in admissions is 12 percent and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital increase in
admissions is 14.5 percent. It is actually not stated but 1 calculated those numbers. So a little bit
of consistency would go a long way for really understanding what is going on.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt.
Commissioner Burt: I would like to request that we include an evaluation of some under-
grounding of the parking at the shopping center for the parking structure that otherwise 1 believe
would exceed the normal height limit.
This is not an EIR request it is just a sidebar request of Staff. Any time that we have a change in
the timeline for the project or for public meetings or for those sorts of things if the Commission
could automatically get an update on that.
Chair Holman: Visual simulations, which are part of this, 1 will do two things that have to do
with visuals. One is maps, the Commission has made numerous comments about the maps and
so what is provided as a part of the DEIR if it could follow these maps so people could really
track what the project is when reviewing the DEIR those changes to the maps would be most
helpful.
Visual simulations, it is terrific that we are going to have those and I think they should be
considered from - in this day and age what is possible with simulations I think that we should
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consider that they be provided for all sides. Also, for some of the taller buildings like City Hall,
101 Alma, those buildings that it is going to affect their viewscape going forward. Another one
having to do with visual is that these are quite large buildings and I have seen in previous
documents that it says that the mitigation for the large buildings wilt be that they will go through
Design Review at the ARB and maybe even sometimes even Site and Design at the Planning
Commission and Council but that is not always the case. So l would like a real determination in
the DEIR whether something could be ameliorated to be compatible with its surroundings for
instance through Design Review or is it just not possible? So I would like a realistic evaluation
of that. Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: Following up my last comment when 1 guess the cancer center was built
there was a very deliberate abbreviating of Lake Wilbur Drive. Lake Wilbur Drive was the street
that comes off of Pasture l believe and dead-ends into the new cancer center. The other approach
for it just brings you in off of Welch Road into a parking lot. l think that an analysis or a look at
circulation onsite through the medical center site is important and those relationships in terms of
patient entrances and drop off points.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
Commissioner Sandas: Yes, I was just briefly looking at a letter that we received today from Joy
Ogawa about the neighborhood parking. One of the things that ! wanted to say about that is that
it seems like we in the City of Palo Alto are stumbling a little bit on this idea. The City of Santa
Cruz has a very successful parking permit program especially around and near the university for
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this very reason. So I think that it would be wonderful in the process of the Environmental
Impact Report research, etc. to contact the City of Santa Cruz and see how they do it. 1 don’t
know, maybe the police department here in Palo Alto has already done that, 1 don’t know, but it
would be worth investigating.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Garber. Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: Yes, considering that housing built on Stanford land that is part of the
County does not count toward ABAG numbers for Palo Alto and that some of the housing that is
proposed under the Stanford GUP use in fact to mitigate housing impacts of medical center
increases and medical center employment that have taken place in the past to the extent that
housing is built on the Stanford campus we should consider whether that housing should be
annexed to the City of Palo Alto so that it can count toward Palo Alto’s ABAG goals considering
that it doesn’t seem like the County ABAG goals matter much.
The second thing is l want to reiterate something that has been mentioned in the past which is the
financial impact on the Downtown Shopping District of the expansion of the Stanford Shopping
Center should certainly be considered as well as potential impact on other shopping districts
within Palo Alto, California Avenue and Midtown in particular.
The third thing for now is when the Planning and Transportation Commission comments from
June 13 and July 11 where brought to the City Council in terms of Attachment A and Attachment
B, the City Council particularly endorsed Attachment A but did not specifically endorse
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Attachment B. l want to ensure that those items that are a part of Attachment B, which are dated
7-18-07, are specifically incorporated into these considerations in addition to those in
Attachment A that have already been adopted by the City Council.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Butt.
Commissioner Burt: Yes. My comments will be regarding pedestrian and bicycle circulation
and there is a Figure 3-7B that was part of the electronic copies that 1 am referencing here.
First 1 think there are actually still some omissions here. I pointed out at our last meeting that
there is an off-road bicycle path that is adjacent to the creek that does not appear to yet be
included anywhere on the map if I am interpreting it correctly. Also, the pedestrian only off-road
routes don’t include anything through the shopping center either present or future. Not only do
they exist today and they are used whether they specifically are used to connect all the way to the
medical facilities or only within the shopping center boundaries they are still valuable, l am
aware that you will see people who presently walk from the medical center areas and cut-through
between Welch Road and Vineyard to get to restaurants at noontime and in fact there is a marked
mid-block crosswalk on Welch and it goes through a circulation that is valued and heavily used
and it is not even on the map. This goes back to some of what Commissioner Garber was
alluding to is that it does not appear to me that all of the opportunities for improvements to
pedestrian and bicycle circulation have been identified, l would not only request that they be
included l would certainly strongly recommend that they be so as among the most cost-effective
ways to mitigate the automobile generation. If I were Stanford I would go like crazy to put those
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in and do as good a job as possible because doing that means that Stanford doesn’t have
potentially more expensive impacts that they have to mitigate a different way. So as we look at
what is probably the southern side of Quarry Road and the bicycle paths and pedestrian paths
that go off into destinations on campus and off campus don’t show an efficiency of their
direction even though they go through areas that are undeveloped and would have low cost to
create better paths that would not interfere with any existing development. So those are nay
comments on that.
Chair Holman: Having to do with demolition, which Commissioner Garber mentioned earlier, I
would also ask that we not overlook fill that is something that should be considered the impact of
and the potential mitigation. Air traffic at the Pa!o Alto Airport, 1 trust that much of the
helicopter use would be from the Palo Alto Airport and if that is wrong I am sure you will find a
way to do that but there could be an impact there having to do with if that airport gets overused
then people are going to start using other airports and they are going to be driving further. So
you get the drift there. Also having to do with traffic again, roadway erosion, more trips means
more roadway wear and there is an environmental consequence to that in addition to financial.
Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: It might be wishful thinking on my part but I think when you look at the
analysis alternatives of the shopping center one might be applying the auto dealer overlay on a
portion of that site. That might be one alternative to look at.
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One other impact that I think is crucial but it doesn’t happen frequently is the coincidence of
holiday shopping and Stanford games on Saturdays which have a tendency of colliding when the
stadium lets out and all the traffic goes up Arboretum Road and out to Sand Hill Road and out to
280.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Sandas.
Commissioner Sandas: All done.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Keller.
Commissioner Keller: When calculations are done with respect to where employees are residing
by zip code please divide 94303 between the East Palo Alto portion located in San Mateo and the
large portion 94303 located in Palo Alto in Santa Clara County. It is useful to understand how
many are in each portion and not lump them together.
With respect to emergency route access I would like to understand how ambulances are expected
to arrive at the new emergency room in a timely manner during rush hour traffic particularly
since the access route from E1 Camino is being changed from a four-lane road, two-lanes in each
direction, along Quarry to a two-lane, one-lane each way, along Welch Road and along Pasture
Drive. The congestion of those routes is something that 1 am concerned about.
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In addition, when you are considering that also consider mass transit and bus access so that buses
can travel more freely during rush hours and whether buses will get caught up in that congestion
and thereby tend to diminish commuters interest in taking buses.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt.
Commissioner Butt: Regarding construction impacts 1 think 1 brought this up at the previous
meeting but 1 couldn’t find it in the documents and that is evaluation of both the more favorable
environmental and perhaps cost-effectiveness of reuse of debris material onsite during
reconstruction as opposed to hauling offsite and all the ancillary impacts of doing that. l know
that is an increasing trend within the industry. 1 think that is my only remaining one.
Chair Holman: l have a few left here. Penneability, storm drains, runoffthose are issues that
should be analyzed as well as Vice-Chair Garber mentioned the creek earlier and the impacts on
it. I would like to specifically mention potential for flooding and erosion.
Housing is not just the housing demand but also the type of housing demand would be good to
know. Commissioner Lippert.
Commissioner Lippert: I have one last one and that’s it. With regard to the hospital tower
scheme looking at how many stories of the tower could feasibly be underground and specifically
those rooms that don’t require any windows for instance and whether the soil, the geology, will
allow for part of the tower to be submerged.
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Chair Holman: Commissioner Keller, do you have another?
Commissioner Keller: I have several. One is in the time horizon of these projects tele-medicine
will become more prevalent and the extent to which reduction in capacity might be allowed for
the use of tele-medicine.
Another is to follow up on a comment of Commissioner Burt about photovoltaic. The
consideration of putting photovoltaic covering parking in order to shade the cars there which
makes people happy as well as generating power.
One of the mitigations that can be done for school impacts is for Stanford to provide land for
schools. At one point in time there was another elementary school on the Stanford campus,
which l believe was replaced by one of the housing complexes on the Stanford campus near
Mayfield. So that should be considered.
1 think that Stanford should get credit for any increases in transit provided by Stanford as part of
the Stanford Marguerite - VTA - Palo Alto Shuttle study that is going to be happening in the
next few months. So I would be in favor of integration of the Marguerite and Palo Alto Shuttle
routes to the extent that is feasible and to the extent that that is cost paid for by Stanford,
certainly Stanford should get credit for that.
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l want to make sure that the Development Agreement provides for Site and Design Review by
the Planning Commission.
Chair Holman: We are getting outside the scope of the EIR scope and mitigations and
alternatives.
Commissioner Keller: Okay. Well me just say that make sure the Development Agreement
includes appropriate reviews downstream.
I would like the mitigations to include as far as the impacts on Downtown North traffic
improvements Downtown including the consideration of making Lytton into one-way towards
the University, towards Alma Street, and making Hamilton one-way the other way with timed
traffic lights and whether that would improve traffic circulation.
The impacts of excavation of anything underground plus foundations and the like. And also the
impacts of construction, a roadway where as a result of construction vehicles transporting
construction material and construction equipment and all that kind of stuff.
With respect to under-grounding I would like the consideration to the extent that either parking is
provided underground or places occupied by people is considered underground there are new
technologies including the ability to capture sunlight exterior to the building and pipe it via fiber
optics into a room so that you can have natural daylight in rooms without having windows in
those rooms. I think that is a potential mitigation for under-grounding.
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Chair Holman: Commissioner Butt.
Commissioner Burt: I don’t have any others.
Chair Holman: I think I have just a couple more I do believe. Waste management is referenced,
as the City has adopted a zero waste policy fewer impacts are felt by waste reduction. So that
could be a part of the scope. Waste reduction obviously reduces energy from recycling,
manufacturing, and transportation of materials and reduces landfill impacts.
I don’t know what the period of time of the Development Agreement is going to be l have been
presuming 20 years. I think that may have been mentioned somewhere along the line. I don’t
know what the timeline is that you wilt be addressing, l mentioned earlier about looking at the
longer-range environmental impacts so 1 guess maybe enough said about that.
Having to do with water supply it does say that development analysis, this is in the Staff Report
on page 7, it says develop an analysis of projected water supply for the next 20 years. As water
is often mentioned as one of the critical and foreseen most scarce resources 1 think we ought to
be looking at more than 20 years.
Commissioner Keller, did you have another?
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Commissioner Keller: Yes. lfyou look at Chapter 3 of the medical center document in terms of
background overall requirements there is a reference to California Senate Bill 1953 and it refers
to the hospital comprised of buildings 1959, 1973, and 1989 and there it refers to 1959 it has 188
rooms there that need to be replaced in its entirety and 66 intensive care beds that need to be
replaced and 21 operating rooms. So what l would like to understand is the degree to which only
those rooms would be increased and not replacing the entire hospital and allowing the newer
portions to remain and be retrofitted and perhaps locating a replaced hospital building in closer
proximity to the existing sort of fan shaped buildings so that it would allow for a continuity
between the Stanford Medical Center and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital which I think is
a good thing whether sites can be found for locating a hospital that would allow for that
continued contiguousness.
Chair Holman: Okay, seeing no other comments and 1 sure Commissioners can still submit
comments by email if they wish to, so seeing no other comments I think l neglected earlier to
close the public comment period so 1 will do that at this time. Seeing that no one is throwing
their hand up in the air, Curtis?
Mr. Williams: I would just like to suggest that what we can do is our consultants working with
Staff can put together a list of all your comments plus the ones that you made previously to be
sure they are all incorporated and then get the minutes from the meeting and work with Paula to
make sure we have everything covered, we can provide that to the Council and then you can like
you said summarize that for the Council at their meeting if that works for everyone.
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Chair Holman: Commissioner Keller, did you have one more thing?
Commissioner Keller: One more thing which was mentioned earlier but I don’t think it was
captured in any of the earlier documents which is the potential for connecting Pasture Drive all
the way to Campus Drive and Roth Way rather than having that connection go through an
underground parking lot, having it actually go through streets that connect. I think that would
improve circulation and might provide an alternative in the case of congestion for emergency
route access.
Chair Holman: Okay, with that we will close item number one. Thank everyone for coming and
for your patience, it was not a terribly long meeting, but certainly a detailed one. So thank you
for that.
We have no minutes to approve tonight.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: None.
Chair Holman: Do we have any Reports From Committees or Officials? Commissioner Keller.
REPORTS FROM OFFICIALS/COMMITTEES.
Commissioner Keller: I was at the VTA meeting last Thursday where they considered the 88 bus
route and other transit within Palo Alto. They decided to keep the revised changes as a result of
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the concept of operations. They decided that there would be a process of their staff would work
with the City of Palo Alto to consider revisions to bus routes within Palo Alto, a plan for
community bus service within Palo Alto based on the discussion between Stanford with respect
to the Marguerite, with the City of Palo Alto with respect to the Palo Alto Shuttle, VTA. I hope
that Samtrans is included in that but they were not specifically mentioned. Explicitly mentioned
by several of the members of the Board of VTA was the potential that there would be increased
funding provided by VTA for this increased service, l hope that this comes to a useful fruition
and 1 would welcome Stanford’s participation in that for benefit to all. I hope that the
Commission is involved in helping to shape this and as a focal point for public input with respect
to the timeline, coming up with a plan by December.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt.
Commissioner Butt: Curtis, given that that is an important transportation issue and we are the
Planning and Transportation Commission is there a plan to incorporate that within our schedule?
Mr. Williams: Yes, there is. I talked to Gayle about that yesterday morning and she said she
needed to work that in there would definitely be a public outreach component of that and we
needed to work the Commission into that schedule as well.
Commissioner Burt: And, it is also the intention to work with Stanford as a partner?
Mr. Williams: Yes, they are very integrally related to all of it so it is VTA, Stanford, and us.
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Commissioner Burt: Great.
Chair Holman: We have three or four things.
anything about the timing of that?
The open space outreach, do you want to say
Mr. Williams: Yes, we need to include a couple of Commission members on our committee.
We have several residents who have agreed to be involved and we will probably have quite a few
of them come at least to the initial meeting, a couple of open space organizations that will be
involved and we want to have a couple Commissioners involved. So 1 need to talk to the City
Attorney first and see if it is the kind of thing where the Director essentially requests of the
Commission to have two people on there as opposed to a formal appointment that you would do
to one of your standing committees or ad hoc committees. So l need to have that discussion with
them first. We are looking at probably having a meeting maybe the first week of October or first
or second week of October to start that.
Commissioner Butt: That would be an ad hoc committee not a standing committee, correct?
Mr. Williams: That would be a Staffworking group. 1 forget what the attorney’s title is. It is
not either one.
Commissioner Burr: Okay, but an ad hoc one nonetheless.
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Mr. Williams: Yes.
Chair Holman: Then the Report to Council, do you want to say anything about the status of that
and when to start?
Mr. Williams: Yes, and l didn’t get to meet with Julie to find out what her suggestion is for a
specific dates to get together. Roland has been working on pulling together a lot of the
information that we talked about. So 1 think we need to probably schedule something and we
need to know from you whether you want to have the same group of Commissioners work with
us or if you want to appoint someone different to work with us at this point. The first step we
would do is come to that committee and present the data and discuss some of the issues with
them before we put together an agenda for Commission and public input.
Chair Holman: This would commence this month?
Mr. Williams: Right.
Chair Holman: Okay. The previous committee and can we determine that tonight or do you
need to check with City Attorney?
Mr. Williams: I think you can determine that tonight.
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Chair Holman: Okay. Previously it was Commissioner Sandas, Commissioner Garber, and
Commissioner Butt. Are all of you available and willing to continue?
Commissioner Burt: 1 am less available these days.
Chair Holman: So Commissioner Sandas will continue.
Vice-Chair Garber: What would be the time commitment this month or next month, any sense?
Mr. Williams: It would probably be late this month and through the middle of next months a
couple of committee meetings and then needing to schedule something with the full
Commission. We are talking about maybe an hour and a half for each of those meetings.
Commissioner Sandas: 1 can handle that.
Chair Hohnan: An hour and a half may be a bit of an underestimate.
Mr. Williams: We talked about one committee meeting and coming to the Commission and the
Commission will take some more time obviously but the committee hopefully with the
information we have will put together some issues to present to the Commission.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Garber, are you available to continue on that?
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Vice-Chair Garber: Sure.
Chair Holman: Commissioner Burt, you have a fairly full plate.
Commissioner Burt: I would like to see if 1 could pass on that.
Chair Hohnan: Okay. We could have just a committee of two at this point in time.
committee of two would probably suffice.
I think a
Mr. Williams: You have a lot of other committees.
Chair Holman: We do. If it is agreeable to you guys let’s just stay with a committee of two.
Commissioner Sandas: Okay.
Vice-Chair Garber: That’s fine.
Chair Holman: The other thing having to do with this is that report, the structure of that report.
In other words, the structure of what we are doing has that been created yet? 1 know our minutes
came to us.
Mr. Williams: l need to talk to Julie about if she has made those changes and we need to get you
the clean document.
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Chair Holman: The document is what I am looking for.
Mr. Williams: Right, the document that you adopted basically needs to come back to you.
Commissioner Sandas: With the blanks filled in.
Chair Holman: Right, so that these guys can have that.
Then you all will be polled soon on a Retreat schedule so that should be coming up before long.
So think about what items you would like to have included in the Retreat.
COMMISSION MEMBER QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, AND/OR ANNOUNCEMENTS.
Chair Holman: Commission Representative to the Council has already been previously stated.
Commissioner Sandas has the month of September.
Seeing no other business we need to attend to Commission meeting is adjourned for this evening.
Thank you all very much.
NEXT MEETING: Special Meeting of September 19, 2007.
ADJOURNED: 10:05 PM
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