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HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 13842 City of Palo Alto (ID # 13842) City Council Staff Report Meeting Date: 2/14/2022 Report Type: Action Items City of Palo Alto Page 1 Title: Discuss and Provide Direction to Staff on: (1) Continuing the Cubberley Concept Plan; (2) the Temporary Relocation of Palo Verde and Hoover Elementary Schools to Cubberley; and (3) Potential Opportunity to Acquire Additional Land at Cubberley (6:00 - 8:00 PM) From: City Manager Lead Department: Community Services Recommendation Staff recommends that the Council provide direction to Staff on advancement of the Cubberley Concept Plan and provide feedback on the temporary relocation of Palo Verde and Hoover Elementary Schools to Cubberley and potential opportunity to acquire additional land at Cubberley. Background This report provides information on several projects related to the Cubberley Community Center. These projects include: the Cubberley Concept Plan, temporary relocation of Palo Verde and Hoover Elementary Schools to Cubberley, and potential opportunity to acquire additional land at Cubberley. The City of Palo Alto (City) began leasing the Cubberley site from the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) on January 1, 1990. The Lease provided City use of the 35-acre former Cubberley High School site, which closed as a school in 1979. The Lease included a covenant that PAUSD would not develop or sell five neighborhood elementary school sites that were closed due to declining enrollment in exchange for annual payments from the City to PAUSD. In the Lease, PAUSD also agreed to lease space at 11 elementary school sites to the City for City-operated extended day care. The original Lease was for 15 years, ending on December 31, 2004. The Lease included a provision that the City could extend the term of the Lease an additional ten years, and two additional five-year extensions could be allowed upon mutual agreement of the City and PAUSD. The City exercised its option to extend the Lease for an additional ten years, which extended the lease through 2014. There were two amendments during the original Lease term. In 1998, the Lease was amended to remove one school site and add two new school sites to the Covenant Not City of Palo Alto Page 2 to Develop. In 2002, the City and the District entered into a Lease Amendment and Land Exchange Agreement whereby the City conveyed to the District the Terman site and in exchange received 8 acres of the Cubberley site (Cubberley Conveyance Property). As a result, the amount of the Cubberley site leased to the City was reduced to 27 acres. A third amendment to the Lease expired on December 31, 2019. In this amendment, the Covenant Not to Develop was eliminated from the Lease and instead a requirement was added that the City establish a restricted Property Infrastructure Fund for repairing, renovating, or improving the leased portion of Cubberley and the Cubberley Conveyance Property. The Lease requires that the City deposit $1,864,248 into the fund annually. Also, the third amendment includes a condition that the City and District jointly develop a master plan for the Cubberley site by December 31, 2019, the termination date of the Lease. Due to the negative impacts to the City’s budget from the events surrounding COVID-19, a new lease for Cubberley was negotiated to reduce the City’s use of the premises and the corresponding cost. The lease was approved by Council on June 23, 2020. To address the lease requirement that a master plan be developed for the Cubberley site, funding in the amount of $771,692 for the Cubberley Concept Plan was included in Capital Improvement Project CB-16001 (Cubberley Community Center Master Plan). The City and PAUSD shared the cost for the Cubberley Master Plan and the CEQA consultant. The City managed two Professional Service Agreements with consultants to assist in the effort. A Consultant contract for development of the Concept Plan was approved with a not to exceed amount of $565,972, and a Consultant contract and amendment for development of the CEQA document was approved with a not to exceed amount of $170,497. The City’s portion for the CEQA consultant exceeded that of PAUSD’s portion due to a term in the Cost Share Agreement that the total contract amount not to exceed $100,000. The City operated the entire 35-acre site as the Cubberley Community Center until the leased area was reduced in 2020. The City continues to provide below market space to organizations and artists who then offer programs and services to the community in the facilities owned by the City and in the gym, Pavilion, theatre and athletic fields, which are owned by PAUSD. Space is either leased to long term tenants and artists, or rented to other organizations (classrooms, a theatre, gyms and fields) on an hourly basis. Discussion Cubberley Concept Plan Recognizing that the Cubberley buildings are coming to the end of their useful life, the City of Palo Alto and Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) jointly developed a concept plan for future development of the Cubberley Community Center site, with collaborative participation from the community. The community co-design effort began in October 2018 and included four iterative community meetings in which community members worked together to identify needs, propose opportunities, discuss options, and guide the master planning process towards solutions for the Palo Alto community. City of Palo Alto Page 3 At each meeting, participants engaged in interactive activities designed to gather pertinent information and perspectives on key project decisions. All project information and deliverables, including meeting materials and summaries are available on the project website at https://www.pausd.org/about-us/committees-task-forces/cubberley- master-plan. The Cubberley Concept Plan was completed in November 2019 and the final step is to complete the environmental assessment as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). In June 2019, Rincon Consultants was hired to complete the CEQA review and documentation. During the review, the law changed with respect to how traffic impacts are to be assessed and in June, 2021 Council approved a contract amendment with Rincon to re-assess traffic impacts using the new requirement of determining vehicle miles traveled (VMT). The CEQA review is not complete and limited staff resources have resulted in further delays. A decision should be made whether to continue moving forward and completing the CEQA document and ultimately, adopting the Concept Plan considering that much of what was identified during the co-design process is no longer applicable with respect to future activities on PAUSD’s portion of Cubberley. PAUSD has shifted its priorities to focus on a future alternative high school and will not be pursuing teacher housing or relocation of PAUSD Administrative Offices. Since many of the spaces planned are identified as “shared use spaces” in the Concept Plan, this would likely impact plans for development of the City’s portion of Cubberley. Staff is requesting feedback and direction from Council on whether to continue this effort. Temporary relocation of Palo Verde and Hoover Elementary Schools In the next three academic school years (2022-23, 2023-34, and 2024-25) significant school construction projects will occur at two Elementary Schools which will require a relocation of student education from the Palo Verde School in 2022-23 and the Hoover Elementary School in 2023-24 and 2024-25 to Cubberley grounds, specifically the Greendell School campus. The relocation will not impact City-owned or leased sections of Cubberley, but students, staff and their families will utilize common areas of Cubberley as defined in the lease agreement between the City of Palo Alto and PAUSD. The lease agreement defines common areas as including, but not limited to parking, walkways, restrooms, and other portions of the Property which are non-exclusive. No adjustments to the lease will be made in association with the relocation. Since October 2021, City of Palo Alto staff have been actively engaging with PAUSD staff to address logistical questions in preparation for the relocation. Per the School District, Palo Alto Unified has also engaged in 23 school community, general community, and public Board meetings thus far and continues to meet with different constituent groups. The School District has also met with various Palo Alto staff departments over half a dozen times, and Palo Alto City staff continue to collaborate with the School District. City of Palo Alto Page 4 Beginning at the start of the 2022-23 School Year in August 2022, students from Palo Verde Elementary will occupy the Greendell School located adjacent to the Cubberley Community Center. The existing Greendell structures will house classrooms for students in Grades K-3 and portable structures located in the Greendell parking lot will house classrooms for students in grades 4-5. PAUSD will install technology upgrades in all the temporary classrooms at Greendell this spring including large touch panel displays and voice uplift systems (microphones and speakers) for every classroom. The plans for the temporary upper campus were submitted to the Division of State Architect (DSA) and will be approved soon. The portables will contain six classrooms for 4th and 5th grade students, a bathroom building, and two additional buildings with one for administrative needs and the other for music/ art. PAUSD will also hire a logistics company to manage the teacher/ campus move in summer 2022. Attachment A depicts the locations of existing Greendell structures and portables that will be installed. The majority of the Greendell temp portables will come from the Hoover site. Teachers were already moved out of those portables over winter break, and the portables will be moved to Greendell during spring break. In addition to the portable placement, adjacent parking lot areas will be reconstructed to provide safe pedestrian parking and access. The school District is also working with the City of Palo Alto Utilities to install a new electrical service at the site to serve the portable village. The Adult Education program currently located at the Greendell School will re-locate to the Cubberley I building, which is owned by PAUSD. In 2022-23 afterschool programs for Palo Verde students will utilize one or more PAUSD rooms in Cubberley; the exact locations of the afterschool programs are currently being determined in coordination with the Palo Alto Fire Department and the non-profit afterschool providers. PAUSD has met with the Palo Alto Fire Department to discuss potential fire alarm and signage needs for the temporary before and after school care programs. Traffic circulation patterns and student safety is a paramount concern for the redesign. As such, PAUSD hired Transportation consultant Fehr and Peers. The City has worked with Fehr and Peers on the Waverley bike path and the Cubberley Community Center Concept Plan. PAUSD has met with City Transportation staff multiple times and presented and sought feedback at the October, November, December and January City School Traffic Safety Committee Meetings and with the City’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee. Many conceptual iterations centered on exploring feedback concerns and suggestions from previous meetings. PAUSD is continuing to work on refining plans and scenarios for bike/ pedestrian/ car parking and drop off at the site. Potential fire lane and drop off scenarios are being discussed with the Palo Alto Fire Department. PAUSD is planning a bike audit of the route from Palo Verde to Greendell to explore additional mitigation measures that may be necessary along the city streets so that PAUSD can coordinate and get approval from the Office of Transportation to implement City of Palo Alto Page 5 further improvements. PAUSD is also a planning a bike rodeo in the spring to support the 4th grade students that missed the traditional bike safety training last year due to COVID and will hold multiple rolling bike to school trainings in the fall to teach children safety, specifically along the path the Greendell campus. The City of Palo Alto will continue to collaborate closely with PAUSD on the relocation preparation through regular emails with project updates to all Departments involved in the relocation, as well as project-specific meetings with Transportation, Fire, Police, and Community Services Department. Land acquisition opportunity At PAUSD’s October 19, 2021 Board of Education meeting, a discussion of Cubberley included a staff recommendation that 20 acres of the 27 acre site owned by PAUSD be preserved for an innovative alternative high school for 1,000 students if enrollment grows at an unknown point in the future (staff presentation and Board discussion can be viewed here). The recommendation recognized that the City may have an interest in the remaining seven acres by including this statement, “Work with City for ways to increase their ownership of the Cubberley site in a fiscally responsible way.” This could potentially be acquired through a land swap of another City-owned property or through a land purchase. While the Board of Education did not take an action on this item, the Board expressed general support for the staff recommendation. Neither a formal proposal nor a timeline have been discussed, but it is anticipated that significant staff resources would be needed to advance this forward. If a land swap were preferred, surplus land would need to be identified. Through initial discussion of a land swap involving the Ventura Community Center property, it is clear that such a transaction would be complex and involve multiple community interests. Timeline Cubberley Concept Plan A draft CEQA document was expected to be completed by the end of the calendar year 2021, however; due to limited staff resources the document is not complete. If Council chooses to finalize the CEQA document, it would likely be completed by Fall 2022. Temporary relocation of Palo Verde and Hoover Elementary Schools Palo Verde will move to Cubberley in Summer of 2022 for the 2022-2023 academic year. Hoover Elementary School will occupy the Cubberley grounds during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years. PAUSD plans to move most of the portables to Greendell during PAUSD Spring Break. Two remaining portables will move in June after school finishes because they are coming from another site and are occupied until the school year ends. PAUSD is currently working out the sequence of events for the prep work in the existing Greendell structure and hopes to start that in March. The physical move of teachers will happen over the summer. City of Palo Alto Page 6 Resource Impact Cubberley Concept Plan There are adequate funds remaining in the contract budget to complete the CEQA study. Temporary relocation of Palo Verde and Hoover Elementary Schools Coordination with PAUSD on the relocation has resulted in a use of City staff resources from multiple departments. Because the relocation will not impact City owned or leased sections of Cubberley, no adjustments to the amount paid by the City to PAUSD as identified in the lease agreement will be made in association with the relocation. Policy Implications Cubberley Concept Plan If Council chooses not to complete the CEQA document, the Concept Plan could not be formally adopted. Stakeholder Engagement Cubberley Concept Plan Significant community engagement was part of the Cubberley Co-design process. A public comment period is part of the CEQA process. Temporary relocation of Palo Verde and Hoover Elementary Schools As discussed above, PAUSD continues to engage with City staff on the logistics of the campus moves. Per the School District, they have also engaged the school community, general community, and presented to the Board of Education. Environmental Review As discussed above, the Cubberley Concept Plan is currently undergoing CEQA review. Should environmental review be required under CEQA for any aspect of the temporary school relocations or land acquisition, staff will return to Council as necessary. Attachments: • Greendell Temp Campus Site map SCALE: 10' 20' 40' 60' 100' DYH S DYH S OPEN AREA FOR TABLES STORAGE CONTAINER 15'-0" 33'- 0 " 15'-0" 33'-0 " 34'-4" 38'-0" 38'-0" 38'-0" 38'-0" 20'-0" 20'-0" 2 7 ' - 0 " 27'-0" (E) CHOKE POINT 38' WIDE, 2-WAY FIRE ENGINE TURN RADIUS (E) CHOKE POINT 1 2 3 4 5 6IN F A N T S ADMIN 6A 7 8 9 10 FIRE HOSE PULL 312'-0" 11(K) 36 ' - 0 " P1 12(K) 13(K)14(1) P2 (1) P9 (3) P8 (3) P7 (3) P6 (2) P5 (2) P4 (2) P3 (1) P10LIBOFFICE READING SPEC. TO I L E T S 27 RE-ALIGNED DRIVE AISLE/PARKING GR E E N D E L L T E M P C A M P U S LEGEND ................. EXISTING, DEDICATED USE ................. (N) TEMPORARY CAMPUS USE ................. DRIVE LANE 17 18 28 29 30 31 32 BREAK RM. TOILET OFFICE PSYCH 18 ................. HOOVER/PALO VERDE PORTABLE # P11P12 P19(4) P16(4) P14ART P13MUS P15(4) P17(5) P18(5) P20(5)