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HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 7603 City of Palo Alto (ID # 7603) City Council Staff Report Report Type: Action Items Meeting Date: 2/13/2017 City of Palo Alto Page 1 Summary Title: Retail Preservation Ordinance (First Reading) Title: PUBLIC HEARING: Adoption of an Ordinance Amending Chapter 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code Making Permanent Interim Urgency Ordinance 5330 (Limiting the Conversion of Ground Floor Retail and Retail Like Uses), With Some Modifications; Extending the Ground Floor Combining District to Certain Properties Located Downtown; Modifying the Definition of Retail; Adding Regulations to Improve Pedestrian Oriented Design Standards in the Downtown; and Related Changes. The Proposed Ordinance is Exempt From the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) per Section 15308. The Planning and Transportation Commission Recommended Approval of the Proposed Ordinance From: City Manager Lead Department: Planning and Community Environment Recommendation: Staff recommends that the Council adopt the attached Retail Preservation Ordinance (Attachment A). Executive Summary: To allow for continued retail protections following the expiration of the Retail Interim Urgency Ordinance in April 2017, the City Council has directed staff to prepare an ordinance that:  protects retail and retail-like uses from conversion to non-retail uses on a citywide basis;  expands the Ground Floor (GF) district boundaries to reincorporate downtown parcels that were previously removed from the district and to create a continuous ground-floor retail environment; and  adds design standards to the Downtown Commercial – Community (CD-C) (GF) district that support active retail uses and pedestrian-oriented ground-floor design. The attached ordinance would accomplish these objectives and is explained in greater detail below. City of Palo Alto Page 2 Background: This section summarizes the recent history of citywide and Downtown retail protections over the past 15 years, and direction on the proposed ordinance as provided by the City Council, Architectural Review Board, and Planning and Transportation Commission. Ground-Floor Regulations and Protections Since 2001 The GF district regulations and boundaries have been modified several times in the last 15 years based on changes in market conditions Downtown:  The GF district regulations were initially implemented in 1986. Over time, the district was modified to include a set of conditionally permitted uses in addition to the list of permitted retail uses, and to allow use exceptions when the vacancy rate for ground floor properties was 5 percent or greater and the ground floor space had been vacant and available for six months or more.  In December 2001, at the end of the dot-com boom, the City Council adopted an ordinance that prohibited the conversion of neighborhood-serving retail uses to office uses in Downtown and several other commercial districts. The purpose of the ordinance was to retain neighborhood-serving retail for residents, prevent the loss of sales tax revenue, and prevent the higher lease rates from office uses from driving up lease rates for retail uses.  In November 2009, amidst the recession, retail vacancy rates approached 10 percent Downtown. A 2009 ordinance eliminated the 5 percent trigger. Also, in an effort to concentrate retail activity in the core of Downtown, the City Council voted to remove the GF overlay on several parcels outside of the core that were identified as marginally viable for retail use: along Alma Street, portions of High Street (near Hamilton Avenue); along the circle ramps connecting University Avenue and Alma Street; and along Kipling and Cowper north of University Avenue. The purpose of these changes was to address concerns about the loss of revenue-generating retail. Additionally, the ordinance sought to retain a thriving retail sector by concentrating retail in higher foot traffic areas along University Avenue and the immediate vicinity and allowing more flexibility to lease ground floor space for either office or retail uses outside of the core area (i.e., outside of the GF district). (See related staff report: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/17614)  In April 2013, with the market having rebounded, the City Council voted to extend the GF boundary on Emerson Street (generally between Hamilton and Forest Avenues). The intent was to prevent conversions of retail into office use. (See related staff report: City of Palo Alto Page 3 http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/33817)  Subsequently, a 2015 interim urgency ordinance (described further below) was adopted in response to a net loss of retail square footage citywide over the preceding 15 years, in part because of the increase in office rent and demand to locate in Palo Alto, and the pressure this put on retail uses to convert to office. Interim Urgency Ordinance for Retail Preservation In mid-2015, the City Council adopted an interim urgency ordinance prohibiting the conversion of ground floor spaces used for retail and retail like uses to office or other uses (Attachment B & C). The ordinance, which will sunset on April 30, 2017, was intended to protect retail spaces from converting to other uses while the City developed permanent zoning amendments to enhance retail preservations. The interim urgency ordinance prohibits the conversion of ground floor retail use “permitted or operating as of March 2, 2015 or thereafter” to any other non-retail use. The interim ordinance currently applies to legal non-conforming uses, stating that such uses “shall remain… and shall not be subject to the change, discontinuance, or termination provisions of Chapter 18.70” of the Palo Alto Municipal Code (PAMC). The ordinance also applies to basements “currently in retail use or in use for retail support purposes,” and contains an exemption for “pipeline projects.” There are also provisions regarding “waivers and adjustments” (PAMC Chapter 18.85.104) which allow an applicant to request a waiver based on economic hardship by “showing that applying requirements [of the ordinance] would effectuate an unconstitutional taking of property or otherwise have an unconstitutional application to the property.” Recent Permanent Zoning Amendments Since the interim urgency ordinance was adopted, the City has adopted a permanent zoning amendment affecting the California Avenue Area (Ordinance No. 5358, adopted October 26, 2015) and closed a loophole affecting the Community Commercial (CC), Neighborhood Commercial (CN), and Service Commercial (CS) zoning districts (Ordinance No. 5373, adopted January 11, 2016). City Council Direction The City Council discussed proposed retail protections citywide and in the Downtown and the South of Forest Area (SOFA II) on August 22 and October 17, 2016 and provided feedback to staff’s proposed approach. At that time staff indicated its intent to present two ordinances to Council: one that addressed the citywide retail preservation objectives and a second focused on the Downtown. With respect to the citywide ordinance, staff communicated its intent to codify City of Palo Alto Page 4 the interim regulations with minor amendments that clarified certain provisions and to modify the waiver requirements. The purpose of this ordinance was to prohibit retail and retail like uses from transitioning to other non-retail uses, citywide. Regarding the Downtown ordinance, staff received specific feedback from the City Council which is summarized below: 1. Protect existing ground floor retail and retail like uses from converting to non-retail uses; 2. Clarify the intent of the “retail services” definition to specify the business be open to the public (i.e., no door buzzers) during typical hours of operation, and removed the exhaustive list of examples used to describe a retail use; 3. Maintain the mix of existing uses allowed in the GF district, but preclude personal services uses on University Avenue 4. Add regulations to the GF district protecting basements used for retail and retail like uses in the Downtown; 5. Restore the prior GF boundaries and re-designate parcels that were removed from the CD-C (GF) district during the recession; 6. Eliminate an existing provision in the GF boundary that allows 25% of the ground floor space not adjacent to the street to be used for other permitted uses; 7. Prohibit reflective glass and require window transparency for non-conforming uses in the GF district in the Downtown; and 8. Develop design standards that support active uses and pedestrian-oriented ground- floor experience Downtown (note: the Council did not support additional design standards for SOFA II). Since the Council meeting, staff concluded that merging the two efforts into one ordinance was a more efficient approach. Additional direction from the City Council not addressed in the draft ordinance is described in the “Subsequent Ordinances and/or Studies” section below. Council also directed staff to complete informal community outreach to get feedback on the interim and proposed ordinances. Staff conducted a series of stakeholder interviews as described below and maintained an electronic mailing list and project website to keep interested parties up-to-date on the draft ordinance, meeting dates, and ways to stay involved: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/depts/pln/advance/downtown_retail_ordinance_.asp. Additionally, the retail ordinance has benefited from several other parallel community outreach initiatives in the city, including the intercept surveys completed Downtown as part of the Downtown Cap Evaluation and the Citizens Advisory Committee assembled for the Comprehensive Plan Update. Architectural Review Board Direction City of Palo Alto Page 5 The Architectural Review Board (ARB) discussed potential design standards (items #7, and #8, above) in the CD-C (GF) district at a study session on November 3, 2016. Although the ARB did not take formal action, Board members generally supported the following types of standards/design features:  Encourage clear glass in storefront windows (vs. tinted or translucent windows) to increase visibility in and out of retail spaces.  Prioritize usable recessed areas in front of stores and/or entryways for outdoor seating and display areas, to support interaction between retail spaces and the public street.  Consider a minimum window transparency requirement (i.e., minimum length for openings—windows and doors—based on the linear frontage of the property)  Encourage pedestrian-oriented features such as public seating.  Continue to enforce the existing design guidelines in the Pedestrian Shopping (P) and Downtown Commercial (CD) zoning districts as well as the Downtown Urban Design Guidelines through the existing architectural review process. See ARB staff report: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/54498. Planning & Transportation Commission Action The Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) held public hearings over two meetings on December 14, 2016 and January 11, 2017. Some Commissioners expressed support for the draft ordinance, specifically the intent to prevent the conversion of retail spaces to non-retail uses as a way to protect and promote vibrancy in commercial districts. Other Commissioners objected to the premise of the ordinance as a way to support retail development and to the scope and scale of the community outreach process. In general, Commissioners were concerned that the ordinance presented too broad a reach and recommended additional analysis to focus and refine retail preservation and retail support policies at the neighborhood or district level. Additionally, Commissioners wanted to see a broader community outreach effort, such as subcommittee or stakeholder working group, to determine more specific policy interventions. Ultimately, the PTC made two formal recommendations to the City Council: 1. Recommend approval of the draft ordinance (with minor modifications, as proposed herein) and request that the Council direct the PTC to further study refinements to the ordinance, including evaluating non-viable retail areas that may be removed from protection in the new ordinance. (Passed 4-2) 2. Request that the Council direct the PTC to review the impacts of the ordinance with retailers and other members the community to get more in-depth feedback and suggest amendments to the ordinance after that time. (Passed 5-1) City of Palo Alto Page 6 (See PTC staff reports from December 14, 2016 (http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/55201) and January 11, 2017 (http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/55393). Excerpts from the meeting minutes are included with this report as Attachment E. On balance, Commissioners supporting the above motion, found the ordinance responsive to city council direction and the city’s retail interests. The dissenting perspective from the PTC included a strong expression of dissatisfaction with the public outreach efforts and frustration about the time constraint associated with this project to have a permanent ordinance in place prior to the expiration of the interim ordinance. This perspective favored allowing the interim ordinance expire in favor of a more robust community engagement effort to craft more finely tuned regulations that respected the different commercial districts in the city. The dissenting commissioners offered the second motion listed above which was supported 5-1 by the Commission. Discussion & Analysis: The draft ordinance is based on City Council direction, as described in the Background section above, and as modified by the PTC. (PTC directed modifications are described below.) The draft ordinance creates the following policy changes and/or makes permanent the existing interim urgency ordinance policies: (Analysis is provided in italics below and the subsequent subsections.) Citywide Measures 1. Modify the Retail Services and Personal Service Definitions: a. Remove the extensive list of example uses from the Retail Services definition and define it more generally as use open to the public during typical business hours that is predominantly engaged in providing retail sale, rental, service, processing, or repair of items primarily intended for consumer or household use. b. Clarify that personal service includes fitness and exercise studies, such as yoga or a martial arts studio (in addition to art and dance studios) and confirm that it is intended for an individual or small group instruction of 15 or fewer students/customers at one time. As directed by the City Council, this provision removes the extensive list of retail uses and focuses instead on the intent of retail uses to be open to the public during typical business hours and with sales and services for customers and clients. The broader definition of retail seeks to respond to the changing nature of retail in Palo Alto which is expected to continue to shift towards restaurants, services, and experiences. City of Palo Alto Page 7 Generally, the PTC and stakeholders supported the broader definition of retail to allow more flexibility in leasing and more diversity in commercial district offerings. These revisions also clarify that a yoga studio, and similar fitness related uses, of 15 students/customers is defined as personal service instead of commercial recreation, which requires a conditional use permit. This clarification is consistent with current interpretations of the zoning ordinance. 2. Protect existing ground-floor retail and retail like uses from converting to non-retail uses citywide: retail and retail like uses are interchangeable provided the use is permitted or conditionally permitted in the district. This provision continues the citywide moratorium on conversion of uses permitted or operating as of March 2, 2015, as expressed in the Interim Urgency Ordinance and applicable to all zoning districts. Projects in the pipeline as of this date would be exempt from the ordinance. The protections would be codified in the use classification tables of each zoning district with a note referencing a new subsection in Section 18.40 (General Standards and Exceptions) of the PAMC. Notably, and in contrast to the Interim Urgency Ordinance, this provision would only pertain to sites where the retail or retail-like uses are permitted in the underlying base zoning district. In other words, the ordinance would not apply to legal and non- conforming uses and primarily affects the CN, CC, CS, CD, ROLM, RP, GM, and RM districts where retail uses are permitted or conditionally permitted. The PTC suggested that these provisions could be further refined to address specific needs and dynamics of specific districts or neighborhoods. 3. Modify the waiver/hardship provisions to include a process that is less stringent than the constitutional takings standard used in the interim ordinance. The proposed ordinance provides two different paths for waivers, one of which would be applicable to each site, depending on its location. The ordinance would: a. Maintain the existing economic hardship threshold that requires demonstration of an unconstitutional taking in the GF and R-Combining Districts. b. Provide an opportunity to consider an alternate viable active use, requiring the applicant to provide the following evidence to be considered by the Planning Director, or referred to the City Council.  Provide a 10-year history of the site's occupancy and reasons for respective tenants discontinuing their use of the site;  Provide a map that indicates all the existing surrounding uses, both residential and non-residential, within a one city block; include the corresponding zone district on the map; City of Palo Alto Page 8  Provide analysis that demonstrates the proposed use will support the purpose of the zoning district and Comprehensive Plan land use designation, and will encourage active pedestrian-oriented activity and connections. In addition to the economic hardship waiver to demonstrate a constitutional taking, the proposed ordinance provides a second exception for properties outside the GF and the R combining districts. This exception offers property owners additional flexibility on sites where retail uses have shown not to be viable and where a proposed alternate use meets the intent of the base district. The purpose of the evidence requested is to understand the viability of existing and future uses on the site based on both the site characteristics and the surrounding uses; and to determine whether a substitute service, office or manufacturing use could be designed and/or conditioned to contribute to the goals and purposes of the zoning district. 4. Expand the GF district purposes in Section 18.30(C) of the PAMC to extend beyond use classifications and reflect a desire for active pedestrian-oriented uses, with a high level of transparency and visual interest and the ground level. The current GF district purposes are focused on type of use and on the Downtown, specifically. The proposed revision seeks to: (1) capture the contribution of architectural form, such as transparency and pedestrian-orientation, that create a vibrant commercial district; and (2) clean up the Downtown-focused language to recognize that the GF district is currently applied as a combining district in the Midtown and Charleston commercial areas, in addition to Downtown. 5. Amend an existing provision in Section 18.20(C).020 to reorganize how building lobbies and reception areas are addressed on the ground floor level in the GF district. This PTC recommendation deletes a reference from the permitted uses section related to building entrances, lobbies and reception areas serving non‐ground floor uses. In its place, the PTC recommends adding a new sub-section to address building entrances and lobbies serving non-ground floor uses. This represents an organizational change to the code as opposed to a substantive policy change. Downtown Measures 1. Protect all existing basement retail and retail like or retail support uses from converting to non-retail uses in the CD-C (GF) district. The draft ordinance continues the Interim Urgency Ordinance provision to restrict the conversion of basements—but only in the CD-C (GF) district. A forthcoming report as part of the Downtown Cap Evaluation studied existing basements Downtown to determine the impacts of retail to office conversion and estimate the potential for City of Palo Alto Page 9 basements to serve as office space. Though a complete inventory was not feasible, the report found a substantial opportunity for office uses in basements which are currently being used as storage and ancillary retail functions. The proposed ordinance would help to prevent such conversions. 2. Modify the GF district where it is combined with the CD-C district to do the following: a. Allow yoga studios, dance studios, martial arts studios, and similar uses only on parcels that do not contain frontage on University Avenue. b. Require clear glass. Low-e glass or a minimal amount of tinting to achieve sun control is acceptable if the glass appears essentially transparent when viewed from the outside. Opaque and reflective glass shall not be used. c. Require 70% of any sidewalk-fronting frontage to have transparent window/door openings between 2.5 and 10 feet above grade. d. Prohibit window coverings in non-conforming tenant spaces fronting onto a sidewalk, during business hours. Require displays of merchandise, artwork or items of visual interest where customer privacy requires window coverings. Exceptions are permitted where operations preclude transparency (e.g., theaters). e. Remove provision 18.30(C).020(b) which allows 25% of the ground-floor area not fronting a street from being occupied by a use in the applicable underlying CD district (such as office) The draft ordinance proposes to regulate architectural form and transparency with items a through d above, in an effort to support active pedestrian-oriented uses that encourage window shopping and a high degree of visibility between the store interior and passersby on the street. Bullet e seeks to strengthen the retail core of the GF district by removing the provision that allows for ground-floor office. (This provision is currently suspended by the Urgency Ordinance). However, it should be noted that removal this provision would limit some uses that some planning and transportation commissioners and councilmembers thought could be useful, such as optometrists. There may be some uses that have an active retail component and ancillary medical office uses that would be precluded by this change. Yoga studios and similar uses up to 15 customers or students would be permitted by right, except on University Avenue; yoga studios with more customers at a time would be considered a commercial recreation use and subject to a conditional use permit. Notably, the draft ordinance lifts the suspension on allowing conditional uses in the GF district. It does add a new required finding that the proposed conditional use will City of Palo Alto Page 10 not be detrimental to the retail environment or the pedestrian-oriented design objectives of the GF district. If the Council wanted to further restrict or regulate conditional uses on University Avenue or another subdistrict, additional provisions would need to be added or the list of conditional uses in the GF district regulations would need to be removed or refined. 3. Extend the GF boundary to Alma Street and Hamilton Avenue, re-designating the parcels that were withdrawn in 2009 and adding parcels to create a continuous ground-floor retail environment in the western portion of Downtown. The GF overlay would be added to the following parcels: 125, 124, 116, and 102 University Ave., 525, 529, 542 and 550 High St., 539 and 535 Alma St., 115, 150, 156, 158, and 164 Hamilton Ave. This map amendment is intended to expand the Downtown core area where ground- floor retail and the design standards identified above would be required to create a more continuous retail experience on the ground-floor. Some of these properties are currently occupied by uses that are not permitted in the GF overlay district—such as office, financial services, and real estate offices. As a result these properties (including 124, 116, and 102 University Ave., and 539 and 535 Alma St.) would become non-conforming uses until the existing use discontinues and they were required to comply with the GF provisions. Discontinue is a defined term in the municipal code (18.70.040) and it occurs after a use ceases operation for one year or longer. Some of these properties were designed as offices and do not have architectural features, such as storefront windows and doors, that make retail viable. Therefore, these property owners may be limited in the retailers that they can lease to. Some Planning Commissioners expressed concern about extending the boundaries for the GF beyond those determined during the 2001 planning process. 4. Amend an existing provision in Section 18.30(C).040 pertaining to annual vacancy monitoring for properties located downtown in the GF district. This is a minor change to existing code language. This section requires an annual report the PTC and City Council to monitor the vacancy rate in the CD-C and GF districts downtown. The PTC recommends this section be amended to include a survey of land uses in addition to the vacancy rate in the annual report. SOFA II Proposed Measures In addition to the provisions described above, which are included in the draft ordinance in Attachment A, staff recommends that the Council add the following provision to the proposed ordinance: 1. Allow private educational facilities in certain portions of the RT-35 District in SOFA II. City of Palo Alto Page 11 Based on a waiver request and feedback from property owners, during August and October 2016 Council hearings, the City Council considered modifications to the Interim Ordinance to allow private educational facilities to replace discontinuing retail or retail- like uses in SOFA II. While a majority of Council members voted for such an amendment (5-4), a super majority was required for approval and therefore the amendment failed. To respond to the Council’s intended direction, staff recommends adding the following provision to allow flexibility in SOFA II, outside of the retail core area:  Any ground floor Retail or Retail-Like use permitted or operating as of March 2, 2015 in the RT-35 district on properties with frontage on Alma Street between Channing Avenue and Lincoln Avenue may additionally be replaced by a private educational facility. Property owners would be prohibited from converting a discontinued retail use to a private school and then to office. This provision was inadvertently excluded from the draft ordinance reviewed by the Commission. Staff’s efforts to introduce the concept with an at-places memo was rejected by the Commission for reasons that included being unfamiliar with the topic, procedural concerns about incorporating this language into SOFA II and concern about singling out a few properties that would benefit from this provision. Because the above provision was previously endorsed by a majority of the City Council, staff is reintroducing the concept. The Council may recall previous efforts to incorporate this provision into the existing interim retail preservation ordinance failed due to a lack of support; eight votes were needed to affect the change; five affirmative votes were recorded. Subsequent Ordinances and/or Studies Remaining issues identified by the City Council will be addressed through subsequent ordinances and/or studies: 1. Comprehensive Plan (underway):  Building Height Requirements: During the Comprehensive Plan Update (Comp Plan Update) discussion on January 30, 2017, the City Council discussed a potential increase to the maximum building height, including an increase from 50 to 55 or 60 feet for buildings containing ground floor retail and housing, which would allow for better design. While the Council elected not to include this concept in the Comp Plan Update, it could consider an ordinance to increase in the minimum first floor height requirement as a method to encourage inviting and active retail uses at a later date. 2. Future Policy Work: City of Palo Alto Page 12  Aligning the Planned Community (PC) Zone: Consider whether PC zoned parcels downtown could be aligned with GF and/or P combining district requirement (e.g., with respect to design standards and guidelines)  Amortization for Non-Conforming Uses: Policies regarding amortization of non- conforming uses would be addressed separately and subsequent to approval of the permanent ordinance. Amortization ordinances can take significantly more time to complete, given the work required with affected property owners, and it will not be feasible to prepare such an ordinance prior to the upcoming expiration of the interim urgency ordinance.  Window Transparency for Nonconforming Uses: Staff in consultation with the City Attorney’s office is still exploring the best means to address the Council’s interest to apply the new window transparency standards to existing nonconforming land uses in the ground floor and pedestrian combining districts. It is anticipated that another code amendment will be required to give the city the authority to effectuate this change. In the interim, if the new transparency provisions are adopted, staff would explore an outreach effort to inform tenants and property owners of the new requirements and encourage voluntary compliance. Summary of Key Issues The following section provides feedback from community members interviewed as part of the development of the ordinance and further analyzes some of the ordinance’s key provisions. Mixed Feedback from Community Members Staff and consultants conducted 24 informal interviews between November 2016 and January 2017 with community members and other stakeholders that live and/or work in the Palo Alto, including developers/property owners, small retail/personal service business owners or store managers, architects, and residents (see Attachment D for list of interviewees). The purpose of the conversations was to solicit feedback from a broad range of viewpoints on the interim urgency ordinance and the direction proposed by the City Council for the permanent ordinance. Interviewees expressed a variety of perspectives about retail development in Palo Alto, which are summarized below:  Consider the Future of Retail in Palo Alto. Stakeholders supported a broader definition of active uses in the existing neighborhood commercial districts, encouraging the City to be realistic about the future of retail. Retail product sales are shifting to online retailers. Palo Alto’s future is in restaurants and other food businesses, personal services and experiences, as well as arts, cultural, and quasi-public uses. City of Palo Alto Page 13  Need for More Affordable Businesses. The prices at retail businesses Downtown are expensive; ideally more affordable retailers would be available.  Mixed Opinions about Expanding the GF District. While some stakeholders supported the idea of extending the GF district (for example, to Alma Street or into the SOFA II district), others thought it was unnecessary and overly prescriptive for these lower quality retail streets. Several stakeholders identified the “middle” of University Avenue (roughly Emerson to Waverly Streets) as the most viable retail location. Hamilton Avenue and several side streets intersecting University Avenue (namely Ramona and Emerson Streets) were seen as secondary retail locations. Alma Street was identified as a poor retail location by several stakeholders because of Caltrain and vehicle traffic and noise, and the lack of foot traffic. Moreover, potential retail sites outside the Downtown core may be challenged by a lack of onsite parking and exclusion from the Downtown parking assessment district.  Mixed Opinions about the Moratorium on Conversions. Many stakeholders tend to favor more flexibility in finding tenants, based on current market conditions and expressed concern about a proliferation in vacant spaces. However, other interviewees tend to support policy interventions that support retail over office uses (which are seen as contributing to traffic congestion). Several stakeholders thought that if any protections are provided, they should only be on University Avenue and the intersecting side streets Downtown and potentially on California Avenue.  Consider Alternate Policy Mechanisms. A few stakeholders recommended using more typical policy mechanisms to regulate the quality and design of uses, specifically the conditional use permit process, specific finding requirements, and the precise/specific planning process to develop plans for individual neighborhood commercial areas.  Strength in Mix of Uses for Retailers & in Office Worker Foot Traffic. Retailers Downtown generally support the mix of uses in the core, with office workers and hotel guests serving as the strongest customer base. Several Downtown business owners mentioned that they are considering closing on Sundays since business is so slow. Further from the Downtown core, retailers tend to rely on the local resident population as their customer base.  Private Schools and Medical Offices are Getting Squeezed. A few stakeholders acknowledged that there are some specific business types (such as private schools and after-school programs, and medical offices, including therapists and chiropractors) which are getting squeezed by the current market and moratorium. These businesses can locate either in retail storefront spaces or office spaces, but were (1) not included as a retail or retail-like use under the Interim Urgency Ordinance and (2) cannot generally afford the current office lease rates.  Mixed Support for Waivers/Exceptions, if Reasonable. Some stakeholders support waivers and exceptions to allow certain low-quality retail sites to convert to other uses, while a moratorium is in place. A few interviewees expressed concern that the threshold City of Palo Alto Page 14 for an exception under the current Urgency Ordinance is too high and the requirements are confusing. Additionally, stakeholders were concerned about a lack of clarity in the timeline for a waiver to be granted, the burden on the property owner to provide adequate documentation, and the message that it sends to prospective tenants about the value of a space.  Some Support for Design Standards. Stakeholders were generally supportive of design standards that encourage active retail uses and pedestrian-oriented design through the use of clear glass and removing curtains and other window coverings. However, several stakeholders thought such standards were unnecessary and overly prescriptive. Other related comments:  Housing to Support Business. Many stakeholders expressed support for more housing Downtown and elsewhere in the city to support retail businesses and to provide more affordable housing for retail workers. Several retailers cited challenges in hiring and retaining workers because of the cost of housing locally.  Parking Constraints. Nearly all stakeholders, including residents, employers, customers, and developers expressed frustration about a lack of parking Downtown. At the same time, several stakeholders proposed removing on-street parking to create outdoor dining areas, seating or parklets to support more active use of the street and sidewalks.  Infrastructure and Transit Investments. Several stakeholders stated that the City and business associations need to invest in transit, alternate travel modes, and additional parking garages to make local retail shopping more convenient. Pros and Cons of Continuing a Moratorium and Extending the GF Boundary The draft ordinance would modify, but continue the moratorium on the conversion of retail uses, as stated by in the current Interim Urgency Ordinance. The Interim Urgency Ordinance has been successful in that it has prevented the conversion of retail uses during the past 18 months. Continuing such a prohibition would help to ensure that discontinued retail spaces would continue to be available for new retail uses and would preclude office or manufacturing uses from occupying these spaces. However, a moratorium and extension of the GF boundary do not guarantee that retail uses would necessarily occupy these spaces. In Downtown, in 2016, the vacancy rate for retail uses remains very low (<3%), while the lease rates Downtown have increased to $6.50-$8.25 per square feet, suggesting that the retail market is competitive and potentially too expensive for smaller businesses to find space Downtown. (See the most recent Downtown Monitoring Report for details: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/51729.) Property owners and developers interviewed as part of this project and/or who have requested waiver/exceptions have identified challenges in leasing retail spaces in non-prime locations— City of Palo Alto Page 15 further from the main corridors of University Avenue, El Camino Real, etc., despite at times lowering lease rates. Whether owners are holding out to lease to a tenant at a certain price or whether the market truly cannot bear a retail tenant in a sub-price location, the result is, at times, that a space will remain vacant for months or even years. Other Administrative Changes Some provisions in the Interim Urgency Ordinance have proven difficult to administer. The proposed ordinance addresses these issues. Notably, staff has not included a provision from the existing interim ordinance that would have protected retail and retail-like uses in districts where such uses are not permitted or conditionally permitted. Language has been added to clarify the ordinance does not have precedence over specific amortization language in the municipal code that may relate to specific properties. Additionally, the terms “permitted and operating,” which is a key phrase in the ordinance as it relates to the establishment of retail and retail like uses has been clarified. Other Design Standards Considered and Rejected/Postponed Other design standards were discussed with decision-makers and stakeholders and were ultimately rejected or are recommended to be postponed:  Minimum First Floor Height: Staff recommended and the City Council discussed a potential minimum first floor height requirement, such as 15 feet. Based on feedback from the ARB, architects, and developers, such a standard is not feasible within the CD district’s existing 50-foot height limit, without reducing the feasibility of constructing a 4-story building. As mentioned in the Next Step section above, this standard will be reconsidered as part of the Comprehensive Plan Update.  SOFA II Design Standards: Staff recommended and the City Council discussed potential design standard amendments for SOFA II. The Council determined that additional design standards were not needed in this area.  SOFA II Medical Office Size Threshold: The Council requested a recommendation on medical office size in SOFA II. Per existing SOFA II district regulations, medical uses are capped at 5,000 square feet. No change is proposed in order to maintain this small- to mid-size medical office uses.  Lobby Sizes: The GF district allows lobby and reception areas serving non-ground floor uses (such as for office uses on upper floors), but does not regulate the width of the frontage or size of the lobby area. As lobbies serving tenants on upper floors tend not to be leasable areas, they are typically relatively small in size; further regulatory restrictions are not warranted. Policy Implications Implications for the SOFA II district and the Comprehensive Plan are discussed below. City of Palo Alto Page 16 Implications for SOFA II Zoning Districts The SOFA II RT-35 and RT-50 residential transition districts emphasize residential and mixed use development with residential districts. The retail uses in these districts tend to cater to local residential areas that have limited foot traffic compared with Downtown. Currently, the Coordinated Area Plan prevents new ground-floor office in the Homer/Emerson Corridor1 which includes many of the retail tenant spaces in the Plan Area. The proposed ordinance would extend these protections to other retail and retail like uses in SOFA II. The waiver provisions would apply citywide. Comprehensive Plan Policy Implementation The draft ordinance supports land use and economic development policies envisioned by the City’s Comprehensive Plan. The Comprehensive Plan identifies the desirability of neighborhood serving retail (Policy L-16) and envisions inviting, pedestrian-scale “centers” with a mix of uses as focal points for neighborhoods (Goal L-4). Policy L-20 suggests that the City “encourage street frontages that contribute to retail vitality…” and Policy B-5 calls on the City to “maintain distinct business districts within Palo Alto as a means of retaining local services and diversifying the City’s economic base.” The draft ordinance also supports Comprehensive Plan policies in the Downtown and SOFA II, which seek to maintain “a mix of commercial, civic, cultural, recreational and residential uses” Downtown and “promote quality design that recognizes the regional and historical importance of the area and reinforces its pedestrian character” (Policy L-23) and “enhance the character of the South of Forest Area (SOFA) as a mixed use area” (Policy L-25). Resource Impact: The city engaged Lexington Planning to assist staff with consulting services related to this effort in the amount of $25,000. This cost and related staff time and resources were expended from the Planning and Community Environment department operating budget. While there was no economic study prepared for this project, it is not anticipated the provisions of this ordinance would result in a substantial impact to city sales and property tax revenues. Timeline: The ordinance would be effective 31 days following Council’s adoption (on second reading). If the second reading occurs on or before March 27, 2017, it would become effective just prior to April 30, 2017, which is when the urgency interim ordinance would cease to be in effect. Environmental Review 1 The Homer/Emerson Corridor means all sites bordering Homer Avenue between Alma Street and Ramona Street and/or Emerson Street between Forest Avenue and Channing Street. City of Palo Alto Page 17 The subject project has been assessed in accordance with the authority and criteria contained in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the State CEQA Guidelines, and the environmental regulations of the City. Specifically, the project is categorically exempt under CEQA Section 15308 as a regulatory action taken by the City pursuant to its police power and in accordance with Government Code Section 65858 to assure maintenance and protection of the environment. As a result of implementation of the ordinance, no substantially greater or more severe impacts are anticipated and no development is proposed, beyond what is currently allowed by the Zoning Ordinance and Comprehensive Plan. Attachments: Attachment A Ordinance Ground Floor Retail Preservation (PDF) Attachment B Ordinance 5325 (Retail Preservation Interim Ordinance) (PDF) Attachment C Ordinance 5330 (Retail Preservation Interim Ordinance Extension) (PDF) Attachment D List of Stakeholder Interviewees (PDF) Attachment E: Excerpted Draft Minutes from 12-14-16 and 1-11-17 PTC Meeting (PDF) NOT YET APPROVED   1  November 23, 2015      Ordinance No. ____  Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Limiting the Conversion of  Ground Floor Retail and “Retail Like” Uses Citywide      The Council of the City of Palo Alto does ORDAIN as follows:     SECTION 1.  Findings and Declarations.     A. The City of Palo Alto has long been considered the birth place of Silicon Valley.   With its proximity to Stanford University, its international reputation, its deep ties to  technology firms, its highly rated public school system and its ample public parks, open space  and community centers, Palo Alto continues to serve as a hub for technology based business.    B. Palo Alto is considered one of Silicon Valley's most desirable office markets,  leading to rapidly increasing rental rates for commercial property.  In particular, average  commercial rental rates have gone up significantly from 2013 to 2015.  In 2013 the average  monthly rental rate citywide for office was $4.57 per square foot. That rate increased to $5.12  in 2015.  While retail rents have also increased during this period, retail rents are considerably  lower than office rents.  The average monthly rental rate for retail in 2013 was $4.21 and in  2015 was $4.88.      C. These record high monthly rental rates for office and low vacancy rates have  created financial incentives to replace current retail use with office use where such conversions  are permitted by the City’s zoning ordinance.  These economic pressures are more severe in the  downtown and California Avenue commercial areas but exist throughout the City. In addition,  these trends place particular pressure on small and medium‐sized businesses.    D. Based on these trends, on March 2, 2015, the Palo Alto City Council asked staff  to consider whether zoning‐based protections for ground floor retail uses need to be  strengthened where they currently exist and expanded to areas of the City where they do not.    E. This direction is consistent with the City’s existing Comprehensive Plan, which  identifies the desirability of neighborhood serving retail (Policy L‐16) and envisions inviting,  pedestrian‐scale “centers” with a mix of uses as focal points for neighborhoods (Goal L‐4).   Policy L‐20 suggests that the City “encourage street frontages that contribute to retail vitality…”  and Policy B‐5 calls on the City to “maintain distinct business districts within Palo Alto as a  means of retaining local services and diversifying the City’s economic base.”       K.  The City of Palo Alto enacted Urgency Interim Ordinance 5325 on May 11, 2015  to prevent the conversion of ground floor space to office or other non‐retail uses, which was a  trend in the City’s commercial districts.    L. The urgency interim ordinance was extended through adoption of Ordinance  5330 on June 15, 2015, and is set to expire on April 30, 2017.  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     2     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        M. The City’s land use data shows that there was a loss of approximately 70,000  square feet of retail‐type uses in the period from 2008 until the urgency interim ordinance was  adopted.  This loss of retail‐type uses coincided with an increase in commercial office rents,  such that property owners had an economic incentive to convert ground floor retail spaces to  office use where this was permitted by the City’s zoning regulations.    N. The economic conditions that favor conversion of retail space to office space  remain in place because office rents remain higher than retail rents.  According to the most  recent data available, in the third quarter of 2016, Palo Alto’s retail asking rates were higher  than any other city in the South Bay.  In tandem with these high retail lease rates, vacancy rates  for retail spaces have remained low, averaging 2.6% over the first three quarters of 2016.   Despite the strong demand for retail space, office lease rates in Palo Alto were 42% higher than  retail rates, with similarly low vacancy rates.    O. Since the urgency interim ordinance was adopted, the City has adopted  permanent retail protections for the California Avenue business district, and has adopted an  ordinance closing a loophole in PAMC Section 18.16.050 that was allowing the loss of retail  space along El Camino Real.      P. In anticipation of the expiration of the urgency interim ordinance (Ordinance  5330), and in order to provide protections for the entire City, the City Council desires to adopt  permanent retail protections.     SECTION 2. Section 18.04.030 of Chapter 18.04 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code is  hereby amended to amend definitions 114 and 125 and to add definition 125.1 as follows:    (114) “Personal service” means a use providing services of a personal convenience  nature, and cleaning, repair or sales incidental thereto, including:    (A) Beauty shops, nail salons, day spas, and barbershops;  (B) Self‐service laundry and cleaning services; laundry and cleaning pick‐up  stations where all cleaning or servicing for the particular station is done  elsewhere; and laundry and cleaning stations where the cleaning or servicing  for the particular station is done on site, utilizing equipment meeting any  applicable Bay Area Air Quality Management District requirements, so long as  no cleaning for any other station is done on the same site, provided that the  amount of hazardous materials stored does not at any time exceed the  threshold which would require a permit under Title 17 (Hazardous Materials  Storage) of this code;  (C) Repair and fitting of clothes, shoes, and personal accessories;  (D) Quick printing and copying services where printing or copying for the  particular service is done on site, so long as no quick printing or copying for  any off‐site printing or copying service is done on the same site;  (E) Internet and other consumer electronics services;  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     3     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        (F) Film, data and video processing shops, including shops where processing for  the particular shop is done on site, so long as no processing for any other shop  is done on the same site; and  (G) Art, dance or music studios intended for an individual or small group of  persons in a class (see “commercial recreation” for other activities).  (H)  Fitness and exercise studios, or similar uses, intended for an individual or small  group of 15 or fewer students/customers at one time (see “commercial  recreation” for other activities).    (125) “Retail service” means a use generally open to the public during typical business  hours and predominantly engaged in providing retail sale, rental, service, processing, or  repair of items primarily intended for consumer or household use, including but not  limited to the following: groceries, meat, vegetables, dairy products, baked goods,  candy, and other food products; liquor and bottled goods, household cleaning and  maintenance products; drugs, cards, and stationery, notions, books, tobacco products,  cosmetics, and specialty items; flowers, plants, hobby materials, toys, household pets  and supplies, and handcrafted items; apparel, jewelry, fabrics, and like items; cameras,  photography services, household electronic equipment, records, sporting equipment,  kitchen utensils, home furnishing and appliances, art supplies and framing, arts and  antiques, paint and wallpaper, carpeting and floor covering, interior decorating services,  office supplies, musical instruments, hardware and homeware, and garden supplies;  bicycles; mopeds and automotive parts and accessories (excluding service and  installation); cookie shops, ice cream stores and delicatessens.     (A) “Extensive retail service,” as used with respect to parking requirements,  means a retail sales use having more than seventy‐five percent of the gross  floor area used for display, sales, and related storage of bulky commodities,  including household furniture and appliances, lumber and building materials,  carpeting and floor covering, air conditioning and heating equipment, and  similar goods, which uses have demonstrably low parking demand generation  per square foot of gross floor area.  (B) “Intensive retail service” as used with respect to parking requirements, means  any retail service use not defined as extensive retail service.    (125.1) “Retail‐Like Use” means a use generally open to the public during typical  business hours and predominantly engaged in providing services closely related to retail  services, including but not limited to:    (A) Eating and drinking services, as defined in Section 18.04.030 (47);  (B) Hotels, as defined in Section 18.04.030 (73);  (C) Personal services, as defined in Section 18.04.030 (114);  (D) Theaters;  (E) Travel agencies;  (F) Commercial recreation, as defined in Section 18.04.030 (33);  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     4     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        (G) Commercial nurseries;  (H) Auto dealerships, as defined in Section 18.04.030 (12.5);  (I) Day Care Centers, as defined in Section 18.04.030 (42);   (J) Automobile Service Stations, as defined in Section 18.04.030(13); and  (K) Automotive Services, as defined in Section 18.04.030 (14).     SECTION 3. Chapter 18.30(A) of Title 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code is hereby  amended to add section 18.30(A).055:    18.30(A).055   Design Standards    The following design standards shall apply in the R combining district:    (a) Exterior windows on the ground floor shall use transparent glazing.  Low‐e glass or  minimal tinting to achieve sun control is permitted, so long as the glazing appears  transparent when viewed from the ground level. Opaque or reflective glazing is  prohibited on the ground floor for ground floor exterior windows in the R combining  district.    (b) Window coverings are not permitted on the ground floor during typical business  hours.  Where operations preclude transparency (e.g., theaters) or where privacy  requires window coverings, sidewalk‐facing frontage shall include items of visual  interest including displays of merchandise or artwork.    SECTION 4. Chapter 18.30(C) of Title 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code is hereby  amended to read as follows:    18.30(C).010   Specific Purpose    The ground floor combining district is intended to provide design guidelines and modify  the uses allowed in the CD commercial downtown districts and subdistricts to allow only  retail, eating and drinking and other service‐oriented commercial development uses on  the ground floor promote active, pedestrian‐oriented uses, with a high level of  transparency and visual interest at the ground level. For the purposes of this chapter,  "ground floor" means the first floor which is above grade. Where the ground floor  combining district is combined with the CD a commercial district, the regulations  established by this chapter shall apply in lieu of the uses normally allowed in the CD  underlying district. Except for the regulations relating to uses set forth in this chapter, all  other regulations shall be those of the applicable underlying CD district.    18.30(C).020   Permitted Uses    (a) The following uses shall be permitted in the GF combining district, subject to  restrictions in section 18.40.160:  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     5     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                          (1) Eating and drinking;  (2) Hotels;  (3) Personal services, except for parcels with frontage on University Avenue,  where uses defined in 18.04.030(114)(G) and (H) are not permitted;  (4) Retail services;  (5) Theaters;  (6) Travel agencies;  (7) Entrance, lobby or reception areas serving non‐ground floor uses;  (8)(7) All other uses permitted in the underlying district, provided such uses  are not on the ground floor.    (b) Elimination or conversion of basement space currently in Retail or Retail‐Like use  or related support purposes is prohibited.  (b) Notwithstanding subsection (a), not more than twenty‐five percent of the  ground floor area not fronting on a street may be occupied by a use permitted in  the applicable underlying CD district.     (c) Entrance, lobby, or reception areas serving non‐ground floor uses may be  located on the ground floor.    18.30(C).030   Conditional Uses    (a) The following uses may be conditionally allowed on the ground floor in the GF  ground floor combining district, subject to issuance of a conditional use permit in  accord with Chapter 18.76 (Permits and Approvals) and with the additional  finding required by subsection (b), subject to restrictions in section 18.40.160:    (1) Business or trade school;  (2) Commercial recreation;  (3) Day care;  (4) Financial services, except drive in services;  (5) General business service;  (6) All other uses conditionally permitted in the applicable underlying CD  district, provided such uses are not on the ground floor.    (b) The director may grant a conditional use permit under this section only if he or  she makes the following findings in addition to the findings required by Chapter  18.76 (Permits and Approvals):   (1)   The location, access or design of the ground floor space of the existing  building housing the proposed use, creates exceptional or extraordinary  circumstances or conditions applicable to the property involved that do  not apply generally to property in the same district.  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     6     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        (2)   The proposed use will not be detrimental to the retail environment or the  pedestrian‐oriented design objectives of the GF combining district.    (c) Any use conditionally permitted pursuant to this section shall be effective only  during the existence of the building that created the exceptional circumstance  upon which the finding set forth in subsection (c) was made.    18.30(C).035   Design Standards    Where the GF combining district is combined with the CD‐C subdistrict, the following  design standards shall apply:    (c) Exterior windows on the ground floor shall use transparent glazing.  Low‐e glass or  minimal tinting to achieve sun control is permitted, so long as the glazing appears  transparent when viewed from the ground level. Opaque or reflective glazing is  prohibited on the ground floor for ground floor exterior windows in the GF  combining district.    (d) At least 70 percent of any sidewalk‐facing frontage shall have transparent  window/door openings between 2.5 and 10 feet above grade.    (e) Window coverings are not permitted on the ground floor during typical business  hours.  Where operations preclude transparency (e.g., theaters) or where privacy  requires window coverings, sidewalk‐facing frontage shall include items of visual  interest including displays of merchandise or artwork.    18.30(C).040   Annual Monitoring of Ground Floor Retail Use  A downtown retail vacancy rate and use survey shall be prepared annually in September  of each year, and a report shall be prepared conveying that information to the Planning  and Transportation Commission and City Council prior to the end of the year.  The  purpose of the survey is to assess changes in retail use in the downtown zones.  The  vacancy rate shall address all areas zoned CD‐C or GF in downtown.     SECTION 5. Sections 18.85.010 through 18.85.060 of Chapter 18.85 of Title 18 of the  Palo Alto Municipal Code, which establish the Retail Preservation Interim Ordinance, and which  expire on April 30, 2017, are hereby deleted in their entirety.    SECTION 6. Section 18.40.160 of Chapter 18.40 of Title 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal  Code is hereby added to read as follows:    18.40.160 Retail Preservation    (a) Conversion of Retail and Retail‐Like Uses Prohibited.   170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     7     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        (1) Any ground floor Retail or Retail‐Like use permitted or operating as of March 2,  2015 may be replaced only by another Retail or Retail‐Like use, as permitted in  the applicable district.    (2) The phrase ‘use permitted or operating’ as used in this section means:  (A) A lawfully established use conducting business, including legal non‐ conforming uses   (B) An established use conducting business without required city  approvals, but is a permitted or conditionally permitted use in district  (C) For parcels vacant on March 2, 2015, the last use that was lawfully  established, or established without required permits, and permitted or  conditionally permitted in the district.    (b) Non‐conforming uses.  (1) The requirements imposed by subsection (a) shall not apply to Retail or Retail‐ like uses that are no longer permitted or conditionally permitted in the  applicable district.    (2) Nothing in this section shall modify the provisions of Chapter 18.70 regarding the  expansion, change, discontinuance, or termination of a non‐conforming use.    (c) Waivers and Adjustments.  (1) Grounds. The following shall be grounds for a request for waiver or adjustment  of the requirements contained in this section:    (A) Economic Hardship. An applicant may request that the requirements of  this section be adjusted or waived based on a showing that  applying the  requirements of this section would effectuate an unconstitutional taking  of property or otherwise have an unconstitutional application to the  property; or  (B) Alternative Viable Active Use. Except in the GF or R combining districts,  an applicant may request that the requirements of this Section 18.40.160  be adjusted or waived based on a showing that: the a permitted retail or  retail‐like use is not viable; the proposed use will  support the purposes  of the zoning district and Comprehensive Plan land use designation; and  the proposed use will encourage active pedestrian‐oriented activity and  connections.    (2) Documentation. The applicant shall bear the burden of presenting substantial  evidence to support a waiver or modification request under this Section and  shall set forth in detail the factual and legal basis for the claim, including all  supporting technical documentation.  Evidence in support of a waiver under  subsection (c)(1)(B) must demonstrate the viability of existing and future uses on  the site, based on both the site characteristics and the surrounding uses;  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     8     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        specifically whether a substitute use could be designed and/or conditioned to  contribute to the goals and purposes of the zoning district. Examples of such  evidence include:      (A) A 10‐year history of the site's occupancy and reasons for respective  tenants vacating the site;  (B) A map that indicates all the existing surrounding uses, both residential  and non‐residential, within one City‐block; include the corresponding  zone district on the map;    (3) Any request under this section shall be submitted to the Planning Director  together with any supporting documentation. The Planning Director, in his or her  sole discretion, may act on a request for waiver or refer the matter to the City  Council.  A decision by the Planning Direction may be appealed to the City  Council by written form in the manner prescribed by the Planning Director.    (d) Reconstruction.  Any ground floor Retail use existing on or after March 2, 2015 may be  demolished and rebuilt provided that the portion of square footage used as Retail use  on or after March 2, 2015 is not reduced except that Retail square footage may be  reduced by the minimum amount needed to provide access to any new upper floor  and/or lower level.    (e) Applicability to Current Requirements.  Nothing in this section shall alter requirements  of site‐specific Planned Community zoning ordinances or adopted conditions of  approval.  Nothing in the section shall be construed to waive the requirement for a  conditional use permit or other entitlement where such requirements currently exist.     SECTION 7. Section 18.13.030 of Chapter 18.13 of Title 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal  Code is hereby amended to read as follows:     18.13.030   Land Uses        Table 1 specifies the permitted and conditionally permitted land uses in the multiple‐ family residence districts.  Table 1  Multiple Family Residential Uses  [P = Permitted Use • CUP = Conditional Use Permit Required]       RM‐ 15  RM‐ 30  RM‐ 40  Subject to  Regulations  in:  ACCESSORY AND SUPPORT USES  Accessory Facilities and uses customarily incidental to permitted P P P Chapter  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     9     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        uses 18.40  Home Occupations, when accessory to permitted residential uses P P P Chapter  18.42  Horticulture, Gardening, and Growing of food products for  consumption by occupants of a site P P P   Surface Parking Facilities located on abandoned railroad rights‐of‐ way  CUP CUP   EDUCATIONAL, RELIGIOUS, AND ASSEMBLY USES  Churches and Religious Institutions CUP CUP CUP  Private Clubs, Lodges, or Fraternal Organizations, excluding any  such facility operated as a business for profit   CUP   Private Educational Facilities CUP CUP CUP  PUBLIC/QUASI‐PUBLIC USES  Community Centers CUP CUP CUP  Utility Facilities essential to provision of utility services but  excluding construction or storage yards, maintenance facilities, or  corporation yards.  CUP CUP CUP   RECREATION USES  Neighborhood Recreational Centers CUP CUP CUP  RESIDENTIAL USES  Single‐Family P (1) P (1) P (2)  Two‐Family P (1) P (1) P (1)  Multiple‐Family P P P  Village Residential P (3) (3) 18.13.050  Mobile Homes P P P  Residential Care Homes P P P  SERVICE AND RETAIL USES  Convalescent Facilities CUP  Day Care Centers CUP CUP P 18.40.160  Small Family Day Care Homes P P P  Large Family Day Care Homes P P P  Small Adult Day Care Homes  P P P  Large Adult Day Care Homes CUP CUP CUP  Eating and Drinking Services, except drive‐in and take‐out services  CUP CUP 18.13.040(f), 18.40.160  Personal Services and Retail Services of a neighborhood‐serving  nature  CUP CUP 18.13.040(f),  18.40.160  TEMPORARY USES  Temporary Uses, subject to regulations in Chapter 18.42 CUP CUP CUP 18.42.050  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     10     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        P = Permitted Use CUP = Conditional Use Permit  Required  (1)   Permitted use only on lots less than 8,500 square feet in size.     (2)   Permitted use only on lots less than 6,000 square feet in size.  (3)   Permitted use only if lot is substandard in size, e.g., less than 8,500 square feet or less than 70 feet in width, or at the  perimeter of a site in excess of one acre where used as a transition to low‐density residential area.  SECTION 8. Section 18.16.040 of Chapter 18.16 of Title 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal  Code is hereby amended to read as follows:     18.16.040   Land Uses     The uses of land allowed by this chapter in each commercial zoning district are  identified in the following tables. Land uses that are not listed on the tables are not allowed,  except where otherwise noted. Where the last column on the following tables ("Subject to  Regulations in") includes a section number, specific regulations in the referenced section also  apply to the use; however, provisions in other sections may apply as well.       (a)   Commercial Zones and Land Uses        Permitted and conditionally permitted land uses for each commercial zone are shown in  Table 1:    TABLE 1  CD PERMITTED AND CONDITIONALLY PERMITTED USES  P = Permitted Use          CUP = Conditional Use Permit Required     LAND USE CN (4) CC, CC(2) CS (4)  Subject to  Regulations  In:  ACCESSORY AND SUPPORT USES     Accessory facilities and activities customarily associated with  or essential to permitted uses, and operated incidental to the  principal use.  P P p 18.42  Drive‐in services or take‐out services associated with  permitted uses(3) CUP CUP CUP 18.42  Tire, battery, and automotive service facilities, when  operated incidental to a permitted retail service or shopping  center having a gross floor area of more than 30,000 square  feet.   CUP   18.42,  18.40.160  EDUCATIONAL, RELIGIOUS, AND ASSEMBLY USES  Business and Trade Schools P P  Churches and Religious Institutions P P P  Private Educational Facilities CUP P P  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     11     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Private Clubs, Lodges, or Fraternal Organizations CUP P P  MANUFACTURING AND PROCESSING USES  Recycling Centers CUP CUP CUP  Warehousing and Distribution CUP  OFFICE USES  Administrative Office Services P 18.16.050  Medical Offices CUP CUP CUP 18.16.050  Professional and General Business Offices P P P 18.16.050  PUBLIC/QUASI‐PUBLIC USES  Utility Facilities essential to provision of utility services but  excluding construction or storage yards, maintenance  facilities, or corporation yards.  CUP CUP CUP   RECREATION USES  Commercial Recreation CUP CUP CUP 18.40.160  Outdoor Recreation Services CUP CUP CUP  RESIDENTIAL USES  Multiple‐Family P(1) P(1) P(1) 18.16.060(b)  Home Occupations P P P  Residential Care Homes P P P  RETAIL USES  Eating and Drinking Services, excluding drive‐in and take‐out  services P P P 18.40.160  Retail Services, excluding liquor stores P P P 18.40.160  Liquor stores CUP P P 18.40.160  Shopping Centers P   18.16.060(e),  18.40.160  SERVICE USES  Ambulance Services CUP CUP CUP  Animal Care, excluding boarding and kennels P P P  Boarding and Kennels CUP  Automobile Service Stations CUP CUP CUP 18.30(G),  18.40.160   Automotive Services CUP 18.40.160  Convalescent Facilities CUP P P  Day Care Centers P P P 18.40.160  Small Family Day Care Homes P P P  Large Family Day Care Homes P P P  Small Adult Day Care Homes P P P  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     12     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Large Adult Day Care Homes CUP P P  Banks and Financial Services V CUP P(2) P(2)  General Business Services CUP P  Hotels P P 18.16.060(d), 18.40.160  Mortuaries CUP P P  Neighborhood Business Services P 18.16.060(f)  Personal Services P P P 18.16.060(f),  18.40.160  Reverse Vending Machines P P P  TEMPORARY USES  Farmer's Markets CUP CUP CUP  Temporary Parking Facilities provided that such facilities shall  remain no more than five years. CUP CUP CUP   TRANSPORTATION USES  Parking as a principal use CUP CUP  Transportation Terminals CUP CUP  P = Permitted Use CUP = Conditional Use Permit Required     (1)   Residential is only permitted as part of a mixed use development, pursuant to the provisions of Section 18.16.060(b), or  on sites designated as Housing Opportunity Sites in the Housing Element of the Comprehensive Plan, pursuant to the provisions  of Section 18.16.060(c).     (2)   Except drive‐in services.     (3)   So long as drive up facilities, excluding car washes, provide full access to pedestrians and bicyclists.  A maximum of two  such services shall be permitted within 1,000 feet, and each use shall not be less than 150 feet from one another.     (4)   For properties in the CN and CS zone districts, businesses that operate or have associated activities at any time between  the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. require a conditional use permit.       (b)   Late Night Use and Activities       The following regulations restrict businesses that operate or have associated activities at any time  between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., where such site abuts or is located within 50 feet of  residentially zoned properties.          (1)   Such businesses shall be operated in a manner to protect residential properties from excessive  noise, odors, lighting or other nuisances from any sources during those hours.          (2)   For properties located in the CN or CS zone districts, businesses that operate or have associated  activities at any time between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. shall be required to obtain a  conditional use permit. The director may apply conditions of approval as are deemed necessary to  assure that the operations or activities are compatible with the nearby residentially zoned property.       (c)   CN District: Special Use Requirements in the Charleston and Midtown Shopping Centers     The following regulations shall apply to areas of Charleston Center and the Midtown Shopping Center  as defined in Section 18.16.030.       170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     13     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Table 2 shows the uses permitted and conditionally permitted on the ground floor of the applicable  areas of the Charleston Center and Midtown Shopping Centers.  Permitted and conditional uses  specified in subsection (a) of this section shall only apply to the ground floor of the areas of the  Charleston and Midtown Shopping Centers as listed in Table 2.  Uses lawfully existing on January 16,  2001 may be continued as non‐conforming uses but may only be replaced with uses permitted or  conditionally permitted under this subsection.    TABLE 2  CHARLESTON AND MIDTOWN SHOPPING CENTERS GROUND FLOOR USES  P = Permitted Use   CUP = Conditional Use Permit Required   X = Prohibited Use   LAND USES  Charleston  Shopping  Center  Midtown  Shopping  Center  Subject to Regulations in:  ACCESSORY AND SUPPORT USES  Accessory facilities and uses customarily incidental  to permitted uses. P P  EDUCATIONAL, RELIGIOUS, AND ASSEMBLY USES  Churches and Religious Institutions CUP CUP  Private Educational Facilities CUP CUP  MANUFACTURING AND PROCESSING USES  Recycling Centers CUP CUP  OFFICE USES  Neighborhood‐serving offices that do not exceed  2,500 square feet in floor area. P 18.16.050  Neighborhood‐serving offices exceeding 2,500  square feet in floor area. CUP 18.16.050  Administrative office uses and general business  office uses (other than neighborhood‐serving travel  agencies and insurance agencies) other than those  legally in existence on January 16,2001  X X 18.16.050  Medical offices not exceeding 2,500 square feet in  area, professional offices, travel agencies, and  insurance agencies  CUP 18.16.050  PUBLIC/QUASI‐PUBLIC USES  Utility Facilities essential to provision of utility  services but excluding construction or storage  yards, maintenance facilities, or corporation yards.  CUP CUP   RECREATION USES  Commercial Recreation CUP CUP 18.40.160  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     14     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Outdoor Recreation Services CUP CUP  Private Clubs, Lodges, or Fraternal Organizations CUP CUP  RESIDENTIAL USES  Residential uses of any nature X X  RETAIL USES  Eating and Drinking Services, excluding drive‐in and  take‐out services P P 18.40.160  Retail Services, excluding liquor stores P P 18.40.160  Liquor stores CUP CUP 18.40.160  SERVICE USES  Ambulance Services CUP CUP  Animal Care, excluding boarding and kennels P P  Automobile Service Stations CUP CUP 18.30(G), 18.40.160  Convalescent Facilities CUP CUP  Day Care Centers P P 18.40.160  Financial Services CUP CUP  Mortuaries CUP CUP  Neighborhood Business Services P P  Personal Services P P 18.40.160  Reverse Vending Machines P P  TEMPORARY USES  Farmers' Markets CUP CUP  Temporary Parking Facilities, provided that such  facilities shall remain no more than five years. CUP CUP  P = Permitted Use          CUP = Conditional Use Permit Required        X = Prohibited Use  (d)   Charleston Shopping Center: Additional Use Restrictions            (1)   Any office use first occupying space at the Center on or after January 16, 2001, shall obtain a  written determination from the director of planning and community environment that it qualifies as a  neighborhood serving use, as defined in this chapter, before occupying its premises. The applicant shall  submit such information as the director shall reasonably require in order to make the determination,  and the director shall issue the determination within 30 days of receiving a complete  application.  Failure to submit the required information shall be grounds for determining that a business  is not neighborhood‐serving.                (2)   No more than 7,850 square feet of total floor area at the Center shall be occupied by office  uses at any time.      170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     15     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                                (3)   Prior to approving a conditional use permit for neighborhood‐serving offices larger than 2,500  square feet in total floor area, the city shall find that the proposed use will be neighborhood‐serving,  that it will be conducted in a manner that will enhance and strengthen the Center as a neighborhood  resource, and that it will not diminish the retail strength of the center.       (e)   Midtown Shopping Center: Additional Use Restrictions               (1)   An existing ground floor office may be replaced with another office if                (a)   the new tenant or owner will continue the existing business or practice; or                 (b)   a conditional use permit is issued for the new office use.          (2)   No conditional use permit shall be issued for any new office use on the ground floor unless, in  addition to the findings required for a conditional use permit as specified in Section 18.76.010, the city  finds that the proposed use will be neighborhood serving, that it will be conducted in a manner that will  enhance and strengthen the Midtown Shopping District as a neighborhood resource, and that it will not  diminish the retail strength of the District.                  (3)   For properties at 711, 719, and 721 Colorado Avenue, and 689 Bryson Avenue, buildings not  fronting on Middlefield Avenue, designed and used for office purposes, and not well suited to other uses  are exempt from the provisions of this subsection (b).    SECTION 9. Section 18.18.050 of Chapter 18.18 of Title 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal  Code is hereby amended to read as follows:     18.18.050   Land Uses        The uses of land allowed by this chapter in each commercial zoning district are  identified in the following table. Land uses that are not listed on the tables are not allowed,  except where otherwise noted. Where the last column on the following tables ("Subject to  Regulations in") includes a section number, specific regulations in the referenced section also  apply to the use; however, provisions in other sections may apply as well.        Permitted and conditionally permitted land uses for the CD district are shown in Table 1:     Table 1  CD Permitted and Conditionally Permitted Uses  P  Permitted Use • CUP  Conditional Use Permit Required   CD‐C CD‐S CD‐ N  Subject to  regulations in  Chapter:  ACCESSORY USES  Accessory facilities and activities associated with or essential to  permitted uses, and operated incidental to the principal use P P P   Drive‐in or Take‐out Services associated with permitted uses (2) CUP CUP CUP  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     16     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Tire, battery, and automotive service facilities, when operated  incidental to a permitted retail service or shopping center having  a gross floor area of more than 30,000 square feet  CUP   18.40.160  EDUCATIONAL, RELIGIOUS, AND ASSEMBLY USES  Business and Trade Schools P P  Churches and Religious Institutions P P P  Private Educational Facilities P P CUP  Private Clubs, Lodges, or Fraternal Organizations P P CUP  MANUFACTURING AND PROCESSING USES  Recycling Centers CUP CUP CUP  Warehousing and Distribution CUP OFFICE USES  Administrative Office Services P 18.18.060(f)  Medical, Professional, and General Business Offices P P P 18.18.060(f)  PUBLIC/QUASI‐PUBLIC FACILITY USES  Utility Facilities essential to provision of utility services but  excluding construction or storage yards, maintenance facilities, or  corporation yards  CUP CUP    RECREATION USES  Commercial Recreation CUP CUP CUP 18.40.160  Outdoor Recreation Services CUP CUP CUP  RESIDENTIAL USES  Multiple‐Family P(1) P (1) P (1) 18.18.060(b)  Home Occupations P P P  Residential Care Homes P P P  RETAIL USES  Eating and Drinking Services, except drive‐in or take‐out services P P P 18.18.060(g),  18.40.160  Retail Services, excluding liquor stores P P P 18.18.060(g),  18.40.160  Shopping Centers P    18.18.060(g),  18.40.160   Liquor Stores P P CUP 18.40.160  SERVICE USES  Animal Care, excluding boarding and kennels P P P  Ambulance Services CUP CUP CUP 18.30(G)  Automobile Service Stations CUP CUP CUP 18.40.160  Automobile Services CUP 18.40.160  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     17     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Convalescent Facilities P P CUP  Day Care Centers P P P 18.40.160  Small Family Day Care Homes P P P  Large Family Day Care Homes P P P  Small Adult Day Care Homes P P P  Large Adult Day Care Homes  Financial Services, except drive‐up services P P CUP  General Business Services CUP P P  Hotels P P P 18.18.060(d),  18.40.160  Mortuaries P P CUP  Personal Services P P P 18.18.060(g),  18.40.160  Reverse Vending Machines P P P  TRANSPORTATION USES  Parking as a principal use CUP CUP Passenger Transportation Terminals CUP TEMPORARY USES  Indoor Farmers’ Markets CUP CUP CUP  Temporary Parking Facilities, provided that such facilities shall  remain no more than five years CUP CUP CUP   P  Permitted Use                CUP  Conditional Use Permit Required     (1)   Residential is only permitted as part of a mixed use development, pursuant to the provisions of Section18.18.060(b), or  on sites designated as Housing Opportunity Sites in the Housing Element of the Comprehensive Plan, pursuant to the provisions  of Section 18.18.060(c).     (2)   Drive‐up facilities, excluding car washes, provide full access to pedestrians and bicyclists.  A maximum of two such  services shall be permitted within 1,000 feet and each use shall not be less than 150 ft from one another.    SECTION 10. Section 18.20.030 of Chapter 18.20 of Title 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal  Code is hereby amended to read as follows:     18.20.030   Land Uses    (a) Permitted and Conditionally Permitted Land Uses        Table 1 lists the land uses permitted or conditionally permitted in the industrial and  manufacturing districts.    Table 1  Industrial/Manufacturing District Land Uses  [P = Permitted Use   CUP = Conditional Use Permit Required]  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     18     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                            MOR ROLM  ROLM(E)  RP  RP(5) GM  Subject to  regulations in  Chapter:  ACCESSORY AND SUPPORT USES  Accessory facilities and activities customarily  associated with or essential to permitted uses, and  operated incidental to the principal use.  P P P P Chs. 18.40,  18.42  Automatic Teller Machines P P P P 18.20.030(d)  Home Occupations, when accessory to permitted  residential uses. P P P P Chs. 18.40,  18.42  EDUCATIONAL, RELIGIOUS, AND ASSEMBLY USES  Business and Trade Schools P  Religious Institutions P P P  Colleges and Universities P P P  Private Clubs, Lodges, or Fraternal Organizations CUP CUP CUP CUP  Private Schools (K‐12) CUP CUP CUP CUP  HEALTH CARE SERVICES  Ambulance Services CUP Convalescent Facilities CUP CUP CUP CUP 18.23.100( B)  Medical Office P CUP CUP Medical Research P P P 18.20.030(c)  Medical Support Retail P 18.20.030(b)  Medical Support Services P 18.20.030(b)  MANUFACTURING AND PROCESSING USES  Manufacturing P P P 18.23.100( B)  Recycling Centers CUP CUP CUP  Research and Development CUP P P P 18.23.100( B)  Warehousing and Distribution P P P  OFFICE USES  Administrative Office Services P P CUP  Financial Services CUP CUP Professional and General Business Office P P  PUBLIC/QUASI‐PUBLIC USES  Service and Equipment Yards P  Utility Facilities CUP  Utility Facilities essential to provision of utility  services but excluding construction/storage yards, CUP CUP CUP    170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     19     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        maintenance facilities, or corporation yards  RECREATION USES  Commercial Recreation CUP CUP CUP 18.40.160  Neighborhood Recreational Centers CUP RESIDENTIAL USES  Single‐Family Not permitted 18.20.040(b) Two‐Family Not permitted  Multiple‐Family CUP CUP CUP Residential Care Homes P CUP CUP CUP 18.23.100( B)  RETAIL USES  Eating and Drinking Services, excluding drive‐in and  take‐out services  CUP CUP CUP 18.40.160  Retail Services CUP CUP CUP 18.40.160  SERVICE USES  Animal Care, excluding boarding and kennels P  Boarding and Kennels CUP  Day Care Centers P CUP CUP CUP 18.23.100( B),  18.40.160  Emergency Shelters for the Homeless   P  (ROLM(E)     18.20.030(d)  Family Day Care Homes     Small Family Day Care P CUP CUP CUP 18.23.100( B)     Large Family Day Care P CUP CUP CUP 18.23.100( B)  General Business Services P  Lodging     Hotels providing not more than 10% of rooms with  kitchens CUP    18.40.160  Mortuaries and Funeral Homes P  Personal Services CUP CUP CUP 18.40.160  Vehicle Services     Automobile Service Stations, subject to site and  design review in accord with the provisions of  Chapter 18.30(G)  CUP CUP  18.40.160     Automotive Services CUP 18.40.160     Off‐site new vehicle storage for auto dealerships  located in Palo Alto  CUP  CUP   TEMPORARY USES  Temporary Parking Facilities, provided that such  facilities shall remain no more than five years CUP CUP CUP CUP   170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     20     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        TRANSPORTATION USES  Passenger Transportation Terminals CUP        (b)   Limitations on Medical Support Service and Medical Support Retail Uses in the Medical Office and Medical Research  (MOR) Zone        (1)   The intent of this limitation is to restrict medical support service and medical support retail uses in the Medical Office  and Medical Research (MOR) zone in order to preserve and facilitate space for medical offices and medical research facilities.        (2)   Floor area devoted to medical support services and medical support retail uses in the Medical Office and Medical  Research (MOR) zoning district shall not exceed twenty percent (20%) of the total gross floor area within the district.        (3)   The director may require a report from the property owner or applicant whenever application is made to the city to  develop new space for medical support service or medical support retail uses or to convert existing space to such uses. The  report shall identify the gross floor area of buildings on each site within the zoning district and the gross floor area of medical  support service and medical support retail uses for each site. The director may, from time to time, establish procedures and  standards implementing this Section 18.20.030(b).     (c)   Automatic Teller Machines        (1)   Automatic teller machines may be allowed as an accessory use in the MOR, ROLM, ROLM(E), RP, RP(5), and GM districts  when incidental to a primary use on the site and when accessible only from the interior of a building.        (2)   Automatic teller machines may be allowed as a permitted use in the MOR, ROLM, ROLM(E), RP, RP(5), and GM districts  when incidental to a primary use on the site and when accessible from the exterior of a building. Staff level Architectural  Review is required prior to issuance of a building permit.     (d)   Emergency Shelters for the Homeless     Emergency shelters for the homeless may be allowed as a permitted use in the ROLM(E) district on properties located east of  Highway 101, subject to the following performance and design standards.       Performance and Design Standards for Emergency Shelters for the Homeless.       An emergency shelter for the homeless shall conform to all site development standards and performance criteria of the  ROLM(E) zone district except as modified by the following performance and design standards:          (1)   The construction of and/or renovation of a building for use as an emergency shelter shall conform to all applicable  building and fire code standards.        (2)   There shall be provided one parking space for each three (3) beds in the emergency shelter.        (3)   Shelters shall have designated smoking areas that are not visible from the street and which are in compliance with all  other laws and regulations.        (4)   There shall be no space for outdoor congregating in front of the building adjacent to the street and no outdoor public  telephones.        (5)   There shall be a refuse area screened from view.        (6)   Maximum number of persons/beds.  The emergency shelter for the homeless shall contain no more than 40 beds.        (7)   Size and location of exterior and interior on‐site waiting and client intake areas.  Shelters shall provide 10 square feet of  interior waiting and client intake space per bed.  In addition, there shall be two office areas provided for shelter staff.  Waiting  and intake areas may be used for other purposes as needed during operations of the shelter.        (8)   On‐site management.  On‐site management and on‐site security shall be provided during hours when the emergency  shelter is in operation.        (9)   The emergency shelter provider shall submit an operations plan that addresses the standards for operation contained in  the Palo Alto Quality Assurance Standards for Emergency Shelters for the Homeless.        (10)   Distance to other facilities.  The shelter must be more than 300 feet from any other shelters for the homeless.        (11)   Length of stay.  Temporary shelter shall be available to residents for no more than 60 days.  Extensions up to a total  stay of 180 days may be provided if no alternative housing is available.        (12)   Outdoor lighting shall be sufficient to provide illumination and clear visibility to all outdoor areas, with minimal  shadows or light leaving the property.  The lighting shall be stationary, and directed away from adjacent properties and public  rights‐of‐way.       170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     21     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                         SECTION 11. Section 5.020 of the South of Forest Area Coordinated Area Plan, Phase II  (SOFA II CAP) is hereby amended to read as follows:    5.020           RT Districts ‐ Land Uses    (a)    Permitted and Conditionally Permitted Uses    Table 1 shows the uses permitted or conditionally permitted in the RT‐35 and RT‐50 districts.    Table 1: RT District Permitted and Conditionally Permitted Uses  RT-35 RT-50 Also see regulations in Section: ACCESSORY AND SUPPORT USES Accessory uses to the primary use P EDUCATIONAL, RELIGIOUS, AND ASSEMBLY USES Private educational facilities P Private clubs, lodges, or fraternal organizations P Religious institutions P OFFICE USES Medical, professional, and general business offices P See restrictions on size and location in subsections (b) and (c) PUBLIC/QUASI-PUBLIC USES Utility facilities CUP RECREATION USES Commercial recreation CUP RESIDENTIAL USES Home occupations P Lodging (including bed and breakfast facilities) P Multiple-family uses, including SRO housing P Residential care homes P Two-family uses P RETAIL USES Retail services, excluding liquor stores P 18.40.160    170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     22     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                          RT-35 RT-50 Also see regulations in Section: SERVICE USES Automobile service stations, subject to site and design review as specified in Chapter 18.82 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code CUP(1) 18.40.160 Automotive services, including tire services CUP(1)18.40.160 Convalescent facilities P Day care centers P 18.40.160 Day care homes, small adult P Day care homes, large adult P Day care homes, small family P Day care homes, large family P Eating and drinking facilities, except drive-in services P 18.40.160 Financial services P General business services P Personal services P 18.40.160 Reverse vending machines P Warehousing and Distribution CUP TEMPORARY USES Temporary parking facilities for up to five years CUP Temporary uses, subject to regulations in Chapter 18.90 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code CUP TRANSPORTATION USES Parking as a principal use CUP Transportation terminals CUP(1) (1) New uses of this nature are only permitted in that area bounded by High Street on the east, Alma street on the west, Forest Avenue on the north, and Addison Avenue on the south.   (b)     Office Uses    (1) No new gross square footage of a medical, professional or general business or administrative office  use shall be allowed, once the gross square footage of such office uses, or any combination of such  uses, on a site has reached five thousand gross square feet.  (2) No conversion of gross square footage from any other use to a medical, professional or general  business or administrative office use shall be allowed once the gross square footage of such office  uses, or any combination of such uses, on a site has reached five thousand gross square feet.  (3) Subdivision of a parcel shall not increase the square footage of allowed office uses.  (4) In the case of a lot merger, the resulting parcel is subject to the five‐thousand‐gross‐square‐foot  limit set forth in subsections one and two.     (c)  Protection of Specific Uses     170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     23     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                        (1)  For sites in the Homer/Emerson Corridor (as defined in Appendix C‐1) located in   the RT‐35 or RT‐50 districts, medical, professional, and general business offices   may not be located on the ground floor of a building unless such offices:    (A)  have been continuously in existence in that space since March 19, 2001, and, as of that date,  were neither non‐conforming nor in the process of being amortized pursuant to PAMC  Chapter 18.95;  (B)  occupy a space that was not occupied by retail services, eating and drinking services,  personal services, or automotive services on March 19, 2001 or thereafter;  (C)  occupy a space that was vacant on March 19, 2001;  (D)  are located in new or remodeled ground floor areas built on or after March 19, 2001 if the  ground floor area devoted to retail services, eating and drinking services, personal services,  and automobile services does not decrease; or  (E)  are located in commercial space constructed under a building permit issued in reliance on  Section 8 of Ordinance 4730 (which defines commercial space for which an ARB approval had  been granted prior to March 19, 2001 as “space not occupied by retail, personal services,  eating and drinking services, housing, or automotive services”).  (2)  For all sites outside of the Homer/Emerson Corridor, in the RT‐35 or RT‐50   districts, housing on the ground floor may not be replaced by office uses.  (3)  For all sites outside of the Homer/Emerson Corridor, in the RT‐35 or RT‐50   districts, housing on the ground floor may not be replaced by office uses.    SECTION 12. The Zoning Map adopted pursuant to Section 18.08.040 of Chapter 18.08  of Title 18 of the Palo Alto Municipal Code is hereby amended as follows:    The Ground Floor (GF) combining district shall be extended to additionally include: 125,  124, 116, and 102 University Ave., 525, 529, 542 and 550 High St., 539 and 535 Alma St., 115,  150, 156,158, and 164 Hamilton Ave.  The revised boundaries of the (GF) combining district are  shown on the map labeled Exhibit “A,” attached hereto and incorporated herein by reference.     SECTION 13.  This Ordinance supersedes Ordinance Nos. 5325 and 5330, and any  provision of the Palo Alto Municipal Code inconsistent with the provisions of this Ordinance.   Additionally, this Ordinance shall supersede any conflicting provisions of the SOFA II  Coordinated Area Plan.     SECTION 14.  Severability.  If any provision, clause, sentence or paragraph of this  ordinance, or the application to any person or circumstances, shall be held invalid, such  invalidity shall not affect the other provisions of this Ordinance which can be given effect  without the invalid provision or application and, to this end, the provisions of this Ordinance  are hereby declared to be severable.    SECTION 15.  Effective Date.  This ordinance shall be effective on the thirty‐first date  after the date of its adoption and shall not apply to any project where a discretionary permit or  entitlement application, other than a “use and occupancy permit,” was submitted to the City  before March 2, 2015.  Nothing in this ordinance shall be construed to affect a vested right  existing before its effective date.     SECTION 16.  CEQA.  The City Council finds that this Ordinance falls under the California  Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption found  in Title 14 California Code of Regulations  Section 15061(b)(3) and 15301 because it is designed to preserve the status quo.  170124 ay/2017‐01‐23     24     January 23, 2017                                                                                                                                                                                                                           INTRODUCED:     PASSED:     AYES:     NOES:    ABSTENTIONS:    ABSENT:     ATTEST:      APPROVED:    ______________________________    ____________________________  City Clerk      Mayor    APPROVED AS TO FORM:    ____________________________   City Manager  ______________________________  Senior Deputy City Attorney    ____________________________   Director of Planning and    Community Environment  934 -944 927 932 233 281 933 -937 943 327 1001 942 469 475 744 459 832 801 427-453 920 912 362 370 900 838 846 471 459 835 -855460 815 840836 834 845 400 803 928930 93 1 933 83 5 -837 831 -833 451453 802800 810 -816 818 -820 828 -830 817 -819 825 567-569 559563 521-529 531-539 541-547 556 596 904 926 561-567 569 84 527-533 543 551 510520 558-560 903 825 837 581 575940934 813-823 501-509 511-519 539541543 515-517 809 811 420 1001 1011 3 365 1010 376 370 1020 1022 345 331 329 10611033 1027 1017-1023 980960 990 342-352 354-362 326 1019 1027 1035-1037 405 409 427 1050 426-430 432-438 10551033 1043 4671042 1036 1018 1000 448 452 450 451 439 944 471 483948952 959947925 915 933935 425-443 451449 463-465 936-940 458 460 440 428426 1028- 1030 536 526 1001 1011- 1015 1021 525 540 542 483 904 912 468 918 926 537 965-971 505-507 519-521 939-945 931-935 923-925 518-520 59 5851048 1044 5 56 1026 1022580 574 566 539 552548 546544 9999 136 610 116-122 150 535529525 542516140 102 116124 163 145 566556 167 528 643635 635 645- 685 660- 666 620 180 164 158156 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307-311 325330 3321&23301-3 324 326316 318 373-377 416-424 361 314 338 340 560 345 321325 315 529 285 555 650636628 385 365 375380 345 664 325650-654 661 635300 690 675 555541-549533 535- 539 318320322324326 352 425 439-441 435429425 415-419 405403453 461 383460 502 510 526 520 540 499 467 459 439 425 555 400 436-452 456 379 370-374 376380-382 384-396 550-552 364 360 431 440-444 423 499 475 421-423 431-433 432428 460-476 450 635 446 430 400 745 720706 385744734 724-730 720712704 360 351 315737 332 300 653 -681 683 685 512 501 619 609605 518 482486496 610 630 455 400 653-687 543-545 532534 542544 550 552 554556 558560562564 470 313 334 333 325326 342 303301 229 336 308 310 312 316 318 311 331 315 319 317 321 335 426-428 427-431 183 359357 341 343 228220 356-360 347-367 351357 369-379360 258- 296 193173169159 449Units 1-4 419 350 210 204176 365 375 381 181- 187 302-316 379310 320 328 332 340 437 412 311A-B404 313 325 327 333 407401385 411 452 378-390 360 - 1A - 1C360 - 2A - 2C360 - 3A - 3C360 - 4A - 4C360 - 5A - 5C360 - 6A 344-348 418420 482 328 456 321 325 330204 218 236 240 250-252 477 475 467 457 453249235 225 221 201 460 275 505-509 239- 243 209- 213 210- 214 513-519 460 474472228-230130 136-144 150 465 164 166 466 446 453 176 545 548 151 134 552 135-137 141-143 100 457-459 471-479 483-485 465-467 459-461 432 470-472 565 555 535 531174170 525 507505 189185179 160164152144 171A 171B 535 558 201 516512 520 209 215 223 231 521 580 239-245 530-540 544-554 212- 216 218-222 175 168160150 181177169 145 580 110 590 151155 190 194192 577575 333 335- 337 351 457451 465463 489-499360 530 480 420 430 480 463 451443437411405 419405401 441 480-498 347 351 355 359 525 430 473 332- 342 425415 400 570568 556 550 543 327321315305 343 515 525 551 555 328 309-311 518-528 536-540 552-554 558-562 573 591-599 557-571 330-332 318-320 406-418 417 542548568 524 550 500-528 578 564 550 546 540 530 531-535 541 505 525 537 555 565 571 530 520 440-446 579 567 600 555 581 420-438 437 566 224 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235 258 212 163 115 291247 131 141 145 150 210 201 207 164 202 158 180 165 147 143 125 149 101 150 170172 165167169171 101- 119 121 123 129 139 235 251249 252 247 244250 177220 261 251-257 205245231225213 205 170 172 206 234240 183 251 270 241-247 215- 237 210- 216 124 124A 132 144 152 147 221-243 275 220 246 250 260 166162130 129 160 154 116112180 - 180A 171 219 219 235 262 202 245 254 252 250 151 159 203 215 221 313-317318 220-224 238 319-323311-317 339327-335 197185 177 170 451 422422A 429 437 121 151 187- 197 309167-169 165 135 143149155 302310 314320 161 171 101 115 110 120 354 344 334 364 160- 164126 134 150 168 181 179 542-550 531-539 532 759 223-239 905 911-917907 188190 251- 293 202 206 208 210 212 216 220 1008 159 275 539 201 400 27 168 865857 302 324 340 795 848 918 903 903A 408412 440 483A - F 435 751 735 745 532 210 727 733 335 328 330 345 214 350 800 806 441 441A 230302306308 312316 301 303 305 307 309 325 251 807 821 829 801 818-824 420 424 430 832A 832 842A 842 852A 852 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L E EVERETTCOURT LANE 39 LANE B EASTLANE 7 EASTLANE 5 EAST LANE 6 EAST LANE20EAST LANE30 LANE20WEST LANE21 MITCHELL LANE LANE33 LANE 15 EAST BRYANTCOURT PAULSENLANE LANE 12 WEST LANE 11 WEST CENTENNIAL WALK LANE D EAST LANE D WEST PEARLANE DOWNINGLANE LANE56 ELCAMINOREAL PALO AVENU E SHOPPING CENTERW AY PISTACH EPLACE PENINSULA CORRIDOR JOINT POWERS BOARDNINSULA CORRIDOR JOINT POWERS BOARD P ALM D RIV E PALOROAD EMERSONSTREET EMERSON STREET HIGHSTREET HIGHSTREET HIGHSTREET ALMASTREET ALMA STREET ALMA STREET ALMASTREET ALMA STREETFORESTAVENUE CHANNINGAVENUE HOMERAVENUE ADDISONAVENUE ELCAMINOREALELCAMINOREAL ELCAMINOREALELCAMINOREAL ELCAMINOREALELCAMINOREAL EMBARCADERO R OAD WELLSAVENUE URBANLANE URBANLANE ENCINA A VENUE ENCINAAVENUE MEDICAL FOUN D ATIONWAY LANE 7 WEST LANE8WEST LANEAWEST LANEBWEST CHANNINGAVENUE This map is a product of the City of Palo Alto GIS This document is a graphic representation only of best available sources. Legend Transportation Station University Avenue/Downtown Business District - Commercial Center Existing Ground Floor (GF) Combining District Zoned Parcels Proposed Ground Floor (GF) Combining District Zoned Parcels SOFA II CAP '055'0 Pr o p o s e d Gr o u n d Fl o o r Co m b i n i n g Di s t r i c t Ad d i t i o n s re v . 20 1 6 1 2 0 6 CITY O F PALO A L TO IN C O R PO RATE D C ALIFOR N IA P a l o A l t oT h e C i t y o f A P RIL 16 1894 The City of Palo Alto assumes no responsibility for any errors. ©1989 to 2016 City of Palo AltoRRivera, 2016-12-08 09:48:00 (\\cc-maps\gis$\gis\admin\Personal\RRivera.mdb) EX H I B I T A Ordinance No. 5325 Urgency Interim Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Adopting a Temporary Moratorium on the Conversion of Ground Floor Retail and "Retail Like" Uses to Other Uses Citywide FINDINGS A. The City of Palo Alto has long been considered the birth place of Silicon Valley. With its proximity to Stanford University, its international reputation, its deep ties to technology firms, its highly rated public school system and its ample public parks, open space and community centers, Palo Alto continues to serve as a hub for technology based business. B. Palo Alto is considered one of Silicon Valley's most desirable office markets. According to one study Class A office rates have climbed 49 percent since the start of 2010. The same study reported Class B office space increasing by 114.4% since 2010. C. In particular, average commercial rental rates have gone up significantly from 2013 to 2015. In 2013 the average monthly rental rate citywide for office was $4.57 per square foot. That rate increased to $5.12 in 2015. While retail rents have also increased during this period, retail rents are considerably lower than office rents. The average monthly rental rate for retail in 2013 was $4.21 and in 2015 was $4.88. D. Price increases have been even more significant in the downtown area. In 2013 the average downtown monthly office rent was $6.37. In 2015 the rate increased to $7.33. E. At the end of 2014, Palo Alto's downtown vacancy rate was a low 2.83 percent, according to a report prepared by Newmark Cornish & Carey. F. These record high monthly rental rates for office and low vacancy rates have created financial incentives to replace current retail use with office use where such conversions are permitted by the City's zoning ordinance. These economic pressures are more severe in the downtown and California Avenue commercial areas but exist throughout the City. G. The data submitted by the City to support the Valley Transportation Authority's Congestion Management Plan (CMP) each fiscal year suggests that there has been a loss of approximately 70,000 square feet of retail-type uses in the period from 2008 to the present. The CMP data is broad in the sense that it inclupes uses like automotive services in the "retail" category even though they are considered separate uses in the City's zoning ordinance. However any overstatement of the trend towards less retail is likely to be offset by the data's reliance on a list of discretionary applications processed by the City, since there have also been recent conversions of retail space to office space that did not require discretionary approvals and are not included in the 70,000 square foot number. 1 150429 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 H. City residents have seen this occurring in the City's commercial districts as the City's Architectural Review Board has considered projects like those affecting Spagos restaurant at 265 Lytton, lnhabiture at 240 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto Bowl at 4301 El Camino Real, and Club Illusions Restaurant at 260 California Avenue. In addition, familiar retail businesses like the Zibibbo restaurant have closed and their spaces have been acquired and occupied by non-retailers. Likewise the old location for Fraiche Yogurt, which moved from Emerson Street to Hamilton Avenue, was immediately re-purposed as office space. I. Based on these trends, on March 2, 2015, the Palo Alto City Council asked staff to consider whether zoning-based protections for ground floor retail uses need to be strengthened where they currently exist and expanded to areas of the City where they do not. J. On April 6, 2015, the City Council discussed these issues in detail and directed staff to prepare an urgency ordinance that would preserve existing ground floor retail and retail-like uses until permanent zoning revisions can be prepared. K. This direction is consistent with the City's existing Comprehensive Plan, which identifies the desirability of neighborhood serving retail (Policy L-16) and envisions inviting, pedestrian-scale "centers" with a mix of uses as focal points for neighborhoods (Goal L- 4). Policy L-20 suggests that the City "encourage street frontages that contribute to retail vitality ... " and Policy B-5 calls on the City to "maintain distinct business districts within Palo Alto as a means of retaining local services and diversifying the City's economic base." L. Palo Alto is in the process of updating its Comprehensive Plan, and it is expected that the updated Comprehensive Plan will contain additional policies and programs designed to preserve existing retail uses in the City. M. The public's health, safety and welfare are currently and immediately detrimentally affected as neighborhood-serving retail service and related uses are priced-out by rising rents and replaced by uses that do not provide similar services or activate the street frontage by creating pedestrian activity and visual interest (i.e. shop windows and doors). These changes affect neighborhood quality of life, and mean that local residents have to drive to similar retail destinations in other locations, diminishing the public health benefit when residents can walk to needed services and increasing traffic congestion, vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions. N. Unless abated, the City's actions to approve conversion of ground floor spaces from retail to other uses will exacerbate the reduction of retail and changes described above, resulting in the need for the proposed interim ordinance. 0. The City Council desires on an interim basis to temporarily suspend conversions of retail and retail like uses to office throughout the City as such conversions may be in conflict with the City's Comprehensive Plan and zoning proposal that the legislative body, planning commission or the planning department is considering or studying or intends to study 2 150520 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 within a reasonable time. P. The possible extension of this interim ordinance beyond 45 days would not have a material effect on the development of projects with a significant component of multifamily housing because a specific exemption has been included to address this requirement of State law. Q. This urgency interim ordinance is adopted in accordance with the requirements of Government Code Section 65858 and Palo Alto Municipal Code Section 2.04.270 and is based on the need to protect the public safety, health and welfare as set forth in the above findings. A 4/5 vote is required for adoption. The Council of the City of Palo Alto does ORDAIN as follows: SECTION 1. Findings. The findings listed above are hereby incorporated. SECTION 2. The following Section 18.85.100 (Retail Preservation) is added to a new Chapter 18.85 entitled "Interim Zoning Ordinances" to the Palo Alto Municipal Code to read as follows: "18.85.100 Retail Preservation 18.85.101 Definitions. For the purposes of this Ordinance, the term "Retail" shall include a modified definition of "Retail Service" as well as the "Retail Like" uses defined below: (a) Retail Service: A use predominantly engaged in providing retail sale, rental, service, processing, or repair of items primarily intended for consumer or household use, including but not limited to the following: groceries, meat, vegetables, dairy products, baked goods, candy, and other food products; liquor and bottled goods, household cleaning and maintenance products; drugs, cards, and stationery, notions, books, tobacco products, cosmetics, and specialty items; flowers, plants, hobby materials, toys, household pets and supplies, and handcrafted items; apparel, jewelry, fabrics, and like items; cameras, photography services, household electronic equipment, records, sporting equipment, kitchen utensils, home furnishing and appliances, art supplies and framing, arts and antiques, paint and wallpaper, carpeting and floor covering, interior decorating services, office supplies, musical instruments, hardware and homeware, and garden supplies; bicycles; mopeds and automotive parts and accessories (excluding service and installation); cookie shops, ice cream stores and delicatessens. 150520 cs 0131335 (b) Retail Like Uses including but not limited to: (1) Eating and drinking service as defined in Section 18.04 (47); (2) Hotels as defined in Section 18.04 (73); (3) Personal services as defined in Section 18.04.030 (115); (4) Theaters; 3 May 11, 2015 (5) Travel agencies; (6) Commercial recreation; (7) Commercial nurseries; (8) Auto dealerships defined in Section 18.040.030(a)(12.5); (9) Day Care Centers defined in Section 18.040.030(a)(42); (10) Service Stations; and (11) Automotive Services. To qualify as a Retail use under this definition, the use shall be generally open to the public. 18.85.102 Moratorium on Retail Conversions. The City Council hereby enacts this Urgency Interim Ordinance establishing a moratorium on the conversion of any ground floor Retail use permitted or operating as of March 2, 2015 or thereafter to any other non-Retail use anywhere in the City. (a) 25% Exemption Suspended. During the pendency of this Ordinance, Section 18.30(C).020 permitting not more than twenty-five percent ofthe ground floor area not fronting on a street to be occupied by a non-retail service use otherwise permitted in the applicable underlying CD district shall be suspended. (b) Conditionally Permitted Uses Suspended. During the pendency of this Ordinance, no ground floor Retail use operating as of March 2, 2015 may be replaced by any other non-Retail use, including uses for which Conditional Use Permits are currently allowed. (c) Legal Nonconforming Uses. During the pendency of this Ordinance legal nonconforming Retail use shall remain as a grandfathered use and shall not be subject to the change, discontinuance, or termination provisions of Chapter 18.70. (d) Conversion of Basements. During the pendency ofthis Ordinance, elimination of or conversion of basement space currently in Retail use or in use for retail support purposes shall be prohibited. 18.85.103 Exemptions. The following shall be exempt from this Ordinance: (a) Pipeline Projects. Any Retail use where a discretionary permit or entitlement application to convert such Retail use to a non-Retail use was submitted to the City on or before March 2, 2015 and is currently pending. For purposes of this Ordinance a 11Use and Occupancy" Permit Application shall not constitute a discretionary permit. (b) Vested Rights. Any Retail use for which an applicant has received a valid building permit from the City and performed substantial work and incurred substantial liabilities in good faith reliance on such permit as of the date ofthis Ordinance. 4 150520 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 18.85.104 Waivers and Adjustments. The following shall be grounds for a request for waiver or adjustment of this Ordinance: (a) Economic Hardship. An applicant may request that the requirements of this Ordinance be adjusted or waived based on a showing that applying the requirements of this Ordinance would effectuate an unconstitutional taking of property or otherwise have an unconstitutional application to the property. (b) Multi-family uses. Any project which (i) contains four or more housing units, (ii) the multi-family housing component constitutes at least one-third or more of the total square footage of the project and (iii) otherwise complies with all sections of the Zoning Code may apply for a waiver or modification from this Ordinance upon a finding that this Ordinance would have a material effect on the multi-family component of such project. (c) Documentation. The applicant shall bear the burden of presenting substantial evidence to support a waiver or modification request under this Section and shall set forth in detail the factual and legal basis for the claim, including all supporting technical documentation. Any such request under this section shall be submitted to the Planning and Community Development Director together with an economic analysis or other supporting documentation and shall be acted upon by the City Council. 18.85.105 Reconstruction. Any ground floor Retail use existing on or after March 2, 2015 may be demolished and rebuilt provided that the portion of square footage used as Retail use on or after March 2, 2015 is not reduced except that Retail square footage may be reduced by the minimum amount needed to provide access to any new upper floor and/or lower level parking. 18.85.106 Applicability to Current Requirements. Nothing in this ordinance shall alter requirements of site-specific Planned Community zoning ordinances or adopted conditions of approval. Nothing in the ordinance shall be construed to waive the requirement for a conditional use permit or other entitlement where such requirements currently exist." SECTION 3. Study. The City Council directs the Department of Planning & Community Environment to consider and study possible amendments to the Comprehensive Plan and zoning ordinance to preserve existing Retail uses. SECTION 4. Written Report. At least ten (10) days before this Urgency Ordinance or any extension expires, the City Council shall issue a written report describing the measures taken to alleviate the condition which led to the adoption of this Urgency Interim Ordinance. SECTION 5. Severability. If any provision, clause, sentence or paragraph of this ordinance, or the application to any person or circumstances, shall be held invalid, such 5 150520 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 invalidity shall not affect the other provisions of this Ordinance which can be given effect without the invalid provision or application and, to this end, the provisions of this Ordinance are hereby declared to be severable. SECTION 6. Effective Period. This Urgency Ordinance shall take full force and effect immediately upon adoption. In accordance with Government Code Section 65856, this Ordinance shall be in full force and effect for a period offorty-five (45) days from adoption. This Ordinance shall expire on June 25, 2015 unless this period is extended by the City Council as provided in Government Code Section 65858. SECTION 7. ~-The City Council finds that this Ordinance falls under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption found in Title 14 California Code of Regulations Section 15061(b)(3) because it is designed to preserve the status quo. INTRODUCED AND PASSED: May 11, 2015 AYES: BERMAN, BURT, DUBOIS, FILSETH, HOLMAN, KNISS, SCHARFF, SCHMID, WOLBACH NOES: ABSTENTIONS: ABSENT: ATTEST: ~~ APPROVED: ~~~ City Clerk Mayor APPROVED AS TO FORM: ./~~- Senior Assistant City/.: t: 6 150520 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 Ordinance No. 5325 Urgency Interim Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Adopting a Temporary Moratorium on the Conversion of Ground Floor Retail and "Retail Like" Uses to Other Uses Citywide FINDINGS A. The City of Palo Alto has long been considered the birth place of Silicon Valley. With its proximity to Stanford University, its international reputation, its deep ties to technology firms, its highly rated public school system and its ample public parks, open space and community centers, Palo Alto continues to serve as a hub for technology based business. B. Palo Alto is considered one of Silicon Valley's most desirable office markets. According to one study Class A office rates have climbed 49 percent since the start of 2010. The same study reported Class B office space increasing by 114.4% since 2010. C. In particular, average commercial rental rates have gone up significantly from 2013 to 2015. In 2013 the average monthly rental rate citywide for office was $4.57 per square foot. That rate increased to $5.12 in 2015. While retail rents have also increased during this period, retail rents are considerably lower than office rents. The average monthly rental rate for retail in 2013 was $4.21 and in 2015 was $4.88. D. Price increases have been even more significant in the downtown area. In 2013 the average downtown monthly office rent was $6.37. In 2015 the rate increased to $7.33. E. At the end of 2014, Palo Alto's downtown vacancy rate was a low 2.83 percent, according to a report prepared by Newmark Cornish & Carey. F. These record high monthly rental rates for office and low vacancy rates have created financial incentives to replace current retail use with office use where such conversions are permitted by the City's zoning ordinance. These economic pressures are more severe in the downtown and California Avenue commercial areas but exist throughout the City. G. The data submitted by the City to support the Valley Transportation Authority's Congestion Management Plan (CMP) each fiscal year suggests that there has been a loss of approximately 70,000 square feet of retail-type uses in the period from 2008 to the present. The CMP data is broad in the sense that it inclupes uses like automotive services in the "retail" category even though they are considered separate uses in the City's zoning ordinance. However any overstatement of the trend towards less retail is likely to be offset by the data's reliance on a list of discretionary applications processed by the City, since there have also been recent conversions of retail space to office space that did not require discretionary approvals and are not included in the 70,000 square foot number. 1 150429 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 H. City residents have seen this occurring in the City's commercial districts as the City's Architectural Review Board has considered projects like those affecting Spagos restaurant at 265 Lytton, lnhabiture at 240 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto Bowl at 4301 El Camino Real, and Club Illusions Restaurant at 260 California Avenue. In addition, familiar retail businesses like the Zibibbo restaurant have closed and their spaces have been acquired and occupied by non-retailers. Likewise the old location for Fraiche Yogurt, which moved from Emerson Street to Hamilton Avenue, was immediately re-purposed as office space. I. Based on these trends, on March 2, 2015, the Palo Alto City Council asked staff to consider whether zoning-based protections for ground floor retail uses need to be strengthened where they currently exist and expanded to areas of the City where they do not. J. On April 6, 2015, the City Council discussed these issues in detail and directed staff to prepare an urgency ordinance that would preserve existing ground floor retail and retail-like uses until permanent zoning revisions can be prepared. K. This direction is consistent with the City's existing Comprehensive Plan, which identifies the desirability of neighborhood serving retail (Policy L-16) and envisions inviting, pedestrian-scale "centers" with a mix of uses as focal points for neighborhoods (Goal L- 4). Policy L-20 suggests that the City "encourage street frontages that contribute to retail vitality ... " and Policy B-5 calls on the City to "maintain distinct business districts within Palo Alto as a means of retaining local services and diversifying the City's economic base." L. Palo Alto is in the process of updating its Comprehensive Plan, and it is expected that the updated Comprehensive Plan will contain additional policies and programs designed to preserve existing retail uses in the City. M. The public's health, safety and welfare are currently and immediately detrimentally affected as neighborhood-serving retail service and related uses are priced-out by rising rents and replaced by uses that do not provide similar services or activate the street frontage by creating pedestrian activity and visual interest (i.e. shop windows and doors). These changes affect neighborhood quality of life, and mean that local residents have to drive to similar retail destinations in other locations, diminishing the public health benefit when residents can walk to needed services and increasing traffic congestion, vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions. N. Unless abated, the City's actions to approve conversion of ground floor spaces from retail to other uses will exacerbate the reduction of retail and changes described above, resulting in the need for the proposed interim ordinance. 0. The City Council desires on an interim basis to temporarily suspend conversions of retail and retail like uses to office throughout the City as such conversions may be in conflict with the City's Comprehensive Plan and zoning proposal that the legislative body, planning commission or the planning department is considering or studying or intends to study 2 150520 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 within a reasonable time. P. The possible extension of this interim ordinance beyond 45 days would not have a material effect on the development of projects with a significant component of multifamily housing because a specific exemption has been included to address this requirement of State law. Q. This urgency interim ordinance is adopted in accordance with the requirements of Government Code Section 65858 and Palo Alto Municipal Code Section 2.04.270 and is based on the need to protect the public safety, health and welfare as set forth in the above findings. A 4/5 vote is required for adoption. The Council of the City of Palo Alto does ORDAIN as follows: SECTION 1. Findings. The findings listed above are hereby incorporated. SECTION 2. The following Section 18.85.100 (Retail Preservation) is added to a new Chapter 18.85 entitled "Interim Zoning Ordinances" to the Palo Alto Municipal Code to read as follows: "18.85.100 Retail Preservation 18.85.101 Definitions. For the purposes of this Ordinance, the term "Retail" shall include a modified definition of "Retail Service" as well as the "Retail Like" uses defined below: (a) Retail Service: A use predominantly engaged in providing retail sale, rental, service, processing, or repair of items primarily intended for consumer or household use, including but not limited to the following: groceries, meat, vegetables, dairy products, baked goods, candy, and other food products; liquor and bottled goods, household cleaning and maintenance products; drugs, cards, and stationery, notions, books, tobacco products, cosmetics, and specialty items; flowers, plants, hobby materials, toys, household pets and supplies, and handcrafted items; apparel, jewelry, fabrics, and like items; cameras, photography services, household electronic equipment, records, sporting equipment, kitchen utensils, home furnishing and appliances, art supplies and framing, arts and antiques, paint and wallpaper, carpeting and floor covering, interior decorating services, office supplies, musical instruments, hardware and homeware, and garden supplies; bicycles; mopeds and automotive parts and accessories (excluding service and installation); cookie shops, ice cream stores and delicatessens. 150520 cs 0131335 (b) Retail Like Uses including but not limited to: (1) Eating and drinking service as defined in Section 18.04 (47); (2) Hotels as defined in Section 18.04 (73); (3) Personal services as defined in Section 18.04.030 (115); (4) Theaters; 3 May 11, 2015 (5) Travel agencies; (6) Commercial recreation; (7) Commercial nurseries; (8) Auto dealerships defined in Section 18.040.030(a)(12.5); (9) Day Care Centers defined in Section 18.040.030(a)(42); (10) Service Stations; and (11) Automotive Services. To qualify as a Retail use under this definition, the use shall be generally open to the public. 18.85.102 Moratorium on Retail Conversions. The City Council hereby enacts this Urgency Interim Ordinance establishing a moratorium on the conversion of any ground floor Retail use permitted or operating as of March 2, 2015 or thereafter to any other non-Retail use anywhere in the City. (a) 25% Exemption Suspended. During the pendency of this Ordinance, Section 18.30(C).020 permitting not more than twenty-five percent ofthe ground floor area not fronting on a street to be occupied by a non-retail service use otherwise permitted in the applicable underlying CD district shall be suspended. (b) Conditionally Permitted Uses Suspended. During the pendency of this Ordinance, no ground floor Retail use operating as of March 2, 2015 may be replaced by any other non-Retail use, including uses for which Conditional Use Permits are currently allowed. (c) Legal Nonconforming Uses. During the pendency of this Ordinance legal nonconforming Retail use shall remain as a grandfathered use and shall not be subject to the change, discontinuance, or termination provisions of Chapter 18.70. (d) Conversion of Basements. During the pendency ofthis Ordinance, elimination of or conversion of basement space currently in Retail use or in use for retail support purposes shall be prohibited. 18.85.103 Exemptions. The following shall be exempt from this Ordinance: (a) Pipeline Projects. Any Retail use where a discretionary permit or entitlement application to convert such Retail use to a non-Retail use was submitted to the City on or before March 2, 2015 and is currently pending. For purposes of this Ordinance a 11Use and Occupancy" Permit Application shall not constitute a discretionary permit. (b) Vested Rights. Any Retail use for which an applicant has received a valid building permit from the City and performed substantial work and incurred substantial liabilities in good faith reliance on such permit as of the date ofthis Ordinance. 4 150520 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 18.85.104 Waivers and Adjustments. The following shall be grounds for a request for waiver or adjustment of this Ordinance: (a) Economic Hardship. An applicant may request that the requirements of this Ordinance be adjusted or waived based on a showing that applying the requirements of this Ordinance would effectuate an unconstitutional taking of property or otherwise have an unconstitutional application to the property. (b) Multi-family uses. Any project which (i) contains four or more housing units, (ii) the multi-family housing component constitutes at least one-third or more of the total square footage of the project and (iii) otherwise complies with all sections of the Zoning Code may apply for a waiver or modification from this Ordinance upon a finding that this Ordinance would have a material effect on the multi-family component of such project. (c) Documentation. The applicant shall bear the burden of presenting substantial evidence to support a waiver or modification request under this Section and shall set forth in detail the factual and legal basis for the claim, including all supporting technical documentation. Any such request under this section shall be submitted to the Planning and Community Development Director together with an economic analysis or other supporting documentation and shall be acted upon by the City Council. 18.85.105 Reconstruction. Any ground floor Retail use existing on or after March 2, 2015 may be demolished and rebuilt provided that the portion of square footage used as Retail use on or after March 2, 2015 is not reduced except that Retail square footage may be reduced by the minimum amount needed to provide access to any new upper floor and/or lower level parking. 18.85.106 Applicability to Current Requirements. Nothing in this ordinance shall alter requirements of site-specific Planned Community zoning ordinances or adopted conditions of approval. Nothing in the ordinance shall be construed to waive the requirement for a conditional use permit or other entitlement where such requirements currently exist." SECTION 3. Study. The City Council directs the Department of Planning & Community Environment to consider and study possible amendments to the Comprehensive Plan and zoning ordinance to preserve existing Retail uses. SECTION 4. Written Report. At least ten (10) days before this Urgency Ordinance or any extension expires, the City Council shall issue a written report describing the measures taken to alleviate the condition which led to the adoption of this Urgency Interim Ordinance. SECTION 5. Severability. If any provision, clause, sentence or paragraph of this ordinance, or the application to any person or circumstances, shall be held invalid, such 5 150520 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 invalidity shall not affect the other provisions of this Ordinance which can be given effect without the invalid provision or application and, to this end, the provisions of this Ordinance are hereby declared to be severable. SECTION 6. Effective Period. This Urgency Ordinance shall take full force and effect immediately upon adoption. In accordance with Government Code Section 65856, this Ordinance shall be in full force and effect for a period offorty-five (45) days from adoption. This Ordinance shall expire on June 25, 2015 unless this period is extended by the City Council as provided in Government Code Section 65858. SECTION 7. ~-The City Council finds that this Ordinance falls under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption found in Title 14 California Code of Regulations Section 15061(b)(3) because it is designed to preserve the status quo. INTRODUCED AND PASSED: May 11, 2015 AYES: BERMAN, BURT, DUBOIS, FILSETH, HOLMAN, KNISS, SCHARFF, SCHMID, WOLBACH NOES: ABSTENTIONS: ABSENT: ATTEST: ~~ APPROVED: ~~~ City Clerk Mayor APPROVED AS TO FORM: ./~~- Senior Assistant City/.: t: 6 150520 cs 0131335 May 11,2015 DocuSign Envelope ID: D49C6B91-8428-4594-8DCD-3FD97FOAE507 Ordinance No. 5330 Ordinance of the Council of the City of Palo Alto Extending Urgency Interim Ordinance 5325 Adopting a Temporary Moratorium on the Conversion of Ground Floor Retail and "Retail Like" Uses to Other Uses Citywide FINDINGS A. The City of Palo Alto has long been considered the birth place of Silicon Valley. With its proximity to Stanford University, its international reputation, its deep ties to technology firms, its highly rated public school system and its ample public parks, open space and community centers, Palo Alto continues to serve as a hub for technology based business. B. Palo Alto is considered one of Silicon Valley's most desirable office markets. According to one study Class A office rates have climbed 49 percent since the start of 2010. The same study reported Class B office space increasing by 114.4 % since 2010. C. In particular, average commercial rental rates have gone up significantly from 2013 to 2015. In 2013 the average monthly rental rate citywide for office was $4.57 per square foot. That rate increased to $5.12 in 2015. While retail rents have also increased during this period, retail rents are considerably lower than office rents. The average monthly rental rate for retail in 2013 was $4.21 and in 2015 was $4.88. D. Price increases have been even more significant in the downtown area. In 2013 the average downtown monthly office rent was $6.37. In 2015 the rate increased to $7.33. E,. At the end of 2014, Palo Alto's downtown vacancy rate was a low 2.83 percent, according to a report prepared by Newmark Cornish & Carey. F. These record high monthly rental rates for office and low vacancy rates have created financial incentives to replace current retail use with office use where such conversions are permitted by the City's zoning ordinance. These economic pressures are more severe in the downtown and California Avenue commercial areas but exist throughout the City. G. The data submitted by the City to support the Valley Transportation Authority's Congestion Management Plan (CMP) each fiscal year suggests that there has been a loss of approximately 70,000 square feet of retail-type uses in the period from 2008 to the present. The CMP data is broad in the sense that it includes uses like automotive services in the "retail" category even though they are considered separate uses in the City's zoning ordinance. However any overstatement of the trend towards less retail is likely to be offset by the data's reliance on a list of discretionary applications processed by the City, since there have also been recent conversions of retail space to office space that did not require discretionary approvals and are not included in the 70,000 square foot number. H. City residents have seen this occurring in the City's commercial districts as the City's Architectural Review Board has considered projects like those affecting Spagos restaurant at 265 Lytton, lnhabiture at 240 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto Bowl at 4301 El Camino Real, and Club Illusions Restaurant at 260 California Avenue. In addition, familiar retail businesses like the 150521 cs 0131444 1 June 15, 2015 DocuSign Envelope ID: D49C6B91-8428-4594-8DCD-3FD97FOAE507 Zibibbo restaurant have closed and their spaces have been acquired and occupied by non- retailers. Likewise the old location for Fraiche Yogurt, which moved from Emerson Street to Hamilton Avenue, was immediately re-purposed_ as office space. I. Based on these trends, on March 2, 2015, the Palo Alto City Council asked staff to consider whether zoning-based protections for ground floor retail uses need to be strengthened where they currently exist and expanded to areas of the City where they do not. J. On April 6, 2015, the City Council discussed these issues in detail and directed staff to prepare an urgency ordinance that would preserve existing ground floor retail and retail-like uses until permanent zoning revisions can be prepared. K. This direction is consistent with the City's existing Comprehensive Plan, which identifies the desirability of neighborhood serving retail (Policy L-16) and envisions inviting, pedestrian-scale "centers" with a mix of uses as focal points for neighborhoods (Goal L-4). Policy L-20 suggests that the City "encourage street frontages that contribute to retail vitality ... " and Policy B-5 calls on the City to "maintain distinct business districts within Palo Alto as a means of retaining local services and diversifying the City's economic base." L. Palo Alto is in the process of updating its Comprehensive Plan, and it is expected that the updated Comprehensive Plan will contain additional policies and programs designed to preserve existing retail uses in the City. M. The public's health, safety and welfare are currently and immediately detrimentally affected as neighborhood-serving retail service and related uses are priced-out by rising rents and replaced by uses that do not provide similar services or activate the street frontage by creating pedestrian activity and visual interest (i.e. shop windows and doors). These changes affect neighborhood quality of life, and mean that local residents have to drive to similar retail destinations in other locations, diminishing the public health benefit when residents can walk to needed services and increasing traffic congestion, vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions. N. Unless abated, the City's actions to approve conversion of ground floor spaces from retail to other uses will exacerbate the reduction of retail and changes described above, resulting in the need for the proposed interim ordinance. 0. The City Council desires on an interim basis to temporarily suspend conversions of retail and retail like uses to office throughout the City as such conversions may be in conflict with the City's Comprehensive Plan and zoning proposal that the legislative body, planning commission or the planning department is considering or studying or intends to study within a reasonable time. P. The possible extension of this interim ordinance beyond 45 days would not have a material effect on the development of projects with a significant component of multifamily housing because a specific exemption has been included to address this requirement of State law. 150618 cs 0131444 2 June 15, 2015 \ DocuSign Envelope ID: D49C6B91-8428-4594-8DCD-3FD97FOAE507 Q. This urgency interim ordinance is adopted in accordance with the requirements of Government Code Section 65858 and Palo Alto Municipal Code Section 2.04.270 and is based on the need to protect the public safety, health and welfare as set forth in the above findings. A 4/5 vote is required for adoption. R. The City Council adopted Interim Ordinance No. 5325 on May 11, 2015, by a four- fifths vote after a public hearing pursuant to Government Code Section 65858 and Ordinance 5325 will expire on June 25, 2015. S. The Council desires to extend Interim Ordinance 5325 in accordance with the requirements of Government Code Section 65858 and Palo Alto Municipal Code Section 2.04.270 for an additional period of 22 months and 15 days. This extension is based on the need to protect the public safety, health and welfare as set forth in the above findings and a 4/5 vote is required for passage. The Council of the City of Palo Alto does ORDAIN as follows: SECTION 1. Findings. The findings listed above are hereby incorporated. SECTION 2. Written Report. Government Code Section 65858(d) states that "ten days prior to the expiration of an interim ordinance or any extension, the legislative body [the City Council] shall issue a written report describing the measures taken to alleviate the conditions which led to the adoption of the ordinance. Pursuant to this provision, the City Council hereby reports that much of the factors which gave rise to Urgency Interim Ordinance No. 5325 still apply, namely increasing commercial rental rates; low office vacancy rates; retail service uses being priced out of market and being replaced by office and other uses; and increased traffic congestion, vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions resulting from these changing land use patterns. The City Council has undertaken a number of actions since the adoption of Ordinance Number 5325, including directing staff to bring to the Planning and Transportation Commission a "backstop" ordinance to retain retail and retail like uses as well as directing staff to more closely study retail protection initiatives together with a formula retail ban in the California Avenue commercial district. Staff has also begun detailed reviews of regulatory schemes from other jurisdictions. In order to have adequate time to fashion and propose appropriate regulations, and to ensure that the current and immediate threat to the public safety, health and welfare continues to be forestalled, adoption of this ordinance is necessary. SECTION 3. Moratorium. The City Council hereby extends Interim Urgency Ordinance No. 5325 establishing a moratorium on the conversion of any ground floor Retail use permitted or operating as of March 2, 2015 or thereafter to any other non-Retail use anywhere in the City. SECTION 4. Severability. If any provision, clause, sentence or paragraph of this ordinance, or the application to any person or circumstances, shall be held invalid, such invalidity shall not affect the other provisions of this.Ordinance which can be given effect without the invalid provision or application and, to this end, the provisions of this Ordinance are hereby declared to be severable. 150618 cs 0131444 3 June 15, 2015 DocuSign Envelope ID: D49C6B91-8428-4594-8DCD-3FD97FOAE507 SECTION 5. Effective Period. This extension ordinance shall take full force and effect ' immediately upon expiration of Interim Ordinance No.5325. In accordance with Government Code Section 65856, this ordinance shall be in full force and effect for an additional period of 22 months and 15 days following expiration of Interim Ordinance No. 5325. Thus the moratorium shall expire on April 30, 2017, unless this period is extended by the City Council as provided in Government Code Section 65858. SECTION 6. Supersedes Earlier Ordinances. During the time period that this Ordinance is effective, this Ordinance supersedes any provision of the Palo Alto Municipal Code inconsistent with the provisions of this Ordinance. SECTION 7. g,QA. The City Council finds that this ordinance falls under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption found in Title 14 California Code of Regulations Section 15061(b)(3) because it is designed to preserve the status quo and therefore does not have the potential to significantly impact the environment. This ordinance is also categorically exempt under CEQA Section 15308 as a regulatory action taken by the City pursuant to its police power and in accordance with Government Code Section 65858 to assure maintenance and protection of the environment pending the evaluation and adoption of potential local legislation, regulation, and policies. Adoption of the proposed interim ordinance is categorically exempt from review under Section 15301 (Class One -Existing Facilities) of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines since it will temporarily perpetuate existing environmental conditions. INTRODUCED AND PASSED: June 15, 2015 AYES: BERMAN, BURT, DUBOIS, FILSETH, HOLMAN, KNISS, SCHARFF, SCHMID, WOLBACH NOES: ABSTENTIONS: ABSENT: ATIEST: /. ~~ City Clerk APPROVED AS TO FORM: re,;:s~ii:r LC2CEDQ84ABC3429 Senior Assistant City Attorney 150618 cs 0131444 APPROVED: ~tlL Mayor GDocuSlgned by: ~4~, 39E7298FB2064DB ... City Manager CaS:~ Director of Planning and Community Environment 4 June 15, 2015 City of Palo Alto ‐ Retail Preservation Ordinance   List of Stakeholders   Individuals and retailers interviewed between November 2016 and January 2017:   Neilson Buchanan   Simon Cintz  Benjamin Cintz  Brad Ehikian  Christian Hansen  Ken Hayes   Chop Keenan  Judith Kleinberg  Julia Moran  John McNellis  Randy Popp  Roxy Rapp  Beth Rosenthal  Jonny Satz  Lund Smith  Elaine Uang  Leaf & Petal | Cassis  Patagonia  Skin Spirit  Spot Pizza  Susan Graf LTD  Three Seasons  Title Nine Sports  Vivre    December 14, 2016 Excerpted PTC Meeting Minutes regarding Retail Ordinance _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. unanimous; unanimous support for the Motion. Ok. That concludes Item Number 4. 1 2 MOTION PASSED (5-0-0-1, Commissioner Fine absent) 3 4 Commission Action: Recommend that the City Council Adopt the staff recommended 5 ordinance. Motion made by Commissioner Rosenblum, seconded by Commissioner 6 Tanaka motion is APPROVED 5-0. 7 Amended Motion: 8 A. Amend Section 9 - 9.18.54.020(b) Item E to remove required parking in guest 9 parking, motion made by Commissioner Tanaka, seconded by Commissioner 10 Gardias, APPROVED 3-2 Commissioner Waldfogel and Rosenblum AGAINST. 11 B. Amend the ordinance to remove Section 5 18.42.140 from the ordinance. Motion 12 made by Commissioner Gardias, seconded by Commissioner Tanaka; motion FAILED 13 3-1-1; Vice-chair Waldfogel and Chair Alcheck Against; Commissioner Rosenblum 14 Abstained. 15 5. Recommendation to the City Council for the Adoption of an Ordinance Making 16 Permanent Interim Urgency Ordinance 5330 (Limiting the Conversion of Ground 17 Floor Retail and Retail Like Uses), With Some Modifications; Extending the Ground 18 Floor Combining District to Certain Properties Located Downtown and in the South 19 of Forest Avenue Coordinated Area Plan; Modifying the Definition of Retail; Adding 20 Regulations to Improve Pedestrian Oriented Design Standards; and Related Changes. 21 The Proposed Ordinance is Exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act 22 (CEQA) Per Section 15308 23 [Note-out of order, took Number 5 first before Number 4 (above)] 24 25 Chair Alcheck: Alright, what I'd like to do right now is begin with Item Number 5 instead of 26 Number 4 and what we'll do is… that last item took a little longer was, as you could tell, 27 complicated, more complicated than I think we imagined. What I would like to do is begin 28 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. tonight with Item 4 as it, what I'm going to term as an abbreviated session. I’d like staff to 1 prepare, to present its report. I'd like to take comments from the public that we have here and 2 then what I would like to do is have one efficient, very efficient round of questions from the 3 Commission to staff so that when we bring this item back for a second session some of the 4 issues that you may have uncovered in your review for tonight are responded to. So with that 5 please begin your presentation. 6 7 Staff woman: Thank you, Chair. Tonight we're bringing to you the first public hearing on the 8 Retail Preservation Ordinance and I would like to introduce Jeannie Eisberg. She's the City 9 consultant who is the Project Manager for this project. 10 11 Jean Eisberg, Lexington Planning: Hi. Good evening, Chair Alcheck and Members of the 12 Commission; again, my name is Jean Eisberg and I'll just give a short presentation and then if 13 you have any questions I'm happy to provide more detail. 14 15 So based on the City Council's direction staff has prepared a draft ordinance for retail 16 protection citywide and in Downtown and South of Forest Avenue 2 (SOFA 2) and we're 17 requesting your review of a recommendation to the Council to protect City, excuse me, to 18 protect retail conversion citywide, add design standards in two of the combining districts in 19 Downtown and California Ave., and modify the GF Foundry Downtown. So just looking back at 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the interim urgency ordinance this prohibits ground floor or basement retail and retail like uses 1 citywide from converting into office or other nonretail uses. It was adopted during a period of 2 time in the City and particularly Downtown where we were seeing a lot of vacancies, vacant 3 retail spaces being replaced by office uses. This is the list of uses that the interim ordinance 4 protects and you'll see the same list of uses is carried forward in the draft ordinance. 5 6 The Council twice discussed priorities for permanent retail protections and these are the 7 outcomes that drove the draft ordinance before you tonight. I'm not going to go into them in 8 detail, but they are in the report. The Architectural Review Board (ARB) discussed some of the 9 potential design standards in their meeting in November and they expressed support for more 10 transparency, for recesses, articulation, but also supported the continued implementation of 11 the existing design guidelines in the City. 12 13 There are seven key points to the ordinance laid out in the staff report. First, modifying the 14 definition so this provision removes the extensive list of retail uses that's in the code and 15 focuses instead on the intent of retail uses to promote active pedestrian oriented uses during 16 public, excuse me, open to the public during typical business hours and the sale and services for 17 customers and clients. And this is intended to respond to the changing nature of retail both in 18 Palo Alto and across the country shifting towards restaurants, experiences, services as opposed 19 to retail sales. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 So Number 2 this provision continues the citywide moratorium on retail conversions. So these 2 protections would be codified in the use classification tables of zoning district. One notable 3 change is that the draft ordinance only protects uses that are permitted or conditionally 4 permitted in the underlying zoning district. 5 6 In terms of [waiters] first the ordinance proposes to maintain the existing economic hardship 7 threshold that requires demonstration of an unconstitutional taking. Additionally, except in the 8 Downtown GF the ordinance provides an opportunity to consider an alternative viable use if it 9 meets the intent of the zoning district. The current GF district proposes purposes are focused 10 on type of use and on the Downtown. The proposed revision here seeks to capture the 11 contribution of architectural form such as transparency and pedestrian orientation in this 12 purpose statement and also to clean up the Downtown focused language acknowledging that 13 the GF district is applied elsewhere in the City. 14 15 In terms of Downtown the draft ordinance continues the interim ordinance provision to restrict 16 the conversion of basements, but only in the GF districts Downtown. And then the next two 17 slides show modifications to the GF district regulations Downtown. So first fitness studios and 18 similar uses up to 15 customers would be permitted by right except on University Avenue 19 where the Council was concerned about window coverings and here students’ studios with 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. more than 15 students would be considered a commercial recreation use which are subject to 1 conditional use permits. The ordinance also proposes to remove the existing provision that 2 allows 25 percent of the ground floor area to be occupied by use in the underlying CD district 3 such as office and this is intended to strengthen the retail core. 4 5 In terms of design standards the ordinance proposes to require clear glass with only a minimal 6 amount of tinting, 70 percent of the sidewalk fronting frontage would be required to have 7 transparent doors and windows. Window coverings in non-conforming spaces such as office 8 spaces in the GF that front onto a sidewalk would be prohibited during business hours. And 9 here there would be some exceptions for uses that require privacy and that these uses we 10 would encourage or require artwork displays of merchandise or other visual interest. 11 12 Lastly a map amendment is intended to expand the Downtown core area where ground floor 13 retail and the design standards I just mentioned would be required to create a more continuous 14 retail experience on the ground floor. So looking at the map the dark pink areas show the 15 existing GF boundary. In yellow the map identifies proposed locations near Alma, University, 16 and Hamilton where the GF foundry would be brought back, restored from its pre 2009 map 17 locations. Some of these properties shown in yellow are currently occupied by uses that are 18 not permitted in the GF overlay so such as office, financial services, real estate offices. As a 19 result these properties would become non-conforming uses and they would be required to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. comply with the GF provisions if those uses vacated; however, some of these properties were 1 designed as offices and do not have architectural features that typically would support retail 2 development. So this may limit what property owners can do, can lease to. A note on the SOFA 3 2 plan, the SOFA 2 plan currently prevents new ground floor office in the Homer/Emerson 4 corridor. So this ordinance would extend protections to other retail and retail like uses in SOFA 5 2 namely in, along Addison Street and would also allow for the alternate viable use waiver 6 process that I mentioned. 7 8 In terms of outreach we conducted 17 informal interviews last month with community 9 members and other stakeholders that live and work in Palo Alto including developers, property 10 owners, small business owners, store managers, architects, residents. Their feedback is 11 summarized in the report. Generally it was mixed. There's mixed support for the existing 12 interim ordinance and for the proposed extension of it. 13 14 This lays out our work so far and the timing going forward. The ordinance the interim 15 ordinance expires in April and so we're looking to go to the Council in February for the first 16 reading of the permanent ordinance. And lastly the Commission and staff have received some 17 correspondence since the staff report was published expressing concern about the extension of 18 the GF foundry, concerns about where private educational facilities may be located, desire for 19 more flexibility and allowing different types of uses to replace retail, and concerns about traffic 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. and parking especially Downtown. That concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any 1 questions. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: Ok. I would like to invite the individuals who filled out comment cards to come 4 speak. I will allot five minutes per speaker. 5 6 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I’d like to start with Mike Powers followed by Simon Cintz. 7 8 Mike Powers: Good evening, Commissioners; my name is Mike Powers. I'm with McNellis 9 Partners in Palo Alto. We’re as you're probably aware we’re owners of a number of properties 10 in the Downtown corridor including the West Elm building. With [Roxy Wrap] years ago we put 11 Anthropologie in a building. Also Lululemon is a tenant and the infamous Alma Plaza. So we've 12 had over, we have 35 years’ experience. Probably 70 projects of which over 60 are retail. So I 13 think you have in your packages John McNellis’ transmittal indicating kind of the difficulties that 14 retail developers have. And in terms of trying to come up with ordinances that protect the 15 unique nature of Downtown Palo Alto while at the same time can have some serious negative 16 consequences in terms of future uses for building. 17 18 So I'm not going to take much of your time here. Just to point out a couple things I think kind of 19 our opinion that the expansion of the geographic areas to the SOFA really was going to, we 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. don't own property by the way so it doesn't have a negative impact on us per se, but I just think 1 there'd be a tremendous difficulty for those property owners in finding retailers that are 2 interested. All the hard and soft good retailers are going to Stanford which is a kind of a very 3 nice high class problem that the City has when you have one of the world's literally one of the 4 world's best shopping centers just walking distance away from a downtown. So you are 5 attracting some of the best retailers, but not necessarily per se in the Downtown corridor 6 unless they fit into a very specific parameters. 7 8 The other thing I think that the retail world has changed and so if you're looking at expanding 9 the definition of retail services the type of services we see in our 25 plus shopping centers, the 10 type of tenants that we're attracting, the soft goods retailers aren't there, the hard goods, 11 electronics, aren't there. It's more along the lines of medical offices, financial institutions, 12 fitness, some of what you're addressing here, some clearly aren't fitting into the retail 13 definition as being suggested, but I think we would urge you to keeping the right vitality of 14 ground floor properties as an expansive of a definition in terms of services, retail, quasi-office 15 that are open to the public whether it be the State Farm Insurance agencies, title companies 16 that will go a long way in addition to restaurants to helping keep up the vitality and uniqueness 17 of Palo Alto. And I'm here to answer any other questions from retailer perspectives if you want, 18 but with that thank you for your time. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Simon Cintz followed by Ben Cintz. 1 2 Simon Cintz: Good evening, my name is Simon Cintz. My brother Ben is going to speak next 3 here. Our firm, our family has been in Palo Alto since the early 1950’s when fine dining on 4 University Avenue meant eating at the lunch counter at Woolworth's Five-and-Dime. We own 5 four small commercial properties in Palo Alto. 6 7 We're, I want to specifically speak about Section 5 of the proposed ordinance. This is the 8 blanket citywide prohibition against any and all ground floor retail conversion. This is a one size 9 fits all approach to retail preservation. It doesn't matter what type of retail. It doesn't matter 10 where the retail is located. It doesn't matter whether or not the retail is viable in this location. 11 It ignores most of the issues that should be considered in a carefully thought out process. Is the 12 way Palo Alto wants to do zoning and city planning? It's important to note that almost all of 13 Palo Alto’s existing retail is currently protected by current zoning and ordinances. Section 5 of 14 this proposed ordinance only serves to protect a very small portion of Palo Alto’s existing retail 15 including retail properties where retail is no longer viable. What is the real benefit of this 16 proposed citywide prohibition against ground floor retail conversions? That's an important 17 question. 18 19 Let's imagine what would happen if this ordinance was in place when our family applied to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. convert our 1960’s auto repair garage to what is now about a 3,400 square foot medical/dental 1 office building at 882 Emerson in the SOFA area. We now have two dentists and one doctor in 2 our building. More than half of their patients are Palo Alto residents. It cost us hundreds of 3 thousands of dollars to do the conversion which you could only do because of an increased rent 4 that we would get from medical office space. 5 6 If this ordinance had been in place prior to the conversion Palo Alto would still have an auto 7 garage at our location. The garage parking was surrounded with a chain link fence along the 8 sidewalk. The junk cars were parked nearest the fence because they weren't going to go 9 anywhere soon. It was just plain ugly. Palo Alto citizens have benefited more by having access 10 to medical/dental services now offered in our building instead of having an auto garage. The 11 citizens of Palo Alto have benefited by having many of the old auto garages in the SOFO area 12 converted to non-retail uses. For example, this ordinance would have prevented the 13 conversion of the auto garage at 930 Emerson to what now occupies the space. It is a state of 14 the art private school. Many of the students are from are from Palo Alto families. Isn’t our 15 community benefited more by a school than an auto garage? 16 17 This citywide prohibition against ground floor retail will interfere with the process of making 18 adjustments in neighborhoods which will allow them to better adapt to change in an 19 appropriate way. One might argue that the ordinance provides an appeals process. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Unfortunately, it still sets the bar much too high to get a realistic exception to do a conversion. 1 The actual effect will be that no retail no matter how non-viable or how inappropriate it is for a 2 neighborhood now or in the future will be able to convert to use that is more beneficial to the 3 citizens of Palo Alto. A suggestion in SOFA and possibly other areas of Palo Alto small 4 medical/dental uses should be allowed as a permitted retail conversion under restricted 5 circumstances. Small medical/dental offices benefit our community and can be successful in 6 areas that have limited pedestrian traffic. Doctors and dentists often get their referrals from 7 health plans and the like and can operate in areas that other retail is not or that other that 8 retail is not viable. 9 10 Finally this proposed ordinance that we are considering tonight fails to follow a careful process 11 that our City has followed in the past. When the 2009 retail ordinance was being developed a 12 stakeholder group was formed. We had a number of meetings. When SOFA 2 was being 13 developed there were many community meetings. In the case of this proposed ordinance 14 which affects all retail areas of our City only 17 people were interviewed by a consultant. Many 15 people, ourselves included, were not on given an opportunity to participate. This does not 16 legitimately qualify as community outreach for an ordinance that affects so much of our City. 17 Thank you. 18 19 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you very much. Ben Cintz please. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Ben Cintz: Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Benjamin Cintz. My brother, Simon, just 2 spoke. I live in Palo Alto, live in the Midtown area now. Used to live near Professorville prior to 3 that and grew up here and then moved away and moved back. It's a wonderful city. And I have 4 my law office on El Camino here in Palo Alto as well. 5 6 What I'd like to address tonight really is two things, one is that I think the stakeholder meetings 7 there needs to be more outreach. I wrote to Hillary Gitelman and on September 1st. On 8 September 2nd she got back to me and I had asked her about the stakeholder participation and 9 she said thanks for this message Ben, we are reaching out to you and other stakeholders as we 10 move forward. Stay tuned. I was not contacted. Now I don't need to be contacted, but the 11 point is that I think others do. And I think it should be a process similar to other stakeholder 12 processes which is where the stakeholders get together and have a discussion; my 13 understanding that this process was an interview process where people were interviewed. I 14 was part of the stakeholder process for Downtown Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) and I 15 think it was a very useful process and I think we could utilize that process again. This is an 16 important decision for the entire City because it affects all properties as my brother pointed 17 out. So I think it would be important to make a recommendation that further input be provided 18 because I think the future of properties in Palo Alto and the quality of life in Palo Alto are 19 affected. Thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: Ok. That concludes public comment. What I'd like to do now is essentially 4 bifurcate this review of this item, but I think to make our next opportunity more effective I 5 think it makes sense for us to go and have one round of comments or questions so that maybe 6 some of those comments and questions can be staff can prepare answers to those comments 7 or questions next time we meet. So you may have answers now. My preference is that you 8 don't answer and we pick this up with the staff having the opportunity to respond to our 9 questions. And the best way to do that is to sort of address them in the minutes or use the 10 minutes of this next piece for that. Ok, so why don't we start on this end with Commissioner 11 Gardias and go straight down and [unintelligible] you could spend a few minutes laying the 12 groundwork for our next meeting. 13 14 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So I just want to understand the objective because it's 15 stated clearly that staff wants to recommend adoption to the City Council, but I understand 16 that you're proposing there is going to be a follow up meeting and it is we will not meet the 17 staff recommendation tonight. 18 19 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. I'm not going to call for a Motion on this item. We're going to postpone 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the review of this to the next meeting. 1 2 Commissioner Gardias: That's fine. So in terms of the comments and we tried to establish 3 procedure with Chair Fine back not that long ago that we would respond immediately to the 4 constituency that speaks to us. Would you mind just responding to this concerns about 5 possibility of broadening, listening to the merchants and those that are subject of this possibly 6 permanent regulation. Is there a possibility to broaden this, the reach out to the community 7 and the stakeholders before the follow up meeting? 8 9 Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: So I’ll look to the Chair just to see if I got the impression you 10 didn’t want to have a question and answer (Q&A), but rather (interrupted) 11 12 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. That’s a unique question because he wants to know if you can do it before 13 the follow up. My real preference is we sort of identify the areas of concern/questions and we 14 allow staff to address them at the next meeting since we have to we really do have to get Item 15 Number 4 and we're running late. So I don't want this to turn into a dialogue. I really would 16 prefer we don't do that. So my preference would be that you present all their concerns and 17 questions and then staff will answer those the next time we meet, ok? 18 19 Commissioner Gardias: So that's the question that I ask that. My question is that I would 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. appreciate and I'm sure the community and stakeholders if there is a broader survey or reach 1 out to the community and the merchants for their input to this ordinance before the next 2 meeting. So that's my first comment. Then if I can go from the top and I'm going to go by the 3 pages because that's how I allocated my comments. So please bear with me, they may be 4 scattered. 5 6 So if I go through the, the first item is the definition and then it seems to me in general that we 7 are just getting very prescriptive in number of the ordinances which on the one hand which 8 maybe satisfies our number of the inputs that we're getting and number of the shake hands 9 that we have to make, but on the other hand just makes administrative burden upon ourselves 10 because to each one of these processes we need to have exception that's later on reviewed by 11 the Director as opposed to the pure law that just clearly states to the developers, merchants, 12 and everybody else how this should work. Definition of the retail in this and then specifying 13 different uses of retail use or retail like uses is an example of this. My comment is pretty much 14 just to simplify the definition, get rid of all these different categories or different types of the 15 retailer. Just stay with the retail. Everybody knows what it is. We know what retail services 16 are. We should have two categories; we should have one definition for each one. So that's my 17 first comment. 18 19 Number two is that I have a question that since we were not expecting answer I will just convey 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. this to you. It says on Page Number 229 about the pipeline projects and for the follow up 1 meeting I would like to pretty much know… I'm just going through the questions because that 2 was the ask. How many pipeline projects are we have for this that would be subject of this 3 ordinance? 4 5 Then on Page 236 there is a passage, there is a paragraph this is under subsequent ordinances 6 and studies and then it just talks about the future work which is Paragraph Number 2 and talks 7 about the Planned Community (PC) zone parcels. So I know that we have historical PC zone 8 parcels, but [unintelligible] we don't have any longer the PC zoning. I would like to have a 9 clarification about this paragraph, what it talks about. 10 11 I'm going to jump briefly to the Page 243, 243 that talks about design standards. In general 12 Paragraph 18.30a.085 it's just a piecemeal. We need to have a clear drive. Are we getting into 13 the design standards for retail or we don't. And I think that this will be the discussion that we 14 should have among ourselves and to in order to justify the position of this Commission, but 15 clearly the design standards that are here presented to us about the windows and the windows 16 covering this is just a small part of the comprehensive design standards there should be or 17 there should not be in this ordinance. Right now you're just proposing us just two of them, 18 exterior windows and coverings, but then and then also I think that height of the windows 19 some it’s somewhere else, but then as you may know it's much more than this, right? We can 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. talk about like the height of the clear ceiling for the retail. We can talk about the windows 1 space in terms of the active retail. We can talk about the distances between the buildings and 2 access points. We can talk about the limitation of the office lobby. We can talk about the 3 transparency of the glazing and how far the wall that would be from the facades how far there 4 will be any wall that's that would define the initial space. I'm just giving you a couple of 5 examples because the design standards it's much more than just two paragraphs or two points 6 that are in here. So I would like to just either have really deep draft on this so we can discuss 7 this or just drop it altogether from the list. 8 9 Another example is that if you talk about lobby sizes. It's the same story. You can… it should be 10 on also under the design standards. Example is that the building that's next to CVS on 11 University where you have a pretty much lobby that serves nobody I think that house it's 12 housed over there currently where pretty much [passerbyers] they see empty lobby. There is 13 no service. There is no retail. When it was designed it was designed with no public in mind 14 whatsoever. It's just an empty space. So that's an example, another example of this how we 15 should regulate this. When you think about the great cities like New York you know that that 16 majority of the facade is the selling space and then if you want to get to the second level then 17 pretty much there is only just a door and then you just behind this door there is a staircase 18 behind this or the entire front façade is taken with the retail space and you get to the building 19 from the back side. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Alcheck: I want to just (interrupted) 2 3 Commissioner Gardias: There's (interrupted) 4 5 Chair Alcheck: Just a second. I want to take the opportunity to just encourage Commissioners 6 that if they can also, we should also use the opportunity to email staff in the next several weeks 7 specific questions that they can add to this list. Because what I really would like if everyone 8 takes ten minutes we're not, we’re going to be here another hour. So if as we go through this if 9 there's lots of questions consider writing an email to staff directly which I hope I will ask staff to 10 incorporate into this longer list of questions. 11 12 Yeah, why don't we do this? Why don’t we set the timer? I’m going to give you two more 13 minutes to get through your questions and then I’m going to give everybody five minutes to get 14 through theirs. Ok? 15 16 Commissioner Gardias: Ok, I will do my best. So if you go to Page 246 on at the bottom there is 17 a Paragraph 2b that talks about a 2,000 foot radius that is for the applicant to present the 18 burden for exemption, if I remember. What is 2,000 feet? It's 300, this is 300 meters. This is 19 unreasonable burden up on the merchants just to ask them to do the survey [unintelligible] 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. them up and submit to the City in their radius of 300 meters. It's a large distance. I'd 1 recommend just to remove it all together. 2 3 Also when you talk about the on the same page Paragraph C, waivers and adjustments, this 4 should be periodic. This should be the wavier and adjustments should be for a period of time. 5 If we allow for an exemption from this regulation this should be for a specific period of time 6 upon which this extension expires. So there should be aware period and there should be a 7 definition for how long this exemption would take place. And so my proposal is that pretty 8 much waiver would expire within three years. Thank you. 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Commissioner Waldfogel [note-Vice-Chair]. 11 12 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I'll try to be brief. I first of all thank you for very clear presentation. I like 13 the graphics. I really support the idea of Downtown district vibrancy. I agree with 14 Commissioner Gardias we shouldn't be too prescriptive. I mean I think our goal is to create an 15 interesting Downtown. I mean I would I think that the core needs to be needs to read urban. 16 It’d be great if there were some kind of unexpected urban experiences possible outside of core. 17 So I just think as long as we can define it along those terms I'm comfortable. 18 19 The medical office, dental office, health care, we need these in town. I've heard anecdotes in 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. San Francisco that things like urgent care storefronts or deactivating business districts I’d kind 1 of like to understand I mean maybe you guys can come back to us with just some comments 2 about what's the right way to weave those kind of offices into an urban fabric. I don’t have a 3 really strong point of view right now. I also think it would be great if you could when you come 4 back if you could show us some prototypes. Are we trying to look like Chestnut Street in San 5 Francisco? I mean I'm not prescribing, but just saying are we're trying? I don't think we're 6 trying to look like Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, but it's another prototype we all get or Melrose 7 Street in West Hollywood or these are all possible prototypes. And I just think if we could say 8 these are kind of the prototypes that we’re aiming for in the core and adjacent to the core that 9 would be helpful. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: Alright, I’ll be brief as well. This is not in any particular order. I think my issues 12 with the report are that it lacks context, and important context. The majority of none of this 13 Commission was here in 2009 and more importantly a great deal number of our staff really 14 wasn't, right? Our Director, our Assistant Director, and one of the things that may be the result 15 of the lack of interviewing or actually I don't even really love the idea of the word interviewing, 16 but sort of the lack of outreach maybe sort of a fundamental lack of context. And so I'm 17 grappling with two sort of concerns. 18 19 Number one I believe that the pitchforks in town are being raised because of traffic related to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. office. And we’ve adopted an office cap last year and now and the interim retail ordinance as it 1 was and, but and now we're expanding on this interim retail ordinance in ways that in my mind 2 sort of ignore the context. And so what I'm hoping is is that we can understand the context 3 better with new information. What is that information? I think it's really important to 4 understand what happened in 2009. In 2009 and I'm going to shed light on this, but I'm hoping 5 that you will actually shed light on this when we meet or staff will shed light on this. We had 6 this situation where if there was more than 5 percent vacancy in retail you could convert it into 7 office and at that time we had 15 percent vacancy and the and the community came together, 8 the business owner, retailers owners came together and staff came together and they decided 9 to sort of remove that safety valve or what I would call a safety valve for retailers and in 10 exchange put forward the 2009 ordinance. Despite the fact that I would argue that retail is just 11 a use that has substantially suffered in the last 10 years we had the highest retail sales ever last 12 year. 13 14 So this notion that we're going to now expand what was pretty restrictive into a more 15 restrictive and more encompassing and farther reaching thing seems counterintuitive to me in 16 general. Why are we going here? Is it because we really don't want any more office and this is 17 another tool to just stop office? If that's the case ok, but are we actually helping retail? And 18 that context I think is really important. I think the reason why the report lacks it is probably 19 because the outreach to business owners was not sufficient enough. And I think when we meet 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. again I'm going to sort of discuss that same issue, that there may have not been enough and 1 sufficient outreach reach. 2 3 And the most important thing I want to suggest tonight which is that I think at the next meeting 4 I'm going to strongly encourage us to consider in a more expansive view of what is retail. It 5 may be that anything that where people come in to spend some money should be accepted as 6 retail: banks, you heard one individual talk about State Farm. Retail is not despite this great 7 year we had retail is not doing that well. And my biggest concern is that we're not setting them 8 up to succeed in the same way that we may have in 2009. 9 10 I also am concerned about the citywide proposal. We were talking really about a specific G area 11 and then this element of the ordinance is going to dramatically change it in a way that we didn't 12 discuss last year. And I think the last piece of context here is that… the without that without 13 incorporating more sort of business owners into this it sort of freaks me out because they were 14 a big part of the 2009 process that stakeholders group. Again, that goes back to context. So 15 that those are my comments; I'd love to see those addressed or to at least have a discussion 16 about those elements next time we meet. Commissioner Tanaka. 17 18 Commissioner Tanaka: So I’ll keep this really brief. So I think what this proposal does is it really 19 kind of uses the stick so to speak to try to force retail to be in Palo Alto which in general I 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. actually want to have very vibrant strong retail in Palo Alto. I think, I don’t think anyone here 1 doesn’t, but I think that the part that I think is really lacking is the carrot, right? Is to actually 2 make property owners want to have retail because retail will do well. And it's not that retail 3 can't do well in Palo Alto because we look at Town & Country. It’s done amazingly well since it's 4 been kind of renovated and Stanford Shopping Center’s also doing extremely well. And I think 5 what they've done is they've created a business environment that allows retail to thrive and it's 6 not, it wasn't, it didn't happen because of some sort of mandate, right? Some sort of forcing of 7 retail there, it happened because the creation of retail was good, the business environment was 8 good, they had a right mix of retail. 9 10 And I kind of want to echo what some of my fellow Commissioners said earlier which is I think 11 what we should do is because this is actually a really complex problem. It’s not something that 12 we’re going to solve in even one meeting. I think this is going to actually how we get strong 13 vibrant retail in Palo A is not a simple easy question. I think what we should do is and I think 14 one of the speakers mentioned this earlier, but I think we should form a stakeholder group with 15 retail professionals, right? Property owners, people who are in retail to really look at how do 16 you make vibrant retail in Palo Alto? What do we need to do to enable this business 17 environment that would that rather than trying to force the property owner to put retail in the 18 property owner will want to do it because the retail will make a ton of money, right? You [take 19 a] percentage rent. They could get all these other kind of… it's drawn in versus being forced in 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. because I think if we just try to force it what happens is you create vacancies, right? I mean 1 maybe we want retail here, but they couldn't, they can’t rent it out to a retailer, right? It and 2 that I think that's not good for anyone. 3 4 So I think maybe even on the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) maybe there 5 should be some sort of subcommittee to really look at this issue more closely, but I think it 6 needs to really involve folks in the business community that know a lot about retail and can 7 actually study some of the barriers that that doesn't enable strong retail here in Palo Alto. And 8 then we can start addressing some of those barriers and how to get rid of them. So because I 9 think this is very much the stick approach versus trying to also create the business environment 10 that allows retail to thrive. So that's my thoughts. 11 12 Commissioner Rosenblum: I’ll also try to be very brief because I think everyone has brought up 13 several of the points that are on my mind. So since this original urgency ordinance was adopted 14 I've always felt it's too one dimensional and it's a very surface level analysis of retail, meaning 15 we love retail therefore make it so that retail is protected on the ground floor. And not only 16 that, we don't particularly like nail salons so let's restrict those and we don't… the “we” are 17 people sitting up here and I find it frankly a little disturbing that a town that has this much 18 talent is doing things this one dimensionally. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I think retail is a complicated issue especially given today's environment of what's changing in 1 consumption habits, but when I talk to retailers again they say Number 1 difficult for me to 2 retain employees, Number 2 you are simultaneously driving away my customers i.e. a lot of 3 these retailers Downtown especially rely on the people who are working Downtown as their 4 employer as their customers. So you're simultaneously making it difficult for my employees to 5 live here, for my customers to shop here and yet you say you love me and you want me to take 6 more space. So what I would propose doing is I do think that this is something we should take 7 time on and have a proper stakeholder group that has more representatives. I think there were 8 five retailers represented, I don't know how many the property owners are listed by their 9 names I believe so I don't know how many of them were property owners versus neighborhood 10 activists, etcetera. But I think that you should do a good job of bringing us a very 11 representative stakeholder group together and then this is an opportunity. 12 13 I think SOFA is an example of a pretty good I don't know if that was a specific plan or area plan 14 under the term of art of how plans come together, but I think it's time for a pretty specific plan 15 around the way retail, housing, and employment work together. And by that I may not just 16 where they're permitted, but how they work together. So for example, I work for Palantir, a 17 large Downtown concern. We've done experiments where employees are encouraged to go to 18 local businesses and we basically we’ve done pilot programs where we reimburse or that we 19 introduce to local restaurants and stuff, but it's it takes work for someone to figure this out; 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. how can local employees spend their dollars in our local environment without overwhelming 1 the capacity of any individual restaurant for example. But there's a tremendous opportunity 2 between housing employment and retail and I think by analyzing it at the surface level that 3 we're doing we're really doing a disservice to what could be a great area. 4 5 The only really specific comment I have is there are some buildings that simply were not built 6 for retail because they were built under a regime where they were not part of this retail district. 7 So for example, the buildings at the corner of University and Alma as an example and 8 somewhere in this ordinance or in the study we need to talk about what do we do about these 9 kinds of cases and why are we including them if we know that they can't comply? And so what 10 is the plan for that? But in general I agree that this should be put more towards a I hate to say 11 it, but a study session but it should be a fairly extensive group that gets together. This is a big 12 deal. It's not something that I think people on the dais without really talking to retailers should 13 just be making up. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you. This, the make-up of this Commission is going to change in 16 January and the make-up of the City Council is going to change in January. I know that there is 17 a perceived deadline for this because of the sunset of the ordinance. I don't know how this is 18 going to play out. Judging by some of the comments it sounds like two meeting, having this at 19 the next meeting may not create a final result if some issues aren’t… So I don't know that that's 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the case because again this Commission will change its make-up, but I don't know I mean we 1 will postpone this now to our next meeting or how will this, how will we deal with this calendar 2 issue? 3 4 Mr. Lait: Well so yeah we would recommend that the item get continued to January 11th where 5 we can have more input from the Commission. We kind of did a once pass and there wasn't the 6 ability to go back and forth. 7 8 Chair Alcheck: Right. I think that that's wise and I'm going to call for that Motion. It's 9 hypothetical because the make-ups are so confusing here, but if at that time the new 10 Commission desires to explore this even further that may require some sort of involvement in 11 determining how you want to proceed with the sunset situation if you don't have enough time 12 to get in front of Council. 13 14 Mr. Lait: Right. So I… 15 16 Chair Alcheck: I guess what I'm really trying to say is I don't know that moving forward to 17 Council without… let's do this next meeting and see what happens. I'm just suggesting to you 18 that it may be prudent to have a portion of the discussion next time revolve around how we 19 would deal with the timeliness of this if we couldn't get it done in January 11th. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Lait: Ok. And I don't think it has to be solved on January 11th, but it would probably need to 2 be solved by the next meeting in January to get this to Council or maybe a meeting in February, 3 maybe the first meeting February to get this to Council in March. The absolute latest that we 4 can get this to the Council I think is right around the 14th and I'm not sure if that's a Monday, 5 but like mid-March is the idea because there’s got to be a first reading and then a second 6 reading and then the ordinance effective 30 days after. 7 8 Chair Alcheck: So what I guess our goal will be to if we determine that we want to pursue a 9 greater amount of research into this topic and create stakeholder groups then we'll make that 10 recommendation as quickly as we can in the processes that we have and then it will be up to 11 that new City Council to determine whether or not they want to do that or not. 12 13 Mr. Lait: Right. And I guess what I would say is and we can have more of an offline 14 conversation about it if you want, but I think that there's I don't think this Commission wants to 15 hold the advancing an ordinance so that the Council is not able to act on a policy direction that 16 they told us which was to implement (interrupted) 17 18 Chair Alcheck: No, I don't think we're going to do that. The question is is whether you will 19 proceed with a recommendation to pass the ordinance or recommendation to not. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Lait: Right. Ok. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: And I hope that we will be able to arrive at one of those choices in one meeting, 4 but I think it might be wise when you do your calendaring to at least save some space in case 5 we exceed that time. 6 7 Mr. Lait: Ok, yeah. That I think we can accommodate. Thank you. 8 9 Chair Alcheck: Ok, alright so I'm going to ask for a Motion right now to what's the correct 10 terminology here? 11 12 Mr. Lait: Continue to January 11th. 13 14 Chair Alcheck: Continue this agendized item to the January 11th meeting, our next meeting in 15 the 2017. Can I get a Motion? 16 17 MOTION 18 19 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: So moved. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Alcheck: Second? 2 3 SECOND 4 5 Commissioner Gardias: Second. 6 7 Chair Alcheck: Great. All those in favor please raise your hand. Ok that passes unanimously. 8 Thank you to the people who came out to speak tonight and thank you to staff for hanging 9 around. 10 11 MOTION PASSED (5-0-0-1, Commissioner Fine absent) 12 13 [note—go back up to Item 4] 14 15 Commission Action: Continue to the public hearing to January 11, 2017 Motion made 16 by Chair Alcheck, seconded by Commissioner Gardias, motion APPROVED 5-0. 17 Approval of Minutes 18 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 19 20 Chair Alcheck: I am going to ask that I have a Motion for approval of the minutes. 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online: 2 http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are: 3 4 Chair Michael Alcheck 5 Vice Chair Asher Waldfogel 6 Commissioner Adrian Fine 7 Commissioner Przemek Gardias 8 Commissioner Eric Rosenblum 9 Commissioner Greg Tanaka 10 11 Get Informed and Be Engaged! 12 View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26. 13 14 Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card 15 located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission 16 Secretary prior to discussion of the item. 17 18 Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be 19 delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250 20 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM the Tuesday preceding 21 the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through 22 2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais. 23 24 Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the 25 agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above. 26 Americans with Disability Act (ADA) 27 It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a 28 manner that is readily accessible to all. Persons with disabilities who require materials in an 29 appropriate alternative format or who require auxiliary aids to access City meetings, programs, 30 or services may contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at (650) 329-2550 (voice) or by emailing 31 ada@cityofpaloalto.org. Requests for assistance or accommodations must be submitted at least 32 24 hours in advance of the meeting, program, or service. 33 January 11, 2017 Excerpted PTC Meeting Minutes regarding Retail Ordinance 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Alcheck: Ok here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to have a vote on the current Motion unless 1 someone has an amendment they want to make themselves. Barring that I really appreciate the 2 effort to encourage our new Commissioners to make amendments, I do, but let's do this. We 3 have a current Motion on the table to move this forward with typical conditions of development. 4 All those in favor of this Motion please say aye and raise your hand. Ok. Five in favor. All 5 opposed? One. The Motion passes. I want to take a five minute break and then we'll pick up on 6 Agenda Item Number 3. Thank you. 7 8 MOTION PASSED (5-1, Commissioner Summa opposed) 9 10 Commission Action: 11 Motion: Recommend approval of the project to the City Council, subject to typical conditions of 12 approval. Motion made by Vice Chair Waldfogel, seconded by Chair Alcheck; motion PASSES 5-1, 13 Commissioner Summa against. 14 15 Substitute Motion: Continue the project to January 25, 2017. Motion made by Commissioner 16 Lauing, seconded by Commissioner Summa; motion FAILED 2-3-1, Chair Alcheck, Vice Chair 17 Waldfogel, and Commissioner Rosenblum against, Commissioner Gardias abstaining. 18 19 Substitute Motion: Continue the project to allow staff time to demonstrate the legality of the 20 legality of the accessory structure. Motion made by Commissioner Summa, seconded by 21 Commissioner Rosenblum; motion FAILED 3-3, Chair Alcheck, Vice Chair Waldfogel, and 22 Commissioner Lauing against accessory structure. 23 24 The Commission took a break 25 26 3. Recommendation to the City Council for the Adoption of an Ordinance Making 27 Permanent Interim Urgency Ordinance 5330 (Limiting the Conversion of Ground 28 Floor Retail and Retail Like Uses), With Some Modifications; Extending the Ground 29 Floor Combining District to Certain Properties Located Downtown and in the South of 30 Forest Avenue Coordinated Area Plan; Modifying the Definition of Retail; Adding 31 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Regulations to Improve Pedestrian Oriented Design Standards; and Related Changes. 1 The Proposed Ordinance is Exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act 2 (CEQA) Per Section 15308. Continued from 12/14/16 Meeting 3 4 Chair Alcheck: [Note-starts in progress] retail preservation ordinance. I have speaker cards 5 here. I have four speaker cards. If you have a speaker card for this item can you please just 6 bring it up to me? Ok I'm going to give we have six or so speakers I'm going to give you each five 7 minutes time to speak on this item. Do we want to start with comments first or how do you 8 want to do that? 9 10 Jonathan Lait, Assistant Director: We thought we'd just do like a little two minute recap just to 11 sort of frame the discussion and if you're ok with that I’ll ask Jean to make that presentation. 12 13 Chair Alcheck: Ok before you sort of start I just want to sort of let the rest of the Commissioners 14 know we begin a very quick sort of discussion on this before the new year and we didn't really 15 have a lot of time that meeting so we pushed it and there was also this sensibility that the 16 Commission’s make up was going to change a little bit and we might want to wait till the new 17 Commission members who are here to sort of jump in and go in-depth. And so with that please 18 staff take it away. 19 20 Jean Eisberg, Lexington Planning: Ok, thank you. Good evening, Chair Alcheck and Members of 21 the Commission; I'm Jean Eisberg, Planning Consultant with Lexington Planning. As mentioned 22 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. we were here back in December on the 14th. Staff didn't have an opportunity that night to 1 respond to the Commission's questions and comments. We've done that in the staff report 2 that's before you tonight. I'm just going to recap a couple items. I'm not going to repeat the 3 presentation from last month. 4 5 So in December the Commission made some comments recommending policy measures that 6 could help support retail. This included housing production, retail incentives, parking 7 management strategies. So those topics could be addressed in an area plan, in a economic 8 development strategy, and they're currently being addressed in the Comprehensive Plan and in 9 a parking management study Downtown. But this draft ordinance is very narrow in that it’s a 10 zoning intervention, a very narrow zoning intervention to address one issue affecting retail. It 11 responds to Councils concerns about office and non-retail uses replacing retail and installing 12 window shades and films reducing the vibrancy particularly Downtown. So as a result the 13 Council directed staff to revise the interim ordinance to permanently protect retail spaces from 14 converting to office or non-retail uses citywide and to add provisions to the GF ground floor 15 district Downtown to require window transparency in all ground floor spaces including non-16 conforming uses. 17 18 In terms of outreach the Planning Commission also asked about the outreach efforts. The City 19 Council directed staff to conduct informal community outreach. And so what we did was a 20 number of stakeholder interviews. At this point we've met with 23 individuals to gain their 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. perspectives. This includes some of Palo Alto’s largest commercial property owners Downtown, 1 a commercial brokerage firm representing over 90 properties citywide, architects, residents, 2 and a number of small business owners and retailers. And this feedback is summarized in the 3 December staff report. 4 5 Additionally in front of you you should have received a memo today it's also in the back of the 6 room with an additional staff recommendation to allow property owners in the South of Forest 7 Avenue 2 (SOFA 2) the southern tip of SOFA 2 and the RT-35 district to replace retail uses with 8 private educational facilities. The Council had expressed support for this specific provision this 9 fall and staff is now recommending including that in the draft ordinance to provide some 10 additional flexibility in this vacant retail area outside of the Downtown and SOFA 2 core. 11 12 Lastly just a reminder about timing; so the interim ordinance expires April 30th, the intention is 13 to have a permanent ordinance in place at that time. So we're aiming to go to Council for the 14 first reading in February and are requesting tonight that you review and consider a 15 recommendation to the Council that protects retail conversion citywide, adds design standards 16 in the Downtown GF and California Avenue combining districts and modifies the ground floor 17 boundary Downtown. That concludes my presentation. I’m happy to answer any questions. 18 Thank you. 19 20 Chair Alcheck: Thank you. I'm going to open in the public hearing now and invite our 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. community members to speak. You’ll each have five minutes and Vice-Chair Waldfogel will call 1 you up. 2 3 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Great. Let's start with Benjamin Cintz followed by Terry Shuchat. 4 5 Benjamin Cintz: My brother will also be speaking and is it possible for me to defer for now and 6 then add my time to his? His name is Simon Cintz. 7 8 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Yes absolutely. Let's see where do we have… I think fourth in the list, is 9 that ok? 10 11 Mr. B. Cintz: That's fine. Thank you very much. 12 13 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Ok. Great. So it’s Terry Shuchat followed by Christian Hansen. 14 15 Terry Shuchat: Good evening, I'm Terry Shuchat. For the last 51 years I've owned a retail 16 camera store Keeble & Shuchat in Palo Alto. Having had that many years’ experience in retail I’d 17 like to kind of share with you the state of retail today and it's not good. If you had asked me a 18 year ago if I would retire someday due to my old decrepit age I would say absolutely never. I 19 like my business. I love it there. I've got great people working there. I have no reason to retire; 20 however, we've been put out of business basically by the Internet and by the smartphone. So 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. technology has raised havoc with the camera industry. A good portion of the cameras that we 1 used to sell were replaced by smart phones. A lot of our business has been taken away by the 2 Internet. So I think you need to be quite liberal when you when you look at retail. And I built in 3 1977 a two-story 16,000 square foot building for my business. At one point we had seventy 4 employees. So we were the largest camera store in all of greater Northern California. 5 6 The second story is an office area. We've always use it for offices and right now I'm trying to 7 rent the building. So our plan will be to separate the first floor from the second floor. Let the 8 second floor continue as office space as it's been and the first floor will continue as retail. I am 9 deluged with calls from realtors who are very, very interested in the office space. I have 10 received hardly any calls regarding the retail space. 11 12 If you ask people in Palo Alto what would you like to see in retail? Oh, I'd like to see the local 13 hardware store back. I want to see the jewelry store back. Why did you close your camera 14 store? Well the reason all these stores have closed is because they're not getting support. And 15 I think you're going to find if you make retail on the first floor difficult to fill that Palo Alto is 16 going to have a lot of vacant space. And I think the City would be much better off with that 17 space filled with some type of business, so extending the concept of retail would be a really a 18 great idea to encourage people to open businesses. Because if you look at companies like 19 Macy's, Sears, even Wal-Mart their businesses are suffering and they're suffering because of the 20 Internet. Now they're in the Internet business also, but they're in the process of closing stores 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. or reducing the size of their stores. So what you can't expect to see in Palo Alto is what we used 1 to have in retail with lots of small locally owned stores. 2 3 I was born in Palo Alto so I have seen huge, huge changes here in retail and as I was growing up 4 so many of the small retail businesses were locally owned and a large portion of those people 5 also owned the buildings they were in. Today on California Avenue I own my building. Bob 6 Davidson who owns the paint store owns his building. There's about two other businesses that 7 are owner occupied. All the rest of the retail stores are either owned by developers who have 8 moved in and have redone the business or the buildings or by large concerns so that it's 9 unfortunately also the cost of retail space in Palo Alto is extremely high. And due to that cost 10 small retail or even medium sized retail or even like my store which was a large store really can't 11 survive. So I would like to encourage you I mean I'm all for the second story as I said. I get calls 12 from realtors every day, every few days inquiring about our office space upstairs. So office 13 spaces is really very easy to occupy and that's why so many people would like to convert their 14 first floor retail to office space. I am all for having retail, but I think you have to be realistic as to 15 what type of retail if any retail is going to fill certain spaces that are available. Thank you. 16 17 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Christian Hansen followed by I’m not sure which Cintz, 18 Benjamin or Simon. 19 20 Christian Hansen: Good evening, Commissioners. My name's Christian Hansen. I just wanted to 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. share with you my experience in a building that we own on 999 Alma which is the Anthropologie 1 building. We purchased that building a couple years ago and fully knowing that Anthropologie 2 was not getting the business that they wanted and they were talking about moving. We know 3 now that they've moved to the mall to a much larger building where they get more foot traffic. 4 5 I've been marketing… when we bought the building we had some flexibility in how we could 6 market the space. We knew that because they were struggling in retail it would be difficult for 7 us to get another retail in that space, retailer. So with the SOFA 2 zoning you're allowed some 8 additional flexibility to market; for example, you can have up to 5,000 square feet (sf) of office, 9 but you have to maintain a retail component. We've been marketing that space for a year now 10 strictly as retail and I have not yet received an offer on the full space. And I hate coming here 11 and telling everyone that because that really makes it difficult for me to be competitive when I 12 go negotiate with prospective tenants. I have received an informal offer for a portion of the 13 space along Alma which would leave the alley space behind the Alma frontage to lease which 14 would be extremely difficult. Again I, we would love to lease the space. We've been trying to 15 market it to any tenant at an undisclosed price because we wanted to see all offers and it’s been 16 very difficult. 17 18 We did receive some interest from a school and I know one of the things discussed here tonight 19 was to fold in education use as a retail like use. And we've been working on this for… with the 20 school to try to get this through the City for a year or six months. I don't know, because it's 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. taken so long I don't know if the school is still going to be a round in a viable option for us, but 1 as you look at what to do with this retail ordinance I would just let you know that time, the time 2 it takes there's a waiver provision that's proposed to say if you're struggling like we are you can 3 come in, you can submit a waiver, and you can approve or deny it. But as you know as tenants 4 are looking for space they don't always have two, three, four, six months to wait around for us 5 to figure out with the City if we can lease up the space and the use that they want. So we again 6 start back at square one. So I hope the education use is still around when this goes through. 7 8 But the other thing I would just want to mention is that SOFA 2 was a very well thought out 9 zoning plan. There was a lot of thought, a lot of study. I mean the packet I know is 200 pages 10 thick and they seem to have thought of almost everything and this ordinance blankets the 11 whole City saying that no, there can be no change from retail. And specifically in the SOFA 12 ordinance it retail is protected on the Homer and Emerson corridors there's no conversion of 13 ground floor retail. It's not allowed. You're not allowed to convert ground floor retail to any 14 other use. It's protected in the SOFA 2. The southerly most tip like where we're at on Addison 15 where there's virtually no retail was excluded from that for good reason, to give us some 16 flexibility so that we can lease our space. 17 18 And I call it luck that we just happened to buy this building right around the time that this 19 emergency ordinance came through and we had a tenant vacate, but this is something that not 20 everyone is feeling now, but as spaces roll and tenants move out this is going to be something 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. that's that a lot of the tenants on the periphery are going to be faced with. So I would just 1 encourage you to remember that when these specific areas of the City that are on the outskirts 2 when the zoning ordinances were constructed they were done with a lot of thought, a lot of 3 study, and I would urge the Council to leave or the Commission to leave that as is. And I agree 4 that it's important to preserve the livelihood of certain areas and retail corridors, but they… it's 5 not the whole City. There are certain areas. Thank you. 6 7 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Simon Cintz followed by John Goldman. 8 9 Simon Cintz: Hi, my name is Simon Cintz. My brother and I our family has been in Palo Alto 10 since the early 1950s. Our family owns four small commercial properties in Palo Alto, two in the 11 SOFA area, two along El Camino. 12 13 I wanted to say I really hope that this Commission will listen to the last two speakers Mr. 14 Shuchat and Mr. Hansen. I have bought cameras at Keeble & Shuchat. I have gone in there 15 many times for various photographic things. You know I really do wish that they could stay, but 16 that's being nostalgic and I hope this Commission will stop being nostalgic and become realistic. 17 And that's what these two people are really saying, what's realistic given the changing 18 environment is not what's in front of you as a proposed ordinance. 19 20 The blanket citywide prohibition against any and all ground floor retail conversion is a one size 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. fits all approach to retail preservation. I'm referring specifically to Section 5 of the proposed 1 ordinance. It doesn't matter what type of retail. It doesn't matter where the retail is located. It 2 doesn't matter whether or not the retail is viable in this location. It ignores most of the issues 3 that should be considered in a carefully thought out process. Is this the way Palo Alto wants to 4 do zoning and city planning? It's important to note that almost all of Palo Alto’s existing retail is 5 currently protected by current zoning ordinances. This ordinance only serves to protect a very 6 small portion of Palo Alto’s existing retail including retail properties where retail is no longer 7 viable. What is the real benefit added by this ordinance? 8 9 It's also important note the ordinance mentions that there 70,000 sf of retail has been lost since 10 2008. Let's put this in perspective; I asked Miss Jean Eisberg how much retail there was in Palo 11 Alto, she looked it up said 2.6 million sf of retail in Palo Alto. This means that 2.7 percent of our 12 retail has been lost in about six or seven years. This isn't much considering the changing nature 13 of retail. So let's put this thing in perspective and what retail really is available to the citizens of 14 Palo Alto. 15 16 In our own family situation we converted an auto garage that was built in the 1960s by my 17 parents into the ground floor into dental/medical. There’s about 3,300 sf. We have a two 18 dentists and a doctor there. Most of their patients are Palo Alto residents. It serves Palo Alto. 19 Would the residents rather have the benefit of these medical offices/dental offices or would 20 they rather have the auto garage that was there which had a chain link fence around it and the 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. old junk cars were parked against the fence because they weren't going to go anywhere. Now 1 we have a really a very attractive place. It benefits, it certainly looks a lot better and I think it 2 provides much more benefit to the citizens of Palo Alto. 3 4 One might argue that the ordinance provides for an appeals process. As pointed out earlier I 5 think by Mr. Hansen it sets a bar that’s way too high for a realistic exception for a conversion. It 6 would take forever. Conversion should be allowed in those areas with a little pedestrian traffic. 7 I mean the ordinance and the staff report often talks about encouraging pedestrian traffic. Well 8 you’re not going to encourage pedestrian traffic by sticking in a retail use in the middle of a 9 place that doesn't have pedestrian traffic. The area around Anthropologie and what used to be 10 the old Addison Antique is a good example of an area that I could literally lie down on the 11 sidewalk there and nobody's going to step over me, ok? 12 13 I hope that you would consider medical, small medical and dental as an appropriate 14 replacement for retail and the last thing I want to say is if you really want to help retailers, if you 15 really want to help the City of Palo Alto’s residents with retail, fix the parking problem. 16 Everybody will cheer. The residents will cheer, the store owners will cheer, the property owners 17 will cheer. That's really the problem. That's really where the focus should be to make retail 18 successful is fix the parking problem. Thank you. 19 20 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: John Goldman followed Brad Ehikian. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 John Goldman: Ok, hello. So I've been in property management and leasing in Palo Alto for 20 2 years. In fact this month is my, will be my 20 year anniversary. So I've been highly involved in 3 managing retail tenants and doing retail leasing. I've been friends with retailers and talked to 4 them many times over the years. I was on the ground floor retail stakeholder group in 2009. By 5 the way our firm we manage about 65 buildings in Palo Alto including 43 in Downtown and no 6 one asked me my opinion or invited me to a stakeholder group. 7 8 The 2009 process was very productive. I mean there were groups from retail, building owners, 9 regular unaffiliated citizens and it was very minor changes, but we had at least 6 probably two 10 hour meetings and everyone left shaking hands and felt… and some of that was to tweak the 11 thing I’m going to talk about is vacancy. Like people were seeing these boarded up buildings on 12 Alma Street in and other areas that had… no one views that as good and productive for retail to 13 have a bunch of vacant buildings. If you went to the mall and every other store was closed 14 you’d go to a different mall. Like I used to go to the one down in Cupertino that was falling 15 apart and it was like it was depressing. 16 17 So, so I talk regularly to retailers and interestingly the two things that they've been absolutely 18 panicked about was when they started hearing about the… well, I'll just talk about one. The 19 other one is too political, but the legislating of tech out of Downtown as discussed by the Mayor 20 last year I had so many people calling me saying what's going to happen, I'm going to be out of 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. business, this is insane. So they… I don't know how this ordinance is supposed to help the 1 retailers. There's not a lot in it for them that they're seeing. Their biggest concern that they talk 2 to me about is foot traffic and they don't want more retail. They want a consolidated customer 3 base in a shopping district like University Avenue. They don't want people running around onto 4 Everett Street trying to find, to buy some clothes over there. They want to force people into 5 where they are. 6 7 So let's see I just wrote a couple thing… yeah, they don't want vacant buildings breaking up the 8 district that they're very happy now. And whenever we have a vacancy that's one of the 9 common calls I get is: when are you going to lease the building next door to me? It's making my 10 block bad. People don't walk here anymore. And at one time I read a study from a retail 11 consultant who said one section a 100 foot of vacant block face can destroy an entire block that 12 people won't walk there anymore. 13 14 So just one other note, I mean really the retailers that are succeeding in the current 15 environment with all the things that everyone else already talked about are restaurants that 16 serve a lot of booze or expensive coffee, cell phone retailers and hair salons. There's really not 17 the vacuum cleaner store and the penny candy store is just people are ordering all that stuff on 18 Amazon. And the retailers this they have a lot of pressures whether it's the minimum wage, 19 California laws like paid time off, workers comp, medical insurance, liability insurance, license 20 and compliance. I mean just a new retail or small retailer comes in they have to get a use and 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. occupancy permit for about $450 and they have a number of other requirements. A business 1 registry is $300. The costs of their employees being able to park; I mean the Transportation 2 Management Association (TMA) has done some things to give free bus passes and other things 3 to the employees of these retailers. That's helpful to retailers because hiring for Downtown 4 Palo Alto is very difficult. Our office is next to Spot Pizza and that's the Number 1 problem he 5 has. He can’t hire people and giving them free bus passes that's something that actually works. 6 That's the kind of thing the City can do to help the retailers. 7 8 So yeah that's pretty much my observations. I’ve been around a long time. I'm always happy to 9 talk to anyone about what I know and introduce other friends and people who've also been 10 around and seen a lot of things happen in Downtown Palo Alto. Thank you. 11 12 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Thank you. Brad Ehikian followed by Chop Keenan. 13 14 Brad Ehikian: Hello, my name is Brad Ehikian and I’m a partner over at Premier Properties. So 15 we as John mentioned we've managed about 43 properties Downtown and I think we're 16 averaging about sixty leases a year in Palo Alto. Just as a kind of some a personal anecdotes we 17 are seeing retail environment change right before our eyes. I would probably say 90 percent of 18 the calls I receive are from restaurants. This is a similar trend we're seeing in other downtowns. 19 It makes sense because restaurants are coming to our area to take advantage of our very robust 20 office environment. That's built in clients for them. It's created this symbiotic relationship 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. between the office and the restaurant and they've been able to thrive under that environment. 1 Retailers on the other hand are shedding space to provide more show room type of 2 environments and they're essentially distributing a lot of their goods to help reduce overhead 3 and inventory. You know just name few we got FLOR, West Elm, Rejuvenation, Restoration 4 Hardware, Design Within Reach, The Shade Store, I mean I can go on and on. These are the 5 changes and trends we're seeing in the retail environment. 6 7 In my experience in discussion with retailers the biggest killer is vacancy. Vacancy will destroy a 8 block. If our intent is to help promote and protect retail we need to really ensure that we're 9 creating a vibrant area and protecting our core business districts which would allow for really 10 maximum foot traffic and exposure. Let's take our current environment in Palo Alto right now; 11 we have a very thriving market. With that said we just lost two of our major retailers to 12 Stanford Shopping Center. We saw, lost the North Face and Anthropologie. I use those two 13 because those are probably the most well-known, but those are on the outskirts. In both cases 14 rent was not the issue. They're going over to Stanford and they're paying probably three X the 15 rent but they're getting 100 times more the foot traffic. This to our retails is key. That's the 16 most important part to our retailers. So now University Avenue may come close, but are out… a 17 lot of the side streets don't have that kind of traffic. 217 Alma, the former North Face, that's 18 going on vacant a year. We don't ask a price. We're trying to find everybody. We're looking for 19 anybody who's out there. It's a very challenging site for us to get leased. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So really at the end of day we're asking really what are we trying to do here? What's the end 1 goal? Very little of this ordinance does anything to really help our retailers. TMA as John had 2 mentioned was a kind of really the first step in providing some assistance to our retailers, but by 3 adding more retail and expanding our district will only hurt our existing businesses. So I would 4 recommend going back to the original 2009 ordinance and keeping things the way they are 5 without any retail citywide protections. Thank you 6 7 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Chop Keenan please. 8 9 Chop Keenan: Good evening, 700 Emerson, Chop Keenan. I want to call this the retail 10 enhancement ordinance not the retail preservation ordinance because I think that's what we're 11 all about. I started buying property and improving them in Downtown Palo Alto in 1972. And so 12 we've done Whole Foods and Aquarius and the Varsity Theater twice, all of the 600 block where 13 Dan Gordon is and the corner of University and High and on and on. I mean I'm a retail nut and 14 I've got a retail centers all around the Bay Area, almost two million sf of them. So I'm in that 15 game all the time. I know what works. 16 17 Parking certainly works. We're in a parking district in the core Downtown. SOFA has no parking 18 district and SOFA was a three and a half year specific plan with an Environmental Impact Report 19 (EIR). If you go to alter that I would suggest you're going to need an EIR. I noticed and also in 20 the Comp Plan discussions the reluctance to get into another specific plan area because there 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. are so forever and to what end? 1 2 So what's good short of just shelving this plan? What's the enhancement? I sent all of you an 3 email that was from John McNellis which expanded allowable uses in the retail core. Banks are 4 a perfect example. They are high traffic generating. Anything I have in my shopping centers in 5 San Ramon and San Jose, Berkeley I've got dentists and I've got tutoring and I've got financial 6 banks. So rather than expanding that out of the core I would expand that in the core. It was 15 7 percent vacancy on University Avenue in 2009 when that last update on the retail ordinance 8 was done. We went building by building looking at which are appropriate for retail and which 9 are just functionally not. And west of High Street was very problematic; Zebra Copy, everybody 10 laments their Zebra Copy left. They were always six months behind in their rent. They just 11 weren't making it there. And if I hear one more time about everybody crying about Rudy's, 12 nobody here has ever been to Rudy's Pub, but ok Doria; says a lot about you. 13 14 So I can… there's not much in this ordinance that I think is good. Eliminating that 25 percent 15 office ground floor exemption is terrible. I would say that the Downtown and SOFA are highly 16 regulated already. One size fits all I can guarantee Downtown is different than SOFA. SOFA’s 17 different than Midtown. Midtown is different Cal Ave. As long as we're talking about the whole 18 City one size fits all, eliminate the chain store restriction in Cal Ave. It’s their finally their day in 19 the sun comes. Cal Ave. used to go across the tracks, it was a very vibrant district. Put in 20 Oregon Avenue and it died. It's having its day in the sun because it too is mixed use. Every time 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I have an office user that's also a customer. This is what… we’re the envy of every city in 1 America is Downtown Palo Alto. We’re working hard on traffic, on parking and I urge you to 2 step back from this ordinance. 3 4 The outreach that was made by Ms. Eisberg was very superficial and one way. Just it wasn’t 5 engaging. I’d love to have a working session with this Council [Note-Commission] and talk to the 6 users and property owners particularly in the Downtown and in SOFA to get more than a five 7 minute sound bite. So you know what's happening to retail in America. Putting our finger in the 8 retail dike with this ordinance when there's a tsunami on the other side is not constructive. 9 Thanks so much. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: Ok. What I'd like to do now is have our Commissioners weigh in. Let's start from 12 the other side and we’ll go down the line and everybody please incorporate your comments and 13 questions into your time. 14 15 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So let me think about this how to start. So I think that at 16 first thank you very much for those from the property management and owners, property 17 owners, and merchants and Mr. Shuchat. You’re the legend of Palo Alto and you are. You are, 18 yes. So thank you very much for taking your evening and coming here to us. And with saying 19 this I think that we would be extremely interested in having this gentleman and all other men, 20 merchants, systemic and deep perspective of this on this how we can improve retail in Palo Alto. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So I'm saying this because when I look at this ordinance and I'm just asking ourselves the 1 question that somebody raised here: what are we trying to achieve here? And I'm not really 2 sure if this document conveys or convinces me to any idea that we want to have with preserving 3 or expanding or just making changes to a retail merchants in Palo Alto. 4 5 First of all I'd like to understand what's the strategy? I’d like to understand the broader picture. 6 I can tell the staff and my colleagues what I think about this, but there needs to be some sort of 7 consensus and the greater understanding what's our end goal of this and other retail 8 ordinances. We agreed that we want to just preserve it. We want to have it thriving, but this 9 means nothing. So this documents lacks greater understanding and consensus of the 10 community what we're trying to do. That's Number 1. 11 12 So with this I hope that with these comments that maybe besides of the discussion on this that 13 staff can make an effort to engage with the discussion with the community of the merchants 14 because this topic will not go away. There's going to be the recession. There will be a change of 15 minds. There will be change, there is already ongoing change toward in the attitude toward the 16 malls that are not thriving as used. There is a youth population that recognizes the value of the 17 stores long the streets. So I think that the winds are changing across America the way I see it, 18 but we have to think this through because there are of course other Internet forces as 19 somebody said here that we are have to overcome in order to make this gentleman wealthy, 20 right? Because that will thrive as long as they are wealthy and their businesses will be wealthy 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. to overcome also the cost that's associated with running the businesses. But then with this 1 there needs to be a set of the planning decisions that will bring the foot traffic, that will make 2 that will bring the lower cost skilled employees, that will allow them to for flexible 3 arrangements, that will maybe ease up on the regulations. So that's in terms of the larger 4 perspective. 5 6 So with saying this I'm just asking because I have number of the detailed questions, but it may 7 take a while. So are we going to have a couple of rounds? Because now I can just stop and just 8 allow somebody else. Ok, thank you. 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Yes, please. 11 12 Commissioner Lauing: Ok, thanks. The staff's intent here is for this to be basically very narrow 13 and some of the comments that I read in the last minutes from December and here tonight are 14 very worthwhile, but I'm not sure that all of them or many of them apply to the narrow issue of 15 preserving ground floor retail. And the second thing is that we're talking about this of course 16 for merchants and of course for developers, but we're talking about this with respect to the 17 vitality of the area in mixed use area for our citizens. So that needs to be the focus here. 18 Anything that we would recommend with respect to this ordinance doesn't preclude a lot of 19 these other things like more parking and how to do promotions which I saw in the minutes from 20 the last meeting and so on. It doesn't preclude that, but it’s just not quite the same subject as 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. what we're dealing with here. So I think more the question is, is this ordinance what we need or 1 is it does it need to be added to or subtracted from? 2 3 Two comments that I wanted to make that were prepared and I don't know if we're just all on 4 the same page or many of the speakers were looking over my shoulder, but one of the things 5 that was there in the 2009 ordinance and is still extremely important is this issue of where is 6 there marginally viable retail locations? And the three businesses that I put in my own notes 7 where the three that you mentioned which is over by Addison Antiques and Anthropologie on 8 the one hand on Alma and then also the ski shop, what’s the name of it? North Face, thank you. 9 So it does seem to me that there is room for defining some areas that in 2017 we might now 10 define as marginal, marginally viable and address that maybe even going overboard and saying 11 those can now be offices. We can't deal with that tonight so in terms of the methodology City 12 staff can give us advice on how to proceed with that, but I think there are some areas that may 13 need to be exempt from the one fits all kind of regulation. 14 15 And the second thing is that and this is been mentioned so I would just since I currently have the 16 floor say I do think that small medical offices can make some sense. It's all about traffic, 17 pedestrians, getting services and getting an eye exam and getting my glasses taken care of and 18 going to the shoe repair guy on the same street on California Avenue sounds… I do it. It’s fine, 19 should… that seems fine to me. So those two are examples of things that we could consider as 20 amendments to what's in front of us. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 I do think that the last staff that we got was there's only about two percent vacancy and that 2 may be old, but relative to when this report was published, but that was November of 2016. So 3 it seems like except for these more marginal areas that there are retailers that want to move 4 into the vacant space, thank goodness not like 2009, with some notable exceptions that we just 5 heard from Mr. Shuchat as well. So in some sense what I'm saying is I don't feel like it's broken. 6 That preserving ground floor retail for citizens to walk by and see all of the options is terrific. 7 Clearly I actually cut my teeth in retail. I was in it for about 10 years. It's all about traffic. It's 8 what you sell and where you are. So there has to be some issues around that that we can look 9 at as well again I think sort of outside the narrow definition of what we're dealing with right 10 now. 11 12 One comment that would make just on the wording is that we're trying to get a much more 13 broad definition of what retail is. I'd be very supportive of that as long as it doesn't get 14 ambiguous because then somebody’s going to have to be making the decision on a lease by 15 lease basis. So I think that for a first round is all I have to say. 16 17 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: So this proposed ordinance responds to direction from the City Council 18 and my view is that we should forward this more or less as written to the Council. And if Council 19 the current Council wants to provide us different direction then they can send us new direction 20 and we can move forward on that basis. But I think that a lot of speculative deliberation tonight 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. on what the Council may or may not want that's different from what the Council previously 1 directed to staff and previously directed indirectly to us is potentially a waste of time. That said 2 I agree with my colleagues with Commissioner Lauing’s view on medical and dental office 3 particularly outside of the core retail districts. So I wouldn't want to see a lot more of that on 4 Cal Ave. or on University, but in the periphery I think that would be potentially a great thing. 5 6 I think there's an open question whether ground floor office particularly with shaded windows 7 creates the same hole in the street that a retail vacancy creates. So I think we just want to be 8 careful as we think about and when we talk about vacancy and talk about the risks of vacancy 9 that we're cognizant that there are occupancies that create the same effect on the street as a 10 retail vacancy. And retail may be in a crisis, but we happen to be in or near zip codes where 11 retail is working. And we know that retail is working in the Stanford Shopping Center and in 12 Town & Country. Retail appears to work in Downtown Los Altos. It appears to work in Los 13 Gatos. It appears to work in San Carlos. It appears to work in Belmont. And not all of those 14 cities have heavy office conditions to drive that retail. So I think that understanding why it is 15 that retail works in some of those communities is something that's important for us to explore 16 and to understand better. But as I said my general view is that we should just forward this 17 forward this to Council and see if Council has any new direction for us. 18 19 Chair Alcheck: Ok. Well I'll start by saying that I found the inclusion of the 2009 minutes and 20 notes to be particularly informative. I think one of the main things I sort of took away from that 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. was the notion that there was a really exhaustive effort made to engage a members of the 1 community in a process that wasn't necessarily self-serving, but really City serving. I appreciate 2 that there was a Council direction here, but I consider our appointment to this Commission to 3 be not necessarily an appointment to essentially enact the Council's direction, but really to give 4 Council perspective. Maybe it's a perspective they share and maybe it's a perspective they 5 don't, but if for example we find many aspects of this ordinance problematic I think now is a 6 great opportunity to let them know. 7 8 And I'd say the number one thing that I find problematic about what we're what we have in 9 front of us is this notion that we didn't engage the community the way we did in 2009. And just 10 so we're clear here 2009 was just the beginning of our recovery. So that engagement essentially 11 was on the heels of a crisis. I think we're in the 82nd or 83rd month of our recovery. We've 12 never had a 10 year recovery. I don't know that we've had a nine year recovery. So we're four 13 months away from eight years. I don't know. Or that mean that we're going have a crisis in 4 14 months or 8 months or 12 months or 14 months or 16 months? I can guarantee you it's coming. 15 I just don't know when. I'm not going to put money on it, but it's not going to we're not going to 16 have a 10 year recovery. 17 18 And so the question is are we about to essentially codify something that doesn't speak to what 19 potentially is looming, in which case we'll be in a crisis let's say in 2019 or 2018. And then we're 20 going to want to get together with everybody and figure out well what can we do to help you 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. because we've got vacancies everywhere. I feel you were telling me about your camera store. I 1 swear I felt really guilty because I the last camera I bought was on Amazon and it was an single-2 lens reflex (SLR) because I had a kid and I wanted to take pictures of them and it's the absolute 3 truth. We're buying everything online. And one easy thing that I'd love to see staff come back 4 to is essentially what could only be described as the broadest definition of retail. I'd like to see 5 an ordinance that essentially had a definition of retail that someone would be like how is that 6 retail? I'd like to see the broadest definition on the table that we could pare back as opposed to 7 sitting here and saying well what about if added dental offices? Which aren’t included or what 8 if a yoga studio or what… I don't want to… I don't think any of us are qualified to just call it off 9 the dais. I’d rather have a definition that would be really broad. Frankly if there are shopping 10 malls that have dental offices and financial planners and tutoring centers then our definition of 11 retail should incorporate those because I assume that anything that generates foot traffic for a 12 shopping center like Stanford or its competitors is probably worth consideration. 13 14 I don't know, I'm really uncomfortable moving this forward to Council as is and I take a little 15 solace in the fact that the Councils’ make up has changed dramatically in the last election. So 16 maybe the direction that we've given is… it's not enough I think to just say this is ready for their 17 vote. And I would I mean I would like to hear everybody's thoughts before we sort of delve into 18 the specifics, but I would argue that the most concerning issue is that I don't think any of this 19 addresses a potential crisis that's coming in the next 18 months. And the worst thing that could 20 happen is if this accelerates problems in our town that would have come anyways because it 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. wasn't sort of sensitive. 1 2 I'd argue that in 2009, I don't even know if the 2009 ordinance if we can just rest on that alone. 3 I don't even know if that's a good fallback and I'll tell you why. Let’s just put some context here, 4 right? iPhone is 2007. The whole retail framework has changed. I do most of my retail on my 5 phone now. Like literally all of it. I don't even use my computer for retail. I literally buy 6 everything I buy on my phone. And that the retail landscape has changed so dramatically 7 between 2009 and 2017 that I don't I don't know that even the 2009 framework is enough. I 8 think we need to essentially understand what it is that we're doing. 9 10 I think the argument about parking is persuasive. I think we don't acknowledge how valuable 11 the business users are to the retail operators. When we talk about getting business, getting 12 tech out of Downtown I can imagine the retailers getting scared, but again I want to hear from 13 everybody else. My biggest concern remains the sort of looming economic conditions and how 14 are we addressing them without input based on the last seven years of experience. So I’m going 15 to pass it to Doria and we’ll come back. 16 17 Commissioner Summa: So I'll keep my comments general and I want to thank everybody from 18 the public that came here to speak. And I'm sorry if you didn't think the public outreach process 19 was good enough. And I also notice that there aren't any small business operators here tonight 20 which kind of surprises me and including any traditional retail, well Terry, but… so that was kind 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. of striking to me. I want to agree with a lot of my colleagues and especially with comments that 1 this is kind of a narrow ordinance that the Council wants us to take a look at that they felt was 2 important. And I don't think it's so, I don't think we're going through this ordinance solve the 3 parking problem for sure and other complicated issues. I think the idea of this ordinance was 4 kind of a quit the convert, to stop the conversion of what had been retail to office uses basically 5 and to support creative ideas to a certain extent about retail zones. 6 7 So I have some specific ideas here, but oh ok. So and I'm kind of interested in sending this to 8 Council quickly because I know you guys saw it before. I don't want to get into specific things, 9 but I don't want to try to solve other bigger problems with this ordinance. What I want to do, 10 what I think the Council intended to do and what I'd like to support is stopping the conversion of 11 ground floor retail. And I think that another one of my colleagues made a very good point that 12 conversion of office to ground on the ground floor to as a use can be as devastating as a 13 vacancy. I think that's an interesting point. 14 15 And another thing that I always like to do when I'm considering these issues is to be fair to 16 everybody and I think that it's so important how retail uses to support one another. And I'll very 17 believe briefly use as an example the Anthropologie store and Addison Antiques. That was 18 beginning to create a really cool little retail area out of unusual buildings that were kind of 19 warehouse buildings. It could have… I mean I really like that. I went to both of them every time 20 I went to one of them. I'll probably never go to Anthropologie now that it's at the mall, but I'm 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. sure they'll make more money and that's fine. But I would also like this ordinance and I think 1 that's the intent to encourage rather than limit creative uses of retail. And I think many of the 2 uses that were that some colleagues would like to broaden I think that the description of retail 3 is broadened here and many of the uses that have been mentioned are already at least available 4 as conditional uses. So I'm going to leave it at that for right now. 5 6 Commissioner Rosenblum: Great. Yeah, since this has come to us a couple times also we can 7 kind of start in the middle, but I did want to just bring it back. I've said this before, but as a 8 meta point I do agree the retail protection ordinance is focused on the wrong side of “loving 9 retail and wanting to encourage retail.” When I talk to retailers it's not even among their top 10 five concerns is protection for ground for retail. They bring up always how they find employees. 11 Even before foot traffic they say it's difficult for me to get employees, it’s difficult for me to 12 retain employees. Next is foot traffic and they worry about the consistency of the 13 neighborhood. They don't want vacancies. They don't want a dead zone. It also does feel like 14 an overreaction I think the point was well said, 2.6 million sf of retail in Palo Alto. The reason 15 cited in the report for triggering this urgency ordinance is 70,000 square [foot fit] that had been 16 converted over the previous eight years. It feels a little bit like taking a bazooka to swat a very 17 annoying mosquito. 18 19 And I also agree with Vice-Chair Waldfogel that the Council the new Council may have very 20 different direction and so overly debating this before getting that new direction may be 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. premature. Having said that a couple things that are between the general and the specific; so 1 first there have been many people talk about the makeup of the stakeholder group. This was 2 brought up in our last meeting. I was not that happy with the involvement of the stakeholder 3 group at that time and I'm still not. And I don't think the new report really addressed it. 4 5 A couple of things super minor, but the very least in the report you should bucket who is who. I 6 had to go up and look up every person and see who are they, how many property developers, 7 how many property owners, how many retailers, what type of retailer are they? You have five 8 retailers of which one is a restaurant. One is laser hair removal, etcetera. If the majority of our 9 retailers that are coming in are say restaurants then they should have proportional 10 representation. You don't want to have just Spot Pizza represent the entire restaurant industry 11 of Palo Alto. When you read the notes from 2009 it did indeed seem to be a very vibrant 12 stakeholder group that did block by block walking. And it was a tight group and I agree with our 13 Chair that the inclusion of the notes from 2009 I found very enlightening: their process, the 14 participation, etcetera. It also included by the way a quote from Cicero from Mr. Chop Keenan. 15 So next time we can up the game and get more Latin quotations. But the quote was good. He 16 said Cicero said not knowing your history is like looking to the world through the eyes of a child 17 and I think that's a good thing. So looking at 2009 was really enlightening for me. 18 19 So second I think that we're very premature to extend what we have to citywide. I think what's 20 going on in the Downtown corridor and preventing conversions is a good thing, but there's no 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. way we can apply this the rest of the City. I agree that Midtown is different from where I used 1 to live in South Palo Alto is different from many other many neighborhood types shopping 2 areas. If we want to look at those we should look at them one by one. I don't think this 3 ordinance is anywhere near a good tool for citywide and if the point of this meeting was to say 4 do we extend it citywide then I would be a strong no. 5 6 I also don't agree with extending the map of the protected 2009 boundary. I do think that the 7 original intent of the of the emergency ordinance to basically halt anything that was violating 8 the spirit of what we had done so things that were not in any way retail suddenly taking over a 9 ground floor and pretending somehow to be retail absolutely that should be stopped. But 10 somehow believing that extending our boundaries of protected retail towards really marginal 11 cases I think is poor. I live very close, I live three blocks from that North Face store and it breaks 12 my heart. It's a great location for an apartment building right across from Caltrain. It's part of 13 our neighborhood. It breaks my heart to have this this wonderful space that's been unoccupied 14 for a year and I was always wondering why there's retail there. There's nothing else around 15 there. It's just other apartment buildings. And so it's something that seems odd that we would 16 want to expand to these marginal cases. 17 18 And so and then finally to the extent that we should do our job, bring this back to Council as as 19 instructed I agree that if there is useful comments to put forward it would be what they already 20 have expanding it to include the whole City is certainly premature. Taking what they currently 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. have and enforcing that within the boundaries that had previously been established I have no 1 problem with. I think that having a two percent vacancy doesn't show that we yet I have seen 2 any ill effect of the previous ordinance and would be supportive of continuing. But with that I 3 agree with Vice-Chair Waldfogel they may have different direction for this whole retail area, but 4 certainly extending this to the citywide is premature. And I’ll end my comments with that. 5 6 Chair Alcheck: Ok, let's go to the lights. If you have sort of a second round of comments just 7 turn your light on and I’ll call on you and we'll continue this discussion for a little longer. Ok, 8 Commissioner Gardias and then Commissioner Summa. 9 10 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. So I believe that we have at least one supporter on the City 11 Council to strengthen our mandate, Greg Tanaka, who was saying many times that he believes 12 in the greater and stronger role of the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC). So I 13 think that that with this I would be leaning toward having a discussion on this ordinance. And 14 this would extend our perspective this way extending our perspective to the City Council not 15 necessarily awaiting their directions. I'm sure that they would appreciate our perspective. And I 16 have more comments if we agree on this direction. Thank you. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: So I had some specific comments. One of them is about in the 19 conditional uses the first one which is business or trade school. So I'm assuming by business or 20 trade school you don't need mean business school as in Columbia Business School or Stanford 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Business School. And I'm wondering if business school and trade school as a ground floor retail 1 use is maybe archaic? And I think that most trade schools probably don't want to be in such 2 expensive retail buildings. The three so trade schools and those kinds of things are regulated by 3 the state and we only have three. One of them is Downtown. It's the Berlitz and the other two 4 are kind of like on San Antonio in general manufacturing. And I worry that this business school 5 and trade school conditional use is A) archaic and also might be used as a loophole by 6 businesses that really aren't retail. So I would like to make a recommendation that we look into 7 that. It's a very specific thing, but I think it could improve the conditional uses. 8 9 And then I also when it comes to the waivers and adjustments and I don't mean this to sound at 10 least the least bit insensitive, but having economic hardship be listed as a reason for a waiver or 11 adjustment is kind of troubling to me because I wouldn't like it to encourage people to ask to 12 have a waiver just because they know they can make more money currently by renting retail 13 space versus office space. I don't consider owning a property that has a zoning use restriction to 14 be an economic hardship. So I found that kind of troubling and I think that having it happen at 15 the Director’s level without any public hearing makes it very difficult for adjacent businesses to 16 know that it has happened. And everybody on both sides today has stressed the importance of 17 what's happening down the block, 100 feet of a vacancy can be destructive to thriving retail. 18 19 So I think that there should be a public hearing for a process like this and in fact I don't know 20 why it shouldn't just be a variance. Because I'm worried that on the one hand under the 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. documentation required. There's a very strict suggestion that people would have to provide a 1 map of 2,000 foot radius of every business use, but I don't think the process as proposed would 2 allow for I don't know how a business would know if somebody next door was in time to appeal 3 the Director's decision and I think that can have a real effect on businesses nearby. So those are 4 my two comments for now. 5 6 Commissioner Lauing: So basically the point that I want to underscore because I still think we're 7 not aligned on this and maybe we can't be, but we're not being asked by this ordinance or by 8 the Council to come up with a what I’ll call a comprehensive master plan for retail vitality for 9 retailers themselves, for retailers and developers. What we’re asked specifically about should 10 we protect ground floor retail with glass for new tenants coming in? That's basically what we're 11 being asked for. All these discussions about other things we could do for retailers are 12 completely valid. Totally valid in my judgment, but it's not part and parcel of this right now. So 13 one option I think is to take this back to Council and say that we can generally support the intent 14 if we do of first floor retail, but we would like you to consider reduction. Not expansion as this 15 one currently does, but reduction of some of the non-viable retail areas focusing on the more of 16 a core is what I'm saying. We can use the broader definition of retail that cities already put in 17 here as an example of the broader definition that we would like to see and ask for more 18 guidance. Because that way we kind of get a couple of things that I think we're mostly aligned 19 on and still ask for the guidance without getting into a whole comprehensive study of lots of 20 different things that could make retailing better. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. I so let me respond to that. I think you make a very, very valid point about 2 sort of the intent of the review. I think that you're acknowledging one of the issues that I'm sort 3 of dealing with which is that we're reviewing this interim ordinance, but it incorporates a lot of 4 changes that are expanding its reach. And it's and those expansions are intended to enhance 5 the retail, but no one's really spent a lot of time evaluating them. And so there is concern that 6 maybe that's a mistake. And I agree with you that we weren’t asked to essentially come up with 7 a retail enhancement program. I don't dislike your suggestion actually. I think it might be one 8 route which is essentially to encourage the removal of the elements of this that are technically 9 expansive until such time as we're given to review their broader impacts and potentially include 10 a community oriented approach. I'm going to, let's hear from everybody else and see what they 11 think. Commissioner Fine. 12 13 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Not present. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: [Unintelligible] Commissioner Rosenblum. 16 17 Commissioner Rosenblum: Thank you. I think we can take this in two ways. We can do the 18 narrow assignment that Council gave to us and I think they're asking us A) to approve a map. So 19 there's the existing 2009 outline and then there's a number of properties designated in yellow 20 in the Downtown corridor that would be added to that. So it's University Circle. There's a 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. couple of blocks along Hamilton, etcetera. And so they're asking us… it's attachment, it’s 1 Proposed Ground Floor Commercial District Additions. 2 3 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Page what? 4 5 Commissioner Rosenblum: Exhibit A. 6 7 Mr. Lait: I believe we have an at places memo with color maps at the (interrupted) 8 9 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah. Yeah so it’s Exhibit A. And so one we're being asked to 10 approve a map I think. Number two we're being asked to think about the same restrictions 11 being applied citywide. Is that not the case? 12 13 Mr. Lait: There's more to it than that. There one is the expansion of the ground floor area as 14 you noted on Exhibit A. We've modified on in the GF area some of the permitted uses. 15 16 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yes. 17 18 Mr. Lait: And on University Avenue specifically we've even made some other refinements to 19 that. The existing interim ordinance already applies citywide. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah. 1 2 Mr. Lait: What this ordinance does is codify that ability to convert existing retail where it exists 3 as of March 2015 to be converted to a non-retail or non-retail like use. 4 5 Commissioner Rosenblum: Ok. Thank you. And so then number three was I was going to lump 6 several things together which is the categories of retail that are acceptable and the wavers. So 7 basically how do you apply to get out of it? And so in the narrow task of giving feedback my 8 personal kind of votes on these things would be first on the map as proposed is too expansive. 9 That I don't really understand how even buildings like University Circle which by the way was a 10 big part of the 2009 PTC discussion about whether or not it should be eligible and why it’s not 11 eligible, etcetera. But when you look at these buildings they just weren't built for retail. I don't 12 even know what you would do if their tenants move out. I mean I… you punch a hole and 13 rebuild the ground floor. I honestly don't know what they would do. One my questions for staff 14 in a moment what would happen? 15 16 But so first my answers in order would be the map expansion or adding a property seems ill 17 advised. Number two so I had actually thought we were being asked if this should also be 18 expanded to citywide, but we were saying that was already in the interim ordinance for this is 19 outside of that, but any expansion I think of anything that we're considering for the Downtown 20 corridor to apply citywide I think is also ill advised. And then finally around the waivers and uses 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I didn't have a problem with the set of waivers. The definition of permitted uses I always think 1 is a can of worms. I always think it's easier to exclude uses rather than dictating every category 2 under the sun of creatures that can get on the ark. And I just think it's leading us down a bad 3 path although I have to admit when I looked at it it seemed logical, no major red flags. So 4 putting that aside those would be my couple of votes around if we're talking about what we 5 want to get back to Council to fulfill our assignment. 6 7 But more generally following up on Commissioner Gardias’ comment people like Council 8 Member Tanaka really do want us to take this job a bit more expansively. And so I would love 9 for Council to say we'd like you PTC to come back with a more comprehensive retail vitality 10 study that includes everything from parking to the map itself to how does Transportation 11 Demand Management (TDM) relate to the Downtown retail area. And I think that would be a 12 median relevant assignment. So that would be my vote for how to pursue this in a less 13 piecemeal fashion. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Yeah, alright. Let me ask a question to my fellow Commissioners here. So it's 16 sort of my impression that we and correct me if I’m wrong, it’s sort of my impression that this 17 interim ordinance was put in place in what could be described as a response to concerns over 18 excessive office uses. And the sort of notion behind it being interim was this idea that it would 19 come back and during that period of time we would actually review it and give it maybe a more 20 in-depth analysis before codifying it. And I think that the concern and I want to hear from you 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. guys, but I think one of the concerns that you're hearing from some the Commissioners here is 1 that I don't know that we did the analysis during the interim period to justify putting this into 2 law. And you know one option could theoretically, I hate the notion that we are operating with 3 a time line, it's so arbitrary. They've got to prove it before it lapses in April? Alright, well then 4 one suggestion could be extend it for six months. And let's take six months and figure out 5 whether or not this should be codified. 6 7 Let’s just be clear here, everything that we're talking about is here is just a recommendation. So 8 anybody that showed up tonight to participate has to show up at City Council because this may 9 not necessarily translate. And I think one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is do we 10 want to recommend maybe a six month continuance of the interim ordinance and request that 11 they allow the Planning Commission and the staff to work together to analyze the greater 12 impacts as opposed to expand and codify permanently what is potentially an unanalyzed 13 interim ordinance. I see a staff light. 14 15 Mr. Lait: Well I just wanted to respond to the question about the what's been done in the 16 interim since the interim ordinance was adopted. Because the suggestion was that there hasn’t 17 been any analysis that's been done since then (interrupted) 18 19 Chair Alcheck: No. I don't want to suggest there hasn't been analysis. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: No, but I mean there's specific things that have been done and I think it's important at 1 least to articulate some of those. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: Please. 4 5 Mr. Lait: You're absolutely correct that when you, when the City, when cities adopt a an urgency 6 ordinance the idea there is to immediately stem the problem and stop what's happening and to 7 take that time for how [ready] how many months or years up to two years to study and 8 evaluate how you might adopt some permanent regulations to address it or maybe decide that 9 the issue is not urgent and you let it lapse. Since this interim ordinance was adopted there was 10 we heard reference to it this evening in an unfavorable way, but there was a reference to the 11 California Avenue regulations and the change doors and some other issues to address small 12 businesses on California Avenue. There was another regulation during this time that we studied 13 and that the Commission made recommendation on having to do with the California 14 commercial neighborhood and neighborhood commercial areas where we addressed a loophole 15 in some of those issues that were resulting in retail spaces being converted to office. We have 16 also gone to the City Council and we have sought their guidance on the next year which was sort 17 of this Downtown and the rest of the ordinance of the interim ordinance and we got guidance 18 from the Council. And we believe that the guidance that we got from the Council is reflected in 19 in this ordinance. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So I don't think we're just simply changing the date and now running through the system again. 1 I think there has been some guidance and thoughtful dialogue that has been granted. Now to 2 the public outreach I hear the comments that have been made about that and I don't take 3 objection to that. I will note that when we did get City Council direction on this and I think we 4 reported this in the staff report it was pretty clear to us and maybe we got it wrong, but they 5 did want to do an informal outreach. It was our impression that there was not the expanded 6 outreach of 2009 that they were seeking. And so we'll find out when we go to Council whether 7 we got that right or wrong and certainly there's always an opportunity for more dialogue on 8 such issues. But I do think that I'm hearing some of the comments about moving this forward to 9 Council I think that is important and I do appreciate the constraint that you're expressing 10 relative to the deadline and wanting to have a more robust dialogue about that. 11 12 Chair Alcheck: Ok, I appreciate that. Let me ask you just a quick question. There's sort of a 13 difference between community outreach right now everybody has an opportunity for five 14 minutes and what I would call a much more involved process which was the 2009 process. And 15 I guess my question is I'm not for one minute suggesting that you didn't get the Council 16 direction correct. I'm just curious if in your professional opinion this ordinance could be 17 improved if it, if we incorporated a more exhaustive community involved process. If we 18 followed the parameters of the 2009 process do you think this could be improved? 19 20 Mr. Lait: Well I think any time you allow for open dialogue and conversation then yeah you can 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. probably address some of the issues that are problematic. I mean we've heard the Commission 1 express concerns about some of these marginal areas. I've also heard how some of these 2 marginal areas can actually turn into something kind of neat and exciting and that's great, but 3 then what's the economics behind that? So yeah we have not done a, not consulted with an 4 economic consultant to talk about feasibility of retail in certain parts of the City and if we 5 wanted to get that fine grain analysis that's an opportunity. And I think I've heard some 6 comments about the interrelationship of this and the customers that you have through office 7 and the housing opportunities and how all this stuff comes together. That is definitely a much 8 more expansive effort and would result in some more information, but I think that… well, so I 9 think that answers your question. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: [Unintelligible] Commissioner Gardias. 12 13 Commissioner Gardias: Ok. Thank you, but I would like to talk about the so there are two topics 14 one is the greater perspective so let me just relate to this. If we pursue so in regards of pursuing 15 that greater aspect and retail strategy and greater study if we decide to take this route in 16 addition what I understand would be also looking into this ordinance so doing two at the same 17 time that's what Commissioner Rosenblum suggested and I liked it very much. In regards to the 18 first item I think this should be related to the works on the Comprehensive Plan. So however we 19 formulate this there needs to some be some relationship to the team that formulates polices on 20 the Comprehensive Plan. Otherwise there was going to be conflict of work pretty much. They 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. will be just doing their work, there is going to be another work done by Commission, and then it 1 will result with the confusion. So ok, please. 2 3 Mr. Lait: If I… so I, yes. I would agree with that. And I think just so we understand procedurally 4 how this would happen as I'm understanding some of the as the dialogues emerging there may 5 be a recommendation on the ordinance itself and then there would be also this 6 recommendation to the Council requesting that they direct the PTC to further examine these 7 issues. And so the Council's going to think about that recommendation in the context of the 8 Comp Plan effort that's under way. And they will think yes and in fact I think that the Comp Plan 9 is now entering into a new phase and looking at the business economics side of it. So all the 10 stuff is sort of coming together right now and we recognize that there is these different 11 elements that need to feed into the dialogue, but we believe and I think some of the 12 Commissioners have reflected this, this is a much more narrow focus. Yes, there's a broader 13 conversation that ought to take place and should take place, but we still need Council direction 14 on when and where that's going to take place whether that's the Comp Plan or another effort. 15 16 Commissioner Gardias: And I agree. And in this regards I can I am ready just to start looking into 17 the ordinance itself if my colleagues agree because I have prepared a set of comments to this. 18 19 Chair Alcheck: Why don’t you let me get through the remaining lights and then see where they 20 go. Commissioner Summa. Go ahead. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Summa: Oh, I wasn’t sure I hit my light. Yeah, I kind of agree that what the 2 Council's looking for us to do tonight is a comment specifically on this ordinance and many of 3 those broader issues will presumably be dealt with in the very, very comprehensive 4 Comprehensive Plan. And that I think if we just punt it I don't feel like we’ll be doing our job this 5 evening. I've already and I've already made some specific comments. I have some more to 6 make, but that's just kind of where I'm going with the larger process. 7 8 Chair Alcheck: Ok, so basically we have two different tracks here. We have a number of 9 Commissioners who don't believe that it's worth the time to delve into these, to delve into the 10 issues that they find troubling because they want greater Council guidance. And there are some 11 that would like to delve into the issues that they find problematic and ask for greater Council 12 guidance. Is that sort of where you are you? You want to get specific and move it along? 13 14 Commissioner Summa: Yeah. 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Right. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: I think so. I think that's what Council wants from us. 19 20 Chair Alcheck: So those are sort of two different paths and I'm prepared to shelve it. So I how 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. do you want to proceed? Does anybody... I’m open. I'm open to getting specific. I think I'd 1 rather get specific and talk about the issues that we find problems with then simply pass it 2 along. So why don’t we go in order? Commissioner Gardias why don’t you kick it off and… 3 4 Commissioner Lauing: I was going to say that I'm not sure tonight in any amount of time we can 5 get through all the specifics. If we're going to talk about we recommend this with these changes 6 to the staff presentation and we have to go into what geographies we're recommending and I 7 just don't know how we can get there tonight. So I think there is merit, no is what I'm saying, I 8 think there is merit in getting a little bit more time from the Council, but to give them sort of a 9 preliminary indication that, if this is true, that we generally do support maintaining first floor 10 retail glass for new tenants. But we need further time to look at this because we actually think 11 that it should be a more constrained amount of geography than what's in the current memo, 12 etcetera, etcetera. 13 14 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 15 16 Commissioner Lauing: So we would like to have some more time to do that and in the meantime 17 when you send this back to us and hopefully give us more time you can also give us more 18 direction. So it just doesn't seem to tonight like we can get deep enough into it without 19 spending hours on it and maybe still have it defeated I don't know. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Alcheck: So here's where I'm interpreting your suggestion and I'm assuming Commissioner 1 [Note-Vice-Chair] Waldfogel’s probably on board with that suggestion. And so we have two 2 Commissioners (interrupted) 3 4 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: [Unintelligible] question for staff. 5 6 Chair Alcheck: Got it. So but I assume that you're sort of on board with that so we have two 7 Commissioners that are prepared to not discuss the details. I have two Commissioners that 8 would like to talk about specifics. [Unintelligible – people talking off microphone] And one 9 suggestion to potentially continue it to another meeting where you could I don't know that we'd 10 have support for that here either. At some point we need to have a Motion and I'm afraid I 11 don't know that we have enough consensus on how we want to proceed. So yeah, please. 12 13 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Is so the current ordinance is an urgency ordinance that has a two year 14 time frame. Is that correct? 15 16 Mr. Lait: [Unintelligible] 17 18 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: And is it possible to extend that or do we need to we need to bring in a 19 replacement? 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: Yeah there's no further opportunities to extend that urgency ordinance. It expires on 1 the 30th of April and I think the Council is interested in having a new set of regulations in place 2 before that happens. 3 4 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Yeah, so if we want to keep what's in place we have to move something 5 forward in a timely fashion is what I'm understanding. I mean that said I agree with a lot of the 6 comments that we've heard that there's a deeper question here about what really supports 7 retail, but I feel pretty strongly that we just have to move this forward and then we can delve 8 into what direction we want from Council on the process. Whether it's Citizen Advisory 9 Committee (CAC) or the Comp Plan process or whether we should set up a subcommittee to 10 explore this further even if we don't have another ordinance in front of us. But I just feel like we 11 have to move this forward. 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: Are you suggesting that for tonight or maybe if we met in two weeks and 14 retackled it? 15 16 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Well I think there's some hard deadlines here because this needs to go 17 through what is it? Two readings at the Council and if you walk this back and look at the 18 schedule to agendize it first reading, second reading we're pretty much at three minutes to 19 midnight. Am I close to right there? 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Lauing: So two weeks from now is not an option? 1 2 Mr. Lait: Well I'm not going to say it's not an option, but I will tell you that we're very nervous 3 about giving the Council enough time. So the Commission feels pinched on time I also don't 4 want the Council to feel pinched on time. If they want to take another meeting to discuss the 5 issues I'm concerned that if the Commission continues it they may not have that luxury of doing 6 that. 7 8 Chair Alcheck: Ok, I have a light from Commissioner Gardias. Do you have, you want to 9 comment on this? 10 11 Commissioner Gardias: As I said I’m ready to dive in and start discussing the ordinance itself. 12 13 Chair Alcheck: Ok. Ok what I'm going to do is I'm going to allow any light to proceed with their 14 comments and if a lit light proposes a Motion then we'll hear it, but I can't put words in your 15 mouths. So I have a light from Gardias and now I have a light from Commissioner Rosenblum 16 and I'll go in order of the lights as they see them. So if you'd like… 17 18 Commissioner Gardias: Since I just spoke maybe Commissioner (interrupted) 19 20 Chair Alcheck: Ok. We’ll start with Commissioner Rosenblum and the next light I have is 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Doria. So let's start. I keep switching. 1 2 Commissioner Rosenblum: Well so I'd like to make just a base Motion and then see if we can 3 build off this. So that the we're looking to extend this emergency ordinance into an official 4 ordinance. So I'd like to make a Motion to adopt what the Chair suggested which is to extend 5 the current ordinance, is this permissible for six months? Are we allowed to recommend this? 6 7 Albert Yang, Senior Deputy City Attorney: So the interim ordinance is limited to two years and at 8 that point it's really meant to be adopted either as a permanent ordinance or for some 9 permanent regulation to go into effect. 10 11 Mr. Lait: That said though the Commission could recommend could it not to the City Council 12 that they adopt this ordinance for a limited term? 13 14 Mr. Yang: Yes, I think that raises a question of how that differs from an extension of the interim 15 ordinance. 16 17 Chair Alcheck: Can I ask for some clarity here? Is there a sort of is it forbidden to essentially 18 implement a new interim ordinance that is very similar, but called version two? 19 20 Cara Silver, Senior Assistant City Attorney: So we're kind of threading the needle of the 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. distinction between the emergency ordinance that was actually adopted as a moratorium which 1 banned retail conversion versus a brand new set of regulations that more clearly prescribe what 2 uses should be there and which should not. So if you compare side by side the interim 3 ordinance the interim urgency moratorium ordinance with the new ordinance that we're 4 proposing you'll see that the language is very different. So you can certainly as Albert 5 mentioned you can't legally extend the moratorium for longer than two years. That's off the 6 table under state law, but you can adopt an interim ordinance. So you could recommend that 7 Council accept this ordinance that we're proposing for say a six month period and then do 8 further study during that time period. 9 10 MOTION #1 11 12 Commissioner Rosenblum: Ok. Yeah so this, thank you for that option; so just to explain where 13 my head is there's two things that we could do if we want more time, but also want to fill our 14 obligation to Council then we can make this a limited interim ordinance. Where my heart is 15 though is to give more clear direction which is that they basically roll back to the 2009 16 boundaries with stricter protections because I think where people went wrong were retail 17 spaces converting into uses that really were not retail that should have been protected. And 18 people came and rightly said this is wrong, people are pulling a fast one on us. They said that 19 this should be retail, but this is clearly not a retail use. And so I think part of the work that staff 20 did was define much more clearly what constitutes retail, what is eligible and so to me it's a 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. matter of being better enforcers and clearer, but I think that the boundaries that have been 1 established in 2009 are very logical and they did exclude areas that are fairly marginal and other 2 areas if retail could thrive there I think retail will find a way, but I think we want a very good 3 dense corridor. 4 5 So where my heart is is to give advice to Council to go to the 2009 boundaries, but include the 6 clear definitions of retail and retail service that has been provided by staff. So that would be my 7 Motion is to adopt the boundaries prescribed by the 2009 retail ordinance with the permitted 8 uses being outlined in this ordinance over a permitted retail and retail like services. 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Do I have a second? 11 12 Commissioner Lauing: Well I’ll second it at least for discussion purposes because I have a 13 question about what I seconded. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Ok. I'll second the ordinance and you are feel free to ask a question. 16 17 Commissioner Lauing: Ok, thank you. So let me (interrupted) 18 19 SECOND 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Alcheck: I mean I'll second the Motion. 1 2 Commissioner Lauing: Ok what you're saying is this regulation wording except the 2009 3 boundaries? 4 5 Commissioner Rosenblum: I'm saying that I the thing I dislike about this ordinance are the 6 boundaries. That clarifying the definition of what is retail and retail like service making it easier 7 to enforce I like. What I think we got wrong was making it too expansive and so I think that the 8 goal of this was noble which is to make a high functioning dense area of retail and not have 9 offices sneak their way in, but I think they that we cast too wide a net. So yes, it's I'm saying 10 constrict the boundary, but otherwise the definitions of permitted services and waivers I would 11 adopt. 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: Ok. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Yes. 16 17 Commissioner Summa: So I'm a little confused. Does that mean you just want it to be 18 Downtown? 19 20 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, I think it should apply to the Downtown area. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Summa: So I really want the Downtown core as our chief retail area to be very 2 strong and I agree with that, but there's other areas that are very important for people who 3 want to have something they can walk to particularly for retail all over the City that have been 4 like the CN zones have been fairly ravaged by illegal conversion. So I would like to extend it and 5 I don't think this ordinance is going to kick anybody out. It's just going to say once this is 6 available again to a new tenant it will have to become what it was meant to be. So I don't want 7 to just take care of Downtown I really want to take care of the whole City. 8 9 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah if I can, if I can address that? 10 11 Chair Alcheck: Yes. 12 13 Commissioner Summa: Yeah. 14 15 Commissioner Rosenblum: I agree with this. I think there are lots of retail areas in Palo Alto that 16 are important. My point is that the I think Council looked at Downtown when they crafted this 17 initial urgency ordinance and thought about the situation we face there and then took the same 18 prescription and painted the rest of the City. And I just think that each area is somewhat 19 different and I have experience personally with a couple of the retail areas in Palo Alto and so I 20 go to Town & Country. I used to live in South Palo Alto so went to Charleston Shopping Center 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. area and Midtown. So I know some of them, but I'm not sure what prescriptions should be for 1 each of these areas. And so I feel like even Cal Ave. I don't know what the boundaries should 2 be. And I feel like the Downtown area was well studied in 2009. They went block by block by 3 block and you can read that the discussion and so I'd be very supportive of a similar process in 4 Cal Ave. and South Palo Alto and Midtown and come up with what the ordinances should be in 5 those areas. I just don't think that that anyone did that. 6 7 Mr. Lait: So Chair? I have some information that may be informative to your deliberations. So 8 as I'm understanding the Motion. It's move the staff report, the recommendation and staff 9 report with the exception that the GF boundary not be expanded and in fact restored to the 10 2009 boundaries which you have on your map here. Ok. And just so we're clear that would not 11 include the 2013 expansion. Ok, very good. 12 13 So I wanted to just clarify a point that I heard from Commissioner Summa and maybe for the 14 rest of the Commission in areas where there is a ground floor protection today or expanded if 15 there is existing non-retail or retail like uses in that space. Let's say an office is in that space, 16 that office use can leave and a new office use could be established. This ordinance doesn't 17 require the immediate transition when one office leaves it has to now be retail. Our code has a 18 non-conforming provision that says when a use is abandoned and I think it’s 12 months then if 19 you are in a GF area and you're an office use and the sites been abandoned for 12 months that's 20 when the GF standards of now you got to be ground floor retail would kick in. So practically 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. speaking the GF boundary where the rest of the ordinance already would protect any property 1 that has retail on the ground floor. So for example we've got the 2013 map here which 2 Commissioner Rosenblum is suggesting not be included in the GF boundary in each one of these 3 areas where there is retail that retail is still protected under the ordinance. 4 5 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah and I to respond to that also I understand that and thanks for 6 the clarification. And my colleagues could say no I disagree I want to also include the 2013 or 7 even the new suggested areas as well. I'm reacting to a lot of the at least petitioners tonight 8 that the state of retail is changing and I think having an area that we're really going to protect 9 and do a great job of making sure that every single store front is protected for retail and exciting 10 and vibrant is better than trying to expand the footprint and possibly have to make 11 compromises. And so I would like to see us adopt quite strong protections in that in the areas 12 we really want to see retail thrive. And so to me the 2009 boundaries were very well 13 established. 2013 my only issue with it again is actually my issue with it is that it's not as well 14 defined as the 2009 corridor, it’s just a it's an appendage. I don't have a strong feeling about it 15 to be honest. I have a stronger feeling about extending what we've done to the more marginal 16 which were designated in yellow in Attachment A and to take the same implications for 17 everyone I think is premature. The 2013 versus 2009 I my feelings are less strong. I feel like the 18 2009 boundaries were better defined, but I don't have a strong feeling about including 2013 or 19 not. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Alcheck: Ok, yeah I wanted to speak to the second and then to the Motion as well. I think 1 one of the challenges here is this look, it's incredibly sort of eye opening that we had a 2 commercial property owner sort of testify tonight that they are unable to lease a space and 3 they're not even advertising a price they're just asking for anybody to make an offer. And it's 4 not inaccurate to suggest that by doing that that individual is sort of putting themselves in a 5 tough financial position because in theory it's public knowledge now that there's no 6 competition. That's not where you want to be when you're a property owner, right? What 7 happens to that Anthropologie space? How do they fill it? 8 9 And one of the concerns that I think you're hearing from some of us on the Commission here is 10 without engaging a process like the 2009 without having a process like the 2009 maybe on Cal 11 Ave. and maybe on some of our other areas where we really want to focus on a core how can 12 we simply codify this? I think that's our discomfort. Our discomfort is not with the sort of heart 13 of this notion it's why are we doing this blind? When we clear, you know what's funny about 14 this a little bit? The individuals that participated the 2009 process are all still in in the 15 community and they're eager to participate. And the staff level we have a lot of new members. 16 And so we have the same community that was involved in 2009, some of the same Planning 17 Commissioners that were in 2009 are now on the City Council, and we have an entirely new 18 staff essentially make up. And so the notion that we wouldn't maybe draw on those community 19 members to participate in the process again now seems like a mistake and I think that's what 20 you're hearing from us tonight. I have two lights. We have a Motion on the table. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Lait: Can I clarify the Motion? Because I think what I stated is not what I'm hearing stated. 2 So just to be clear the Motion is I thought the Motion was move the staff report which includes 3 implementing the interim ordinance which applies citywide that if you have retail you cannot 4 convert that to a retail a non-retail or retail like use. And but what the dialogue is that I'm 5 hearing is that no, what you want is forget about the expansion citywide, restore the 2009 6 boundary, keep this definition of retail and retail like though I don't know what the significance 7 of that would necessarily be, and yes or no on University Avenue changes with the yoga studios 8 and things of that nature? That maybe we don't have the answer to that question right now, 9 but so in essence the change I mean and this isn’t precise, but in essence what we're saying is 10 let the ordnance expire. But before it expires change the map back to the 2009 standard 11 instead of the 2016 standard that we have today. 12 13 Chair Alcheck: [Unintelligible] the clarity if the ordinance expired that's exactly what would 14 happen except it wouldn't incorporate maybe some of these new definitions. 15 16 Mr. Lait: Yeah. It wouldn't include the retail definition. 17 18 Chair Alcheck: Right which we heard tonight and some Commissioners had mentioned that they 19 are interested in expanded definition of retail. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: Ok so the Motion then just for clarity of the record is to amend the GF boundary back 1 to the 2009 and adopt the new retail definition that we have. 2 3 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, I agree. It's very close to just letting it expire. 4 5 Mr. Lait: Ok, thank you. 6 7 Chair Alcheck: Hold on. 8 9 Commissioner Rosenblum: The thing that I wanted to keep though was I think the community 10 reaction if I read the community reaction correctly was that there were ground floor properties 11 which had been converted from retail to other uses that shouldn't have been or that they're 12 pulling a fast one that it’s not actually retail. And so that the extent that we can get clarity 13 around what is permitted retail versus not I think would give people comfort. That if we say this 14 is a protected area that we actually will get retail that the community wants to see there. I do 15 think that's important. What I think we did poorly was in saying in addition we want to expand 16 the geographic boundaries of where retail is because even in the core retail areas our retail is 17 not thriving. And so it's not a problem of having too little or expanding the footprint it's a 18 problem of making sure that what exists is healthy and contiguous of good retail so we don't 19 have blank spaces of stuff that people don't consider to be retail. So we want to keep offices 20 out of there or offices disguising as retail. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Alcheck: Ok I’ve got lots of lights; Commissioner Gardias then Commissioner [Note-Vice-2 Chair] Waldfogel then Commissioner Summa. 3 4 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT #1 TO MOTION #1 5 6 Commissioner Gardias: Just want to make a comment about the 2013 area. I think that this is 7 viable commercial area and if there was going to be if this Motion on the floor was going to 8 move I will try to amend it without adding this because I go there all the time. I sometimes eat 9 at those restaurants and it's a nice place to go. So I think that it should be within the 10 boundaries. 11 12 Commissioner Rosenblum: I would accept that. 13 14 Chair Alcheck: Would you like to make an amendment? Can you just be specific about the area? 15 16 Commissioner Rosenblum: Add the 2013 expansion of the beyond 2009. 17 18 Commissioner Gardias: Yes. 19 20 Chair Alcheck: Ok. Do you accept that? 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yes. 2 3 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT #1 TO MOTION #1 ACCEPTED 4 5 Chair Alcheck: Alright, I will accept that. Commissioner [Note-Vice-Chair] Waldfogel. 6 7 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: So I think that a lot of good points are being raised that retail needs to be 8 looked at citywide, but I think that until we do that we really need to keep some version of what 9 we have in place right now. If you think about retail outside of the Downtown core you think 10 about areas like Midtown where a big parcel just traded and who knows what will happen as 11 that evolves. You think of all parcels like the SummerWinds Nursery down on San Antonio 12 which I believe traded sometime in the last year or two. And I think that there are valid 13 questions that can be that should be studied about what are viable districts for retail and what 14 can happen in the in these districts, but I think that until we know the answer to that we 15 shouldn't just abandon all of these districts and just say hey let's just take away all the 16 protection and let whatever happens happen. I think that we have a responsibility to look out 17 for the interests of the residents of Palo Alto and I think we should study these questions, but I 18 just don't think that tonight is the time to try to sort out which districts are and aren't viable and 19 which ones are and aren't worth protection. I mean that's not what the City Council directed 20 and if they want something different I really think that they should ask for it. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Summa: Thanks. I won't be supporting the Motion. I don't see it as a one size fits 2 all solution because there's different zones and different zones have different development 3 standards that respond to what they're what's in that zone, what they're adjacent to and so I 4 don't see it as one size fits all at all. And for that reason I cannot support the Motion. 5 6 Commissioner Lauing: Yes I just wanted to comment that keep going back to we're trying to get 7 a focus on a simple thing for tonight and we're under time constraints because it's the Motion, 8 I'm sorry, and ordinance that’s expiring. But we're trying to figure out if it's logical to have first 9 floor retail with glass be reserved for retailers. And I think we can opine on that and give 10 Council probably our endorsement for that. Given the time constraints I think we have to do it 11 in a different way which is to say yes let's go ahead with that given the time constraints, but 12 number one we actually think it's a little bit too broad. Because now there's some non-viable 13 retail that we should take a look at and in fact what that means is we should take a look at all of 14 the corridors with the emphasis being on Downtown. I think we all agree with that. That that 15 has to be maintained in its vibrancy and anything outside of that is a whole different set of 16 Motions, discussions, what I called earlier a master plan for retail. That's a whole different 17 other assignment. So I don't think we can just roll back to 2009 and start feeding back in 18 Emerson Street and Midtown and so on to just get there in the time frame that we have. 19 20 Chair Alcheck: Ok, well we have a Motion on the floor, but I would I am I and it may not get a 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. consensus, but one assuming it does… regardless of what happens when we take a vote on this 1 Motion I would like to suggest that it's possible that we could make a recommendation that 2 regardless of where we fall on this particular Motion could theoretically be unanimous which is 3 that we would very much like Council to give us the opportunity to explore this topic in greater 4 detail. And what I heard here tonight is that almost everybody wants to dive into this. The 5 question is whether they want to do it tonight or not. 6 7 Commissioner Lauing: You're speaking specifically about the geographies for this? 8 9 Chair Alcheck: I'm talking about the whole thing whether or not it makes sense to open up a 10 community outreach involvement and go block by block in California Avenue or whether it 11 makes sense to eliminate the 25 percent office space that currently is a part of the… I mean 12 we're not even really getting into the specifics, but this ordinance eliminates the 25 percent 13 office space that you can currently use. So when we do that what happens to the flexibility? Do 14 they get to have back office for your… we haven't explored any of it. 15 16 Commissioner Lauing: But just you, just for clarity your comments are specifically on this topic 17 not the broader issue of what can we do for retailers in a master plan kind of like? 18 19 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. So… 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Lauing: Ok. 1 2 Chair Alcheck: So what I'm trying to say it would be disingenuous to sort of suggest that we at 3 least in my opinion the maker and the seconder of this Motion is suggesting that we simply roll 4 back and that there is no issue and that's perfectly fine. I think the question is what elements of 5 this current draft ordinance that we see are potentially problematic? So you're right, there's a 6 broader question of how we enhance retail. But in this specific ordinance there's a specific 7 clause that says we're eliminating the 25 percent. Is that going to help any retailer? And are 8 the retailers in our community going to say hey guys, that's a really important part of what we 9 do every day and if you eliminate that… nobody's vetted this the way that we did the 2009. And 10 that is from my perspective the biggest problem with it. It’s not that it can't or won't help, it’s 11 that it hasn't been vetted properly. And so my point is that regardless of where we go on this 12 Motion I would very much be in favor of a follow up recommendation that could sit aside and 13 adjoin the report that maybe the, we could have a greater number of members support which 14 would be like please let us explore the items in greater complexity. And frankly it's for the City 15 Attorney's Department to figure out how we can do that in a legal way, but I'm uncomfortable 16 with this notion that simply because state law forbids us to enact an ordinance for a few more 17 months that we have to enact a bad one. That's where I'm at. So that's all I'm saying. 18 19 So I'm, I'd like… we have a Motion on the floor and I'm ready to vote on it. And my preference is 20 that immediately following that vote we can also see if we can make a recommendation that 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. represents where all of us stand despite maybe differing opinions on what we should do with 1 this specific ordinance at this time. I think all of us are in agreement on what we feel is needed 2 and maybe that's something we could unanimously support in conjunction with whatever 3 happens in this next vote. Does anybody want to make another comment before I take a vote 4 on this Motion? 5 6 Commissioner Lauing: I just think we should specify exactly what it is. Just read it one more 7 time if somebody’s written it down. 8 9 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah so now we are forwarding on the ordinance in so far as it 10 defines permitted uses for retail and retail like services, waivers so it prohibits conversions 11 within a specified area. What it's adjusting is the boundary of the GF area to the 2009 plus the 12 2013 extension. So it's only applied to the Downtown core. So essentially the protections given 13 to the rest of the City would expire or we’re recommending to Council to let that expire. I agree 14 with Commissioner [Note-Chair] Alcheck that then the next step would be for us to look at the 15 rest of the City and probably enact a series of measures around some specific areas. But that 16 what we're talking about right now is essentially what was given to us with a contraction of the 17 boundary so it no longer applies to the whole City. It applies to the 2009 plus 2013 expanded 18 boundary. So it's the Downtown core. 19 20 Chair Alcheck: Any other clarifying questions? 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Gardias: If I may, right? So I just want to understand when SOFA became part 2 was SOFA ever a part of those boundaries or this is the recent addition? 3 4 Ms. Eisberg: No. So SOFA 2 is not the ground floor boundaries shown on that map do not 5 include SOFA 2. No. 6 7 Commissioner Gardias: So it is recent it is this time staff recommendation to add SOFA. 8 9 Ms. Eisberg: So the ground floor overlay is not recommended for the SOFA 2 district. The 10 ordinance this moratorium getting carried forward the requirement that retail be replaced by 11 retail or retail like would be applied in SOFA 2 just as it would be applied elsewhere in the City 12 where those underlying uses are permitted uses. 13 14 Commissioner Gardias: Thank you. 15 16 Commissioner ?: [unintelligible-off mike] 17 18 Ms. Eisberg: The ordinance would, but the ground floor districts that are shown on that map the 19 ground floor combining overlay is only what's shown on that map. So there's the ground floor 20 overlay and then there's the separately this ordinance that would apply citywide where the uses 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. are permitted in the underlying zone. 1 2 Chair Alcheck: Ok, so 3 4 Commissioner Lauing: I clicked. 5 6 Chair Alcheck: Do you have another? 7 8 Commissioner Lauing: I just wanted to speak to what I understand the Motion to be. It seems to 9 me the trade off at base here is that we leave some retail areas under protected by 10 recommending the Motion that's on the table. If that were to be accepted by Council that 11 would mean that those areas would be unprotected for an unknown amount of time because 12 there would have to be another whole Motion in place. Whereas if we didn't do that and 13 instead voted for the City staff presented Motion we would be overprotecting some areas that 14 maybe most of us think are not all necessary anymore because of some non-viable retail. But 15 without the latter people tomorrow could start converting retail to offices. 16 17 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah, I think that that's the correct interpretation. So I think that 18 this [unintelligible] of ordnance is why I have an empty building, the North Face building, in my 19 neighborhood. And it's been empty for this length of time. So I think it's these sorts of things so 20 you’re right, it’s a tradeoff of having more of those versus unfortunate conversions versus 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. unfortunate vacancies. So I agree I think that you’ve framed it nicely. 1 2 Chair Alcheck: Yeah I would add that overprotecting the overprotection option is codifying it. 3 It's not an interim overprotection it's a permanent overprotection. And the look again it's just 4 my perspective there's no saying what Council will do. They could ignore our recommendation 5 completely and pursue the interim ordinance and enact it. I think what we're really doing 6 tonight is not necessarily deciding what Council is going to do. We're suggesting to them that 7 among the six of us we had tremendous concerns about the expansiveness of this and many of 8 us didn't feel comfortable without greater time. And I think what this Motion suggests isn't 9 necessarily what we think they should do it suggests that we think that overdoing something 10 permanently is worse than potentially under protecting something and giving us time to do it 11 right. I think that's what we're suggesting that there's a slight preference there. Again we… 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: It just seems to me that if we think it's the worst of two evils that all of us 14 have to vote on the worst of two evils then we do have to say we need more time to do a bit 15 more research. And if that’s two weeks from now or a week from now or whatever that's what 16 we have to do. 17 18 Chair Alcheck: Sure Summa go ahead. 19 20 Commissioner Summa: So I don't see it is the worst of two evils. I take your point that throwing 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the baby out with the bathwater at this time seems very drastic and that's what the waiver is 1 for; the waiver is actually for the North Face building and I can see them being successful in 2 applying for it. So I think we have to remember that built into this recommendation by staff 3 which I have some little [nigli] thing problems with some of which I have already expressed, but 4 I cannot support rolling it back, the rolling back the protection and I think the waiver really 5 contemplated that there are situations when it will not be viable. 6 7 VOTE 8 9 Chair Alcheck: I see no more lights. So we have a Motion of the floor. I'd like to put it to a vote. 10 All we have six Commissioners tonight so we will need four for this Motion to pass assuming 11 that no one abstains. Ok. All those in favor of supporting the Motion as outlined say aye and 12 raise your hand. That’s two. All those opposed. That's four. Ok that Motion failed. The floor is 13 open and anybody that would like to make a Motion is welcome to. 14 15 MOTION #1 FAILED (2-4, Vice-Chair Waldfogel, Commissioners Summa, Lauing, and Gardias 16 against) 17 18 Commissioner Summa: Oh, go ahead. 19 20 MOTION #2 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Lauing: I was going to move that we adopt the City presented Motion, I'm sorry 2 ordinance, to Council with the reservation that there has to be some relook at some of those 3 areas because they may no longer be viable retail. 4 5 Mr. Lait: And maybe before there's a second on that can I ask the Motion maker if that also 6 might include the at places memo where staff is recommending private schools along a certain 7 stretch of Alma in the RT-35 zone? 8 9 Commissioner Lauing: Given that it was at place I didn’t even read it yet so. 10 11 Mr. Lait: So maybe I can spend a second just to explain what this memo does. 12 13 Chair Alcheck: Let me ask a question before you start. Is this related to the conversation that 14 one of the speakers mentioned about the tenant that may or may not be interested anymore 15 because of the amount of time it's taken. 16 17 Mr. Lait: Yeah I believe that was part of the conversation. 18 19 Chair Alcheck: It's that space. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: Well it's a number of properties on Alma. It would include the one that was discussed 1 this evening. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: Ok. Why don’t you go into detail about it so that everybody's aware? 4 5 Mr. Lait: Ok I'll just briefly summarize. During the Council's review of a waiver request under 6 the existing interim ordinance a property owner had requested a waiver. There was a public 7 discussion about the ordinance and an interest from the Council in fact direction to staff by an 8 8-0 vote to prepare an amendment to the urgency ordinance to allow schools, private schools, I 9 think its south of Channing Street, Avenue? 10 11 Ms. Eisberg: In this case south of Channing. 12 13 Mr. Lait: To allow in the RT-35 adjacent to Alma south of Channing private schools to be a 14 permitted use. So there would be retail, retail like, and private schools for this discrete several 15 block area on Alma. Staff went through that process presented the ordinance the City Council 16 and while it had a majority vote of 5-4 it required a supermajority and therefore failed to pass at 17 the Council meeting. The ensuing dialogue it was suggested at least our read of the 18 administrative record suggests that there is at least that time Council interest in having that 19 ordinance be implemented into this effort that is before the Planning Commission tonight. So 20 that was inadvertently left off of the ordinance that's included in your packet and so we're 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. trying to correct that and by way of this at places memo ask the PTC as part of your Motion that 1 you include for the RT-35 areas adjacent to Alma south of Channing that private schools also be 2 a permitted use. And then there’s some protections where if a private school does go in there it 3 cannot then convert over to office. 4 5 Commissioner Summa: So I have a question about that and that I guess for staff and so I'm a 6 little confused. So if it requires a supermajority and it failed then it failed. So I'm not sure why 7 that is so significant really. And then I'm a bit uncomfortable with this for two reasons. One I 8 don't know that you can, I think you would have to amend SOFA not change it through this 9 process. So I'm not sure that would be the correct way to do it and it does feel a little bit like 10 (interrupted) [unintelligible-man off mike] and so and then it does feel a little bit like a situation 11 where there should be a waiver or variance because it's applying basically to two buildings I 12 think and I don't I see a sense of unfairness when an ordinance is written that has an exclusion 13 for one property owner. That should be, that fall under the waiver and/or because I don't think 14 it's a legal process too SOFA would have to be amended. 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Let me cut you off for a second. I think it's more important if I could just find out 17 from the maker of the Motion if he three wishes to include that. 18 19 Commissioner Lauing: Well I didn't know until seconds ago what it was so that's the problem. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Alcheck: Ok. 1 2 Commissioner Lauing: We should probably get a legal opinion on this or can it just go back to 3 Council on its own for them to add it to it? 4 5 Mr. Lait: Absolutely. You don't have to include it [unintelligible] Motion. We’ll highlight the 6 issue for Council and there may be some interest in advancing it or not so, but that does not 7 need to be part of your Motion. 8 9 Chair Alcheck: Ok so your Motion as is. 10 11 Mr. Lait: Yep. 12 13 Commissioner Lauing: We don’t have a second yet. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Do I have a second? 16 17 Commissioner Summa: Can you restate it? I'm sorry. 18 19 Commissioner Lauing: Did somebody write it down? 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: I think was to move the staff report with also a recommendation that the Council direct 1 the PTC to examine the request that the PTC have the opportunity to examine the ordinance in 2 more detail. Is that correct? 3 4 Commissioner Lauing: Well no, specifically that we be able to look at the geographies because 5 there may now be some of those areas that are nonviable retail which actually has a definition 6 from 2009. 7 8 Mr. Lait: So to examine the geographies of where the ordinance would apply. 9 10 Commissioner Lauing: Well right now the way it's written it applies everywhere. 11 12 Mr. Lait: That's right. 13 14 Commissioner Lauing: But we want to have the opportunity to come back to them and 15 potentially recommend areas that should be trimmed because they're nonviable. That's the 16 Motion. 17 18 Chair Alcheck: Do I have a second? 19 20 SECOND 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I’ll second. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: Ok. So we have a second of the Motion. Would you mind restating it one more 4 time so that I can make sure Commissioner Gardias has heard it? We have a Motion on the 5 floor that's been seconded and the Motion is… 6 7 Mr. Lait: Well so as I understand it and I’ll I may not get the precise wording, but it's basically to 8 move the staff report, adopt the ordinance, a recommendation to City Council to adopt the staff 9 recommended ordinance and a corollary request that recognition that there may be some 10 properties that this net is cast widely and that there was there would be interest presumably 11 after the ordinance gets adopted that would allow the PTC an opportunity to reexamine the 12 geographic areas where this ordinance applies and maybe pull it back in some of these marginal 13 areas. 14 15 Commissioner Lauing: If it's considered that they're nonviable retail. 16 17 Mr. Lait: Nonviable retail. 18 19 Chair Alcheck: Ok at this time I'm going to see if there's anybody interested in making 20 amendments to the current Motion? I have an amendment from Commissioner Gardias. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Gardias: Well so what I would like to do because I think that what I'm going to 2 say is supported with the reason that we didn't vet this ordinance. So amendments that I will 3 propose will pretty much. 4 5 Chair Alcheck: Let's do them one at a time. 6 7 Commissioner Gardias: Be ok (interrupted) 8 9 Chair Alcheck: And let’s treat them as Unfriendly. 10 11 Commissioner Gardias: [Unintelligible] of this be maybe changed because of certain reasons. So 12 I will do them one at a time. 13 14 Chair Alcheck: Let’s do them one at a time, treat them as Unfriendly, and we’ll vote on them 15 right away. 16 17 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #1 TO MOTION #2 18 19 Commissioner Gardias: Ok. So the first one is you can go to packet Page 57 and that is 20 18.30A085 design standards. So Amendment is to remove entirely this this paragraph. And the 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. reason if you ask is pretty much that what I already said at the prior hearing that this is just a 1 piecemeal standard and there should be for me to support this there should be comprehensive 2 standards if at all. But then for this specific area I don't believe that we need to have any design 3 standards if you just told me about [meet down] or Charleston or some other Center I would say 4 yes that's different area. But for the Downtown I believe that we should minimize restrictions. 5 So for this reason I want to propose to remove entirely this paragraph. 6 7 Chair Alcheck: Yeah just to be clear you're entirely removing A and B or just A? 8 9 Commissioner Gardias: This is Section 3. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: Section 3, [18.30A.085] this paragraph? Starting with external? Exterior. 12 13 Commissioner Gardias: That's correct. Yes. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: And what about Paragraph B? 16 17 Commissioner Gardias: Yes. 18 19 Chair Alcheck: Ok. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Gardias: Entire paragraph. 1 2 Chair Alcheck: The entire part. Ok I'll second that Unfriendly Amendment. I'd like to put it to a 3 vote (interrupted) 4 5 Mr. Lait: And just for clarification this only affects California Avenue. 6 7 Chair Alcheck: Basically we're omitting a section of the ordinance that he thinks is unacceptable. 8 9 Commissioner Gardias: So just a moment. So I didn't understand that. So it relates to the 10 California Avenue? 11 12 Mr. Lait: It only relates to Cal the R combining district which is located on California Avenue. 13 This does not apply to Downtown. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Is there a section that applies the same sort of regulation to a part of Downtown 16 it’s just separated? 17 18 Ms. Eisberg: Yes. So beginning on the bottom of Page 58 in your packet [18.30C.035] those 19 design standards and what are identified as C, D, and E below that. Those would apply to the GF 20 combining district in the CDC sub district which is Downtown. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Alcheck: Ok so let me just ask the maker of the amendment (interrupted) 2 3 Commissioner Gardias: Just a moment, could you give me, could you refer me to the page 4 again? 5 6 Ms. Eisberg: It starts on the very bottom of Page 58, design standards, and then the top of Page 7 59. 8 9 Chair Alcheck: It's the next Page 59. Top of 59. It’s essentially the same. 10 11 Commissioner Gardias: Yes, it’s same, same story. 12 13 Ms. Eisberg: Similar, yeah. 14 15 Commissioner Gardias: So we were going to go one at a time, but I just flipped the page and I 16 have exactly the same comments. So (interrupted) 17 18 Chair Alcheck: Ok so just let me clarify. You would like to remove Paragraphs A and B on Page 19 57 and Paragraphs C, D, and E that the 18… Paragraph C, D, And E at the top of Page 59. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Gardias: Correct, but I will provide you different reasons for the record if you're 1 interested because they are totally two different reasons for why I would like to remove them 2 for Downtown and for California. 3 4 Chair Alcheck: Let me do this, let me just second the… I'm going to second, does anybody want 5 to second this Unfriendly Amendment? 6 7 Commissioner Rosenblum: I have a point of order though. 8 9 Chair Alcheck: Ok. 10 11 Commissioner Rosenblum: If I am opposed to the underlying Motion and now we're on 12 amendments I have no issue with the amendment per se I would support the amendment. I 13 have problem with the whole underlying Motion and so how do I address that? 14 15 SECOND 16 17 Chair Alcheck: Let me tell you how I feel this process is going because it’s not particularly 18 smooth at this point, but essentially we had a Motion and it failed and now we have an 19 alternate Motion and in order for me to support this Motion I've got to change the 20 recommendation as it is which means that and it sounds like there are other individuals who are 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. interested in some changes which means we're getting specific. Which is something a number 1 of us suggested they didn't want to do today, but I'm with you I don't feel comfortable 2 supporting the current Motion as is and so I am trying to give in order to get some majority here 3 I'm trying to give Commissioners an opportunity to make a Motion that they could support. And 4 so we have an amendment that what may be a series of amendments and I want to give 5 essentially if Commissioner Gardias can amend this then he may support it. And if he supports 6 it then that's three people that may support it and that's one more you know anyways. So you 7 get it. 8 9 Alright, so we have an Unfriendly Amendment to remove these design standards. Do have a 10 second? I ok, fine. I seconded it. Are we prepared to take a vote or does anybody want to ask 11 anymore clarifying questions. Let's take a vote. All those in favor of (interrupted) 12 13 Commissioner Rosenblum: Last time we had people speaking against the Motion. So can I have 14 an opportunity to do that? 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Yes. Wait, no, no, no. We're not voting on the Motion. We're voting on an 17 Unfriendly Amendment. 18 19 Commissioner Rosenblum: Ok, alright. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. VOTE 1 2 Chair Alcheck: I will give you an opportunity to speak to your dissent if that makes you feel 3 comfortable, but for this particular amendment all those in favor of this Unfriendly Amendment 4 please say aye or raise your hand. Ok we have two. All those opposed to this Amendment? We 5 have three and clearly an abstention. I think that means it fails. Ok, what’s your next 6 Amendment? 7 8 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #1 FAILED (2-3-1, Commissioner Rosenblum abstained) 9 10 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #2 TO MOTION #2 11 12 Commissioner Gardias: Second Amendment is to remove the burden... just a moment I will give 13 you the specific paragraph. This is on Page 60. And this is the last line item on that page 14 number, page number of the packet 60 that talks about the radius of 2,000 feet radius that 15 needs to be where the study needs to be provided by the applicant. So I proposed to reduce it 16 to a City block as opposed to 2,000 feet. 17 18 Chair Alcheck: Ok. Is anyone that would like a second that Unfriendly Amendment? 19 20 SECOND 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Rosenblum: Second. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: Great. Ok, do you want to speak to your second? 4 5 Commissioner Rosenblum: No. Just it's more logical unit for people to be able to deal with. I 6 think that it makes sense. 7 8 VOTE 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Ok. Alright, let's put it to a vote. All those in favor of this Unfriendly Amendment 11 please raise your hand. Ok that’s five in favor. All those opposed? One opposed. Motion is so 12 amended. 13 14 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #2 PASSED (5-1, Commissioner Summa against) 15 16 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #3 TO MOTION #2 17 18 Commissioner Gardias: So next one is on Page 59. And this is in regards to paragraph 19 18.30C.040 in the middle of the page that talks about annual monitoring of ground floor retail 20 use. And I proposed to amend it to add words “and use” after a Downtown retail vacancy 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. survey… a Downtown retail vacancy rate and use survey. And this is due to pretty much to 1 broaden the survey to bring to the Commission more meaningful material as opposed to only 2 vacancy rate because without the structure it doesn't tell me anything. So I need to know the 3 structure of the vacancy rate. 4 5 Mr. Lait: Ok so we’re on packet Page 59 which is Page 6 of the ordinance and you're looking at 6 1830C.040 and you would like to insert the words what after what? 7 8 Commissioner Gardias: And use after vacancy rate. 9 10 Mr. Lait: And use [unintelligible]. 11 12 Commissioner Gardias: A Downtown retail vacancy rate and use surveys. 13 14 Mr. Lait: And use survey. Ok. 15 16 Chair Alcheck: So essentially when you say use do you mean like not just retail you want the 17 specific use that vacated if it’s vacant? 18 19 Commissioner Gardias: I simply just want to know that something… I simply want to have the 20 besides of the vacancy rate I want to have some structure in the survey that would just bring us 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. square footage, what was so that retail that abandoned this property, this space, and some 1 other uses. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: So like if it was a restaurant that abandoned or a clothing shop? 4 5 Commissioner Gardias: Exactly, yes. 6 7 Chair Alcheck: You want specific? Does that make sense to staff? 8 9 Mr. Lait: Yeah, you want to know the uses. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: Yeah I mean the use is retail. I think what he's suggesting is he wants a little… we 12 heard tonight for example that 95 percent of the calls they get are from restaurants and not 13 from clothing shops if you will. And so I think what he's suggesting is he would like a more 14 specific distinction on the vacancy rate. So if… that somehow reflects the abandoned user. 15 16 Mr. Lait: Probably use like [Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE)] codes or however it’s set 17 up or we can just draw from the retail type of uses versus office uses versus, right? I mean 18 that’s what you're, the categories is what you're looking for. 19 20 Commissioner Gardias: Exactly. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Lait: Ok. That’s understandable. 2 3 Commissioner Gardias: Something that would allow me to understand what this vacancy rate 4 (interrupted) 5 6 Chair Alcheck: Let me just ask question do we need to amend that or can that just be 7 incorporated? 8 9 Mr. Lait: No, I’d amend it. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: Ok, let’s amend it. 12 13 Mr. Lait: If that’s what you’re interested in. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Ok. Do we have a second? 16 17 SECOND 18 19 Commissioner Gardias: Second. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. VOTE 1 2 Chair Alcheck: Great. Let’s vote on it, all those in favor of amending the annual monitoring of 3 ground floor retail use provision please raise your hand. Oh, it’s unanimous. Great. The Motion 4 is so amended. 5 6 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #3 PASSED (6-0) 7 8 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #4 TO MOTION #2 9 10 Commissioner Gardias: Ok so next one if you go to Page 58 then this is part of the paragraph 11 permitted uses that starts on the prior Page 57 and that lists all the permitted uses and then it 12 within those permitted uses there is a point seven and eight and one talks about entrance lobby 13 or reception area serving non-ground floor uses, all other uses permitted in the underlying 14 district provided such uses are not on the ground floor. So I propose to remove both. And the 15 reason is that pretty much that is that should be part of the design standards or farther 16 understanding how truly the retail would work in conjunction with other uses on the lot. In 17 other words point seven and point eight don't mean anything it just provide confusion in this 18 ordinance. That's how I see this. 19 20 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Should we get staff to respond to that? Is this what enables non-retail 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. use on upper floors? Isn't doesn't Bullet 8 allow the non-retail uses on upper floors? I mean 1 without that you wouldn't be able to use the underlying say office use (interrupted) 2 3 Commissioner Gardias: Or [unintelligible]. 4 5 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: That’s how I read it, but… 6 7 Commissioner Gardias: On the upper floors? 8 9 Mr. Lait: That's correct. 10 11 Ms. Eisberg: Right, that’s correct. 12 13 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I think what that says, but I would like staff to respond to that. 14 15 Commissioner Gardias: Does it relate to the upper floor (interrupted) 16 17 Ms. Eisberg: Right so this is just in the ground floor overlay district. So this is not a citywide 18 application. So what Bullet Point 8 says and this is existing today is that other uses that are 19 permitted in the underlying district which in our case may be looking at Downtown that's going 20 to be the CD district would be permitted on upper floors. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Gardias: Ok, so I would throw this, right? But so could you comment on the on 2 your perspective because I would still strike Number 7. 3 4 Ms. Eisberg: So seven would just then if you struck that you couldn't have a lobby, a lobby area 5 that served those upper floor uses. 6 7 Mr. Lait: So if you have retail on the ground floor and you want to change your building or make 8 some changes what we're trying to do there is allow for a small lobby to allow for that transit. 9 [Unintelligible] would the ordinance talked about not losing square footage of retail, but here 10 we would say well you could lose a little bit of retail square footage to accommodate a lobby 11 serving a, oh sorry, serving a upper floor. 12 13 Ms. Eisberg: But just be clear so this is just in the GF so if you think about University Avenue 14 there are several places where you have a lobby entrance. 15 16 Commissioner Gardias: Right. 17 18 Ms. Eisberg: That's not retail (interrupted) 19 20 Commissioner Gardias: And I totally understand, right? So but logically the way that I just so I 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. can withdraw it, but let me just tell you a logical argument why it should not be there, right? 1 And this is the reason why I just wanted to strike out the provisions about the design because 2 it's a piecemeal, doesn't mean anything, right? It's going to be there comprehensive and it's 3 going to mean something and it's going to just address the height, the glass clearance, the 4 distance from the floor, from the window pane or the facades to the back wall and then 5 entrance, how much of the area is dedicated to the retail versus entrance to the second floor. 6 It's a separate paragraph, right? That was the reason that I didn't like the design that was just 7 talking about 70 percent of the transparent window because it just didn't look to me as properly 8 done homework, right? This item about entrances/lobbies should have been regulated by the 9 design because otherwise it's just it's not doesn't mean anything, doesn't say specifically how 10 large it should be, how or what would be the relationship to the retail area and so forth. 11 12 Mr. Lait: So I with the possibility of me being corrected here I think I agree with your point that 13 Number 7 should be struck and maybe instead of having it there we add a Letter C in that 14 section that uses words to sort of articulate what we're trying to get at which is retail… you 15 know we’ll have to quantify this maybe somehow, but a small amount of retail may be removed 16 in order to accommodate an upper floor, a lobby or upper floor access or something like that. 17 And just rather than establish it as like a used as permitted which seems kind of odd. 18 19 Commissioner Gardias: Right. Yes, exactly. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mr. Lait: We’ll say we’ll recognize in a new Letter C that some retail may get lost a small amount 1 to accommodate a lobby. 2 3 Commissioner Gardias: That’s fine. 4 5 Mr. Lait: Ok. 6 7 Commissioner Gardias: I totally agree, right? But again, right, I hope that are we going to revisit 8 it again. I recommend you that you read some other ordinances of other cities how they 9 resolve it. Every ordinance that just looks into this properly it just has a proper it either has 10 nothing because the retail is thriving or it has a beefed up and analyzed logically categorized 11 section about the design standards. And then pretty much it's clear for the architects for the 12 plan there's what truly should be done. 13 14 Mr. Lait: And just one clarifying point. We're not trying to establish any kind of design criteria. 15 What we're trying to do is say it is ok to lose a little bit of retail because elsewhere in this 16 ordinance it says you shouldn’t, thou shall not remove a square foot of retail, but here we're 17 saying we recognize that you may remove a little bit of retail in order to accommodate this 18 entry or this lobby serving other parts of the building. 19 20 Commissioner Gardias: I agree. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Lait: Ok. 2 3 Commissioner Gardias: Ok so with this words sorry for the long discussion. 4 5 Chair Alcheck: That's a good one. We’ll this, I think we’ll treat this proposed amendment as 6 incorporating language in as a Letter C that addresses I don't know if the word access is the right 7 one, but access to upper floors. And we’ll just rely on staff to make that language work. So do I 8 have a second for this? 9 10 SECOND 11 12 Commissioner Lauing: I’ll second that. 13 14 VOTE 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Great. Ok all those in favor of this Unfriendly Amendment please raise your 17 hand. It’s unanimous. Ok the Motion is so amended. Commissioner Gardias do you want to 18 continue or can maybe we see if there's other amendments from other individuals? 19 20 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #4 PASSED (6-0) 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah so let's see if anybody else has some amendments. I may have one 2 or more too. 3 4 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #5 TO MOTION #2 5 6 Chair Alcheck: Alright I've got a couple amendments. I'd like to suggest that we return the 25 7 percent office use on the ground floor retail. So the ordinance used to allow that 25 percent of 8 the ground floor could be utilized as office and I'd like to return that because this ordinance just 9 removes it and I’m unclear on why that's a good idea. So I'd like to 10 11 Commissioner Lauing: Is there a place that's written down here anywhere? 12 13 Chair Alcheck: It's not in the... 14 15 Commissioner Lauing: Not in the ordinance. 16 17 Chair Alcheck: It's not in the ordinance because the ordinance essentially doesn't carve out the 18 opportunity. Essentially you’d have to add it to the ordinance. Is that right? 19 20 Ms. Eisberg: Right. You can see it as a strike out under on Page 58. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Mr. Lait: Ordinance Page 5. 2 3 Ms. Eisberg: Ordinance Page 5 just under where we were just talking about (interrupted) 4 5 Chair Alcheck: It says notwithstanding Subsection [unintelligible] not more than 25 percent of 6 the ground floor area not fronting on a street may be occupied by a use permit in the applicable 7 underlying CD district. So that used to be a component of this. it allowed ground floor retail to 8 utilize some of the space for back office or office in general. It's been removed and it's unclear 9 sort of why that’s (interrupted) 10 11 Commissioner Lauing: Could we get staff to comment on that? 12 13 Chair Alcheck: Sure. I guess my first question is do I even have a second? 14 15 SECOND 16 17 Commissioner Gardias: I will second it. 18 19 Chair Alcheck: Ok, great; staff do you want to tell us why you removed that in the interest of 20 potentially informing the vote? 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Ms. Eisberg: So one that was a specific advice from the Council as a way to encourage more 2 retail and essentially more, promoting more retail rather than allowing office. 3 4 Chair Alcheck: Alright so I think the reason is Council direction. I would just argue that this is an 5 area that I don't know has been properly vetted and I'm concerned about it. But I'd rather not 6 spend a whole round going through it. I'd rather just sort of see if there’s support for it so do I 7 need to restate the Amendment? Ok, alright. So all those in favor of unstriking Paragraph B at 8 the top of Page 58 please raise your hand. I have three in support. All those opposed? I have 9 three opposed. OK that Motion that Unfriendly Amendment fails. Are there any other 10 amendments? 11 12 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #5 FAILED (3-3, Vice-Chair Waldfogel, Commissioners Lauing and 13 Summa against) 14 15 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #6 TO MOTION #2 16 17 Commissioner Gardias: Yes, please. So please refer to Page 57 and that is Paragraph 18 [18.30C.010]. This is just a general statement. So what I'm proposing is to remove after word 19 “promote” which is on the third line, third row under this paragraph under specific purpose to 20 say “promotes local commerce” and then strike out the rest of the words after that through in 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the same sentence. So pretty much it would read that “promotes local commerce,” the ground 1 floor combining district is intended to provide design guidelines and blah, blah, blah… and sub 2 districts to promote local commerce. There reason that I'm just doing this although I'm typically 3 indifferent about this preambles is that I think this is the this is what we should be doing other 4 things I'm not really finding intuitive and understanding, understandable, so I think that the 5 commerce should be the key of this ordinance. 6 7 Mr. Lait: So the rest of the sentence gets struck? 8 9 Commissioner Gardias: That’s correct. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: Ok can we get a little clarification here? What section of the sentence are we 12 eliminating? 13 14 Commissioner Gardias: This is Page 57. 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Yes. 17 18 Commissioner Gardias: Paragraph specific purpose [18.30C010] (interrupted) 19 20 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Gardias: And after word promote which is the one, two, three, four, the fourth 2 line. 3 4 Chair Alcheck: Yeah. 5 6 Commissioner Gardias: Under this specific paragraph there is a word promotes. 7 8 Chair Alcheck: Yes. 9 10 Commissioner Gardias: Which says, “promote active pedestrian oriented uses with a high level 11 of transparency and visual interest,” but I would strike out the whole the rest of the sentence 12 after the word “promote” and I would say, “promote local commerce” instead. 13 14 Chair Alcheck: Ok. Do I have a second for amendment? 15 16 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: I’d second it if you kept the end of the sentence, I mean after “with.” 17 With a high level of transparency [unintelligible]. 18 19 Commissioner Gardias: I accept. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Waldfogel: So you want to make that Motion [Note-Friendly Amendment]? 1 2 Commissioner Gardias: Yes. So pretty much we’ll insert the (interrupted). 3 4 Chair Alcheck: Local commerce instead of active pedestrian oriented uses. 5 6 Commissioner Gardias: Exactly. We remove “active pedestrian oriented uses” and instead we’ll 7 just insert “local commerce” and then the rest of the sentence will remain. 8 9 Chair Alcheck: You guys with us? 10 11 Mr. Lait: Yeah. 12 13 Chair Alcheck: Ok, alright, let's put it to a vote. All those in favor of this Unfriendly Amendment 14 please raise your hand. I’ll support it. That's three in favor. All those opposed to it? Three 15 opposed. Ok, do you have any other amendments that you'd like to propose? 16 17 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #6 FAILED (3-3, Vice-Chair Waldfogel, Commissioners Lauing and 18 Summa against) 19 20 Commissioner Gardias: No, but there is a couple of probably editorial errors. I don't know, it 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. may be beyond the boundary of this, but I would just recommend that you go through this. 1 There are some like for example on Page 55 (interrupted) 2 3 Chair Alcheck: You mean like typos? 4 5 Commissioner Gardias: Yeah. There is on Page 55 it refers to the section, Section 2 it refers to 6 the Paragraph 125.2 which I couldn't find and maybe I just couldn't find it. Maybe it’s 7 somewhere, right, but maybe it doesn't exist. And also on Page 57 there is another issue like 8 this. So I'm sure that some (interrupted) 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Ok I’ll just request that if Commissioner found any typos or sort of clerical errors 11 let's email them to Director Lait, Assistant Director Lait, and hopefully they'll get incorporated. I 12 think that’s a better use of time. Ok, do I have any other amendments to the… Commissioner 13 Summa. 14 15 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #7 TO MOTION #2 16 17 Commissioner Summa: I mentioned this in, whoops, sorry. I mentioned this in my comments 18 earlier, but I'm wondering if anybody is interested in pursuing my idea that waivers and 19 exceptions, waivers and adjustments should be handled in a public hearing not at the Director’s 20 level. And my thinking behind that is I don't know how people would know that a decision like 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. that was made to appeal it in a timely fashion and I think that can really change the viability of a 1 business to have the adjacent business change from a retail use. But if no one's interested I'll 2 drop it. 3 4 Chair Alcheck: Do I have a second? 5 6 Commissioner Gardias: May I propose something? 7 8 Commissioner Summa: Yeah. 9 10 Commissioner Gardias: [Unintelligible]. 11 12 Chair Alcheck: [Unintelligible] are you proposing an amendment to her (interrupted) 13 14 Commissioner Gardias: I’m proposing I would if you modify it in a certain way I would accept 15 your proposal. And if you consider that applicant may appeal Director’s decision to the PTC I 16 would support such an amendment, as opposed to the Council. 17 18 Commissioner Summa: I actually think that the City by policy an appeal of that nature goes to 19 the Council so I mean I'm not looking... 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Alcheck: Ok, hold on. I want to do this in an organized way. We have a proposed 1 Unfriendly Amendment. You're suggesting an alternative. I don't really want to debate the 2 alternative. I want to… if, are you willing to second her current Unfriendly Amendment? Ok 3 and the assumption is you don’t want to edit with his suggestion? 4 5 Commissioner Summa: No. 6 7 UNFRIENDLY AMENDMENT #7 FAILED FOR LACK OF SECOND 8 9 Chair Alcheck: Ok. So do I have a second for this Unfriendly Amendment? Ok, seeing none are 10 any other Unfriendly Amendments or Amendments? Ok, alright. So we have a Motion on the 11 floor as amended. I don't think it's wise to read through all the amendments since we voted on 12 each one I assume we're all very sort of knowledgeable about them. 13 14 Commissioner Lauing: Or can I just summarize since I made the Motion? 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Yeah well [obviously] I would actually prefer if staff did that. So what I’d like to 17 do is have staff sort of run down them quickly and only the ones, only the amendments that 18 were passed. 19 20 Mr. Lait: Ok. Just [unintelligible] we’ve got the standing Motion. The amendments that passed 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. were going to change the 2,000 foot radius to be a city block. And we’re amending Section 4 1 [180 or 30C040] regarding the Downtown vacancy rate and use survey to get data on the use 2 survey. And the other amendment that passed it was the one having to do with amending 3 Section [1830C020]. We're going to remove line Number 7 and add a new Letter C that would 4 allow for the loss of some retail square footage to allow access to other levels of the building. 5 And there was actually one other one that passed and that I believe and that was the let me ask 6 question, the one about the local commerce, did that pass? Ok so local commerce being added 7 to Section 4 [1830C010] [unintelligible-lots of talking]. Ok so that one failed. Ok. So everything 8 up to that point. So there were three amendments. 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Ok would the maker or the seconder like to speak to their Motion? 11 12 Commissioner Lauing: Yeah just briefly to summarize. 13 14 Chair Alcheck: Please. 15 16 Commissioner Lauing: The ideal would be not to have to vote tonight, to have some more time 17 to spend on looking at the specific geographies that we think should be covered by this, but we 18 can't do that because we're out of time relative to the expiration of the temporary law. So the 19 alternative is to overprotect some retail where maybe it's not needed or to under protect and 20 therefore in the latter case offices could go into retail spaces starting tomorrow. Hence my 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. preference for the Motion made to overprotect in the short term and work it later to look for 1 nonviable retail. 2 3 Chair Alcheck: Would the seconder like to speak to the Motion? 4 5 Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Just to agree with those comments. 6 7 Chair Alcheck: Ok at this time I'd like to put this Motion as amended to a vote. 8 9 Commissioner Rosenblum: I’d ask for opportunity to speak to a dissenting voice. 10 11 Chair Alcheck: Ok so (interrupted) 12 13 Mr. Lait: Yeah after the vote. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Yeah typically I let anybody speak to their dissent after the vote. 16 17 Commissioner Rosenblum: All due respect with my Motion we had several people express their 18 concern prior to the vote. 19 20 Chair Alcheck: Ok I will if you'd like to comment on this vote go ahead. 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Rosenblum: Yeah. So I think this is a really sweeping ordinance. It's protecting 2 retail across the City and I think that the original ordinance was done in a obviously some urgent 3 urgency ordinance. It was done in a hurried fashion. We've heard from stakeholders from 4 2009. We know who the stakeholders were. Very few people were involved, especially 5 retailers. I'm kind of shocked that we're even considering bringing this from interim ordinance 6 to a permanent measure because we feel there is time pressure. I don't think this was ever a 7 great ordinance and certainly there was very little community involvement in crafting this 8 ordinance. And so I think the responsible thing to do would be to let it expire. And by the way 9 it's not the end the world it brings us back to the state of the world 15 months ago that… so it's 10 not that we're actually going to a Lord of the Flies land, we're going back to the world before 11 this interim ordinance. And then give us the time to actually work on each of our other valuable 12 retail areas. 13 14 So I don't feel the same time pressure I guess, but if I did I certainly wouldn't want to pass this. I 15 would want more community involvement and specifically I’d want retailers to get involved. I 16 think that we're trying to balance retail vitality i.e. setting up that atmosphere for them to 17 succeed against the interest of the community i.e. having good retail to enjoy and I think that 18 we want the people involved that can make us something really great. So I would far prefer just 19 to see this expire. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. VOTE 1 2 Chair Alcheck: Ok, thank you. At this time I’d like to put the current Motion as amended to 3 vote. All those in favor please raise your hand. We have four in support and all those opposed? 4 And two opposed. 5 6 Do you want to speak to your dissent? Ok. I'll speak to the dissent real quick. I agree with 7 Commissioner Rosenblum. I think it's a lot harder to undo something than to do something. 8 We do a lot of things right in the City, but I never think sort of the pressure of time is a good 9 reason to sort of pass something that we're uncomfortable with. And so my hope is that when 10 the Council gets this topic on their agenda I hope that the biggest takeaway for them from our 11 deliberations tonight is just how dissatisfied we are with the ordinance. In fact it sounds to me 12 like the majority of individuals on this Commission actually oppose the ordinance as written. 13 There just a, there's just isn't a majority that’s willing to see it lapse during the interim that 14 they'd like to have to fix it. So that Motion passes. 15 16 MOTION #2 PASSED (4-2, Chair Alcheck and Commissioner Rosenblum against) 17 18 MOTION #3 19 20 Chair Alcheck: I would like to suggest a Motion right now to recommend that the City Council 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. grant the PTC the opportunity to review the impacts of this retail preservation ordinance in 1 conjunction with the community and retailers specifically at a later date and amend the 2 ordinance in such ways as recommended at that time. 3 4 SECOND 5 6 Commissioner Rosenblum: I’d second. 7 8 Chair Alcheck: Ok does anybody, do you want to speak to your second? 9 10 Commissioner Rosenblum: I think that would be natural given the way our last Motion was 11 structured that recommended that we go back and look at properties that may be or areas that 12 may be problematic that that would be the natural result is that they would send this back to 13 us. 14 15 Chair Alcheck: Ok I'd like to take a vote. 16 17 Commissioner Lauing: Can I just ask a question about your intent? This is the one again about 18 sort of the geography just like what you said. This isn't the sort of [unintelligible-talking off 19 mike] could be other things as well? 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Alcheck: I'm suggesting that we go back involve the retail… my ordinance, my 1 recommendation is that City Council give us an opportunity to get in depth on this topic. And 2 hopefully that could involve a dialogue with some of the retail owners and something akin to 3 what took place in 2009 to identify what we really could do to enhance retail the way that I 4 think was the intent. It's a suggestion. 5 6 Commissioner Lauing: Ok, great. Thanks. 7 8 VOTE 9 10 Chair Alcheck: Ok and all those in favor of this recommendation please raise your hand. Ok all 11 those opposed? Ok it’s 5-1. Would you like to speak to your dissent? 12 13 MOTION #3 PASSED (5-1, Commissioner Summa against) 14 15 Commissioner Summa: Just super briefly, but I don't think that was exactly on the agenda 16 tonight and I think you're asking for a huge citywide complicated study and I'm not sure that 17 staff even has the time right now to do that. So it didn't seem practical to me. 18 19 Chair Alcheck: Ok. 20 21 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commission Action: 1 2 Motion: Recommend approval of an ordinance to the City Council that restores the ground floor 3 retail protection boundary to the 2009 boundary and amend the retail and retail like definition 4 recommended by staff; reject all other staff proposed amendments. Motion made by 5 Commissioner Rosenblum, seconded by Chair Alcheck; motion FAILS 2-4 Vice Chair Waldfogel, 6 Commissioner Summa, Commissioner Lauing, Commissioner Gardias against. 7 8 Amendment: Restore the 2013 ground floor retail protection boundary. Amendment made by 9 Commissioner Gardias and supported by original motion makers. 10 11 Motion: Recommend approval of the staff proposed ordinance and forward a request to the 12 City Council that it direct the Planning and Transportation Commission to further study 13 refinements to the ordinance, including evaluating non-viable retail areas that may be removed 14 from protection in a new ordinance. Motion made by Commissioner Lauing, seconded by Vice 15 Chair Waldfogel; motions PASSES with applicable amendments below 4-2, Chair Alcheck and 16 Commissioner Rosenblum against. 17 18 Unfriendly Amendment: Remove 18.30(A).0A5. Motion made by Commissioner Gardias, 19 seconded Chair Alcheck; motion FAILS 2-3-1 Vice Chair Waldfogel, Commissioner Gardias and 20 Commissioner Summa against, Commissioner Rosenblum abstaining. 21 22 Unfriendly Amendment: Amend 18.40.160 (c) (2)(B) Waivers and Adjustments as follows - …A 23 map that indicates all the existing surrounding uses, both residential and non-residential, within 24 one city block a 2,000-foot radius; include…Motion made by Commissioner Gardias, seconded 25 by Chair Alcheck; motion PASSES 5-1, Commissioner Summa against. 26 27 Unfriendly Amendment: Amend Section 4 18.30.(C).040 to include the following addition ‘A 28 downtown retail vacancy rate and use survey…’ Motion made by Commissioner Gardias, and. 29 seconded by Commissioner Rosenblum; motion PASSES 6-0. 30 31 Unfriendly Amendment: Amend Section 18.30(C).020 by removing number seven (7) and add a 32 new letter (c) allowing the loss of some retail square footage to allow access to other levels of 33 the building. Motion made by Commissioner Gardias, seconded by Commissioner Lauing; 34 motion PASSES 6-0. 35 36 Unfriendly Amendment: Amend Section 4 18.30(C)010 Specific Purpose, as follows ‘…promote 37 local commerce, active, pedestrian‐oriented uses, with a high level of transparency and visual 38 interest at the ground level. Motion made by Commissioner Gardias, seconded by Chair Alcheck; 39 motions FAILS 3-3 Vice Chair Waldfogel, Commissioner Lauing and Commissioner Summa 40 against. 41 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Unfriendly Amendment: Amend the ordinance to require the request for a waiver to be 2 considered at public hearing. Motion made by Commissioner Summa; motions FAILS for lack of 3 a second. 4 5 Motion: Request the City Council direct the Planning and Transportation Commission to meet 6 with retailers and members in the community for an opportunity to get more in depth feedback 7 on this topic and suggest future amendments to this ordinance. Motion made by Chair Alcheck, 8 seconded by Commissioner Rosenblum; motion PASSES 5-1, Commissioner Summa against. 9 10 Approval of Minutes 11 Public Comment is Permitted. Five (5) minutes per speaker.1,3 12 13 4. November 30, 2016 and December 14, 2016 Draft Planning & 14 Transportation Commission Meeting Minutes 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Alright let's move on to approving the minutes. Let's start with… actually let's just 17 do them together; November 30th and the December 14th minutes. Can I get a Motion to 18 approve the minutes? 19 20 MOTION 21 22 Commissioner Rosenblum: I move to approve the minutes. 23 24 Chair Alcheck: Second? 25 26 SECOND 27 28 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Waldfogel: Second. 1 2 Chair Alcheck: Thank you. All those in favor approving the minutes from November 30th and 3 December 14th please raise your hand. That's three. All those opposed? All those abstained? 4 Ok. That's four in favor, two abstains. 5 6 MOTION PASSED (4-0-2, Commissioners Luaing and Summa abstained) 7 8 Commission Action: 9 Motion: Approve the minutes for November 30, 2016 and December 14, 2016. Motion made by 10 Commissioner Rosenblum, seconded by Vice Chair Waldfogel; motion PASSES 4-0-2 11 Commissioners Lauing and Summa abstaining. 12 13 Committee Items 14 Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 15 16 Chair Alcheck: Ok the last piece of business tonight is I need to make an appointment to the as a 17 representative to the Citizens Advisory Commission (CAC). And in discussing it with Vice-Chair 18 and the Planning staff we felt that Commissioner Summa would be the best person to sit as our 19 delegated liaison. That is in light of the fact that she is currently been serving on the 20 Commission, she's familiar with it, though her role would change slightly now it would go from a 21 voting role to a non-voting role, but we felt that your experience there would provide sort of 22 invaluable so the… invaluable insight. And the assumption moving forward is that when those 23 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. meetings take place you can sort of provide us input and updates and status updates from those 1 meetings and involve us. 2 3 Ok, are there any other items? Ok. With that I'd like to close this hearing. Time is 10:57. 4 Adjourned. 5 6 Commissioner Doria Summa was appointed to the Citizen Advisory Committee for the 7 Comprehensive Plan Update. 8 9 Adjournment 10:57pm 10 11 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to fifteen (15) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Palo Alto Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Commissioner Biographies, Present and Archived Agendas and Reports are available online: 2 http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp. The PTC Commission members are: 3 4 Chair Michael Alcheck 5 Vice Chair Asher Waldfogel 6 Commissioner Przemek Gardias 7 Commissioner Ed Lauing 8 Commissioner Eric Rosenblum 9 Commissioner Doria Summa 10 11 12 Get Informed and Be Engaged! 13 View online: http://midpenmedia.org/category/government/city-of-palo-alto or on Channel 26. 14 15 Show up and speak. Public comment is encouraged. Please complete a speaker request card 16 located on the table at the entrance to the Council Chambers and deliver it to the Commission 17 Secretary prior to discussion of the item. 18 19 Write to us. Email the PTC at: Planning.Commission@CityofPaloAlto.org. Letters can be 20 delivered to the Planning & Community Environment Department, 5th floor, City Hall, 250 21 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Comments received by 2:00 PM the Tuesday preceding 22 the meeting date will be included in the agenda packet. Comments received afterward through 23 2:00 PM the day of the meeting will be presented to the Commission at the dais. 24 25 Material related to an item on this agenda submitted to the PTC after distribution of the 26 agenda packet is available for public inspection at the address above. 27 28 Americans with Disability Act (ADA) 29 It is the policy of the City of Palo Alto to offer its public programs, services and meetings in a 30 manner that is readily accessible to all. Persons with disabilities who require materials in an 31 appropriate alternative format or who require auxiliary aids to access City meetings, programs, 32 or services may contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at (650) 329-2550 (voice) or by emailing 33 ada@cityofpaloalto.org. Requests for assistance or accommodations must be submitted at least 34 24 hours in advance of the meeting, program, or service. 35