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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-10-29 Planning & Transportation Commission Verbatim Minutes_______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Planning & Transportation Commission 1 Verbatim Minutes: October 29, 2025 2 Council Chambers & Virtual 3 6:00 PM 4 5 Call to Order / Roll Call 6 6:00 pm 7 8 Chair Akin: Good evening, everyone. I call to order the October 29, 2025, meeting of the 9 Planning and Transportation Commission. 10 11 Roll Call 12 13 Chair Akin: Mr. Tavera, would you call the roll? 14 15 Administrative Associate Samuel Tavera: Yes. Chair Akin? 16 17 Chair Akin: Here. 18 19 Samuel Tavera: Vice-Chair Chang? 20 21 Vice-Chair Chang: Here. 22 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Hechtman? 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Here 4 5 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner James? 6 7 Commissioner James: Here. 8 9 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Ji? 10 11 Commissioner Ji: Here. 12 13 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Peterson? 14 15 Commissioner Peterson: Here. 16 17 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Templeton? 18 19 Commissioner Templeton: Here. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Samuel Tavera: For the record, we have quorum. 2 3 Chair Akin: Thank you. 4 5 Agenda Changes, Additions, and Deletions 6 The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 7 8 Chair Akin: Assistant Director Armer, do we have any agenda changes, additions, or deletions 9 tonight? 10 11 Assistant Director Jennifer Armer: No changes. 12 13 Chair Akin: Very good. 14 15 Oral Communications 16 Members of the public may speak to any item NOT on the agenda. Three (3) minutes per speaker.1,2 17 18 Chair Akin: Mr. Tavera, do we have any public comment for items that are not on the agenda? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Samuel Tavera: Yes. Through the Chair, we do have one request to speak at the moment. I am 1 going to invite Bob L. to the mic. 2 3 Bob Lenox: Thank you, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. Good evening. Forgive me for reading. I’m 4 not a great public speaker. But my name is Bob Lenox and I’m the president of the Palo Alto 5 Airport Association. It’s recently come to our attention that there is a proposal for housing east 6 of 101 near Geng Road. We respect the City’s push for more housing but this location has issues 7 due to its proximity to the airport which I’d like to bring to your attention. I know that planning 8 is still in the early phases and we recognize this item is not on your agenda this evening but 9 apparently it will be in the near future. First, this development lies within the Airport Influence 10 Area and as such, I understand there is a legal requirement for the Santa Clara County Airport 11 Land Use Commission to review the plans. Any building within the Airport Influence Area 12 requires the county’s airport land use – comprehensive land use plan to be considered for 13 compliance. Secondly, while this would be the first residential construction in this otherwise 14 commercial area, it is planned directly under the airport traffic area which is this red line right 15 here. This development is going to be right in this area and there’s already traffic plan for there 16 and it’s a safety issue. This pattern’s been optimized for safety while minimizing noise impact 17 on the existing residential areas. We feel it would be a grave disservice to future residents if 18 they were not clearly informed of the aircraft noise footprint before purchasing. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Harmonious community relations with neighbors and the City are cultivated when expectations 1 are set and met, not discovered and disappointment would follow. We look forward to 2 collaborating with the commissions and the City Council to create the best combined outcome 3 for both resident and airport communities. Thank you. 4 5 Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Lenox. 6 7 Samuel Tavera: And through the Chair, I have received no other public comment cards and no 8 requests to speak on general public comment. 9 10 Chair Akin: Very good. Thank you. 11 12 City Official Reports 13 1. Director’s Report, Meeting Schedule, and Assignments 14 15 Chair Akin: All right. Then it’s time to move on to city official reports. We’ll start with you, Ms. 16 Armer. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Yes. Thank you. Just briefly we will jump into the standard report for upcoming 19 meetings. Next page? As we are getting to the end of the year, we have one meeting scheduled 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. for November. At this time, we have 3 items scheduled for November 12: the Annual 1 Comprehensive Plan Progress Report, the Palo Alto Link Update, and the consideration of the 2 Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan for recommendation to Council. November 26, the 3 regular meeting is canceled. Happy Thanksgiving. On the next slide, couple of things of note 4 from the Council’s agendas. Just passed on October 20, the tentative map recommended by 5 PTC to Council was approved on Consent Calendar. And next month before your meeting on the 6 12th, one of the meetings of City Council that includes items of interest, the Lighting Ordinance 7 Update and 660 University will be going on November 10. That concludes my presentation. We 8 have Senior Transportation Planner Ozzy Arce here to give the update for Transportation. 9 10 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 20:04]. 11 12 Senior Transportation Planner Ozzy Arce: Thank you, Chair. Hello, everyone. My name is Ozzy 13 Arce, Senior Transportation Planner with the Office of Transportation. I will be stepping in in 14 this role going forward and providing the OOT updates, so looking forward to engaging with 15 PTC and serving as a resource. Next slide, please. Just kicking it right off – you should have 16 received an email about this – the City did release the draft Bike and Ped Plan. Just a reminder, 17 this is an update to the 2012 Bike and Ped Plan. You’ve been involved in this process for the last 18 couple years, and looking forward to presenting the draft plan at your next meeting on 19 November 12. And we wanted to alert you all of its release so you have ample time to review 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. because coming prepared with your review and questions will ensure a productive discussion. 1 Next slide, please. Some good news, and you might have heard already, but there was a ribbon 2 cutting for the Caltrans Rehabilitation Project that included the bikeway. Caltrans was there, 3 City staff was there present, as well as regional representatives. It was nice to do the ribbon-4 cutting ceremony and really celebrate the outcome of that process. If you haven’t ridden it, go 5 take a ride. I highly recommend it. Next slide, please. Another year of successful bike rodeos at 6 local schools. This is part of our Safe Routes to School team and this is a flagship program, as 7 you know, for the City. We led 12 bike rodeos this year at all 3rd grades – for all 3rd grade 8 students at each elementary school at Palo Alto Unified. 9 10 Approximately 700 students were served over the 60-minute safety course. We also gave away 11 about 24 refurbished bikes to students in need and dozens and dozens of helmets. Just a special 12 shout-out to the over 230 parent volunteers to help us put these events together as well as 13 collaborative partners like PAUSD, the police department, Stanford’s Public Safety Department, 14 Silicon Valley Bicycle Exchange, and many others. Next slide, please. Bike Palo Alto returned 15 again this year and with a strong showing of over 600 participants, and volunteers provided 16 free helmets, helmet fittings, free bike repairs, suggestions for best bike routes, and 17 information on Safe Routes to School Program. You see some staff there with some local folks 18 and people from our Safe Routes to School partnerships and community members doing the 19 bike repair. Next slide, please. More recently, just last week, the Urban Land Institute was in 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Palo Alto specifically focused looking at the Palo Alto Transit Center, looking at some near-term 1 and long-term recommendations. They had a panel of experts from across the nation looking at 2 the site. Some recommendations that were addressed included addressing SB 79 by upzoning 3 the area and other sides of the track between University Ave. and El Camino in addition to the 4 area plan on the Stanford site next to the shopping mall, so some upzoning. I’m sure the PTC 5 will be part of those conversations. Design and construct the Quarry Road connection, relocate 6 the MacArthur Building to use the site, road dye on University Avenue, and to pedestrianize 7 some of those loops that we see heading into the station, among many other 8 recommendations. And we’re going to take some time to think about if and how we can build 9 that into some of our CIP or other programs. Next slide, please. 10 11 Just a quick correction on the title here. It should be Alma Street/Charleston Road Safety 12 Improvements. I was typing too quick. But just wanted to highlight that there is a project to 13 bring some improvements to this area. This project is separate and independent from the 14 ongoing rail grade separation conversations so just wanted to distinguish those two. This is in 15 cooperation with Caltrans and the Peninsula Joint Powers Board as well as the City, so think of 16 design elements that could include insulation of a pre-signal, street lighting, roadway 17 resurfacing, utility relocation, signage, and striping all part of the conversation. There was a 18 community meeting last night at Mitchell Park and there were about 10 attendees with a lot of 19 interest and really insightful comments. There was support for the safety improvements by the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. City in addition to Caltrain so we should see some movement there. Next slide. And in closing, 1 and I think one of your agenda items today will be a discussion around – really an introduction 2 around the vision and the idea around a Grand Boulevard Initiative so just wanted to note that 3 Cassie Halls, the Major Corridors Manager of SamTrans, is joining us tonight and she’s a project 4 manager for the GBI initiative and they will be presenting a progress update on the GBI and 5 sharing the vision and goals to get your feedback. Just wanted to provide those updates. Thank 6 you. 7 8 Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Arce. Commissioners, questions for Ms. Armer or Mr. Arce? I have 9 Commissioner Templeton, Commissioner Hechtman, and then Commissioner Ji. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. I just wanted to say thank you to Mr. Arce for a thorough and 12 very informative update. I am delighted and I know they won’t all be like that but really 13 appreciate you sharing those things with us. And that’s exactly the kind of content we’re 14 looking for, so thank you. 15 16 Chair Akin: Commissioner Hechtman? 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Hechtman: In the time I’ve been on the Commission, it’s very rare that a 1 representative from the Transportation Department has come to deliver the report in person, 2 so I’m really excited to see you here tonight and I hope going forward you make a habit of it. 3 4 Chair Akin: Thank you. Commissioner Ji? 5 6 Commissioner Ji: Yeah. Just want to echo what my other fellow Commissioners said and also, 7 personally really enjoyed the bike rodeo because I remember doing that as a child. Just want to 8 say that was a lovely memory. I also had a question for Ms. Armer. I’ve been following the 9 items going to Council. I didn’t notice that the retail nodes have gone. Do you mind – did I miss 10 that? 11 12 Jennifer Armer: No, you did not miss that. There has been a fair amount of movement in our 13 upcoming agendas for Council as we’ve been juggling around all of the different priorities that 14 they are working on. And so that staff report is ready to go but there’s been some discussion as 15 to whether it should go to the Retail Committee before going to Council. And so the latest, 16 which I didn’t include in my presentation because we’ll see whether we do maintain this plan, 17 but the latest is to go to the Retail Committee in December and then bring it to Council on 18 Consent after that. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: Okay. Thank you. Just wanted to clarify that because we also talking about 1 more retail today. 2 3 Chair Akin: Vice-Chair Chang? 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: Also echo everybody else. Thank you for coming, Mr. Arce. Appreciate the 6 report. And a question for Ms. Armer. When you said the lighting ordinance, is that the dark 7 skies ordinance? 8 9 Jennifer Armer: Yes. 10 11 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. 12 13 Jennifer Armer: Correct. 14 15 Vice-Chair Chang: Thank you. 16 17 Chair Akin: Any further comments or questions? Thank you both. It’s good to have you here, 18 Mr. Arce, and we’ll look forward to seeing you in future meetings. All right. If we are done with 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. questions of staff, then I believe we’re ready for Item #2, our study session on the Grand 1 Boulevard Initiative. 2 3 Study Session 4 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 5 6 2. SamTrans Grand Boulevard Initiative: Fall 2025 Progress Update. CEQA Status: Not a 7 Project 8 9 Major Corridors Manager Cassie Halls: Hello, everyone. My name is Cassie Halls. I am the 10 manager of major corridors at SamTrans. Great to join you all tonight. And I’ll try to keep this 11 brief. And thank you also, Ozzy, for the great introduction. So as you can see on the slide here, 12 we are providing an overview of the Grand Boulevard Initiative today which is a multiagency 13 partnership to implement transportation improvements on El Camino and to expedite 14 improvements across the whole San Mateo County segment of El Camino. However, we are 15 also including Palo Alto due to a couple factors, just to the proximity of Menlo Park and then 16 also because of Route ECR, which is our bread-and-butter transit service, goes all the way to the 17 Palo Alto Transit Center so we wanted to include Palo Alto. However, we wanted to focus on 18 San Mateo County given our jurisdictional focus at SamTrans. I’m just going to be providing an 19 overview of our efforts and also an introduction to our planning study which we are going to be 20 completing at the end of this calendar year. And we’re asking for your input on a couple pieces 21 of the action plan so we’ll have a couple discussion questions at the end. Next slide? Oh, I’ll 22 mention that Jason Kim is on the Zoom. He is the transit capital planning manager at VTA. 23 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. We’re closely coordinating with VTA so if you have any VTA-specific questions, he’s also 1 available. Next slide? 2 3 Okay. What is the Grand Boulevard Initiative? This is a partnership between SamTrans; 4 jurisdictions along El Camino; transportation-focused public agencies including some CTA and 5 Caltrans, as well as MTC, C/CAG, and SamTrans; and then advocate and business groups in San 6 Mateo County. And I’ll just mention that Palo Alto’s been a very active member as well as 7 Stanford have attended multiple meetings. SamTrans is working with these partners to lead 8 workshops with staff. We’ve done about a year and a half of workshops to focus on how do we 9 build momentum around transforming transportation on El Camino. This group is called the GBI 10 Task Force and we’re working to advance a unified vision focusing on mobility and safety on 11 this critical north-south corridor that we understand serves as both the Main Street of a lot of 12 local communities as well as providing this important regional connection. Next slide? This is 13 just a little bit of why are we doing this? If any of you ever drive on El Camino or bike or walk or 14 take public transit, you probably understand this already. We believe that it’s time to 15 modernize El Camino Real. I recently learned from Caltrans it was actually the first highway. 16 That’s the basis. It was designed to move autos quickly and is now kind of a hodgepodge of 17 being both a Main Street as well as trying to be this high-speed auto experience so we think 18 that it needs to be transformed to address these mobility and safety needs. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And there are a lot of co-benefits. Even though we’re trying to hyperfocus on mobility and 1 safety, we think that there are a lot of co-benefits including placemaking, economic vitality, 2 providing more sustainability elements, and infrastructure to support future development. As 3 we know, there is a lot more housing coming to El Camino. Next slide? This is just a – provides 4 some visuals of who is involved in our GBI Working Group and Task Force. We have a task force 5 that includes all the city and agency staff, advocacy groups, business groups. And we also have 6 a focus working group of just the city and agency staff that is focused on implementation. Next 7 slide? This is a overview of all the agency partners and roles. One of the exciting things about 8 GBI is due to the jurisdictional structure, El Camino projects often are – maybe different folks 9 are leading different projects and they’re not under one roof so now we are designing El 10 Camino – or designing GBI to focus on how we can all collaborate and speak with one voice so 11 that it’s easier for cities to understand what is the policy and plan for El Camino and also to 12 provide a unified approach for all of this. And I’ll also mention that Caltrans as well as SMCTA 13 have been – and the others have been excellent partners and MTC and the SMCTA are 14 providing funding for this plan along with SamTrans dollars. Next slide? 15 16 And then lastly – apologies that Palo Alto is in gray here. That’s not a personal offense to you 17 all. This is – we’ve done these road shows mainly in San Mateo County so you all are the 18 exception. But we’re coordinating across 9 different projects and studies underway so we’re 19 also coordinating with Quarry Road and we’re working with VTA. However, the ones in San 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Mateo County are listed here. The main takeaway is that there’s a lot of work happening on El 1 Camino and all the cities are kind of gearing up to make changes. And what our intent is with 2 GBI is to streamline the efforts that cities have to do in order to move these projects forward. 3 Next slide? Okay. I’m going to take a couple slides to talk about our planning study which is 4 called the GBI Action Plan. If any of you know about the Caltrans process, this is a requirement 5 that Caltrans asked of us. That’s the feasibility study for this effort. This is intended to refine 6 design concepts prior to starting the next phase of the Caltrans process. And it’s important to 7 note that normally when cities try to make improvements on El Camino they have to go 8 through the Caltrans process on their own. The process is very extensive, requires a lot of traffic 9 studies, multimillion-dollar planning efforts, etc. But what we’re doing is we are proposing a 10 coordinated approach for all of San Mateo County plus a portion of Palo Alto up to Quarry Road 11 to go through one Caltrans process together given that there are pretty similar conditions 12 across the county. 13 14 We’re leading this coordinated process. SamTrans is sponsoring the first phase with the TA and 15 then we will be identifying roles and responsibilities moving forward from there. However, we 16 see that there’s a lot of benefit in having this coordinated approach so it’s less of a burden for 17 cities to go through this process. Next slide, please? The GBI Action Plan is essentially just 18 setting our vision before we start this whole approach together. And so the difficult thing is we 19 have – just in San Mateo County alone, we have 14 jurisdictions so we’re trying to work with all 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. these jurisdictions to establish a cohesive vision. So it may look different for each city in terms 1 of what their final design is. However, we want similar themes across the county and we also 2 want to make sure that any facilities that we put in are continuous. For example, you all have 3 some great new bike lanes on El Camino in Palo Alto. Right now in Menlo Park, it just basically 4 ends so we want to figure out ways to make sure that all of these jurisdictions are working 5 together. Next slide? This is just a slide showing how we’re doing engagement for the GBI 6 Action Plan. We’re presenting to all the councils right now. We also have a steering committee 7 of all the public agencies that I mentioned and we are going to be seeking SamTrans and TA 8 Board adoption at the end of the year. Next slide? 9 10 This is our corridor-wide vision that El Camino Real is a safe and vibrant street where people of 11 all ages and abilities travel comfortably. We’re not trying to do some gold-plated design. We’re 12 not trying to do the perfect thing. We’re trying to get along a improved vision for how we can 13 prioritize safety and mobility on El Camino. Next slide? When we have worked at lot with cities 14 along El Camino as well as the advocacy and business groups, we ask them from the beginning 15 to figure out what are the problems on El Camino? We know there are a ton of problems but 16 how do we prioritize them? How do we make sure that we’re addressing the things that matter 17 the most? And so both in the data that we gathered as well as from all of the cities and other 18 folks involved in GBI, we saw safety as a top issue. And when you look across the Bay area, El 19 Camino Real is the most dangerous corridor. And we have a unusually high rate of fatal or 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. serious-injury crashes, particularly from people walking and biking, so this is one of our top 1 problems that we’re working to address. And our goal for this is to adopt a safety-first mindset 2 to eliminate fatal and serious-injury crashes. We also saw all of the cities coalesce around 3 mobility. The general feedback was that El Camino Real has this highway-like design that is 4 incongruous with the local communities and discourages walking, biking, and transit use so we 5 want to transform El Camino Real into a complete street that works for all users. 6 7 And then lastly, we hear that it’s very challenging to develop, implement, and fund projects on 8 El Camino so we’re creating a new framework for change aligning vision, policy, and funding, as 9 I described previously. Next slide? This is just the menu of options that we’re proposing in the 10 Action Plan. This doesn’t mean that these are the things that each city is going to do but this is 11 the types of improvements that we’ll be advancing through the Caltrans process. These include 12 elements such as traffic calming; elements to add more inviting active transportation facilities 13 such as crosswalk improvements, wider sidewalks; and then transit improvements such as bus 14 lanes, bus stop enhancements, and access improvements. Next slide? GBI builds on plans and 15 projects in Palo Alto. We wanted to make sure we’re not just creating another plan, that we’re 16 synthesizing all the work that all of the local jurisdictions have done. A few to note are the El 17 Camino Real Master Planning Study which helped us – for the Palo Alto section was helpful in 18 figuring out how we’re going to include this and how we make sure our vision aligns with this 19 and vice versa as well as we’re closely coordinating with Quarry Road as well. Next slide? Okay. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. I’m just going to prompt a couple – next slide – couple questions. Oh. Actually – sorry. This is a 1 good slide to talk about. It’s important to note from the onset with this project that this is going 2 to be very expensive and it’s going to take a long time. Which is never what people want to 3 hear but I think we should level set the expectations on El Camino. 4 5 This is 22 miles of streetscape redesign. It’s going to be one of the largest capital projects we’ve 6 completed in San Mateo County. And we estimate 750 million to a billion dollars to complete 7 this effort. We’re currently at the blue on the left so we’re in the conceptual planning phase. I 8 mentioned the GBI Action Plan. And then we’ll be starting the Project Initiation Document 9 which is the Caltrans way of saying the conceptual planning work. And then moving into design 10 and construction. We think this will likely take 6 to 10 years to realize all the improvements we 11 want to make. This doesn’t mean that we have to wait 6 to 10 years to make improvements. 12 There are – after we complete the GBI Action Plan, that will help us identify some of the 13 improvements we want to – the low-hanging fruit improvements that we want to move 14 forward to those other implementation processes that are a bit quicker for spot improvements. 15 But this is – our fully redesigned corridor is going to take a fair amount of time. However, 16 there’s a lot of economies of scale doing it as a coordinated effort by having all of these 15 17 jurisdictions, including Palo Alto, involved in this coordinated process. We’re spending 2½ 18 million for the first – the PAED, which is listed here, where if a city went alone, they would 19 often spend $2M so there’s a lot of benefit for cities to be involved in this. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 And also, another note. We’ve had SMCTA also at many of these council presentations. They 2 were unable to come tonight. But they are really bringing all the forces in to try to get this 3 funded. There are a lot of funding sources that they, us, and MTC can access that cities can’t 4 access and this is more competitive for discretionary funding given that it’s a corridor-wide 5 project. Next slide? I hope I didn’t go over time but I’m happy to answer general questions. And 6 then we also have some discussion questions listed here and a cheat sheet at the bottom of the 7 goals that I’m asking about. I’m curious to hear what goals do you have for the corridor, how 8 we can best work together to advance this vision, and then are you supportive of the process as 9 we described it? Thank you so much. 10 11 Chair Akin: Thank you, Ms. Halls. We will be able to entertain some clarifying questions here in 12 just a moment but Mr. Tavera, we have an iPad technical problem up here. Let’s take a quick 13 look at that and then I think we can begin clarifying questions. Commissioner Ji – I’m sorry – 14 James? Sorry. I’m misreading this. This is my problem, not yours. Vice-Chair Chang? 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: Just a quick question. I know that you’ve involved all the cities and have also 17 involved Palo Alto obviously. What about Stanford? Because it’s not a city but kind of a mini 18 city. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Cassie Halls: That’s a great question. They’re involved in our – I mentioned the task force and 1 the working group. They’re involved in our task force. We have advocates, we have groups like 2 Stanford, we have business groups, SAMCEDA, other types of folks. That’s kind of our broader 3 group. They are – we engage them twice a year and then we have a – in-between that, we have 4 a quarterly meeting with all of the working group members, so all the cities and agency staff. 5 Stanford’s been involved. Yeah. Thank you. 6 7 Chair Akin: Anything else, Vice-Chair? 8 9 Female: [Inaudible 43:56] progress. 10 11 Chair Akin: Commissioner Peterson? 12 13 Commissioner Peterson: Yes. Thank you, Chair. The question I have is large number of agencies. 14 And the last time I checked, agencies don’t always share money so trying to create a 15 patchwork. I think the vision is fascinating and I think with communication, obviously, and a 16 good team, it can – this is probably the way of the future. How do you envision trying to 17 coordinate or allow – I think [inaudible 44:29] talk about more you’re creating the platform to 18 allow people to coordinate and to put those projects together so that they make a coherent 19 thing. Because what you’re describing right now is it’s basically like a patchwork quilt made of 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. different patches all the way through. It looks great but still it’s not quite a planned corridor, 1 which is probably why it has the high injury rates. What’s your vision for trying to create that 2 pipeline of funding that everybody’s kind of sharing? And then going forward – and then the 3 last piece of that is contractors. Do you have contractors that are participating? Because that’s 4 difficult too because you’re not necessarily guaranteeing them work. But it’s hard to think all 5 this through without the end players too. 6 7 Cassie Halls: In terms of contractors, you mean consultants? Is that what you’re referring to 8 or...? 9 10 Commissioner Peterson: I was thinking – I used to work at Granite Construction so I’d be like... 11 12 Cassie Halls: Okay. 13 14 Commissioner Peterson: ...bring Granite Construction in and have them be like – what does this 15 look like from that perspective? 16 17 Cassie Halls: Those are great questions. I would say a lot of this is still being defined in terms of 18 the actual implementation. However, what we have proposed – if you actually go back one 19 slide? To get this project all the way through construction, it’s going to cost – the construction 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. itself is going to cost something like 750 million. The main source of funds that we’re 1 anticipating being able to access is the Highway Call for Projects that SMCTA has and so they 2 can fund up to 50 percent of these construction dollars – or of the total project costs. But they 3 can’t do it in one year. They have to – we have to phase it across multiple years and it’s every 2 4 years is the Highway Call for Projects. Our idea right now is that we are going to get everyone 5 through this PAED process which is we’re basically trying to create like a big tent, make sure 6 everyone has the bare minimum in order to be involved in this process. We’ve done a lot of 7 technical assistance with cities just to make sure that everyone is able to be a part of this 8 process in the county. And then from there, once we get into design – right now, we basically 9 don’t need to decide on our preferred alternative until 2027 when we start the design phase, 10 the PA&ED that’s listed here. Right now, we’re working with all the cities, making sure they 11 have either local plans or we provide them technical assistance to get them to a point where 12 they have alternatives, and then we decide what the preferred is in 2027. 13 14 And then around that time also, we need to have difficult conversations across jurisdictions 15 because there are going to be instances where one city wants to do one thing and another city 16 wants to do another and they’re just not congruous. Part of the effort of creating this regional 17 framework is we’re trying to make sure everyone agrees on some general themes that they 18 want to see. But then from there, we are going to have to do some negotiations, conversations 19 with individual cities, and also making sure that we’re providing transition zones, making sure 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. that design is continuous. We may not have one – we’re definitely not going to have one facility 1 up and down the whole 22 miles. We may have like bike lanes for 5 to 6 miles. We may have 2 transit lanes in the spots where we know that there is the most congestion for transit. We’ve 3 studied that. We understand where those pinch points are. We know what our priorities are. 4 One of the goals of the GBI Action Plan is for El Camino to be a backbone bicycle network. 5 However, that doesn’t mean that El Camino has to be that facility. It could be parallel routes 6 that are included in the corridor. There’s going to be a lot of – we’re kind of in the easy fun part 7 right now where everyone’s happy, we love the vision. And over the next couple years we’re 8 going to start having fights. But I think really – SamTrans is not the natural person – there’s no 9 natural agency to lead this effort so we’re relying on this 5-agency partnership. But someone at 10 the regional level needs to kind of intervene because cities, all they control are their 11 boundaries. 12 13 Commissioner Peterson: Thank you. Appreciate it. 14 15 Chair Akin: Commissioner Templeton? 16 17 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. This is a very exciting project and thank you for bringing 18 it to us. And I understand that you’re shopping it around to the big tent right now and we may 19 not – it’s unclear how much we’re going to see of it in the future. Can we go back to her slide 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. about her questions? Goals. Do you want us to limit the scope of goals to how it interacts with 1 our city? Okay. 2 3 Chair Akin: Is this a clarifying or...? 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Well, it sounds clarifying to me, Chair. What do you think? 6 7 Chair Akin: Just I wanted to make sure you were happy with the limitation so that we can get 8 the public comments in, if any. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Sure. It sounds like you would like me to hold off. And I will talk to 11 you later then. 12 13 Chair Akin: If – I don’t mean to suppress the question. Just trying to follow the process. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: As I was. But I’m happy to hold off. Let’s go ahead. You seem eager 16 to move forward. Let’s do it. 17 18 Chair Akin: All right. Any further clarifying questions for Ms. Halls? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. PUBLIC COMMENTS 1 2 Chair Akin: Mr. Tavera, do we have any requests to speak? 3 4 Samuel Tavera: Yes. Through the Chair, I have one request to speak on Zoom and I have not 5 received any public comment cards in person. At this moment, I’ll allow Bill R. to speak. Bill R., 6 you may now speak. 7 8 Bill Ross: Can you hear me? 9 10 Samuel Tavera: Yes, we can hear you. 11 12 Bill Ross: All right. I think any planning or eventually environmental consideration of this 13 project’s gotta consider the existing physical environment and the existing physical 14 environment includes the bike lanes that exist in Santa Clara County both within the city 15 abutting city territory and unincorporated territory, Stanford, and the county. The existing bike 16 lanes, quite frankly – and every member of our family has observed them night and day for 17 probably, I don’t know, at least as long as they’ve existed and I think there’s a dangerous 18 condition of public property that’s present both during the day and the night. During the day, 19 bicycles go both ways on these lanes and cars are utilizing bike lanes as turn lanes. There’s been 20 a lack of education. So safety is an issue and if this is notification of a dangerous condition of 21 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. public property, it’s certainly present. It’s also used by electric bicycles and it’s not clear what 1 the use of the existing bike lanes is. At night it’s even worse because there’s no visibility then. I 2 think a issue that has to be resolved for existing retail uses for that portion of the bike lanes 3 that exist in the city is existing right of entries. Those are rights in property. Those property 4 owners are entitled to compensation. More importantly, ADA access has been severely limited 5 by the existing bike lanes. It’s unclear how those spaces that existed are replaced. But I think 6 enforcement’s a critical issue. Who’s going to do it right now for these problems that exist on 7 the existing bike lanes? Santa Clara County sheriff? CHP? Palo Alto Police Department? Right? I 8 would suggest that there’s an immediate need for clarifying that before going forward with the 9 plan. 10 11 Now, I’ve read these documents and it is really unclear to me how this planning process relates 12 to the STIP. All the funding seems hypothetical. It is not linked to anything real. I think that 13 addressing these issues about retail uses right now that have had their parking and ADA 14 eliminated, the existing conditions on these bike lanes. I think everybody acknowledges the use 15 is low but I think that’s evidenced by a lack of education about how the bike lanes are to be 16 used safety and how there is to be enforcement for the protections of all users of [inaudible 17 53:30]. I would hope that that kind of study comes out with active, engaged enforcement for 18 the safety issues. Thank you. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Samuel Tavera: And through the Chair, that concludes – I have no other public comment. 1 2 Chair Akin: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ross. We will open it up for general discussion beginning 3 with Commissioner Templeton. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. Just for the public’s awareness, you’re representing 6 SamTrans and not Caltrans? Is that correct? 7 8 Cassie Halls: That’s correct. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Great. Can we go back to her slide, please? Thank you. I have a lot of 11 thoughts about El Camino in general but I’m going to try and keep it scoped per your request. It 12 just so happens that today on my way in I dropped off on the Stanford side of the train station, 13 had to go loop through the campus and come back so I got a nice tour of the entire facility on 14 both sides. And I would say one of the goals I have for this kind of terminus, this big bus/train 15 station that intersects with 3 different systems – Right? Stanford, SamTrans, and VTA? – is I 16 support your desire to improve that train station and the flow of – or the hub as it was very 17 confusing to navigate. Every time I go in, I’m never sure if I’m in the right exit path. And it’s not 18 clear where to drop off someone who wants to ride the train. There’s no signage that says here 19 is the underpass. If you’re trying to go north, drop them here or here. I would say that’s 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. possibly something to improve as you reimagine that space. But also, how it interfaces with El 1 Camino is just enormously frustrating. And it does have the sense of being a legacy, something 2 that was there for many decades that definitely could use improvement. So in terms of the 3 vision, I appreciate that that’s something we’ll be talking about. 4 5 I recognize that it’s very expensive and there’s probably limited stuff that we can do but if we 6 could find some ways to improve that flow and the pedestrian walking space there is a good 7 idea as well. But I found myself putting my car in a space where I knew a bus should be and 8 having my son step out and trying to figure this out. He also couldn’t walk from – we were very 9 close and we had a detour so we had to drive all the way – he couldn’t walk there. He didn’t 10 feel comfortable biking. So making sure our, like you said, our access to the other paths – bike 11 paths in Palo Alto are very clear and well lit, especially coming from the train station at least. I 12 know the rest of that is up to us and our bike/ped plan. But that would be very nice from this – 13 if it was an outcome from this project. As far as the process goes, process sounds fine. I don’t 14 know how much you’ll want to interface with us as Commissioners versus our lovely 15 Department of Transportation staff. They know a lot and they often are very judicious about 16 how and when they bring transportation projects to us. That said, if you thought that you were 17 coming back with something that might be controversial and we’re discussing that, this is a 18 place for that so we welcome you back any time you want to come. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And for next steps, the process sounds good to me. I’m really supportive and I’m also very 1 appreciative that we had a chance to talk about it with you. And I think there’s a lot that we can 2 do. The one thing that I just think about when I think about El Camino and Palo Alto and 3 especially because we have this university involvement, it definitely is pedestrians, it definitely 4 is less-experienced bicyclists, less-experienced pedestrians, and the size of crossing El Camino is 5 very terrifying for people that may be less experienced. And then the last thing is sometimes we 6 have flooding on El Camino under that University Avenue bridge so if you are going to do any 7 kind of improvements to that interchange, that needs to be dealt with. And if you aren’t going 8 to do it, that’s still needs to be dealt with. In other words, if you don’t want to shut down El 9 Camino when it rains, which happens right on this side of the border because of that 10 underpass, even just having a better pump or better maintenance for the pump, if there is one, 11 would be something worth seriously considering. Thank you. 12 13 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Templeton. I have Commissioner Hechtman and then 14 Vice-Chair Chang. 15 16 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you, Chair. And thank you for the presentation. I think it’s an 17 exciting, ambitious project and it’s great to get a first look at it. I love the name of the project 18 because I think of El Camino Real as the granddaddy of boulevards in California. Sometimes I’m 19 down in southern California and I end up on some piece of it. And because these little metal 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. sculptures – I think it’s a lantern, something like that – that are both north and south. And when 1 I see that, I get this sort of weird connected feeling and it makes me think of like the wagon 2 trails that connected the original missions in California. I think it’s a super important part of our 3 state history and the idea of beautifying it and increasing its functionality in this limited 4 segment is definitely worthwhile. Thank you for bringing it to us. The goals I would have for this 5 corridor are really – I can’t improve on the goals you stated. We had a public commenter just 6 before our remarks speak to really what I think is the safety goal, which I don’t think it’s a 7 coincidence that that is listed first. I think that was intentional because that is the first and 8 foremost goal of this process and so I know that will be worked into it. 9 10 The mobility goal is the one that really makes me scratch my head. We have really a set amount 11 of space curb to curb and maybe even less if we’re talking about expanding sidewalks, unless 12 we are talking about acquiring land to expand the boulevard which would be extraordinarily 13 expensive. And nothing I read in these documents suggest that that is in the cards, at least now. 14 And so the real question is how are we going to make everything fit? How do we make this a 15 pedestrian-friendly streetscape while accommodating more bikes – which is already happening 16 here in Palo Alto and our neighboring cities – and more buses and accommodating cars that 17 want and need to flow in volume? To me, the mobility goal is – it’s nice to see it written. How 18 are you going to do it? And that’s what the process is for and so I’m looking forward to seeing 19 those ideas as this unfolds well after I’m no longer a Commissioner. That’s what I have on the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. goals. How do we best work together? I think you started that process here tonight. We keep 1 communicating. I don’t know how often the PTC will be involved as to this sort of limited 2 segment on the north end of Palo Alto but I think everybody just keeps talking. And that’s how 3 you work together. And I am supportive of the process as you’ve described it. Those are my 4 comments. Keep going. Thanks. 5 6 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Hechtman. Vice-Chair Chang? 7 8 Vice-Chair Chang: I thank you for coming tonight and thank you to both Commissioners who’ve 9 already given really great comments. I agree with everything that’s been said. I’m just going to 10 add a tiny bit. As I think about the timeline for the project and you saying it could be 6 to 10 11 years, we’ve had legislation, as I’m sure you know, that affects Palo Alto quite a lot, affects the 12 Transit Center right there quite a lot because of the housing. SB 79 is just something to keep in 13 mind. And I think that while certainly you’re going to be working with our Transportation folks a 14 lot more than with us, it’s also really important to work with our Planning folks because since 15 the end of your segment connects to our downtown, we have a downtown planning effort. We 16 don’t know SB 79 is going to affect that. But regardless, there will be many, many more units of 17 housing and in addition, I know that at one time there was a project proposed for the Transit 18 Center itself. And all of those things would increase the amount of multimodal traffic. And so 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. just to keep those things in mind, as I’m sure that you’re doing, but those are some of the 1 thoughts that come top of mind when I’m thinking about how this would impact Palo Alto. 2 3 I did have a question for you. When you spoke about coming up with a new process to create a 4 framework for change, in what ways do you see that affecting Palo Alto or affecting segments – 5 your map shows the segment of El Camino Real that you’re really working on and those 6 agencies that you’re working with but is that framework for change something that would 7 impact the adjacent agencies or be something that we could learn from? 8 9 Cassie Halls: That’s a great question. And just to your previous comment, we are definitely 10 tracking SB 79. I think for the segment in Palo Alto, the train station will overrule anything that 11 El Camino would – the fact that there’s a train station, there’s requirements for, I think, a half-12 mile radius. For the El Camino portion, we’re still getting interpretation on whether or not it 13 would be applicable to El Camino based on our understanding of what the future of the 14 corridor is going to be. But for the Palo Alto segment, nothing would come anew out of any 15 improvements we made on El Camino given the presence of the train station. To your question 16 about the change in the process, I think this – what I talked about today is our first step towards 17 change. I think Caltrans has been very active in this partnership. They are changing a lot as an 18 agency. They have a bunch of new transit policies, complete-streets policies that are reshaping 19 how they do their work whether it’s repaving or whether it’s these larger projects that they’re 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. involved in, so I hope that GBI is really a test case for them of how this type of work can 1 happen. And they’ve said that multiple times when they’ve attended GBI meetings that this is 2 like a new framework for how to do multijurisdictional visioning. And they currently have their 3 Comprehensive Multimodal Corridor Plan which is their long-range vision for El Camino that 4 they’re doing both here and in San Mateo County as well as the small portion in SF. And our 5 process is guiding that effort in San Mateo County. 6 7 I think there are – there’s this coordinated process that we’re leading with Caltrans. That’s what 8 we’re focused on right now, getting all the cities through this process so they don’t have to deal 9 with it alone and so we can also maximize dollars for construction. But I think there’s also 10 potential future changes to all of these processes. One of the recent pieces of legislation was SB 11 – I think it’s 9 – is it 910? Anyway, there was a new – I’m not remembering the name but there 12 was a new bill that passed that makes it so that Caltrans for state route has to expedite transit 13 improvement. I think that – SB 960 is the name. But I think SB 960 will really shape the future of 14 what we’re going to do. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: Thank you. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. 17 18 Chair Akin: Commissioner Ji? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: Thank you. Just want to echo my fellow Commissioners. Thank you for 1 coming. Thank you for including us. I just have a very small comment, which is I think that the 2 way our station may get redesigned depends potentially on the ULI study that we recently went 3 through for the station so I’ll defer for conversation with Mr. Arce, who seems very involved on 4 that, to learn more about what we’re doing there. 5 6 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Ji. Commissioner James? 7 8 Commissioner James: Nothing revolutionary to add here. I think I agree that the framework for 9 getting to this point looks smart to me. I agree with Commissioner Hechtman that it looks like a 10 very hard problem to solve. There are all the limitations there and I’m very curious to see what 11 some of the design solutions are. And then the last question I have is just kind of a very narrow 12 one, which is on the draft corridor-wide vision page you’ve picked 2 locations to show 13 photographs of and I assume those are kind of best of class in your view and I’m just curious 14 where they are? 15 16 Cassie Halls: That’s a good question. 17 18 Commissioner James: It’s Packet Page 22. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Cassie Halls: Yes. One is in Menlo Park. I know this material too well now. You guys are my last 1 council presentation. One is in Menlo Park and the other, I believe, is in Redwood City. The bike 2 lane’s in Redwood City, the wide pedestrian walkway is in Menlo Park. I would say there isn’t 3 really like a perfect location on El Camino that exemplifies what our vision is. I think there are 4 little pockets of what you could see as potentially happening in the future. But that’s the test 5 cases that we showed in that photo. 6 7 Commissioner James: Can I add one thing? I think the naming is the same of one of Peter 8 Calthorpe’s books for ideas for El Camino and I just wonder if there’s any overlap there? Is that 9 coincidental? 10 11 Cassie Halls: This initiative has actually been around since 2006. That may be what you’re 12 referring to. It was broader before. It was 2 counties, both Santa Clara County and San Mateo 13 County, and it focused on land use, housing, transportation as well. And there was a lot of 14 progress that came out of that for the housing and land use side of things. Transportation 15 given, this whole Caltrans process and the implementation challenges, there were only about a 16 quarter mile of improvements that were made on El Camino in terms of like transit and bicycle 17 improvements in the county and of course Palo Alto is now – Palo Alto, Mountain View have 18 improvements but we just haven’t really moved the needle so that’s why we wanted to focus 19 on transportation. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner James: Thank you. 2 3 Chair Akin: Thank you. All right. I will jump in with a few things here going from the specific to 4 the general. You asked about goals. I would say that bike lane connectivity is a high-priority goal 5 for me and a very difficult one to achieve. But nevertheless of interest. I notice that the 6 modernization benefits include economic vitality but I didn’t get a sense of how that flows from 7 the vision, the problem statements and goals, or the streetscape changes. How do these things 8 that you mentioned early in the high-level discussion come into play? 9 10 Cassie Halls: That’s a great question. The goals, as you mention, are very focused. We have 11 mobility, safety, and process. However, there were a lot of things that we wanted – we heard 12 from people that were important and when we did that exercise of identifying priority 13 problems, we knew that there were – when we did that prioritization, there were a lot of things 14 like climate change adaptation, economic vitality that were kind of co-benefits that we saw of 15 these mobility and safety improvements. If you make it somewhere people want to walk or 16 they want to bike, take public transit, and if you make it so that there are more street trees, it 17 feels safer, there’s lighting, the hope is that it’s promoting more economic vitality, more 18 businesses will open, more businesses will have more people coming to them. And also that 19 people would be shifting – there are always going to be people driving on El Camino. We’re not 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. negating that people are going to drive. However, more people are shifting towards alternative 1 modes which do have a tie-in based on literature to more economic activity. Like biking, people 2 are more often to stop and go into a shop than if they’re driving through. And same with 3 walking. I think it’s a direct benefit but it’s one of those co-benefits. 4 5 Chair Akin: The hope is it’s a consequence. Okay. And that segues nicely into my last 6 observation or question. And this also ties into Commissioner Hechtman’s comments. 7 Eventually we’ll be seeing this as a set of incrementally applied changes, if I understand 8 correctly, yet there are some high-level requirements that we have to meet and maintain 9 throughout that process. And unfortunately things like maintaining vehicle traffic flows are 10 among them. I’m curious as to at what stage in the process we begin measuring and modeling 11 things like the traffic flows we have to deal with and that we hope to deal with? And this 12 applies perhaps more critically to safety than to any other aspect that we’ve been discussing 13 tonight. Where in the process do you begin to pick that up so that it applies to all of these 14 incremental changes that we might expect over time? 15 16 Cassie Halls: Yeah. That’s a great question. Caltrans has a very rigorous process for measuring 17 things like that. In this first phase, which is the Project Initiation Document, we’ll start doing 18 some traffic analyses as well as other analysis like stormwater report, things like that. Very 19 engineering-heavy topics. And then we’ll be doing – we’ll be kind of going deeper and deeper in 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. future design phases. They require even more detailed modeling later. But that will start in 1 2026. 2 3 Chair Akin: Great. That’s a more optimistic answer than I had hoped to hear and so I’m pleased. 4 All right. That’s all I have. Commissioners, do we have any other questions or comments? 5 Commissioner Peterson. 6 7 Commissioner Peterson: Thank you. Just want to follow up my initial question where I was 8 asking with your – how you’re going to patchwork the funding. And then I had mentioned 9 bringing in contractors. One of the things that’s seen on infrastructure projects is the sooner 10 you bring in the shovel, so to speak, but the people who are going to be building it and get 11 them involved in the process, the sooner that – the whole process and decisions you make, 12 when you get to the final stage, you’re already kind of aligned with the people that are going to 13 be bidding on the project. And of course there is that challenge of trying to manage 14 expectations but it’s always good on something large like this to get some of the regional large 15 heavy-construction partners involved one way or another. 16 17 Cassie Halls: Yes. That’s a great point. And I forgot to respond to that portion of the question. 18 SamTrans and the TA are pretty familiar with alternative delivery methods and that’s definitely 19 something that we would consider for this given that it’s such a big project and it has such a 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. long time horizon. I don’t remember the exact acronym but there’s like construction 1 management something something. We’ve done that for a lot of our bus divisions and – when 2 we had to reconstruct them, projects with pretty long timelines and that are very involved, so 3 we’ll definitely be exploring those models. 4 5 Commissioner Peterson: Thank you. That’s exactly where I was going with it. 6 7 Chair Akin: Any other questions, Commissioners? Thank you again. This has been a very 8 optimistic and hopeful expression of where we’d all like to go and we very much appreciate 9 your taking the time to inform us. 10 11 Cassie Halls: Thank you. 12 13 3. STUDY SESSION: Consider Retail Revitalization Measures and Initiatives Related to 14 the City Council's Economic Development and Retail Vibrancy Priority. CEQA Status: 15 Not a Project 16 17 Chair Akin: All right. I believe we are ready to begin our study session for Item #3 on retail 18 revitalization. May we have the presentation? 19 20 Jennifer Armer: Yes. Thank you. Tonight we have Jean Eisberg online to talk us through the 21 options here for this item this evening so I will pass it off to her once she’s ready. 22 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Principal Planner Jean Eisberg: Great. Thank you. Good evening, Chair Akin and Members of the 2 Commission. Tonight we’re talking about retail revitalization measures. Next slide, please. And 3 this is based in policies from the Comprehensive Plan and from the City Council’s priorities 4 which include promoting a retail zoning strategy. On the Comp Plan side, there are a number of 5 policies related to retail including zoning revisions to support small business, parking 6 reductions, and supporting innovative retail. Next slide, please. This task is also built on a 7 number of studies that were done a couple years ago by Streetsense and by Michael Baker 8 International and so those provide a basis of data, of analysis, of recommendations for the City 9 to consider. The PTC met a number of times in 2023 and 2024 to review these reports and 10 discuss potential strategies but didn’t have an opportunity to review an actual ordinance or 11 move forward with an actual ordinance. The City Council and the City Council Retail Ad Hoc 12 Committee ended up preparing and adopting a interim ordinance. Next slide, please. And that 13 ordinance addressed a few targeted issues. One, expanding permissible uses, so some specific 14 changes to definitions to try to allow more flexibility in a number of districts; reducing 15 thresholds for waivers from use regulations; and modifying the formula retail definition on 16 California Avenue to, again, be a little more expansive. The interim ordinance sunsets in 17 December of 2026 and so a permanent ordinance would replace that in advance. Otherwise, it 18 sunsets on that date. Next slide, please. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Tonight we’re looking for the PTC to consider options and recommendations for this retail 1 strategy – these are primarily in Attachment A of the staff report – and we’re looking for your 2 feedback to help prepare an ordinance for your consideration to make a recommendation to 3 Council. This includes refining and making permanent those interim regulations; addressing 4 other topics that were identified by the PTC, by Council in their motion on the interim 5 regulations, by staff over the last couple years; and then considering other amendments based 6 on those previous consultant reports. Next slide, please. One of the problems when we started 7 really looking into the zoning is that it’s very complicated. There are multiple sections that apply 8 for a retailer who’s looking to identify locations in the City to locate, it’s very lengthy, very text-9 heavy, and in some cases in some of the districts, fairly restrictive in terms of the types of uses 10 that can locate. And the issue is that all other things being equal, if a retailer wants to be in the 11 region, may be not as sensitive to being in Palo Alto, if the lease rates are comparable, they 12 may choose to locate in other places. And so the zoning can help – on the margins can help 13 encourage retailers to locate in Palo Alto. Next slide, please. First issue is about use regulations. 14 Restrictions on uses can prevent – can help – or can lead to some increases in vacancies so 15 allowing more uses can reduce those vacancy rates, can improve pedestrian orientation, and 16 potentially increase revenues. And we’re particularly looking at some of the trends in retail and 17 the typical uses that we see today in the market that may not be allowed in Palo Alto but that 18 Palo Alto may be supportive of. Next slide, please. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. This includes take-out restaurants. Particularly since COVID we see takeout in many 1 restaurants. In many locations it’s actually currently precluded in the code and so distinguishing 2 that from drive-throughs which the City probably wants to continue to limit in most locations. A 3 second, animal care. Distinguishing – this idea is distinguishing between daytime uses, which 4 pet grooming, cat cafes, uses that don’t have overnight facilities, that might have noise impacts. 5 Likewise, automobile showrooms which are not allowed downtown and could be considered in 6 other districts where dealerships are not allowed or appropriate. Next slide, please. Other ideas 7 around fitness centers. Currently fitness centers are regulated by size in certain districts and so 8 we could consider increasing that size to allow a little more flexibility. Similarly, medical offices. 9 We see medical spas as a new use. Other types of medical offices that have a retail component 10 like wellness or med spas or acupuncturists where there could be street-facing uses that ensure 11 [inaudible 1:22:46] more pedestrian orientation, window shopping. And so thinking about 12 expanding the office – excuse me – the medical office definition to allow those types of uses 13 distinguished from a more traditional physician’s type of office. Next slide, please. 14 15 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 1:23:03] losing a little volume. [Inaudible 1:23:06] 16 17 Jean Eisberg: Last thing on use regulations, the Commission could also consider allowing office 18 uses in the rear of a space, so facing a side street or rear yard not on Cal Ave. or University Ave. 19 necessarily. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Jennifer Armer: Jean? Jean Eisberg? Can I interrupt you for a moment? 2 3 Jean Eisberg: Yes. 4 5 Jennifer Armer: Sorry. We’re hav-, your audio has reduced. I don’t know if you have a way to 6 adjust your microphone or not. It wasn’t coming through quite as a clearly. If you could... 7 8 Jean Eisberg: Okay. I’ll try to. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: ...maybe just speak slightly louder. 11 12 Jean Eisberg: How’s that? Any better? 13 14 Chair Akin: No different. You were fine initially so was there anything that changed? 15 16 Jean Eisberg: No, but let me hit a button and see if that helps. Is that any better? 17 18 Chair Akin: I don’t detect any difference. All right. Well, we’ll make it work. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jean Eisberg: Okay. I’ll try to speak up. Lastly, on use regulations, there’s a category of retail-1 like. It’s a definition in the code. It was not a use classification itself. So another idea to be more 2 expansive is to expand the existing retail service definition which would encompass both retail 3 and retail-like uses. This could help streamline the code and just broaden the range of allowed 4 uses. Next slide, please. 5 6 Chair Akin: Your volume is back by the way. 7 8 Jean Eisberg: Oh, great. I’ll stop shouting. This is more of a perception issue but retailers can be 9 turned off by the term conditional use permit. In other communities, conditional use permit 10 means it requires review by a decision-making body like a planning commission. In Palo Alto it’s 11 really more of an administrative use permit, an AUP, and so changing the name could help with 12 that perception. Alternatively, just publicizing more on the City’s website what is the process, 13 what should retailers expect, and make sure that it’s clear that the CUP is generally a director 14 level of decision. Next slide, please. This issue is really about certain districts have layers of land 15 use regulations. And so this is analyzed in Attachment B, this example from Midtown and 16 Charleston Shopping Centers, but when you start looking at the code to understand what 17 applies in those locations, first we look at the base district, which is the CN, the neighborhood 18 commercial district. That has one use table. Then if you look at the second use table that’s 19 specific to Charleston and Midtown Shopping Center, that’s another use table. And then finally 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. there’s an overlay, the GF, ground floor combining district overlay, also applies to the Midtown 1 and Charleston Shopping Center, so there’s a third set of uses. And at that point, you then learn 2 that it’s actually the GF supersedes the other 2 so you really only need to look at the GF. Now, 3 this is confusing for someone who reads zoning for a living for decision-makers, for staff, but it’s 4 particularly confusing for a retailer who is less experienced in that. 5 6 Jean Eisberg: Other issue we identified is around parking. So a few different things here. One, 7 commercial parking ratios are dependent on the actual use types. So different uses have 8 different ratios. This can be challenging for existing buildings when an applicant, a tenant, is 9 seeking a change of use permit. So if the existing building maybe has 0 parking spaces or 1 10 parking space, a new tenant wants to locate and they’re not proposing an addition, but if they 11 have a higher parking requirement – say they generate a parking requirement of 2 or 3 spaces 12 and they cannot physically put that on the site, that use cannot go into the space. And so in 13 some cities you’ll see that they exempt change of use applications from parking requirements 14 to acknowledge that physical limitation in an existing use. Other things that the City could 15 consider are increasing the shared parking reductions so that a residential/commercial use 16 could share more parking or really promoting some of the state laws like AB 2097, which 17 exempts parking close to major transit. Next slide. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. So the Retail Preservation Ordinance applies in all locations where retail is a permitted use. And 1 so I’ll show on the next slide on the map, but if the Commission is interested in looking at the 2 Retail Preservation Ordinance, there’s a few different things we can do. We can limit its 3 applicability to specific locations, like in Downtown. We could reduce the replacement 4 threshold. Generally it’s a 1:1 replacement requirement in terms of square footage if there’s an 5 existing retail use. We could look at modifying the waiver thresholds to make it a little easier to 6 make the argument for a tenant that they cannot replace that particular use. We can also, on 7 the flip side, look at requiring retail in specific locations rather than requiring retail where it 8 currently exists. Next slide, please. 9 10 So this next slide shows a map. In yellow are the places where the Retail Preservation 11 Ordinance applies, the caveat being if there is an existing ground-floor retail use that needs to 12 be replaced. The blue hatchings show locations where, regardless of the existing use, a ground-13 floor retail use is required, so when you’re swapping out a use or putting in a redevelopment at 14 a new building. Next slide, please. 15 16 So lastly, the zoning map. The zoning map spans 18 pages. This is very complicated so if you’re a 17 retailer looking where you can locate, it makes it very difficult. Short term-idea is just to publish 18 a simplified map. We put one in the Stock Report that highlights where commercial locations 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. are, where uses can locate. Longer term, the Commission may be interested in streamlining 1 commercial districts and those overlay districts and simplifying this map. Next slide, please. 2 3 I wanted to introduce my colleague who I’m working on this project with. Christine Firstenberg 4 is a retail broker and she’s been working in that borough for over 30 years. We have 5 collaborated together before on policy projects for cities. She really provides a lot of 6 perspective from the retailer’s perspective and from her network of retailers, of brokers, of 7 property owners. Next slide, please. She will be available during Q&A. She did reach out to a 8 few stakeholders within Palo Alto. She can provide a little more information about those 9 conversations. In terms of other stakeholder outreach, there was a number of outreach efforts 10 that were done as part of that previous consultant work effort. Next slide, please. 11 12 The Staff recommendation is to ask the Commission to consider options and recommendations 13 for this retail ordinance and to provide feedback to Staff so we can bring back an ordinance for 14 your consideration and, ultimately, recommendation to the City Council. That concludes my 15 presentation. We do have a few extra slides if you want to hear more from Christine and also, I 16 do have a slide that just lists the discussion topics from Attachment A if that’s helpful as you’re 17 going through with your discussion. Thank you. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: Thank you, Ms. Eisberg. Commissioners, do we have any clarifying questions for Ms. 1 Eisberg or Ms. Firstenberg? Commissioner Hechtman. 2 3 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you, Chair. Just a couple of clarifying questions for Attachment 4 A. Packet page 39, the “Animal Care Potential Modifications,” I understand why noise might be 5 a concern that we need to address by ordinance for things like dogs barking all night but I didn’t 6 understand what Staff was thinking including possibly provisions regarding waste. I understand 7 that animals create waste but humans do too, and I was wondering why did Staff call that out? 8 What was Staff thinking about? Because that will help me understand these potential 9 alternatives to the first bullet. 10 11 Jean Eisberg: The idea was to have some standards that could be incorporated into the 12 ordinance that would help – like objective standards – that would help reduce those impacts. In 13 terms of pet waste, is there – making sure there is a process, receptacles to manage that waste. 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay, thanks. Then the other question I had is on Packet page 43 16 under the “Permitted and Conditional Uses on Cal Ave.” The last bullet in the Potential 17 Modifications, “allow medical offices that contain at least 35 square feet of retail sale space on 18 the street.” I was just curious about the origin of that 35 square feet. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jean Eisberg: We came up with that – it’s really like a 7’ x 5’ rectangle. You get this kind of 1 frontage along the window, 5’ depth. We were thinking of that as a rectangle. You can’t 2 necessarily get that for all shapes and sizes but that’s where that came from. 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Thanks very much. 5 6 Chair Akin: Thank you. Commissioner Ji. 7 8 Commissioner Ji: Thank you, Chair. I was actually wondering if you could – I had some questions 9 about the additional slides, specifically the slide with the availability if you could pull it up. 10 11 Jean Eisberg: Sure. I would invite Christine to weigh in here. My understanding, this is really just 12 a snapshot in time from this week of… 13 14 Commissioner Ji: I was just wondering, can you help me understand what the red and the blue 15 are? 16 17 Christine Firstenberg: I absolutely can. They are just – what this is is just a peak at availability 18 that we pulled up yesterday. The difference between red and blue is really nothing with regards 19 to the space itself but rather the program that we used to pull up the information, for example, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. LoopNet, CoStar. They’re different software programs. One, the red belongs to LoopNet, the 1 blue belongs to CoStar. It means nothing with regards to the actual space itself other than it’s 2 available. 3 4 Commissioner Ji: Thank you. And what about the circles? 5 6 Christine Firstenberg: The circles indicate a building that CoStar and/or LoopNet, who are 7 owned by the same company, they have information on that building. That building is identified 8 as a commercial building, or a retail building, but it has no availability. 9 10 Commissioner Ji: All right. Thank you. That’s all. 11 12 Chair Akin: Any further clarifying questions? Commissioner Peterson. 13 14 Commissioner Peterson: Thank you. Quick question. So I don’t know if it was a comment in 15 passing but you mentioned sites that were not commercially viable. I can’t pretend to say that I 16 know anything about commercial sites or anything. Is that a proposition that maybe that’s part 17 of this? You know, is there a heat map? Or even just like what we have on the screen right now, 18 that there’s an index of commercial viability of each site. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jean Eisberg: The comment was related to the Retail Preservation Ordinance. And when we 1 look at that map, it covers – the Retail Preservation Ordinance covers RM districts, residential 2 districts, it covers the RP district. So technically if there is a retail space in one of those districts, 3 it would need to be replaced upon redevelopment. I would argue that the RM districts in 4 certain locations are not the best retail sites in the city. That’s really where that’s coming from. 5 6 Commissioner Peterson: Thank you. Now I think it was a good comment that, you know, 7 retiring retail sites. Of course, turnover is a normal thing. Thank you. 8 9 Chair Akin: Other questions? All right then. Mr. Tavera, do we have any requests to comment? 10 11 Administrative Associate Samuel Tavera: Through the Chair, I see no raised hands on Zoom and 12 I have received no public comment cards at this moment. 13 14 Chair Akin: Very good. Thank you. All right. We could have a really extensive discussion on this 15 tonight and a good bit of what we talked about in the pre-meeting was, how do we organize 16 things so that we can be as effective as possible? I think what I’d like to do is follow the 17 suggestion made by Ms. Eisberg that we break up the discussion into each of the 10 zoning 18 issue groups so that we have a chance for everyone to comment on a given group before we 19 move on to the next. That gives us a chance to have some back-and-forth within a particular 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. subject area so that we don’t have to wait to go through 9 other un-related areas before we 1 can do that. So the issue group titles are highlighted with gray bars on the packet pages. What I 2 will attempt to do is give you a heads up as to which packet pages we’re talking about and then 3 open it up to discussion on the items that fall on those packet pages. There will be some 4 overlap between items. Animal care comes up in a number of places, for example, but that’s 5 okay. We can have either repetition or, perhaps, just carry-over decisions from earlier issues. 6 Before I begin that, though, I first wanted to ask if there were any General Discussion items that 7 aren’t covered by specific issues that are on Packet pages 39-53? Commissioner Chang. 8 9 Commissioner Chang: I just have a really quick clarifying question that’s kind of a little bit more 10 detailed. I don’t know if other people do for each section, and so the way I see this happening is 11 that – I’ll just give my example right now. So for formula retail business, we’re asked about our 12 opinions about removing it, etc., but that’s sort of dependent on where that definition is used. 13 And so my question, my clarifying question, is just that where is that formula retail business 14 definition in effect? Is it in effect anywhere in our city? That kind of, then, informs our – the 15 whole discussion. So does it make sense to have any quick clarifying questions so that all the 16 commissioners can base all of the decisions on the same information? 17 18 Chair Akin: That’s what I’m hoping we’ll get right now. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Chang: Oh, sorry. Okay. Well, that’s mine. 1 2 Chair Akin: All right, then. Commissioner Ji. 3 4 Commissioner Ji: I have kind of a more logistical – 5 6 Chair Akin: Sorry. You’re happy that you’ve expressed – 7 8 Commissioner Chang: No. Can we get the answer? 9 10 Chair Akin: For formula retail, specifically? 11 12 Commissioner Chang: Yeah. That’s why I asked it. 13 14 Chair Akin: Okay. Not just a general issue. Okay. 15 16 Jean Eisberg: It is only regulated on California Avenue. 17 18 Chair Akin: Right. Thank you. Then we’ll move to Commissioner Ji and then Commissioner 19 Templeton. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Ji: My comment is a little bit brief and kind of just more of an organizational 2 point, which is, if we continue to have kind of this patchwork of information, I think it would be 3 helpful to have the Cal Ave District R also included on Attachment B so that then it would be 4 easy to also compare and contrast all of these. 5 6 Chair Akin: So that would be for the use of the next generation of the ordinance that we see, or 7 for Council, or for? Okay. Commissioner Templeton. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. I am trying to figure out if – so this is coming back to us 10 because Council has asked us to come back to this. Is that right? 11 12 Staff Liaison Jennifer Armer: That is correct. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. Do we foresee any hot buttons in here that Council is pretty 15 frustrated about and wants us to know before we go into this discussion? For example, I’m 16 thinking about last year’s repeal and replace was a hot button that really PO’d a lot of people 17 when it came through us. Is this the same kind of – it’s the same topic. Is this the same kind of 18 presentation when it gets to Council or have we kind of resolved our phraseology so that we 19 could have a discussion where we don’t panic someone who is worried that we’re talking about 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. changing Retail Preservation. So I’m just thinking if you can help us understand where Council is 1 regarding the stuff you’ve put in front of us. Is this going to be a surprise to them, or is this 2 going to be, this is the stuff you already spoke about with them and it's in line with what they’re 3 looking for? 4 5 Jennifer Armer: I’ll start and then Ms. Eisberg might have something more to add. I think the 6 starting point is the interim ordinance that Council looked at and approved. So we started 7 there. And then – 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: And that was the previous Council? 10 11 Jennifer Armer: So that was last December, correct. 12 13 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: So there was that interim ordinance that went into effect based on their 16 approval. In addition, the motion that approved that ordinance included a list of items for these 17 next discussions to include, specifically identifying things that we should be looking into and 18 discussing in more depth. There are a couple of additional items that have been added on. So 19 for example, over the last year there have been some issues that have come up. For example, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. the idea of a cat café and dog grooming where there has been concern about the restrictions 1 that the existing code includes and how those have been understood in the past and a desire to 2 have some more flexibility. And so there are some items that we have included. That is one 3 example in here that were not part of the previous discussions with Council so they will be new 4 for them to see when we bring your recommendation forward to them. However, I do expect 5 we will be bringing your recommendation to the Retail Committee before we bring it to the full 6 council. 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. That makes sense and I appreciate you going through that. I’m 9 particularly thinking, and I guess we’ll get to it when we get to the retail preservation section, 10 but there was a slide in here where Ms. Eisberg was saying, you know, I’m paraphrasing here, 11 it’s a hot mess, we need to smooth it out. I know that is going to make – mean that we are 12 recommending changes to that and that doesn’t mean nobody’s proposing annihilating retail, 13 right? 14 15 Jennifer Armer: Correct. And in addition, if you would like clarification on any of these, if it’s not 16 clear whether it was something that was part of a previous discussion with Council versus 17 something that has been brought up as new based on our analysis over the last six months, we 18 can provide that clarification, as well. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Templeton: That’s great. I just want to make sure that our work is being 1 characterized accurately as it goes forward. Thank you. 2 3 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Templeton. All right. Any other more general questions, 4 or should we begin to really dive into the details now? All right. The first section consists of 5 Packet pages 39-42. That is definitions. So all of you who have comments or questions about 6 that section, please light up your lights. I have Commissioner Hechtman, then Commissioner 7 Templeton. 8 9 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. So I’ll just go top to bottom. In Animal Care, and again, 10 I’m really kind of focused on the potential modifications, which often in these boxes give us 11 options, and we’re just giving our individual feedback, so I’m supportive of the first bullet, 12 which is split the definition between sort of daytime and overnight. And I don’t think that the 13 2nd and 3rd bullet are necessary. You know, every restaurant in Palo Alto has a bathroom but I 14 don’t think those provisions are in our zoning code. They might be in some other code, building 15 code, whatever, and I would think that dealing with waste and dealing with noise beyond our 16 noise ordinance, those maybe need to reside somewhere else than adding more provisions to 17 our zoning code. The next one, Retail Financial Service, that’s an example of something I’m fine 18 with. So as we go through this, I’m not going to talk about those anymore other than to use this 19 one as an example. The potential modification is to fix a typo and make the interim definition 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. permanent. So I’m okay with that. As we go forward, I’m not going to talk about those. So that 1 means I skip to fast, casual restaurants. For this one, I just want to flag an issue for Staff to think 2 about. And because we’re looking at little pieces of our ordinance rather than the thing in 3 totality, this may or may not apply.I In San Jose where I do some work, the city of San Jose, 4 there’s a definition of “bar” and there’s a definition of “eating and drinking place.” The bar is 5 more heavily regulated because there can be more trouble there. A number of outfits, including 6 some who have been my clients, want to fit into the definition of eating and drinking place even 7 though they’re really a bar. So they have food like chips and dip, or platters from Costco, and 8 they don’t have any real food service, they don’t have a kitchen, even a prep kitchen. Again, I 9 don’t know if that concept applies here but I think that’s something that Staff should look at in 10 this term “eating and drinking service.” Do we care how much eating there is if the real function 11 of the establishment and 99 percent of the revenue comes from drinking? That’s just kind of a 12 head’s up on that one. 13 14 Retail-like uses. Let’s see. First of all, in the potential definitions at the bottom of the first 15 column, Staff had asked for some feedback on some replacement for the high level. Right? They 16 didn’t like that and I don’t much, either. So I thought about some alternatives: “considerably,” 17 “significantly,” “more than nominally,” but the one that I like the most is “substantially.” 18 Contribute substantially to pedestrian activity. I think that communicates what we’re trying to 19 get at even though it’s not quantified. It’s a qualitative term. That’s first column. Second 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. column, I like the 4th bullet and not the first three, expanding the retail service definition to fold 1 retail-like into retail. Let’s see, Packet page 42. I like the 1st bullet rather than making the 2 interim ordinance permanent. I guess my thought on that is there might be a concern that if we 3 do that, we’re going to open some floodgates. I feel like that will be a nice problem to have and 4 if it happens, then, you know, in a subsequent revision of the ordinance we can pull back. Those 5 are my comments on that first category. Thank you. 6 7 Chair Akin: Thank you. Commissioner Templeton then Vice-Chair Chang. 8 9 Commissioner Templeton: Thank you. All right. I never imagined that we would be talking this 10 much about animal waste but I recognize that Commissioner Hechtman asked this during his 11 clarifying question round. I thought I would wait. You mean, “produced by an animal” or do you 12 mean “produced by the service”? 13 14 Jennifer Armer: I believe the intent was “produced by the animal.” 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: But it is a valid question, given it was a veterinary service but there are 19 regulations for that when animals pass in their care. That would be – 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: I’m thinking of an entirely different line. I want to bring this up 2 because I don’t know if this, our definition, are restrictive enough. So I’m going to give you an 3 example. There is now, or used to be down on El Camino Way, some kind of pet place that I 4 guess smelled a lot like veterinarian – it might have been a veterinarian, I’m not sure. But they 5 smell like very, very strongly. I have tried to avoid going down that road because even with my 6 car windows closed, it is extremely smelly to me. So I’m imagining if somebody is going to use 7 one of these places, and I’m not thinking of the cat café, I’m thinking of anybody who may be 8 taking a more liberal read of this, is it possible that somebody could open an establishment for 9 grooming that would have strong smells of the kind of products they use and wash off that 10 would then produce waste that makes smells in the vicinity that would be uncomfortable to 11 some other establishments nearby. That’s the waste I’m asking about. It’s chemical. 12 13 Jennifer Armer: Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. I think this discussion actually gets to 14 exactly the point that Staff was trying to identify with those notes, which is there is a reason 15 that the city, and most cities, actually are pretty restrictive as to where veterinary offices and 16 other animal services can be allowed. And there is an interest in allowing them but how do we 17 draw an appropriate line, in terms of the potential impacts of one use on another. Smell is one 18 of those. Smell, noise, waste, etc. So for some of these uses, if it is an animal staying overnight, 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. is it the different type of animal that’s being allowed, you know dogs barking versus cats, or 1 other animals, those are the types of distinguishing, you know, what are the concerns? 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: So that would be my feedback is to add “odors” to be something to 4 evaluate. I’m just going to put it on the record, I am not a cat café hater, I love cats, I love cat 5 cafes, I go to as many as I can in every country I visit. So I just want to say, like, it’s just 6 something to think about in terms of being a good neighbor as a retailer. 7 8 Jennifer Armer: One additional note, any time one of these facilities does include having 9 animals on the premises, our animal control within our police department are involved and 10 there is a permit that’s required as part of that. There are certain things more focused on the 11 health and safety of the animals and that they are being cared for and contained appropriately. 12 But there is that level of review and additional control that is part of the process, as well, just in 13 terms of understanding the context. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Yeah. And there’s disease out there. We don’t want to think about 16 but it’s for real. Okay. That was my note I wanted to add here. And then for the car thing, 17 automobile showroom. Is the distinction you’re trying to make whether it’s a lot or, like, just a 18 retail front? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: Correct. We have had some recent examples where, if you’re talking about a 1 retail showroom like the Rivian that is now in Stanford Shopping Center, that is really about 2 showing the cars that are available rather than having a large lot for storing the individual cars 3 that are going to be sold rather than having service available. So it is a different character and 4 might be appropriate in some of our commercial areas rather than something that’s more 5 focused on service, is my understanding. It may be – Jean, I don’t know if you have anything to 6 add in terms of – or Christine – about the retail character of those or whether I covered it. 7 8 Jean Eisberg: I think you covered it. 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. All right. Fast, casual restaurants. Is this even the least bit 11 controversial? Like, is it as straightforward as it seems? 12 13 Jennifer Armer: Seems to me. 14 15 Commissioner Templeton: Just checking. Yes, people should be able to pick up and not dine in if 16 they want to so sure. All right, thanks. 17 18 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Templeton. Vice-Chair Chang. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: So I’m going to focus on where I might have something different to say than 1 the other Commissioners before me. And if I don’t speak about it, it means I agree with the 2 potential modification that’s listed in the column. So with respect to animal care, I guess my 3 over-arching thing is it’s exactly what we’ve all said from a common sense approach and I leave 4 it up to Staff to figure out how to best do this, which is fine with animals being there as long as 5 it doesn’t negatively impact neighboring businesses, or any neighboring establishments, or 6 people walking by. Just a note, though, for the existing definition for animal care, it does say 7 “outdoor kennels” and it would seem to me that we wouldn’t want to allow anything outdoor if 8 we’re going – in a retail area so. For the fast casual restaurants item, I didn’t go through our 9 code again, but I wanted – I do remember when I was on the Retail ad hoc for the PTC, reading 10 our ordinances and they were just so outdated. There’s things like travel agencies that hardly 11 exist anymore. And I remember thinking, gee, this whole concept of like a takeout definition is 12 so strange. But while I support removing it – or I support not having it be its own thing because 13 everybody does takeout now, what I wonder is, do we have any unintended consequences – 14 this is just a flag for Staff to consider – of upgrading something that might be a purely takeout 15 service establishment to a restaurant? In other words, like are there parking requirements that 16 are more onerous or anything like that where we would need to be careful? And so I just don’t 17 want that type of unintended consequence. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And then similarly, the whole – the commercial kitchen and commercial dishwasher. Again, I 1 don’t know why we had that before but there must have been a reason. And so I just worry it 2 might be affecting some other like, I don’t know, building code. It might be referenced in some 3 other way that is material so it’s just to check. For the retail-like use, I agree heartily with 4 Commissioner Hechtman’s recommendation to change the word “high level” to “substantially.” 5 But then where I differ is I’m not sure that it makes sense to roll the “retail-like” into retail 6 because I don’t know how those definitions are going to be used. So there’s a world in which I 7 might think that there are certain parts of Palo Alto where we care very deeply, that we kind of 8 want to maintain the look and feel, like I think of Burlingame’s downtown and it’s all like 9 restaurants and retail. It’s almost all restaurants and retail. But then if you imagine what would 10 happen if downtown Burlingame were turned into things that were only on the retail-like use, 11 what that would do and whether that would be a place we would want. I’m not sure that it 12 would. 13 14 And so as I was thinking about the whole, you know, overlay issue that we’re going to discuss 15 later on tonight, there’s the idea that we might want to be able to nest things. Like, here's our 16 most, sort of, traditional retail area where it's most important to us to have something really 17 vibrant and we want to really keep it that way. And then, kind of expanding out of that zone, 18 we'll be a little bit more flexible; and out of that zone, even more flexible. And so because of 19 that, I wonder if we might want to preserve that. But I'm not sure and it may make sense that 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. certain of these retail-like uses actually be moved into retail and then other ones kept as purely 1 retail-like. Because I did get a sense when this – when the Commission discussed retail in the 2 past, that there were certain uses that felt – certain retail-like uses that felt more like retail to 3 us than others. So that's just my thought there. 4 5 And then for the formula retail business, I think I don't have enough, kind of, historical context 6 on what our city – maybe just not even enough understanding of what our city really wants for 7 Cal Ave. Like, I remember hearing before that Cal Ave is supposed to be our more, kind of, 8 boutique-y, neighborhood-y retail area, and then University is more like what we see all over 9 the U.S. But – and if that's the case, then maybe keeping the current definition makes sense. 10 But, again, it sort of depends on what we want and I'm not sure I have a – I don't know what 11 we, Palo Alto, want. So because of that, I would say just leave it there right now. That's my 12 feedback. Thank you. 13 14 Leave the formula retail business definition in existence rather than just removing – 15 16 Commissioner Templeton: You mean not changing it from 10 to 50? 17 18 Vice-Chair Chang: No, no, no. Making it permanent but not necessarily removing the definition 19 – not necessarily the first bullet. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Oh, okay. 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. I'm not completely opposed to the first bullet either. Again, I just don't 4 know what the goals are for the various areas. Like, how do we want Cal Ave to be different 5 from University or anywhere else in the city, because it only applies in Cal Ave? But if we don't 6 care if it's different, then we don't need that definition. 7 8 Chair Akin: Thank you, Vice-Chair. Commissioner Ji. 9 10 Commissioner Ji: Thank you. For animal care, plus one what everyone said; same for retail 11 finance services, and auto showroom. For fast casual restaurants, I do agree that now I don't 12 really care how people eat there food. But I kind of want to address, maybe, Vice-Chair Chang's 13 comment about why is there this comment about dishwashers, and I think what Commissioner 14 Hechtman said about these establishments that don't have any real kitchens could be a reason 15 why their – this part exists. But because if you are just serving Costco platters, you don't need a 16 commercial dishwasher for anything. So just kind of food for thought, but no pun intended on 17 this section about that. But also want to plus one about kind of looking into the impacts of this 18 because I believe eating and drinking service is probably a pretty widespread mention in the 19 code. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Now, kind of coming to retail-like use. I want to support the substantively, I believe, 2 Commissioner Hech-, whatever word Commissioner Hechtman used so I don't… 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Substantially. 5 6 Commissioner Ji: Substantially – there we go – for that. I want to talk a little bit about Bullet 2 7 here, which is a revised Bullet K, to be objective. I do think that even – I would be in support of 8 that. I don't know if I know exactly what criteria should be here and it may not be a specific set. 9 It may not be like you have to have storefront windows and displays and lack of window 10 coverings, but it could be like some choose – like have some criteria of the above. I'll defer to 11 Staff's expertise on this area. But I think having some kind of, like – if not objective criteria, but 12 recommendations and say, like, one of the things that makes it support pedestrian activity is 13 that you have a storefront window. That can help with the director's decision-making when it 14 comes to that. 15 16 And then I want to talk about Bullet – sorry. I guess that was Bullet 3, not Bullet 4. Now I want 17 to talk about Bullet 4, the retail and retail-like. And for me, one of the distinctions in 18 participating in the ULI study this week, was the impact of the hotels that are in between Town 19 and Country and University, right. So imagine that the Sheraton that's kind of at the corner 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. there, was actually a retail complex. If I was at the train station, I would probably go and walk 1 around. But it's a giant hotel that faces El Camino and you can't really access it from University, 2 right? So that kind of – hotel is not defined as retail but it would – it is defined as retail-like. So 3 if we were to convert things, right, and we just get a bunch of hotels that kind of face away 4 from the street, I think I would be pretty unhappy with how that looks like. But I do agree that 5 there are some things that feel very, like, maybe could go into the retail definition just going 6 through here. Item A, the eating and drinking services. I think anywhere where I think about 7 retail, I'd be happy with that one. Maybe Item F, which is the commercial recreation; which I 8 saw is, like, amusement, exercise, theaters, bowling alleys, billiard parlors, skating arenas, etc. 9 Like, I do think that having large places for a bunch of younger people to kind of come and 10 gather, I think, could be really interesting in our retail areas. So I think that, kind of stepping 11 back here, I'm not supportive of folding retail-like completely into retail. But I think there exists 12 some world in which we can mesh some of these items, but not all of them, together there. 13 14 And then, for – on Packet page 42, about formula retail business. I'd be in support of making 15 the interim definition permanent. And then one thing that I think we haven't really talked about 16 as much is about the, kind of, the maybe additional definitions that we might want. This is 17 peeking behind the curtain a little bit onto Packet page 43 with Commissioner Hechtman's 18 question about the medical office with 35 square feet. I wonder if maybe we could define 19 something that is retail-medical or something similar that could provide – that we could then 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. slide into the retail-like uses. But I don't have the knowledge about what that looks like; and I 1 guess our consultants have said that 35 makes sense. But I think that could be an interesting 2 definition to slide in here. 3 4 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Ji. Commissioner Peterson. 5 6 Commissioner Peterson: Thank you, Chair. So I want to just echo what I've seen – heard the 7 other Commissioners talk about that I agree with, pretty much all those comments. But 8 particularly I want to raise the comment that Chair Chang brought up about California Avenue; 9 that the current definition for California Avenue is appropriate. I live by there. I think one way 10 or another, I have become the California Avenue commissioner simply from going to the 11 restaurants and everybody recognizing me there, and I hear from all the business owners there. 12 Every decision we make. And one of the things that I've noticed, there's – there are a lot of 13 fitness studios on California Avenue and they've been cycling in and out of business, so there's 14 not the business proposition for a larger space there. And the current businesses that are there 15 seem to be, you know, like Chair Chang brought up there, a boutique businesses. And they've 16 been there for a very long time, multi-generational, some of the businesses, and so that's why I 17 would propose that we do keep the same definition that we have now. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And I want to put in there, you know, California Avenue was recently closed, and so I therefore I 1 think California Avenue, if anything, is probably ready for even more of an understanding of, 2 what is California Avenue turned into as a closed street, which probably has pushed it into more 3 of a boutique, more restaurants, more specialty shops. And so I think that also lends itself well 4 to that street. Thank you. 5 6 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Peterson. Commissioner James, do you have anything on 7 this section? 8 9 Commissioner James: Mostly I agree with the sentiments here. I would say that, for me, 10 splitting the – on animal care, splitting seemed to make sense. Certainly on retail finance that – 11 the proposed changes made sense to me. The – yeah, and I think certainly removing takeout 12 service definition makes sense to me there, as well. The retail and retail-like usage. I think my 13 sort of overarching thing here is that I completely support the idea of simplify, simplify, 14 simplify. And I would, rather than Palo Alto being the community allowing this [inaudible 15 2:10:35], it is the hardest and least attractive for retail. I wish it was the most desirable. I'd just 16 rather be on the other – I don't want remove all guardrails but I would rather that was our 17 reputation rather than it was a difficult place to start a business for even a big enterprise or a 18 small one. I think small businesses are great. And so I would – on all of these, my goal is to kind 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. of be – err on the side of being as permissive as possible without kind of losing all the 1 guardrails, so. 2 3 I think with the – I think I was sort of leaning towards the idea of combining, collapsing retail 4 service and retail-like. I have heard some kind of compelling arguments for why you might want 5 that to be two tier, to preserve certain – the character of certain areas and maybe not having 6 them go to less retail kinds of businesses on the frontage street. So I'm open to a smart 7 definition that would still keep those two categories. And think this – yeah, the formula retail 8 on California Avenue, I think is tricky. I have to say I came into this meeting leaning towards 9 considering moving the definition, again, with this kind of overarching simplifying and trying to 10 get around our vacancies. I certainly don't want to squeeze out existing local boutique 11 businesses. I would not want to create a situation where rent's – if chain coffee shops or 12 whatever go in and there's now scarcity, I wouldn't want rents to go up and squeeze those folks 13 out. And so I think that's kind of a tricky one. And I'm kind of a bit uncertain about that, to be 14 honest. 15 16 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner James. I see no other lights. I'll run through my list. I have 17 a unique perspective on the animal care thing as I once, as a kid, worked removing animal 18 waste from a small zoo. So I've seen a number of takes on this problem. My question is, how 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. difficult would it be to establish objective performance standards for noise and waste? Is that 1 something that's really feasible or not? Ms. Eisberg? 2 3 Jean Eisberg: I think we want to try to do that. It doesn't need to be objective in the way that 4 we think of housing objective standards, but we want to make it clear, especially if it's a Staff 5 determination, clear at the counter what the metrics are. So yes, we want to get as close as 6 possible. As Jennifer said earlier, there is also this stop gap of the animal control on the PD side 7 so we do have a couple ways to regulate. 8 9 Chair Akin: Right. So it's tricky. As Commissioner Templeton and Vice-Chair Chang have brought 10 up, there are health issues; there are odor issues. If it's feasible, then I think I would prefer to 11 define animal care as a single category rather than splitting it. I strongly suspect that you're 12 going to find a lot of these issues are going to be applicable even if the category is split. So 13 perhaps we don't have a real distinction here. But I don't strongly object to the split between 14 daytime and overnight care if we can't manage the issue any other way. So I would just hope 15 that we can come up with enough objective standards that we can deal with the issue in such a 16 way that we don't have to categorize animal care. 17 18 With regard to retail financial services, the proposed modification is fine. I want to just confirm 19 a few of these that Commissioner Hechtman has already mentioned. Automobile showroom, 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. same; the interim definition is fine. Fast casual restaurants. The proposed modification looks 1 good. I would vote to eliminate the definition in use for takeout, just so I'm the record for that. I 2 would also vote to eliminate the subjective qualifier for pedestrian activity entirely, just to 3 make it as straightforward as possible. I certainly don't object to using "substantially" or 4 "substantively," but I think the extra simplicity might be worth it. 5 6 Merging retail-like into retail is attractive, but I would want to know if there are any places in 7 the code where we use retail alone with specific intent of excluding retail-like because that's an 8 indication that there really ought to be a distinction between the two. Ms. Armer. 9 10 Jennifer Armer: On that point I'll jump in just quickly to say that the use of retail-like and where 11 it should or shouldn't be allowed is not really clear. Mostly it is currently in the code just in 12 spaces like the Retail Preservation Ordinance. It's not actually included in very many places. But 13 the intent, as we Staff understood it from Council, was to be allowing more flexibility in a 14 broader range of uses within the retail areas. And so this question about whether there should 15 be a distinction and whether we should be specifying where they are or aren't allowed is an 16 important part of the input we're looking for from you. 17 18 Chair Akin: Okay. Well put me down for preferring that there be no distinction but not 19 convinced yet that we've actually done the homework. Commissioner Ji's observation is very 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. pertinent there. Finally, on formula retail, I have some comments about that but I think they're 1 best deferred until we can talk about the ”R” combining district and Cal Ave. So that's it for me 2 for this section. I have comments from Vice-Chair Chang. 3 4 Vice-Chair Chang: I just forgot to comment on two things so I'm going to throw them in right 5 now. So I, too, think there should be – we need to work on the definition for medical retail 6 because in various places, they're the option to just allow medical office and I can see that 7 being problematic. I'm not entirely sure, for example, that the 35 square feet is sufficient if, say, 8 it were an 11,000 square foot place. So I think we just need to think about it. And then, in fact 9 again, in the past when Town and Country was coming here asking if they could allow medical 10 office during the pandemic, I tried really hard to come up with what I thought a medical retail 11 definition should be, and it wasn't necessarily easy. But I'm hoping that maybe there's more 12 examples out there in other jurisdictions that we might be able to lean on. 13 14 And then I do think that if we keep, you know, if we keep Bullet K – and I do think it would be 15 helpful to make as many standards objective as possible to make it easier for the Director to 16 make those decisions as well as to remove uncertainty from potential businesses who might 17 choose to come. So they can say, well I know I – if we know that if you do these things, it would 18 definitely would count, then I think we should – that would be really useful information for 19 somebody who's coming up with a creative use. Because they're going to be, likely, a small 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. entrepreneur and, you know, they're not going to go to – they're not going to have it here if it 1 seems at all like it might be harder than the next city over. Thanks. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: If I may add to the Vice-Chair's comment about defining medical retail. I think 4 also the medical spa or medical crystal service is another area where there's been a clear line 5 drawn to – that if there is a medical professional, a doctor, involved, then that is not allowed. 6 And so that line is another one where it could blur very easily if it starts to open up and there 7 has been a fair amount of interest in that type of use in the past. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: And we've also – because we have that definition that if there is medical staff 10 there, then it's not allowed, I don't know that that's – back when we were talking about this 11 before, I remember Commissioner Templeton talking about, I think it was the Blossom Birth 12 store at Town and Country being a really wonderful resource, and it did have lactation 13 consultants in the back. But how amazing would it be if you could also have a nutritionist, for 14 example, who might be an actual MD? Or, you know, you could imagine a store where there's, I 15 don't know a fitness-type thing where there's an MD giving you advice on health, too, but still 16 largely generating a lot of foot traffic. So I just don't know what there is out there and we need 17 to think about, how do we allow for a very small amount of this space to be used for, say, a 18 consulting physician? Thanks. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: Another example is an eye doctor associated with selling glasses. 1 2 Chair Akin: Commissioner Ji. 3 4 Commissioner Ji: Thank you. Ms. Armer, I had a question about the Retail Preservation 5 Ordinance. So does that, today, only impact places labelled retail or does it also impact retail-6 like? 7 8 Jean Eisberg: It includes retail-like. So any site that has a retail or retail-like use must be 9 replaced in kind. 10 11 Commissioner Ji: Thank you. That's all. 12 13 Chair Akin: All right. I see no more lights at the moment. I'll give everybody a last few minutes 14 to think if there's anything else they want to comment or ask, but in the meantime I'll ask Ms. 15 Eisberg and Ms. Firstenberg if there is anything more they would like to hear from us on this 16 section. 17 18 Jean Eisberg: I don't think so. This has been very helpful. I know there's some points where 19 there's some different direction among Commissioners, but I think we've heard enough to do a 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. little more research and come back with a draft for your consideration on some of these 1 sticking points. 2 3 Chair Akin: All right, then. I still see no more lights. I think we can progress to the next section. 4 So this is on Packet pages 43 and 44, 18.30A, retail shopping, the ”R” combining district. And 5 this is of particular interest on Cal Ave. Commissioner Hechtman. 6 7 Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you, Chair. Before I start, first of all, I thought that first section, 8 great discussion. A lot of variety of comments. Before we jump into the second, it's a little after 9 8:00 and I'm wondering if this is an appropriate time for a break or do you want to do it after 10 this section or skip it or what? 11 12 Chair Akin: Good question. I actually considered proposing that we do it after this section. Is 13 everyone comfortable with that or would you like to take a break now? 14 15 Commissioner Hechtman: That works for me. 16 17 Chair Akin: All right. Then we will plan to take a break after we're done with this section. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. So listening to my fellow Commissioners in the first topic, it 1 occurred to me that I did have a general comment to make and then I'll talk about this section. 2 So this item before us tonight, it's called the Retail Revitalization Strategy. Our retail 3 environment here in Palo Alto is, to some extent, broken as measured by vacancy and vibrancy. 4 And we've got this item tonight because the City Council wants to fix it and they want our 5 recommendations on how to do it. So I would just observe that our current retail environment 6 is a product of our ordinance and I think our consultants have made a lot of recommendations 7 to sort of change the landscape. And the fewer changes we make to our ordinance, whether it's 8 out of fear of unintended consequences or other reasons, the less of a retail environmental 9 change we should reasonably expect. And so my attitude here is – and I said it before, and I 10 think Commissioner James said it –let's go bold. And if in the future we actually see some 11 unintended consequences, we can pull it back. So that's my sort of general comment. 12 13 On this section, I'm supportive of Staff's suggestions for Cal Ave and my comments are really on 14 the waiver and adjustments. I prefer the detailed potential modification over making the 15 interim regulation permanent. And also, Staff in the added Subsection 2, alternative viable use, 16 I actually prefer that rather than an addition to a modified version of 1, economic hardship. I 17 think that's a better solo tool in that we should eliminate the economic hardship, which is really 18 captured in the alternative viable use where it says, "the permitted retail or retail-like use is not 19 viable." So that serves as a standard and the change that would occur if we keep economic 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. hardship that it "results in an unreasonable financial burden," I just think that 1 unreasonableness is going to be very difficult to apply and determine. You know, what 2 constitutes an unreasonable financial burden? So that's why I kind of like this new concept that 3 Staff came up with, and I'm wondering if that can be the basis of a waiver or adjustment. 4 Thanks. 5 6 Chair Akin: Thank you. I see no more lights here. Anyone else have comments? Vice-Chair 7 Chang. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: So with respect to the waivers, I just hope that whatever waiver process that 10 we have, it's the same everywhere. Like with respect to retail. Because I know it comes up later 11 on, also on the next page. Here's – like I under – my question to Staff about this is, how often 12 has Staff heard that this is a problem? Like, how often has this process been used? The waiver. 13 And – or how often has somebody wanted to use it but then found it too onerous? Because I 14 understand that we need to have a waiver. We need to have a waiver because in – there's 15 some unforeseen situation, we might need to allow an exception. But if this is not being 16 commonly – if this isn't commonly needed, then it's not really a problem we need to spend a lot 17 of time discussing. And I would just say let's just do what Council – Council thought it was good 18 enough. I'd say just make that permanent. But I'd like to understand the context. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: I'll start by saying that I'm not aware of any requests to use this. My history 1 with it is just over the last year, though, so I don't know whether this has been used in the past. 2 3 Chair Akin: [Inaudible 2:28:28] 4 5 Albert Yang: So to my knowledge, it's been used twice. Both in, sort of, short succession several 6 years ago. Unfortunately we don't really know how often someone's thought about using it and 7 then been overwhelmed so. You know, that's the unknown piece. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. So a couple things in response to – I agree with Commissioner 10 Hechtman that if we need retail revitalization, we need retail revitalization. That said, I've made 11 it crystal clear that I had – there are serious data problems with both consultant reports before. 12 And we pointed them out and they weren't necessarily addressed so... In fact, when, in pre-13 meeting, we talked to our new consultant who's a retail broker – and I am forgetting her name 14 right now even though I wrote it – Ms. Firstenberg, she was very, very knowledgeable and was 15 able to provide us – in pre-meeting – all sorts of information that we weren't able to get from 16 the consultants before. And so I've also heard anecdotally, this is not from any source that's 17 reliable, but I've heard from people who work in – for some of the landlords in Palo Alto, that 18 Palo Alto's going gangbusters relative to some other city. So the Council imperative to look at 19 retail and revitalize it was made in 2020. Unfortunately, it's taken us a very long time and a lot 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. of it's come back. Now, that said, we still do have vacancies and we don't want those vacancies. 1 So I'm not saying that nothing needs to be done, I'm just saying I want to understand the 2 magnitude of our prob-, is this a retail problem overall versus a retail problem specific to Palo 3 Alto? And then, again, as discussed in pre-meeting, there's the issue of Palo Alto and its rents 4 and office being particularly attractive here. So I don't know that – I think that we should be 5 making these changes. I'm still also not sure making all these changes would necessarily make a 6 dent in what our problem is. And so I would love to hear from Ms. Firstenberg about what it is 7 that she thinks are the things that we – that are kind of like the lowest hanging fruit that we 8 would – that could really help the situation based on what she knows about the market and has 9 seen as a retail broker. So with that, I'll just stop. 10 11 Christine Firstenberg: I'm happy to answer that. Thank you very much, Commissioner. Generally 12 speaking, at a very high level, Palo Alto's zoning code needs cleanup. I read zoning codes every 13 day. I have to – as a broker, I look at all the zoning codes for all of my retailers that I am 14 representing. Before I actually present a site to my retailers, I have to go to that city zoning 15 code and see if the use is allowed. And Palo Alto zoning code is very, very dense. It's extremely 16 hard to understand, and in fact, there was a time when I couldn't quite understand it because 17 the levels were so deep. It does affect a retailer's decision or a broker's decision about do I 18 spend the next 25 minutes trying to figure this out or do I go look in Menlo Park to see if indeed 19 I can find an alternative site there. So I highly am – I'm very, very pleased to see that you are 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. taking this on. This is an extraordinarily difficult task. I look at the difficulty of changing the 1 language here, and it's mind-boggling, but you're taking it on extremely well. But it should be 2 done. It will help change the vacancy. 3 4 The larger issue, though, I think, over – even over the zoning is – and I do think the zoning is an 5 issue – but the larger issue is the size of your spaces. In retail, with costs having gone up so 6 much recently, we're seeing that every single use is downsizing. And so we did a few analyses in 7 trying to prepare for the meeting, and Jeanie and I have talked at length about different 8 availability. When I ran the availability report, I think you saw there was 37 available spaces in 9 Palo Alto as of yesterday. The median size, meaning not the average but the median size of that 10 retail square footage is 3,460 square feet. There's not a lot of tenants that will fit that size. So 11 again, that is a whole other issue that is over and above zoning, but the iss-, the tenants that 12 could fit into that size are often in your retail-like uses. Fitness – it goes up to about 5,000 13 square feet. The medical salons or medical spas are ballooning in desirability around the Bay 14 area, and those can fit in that size of square footage. So again, by loosening up the retail-like 15 uses, I do think you are going to be able to address that – the size of the buildings that are 16 available in Palo Alto. So I think with – again, we're cleaning up the zoning. And again, it's a very 17 difficult job, so I commend you for that, but also loosening up those uses in the retail-like will 18 allow these bigger spaces to get leased because, again, it's just – there's not a lot of tenants in 19 those size categories anymore. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: Thank you so much for providing that context. And so I wanted you to share 2 it with the rest of the Commission because it kind of prefaces some of my comments, which is 3 that if we do actually – it we're loosening a whole bunch of things, then I think that the more 4 we loosen all those things, the more we may actually want a waiver process to kind of remain 5 as it has been because ideally we keep things loose enough that nobody needs to use a waiver 6 process. And so I guess I – while I want to make a lot of changes, I'm not sure that the waiver 7 one is necessarily what we want to do. If the sizes are too big, then yes, allowing additional 8 uses, but then the other question is do we – and we as the Commission had also talked about 9 this before – what if we allowed the back of the space – we want to keep that retail corridor 10 vibrant, but what if we allowed the ba-, what if we allow people to shrink their spaces. So this 11 would be talking about modifying the Retail Protection Ordinance, and that might be a better 12 way to get the retail or the community-serving businesses that we want without allowing – it's 13 just a real bummer if you have a retail corridor and then like an office in the middle because 14 somebody's able to claim that – or something that we don't want in the middle because 15 somebody's able to claim that it's – it's not what we want. I think we just need to relax in the 16 ways that we want to relax. So that's my comment about this item with respect to the waivers. 17 18 And I sh-, I would love it if we didn't have to have these overlays. I just think we should – if Cal 19 Ave is the only place in the City that this applies to, let's just say this is the Cal Ave District, and 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. anybody who says I'm interested in this space can go look to the Cal Ave section and see all the 1 retail requirements that apply to it there. So I would like to get rid of the R – these overlays I 2 just think are a pain. And maybe there's a – I know we have the pedestrian overlay too. I think 3 that one may have some value because pretty much all retail areas should have a pedestrian 4 overlay but not the other way around. Not all pedestrian areas should be retail areas, so that 5 one may be valid. But with respect to retail, I don't think we should be doing retail overlays on 6 places. We just have ground-floor retail or not. That's kind of where I stand. Kind of jumping the 7 gun to the next topic, but it explains my reasoning for why I would like to get rid of the R – the R 8 overlay. 9 10 Chair Akin: Thank you. Commissioner Ji, then Commissioner Templeton. 11 12 Commissioner Ji: Thank you. Actually I was wondering – Ms. Firstenberg, since we were asking 13 questions, I was wondering if you had any commentary on the rent prices for Palo Alto relative 14 to our neighbors. 15 16 Christine Firstenberg: Yes. Palo Alto is known to be more expensive. There are some spaces 17 along University Avenue that are ex-, that are much, much higher than the surrounding cities. 18 There – I did see, though, in the availability reports that we just ran that there are some spaces 19 at $48 a foot. That's about market in some – 48 to probably $60 a foot is about what the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. market rents typically are on the peninsula. Every now and then, you'll see something at 72, but 1 I don't – there wasn't many at 91, and you have a few properties for lease in the 90s. So I do 2 think those will naturally come down because the tenants are not paying those kind of rents 3 right now. And it – they just – the longer they stay on the market, the longer – well, more likely 4 the property owners think about reducing the rents. So yes, your rents are a little higher, but I 5 do believe the market will take care of that because there are now spaces that are coming out 6 onto the market in Palo Alto with a rent that is similar to rents in Menlo Park and Mountain 7 View, so – not all of them but some, and that's a big statement. 8 9 Commissioner Ji: Yeah. As a follow-up there, i-, what is your understanding for, other than I 10 guess loosening restrictions for what could be there, as to why some of these landlords have 11 kept it at 91 [inaudible 160:02]? Do you know how long they've been keeping at such high 12 rates? 13 14 Christine Firstenberg: I couldn't address specifically how long. I can go back and maybe do some 15 historical research for you, but it is really a landlord's prerogative. In some cases, what we see 16 in the industry is the leasing is being done by someone that is not deep in our industry. And I'll 17 use it at the Interna-, the ICSC industry. So the ICSC is the International Council of Shopping 18 Centers. Most of the retail leasing people belong to that organization, and it's an educational 19 networking organization where people talk and unders-, people talk and convey what's 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. happening in different markets. When we see rents that are out of line with the market rents, it 1 often is because the leasing's being done with someone that's really not used to doing retail 2 leasing. And they might be an office leasing agent, or they might be a property owner that 3 they're wanting to lease their own building and they just don't have enough information. So it 4 varies quite a bit, but oftentime it is just lack of proper information as to why they believe 5 something should be priced a certain way. 6 7 Commissioner Ji: So do you think that if we were to allow more uses, that would – how – I guess 8 how would the market handle that in your experience? 9 10 Christine Firstenberg: Allowing more uses will get many of the spaces leased up. And those 11 spaces that have a rent that's above market will be the last ones still available. They will not 12 lease up when other spaces in Palo Alto are being leased at a rent lower than that. So again, 13 there'll be the market rent and there'll be those above market, and you will see that those don't 14 get leased. One of the other things we are seeing throughout the State of California right now is 15 – and I think this addresses or talks – when you were speaking about the waiver, this came up 16 in my mind. Many of the retailers in today's world, they need a certain type of infrastructure 17 with regard to utilities, and some of the buildings – some of the older buildings don't always 18 have the proper utilities. So in some cases you may come – a property owner may come to you 19 and say I only have 100 amps in my building and I don't have an ability to bring my electrical 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. amperage up to 200 amps. And that can make a difference to the point where that building or 1 that space won't get leased because there's very few retail tenants – and I'm including 2 restaurants, personal services, medical spas. I'm including a lot of those retail-like uses when I 3 use the generic verbiage of retail. There's – most of the tenants that are active in today's 4 industry cannot live with 100 amp service. So those buildings probably exist in Palo Alto that 5 don't have the ability to increase the amperage without really undue hardship. We – it's 6 affecting our retail leasing throughout the State. 7 8 Commissioner Ji: Thank you. This was super informative, to say the least. Yeah. I guess I'll 9 provide my comments on this section. I know we've gone a little bit on a tangent, but this was 10 extremely informative. Thank you. So kind of going back to where we originally were on Packet 11 Page 43, I think that, for me, I could be interested in allowing offices that face a side or the rear. 12 I would be more interested if we limited that to, for example, community-serving uses as 13 defined by our code. And then I don't have any additional comments on the waiver. 14 15 Chair Akin: All right. Commissioner Templeton, you're next, but I wanted to interject something 16 really quickly here for Commissioner Ji. Our packet for the meeting of May 8, 2024, has all the 17 historical data for many years for retail vacancies, office vacancies, and rents, so I strongly 18 recommend taking a look at that if you want that data. Thank you for letting me jump in. 19 Commissioner Templeton. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: Of course. Yeah, I just wanted to weigh in. I was mulling over some 2 of the comments that Vice-Chair Chang made, and I was getting kind of a Main Street USA vibe 3 in Disneyland. And so I'm describing that because I don't know if that's what we mean, but they 4 do have some parts of the streetside retail facing 35-foot thing we – that we've been talking 5 about, whereas you don't know how deep the store is behind it. And I think that's – it's sort of 6 interesting because what we're talking about is creating and maintain a vibe. But also there's a 7 – kind of a façade nature of it that may be not kind of the authenticity that we're known for 8 here. And I struggle because I think being able to have that vibe that would be created by this 9 storefront window shopping kind of thing is interesting and very tempting, but I don't know 10 really how viable it would be long term or what it might do to how people feel about the actual 11 experience if they're not able to – if the store doesn't match the façade kind of thing. So I think 12 as we explore this concept, which is very interesting, we should think about the next step, not 13 just tempting them in but how they feel once they're into the store and is that something that 14 will keep people coming back. 15 16 And then the other comment I had just about California Avenue with regards to her comments 17 was we do have shopping centers have their own kind of zone, so if you're saying – I'm sure – 18 we even literally have a sign that says Cal Ave Shopping Center. So maybe formalizing that is 19 not a bad idea because it will help people understand why it has separate regulations and 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. governance. And just thinking about is that the right thing to do. Did that just spring up and 1 happen? I don't think it did, but really to understand both our train stations in Palo Alto really 2 lack amenities. They're near things that you could walk a couple of blocks and get a coffee, but 3 they don't have those kind of things at the station. And Cal Ave is kind of a little bit closer to 4 having stuff. You can go to Mollie Stone's. You can go get a coffee. You can get a meal, so – do 5 some printing. So there's things that are there, but if we were more purposeful about it, would 6 we have – would it be more attractive to people visiting and to retailers to establish themselves 7 there? 8 9 So I really do like that idea, and I just wanted to throw it out there that if we were to 10 understand it – if you think about major trains – and I'm not saying Cal Ave is a major train 11 station, okay guys. But if I'm thinking as a model of train stations in other cities, I – there's 12 always a little grocery. There's always a little café. There's always a place to sit down and get 13 your nails done or your shoes shined or whatever. There's things that are nearby to pass the 14 time and to catch on your way home or your way to work, something that you might need. So I 15 think that's possibly a way to establish a vision. Now I don't know if that affects this specific 16 section we're talking about and if that impacts retail and retail-like, and my – I guess my main 17 takeaway for staff is let's have a vision for California Avenue and – yeah. I don't know to what 18 extent this exercise we're doing today is that vision, so I'm just going to throw that out there for 19 the future. Thank you. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner. All right. I'll run through my items, seeing no other lights 2 at the moment, and like everyone else, I'll generalize a little more than I had originally 3 intended. I think the provisions in the interim ordinance are worth keeping. Fitness studios 4 might become more attractive as SB 79 forces more growth with less open space, so that 5 suggests to me that we probably should increase the size limit so that we might be able to 6 attract a few more of those. As noted before, I'll just reference earlier comments about take-7 out and animal care. Office uses facing side and rear yards. I suggest that probably what you 8 want is some language that says office uses that are not front facing because I can imagine an 9 entirely internal office space that faces none of the yards, which might still be a valuable 10 addition. So simply not front facing would take care of that. I have no strong opinion about the 11 medical offices with street-facing retail, so I think other Commissioners have covered that 12 better than I can. About formula retail on Cal Ave, of course, Downtown allows formula retail, 13 and I haven't noticed it being a problem, although I would say it tends to turn over. I would be 14 interested in knowing if there is a trend towards more of it or less of it on University or in 15 Downtown because that might inform our decision about what we choose to do on Cal Ave. 16 17 Yeah, the exception process is far too onerous. I appreciate the comments from the Vice-Chair. 18 My original thinking was that I would vote to just clarify the rules and then adjust them later if 19 it turns out that there are unintended consequences. So you will have some judgement calls to 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. make about that. We're not giving you a clear message. The Vice-Chair also brought up 1 something that I had intended to bring up later, and that's the idea of area-specific combining 2 districts. So it's not just Cal Ave; it's also Midtown and Charleston that face this problem. And 3 my original proposal at premeeting was just to collapse everything down to one district, and I 4 have since changed my mind about that. There's too much in the base district to throw that out 5 and try and consolidate it in an area-specific district. But all the other specificity could be 6 combined into one area-specific combining district, so you would have to look at only one 7 combining district and the base. And I think that concept is worth pursuing on Cal Ave, 8 Midtown, and Charleston at least, possibly Downtown; I haven't thought that through. So, I 9 think that covers it for me on this section. Commissioner Templeton. 10 11 Commissioner Templeton: Thanks. I'll be quick. You just reminded me of something that – I was 12 wondering if this is the area where we would talk about it or not. We used to have a café that 13 was – that popped up without being permitted on California Avenue, and it was pretty popular. 14 And I'm just wondering should someone want to do something like that again legally, would we 15 want to – is this what we would change to allow that? Is it already allowable enough, we just 16 didn't see that happen or – I'm just wondering. Staff, do you have any thoughts on if – are you 17 familiar? Okay. Go ahead. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Just – this – we're talking about Backyard Brew, right? And the legal 1 component was what? I think that's what we need to understand in order… 2 3 Commissioner Templeton: That's… 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: …to make the modifications. 6 7 Commissioner Templeton: …exactly my question for staff. 8 9 Vice-Chair Chang: Maybe – so maybe Jean or other staff know. 10 11 Chair Akin: Was it a code enforcement issue? 12 13 Vice-Chair Chang: I thought there was some elec-, I know that there was… 14 15 Chair Akin: Yeah. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: …a code enforcement electrical issue. They were running extension cords 18 where they shouldn't, that kind of a thing, but other than that, I don't know if it was allowed or 19 not. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Templeton: It was a vibrancy component of Downtown – or of Cal Ave… 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: Correct. 4 5 Commissioner Templeton: …that we lost for reasons of safety. So we were just trying to 6 understand if something wanted to happen there in the future, do we – have we created an 7 environment where it could. 8 9 Jennifer Armer: Yes. My understanding is they are working to get the permits they require to be 10 able to reopen. It did have to do with safety. There were thi-, my understanding – and I have 11 not been deeply involved – was that there were modifications made that did not comply with 12 building or electrical code or some component of that. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: So it's not something that we need to correct… 15 16 Jennifer Armer: No. 17 18 Commissioner Templeton: …during this exercise? That was the question really. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Jennifer Armer: Correct. 1 2 Commissioner Templeton: Okay. That's all I wanted to double check. All right. Thank you. 3 4 Chair Akin: All right. Any further comments on this section? If not, then as previously agreed, 5 let's take a break of 10 minutes. We'll come back at 8:52. All right, everyone. Are we ready to 6 proceed? We are back into session and ready to begin the next segment of retail issues, and I 7 believe that is Packet Page 45, 18.30(C), the Ground Floor Combining District which applies to 8 Downtown, Midtown, and Charleston. Commissioner Hechtman. 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: So for both of these, I feel like the staff potential modification is 11 more flexible than making the interim regulation permanent even as modified, and so I'm 12 supportive of staff's alternative to making the interim regulation permanent. 13 14 Chair Akin: Thank you. Next? Vice-Chair Chang. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: So I'm more excited about allowing offices that face the side and rear yards 17 than I am necessarily – I'm not totally against it – but the fitness and exercise studios up to 18 3,000 square feet. And the reason for that is I've been to places where there's just a ton of 19 fitness studios and it's effectively an office. It's just not – yes, the people come and go and so it 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. does generate some foot traffic, but they're really big store frontages. It's like a big gap. It's sort 1 of that hotel effect that Commissioner Ji was talking about, and it breaks things up. And so 2 would I prefer to have a giant fitness studio for half a block, or would I prefer to have some sort 3 of retail and then office back behind it and non-street facing? I would prefer that alternative, I 4 think. That said, I also hear what our Chair said about the need for more recreational space as 5 we have more people coming. So I am a little bit torn on that. 6 7 What really stuck with me is what our consultants said, which is that the spaces that are vacant 8 right now are too big, and so whatever we can do to make – I think we want those smaller 9 businesses. It's not that we necessarily want fitness studios. So if we could encourage those 10 instead, then I would prefer to do that instead of increasing the size up to 5,000. I would love 11 for our consultants and staff to figure out what that threshold is and ideally have it kind of be 12 the same threshold on Cal Ave as on University so that we don't have – why are we splitting 13 hairs? I don't understand why a gym needs to be smaller in one place than the other 14 necessarily. Maybe there's a good reason, but I just think it'd be simpler if we could just make it 15 the same everywhere. Thanks. 16 17 Chair Akin: Thank you. Seeing no lights at the moment, I'll run through mine quickly because 18 they're all repeats of things that I've said before. The not-facing front office, the fitness studio 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. size limit, animal care as usual, and waivers. So I think I've commented on all of those 1 previously. Anyone else? Vice-Chair Chang. 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: I forgot to say one thing. With respect to my comment about allowing offices 4 that face – that are not front facing, I too in general would prefer if those were somehow 5 neighborhood-serving uses because that would then help generate that foot traffic that we 6 need. And I think there's the need for that. I hear about therapists and having a hard time 7 finding office space, and these little nooks might be perfect for something like that. 8 9 Chair Akin: Thank you. Any other comments? It sounds like we've mostly gone over this ground 10 already. All right then. We can come back to this if we need to, but for the time being, let's go 11 ahead and proceed to Packet Page 46, the CD, CN, CC, CS districts. Yeah, I thought these 12 sections would go more quickly, but I'm surprised they're going this quickly. All right. The only 13 novel suggestion I have here is I like the idea of harmonizing the CD uses with GF and R uses, so 14 I would encourage the proposed modifications there and support merging them where that 15 makes sense. Anyone else? Vice-Chair Chang. 16 17 Vice-Chair Chang: So the one thing that I was an emphatic no on was removing the ground-floor 18 – wait. Are we on commercial district right now and Midtown, or you're just doing one at a 19 time? 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Chair Akin: Yeah, Packet Page 46. 2 3 Vice-Chair Chang: Yeah. 4 5 Chair Akin: Yeah. 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: Okay. Yeah, I am not in favor of removing the ground-floor combining district. 8 So I think we can get rid of the Midtown and Charleston designations because the ground floor 9 overrides that, but I wouldn't want just that middle bullet point because I don't think we want 10 offices in those spaces. 11 12 Chair Akin: Thank you. Further comments? All right. Commissioner Ji. 13 14 Commissioner Ji: Yeah, I guess this is more kind of a clerical question. I had a bunch of 15 comments about the usage of GF, but I had it all relative to Attachment B. Would it make more 16 sense to talk it about here, or are we going to go through some of the uses on Attachment B? 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: That's a good question. Yeah, my own notes essentially say that I was going to defer 1 it, but I don't have a strong opinion about it. We could try and tackle some of those things in 2 this section. 3 4 Commissioner Ji: Okay, sure. Okay. So I guess we'll jump kind of down to Packet Page 51, which 5 is where some of the information for the commercial district, the Midtown Charleston Shopping 6 Center, and the ground floor are all kind of listed out. I found it just kind of [inaudible 195:28] 7 pretty sad to read that you have this table but then Columns 2 through 4 are mute. So that was 8 kind of enlightening about how complex the code was. Okay. So in general I'm kind of using 9 Column 5, the GF combining district as my reference point because that is the current status 10 quo. So on Packet Page 52 about liquor stores, they're currently not allowed in GF, but they're 11 conditional use in all of the other categories. I'm indifferent, but I guess to make it consistent 12 we could also make them conditional use for the GF combining district. And then for – on 13 Packet Page 53 about 4th from top, the General Business Service, I'm actually against – I'm not 14 for keeping it in the conditional use. I'm more in favor of not having it because the code 15 describes this as General Business Services use engaging in sales, service, installation, repair 16 services, generally intended to support other businesses rather than individual consumers. My 17 general opinion is that for ground-floor spaces we probably want things supporting kind of 18 individual consumers generally. So that's for Line 4. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. And then I think for the 5th from bottom, the Personal Service, I don't have a particular 1 preference as to whether we should use the CN, the permitted under 3,000 square feet and the 2 conditional use over 3,000 square feet, but if staff had an explanation as to why that is, I could 3 be swayed one way or another on that one. And I think those were all my comments on that. 4 5 Chair Akin: Do you want to request any explanation for… 6 7 Commissioner Ji: Sure. 8 9 Chair Akin: …that point? 10 11 Commissioner Ji: Yeah. Can we talk about the Personal Service 3,000 square feet? 12 13 Jean Eisberg: I believe it's there because the CN district neighborhood commercial is supposed 14 to be small scale. So there's actually another table that's sort of subsumed into here which gets 15 at the size thresholds, and that's where you see size thresholds for personal services, for 16 fitness, and for a few other uses. 17 18 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: So in – wait. I'm sorry. Where am I – okay. So for the fitness, I know we've – I 1 feel like we've been talking about the size of fitness quite a few times tonight. So I didn't see 2 that listed on this chart. What's the fitness requirement for CN? 3 4 Jean Eisberg: I'll have to go back and look at the table. There's basically a separate table in the 5 code that regulates size of establishments and then over the – it's either whether it's permitted 6 or a CUP. But I can look it up. 7 8 Commissioner Ji: Okay. Just kind of a general comment. I think I would prefer probably 9 somewhat consistent fitness standards. Having 7 different fitness standards across the code I 10 think is just a little bit too complicated if I'm a – if I'm trying to host – look for a place to put my 11 fitness studio, but in every single block of the City I have to look at a different sizing I think 12 would be a little bit silly. So that's my general comment on that. Kind of going back to what 13 some other folks have said, I guess I think there might be some value in having a Cal Ave 14 specific area zoning just because it now is a closed pedestrian street, and I think that because 15 it's closed we may want to curate it differently than some other areas. So that's kind of my 16 rationale for Cal Ave. But I don't find that Midtown and Charleston are particularly that 17 different in my opinion, and I'm happy to kind of keep it using the GF generally but would love 18 to hear other Commissioners' comments on that. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: Thank you. Seeing no other lights, I'll jump in with the few comments I have on this. 1 Most of these points I've already made earlier. I think there's perhaps some value in creating 2 combining districts for the separate areas. Along those lines, I was sort of curious. Suppose you 3 were to create such a district by going through the tables on Pages 51 to 53 and taking the most 4 lenient option from all of the applicable columns. What do you get? Do you get something that 5 we find is acceptable or is it attractive? If we are looking for going big, then you say well, okay, 6 let's start by taking the rules that we have and interpreting them in the most generous fashion 7 possible. So if you want to lead with a proposal and a new ordinance, then that might be one 8 disciplined way to go about creating that. But yeah, the existing situation is just horrible. So I 9 think the best we can do is probably one base and one combining district, but if you have a 10 more creative solution, I'm sure we'd all like to hear it. That was all the comments I had on this 11 section. Anyone else? Commissioner Ji. 12 13 Commissioner Ji: I just want to jump in and piggyback off of Chair Akin's comments about kind 14 of the most loose restrictions. I'd also just like to have Section R maybe considered as well in 15 that. 16 17 Chair Akin: Very good. Any other comments here? All right. If not – and of course, we can 18 always come back – we'll move on to Packet Page 47, which is 18.52.030, Basic Parking 19 Regulations. I think we're slowing down here tonight. Vice-Chair Chang. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: So I think I don't have enough information to fully understand this because I 2 don't know what the parking requirements are for the varied uses. But this is where the famous 3 Cal Ave yogurt store example comes up where a yogurt store couldn't come in because it – 4 there was too much parking that was required, whereas I think we would have been really 5 happy to have the yogurt store. So in theory, yes, but I just don't know if that means then 6 suddenly that we don't have – I don't know what that could do, but in theory, yes, because I 7 know, for example, that restaurants are really parking intensive. And so if a restaurant – a really 8 pop-, look at Portola Valley with Alpine Inn and their parking situation. It's – we just wouldn't 9 want to create something like that. I don't see that happening. It'd be a lovely problem to have, 10 so it seems to make sense to me, but that's based on what little I know. 11 12 Chair Akin: Commissioner Templeton. 13 14 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. I just wanted to let the Commission know that I will be having a 15 venue change, and if you're still going when I am able to log back on in about 10 or 15 minutes, 16 then I'll join you then. Thank you. 17 18 Chair Akin: Thank you. We look forward to you rejoining us. I'll jump in with my comments here 19 and see if it inspires any reactions from anyone. So I am not comfortable with completely 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. ignoring the parking impacts with change of use because I can see too many potential problems 1 there. I have no problems with updating the standards because you could certainly argue that 2 what we have are out of date. And this gets back to the area-specific overlays. In Cal Ave, we 3 have a nice new garage on Sherman, so we might be willing to tolerate lower parking updates 4 in that area than we are in some others. So I suspect this might be something we want to 5 address with area-specific districts. I'm also okay with increasing the shared parking threshold. 6 And echoing Vice-Chair Chang's comments, if we have any actual measurements that justify 7 what the value should be, because this is one of those things that varies depending on the hour 8 of the day, so I have no idea what the maximum over the course of the day needs to be, but I'm 9 receptive to the idea of changing the threshold. Just I don't know what it should be. 10 11 And finally, a purely political observation, I'm sort of reluctant to explicitly cross-reference AB 12 2097 because that could be interpreted as encouraging zero parking rather than making a 13 considered choice. Sure, in the AB 2097 areas it's allowed, but that doesn't necessarily mean we 14 want to encourage everyone to think that zero is always the right answer. And it may be area-15 specific, district-specific regulations could be expressed in a way that meets the requirements 16 of the law without perhaps misleading. But again, that's purely political consideration. The 17 other things I mentioned are more substantive, so those are the ones that really matter to me. 18 Commissioner Ji. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: The Chair basically said all the points. I just wanted to do a plus 1 from my 1 lived experience on El Camino Way where there is no other place to park, and so when I've seen 2 the different businesses come and go, you really do feel the parking implication change pretty 3 significantly based on what's around. 4 5 Chair Akin: Commissioner Peterson. 6 7 Commissioner Peterson: Thank you, Chair. So when it comes to parking, being the – probably 8 one of the few who is a pedestrian – I walk – I really enjoy public transit. I just think it's a good 9 time to always reinforce that, that I enjoy not parking and I enjoy not driving. I haven't changed 10 a tire, I haven't had to get the oil changed in I don't know how long. I miss the Ten Minute Lube. 11 The people down there are great. But I always want to promote that lifestyle of get rid of your 12 car and use the Caltrain and take the bus. Thank you. 13 14 Chair Akin: Thank you. Any further comments on this section? All right. To move on to another 15 one that should be fairly straightforward, that's Packet Page 48, the Process and Administration 16 question. Commissioner Hechtman. 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Thanks. Before I go to 48, I just want to remind staff that the sections 19 that I don't say anything about –I think at least one other Commissioner said this – that means I 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. agree with staff's proposed modifications, and I want that to be remembered because it's 1 easier to remember words than silence. So the fact that somebody might've picked at 2 something on Page 47, there's also this implicit voice of mine that's saying I like what you 3 wrote. All right. So on 48, I am supportive of the renaming the CUPs. And I have seen this in a 4 lot of jurisdictions where sometimes they call it administrative permit or a special permit. But 5 CUP has a connotation in the development and commercial community, and it means a lot of 6 hoops to jump through and possibly multiple layers and public hearings. And even if our CUP 7 process was somehow simpler than other places, we don't get the credit for that because 8 everybody just thinks oh god, it's a CUP. So we name it something different, and I think just that 9 simple action will attract people to investigate more thoroughly. So I like the 2nd bullet, not the 10 1st. 11 12 Chair Akin: And I agree. In fact, perhaps we have general agreement here. Vice-Chair Chang? 13 14 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes also. Second bullet. 15 16 Commissioner James: Second bullet. 17 18 Chair Akin: All right. I thought that would be an easy one. Let's move on to one which is a little 19 more challenging, Packet Page 49. That's Retail Preservation. Commissioner Hechtman. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner Hechtman: Yeah. So let's see. First, 3rd, and 4th bullet I am supportive of. The 1st 2 bullet including the sub-bullets. The one I sort of wanted to throw on the table for possible 3 discussion is the 2nd bullet: Consider reduced replacement requirement of less than 1:1 to 4 square feet to increase site flexibility for redevelopment projects. And when I looked at that, I 5 was like well, any redevelopment project? Or do we want to kind of direct people to mixed-use 6 housing or something else? And so I just want to put that out for possible discussion that 7 maybe we want to limit that benefit to some kind of behavior we want to encourage. The last 8 bullet, I have spoken in the past. I'm kind of supportive of this. I think it's controversial on this 9 Commission and so I don't push it anymore. I like trying to adjust the framework in other ways 10 rather than just eliminating the RPO. 11 12 Chair Akin: Thank you. Other comments? Commissioner Ji, then Vice-Chair Chang. 13 14 Commissioner Ji: Yeah. I'm generally – I guess, Commissioner Hechtman, I won't rehash our 15 continued RPO conversation. But one of the things that I just kind of experienced this past 16 weekend was I have a friend who asked me when is something moving into where Bill's Café 17 was over on Loma Verde and Middlefield. And it's currently an empty plot of nothing, I believe. 18 And so these are the kinds of things where I get the – I am lucky enough to live pretty close to El 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Camino, but some other people really enjoy going to their neighborhood business. And so I'm 1 generally kind of for keeping the retail where it is. 2 3 Chair Akin: Thank you. Vice-Chair Chang. 4 5 Vice-Chair Chang: I think when we were talking about nodes on El Camino, as I was preparing 6 for that meeting, I desperately wanted to actually just create ground-floor retail in certain 7 spots. I'm okay with this one going away, but then I would want this whole corner to be ground-8 floor retail. And so to the extent that we could actually do that, I think it could really work for 9 certain areas. However, we have additional complications there. For El Camino, if we could do 10 that, I think I would be okay with it. I don't know where else because there are neighborhood – 11 like for Philz, if I understand correctly – let me look at the map here. Yeah, Philz doesn't have to 12 be retail by zoning, and yet it was such a big part of that neighborhood. And so if we were to – I 13 think a potential – if we don't like the Retail Protection Ordinance, I think a more methodical 14 way to do it would be to mandate retail in certain locations, and that probably would – actually 15 would make sense. I just don't know how difficult it is to – if there's other legal barriers to 16 mandating the retail. 17 18 And I do know that with respect to El Camino, there's a problem where – I actually emailed Mr. 19 Yang about this – where in the implementation of how we chose to implement the Housing 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Element, there are a bunch of little postage stamp size places – and I talked about this in the 1 retail node discussion here at the PTC – where they don't actually generate that much housing. 2 But because they are Housing Element sites and we as a city chose not to make a distinguishing 3 implementati-, we chose not to distinguish between Housing Elements designated for low-4 income housing versus not, all Housing Element sites don't need to replace the retail. And so 5 what happened is even as we were drawing the nodes, within those nodes several of the sites 6 don't need any retail. And so we would want to probably – the ideal way to do this to really be 7 thoughtful about it is to leave it a Housing Element site but to say also that ground-floor retail is 8 required in this because this is not a site that's designated for low-income housing. And then 9 that would make our – and then we could – the areas outside of those nodes we could release 10 and say we don't need retail here because we feel good about these nodes. So I think that 11 would be – in my dream world, that's what I would like to do, but I'm not sure we can do all 12 those things. Yeah. 13 14 Jennifer Armer: If I may jump in, that's exactly what the GF and P overlays do. 15 16 Vice-Chair Chang: Right. But we – so I understand that and so – I understand that, but right now 17 the – if we put that GF overlay on our Housing Element sites, it doesn't work. So for… 18 19 Jennifer Armer: Correct. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Vice-Chair Chang: …the purposes of El Camino, it – we're in trouble. 2 3 Jennifer Armer: It would only work on those sites that are not allowed to build 100 percent 4 housing in compliance with the Housing Element. 5 6 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. And so there is a separate issue of if we really wanted to do something 7 like this, what we should als-, it is possible apparently for us as a city to choose to implement 8 our Housing Element just a slightly different lingo where we make that distinguishing factor 9 that's allowed by State law, and then that would solve the problem on El Camino. So I think, in 10 theory, I would be okay actually with removing the Retail Protection Ordinance, but it would 11 require using the GF overlay in a lot of places, I think. 12 13 Chair Akin: Thank you. I'll jump in because that segues pretty well into my comments, which are 14 much less well thought out than the Vice-Chair's. But yeah, I could support excluding the 15 residential zones and the office and manufacturing zones provided there's not much existing 16 retail there that we want to protect. And I suspect that's the case. I believe someone on staff 17 did this analysis for us once before, but I was not able to find it in my records at the time. And 18 that relates to excluding San Antonio and El Camino, and I think the Vice-Chair has covered all 19 of the trade-offs and those issues in those areas nicely. Yeah, we want to contribute to retail 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. vitality, but what's the best way to go about it? Minor issue: Removing the need for – I have a 1 note here – removing the need to express 10-year history is fine. About eliminating the RPO 2 and requiring ground-floor retail in greater generality, I'm very interested in that idea, but I 3 don't know whether developers are receptive to that approach. It would be interesting to get 4 Ms. Firstenberg's take on that. And I also want to know is it even possible in the SB 79 areas. 5 Can we require ground-floor retail there? So those are the 2 things that I would like some 6 elaboration on. 7 8 Christine Firstenberg: In most cities that I do work, almost every city I work with does have a 9 ground-floor requirement. And what we counsel the cities to do is to really go to the node 10 concept because requiring retail on the ground floor in a mid-block situation doesn't always – 11 the retail doesn't always get leased. Retail really works better at an intersection of 2 streets, 12 and to require retail on a long, long block mid-block, it's not always successful because it 13 doesn't always get leased. So again, going to a node system, being very thoughtful about where 14 you put the retail requirement, that is where most cities are going in the Bay area right now. So 15 I hope that answers your question, but almost every city, again, is dealing with some of the 16 same issues you're dealing with, and they're all struggling. This is not easy. 17 18 So as far as the State laws, there's so many State laws for housing. The way I understand them 19 is every one of the State laws gives you different rights, and you have to identify to the City 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. which State law you're using for the housing development that you're proposing if you want to 1 go around – if you want to get a b-, a density bonus or if you want to reduce the density or if 2 you want to go and build without having to go through a full entitlement process. So it's very 3 complicated. I believe the law is not clear as to whether or not they can disregard your zoning 4 requirement for retail on the ground floor. I've been told by one of the politicians at the State 5 level that the intent of the law was never to disregard a city's requirement for zoning for retail 6 on the ground floor, and yet we're seeing it happen in every city right now. Developers are 7 coming in for housing and saying that they're not going to do retail on the ground floor. So I 8 think the laws will have to be litigated before we get a clear understanding of what you as a city 9 can stand firm on. Does that answer your question? 10 11 Chair Akin: It's a start. I think Ms. Armer was going to weigh in on this as well. 12 13 Jennifer Armer: I was actually going to invite Mr. Yang in case he wanted to add anything more 14 or clarification to that. 15 16 Albert Yang: Yeah. Sorry. Were we discussing this in relation to [inaudible 222:47]. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: SB 79. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Albert Yang: SB 79. 1 2 Jennifer Armer: And retail on the ground floor, whether we'd require it. 3 4 Albert Yang: So I don't – there's nothing in SB 79 in particular that addresses retail on the 5 ground floor, but SB 79 projects are generally eligible to use density bonus law. And under 6 density bonus, a developer could ask for relief from retail requirements as a concession from 7 the City. 8 9 Chair Akin: Okay. So it sounds like in general we can't count on it, but the same concern applies 10 to applying RPO in those projects as well, right? 11 12 Albert Yang: That's right. Density bonus is available to any development – housing development 13 project. That's providing the minimum amount of affordable housing. 14 15 Chair Akin: Okay. So the question I had originally isn't really dispositive? Okay. Hm. I don't know 16 what advice I can offer you then. But in the meantime, I will pass the buck to Commissioner Ji. 17 18 Commissioner Ji: I'm just thinking out loud here because I'm looking at the various overlays on 19 the map. There's CS, LD, and all these other things. But I am curious. This is not really a fully 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. baked thought, but having the GF overlay for some of these RM-40 places that are next to 1 commercial areas could be an interesting idea, but again, with all the State laws not super 2 applicable. But Midtown looks like it might be far enough away from some of these stations 3 where having that could be interesting but not a fully baked thought. 4 5 Chair Akin: Mm. I'm sorry we're not giving you very crisp advice on this one, but do we have any 6 other comments? 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Chair? 9 10 Chair Akin: Ah, welcome back. 11 12 Commissioner Templeton: Hi. I'm back, and I just wanted to say that I am – I had to leave for a 13 just cause, and I'll be happy to join by video for the rest of the meeting. Thank you. 14 15 Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Templeton. Well, we're just about to start a new section. 16 So this is on Packet Page 50, 18.38, PC Districts. Comments? No one wants to touch PCs. 17 18 Jennifer Armer: Or you're all in favor, which is great. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: Well, I'm certainly open to allowing uses that are allowed in the other commercial 1 districts. The only question I had was I didn't understand what the conditional permitting 2 process would be that would be used in that case. 3 4 Jennifer Armer: We would use the same process. So in a PC, for example, when you have a 5 shopping center like Edgewood Plaza which is a PC zone, it has a list of allowed uses and a list of 6 conditionally allowed uses, same as any of our commercial districts. But in some cases when 7 those PCs are older, they may not have the flexibility that is appropriate to be consistent with 8 our other commercial zones and shopping centers. 9 10 Chair Akin: Yeah. So what I was getting at there was do you have to create a new PC as things 11 are constituted today? 12 13 Jennifer Armer: The goal with this provision would be to allow the Director the authority to 14 allow uses in those PCs without having to go ahead and do the rezoning. That is actually the 15 intent of this suggestion if there is support of the Commission for that. 16 17 Chair Akin: Okay. I think that's probably satisfies my concerns. So Commissioner Ji. 18 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Ji: I think it'll come to shock to nobody on this Commission that I am skeptical 1 about PCs. I think that s-, I'm generally just not s-, I think I don't know the specific implications 2 but generally would like to have the PC potentially kind of – I don't know – really know what 3 similar means, so I think I'm a little bit just cautious about the wording there. But that's all. 4 5 Chair Akin: Vice-Chair Chang. 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: In theory, okay with this except that as I think about the amount of kind of 8 neighborhood angst over certain PCs, like over in Edgewood when the grocery store wasn't – 9 was vacant, that was really upsetting to the neighborhood. And so is there – I don't know what 10 – because I don't know what similar means, it was specif-, the grocery store was the public 11 benefit. And so if it – and if – is there a situation where we have a similar use that just really 12 wouldn't be seen by the community as equivalent to the public benefit? That's the kind of 13 situation that really worries me. But in theory, yes, if similar is properly defined. 14 15 Jennifer Armer: And I think we can consider wording to see if we can do something. But I would 16 say that for Edgewood in particular, since I was actually part of the process of updating that PC 17 the last time, they – that grocery store was a very important part of that. And so that would be 18 a part of the PC that would be expected to be retained, as opposed to the lists of the types of 19 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. commercial uses for the other tenant spaces in that shopping center. I think we would 1 understand that that's a different component rather than just the individual small shops there. 2 3 Chair Akin: Any other comments on this one? All right then. Given that we have already 4 discussed the material in Attachment B, I think we're looking at just 1 item left for the specifics, 5 and that's the Zoning Map on Packet Page 50. Vice-Chair Chang? 6 7 Vice-Chair Chang: There's not much to say here other than I think we all agree the current 8 situation is not good and that we do need to simplify. So I'm in complete agreement with the 9 staff, and I'm guessing because of the silence, everybody else – that means everybody else also 10 agrees. Lots of nodding here. 11 12 Chair Akin: Commissioner Ji and then Commissioner James. 13 14 Commissioner Ji: Just plus 1, but also I think one thing that could be helpful is explaining some 15 of these overlays, like the H overlay, the D overlay, the L overlay that may come attached to the 16 map. In terms of simplification, either we actually simplify more, or if this is the 1-pager, also 17 tell people where they can find all this other information. 18 19 Chair Akin: Commissioner James. 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. 1 Commissioner James: I just thought I would make my nod verbal. I agree. 2 3 Chair Akin: Good. Then that's confirmed. I think there's universal approval on this one. All right. 4 That concludes all of the specific items that I had intended to cover. So Ms. Eisberg, is there 5 anything else that you need of us on this item? 6 7 Jean Eisberg: I don't think so. I really appreciate everyone's direction. I think that the feedback 8 on the Retail Preservation Ordinance is probably the most complex, but we'll dig in a little more 9 and come up with some ideas for you. 10 11 Chair Akin: Thank you. I think we're looking forward to it. This is potentially useful progress. 12 Anyone else with a comment? All right. I think this item is concluded. 13 14 APPROVAL OF MINUTES 15 Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 16 17 4. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Summary & Verbatim 18 Minutes of July 30, 2025 19 20 5. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Summary & Verbatim 21 Minutes of August 27, 2025 22 23 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: That brings us to Item #4, Approval of Minutes. And we have a couple of minutes to 1 approve, and I'd like to treat one differently from the other, so let's do them separately. Mr. 2 Tavera, do we have any public speaker requests for this item? 3 4 Samuel Tavera: So through the Chair, I have received no public comment cards for Item 4, and 5 there are no raised hands on Zoom. 6 7 Chair Akin: Thank you. All right. So the easy one is the minutes of July 30, 2025. So do I have a 8 motion? 9 10 Commissioner Hechtman: Move approval as revised. 11 12 Chair Akin: Second? All right. Since… 13 14 Samuel Tavera: Yeah. And I just wanted to make a note before calling names that there were 2 15 Commissioners absent that day, and so if you didn't review the recording, you can say I abstain 16 when I – yeah. It was Commissioner James and Commissioner Ji. 17 18 Chair Akin: Okay. So we'll need to do a roll call then. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Samuel Tavera: Okay. Commissioner Peterson? 1 2 Commissioner Peterson: Aye. 3 4 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Ji? 5 6 Commissioner Ji: Abstain. 7 8 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Templeton? 9 10 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 11 12 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner James? 13 14 Commissioner James: Abstain. 15 16 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Hechtman? 17 18 Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Samuel Tavera: Vice-Chair Chang? 1 2 Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 3 4 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Ak-, Chair Akin? 5 6 Chair Akin: Yes. 7 8 Samuel Tavera: Motion carries 5-0-2, with Commissioner James and Ji abstaining. 9 10 Chair Akin: All right. We have what's possibly a novel situation concerning the minutes of 11 August 27. We received a public comment with a request for changes late, and I don't know 12 how many of us have reviewed the changes. I did, and I found them a perfectly reasonable 13 contribution. So if anyone needs to take a moment to review the changes, they're, I believe, on 14 the 1st page of the Public Comments and they're quite small. 15 16 Jennifer Armer: And through the Chair, I believe we did have a verbal public comment for this 17 item, which was the same person who provided those written comments, so they may be 18 interested to speak to it. 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Chair Akin: I don't see him here in Chamber. Is he on Zoom? 1 2 Samuel Tavera: Yeah. They are not here in the Chamber anymore, and I do not see a raised 3 hand on Zoom. 4 5 Chair Akin: Correction. That was the 2nd page of the Public Comments. So to recap, this applies 6 to the Verbatim Minutes of August 27, 2025. The changes are to add Chair Akin and the 7 Commissioners on one line; to add the article ”a”, the tentative map a copy of which on line 6; 8 correcting of the developer on Line 8 from Town and County Development to Town and 9 Country Development; and lastly on line 12, correcting the name to CEP Town and Country 10 Development, LLC. So these are all, I think, straightforward clarifications. So what I would move 11 is to approve the minutes as previously revised with the addition of the revisions proposed in 12 this public comment. 13 14 Commissioner Hechtman: Second. 15 16 Chair Akin: All right. Mr. Tavera, would you call the roll? 17 18 Samuel Tavera: Yeah. Commissioner James? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner James: Yes. 1 2 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Hechtman? 3 4 Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. 5 6 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Templeton? 7 8 Commissioner Templeton: Yes. 9 10 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Ji? 11 12 Commissioner Ji: Yes. 13 14 Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Peterson? 15 16 Commissioner Peterson: Yes. 17 18 Samuel Tavera: Vice-Chair Chang? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Vice-Chair Chang: Yes. 1 2 Samuel Tavera: Chair Akin? 3 4 Chair Akin: Yes. 5 6 Samuel Tavera: Motion carries 5-0. 7 8 Chair Akin: Thank you. 9 10 Commissioner Questions, Comments or Announcements 11 Chair Akin: All right. It's time for Commissioner Questions, Comments, and Announcements. 12 Anyone have something for us today? Commissioner Ji. 13 14 Commissioner Ji: Yep. Thank you. I had the privilege of participating in the ULI study last week. I 15 thought it was very interesting. The – they interviewed folks on Tuesday and then had a full 16 report by Friday. The [inaudible 237:09] report is on You Tube, so if you are interested in taking 17 a peak, I thought it was pretty interesting. Also, in my interview, I was with some other folks 18 from the community as well as, I think, Steven, the Historical Resources Board Planner that 19 came to us about the shrink wrap. And I thought it was really interesting to learn that the 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. MacArthur Park Café Building had already been moved before, and so they're thinking about 1 that as one option to revitalize the area is to move that café again somewhere else. And then 2 also that there is another building over there that I've always overlooked, and that is a 3 Stanford-owned building that they plan on storing a bunch of rocks in, so – from the Earth 4 School – so… 5 6 Chair Akin: Which we have seen. 7 8 Commissioner Ji: Yes. So that was interesting. I think that might have been on this meeting, 9 which I did not attend. 10 11 Male: [Inaudible 238:03]. 12 13 Commissioner Ji: So there we go. So I think that there's definitely a lot of interest to revitalize 14 that kind of piece of the area as well as maybe doing something more creative with the parking 15 lot that's on the other side where the parking lot and the hotel complex are both owned by 16 Stanford. And so there is some talk about kind of doing some shifting and making – revitalizing 17 that side as well. So that was what came out of my conversation with them. Commissioner 18 Peterson, would you like to add anything from your session? 19 20 _______________________ 1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to ten (10) minutes at the discretion of the Chair, provided that the non-speaking members agree not to speak individually. 2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers. 3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers. Commissioner Peterson: I missed the session, so I was going to ask you questions about your 1 session so I could vicariously experience… 2 3 Commissioner Ji: Okay. The one other thing that I'll add is that I think that there's some 4 interesting conversations about the park as well they want to connect. So right now, the bike 5 path through the park is really complicated and convoluted. A lot of people that come – there's 6 a bike trail that goes on kind of the – our – whatever side we're on of the tracks on Menlo Park 7 side, but then you have to kind of do this weird cut-across. And so there might – there's, I think, 8 some low-hanging fruit accessibility wins through the park there as well that they're talking 9 about implementing. So I think what I really liked about the session was there was a lot of low-10 hanging fruit activities, which I feel like everyone on this Commission really appreciates being 11 able to go into action and not wait X number of years for something like a Grand Boulevard 12 Initiative to roll through. So that's one thing I did like about the project. 13 14 Chair Akin: Thank you. Anyone else? If not, then we are adjourned. 15 16 Adjournment 17 9:51 PM 18 19 /aks 20