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HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 3610 City of Palo Alto (ID # 3610) City Council Staff Report Report Type: Action Items Meeting Date: 6/3/2013 City of Palo Alto Page 1 Summary Title: Arts and Innovation District (27 University) Title: Direction on Community Engagement Process for Concept Plan Refinement for Arts and Innovation District From: City Manager Lead Department: Planning and Community Environment Recommendation Staff recommends a MOTION that Council direct staff to initiate a community engagement process, pursuant to the “Focused Community Input Process,” for the Arts and Innovation District Area (27 University Avenue site), and to return to the Council with a scope of work to retain consultant services. Executive Summary In 2012, the City Council, boards and commissions received presentations and provided comments on the Conceptual Master Plan (Plan) for an Arts and Innovation District. On December 3, 2012, Council directed staff to return with a proposed outreach process and concept plan options for the Arts and Innovation District. Information gathered and community feedback received during the initial (2012) phase will be used as the foundation of any process moving forward. This report outlines guiding objectives for any community engagement process, three process alternatives and associated timelines, and cost estimates for consultant work related to these options. Based on Council direction regarding the type of community engagement process, staff will develop the scope of work for consultant services for Council review. Background The Arts and Innovation District Master Plan efforts (a component of which has been commonly referred to as the 27 University Avenue project) involves re-visioning land use and site design in the area located between the El Camino Real and the Caltrain/Joint Powers Board (JPB) right-of- way, and including the Downtown Palo Alto Transit Center site. This concept planning area also City of Palo Alto Page 2 includes the roadways around University Avenue and the JPB right of way adjacent to Alma Street. The concept planning area is depicted in Attachment A. The planning effort for this area was anticipated in the Stanford University Medical Center Projects approval, in which the City sought funding in the Development Agreement to improve connections between Downtown, Stanford, and the Stanford Shopping Center, and to better utilize and integrate the Transit Center. In 2012, staff reviewed several land use concepts proposed by developer and philanthropist John Arrillaga for use of this area. City staff identified this as an opportunity to initiate a planning effort for this area, building on the Stanford Development Agreement expectations and came to Council for funding approvals for various planning and design consulting services. On September 24, 2012, the City Council received a presentation of the Arts and Innovation District Conceptual Master Plan (Plan). Council asked staff to describe public outreach efforts on the potential project and the city’s height limitation, and continued its discussion to allow staff time to address comments and hold study sessions with boards and commissions. Following the September Council meeting, staff engaged the Planning and Transportation Commission, Architectural Review Board, Parks and Recreation Commission and Historic Resources Board in a series of public meetings. The minutes for these meetings are attached. Community feedback was received during all of these meetings and throughout October, November and December. A revised plan was reviewed by the Council on December 3, 2012. The proposal included over 200,000 sq. ft. of new office space, an 800 seat performing arts theater, an expanded and improved transit center, and numerous other improvements. In addition to reviewing the revised concepts, the Council considered whether this Plan should be placed on the June 2013 ballot as an advisory measure. After careful consideration and an extensive public discussion, the Council declined to move forward with a June ballot measure. The Council directed staff to develop a minimum of two alternative land use concepts for the Arts and Innovation District Area and to schedule a minimum of two public meetings to discuss the concepts when they are prepared. Minutes from the December Council meeting are provided (Attachment B) and additional background information can be found at the City’s website at: http://cityofpaloalto.org/artsandinnovation. At the December 3rd meeting, and in written correspondence, the public voiced a number of repeated concerns. The first concern related to information: the public needed additional information to make informed comments, particularly as it relates to existing and projected traffic flow in the area. Secondly, and perhaps the most frequently heard comment was that the public believed the development proposal was driving the City’s planning efforts, rather than the City’s vision being the basis for review of any subsequent development proposal. Concerns were also expressed about specific aspects of the proposal, such as building height, site circulation, open space areas, traffic generation, and other land use and site design components. City of Palo Alto Page 3 While staff and consultant work prior to December 2012 did not result in the project going to the ballot for consideration as originally planned, the process in effect served as an important due diligence and preliminary stakeholder outreach phase. Due diligence and preliminary outreach is a typical component for any planning process, as it sets the foundation necessary for informed community input and Commission and Council consideration. Information gathered and activities conducted during this phase included initial transit center capacity analysis, detailed discussions and feedback with all the major transit providers, site circulation options, site layout and architectural alternatives, potential analysis of retail and ground floor uses, property ownership (property lines, etc.) and lease information, and initial community outreach and feedback. Furthermore, useful information was also gathered through the Board, Commission and Council meetings. Since December, staff has worked in a limited manner on this project, and has focused attention on gathering technical data and formulating options for moving forward with the community engagement process for this site. For example, Transportation and Planning staff recently interviewed firms to conduct a Traffic Impact Analysis for 25 intersections surrounding the Arts and Innovation Area. This traffic analysis will examine the impact of a number of different potential land use scenarios for the site. Staff will come forward to Council soon to authorize the consultant contract associated with this analysis. Staff has also recently initiated the Downtown Development Cap evaluation process. While this site does not technically fall within the Downtown Development Cap boundaries, it is immediately adjacent, and therefore will need to be considered. Finally, staff also had meetings with retail experts, to gauge the viability of specific retail concepts for this site. Although these conversations were not extensive, they did provide the framework for future community discussions on the topic as noted above. The purpose of this report is to outline potential avenues for moving forward with community engagement, and ultimately developing a City vision for the site. The report does not propose any specific land use, transportation solution, or any other specific concept. Rather, moving forward, the key will be to create a process which allows the public to be involved in creating a realistic and implementable land use and site design concept for the proposed Arts and Innovation District. Finally, staff believes a new name is appropriate for this district and planning project, and will develop a new name in advance of the community input process. Discussion The proposed Arts and Innovation District site area is relatively small area when compared to other districts in the City; however, its location and improvement potential make it one of the critical sites in the City. The site is not only important from a land-use standpoint, but from a multi-modal transportation standpoint as well. Furthermore, site planning for connectivity is a key element. As currently configured, the site creates a barrier for movement between the West End of Downtown Palo Alto and Stanford. Elimination of this barrier, by creating fluid pedestrian, bicycle, automobile and transit connections within the site and between Downtown Palo Alto and Stanford, should be a driving component of the visioning process. City of Palo Alto Page 4 Recap of Initial Phase Planning for this area goes back decades, including the work of the “Dream Team” in the 1990s. The due diligence and outreach work conducted in 2012, however, provides the most relevant background and technical information necessary for any future community engagement and planning process. That said, the building use and design concepts were unnecessarily constrained by the potential development proposal. There are a wide range of design options that should be considered for the site. Information gained in 2012 that can be used in an upcoming community engagement and planning process includes: Transit Provider Outreach & Initial Capacity Analysis: Staff met with the all the major Palo Alto Transit Center transit providers. These detailed discussions helped staff develop an understanding of the issues that are impacting capacity now, or that will limit capacity in the future. For example, based on these discussions the minimum number of bus bays is now understood, as is the relationships between different providers and resulting required layouts (e.g., bus transfers between VTA and Samtrans). All major transit providers agreed that the current site is not optimally designed, and were generally supportive of improvements that would help facilitate future transit ridership demand. Site Circulation: City staff and consultants went through several site plan iterations and have a general understanding of site constraints and opportunities as they relate to circulation. This is critically important, as efficient site circulation will not only allow buses and automobiles to access the site more effectively, but will also help to eliminate the barrier for pedestrians and bicyclists that current exist. Site Layout: In addition to looking at circulation options, several options for building and plaza layouts were also examined. Architectural renderings and massing studies developed during this phase will help inform the community about how buildings layouts could best be situated to mitigate potential impacts to nearby streets. Architectural Alternatives: The final iteration of the Master Plan shown to the Council in December included modern building designs. Conceptual design work, however, was also completed for more traditional style of architecture. Staff expects that architectural style will be one of the most discussed topics in any community input process, and architectural concepts developed during this preliminary phase can be used and built upon. The more traditional concept is shown in Attachment G. Retail and Ground Floor Use: This site has the potential to contain successful ground floor uses. While the ground floor uses could potentially contain successful retail tenants, it is not a traditional retail location. Therefore, staff reached out to several retail specialists, to understand what type of retail or related uses could be successful at this location. Additional information is needed and would be part of any process moving forward. Additional Technical Information: Information related to property ownership, specific property lines and lease details was researched during this initial phase. Additional initial traffic City of Palo Alto Page 5 information was collected, as well details related to nearby intersections and roadway segments. Julia Morgan Building: The placement of the historical Julia Morgan Building was discussed at length by the Parks and Recreation Commission and Historic Resources Board and somewhat at City Council. Preliminary design work associated with alternative site placements was also completed, however there was not a consensus regarding where the building could be located, or if the building should be relocated. Alternatives include, but should not limited to, moving the building offsite to the redesigned Baylands Golf Course, moving the building somewhere else onsite, keeping the building in its current location or moving the building to El Camino Park. A Parks and Recreation Ad-Hoc Committee prepared a memo on the topic, which is included as Attachment H. The Council may want to direct staff how to treat the Julia Morgan building location in this forthcoming outreach/planning process. Moving Forward with Community Engagement The following section outlines several objectives and options for moving ahead with a community engagement process. Each option contains a general description of the proposed process, a timeline for that process, and the type of document that would be produced as a result of the community participation effort. Each option also contains a rough cost estimate. The exact cost would not be known until the City issues an RFP and receives bids from prospective consultants. Community Engagement Objectives Each of the alternative processes shares similar input and result objectives, although the amount of time spent on upfront community engagement will vary depending on the selected process. Based on Council input given in September and December, the following list is an initial list of guiding objectives staff compiled for the community outreach process for this site:  Vision Directs Development. The selected process should lead to the creation of a vision that guides the Boards, Commissions and Council in future decision making. Therefore, all options should be considered. For example, a status-quo (no build) option should be considered, as well as higher density development options. The vision for this site created through the community process will become the framework for future development review.  Focus on Connection: The planning effort for this area was anticipated in the Stanford University Medical Center Projects approval, in which the City sought funding in the Development Agreement to improve connections between the Downtown, Stanford, and the Stanford Shopping Center, and to better utilize and integrate the Transit Center. This site is a critical piece to the “West End” of Downtown Palo Alto and will set the tone for how improvements in this area develop in the coming decades.  Transit First: Transit ridership is on the rise, and it is anticipated that demand will continue to trend upwards in coming years. A successful site planning process will increase overall transit center capacity, thereby improving the ability of the transit center to accommodate future demand unrelated to development on this site. Furthermore, the actual City of Palo Alto Page 6 development must be transit oriented, in order to reduce potential traffic impacts. At the same, the parking supply must realistically accommodate future drivers. Traffic impacts must also be fully analyzed, including measuring the cumulative impacts nearby developments have on intersections and roadways. Potential traffic impacts of specific land uses should be used to inform the site planning process.  Diversity of Land Uses: Most successful districts in a downtown setting contain a variety of land uses. Therefore, the community involvement process should include a discussion regarding the optimal mix of land uses for the site. Ultimately, the mix of land uses will drive all other development aspects, such as architecture, parking, open space uses and traffic impacts.  Grounded in Economic Reality. While all options must be considered, the selected option should be implementable. Therefore, the results of the community engagement process must be balanced with an economic analysis that ascertains whether this development could be built within a certain timeframe and whether the development would be successful on an ongoing basis. Community Engagement Options The following outlines three potential community engagement processes: 1. Focused Community Input Process (2-3 Meetings) The Focused Community Input Process would be comprised of a series of several widely publicized, community engagement meetings hosted by the City of Palo Alto. In advance of these meetings, staff and the selected consultants would work to create multiple land use, architecture and site design alternatives for this site. For example, at previous Council meetings, some Councilmembers suggested that the buildings be constructed at a maximum height similar to the President’s Hotel. Architecturally, other suggestions were that the site be designed in a manner consistent with the buildings and scale of Ramona Street. An example of a potential alternative architectural concept is attached to this report (Attachment G). It was suggested that the modern architectural style proposed in December could be appropriate, but only at a smaller scale. During these community meetings all of these ideas and others can be explored. Rather than focusing on the entire development in one meeting, an exercise that can be overwhelming when trying to gain constructive input, each meeting would be focused on select components of the alternatives. For example, community input meetings could be focused on specific topics such as preferred architecture, land use, building heights, open space, plaza area and other land use/site planning aspects. It is expected that each meeting would focus on no more than three topics. These meetings would be facilitated by consultants who have experience in conducting focused community input meetings. Based City of Palo Alto Page 7 on the results of these meetings, staff and the consultant would develop two preferred land use, design and site planning concepts that incorporate the community’s vision for the site. It is expected these land use concepts would then be vetted through the various Commissions and Boards, followed by the City Council. It is expected that this process would take 6-8 months. The process and conceptual plan development would cost approximately $100-150K, which would also include some type of base level economic analysis. This analysis would not include any type of environmental review. 2. Visioning Process (10-12 meetings with Stakeholder Committee) A more detailed, visioning process could also be considered. This would be similar to the “Focused Community Input” process described above, but would be more extensive in terms of number of meetings and level of detail discussed at each meeting. Rather than only having community-wide discussions, each visioning meeting could include “break-off” groups where topics are discussed in more detail. The community visioning process could also include the appointment of a stakeholder taskforce that would help guide the process. A visioning process would likely require 10-12 meetings. The end result would be similar to the Focused Community Input process, and 2-3 alternatives would be developed for the Board, Commissions and Council to consider. However, those alternatives would be better developed, due to the level of detail in each community meeting, and community buy-in might be stronger as an outcome of the stakeholder committee. It is expected that this process and conceptual plan development would take approximately 12-24 months, and cost approximately $300-$400,000. 3. Coordinated Area Plan Approach The most detailed level of plan for this site that could be considered is a Coordinated Area Plan (CAP). It is very similar to the Specific Plan process used by other agencies and outlined in the State Law. This process would include the visioning process described above, but would also include the development of a very detailed document and zoning for the site. This is the approach the City used for the South of Forest Area CAP. The Municipal Code that outlines the CAP provisions and process is also attached. This process would realistically take anywhere from 3-5 years to develop and would cost approximately $750,000. Given the factors outlined above, staff recommends that the Council move forward with the Focused Community Input Process as described above. This will allow for the community to be involved in developing a vision for this site, while still allowing the process to move forward in a timely manner. Furthermore, it is the least costly option, and will still result in two to three community vetted alternatives. City of Palo Alto Page 8 Timeline The ultimate timeline is dependent on the selected process. As noted above the Focus Community Input Process would take 6-8 months. The Visioning Process would take 12-24 months. The Coordinated Area Plan would take 3-6 years. The official process would begin once a consultant is selected, which is expected take 2-3 months. Given the direction of the Council, staff will prepare a scope of work for Commission and Council review. Resource Impact The use of resources ($250,000 from Intermodal Transit Funds set aside in the Stanford Medical Center Development Agreement) for the 27 University site was approved by Council on March 5, 2012. Additionally, the City Council approved funding for Professional Services Agreements in the amount of $286,000 on September 24, 2012 for consultant services allowing continued efforts on design concepts and analysis of the 27 University Avenue site. Of the $286,000, $136,000 was approved to be funded with SUMC Intermodal Transit Funds (Pedestrian Linkages) and the remaining $150,000 was approved to be funded by the SUMC Infrastructure, Sustainable Neighborhoods and Communities, and Affordable Housing Fund. Future dollars spent on this community engagement process are proposed to be supported by the General Fund. It is expected that a community engagement process would cost anywhere from $100,000 to $750,000 depending on the selected process. The 2014 Proposed Operating Budget included a recommendation to allocate $250,000 for this purpose, with some potential to recoup those costs in the future, as noted below. This level of funding would allow for the recommended Focused Community Input Process. Should the City Council recommend the Visioning Process or Coordinated Area Plan Approach, additional funds would need to be identified. Furthermore, in addition to the community engagement costs, staff anticipates internal management costs would range somewhere between $50,000 to $75,000 as the expected workload anticipated with this process is beyond staff’s current capacity. If the ultimate vision is approved by the Council, the Council could consider adoption of future “visioning” fees for development on this site that are collected at the time of building permit on per square foot of development basis. These fees could help repay the total amount of the Community Engagement Process to the City’s General Fund. Policy Implications The planning effort for this area was anticipated in the Stanford University Medical Center Projects approval, in which the City sought funding in the Development Agreement to improve connections between Downtown, Stanford, and the Stanford Shopping Center, and to better utilize and integrate the Transit Center. Numerous Comprehensive Plan policies relate to this site and planning for sites near transit. Furthermore, the Comp Plan also has policies related to City of Palo Alto Page 9 community engagement during the planning process. Environmental Review There is no environmental review required for the planning and community engagement process. Environmental review would be required before the adoption of any official plan and/or development on this site. Attachments:  Attachment A: Arts and Innovation District December 3, 2012 Master Plan Images (PDF)  Attachment B: City Council Minutes of December 3, 2012 (PDF)  Attachment C: Planning and Transportation Commission Minutes of October 24, 2012 (DOC)  Attachment D: Parks and Recreation Action Minutes of November 27, 2012 (PDF)  Attachment E: Historic Resources Board Minutes of December 5, 2012 (DOC)  Attachment F: PAMC Chapter 19.10 Coordinated Area Plans (HTM)  Attachment G Alternative Architectural Concept (PDF)  Attachment H: Julia Morgan (El Camino Park) Parks and Recreation Commission Ad Hoc Committee Memo (DOC)  Attachment I: Public Comment (PDF) FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 R E V I S E D U R B A N D E S I G N M A S T E R P L A N A R T S & I N N O V A T I O N D I S T R I C T FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 R E V I S E D U R B A N D E S I G N M A S T E R P L A N A R T S & I N N O V A T I O N D I S T R I C T FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN 1. Existing Site Context & Project Area 2. Illustrative Plan 3. Illustrative Plan AI District 4. Existing Ownership & Leases 5. Existing Comprehensive Plan 6. Revised Comprehensive Plan 7. Revised District Boundaries Over Zoning Plan 8. Revised Transit Routes 9. Revised Pedestrian Network 10. Revised Bicycle Routes 11. Revised Automobile Site Access 12. Revised Public Places 13. Compatibility With Future Rail Corridor Changes EXHIBITS ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 EXISTING SITE CONTEXT & PROJECT AREA El Camino Real Un i v e r s i t y Av e n u e Pal m D r i v e Alma Street Qu a r r y R o a d Palo A l t o A v e n u e El Camino Park Transit Center StanfordShoppingCenter Sheration MacArthurPark Westin Arboretum Lyt t o n Av e n u e Ha m i l t o n Av e n u e El Palo Alto Urban Lane Un i v e r s i t y Av e n u e RedCross CaltrainDepot OlympicGrove Palo Alto Medical Foundation PROJECT AREA 0 100’ 500’ N ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 ILLUSTRATIVE PLAN 0.00 00024681.0 El Palo Alto Alma Street Theater Mixed-UseOffice Palo Alto Station Stanford Shopping Center El Camino Park SheratonHotel Lyt t o n A v e n u e Uni v e r s i t y A v e n u e El Camino Real Pal m D r i v e Qu a r r y R o a d Mixed-UseOffice Mixed-UseOffice Mixed-UseOffice Julia MorganHostess House San Francisquito Creek Ha w t h o r n e A v e n u e Eve r e t t A v e n u e Palo A l t o A v e n u e Arboretum New Public Places and Connections: 1. University Grove 2. Transit Ring Road 3. Depot Orchard and Underpass 4. Theater Forecourt and Green 5. Olympic Glade 6. Boulevard Place 7. Urban Forest Walk 8. Boulevard Pathway 9. Continuous Bikeway San d H i l l R o a d 11 2 3 45 6 7 8 9 ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 ILLUSTRATIVE PLAN DETAIL--ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 Park Parcels leased to the City of Palo Alto by Stanford Peninsula CorridorJoint Powers Board State Highway City Streets Leased to Sheraton Hotel by Stanford Palo Alto Medical Founda-tion of Health EXISTING PROPERTY OWNERSHIP & LEASES Pacific Hotel DevelopmentVenture LLC Leased to the American Red Cross by Stanford Leased to Macarthur Parkby Stanford Depot Parcel sublease by City of Palo Alto to “VTA”, (owned by Stanford) Owned by Stanford Parking Lease Agreement from the City of Palo Alto to the Pacific Hotel Develop-ment Venture 1 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 6 11 10 12 1 1 1 2 3 4 4 4 4 4 5 6 6 6 7 8 9 10 10 1111 11 12 ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 Public Park Regional/CommunityCommercial Major Institution/Special Facilities Service Commercial Major Institution/UniversityLands/Academic Reserve &Open Space EXISTING COMPREHENSIVE PLAN LAND USE DESIGNATION Multiple Family Residential Streamside Open Space Streets & Highways Railroad Tracks Creeks 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 1 3 3 ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 Public Park Regional/CommunityCommercial Major Institution/Special Facilities Service Commercial Major Institution/UniversityLands/Academic Reserve &Open Space REVISED COMPREHENSIVE PLAN LAND USE DESIGNATION Multiple Family Residential Streamside Open Space Streets & Highways Railroad Tracks Creeks EXISTING DESIGNATIONS Arts & Innovation District NEW DISTRICT DESIGNATION A&I 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 1 3 3 ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 District Boundaries Stanford Lands Public Facilities BOUNDARY OF REVISED ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT OVER EXISTING ZONING Major Arterial Special Setback Multi-modal Transit Center Arts & Innovation District NEW DISTRICT DESIGNATION EXISTING DESIGNATIONS A&I ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 REVISED TRANSIT ROUTES VTA Marguerite Samtrans V M S VM S V M S ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 REVISED PEDESTRIAN NETWORK Street Level Pedestrian Network Below Grade Pedestrian Connections ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 REVISED BICYCLE ROUTES Bike Lanes Bike Paths Below Grade Bicycle Connection Existing Existing Bike Bike LanesLanes Existing Existing Bike Bike LanesLanes Existing Bike PathExisting Bike Path New Bike & New Bike & Pedestrian Pedestrian TunnelTunnel NewNewBikeBikePathsPaths ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 REVISED AUTOMOBILE SITE ACCESS Drop off/Pick up Parking Access * * ** * ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 1. University Grove 2. Transit Ring Road 3. Depot Orchard & Underpass 4. Theater Forecourt & Green 5. Olympic Glade 6. Boulevard Place 7. Urban Forest Walk 8. Bourlevard Pathway 9. Continuous Bikeway REVISED PUBLIC PLACES 44 3 15 2 6 7 8 9 ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT FUKUJI PLANNING & DESIGN--FGY ARCHITECTS--SANDIS ENGINEERS DECEMBER 3, 2012 ILLUSTRATION OF MASTER PLAN COMPATIBILITY WITH FUTURE CHANGES TO THE RAIL CORRIDOR Assumptions•Trenching of rail corridor below grade with adjustment to horizontal alignment•Trench covers four city blocks from Everett Avenue to Forest Avenue•University Avenue is at grade•New Caltrain station below grade with elevator, escalator and stair access to station and ventilation structures•Potential re-use of existing historic depot•Potential joint development opportunities on rail right of way•Joint development along rail corridor is divided into city blocks and open spaces that align with the downtown street and block pattern•Through pedestrian and bicycle circulation across the rail corridor is at grade and aligns with existing downtown streets Compatibility•Arts and Innovation District streets align with rail corridor open space and development block pattern•Transit along the Transit Center Ring Road can move to a new transit center located either on the rail right of way or at the first level of a new parking structure at a redeveloped hotel site•New buildings can replace the Transit Ring Road, designed in scale and character with downtown, extending University Avenue to El Camino Real •Rail corridor pedestrian and bicycle routes connect directly to district routes City Council December 3, 2012 Final Excerpt Request for Council to: (1) Review Revised Arts and Innovation (A&I) District Master Plan Concept (including 27 University), a Revised Letter of Intent with TheatreWorks, Preliminary Traffic Assessment, and Draft Timeline for Master Plan; and (2) Direct the City Attorney to Draft Ballot Measure Language for Council Consideration for the June election. Council Member Klein recused himself from participation in Agenda Item Number 10, because his wife is a member of the Stanford University faculty. Mayor Yeh also recused himself from participation in Agenda Item Number 10, because his wife had been a student at Stanford University within the prior 12 months. Council Member Klein and Mayor Yeh left the meeting at 7:20 P.M. James Keene, City Manager reported Staff was returning to the Council in a public meeting as a follow-up to the Council meeting in September 2012. Since September, there had been a series of public meetings with the Architectural Review Board (ARB), Planning and Transportation Commission (P&TC), and other Boards and Commissions. He suggested the Council did not need to act at the current time on Staff's recommendations regarding language for a ballot measure and the letter of intent with TheatreWorks. The Council should listen to the public comments and discuss the plan and the potential project. The location had special challenges. The land was owned by Stanford University. The potential applicant was John Arrillaga. His role as philanthropist and developer could allow greater flexibility in exploring and pursuing a range of public benefits. The Council asked Staff to focus on more retail uses and a mixture of uses. Staff embarked on a planning process for the site, while acknowledging the ownership of the property and the special nature of the site. Planning for the site was ongoing and needed to outlast any potential project proposal. Staff anticipated and expected the plan to change as it worked through the public process and through Council discussions. The site was a potential extension of Downtown with issues of connectivity, design, and uses. Any potential project should provide linkage between Downtown, Stanford University, and the Stanford Shopping Center. As part of its discussion, the Council should share the general concepts of planning for the site and the area. Stephen Emslie, Deputy City Manager indicated Mr. Fukuji would present the overall planning concepts of the Master Plan. Mr. Garber would discuss the architectural elements that integrated with the Master Plan. Mr. Santora would relate programming with use of the potential theatre building. Mr. Keene noted the presentations would focus on changes made since the Council meeting in September 2012. Bruce Fukuji, Fukuji Planning attempted to mesh the public's vision for the site, as stated at Board, Commission, and public meetings, with the scale and character of Downtown, while providing connectivity for pedestrians and bicyclists to Downtown. Concerns were traffic, parking, the Rail Corridor, transit operations, public spaces and views, park impacts, and the Julia Morgan Building. The main changes were reduced floor area, reduced building height and mass, connectivity with Downtown, concepts for the Julia Morgan Building, pedestrian and bicycle connections, retail spaces, and site planning for the theatre, El Camino Park and the Transit Center. The site was isolated by the Caltrain right-of-way and El Camino Real. The grid of streets could be extended by use of covers over below-grade rail infrastructure, by connections to pedestrian-bike paths, and by extending the street pattern into the Arts and Innovation (A&I) District. The Transit Center could be relocated on-street or in the Rail Corridor, depending upon changes in the Rail Corridor. The proposed University Grove could be a placeholder for future buildings along University Avenue. The Parks and Recreation Commission (PARC) expressed concerns about minimizing the impact on El Camino Park. Areas of the park close to the Transit Center were underutilized. Relocating the Julia Morgan Building to El Camino Park was a way to restore the original community use of the House. El Camino Park could accommodate the Julia Morgan Building in several ways. Proposed changes for the renovation of El Camino Park included increasing the amount of parking, using synthetic turf for the soccer fields, and adding restrooms and storage areas. Street trees, stairs and ramps, a wider opening, and a short tunnel could make the Lytton underpass attractive, accessible, and walkable. He proposed a dedicated bike route to connect to and around the project area. The bike route was based on one used in Copenhagen, Denmark. Transit agencies liked the concept. The underutilized panhandle of the park could be swapped for a contiguous park area. Swapping the land assumed the theatre building would be located within the park. Potential retail locations could be used to create an active pedestrian environment. Retail space could be successful in most locations, but not in all locations. He proposed a walking promenade with tree-lined streets to reach the theatre. The theatre forecourt had the capacity for 650 people. Drop-off areas could be located on El Camino Real and the extension of Quarry Road. Quarry Road needed green space on both sides of the street; therefore, he proposed featuring the Olympic Grove and a tree-lined boulevard walk. Because the Transit Center was the entryway to Palo Alto, the concept had to be compatible and coherent with the existing landscape of trees and tree-lined streets. Landscaping could provide safe and attractive environments for pedestrians. Landscaping could be extended along the edge of Caltrain tracks and trees used to create a plaza for bus users. Dan Garber, Fergus, Garber, and Young met with the ARB and P&TC and received public comments. The major concerns were height of buildings and mass of the footprint. The Master Plan lowered the allowable height. He explained charts of building heights, building masses, and proposed office buildings. The Hoover Tower was the tallest building at 285 feet. Channing House was 123 feet tall without the roof screening. Six of the sixteen buildings exceeded the allowable height. The ARB and P&TC requested a comparison of building footprints. Palo Alto Square, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, the Sheraton and Westin Hotels, the Bing Concert Hall, the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts/City Hall, and the Lucie Stern Center were larger than or approximately equal to the size of the proposed site. In response to comments, Mr. Arrillaga removed 52,000 square feet from office buildings and reduced the height of the tallest office building by 47 feet. The theatre plan had not changed from the plan presented on September 24, 2012. After discussion with TheatreWorks, the height of the theatre fly tower had been reduced slightly. The P&TC requested the basis for the floor area ratio (FAR). He suggested the basis utilize the lease areas of the Transit Center, Red Cross, and MacArthur Park. Applying an FAR of 2, the amount of allowable, buildable area for those three buildings was 358,602 square feet. The FAR calculation for the proposed buildings and theatre totaled 210,300 square feet, or an FAR of 1.53. He presented various images of the proposed buildings. Phil Santora, TheatreWorks Managing Director reported TheatreWorks' vision lived in the work performed on the stage, in schools, and throughout the community. TheatreWorks was one of the 75 largest theatre companies in the country, was third largest in the Bay Area, served 100,000 patrons annually through Main Stage, and developed 62 world premieres. TheatreWorks had an extensive education program, and reached 25,000-35,000 students per year. A partnership with Lucille Packard Children's Hospital provided an emotional healing tool for children in long-term care. TheatreWorks was community based and was committed to being a vital part of the fabric of Palo Alto. Approximately 50 percent of expenses were covered by revenues from ticket sales. The community donated more than $3 million annually. A study performed in 2000 determined that TheatreWorks could not effectively share space with a permanent, long-term company given the number of performances and breadth of programs. TheatreWorks occupied stages 52 weeks a year in two cities. Educational programs were performed on stages, in rented halls, and anywhere space could be found. The instability of utilizing theatres in two cities tested financial resources and limited programs. The proposed theatre was exciting because of the possibilities it provided. TheatreWorks planned to add a staff position to program the spaces. Lectures, concerts, discussion groups and symposiums could occur in the lobby, adjoining rooms, or the plaza. The Main Stage auditorium would seat approximately 650 people, 50 percent more than the Lucie Stern Center. A black box theatre could seat up to 300 people, provide intimate productions, house New Works and educational programming, and be available to community groups. Lounges and meeting rooms would be ideal for small meetings and receptions. The new theatre would become a community hub and provide a connection between the arts at Stanford University, the galleries and movie theatres in Downtown, and the offerings of the Lucie Stern Center. These arts organizations would form a arts corridor for the Peninsula. Making the theatre a reality would benefit Palo Alto through TheatreWorks centralizing its programs in one location. The economic impacts on shopping and dining would be significant. The facility would be designed and programmed to encourage informal community gathering. Additionally, a permanent home for TheatreWorks would free up approximately half the year at the Lucie Stern Center. Mr. Emslie noted the PARC reviewed the project the prior week and a synopsis of the meeting was at places. The Historic Resources Board (HRB) was scheduled to review the project on Wednesday, December 5, 2012. Vice Mayor Scharff reported public speakers would be limited to 2 minutes, because of the large number of speakers. Council Member Espinosa asked PARC Commissioner Markevitch to provide an overview of the PARC discussion of the project. Pat Markevitch, Parks and Recreation Commissioner reported the PARC met many times to discuss improvements to El Camino Park. The PARC opposed relocating the Julia Morgan Building into El Camino Park, and formed a subcommittee to discuss possible relocation sites. The final three options were the Golf Course, Lucille Packard Children's Hospital, and El Camino Park. The PARC took no action at the November 27, 2012 meeting regarding the proposed project; however, the PARC had many concerns with respect to possible negative impacts to the park including loss of trees, loss of active outdoor field space, reduction of park impact fees, and loss of parking. Concerns regarding placement of the Julia Morgan Building included park integration and connectivity, safe drop-off points for children, and no well-defined concepts for programs using the building. More thought and planning with regard to the project was needed in order to minimize negative impacts to the park. If the Julia Morgan Building was relocated into El Camino Park, four things needed to be considered as part of the overall design: 1) underground parking beneath the soccer field at the north end of the park; 2) artificial turf for the soccer field; 3) lights for the soccer field; and 4) a bathroom for field users. Council Member Espinosa felt few had considered the possible increases in bus and bicycle traffic to the area. He inquired about the timeframe for a traffic impact analysis. Mr. Emslie reported Staff had performed a preliminary traffic analysis; however, a detailed analysis was needed to understand the full extent of traffic impacts and potential mitigations. With Council authorization, Staff could have a traffic analysis by the end of February 2013 for the Council, P&TC, ARB, other reviewing agencies, and the community. Council Member Espinosa asked if the traffic studies would determine the impacts to street congestion, parking, ingress, and egress. Mr. Emslie indicated Staff typically used a wide catchment area for traffic impacts, including intersections within several miles. Traffic would be modeled and analyzed based on customized conditions for Palo Alto. A parking analysis would be performed in conjunction with a traffic analysis. The project proposed a significant number of underground spaces. Parking shared by the theatre and office building would be analyzed in the report. That could be done prior to the end of February 2013. Council Member Espinosa requested Staff comment on the funds needed to expedite the traffic and parking studies. Mr. Emslie estimated a cost of $85,000, with possible additional costs for the short-timeframe. Council Member Espinosa appreciated the decreased square footage of the project. The fly space for the theatre was needed and appropriate. He asked Staff to explain their reasons for recommending the building heights as appropriate for the site. Mr. Emslie reported the project proponent wished to create a unique image that could be achieved through extra height. Mr. Keene stated Staff attempted to develop a plan for the site while incorporating the potential for a specific proposal. Mr. Arrillaga proposed the buildings as a potential gift to Stanford University to provide an ongoing revenue stream. The issue of height could not be separated from other design questions. The first proposal had a great deal of mass that looked out of place for the location. Working within the parameters of the overall square footage, consultants attempted to design buildings that would fit into a grid pattern and provide more open space and connectivity. Those attempts resulted in increased building heights. Because building heights had since been lowered, the amount of square footage had decreased. As discussions continued, there could be different configurations of mass, square footage, height, and architectural features. Council Member Espinosa indicated the site could connect Downtown and Stanford Shopping Center; however, the issues of overall design did not reach that goal. He inquired about Staff's vision to create an A&I District. Mr. Keene explained a straight office project was not viable at the site for many reasons. While there would be more traffic, the project had the potential to create parking for the wider Downtown area. An A&I District recognized the City's need for arts and culture and warranted a community discussion. The question of innovation was conceptual at the present stage. The connection between town and gown in this particular location could facilitate and support the ongoing innovation brand of the City. Staff had not focused on specifying particular square footages or types of uses. If the vision of an A&I District was viable, then the conversation would unfold as the review of the project continued. Council Member Espinosa noted concerns about transparency and the process, and inquired about the reasons for Staff's approach to the project. Mr. Keene stated the process was unusual because the site was unusual. It was clear initially that the conceptual designs would not be suitable for the site. Because the City had committed to developing the site, the proposal was an opportunity to plan the area and inform a project that could mesh with Downtown. Many times Staff drafted Master Plans, and then the projects did not develop. This was a unique opportunity to combine planning and implementation. A different approach was warranted by the ownership of the site and potential public benefits. The basic planning work would outlast the proposed development. The project would not move forward without public and Council support. The process was open to the community, and the Council would direct the project and plan. Council Member Schmid inquired whether $131,000 in property taxes noted on Page 15 of the Staff Report was paid to the County or the City. Thomas Fehrenbach, Manager of Economic Development and Redevelopment reported that amount would be paid to the City. Council Member Schmid noted the height of the building was listed as 103 feet 6 inches and 113 feet with the roof screen. He asked if the 50-foot height limit included the roof screen. Curtis Williams, Director of Planning and Community Environment stated the City Code allowed roof screens to a maximum height of 15 feet, in addition to 50 feet. Council Member Schmid clarified that the height limit could extend to 65 feet. Mr. Williams answered yes. Council Member Schmid referenced the Master Plan recommendation of 103 feet, and inquired whether Staff recommended the site be zoned at 103 feet. Mr. Williams explained Mr. Garber's diagram indicated 103 feet was the maximum height of a building currently proposed in the Master Plan. The zoning created for the A&I District would set the maximum height at 103 feet. Council Member Schmid asked if the maximum height of 113 feet would apply to a specific building rather than the site. Mr. Williams responded yes. A typical Site and Design Review tied the zoning to the specific site plan and building plans. Council Member Schmid asked Staff to clarify the inclusion of the Transit Center in the same use as office buildings. Mr. Emslie explained that there were no lots of record with Stanford property, because Stanford did not subdivide its property. Therefore, the definition of the parcel was subjective. Staff calculated the FAR by estimating a reasonable lot area that was affected by the project and that would be needed to serve the overall property. Council Member Schmid recalled TheatreWorks' educational programs and the City's financial support of the Children's Theatre, and inquired whether the two entities would compete for program attendance. Mr. Keene answered no. Mr. Santora viewed the interaction of the two companies as complementary rather than competitive. They served the children of the community together. Council Member Schmid said Mr. Santora implied substantial growth in TheatreWorks' youth programs. Mr. Santora explained the two companies used different approaches to youth education. Competition did not serve either group. Mr. Keene defined 1.0 floor area ration (FAR) as a lot covered 100 percent by a one-story building. FAR was a method for managing the amount of building that could be placed on a lot in addition to height or setback. Council Member Price inquired whether the next phase of a detailed traffic analysis would be the initial part of a traditional traffic study for a traditional Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Mr. Emslie replied yes. An EIR-level traffic impact analysis could be performed within the stated timeframe and incorporated into an EIR if the project moved forward. Council Member Price assumed the scope of the study would not include details of mitigation measures and transportation design management (TDM). Mr. Emslie believed the Council could benefit from understanding the impacts of mitigations; therefore, Staff would attempt to identify mitigation measures. Council Member Price inquired whether the study would discuss mode split. Mr. Emslie stated it would include mode split. Council Member Price asked Staff to comment on key elements of a fiscal and economic impact analysis. Mr. Emslie explained one of the critical factors in an economic analysis was cost-benefits. The City needed to quantify the cost to deliver services and offset that amount with any potential revenues generated from the project. Council Member Price inquired whether Staff had the resources to perform the preliminary work for a fiscal and economic impact analysis before presentation of an advisory measure. Mr. Emslie asked Council Member Price if she was asking whether Staff had the in-house resources to perform the analysis. Council Member Price assumed Staff did not have in-house resources. Mr. Emslie reported Staff would ask the Council for authorization to obtain specific experts to prepare a fiscal impact analysis. The analysis could be performed prior to a deadline setting an advisory measure for election. Mr. Keene indicated Staff would contract with an independent, third- party analyst to determine the potential value of zoning or rezoning and to assess appropriate levels of public benefits in relation to the project. The Council would need an independent assessment as part of its negotiation of a development agreement. Council Member Price was encouraged by the cooperation of the transportation agencies. There was a strong issue in terms of the value of arts and culture as an economic promoter. She believed funding of the full EIR would not occur prior to the advisory measure. Mr. Keene agreed that the EIR would not occur prior to the advisory measure. Council Member Price asked if a full EIR analysis would require a few years to perform. Mr. Keene stated the EIR analysis review and report would require at least one year, but it often required more than a year. Council Member Price indicated an EIR analysis would be related to a specific project proposal. Modifications of building size and square footage were valuable. Council Member Burt recalled in March 2012 Staff recommended and the Council supported a Master Plan for the area. At that time, Mr. Arrillaga's prospective proposal included a major office component. The City proposed a theatre component and considered the Intermodal Transit Center. As the Council discussed it, the City should create a Master Plan independent of the prospective proposal. The current building designs were inconsistent with the small, urban fabric of Downtown. He understood Staff was to propose a vision that would provide a framework for projects. He asked about the amount of time Staff would need to prepare building designs compatible with the community, so that the Council could determine a range of acceptable designs. Mr. Keene reported Staff could return in the first months of 2013, depending upon any Council directives or parameters provided to Staff. Council Member Burt asked public speakers to share their visions for the area. Mr. Keene noted the property was not publicly owned and the City could not program development there. The existing land use plan would be rejected by the Council and the community. Council Member Burt inquired whether Staff knew the number of square feet per employee for Downtown employers. Mr. Fehrenbach reported Palantir occupied 225,000 square feet and employed 560 people, resulting in 404 square feet per employee. He expected IDEO would fall in that range as well. Council Member Burt suggested Staff follow-up with two or three employers in Downtown. He inquired about the number of buses and trains utilizing the Intermodal Transit Center and the number of boardings that represented. He also inquired about the agencies utilizing the Intermodal Transit Center. Jaime Rodriguez, Chief Transportation Official indicated the Palo Alto station had approximately 1,000 scheduled bus stops daily, and that was a conservative estimate. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), the Stanford Marguerite system and the San Mateo County Transit (SamTrans) utilized the Transit Center. He did not have information for Caltrain. Council Member Burt noted AC Transit, the Dumbarton Bridge, and the Palo Alto shuttles also used the station. Mr. Rodriguez stated the Palo Alto shuttle did not stop at the station. It stopped on Lytton, and was not included in the number of buses using the bus station. Council Member Burt felt the number should include any system that brought people to the Intermodal Transit Center. Mr. Rodriguez reported the Marguerite system had an average of 2,500 boardings at the Transit Center daily. Council Member Burt inquired whether the letter of intent for TheatreWorks had to be tied to one developer. Mr. Keene felt having a theatre at the site was more important than the proponent. Staff would work with the City Attorney regarding the language of the letter of intent. The letter of intent had to be meaningful for TheatreWorks' purposes and fundraising efforts. Robin Kennedy, Chair of the Board of TheatreWorks reported TheatreWorks would consider any site in Palo Alto regardless of the developer. She estimated the value of Mr. Arrillaga's contribution to the theatre at approximately $30 million. TheatreWorks would have to raise $35-$50 million to complete the interior of the building. Raising $80 million would be considerably more difficult. Council Member Shepherd understood the City would not begin the EIR process until an application was submitted. Mr. Emslie agreed. Council Member Shepherd stated the applicant paid for the EIR. She asked whether Staff anticipated the submission of an application if the advisory measure was successful. Mr. Emslie responded yes. Council Member Shepherd clarified that Staff had moved the election from March to June 2013. Mr. Emslie explained June 2013 would be the earliest possible date given the schedule. Council Member Shepherd recalled buildings had been donated to the City in the past. She asked why the theatre building needed to be so tall. Mr. Santora explained the height of the fly tower was based on a formula which used the height of the stage. The fly tower was used to raise scenery. Council Member Shepherd inquired about the proposed height of the theatre. Mr. Santora stated the height was 95 feet. Council Member Shepherd asked at what point the design became unsuccessful. Mr. Santora did not have an answer. If the Palo Alto High School theatre was 80 feet, then a professional theatre should not be less. Council Member Shepherd felt imposing the 50-foot height limit would eliminate TheatreWorks from Palo Alto. She asked if the height of the theatre influenced the height of the building. Mr. Santora stated the building itself did not need to be 80-feet tall, only the fly tower. The fly tower footprint was 50 feet by 100 feet. Mr. Emslie reported the goal was to have an efficient back-of-house operation to stage shows and to transfer shows to other facilities. Council Member Shepherd asked if the height of the theatre influenced the height of the office buildings. Mr. Emslie felt the two heights could stand alone in the current configuration. Council Member Shepherd explained the only method for the City to incentivize public benefits was to allow more square footage. She inquired about a means to measure the amount of benefits versus the prospect of taller buildings. Mr. Keene wanted to capture the value of rezoning to a property owner or developer in relation to the public benefits provided to the City. A project with a philanthropic aspect offered more public benefits than a traditional project. This was an opportunity for Staff to demonstrate the fairness of the exchange between the City and the developer. Any terms with respect to public benefits, entitlements, and zoning would be institutionalized in a development agreement. Council Member Holman felt the City had not led the vision for the site. She asked if the process should begin with a Master Plan and a vision for the site rather than an EIR. Mr. Keene stated that was the ideal process. This project provided the potential to plan and implement simultaneously, and required both to evolve. Staff was on that track in order to provide a plan and project the Council would approve. Council Member Holman felt the statement that taller buildings accommodated more open space was a misstatement. Zoning and FAR defined the amount of open space. She inquired whether TheatreWorks had performed a feasibility study for the theatre, about the timeline for a fundraising campaign, and whether office buildings would be constructed after TheatreWorks completed fundraising. Mr. Keene indicated those topics would be expressed in a development agreement. The office buildings would not be constructed without the civic and public value. Staff would not submit a proposal to the Council that did not guarantee the vision of the proposal. The City could not grant an entitlement for one use that provided a risk for another component of the project. Mr. Santora reported the questions were difficult to answer, because the building had not been designed and the cost was undetermined. It was premature to perform a fundraising analysis. Utilizing costs for similar buildings allowed TheatreWorks to estimate a fundraising goal of $35-$50 million. After consulting with major donors and performing a basic feasibility study, TheatreWorks had an 80 percent probability of raising the amount of funds required to outfit the interior of the building. The fundraising timeline was connected to the timeline of construction. TheatreWorks was laying the foundation for fundraising, and would begin fundraising as soon as it was confident the project would proceed. Council Member Holman noted the proposed theatre was located on parkland. In her experience, buildings located in parks were ancillary to recreation. She asked why the proposal did not require the undedication of parkland for the theatre. Mr. Emslie explained the theatre met the criteria of being a public building, being owned by the public, and being accessible for entertainment and recreational purposes although not directly related to the function of the park. Staff believed attending the theatre was recreational and, thus, consistent with the intent of the Park Improvement Ordinance. Mr. Keene indicated many kinds of buildings were located in parks, and that would be part of the Council's review. Council Member Holman felt the Julia Morgan Building had not received due consideration. She inquired about the financial implications of locating the Julia Morgan Building in the park. It was important for the City to take the lead in determining goals. Vice Mayor Scharff asked at what point in the process would TheatreWorks begin fundraising. Mr. Santora explained the ongoing nature of fundraising. He could rally community support and build relationships, but could not request a gift until the project was approved. Not having a letter of intent would delay the early fundraising process. Vice Mayor Scharff asked whether the letter of intent was important to beginning the fundraising process. Mr. Santora answered yes. Vice Mayor Scharff inquired if Staff and the Council were in the process of preparing the Master Plan. Mr. Keene responded yes. Vice Mayor Scharff inquired about a timeline for the Master Plan process. Mr. Keene stated Staff could return in a few months if the Council provided additional directives. As the process proceeded, Staff would hold discussions with the Council, community, and project proponent to ensure the project met the vision. The effort was to attempt both planning and implementation. Vice Mayor Scharff assumed Staff was considering a dynamic planning process as opposed to a visioning concept. Mr. Keene noted many constraints for the site and location. Vice Mayor Scharff felt the Lytton Tunnel was critical to tying the project to Downtown. The major concerns were traffic, parking, and height. He wanted a commitment for no overflow parking into the neighborhoods from the project. Parking should be opened in the evenings to support the project and Downtown. He requested Staff's thoughts for addressing those topics. Mr. Keene stated the Council explicitly directed Staff's work. Vice Mayor Scharff inquired whether $81,000 would pay for the traffic study, which could be utilized in the EIR. Mr. Keene replied yes. Vice Mayor Scharff asked if funds were currently available for the traffic study. Mr. Keene reported Staff would seek Council authorization for those funds. The City would recover expenditures through public benefits. Vice Mayor Scharff believed the project would be a good retail site, if it was designed appropriately. Typically, the office component of a project determined design; however, he wanted to embed a design for retail space in the project. Beth Bunnenberg stated as a member of the Historic Resources Board (HRB) she could not comment on the project itself. The process had gone awry in that the ARB had reported to the Council without HRB input. She urged the Council to respect the process. AJ Sakaguchi, Youth and Education Program Manager at the Palo Alto International Film Commission, felt the project would be the perfect venue for future programs. She suggested the theatre be compatible with film screenings and utilize state-of-the-art technology. Sheri Furman objected to the process, because the public aspect was moving too quickly. The public had not had months to participate in discussions, yet the Council proposed a vote on narrow aspects of the proposal. Public benefits were not worth the cost of density, traffic, and City services. Lenore Cymes stated traffic in Palo Alto was impossible. Palo Alto was neither small town nor urban. There would be less visual space if the project were implemented. Jim Rebosio, Sheraton Hotel General Manager, supported the project, because it was an opportunity for TheatreWorks, the park, and connectivity. Dena Mossar felt public information had been limited and inconsistent. She questioned the lack of housing. The Staff Report did not provide data to support statements. Drafting language for a ballot measure and establishing an A&I District was premature. Jeff Brown felt the developer would not support the project without four office towers. The City should not negotiate with a developer who wanted to build office towers. He suggested the City install bike paths and directional signs and plant wildflowers and trees. Paul Goldstein supported increased density in the area around the train station, but did not support the basic premise of the development. The project was a commercial, high-rise office park with public benefits. The statement that the design of the Master Plan would be compatible with the Rail Corridor Study was misleading. He urged the Council to craft a community-based Master Plan. Deborah Wexler felt the Palo Alto process had been hijacked by a special interest. She questioned expenditures for studies when the project had not been officially submitted. The theatre was merely a bribe and not needed in the community. Rob Lancefield believed the project should be deferred until the hospital was completed in order to determine traffic impacts. He questioned whether the income stream to Stanford had been factored into Stanford's contribution to the City. The City needed housing more than a theatre district. He suggested Mr. Arrillaga construct poles on the site to assist visualization of the proposed buildings. Art Sklaroff stated the proposed project did not benefit Palo Alto as much as Mr. Arrillaga and Stanford University. The Master Plan should meet the City's vision rather than Mr. Arrillaga's vision. He requested the Council consider traffic impacts and adhere to current height limits. Dick Rosenbaum indicated the driving force for the project was the revenue stream for Stanford University. TheatreWorks was being used to make the project palatable. Staff should recommend that the City receive 50 percent of the revenue stream to Stanford. Don McDougall explained vitality was measured by shopping, education, parks, transportation, and the arts. He supported the project and applauded Staff's leadership. Hal Mickelson spoke on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber would support a ballot measure for the proposal. He commended City Staff for compiling the information for the proposal. Karen Nierenberg stated the vibrancy of the proposal for the Downtown area was excellent. The community would benefit from a permanent home for TheatreWorks. She hoped the Julia Morgan Building would be used for non-profit agencies. Barbara Gross recalled prior designs for the site had been cancelled, because there had not been funding sources. She believed stopping the process would not be helpful. The proposal had evolved over time and would continue to evolve. Residents deserved a public dialog and review process. Enid Pearson was outraged and disappointed by the City's handling of the development. The project had been private and hidden from the public. Gifts associated with the project carried high price tags. She urged the Council to stop the development and not to consider a ballot measure. Emily Renzel stated secret negotiations had taken power from the public. The Council's first obligation was to the rights of the citizens of Palo Alto. She opposed the use of parkland for the theatre and Julia Morgan Building. Contract zoning was illegal. Martin Sommer began the online 27 University petition. Palo Alto residents supported the 50-foot height limit and wanted it enforced at 27 University Avenue. He requested the proposed ballot measure explicitly state the proposed towers exceeded the height limit. He suggested Mr. Arrillaga tunnel the train through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Atherton; propose a surcharge on tickets at Stanford University; and rebuild the Varsity Theatre. Tina Peak stated the Council should dismiss the project and direct Staff to more appropriate planning. The project was not a benefit to the City. The Comprehensive Plan and zoning laws had been disregarded. Dick Maltzman, Board Member of TheatreWorks wanted the theatre. The concept of the development was an example of Mr. Arrillaga's vision. He felt the project would benefit Palo Alto. Norman Beamer expressed concern about traffic on University Avenue resulting from the project. The office building was not needed and would not facilitate innovation. Robert Moss indicated a large theatre was not needed for successful productions. The building would not be occupied for many years, because of the amount of money needed to complete it. TheatreWorks would determine uses of the parkland. The figures Staff was utilizing for traffic was incorrect. The City did not need an A&I District. Susie Richardson agreed with Ms. Mossar's comments. She urged the Council to consider traffic problems first. Ian Irwin felt the process had been derailed. TheatreWorks did not need a new facility. The bike path was not appropriate. He opposed the project and requested public input. Don Kenyon opposed the concept of the project. Palo Alto did not need additional office buildings. Bike paths would not solve traffic problems. Herb Borock urged the Council to take no further action until a complete application was submitted. Staff and consultants should comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), zoning ordinances, conflict of interest provisions of the Political Reform Act, and Title 19 of the Code. Fred Balin felt Staff and Council Member actions were inappropriate. Stanford University would be the applicant of the formal application. The Council should insist that primary public benefits be essential to the community and commensurate to applicant gain. Jennifer Landesmann objected to the height of the project. The height and footprint of the project was inappropriate for the size of the site. Gina Jorasch stated TheatreWorks provided a cultural option for children. This was an opportunity for TheatreWorks to move to Palo Alto. She hoped the Council would make the project work. Bruce McLeod reported the general standard for the fly loft was three times the height of the proscenium. He encouraged the Council to consider mixed-use development for the office space and towers. Having a home for TheatreWorks was a public benefit. Virginia Saldich felt the project would generate additional traffic. The Council should consider developments that met zoning regulations. Patricia Ward-Dolkas urged the Council to consider the comprehensive infrastructure impact of the project. None of the impacts were included in the project analysis. The project did not meet community values, aesthetics, or the City process. Paul Ward-Dolkas opposed additional large buildings. Additional traffic would be a disaster. He urged the Council to stop the process. Holly Ward applauded Staff for leading the process. The theatre building was designed to meet TheatreWorks' needs. The process was just beginning, and there would be opportunities for public input. Robert Kelley, Artistic Director of TheatreWorks stated Mr. Arrillaga's gift was as important as Lucie Stern's gift many years ago. It would provide a world-class theatre, link Palo Alto and Stanford, and provide an improved transit hub. Anne Ercolani asked why the Council did not set the criteria for an A&I District before asking for proposals. The public benefit was not as great as the private benefit. The proposed improvements for circulation around the Caltrain station seemed to be offset by increased traffic and parking problems. She urged the Council to vote against Staff's Recommendations. Michael Griffin did not understand how streets could support additional traffic. Additional trains would result in longer vehicle waits at crossings. The project was massive, invasive and expensive, and would not provide value or benefit to the average citizen. Elaine Meyer suggested the Council not support the project. Stephanie Munoz indicated the project was unreasonable. She suggested the property be used for low-income housing. Richard Landes stated most tall buildings mentioned in the presentation had been constructed prior to the 50-foot height limit. Traffic was a problem without adding to it. Janice Berman opposed 100-foot tall buildings. The project would be huge and create an urban cityscape. Susan Fineberg reported the public had not seen a draft of written policy regarding exceptions or abandonment of the 50-foot height limit or the optimal amount of Downtown office growth. There had been no public process to prioritize spending of Stanford funds. The current Comprehensive Plan and zoning laws did not support the scale, size, and uses of the proposed project. She suggested the Council update the Comprehensive Plan before taking further action on the project. Lisa Webster supported the proposed project, especially the proposed theatre building, and asked the Council to continue the process. Mark Vershel stated TheatreWorks was known for arts innovation and education. Most people did not consider the possibilities of the project. Neilson Buchanan could support the project if it were in isolation. He suggested the City's website include more facts and responses to public comment. Russ Cohen felt the park was not an adequate entryway to Downtown. The Council's job was not to judge the merits of the architectural design, but to discuss the project. He urged the Council to move the discussion forward. Ronna Devincenzi felt the area needed help. Traffic, parking, and use of parkland had to be addressed. This was a chance for the public to provide input to redeveloping the area. Shani Kleihaus stated the process should begin with full environmental review. Having a ballot measure first limited the Council's future actions. Eric Filseth indicated Staff's vision for Palo Alto was disconnected from the vision of a large majority of residents. Zoning laws, the Comprehensive Plan, and the concerns of residents were not important to Staff. Vice Mayor Scharff inquired whether Council Members wished to continue the discussion. Council Member Espinosa preferred continuing the conversation to another time. Council Member Burt was prepared to offer a Motion that would focus the discussion. A discussion of various aspects and details of the project could not be accomplished at the current time. Mr. Keene reported there were no time limits for the project, and the Council could discuss it at length. Clearly, another meeting would be needed for the discussion. One consideration was the new Council taking office in January 2013. There were many misunderstandings about intentions and motives. The Palo Alto process had many layers and opportunities for public meetings. Staff needed some direction to have a meeting with the new Council. MOTION: Council Member Burt moved, seconded by Council Member Holman not to go forward with a request for the City Attorney to draft ballot measure language for Council consideration for the June election, to direct Staff to proceed on Master Plan variations for the site with guidelines for Staff to begin to develop two different alternatives compatible with the downtown urban design in both the architectural style, mass, and scale and other urban design features to include as the anchor to the Master Plan a theatre design, and a public process of review of those alternatives that would include at least two community meetings in addition to the Board and Commission meetings, and request Staff to return with a plan for proceeding under these guidelines. Council Member Burt did not believe the office component to the project should be more than 4-5 stories. He was interested in the site for a visionary outcome, driven by community values and consistent with the Downtown urban fabric. The Council would have to review a variety of impacts and issues. He encouraged the public to read the "frequently asked questions" portion of the City's website regarding the project. Key was moving the process and potential outcomes in a constructive direction. The best method for the Council to move toward a well-designed outcome supported by the community was to invest in the Palo Alto process. The Council should determine a Master Plan and then inquire whether a developer was interested in building within the framework of the Master Plan. Council Member Holman stated this was not the time to present a ballot measure to the community, because there was not information for the public to be informed. The current proposal was overly ambitious. She felt Mr. Arrillaga would stay attuned to the process and build a project complementary to his legacy and to Palo Alto. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to follow “downtown urban design in both the architectural style, mass, and scale and other urban design features” with “being informed by the Comprehensive Plan, Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations, and the Dream Team vision.” Council Member Burt asked Council Member Holman to clarify which Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations. Council Member Holman explained the Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations referenced many elements of the Comprehensive Plan. Council Member Burt would accept the amendment if she meant the process would be informed by the Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations. He did not wish to be prescriptive. Council Member Holman agreed with the process being informed by the recommendations. She asked if the community meetings within the vision process would include ARB, HRB, P&TC, and the PARC. Council Member Burt intended for the community meetings to be held outside the Board and Commission process. The Motion should include a request for Staff to return with a plan for proceeding under the guidelines. Mr. Keene indicated Staff needed to have an idea of the meetings and a rough schedule for the process. Council Member Holman understood that the community meetings would be in addition to regular Board and Commission meetings. Mr. Keene stated Staff would identify Board and Commission meetings to be held in the near-term within the context of the Motion. Council Member Holman inquired whether the maker of the Motion would accept two community meetings in addition to Board and Commission meetings. Council Member Burt answered yes. Council Member Holman asked if the Motion would eliminate the need for outside consultants as the Council would be developing the Master Plan. Council Member Burt reported outside consultants had been used in the past to draft plans. He assumed when Staff returned with a Master Plan, they would report on the process to be used and the resources they would need. Council Member Holman agreed. She asked Staff if they would also report necessary expenditures when they returned with a plan for proceeding under the guidelines. Mr. Keene answered yes. Council Member Holman felt the building should be a landmark if it exceeded the 50-foot height limit. The vast majority of buildings exceeding 50 feet in Palo Alto were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s. Architecture of that period was the basis for Palo Alto's 50-foot height limit. Council Member Espinosa suggested the Motion should include intermodal transportation design as an anchor to the Master Plan, just as theatre design was an anchor. He wanted to ensure the Master Plan incorporated that. Council Member Burt agreed that intermodal design should be incorporated as part of the process. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to add the Master Plan would use the circulation and intermodal design work to date as a basis for the plan going forward. Council Member Holman was uncomfortable with the language "to date." Council Member Burt asked Council Member Holman to state her concern. Council Member Holman agreed with use of design work as the foundation for a plan going forward, but not the work done to date. Council Member Burt inquired why she disagreed with the work done to date. Council Member Holman was not confident that it was the most appropriate design work. Council Member Burt did not want to limit the Council. Council Member Espinosa agreed. Council Member Burt suggested use of "design work as a basis for the plan going forward." That language would be inclusive. Council Member Holman preferred to delete "to date," but would accept the amendment. Council Member Espinosa inquired whether the Motion was for Staff to draft a Master Plan, develop two alternative proposals , and then present them to the Council along with timelines and budgets and a public process for moving a project forward. Council Member Burt answered yes. Staff should not abandon the current proposal; however, the community probably would not favor it when compared to the two alternative proposals. Council Member Espinosa asked if the Motion would remove the current proposal from consideration or prevent Staff from suggesting additional work on the current proposal. Council Member Burt would not prescribe that. The intent of the Motion was to move the discussion forward. Council Member Espinosa would support the Motion, because it added transparency, implemented a good process, and addressed community concerns. He asked Staff to ensure the Council understood the costs, the amount of work, and timelines for the process. Council Member Shepherd inquired whether Staff would return to the Council before moving forward with concept plans. Mr. Keene responded yes. Council Member Shepherd did not intend for the process to be rushed. She asked where Staff and the Council was in the process. Mr. Keene was unsure as it was the Palo Alto process. Council Member Shepherd indicated Downtown had buildings taller than 50 feet, and asked if Staff would present ideas complementary to the historic design or limit buildings to 50 feet in height. Council Member Burt personally preferred the height be 4-5 stories; however, buildings over 50 feet would fit the urban fabric. Council Member Shepherd would like to discuss the public benefit aspect of the project in the future. She supported the Motion. Council Member Schmid would have preferred to allow Council Members to discuss the project. He heard concerns about retail space. He asked if the Downtown urban design meant ground-floor retail. Council Member Burt replied yes, but it would not have the same retail guidelines as currently imposed in Downtown. INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to change “other urban design features to include as the anchor to the master plan” to “other urban design features including retail vitality and as the anchor to the master plan.” Council Member Schmid inquired if the Motion included the Rail Corridor Task Force's emphasis on mixed use. Mr. Keene asked if he meant mixed use in the form of residential in addition to commercial office. Council Member Schmid answered retail, office and other uses, certainly housing. He suggested Staff examine the concerns of the PARC in terms of use of the park, and state explicitly financial, infrastructure, and other benefits of the project. The height and size of the buildings would manifest themselves in traffic problems, and the area was extremely sensitive to traffic. He did not wish to exclude concerns expressed by the public speakers. Council Member Price supported the Motion, because of the clarifications made by Council Member Espinosa. The location was a key transitional area. The Motion did not restrict further examination of the original concept. The process was only beginning, and would allow refinements to and negotiation of the concepts. The Master Plan process would have development standards. Vice Mayor Scharff stated adding the language "will be informed by the Comprehensive Plan, Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations, and the Dream Team vision" to the Motion provided a feeling of prescription. Staff and the Council always considered the Comprehensive Plan. AMENDMENT: Vice Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member XXX to remove incorporation of the Comprehensive Plan, Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations, and Dream Team vision. Council Member Holman explained the Comprehensive Plan was not zoning regulations or prescriptive; it was vision. Many comments referenced elements of the Comprehensive Plan and Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations. Vice Mayor Scharff felt inclusion of the language limited possible plans for the site. Council Member Holman said a basis of adopted City policy was needed. Council Member Burt indicated the Council did not want to be prescriptive, but did want to be informed by policy. AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE MAKER AND SECONDER to change the language “being informed by the Comprehensive Plan, Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations, and the Dream Team vision” to “being informed by although not prescribed by the Comprehensive Plan, Rail Corridor Task Force recommendations, and the Dream Team vision.” Council Member Burt stated the existing guidelines should be the foundation; although, they could be modified. Council Member Holman would accept the Amendment. The important point was to be informed by those policies. Vice Mayor Scharff noted Council Member Schmid's comments regarding inclusion of residential space, but felt that was not appropriate for the site at the current time. Council should consider an office-retail-theatre component. Mr. Keene did not believe Council Member Schmid's comments were a Motion. Council Member Burt agreed the comments were not a Motion. Council Member Burt presumed the Council would further discussion when Staff returned with a presentation. Council Member Schmid recalled that the Council had voted to exceed the 50-foot height limit only when projects included housing located near transit areas. Those actions resulted in the City receiving only two housing units. If the Downtown area did not have mixed use, then housing would be located in neighborhoods that were not necessarily appropriate for dense housing. He expressed concern about excluding housing from the discussion. Council Member Holman clarified that the Motion did not exclude housing from the discussion. MOTION PASSED: 7-0 Klein, Yeh not participating   _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 1 of 47 PLANNING& TRANSPORTATION 1 COMMISSION 2 EXCERPT MINUTES 3 4 ==================MEETINGS ARE CABLECAST LIVE ON GOVERNMENT ACCESS CHANNEL 26====================== Wednesday, October 24, 2012 Special Meeting 5 4:00 PM, Council Chambers 6 1st Floor, Civic Center 7 250 Hamilton Avenue 8 Palo Alto, California 94301 9 10 11 Study Session 12 13 27 University Avenue: (6:00 – 8:00 p.m.) Two Hour Joint Study Session of the Planning and 14 Transportation Commission and the Architectural Review Board/27 University Avenue 15 Public Meeting The group will receive public comments and a presentation on the site planning 16 and urban design concepts Council reviewed on September 24, 2012 for the area bounded by El 17 Camino Real, University Avenue, the improved areas of El Camino Park and the Caltrain Station 18 and Right of Way, the potential site of a new Arts and Innovation District. Included in the 19 concepts are the relocation of the Intermodal Transit Center from Mitchell Lane to a transit circle 20 at University Avenue and Urban Lane to enhance transit accessibility and capacity, improved 21 connections across the site, and provision of an urban destination including a performing arts 22 theater and contemporary office space. Questions from Board members and Commissioners will 23 be received. Board member comments on various components, particularly height and urban 24 design aspects of the potential project, may be made during the joint session if time allows. 25 26 Chair Martinez: Ok. We are going to, excuse me, resume our hearing. Welcome back to the 27 October 24, 2012, hearing of the Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC). I’d 28 like to welcome members of the Architectural Review Board (ARB) to our joint study session. 29 And Secretary Ellner, do you want to call the roll? 30 31 Robin Ellner, Administrative Assoc. III: Commissioner Alcheck, Commissioner Keller, Chair 32 Martinez, Vice-Chair Michael, Commissioner Panelli, Commissioner Tanaka, Commissioner 33 Tuma. For the Board Members, Vice-Chair Lippert, Board Member Lew, Board Member Popp. 34 Eight present. Sorry, I had to think about that. 35 36 Chair Martinez: Ok, you’re not gonna call the rest of the Board? Or are we just going to make 37 the assumption they’re not here? Nine? Ok. Nine present for the record. 38 39 Ok we are going to undertake a joint study session with the Architectural Review Board for the 40 consideration of a project to be proposed at 27 University and we’re going to begin with a Staff 41 report. Ms. French. 42 43 Amy French, Chief Planning Official: Hello. Good evening, Amy French, Chief Planning 44 Official. You received a brief report we pulled together last week as a cover memo for a few 45 things that we thought you would want to have for this review. We do have a PowerPoint 46 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 2 of 47 presentation to present to you. We have members of our project team and Staff from the 1 Transportation Division. And so we’re here for your questions and discussion. We’re eager to 2 have some focus on urban design given the parties assembled up there on the dais, but there is no 3 need to limit the conversation to urban design. Given the time we have we will be ending at 4 8:00. So without further conversation I would see if our consultant number one, Bruce, would 5 like to present. Ok. Bruce Fukuji. 6 7 Bruce Fukuji, Consultant: Good evening Architectural Review Board Members and City 8 Planning, City Transportation, Planning and Transportation Commission and Chairman. It’s 9 really a pleasure to be here this evening. We’re gonna have a fairly concise presentation we’re 10 gonna be making that really talks about the project. You know this is really an opportunity. 11 Council’s direction is really to seek your advisory input about what you think about this project 12 proposal. 13 14 The consultant role in this, myself, Bruce Fukuji of Fukuji Planning and Design and Dan Garber 15 briefly is really, we’re hired by the City to really look at how to come in and we really did some 16 design review and then looked at how to work collaboratively with the project proposer on how 17 to reshape that plan in a way to really advance the City’s goals. And I think this is a project in 18 process and in order to show you how far we’ve been able to advance that, but the main thing we 19 got from the direction from Council is that by doing a master plan we really can kind of frame 20 the opportunity of what this project can mean for the City and to think comprehensively about 21 the site in its context. And the role the site has both locally and regionally and look at how to 22 shape an appropriate vision to realize the potential of the site and how it can contribute to the 23 quality of life of the people here in Palo Alto and contribute to the vitality of the City. 24 25 So with that we have about 10 slides we’re going to go through. And I’m going to present; 26 Jaime Rodriguez is also going to present and so is Dan, Dan Garber. So our first slide here is the 27 existing context, so this is the Caltrain right of way, excuse me, little shaky here. This is El 28 Camino Real. Here’s the arboretum and then Palm Drive and University Avenue right through 29 here. And the original proposal is looking at the MacArthur Park and Julia Morgan relocating 30 that and taking out the Red Cross building and looking at how to develop this site right here that 31 really spans really from the Olympic Grove all the way to the circle around University Avenue. 32 And what we looked at was a slightly larger area where we looked at both the existing transit 33 center, historic transit depot there, the whole circle that’s around University Avenue on both 34 sides, part of the front of the Sheraton property on the Urban Lane and part of El Camino 35 through here and along El Camino Park, right in through here. So that’s really the, kind of the 36 project area. 37 38 And what we’re thinking about this site is really how can the site really be an area that is 39 transforming really kind of a non-place realm in a way, transitional area between the downtown 40 and Stanford University along El Camino, which is a very long regional boulevard. How can 41 that be done in such a way as to really create an attractive sense of arrival and destination for 42 people arriving both by Caltrain and also by Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) via Santa Clara Valley 43 Transportation Authority (VTA) or San Mateo County Transit (SamTrans) and also when you 44 arrive to the station area as an entrance to both the downtown and to Stanford University. So we 45 looked at that and there’s several sort of assets and kind of liabilities and, you know, in a way 46 with this site where assets and challenges with the site and certain unique opportunities I think 47 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 3 of 47 that as we get into our conversation this evening we can kind of get into that more detailed 1 without going through all that. All of you I’m sure know the area quite well. 2 3 Go to the next slide. So, this, this exhibit is the illustrative plan and it’s a vision for the area 4 based on how to accommodate the 250,000 square foot, which is slightly larger too in its net 5 square foot office program, some retail, and the theatre program. But when we looked at this 6 project what we started out doing was really looking at how to plan for the future of transit and 7 how to do that in such a way as to not preclude opportunities for being able to expand bus transit 8 service and transit connectivity and bus transit connectivity to Caltrain. And then how do we lay 9 out kind of a walkable well connected district that meets a lot of the vision that was in the dream 10 team plan and also was a result of the Stanford Medical Center Development Agreement around 11 looking at how to do bicycle pedestrian connectivity in this area. So we looked at that and we 12 looked at how do you really configure the building massing and height and orientation in order to 13 really shape public spaces because one of the things the site really creates an opportunity for is 14 how to create new public spaces and a new attractive destination arrival public space for 15 downtown. And at the same time create a very walkable neighborhood or walkable district. And 16 this also set the stage for creating designing sustainable architecture. 17 18 So I’m just going to identify the main features in the plan and then Jaime will be able to talk a 19 little about the transit planning. The main features of the plan is that with, look at relocating the 20 transit center that was right here along the Caltrain tracks, actually to creating a transit ring road 21 where you’d actually have stops for buses on both the inside of the loop and the outside of the 22 loop having a double sort of row, a median for stops and another row of stops here. That’s kind 23 of the key feature for relocating the transit centers, utilizing the underutilized area at the inside of 24 that loop, expanding it and redesigning the intersections here to remove some of the sort of slip 25 ramps to make for a much more coherent street circulation pattern. We have a two way streets 26 that go through there two lanes with two continuous bus stops on either side. We extend an 27 urban lane north and extend Quarry Road up towards the tracks and link those together to create 28 a new street connection in through here. You have the El Camino ramp access right here and up 29 by the major project access to below grade parking with four lanes entering here and three 30 entering and exiting here. And then a pedestrian bridge above that, but really creating two 31 districts. Two blocks, an urban block which has two office buildings that are designed to sort of 32 two towers for each building; I’ll talk about that more. And then a sort of theatre in the park 33 block where you have the theatre in a major public theatre plaza here on this side right here. 34 35 The other features that we’re looking at with the plan is that this is really kind of a pedestrian 36 oriented sort of bicycle and slow street. It’s much more urban street in terms of its design; it’s 37 not designed as a typical street section. And also we looked at how to increase connectivity to 38 the downtown by having a, expanding the existing crosswalk platform connection that you have 39 here for pedestrians, to widen that to be able to accommodate bicycles. So we looked at having a 40 bicycle path here that would go from Quarry Road and the El Camino intersection connect up to 41 the existing paths that are in El Camino Park, run along the tracks right here and then from this 42 place you can ramp down and connect up to your bicycle lanes that are on the other side. And it 43 allows another way to get from downtown into the project area. While it’s not kind of an at 44 grade crossing, which would be sort of desirable. I think everyone would like to be able to walk 45 right at grade. It is a below grade connection that’s in there. 46 47 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 4 of 47 So those are sort of the major elements of the design without getting into more detail on that and 1 I’m gonna let Jaime talk about transit. 2 3 Jaime Rodriguez, Chief Transportation Official: Thank you Bruce. Bruce talked a lot already 4 about little details of the actual site plan as it relates to transit and transportation, but really one 5 of the nice benefits of the concept plan that we have before us today is that it actually took transit 6 into consideration before the site. And that’s really, that’s an unusual opportunity that we’re 7 usually presented with from a transportation perspective in that the transit agencies that we work 8 with were very appreciative because if you look at the existing transit mall for example they kind 9 of fit it in where it was that there was space available. And we thought it was very important to 10 make sure that we take a different approach with this unique opportunity in trying to make sure 11 that transit was gonna work first and foremost to meet the demands of the existing uses and we 12 also wanted to also plan for the demands of transit uses in the future. 13 14 So one of the ways that we got to this layout here first is actually we worked very closely with 15 the major transit partners in the area that are using the transit mall today so that involved regular 16 meetings with the Stanford Marguerite staff, which is by far the greatest transit user in that area 17 providing shuttling services to the Medical Center, to the University, and to other areas around 18 town at the Research Park. We also worked with the Valley Transportation Authority that 19 actually built the current transit mall that’s located behind or at the site of the existing, of the 20 proposed theatre. And we also worked with SamTrans who, you know, is a big user of that 21 connecting San Mateo County to the north, but has historically had minimal opportunity to take 22 advantage of the transit spaces because they couldn’t really take what they can get after Stanford 23 and the VTA has used up their particular stops. 24 25 So with the existing site we have about kind of 17 stops along with some kind of unofficial areas 26 are used by transit. And then with the proposed site we end up to about 30 plus transit stops to 27 meet the demands of the growth that the transit agencies foresee in the foreseeable future. But at 28 the same time we also preserve opportunities to expand transit beyond that for say the next 20 to 29 30 to 50 years and that’s one of the reasons why Urban Lane today is left as open as it is now and 30 not made additional changes for transit because that’s the growth area for the future. 31 32 So like Bruce mentioned, you know, the proposed relocation of the transit facility around a 33 widened urban or University loop allows those transit agencies to take advantage of transit 34 capacity from both sides of the road. That doesn’t happen today. We have a wide inner loop, 35 but it doesn’t get any transit use. And at the same time that we take advantage of that space to 36 connect pedestrians, bicycler users across the site and for a lot of the Council Members in the 37 past, members of the PTC and Parks and Recs Commission has been a long standing concern of 38 the community that you kind of get lost coming out of the transit mall. You don’t really know 39 which way to go to go to downtown. This solves a lot of those problems. And so with that 40 Bruce did mention the connectivity to the downtown with the expanded or improved connection 41 through the tunnel underneath the Caltrain tracks toward Lytton Avenue as well as the 42 connections to the University tunnel from the transit mall. So again, a lot of great transit 43 improvements that will benefit the site. So with that I’ll hand it back to Bruce to guide you 44 through the rest of the presentation. 45 46 Mr. Fukuji: Can we go to the next slide? Ok. So, this next slide is talking about the, it’s called 47 a kind of parkland swap, which is really kind of four points I want to make about this. One is 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 5 of 47 that there was a 2000 preforming arts theatre study that was done with the City and in that it had 1 identified the area really kind of this area really right here. And on this map here, it’s the same 2 orientation, here’s the Caltrain line and here’s El Camino and the transit center and this is the 3 office component and the theatre component. And then I’ll explain the kind of coloration of 4 what that map is, but the preforming arts theatre study located a theatre and said it should be in 5 the El Camino Park north of Quarry Road to look at relocating some of the parking that’s in there 6 and moving the ball field north, the softball field north to be able to do that. Because they 7 thought it would be a good, prominent, visible, transit adjacent location that could link Stanford 8 and downtown and support downtown business through retail sales and restaurants and cafés and 9 things like that. 10 11 So when looking at this project and looking at the project area, you know, the, this issue about 12 why would there be a need for a parkland swap and part of it is this boundary right here, the 13 yellow here and the red is the existing area that’s defined by leases of parkland that the City is 14 leasing from Stanford University. And in looking at that configuration you have a very narrow 15 strip here along El Camino ramp [that’s Oaks Savannah, Riparian], kind of remnant landscape 16 that’s in that area. And that extends north really right along through here, where the Olympic 17 Grove is right here and here’s where the ball fields are. So you have this active use to the north 18 and have this sort of unimproved passive Oak remnant landscape open space area. 19 20 And so looking at this proposal it was decided that it would be appropriate to look at 21 reconfiguring this boundary in such a way so that more urban development can happen actually 22 at this very prominent location along University Avenue. And to take the underutilized parkland 23 area, this really kind of remnant landscape and look at how it could be reconfigured to make 24 more usable public space and to allow leasing to take place for the theatre and office in order for 25 the intent of the Arts and Innovation District to be advanced. So what you have is the red area 26 here is about 38,000 square feet of land that will be taken out of the lease area right here and then 27 this green area right here would be added back in so there would be an equal area. and the 28 reason for having it be an equal area is that Stanford in their leases to the City did not want to 29 increase the amount of parkland that they’re currently leasing it will have more land under 30 parkland restrictions. 31 32 So in looking at that we said, well, you know, if you use sort of standards from like crime 33 prevention to environmental design and other things there’s some things about that area that are 34 not necessarily safe or ideal in existing conditions especially around the bus transit center. And 35 then we look at examples for privately owned public space and Manhattan has a lot of examples. 36 I’m not saying that Manhattan has the right density for here; I’m just saying that they have a 37 program where they’ve looked at how you create attractive public space even though it’s 38 privately owned. And we use some of the, kind of lessons learned from that to look at what to do 39 and one of the main ones is that if you’re creating new public space and that you want it to be 40 active and vibrant it really needs to be part of the street environment. 41 42 So what we did is we looked the selection of what would be appropriate area to be included in 43 park as being sort of the most attractive, pedestrian oriented, most vibrant places that are going to 44 be part of this district. But we didn’t include all of them. We only included as much as was 45 necessary in order to balance it out. And originally we had the theatre included in that area. 46 Here’s the theatre right here. But it was felt that for the City to have more flexibility in its 47 leasing arrangements with Stanford and to have it independent from the Park regulations and 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 6 of 47 park standards so we took that out. So that’s why it has a very unusual configuration. It’s 1 conceptual and if you have suggestions about other ways to do that I would like to be able to 2 hear that. So, next. 3 4 So, the next three slides are really looking at the issue about building massing and, you know, 5 basically the floor area that we’re looking at here there’s several ways of being able to calculate 6 that. We haven’t landed on the exact way to calculate it. Dan has provided some exhibits to 7 show different ways of doing it. But it’s kind of in the 2.0 Floor Area Ratio (FAR) range, which 8 basically consists with your regional community commercial zoning that you already have in 9 place that would be appropriate for an area like that. I’m not saying that that’s the appropriate 10 plan use for the area, but it’s a density that’s already accepted for areas such as this in the area. 11 and then you actually have higher densities in areas permitted in this area also if it has housing 12 for example. But what we looked at doing is that instead of having kind of lower rise 13 development across the entire site, we looked at how do we actually have taller buildings to be 14 able to have more open space that’s usable on the site. For example, for transit use, for public 15 plaza use, sort of plaza for the theatre, things like that. And also given that it’s a transit oriented 16 location it’s a regional center, it’s in a unique transitory location we thought that it would be 17 appropriate to have the higher building heights and masses along University Avenue and along 18 El Camino. 19 20 So there’s some subtle things about what’s happening with the heights and I just want to quickly 21 go over those. So basically we looked at instead of having one large building, which was what 22 was originally proposed, we looked at having two buildings. And then instead of just doing each 23 building as one large mass we look at how to break the building massing up. Here’s one 24 building L shaped like this. It faces onto, across the depot in front of the University Avenue 25 along El Camino with the highest height, sort of 10 stories along El Camino, then steps down to 26 9 along the depot at Mitchell sort of extension of Urban Lane on this side and then that it’s sort 27 of 7, 6 on the other side right here. And here’s the theatre here, which is basically about 50 feet 28 high and then has its fly tower which is 100 feet. So we thought that by doing this configuration 29 higher here and it gets down lower we did some sun studies to make sure the public plaza in the 30 back here that’s over on El Camino and we can go to the next slide. It has that, has a better view 31 of it. Yes. 32 33 So that this is looking at it really from above. Stanford Shopping Center, here’s El Camino/ 34 University Avenue the Caltrain tracks, here’s the theatre and the 100 foot high fly space for that 35 and Dan can explain more about the theatre massing, but this is the entrance right in through 36 here. And there’s a back, back of houses faces out along the Caltrain tracks. So it steps down 37 and these buildings step down also to make sure there’s enough sunlight that comes in 38 throughout the day on this public, public plaza. And then given the shape of the plaza and size 39 of the plaza we, we looked at what’s an appropriate for the building heights for the size public 40 space. And that is an appropriate height for this width space so you can actually in it be able to 41 observe and see all the architectural features and not feel like it’s too tall or overshadowing you. 42 And that for a longer, narrower space, especially something can be seen from El Camino Park, 43 that’s where we had the taller, taller building massing on that. Can we go to the last one? 44 45 This slide, again to look at it from a slight different view here’s a Caltrain tracks, here’s Alma, 46 here’s the theatre, you know, part of why we turn the axis of the fly space east/west to the 47 north/south is to help minimize its visibility from the downtown and also increase its visibility 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 7 of 47 along El Camino because part of the theatre design by being on El Camino it has to be able to be 1 accessible both when you’re entering from Menlo Park and you’re going along El Camino. And 2 that then you can see how the building massing steps up six, seven, you know, nine, ten stories 3 along that. Again, it looks like four buildings instead of one building. So that was a basic 4 strategy which we employed in terms of the building massing. 5 6 So from here I’m gonna have, give it off to Dan. Dan’s gonna talk more specifically about 7 building heights and a little more about some of the architectural on this. Here’s the, yeah. 8 9 Dan Garber, Consultant: So these are the sections of the office buildings here. This is the, the 10 office building mass it’s along University Avenue. The 10 stories is built up through a ground 11 floor at 20 feet and then remaining floors are 14 foot 6, with a mechanical room or level on top 12 of 11 feet. The slightly shorter mass, the nine story mass is 147 feet built up in the exact same 13 way. Yes, thank you for the reminder. And below that there are three levels of below grade 14 parking. And then the section for the other, the other two, are built up in the exact same way but 15 obviously they go to 7 and 6 floors. 16 17 The concept section for the theatre operates as you see it here with the primary main stage on the 18 left, which would seat approximately 600 to 650 people on a ground floor and a mezzanine or 19 balcony area. A lobby space in the center and then the black box space with a rehearsal floors 20 above that and the other administrative floors above that, although you don’t see them 21 specifically in this drawing. What’s important about the way that this has been laid out is that 22 the lobby really operates as a showcase for the mission of the theatre, which is to display both its 23 main stage as well as its new works functionality in the black box as well as to be able to see up 24 into the administrative areas and on the mezzanine level there’s a, there’s a costume shop and the 25 rehearsal space is all the way at the top. 26 27 There’s both a public lobby on the ground floor which really operates as an extension of the 28 ground floor plaza and is large enough to accommodate gatherings of both the populations of the 29 theatre for regular theatre going events, but also for larger events that are not specifically theatre 30 related be they large parties if it’s rented out, if it’s used by large organizations in the City, 31 etcetera. There’s then a secondary lobby on that second floor, which allows the public to access 32 the, the rehearsal spaces which are also imagined to be utilized or made, provide access to the 33 public when the theatre isn’t using them and for other events that the theatre has that are not 34 utilizing the two ground floor spaces. But all that is really centralized around this, this lobby. 35 And that’s the current concept of that. Bruce did you want to talk? 36 37 Mr. Fukuji: We, there’s several rendering views. We thought we should just focus on one view. 38 We spent quite a bit of time looking at what’s the eye level, ground level experience for the 39 pedestrian. This view is looking from El Camino Park, this is the extension of Quarry Road 40 looking south and seeing here’s the preforming arts theatre, here’s the fly space, here’s the 41 theatre plaza designed really as a park which is heavily landscaped especially along the edge 42 along El Camino and the landscaping of El Camino as a boulevard. And here are the office 43 buildings with ground floor active uses. I think that one of the things we were looking at is a 44 space like this is a forecourt for the theatre could have anywhere from 600 to, you know, 700 45 people who can be in it during the peak. And we looked at peak times both during the sort of 46 noon hour and also especially on Friday, Saturday, Saturday early evening before performances 47 because you have both the black box theatre and you have the main theatre together. So we 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 8 of 47 looked at how do you create a park like setting for doing that. And we can answer more 1 questions about design issues around how we’ve accomplished that. 2 3 Mr. Garber: I’ll simply add that we have a variety of backup slides depending on what sorts of 4 discussions you want to get into. We can, as well as the rest of the presentation that was made to 5 Council, but we’ve, they’ve asked us to shorten it up so we can focus on your questions rather 6 than the presentation at the moment. 7 8 Ms. French: I just want to add one thing too is there were some questions I neglected to mention 9 earlier from two of the Planning and Transportation Commission Members and those have been 10 provided, a answers via e-mail and at places at the back table as well. 11 12 Chair Martinez: Ok. Excuse me. I think I’m not gonna be able to say very much, but Assistant 13 Planning Director do you have anything that you want to add at this point? 14 15 Aaron Aknin, Assistant Director: Yeah, I just wanted to add one comment, something that Chair 16 Martinez and I spoke beforehand is that this is a great, the Council sent this back to the ARB as 17 well as the PTC because they really wanted to hear from you. And so as you’re looking at this I 18 agree that we should probably focus on urban design issues as a joint commission and committee 19 because we are here for, you know, another hour and a half and the Commission as well as the 20 Board are each gonna get another shot at providing comments. But rather than saying, you 21 know, I like this or I don’t like this please do describe aspects of each component that you do 22 like or don’t like so that could provide better direction both to Staff and to the Council as we 23 move forward. 24 25 Chair Martinez: Good. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Let’s open the public hearing. We 26 don’t have any speaker cards or do we? If there’s anybody from the public cares to speak you 27 will have three minutes. And if you can give us a card after? 28 29 Bob Moss: I’ll give you a card. Interesting looking at the proposal and the justifications for it, 30 but as I’ve said several times before it’s completely out of scale, not only with this portion of 31 Palo Alto but Palo Alto in general. It, it totally violates the El Camino design guidelines which 32 I’m familiar with because I’m one of the people who created it, the design guidelines in the 33 ‘70’s. And the normal justification for asking for increased density and increased height is a 34 developer can make money and in this case the profit would offset building the theatre, but the 35 developer, Arrillaga, has already said that when the buildings are built he’s going to donate them 36 to Stanford. So the only financial benefit to him is the tax write off he gets from donating 37 whatever is built. So he can’t argue that he would have to have something of this scale in order 38 to justify building the theatre. 39 40 Second, when we put in the Comprehensive Plan a goal to have higher density near transit, it was 41 supposed to be focused on higher density housing not higher density commercial or office space. 42 And so this violates the original intent of higher density near transit stations. And because of the 43 size of the project it would generate thousands of jobs, which is going to exacerbate the 44 jobs/housing imbalance. And you know of the fight we’re having right now with Association of 45 Bay Area Governments (ABAG) about how many housing units they want us to build in Palo 46 Alto something like this goes in and they’ll say, “Oh, you got that many more jobs you got to put 47 in more housing.” And be back up to 12 or 15 or 18,000 housing units, which we’ll have to fight 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 9 of 47 them on. So, to quote what some of the Council Members said when this first came up, shorten 1 the height of each floor. You don’t need a 14 foot floor. 10 or 11 is plenty. Reduce the scale 2 and the size of the buildings and reduce in that case the demand for parking and traffic impacts. 3 That intersection is very heavily impacted by traffic. 4 5 So what we should be doing is scaling it down to perhaps 50 or 60 feet, reducing total area 6 appropriately. That would reduce the need for parking and reduce the traffic and it would put it 7 more in scale with the rest of the City. There are only four buildings in Palo Alto that are over 8 140, over 100 feet tall. Only one, 101 Alma, is over 140 feet. We don’t need this. 9 10 Chair Martinez: Thank you. There are no more speakers. Commissioners and Board Members 11 can, can you hear me at all? So following the Assistant Planning Director’s suggestion why 12 don’t we see if we can have a conversation around urban design issues. I’m not gonna say that it 13 should be limited, but for the PTC we have a follow up meeting where we can talk about zoning 14 and traffic, regional planning issues that may not be the greatest opportunity. So if we want to 15 open it right now let’s begin our conversation about the site plan, the building height, circulation, 16 preservation, things that we share a common focus on and if that’s not too limiting let’s see 17 where it takes us. And we’re just gonna allow each Board Member/Commissioner three minutes. 18 Ask a question, make a comment. If there’s a follow up by anyone else we will continue on the 19 line of that question and then we’ll move on down the line. So what we’re going with Board 20 Member Lew. Three minutes. 21 22 Board Member Lew: So thank you for the presentation. I know it’s a very complicated site. I 23 think my first question would be was, was there an option of locating the theatre where the office 24 buildings are currently proposed? I guess my, in the back of my head I’m thinking that that’s 25 gonna get the more public use and that would be the more prominent so it would be also sort of 26 more in keeping with the use of the Hostess House, which was sort of theater kind of use 27 initially. And, and if the theatre were located sort of closer to the circle it would sort of maintain 28 that, you know, the historic use on that site. 29 30 Mr. Fukuji: Shall I respond to that question? 31 32 Chair Martinez: Yes, please. 33 Mr. Fukuji: Yes we, we looked at that. The main reason for having the theatre separate and not 34 on University Avenue is that there’s so much traffic, pedestrian, transit, and circulation 35 movements that are happening in that space throughout the day that to try to have a public space 36 that can be organized for different events that might be theatre related or other civic events that 37 you have some competition around that and that in many cities they’ve actually looked at 38 designing their public space separate from the transit center and the public space related to the 39 transit center so there’s sort of a protected space for how they want to manage the operations 40 they want to have. City operations. 41 42 Board Member Lew: Then the, I think I read in the Staff report that I think you’re envisioning 43 that the theatre is sort of connected to, you know, visually connected to Quarry Road. And I was 44 wondering how that could be connected to like the public? So say like I know that a Quarry 45 extension, right, but it’s the kind of thing that like, that intersection of Quarry is very sort of hard 46 to, hard to navigate. Like even with extension that’s being proposed I think that it’s still confuse, 47 would be confusing to people. And so I’m thinking like the, that you may see the theatre and 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 10 of 47 sort of know that you need to get there, but just in the current configuration of the existing 1 underpass and everything like that I’m not sure that I would be able to figure out where I need to 2 go and where I need to park and how do I get to the front door. And so, anyway that was why I 3 was thinking that maybe the theatre would be located better, you know, on the, you know, closer 4 to the circle, but possibly if that, if the, if that plaza in front of the theater is, you know, really 5 prominent and you know, design, you know, and has a beautiful design then maybe that creates 6 enough of a, a, you know, enough of a space and so I think that’s it. Is that the timer? 7 8 Chair Martinez: You can finish. 9 10 Board Member Lew: I’ll finish. That’s ok, I’m done. 11 12 Chair Martinez: I had a follow up because I had the same concern that the highest building is 13 next to the lowest building and that’s the transit station. And if you switch positions it would 14 give you the opportunity for more scale. And I also had shared the concern that the civic 15 building, which is the theater and the way that I look at it is more of a, of sort of the public place. 16 And that the plaza, the theatre, and the tower turned at 90 degrees wouldn’t give the tower more 17 opportunity to have more space for addressing the issues of scale. So my concern was obviously 18 the placement of buildings and is there the opportunity to look at it that way? 19 Mr. Fukuji: I think that we can certainly look at different ways of configuring the site and seeing 20 what the pros and cons are of those different configurations. I think the only other thought we 21 had, and I understand the scale issue about you has the depots existing, you have the theatre it’s 22 slightly, it’s less in height. Why not have that near it because then it’s more compatible in 23 height? And some ways you can orient the fly tower in order to help mitigate that. 24 25 Also we thought though that having the theatre on the park side would be a better more 26 compatible use with the park than to have the office building adjacent to the park. So I thought 27 that that, that’s the other reason that we had in thinking about doing that. So I don’t know if you 28 had some… 29 30 Mr. Garber: Yeah, I think those are all part of the reasons. I also think there is a strong desire on 31 behalf the Applicant to have the most prominent address be the office tower frankly, but I think 32 the other thing that when we had initially looked at that it was prior to moving the transit center 33 into the location it is now. Because it allowed, you know, we didn’t have all of the transit 34 activity occurring in the front. And the symmetry between having the, a theatre in the park to 35 use the metaphor, but also adjacent to and seen from the Stanford Mall because there would be 36 restaurants and opportunities there and synergy there and also add to the very good draw to be 37 able to get people to be, to be able to act as a bridge between Stanford Mall and University 38 Avenue. So ultimately we ended up pursuing this for, for those reasons. There’s also the 39 connection, the pedestrian connection that goes underneath the tracks and rather than having that, 40 you know, that connection back to University North sort of go underneath the tracks and enter 41 into the offices or the office portion it would essentially enter into the intersection with the 42 theatre there and the park, etcetera. So there’s, there’s some we thought there was, you know 43 when we sort of backed out of our initial thought of it we thought that there was some synergy to 44 placing it where, where it’s ended up or where we’re currently proposing it be considered. Is 45 that fair? 46 47 Chair Martinez: Ok. Commissioner Keller. 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 11 of 47 1 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. So I’m gonna continue with this line of discussion. I will ask 2 this question rhetorically; I don’t expect you to answer. But the question is, of the uses for this 3 district, who will take transit and when? And the answer is the transit users will be the office 4 building users because by the time the theatre lets out at 10:00 or 10:30 or 11:00 at night transit 5 is not a viable option to get home. People will drive. And so you really, so on that basis you 6 want the transit to be, you want the office building to be adjacent to transit because people will 7 get to the theatre most likely by driving to the theatre or by bicycling; relatively few people from 8 walking. Those who live close enough, but most people will not take transit to this location. 9 10 But on the other hand you want the theatre to be located in such a way that it is safe and alive 11 because in some sense the park at night is dark and uninviting and unsafe. And so that adjacency 12 is a little scary in some sense; so thinking about how to make that lively if it makes interesting. 13 I’m willing to bet dollars to doughnuts or maybe sandwiches and dinners that the, that that’s the 14 retail that will be located at the bottom of the office building will be food related. Other retail is 15 just not really viable at that location but there’s a great demand for food from the buildings 16 unless they provide their own cafeteria as Google does. And also it’s a great demand for eating 17 from the theatre. So I think that that’s the kind of thing that you need to think about in terms of 18 that. 19 I think that the office buildings are way too tall and I will talk about FAR in the next discussion 20 about why they are too tall for various reasons. It seems to me that there’s a little mistake in the 21 design of TheatreWorks theatre. And the mistake is if you look at the, can you get back to the 22 diagram where you show the profile of, of it? Yes. If you look on there, there’s a lobby that 23 goes up to get into the auditorium. And that seems to be a mistake. You really need to depress 24 so that you walk into the top of the auditorium and then come down and that means that the 25 auditorium goes down below grade and, and the stage may be above grade. So you actually dig a 26 little bit down below. But because the parking lot entrance would be more on the University 27 Avenue side and parking lots can sort of go around and they’re not level like an elevator down 28 unlike somebody else’s elevator for cars, but the issue is that you actually go around ramps and 29 ramps. The ramp level below the theatre would actually be slightly lower than the ramp level 30 there so you can accommodate that depression that way. 31 32 Mr. Garber: May I respond briefly? 33 34 Chair Martinez: Go ahead. 35 36 Mr. Garber: Excellent points all Commissioner Keller. Related to the section, the section has 37 been looked at extensively because obviously that is one of the critical things that needs to be 38 solved with any theatre. And actually we did look at lowering the main theatre down a level 39 such that it would be at the same level as the first level of parking. The real issue there though is 40 that as soon as you do that you have to get very large materials from grade down to that lower 41 level and you end up with a service ramp, excuse me, a service elevator that’s probably 10 feet 42 by 20 feet at least. That also then has an impact in terms of operations because you are having to 43 move then that same material from the same dock back up across from the lower level and then 44 back up to the top and then over to the other theatre, etcetera. So we looked at it not only in 45 terms of its geographical locations if you will, but also in terms of its operational impacts. The 46 reality is that by the time you do that and by the time you add the additional elevator, etcetera, 47 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 12 of 47 you’ve added something like half a million dollars to the actual infrastructure of the building and 1 somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000 a year in operational costs. 2 3 So what you’re not seeing unfortunately because the section is just two dimensions is that the 4 theatre actually is or excuse me, the seating actually is depressed three feet. And the lobby level 5 comes in and you enter the auditorium in the center of the auditorium so that the auditorium 6 seating goes up six feet and goes down three feet, which is the current modern way of managing 7 or organizing a theatre stage. That allows you to have the maximum number of people entering 8 into the center of the theatre and shortens the exits and entranceways up and down the theatre 9 steps. And, importantly it leaves the main stage at the ground level, which is the same level as 10 the other theatre so you can eliminate a lot of the mechanicals that have to happen in the theatre. 11 So, long way around, great observation. There’s your explanation. 12 13 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Panelli. 14 15 Commissioner Panelli: So the, I want to continue on this element. In fact I took some notes and 16 one of my questions to ask here was, was there some thought to build some of the theatre below 17 grade. Because if you did so, I mean you could effectively lower the, the height of the entire 18 property and perhaps (interrupted) 19 20 Mr. Garber: Believe me; the project Applicant was very interested in that solution. 21 22 Commissioner Panelli: Yeah, I mean just adding up the numbers you’d actually, if you went one 23 floor down you’d be effectively below 50 feet for everything except for the fly tower. So that 24 was something that came up off the top of my head. 25 26 Now when I, when I look at the site and I think about what does this look like from each angle 27 and you gave us an illustration from the park looking south. Is that? I got that right? From 28 looking from Quarry Road (interrupted) 29 30 Mr. Garber: The rendering that was just up there? 31 32 Commissioner Panelli: Yeah. 33 34 Mr. Garber: Yeah, you are on the north looking south across Quarry. Yes. 35 36 Commissioner Panelli: but, but I think about it from all four sides. I’m less concerned about the 37 El Camino side because El Camino’s kind of a broad boulevard and it seemed it probably could 38 handle the kind of height that’s being illustrated kind of the same thing with University/Palm 39 Drive. It’s more of a utilitarian corridor right there. But the one that sort of I’m most sensitive 40 to is from Alma and a number of residences and offices on that side. In fact I sent just a quick 41 diagram asking some questions. I know you may not have had time to address it, but… 42 43 Mr. Garber: I, Ms. French had sent me your, your sketch. I did try and come up with something, 44 let me, but I need to bring it up on the screen. This is the section, yes? Your section diagram? 45 46 Commissioner Panelli: Well what I was trying to get at with my diagram is trying to understand 47 if I’m standing on the sidewalk on the east side of Alma, I’m trying to compare what that 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 13 of 47 viewpoint is if we had sort of a typical community commercial property with a height limit of 40 1 feet, 50 feet up to the edge of the parcel versus, you know, if you have buildings sort of setback 2 closer to El Camino do we, do we have a, yeah. Exactly, exactly. So what, you know what I 3 need time, I would need time to look at it to have some subsequent questions so I’m gonna, I’ll 4 pass along. 5 6 Mr. Garber: Ok. 7 8 Commissioner Panelli: Yeah, thank you. 9 10 Chair Martinez: Board Member Popp. 11 12 Mr. Garber: Do I? How do I, do I just leave it like that? Ok. 13 14 Commissioner Panelli: If you wouldn’t mind just leaving it up for a bit. I appreciate it. Just, is 15 that ok? 16 17 Board Member Popp: Shall I begin? Shall I begin? Great, thank you very much for the 18 presentation. Really helps me to understand some of the nuances that I was struggling with a 19 little bit and I really appreciate the time to have this dialogue. 20 I will echo some of the comments that others have made tonight and just leave it at that quickly, 21 but I really do think it’s important to study flipping the site around. I’m quite concerned about 22 the imagery of Palo Alto coming from Menlo Park on El Camino and the first object that you see 23 that’s so significant will be the backside of the theatre sort of very difficult to fenestrate and 24 articulate. And one of the things that I might offer as a suggestion is perhaps even studying 25 reorganizing the internal, interior of the building. I know you got this interesting concept around 26 the centralized lobby, but perhaps there’s a way to put the fly in the middle and have things 27 around and work around it in some way. You know there may be enough site area to start to do 28 that so you get active edges all around the building and I don’t know the realities of that and 29 whether it’s even possible but sitting here in a moment it seems like that might be worth study. 30 31 I’d also like to ask to have a little bit of discussion perhaps about the vehicular entrance to the 32 garage being centered in the site. To me that feels a little like a barrier in the middle of the site 33 really dividing one from the other and I’m concerned about how that feels to have the site really 34 bisected by cars where the, you know, the clear imagery that we’re being shown is that you’re 35 trying to create parkland in the middle and really have that be this very pleasant park space, but 36 with these two big holes that the cars are going in and out of seems like its detracting that, from 37 that in a way. You know, again I don’t know how to manage this and it’s not my job to design it, 38 but I’d like to ask that maybe we have some dialogue about why that choice was made and 39 maybe start to understand a little bit more about that. That’s, that’s really, I’d like to maybe just 40 open it up to some conversation rather than using up all the time. 41 42 Mr. Fukuji: I’d like to just respond just for a second. 43 44 Chair Martinez: Go ahead. 45 46 Mr. Fukuji: Yeah we, you know, the vehicular access to the site was a bit of a conundrum for us. 47 We had looked at a lot of different ways of doing it. We don’t have the site plan. Put the site 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 14 of 47 plan up? You know we looked at there’s, there’s kind of three things really driving our decision 1 making around what to do. One was how do you access the theatre and what’s the sequence for 2 arrival at the theatre? We thought that if you’re off Quarry Road you come off El Camino, you 3 know drop off, from there people can walk to the plaza and find the entrance to the theatre and 4 then people can drive around to the back of the theatre. They can drop off again if they want to 5 in the back instead of go into parking. And that, that move I think was a good move for how to 6 organize that. We couldn’t really do it in front of the theatre. There wasn’t really enough room 7 to do that. 8 9 And then looking at how do you provide access to below grade parking for the office. Primarily 10 people are going to be coming really along the El Camino ramp from University Avenue or Palm 11 Drive or from El Camino and along that way that had to provide access for doing it from there. 12 So then that set really the two main points for access. We actually thought about having more 13 points of access to below grade parking, but in looking at parking structures of this size, 850 to 14 900 spaces both on the Stanford campus and other places we found that many of them only have 15 one entrance as opposed to two. And, but the way they handle that is that they look at what to do 16 for peak loading coming in and out and Mr. Arrillaga’s a fan of having it be open when you drive 17 into a parking structure. So he really wanted it to be, you know, four lanes. Two lanes in, two 18 lanes out. We said that’s going to be a little wide on the side by Caltrain, why don’t we have it 19 be three lanes? You have one in two out. And so we came to the conclusion that was the way to 20 do it. 21 22 He proposed, we originally had you drive that, that was a street. That you can just drive through 23 and from that you would go from that to access to the sites to the theatre or to the office. He 24 suggested actually having it go below grade from there to more direct and then have a very wide 25 pedestrian bridge that links the two together so you separate pedestrian and vehicular traffic 26 through the main part of the site. We thought that was a good idea so that’s how we arrived at 27 the proposal. We said it wouldn’t make sense to have driveway access where you’re having bus 28 circulation so we removed it from those areas in front along University Avenue in front of the 29 depot. That’s the thinking behind that. 30 31 Board Member Popp: Ok well I can certainly follow along with that and that’s rational. I just I 32 think in light of what you’re hearing perhaps there’s other organizational options that might be 33 available even maybe taking those two and pulling them apart to corners. It certainly occurs to 34 me that it’s easy for the car to travel and more difficult for the pedestrian, bike, and others. And 35 so having the vehicular entrances farther away and, you know, maybe some centralized element 36 that you come up out of the garage within. You know I’m looking for a pleasant way to 37 visualize that park area in the center and really maximize the bang we’re gonna get out of that. 38 And so in light of the things you’re hearing I think maybe that’s a, that’s something that’s worth 39 studying. 40 41 But I’ll say that I’m not, I’m not challenged too much by the height. I think we’re far enough 42 away and these things seem workable to me. And I think that buildings that are articulated in the 43 right way and, you know, I’m jumping into probably a can of worms here, but I think that the 44 (interrupted) 45 46 Chair Martinez: We need to move on. 47 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 15 of 47 Board Member Popp: Ok. I’ll let you go on. Thanks. 1 2 Chair Martinez: I’m gonna try to follow up. No I’m gonna wait see if I can… well I’m gonna try 3 to follow up if I can. Any of us who have traveled have used the ramp at the Palo Alto Medical 4 Foundation know how terrible of an entry to a clinic that is and we’re kind of faced with the 5 same kind of entrance to something that should be very special. 6 7 Now I have, I’m designing a much more modest preforming arts theatre and one of the people 8 I’m working with is singer Linda Ronstadt. And she described the best place that she liked to 9 perform at and that was the Santa Barbara Preforming Arts Theatre I think it’s called. And she 10 described people arriving in a courtyard, in a garden, and then walking through a courtyard into 11 the lobby and then into the seating area. And she said by the time they were there they were 12 ready. They build up the experience of, of, of that procession really made the anticipation of the 13 theatre that much more exciting. And I don’t see that in driving down, coming out through an 14 elevator up and into the building. You, you don’t arrive walking along El Camino into the 15 courtyard into the building. You arrive through the side or the back and I think that’s a great 16 mistake for any kind of a performance theatre. And I think the comments that especially Board 17 Member Popp had just said really speak to the point of that experience of the theatre. I could, 18 I’ll say a little more about that in our next session, but we need to move on to Commissioner 19 Tanaka. 20 21 Commissioner Tanaka: So I just wanted to ask about the theatre uses and is this only going to be 22 used for theatre? Do you think there’s convention center uses? I don’t know if Dan you could 23 speak about that? 24 25 Mr. Garber: Yeah I think the intent is for the City and TheatreWorks to come to an agreement as 26 to how both the City and the theatre can, can utilize the space. The idea is and TheatreWorks is 27 very much supportive to try and find ways for, for this to become a community resource and to 28 act in a responsible way for that and to find ways to program not only the spaces that occur 29 inside the building but outside the building as well and take responsibility for that. You know 30 what those, you know what those programs are, what they actually can be I think is, you know, 31 we’re still a long way away from. But relative to the design of the building in terms of the 32 concepts that we’ve been trying to forward here is to create opportunities for the public to enter 33 the building and participate in it. And will not having sort of a losing TheatreWorks, you know, 34 opportunity to have its own administrative spaces, its own storage spaces, etcetera. But to 35 recognize that it has a very significant public function as well. I mean every theatre does, but in 36 this case more so. 37 38 Commissioner Tanaka: Sure. Well I guess the reason I mention that is I, I think certainly there’s 39 a need for a theatre but also in this area there’s not a lot of convention center space except if you 40 go to (interrupted) 41 42 Mr. Garber: A lot of what? I’m sorry. 43 44 Commissioner Tanaka: Convention center. And so I was just trying to see a kind of prop stool 45 use of the space. 46 47 Mr. Garber: Are you looking for a response or is that a comment? 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 16 of 47 1 Commissioner Tanaka: It’s more of a comment, but if you can respond that’s also good. 2 3 Mr. Garber: Yeah, I think the thing to keep in mind is that one of the primary reasons that 4 TheatreWorks has been searching for a new home for, you know, more than 10 years now or 12 5 years is because it has programs which preclude it, you know, truly sharing. So there is a 6 number of opportunities that were investigated back in the year 2000 as part of the feasibility 7 study that was done with Stanford and the City and Stanford recognized that when, you know, 8 TheatreWorks which provides over 280 days of programming every evening in addition to its 9 educational programs, outreach programs, new works, festivals, etcetera, etcetera. You know 10 you can’t have another theatre company in there. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t down times 11 for some of the spaces and that there’s obviously great utility in that. So conventions, 12 convention center is a completely different use that has a much different requirement for large 13 gathering spaces. And, you know, I think there is a large opportunity for convention that would 14 occur as a result of this project that can be pursued in other projects. I think, I suspect that it 15 would be hard to try and do both inside this one theatre building. Is that helpful? 16 17 Chair Martinez: Thank you. Commissioner Alcheck. 18 Commissioner Alcheck: Thank you for your presentation tonight. This is actually my second sit 19 through; I was present when you made this presentation to City Council as well. I in general 20 can’t imagine a more apt location for the sort of height and density you’re seeking especially in 21 the commercial context. And I think that the theatre is a very exciting opportunity and in hearing 22 my fellow dais members speaking today about the adjustment of the positioning of these 23 buildings I think there may be something to say for a theatre plaza being far away or far enough 24 away from a bus depot if you will. So I do think that there is a, maybe a value to have that 25 segregation and I identify the theatre plaza as being a public space and although the retail level 26 of the first floor of this building is going to be privately owned I always consider retail to be 27 semi-public in its invitation to the public and so if in fact Commissioner Keller is right that 90 28 percent of the space will be, you know, public, you know, restaurants available to the public to 29 some extent I consider the transitionary area between the hub and the theatre including that retail 30 space. And to some extent I can imagine cafés full of people and as you transition through that 31 maybe there is sort of that element. 32 33 So in, in general I, I, I think there’s some tremendous need for this space. It’s not just Facebook 34 I know that, you know, smaller companies have left. I just heard that Speck, there’s a tech 35 company called Speck, they just moved to Mountain View or Sunnyvale because the five small 36 buildings they were looking at were not as appealing as the one larger building they could get. 37 Although they did leave their retail space here, they’re going to sublease the rest. So I think 38 there’s a tremendous need for commercial space and I believe that the mixed use adjacent to the 39 transit center is important. 40 41 My only question, and I’ll finish with this is the outer loop/inner loop concept for this transit 42 depot reminds me of the current temporarily hub, bus hub in San Francisco. It has sort of an 43 interior out, it’s probably not as large but it has an interior and exterior kind of loop thing. And 44 I’m wondering if there are other examples in other cities of this sort of configuration? Whether 45 it would be smart maybe to have a study of the San Francisco temporary bus depot to see if there 46 are issues there. One of the issues that I sort of have seen in the San Francisco temporary hub is 47 that if you are crossing this thoroughfare of buses it’s sort of scary because you look like an ant 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 17 of 47 next to, you know, double length and single length buses. And so my only question is how did 1 we come to this design and how did you study it and to what extent are we evaluating similar 2 designs like this and whether or not they work or not? 3 4 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you very much. The way we actually came to the design of the transit 5 ring road was again through that consensus building with the various transit agencies the VTA, 6 Marguerite, and SamTrans staff and actually one of the things that kind of helped us kind of 7 model the concept for this was actually operations of the Mountain View Transit Center 8 operating sort of similar, just at a much smaller capacity. And in discussions we’ve had with the 9 VTA, I think how their envisioning this working is for the, for the short term drop off you kind 10 of just come in, drop off, unload the people at the bus, maybe forward some people. All that 11 happens kind of on the outer edge of the ring road and then more layover activities begin to 12 happen kind of in the center portion of the, of the ring where they’ll be less people dropping and 13 boarding or de-boarding from the busses. And so the activity where the pedestrians would be 14 kind of getting off the bus happens on the outer perimeter going straight to the Caltrain station or 15 to the other office uses or adjacent land uses. And so there’s a less of an interaction for 16 pedestrians to have to kind of run right across the street for lack of a better term. But it is a good 17 point. Definitely if you’re aware of some locations or if anyone else is we’d love to have some 18 site visits. I was looking for a reason to go to San Francisco and so that sounds like a good one. 19 20 Chair Martinez: Ok. Vice-Chair Michael your comments. 21 22 Vice-Chair Michael: So thank you very much. This is a very interesting and provocative 23 proposal and I’ve got a number of comments. One is on the plan that you’ve got up now the, the 24 backside of the fly tower is both the very tall and also very wide and just very flat and its, it’s not 25 softened by any tree planting that I can see or other something just to soften that. And I just 26 drove past the Menlo-Atherton theatre with the fly tower and I think this is a defect in the layout. 27 So if you could plant some trees that would be fabulous. 28 29 Also I had a chance I was in San Francisco today and you approach the city you look at the 30 skyline, you see the older part of the city a lot of the buildings are sort of square, rectangular, 31 flat, right angles. You look south at Market and it gets quite a bit more interesting and what 32 you’ve got here is sort of rectilinear block shapes with flat roofs on what we’re seeing and I’m 33 very curious about the option for different treatments of the, the skyline kind of qualities, more 34 graceful, more curvilinear, which I think particularly given the sensitivity to the height impact 35 the blocky, flat, rectangular as you being using the entry to San Francisco as an example it’s 36 really lovely in the new area and very dated and we’re instantly going back if we keep the 37 blocks. 38 39 So and another comment the, just to enumerate the public benefits which are substantial and 40 significant: the theatre, the transit improvements, the intermodal transit center, all of that. I’m 41 wondering to the extent that within the, the mixed use and the office buildings there might be an 42 additional sort of public space dedicated in the design of one of the office buildings that might be 43 sort of auditorium like that might be available for certain events or meetings or whatnot that 44 could be public/private sharing which would be quite useful and balance out the, the space. 45 46 And finally to the extent that the TheatreWorks is gonna be so active but may not be here forever 47 in terms of the design of the theatre to what extent does the design accommodate other 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 18 of 47 modalities of ballet or musical performances or other activities in addition to or maybe after 1 TheatreWorks is finished? And that’s most of my three minutes but if you want to comment to 2 any of those or just take those as observations. Thanks. 3 4 Mr. Garber: Hi, I can comment relative to the TheatreWorks or the theatre building. If you were 5 just designing a space for ballet or concerts or something of that sort you wouldn’t need frankly 6 as much infrastructure as you have in this theatre now. Can it be used for those sorts of 7 functions? The answer is yes frankly because they have less functional requirements. Perhaps 8 less so for ballet in that you would have the same, you know, you can have the same amount of 9 scenery, you have large casts, or you can have the opportunity for large casts and so you need 10 rehearsal rooms and green rooms, etcetera. 11 12 So there’s a lot of opportunity to utilize the space for a lot of different things versus for instance 13 like the Bing Concert Hall. You would be very difficult to put on a performance there because it 14 doesn’t have a lot of the infrastructure, it does not have a fly space, it does not have the rehearsal 15 rooms, etcetera that you would have to have for this sort of thing. So there’s a lot of flexibility 16 for what the spaces can be, can be used for. One of the large, there are two very large rehearsal 17 rooms that are programed one of which essentially reproduces the size of the main stage. And 18 then there’s also the second one that is also very large is a, is in fact a dance rehearsal room and 19 those can be used actually for, you know, informal performances or a smaller scale performances 20 as well and that works well with the lobby, the upper level lobby that’s, that’s there. 21 22 Chair Martinez: Acting Board Chair Lippert. 23 24 Acting Board Chair Lippert: Thank you. I think the interesting thing is that just as San 25 Francisco’s completed their review of the tallest building in San Francisco we’re just beginning 26 our review of what could be the tallest building in Palo Alto. Can you just very quickly explain 27 what the relevance or nexus is of Urban Lane on this site? Please just be brief on it. You know. 28 29 Mr. Fukuji: I think that as Jaime mentioned earlier for existing Urban Lane the only thing we’re 30 proposing is a bus turnaround at the end by Palo Alto Medical Foundation to help support transit 31 movements through there. 32 33 Acting Board Chair Lippert: Is it part of the site? 34 35 Mr. Fukuji: It’s not part of the site. That’s property that’s owned by Palo Alto Medical 36 Foundation it’s also Stanford land that’s been leased. 37 38 Acting Board Chair Lippert: Ok. Did you look at all the dream team scheme for the University 39 Circle area there? University Avenue where the terminus is? 40 41 Mr. Fukuji: Yes, yes we did. I think that in a sense the dream team was very visionary but very 42 difficult to implement. But the key things that came out of that were how to enhance 43 pedestrian/bicycle connectivity and look at how to redesign transit circulation and that gave a lot 44 of very creative thinking into how to do that. And we learned from what that could teach us and 45 then we based most of our decision making on that and our collaboration with our transit 46 providers. 47 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 19 of 47 Acting Board Chair Lippert: Ok that’s what I was looking for exactly. Ok the connectivity and 1 also when you’re trying to piece together pieces of Salvage Park, you know, it also expanded that 2 element as well in the dream team scheme. So I certainly take a look at that. 3 4 With regards to built heights of tall buildings in Palo Alto, 525 University in the City Council 5 Staff report it’s only given in terms of stories it’s not really given as height. Where do we fit in 6 terms of the height of this building and that? 7 8 Mr. Garber: You know we don’t, I don’t know why we don’t know the height of that building. 9 Well, it sounds like Ms. French knows. Please inform us. 10 11 Ms. French: That’s what I found in the means that I could in our online electronic resources. 12 Everything that I put there was what I found. I could not find the height of that building. 13 14 Acting Chair Lippert: Ok as far as watermark is concerned it’s important I think to understand 15 what the context is or what the height of the building is in this proposal versus the one at 525 16 University. 17 Mr. Garber: So, if you, let’s make an assumption. There’s 15 stories (interrupted) 18 19 Acting Chair Lippert: No, I don’t want to make an assumption. I want the number, ok? I want 20 to know whether this building is coming up to or topping 525 University. I want to know where 21 it’s coming up to or topping Palo Alto Square. I want to know where it’s coming up to on, on 22 101 Alma. Because those are the most significant tallest buildings in Palo Alto and this is gonna 23 be one of the tallest buildings in Palo Alto. And so we want to have an idea as to context wise 24 where it’s gonna be. 25 26 Chair Martinez: Ok. And I want to thank the Chief Planning Official for the tea. Let’s see if it 27 works overtime. When I travel I carry around with me a checklist of what makes a great city. I 28 wanted to talk about a great civics base, but I think I’m going to take this time to talk about a 29 great sense of history and really put it on the line why isn’t the Julia Morgan included in the 30 project? Why isn’t it there? A response, please. 31 32 Mr. Fukuji: We’re, there’s a couple of things. We’re looking at several different locations for it. 33 It wasn’t initially proposed to be in the project. the direction that we’ve gotten from Council is 34 to really look at how to include that in El Camino Park and in the response that we’re putting 35 together for City Council in November we’re looking at how that can be done in a way that helps 36 create a more holistic environment for that building, the park, and the project. So we can look at 37 how that could work together. 38 39 Chair Martinez: Ok, but we all know that because of the sighting of the tower there was no place 40 for that building and it also compromises the transit station because of it’s out of scale 41 relationship. So what I’m suggesting, move the tower, create a civics base, put the Julia Morgan 42 back, recognize the significance of the history, not just of the building but the people who to this 43 day continue to use that building. Place it as part of what’s important, what makes Palo Alto a 44 great city our sense of history. Our sense of who the people are that have come before us. Who 45 the people are that are using this building. Honor the memorials that are there. It wouldn’t be 46 that hard. Perhaps you need to look at the architectural program for the site. Maybe there isn’t 47 room for a theatre that that’s ambitious. Maybe the towers need to have a different relationship 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 20 of 47 and be more modest. If that can be introduced into this planning process, but it has to be taken 1 more seriously that it has been there for almost 100 years and it needs to be included in the plan. 2 Not at the golf course, not at the other end of El Camino Park, not at the VA Center, but there 3 where it’s been for almost 100 years. 4 5 I am going to turn over the mike to the Vice-Chair Michael who has a better voice than me 6 tonight for the next round. 7 8 Vice-Chair Michael: So thank you Chair Martinez. Enjoy the tea and for the second round let’s 9 go back to Board Member Lew for three minutes. 10 11 Board Member Lew: So I have a question about the, the office buildings. So like many of the 12 other high tech tenants that have come to the ARB have told us that their employees require like 13 outdoor amenity areas. Their sports, whatever recreation, terraces, patio dining, and they’re all 14 private to their employees. They are not really public at all. And so I was curious as to about 15 this project because it’s a very different kind of site. You don’t really have the same kind of area 16 and how those kinds of amenities would be provided on this site. 17 Mr. Fukuji: I think that we hear that. I mean I think it’s not an isolated campus. It’ll have a 18 cafeteria where every need will be met. Several of the interviews that we’ve done major 19 technology companies have all said that there’s sort of more urban environments that have 20 amenities that are part of a downtown are really attractive to their employees and they like to see 21 that. That creates a lot of space for how to look at how you manage the ground floor use. I think 22 that’s the City’s choice to think about how we’d like to manage the ground floor. What uses and 23 activities should be there and to help really make sure that is enabled for that. 24 25 Board Member Lew: And is there anything in the proposed zoning change that would like, say 26 restrict other office tenants? Say if it was like predominantly lawyer offices or is this really 27 intended to be technology driven innovation district? 28 29 Mr. Fukuji: We haven’t quite gotten to that place yet. We’re really trying to get the big picture 30 vision but that’s gonna be a negotiation topic. 31 32 Board Member Lew: Ok. Thank you. 33 34 Vice-Chair Michael: Commissioner Keller. 35 36 Commissioner Keller: So firstly let me indicate that the park appears to be in shape to be what I 37 would refer to as gerrymandered around the space to sort of shoehorned in. And I think that the 38 reference to Zuccotti Park is not apt because I don’t think you want the Occupy Palo Alto people 39 standing there and protesting the big industrial behemoth that happens to be in the office building 40 adjacent. So I don’t think that that’s the, that’s the image that we would like to continue. 41 42 I think that what you’re really doing is reducing the effective size of the park and if that’s what 43 you’re doing, that’s ok. That’s not necessarily, not necessarily the right thing to do, but if that’s 44 what you’re really doing and I think that’s what you’re doing then say so. And instead of trying 45 to indicate that this certain amount of square footage goes somewhere in this weird place all 46 around in front of the building that’s really part of the setback of the building not really part of 47 the park. So I think that, you know, while you may rationalize a little bit more of the space in 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 21 of 47 front of the theatre as being part of the park this, the bridge over the roadway, the space on the 1 other side of Urban Lane that’s right it’s stuck against the Caltrain depot is not a park. I’m sorry 2 it’s not. 3 4 In terms of opportunities that you might consider you have this wonderful site opportunity this 5 50 or 60 or some odd feet on top of the theatre and then a tall slab of 40 feet above that and I’m 6 wondering if there, you know, for the, for the theatre. I’m wondering if there’s a use for that in 7 some sense? A gathering space? You know some towns have outdoor movies and you can sort 8 of show outdoor movies on top of this. You know think of, take an opportunity to use that space 9 it’s got a great view. It’s sort of a wasted opportunity as unused up there and I’m not sure 10 exactly what you’d do with it, but think of a use for it. 11 12 Also I would hope that in the life of this project that the train tracks would be undergrounded for 13 Caltrain or high speed rail or whatever it is. And I think that you should plan this project around 14 the ability to accommodate undergrounding Caltrain. And although I certainly do think that it is 15 not appropriate to have four tracks around south of say Churchill, it is quite possible that some 16 day there will be four tracks at the Palo Alto station in an underground configuration underneath 17 the current platform and that you’ll basically have access over the train tracks to be it for 18 pedestrian/bicycle path. And I don’t know what that does to University Avenue and I don’t, you 19 know, but in some sense some consideration of that transition needs to be thought about because 20 I think that that in the next 50 or 100 years or however long this complex is gonna be there that’s 21 hopefully gonna happen and separate the, the, the we have this sort of wall in some sense, the 22 rolling wall of the train separating two parts of Palo Alto. That’s gonna hopefully go away and 23 with Caltrain increasing more and more it’s gonna become more of a problem so think about 24 that. Thank you. 25 26 Vice-Chair Michael: Commissioner Panelli. 27 28 Commissioner Panelli: I’m gonna pick up where I left off and by the way thank you for putting 29 that slide up. I’m gonna need more time to study it so if you could send it to me that would be 30 great. But it does, it does help coalesce my, my thought and the point I was trying to make 31 which is if I’m standing on the sidewalk on the east side of Alma directly across the street from 32 the depot station it’s a much, the sense I think I would get is much different than if I’m standing 33 in the middle of theatre plaza or in the courtyard between the two office buildings. If I’m in 34 either of those two locations there’s some pretty decent sort of view plains. But if I’m standing 35 directly across the street my, my concern is that, that both the office towers, especially with the 36 two L’s sort of interlocking and then the broad side of the theatre it’s effectively, the sense is the 37 further away I am from the site the more of a sense of a wall that there is. And I’m wondering is 38 it, was there any consideration to, to sort of directionally sort of turning them 90 degrees and 39 having everything sort of perpendicular to El Camino and Alma so you’re sort of more preserve 40 those sight plains? 41 42 Mr. Fukuji: I think that’s been a really tough design problem to look at what to do and how to do 43 that. I think we’ve had some success in doing that. I don’t think it’s quite completely there and 44 we can talk about some of the things that our strategies have done to address that. One thing we 45 did do with the theatre is that because it, and I know you want to talk about the theatre but I just 46 want a point about it is that, you know, it’s kind of a blank box. But if you have the service 47 spaces facing the Alma side then you can have windows glazing at all kinds of articulation on the 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 22 of 47 building on that side that you wouldn’t have on other sides. We felt that at least when you’re on 1 the Alma side you look and you actually would see a fenestration of a building as opposed to a 2 blank wall. We thought that would be the better of the four sides that would be an appropriate 3 side. 4 5 We looked at how to align the streets so that you had new corridors. One of the things we did 6 was like with Everett for example is when you look down that you now continue to see open 7 space. We literally tried to do that with Lytton. It was a little more difficult to accomplish with 8 doing that, but this becomes an architectural design issue. There are many streets that terminate 9 and buildings that can be done well. This is a little more bleak in terms of how you’d be looking 10 at it. You’d be seeing part of the building but there is a space between the theatre and the office 11 buildings that you would partially see if you looked down the length of it. So it does some of it, 12 it doesn’t quite do everything in terms of that. 13 14 Commissioner Panelli: Well, let me just quickly follow up to that. So what about a minor 15 reconfiguration such that at least between the office buildings you have a clear shot, which right 16 now you don’t unless your actually sort of inside the courtyard. 17 Mr. Fukuji: I think that’s a good, it’s a really good idea. We’re gonna see what we can do about 18 that kind of thing. 19 20 Vice-Chair Michael: Board Member Popp. 21 22 Board Member Popp: I’m essentially gonna follow the comments that others have been saying 23 here. It’s the same tact that I’m interested in understanding as well and I really am focused on 24 trying to find a way to enhance the connection between what is on the other side of Alma with 25 this site. Really knit it into a feeling so that it’s part of downtown and find a way to maybe not 26 rigorously extend the grid across the street, but one of the things that I do think really is valuable 27 is as you’re moving along the streets as a pedestrian or in a vehicle that you do have this view of 28 the hills. It’s beautiful and finding a way to allow the Lytton access and maybe, you know, I 29 don’t know what the solution is and I’m not ready to start proposing things for you. It’s really 30 your job to do that. 31 32 We’ll talk about it, but I think the things that I’m looking for are not taking away the view of the 33 mountains and really trying to find a way to integrate the downtown and this new area. And 34 maybe it is a reconfiguration of the shape of these buildings. And we’ve said a bunch about this 35 now so I won’t belabor that but I do also want to really encourage you to think about these 36 buildings in a sculptural way so that when we get to the ARB, you’re skilled, right? And we’ll 37 look forward to having all of that come to the table for us, but I’m, I’m intrigued by the site plan 38 and the way the buildings are organized and shaped in a way, but I’d like to see that translated 39 three dimensionally more. And so starting to think about how these buildings reach up to the sky 40 and what those look like and maybe, you know, voids the pull in and out a little bit to help 41 enhance the view might be something that would provide a good tact and a good approach. So, 42 my two cents. 43 44 Vice-Chair Michael: Commissioner Tanaka. 45 46 Commissioner Tanaka: Yeah I actually had the same line of thought as well as my, as, for my 47 second round here which is I think this space here provides the opportunity to not just connect 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 23 of 47 downtown but also the Stanford shopping mall and I think there’s that kind of intent. And so 1 thinking about how can this connect to all, you know, connect downtown with the Stanford 2 Shopping Mall I think would be a really, really good goal to do somehow. I’m not prepared to 3 tell you how to do it through, but if you could figure that out I think that would be a really, really 4 powerful (interrupted) 5 6 Mr. Garber: Forgive me. Just spend another sentence or two telling me what you’re imagining or 7 thinking about relative to this site and Stanford again because I think is missed something there if 8 you would just repeat that? 9 10 Commissioner Tanaka: Sure. I guess what I’m thinking is, you know, we have kind of one of the 11 premiere shopping centers, Stanford Mall, we have downtown which is also a really nice 12 shopping area and we have this spot, which is kind of in the middle. And I think it provides an 13 opportunity to kind of bridge the two together. Perhaps even a way where you could walk from 14 Stanford Shopping Mall and have a meaningful experience all the way to downtown and vice-15 versa. And I think if that could be done somehow, I was actually looking at how you were doing 16 the pedestrian routes and still like I’m not sure if it’s there yet right now. But if you could think 17 about how that could be done I think that would be quite powerful. And I think in order to also 18 enable this besides, you know, the right kind of routes is to also have, have the right kind of uses 19 on the bottom to make it kind of a, a, a, you know, meaningful experience. If it’s kind of dead or 20 if it’s not, you know, if there are not enough things going on when people are going in between 21 these it doesn’t really act as that bridge. So I think that’s, that’s something that could be thought 22 of more of how to make this kind of strong connection because I think this is a really nice 23 opportunity to do that where this can, I guess it also depends on what happens at the Stanford 24 Shopping Center. So we don’t know those plans yet, but I assume that’s gonna also expand one 25 day and thinking about how that all kind of comes together I think would really be nice. 26 27 So and just back to my other previous comment which was the theatre and I understand the need 28 to be focused on the theatre. I guess my only concern is just it’s hard to predict the future so 29 having, you know, having a building that could serve multiple purposes is actually a good thing 30 and I think one of the needs right now is the convention center or something like that. So it’s 31 just something which can perhaps be thought about as part of this plan. Thanks. 32 33 Vice-Chair Michael: Commissioner Alcheck. 34 35 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok, so, you know, my comments are directed at you but also directed to 36 the Council since I know that they’re going to be looking at this and our input. I’m gonna just 37 kind of quickly respond to as many things as I can. I’ll start with Commissioner Keller’s 38 comments. I don’t think the existing park along El Camino Real or the space that’s currently 39 designated as existing park is, is a good use of park space so to the extent that you’re moving that 40 park over here and not, you know, using it, I don’t think that’s an important issue. I do think to 41 some extent if we’re gonna be honest about whether or not we’re decreasing park space or 42 increasing park space we should, but in this particular instance I don’t think the reduction of park 43 space along that El Camino strip is really a significant issue. And, and I also want to highlight 44 something, you know, I’m a huge fan of the High Line in New York and we, parks are not just 45 places where you can run to ultimate Frisbee matches. Parks can be extremely unique spaces 46 where we can contemplate and we can gather socially or we can even experience the outdoors 47 individually in an extremely urban area. 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 24 of 47 1 So I want to just elevate or highlight the comment by Commissioner Tanaka, which is I really 2 think that the idea of connecting Stanford to this space and, Stanford Shopping Center, to this 3 space and maybe even Stanford to this space and this space to our downtown in a way where it 4 feels like even if you were doing nothing related to the facilities at this site it would still be a 5 popular walk, if you will. I think that’s a very interesting idea because that would allow us to 6 enjoy that space in a unique way and I also want to kind of comment on Commissioner 7 Michael’s note and say that I think that there is this and also Commissioner, Board Member 8 Popp this, this sculptural opportunity here that these buildings can be gorgeous, you know, to 9 name a preforming arts hall in L.A., the Disney Hall or whatever, that is really it’s the new Bay 10 Bridge. It’s a sight that will always remain iconic. 11 12 And look I’m, I’ll be very forthright with you and I hope the City Council is listening. There is 13 no location that is closer to transit, closer to El Camino, that’s more apt for the tallest building 14 we’d ever consider. Whether it should be as tall as you like, I’m not going to venture to say that 15 yet, but there isn’t a better location for this sort of mass that we’re talking about. So if we’re 16 going to do it, it ought to be, we ought to shoot for the stars here and so the, that’s all the time I 17 have but those are my comments and I encourage you to really reach for it. 18 19 Vice-Chair Michael: So I’ll take my turn next. Just have two, two areas just to explore briefly. 20 One is when the Planning Commission reviewed the Bicycle Pedestrian Plan one of the things I 21 really enjoyed about that was relating my own personal experience as a cyclist and so once that 22 came up I decided to more seducely use the Homer Tunnel when I ride my bike from my home 23 and the community center out to the hills and so this area that you’re talking about here is 24 something I’ve been, been transiting quite a bit recently. And so I’m just kind of curious 25 whether what you’re proposing here is going to enhance my, you know, personal selfish 26 experience in getting from my home out to the hills more easily or whether it’s actually gonna 27 get sort of preempted by all the, you know, the occupants of the, the space and I’ll have to go 28 back to riding past Palo Alto High School and that’s not so good. But anyway I, it doesn’t seem 29 to me that it’s gonna be a good sort of regional cycling kind of transit area. It’s going to be more 30 localized. So I think that’ll be for me a little bit of a negative. Just put it out there. 31 32 The other thing is the concern about the, the status of the Julia Morgan building and where it 33 might be moved to the extent that it has to be moved. I have a, an odd idea and it’s perhaps, you 34 know, not at all practical, but the primary beneficiary of this philanthropic effort by the 35 Applicant isn’t the City, it’s the University. And I think that’s a great thing for the University 36 and, and I think that to the extent that there’s that benefit to the University it’s probably also 37 good for the City, but I wondered if maybe there’s a way that the Julia Morgan building might be 38 moved not so far, but across El Camino into what’s now sort of part of the arboretum area sort of 39 adjacent to Quarry Road so that, you know, right now that’s not utilized other than there’s trees 40 and trees are lovely and it’s, you know, sort of an undisturbed block of, you know, eucalyptus 41 forest, but you might do something quite nice with that in that space. With this it’s a nice 42 building, it’s a nice area and it might also go to further Commissioner Tanaka’s suggestion 43 which I’ve been thinking about is there really is sort of a nexus between the shopping center and 44 this, this development and the City. And that would be sort of on the pathway of that nexus and 45 would, would add considerable interest and it might be utilized in a way that would promote, you 46 know, a good experience. 47 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 25 of 47 Vice-Chair Lippert. 1 2 Acting Board Chair Lippert: Thank you. The first thing I wanted to say is that I think probably 3 the site for the office building there is, there is precedent for it being located close to the, the 4 train depot. And that is that 525 is located at the other end of University Avenue. As you walk 5 down University Avenue it’s visible. It punctuates the street even though it’s not centered on the 6 street and the same thing could very well happen here as you head down University Avenue. It 7 punctuates the other end of University Avenue. And that goes to other tall buildings that 8 punctuate University Avenue I’m thinking University Circle in East Palo Alto. Again, you 9 know, it’s along this route. 10 11 However we can’t continue the discussion of height until both the Planning and Transportation 12 Commission and the ARB finishes their discussion regarding building height and understand 13 what that means in Palo Alto as well as revisions to the El Camino Real Guidelines. Because 14 we’ve had a retreat on that and we’ve talked about that as well. And those are two very 15 important pieces that need to be completed before we can really begin to have a discussion on 16 height for this building. 17 18 I think that, that Vice-Chair Michael raised a very important point which is the MacArthur Park 19 building or the Julia Morgan building. And that maybe that shouldn’t be moved very far. And 20 one thought is that, you know, we do have El Camino Park there and maybe it could be located 21 in El Camino Park in the parking area and that parking area could be incorporated with the other 22 underground parking and therefore it could act as a secondary rec building. You know, maybe a 23 field house for El Camino Park staying within the environs of Palo Alto. 24 25 I think the University Avenue and the Circle, the transit center that happens there is particularly 26 important, but it does not have to happen in the Circle itself. There are lots of underutilized sites 27 adjacent to that area and one of them is, is just right in front of the transit center across the 28 railroad tracks. Again it’s surface parking that could be incorporated into some of the 29 underground parking or into the complex of buildings itself as well as the strip along Urban 30 Lane. We’re ignoring Urban Lane as Commissioner Keller I think indicated by not using this as 31 an opportunity to maybe underground Caltrans, Caltrains and utilizing the land above it and 32 perhaps since Stanford does have ownership of that land. Ownership of that land and they lease 33 it they could not, there’s no reason why they could not be renegotiated and have portions of the 34 tower structures happen there thereby reinforcing Alma Street and the downtown. Taking the 35 parking that’s there and incorporating it into other parking that happens. It could very well be 36 that we, that negotiators work, negotiation is worked out with the Sheraton and there’s multilevel 37 structured parking that happens on the Sheraton lot that accommodates that. So I think there’s 38 ample opportunities but what’s not happening here is we’re not looking at a holistic plan in terms 39 of how it’s going to work with the other parts of the City. 40 41 Vice-Chair Michael: Chair Martinez. 42 43 Chair Martinez: Let’s say I did want to talk about circulation, but I’m gonna save that for the 44 next hour. I, I think I’m going to with the time that we have left initiate maybe a lighting round 45 so we can continue quickly, maybe a minute each the discussion about building heights. I think 46 Board Vice-Chair Lippert raises an important point about the future discussions, but this project 47 also gives us the opportunity to talk about why. Why does the City want to raise its building 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 26 of 47 height? Why does it want to raise it in such an extreme way or to such an extent? What, what 1 are the factors? It’s not only about or even about urban design. It’s not about the location and 2 the distance from the streets and, and what’s around it. It’s about other factors like what is our 3 economic development plan, you know, is there a need for the City to grow this way? It’s about 4 our tradition. This is a fairly low density suburban city. Is new high-rise sort of fit what Palo 5 Alto wants to be? 6 7 I think the discussion about why, why we want to build higher and I mean significantly higher. 8 I’m not talking about 10 feet higher to allow better architecture. I think that’s a discussion that 9 this project allows us to have and I think we should continue that argument using this project as 10 the vehicle for what is, what is good building height or why are we going in this direction or why 11 we should not go because it’s a divisive issue in the City. It’s one that’s going to put, you know, 12 many of our neighbors opposing it. So we, we need to look at strongly not just yeah this is a 13 good site, it’s a great opportunity, but why should we be going in this direction? And if we can 14 just, you know, one minute each as, as sort of our parting comments each of our members to talk 15 about height issue from their own perspective. And we’ll start with Board Member Lew. 16 17 Board Member Lew: so I think my question about height was how, what other options were there 18 for massing of the office buildings? So I was thinking like is it possible to have one tower that’s 19 even taller and then you have another bar or something that’s lower and more in keeping with, 20 you know, the rest of Palo Alto. And so I think maybe going forward with other meetings and 21 stuff I’d like to see other studies and stuff that the design team has done. 22 23 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Keller. 24 25 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. So the first thing is the office buildings being proposed are 26 way too high. I grew up in New York if I wanted to live there I would. I want to live in Palo 27 Alto. Palo Alto’s not New York and the people in Palo Alto made a deliberate step not to have 28 Palo Alto be Manhattanized. So I think that that it, it’s too high. Thank you. 29 30 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Panelli. 31 32 Commissioner Panelli: I’m probably gonna sound like a broken record here but I’m gonna say it 33 over and over and over probably for the next several years. We need to be careful not to conflate 34 density and height. We have districts in fact in your Staff answers to my questions you, you 35 mentioned, you know, the CC district which is actually the conclusion I came to independently 36 which has a, a density a FAR that’s already established in the code. So the question is do we 37 want squat, flat, uninteresting buildings that take up a bulk of the site or do we want to increase 38 the amount of open space on a site in exchange for more height? I think that is sort of the 39 seminal discussion that we’re gonna have on this topic. 40 41 Chair Martinez: And then Board Member Popp. 42 43 Board Member Popp: So like Commissioner Panelli I think I’ll, I’ll repeat some comments that I 44 had made at the Architectural Review Board which is I, I’m concerned about the City getting 45 full. If we just stick with the zoning that we got, we let everything fill up to the FAR that it can 46 get to we’re gonna feel like we’re full. And I’d really much rather see us consider significant 47 height in places where it feels tolerable. And I’m not sure this is the right height, I’m not sure 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 27 of 47 it’s the right organization of buildings yet, but I think that there are places in this City where we 1 can tolerate significant height. And there are places where we really don’t want it. And we want 2 to make sure it stays low and comfortable and residential and calm. And I think that the, the 3 opportunity here is interesting and I’d like to see it explored further and the height does not 4 frighten me at all. I’d just like to see how it’s going to evolve. Thank you. 5 6 Chair Martinez: Thank you. Commissioner Tanaka. 7 8 Commissioner Tanaka: So I’m, I’m gonna align my comments along to, along with 9 Commissioner Panelli which I think it’s kind of a trade between flat low buildings that fill up the 10 whole lot or tall buildings. Open space versus not having open space. So I think those are 11 interesting tradeoffs that we have to consider and think about. This site is near transit; having 12 jobs near transit makes a lot of sense. So I think we have to think about that carefully. Thanks. 13 14 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Alcheck. 15 16 Commissioner Alcheck: I think that this, these issues are divisive because they are issues related 17 to individuals who don’t want this happening in their backyard and there are issues related to 18 kind of the historical record here. Frankly I need to be persuaded why we need to build only 15 19 feet above our two story residential homes. Our homes go up to 35 feet that means we have 15 20 feet above them for our commercial spaces. I need to be persuaded why that’s an intelligent 21 decision and Palo Alto is not Palo Alto. There is downtown Palo Alto, there’s south, there’s so 22 many different areas and I think we have to investigate each one of them and decide which ones 23 are more suitable for height. Downtown is more suitable for height. 24 25 I don’t believe I would not call this high-rise. This is mid-rise and I, I really I’m not suggesting 26 that I’m willing to approve or suggest approval of 200 foot or 150 foot buildings or 100 foot 27 buildings without better review, but I believe we need to be persuaded. And if I could just 28 quickly finish I understand that they conflict with design guidelines we have in place, but those 29 aren’t written in stone. And I, I seem, I’m under the impression that those exist because a few 30 awful looking buildings got built in the ‘70’s. And just because some awful looking buildings 31 got built in the ‘70’s doesn’t mean we can’t trust ourselves and this process to come up with a 32 better, a better design aesthetic. So I’m, I’m not in charge of design but I do believe it’s possible 33 and so I think we need to be persuaded and I don’t think we have been yet. 34 35 Chair Martinez: Vice-Chair Michael. 36 37 Vice-Chair Michael: So I’m a big fan of Palo Alto and I’ve had a lot of, I come to the height 38 limit with an open mind. I don’t have any objection to tall architecture particularly if it’s 39 beautiful. And driving around San Francisco today I found a lot to like about tall buildings and 40 many buildings not to like. I think suburban city is an oxymoron. It worries me. I think if this 41 height limit sort of issue may lead to entropy and could sort of suffocate sort of the future 42 evolution of the City in ways that would otherwise be very dynamic and interesting. I think 43 going up as long as you have open spaces and setbacks and view corridors I think a view of the 44 mountains is lovely. I ride my bike to the mountains, you know, three, four times a week, but 45 having a view of beautiful architecture is also inspiring. 46 47 Chair Martinez: And Vice-Chair Lippert. 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 28 of 47 1 Acting Board Chair Lippert: Yeah, I, I am not in any way dissuaded from this proposal 2 whatsoever. You know I think it’s a really incredible opportunity we have here and it really 3 needs to be treated very seriously. With regard to the height, height needs to be the solution to 4 solving a number of problems. A number of very important problems; number one, does it really 5 buy us something that we can’t achieve by adding a little extra height to all the buildings in 6 downtown? Number two, is it gonna create additional problems with regard to traffic impacts in 7 the City? Will people wind up be parking, you know, parking in the neighborhoods to avoid 8 parking in the building? And just concluding I’d say I think the, I think mixed use is also a way 9 to reward height and density. 10 11 Chair Martinez: Ok. I’d like to thank Members of the Architectural Review Board for coming 12 tonight. We’re going to take a five minute break before we go on to the next round on this 13 project. Ok, thank you. Any comments from Staff first before we part? 14 Ms. French: Just thank you for doing this as a joint board. It was very, very interesting to have 15 the joint group. Thank you. 16 17 Chair Martinez: Ok, thank you very much. 18 19 Commission Action: No action taken 20 21 27 University Avenue: (PTC only 8:00 p.m.) Commission study session regarding general land 22 use issues and design concepts related to the potential project presented as Item #2. This study 23 session is being scheduled to allow the Commission and public an additional and more detailed 24 opportunity to provide comments in advance of City Council consideration. 25 26 Chair Martinez: Ok let’s, let’s continue everyone. Excuse me again. We are continuing with 27 agenda item number three which is a study session with the Planning and Transportation 28 Commission (PTC) only regarding planning issues related to the 27 University Avenue project. 29 And I think I’m going to ask our City Attorney to let us know what brings us here. Thank you. 30 31 Molly Stump, City Attorney: Thank you Chair Martinez. Molly Stump, City Attorney. 32 Appreciate the Commission’s opportunity to be with you this evening and to talk about this 33 important project. You’re here tonight for an opportunity to have input and to provide some 34 advice and direction and counsel to the City Council as it considers the very early stages of 35 looking at this quite substantial master plan on this site. The Council very much wanted to be 36 informed by its Planning Commission and its Architectural Review Board (ARB) even though 37 the project is very much at the conceptual stage and it’s not the typical type of matter that you’ll 38 see. There isn’t a proposed zone change before you. There’s not a project application that’s 39 been filed, but it is an opportunity and an important one to have some early input into the 40 direction on this, this major piece of planning work that may go forward. 41 42 Chair Martinez: Thank you. And in that regard I, I’m not gonna make long speeches tonight. I 43 view this as the very best of the Palo Alto process in that here’s a project that’s being considered 44 there’s no sort of agreement as to that it is this. It’s, you know, in a very conceptual phase being 45 asked for the public and the Commission and our boards to have input. To talk about whether 46 this is a good idea. And, and I think that sort of goes to the transparency that we like to see. 47 That we like to know that we’re thinking about something that we’re a long ways before 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 29 of 47 deciding what that is and to really put out a forum in which it can be discussed and which a wide 1 variety of opinions can weigh into the issues. So I’m very pleased that we have this opportunity 2 and that it really shows that this is a City that cares about public input even though I don’t think 3 there’s any of us here on this panel that sort of agrees with each other. That’s, that’s part of the 4 Palo Alto, that’s part of the Palo Alto process. 5 6 I assume that Staff you have no additional report? Or is there something additional you want to 7 say? Assistant Planning Director. 8 9 Aaron Aknin, Assistant Director: No. I think that we covered everything in the last presentation 10 and I think you covered it in your introduction remarks that it’s a somewhat wider discussion 11 now though we touched on a number of issues during the joint commission committee meeting, 12 but we can open it up again for discussion to see if there’s any other guidance you could give the 13 Council. 14 Chair Martinez: Ok. The City Attorney’s not gonna want to hear this, but I forgot Oral 15 Communications earlier. So first I’m gonna go to Oral Communications the opportunity for 16 members of the public to speak on anything else except 27 University. I, we have no speaker 17 cards. Yes. So I’m gonna close Oral Communications and open the public hearing. And we 18 have one speaker card and that’s Mr. Bob Moss. You’ll have three minutes. Thank you. 19 20 ORAL COMMUNICATIONS 21 22 Bob Moss: Thank you Chair Martinez. It was very interesting listening to your discussion earlier 23 with the ARB and getting some sense of how you’re looking at this. I would have to agree that 24 this has never happened before there’s never been a project which isn’t legally a project. You 25 don’t have an official proposal before you that you’ve been asked and the ARB and the Council 26 have been asked to review and discuss. So this is unusual. 27 28 So let me just discuss some of the details of the project as it’s laid out. First of all the more I 29 look at it the more concerned I am about the location of the theatre because what you end up 30 with is this huge wall facing park. And that’s not the way parks should be configured. Another 31 thing that puzzles me is that in the report that came out this March about what Stanford was 32 thinking about for a theater they said that the proscenium only had to be 70 feet, you know, 35 33 feet for the stage and 35 feet for the workstation and this ended up being 100 feet. And I wonder 34 why if 35 feet is enough for a Broadway quality stage why do we need 50 feet? So I think the 35 height of the theatre building should be reduced. 36 37 Some of the comments that you made about not, about not being appropriate to go into a garage 38 in a tunnel and then come up through an elevator to go into a theatre rather than walking across a 39 plaza I think are very appropriate. And so we should be reconfiguring the site so there’s some 40 surface parking. And if that means reducing the scale and the footprint of the buildings, so be it. 41 Also the more I look at it and look at the circulation the less appealing it is. I mean you’re 42 driving down the street and the first thing you do is go into a tunnel and so your view of the site 43 really is under, is in an underground garage as much as three levels down. And that doesn’t 44 strike me as terribly appealing. 45 46 One of the basic points that I think has been overlooked is traffic because if you look at the 47 traffic on this, in this location the traffic we have today is not the traffic we’re going to have 10 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 30 of 47 years from now because Stanford Hospital after going through years of discussion was found to 1 have a very significant traffic impact. Impacts as far as Atherton, Middlefield, and as far down 2 as El Camino and Page Mill. So if you combine this size project with Stanford Hospital and 3 Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital you’re gonna find the traffic on El Camino and University is 4 totally clogged. So when you look at traffic impacts you should consider what’s been approved 5 but not yet built in order to have a true evaluation of the impacts otherwise you’ll be much, much 6 underestimating what the problems are. 7 8 Chair Martinez: Thank you Mr. Moss. Commissioners you can continue our discussion about 9 the site, the design, but this is also our opportunity to talk about the transportation circulation and 10 traffic on El Camino and policies, implications for the downtown and really the strategy for 11 growth for the City. In many ways it’s much broader than the project itself but I would like us to 12 try to keep it in context of this project as long as we have the consultant team here. I’m gonna 13 start with Commissioner Keller. 14 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. So my first comments have to do with Comprehensive Plan 15 Policy L8. I didn’t expect a two third, three quarters of a page answer; I expected the answer yes 16 or no. And it seems to me that the spirits of the Comp Plan policy is that the answer should be 17 definitely yes and that this should be considered part of the downtown area regardless of the 18 actual boundaries of the downtown area. Because when the 1989 study was done it was not 19 contemplated that anybody would be building a tall office building over here and a theatre. So 20 the idea that this somehow falls between the cracks even though it’s somewhere on the order of 21 eight or so percent of the total citywide cap and exceeds the amount of development downtown 22 that has occurred since 1989 means that this definitely should be considered within the spirits of 23 Comp Plan Policy L8. And if you’re gonna basically go down to the idea that it’s not within the 24 sub area I think that that’s, that’s not following the legislative intent and although I’m not a 25 lawyer and I don’t understand the additional, additional about originalists and whatever that’s 26 currently en vogue in the Supreme Court the issue is that it’s pretty clear the legislative, what the 27 legislative intent was. And I understand that there was an argument for the Stanford Hospital not 28 including it in 3.25 million square feet, but I don’t really see an argument for excluding this 29 development from that 3.25, 3.26 million square feet. So I’d expect the answer to be definitively 30 yes, not simply a repeat of what’s in the Staff report. 31 32 The second issue is that Palo Alto was named after a twin tower of redwood trees and after the 33 development of railroad trestle, a railroad trestle and widening the railroad trestle over San 34 Francisquito Creek one of those twin trees came down and then subsequently another one of the 35 twin trees was cut short because of lightening. And I’m wondering if it is the intent and this may 36 be something I should’ve brought up at the last issue, but I’m wondering if it’s the intent that 37 these two, four, whatever number of tall buildings become the iconic tall structure for El 38 Camino, for El, for Palo Alto instead of, instead of trees. And it seems to me that that’s what’ll 39 happen. These will be the tallest buildings as proposed between San Francisco and San Joe and 40 I’m not sure that these are the buildings that we want to be known for in terms of, of, of twin 41 towers as opposed to twin redwood trees. Thank you. 42 43 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Panelli. 44 45 Commissioner Panelli: So the way I’m thinking of this is there are three predominately 46 contentious issues here: traffic, parking, and height. I’m gonna just briefly touch on the traffic. 47 Clearly there are some impacts here. The way I look at it though is for this project to move 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 31 of 47 forward the traffic impacts will have to be mitigated and if they’re not mitigated the project 1 would not be able to move forward as planned. So it’s too early to talk about that one other than 2 it is one of the three, to me, most salient concerns, parking. 3 4 I understand that, you know, we have rules about parking. My concern if we sort of try to adapt 5 an existing parking requirement, you know, sort of borrow it from another zoning designation 6 and try to adapt it for this purpose I think we’re gonna, we’re gonna miss something because if 7 this project truly does become a centerpiece and a beacon for the City it’s going to attract 8 incremental traffic. That’s not necessarily associated with the use of this as an arts and/or 9 innovation center. And I don’t know how w accommodate that, but that is a concern is that the 10 parking won’t be sufficient and I’m, I actually would like to just touch on real quickly what 11 Vice-Chair Lippert mentioned before, which is are there other sort of areas that we can extend 12 this parking footprint, multilevel subterranean parking footprint beyond the boundaries of this 13 site? 14 And then the last thing, you know, going back to the height. I, I think I’ve said my peace in the 15 last, in the last session that we had. Now the way I’m thinking about this is the Council wants 16 our input predominantly to help them sort of decide how and whether and when to put this on the 17 ballot for an advisory measure, right? And so the way I’m thinking about this is what we need to 18 do here is clearly compare what a common zoning designation would be in this case, that would 19 likely be for this site. So if it’s CC, fine. If it’s something else, fine. But whatever this would 20 likely be, what that is, what the proposed A&I characteristics are for height, Floor Area Ratio 21 (FAR), everything else and then say, ok, here’s the delta between those two. Here are the public 22 benefits between those two. That way we can, you know, whether people are for it or against it 23 we’re all objectively, we’re all using the same objective data to make our, to formulate our 24 opinions. I think that’s critical for this process. Thanks. 25 26 Chair Martinez: Thank you. Commissioner Alcheck. 27 28 Dan Garber, Consultant: Excuse me, Chair? Chair? May I ask a question of the Commissioner? 29 30 Chair Martinez: Sure. 31 32 Mr. Garber: I would be interested in some discussion not only from you but from the rest of you. 33 The project being immediately adjacent to a transit both bus hub and station would normally 34 generate, you know, it would be eligible for benefits to reduce the parking in it. And those have 35 been in large part the Applicant in the way that the project had been conceived have sort of been 36 ignored to be able to provide it to be parked fully. Which other communities are trying to find 37 ways to get parking out to reduce those impacts because you’re compensating with the transit. 38 And it has been pointed out before that there’s a certain irony that Palo Alto both wants to reduce 39 its traffic and parking impacts and yet it wants all the parking which generates that. I would be 40 interested in some discussion from the Commissioners on, you know, those two topics or that 41 single topic and those two issues that arise. 42 43 Chair Martinez: You care to respond? Yes, Commissioner Panelli. 44 45 Commissioner Panelli: I understand what you’re saying. I have two quick comments. One is 46 I’ve heard, you know, the approach where people say well if we don’t build it they won’t come. 47 Doesn’t work, if it’s a desirable place they’ll still come it’ll just be messier and uglier and 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 32 of 47 everything else. I would much rather see us overbuild subterranean parking and have it go 1 somewhat unused than have the opposite problem which is not enough and we have horrible 2 traffic impacts on surface streets in neighborhoods in Downtown North and other adjacent 3 neighborhoods. So, that’s my take. 4 5 But the point I was trying to make though is that if this truly becomes this wonderful centerpiece 6 it’s going to perhaps attract more local traffic. And I’m, you know, I live in South Palo Alto. 7 It’s pretty unlikely that I’m gonna go to the San Antonio train station or the California Avenue 8 train station to come downtown. So that’s the kind of traffic I’m talking about, not commuter 9 traffic. 10 11 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Alcheck. 12 13 Commissioner Alcheck: So again I limit my comments and viewpoints on this to the position 14 that I hold, which is from the Planning and Transportation perspective. I’ve said earlier that I 15 think on a personal level I’d love to see you guys reach for the stars here, create an aesthetic and 16 there’s design issues. I sort of want to stay away from those as a Planning Commissioner, but 17 again I know I’ve said this already but this is an excellent site for the sort of development you’re 18 considering. And I think we’re doing a disservice to this process to some extent by not really 19 appreciating the notion that there is a tremendous demand for growth not just in Palo Alto, all 20 over. I, I don’t want to mention statistics because I’ll probably quote them wrong, but you know, 21 the population growth in this area is going to continue to explode. It’s gonna continue to be too 22 expensive for everyone and there’s not gonna be enough office space in the places people want 23 to work and they’ll be plenty of office space off 237. 24 25 There are six or seven yogurt shops in downtown Palo Alto, which is unbelievable. It’s an 26 unbelievable thing that there are six or seven different yogurt shops. And I bet you that if you 27 poll a number of people they’ll each have a different one they’d like to choose. That, that, that 28 offering exists because of the density we have here from the workforce. It is not because the 29 residential density downtown is so high. It exists because there are young people at Stanford 30 who spend a significant amount of time in downtown Palo Alto. And, and that offering is of 31 tremendous benefit to the residents of Palo Alto because we come to downtown to eat excellent 32 food, to shop in interesting shops, and to try out seven different kinds of yogurt. 33 34 I only mention this because I am a little worried that we are going to fail to compete space wise 35 with our neighbors. We are going to fail to provide commercial space opportunity that, that 36 exists at a much, much lower cost relative to downtown Palo Alto elsewhere and then it won’t be 37 the downtown that we all, it’s not just we, it’s everybody in the peninsula, ok? Everybody in the 38 peninsula, every City in the peninsula wishes their downtown was as thriving as downtown Palo 39 Alto’s and I think that this notion of accommodating growth we’re sort of ignoring it. If you 40 don’t build this, this won’t even address probably the growth needs that we have. It’s just one 41 effort. 42 43 And I know I’m a little over if I could just have 30 more seconds. There was this notion that 44 maybe we should just increase height on every building by a story or two. That’s not the way 45 development occurs. We need to create, you know, opportunities. Nobody’s knocking down 46 buildings or adding a story at a time. So, I just want to conclude with this idea that we have to 47 continue to preserve this sort of economic vitality, this density. It benefits us; it benefits the 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 33 of 47 public to have that. So I want to throw that, in this first round I want to throw that out there 1 because that’s really what we’re trying to, you know, deal with. 2 3 Chair Martinez: Ok, but you only get a minute in the next round. 4 5 Commissioner Alcheck: Ok. 6 7 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Tanaka. 8 9 Commissioner Tanaka: Yes, so I actually agree with a lot of the comments of my fellow 10 Commissioners. So I’ll just talk a bit about the parking issue first. So I think in general I agree 11 with the concept that because this is near transit you don’t need as much parking, but I think 12 having enough parking on the site is going to be important because it is near transit and it also 13 works the other way where maybe people want to go to use, you know, drive from home to a 14 Caltrain station and then go to San Francisco. So it could work the other way as well and having 15 enough parking for that makes a lot of sense. 16 17 Also in general it does appear that Palo Alto is at a deficit for parking, especially in the 18 downtown area, Downtown North area and this could certainly help alleviate some of that. So I 19 think, and I’m not quite sure by looking at these diagrams if parking is already under all the 20 buildings like the whole entire site or are the just under the footprint of the building? I don’t 21 know if, it looked from the picture it looked like it was just under the footprint of the building. 22 23 Mr. Garber: Well, it’s, it’s actually under, oh here let me use the diagram. So the parking if you 24 follow the green light there is along this edge here. So it’s underneath all the office, the plaza 25 space. Where it’s not is it’s not under the theatre, which is actually a huge benefit to the theatre 26 and the seismic and noise issues that it needs to absorb. And there are three stories. 27 28 Commissioner Tanaka: So you’re saying that not having a garage underneath helps? 29 30 Mr. Garber: Tremendously so. Yeah. 31 32 Commissioner Tanaka: Ok. 33 34 Mr. Garber: Yeah, it allows the, the foundation of the theatre to float free of the other structure 35 such that it can be isolated which would otherwise if you didn’t do that you end up with some 36 significant costs to try and isolate that structure not in the ground basically. 37 38 Commissioner Tanaka: Ok. So also just to touch on Commissioner Alcheck’s comment about 39 density and vibrancy in downtown. I agree with a lot of those comments. It makes a lot of sense 40 so I’m not going to repeat it, but thank you. 41 42 Chair Martinez: Vice-Chair Michael. 43 44 Vice-Chair Michael: So three minutes isn’t really enough to get into all the questions that I have. 45 I, I was invited to give a short talk to the Venture Capital Private Equity Roundtable a couple 46 weeks ago about risks in emerging markets, which I had to study up on to make it interesting, but 47 I caught their attention. One of the other speakers came back from China and China he told that 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 34 of 47 they were building a 4,000,000 square foot industrial park to attract a particular type of desirable 1 arts and innovations center. And the amazing thing as an amenity they copied University 2 Avenue. Blew me away, they copied University Avenue. So something about University 3 Avenue is world class. Although I’m kind of proponent of thinking about change in a positive 4 way it really is special kind of what, what there is. 5 6 One of the concerns I guess going to Commissioner Keller’s concept or question about the 7 overall development cap in the City and maybe the downtown area is to the extent that we’re 8 gonna have various impacts which will be the subject of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) 9 and other analysis to the extent that we build a large project on this site, to what extent do we 10 sort of usurp opportunities for development elsewhere that we would otherwise see as very 11 desirable? And I think that I tend to be very favorable towards this project, but I’m concerned 12 about the fact that we just use up the whole nine yards right here then nothing is left that would 13 be supported by our streets and schools and parks and whatnot. That’s one thing. 14 15 On the question about adequacy of parking I think depending on the tenant for the building you 16 may have a lot of visitors. So you might have the issue of occupants of the building, but also 17 how many people are coming; clients, customers, meetings, negotiations, whatnot. So I 18 definitely would park it as close to or even in excess of 100 percent. There was, you know, 19 whatever just max out the parking and use it because there’s a shortage of parking this would be 20 a great thing to do. 21 22 I think that the somehow anticipating what’s likely to happen, best guess on the rail corridor, 23 high speed rail, Caltrain, you know, underground trench, electrification and all that is really 24 integral to what you’re presenting in terms of concept. And I think you would really serve us all 25 by kind of making a bet as to what you think can happen or should happen or will happen and 26 sort of plan accordingly because that might really enhance if there’s a covered trench what does 27 this do for this property? It opens it up towards the City and might be really even quite a bit 28 more interesting that way. I’ll stop and yield my time. 29 30 Chair Martinez: Let’s see how I do. I wanted to talk about circulation on the site. The, the bus 31 loop is shared by private cars, correct? 32 33 Bruce Fukuji, Consultant: Yes. 34 35 Chair Martinez: So cars coming out of the hotels and then cars in the perimeter road in front of 36 the train station? 37 38 Mr. Fukuji: Yes. 39 40 Chair Martinez: Ok. So that’s gonna make it a little more complicated. And then the perimeter 41 road that goes in front of the train station other than for emergency vehicles, can you say what its 42 purpose is? 43 44 Mr. Fukuji: You’re speaking about the street that’s in between the depot and the office buildings 45 as it goes around? 46 47 Chair Martinez: You referred to it as a comp street or? 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 35 of 47 1 Mr. Fukuji: Oh right, yeah. That will have several purposes in front of the historic depot will be 2 space for drop off, so it could be for Marguerite shuttles or kiss and ride looking at how to 3 allocate that space and then it’s gonna be for thru vehicle movement through that. But we’ve 4 also been looking at how to design that street so that, you know, in that, you could actually 5 bollard off or close this section of the street from here to here and have it be completely 6 pedestrian oriented because the way the circulation is designed on the site it allows movement 7 for people coming from the theatre can come directly in or from the office they can come out or 8 they can come out through here and all the bus circulation can happen though here so you don’t 9 have to have that always be open. So you can close that for certain events. We’ve looked at that 10 as a potential street, it can be designed to be more pedestrian oriented in terms of how it’s paved 11 and landscaped and treated. 12 Chair Martinez: Seems to me that would be preferable because the way it is now it’s the, you 13 step off of the curb and you’re gonna get hit by a bus. And to make it a stronger pedestrian 14 connection would really make it a much better use of the depot and, and of the connections to the 15 buildings that are being placed there. 16 17 In regard to I think one of the Board Members mentioned the underground ramp access and the 18 way it splits the site. And I think I would like you to consider moving it to the north at the edge 19 and look at whether you can make it work and make the connection between buildings much 20 stronger than it is now. 21 22 And then later, maybe next round I’d like to talk about sort of the some of the traffic issues on El 23 Camino, University and elsewhere. But let’s go to another round with Commissioner Keller. 24 The same. 25 26 Commissioner Keller: So first let me say that I agree with the idea of having parking particularly 27 since there will be need for more Caltrain parking and not space to put it. Secondly, I understand 28 that one of the important reasons of isolating the theatre is so that there’s not vibration when 29 Caltrain goes by. That’s a significant source of vibration. Thirdly I think that the increased 30 amount of density and will not only result in increased traffic, which we can talk about later, but 31 also there’ll be more pressure from the point of view of Association of Bay Area Governments 32 (ABAG) for us to have housing and I think that there is a significant preference not to have a lot 33 more housing in Palo Alto and particularly as it affects; I know that one of the Commissioners 34 doesn’t live in the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD), but most of the people who live 35 in Palo Alto are in the Palo Alto Unified School District and don’t want the Palo Alto Unified 36 School District to continue to grow ad infinitum when there’s no land for buildings. You can 37 maybe have two story house, a two story buildings in schools, but you can’t have two story 38 playgrounds. At least not very easily. 39 40 In terms of the FAR you can’t double count. You can’t count parkland as part of the land for 41 which you calculate FAR. That’s just crazy. On the other hand I could imagine that if you think 42 about the theatre sort of like Lucie Stern, which may, I’m not sure if Lucie Stern is considered 43 dedicated parkland or not, but to the extent that Lucie Stern is considered part of dedicated 44 parkland and that can be found out that may be justification for the theatre here being considered 45 parkland. And that would be much better from my point of view than gerrymandering the park 46 in a shoehorned in space around Urban Lane. So that’s an issue that should be investigated. To 47 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 36 of 47 me that makes a lot more sense to me than doing the other thing. Because in some sense it is a, it 1 is a, it is a community amenity in that way. 2 3 Now if you took the section on, on, the calculation D, there’s the calculation site plan D. that 4 gives you about 91,000 square feet. If you took 2.0, if you calculate the office buildings as 5 263,000 square feet that’s a 2.88 FAR. If you reduce that to 2.0 FAR that would be 182,000 6 square feet. It turns out that if you lop off the top four floors, floors 10, 9, 8, and 7, bring it down 7 to 6, not sure, I’m just giving rough calculations. That reduces it by 67,300 square feet while the 8 other one is in excess of 80,000 square feet. So, you know, if you get closer to 2.0 FAR you can 9 actually reduce the height of the buildings and get them more manageable. And in the next 10 round I’ll talk about what, what kind of office tenants you really want. 11 12 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Panelli. 13 Commissioner Panelli: Yeah. I, I think the heights when I take a look at some of the different 14 angles, the 3-D views and I’m gonna want to take a look at more of these it seems to me that 15 pushing the height closer to El Camino as much as possible is, is idea. And what that right 16 height is, I don’t, I don’t know. I’m not as other Commissioners and Board Members have said, 17 I’m not afraid of height, but I’m not, I’m not blessing it as it is today. Because the way it seems 18 to me is that, the way that the office buildings are configured there’s actually some height that’s 19 pushed closer to the depot and the railroad tracks. It just seems to me that the right place for it is 20 as far back as possible. I should say as far west as possible closest to El Camino where it has the 21 least impact. And maybe something that’s a little bit more scaled gradually back so that it’s 22 shorter in front, and when I say in front, the view from Alma looking toward, toward the 23 mountains. 24 25 If we are going to have this potential 10th floor that’s the highest floor in the City it seems a 26 shame that it would be in the hands of only those who could afford to pay the rents there. and 27 I’m wondering if there was any thought given to making that top floor, which would be the 28 highest manmade point in the City some kind of a semi-public use, whether it’s a restaurant or 29 something of that nature that everyone in Palo Alto could enjoy. Just something to consider, as a 30 child my parents loved to go up to the Sheraton in San Francisco and have a nice, well, I should 31 say an average meal with a nice view at the top of the Sheraton. So, you know, maybe that if we 32 were gonna do something like that it seems like it would be nice to have that accessible to the 33 public. Anyway I’m gonna pass along the rest of my time to the next Commissioner. 34 35 Assistant Director Aknin: To the Chair? Can I, can I make one comment on the previous 36 comment made by Commissioner Keller related to the jobs and housing balance and the fact that 37 a project like this size would bring in a significant amount of jobs and ABAG may make us 38 create more housing because of that. The Director and I looked into this somewhat and the way 39 that ABAG does it they don’t really do it on a city by city basis. What they do is project job 40 growth on a regional basis. So if jobs aren’t produced here but they’re produced in Menlo Park, 41 they’re produced in Redwood City or Mountain View it would still create the same demand for 42 housing within Palo Alto, which would, which would equate to additional housing numbers that 43 ABAG gives us. So they don’t really look at it on a city by city basis, but they look on a regional 44 basis. 45 46 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Alcheck. 47 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 37 of 47 Commissioner Alcheck: This is like designed by democracy, which is dangerous because, I 1 mean, I won’t speak for my fellow Commissioners. I’m not confident or comfortable with the 2 notion that I can come up with the best ideas in three minutes every 25 minutes. If I was the 3 Applicant, and don’t take this the wrong way, but if I was the Applicant I would’ve, and he’s a 4 famous Applicant, I would’ve thrown it to like 30 architectural firms. I’d say listen, here’s your 5 chance. They have a transit hub, they’ve got an entry, gateway, I want this, I want to see 6 options. Had they did that they had options and I’m not suggesting that you guys aren’t the right 7 choice, that’s not what I’m suggesting, but there were and I know there’s a dream team so I’m 8 lacking some context here but I remember when they were looking at options in downtown San 9 Francisco for their transit terminal hub whatever. 10 11 I only mention options because I think it would help your campaign. It’s a campaign now. I 12 think you should know that. I think the City Council or whoever came up with the idea to 13 approach the public was smart because this is going to be very controversial and there’s so many 14 ideas that are floating around. Again I will say again that I think this is the right site to get 15 developed. I think you should’ve, you should’ve designed the design that showed you exactly 16 what you could do under the current zoning or whatever the current zoning of downtown is you 17 should’ve shown us a box that’s four stories tall that occupies the majority of the site with 18 parking around it that gave, you know, just the whole thing from the theatre to the front. We 19 should see what our current design guidelines are suggesting we do. Because I have a feeling no 20 one would want that either, but at least they’ll know. At least they’ll know why you’re asking 21 for a change. 22 23 Again, I think that we’ve heard so many good ideas here. I’m sitting here and I’m thinking there 24 should be an entrance to the parking lot that comes off the underpass. I mean there’s a million 25 things here and I’m not, I’m not skilled enough to know what the best way to make this site is 26 and I can keep kind of shooting ideas and by tomorrow I’ll have 15 more. I think it would make 27 sense for there to be a few more renderings. Different mock ups because you’re letting the 28 public weigh in in a major way. You’re having a meeting on a site that you’re not really actually 29 asking to build yet. And you’re gonna keep getting these comments about well I think this is 30 important and this is important. It’s our job to review projects and see how they affect our, you 31 know, if they’re meeting our goals in terms of planning and whether they’re affecting our 32 transportation and our traffic and are addressing the concerns that our citizens have. 33 Unfortunately this is such a unique location that it’s attracting, it seems to be attracting 34 tremendous ideas and I sort of wish I had a couple sites and I could say, “Oh I like this on this 35 one and I like this on the other,” and you know. 36 37 Mr. Garber: Chair? I think it’s important that I respond to a couple of things. And Bruce can 38 mop up behind me as he needs to. It’s important to recognize that we’re not; the City isn’t really 39 designing these. The reason that Bruce and I are here is first of all to actually take more of a 40 design role with the underlying master plan or a specific plan or however you want to refer to it 41 at. And that we do take a lot of responsibly for. The design of the building themselves is 42 ultimately in Mr. Arrillaga’s hands and he does think of himself as a designer. He has actually 43 gone out to several, 2 architects I should say, not 30, but 2 to get some ideas on how to approach 44 the office buildings. But he has incorporated those in his own hand and ultimately has come up 45 with the concepts, you know, that are being displayed here. We have a little more knowledge 46 than he does on how to put together a theatre and so there’s, you know, he looks to us to, you 47 know, pull together some of those concepts to a greater degree but ultimately he is gonna be, you 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 38 of 47 know, he will end up hiring the architect of record and will guide their hand as he desires. Part 1 of our role here is to hopefully better ensure that the outcome meets the City’s goals as well. Do 2 you want to help me out here Bruce? 3 4 Mr. Fukuji: You know just two brief points. We’ve been in a competition already. Besides his 5 opinions, which are pretty well developed about what he likes and doesn’t like and based on his 6 experience there’s been two other architects we’ve had to compete with in terms of what we’re 7 doing. So that’s, you know, we have done that we should talk to him about how we do that or 8 what we do about that. 9 10 The other, the other part is, is that we if a design idea isn’t a good idea we really hear about it. I 11 mean we, we’ve gone through a pretty rigorous design process. I think that’s based on what a 12 market driven and a philanthropist is willing to do and I think that’s been a very informative 13 process for us. But I think you’re right, I think some other alternatives to look at would be very 14 informative for the public in terms of how to evaluate something like this and compare what 15 would happen under current guidelines and what is or isn’t beneficial about that and why this 16 might be beneficial, for what reason would be helpful. It’s a great suggestion. Thank you. 17 18 Mr. Garber: Yeah, I will simply add I did have a sidebar conversation with Steve Emslie and the 19 number of iterations that we’ve gone through are probably equal to the number of weeks we’ve 20 been involved. The project has taken different shapes almost weekly. And, you know, for us to 21 walk through all those different things would take significantly more hours, but maybe I was 22 talking with Steve and maybe there’s some way that we can find a way to display them or find 23 some way of sharing those so that people can see the amount of effort that’s gone into various 24 things that have lead us to here. Not that this is the final, this is just a snapshot in time because it 25 continues to evolve. 26 27 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Tanaka. 28 29 Commissioner Tanaka: Yeah so I was actually thinking about access. I was thinking about the 30 Chair’s question about automotive access and thinking about where that might go and I think 31 Commissioner Alcheck actually had an interesting idea if it actually came off of the under, the 32 current underpass. That’s actually kind of clever. Maybe that’s a good idea. I don’t know. 33 34 One other thought I had was just I was looking at the, and this is a very good picture right now. 35 Looking at the historic depot and just how it relates to the project itself and, you know, I was just 36 trying to think if there was a way to better integrate it. I don’t quite know how but I just, maybe 37 just cause it’s a different color. I don’t know. But if there’s a way to incorporate into the project 38 somehow more, more thoroughly than it is and maybe you can’t because it is what it is. 39 40 And I was also thinking about one of the comments that a member of the public made about the 41 fly space and how it’s kind of a big blank wall and it’s actually kind of a big blank wall on both 42 sides and maybe on the side from the train, the station side you don’t quite see it but its only 43 from El Camino Park and I think something, something should be done about that. Maybe it’s a 44 gigantic mural of two trees. I don’t know, but to have it just a big blank wall there facing the 45 park, something should be done with it. 46 47 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 39 of 47 And then, you know, I was looking at the pedestrian network and thinking about my earlier 1 comment about how do you integrate that with, you know, how do you kind of provide kind of 2 like a corridor or some sort of transition from the shopping mall to the, to the downtown area? 3 And I don’t know if some sort of corridor makes sense but it looks like I guess a lot of the retail 4 stuff would be on the bottom floor of the office buildings and so, you know, if you were making 5 a path from the shopping center to downtown you’re not really walking past any of that. It’s 6 kind of, you really have to make an effort and go some sort of circuitous route to get there. so I 7 don’t know if that can be changed somehow to kind of give it a more contiguous feel as you go 8 shopping from let’s say Stanford Shopping Mall, which, you know, walking down to downtown 9 it’s really kind of bridge both sides. But I’m sure you guys will figure it out. Thank you. 10 11 Chair Martinez: Thank you. Vice-Chair Michael. Only three minutes. 12 13 Vice-Chair Michael: ok, so in a, in a past life I was an executive with a large high tech company 14 which is one of the 10 largest companies in Silicon Valley and we at the height of our glory had 15 facilities several million square feet and I think we bought the land from Peery Arrillaga for our 16 headquarters in Santa Clara and built something not unlike what you have on the concept plan 17 here, which was I think about 350,000 square foot, which as we grew that was sort of a drop in 18 the bucket of what we needed. So my sense is just in terms of what you’re going to find when 19 you stress test the market for tenants. This is not really big enough or good enough for the 20 headquarters, the world headquarters of a top tier growth company. Just not big enough. 21 22 So what you’re really going to get is you’re gonna get a number of smaller tenants which may 23 not be a bad thing. You know you’re going to get a combination of some, you know, innovative 24 type businesses, professional firms, accounting firms, financial services, venture capitalists, 25 which might be totally ideal. But I don’t think this is going to be sort of a corporate campus. It’s 26 just not big enough as far as I can tell. So I think part of the design should maybe reflect the 27 heterogeneous nature of the occupancy and the visitors to the site rather than thinking that its 28 going to be just taken up by one ideal, the next Facebook or something. 29 30 But when we built our corporate campus it was bought from Mr. Arrillaga in Santa Clara and we 31 put up the 350,000 square feet in the four buildings. The orientation of the buildings was not 32 unlike what you have here and my sense was there hadn’t been a study of sort of the weather and 33 the wind. And they wanted to use the outdoor spaces in the summer for coming to meetings and 34 the wind would come up in the afternoon be, you know, 20 miles per hour and it was freezing 35 cold and really, really quite unpleasant. It was amazing that that hadn’t been thought through. 36 And the Venturi effect from the having the buildings close together was nice because you could 37 have the passageways and the, but I wonder if maybe you want to think about the year round 38 metrological conditions and maybe space things sufficiently such that you don’t amplify things 39 like wind or whatnot and that I think would probably ameliorate some of the massing because 40 right now with all the buildings together in one spot it’s like it’s a much bigger bulk. And if you 41 spread them out then you can have your sight lines between the buildings. 42 43 Chair Martinez: Ok, I’m probably going to drive our City Attorney to drinking. 44 45 Ms. Stump: Right here at the meeting. 46 47 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 40 of 47 Chair Martinez: I want her to weigh in on something that’s probably not my business and that’s 1 I’m kind of worried about TheatreWorks. I’m, here’s a small theatre company that’s going to 2 grow into a massively large theatre company with a theatre that seats 650 people when there are 3 gonna be times when they’re gonna have a small audience. And nothing’s worse than to preform 4 before a small audience like this. So, so I’m worried about that. And you know usually 5 providing a black box it’s usually done in a warehouse somewhere. I’ve rarely seen theatres 6 build a black box in a prominent expensive site that maybe it might be more useful to build a 7 smaller theater and that way to be able to fulfill your promise to local theatre companies to have 8 a place to share. Because there’s not any that I can think of that would have the demand for a 9 650 seat theatre. They’re probably looking at 200 or 225 in that range. 10 11 And then the issue that is our concern is that black box is literally a black box. There is nothing 12 on the outside that attracts anybody in that courtyard or around it that sort of makes it sort of a 13 inside out experience and I guess theatres are like that. I’m, I fear that the TheatreWorks is 14 overreaching for something that may not be good for them, may not be good for us, and doesn’t 15 really be that public benefit that ultimately we’re gonna be talking about. So, I don’t expect Mr. 16 Garber to respond, but I just want to put it out there as something to think about as you move 17 towards design to really look at the program for TheatreWorks and really have a much more 18 realistic vision for what it can be. Thank you. 19 20 Mr. Garber: I’d actually be happy to respond to a couple of those things if you’d like. 21 22 Chair Martinez: I’m afraid. Go ahead. 23 24 Mr. Garber: Is that, would you like me to or? 25 26 Chair Martinez: Of course. 27 28 Mr. Garber: I’m trying to get to a plan here of the theatre. Here we go. See if we can bring this 29 up. So the size of the theatre has been under scrutiny for about 12 years and actually the 30 feasibility study that was done in 2000 anticipated a theatre that should be around 1,000 to 1,200 31 seats. The current theatre at Mountain View is 600-650 seats depending on the arrangement of 32 them. There really is zero expectation that, the real expectation is, are there too few seats as 33 opposed to too many? And this isn’t this has been a topic that has not been just vetted with 34 TheatreWorks but they the same theatre consultant that was used for the feasibility study has also 35 been consulted to help confirm the programming that we’ve taken to Arrillaga to be satisfied in 36 this particular case. 37 38 Regarding black box theatres, the concept of the black box theatre is that you have a flat floor 39 such that it can be configured in any number of different ways. And I can sit here and name 40 probably three dozen different theatres in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York that 41 have black box theatres that are right downtown. In fact I’d say the most prominent one that was 42 finished that’s on top of Lincoln Center it was built because they didn’t have one and that’s the 43 Claire Tow Theater that was completed about three months ago. But they are as you say they are 44 small and that allows for, you know, much smaller audiences much more intimate sorts of things 45 and that’s much the same concept that would happen here. 46 47 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 41 of 47 I wanted to bring up the plan because you’re absolutely right that you end up with, just as you do 1 on the main stage, blank walls because you can’t obviously have windows into those areas. But 2 there is an attempt in the plan you will notice to have an interstitial space between the black box 3 and the plaza there that would end up being occupied most likely by a small café or meeting 4 spaces and things of that sort so that there is a sense of permeability and entry between the plaza 5 and the building. And again these are just essentially line drawings, concepts, but we, you know, 6 are very sensitive to trying to make sure that TheatreWorks finds ways to interact with the 7 ground floor so that there’s a sense of pedestrian participation in the activities of the theatre 8 itself. 9 10 Chair Martinez: Yeah, that’s really my point that this isn’t Lincoln Center. You know it’s a 11 small community with a small theatre company and I’ve seen too many institutions fail because 12 they’ve overbuilt. And I’m not saying I expect you to fail. I don’t expect that and I know 13 you’ve done your homework, but this is a real concern and the City is betting on you. So I, I’m 14 glad you’ve done the study and, you know, I want it to succeed because if it doesn’t it really it 15 doesn’t serve anyone. But I also want a better community usage of this. I would like to see 16 others have a space that they can use, not just when, you know, you’re out of town, but when 17 TheatreWorks is actually sharing space and teaching and, you know, making this gift available to 18 the community. And I don’t see it in the program that’s there now. 19 20 Mr. Garber: I did not spend much time going through the program which we can do. I think your 21 points are very important. There is actually classroom space in this program in addition to the 22 significant amount of spaces that can be leased or rented. The other important thing to recognize 23 though is that what will happen as a result of TheatreWorks moving in here is that there’s 24 significant space in the theatre marketplace that opens up and allows for significant growth in 25 that marketplace that cannot occur right now because there are venues that don’t exist. 26 27 Interestingly, the Bay Area has something on the order of 400 theatres the largest of which the 28 top three are ACT is the largest, Berkley Rep, and then TheatreWorks and then you jump down 29 to San Jose Rep and then you end up with literally hundreds of theatres which are anywhere 30 between 26 seats and, you know, 150 seats. And it’s one of the densest places for theatre in the 31 entire country. And there’s a tremendous demand for space for performance. There’s a lot of 32 demand that TheatreWorks gets both from the City of Mountain View and the other preforming 33 art ensembles and that utilize that space in Mountain View, you know, asking for any additional 34 time that TheatreWorks can give up, which it can’t because it has a program. But that space 35 suddenly becomes available and there are lots of other arts organizations that would love to be 36 able to take advantage of that space. 37 38 Same thing happens with Lucie Stern, which unlike Mountain View which has been a successful 39 venue for TheatreWorks and is 600 seats for the last 15 years I guess or something in that sort. 40 Lucie Stern is in the mid 300’s, 360 I think, 325, 360 something of that sort. So it’s a different, 41 you know, stratus or level in the marketplace and it appeals to a different type of theatre and 42 potentially one that’s working its way up to that. But so in addition to the space that is made 43 available new that will be used mostly presumably by TheatreWorks and yes there will be other 44 opportunities for other organizations and not just our sort of organization but other community 45 sorts of uses there. The, the result is that the tide if you will of theatre usage becomes greater as 46 a result. 47 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 42 of 47 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Keller. 1 2 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. I noticed that Director, Artistic Director Robert Kelley has 3 been essentially the founder of TheatreWorks. He’s been there for the 40 some odd years that 4 TheatreWorks has existed. I’ve been subscribing for more than half that amount of time and I 5 hope that when you, TheatreWorks makes a commitment to move to this stage, this, this facility 6 that there is thought about transition plan of what you do when Robert Kelley is unable to 7 continue in that role for one reason or another and I’m not gonna go further. But just I think 8 that’s a concern that the City has to have as well. Thank you. 9 10 There was a, I want to follow up on something Vice-Chair Michael said because it’s something I 11 was gonna talk about which is what kind of tenant we want. And it seems to me that part of the 12 reason we were told, that the City Council was told and those of us in the audience were also told 13 that this, we want a quarter of a million square feet in this is for a headquarters building. And it 14 seems to me that that as just as Vice-Chair Michael pointed out, this is the wrong plan. It’s the 15 wrong concept. 16 17 The right concept is that when you have a company that is distributed around downtown Palo 18 Alto and wishes to consolidate into a space and grow out, grow into a bigger space that you need 19 some way of doing that. And so it’s really a consolidation within downtown as opposed to 20 having to move to California Avenue area which is what Facebook did or move to Mountain 21 View which is what Google did. In particular if you look at the history in the last 20, 30, 20 or 22 so years we’ve had some big tenants in downtown Palo Alto. We’ve had Digital Equipment, 23 we’ve had Google, we’ve had Facebook, we now have Palantir here and there’s a wave of each 24 one of these moving on to next space. And it seems to me that what’s really needed is space for 25 these companies to consolidate and, and be, stay downtown. And if the idea is instead to have a 26 big office building or complex that is used by one tenant when that tenant goes away, and it will, 27 ok. Remember how big Sun was? Remember how big SGI was? SGI is no longer anything and 28 Sun is a mere shadow of itself and bought by Oracle, ok. Big office, big buildings they get 29 acquired, you know, big companies they get acquired, they move, they do all kinds of other stuff. 30 That’s gonna create that bimodal distribution of small space and a big tenant is gonna create a 31 big problem with downtown a booming bus cycle if it goes away. When that tenant comes, that 32 tenant goes it’s gonna really destroy retail. 33 34 So instead what you really need to have is a complex of something for companies as they grow 35 to have a place for them to move into. A smaller space, that’s the kind of thing you need to do. 36 And also in terms of that if you think about this being an activated space that is connected to 37 downtown it means that you need to expand the footprint of retail space downtown to connect 38 with it and in particular that means expanding the footprint of retail on Lytton and on Alma and 39 connecting around. And in reversing the thing we did a couple of years ago about removing 40 retail space. We really need to put it back. We really need to connect the retail space downtown 41 or it’s gonna, or it’s not gonna flow to the rest of downtown. 42 43 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Panelli. 44 45 Commissioner Panelli: I’m gonna touch on something that Commissioner Keller just mentioned 46 and I’m not quite certain whether you’re advocating for a large tenant or, or many smaller 47 tenants. 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 43 of 47 1 Commissioner Keller: Many smaller ones is what I’m advocating for. 2 3 Commissioner Panelli: Ok, which I think is and I agree with you then. Which I think is more 4 consistent with what I would consider an innovation district. To me you want to have we want, 5 we should aspire to have many tenants that have enough room to grow into reasonably sizable 6 companies. I think one of the problems we have today is companies form they find some office 7 space somewhere around town and then when they get to the 10 to 50 range is when they really 8 see the growing pains. So having, having an office area where they can grow to 200 before they 9 have to seek new digs is, is great, but building off of what Commissioner Keller was saying 10 when you have a company of 100, 200 if they were to leave they don’t leave this giant gap. 11 What, what I’ve noticed in the commercial real estate market is if, if you have a single tenant 12 who occupies a large amount of space when they do leave the vacancy, the time of vacancy is 13 exceptionally long compared to when you have a number of smaller spaces. Those seem to turn 14 over much more quickly so I actually like the idea of several companies occupying or sharing, 15 sharing the space. 16 17 I wanted to touch on another thing that Commissioner Keller talked about earlier going back to 18 the, the FAR comment. He’s absolutely right and I think it’s gonna require more time of study 19 and more understanding from, from you all what that right denominator is for that FAR 20 calculation. I can understand under all those scenarios that we documented A, B, C, D, I can 21 understand justifications for all of them. But I think we need to figure out which one is the right 22 one and I don’t know yet, but I think that’s gonna require more study. 23 24 Chair Martinez: Thank you. Commissioner Alcheck. 25 26 Commissioner Alcheck: I’m not gonna respond to the tenant mix because I think those are 27 market driven. If it’s an innovation district should there be some requirements? I don’t know, 28 I’m not sure that’s, I’m not sure we’re there yet. I’ll say that I think the public will benefit if the 29 space isn’t utilized by a single company because a single company may seem put offish, you 30 know, to the general public. They may use their, the space on the ground floor whether it’s 31 restaurant or not in a unique way and everybody will feel like it’s somebody’s space as opposed 32 to multiple people’s spaces. So I’ll just throw that out there but I think yeah I don’t know if I 33 want to comment on tenant mix really. 34 35 I think my, I don’t know if this is my final comment, but I think my final comment is that I don’t 36 think this plan addresses the opportunity for transit oriented development. And what I mean by 37 transit oriented development I really mean the transit development as well as it could. In 50 38 years, maybe that’s too long. I’ll still be here in 50 years, but I don’t know if everybody will still 39 be here in 50 years so I’ll scale back. In 25 years I don’t know if you’ll be able to tell the 40 difference between Redwood City and Menlo Park and Palo Alto and Atherton and Los Altos, 41 right? As it is everybody’s like they’re so close there’s barely any division you just go from one 42 to the next. I think what we’re gonna see is tremendous growth in this area and it’s just gonna be 43 like, you know when you’re in places in San Francisco did you cross into Noe? Are you in Glen 44 Park? Is it Upper Noe? Are you in the Mission? 45 46 I mean it’s a, there’s a part of me that thinks we’re gonna see such tremendous overlap that, that 47 they’ll almost be indistinguishable from each other and in this particular instance we’re talking 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 44 of 47 about a major transit center opportunity. Maybe a train pulls into a station. I’m thinking about 1 the ferry building and how central that is to downtown Palo Alto and I think we’re, personally I 2 have a lot of issues with the plan but I really don’t think that this little don’t take it the wrong 3 way, but the inner circle and outer circle and when you asked the question about whether car 4 traffic shares that space. I don’t know in 25 years if we’re gonna look back and go what? Did 5 we just create a black diamond mogul run in this area that we should’ve created something 6 better? I anticipate that we will be using the train more. Tremendously more in the future. 7 8 So my last little comment I want to make is about the theatre. I want to respond a little bit. I 9 don’t think 600 is small; I don’t think 600 is large. I think its small. I sort of experienced the 10 development of the Mondavi Center in Davis. Davis is tiny. Davis is a speck and the Mondavi 11 Center is an amazing facility. I actually happen to think it’s a gorgeous building. People might 12 differ on that opinion because it’s very modern. But that place sits 1,800 in its main theatre and 13 250 in its side stage and this 600 seat place is supposed to have Broadway shows? So, I’d be 14 really excited if I could go see the future Avenue Q in my local town because I think they’ll be 15 enough demand for that. But I don’t think 600 is too small and I just want to throw that out 16 there. I don’t know how tall Mondavi is. I don’t know if you guys know, but? 17 18 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Tanaka. 19 20 Commissioner Tanaka: I think for the most part I said a lot of my comments already so I just will 21 comment quickly on the tenant mix. I, I think pretty much the market’s gonna decide. I think 22 probably Vice-Chair Michael and others are probably right that it’s probably not gonna be one 23 single tenant and that’s ok I think smaller tenants are good too. I think it provides a good mix. 24 But I do think it’s important to kind of activate the ground floor and not just have it office. I 25 think it needs to be some sort of retail use, shopping, restaurants, something like that that 26 actually makes the place interesting. But I think that’s kind of the intent right now anyway so, 27 but I do, I do like the idea that you’re also trying to do some of that on the theatre site as well 28 which I think is a great idea. And that’s all I had. Thank you. 29 30 Mr. Garber: Chair? It occurred to me in the previous comment that I needed to correct Mr. Moss 31 when he was speaking. The numbers I was using when I was asked about how the height of the 32 fly was calculated when we were making the presentation to City Council I did not use the 33 number 35 feet. I used the number 45 feet. So the height to the proscenium is 45 feet. You 34 double that to be able to get the, to be able to hide everything you rise up into the flight and then 35 you have 10 feet essentially for structural space. So you get, you know, 45, 45 that’s 90, 10 feet 36 for structural you’re at 100. That’s where that came from. 37 38 Chair Martinez: Yeah, I heard that so I’ll, I’ll support what you just said. Vice-Chair Michael. 39 40 Vice-Chair Michael: Well after all the hours of study session on this topic my head is spinning 41 and kind of humble about the, the quality of the feedback we give you. In this format it’s, you 42 know, the old joke about what’s a camel as a horse designed by a committee. And I’m not sure 43 how coherent these ideas are but perhaps there’s a few that are useful. 44 45 In our excitement about the zoning and the height and whatnot I think the whole notion of the 46 traffic impact has hasn’t really gotten a whole lot of attention and I think that, I think that at 47 times during the day the traffic on University Avenue is, is fully saturated and at times during the 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 45 of 47 day the traffic at El Camino is fully saturated. And so this is gonna be additive to that. I’m not, 1 so I think it’s going to be very important when the traffic study is done to figure out to what 2 extent that can be mitigated. I don’t know that it’s mitigated simply by giving people, you know, 3 passes to use the buses and trains and so forth. 4 5 I think one of the conceptual difficulties I’ve had with trying to understand traffic and 6 transportation issues is because in Palo Alto the main problem seems to be that people who live 7 elsewhere kind of commute here to work for their jobs and then they commute back home, you 8 know, at the end of the workday. But my personal situation is I’m no longer a commuter so my 9 traffic within the City is intracity and a lot of the traffic solutions don’t address intracity 10 activities, you know, coming from my home to attend the Planning Commission meeting for 11 example and transit, you know, doesn’t really support that so I drive. 12 13 And I think that the, the inexorable sort of rate of growth sort of in this whole region and, you 14 know, with what’s going on at Stanford and so forth is gonna put increasing capacity demands 15 on all the existing arteries and I think that the traffic study should somehow lead the community 16 and the Council to a better understanding of this is a big enough project that it’s gonna maybe be 17 the sort of the tipping point and if you have to get people from you know 101 and 280, you 18 know, into their, their office and then back out at the end of the day, but all those there’s a 19 limited number of ways to, to get from there to here. So I’m looking forward to that because it 20 was not clear to me how, it’s not an easy problem. And I think that the intracity transit issue to 21 me is, is I think shouldn’t be overlooked. I think it’s important particularly there’s more location 22 independent working, you know, home consulting and so on so that’s part of our economic 23 development. 24 25 Chair Martinez: Ok. A couple things I wanted to just finish with. One is that what this project 26 needs a great civics base. I said that at the beginning. I want to finish with that. The civics base 27 is really the missing piece and it should be really the connection to the City oriented to 28 downtown not to the shopping center. But considering the shopping center I think it would be 29 great if we had a bridge from PF Chang’s, not from there, but you know, from around there 30 across. I think the connection across Quarry is still fragile and I think we should be proposing a 31 futuristic bridge as part of this arts and innovation to really build a stronger connection. So I 32 would really like to see us explore that. 33 34 And then finally I have one other question and that is does anybody know what the final score 35 was? Alright. We won, right? Yeah right, thank you. 36 37 Commissioners if you don’t have any, yes. One minute. People want to go home. Yeah I just 38 want to see if you agree first. Commissioner Keller. 39 40 Commissioner Keller: Alright thank you. So the first thing is that the 260,000 square feet of plan 41 is faulty that the ration off of that so if you reduce the square footage you can reduce the height. 42 First thing. Second thing, the theatre is 800 seats not 600 seats. Third thing the last divisive 43 thing we had in terms of land use, in terms of building structure was 800 High and people looked 44 at the drawings for 800 High and then when they got the building they said this doesn’t seem to 45 match what the drawings were, the drawings somehow looked smaller than the building. So 46 that’s the kind, expect the divisive thing that happened with 800 High to happen here. 47 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 46 of 47 In terms of traffic, could you please turn to slide 28? 27, sorry, keep going, keep going, it’s the 1 one with the proposed transit routes. Ok. No, go back one, so if you see that there’s a route that 2 goes around the red route that goes around on Marguerite and then makes a left turn down there 3 down to Quarry. That left turn is not possible. It doesn’t exist and I can tell you that a lot of the 4 cars exiting this thing will want to go that way. So, also the other red line happens to go across 5 the bridge and fall onto the roadway in the north, in the southbound direction onto El Camino, 6 which doesn’t make any sense either. 7 8 So I think the traffic circulation is just not really feasible. I think you need to do an analysis of 9 not just the intersection but you need to do an analysis of the capacities, various routes, 10 especially the service road entrance ramp onto northbound El Camino from University Avenue. 11 That is gonna be the biggest bottleneck and it’ll back up and cause problems in all different 12 directions. 13 In terms of transit people, the average commute length into Palo Alto is 11 miles. Somewhere in 14 the order of over a third, somewhere 35 percent somewhere roughly of Palo Altan’s, of people 15 who work in, live in Palo Alto work in Palo Alto. A sixth of the people who work in Palo Alto 16 live in Palo Alto. A lot of people come close and those people are gonna drive. There are some 17 people who come from far away. The people who take transit are basically those people who 18 live in San Francisco and take Caltrain. There is very little other transit use into Palo Alto other 19 than Caltrain and the people who work in this office building are not gonna take the 22 bus or the 20 522 bus likely. They’re gonna take Caltrain. That’s what’s going on here and that means people 21 living in San Francisco. People living in Menlo Park are gonna drive, people living in Mountain 22 View are gonna drive, people living in Sunnyvale are gonna drive, and people living in San Jose 23 are gonna drive unless they live near the Caltrain station downtown. But if you’re gonna live 24 downtown you’re gonna live in San Francisco not in San Jose. Ok? Seriously. So I think that 25 that’s you need to think about exactly how people will go and therefore that needs to affect your 26 transit use. 27 28 The hospital has a completely different type of structure in terms of where people live and how 29 dispersed they are and, and how much they make. So I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t think that that’s 30 comparable. And I’ll close by saying that I endorse the bridge idea over El Camino to connect 31 with Stanford Shopping Center with this arts and innovation district. I think that that’s an 32 excellent idea and it is really effective to connect them because otherwise you have people just 33 trying to get across a essentially seven lane road, maybe it’s eight or nine with left turns or 34 whatever and that’s pretty, pretty hard. 35 36 Mr. Garber: Chair, may I ask for just to make sure I understood what I heard? 37 38 Chair Martinez: Yeah sure of course. 39 40 Mr. Garber: Your first two comments you were saying the 268,000 square feet for the office 41 make that less in order to reduce height and make it more appropriate for the marketplace that 42 you’re imagining should go in there? And I’m sorry did you give, did you actually specify a 43 number of where you thought it should be? 44 45 Commissioner Keller: Well earlier I was talking about if you had a 2.0 FAR and that piece would 46 be 180 square, 180,000 square feet. So somewhere in the range of 150,000 to 180,000 square 47 feet is a reasonable range for appropriate buildings that would give you appropriate height. And 48 _____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto October 24, 2012 Page 47 of 47 that, and because 260,000 square feet is an artificial number for a market that doesn’t make 1 sense. 2 3 Mr. Garber: And then you’re suggesting an 800 seat theatre instead of a 600 seat? 4 5 Commissioner Keller: It already is an 800 seat theatre. That’s what the program says. 6 7 Mr. Garber: Oh that’s, yes, between the two theatres. 8 9 Commissioner Keller: Oh it’s between two theatres? 10 11 Mr. Garber: Yes. 12 13 Commissioner Keller: Ah. That should be explained because I didn’t understand that from the 14 write up. 15 16 Mr. Garber: Ah. Ok. 17 18 Commissioner Keller: Ok, I saw it says 800 I was looking at the traffic study it said 800 seat 19 theatre. Sorry about that. 20 21 Mr. Garber: Yes, they were looking at the impact of both theatres if they were both, sorry. 22 23 Commissioner Keller: Ok, thanks for the clarification. Please explain, please put that more 24 clearly in your write up. Thank you. 25 26 Chair Martinez: Anything else? Commissioners any final comments? Ok, we shall close the 27 public hearing and this agenda item. And thank you all very much. Thank you Bruce and Dan 28 for a great presentation. 29 30 Commission Action: No action taken 31 PARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION NOVEMBER 27, 2012 EXCERPT MINUTES Presentation on 27 University project, discussion on park and recreation related impacts and the possible relocation of the Julia Morgan building – Staff de Geus introduced the consultant Bruce Guchi, and city staff Amy French, Chief Building Official with the Planning department, and Deputy City Manager, Steve Emslie working on the project. Mr. Guchi started the presentation with explaining when and why he was hired by the City. His presentation to the Commission included the proposed design of the 27 University project and the concerns affecting El Camino Park, moving the JP Morgan Building, and the impact on Palo Alto. After the presentation public comment were received. Public Comment Deborah Wexler – Ms. Wexler spoke on her opposition of the 27 University project and how this huge project would negatively impact Palo Alto. Martin Sommer – Mr. Sommer opposed the proposal on the height of the four buildings in the 27 University project. Pointing out the impact on the height of the proposed buildings would shadow over El Camino Park and cause cold and wet mornings on the fields. Emily Renzel – Ms. Renzel spoke on opposing the 27 University project and noting her discomfort of the fact that the project has been in the planning stages since February without the resident’s knowledge. She also remarked on the impacts of parking and the traffic flow that this project would create. Elaine Meyer – Ms. Meyer commented on her concern and disappointment over how the project is being described and that the buildings proposed in this project are not considered a problem given their proposed height. She also remarked on how the Julia Morgan building is now being referred to as the “Hostess building”. Don Kenyon – Mr. Kenyon commented on not being pleased with the height of the proposed buildings but requested that the city slow now the process commenting that this is a great opportunity for the city to make this a great entrance to the City of Palo Alto by thinking through what the residents of the city would want. The Commission spent time asking questions and commenting on the project. Council liaison Espinosa emphasized the importance of capturing information in the minutes to assist City Council with items such as this item. The Commission concluded that the following was a consolidation of their concerns they would like to be represented at the upcoming Council meeting on Monday, December 3rd along with the ad hoc’s staff report included in this month’s packet.  Concerned over the loss of trees by the placement of the Julia Morgan Building  The loss of Park space  The impact of the decrease in size of the fields agreed upon in the El Camino project.  The impacts of parking for El Camino Park from the placement of the Julia Morgan Building into El Camino Park, and the proposed Theatre.  The location of the proposed placement of the Julia Morgan Building.  The commitment already agreed upon for the use of park impact fees on El Camino Park.  The barriers created by the project for the integration and connectivity of the neighborhoods.  The height of the proposed office buildings casting shade onto the fields and the excessive height of the proposed outside Theatre.  The potential use of the Julia Morgan building and its targeting users needs to be studied as part of the decision for the relocation of the building.  The Commission would like to have the suggested locations for the Julia Morgan Building that the ad hoc committee came up with taken under consideration. City of Palo Alto Page 1 1 Wednesday, December 5, 2012 2 REGULAR MEETING – 8:00 AM 3 Council Chambers 4 Civic Center, 1st Floor 5 250 Hamilton Avenue 6 Palo Alto, California 94301 7 8 9 10 ITEM 2. 27 University Avenue: Study session for a presentation, public comment and HRB 11 discussion of urban design concepts, land use and modifications to sites of and adjacent to 12 historic resources, related to a potential Arts and Innovation District project involving 13 establishment of a performing arts theater and contemporary office space. The site is within the 14 area bounded by El Camino Real, University Avenue, the improved areas of El Camino Park, 15 and the Caltrain Station/Mitchell Lane Right of Way. The site concept includes: (1) removal of 16 two buildings from the site; the 1918 Julia Morgan building (a.k.a. Hostess House/Veteran’s 17 Memorial Building/first Palo Alto Community Center), Category 1 Resource #399 on the Palo 18 Alto Historic Inventory, a National Register of Historic Places Landmark (#895), and listed on 19 the State Historic Register, and the 1947 American Red Cross Chapter House building (not listed 20 on inventory/not registered), (2) relocation of the Intermodal Transit Center from Mitchell Lane 21 to a transit circle “Ring Road” (involving expansion of the University Avenue Underpass bridge 22 (c. 1941) width) and Urban Lane in order to enhance transit accessibility and capacity, and (3) 23 improved pedestrian connections across the site including those from the CalTrain Depot (aka 24 Southern Pacific Depot, Category 1 Resource #400 on the Palo Alto Historic Resources 25 Inventory). 26 27 Chair Bernstein: I’d like to welcome everyone back to the Historic Resources Board 28 (HRB) meeting of December 5. Our next agenda item is, open up the page, 27 University 29 Avenue. I’ll read the description of the agenda item: 30 31 Study session for a presentation, public comment and HRB discussion of urban 32 design concepts, land use and modifications to sites and adjacent to historic 33 resources, related to a potential Arts and Innovation District project involving 34 establishment of a performing arts theater and contemporary office space. The site 35 is within the area bounded by El Camino Real, University Avenue, the improved 36 areas of El Camino Park, and the Caltrain Station/Mitchell Lane Right of Way. 37 The site concept includes: (1) removal of two buildings from the site; the 1918 38 Julia Morgan building (a.k.a. Hostess House/Veteran’s Memorial Building/first 39 Palo Alto Community Center), Category 1 Resource #399 on the Palo Alto 40 Historic Inventory, a National Register of Historic Places Landmark (#895), and 41 listed on the State Historic Register, and the 1947 American Red Cross Chapter 42 House building (not listed on inventory and not a registered landmark), (2) the 43 HISTORIC RESOURCES BOARD MINUTES EXCERPT City of Palo Alto Page 2 relocation of the Intermodal Transit Center from Mitchell Park, I’m sorry, from 1 Mitchell Lane to a transit circle “Ring Road” (involving expansion of the 2 University Avenue Underpass bridge (c. 1941) width) and Urban Lane in order to 3 enhance transit accessibility and capacity, and (3) improved pedestrian 4 connections across the site including those from the CalTrain Depot (aka 5 Southern Pacific Depot, Category 1 Resource #400 on the Palo Alto Historic 6 Resources Inventory). 7 8 Will staff have a presentation to us please? 9 10 Amy French, Chief Planning Official: Hello, Amy French, Chief Planning Official. 11 Thank you, I realize that was a mouthful to put on the ad and agenda, but it does highlight 12 the historic resources there and so, as you I’m sure are aware, this has been making the 13 rounds with several commissions, Council now twice. We just appeared at Council on 14 Monday night and they had been forwarded the resource documents in the past, for the 15 first meeting September 24th. And of course the discussion about the Julia Morgan 16 building has been going on for some time. If it were to be relocated would it go back to 17 the original location or would it be kept in Palo Alto? So that’s kind of been a 18 conversation at the higher levels, at Council. 19 20 And we do have representation. Beth Bunnenberg has come to an Architectural Review 21 Board (ARB) and Council meeting, but she represented herself as an individual rather 22 than from the Board because the Board has not had a chance yet to weigh in and hear the 23 presentation. Here today we have Bruce Fukuji who is our City Consultant to give the 24 presentation that others have seen. And we’re going to have a focus on the historic 25 resources as well and the potential changes there to the site. It’s a very excited and 26 engaged community on this topic, and so we look forward to hearing your input. Thank 27 you. 28 29 Bruce Fukuji, City Consultant: Good morning, my name is Bruce Fukuji. I’m an 30 architect and urban planner and had a long history of doing projects and planning here in 31 Palo Alto. I was on the Palo Alto Urban Design Committee for eight years. I helped put 32 that plan together and have been involved in doing several buildings downtown. One 33 was the renovation of the Paddleford Oldsmobile Dealership that turned into Whole 34 Foods and also 250 University/Ramona Plaza. I’m working on some of those things. 35 36 Just as some background, my role here with the City is, I’ve been hired along with Dan 37 Garber and also Sandis Engineers to look at how to basically kind of redesign and 38 negotiate a better design solution for the proposal that Mr. Arrillaga put forward. So 39 what I want to do today is sort of go through the revised plan. We started really in 40 February; we had a plan that we put before the Council the 24th of September and had a 41 lot of feedback from that. We’ve done a lot of public outreach and community meetings 42 that are part of board and commission meetings. Returned earlier, just a few days ago 43 went back to the Council got some more direction and we’re going to be looking at some 44 additional alternatives in terms of moving forward. 45 46 My thought what would be helpful is just to talk about why we’re doing a master plan. 47 You know it’s really, the City Council really and the City Manager really recognize that 48 with Mr. Arrillaga’s proposal that there really needed so much opportunity for looking at 49 City of Palo Alto Page 3 change to that area that had never, and it’s also an area that had been planned for change 1 for a long time. And it was a dream team I was part of that effort, that was the early 90’s 2 to look at what to do with connecting Stanford and the Downtown together and that had 3 really never gotten funded or implemented so there’s a long history of plans that haven’t 4 been implemented here. 5 6 So part of looking at the opportunity was how do you think comprehensively about the 7 site, its context, its role regionally, and how do you shape really the appropriate vision to 8 realize the potential of the site and how it can really contribute to the quality of life and 9 vitality of Palo Alto? And a part of that, and you’ve seen this really, when looking at the 10 historic resource aspect of this project and its potential what I think is really exciting 11 about this is you know the FTA for example, and also the National Trust for Historic 12 Preservation over the last 20 years really has been looking at how you revitalize transit 13 stations as part of revitalizing downtowns to create more livable cities. And in a way this 14 is really a transit oriented project to create a really a sense of arrival and destination to 15 Palo Alto both by CalTrain, San Mateo County Transit (samTrans), Santa Clara Valley 16 Transportation Authority (VTA). And also to be able to help and think about creating a 17 new center that can help create connections and linkages between the Downtown and 18 Stanford Shopping Center and Stanford. 19 20 So there’s a lot of opportunity but the site’s also very constrained, as you know it has a 21 lot of challenges and it has taken a lot of work to sort through how to address those. So I 22 want to walk you thought the plan around what that is and what we’ve done. So, I think 23 that it’s just helpful to kind of understand, [Kiko] you can see it right there. Ok, great. 24 So I’ll use the cursor then instead of a laser pointer. 25 26 The original proposal really looked at relocating the Julia Morgan, which is right here 27 and the, and this is the Red Cross building right there. And I have a larger aerial that 28 might be easier to look at. I can look at that more detail in a second, but we start, that 29 was the original proposal just looking at this area. and in meeting with the Council we 30 said we really need to look at what to think about for the larger area here primarily 31 because there was a concern that if you did a development there with a theatre and an 32 office building/mixed use that it could preclude being able to expand the transit center 33 and the bus activity and the bus connectivity to CalTrain. Right now there’s 10 bays with 34 four layovers and it’s really at capacity in terms of what’s going on. There’s over 1,000 35 buses daily that go through there. It’s just not going to be able to meet future capacity. 36 So we said, ok, we met with the transit agencies and we said, “If we started from scratch 37 in looking at the area what would be the right approach?” So we really looked at how to 38 look at transit connectivity as a foundation for planning for this area. 39 40 This is just an aerial blown up just looking at that immediate area. Here’s the CalTrain 41 tracks, here’s University/El Camino Real, this is the Julia Morgan right here, here’s the 42 historic Palo Alto CalTrain Depot. This is the Red Cross and this is the actual intermodal 43 terminal right in through here with access through along parallel to Mitchell Lane and 44 here’s the existing loops. Now because the Julia Morgan was located right here when 45 they did the underpass and overpass connections right here that’s sort of how far the 46 diameter of these kinds of ramps could actually go. It actually constrained thinking about 47 how to make those improvements. And in some indirect way it actually contributed to 48 how complicated that was, but we realized is that this area right here is really an 49 City of Palo Alto Page 4 opportunity for expanded transit facilities because the way the existing transit center 1 works you have an island which everyone has to, the pedestrians have to cross to get to 2 and then buses sort of circulate around it. And that’s less efficient than if you actually 3 had a street, which we’re looking at here, and then you have stops on both sides of the 4 street on the inside and outside. And that was really the genesis for thinking about 5 relocating the transit center which has been the hub of what we’ve been doing here. So I 6 just wanted to kind of touch on that in terms of that. 7 8 So this is the illustrative plan for the current concept. This lists the things that we’ve had 9 to do to revise the plan but just to sort of briefly go over what is being proposed here 10 right now there’s a 70,000 square foot preforming arts theatre that has 650 seat main 11 stage theatre and then 200 seat black box theatre. And that’s been designed working in 12 close conjunction with TheatreWorks as a proposed user for doing that for relocating 13 TheatreWorks back to Palo Alto. And then the office component would have ground 14 floor retail. I’ll talk about that more later, but it’s really four small buildings that are 15 8,700 square feet each floor plate. They’re basically seven stories along El Camino Real 16 and six across from where the depot is. They’re about the highest part is 103 feet six 17 inches for the seven story portions not including the mechanical screening that’s there 18 and then they have bridges that connect them together at the third and fifth floors so 19 they’re linked together so there’s some cross connectivity there. Now but basically in the 20 floor plan I’ll show that later, you can walk all the way through that area. 21 22 Those are the two major land use components and then the street circulation we looked at 23 redesigning the transit center. And I can go into more detail, but basically eliminating the 24 loop ramps that are there and having a two way street that goes all the way around that 25 has continuous bus ways on both sides of the street plus a median with one way bus way 26 right along here. And then new kind of curbside median bus drop off all the way along 27 the frontage and the depot would have both either bus or car pick up and drop off. 28 29 And then this street, Mitchell Lane, or the extension of Urban Lane would extend all the 30 way around and connect to an extension of Quarry Road to create a continuous street 31 network. And then the ramps to get to below grade parking are accessed off of the El 32 Camino Real ramp here, which is one way. So you have two lanes in and two lanes out 33 to go to about 850 to 900 parking spaces that are underneath the plaza and underneath the 34 office buildings. And then you also have access across from where the tracks are. This is 35 also you have access down through here. And the drop off for the theatre would be along 36 El Camino Real, right here the ramps and also along the edge of the theatre right through 37 here. Those are sort of the main components and then I’m going to talk a little bit about 38 the relocation of the Julia Morgan to El Camino Park and what that means. 39 40 The other big planning issue we’ve been addressing here is how to think about 41 connectivity to the downtown and there’s been the long history of discussions around 42 high speed rail, what its implications are and what would happen with the electrification 43 of CalTrain and then what’s happening with the Rail Corridor Study and sort of a 44 hypothetical, but the main point here is that when whatever improvements happen 45 assuming it’s this case below grade with covered trenches, then you would want to have 46 pedestrian/bicycle connections across the tracks, which is a barrier now, but to alleviate 47 that barrier where at kind of Everett, you know Lytton, obviously University would be 48 City of Palo Alto Page 5 brought all the way back up to grade and be able to cross all the way through here. All 1 these would be at grade right through here and at Hamilton and also at Forest. 2 3 The site plan has been designed so that it’s small blocks, 250 by 400 feet that are 4 basically the same as the street and block patterns in downtown to help extend that grid. 5 And then [unintelligible] pedestrian and bike connections that link right up to that grid. 6 The other thing we’re looking at is that at that time the transit center was being relocated 7 into the center of the plan here could be relocated either in these areas right along here or 8 we’re having some structure parking over where the hotel area is. And then these can be 9 in filled with buildings that could be in scale with the downtown to really extend the 10 downtown all the way to El Camino Real. So that’s kind of some of the big picture 11 planning concepts we’ve been looking at for how to insure the project is going to be 12 consistent with changes that can happen in the future there. 13 14 So the next couple of slides we’re just going to talk about the Julia Morgan Hostess 15 House itself. City Council, two City Council Members asked us back in September to 16 look at how to relocate it at El Camino Park. We looked at several different locations for 17 how to do that and this is really kind of the result of that exploration, it’s not necessarily a 18 final recommendation it’s one of many ways to do it, we needed to illustrate that it’s 19 possible. We’re looking; we’ve met with a Park and Rec Commission. We have a lot of 20 feedback about this project and discussion about that. But what really was kind of the 21 main thoughts about this was as you know currently there’s a reservoir project right here 22 with the pump house, and then there’s the restoration of the park that’s going on as part 23 of that plan and I’m sure you know about this and part of that is to have an artificial turf 24 for the soccer field to be able to put in new restrooms, expand the parking, that proposal 25 looks like there’s 42 spaces they want to expand it to 65, put parking right in through this 26 area right here. So that project has already been approved by Council it’s moving 27 forward. 28 29 So this would change that project. This is a photograph of the Hostess House from 30 University Avenue. And as you know from the staff report it was the first municipally 31 owned community center in the United States and one of the opportunities here in 32 relocating it here is to return it from commercial use back to community use. And also to 33 look at how would you create a setting that would be more appropriate for that kind of 34 community use set within the park area right here without having the kind of immediate 35 impacts you have all the traffic that’s circulating around the transit area. So we looked at 36 that. This proposal shows that the building could fit actually in between the two parks. It 37 means moving the soccer field north. There’s a passive recreation area that was proposed 38 in that previous plan that was right here. This would take that up. It means eliminating 39 some of the, removing or replanting or replacing some of the trees that would be lost in 40 this area right in through here. 41 42 The idea was to have sufficient parking for both the soccer fields, the softball field, and 43 community use. This increases the amount of surface parking up to about 100 spaces 44 until we really know what those uses are we don’t know how much parking will really be 45 needed. It’s located on access with the entrance to the shopping center so that if there as 46 the shopping center slowly evolves that if that there could be a direct relationship with 47 that. And it allows by having the parking kind of pooled together and the circulation that 48 some of that parking could be used for exhibits and events or other things without using 49 City of Palo Alto Page 6 all of it. And then we also had some parking that was added over here for the softball 1 area and also could serve the theatre for a short term drop off. So that was what was 2 proposed for that. 3 4 And then we can go to the next one. I think other piece to understand I think it’s sort of 5 important about the plan is that we’ve been looking at the parkland configuration and the 6 need to reconfigure what the park lease is that’s there now. This top map right here in the 7 green with the red boundary around it is the existing lease between the City and Stanford 8 for that to be parkland and what we’re proposing in this plan here is actually this finger of 9 parkland that really is a very narrow stretch that’s along the El Camino Real ramp that 10 basically is remnant landscape it’s an underutilized part of the park area which includes 11 the land here where the power lines are. We looked at taking that land, that lease area 12 and putting it over here. You could see it in the proposal here so there’s a more kind of 13 rational continuous parkland area. And this proposes having the theatre then located in 14 the park. 15 16 The next piece, and I think this effects the thinking about the transit center and what that 17 means is we looked at how to connect the bicycle network together right now it kind of 18 ends at El Camino Park and it kind of ends just south of the existing CalTrain tracks 19 along Urban Lane, you have a sort of class one bike route. So what we’re proposing here 20 is to continue having a dedicated bike route that goes from Quarry Road and El Camino 21 Real around, connects up to what’s in El Camino Park, goes along the edge of the tracks 22 and then we’ve been looking at and I’ll have another slide to talk about this in more 23 detail, a new pedestrian/bicycle underpass that’s similar to what we have at Homer, but 24 then having a dedicated bikeway that goes all the way through the transit center that 25 connects up to the class one bike route that’s over by Urban Lane. 26 27 This has been modeled after several European examples, you can find with Copenhagen 28 and Rome. This is a good example of what’s in Copenhagen. It’s right across the street 29 from the Royal Theatre in this lower picture these pyramids are really the light shafts for 30 the transit station stop below. People come up out of the station, there’s a sidewalk right 31 here, this is the bikeway right through here, and there’s a median. Here’s the bus stops 32 where people wait for the busses and they can cross over this and then there’s a dedicated 33 bus way and then here’s the actual street right of way. This is across the street from that, 34 they have on both sides, this is the Royal Theatre here. It’s the same thing: sidewalk, 35 bike lane, median with bus shelters, and then the bus way. And then these are the ways 36 they handled pedestrian and bike crossings for doing that. So we talked with the transit 37 agencies. They like this idea. It’s an innovative idea looking at how to apply that 38 through here. I think that’s a positive contribution. 39 40 We’re also looking at how to introduce a new undercrossing. This one’s the Homer 41 underpass. This is the proposed kind of Lytton underpass. Again here’s Alma Street, 42 here’s Lytton, this is the existing crossing that takes place here. Here’s the existing 43 depot. This would be a new crossing. It means modifying some of the ramps that are 44 used for ADA access to get to the below grade crossing here, but it would have steps that 45 would come. It would be wider than the Homer one, come down and then you have steps 46 that come back up that’s joined with bike ramps on both sides in order to provide a 47 continuous bike and pedestrian access. And here you come into a depot plaza. There 48 would be an orchard of trees that are planted right in here. There would be a plaza that 49 City of Palo Alto Page 7 would help be connected to and part of the historic depot area. It means regarding and 1 adjusting some of the steps and access in here so that this would all be at the same level. 2 So it has a continuous Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) access through here. One 3 of the things we learned from the Homer underpass is how to have the entrance really 4 announced as a kind of broad wide way. It’s sort of shallow steps and ramps that come 5 down that’s visible so we’ve been looking at how to do that. Introducing perhaps public 6 art or something could be in there. 7 8 There’s a discussion with the Council. This is a ground floor plan of the mixed use area 9 here. What to do about retail, how to have a continuous sort of retail experience to go 10 from the downtown to the shopping center and then when you have office users here that 11 they would be able to, theatre goers and commuters would all be a sort of market for the 12 retail that would be here. We’ve been looking at several options for what to do. Some 13 kiosk retail, this could be like newsstand or something. Kiosk retail now is very popular. 14 You can see this example the picnic kiosk in Battery Park in New York where you have 15 kind of destination dining kiosk. And it’s also a way to have a remote site for other 16 higher end restaurants to be able to provide lunch and things like that. It’s very attractive. 17 You can have outdoor seating. 18 19 The three different retail developers met with Thomas Fehrenbach and Steve Emslie to 20 talk about is this feasible and what’s the extent of retail that you could have. Down here 21 they talked about having like a destination restaurant that you can have commuter, 22 theatre, and office user related retail, you can have a café. There’s a café being discussed 23 as part of the theatre itself, which would have space right here on the plaza, but basically 24 this street frontage across from the depot is kind of thought of as being the most desirable 25 retail frontage area. 26 27 We also spent a lot of time looking at how to integrate the design of the park and the 28 project area really so that the experience is a theatre in the park. Here’s the depot plaza. 29 This is the parking access that goes to below grade parking underneath. Pedestrians can 30 cross through here. There’s a pedestrian bridge that links to the mixed use. There’s a 31 theatre fore court for about 650 people to be able to meet before, during, or after shows. 32 There’s an area here for the café and also for black box theatre [unintelligible]. And then 33 we looked at having a continuous way to build a walk around that even if there’s an event 34 happening there would be drop off along here kind of an arrival green and looked at 35 here’s the extension of Quarry Road. There would be a drop off right in through here. 36 We looked at the Olympic [unintelligible], the redwood trees that are in the Olympic 37 Grove. It’s really buried in the site now. It’s not really known or visible how to bring 38 that out and be visible from El Camino Real and then create room to be able to extend 39 that so really you have a much larger kind of open space with this tree lined more of a 40 forest entrance into the park and behind the theatre as a stage for the entrance and 41 visibility of the theatre on El Camino Real, which is a very broad, wide, fast moving 42 street across from the shopping center and a little more campus like. 43 44 And then we looked at how to extend some of those concepts with an arboretums around 45 a forest walk that links into the park, park green for passive recreation areas, and then 46 continue to connect up the bike path work and then also having a kind of boulevard walk 47 along El Camino Real to more formalize the way the park edge is relating to the street. 48 So those are some of the design concepts that we’ve been looking at. 49 City of Palo Alto Page 8 1 And this is the last slide of this presentation. This is looking at sort of entrance 2 experience from Palm Drive. Here’s El Camino Real up into the transit area across the 3 tracks and into the downtown. And this transit center’s really looking at how to create a 4 new entrance and this is an enlargement of that. I mean what we found is what’s 5 beautiful about this historic landscape is part of the arboretum is that you have the twin 6 gates that are right here as the entrance to Stanford with the low walls. Then you have 7 paired bike lanes on either side and then you have the canary palms with the arboretum 8 on either side. 9 10 We said ok, well then how do you come back here? We looked at Olmstead’s original 11 plan and the vision that he had. He had an open space that was actually here at the train 12 station. His original plan had three urban blocks. Went from here to San Francisquito 13 Creek. We have two open blocks and the park, so it’s basically the same concept. We 14 have urban frontage that’s right on the entrance. It’s the same thing as the Olmstead plan. 15 And then what we did here is slightly different. We said, let’s have an oak grove that’s 16 really the entrance environment and then have the palms on the outside of that helping 17 define the overall space with the transit center. So kind of talking the palm drive concept 18 and reversing it as a way to have similar vocabulary and identity for that area. 19 20 And then just briefly in terms of how these work there are basically two lane streets that 21 go through here so cars and busses can go through. Basically on the outer loop here, you 22 know VTA would come up here northbound, drop off here, go down. We have a 23 turnaround at the end over by Palo Alto Medical Foundation, come back layover and then 24 it would pick up in front of the [unintelligible—pause in audio] right here and then go 25 southbound and then samTrans would come in and they would be on the inside of the 26 loop. Drop off here, layover or go down at the end of Urban Lane, turn around and come 27 back and then pick up here and then come back out. So you have kind of crossed the 28 street connectivity in terms of VTA and samTrans in terms of drop off and pick up. And 29 this area here in front of the Sheridan would be for Marguerite shuttles and all along the 30 frontage along the CalTrain tracks would be for Marguerite. So that’s sort of the, kind of 31 the main concepts for the master plan. 32 33 Board Member Bunnenberg: [off microphone] on that diagram. 34 35 Mr. Fukuji: What was the question? I’m sorry. 36 37 Board Member Bunnenberg: The Julia Morgan. Would you point to where it is please? 38 39 Mr. Fukuji: Yeah. The existing Julia Morgan? 40 41 Board Member Bunnenberg: Yes. 42 43 Mr. Fukuji: Yeah the existing Julia Morgan is right here. 44 45 Chair Bernstein: Ok, you’re through with this portion? 46 47 Mr. Fukuji: Yeah, that’s the complete presentation. Thank you. 48 49 City of Palo Alto Page 9 Chair Bernstein: Bruce, thank you so much. Because we are at a study session we won’t 1 be making any formal Motions on this but we’ll have, I do have a card one member from 2 the public. I’m just going to follow somewhat our normal order of if there are any 3 questions of the applicant or staff, not any comments yet, but just questions. And then 4 I’ll have a member of the public come and then we can make our comments. Any 5 questions at this point before I invite the member of the public? Yes. 6 7 Vice-Chair Kohler: Just leading up to what I know are going to be comments, was there 8 any proposals for this project where the Julia Morgan building stayed where it is? 9 10 Mr. Fukuji: No. 11 12 Vice-Chair Kohler: Ok. 13 14 Chair Bernstein: Any other questions? Ok, seeing none. Oh yes, Board Member Bower. 15 16 Board Member Bower: Sorry. The Red Cross building is not considered historic 17 property. Is that right Steven? 18 19 Steven Turner, Advance Planning Manager: I’m unaware of the status. Dennis, are you 20 aware of the status of the Red Cross Building? 21 22 Dennis Backlund, Historic Planner: Yes, the Red Cross building has never had a study. It 23 is not listed anywhere. It was not part of any survey. So its status is unknown, but I 24 believe it dates from 1940’s. 25 26 Board Member Bower: 1948. We have a news packet. We have a newspaper article it 27 was (interrupted) 28 29 Mr. Backlund: So the question would be in if any [unintelligible] that was done the first 30 question [unintelligible] is the building had significant alterations since ’48 that might 31 leave it definitely not a historic resource that would be the first question. 32 33 Board Member Bower: Alright. It does meet a couple of the requirements for historic 34 consideration, but so at this point it’s not considered (interrupted) 35 36 Mr. Backlund: It has not been identified as a historic resource. And the first step in any 37 such survey would be to assess the integrity and if it has retained its architectural 38 integrity since it was built then that could trigger looking at other things too, which is 39 events and persons. But events and persons cannot determine a historic status unless the 40 building also maintains integrity, so that’s the first thing we look at. 41 42 Board Member Bower: Thank you. 43 44 Board Member Bunnenberg: And wasn’t it designed by Birge Clark? 45 46 Mr. Backlund: The Red Cross center, I do not know who the designer is. 47 48 Chair Bernstein: Ok, and so any other questions? 49 City of Palo Alto Page 10 1 Board Member Bunnenberg: Let’s see. I had a question. 2 3 Chair Bernstein: Please go ahead. 4 5 Board Member Bunnenberg: In your thinking have you done any thinking about the 6 historic Palo Alto flagpole which is out in front of MacArthur Park? And the large 7 granite piece that commemorates veterans and the size of that plinth of the big plinth go 8 back to commemorating Civil War, the War Between the States, the Western Movement, 9 Daughters of the Golden West, and Sons of the Golden West. Any thoughts on what 10 would happen to those? 11 12 Mr. Fukuji: A couple things. I think that one of the reasons why we’re here is to help 13 make sure that we’re identifying all the historic resources that really need a place with 14 looking at relocating the Julia Morgan. I think the assumption and the planning 15 assumption has been as sort of a set of historic elements that are in that area would all be 16 relocated. We haven’t gotten to that level of detail in terms of how to precisely do that. 17 18 Board Member Bunnenberg: I do want to get into the record that those are very important 19 pieces that are not really alluded to and are very, very important. And then I do have 20 some more history on the national register nomination, but I think that would be more 21 appropriate later on. 22 23 Chair Bernstein: Ok great. Thanks. Any other questions from Board Members? Yes, 24 Michael. 25 26 Board Member Makinen: So I had one question regarding the timing and sequence of 27 implementation if this project was to proceed per your plan would your plan move the 28 Julia Morgan building first, before anything else happened to the new site that you 29 propose? Or would you propose dismantling it and storing it at an offsite location? 30 31 Mr. Fukuji: You know that’s a really good question and as a result of Council direction 32 that we had on Monday night around looking at alternatives. We had a series of 33 conversations that are starting that are really could turn this whole issue of what the 34 phasing is around in terms of what the sequence would be. I think that prior to that 35 conversation was, what the thinking was is that you have to stage the relocation of the 36 transit center. You have to be able to do the transit center improvements first. And the 37 question is like how do you actually do that? And would it be better to partially reuse, 38 like have the Red Cross and then you look at the utility undergrounding improvements 39 that would be needed and then you have the space really sort of from the Red Cross 40 north. You can do some staging there. Because there has to be some temporary place to 41 have buses in order for you to be able to make the changes in transit center and around 42 the transit ring road. And those things really have to happen first. 43 44 So the Julia Morgan doesn’t necessarily have to be relocated at the very beginning, but I 45 think that to dig the hole for being able to do the below three levels of below grade 46 parking that that would really need to be a very early part of the process to be able to do 47 that. So in that case it would have to be relocated. And again, in terms of the phasing it 48 would be easier to have the site available to relocate it to and complete that early instead 49 City of Palo Alto Page 11 of later. Because that will be, it’ll cost less to do that than to take it apart and store it. 1 But I think that we haven’t really gotten to that point yet in thinking about that. We’ve 2 just sort of talked about it in concept. 3 4 Board Member Makinen: So you’re, am I correct in stating that you would attempt to 5 move it in its entirety without trying to dismantle it? 6 7 Mr. Fukuji: No, I think that when it was relocated previously it was completely taken 8 apart and then reassembled. Now, I am a planner and an architect, but I haven’t been 9 involved in historic preservation/relocation of buildings and what’s involved in doing that 10 so I can’t really advise on what would be the recommendation for this particular building 11 and how to best do that. We’re so early in the planning process I think that we’ll have 12 experts involved who will really help advise on what would be the best, best strategy. I 13 think that for this initial meeting and talking about issues that need to be thought through 14 from a planning point of view I think it’s really great to identify those. I think that staff 15 has talked about wanting to look at how to have historic resources and the thinking that’s 16 involved with that be an integral part of the planning process. So if there’s concerns or 17 opportunities that we need to really think though it would be very helpful to identify 18 those things. 19 20 Chair Bernstein: Any other questions from Board Members before I invite a member of 21 the public? 22 23 Vice-Chair Kohler: I’m trying to decide whether this is a question or not. 24 25 Chair Bernstein: Questions only at this point in time. 26 27 Vice-Chair Kohler: I’m kind of curious as to your comment that this is the beginning of 28 the planning stage and yet we have volumes of drawings and models and diagrams and 29 proposals and literally and comments that this started a year and a half ago, 18 months 30 ago. I’m just wondering why is it so far along and now coming to the Board? Well, all 31 the boards in Palo Alto actually I guess. 32 33 Mr. Fukuji: Right, yeah, well I think that you know Jim Keene addressed this exact 34 question when talking about this to the City Council on Monday night and I think the 35 challenge that staff has had is that this proposal came forward. Council reviewed it and 36 was not excited about it and initiated this sort of, it was August. I think August of 2011 37 was I think when there was some initial conversations about this. 38 39 I was hired in February, so there was a City Council meeting in February where they said 40 this is the direction we want to take. And staff’s position about [unintelligible] City 41 Manager’s position is that you have to have, in order to have constructive public 42 conversation you actually have to have a proposal to look at and react to. And if we just 43 had meetings where, I mean his position was if you just had meetings to talk about it in 44 concept or in abstract or just to look at what was being proposed it wouldn’t necessarily 45 advance things as far as would be most effective. So and the Council also made a 46 decision to have this go before the voters as a voting process in terms of an advisory vote. 47 So, without taking a position yet on what the project is, so this is kind of a public pre 48 City of Palo Alto Page 12 application process. There’s been no application that’s been filed. And I think that’s part 1 of why that’s now happening in this order. 2 3 Vice-Chair Kohler: Ok, I can see all that. So it is officially going to go to the vote? To 4 the public? 5 6 Mr. Fukuji: Well Council’s was initially going to be looking at the right ballot language 7 to do that and they have really till March if they want to have it on the June ballot. 8 [Unintelligible] the Council has taken a direction on how they want to do that yet. 9 10 Chair Bernstein: Ok, thank you Board Members. I have one card from Emily Renzel. I 11 don’t see her in the audience. 12 13 Board Member Bunnenberg: Emily Renzel was only able to stay until 9:00. I can share 14 with you that she on Monday night talked extensively about dedicated park land. 15 16 Chair Bernstein: Ok. Great, thank you Beth for that. Alright, now let’s open up for 17 Board Member comments, questions, or any other discussion items. Then we can go 18 right down the line. Beth. 19 20 Board Member Bunnenberg: Before we start individual comments, I would like to talk 21 with the Board about what was in the National Register Nomination for this building and 22 let’s see I think maybe Mike McKennon has some of my information, but the building of 23 course was moved in 1919. In 1974 the building was nominated for the National Register 24 and it was accepted July 30, 1976. So that the building was on its present location for 25 many years before it was put on the National Register. And interestingly enough, in 26 April of 1919 there was a meeting in which Mayor Cooley, they were to fix the location 27 for the building and Miss Julia Morgan herself came to that meeting and she approved of 28 the move and the location. 29 30 The National Register Nomination noted three important aspects of significance. The 31 first one was the architect, Julia Morgan, and we know a great deal about her. The 32 second was that it was the only remaining intact World War I Army base [unintelligible] 33 in California. Because there were only two training bases in California during the first 34 World War. And then after Palo Alto applied to get one of those buildings and bought 35 the building and moved it then after moving to Palo Alto the Hostess House was dubbed 36 the Community House. And it became the first community center to be municipally 37 owned in the whole Unites States. So Palo Alto was thinking outside of the box and 38 saying a community center is a good idea. They held plays, they held dances, they held 39 meetings; it was a true community center. But Lucie Stern couldn’t hear the plays as the 40 train went by and that was the reason she offered to make us another community center, 41 but part of its significance was established on this site and I think that’s extremely 42 important. 43 44 And then I’ve talked to you about the other pieces that are on. The flagpole was actually 45 located across the street, across Alma and was the flagpole of the City of Palo Alto for 46 many years and then moved to this site by the Community House. So this is a very 47 significant site. Ok. And you were going to start what, at the other end? 48 49 City of Palo Alto Page 13 Board Member Smithwick: Alright. Where to start? First of all I am disappointed to 1 hear that there has been no discussion about studying anything, any plan that would leave 2 the house in its current location. If this project goes forward you’re going to have to do 3 that anyway for California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). So why not do it now 4 and see if there’s a viable plan that can leave it where it is? And in cursory review it 5 looks like it could be some viable plan that could do that. That’s the biggest thing I have 6 a problem with. This building is not just a category one historic structure on a local and 7 State inventory, it’s on the National Register. The fact that it was moved early in its life, 8 I mean it was in its original location for a year and for the remainder of its life it’s been in 9 its current location. So in my view that is essentially its original location. And like Beth 10 stated it’s significant, you know, being its biggest one being Julia Morgan is the architect, 11 and second is its location here in Palo Alto when it was established as a community 12 center. 13 14 So I mean as a general rule in historic preservation relocating the building, and I’ve 15 relocated five historic buildings in my career before, is a last resort in historic 16 preservation. And if it is essentially a choice between it being torn down and lost and 17 relocated then ok, fine. Relocate it. But it’s not preferable and I personally feel that there 18 is a plan that would be viable to leave it in its current location and to also develop the site 19 around it, which I do agree is in need of development. I’m not opposed to development. 20 It is necessary and as your very through presentation pointed out there are a lot of 21 problems with this area especially when it comes to transportation. So I’m in full 22 agreement with the need of this site to be redeveloped, but I would urge a study that 23 would look at the potential for leaving the house where it currently is. 24 25 Chair Bernstein: Thank you, Michael. 26 27 Board Member Makinen: Thank you. What I have in front of me is the seven aspects of 28 historic integrity that are used to characterize a property if it does have integrity, historic 29 integrity, and it must have historic integrity to be declared a historic property on the 30 National Register. And those seven aspects are location, design, setting, materials, 31 workmanship, feeling, and association. 32 33 I feel that the proposal in front of us compromises at least two of those characteristics of 34 historic integrity, mainly setting, also feeling and association. And the risk here is that if 35 the building loses integrity it can be delisted from the National Register of Historic 36 Places. It can no longer be a historic property. So there’s a great risk with this proposal 37 that the building could be potentially delisted as a historic property due to loss of 38 integrity. 39 40 Chair Bernstein: Ok. Thank you. Board Member Kohler. 41 42 Vice-Chair Kohler: I’m not exactly sure how to start here but I do a lot of work with 43 home owners working with the individual review process doing second floors and two 44 story homes and these homeowners struggle many times to understand and have left 45 meetings with staff in tears because of what they’re being requested to do. So I kind of 46 extend that process to in general planning and everything. 47 48 City of Palo Alto Page 14 The other question I get is what is it with all of these tall buildings on the edge of the 1 sidewalk. And I call it in your face architecture. And when I first saw this in the paper I 2 said, “My, this is in your face architecture on steroids.” So just as a sideline I used to 3 walk along El Camino Real where Ricky’s used to be and now there are condos there and 4 everything. My dog refuses to go out on El Camino Real because the noise and the cars 5 go 40, 50 miles an hour five feet away from our sidewalk. It’s not very pleasant. It’s a 6 horrible, horrible situation. And if you look on our first page, all these grey buildings 7 along Alma now are I say kind of in your face architecture and the new low income 8 housing or housing project that’s [warped] along there is it’s number one. 9 10 So, I from historic standpoint this building is on, gosh it’s in the top two or three 11 buildings in Palo Alto I would say. It’s the Lucie Stern Community Center and a number 12 of other projects so to just, and I agree with Scott that there was no attempt to keep it. So 13 I guess my point was there’s been no attempt to see how this could work leaving the 14 building where it is, which would be in part an extension of the individual review, you’re 15 trying to fit in with the neighborhood, your homes and it’s the theme of R1 zone district 16 is that you’re building new homes that blend in with the neighborhood and still achieve 17 the goal of the homeowner. 18 19 Here is we have an existing storage structure which is actually a jewel in a sense and it’s 20 being somehow lifted and being put out in the boondocks by itself around the sporting 21 fields. So if there’s any way, at least there should be an attempt to see if we can leave it 22 where it is. And actually I think it could work to an advantage. You have this historic 23 structure as a key point of this whole project. You walk past through the historic building 24 into the newer buildings. It could really be a really a nice component of the whole 25 project rather than picking it up and putting it out into the, well in this case center field. 26 27 So, that’s the biggest thing I have is that there’s been not even, as Scott said, there’s been 28 no attempt at all to try and keep it. And since this is the Historic Resources Board and 29 that’s our, be our major concern, I just it would have been nice to if we can see ok here’s 30 how it works with it staying and this is why it doesn’t work. Then we could all say, “Ok, 31 yeah, that makes sense. We should move it.” I think you’re going to find that it might be 32 able to stay. That’s my comment. 33 34 Chair Bernstein: Thank you. Board Member Bower. 35 36 Board Member Bower: I’d like to express my appreciation for coming here and standing 37 in front of the firing line. This wasn’t your idea, I know you’re getting paid to do this, 38 but I can’t imagine you’re getting a much better reception in the other boards. I want to 39 share Michael’s concern. As I looked at this photo, which is the revised proposal, now I 40 understand how this works. I’m in the building business. I understand that you make a 41 proposal that’s ridiculous so that you can then scale it back to what you hoped you were 42 going to get, but the problem with this photo when you look at it is as Michael points out, 43 if you move the Julia Morgan building you’ve lost some of the historic integrity. And 44 that’s only, I guess, I mean really, only been there 93 years. What’s that? Seven years 45 short of a century. There isn’t much in Palo Alto, and I’ve been here 62 years 46 (interrupted) 47 48 Man off camera: You’re historic. 49 City of Palo Alto Page 15 1 Board Member Bower: Yeah, well right. But I’m not in my original condition as Dennis 2 points out. You know there’s not much of Palo Alto that gets more, that’s more 3 significant than having these older buildings in their original place. Look at what this 4 project does to the train station, which is already been threatened by high speed rail, 5 which I think is going to die of its own ridiculous funding weight. Nonetheless I think 6 even if you move the Julia Morgan building and you get it in a place where it can stay, 7 the context of this development with the train station would probably then jeopardize the 8 train station’s historic status. I understand the politics of this proposal. I just don’t 9 understand how we can get, as Scott says this one down the road with nobody looking at 10 this critical element of historic compatibility. You can’t build 100 story building next to 11 a little tiny historic structure without losing some of its historic value. Now it’s not 12 proposing a 100 story building, but you understand my point. This is so out of scale. I 13 cannot see that this Board would ever approve this project. I’m just speaking for myself, 14 but I gather that other Board Members have the same feeling. 15 16 I won’t talk about all the other issues that are part of the Architectural Review Board, 17 Planning and Transportation, those I can talk about there. And the infrastructure burden 18 that this theatre would add to a City budget that can’t afford to deal with infrastructure 19 costs right now, this is as I understand it unfinished theatre. There’s no money in our 20 budget to support the ongoing maintenance. I don’t get it. 21 22 Unidentified speaker (off camera): [not into microphone] You might mention you were 23 on the committee. 24 25 Board Member Bower: I was by the way on the Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Commission. 26 We worked for 15 months to look at those issues. So, thank you for your hard work. I 27 think this is well thought out. You’ve obviously looked at all the issues that surround 28 this, but I think the historic stuff is the beginning of the problem. 29 30 Chair Bernstein: Thank you. Board Member Bunnenberg. 31 32 Board Member Bunnenberg: Thank you very much and I too am extremely concerned 33 that there was no scenario proposed that even looked at leaving this building in place. 34 The one bright spot is, and I hope that Amy French will correct me or help me on the 35 final Motion on Monday night at 12:30 or somewhere in there from the City Council was 36 to ask that the Planning Department before working on this project come back with was it 37 three scenarios, three different? Two, two scenarios for this whole development and I 38 hope that the HRB’s comments are in time to get into that consideration because there 39 could be very creative ways to use this building. 40 41 Among other things I looked, I should declare I walked yesterday this site. Went into 42 MacArthur Park which is a [unintelligible] facility and looked at all the buildings, 43 everything on that site. And one interesting thing is that we see the front side of 44 MacArthur Park, which is a nice brick walkway up and with a plaque that says it’s 45 dedicated to the veterans and this is part of Palo Alto’s genius in not building just a big 46 cement slab and saying these are our war dead. Palo Alto chose a living building that 47 everybody could see and that the veterans still meet in quite regularly. But the interesting 48 thing is the back of the building is not all that bad. Right now it’s covered with fence, but 49 City of Palo Alto Page 16 it has a patio back there. So that this building to me could function even if it uses the 1 back of the building into a courtyard kind of facility. One of the suggestions of the 2 Council was lower buildings with a focusing courtyard so that there could be possibilities 3 for this building without moving it from the spot at all. So that I see this as a very 4 important thing to look at. 5 6 And just to comment on the other boards, from what I read in the newspaper the Julia 7 Morgan building was not very well accepted by the Parks and Rec Commission. They 8 didn’t think it was worth the losing of valuable parkland to put the Julia Morgan on it, so 9 this is another component. 10 11 Vice-Chair Kohler: I have one quick comment that I just want to throw out there is that I 12 had a meeting with a staff person at one point and he mentioned to me that during the 13 day, I mean Palo Alto has a population of 66,000 to 70,000 people or so, but during the 14 day it’s over 200,000. 220,000-230,000 people. So that’s right now that is. So can you 15 imagine all these large projects and the turnaround during each day is just going to get 16 [unintelligible] 300,000, to 300,000 or more people a day in Palo Alto is kind of hard to 17 believe. But right now it’s 100 and what is that? 110,000, 20,000 more. No. I can’t do 18 my math, but it’s a lot. So. 19 20 Board Member Bunnenberg: Couple more things. It is important to think about and 21 many of the members of the public spoke to the traffic. And certainly traffic studies need 22 to be done. Many spoke to parkland. People did support the idea of a place for 23 TheatreWorks that, even though it is quite tall. And the business community did speak in 24 favor of and the hotel owners and so forth did speak in favor of it, but many citizens 25 came and spoke to quality of life issues, to all the aspects that we have been discussing 26 and also the environmental impacts of this project need to be really studied because 27 there’re enumerable aspects. One would be this possible loss of the integrity of a historic 28 structure. Isn’t that correct that CEQA looks at that kind of thing? 29 30 Mr. Fukuji: Yes. 31 32 Board Member Bunnenberg: And so I think there’s some hope for us to try to look at a 33 project that would maintain the building here, but we really need to be on our toes. 34 35 Chair Bernstein: And Board Member Makinen. 36 37 Board Member Makinen: I guess my concluding thought on this, the question you have to 38 ask yourself, does this project improve the quality of Palo Alto or does it degrade it? In 39 my opinion it degrades it. I think we lost a lot of critical things right here and we’ve 40 added nothing that improves the quality of our community. 41 42 Chair Bernstein: Board Member Smithwick. 43 44 Board Member Smithwick: I would just add one day I think this at least in this part of the 45 proposal I think transportation is greatly improved and I think that does improve the 46 community, but I just wanted to mention two quick things. As you were going through 47 your presentation in talking about the new buildings and the mixed use and the office use 48 I was thinking to myself well how nice would it be to have a restaurant nearby and we 49 City of Palo Alto Page 17 have a successful one now in MacArthur Park and how that could be such an advantage 1 to a new development. And then you got to the new plans and you proposed a new 2 restaurant in one of the new buildings. 3 4 So the question that always comes up and I’m in this industry a lot and we do a lot of 5 development projects, how can you create win-wins for everyone involved? And I think 6 there’s a scenario in this project that you can create a win-win for everyone. Improving 7 transportation, developing the site, making use of the site that is underutilized right now, 8 and on the historic side preserve a very valuable historic resource. 9 10 Chair Bernstein: Ok, thank you. Bruce thanks again for your excellent presentation. So, 11 and when I learned that you were part of the design team for the undergrounding of 12 expanding, I think there’s a model of it. It used to be behind the TV station, I don’t know 13 if it’s still there but when I first saw it I thought it was just ingenious the way to get that 14 whole plaza below grade. 15 16 The, because we’re a Historic Resources Board obviously everything that we’re 17 discussing is passing through the filter of the US Secretary of the Interior Standards. And 18 as members of the public and staff and yourself may be aware, moving a significant 19 structure is the least desirable thing to do. I assume for this project that whatever project 20 may go forward there will be an Environmental Impact Report (EIR). So that will 21 obviously will require to show historic structures exactly where they are. That would be 22 one of the alternatives. 23 24 I see also I’m sure you’ve done many projects in your successful career. I see some 25 examples of some classical training with some landscaping designs. You mentioned 26 Olmstead. There [unintelligible] I appreciate that sensitivity to this site and this whole 27 project. I’m thinking about what are impacts on historic structure say if the historic 28 resources were left intact. So one of the things we need to decide obviously think about 29 is what are the shadow impacts if the high rises are in the vicinity of two historic 30 resources, the Sun Pacific Depot and also then the Julia Morgan structure if those remain 31 in their current place. So a shadow study that has obviously an impact and that would be 32 part of an EIR, quality of environment for that. 33 34 Speaking as a quick comment about design, the relatively new high rises along the 35 Dannow and the Danube in Vienna, immense structures are very next to the historic 36 district. I don’t know who, if members of the public or yourself have visited that area, 37 but it is quite a historic district there, there’s still some Roman paving there and then the 38 palaces that were there during the different kings and royal processions there. Historic 39 preservation is very important in that city and yet right across the river are these immense 40 high rises. Well, as you know as a successful creative person that high rises can be 41 designed to have the least amount of massing impact and maybe some kind of 42 transparency. I’ve been to Vienna often enough, so I’ve seen many of these examples. 43 Vienna Garden is basically, it’s all glass and it’s like a 93 story building, so very 44 transparent. So those are possible design directions that can happen. 45 46 The diagram you presented to us showed tunneling or undergrounding or some kind of 47 channeling of the railroad. In terms of environmental impact and economics, this is 48 beyond historic resources, but just as a comment that might contribute to how we protect 49 City of Palo Alto Page 18 historic resources and maybe the funding to encourage this to happen, such as what kind 1 of economic incentives allow preservation and other ideas to emerge is that the space, if 2 the train is submerged in some form then there becomes perhaps leasable square footage 3 or space above it. And economic beneficiaries to that could be City of Palo Alto, or it 4 could be just the in some form of a lease agreement that any rents collected from that 5 leased air space pays for the CalTrain or Union Pacific. I guess it’s Union Pacific’s 6 property, I believe. I forget who owns it. Pay for that benefit. So there’s a lot of 7 potential sources of how do you achieve things? Historic Resources Board emphasizes a 8 lot and encourages property owners to take advantage of what are the economic 9 incentives to make things happen? So for historic properties we have transfer 10 development rights, issues, bonus square footages, for example. So here’s an example 11 where maybe there’s lease square footage of that air space just as a way, where does 12 money come to make these changes? Certainly there as I mentioned in other cities in 13 Europe there are historic structures that are one story structures next to high rises so just 14 as you heard from other Board Members of the possible thing to explore is if the historic 15 building, Julia Morgan building, stays where it is what can be done so that high rises can 16 be next to it. There are examples in the world where that happens. 17 18 Just to celebrate the fact that this is national landmark building and let’s keep that 19 celebration going. The overall measure of all things is how are all interested goals/parties 20 met? So there’s the property owner. I believe this is Stanford University property? And 21 then the building itself is owned by? City of Palo Alto owns the building. Yeah. So then 22 it’s on leased land, is that how the arrangement? Yeah. Ok. So there’s Palo Alto, City 23 of Palo Alto is an owner. Stanford University is an owner. So we have all these goals. 24 As long as they are all met, let’s look at alternatives. So I mean that’s a good filter for 25 everything to pass through too. 26 27 The bottom line question I think is whatever is proposed here and whatever might get 28 approved and then constructed. One of the measures that we look at is, is historicism 29 lost? Or is it modified in a way where enough historicism is kept intact. The struggle is 30 going to be two of the measures. So, I’m just looking at my notes to see if there’s 31 anything else I wanted to mention here. You already mentioned the underground 32 reservoir so that would be paid attention to. Ok, I think that’s the end of my thinking that 33 just make sure the alternatives because I think it’s going to be required as you go through 34 environmental process that one of the alternatives is that the two historic structures, the 35 Sun Pacific Railroad is not impacted in a negative way, nor the Julia Morgan structure. 36 And I think with the genius of you and your team and other team members I think there 37 will be solutions that will meet the goals of all property owners. And we look forward to 38 as this project may move forward. Thank you. 39 40 Board Member Bower: Just so I don’t leave on a totally negative note here, I do think that 41 Scott’s right. I agree with Scott the transit improvements are really a benefit to us. I 42 think the park consolidation is also a benefit. And those two things can’t quite go 43 forward without this project, but the park certainly could because that would help. 44 45 The other thing that occurred to me is I think the underpass is also an historic structure, 46 isn’t it? Dennis is that historic landscape? 47 48 City of Palo Alto Page 19 Mr. Backlund: The Dames and Moore report found that eligible for the National Register. 1 The underpass complex. 2 3 Board Member Bower: Both of them right? El Camino Real and Alma? Or just Alma? 4 Just the train Alma? 5 6 Mr. Backlund: It’s the one that is under the train tracks. 7 8 Board Member Bower: Weren’t they both built at the same time? The one that spans, 9 University Avenue spans across El Camino Real. Isn’t that separate as a structure? 10 11 Mr. Backlund: When University goes over El Camino Real; actually I think that was part 12 of the original concept. Dames and Moore studied the structure that is under the train 13 tracks because that is entirely intact. That whole concrete complex is original 1940. 14 15 Board Member Bower: So it’s a third structure. So we’re now capturing that. As an 16 experience, a side experience as other Board Members have identified, it’s a critical, I 17 think it’s a critical part of that. And obviously that’s more or less left intact, but it they 18 ever underground, I don’t think they’re ever going to underground railroad the transit 19 tracks. Too expensive and no motivation, but that would be another thing to consider. 20 So I think when we get to the CEQA part of this you probably ought to take the train 21 station, Julia Morgan, and the underpass into consideration as a part of (interrupted) 22 23 Mr. Backlund: The original underpass is part of a cloverleaf system of access roads, 24 which that is one of the first cloverleaf’s I believe in the world. Certainly one of the very 25 first in the United States. Very early for a cloverleaf access system. 26 27 Mr. Fukuji: I just want to make a comment about the bridge structure. I think that just to 28 clarify what’s being proposed and how that would affect the bridge structure. You know 29 the existing; I’m not sure why these two slides are so far apart. It’s kind of hard to go 30 back and forth. The existing ramps go like this around and come up and then back down 31 over here. And the actual, this proposes to widen the bridge that’s there now. So you 32 have the tracks, you have the bridge structure that’s for the road that’s there now and this 33 widens that bridge structure. So this would introduce a new structure that would be in 34 front of that structure. 35 36 Board Member Bower: So that basically destroys the historic integrity of that piece of 37 this project. 38 39 Board Member Bunnenberg: But isn’t there part of that there now? Isn’t there part of 40 there now? 41 42 (Several people talking at once) 43 44 Mr. Fukuji: Yes. Yeah, part of that horseshoe. I mean the bridge structure has, it 45 supports three things. It supports Alma, it supports the tracks, and it supports the 46 University Circle roadway. So two roadways and the tracks itself. And so this proposal 47 in order to be able to have all the transit improvements located here moves the, and this is 48 the edge now where the road is right it’s more like right around here. And so this moves 49 City of Palo Alto Page 20 it forward to do that. So it would be putting a new bridge structure that would be in front 1 of that structure. 2 3 Chair Bernstein: Yes, Beth. 4 5 Board Member Bunnenberg: I would comment that I do like the idea of a tunnel that 6 would connect Lytton under the tracks. I think we’ve had some really important success 7 with the Homer Avenue tunnel and it is right now kind of a mess to walk from University 8 having to go part way around the circle and cross accesses to University to get under 9 from the Alma Street side to the properties that we’re talking about. And I think that 10 tunnel looks like a good possibility. 11 12 Chair Bernstein: Anymore Board Member comments, questions? Ok. There’s been a 13 suggestion by one Board Member to actually have us make a Motion, but because we’re 14 study session Motions would not be appropriate for this. Alright. Anything else? I think 15 we are… any questions from you [unintelligible]. 16 17 Mr. Fukuji: No, I appreciate all the comments. I look forward to coming back and seeing 18 what we can do and I think the Council direction was to look at alternatives and we’ll be 19 assessing what those alternatives will be. I can certainly see that having alternative, have 20 a different approach to historic resources might be really, will be an appropriate 21 alternative. And also if there are other thoughts or ideas you have about how to do 22 development that protects or is respectful of historic integrity of the environment around 23 the building that would be worthwhile to share those with staff so we have kind of your 24 thinking about that. I think that part of this process that’s, a hard part of the process is 25 very reactive. It’s not necessarily creative and thoughtful. It’s thoughtful in some ways 26 but not others. And one of the things Pat Burt was trying to do [unintelligible] asking 27 people to think, well, you know, this is your town and your project; what would you like 28 to see? And only one person actually said something about, that was a creative 29 contribution to how to advance the conversation. So, you know, I really encourage that 30 and am available to hear any of those ideas so we can figure out what to do. 31 32 Because any adaptive, any keeping the historic building, the Julia Morgan there, the 33 context will change at least in the rear of the building in order to be able to do something. 34 How would you do that and the street frontage and these transit improvements change the 35 front of it. So there will be modifications based on meeting other goals. And it’s like 36 how to do that in a way that makes the most sense I think would be really helpful to 37 understand or have any ideas about that if you’d share that would be great. Thanks. 38 39 Chair Bernstein: Alright. Thank you very much. I think we are done with this agenda 40 item. Thank you so much. 41 Palo Alto Municipal Code Chapter 19.10 COORDINATED AREA PLANS Sections: 19.10.010 Purposes. 19.10.020 Initiation. 19.10.030 Procedures. 19.10.040 Contents of coordinated area plans. 19.10.050 Coordinated development permit required. 19.10.060 Development must be consistent with coordinated area plan. 19.10.010 Purposes. This chapter establishes procedures for preparation of coordinated area plans. This chapter is intended to achieve, and shall be implemented to accomplish, the following purposes: (a) To create enhanced opportunities for building a sense of community through public involvement in planning processes which are designed not only to satisfy constitutional due process requirements, but also to provide residents, and business and property owners with early, meaningful opportunities to help shape the physical components of their neighborhoods and community. (b) To emphasize and enhance architectural qualities, public improvements, and site design by providing a graphic, visual linkage between policies and programs established in the Comprehensive Plan and specific development entitlements and public improvements. (c) To facilitate physical change by each of the following methods: (1) Accelerating and coordinating the planning process within selected areas so that private development and re-use can proceed under streamlined city review processes. (2) Encouraging rational private investment by providing specific, dependable information about the design requirements, development standards, and uses allowed on a particular site. (3) Analyzing and considering the economic environment so that the planning process works in conjunction with the marketplace, rather than independent of it. (4) Coordinating and timing public infrastructure investment to facilitate desirable private land uses. Page 1 of 5 5/29/2013file:///C:/Users/rellner/AppData/Local/Temp/MinuteTraq/paloaltocityca@paloaltocityca.I... (d) To assure Palo Alto's environmental quality by using the Comprehensive Plan Environmental Impact Report to focus environmental review on area and site-specific issues and changed circumstances. (e) To facilitate orderly and consistent implementation of the city's Comprehensive Plan and development regulations. (Ord. 4454 § 2 (part), 1997) 19.10.020 Initiation. Coordinated area plans shall be initiated as set forth in this section. (a) Initiation. Coordinated area plans shall be initiated by motion of the city council, upon its own initiative or upon request of the planning commission. Planning commission or council action may be based upon the request of any person or the director of planning and community environment. The council will consider support or opposition from residents, and property and business owners, but such support or opposition shall not compel or preclude council action. The council will further consider whether the area has been identified in the comprehensive plan for coordinated area planning. (b) Minimum Area Size. Coordinated area plans may be prepared for any area that includes more than one parcel. (c) The city may from time to time establish application forms, submittal requirements, fees, and such other requirements, administrative guidelines and regulations as will aid in the efficient preparation and implementation of coordinated area plans. (Ord. 4454 § 2 (part), 1997) 19.10.030 Procedures. Coordinated area plans shall be prepared in accordance with the procedures set forth in this section. (a) Council Goals and Policies. Council will establish goals, objectives, and a schedule for each coordinated area plan at the time the plan is initiated or shortly thereafter. The goals and objectives will be supplemental to existing Comprehensive Plan policies and programs. Council may establish goals, objectives, and a schedule during preliminary review pursuant to Chapter 18.97. (b) Community Involvement. Each coordinated area plan will be prepared pursuant to a program for city-facilitated interaction between residents, business and property owners, and other interested persons. The program shall contain, at a minimum, the following elements: (1) Working Group Formation. The city council shall appoint a seven-to-fourteen-member working group comprising residents, business and property owners, and persons representing broader community interests including, but not limited to, environmental, community design, and business perspectives. The working group shall be advisory to the staff, planning commission, and city council. The working group shall be assisted by a city-designated facilitator who may be a consultant. Page 2 of 5 5/29/2013file:///C:/Users/rellner/AppData/Local/Temp/MinuteTraq/paloaltocityca@paloaltocityca.I... (2) Working Group Tasks. The working group shall assist staff in preparing a draft coordinated area plan that contains each of the components set forth in Section 19.10.040. The working group shall, at a minimum, accomplish each of the following tasks to facilitate preparation of the coordinated area plan: (A) Initial Public Meeting. The working group shall conduct an initial public meeting to accomplish the following: (1) Establish the general parameters of the plan; (2) Conduct environmental scoping; (3) Identify any known public infra-structure needs and plans; (4) Explain any known private development proposals; (5) Introduce staff and consultants to the public; (6) Identify additional important participants; (7) Identify any other relevant constraints and opportunities. (B) Regular Public Meetings. The working group shall conduct regular meetings. The working group may also form subcommittees to meet from time to time to address particular issues or components of the coordinated area plan. All working group or subcommittee meetings shall be open to the public, with notice provided to property owners and other persons who have expressed an interest in the matter to the city. At least one regular meeting during the first half of the scheduled working group tasks will be conducted as a joint meeting with the city council. The city council may direct additional or revised goals and objectives during or following such meeting(s). (C) Community Update Forum. The working group will schedule and notice at least one community update forum designed to keep the larger community informed of progress on the plan, and to seek the ideas and advice of the larger community regarding the content of the coordinated area plan. (c) Schedule. Coordinated area plans, including review and action by the planning commission and city council, will generally be completed within twelve to fifteen months of the initial public meeting of the working group. (d) Public Hearings. The coordinated area plan shall be considered at public hearings before the planning commission and city council prior to adoption. Notice of the public hearings, initial meeting and community update forum(s) shall be given in the same manner required by law for amendments to the Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Ordinance. (e) Planning Commission and Other Board and Commission Advice and Recommendation. The planning commission shall make a recommendation to the city council upon each coordinated area plan. The director of planning and community environment may seek advice of any other city board or commission if such advice is deemed desirable. (f) Adoption. coordinated area plans shall be adopted by ordinance upon a determination of the city council that the public interest, health, safety and general welfare will be served by the plan, and Page 3 of 5 5/29/2013file:///C:/Users/rellner/AppData/Local/Temp/MinuteTraq/paloaltocityca@paloaltocityca.I... that the plan is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. The city council shall also consider the manner in which the proposed coordinated area plan will integrate with and be implemented by the capital improvement program. The city council may approve, reject or modify all or part of the coordinated area plan. (g) Amendments. An ordinance adopting a coordinated area plan may establish procedures for amendments of the plan, including but not limited to procedures authorizing minor amendments by the director of planning and community environment. (h) Fees. As part of the ordinance adopting a coordinated area plan, the city council may impose a coordinated area plan fee upon persons seeking governmental approvals which are required to be consistent with the coordinated area plan. The fees shall be established so that, in the aggregate, they fully recover but as estimated do not exceed, the cost of preparation, adoption, and administration of the coordinated area plan, including costs incurred pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act. The fee charged will be reasonably prorated to take into account the applicant's relative benefit derived from the plan. It is the intent of the city council to charge persons who benefit from coordinated area plans for the costs of developing those plans which result in savings to them by reducing the cost of documenting environmental consequences and advocating changed land uses which may be authorized. The city council may require a person who requests adoption, amendment, or repeal of a coordinated area plan to deposit with the city an amount equal to the estimated cost of preparing the plan, amendment, or repeal prior to its preparation. (Ord. 4454 § 2 (part), 1997) 19.10.040 Contents of coordinated area plans. Each coordinated area plan shall contain at least the following components. (a) The distribution, location, and extent of land uses, including, but not limited to, industrial, office, commercial, residential, public facilities and open space, within the area covered by the plan. The land uses established by the plan may be supplemental to or different from the uses permitted and specified in the city's zoning districts. For retail commercial and professional office designations, the coordinated area plan shall also include the preferred and allowable uses, their respective orientation, articulation, and floor area ratio. For housing designations, the coordinated area plan shall also include density, floor area ratio, orientation, setbacks, and graphical design prototypes. (b) The proposed distribution, location, and extent and intensity of major components of public and private transportation, sewage, water, drainage, solid waste disposal, energy, and other public improvements proposed to be located within the area covered by the plan and needed to support the land uses described in the plan. (c) A program of implementation measures including development regulations, public works projects, and financing measures necessary to carry out the plan. This program shall be specifically coordinated with the city's capital improvement program ("CIP"), and may include CIP revisions necessary to implement the plan. Page 4 of 5 5/29/2013file:///C:/Users/rellner/AppData/Local/Temp/MinuteTraq/paloaltocityca@paloaltocityca.I... (d) Standards and criteria by which development will proceed, if needed. (e) Specific architectural and site design objectives and requirements, including but not limited to the scale of streets, building orientation, placement and design of public and private parks or plazas, courtyards, arcades, porches, walls, fences, trellises, sidewalk treatments, and parking configuration. Design guidelines that are specific to the conditions of the area shall be included to address each land use type, streets, parks, and any public facilities. Specific objectives and requirements may be adopted in addition to, or in lieu of, existing zoning and design requirements. The coordinated area plan shall include preliminary elevations and information regarding facades, roofs and building materials. (f) A determination of the economic and fiscal feasibility of the plan with specific analysis of market place factors and incentives and disincentives to the desired development product, as well as a cost-benefit analysis of public infra-structure investments and projected economic benefits to the city and community. (g) Environmental review, provided that to the maximum extent feasible the Comprehensive Plan Environmental Impact Report shall be used as a master or tiered EIR in order to streamline and focus environmental review of the coordinated area plan. (Ord. 4454 § 2 (part), 1997) 19.10.050 Coordinated development permit required. A coordinated development permit shall be required before any building or structure is erected, constructed, enlarged, altered on the exterior, placed or installed on any site located within an area subject to an approved coordinated area plan. (Ord. 4454 § 2 (part), 1997) 19.10.060 Development must be consistent with coordinated area plan. No coordinated development permit shall be issued, nor shall any building or structure be erected, constructed, enlarged, altered on the exterior, placed, installed or moved within an area subject to an approved coordinated area plan except upon a finding that the resulting building or structure is consistent with the coordinated area plan. (Ord. 4454 § 2 (part), 1997) Disclaimer:This Code of Ordinances and/or any other documents that appear on this site may not reflect the most current legislation adopted by the Municipality. American Legal Publishing Corporation provides these documents for informational purposes only. These documents should not be relied upon as the definitive authority for local legislation. Additionally, the formatting and pagination of the posted documents varies from the formatting and pagination of the official copy. The official printed copy of a Code of Ordinances should be consulted prior to any action being taken. For further information regarding the official version of any of this Code of Ordinances or other documents posted on this site, please contact the Municipality directly or contact American Legal Publishing toll-free at 800-445-5588. © 2013 American Legal Publishing Corporation techsupport@amlegal.com1.800.445.5588. Page 5 of 5 5/29/2013file:///C:/Users/rellner/AppData/Local/Temp/MinuteTraq/paloaltocityca@paloaltocityca.I... Fergus Garber Young Architects 81 Encina Ave Palo Alto CA 94301 650.473.0400 fgy-arch.com IN PROGRESS: Planning Concept Development August 26, 2011View Looking East Fergus Garber Young Architects 81 Encina Ave Palo Alto CA 94301 650.473.0400 fgy-arch.com IN PROGRESS: Planning Concept Development August 26, 2011View Looking North ATTACHMENT H 1 Parks and Recreation Commission Recommendation El Camino Park Re-Design The Parks and Recreation Commission reviewed the park re-design presented to the Commission by Staff and the architect on 3/26/13. That design - and our focus - was in the area of the park bounded by El Camino on the west, Alma on the north, the railroad tracks on the east, and the end of the outfield grass beyond the softball/baseball field on the south. Summary Consistent with Commissioner comments that evening, the El Camino Park Ad Hoc Committee concluded that the newly proposed design does not meet appropriate standards for all users in a Palo Alto park. It is a design of compromise which does not work. The inclusion of a dog park and a space reserved as a possible location for the Julia Morgan building forces too many elements into too little space. The design presented simply has NO passive space for use by citizens. It is consumed by sports fields, reserved space for the Julia Morgan Building, parking lots, and a dog park compressed into such a small space that the functionality of each use is diminished. The commission recommends proceeding with the previously approved design. However, if Council does not accept this recommendation and requires a contingent land bank for the Julia Morgan building, we believe some element has to be removed or reduced in size to create a minimum amount of open space. There are only a few options: the dog park, the soccer field, the multi-use field (baseball/softball/lacrosse), or some parking. Recommendations I. The commission reiterates the following recommendations: a) We recommend against moving the Julia Morgan building to the park. In addition to negatively impacting other park uses, the addition of the building without a plan for how it will be used impedes appropriate facility planning for access and parking requirements as well as for management, operations and staffing costs. Furthermore, in order to reserve space in the park for the Julia Morgan building, the proposed redesign shifts the soccer field substantially to the north (left in the diagram) resulting in restricted space surrounding the soccer field for teams and spectators, and loss of much of the open space in the original design. b) We previously identified a number of possible locations for the Julia Morgan building. Among these, we believe the new Baylands Golf Course should be given serious consideration for its new location. The historic building would have very high visibility as the only structure in the open space of the new Baylands course and would retain its historic purpose as a public gathering space. The building would enhance - and be compatible with - the beauty of the new golf course design and replace the run-down clubhouse/restaurant building currently on the ATTACHMENT H 2 site. And, significantly compared to other possible locations, the building will have a specific and needed purpose, be self-supporting and be used extensively by Palo Alto residents and visitors. c) We recommend against locating a dog park within the main body of the park. Environmental considerations have precluded locating the dog park across Alma in the eucalyptus grove which was the original design. That was a large, self-contained area separate from all other park improvements. Now that this is not an option, forcing it into the originally designed open space compromises the one true/dedicated passive space in the approved design. Further, we believe it is best to evaluate the optimal locations for additional dog parks in the city via the upcoming Palo Alto Parks Master Plan instead of on an ad hoc basis. II. If Council nonetheless votes in favor of a contingent land bank plan for the Julia Morgan building, we recommend the following changes to the proposed re-design: a) Eliminate planned investments in artificial turf and lighting infrastructure and reduce the soccer field to mid-size in order to accommodate players, spectators, and routine constituent flow around the field. The full size field is not absolutely essential at this time although it is highly preferred. Further, the primary users of a mid-size field will be under the age of 12. Unlike the neighborhood fields typically used by that population, El Camino Park is in a more remote location and not easily accessible for young players by walking or bicycling. In addition, there is little demand by U12 teams for artificial turf or lighted fields. While the PARC supports investment in artificial turf and lighting at this site in order to allow flexibility to meet growing field demand, we cannot justify those investments without the potential for use by adults and older youth. b) Eliminate the dog park, so there is certainty of at least a bit of open space. Per the original design, place ample picnic tables and benches within the open space.