HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-04-08 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: April 8, 2026 2
Council Chambers & Virtual 3
6:00 p.m. 4
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Call to Order / Roll Call 6
6:00 p.m. 7
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Chair Allen Akin: Good evening, everyone. I call to order the April 8, 2026, meeting of the 9
Planning and Transportation Commission. 10
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ROLL CALL 12
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Chair Akin: Mr. Tavera, would you call the roll, please? 14
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Samuel Tavera: Yes. Chair Akin? 16
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Chair Akin: Here. 18
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Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Hechtman? 20
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Commissioner Bart Hechtman: Here. 22
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
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Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Ji? 2
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Commissioner Kevin Ji: Here. 4
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Samuel Tavera: Vice Chair Chang? Commissioner James? Commissioner Templeton? 6
Commissioner Peterson? 7
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Commissioner Forest Olaf Peterson: Here. 9
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Assistant Director Jennifer Armer: And Commissioner Peterson, now is the time to share the 11
information about your location, the reason you’re joining us remotely. 12
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Commissioner Peterson: Just give me one minute here. Trying to understand – you’d think after 14
5 years of Zoom, I would be more competent in this. Let’s see. Give me one second here. There 15
we go. Okay. So I’ve just cause to attend this meeting remotely under the Brown Act. I’ve 16
attended every meeting – I’m not sure how many meetings we’ve had but I’ve attended every 17
one of them remotely – or meetings – I have not attended a single meeting remotely this year 18
and I must attend this meeting remotely because I have a contagious illness that prevents me 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
from attending in person. And in this room, I am accompanied by no one over the age of 18 and 1
so with that, thank you. 2
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Samuel Tavera: Yes. And for the record, we have quorum, noting that Commissioner Templeton 4
and Commissioner James are absent. 5
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Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Tavera. 7
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Samuel Tavera: And Vice Chair Chang at the moment. Sorry about that. 9
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Chair Akin: All right, although we do expect her to join us later. 11
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Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions 13
The Chair or Commission majority may modify the agenda order to improve meeting management. 14
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Chair Akin: Assistant Director Armer, are there any agenda changes tonight? 16
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Jennifer Armer: No changes. 18
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Chair Akin: Thank you. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Oral Communications 1
The public may speak to any item not on the agenda. One (1) minute per speaker.1,2 2
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Chair Akin: Mr. Tavera, do we have public comment for items that are not on the agenda? 4
5
Samuel Tavera: Through the Chair, at the moment, I have 2 requests to speak for a general 6
public comment and so actually, we have – and if there’s any members on Zoom that would like 7
to speak to general public comment for items not on the agenda, I would like to ask you to raise 8
your hand so I can add you to the queue. Through the Chair, we have 3 speakers. 9
10
Chair Akin: Thank you. 11
12
Samuel Tavera: Yes. 13
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Chair Akin: Let’s begin. 15
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Samuel Tavera: Yes. Give me one second. 17
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Jennifer Armer: To clarify, how much time would you like to provide for each speaker on items 19
not on the agenda? 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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: We are setting 1 minute as the time limit for items not on the agenda tonight. 1
2
Jennifer Armer: Thank you. 3
4
Samuel Tavera: Give me one second. Our first speaker is Conner W. Conner, you may now 5
speak. 6
7
Conner W.: Hi. This is Pastor Ssempa. I want to talk about should Africans be blamed when 8
homosexuals kill each other? Should we pretend that gay-on-gay violence doesn’t exist? I want 9
to talk about the case of what happened to Chiloba who was killed by his boyfriend in Kenya 10
yesterday. Well, a story brought yesterday evening that a prominent LGBT activist in Kenya had 11
been killed. The Internet became ablaze. Western media from [Inaudible 4:09], France, BBC, 12
Canadian newspapers, American, they were running with the story, blaming Africans, East 13
Africa, saying that this is the cause of the young man. The story, a few hours later, it was 14
learned that Chiloba was killed by his boyfriend, Odhiambo. And when this happened, they 15
tried to continue blaming us and I decided to look it up. I decided I wasn’t going to take this. 16
You know, this… 17
18
Samuel Tavera: Our next speaker is Dillem Y. Dillem, you may now speak. 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Dillem Y.: Dillem Y. played a recording not related to an agenda item and shared their views. 1
2
Samuel Tavera: Our next speaker is Chris S. Chris S., you may now speak. 3
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Chris S.: Chris S. played a recording not related to an agenda item and shared their views. 5
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Samuel Tavera: Through the Chair, that concludes public comment. 7
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Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Tavera. It’s unfortunate that this process is affecting us tonight. The 9
City of Palo Alto is committed to a culture of belonging where all members of our diverse 10
community feel included, safe, and respected. We strongly denounce messages of 11
discrimination and hate. We have allowed the speech only because the First Amendment of the 12
Constitution requires us to give everyone an equal chance to express their views. Is that it for 13
public comment for items not on the agenda? 14
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Samuel Tavera: Yes. That… 16
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Chair Akin: I see… 18
19
Samuel Tavera: That is… 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
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Jennifer Armer: Yes. 2
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Samuel Tavera: Yes. 4
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Chair Akin: And I see Vice Chair Chang has joined us for the record. 6
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City Official Reports 8
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1. Director's Report, Meeting Schedule, and Assignments 10
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Chair Akin: It is time for City Official Reports. Ms. Armer. 12
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Jennifer Armer: Good evening and thank you all. Jennifer Armer, Assistant Director for Planning 14
and Development Services and I will give you a quick update on upcoming meetings and recent 15
activity relevant to the Planning Commission. Next slide. 16
17
So for your next agenda, we have 2 items plus the elections of Chair and Vice Chair for the 18
following year. We have an update on parking programs and Downtown parking modernization 19
initiatives and we have consideration of a tentative map at the property at 4103 Old Trace 20
Road. Please note that because there are 5 Wednesdays in the month of April, this is the last 21
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Wednesday of the month, not the fourth Wednesday of the month. And then your next 1
meeting is scheduled for May 13 and we do at this time expect to have the Stream Protection 2
Ordinance return to you for consideration and an updated ADU ordinance to bring us into 3
compliance with state law for consideration at that time. At the follow – or the following slide, 4
we will move on to updates about City Council. So on Monday this week, we had a great 5
conversation with the City Council about the San Antonio Road Area Plan that is expected to 6
return to them for some direction in June. And next week, April 13, City Council is set to 7
consider the project at 3606 El Camino Real, both the map that was considered by Planning 8
Commission as well as the development project. We also do expect at that time they will take 9
up the appointment of Planning and Transportation commissioners. There are 2 slots, as you 10
know, that are under consideration. And then on April 20, there is a prescreening for a 11
proposed PHC at the – on the property at 910 Webster Street. And that is the update today. We 12
do not have an update for Transportation but we do expect they will join us at your next 13
meeting. Thank you. 14
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Chair Akin: Thank you, Ms. Armer. Commissioners, do we have any questions for Ms. Armer? 16
Commissioner Ji. 17
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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, Chair. I had a question for Ms. Armer about the City Council 1
meeting scheduled for April 20. Is there any PTC items that need the attendance of the liaison 2
that day? 3
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Jennifer Armer: There is not. Thank you. Not at this time. I will update you if that changes. 5
6
Commissioner Ji: Okay. Of course. Thank you. 7
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Chair Akin: Any further questions, Commissioners? 9
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Study Session 11
Public Comment is permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 12
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2. Study Session on Housing Element Program 6.5: Alternative Housing Program, 14
Objective B. CEQA Status: Exempt under CEQA Guidelines Section 15262. 15
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Chair Akin: Seeing none, Agenda Item Number 2 is a study session on Housing Element Program 17
6.5, the Alternative Housing Program. This begins on Packet Page 8. May we have the staff 18
presentation, Mr. Krishnan? 19
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Senior Planner Vishnu Krishnan: Thank you, Sam. Good evening, commissioners, staff, and 21
members of the public. Today I will be presenting the overview of the City’s Alternative Housing 22
Program Initiative, part of the Housing Element Program 6.5. So this study session is intended 23
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
to introduce key concepts, share preliminary analysis, and get your feedback as we move 1
forward with developing zoning approaches. Next slide, please. 2
3
I’ll start with a brief overview, so this is the study session agenda. I’ll start with a brief overview 4
of Program 6.5’s objectives and the types of housing we are studying. Then I’ll walk you through 5
examples, existing policies, and potential approaches. We’ll conclude with next steps and open 6
it for the Commission’s discussion. Next slide, please. 7
8
Program 6.5 focuses on enabling more innovative housing types, particularly microunits, shared 9
housing, and intergenerational models. A key objective is to remove regulatory constraints, 10
especially density limits where appropriate, while engaging stakeholders and updating zoning 11
regulations. Since alternative housing includes a wide range of formats such as multifamily 12
microunits, urban coliving spaces, coliving condominiums, market trade suburban-style 13
cohousing communities, and program facilities with eligibility requirements that serve different 14
populations and market segments, the project team feels that a one-size-fits-all approach is not 15
something that’s going to work when implementing the program. Next slide, please. 16
17
So we looked at different typologies here and in urban context, microunits are smaller, private 18
units with shared amenities. The examples, Rise and Studio 2000 that is under microunits on 19
your slide, are located in Berkeley. They demonstrate how projects can deliver high-density 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
housing with little to no parking, often including below-market rate units. In most suburban 1
settings, shared housing often takes the form of cohousing communities. These typically 2
include private homes alongside shared facilities, fostering community attraction while 3
maintaining some level of independence. We have examples from Mountain View and Pleasant 4
Hill to illustrate how these function within a condominium framework. Next slide, please. 5
6
Some alternative housing models are more programmatic such as the intergenerational 7
housing. We’ve got 2 examples again. The Emeryville example shows a development design, 8
specifically for seniors and transition-age youth with no density or parking constraints. These 9
models are often paired with supportive services. Similarly, the example that we chose from 10
San Jose highlights supportive intergenerational housing with a mix of unit types. These 11
developments are designed to meet specific community needs and often include affordability 12
components and service integration. Next slide, please. 13
14
Although not a part of the housing types required for the program to consider, the project team 15
felt it was necessary to include considerations to senior housing as a part of tonight’s 16
discussion. Staff feels that locally, there is a clear and growing need for senior housing. Data 17
shows an increasing senior population and rising cost burdens. Community input through the 18
Housing Element and the Downtown Housing Plan has consistently emphasized the importance 19
of housing near transit and services for seniors. Next slide, please. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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
As a part of the research, the project team also assessed how alternative housing constituted to 2
the Regional Housing Needs allocation numbers and determined that the State-provided 3
definitions of housing types impact how units count towards RHNA. Currently, some shared 4
housing configurations may not be counted, although the state is exploring changes to better 5
recognize these housing forms. This creates both opportunities and challenges to the local 6
policy. Next slide, please. 7
8
For senior housing specifically, state law provides definitions and incentives. Independent 9
senior units count towards RHNA while assisted living components typically do not. There are 10
also density bonus provisions that can support the – these developments, particularly when 11
affordability is included. Next slide, please. 12
13
At a local level, existing policies already support housing diversity, walkability, and increased 14
density near transit; however, current zoning definitions and standards, as those for 15
microhousing and shared housing, are somewhat limited and may need refinement to fully 16
enable these housing types. Next slide, please. 17
18
State and regional transit-oriented development policies are also key considerations here. With 19
the Senate Bill 79 going into effect on the first of July 2026, the scope for increased density 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
around transit centers increases dramatically. We are working with the Council Ad Hoc 1
Committee to determine the right approach towards the implementation of the state law. That 2
said, recent legislation changes, including AB 2097, has reduced parking requirements near 3
transit. This includes areas around Palo Alto, University Avenue, California Avenue, and San 4
Antonio Road Caltrain stations. While the state legislation strongly aligns with the requirements 5
of accommodating alternative housing and specific geographic locations that are highly 6
resourced and adjacent to transit, staff is seeking direction from the Commission on the 7
appropriate zoning districts and geographic areas in the city where the preferred alternative 8
housing types may be accommodated. Next slide, please. 9
10
So as for the next steps, based on the feedback we receive from the Commission tonight, we 11
will start working on the potential approaches that will focus on shared characteristics. A 12
broader approach would involve defining new housing types and updating zoning regulations 13
accordingly. This could include allowing the uses in appropriate districts, adjusting standards 14
like density, FAR, parking, and open space. Design criteria can also be tailored to better fit these 15
housing types. Next slide, please. 16
17
So we have identified zoning districts that are already well aligned with housing – alternative 18
housing objectives. These include high-density transit-oriented areas such as RM-40, 19
commercial districts around Downtown, and the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan areas. 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.
Focusing on these areas can help ensure compatibility with existing land use patterns and 1
available public infrastructure. Next slide, please. 2
3
Looking ahead, staff will develop potential approaches and propose zoning changes for 4
Architectural Review Board's consideration and present the changes to the Planning 5
Commission for recommendation in fall 2026. Next slide, please. 6
7
So at this point, we welcome your questions and feedback, particularly on the housing types 8
and appropriate locations to assist staff with developing the regulatory approaches. That brings 9
me to the end of my presentation. If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer. 10
11
Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Krishnan. Commissioners, do we have any clarifying questions 12
before we move to public comment? Vice Chair Chang. 13
14
Vice Chair Bryna Chang: Hi. Yes. Thank you so much for your presentation and apologies that I 15
was late arriving. I do have a question that was in the packet where there is an area on Packet 16
Page 15, the fourth bullet down, where it says that the Housing Element identifies the area of 17
Embarcadero Road northeast of Highway 101 and south of Alma Street as overcrowding hot 18
spots. So I’m wondering what we’re referring to there. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Vishnu Krishnan: Thank you for the question. So this is something that we looked up. So based 1
on the 2023-31 Housing Element, this is in Appendix C, Page C-104. So the area that we are 2
referring to are properties between 101 and the City of East Palo Alto, so it’s a very small piece 3
of land. This area is composed of census tract with rates of overcrowding between 8.3 and 12 4
percent as we studied it. So it is true there are very few housing and census tract that we are 5
looking at or at least the Housing Element is looking at; however, there is a primary – it is 6
primarily composed of single-apartment complexes that include Stanford graduate students 7
and hospital staff and students. 8
9
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. That’s actually really helpful. Now I know what you’re – 10
what area we’re – of the city we’re talking about. For the bullet point before that on the same 11
page, I had a quick question about the inaccessible housing data that you have where you said 12
there, 17 percent of all households were cost burdened and spent more than 30 percent of 13
monthly income on housing and then 14 percent spent more than 50 percent. So is that 14
cumulative, meaning does the 30 percent – sorry – does the 17 percent include the 14 percent 15
or not? 16
17
Vishnu Krishnan: I believe it is cumulative. I mean, this is information from the census tract and 18
we also have – yes. It is from ACS, so I believe it is cumulative. 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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 basically we have 31 percent of Palo Altans spending more than 30 1
percent of their monthly… 2
3
Vishnu Krishnan: Yes. 4
5
Vice Chair Chang: …income on housing. Okay. Thank you. All right. I think that’s it for right now. 6
7
Chair Akin: And thank you, Vice Chair. Commissioner Dr. Peterson. 8
9
Commissioner Peterson: Thank you, Chair. I have a question on the homecare facilities. Some of 10
these are live-in-type facilities where – I think sometimes these get categorized as cottage 11
industry where somebody’s going to work out of their home, whether that’s homecare, 12
childcare, some kind of other small business. So can you elaborate on the homecare facilities? I 13
think these are often called 8-bed facilities and you’re saying that counts towards RHNA or it 14
did not count for – to RHNA? And give me the definitions of where that split was. 15
16
Vishnu Krishnan: So we looked at how alternative housing and RHNA works, so HCD basically 17
uses this definition. It says anything that is a house, an apartment, a mobile home, a group of 18
rooms, or a single room occupied as separate living quarters is what counts towards a unit, 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.
towards RHNA. So by definition, it’s only the microunit or a condo in a shared development that 1
would count towards RHNA. So if you are talking about multiple beds in 1 unit, it doesn’t count. 2
3
Commissioner Peterson: Let me see if I understand. So let’s say I had a 8-bed facility but I had 8 4
rooms, then the 8 rooms count. But if I have, say, 3 larger rooms where I’ve split the beds 5
between those 3 rooms, it counts as 3? 6
7
Vishnu Krishnan: No. So – is Albert on the call? 8
9
Jennifer Armer: Yes. 10
11
Vishnu Krishnan: Yes. Okay. Albert, correct me if I am wrong. Even if it is 8 different beds, it 12
would still count as 1 unit because it’s 1 house or an apartment by definition of HCD. Albert? 13
14
Jennifer Armer: Mr. Yang, are you available? 15
16
Albert Yang: Yes. 17
18
Jennifer Armer: Thank you. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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: That’s correct. 1
2
Commissioner Peterson: Thank you. Sorry to ask the detailed questions but you can see these – 3
it gets – apparently it gets a little complicated. 4
5
Chair Akin: Is that it, Commissioner Peterson? 6
7
Commissioner Peterson: Yes. That is it. Thank you. 8
9
Chair Akin: Thank you very much. Seeing none from my – oh, Vice Chair Chang has another 10
question. 11
12
Vice Chair Chang: Sorry about that. I forgot to ask one more question. Thank you for giving – 13
thank you, staff, for giving us examples of built examples of the alternative housing. I was 14
wondering if there were any examples on the peninsula that are already built. 15
16
Vishnu Krishnan: I believe Berkeley was one of the first jurisdictions to come up with 17
microhousing units. They do have built examples in the Downtown area. 18
19
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. But that’s East Bay, not 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.
1
Vishnu Krishnan: Yes. 2
3
Vice Chair Chang: …not the peninsula? 4
5
Vishnu Krishnan: Not the peninsula. 6
7
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. 8
9
Chair Akin: Thank you, commissioners. I have a few questions. Fortunately, you’ve answered 10
some of them already. First one is, how does microunit housing differ from the SRO facilities 11
that exist and used to exist Downtown? 12
13
Vishnu Krishnan: So microunits are purpose-built and they accommodate private bathrooms 14
and also have a kitchenette whereas SROs generally are featured as small individual rooms with 15
shared kitchen and community spaces, so – community bathrooms. I’m sorry. So the target 16
population, again, is very different and SROs are generally considered transitional housing 17
rather than permanent housing whereas that’s not the case for microhousing. Again, with 18
microhousing, the cost is also high. 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: Okay. So I hear 2 differences there. One, unit configurations… 1
2
Vishnu Krishnan: Yes. 3
4
Chair Akin: …may be different and the other is intended term of use. Okay. Similarly, you’ve 5
already touched on this already but what would you say is the difference between coliving and 6
simply unrelated renters sharing a house? 7
8
Vishnu Krishnan: Unrelated renters sharing a house – again, you’re talking about SROs or… 9
10
Chair Akin: No. No. We’re into houses now, not… 11
12
Vishnu Krishnan: Okay. 13
14
Chair Akin: …SROs. 15
16
Vishnu Krishnan: So coliving spaces, again – it’s not program run, one. Cohousing could be 17
multiple different individuals who basically sign a lease. They share common communal areas. 18
Then the other type of housing basically is the same. It again depends on if it is programmatic 19
level. Greg, I – are you there on the call? Correct me if I’m wrong. Did I miss out on anything? 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: Introduce him. 2
3
Vishnu Krishnan: Oh. Greg is a consultant working on the project. He’s with PLACEWORKS. 4
5
Associate Principal Greg Goodfellow: Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for having me. 6
The 2 terms, shared housing and cohousing – and actually it’s 3 – and coliving, those are all 7
actually formal terms from HUD, the federal Housing and Urban Development Department. And 8
so cohousing generally refers to a development with private self-contained units clustered 9
around a shared space with – and the idea is to form intentional communities, whereas coliving 10
is more of an urban housing model where individuals rent private furnished rooms in a 11
multifamily building. In other words, they’re just renting individual rooms with a shared kitchen 12
and potentially a living space, so shared housing is – you have your own private unit but maybe 13
you share a community kitchen or an outdoor open space such as the more suburban models in 14
Pleasant Hill or Mountain View where, again, the other is you’re actually sharing an internal 15
space and you have your own bedroom and perhaps bathroom but you’re sharing a kitchen and 16
it’s much more – I would think of it as a group of college students living together but each with 17
their own lease for that bedroom, not just sharing a single lease. There are definitions of each 18
of those from that HUD branch in the – which I understand – in the lengthy packet that you 19
have. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
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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. That’s a useful reference because I felt like the differences were subtle 2
and perhaps I was missing something important like whether there is a real programmatic 3
difference between them that we should be aware of. 4
5
Greg Goodfellow: Yes. 6
7
Chair Akin: But – oh… 8
9
Greg Goodfellow: And again, I would really summarize it as the cohousing, it’s that more 10
suburban model where you have your own private space and then a shared community space 11
whereas coliving – think of it as you’re really living together. You’ve got that private bedroom 12
but you’re in that contained unit. 13
14
Chair Akin: Thank you. That helps a bit and I will also do a little more research to understand 15
the subtleties. Last question is, could we have a map for where we believe overcrowding is 16
worse in the city? Not tonight but I mean in the documented presentations that you’re working 17
on. 18
19
Vishnu Krishnan: We’ll definitely bring that next time. 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: Great. Thank you. That’s all the questions for me. Commissioners, any further? All 2
right, then. Mr. Tavera, do we have any requests to comment? 3
4
Samuel Tavera: Through the Chair, at the moment, we have 2 requests to speak. If you would 5
give me one moment. Our first speaker is George F. George F., you may now speak. 6
7
George F.: Yes. I’m sitting here smoking weed and watching it. I’m not done. Okay. 8
9
Samuel Tavera: Our next speaker is Mark H. 10
11
Mark H.: Hello. Can you guys hear me? 12
13
Samuel Tavera: Yes. We can hear you. 14
15
Mark H.: Okay. Sorry about that. Ladies and gentlemen of the Palo Alto Planning Commission, 16
neighbors, and fellow residents, thank you for giving me the floor here tonight. I’m not here to 17
debate zoning tweaks or missing middle housing. This program in front of you is not about 18
enabling more housing types. It is a CCC – CCP-backed, red commie scheme designed and 19
funded through Indian networks to herd our homeless people into centralized facilities. Let’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.
call it what it is. These are not supportive housing projects. These are vampire, lizard-person-1
led, brain sucking, and organ blood harvesting centers. Once the homeless are funneled inside, 2
they disappear. Their brains are going to be harvested for neural tissue, their blood drained for 3
elite rituals, and their organs removed while they’re still alive. Their meat is then processed, 4
packaged, and shipped directly to Indian markets and slaughterhouses run by the families of 5
the project presenters that’s sitting here tonight. Yes. The same developers and consultants 6
pushing this ordinance have close relatives operating meat export businesses in Delhi, Mumbai, 7
and Gujarat. Follow the ownership chains. Follow the Visas. Follow the LLCs tied to Indian real 8
estate conglomerates, export firms, and motel chains. This isn’t local planning. This is a 9
transnational operation. Palo Alto streets cleared, bodies processed, profits wired back to India 10
while the CCP sits fat on your tax dollars. It fits the pattern perfectly. 11
12
Every time a California city rams through density mandates and homelessness solutions, the 13
vulnerable people vanish, public safety collapses, and suddenly, there’s a surge in exported 14
protein and organ tourism pipeline. What are all those Israeli tourists doing in the hospitals 15
around here? Coincidence? I think not. This is Agenda 2030 with curry, fangs, and bagels. We 16
still have a narrow window to stop this. Reject this program outright. Demand real housing, 17
single-family neighborhoods, honest market rate development, not CCP-financed, Indian-run 18
cattle pens for human harvesting. We are not a feeding ground in Palo Alto for foreign elites 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 their lizard sheeny overlords. We are awake, we will not be silent, and we will not be 1
processed. Thank you for your time. 2
3
Samuel Tavera: And through the Chair, that concludes public comment. 4
5
Chair Akin: Thank you. If I may, I will take the previous statement… 6
7
Samuel Tavera: That was a… 8
9
Chair Akin: …as read. Acceptable to everyone? 10
11
Male: Yes. 12
13
Chair Akin: Good. Now that that’s concluded, commissioners, the discussion is open. 14
15
Mark H: Yes. 16
17
Chair Akin: Mr. Tavera, are we ready to begin discussion? 18
19
Samuel Tavera: Yes, we 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
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1
Chair Akin: Great. Thank you. Vice Chair Chang. 2
3
Vice Chair Chang: It wasn’t my intention to always be the first one to go. All right. So thank you 4
so much, the staff, for putting this together. As I read the packet, what struck me is that this is – 5
I know that it was highlighted that we have a lot of regulatory barriers and I agree that there 6
are technically regulatory barriers right now in that it’s not clearly allowed in our code but I 7
think that that’s the easiest portion to fix. And this struck me as not so much a regulatory and 8
local buy-in problem as much as an economics and transportation problem. So there was a lot 9
of references to financial feasibility and I think that that is one of my greatest concerns. And 10
then secondly, when I say a transportation problem, it was mentioned a number of times in the 11
packet that these types of alternative housing are feasible because they often don’t provide any 12
parking, which is wonderful, assuming that it’s – that they’re located near transit and in 13
amenity-rich locations. And where I struggle a bit is that the analogies that were given, a 14
number of times references were made to Berkeley, San Francisco, and Seattle. I think it’s a bit 15
of a false analogy because we’re not comparing apples to apples, because I’m not sure that you 16
would say Palo Alto in general or actually kind of any part of Palo Alto is very comparable to the 17
densest sections of Berkeley in terms of accessibility to transportation as well as accessibility to 18
healthcare and affordable food, so students living off campus near Berkeley can go get their 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.
meal for under 10 bucks – or at least they used to; maybe it’s more like 10 bucks now – but 1
that’s not really possible in Palo Alto. So that’s the biggest concern for me. 2
3
And then the other thought I had was that Berkeley also – I could be wrong but I’m not sure 4
that Berkeley has that same huge demand by developers, at least, to build Class A office space 5
and so when we were looking at the San Antonio Road Area Plan at the last PTC meeting, we 6
were essentially told that unless we build a lot of office, even the lower-density housing isn’t 7
feasible. And so I’m not quite sure how this would work here. And there are examples that 8
were given in the packet about the Berkeley housing – there’s a Berkeley development – and I 9
just – made me think of the Teacher Housing Project that we recently broke ground on, on El 10
Camino, where the units were much more expensive and provided also very little parking. And 11
so I’m just worried about the financial viability for these things. And then the final comment I 12
would have, at least for this round, is that I would love to see really dense housing but I think 13
that what we – if it didn’t result in spillover effects – so what we talked about with San Antonio 14
is that we have – I think it’s F-grade in terms of the level of surface for traffic. I worry that if we 15
were to pack things in, we would get F-grade everywhere in the city. So I wonder if there’s a 16
way, as we think about this – I love the idea of providing this housing in the right spots but then 17
if they – if really the people come with no cars, that would be amazing. 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
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2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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 so is there something that we can do with respect to residential parking programs or 1
anything that would limit that, because that is naturally limited in places like Berkeley and San 2
Francisco. Because unfortunately, the incentive in our area is for each person to come with a 3
car just because we’re not as transit rich and we’ve heard that both from retail landlords who 4
were participating and I believe a Council Ad Hoc meeting where it was very clear. They may 5
have also commented in a PTC meeting but I remember hearing from a number of retail 6
landlords saying, let’s be clear: this area is a car-centric area. And so I would love for it to not be 7
a car-centric area but I don’t think that we can build this type of dense housing without 8
expecting the traffic and problems that come with it unless we somehow have the transit-rich 9
area first. So it’s a chicken or the egg issue. I realize that but I wonder if there’s a way that we 10
could somehow build these types of units but ensure that the people don’t come with a car so 11
that they’re really – and that the incentives are aligned for carlessness. Thank you. 12
13
Chair Akin: Commissioner Hechtman. 14
15
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. I’d like to start by seeing if staff happens to have a map of 16
the 4 locational areas that they are asking us to consider on Packet Page 17. 17
18
Chair Akin: If I may interrupt, Mr. Goodfellow, did you have some comment you wanted to 19
make in response to 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
Greg Goodfellow: No. You know what? I’m just trying to make sure that I step in at the correct 2
time and then – and was available. I’m happy to – my response to that, in general, would be the 3
incentive to attract those without cars is to literally not provide a parking space and I do think 4
you’re absolutely right. I hope the memo didn’t come off as us trying to compare Palo Alto to 5
Berkeley. It is simply that and you’re absolutely correct. That is where these types of microunits 6
have been built and the other thing I want to impress – and this was staff’s very solid idea, I 7
think – was that we – the reason we stopped this study at this point and wanted you to share 8
the actual types of housing before we started thinking about zoning ideas was, in fact, to hear 9
this kind of input and also just to remember that the other types of housing we’re looking at, 10
the – they are more suburban. They could be that Pleasant Hill-style group of smaller but 11
detached homes around a community garden and a community kitchen. One more example I’ll 12
throw out just because I do think it’s really come up in the world of, quote, “cohousing,” is this 13
new project in Berkeley that is a spiritual cohousing group of condominiums around a Jewish 14
kitchen and Jewish community center and it has, I think, just one space per unit but some of the 15
units are up to 3 bedrooms. And it’s another example of just 12 units being in a – not entirely 16
urban but a – along a transit corridor on San Pablo Avenue, so I do – I would like the 17
Commission to remember that there are approaches to these that don’t really fit that sort of 18
characteristic microunit 8-story building with tiny units and that is what I hope this packet 19
allows you to see, is that there are other approaches to these. 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. Staff, have you had time to respond to Commissioner Hechtman. 2
3
Jennifer Armer: All right. We’ll bring that up in a moment. 4
5
Commissioner Hechtman: While that’s coming up, I don’t know that I’m going to actually have 6
more than one round of comments. I’m familiar with, I think, with micro and shared housing. I 7
think I’ve lived in those kinds of places. My first year of law school, I had a self-contained studio 8
that was maybe 350 square feet. I did not have a car. And then the next year, I moved into a flat 9
where I had my own bedroom and shared common areas with some other housemates and so 10
I’m familiar with those. I have not experienced intergenerational housing unless you count my 11
father living with me for a number of months when he first moved out here. So I have some 12
familiarity with those and – great. Here’s our map. And I think what’s being asked of us tonight, 13
or at least the way I perceive this, is we want our code to accommodate some or all of these 14
uses rather than we’re being asked, which of these should we incentivize? And so I think the 15
task is a little bit simpler because that’s so. Right now these housing types don’t really fit and so 16
my thinking on this is that recognizing how much our staff already has on their plate, they’ve 17
got 410 Comprehensive Plan programs to massage and push forward. They have all of the 18
individual projects. They have all of the Housing Element work we are doing and so what I’m 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
focused on is, which of these potential alternate housing types is most likely to yield a result 1
and to focus on that. 2
3
Making all the ordinance changes necessary so we can allow micro and shared and 4
intergenerational will take 3 times as much as focusing on 1. And so my feedback is going to be, 5
let’s figure out which one is the most likely to be taken advantage of. And so one of the 6
questions I had, which could be for staff or the consultant, is, do any of these 3 seem to be 7
favored over the others in the marketplace? In other words, Vice Chair Chang had talked about 8
the economics and obviously that’s an important thing. And we have some examples that staff 9
has provided of places where it’s worked and you’ve tried to provide us examples of all 3, so I’m 10
not sure I get, just from the examples, if the market had to choose one, which one it would be. 11
And so I’m wondering if staff has an impression of which one is favored in the market of the 3. 12
13
Vishnu Krishnan: We’ve actually not done a financial feasibility analysis for the alternative 14
housing prototypes but I can tell you that we have done the financial feasibility and – economic 15
and financial feasibility analysis for the Downtown Housing Plan, which looked at units that 16
were a little bigger than 450 square feet. We went all the way to 780 square feet and in the 17
current market conditions, well, we realize none of it is feasible. So what we are really trying to 18
do is find the missing middle and see if we can get the incentives in place today and make sure 19
that everything is in place for whenever the market gets better so that developers will actually 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.
be interested in building something. That said, we’ve had property owners inquire to us about 1
coliving/cohousing spaces. There are a few examples that actually exist in Palo Alto and they 2
were really interested in building on that particular prototype. And I also believe there was one 3
project that came to the Commission and I’m not sure if it was approved. It was a microunit 4
housing development but then again, there has been some interest. And this again probably 5
was 2 decades ago – I’m not really sure – but we do not know if there is any interest at the 6
moment. 7
8
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. So… 9
10
Jennifer Armer: And it may be that the consultant has some knowledge of other developments 11
that has – that are going on in the Bay Area if that would be helpful. I’ll leave it to you, 12
Commissioner, if you’d like more information. 13
14
Commissioner Hechtman: Sure. Mr. Goodfellow, if there’s some more information you can add, 15
absolutely. 16
17
Greg Goodfellow: I mean, I think one of the most interesting things about doing this project was 18
my in-depth interviews with the stakeholders, with the local architects, with the leader of the 19
Cohousing Institute, with local advocates in Palo Alto. In terms of microunits, I think it is pretty 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
clear that feasibility comes with density and I think there will be challenges to microunits and 1
the amount of units needed to bring a project up to that feasibility level. And I think, as we’ve 2
seen, it can work in a place like Berkeley where the density’s there and the density can be 3
supported but I think the challenge will – with microunits will be that in order to bring a project 4
to financial feasibility, it requires a density that I don’t believe at this point would be supported 5
in Palo Alto as Commissioner Chang has pointed out and I think that has to be considered. And I 6
have really seen a lot of interest from the real estate market and for the planning world about 7
these cohousing situations like the one in Berkeley. And I spoke to the leader of the Cohousing 8
Institute and she’s looking at projects around the country. And the value of those, of course, is 9
also that those are applicable to RHNA because they are sold as separate units and so they 10
fulfill that as well. 11
12
And I would leave this also as, remember this is – it’s hard when we’re getting so narrow into 13
one discussion. Remember, this is one housing program amongst tens in the Housing Element, 14
almost 100. This would be one tool in the City’s toolkit and to remember that it wouldn’t be – it 15
would still be a success to locate just a few areas where just one of these could be allowed and 16
the zoning chains based on that, so I think it is perfectly a valuable discussion to just locate or 17
identify one of these that the Commission and City leadership feels is applicable. And it doesn’t 18
need to be a massive shift in architectural or density paradigm in the City of Palo Alto. 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 Hechtman: All right. Thank you. That was useful. So if we are looking at 1
microhousing with its challenging economics right now – and I’m looking at the map, which 2
staff has now provided of these areas – to me, the only logical candidate where maybe we 3
would want to focus is in the Cal. Avenue PTOD because that’s a place where we could have 4
some significant density for people without cars because the train station is right there; the El 5
Camino bus lines are right there. And so I like that– since we already have that combining 6
district established, we could massage those regulations to allow micro, which I would include 7
in those regulations, relaxing parking and open space requirements and figuring out how to 8
deal with the density issue that Mr. Goodfellow just mentioned. How dense does it need to be 9
to pencil? But to me, that’s the best place to locate it. I do note that there’s a corner of the 10
south of Forest area, a tiny corner that’s within a quarter mile of the University station. Both 11
are close to Stanford to the extent Stanford students might use them but to me, there’s kind of 12
a different set of influences happening Downtown near University than along Cal. Ave. and so 13
my thinking is that micro-type would work best there. I’m thinking you’d focus that. 14
15
If instead you looked at the shared or cohousing, I don’t really have a good sense to suggest 16
where that might go because that feels like it needs a low-density setting – right? – either an R-17
1 or R-2 and that’s none of the areas on our map here. And so I don’t really have any thoughts 18
on where that might go. So I think that’s really all I had to say on this. Those are my thoughts on 19
a direction you might look at. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
the time of the spokesperson’s presentation will be allowed up to 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: Just to add on based on that comment, I would suggest that there is low – a fair 2
amount of low-density housing around the California Avenue Station if you were looking for… 3
4
Commissioner Hechtman: All right. 5
6
Jennifer Armer: …an opportunity that – just given the context of your comment. 7
8
Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. No. And so would you be referring to low-density areas outside 9
of the PTOD, in other words, within the concentric circles but not… 10
11
Jennifer Armer: Correct. 12
13
Commissioner Hechtman: …in the brown shaded area? 14
15
Jennifer Armer: Correct. 16
17
Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. So that would make sense to me as a possible location but I do 18
think for some of the reasons that Vice Chair Chang mentioned that available public 19
transportation, is really critical to the potential success of any of these, which again, we’re not 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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
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incentivizing. We would just be creating regulations so that we could say yes if the right project 1
presented itself. 2
3
Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner. I have Commissioner Ji, then Commissioner Peterson. 4
5
Commissioner Ji: Thank you, Chair. And I’m just going to jump on the financial feasibility 6
discussion that we just had and I want to direct your attention to Packet Page 47 where there’s 7
a section on financing and feasibility, specifically the second bullet from the top, I’ll say. Quote, 8
“The program calls for zoning amendments but I’d suggest the bigger barrier to micro-ensured 9
housing is not zoning but the state of finances.” So just kind of – if anyone else is interested in 10
reading more, there are some other bullets from other stakeholders provided there. But it 11
sounds like, based on this comment and others, that zoning isn’t really the problem. It is 12
financing and I’ll defer to the experts. As you continue to do your analysis, it seems like this may 13
be a route to go. I also had a quick question for staff. Could you – I know I think we’re all a little 14
bit tied up by the wording here. Which of the options are actually – count towards RHNA and 15
which ones don’t? I think you had a nice slide up for that but I’ll defer to you about how you 16
want to present that information. 17
18
Jennifer Armer: Yes. We can bring that slide back up. Which slide is it? 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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
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2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
Vishnu Krishnan: I’m sorry. Sorry. It is Slide 7. 1
2
Chair Akin: While this is coming up, Vice Chair, did you have something you needed to inject at 3
this point or is it for a next round? Okay. Thank you. 4
5
Vishnu Krishnan: So a microunit or a condo in a shared development would count towards 6
RHNA. Yes. One – each unit. And shared or coliving or cospaces with a single entrance wouldn’t 7
count. 8
9
Jennifer Armer: Likely those count per kitchen rather than individual units. 10
11
Commissioner Ji: Okay. Thank you. I think that as we move forward, presenting this information 12
in the packet would be really helpful to help us parse through the information because I think it 13
was a little bit hard for me to understand the differences that were provided here in the packet. 14
Also, there is nothing stopping developers from building microunits right now, right? Those 15
would just be considered studios. Is that correct? 16
17
Vishnu Krishnan: Yes. 18
19
Commissioner Ji: Okay, so… 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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1
Vishnu Krishnan: They’re just smaller in size… 2
3
Commissioner Ji: ...just… 4
5
Vishnu Krishnan: …but then they have the same requirements as a studio. 6
7
Commissioner Ji: Okay. 8
9
Vishnu Krishnan: Yes. 10
11
Commissioner Ji: Thank you. That’s helpful. And then I had another question, which is not quite 12
mentioned here but is mentioned on Packet Page 22, the student development housing. Yes or 13
no on RHNA counts? I suspect the answer is no but I just want a clarification here. 14
15
Vishnu Krishnan: No. It doesn’t count. 16
17
Greg Goodfellow: The answer is no. Yes. 18
19
Vishnu Krishnan: Yes. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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1
Commissioner Ji: Okay. Thank you. That’s helpful. And so suppose that we decide that near 2
Stanford we want to incentivize student housing development of some kind. If I were to build 3
one building with a bunch of dorm rooms such as is described on Packet Page 22, would the 4
answer mean that I would get zero RHNA count? Okay. Just… 5
6
Vishnu Krishnan: That’s right. 7
8
Commissioner Ji: Okay. Yes. Thank you. So I think stepping back here, the description provided 9
in the packet is primarily around transit-dense areas and my personal preference is – and I want 10
to acknowledge the staff work going into this program – that it may be better to fold this into 11
our SB 79 discussion that the Ad Hoc is doing, right? I think that it’s really hard to pull this out as 12
a separate program because fundamentally, what we decide with SB 79 will significantly impact 13
what we decide here because by definition, the SB 79 areas are the transit-dense areas of town. 14
So I want to start by saying that. And second – do you mind pulling up the map again? 15
16
I want to talk about some other potential areas that could be interesting to look at that aren't 17
mentioned explicitly here and some of those that I think are, for example, let's see here – so 18
I've circled a region on the map here. So near Town & Country, I think that this could be a 19
potential area that's pretty interesting. It's not – not all of it is inside the circles that are – the 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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
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concentric circles impacted by SB 79. I'll defer to staff as to whether or not the new Town & 1
Country project is within that area. It looks pretty close but hard to tell. So that's one potential 2
area because the Town & Country development has decided that they are proposing something 3
in that – there, so using some kind of the incentives that you're providing here could be 4
interesting. 5
6
In addition, I know that both that area that I've circled here as well as – I'm going to circle 7
another region that's a little bit further south of it – are places where there are lots of Stanford 8
grad students who are already living in some kind of shared-house formation. And explicitly, 9
there are – okay and I guess keep me honest about which of these options – I think it is the 10
shared housing building where there are multiple buildings that are – that share kind of a 11
backyard area of which they share amenities and such. So this seems to be a type that's already 12
existing within Palo Alto, and I think it could be interesting to go talk to some of the people who 13
are partaking in that currently. In addition, I think that it could be also interesting to look at 14
where are places that people don't need a car, and I believe that, based on the most recent 15
census, the region – the northern region that I drew, that circle area, that zip code has the 16
highest percentage of people who bike to work in the entire nation. So that would suggest that 17
that is an area in which people don't need a vehicle, and I suspect that many of those people 18
are going to Stanford for work, so that's one area that I think could be interesting to look at. 19
Along that thought though, I think that the Stanford Research Park could be another place 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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where we could potentially incentivize some form of housing there. Many people, if you've ever 1
been to Stanford campus, bike around as their primary form of commuting, and so reducing the 2
parking impacts of – reducing parking on these buildings that we provide there may not have as 3
drastic of a parking secondary effects issue that Vice Chair Chang had mentioned. So those are 4
my comments. Thank you. 5
6
Chair Akin: Thank you. Commissioner Peterson. 7
8
Commissioner Peterson: Thank you, Chair. So I think Commissioner Ji and Commissioner 9
Hechtman covered every point I wanted to make, so I think all that's left for me is to commend 10
Mr. Goodfellow for really bringing, I think, good work and not just good work but good policy 11
and a good presentation of this. From my standpoint, I couldn't be more favorable to this. I 12
think pointing out that we could even expand at University Avenue around to El Camino 13
because we have just approved how many units? Staff, real quick, how many units did we 14
approve there in the Town & Country Center? It seems – it's in the hundreds. I don't want to 15
put anyone on the spot if nobody remembers exactly how many. 16
17
Jennifer Armer: So at Town & Country, I think the only project that's been approved was at 70 18
Encina, which was a much smaller project, but there is a pre-screening that came in for a much 19
larger project. No decision or approval has been on that one. 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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1
Commissioner Peterson: Thank you, Ms. Armer. So that's – but that gives that lead way in there 2
that we definitely have higher density going in there. The University housing there where there 3
are a lot of units, and it's not University, but it's across the street from El Camino and there is a 4
lot of essentially shared facility-type housing, shared yard, shared community space that is built 5
there. I live in the strategic zoning area of Cal Ave. I will tell you, this is a great neighborhood. I 6
haven't had to have a car in over a decade, and I haven't missed it. There's not once I thought "I 7
wish I had a car." I walk out the door and I say "There's a Caltrain. There's a bus. I can walk to 8
city hall. I can walk anywhere from here." Instacart for groceries is such a normal thing now. 9
Amazon – the concept of driving to the grocery store is almost a foreign concept, and I can tell 10
you, in this neighborhood, every morning there's a parade of Waymos and lifts picking people 11
up to work, bikes coming out of here, coming back. This is a complete, walkable neighborhood. 12
13
And the piece that I want to add to this that I'd like considered is public parking garages have 14
become something that I've suddenly discovered is a community asset. To park your vehicle 15
where you live I think is almost a dead concept, especially in Cal Ave as they've just built 16
massive parking garages here that I've noticed a lot of the cars are off the street here. And it 17
took a minute for me to notice and then to realize because everyone's parking in the parking 18
garage, buying parking garage passes, and using the electrical chargers particularly. And there's 19
huge solar panels on top of the parking garage, so it makes a lot of sense to be charging your 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.
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car there. So I think the – a lot of the parking issue is taken up by simply by having community 1
parking garages within the strategic zoning locations. So if you look at University Avenue and 2
you look at the San Antonio Road Area Plan, I think you really need to think about where is our 3
major parking garages locations and they're under – if they're underground parking garages, 4
you go to Stanford campus, there are massive, massive underground parking garages that just 5
look like open fields, and they're community spaces. So I think that's the piece that I can add to 6
this as some feedback. But again, Mr. Goodfellow, I want to tell you I really commend your 7
work and I really appreciate the presentation you gave. 8
9
Greg Goodfellow: Thank you. And the one thing I would add to that great comment about 10
parking garages is that the City, in its objective design standards and its approaches to design, 11
has good approaches to design of structured parking. And one approach to this could be an 12
expanded structured parking objective design standard or zoning approach or allowable 13
approach so it can be more indirect. Again, this is – I just want to keep stressing that this is one 14
tool in a housing toolkit that every city has to have, and success does not have to be covering 15
the entire program of selected options. 16
17
Commissioner Peterson: One hundred percent. I agree with everything you say. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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
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2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes 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, Commissioner. I believe it's my turn. I've grouped my comments into 3 1
sections. First is general; this applies to all the types and locations. I have few problems with 2
eliminating the parking requirements if the parking demand is genuinely eliminated, and that's 3
the key. I think it's unacceptable to eliminate the parking requirements if the demand just shifts 4
to somewhere nearby. And of course, downtown, that issue is primarily the adjacent 5
neighborhoods, and in places with parking garages, it's the parking garages because those have 6
other commitments. In a sense, this is the old problem of socializing the costs while privatizing 7
the benefits. That's neither sustainable nor is it fair to other people who use those resources, 8
and depend on them. And since we've mentioned RPP programs, that's something to keep in 9
mind because they would have an effect. 10
11
Second general comment is about open space requirements because they present some similar 12
problems. If the individual projects aren't providing at least common open space, then it's fair 13
to criticize us to say that we care more about warehousing people than we care about making 14
the city livable for them. That will come up, I'm sure. Having the City acquire nearby land for 15
parks and other open-space uses can work, but that's another case of socializing the costs, so if 16
that's the solution that's chosen, then I would be reluctant to eliminate impact fees altogether. 17
18
All right, now for comments on the types. I'm having to evolve my position a little bit because of 19
the good comments from my fellow commissioners here. I was not convinced that there is 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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going to be broad market acceptance for some of these types. Perhaps that doesn't matter. 1
Perhaps this is just a small part of what we hope to achieve, and so if we make a small gain, 2
that's sufficient. But any rate, with that caveat, the micro units seem to me to be the most likely 3
to succeed, so that's what I would vote to prioritize. And at the very least, for historical reasons, 4
I'd like to see us develop replacements for the micro units we've lost at places like the President 5
Hotel and Casa Olga and other downtown sites. Next on my list would probably be senior 6
housing because I think the demand is likely to be greater than for the co-living, co-housing, 7
shared housing formats. Regarding larger units for larger families, I think those of us on the PTC 8
often try to encourage that, but I wonder if that should be dealt with more general incentives 9
rather than making it a focused effort as part of this program. 10
11
And finally, I'd like to say a few words about locations. And I will follow up more strongly on 12
Commissioner Ji's comment. I think this program is a great reason for re-zoning Stanford 13
Research Park to make it easier for housing development there. It's close to Stanford, so micro 14
unit projects could see demand from students and staff. Arguably, it's the largest concentration 15
of jobs in the city. So for our sustainability goals, it may make sense to put housing and jobs 16
together there. This would be one way to do that. Parking can be shared between commercial 17
and residential uses there, so it's unlikely to be a great concern. But if the goal is still to 18
eliminate the use of private vehicles, this area is still close enough to the Cal Ave zones and 19
parts of it to Ventura and the El Camino retail nodes that I think residents of SRP-based housing 20
_______________________
1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
could make use of the services in those areas and not be isolated. So that would be a strong 1
vote for me. All right, that's all from me for this round. I believe we have Vice Chair Chang next. 2
3
Vice Chair Chang: Thank you, Chair. I love being on this commission because everybody has 4
such good comments. Many of what – much of what I was going to say has already been said by 5
Commissioner Hechtman, Chair Akin, and Commissioner Ji. I had wanted to start by asking a 6
question. So I believe we've asked this question in the past, and maybe Counselor Yang needs 7
to answer it. Are we allowed to essentially say residents in a certain building that provides no 8
parking cannot use – cannot participate in the RPP? 9
10
Albert Yang: So it depends. We can draw the boundaries of an RPP district to exclude certain 11
sites, but we cannot just say this property that is within the RPP boundary can't participate. And 12
we also can't draw the RPP boundaries like a donut so that you have a spot that's missing from 13
the middle. 14
15
Vice Chair Chang: You can't gerrymander our RPPs? Okay. Because I'm just trying to figure out 16
how do we do this so that people don't have the incentive to essentially to socialize their 17
private need for parking. And it sounds like that may be challenging because I agree with what 18
Commissioner Peterson said about this lovely parking garage at Cal Ave, but how many micro 19
unit developments could we have without that just filling up really quickly? So I'm trying – if 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.
all remember when we were discussing 660 University and Commissioner Templeton said "I 1
have a solution to this underground garage problem, let's just not have a garage." So in a sense, 2
that's providing no parking, and theoretically then, the residents would be incented to not bring 3
a car. But the developer immediately said, no, we cannot do that. It would not be viable 4
because there wouldn't be the demand. But I do think that in the areas in the map, along with 5
those that Commissioner Ji mentioned, like potentially Town & Country, potentially the transit 6
center, those would be great areas for where I think people could be incented to not need cars 7
and could actually live here without cars. 8
9
I'm trying to find my notes here. So I don't know. I think that to the extent that staff is going to 10
look at waiving open space requirements or parking requirements, I think that we do it written 11
in such a way that there's a particular type of housing with specific development requirements 12
that says you're only allowed to waive the parking requirements if you're this type of housing 13
because I wouldn't want to do that for the whole for, say, a single-family home going up in the 14
same same area. Not that those – well, no, I think that the area around Cal Ave does have some 15
single-family homes. The other thing that I think that staff could do is try and think about how 16
we can address that socialization of a private need. 17
18
Okay. In terms of the map, I do agree with Commissioner Ji that I think this should probably be 19
done in conjunction with SB 79 so that we're not duplicating efforts, but then, with respect 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
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2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
what Commissioner Hechtman said about how SOFA – the SOFA area perhaps is not as good as 1
Cal Ave, what I would say is that if we are going through the trouble of adding a definition in the 2
code and perhaps on development requirements, if we expand it to other areas where it might 3
work, maybe the market will tell us that it doesn't, but that way we have it so even if it's just a 4
little bit maybe we're doing something good there. 5
6
I know that we've looked at, in the past, at the PTC at cottage clusters, and I wonder if there's a 7
way to incentivize more things like that. But that's probably much lower on the priority list than 8
the micro units and senior housing. So where I really agree with Vice Chair, I'm sorry, with Chair 9
Akin is that I think that senior housing is a really big opportunity and that as this effort moves 10
forward, that we should look at that very carefully. Because in the stakeholder interviews, there 11
was some discussion indicating that it was unlikely that we could do below market-rate housing 12
for these alternative models just because of the financing and other costs. But what I wonder is 13
that maybe some of the senior housing would be naturally more affordable than what 14
somebody is living in right now, and it could free up housing as people want to downsize. So it 15
could be market rate, but it will be less expensive than, say, a single-family home. 16
17
And then I had a question for staff about dormitory-type housing. So I heard that student 18
housing isn't – doesn't count for RHNA, but I'm thinking about a specific type of housing on the 19
Stanford campus, the Schwab Residential Center that's for business school students, where it's 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
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2 units with a shared – 1 shared kitchen for every 2 units. And each unit has its own bathroom, 1
and there's just a shared kitchen, and each unit has its own entrance. So would something like 2
that be able to be used for RHNA? 3
4
Vishnu Krishnan: Greg, do you know if that counts? 5
6
Greg Goodfellow: I think that's one of those difficult ones that is right in between that state 7
definition of "group quarters," which does not count to RHNA, versus the traditional housing 8
unit, and I wish I knew a little bit more about that Schwab Center. My sense is that it wouldn't 9
count, and – because I do think it's more associated with that group quarter. I can't pull the 10
slide up; I don't have control over it. But I think – but I do think also, and I look closely into 11
HCD's most recent report on the state of RHNA, and I do think it is pretty well agreed upon that 12
because of programs like this, alternative housing programs aren't in a lot of housing elements 13
and there's a general assumption and a general realization that these alternative units have to 14
be considered more as formalized RHNA-counting units. I think that's the good news right now 15
and that's – it came up in discussions of a lot of the density bonus laws that have come up for 16
shared housing that is now referenced in your PAMC, but in those discussions, it was also an 17
issue. Look, we're incentivizing these types of shared units with these density bonuses, but 18
they're still not counting towards RHNA. These 2 things are in conflict, so I do think there really 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 a movement right now, even into the next counting of RHNA, to expand what counts as a 1
RHNA unit. That's my spiel for that. I would say that Schwab would not count at this point. 2
3
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. It seems like – well it seems like maybe with a little tweaking, though, it 4
might because there was the discussion of units with their own bathroom and a kitchenette 5
and then a shared kitchen working, so Schwab seems like it's better than that. 6
7
Greg Goodfellow: Right. I might not understand the formal lease process and the ownership. 8
9
Vice Chair Chang: Maybe that's part of it is the lease process. If it were leased the way an 10
apartment is, maybe it would be legit. And so that's an area of investigation that I would 11
suggest for you guys in conjunction with the micro units because I really think that Stanford 12
Hospital workers, young professionals, postdocs, grad students would all be really interested in 13
this type of housing. It just doesn't exist right now, so instead what they're doing is renting a 14
house – a four bedroom house and then having a shared kitchen. But I know that Schwab is 15
over subscribed for business school students specifically, and I – and so a whole bunch – first-16
years can't all live there, so some of them live off campus in Palo Alto. Second-years all live off 17
campus in Palo Alto. So right there I know that if we could free up that housing stock it would 18
be great. And I imagine for postdocs and everything like that too, it would – it could be really 19
good. So that's just a direction there. Similarly, it could be really useful for senior housing even. 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
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2. The Chair may limit Oral Communications to 30 minutes for all combined speakers.
3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
You're not ready to move into a retirement community, but you do have a good friend that you 1
wouldn't mind living next door to and kind of sharing a kitchenette or whatever. So anyway, I 2
just think that there are some alternatives here that could work as I think about the various 3
demographics in our city. 4
5
Okay, let me look down the list here. In the packet, the San Antonio Area and the ROLM 6
Housing Element Focus Group were listed and as well as RM-40 as potential areas, and it looks 7
like the map that you have is already much more focused. I don't think that those are good 8
areas for us to focus on right now because it would involve more sweeping change and there's 9
the transportation issue. And then I had a question for you about the multi-generational 10
households because aren't our current 3-plus bedroom homes that we have, all the single-11
family homes, the 60 percent of housing units in the city, aren't they effectively multi-12
generational housing depending on how people use them? Because I think about the Asian 13
families I know, and probably half of them, maybe a little less, are multi-generational. They've 14
got grandma and grandpa or one of grandma and grandpa and then the nuclear family. So I had 15
a – I'm not sure that that's where we need to focus because I think we're seeing it naturally go 16
that way anyway here. 17
18
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Vishnu Krishnan: So the key difference here is we're talking about intergenerational housing, 1
which is more program oriented. So there is a senior living with youth, which is basically 2
allocated through a program. So that is a very different concept from what you're referring to. 3
4
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. All right. I think that's it for my comments. Thank you. 5
6
Chair Akin: Thank you, Vice Chair. Commissioner Hechtman. 7
8
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you. Yes, just a sort of reflection on the RHNA issue and which 9
of these fit RHNA and which don't. In this discussion, don't want to get too hung up on RHNA. 10
We have a housing shortage. And we knew that before we got a RHNA number, and the RHNA 11
number we got is completely unachievable. That's my belief that there's no way we're going to 12
remotely come close in this cycle to doing it. But every time we can provide a legitimate 13
housing spot for somebody, we are adding one checkmark to reducing the housing shortage. 14
And so even though, I favor focusing on these micros that would count, I think these other 15
housing types, even if they come, it's going to be a small number. I don't know if it's a hundred 16
or 200 in the next cycle. And so if we get those units and they don't count toward RHNA, I'm 17
okay with that because I know that they're actually providing housing, whether it meets some 18
technical qualification that, as Mr. Goodfellow pointed out, may be shifting over time or not, it 19
really doesn't matter to me. I think the focus is on providing housing, not satisfying the state. 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. I see no hands and no lights. Mr. Krishnan, is there 2
anything that you'd like to request of us? 3
4
Vishnu Krishnan: That's everything. Thank you. 5
6
Chair Akin: Thank you very much. Excellent program. I certainly hope we see it bear fruit and 7
there are plenty of opportunities to connect to other programs as well, so that may be useful in 8
addition. All right, it's a little early, but I suggest we take a break now before getting into our 9
next item because I suspect it will need some time. So it is 7:26. Let's return at 7:40. 10
11
Chair Akin: Welcome back everyone. Agenda Item Number 3 tonight is a quasi-judicial hearing 12
to review a Conceptual Plan for 788 San Antonio Road and to make a recommendation on 13
forwarding the application to the Architectural Review Board. For those following along at 14
home, this begins on Packet Page 50. Since this is quasi-judicial, I'll ask if anyone needs to 15
disclose information that's not already in the public record. Seeing none, may we have the staff 16
presentation? 17
18
Manager of Current Planning Claire Raybould: Perfect. Thanks, Sam. Good evening, 19
Commissioners. Claire Raybould, Manager of Current Planning. The project before you tonight 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.
is 788 San Antonio Road, a planned community/planned home re-zoning. If you can go to the 1
next slide. 2
3
So the project location is located on the San Antonio Road Area Corridor, which is within the 4
boundaries of the proposed San Antonio Road Area Plan. Some other nearby projects include 5
800/808 San Antonio Road. There is an existing PC adjacent to the site that's 5 stories. They are 6
proposing a new amendment to the PC to make that 5-story housing development an 8-story 7
housing development: 762 San Antonio Road, which is across Leghorn, which is a proposed 8-8
story housing development, and 824 San Antonio Road, which is an approved project, a little bit 9
to the north, plan north, in this view. And that's a 4-story senior housing development. If you 10
can go to the next slide. 11
12
So a brief overview of the project, planned home re-zoning includes new 8-story, mixed-use 13
building with 167 residential rental units. Twenty percent of those units, or 28 units, would be 14
affordable to low income. There's 1,400 square feet of retail proposed. The parking is 72 total 15
on 2 levels at and above grade, so no below-grade parking is proposed. Some of the exceptions 16
they're asking for include but are not limited to the height exception to exceed the 50-foot 17
height limit, floor area and lot coverage exceptions, and retail floor area requirement 18
exceptions. And I'll get into those a little bit more in a few slides. A separate certificate of 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
compliance to merge 2 lots is required and would be made a condition of approval of the 1
project. If you could go to the next slide. 2
3
So just a summary of the background process. As you're familiar with, there's a pre-screening 4
requirement to go to Council, which this project did in May 2025. They then submitted a formal 5
application later that year and are now coming forward for their first initial PTC hearing. There 6
will also be ARB hearings and ARB recommendation, and then it will return to the PTC with a 7
formal PC ordinance for your consideration along with the development plans as recommended 8
by the ARB and then goes to Council for a final decision. Next slide. 9
10
The CEQA process for this project is we're planning to do an addendum to the previously 11
adopted Housing Incentive Program Expansion EIR. We expect that there will be no significant 12
environmental impacts, but they must comply with all of the adopted mitigation measures, and 13
those measures do include the measures for impacts associated with the historic building that's 14
located on this property. Next slide. 15
16
Site plan. I just wanted to give you guys some context. So there is a 25-foot setback on the San 17
Antonio Road frontage that's proposed. There are some improvements within that area, so we 18
can get into that further as you discuss. Leghorn – there is a setback on Leghorn in accordance 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
with the code, and all of the trash pickup and fire access is proposed along the Leghorn Street. 1
Next slide. 2
3
Some of the key exceptions to the development standards for the existing CS zoning: They're 4
proposing a 3.7 floor area ratio where 0.6:1 is allowed and 2.0:1 is allowed under the Housing 5
Incentive Program. There's – the height of the building is 89 feet tall where 50 foot maximum is 6
typically allowed. There's a 67 percent lot coverage where 50 percent is allowed. I'll note that 7
100 percent of lot coverage is allowed with the Housing Incentive Program. Ground floor 8
commercial, they have about 1,400 square feet proposed where 6,500 square feet is required, 9
which is 15 percent of the floor area ratio for a mixed-use development under the CS zoning. 10
And they're proposing 167 dwelling units per acre where 30 dwelling units per acre is typically 11
allowed, and there's no maximum density under the Housing Incentive Program. Next slide. 12
13
So some of the key feedback that we'll be asking you to provide tonight includes any comments 14
you might have on the public benefits that are being proposed, any comments you might have 15
on the parking that's proposed. This was a key item that was raised by Council, and so we're 16
honing in on that particular component. The retail, any thoughts you have on the retail that's 17
proposed. That was something that the Council requested, but we're particularly interested in 18
your thoughts on the retail and the retail as it relates to the parking. 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 finally, transition to neighboring properties. The Council had requested step backs, which 1
were incorporated into the San Antonio Road frontage elevations. They also look – they were 2
also requesting step backs adjacent to 808 San Antonio Road, which have not been 3
incorporated. I will note that at the time it came to Council, it was adjacent to an approved 5-4
story development too, so – and next slide. 5
6
And I did want to add this because we did receive a resubmittal this week of the 808 San 7
Antonio Road project. So they did provide some minor step backs. They do have balconies that 8
still encroach into that area, but they did step the upper wall back. So I just wanted to provide 9
the context of what is currently being proposed. This has not gone forward to the ARB yet, but I 10
just wanted to provide that context because we had it. Next slide. 11
12
And staff recommends that the Planning and Transportation Commission provide initial 13
comments, feedback and recommend that staff forward the proposed project to the 14
Architectural Review Board for further review. And with that, I will – next slide, I'll turn it back 15
to you and recommend that you hear from the applicant. 16
17
Chair Akin: Thank you, Ms. Raybould. If anyone has questions for Ms. Raybould, would you 18
rather do those now or wait until the applicant's presentation is complete? I see no requests, so 19
let's hear the applicant's presentation and then entertain questions. 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
Senior Director of Development at Grubb Properties Megan Watson: Hi. Evening, 2
Commissioners. We're very happy to be before you tonight. Look forward to a robust discussion 3
regarding 788 San Antonio. My name's Megan Watson. I'm a developer at Grubb Properties. 4
We own the property. I'm also joined tonight by our project consultant with Explore Real Estate 5
as well as our architect with KTGY should there be any questions for them throughout the 6
presentation. Can we go to the next slide? 7
8
Actually, can you do one more? Perfect. So as mentioned in staff's presentation, we went and 9
had our pre-screening last May before City Council and really took that feedback to heart. One 10
of the things that we heard as a primary concern was what this whole corridor looks like when 11
we have multiple multi-housing projects adjacent to each other and concerned with creating a 12
tunnel or creating too much of amassing that would overwhelm the corridor. One of the biggest 13
things that we did is while the program remained relatively similar in terms of number of units, 14
parking, 8 levels, height we completely redesigned the exterior and really took that into 15
account, and that was what primarily took us to October when we submitted our formal 16
application and that's what's represented before you tonight. Next slide. 17
18
So in terms of massing, we heard a lot about upper level step backs and really taking that into 19
account. We see that as a tool in a set – in a tool kit where there are many different 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
architectural techniques, things that we can do with massing to really help tone down the scale 1
if you will and really break up the massing along – in particular around the San Antonio Road 2
corridor. So primarily, we expanded our rooftop terrace right there on the hard corner on San 3
Antonio and Leghorn up at Level 8 there. We also have a expansive courtyard that's up on Level 4
3. That's a 70-foot wide courtyard, which is about a third of the property. That's probably one 5
of the main tools that we've utilized to really help break up the massing. We're using different 6
materials. We've also created a distinction between what we're calling the plinths or the 7
podium level, Levels 1 and 2 versus the upper levels, and using horizontal banding as well to 8
emphasize the horizontality and downplay some of the verticality. So those are just the 9
example of some of our techniques that we've utilized to help with that concern. And then 10
overall, just wanted to call out that in addition to the 25-foot setback that we have along San 11
Antonio, the average step back at Level 8 is 55 feet. That's when you take into account the 12
courtyard as well as the rooftop terrace, which we think is pretty generous. Next slide. 13
14
Street activation. This is another thing that we heard during the pre-screen. So one thing – one 15
really key change that we made is we incorporated the retail back in. I anticipate we'll have 16
some discussion around that tonight. I know there's a range of opinions, but we have 17
maintained that in this design before you tonight, and it's right there on the hard corner. That is 18
an activation tool, and we really use that as a jumping-off point for the rest of the ground-floor 19
experience. And that's not just through the building architecture but also through 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.
treatment of the landscape and the streetscape. You're seeing the bike lane represented there. 1
It's a really wonderful pedestrian experience. Lots of street trees for shading as you come 2
through. I know there's a lot going on in discussion with the San Antonio Road Area Plan. 3
4
What our intent here was to represent that those proposals that are being discussed are 5
possible here, and we're really excited about having those at our front door and continuing to 6
collaborate on that. Also just want to note just on the timeline of this. We're in the PHZ right 7
now, and at the end of the PHZ, we'll have to complete design and go through permitting, and 8
then this is about a 3-year construction once we break ground. We're about 5 years out. This is 9
not a project being built tomorrow, so when we talk about ongoing discussions with the San 10
Antonio Road Area Plan, we really mean that this can evolve with that and be delivered 11
cohesively with some of those initial phases, and we really look forward to that. Next slide. 12
13
One of the ways we were able to do that along San Antonio Road has to do with curb cuts, so 14
wanted to highlight that the current site has 5 curb cuts. There's 3 on Leghorn and 2 on San 15
Antonio Road. The updated design has zero on San Antonio Road; we're really happy about 16
that, and then there are only one on Leghorn, and that was really important for us. We do have 17
the benefit of having 2 street frontages and being on the hard corner, so the the trade-off is 18
that we have really utilized Leghorn for a lot of those back-of-house needs such as garage entry, 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.
trash, the fire access, transformers, those types of things, but the benefit is it really frees up the 1
San Antonio Road experience. Next slide. 2
3
Well, this is really what I was just talking about is what we were able to accommodate. Again, 4
with that 25-foot setback, it really – there really is a lot of potential. One of the comments we 5
did receive was to limit the level of design or activation that we're showing within that setback, 6
and we certainly understand the reasoning for – the rationale for doing that when there is a lot 7
still ongoing in discussion. But for us, we really want to activate and design this space and make 8
it an awesome experience not just for our residents but people coming through here, so we 9
have left that level of activation design here in the plan before you tonight. Let's see – next 10
slide. 11
12
Okay. The last couple slides are about parking, which is the topic I want to end on, at least for 13
my remarks, at the moment. Seventy-four stalls; it's a 0.44 parking ratio. We do have 167 bike 14
parking spaces for a 1:1 ratio. We really want to celebrate the mobility and transportation 15
options at this project. One of the ways we do that is by really enhancing through design 16
elements the parking entry. One thing to note right up front in this entry experience is that's 17
where we will put our car share. Those are dedicated cars for our residents. We're proposing 7 18
of them. That's a really meaningful benefit to have for the residents that do not have a car, and 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.
we put them front and center so it's the first thing you see when you come into the building. 1
Next slide. 2
3
Okay. So some macro trends for why we think reduced parking works. We love that this really 4
dovetails from the robust discussion that you guys were having just before this, but things that 5
we know: ride share adoption continues to grow and we anticipate that it will – that will be the 6
trend that's here to stay. Work-from-home or hybrid model is also a trend that we believe is 7
here to stay so just less trips in general, less demand. Cost of car ownership is at an all-time 8
high, not just to purchase the car but to maintain the car, insurance, gas. We have a 9
demographic profile that we tend to cater to that is very environmentally and socially 10
conscious, and living a car-free lifestyle really aligns with our values. And then lastly, we also 11
heard this from the one of the commissioners as well is just the availability of deliveries for 12
food, groceries, daily needs, household goods is – continues to rise as well and the adoption of 13
that. 14
15
Our experience. So we – we're a national multi-family developer and operator. We – when we 16
build a project, we don't just sell it. We hold it long term and we operate it ourselves, so the 17
property manager that will be at this project is my colleague, and that's really important to us. 18
We are significantly invested in the outcome, the viability, and the success of this project. We 19
have a property in Oakland, not too far away, that's very similar to this in terms of number 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.
units and parking. It's 157 units. It's 79 parking stalls; that's about a 0.5 ratio. That has not 1
created any blockages for getting this thing leased. It's 97 per lease – leased right now. We 2
actually have excess parking available. It is a mechanical parking system. If you have questions 3
on that, be happy to share our experience operating that. And we delivered that in summer 4
2024. Oakland, it has had a lot of supply. There's a lot of housing opportunity. People have 5
choices, and the point that we wanted to make here is that this really is a self-select type of 6
housing if you are – if you don't own a car, meaning that if you did own a car and you came 7
here and there wasn't an available parking spot or if you didn't want to park it in a mechanical 8
stacker, which we got that feedback a lot, they – residents and prospective residents had other 9
choices. And ultimately, they made that choice but it didn't ultimately inhibit us from 10
maintaining or achieving the 97 percent leased. 11
12
A couple more stats on that. Just wanted to highlight also some of the demographics of what 13
we're seeing with this work-from-home or hybrid model. Pretty interesting that less than half of 14
our residents are going into the office full time whereas just over half are either working from 15
home or still doing a hybrid model where maybe they go in 2 or 3 days a week. And then the 16
last stat on this one is that only 19 percent of our residents actually work in the city of Oakland. 17
That's important because we think that that's going to be very different in Palo Alto, and that 18
distinction is key. 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.
Next slide, please. So how do we apply what we did in Oakland to Palo Alto because we 1
recognize they're not apples to apples; they're different. So the jobs to household ratio is really 2
where that comes into play, and that's what we wanted to highlight here is it's a very different 3
dynamic than what we're seeing at our nearby property. We've heard this a lot, whether it was 4
City Council or from the community or even with PTC, that there's a very clear stake and 5
common initiative to want to get that jobs-to-household ratio back in line and reduce that ratio, 6
which means that residents that live here also need to work here. And so what that tells us, as 7
compared to Oakland or San Jose as well, is the distinction is that the transit that we really need 8
to enhance and make this successful is on a hyper local scale as opposed to a regional scale. 9
And that's not to say that regional connectivity and regional transit isn't important and doesn't 10
play a key role, it just – it's a distinction between what we're seeing in other markets where we 11
really are focused on that last mile, the last 2 miles. Getting people for this really local 12
connectivity, whether it's through bike lanes, which there's been a lot of discussion around, and 13
enhancing the pedestrian experience, additional bus stops to get to Caltrain. There's a lot of 14
different opportunities, but it really is that last mile to 2 mile that can really transform the 15
viability of this. And then lastly, we just wanted to highlight again with this visual on the map 16
how close we are to these resources in terms of the Shoreline Park, the Baylands, and some 17
really key employers in the area that are set to continue to expand all within a mile of us. This 18
really is not that far away, and all of these factors are why we believe in the viability of a 19
reduced parking ratio here, which ultimately means less demand on automobiles and 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.
roads of San Antonio, which we've heard a lot – a lot of concerns about traffic. And we even 1
heard it from the consultant previously that the best way to reduce this is by just not providing 2
the parking. That's been our finding as an operator, not just in California but across the nation. 3
And we look forward to your feedback and discussion tonight on all those topics. So thank you. 4
5
Chair Akin: Thank you, Ms. Watson. Did I get your name correctly? 6
7
Megan Watson: That's correct. 8
9
Chair Akin: Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else from the applicant? 10
11
Jennifer Armer: That's the end of their time. 12
13
Chair Akin: Okay. Commissioners, do you have any clarifying questions to ask of either staff or 14
the applicant in order to inform the public comment. I see no requests, so Mr. Tavera, do we 15
have a request for public comment? 16
17
Samuel Tavera: Through the Chair, at the moment we have 5 requests to speak. If there's any 18
other members of the public that would wish to speak to this item, I would ask that you give me 19
a public comment card or raise your hand on Zoom. Our first speaker is Joan L. 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
Joan Larrabee: Good evening, Commission Members, city staff, and everybody else. My name is 2
Joan Larrabee. I live at 777 San Antonio Road, which is the Greenhouse right across the street. 3
Ten acres; only 140 units on 10 acres. I'm retired from the city of San Jose after 25 years, and 4
the last 20 of those were spent on traffic and transportation issues, including the pre-5
construction phase of the light rail. So this – something I would like to speak about, my 6
concerns about this. An 8-story building with only half – less than half the units getting even 7
one parking place. San Antonio Road only has 4 lanes. No bike lanes. No bus service. There was 8
a bus service when I moved into the Greenhouse in the '80s. It stopped right outside next to our 9
driveway, but eventually, the bus service had to be pulled off because the roadway is just too 10
narrow to even have a bus. Very disappointing. One friend of mine who lives on McKay Drive, 11
those are the single-family houses on the other side of Middlefield Road, she calls it the Palo 12
Alto parking lot. San Antonio Road is a parking lot. And the commissioner who came in on the 13
Zoom, she said it's a level of service X. I've never heard of an X. And one of the most odd things 14
that I've heard as justification for having an 8-story building among all of the other 5 and 6 15
stories that keep creeping up and up, is that if we have an 8-story building, then it'll bring a 16
grocery store to this section of Palo Alto. Well, we already have the very best grocery store in 17
Palo Alto, which is Piazza. There's a shopping center right around the other side of our block 18
with Pete's Coffee and 2 restaurants, and there are several other amenities up and down San 19
Antonio Road too. But my main concern is I find it hard to believe that a lot of people will not 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
want to have a car. They'll park on other people's property. But it's not safe to do that with no 1
bike lanes. People right now are already using our sidewalks for the bikes. 2
3
Samuel Tavera: Thank you. This concludes your time. 4
5
Joan Larrabee: I'm sorry, what? 6
7
Samuel Tavera: This concludes your time. 8
9
Joan Larrabee: I'm mainly concerned about safety. If you're going to expect 50 people to start 10
using bikes, they're going to use the sidewalks. And right now, many of the people where I live 11
are very concerned about the fact that sometimes where would a fire truck or an EMT get 12
through all of this? That's my concern. 13
14
Chair Akin: Thank you very much for your comment. We do appreciate it. 15
16
Joan Larrabee: Do you have any questions? 17
18
Chair Akin: Generally, we don't interact with the public commenters. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Joan Larrabee: Okay. 1
2
Samuel Tavera: Our next speaker is Stephen L. Steve L., sorry. 3
4
Steve Levy: Hi. Steve Levy I think I'm going to sound a bit like Claire on this. I support the staff 5
recommendation that has 2 parts. Please add your comments and suggestions and please move 6
it forward as it will come back to you. You and the Council have decided already that this 7
portion of the south side of San Antonio is appropriate for 8-story buildings. The one adjacent 8
to this was raised from 5 to 8 stories at the request of Council. The one at 762, which is not 9
adjacent – I walked that a couple of times – is also 8 stories. So we've already decided that this 10
small stretch is an appropriate and beneficial location for high-density housing. As Claire said 11
and as the – Ms. Watson emphasized, there's not going to be any development of any of these 12
3 big projects and the senior housing project until the 5 or 10-year period. This is not about 13
today or tomorrow, and so I have 2 requests to this staff but also to Robert Kane on the San 14
Antonio Area Plan. One is I'd like to know what car, bike, and pedestrian improvements are 15
likely and possible in that 5 to 10-year period, and 2, it's just me but I remember Council 16
Member Burt on the 3265 Teacher Housing saying wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a zip 17
car location next door in that area? 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.
As far as the setbacks, I have no expertise, but I would remind the Commission, as Claire 1
pointed out, that the original concern came when the buildings were a very, very different 2
height. So I'm interested in what the ARB says; I'm interested in the applicants working 3
together. I don't know whether this car-light project will actually work, but no one in this room 4
knows with any degree of confidence that it won't work, so let's let the process evolve knowing 5
that this is 5 to 10 years out. Come back when we learn more but what is possible and move 6
this forward so you'll get it back with a lot more information before you need to make a 7
recommendation. Thank you. 8
9
Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Levy. 10
11
Samuel Tavera: Our next speaker is Oscar M. 12
13
Oscar Mazariegos: All right. Good evening, esteemed members of the PTC. So my name is Oscar 14
Mazariegos. Thank you for giving me the time to speak tonight. I am a field representative with 15
the NorCal States Carpenters Union. I represent about 5,700 members, give or take, over here 16
in Santa Clara County. So tonight, as you consider this item for some much-needed housing, I 17
urge you to also consider how this project will be built and who will be building it. We are in no 18
shape or form against any housing, we just want it to be built without taking advantage of the 19
workforce. Housing is not just about units and numbers, it's about people, both the families 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.
who will one day live in these homes, but also the men and women who will be constructing 1
them. That is why choosing a responsible contractor is critical. A responsible contractor is one 2
who values the workforce and invests in them, one who ensures workers are paid area 3
standard wages and can afford to live in the communities that they serve. One who provides 4
health care benefits and workers can care for themselves and their families. One who offers 5
retirement security so that after decades of physical, demanding work, these tradespeople can 6
retire with dignity. Equally important is a strong apprenticeship program, one that creates 7
pathways for young men and women from the community to enter the trades and gain skills, 8
earn while they learn and become the next generation of highly trained craftsmen and women. 9
These programs don't just build careers; they build safer jobs, higher-quality projects, and 10
stronger local economies. So as you move forward with this housing project, I respectfully ask 11
that you prioritize responsible contractors to uphold these standards. Doing so ensures the 12
project delivers not only housing but long-term value for the workforce, families, and the 13
community as a whole. And thank you for your time and consideration. 14
15
Chair Akin: Thank you for your comment. 16
17
Samuel Tavera: Our next speaker is Mike B. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Mike Brown: Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Mike Brown. I'm a representative with 1
the North Coast States Carpenters Union, and you guys have a lot to – a lot goes into this and a 2
lot to consider when you're looking at these projects. But I'm going to echo a little bit of what 3
my brother said, but one thing that is grossly overlooked a lot of times is the hardworking men 4
and women that are building these projects. And what is the true public benefit? Are these 5
workers getting paid area standard wages? Are these workers provided health care? Are these 6
workers going to be able to retire with dignity? And is apprenticeship utilization being used? 7
That would be the true public benefit would be that the developer hire a responsible contractor 8
that provides these things to the hardworking men and women that build our nation. Thank 9
you for your time. 10
11
Chair Akin: Thank you for your comment. 12
13
Samuel Tavera: Our next speaker is John P. John P, you may now speak. 14
15
John P.: Hello. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. For fairness and transparency, the 16
Planning Commission is requested to consider and publish how Palo Alto's Housing Element 17
requirements are recommended and distributed across the Palo Alto neighborhoods. This is 18
important so that a particular neighborhood doesn't feel that they're carrying much more of 19
the burden than other neighborhoods. The 788, 790, 796 San Antonio Road project is one of 4 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
projects in the queue for the east side of the section of San Antonio Road between East 1
Charleston and Middlefield Road that may bring an additional 550 residential units to this small 2
section of San Antonio Road if all of the exceptions are granted. The Planning Commission is 3
requested to consider the appropriate density level for this section of San Antonio Road before 4
accepting the exceptions requested for this project. This would be like a foot in the door and 5
that is not necessarily a good thing. The tallest buildings in this section of San Antonio Road 6
between East Charleston and Middlefield are the 5-story Marriott Hotels and at the end of this 7
is the Oshman Center. An 8- or 9-story building would be out of scale for the neighborhood and 8
3 or 4 of these side-by-side could form an intimidating wall with unexpected consequences such 9
as the wall could reflect traffic noise from San Antonio Road into adjacent Palo Alto 10
neighborhoods. We just don't know. We don't have experience with this type of building or this 11
density of construction. The SARAP project has been considering 8-story buildings, but they've 12
pretty much come to the conclusion that those buildings should be placed along Highway 101 13
and not in the neighborhoods where they really are not to scale. Currently, the section of San 14
Antonio Road between Middlefield Road and East Charleston Road provides in each direction 2 15
lanes of traffic, 1 lane of which is a shared bicycle lane, a parking lane, which is also used as a 16
right-turn lane, a loading zone, a median strip, which is also used as a left-turn lane, a sidewalk, 17
and a parking strip. This fits within 76.5 curb-to-curb and overall 100.5 feet of ROW. SARAP 18
presents 3 alternatives, 2 of which drops the parking lanes – both parking lanes in each 19
direction, and the other drops 1 parking lane. Since on-street parking seems likely to be 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
reduced and there not appears to be space for bus or shuttle stops, reducing the parking 1
requirements for Project 788 seems inappropriate. Thank you for your attention. 2
3
Chair Akin: Thank you for your comment. 4
5
Samuel Tavera: Our next speaker is Jeremy L. Jeremy L., you may now speak. 6
7
Jeremy Levine: Good evening, PTC Jeremy Levine here with Palo Alto Forward. I am the 8
relatively new executive director. Thank you all for for a really lovely staff presentation, for a 9
great discussion on the last item. This is my first comment to the PTC, so I'm very excited to be 10
talking before you all. We're excited for 788 San Antonio to move forward. We look forward to 11
this project going to the ARB hopefully and the Council and back to the PTC. I'm here to talk 12
about something that personally excites me about this project because I do not own a car, and 13
it is possible for me to live without owning a car in part because I live in an apartment building 14
with a 0.5 parking ratio and unbundled parking, which means that I am able to live in an 15
apartment and not need to pay the $200 that it would cost in order for me to have a parking 16
space every month and to pay for the insurance and to pay for the gas and to pay for the 17
monthly upkeep expenses of owning a vehicle. This means that I am able to make a series of 18
choices about how I live my life and means that the cost of paying for a parking space is not 19
socialized onto me by a rule that forces me to pay for car ownership that others might decide 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
totally fairly. I'm really looking forward to the future of the San Antonio corridor. I think the City 1
is planning for some really – a really ambitious vision of what this corridor is going to look like. 2
And I hope that as it moves forward with the San Antonio Area Plan projects like this that 3
envision the future of a transit-oriented, walkable, bikeable corridor are something that the PTC 4
celebrates and supports. So looking forward to your discussion tonight and to many more 5
public comments in the future. Thank you. 6
7
Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Levine 8
9
Samuel Tavera: And through the Chair, I have no other requests to speak. 10
11
Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Tavera. Commissioners, as with 800 San Antonio that we reviewed a 12
few weeks ago, we're making a simple decision tonight about whether to forward the project to 13
the ARB; however, we'll see the project again, so I encourage everyone to bring up their 14
concerns now so that the ARB and the applicant have plenty of time to prepare for the 15
questions that we're likely to have later. So general discussion is now open. 16
17
Jennifer Armer: Through the Chair, I would like to invite the applicant to make a closing 18
statement if they wish. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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: Pardon me. Absolutely right. Sorry I missed that. 1
2
Megan Watson: Well, I'll keep it brief, just piggybacking on what Jeremy just said. The vision for 3
San Antonio Road is ambitious, and I just want to acknowledge that the viability of this project, 4
while we firmly believe in it, it does require collaboration and a shared vision with the City as 5
well as other regional stakeholders to make this come to life. Ultimately, we appreciate all the 6
feedback and collaboration that we had to date and we look forward to continuing to refine the 7
project with your feedback as well as with ARB's and advancing this much-needed housing for 8
the region. Thank you. 9
10
Chair Akin: Thank you. Apologies for not offering you that opportunity when it should have 11
happened. All right, Commissioners, discussion is open. I have Commissioner Peterson, 12
Commissioner Hechtman, Commissioner Ji in that order. 13
14
Commissioner Peterson: Thank you, Chair. So this might've been a question I should have asked 15
earlier, but I noticed Attachment H is not in the packet, and it says that's the project plans. Is 16
that just an omission, or was that not included? 17
18
Jennifer Armer: You typically receive a hard copy of the project plans and then there's a link. I'm 19
not sure. Let me check. 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 Peterson: It's not super important; I can just ask a quick question and maybe the 2
applicant can answer my question. 3
4
Jennifer Armer: Sure. The plans are available online as well but you can go ahead and ask your 5
question. 6
7
Commissioner Peterson: Okay. Thank you. So for the applicant, one of the questions I have is I 8
see the outside of the building, the rendering of the 3D and all the rest, but what's the 9
construction of this. Is this a mass timber construction with the heavy beam timbers? Is this a 10
masonry or is this steel? What type of building is this? 11
12
Megan Watson: Yes, great question. So it’s 8 stories, so it’ll be 5 levels of wood frame situated 13
on top of 3 levels of concrete. 14
15
Commissioner Peterson: Okay. So that probably explains why the Carpenters Union came in 16
because it’s a wood-frame building then? The − kind of the normal… 17
18
Megan Watson: Yes. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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: …we see like a – we call them podiums, correct? 1
2
Megan Watson: Yes, podium. You typically might see a 5 over 2. This is a 5 over 3. Yes. 3
4
Commissioner Peterson: Five over three. Okay. Thank you. And then the comment I wanted to 5
make just on top of that is I am – what’s the word for it? I’m sympathetic to the comments by 6
the – was it – Mike Brown and Oscar − that the Carpenters Union, they have a local training 7
center and they really are a high-skill workforce, less rework, less request for information, the 8
projects get done. So I would encourage – I’ve been to their training center in Morgan Hill and 9
so I would encourage you if you’re familiar with building construction in this region, they’re a 10
great resource. It’s just the place where you go – it’s – to get the high-quality workforce. But I’ll 11
keep my – the rest of my comments for the next round. Thank you. 12
13
Jennifer Armer: And for clarification just for the record, it looks like the references to the 14
attachments at the end of the staff report skip to the numbering for F but the attachments are 15
labeled A through G. So what was referenced to the project plans as Attachment H are labeled 16
as Attachment G. 17
18
Commissioner Peterson: Oh, excellent. Okay. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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 for that explanation. I have Commissioner Hechtman, then Ji, then Vice 1
Chair Chang. 2
3
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you, Chair. So a question for staff and then I think I have 3 4
questions for the applicant. So staff, the background here, if I understood correctly, the version 5
of this project that went to the Council for prescreen last May did not have retail. Council 6
expressed an interest in seeing retail, and the version we have received now has 1400 square 7
feet of retail, is that right? 8
9
Jennifer Armer: That is correct. 10
11
Commissioner Hecthman: Okay. If I could have Ms. Watson come up – just 3 questions for you. 12
Given your organization, its background and experience, you’ve addressed the Council’s 13
concern by providing retail. How does Grubb feel about it? Are you excited to have it? Are you 14
nervous that you won’t be able to tenant it? 15
16
Megan Watson: There isn’t a precedence to it. In part – and I’ll just disclose I have previously 17
developed retail as well, so it is something I know intimately. Retail likes to be clustered. Nodes 18
really work. And having some intentionality with where that retail is located is really important. 19
One of our concerns is our neighbor to the south not having it. I know there’s been some back 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 forth of whether our neighbor to the north would have it. But ultimately, how it’s showing 1
up right now is it’s a bit fragmented. So for us, if the desire is to have retail, what we would ask 2
is that it be a little bit more strategic in how we’re locating it and clustering it together 3
throughout the corridor as opposed to it being more of a broad brush. That’s where it starts to 4
become more of a challenge. We’ve had very unsuccessful retail and some successful retail and 5
it’s really driven by the neighborhood characteristics that it’s in. 6
7
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Thank you for that. Second question, your Oakland project, the 8
Link Apartments Four12… 9
10
Megan Watson: Yes. 11
12
Commissioner Hechtman: …what’s the address of that? 13
14
Megan Watson: Four twelve Madison. 15
16
Commissioner Hechtman: Madison. 17
18
Megan Watson: It’s in Jack London Square. 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 Hechtman: Okay. All right. And the third question, 3-year construction– I was 1
trying to understand your timeline. That… 2
3
Megan Watson: Yes. 4
5
Commissioner Hechtman: …seemed like a long time from issuance of building permits to build it 6
but maybe you were thinking from the land use entitlements and then the 3 years starts with 7
your pursuing the building permits? What… 8
9
Megan Watson: No, that’s from when breaking ground. A project of this size, the 8 stories, it’s – 10
any – it definitely would be − I think, at best, we could carve it down to 32 months. There’s 11
other things that contribute to that, such as inspections, getting power to the site. There’s a lot 12
of coordination, so for us, that 3 years − that 36-month construction schedule is what we’re 13
allocating [inaudible 149:32]. 14
15
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. You are taking into account that you don’t have to deal with 16
PG&E at this site because you have Palo Alto’s own utility, which… 17
18
Megan Watson: We are aware. Yes. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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: My impression is they’re more responsive. 1
2
Megan Watson: Yes. We look forward to that. 3
4
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. All right. Those are my questions for you. Thanks so much. 5
6
Megan Watson: Thank you. 7
8
Commissioner Hechtman: I guess let me say overall, I’m enthusiastic about an 8-story housing 9
project at this location. And I’ll have some specific comments but I want to do it in a second 10
round. 11
12
Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Ji. 13
14
Commissioner Ji: Thank you, Chair. Like my fellow Commissioners, this will be a questioning 15
round for me. I have some questions for staff and for the applicant. For staff, on Packet Page 16
63, the daylight plane, you’ve listed here that it must match existing PC, can you elaborate a 17
little bit more on that? 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Claire Raybould: Sure. It’s a bit interesting the way that the special requirements in the code 1
under 1838 read – is that if you have 60 percent of the site that’s residential, you can match the 2
daylight planes of the neighboring property that is in a residential PC use or residential use. So 3
they can match the daylight plane of the neighboring property. The daylight plane of that 4
neighboring PC is not really well defined. They had their massing of their building that was 5
approved by Council under their PC ordinance at this – at the setbacks that it was proposed at 6
but it doesn’t have a clear daylight plane. And that’s because when it was being developed, 7
there was no daylight plane requirement because they weren’t adjacent to a site that was in a 8
residential zone district or a residential PC. And so that’s… 9
10
Commissioner Ji: Yes. I… 11
12
Claire Raybould: …the technical requirement. 13
14
Commissioner Ji: I understand. I think the Commissioners know I’m very familiar with 15
1838150E. So – okay. I understand it’s a little bit of a chicken and egg between this project and 16
808, so that makes sense. For the next line, the build-to-lines, you’ve listed Leghorn: None built 17
to setback, can you elaborate on that a little bit more? 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Claire Raybould: Technically, the setback – the building is set back slightly further than the 1
actual setback line and so they are not building up to the exact setback line. 2
3
Commissioner Ji: I see. So it’s like inches or a very small amount is kind of…. 4
5
Claire Raybould: Yes. 6
7
Commissioner Ji: …what you’re saying here. Okay. Thank you. And then I had a question related 8
to the public comment from Joan, who said that the road is too narrow for a bus, is that 9
something staff can comment on? 10
11
Jennifer Armer: I would say that no, it’s not too narrow for a bus; it is a truck route. 12
13
Female: It’s too narrow… 14
15
Jennifer Armer: And so… 16
17
Female: … for a bus. 18
19
Jennifer Armer: …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.
1
Female: They took if off… 2
3
Jennifer Armer: Maybe that there’s limitations in terms of room for bus stops and other things 4
but it’s something that definitely will be part of the discussions as part of the San Antonio Road 5
Area Plan. 6
7
Commissioner Ji: Yes, that I understand. I just wanted to confirm that for the record. And then I 8
wanted to clarify a different public comment who said that the City has decided to build 8 9
stories as a part of the San Antonio Area Plan but my understanding is that decision is not 10
finalized yet, can staff confirm that? 11
12
Jennifer Armer: Correct. 13
14
Commissioner Ji: Thank you. Now I have some questions for the applicant. So thank you for 15
providing the presentation, the comparison against your project in Oakland. Can you tell me a 16
little bit more about the – like what is around the project in Oakland? Can you tell me about the 17
transit? Can you tell me about the supermarkets? Can you tell me about the park space? Could 18
you tell me a little bit more about the area? 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Megan Watson: Yes. Are you familiar at all with Jack London? 1
2
Commissioner Ji: No. 3
4
Megan Watson: That neighborhood. 5
6
Commissioner Ji: So… 7
8
Megan Watson: Okay. 9
10
Commissioner Ji: …that’s why I’m asking the questions. 11
12
Megan Watson: Yes, understood. So a couple things, so it’s located in the Jack London 13
neighborhood. Our particular project, which is 412 Madison, is right on a freeway. It was one of 14
the things that for us when we were designing the project − was one of the things we were 15
most sensitive to. Jack London is a walkable neighborhood; however, it has been impacted as a 16
result of some Covid era and some retail vacancies, so it’s just started to kind of get its legs 17
again. It’s a couple blocks from the waterfront, which I think is probably one of the nicest 18
aspects of it, which is where Jack London Square itself is situated in. In terms of transit, there’s 19
2 key transit access to note, which is proximity to a BART Station and then the ferry is pretty 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
popular for residents within Jack London. You can hop on the ferry, commute to San Francisco. 1
So those are… 2
3
Commissioner Ji: Any other comments about like supermarkets or parks? 4
5
Megan Watson: Well, the park would kind of be the waterfront, so there’s a whole kind of trail 6
and plaza area right on the waterfront; that would be the main park hub. And then there really 7
isn’t a supermarket within walking distance but there’s kind of some peppered throughout 8
downtown Oakland but there’s not one within the neighborhood that’s walkable. 9
10
Commissioner Ji: Okay. Thank you. 11
12
Megan Watson: Yes. 13
14
Commissioner Ji: And then can you tell me a little bit more about your decision for the retail 15
square footage? How did you settle on this number? 16
17
Megan Watson: So this is – I don’t want to say a holdover but we were referencing the previous 18
entitlement, the 102 units. This was approximately the same square footage. And I can’t recall 19
the exact code reference but it was in reference to replacement retail and based on some of 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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 existing commercial square footage that we presently have on site, noting those are vacant 1
right now but that’s how we derived the calculation. 2
3
Commissioner Ji: Thank you. And then for the vehicle parking… 4
5
Megan Watson: Yes. 6
7
Commissioner Ji: …can you tell me a little bit more about the 74 proposed on Packet Page 65? 8
So is this including the 7 that are the shared vehicles? Help me understand how these 2 balance 9
out? 10
11
Megan Watson: Yes, the 74 is total. So that would be inclusive of the car share. There’s 2 ADA, I 12
believe. And then we have 2 that are dedicated for guests or perspective resident parking… 13
14
Commissioner Ji: Okay. 15
16
Megan Watson: …as well. 17
18
Commissioner Ji: So – sorry. Help me do the math here. So how many are like if I’m a resident, I 19
can get a car – like how many car spaces are there allocated for residents? 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
Megan Watson: Yes. So there’d be 74 less 11, so 63. 2
3
Commissioner Ji: Oh, I see. So the 74, the number that you provided here, is subtracting out the 4
spaces that you’re pre-allocating for the… 5
6
Megan Watson: The… 7
8
Commissioner Ji: No. Other way around. 9
10
Megan Watson: …offices. 11
12
Commissioner Ji: Okay. 13
14
Megan Watson: The 74 is total. 15
16
Commissioner Ji: Okay. 17
18
Megan Watson: So you would net out the 7 plus the 2 and 2, so it would take you down to 63. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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. So – okay. So that’s helpful. Thank you. And then I had another 1
question, which is in your Council presentation, you had said that the building manager would 2
be living on site. 3
4
Megan Watson: Yes. 5
6
Commissioner Ji: And I was wondering – so from a unit’s perspective, that is just 1 fewer unit. Is 7
that for like other residents that aren’t the building manager or how does that get counted 8
here? 9
10
Megan Watson: Yes. One of the 167, one of them will go to a property manager and that’s a 11
state law, by the way. 12
13
Commissioner Ji: Yes. No, I’m aware. 14
15
Megan Watson: Okay. 16
17
Commissioner Ji: I just want to make sure that I’m just doing all of my… 18
19
Megan Watson: Yes. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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: …math correctly. 2
3
Megan Watson: Okay. 4
5
Commissioner Ji: Okay. And those are all of my questions for now. Thank you. 6
7
Chair Akin: Thank you. Vice Chair Chang. 8
9
Vice Chair Chang: Thanks, Chair. Okay, I’ll make my comments a question round as well. So for 10
the – for staff, how many bike spots are there exactly? I saw 167 in your presentation as well as 11
167 on the plan but then looking at the TDM portion, I saw only 120. So I just wanted to verify 12
that the 167 is the planned number as of right now. 13
14
Claire Raybould: We were noting that as well in our comments on the TDM plan that there was 15
a discrepancy but staff’s understanding is that − based on the plan set, that what’s proposed is 16
167. 17
18
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. Thanks. Sounds like you have the same confusion. Maybe the applicant 19
would like to answer that question really quickly. 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
Megan Watson: That’ s correct. It’s 167. We’re planning for the 1:1 ratio. We believe there is a 2
typo in the TDM that we’ll have corrected. 3
4
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. 5
6
Megan Watson: Yes. 7
8
Vice Chair Chang: And then for staff, when you referred to 20 percent of the units as being 9
below market rate units, that’s a weighted average of 20 percent, correct? Rather than – 10
because if I do… 11
12
Claire Raybould: That’s… 13
14
Vice Chair Chang: …the math… 15
16
Claire Raybould: Yes. 17
18
Vice Chair Chang: …it’s 16.7. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
Claire Raybould: Correct. Yes, that is the weighted average. Sorry. 1
2
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. No. Thank you. And then for staff, do we have data on the parking 3
usage for other PCs that have been under-parked in the city? So I know that we have at least 1 4
that was the workforce housing at the corner of Page Mill and El Camino. But most of our PCs 5
require some amount of reporting, so I was wondering if we have anything that's built. There 6
must be other PCs as well that I may not be aware of. Do we have any data on where those are 7
or what the residents have done or are doing? 8
9
Claire Raybould: I would have to look into that further and bring that back when we return to 10
PTC. 11
12
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. That’s definitely an area that I’m interested in. Thank you. And I know 13
that – for example, there’s the teacher housing on El Camino that we requested that they 14
monitor the parking data but I just am not quite familiar with all of the PCs that we have that 15
might have been – had parking reductions. Okay. 16
17
Claire Raybould: I’ll just… 18
19
Vice Chair Chang: Yes. 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
Claire Raybould: …note that a lot of those newer ones aren’t constructed yet, so we don’t have 2
the data from them but we can certainly… 3
4
Vice Chair Chang: Right. 5
6
Claire Raybould: …look into the ones that are constructed, yes. 7
8
Vice Chair Chang: Thank you. Yes. I’m aware that most of them are pretty recent. Okay. I think 9
the remainder of my questions are for the applicant, so Chair, if it’s okay with you, I’ll ask the 10
applicant some questions. 11
12
Chair Akin: Please proceed. 13
14
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. What’s your average length of tenancy in Oakland? Do you have that? 15
16
Megan Watson: We could provide that. We delivered in the summer of 2024, so we don’t have 17
a long history that would probably be super useful but we were very happy this past year with 18
our renewal rate, which is a metric that we typically track. Usually, for a project like this, we 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
would want to hover around 50 percent or half but we got closer to 60 percent, so we were 1
super happy with that. 2
3
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. What about in California? Because you said you mentioned you have 4
other developments in California. 5
6
Megan Watson: We have other… 7
8
Vice Chair Chang: [Inaudible 162:13]? 9
10
Megan Watson: Yes. This is our only operational asset in California. We do have other 11
developments in our pipeline but nationally, we have a renewal rate that is around that 50 12
percent. That’s where that metric came from. 13
14
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. My next question is – oh. So Council had mentioned concerns about 15
parking. 16
17
Megan Watson: Yes. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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: Was the parking not addressed simply because you thought that – you in your 1
applicant presentation ran through a bunch of information, was it based on that or were there 2
other considerations as well? 3
4
Megan Watson: So for us, our primary takeaway from prescreen, we certainly understood the 5
concern. How we interpreted that is really believing in this typology that our – what we really 6
needed to do was provide that additional information as well as provide the TDM, which we 7
didn’t have at the time. So that’s really been our focus to provide the TDM and to provide the 8
additional information to support this type of parking ratio. 9
10
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. And then similarly for retail, I know that Council had asked for retail 11
and thank you so much for including the retail. But it’s much less retail than the 6,000 plus 12
square feet. Did you consider the possibility – and one of the things that we’ve been looking at 13
with retail is we understand that 6,000 square feet might be too much; that it’s the street 14
frontage that needs to be activated. But was it possible to – you said retail-like clustering, so did 15
you guys look at all at having retail on the bottom of the other side where the bike parking is 16
right now or does it not pencil out or can you tell me more about this? 17
18
Megan Watson: We did not study that. That 6,000 square footage was a new metric for us. The 19
part of the code that we were referencing for replacement retail that we were using to 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
determine the square footage comes out to a different number. So that was – that level was 1
new information to us as of this report. 2
3
Vice Chair Chang: Thank you. That’s helpful. Would you be open to having a little bit more if – 4
like is it doable? Do you know? 5
6
Megan Watson: Well, doable. There’s a lot of different things to consider. Obviously, the hot 7
topic of the evening, which is parking, at that level of 6,000 square foot, we really have to talk 8
about the parking impacts with that. That’s probably the biggest concern. I would certainly be 9
concerned with just taking up just more square footage in that kind of – it has to come from 10
somewhere. So that probably is going to mean either a substantial reduction in some of the 11
amenity offering or other – our ground floor services; looking at the plans here at the dais here, 12
bike lane or lobby. We have a coworking area. So there is a ripple effect to that, unfortunately. 13
14
Vice Chair Chang: Is it – are you concerned about the viability of the current retail given the 15
limited amount of parking that is provided in this unit and in the area? 16
17
Megan Watson: We’re concerned about the viability of the retail in general, yes. 18
19
Vice Chair Chang: Yes. 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
Megan Watson: Yes. 2
3
Vice Chair Chang: Okay. Thank you. 4
5
Megan Watson: Thanks. 6
7
Vice Chair Chang: That’s it for me, Chair. 8
9
Chair Akin: Thank you, Vice Chair Chang. My questions have been ably asked by my fellow 10
commissioners and answered by staff and Ms. Watson. So rather than extend the question 11
round, I will begin commenting. And why not start with the hard one? Let’s do parking first. So 12
phrasing it delicately, the parking and TDM plan strike me as unrealistic. This will be the single 13
largest concern when this comes back to us, from my point of view. Looking at Link Four12, I 14
see from Google Maps that within ¼ mile of that project, there are 8 bus stops. The Jack London 15
transit station. It’s not that far to BART. And I didn’t notice the ferry but now that you’ve 16
mentioned that, that’s significant for commuters to San Francisco, so it bears on the “19 17
percent of residents work in Oakland” observation; how many work in San Francisco and take 18
the ferry or BART? For 788 San Antonio, within a ¼ mile, there are currently just 2 bus stops; 19
those are on Charleston, not on San Antonio, yet this proposal has even fewer parking places 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.
per unit than Link Four12. And I didn’t realize that you were counting the carshare places as 1
spaces that were available to residents. Removing those from the total, it works out to be about 2
.38 spaces per unit. That’s really low. I think it’s worth mentioning some general statistics about 3
Palo Alto. 4
5
According to the census, 70 percent of employed Palo Alto residents work in other cities 6
despite the 4:1 jobs/ housing imbalance, so that tells us something about commute patterns 7
that exist today. Just shy of 50 percent of employed Palo Alto residents commute more than 10 8
miles, so those are not going to be local bike and ped commuters. They’re going to be transit or 9
vehicle. Unless you believe that you can attract residents that are drastically different over the 10
lifetime of the project from Palo Altons today, then you’re likely to run into some difficulties 11
here. A point I often make is that in Silicon Valley, we deal with a geographic distribution of jobs 12
that’s different from many other parts of the Bay area, including the East Bay, because we are 13
so distributed. So you need that transit access, not only where people live but where the jobs 14
are. And currently, that’s the weak link. So there’s a major transit issue that has to be solved to 15
make this sort of thing viable. People change jobs frequently here, which means at one point – I 16
haven’t checked it lately – but at one point, the average tenure in a tech job was around 2 17
years. So it’s worth checking on that. If you live in this project on San Antonio, it’s pretty likely 18
that at some point in your life, you’re going to want a job that needs to be accessed by a car. 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.
With the limited parking we’re talking about here, that forces residents to choose whether to 1
move or pass up that job. So that’s a potential weakness, which leads into a comment I made a 2
few weeks ago and I’ll bring it up again today, the cautionary tale of The Fay in downtown San 3
Jose. Fay is a 336-unit high rise that was about to be foreclosed at the end of January due to 4
poor occupancy of the 1- and 2-bedroom units. Studios were fine but the 1- and 2-bedroom 5
units had very poor occupancy rates. The published reports claim that this low occupancy rate 6
is mostly due to the project being under-parked. Now there’s good news more recently; it 7
won’t be foreclosed but that’s because the city of San Jose has agreed to subsidize 60 percent 8
of the units. So that’s the kind of gap we’re talking about that can arise if parking is not 9
sufficient for the lives of the people who would like to live in the development. I think it goes 10
without saying that Palo Alto probably does not have the resources to back up a project to that 11
extent. So we need to have a solution up front that we’re comfortable with. 12
13
Finally, on the parking issue, I mentioned to staff in the pre-meeting that I would suggest 14
increasing the size of the carshare facility either within the project or somewhere nearby on 15
San Antonio. I’ve had second thoughts about that because as I tried to analyze the usage 16
patterns, it looks to me like commuting is going to be the biggest problem here and carshare 17
services aren’t a great solution for that. So we need something else. So I withdraw that request 18
for consideration. All right. That is all I have to say about what I regard as my most significant 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.
issue with the project. And in the next round, I’ll have some other things to say that are a little 1
less critical. All right. Let’s see. Commissioner Hechtman. Commissioner Ji. 2
3
Commissioner Hechtman: I’m going to do the reverse of what the Chair did. I’m going to start 4
with the easy stuff. First of all, on Packet Page 56, the first line of the mid-modal access and 5
parking project proposes a 40 percent parking reduction. I think it’s 60 percent is what they’re 6
proposing, so if that’s right, as this moves forward and you recycle the staff report, please clean 7
that up. Next, I had a question for Mr. Yang on the findings and obviously, we’re not making 8
findings tonight; they were just put in here to remind us of ultimately what we’ll have to be 9
thinking about. But I wanted to ask Mr. Yang a question about B, which is about the public 10
benefits. And so this is the justification for the Planned Community Zone District and we’re 11
comparing it to, I think, the base district. And B is asking, are we going to get public benefits not 12
otherwise attainable from the application of regulations in the base district. 13
14
And so the two public benefits we’re talking about in the staff report, one is the provision of 15
affordable housing and the other is possibly the requirement of an easement in the street 16
setback, which incidentally I am supportive of that idea. That’s a piece that staff wanted 17
feedback on. So my question here is I think in a residential development under the base zoning, 18
there could be some amount of below market housing but not as much because of the more 19
limited density and there could be a requirement for this street easement. I want to make 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.
we can make Finding B and I think that we can because of the additional BMRs generated 1
through this kind of zoning than under the base zoning. Am I reading that right? 2
3
Albert Yang: That’s right. There is additional affordability that’s required, although I guess I’d 4
clarify that for a rental project, we don’t require any on-site affordable units. Most – the basic 5
requirement for rental projects is that they pay a housing impact fee. 6
7
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 8
9
Albert Yang: And they can provide units instead as an alternative of paying that fee. But… 10
11
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. 12
13
Albert Yang: …even taking that into account, the PHC does provide more units. 14
15
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. Good. I’m comfortable with that. So the step-back issue next to 16
808– Council was interested in that but things have changed since then. Now instead of a 5-17
story next door, it’s looking like it wants to be 8– roughly the same elevation. And so I’m not 18
seeing a need for a step-back there, so on that issue, I’m willing to route this forward and it will 19
get back to Council and they can can decide if they want both the step-back or only one of them 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.
or neither. So I think there’s not so much to talk about there. Next, I want to talk about the 1
retail. Will staff remind me what, if anything, is proposed directly across Leghorn at that other 2
Leghorn/San Antonio corner. 3
4
Claire Raybould: Yes. So at the very corner, the existing building is not going to change but at 5
762 San Antonio, which is one parcel in from the corner and then wraps around to have 6
entrance off Leghorn as well, there was a 7-story Builder’s Remedy. They have now resubmitted 7
their plans as an 8-story development. So we are analyzing that change right now but expect to 8
bring it forward to the ARB hopefully by early June this year. 9
10
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. So when I think about retail… 11
12
Claire Raybould: But it’s just residential. Sorry. I should clarify it is just residential at 762 San 13
Antonio. 14
15
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. So I am concerned about this micro-retail site. I do like the fact 16
that it wraps the corner. I think that’s a plus. But when I think about more urban areas – and 17
this San Antonio Corridor, is it going to become a more urban area with all of these 8 story 18
buildings? A model you often see is the retail clustered on the corners and then no retail until 19
you get to the next cluster of corners. And that’s kind of fun. You got a bodega on this side 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.
you go across the street and there’s your dry cleaner or whatever. And so I like this corner for 1
that but it needs the corner across Leghorn to complement it with more retail and right now at 2
that corner, we have a building that’s staying. Who knows what the future will bring? So that’s 3
a concern of mine. I’m not sold that we should have retail there. It might be more valuable to 4
have additional parking on that ground floor. You’re not going to park cars behind that window 5
but it will be attractive. So I’m not sold on the retail because of these factors and certainly, 6
when we talk about San Antonio plan, I think we should have a big retail cluster, as I’ve 7
mentioned, down at San Antonio and Middlefield. I think that should be the gathering place for 8
our retail and that will serve this location very nicely. 9
10
And then finally on the parking, I’m going to give you my experiences as I read through the staff 11
report; 167 units with seventy-four are parking spaces. Well, how does that figure? The Council 12
is concerned with that but since the prescreening, no meaningful changes. And I was thinking, 13
how does that figure? And then I got to the back of the appendix and I read the TDM and I said, 14
“Oh, that’s how they figure.” Because the TDM has a methodology to explain why – now they 15
say 75 parking spaces. You’re one shy. Put that in the retail. But you are one shy but that’s how 16
they figure. And I’m not an expert. But some people with expertise wrote this. This report came 17
out in January of this year. The prescreening was last May, so the Council hasn’t seen this. 18
Rather than prejudge how they might react to the 74 not changing, I’d like to hear their 19
feedback having reviewed this like I did. 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 again, I don’t know whether it’s ultimately right. I do think that the horizon is a little 2
different. The Fay is happening now. This is 5 years from now. I don’t know if that’s really going 3
to make a difference. But the other thing I think about is if it doesn’t work. If there is more 4
parking demand. This kind of under-parking scares me a little bit. But I feel like we’ve got to dip 5
our toe in the water at some point and see if it’s going to work. And I like this location because 6
there’s no single-family neighborhood adjacent to it for the parking to bleed into if this TDM is 7
wrong. And so I like this location as sort of a pilot program for this concept. So those are my 8
thoughts. I am wanting to forward this to the ARB for their review and I don’t really have any 9
changes to the proposal. 10
11
Jennifer Armer: If I may through the chair, I thought it would be helpful to clarify the next steps 12
in the process. 13
14
Commissioner Hechtman: Oh. 15
16
Jennifer Armer: The next step would be, if it is the recommendation of the Planning 17
Transportation Commission, to go to ARB. It would then return to Planning Commission before 18
going to Council. 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 Hechtman: Okay. Yes. 1
2
Jennifer Armer: So just to inform… 3
4
Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you… 5
6
Jennifer Armer: …your comments. 7
8
Commissioner Hechtman: …for that clarification. So when it comes back to us, we won’t have 9
the benefit of Council’s reaction to the TDM. Okay. 10
11
Jennifer Armer: Correct. 12
13
Commissioner Hechtman: Okay. So we’ll have to contend with that when it comes back to us. 14
Thanks for that clarification. 15
16
Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner Hechtman. I have Commissioner Ji, then Vice Chair Chang. 17
18
Commissioner Ji: So I will join Commissioner Hechtman in talking about the easy stuff first. Also, 19
with some questions about the TDM as well. So I’ll start by saying that the City has agreed that 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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 San Antonio area is a good place for higher-density housing and this project, as 1
Commissioner Hechtman noted, has no spillover effects for R1. Has really no other height 2
impacts on its neighboring buildings because the neighboring buildings will be approximately 3
the same height as the proposed building is right now. I will note that on the plans, I believe 4
Page A10, that there is listed some parking that’s going to be on the street and likely that will go 5
away, so just kind of a note for the applicant. There’s a loading zone, I believe, that’s on San 6
Antonio and that will likely go away with some of the transportation projects that we are, as a 7
City, doing on San Antonio Road, so just be mindful of that. I will talk a little bit about the retail. 8
I’m, I think, on the flipside of what Commissioner Hechtman said in that because we’re not 9
building retail, we won’t ever create more retail nodes. So if part of my personal preference on 10
the San Antonio Corridor, specifically in the region designated by this project, is that I prefer to 11
have ground floor retail for every single project along this strip here. And I’ve expressed that 12
previously. And I would like to see that occur here. 13
14
Echoing what Vice Chair Chang had mentioned about the ground floor retail, I would be excited 15
about potentially looking into more ground floor retail here, so that you could become the 16
cluster that you so desire. I don’t know, as Vice Chair Chang mentioned, if 6,583 square feet is 17
the correct number and our retail consultants have said that different configurations are 18
occurring right now and so we may want to be more creative with the space there. But I would 19
like to see potentially some more ground floor retail there. I want to dive into the TDM a little 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.
bit more. As the Commission knows, my background is more on the transportation side and so I 1
did have some questions, and maybe the applicant or your consultant can answer this. So on 2
Packet Page 111, you’ve noted that there is a 21 percent reduction in residential programs and 3
services; however, if I sum up the numbers in that column, you don’t get to 21 percent. So can 4
you help me understand how there’s a – like a 9 percent discrepancy here? 5
6
Megan Watson: Candidly, I would have to defer that to our TDM consultant, who is not present 7
tonight [inaudible 185:44] access planning. You’d have to talk to them. 8
9
Commissioner Ji: Okay. So in that case, I will just kind of provide my commentary about the 10
TDM program. Vice Chair Chang had previously asked staff about programs that have parking 11
counts. The only PC project I do know that does do – that has some kind of parking numbers 12
that I’m aware of is Palo Alto Commons, which I won’t say is comparable but has some kind of 13
parking counts and does have more visitors there as well, so one potential reference for a PC 14
that’s been created that has counts. So the other thing that I’m curious about – and this is more 15
for your consultant – is the graphs that you’ve provided on Packet Page 102, 103, on 108, and 16
109. Are these – like where’s the baseline data for this? Is this for Palo Alto? Is this for the 17
general area? I know you don’t have any answers to these questions but as Chair Akin has 18
mentioned, Palo Alto residents do behave differently than kind of the general populus. And so I 19
would be curious to see if these projections would apply to the demand that we’re seeing – 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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that we would anticipate to see for this project. In addition, if you look at some of the numbers 1
that I previously described on Packet Page 110, 111, and 112, you’ll note that you really don’t 2
get up to that 57 percent because there are a bunch of discrepancies in the sums across these 3
percentages. 4
5
And so that makes me more worried about what Commissioner Hechtman had mentioned in 6
that the report may say the bottom line is that, “Hey, we only need 75 percent.” But a lot of the 7
percentages aren’t adding up and that worries me, especially because, as Chair Akin had 8
mentioned, we’re looking at a .38 parking percentage and given that we’re diving way further 9
into the parking deficit, that having these numbers be pretty accurate would help soothe a lot 10
of the folks here on this Commission in terms of the viability of the project from a parking 11
standpoint. I had a question for the applicant if they are willing to provide the easement that is 12
discussed in our packet. Is this something that you’re open to? 13
14
Megan Watson: Yes, that’s been our understanding that that was likely forthcoming. 15
16
Commissioner Ji: Okay. I just wanted to confirm that. And I think there’s some nods here from 17
the Commission that that’s exciting. I would encourage the applicant to look into some of the 18
designs and the feedback from the San Antonio Road Area Plan. I think that there are some bike 19
plans for the area that I think could be incorporated into your design that would save you a 20
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little bit of work yourself since the City is designing that for you. And then I had a question 1
about the balconies, so right now are the balconies intruding into the setback or are they not? 2
Maybe this – either staff or applicant can answer that. 3
4
Claire Raybould: I believe they are intruding into the setback is my recollection. 5
6
Female: Yes, they do project to the setback. 7
8
Commissioner Ji: On both sides? 9
10
Female: Let me get to the plan sheet. 11
12
Commissioner Ji: I’m stating this because for 660 University, we had a lot of discussion about 13
balconies and setbacks, so just wanted to clarify that. And then… 14
15
Female: On both sides. 16
17
Commissioner Ji: On both sides. Okay. Thank you. And then – okay. I want to applaud the 18
applicant for listening to Council about the setbacks on the San Antonio side. I think there was a 19
lot of concern about it seeming like a canyon and I think the average 53-foot setback is a step in 20
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the right direction. And – but for me personally, I think that I would prefer something that is 1
more kind of a standard setback as opposed to having parts that are right against the street and 2
then some parts that are further back. I think that there could be some way in which you fill in 3
some more area within the horseshoe that you’ve created and kind of move back some of the 4
sections that are right against the street. Because if I’m thinking about the experience as a 5
pedestrian, right, it’s nice that not all of the building is against where the sidewalk is going to be 6
once we potentially put – move the sidewalk and do the easement but it’s – but it’s − I would 7
prefer having more sunlight on the street averaged across as opposed to mostly shade than lots 8
of sun, then some shade. So I think that’s some creative flexibility that I’d recommend you look 9
into as we – this potentially goes to the Architectural Review Board. And then – I think those 10
are all of my comments that are not related to parking for this round. Thank you. 11
12
Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner. Vice Chair Chang. 13
14
Vice Chair Chang: Thanks, Chair. Okay. I think most of you have talked about my major concerns 15
as well as the major benefits of this project. But I did want to say that I was really pleased to see 16
that the affordability for this project would be in the 50 to 80 percent range and that is huge 17
because that’s where we finally get to actual affordability. Because that’s something I’ve 18
harped on many times where the state definition of affordability doesn’t seem to apply so well 19
in Santa Clara County where like the – yes. And ends up being market rate. So I’m really pleased 20
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to see that. It’s a beautiful design. I think you’ve done a really good job regarding the massing 1
on San Antonio and so I was really pleased to see that. Regarding the retail, I’m pleased to see 2
that it’s there but wanted to encourage you – I know that there’s all sorts of trade-offs to be 3
made and I think there’s larger issues with the parking. But if we want to encourage the success 4
of retail here and if 5 years from now we have – oh, I don’t know – 7, 8, 9 more developments 5
going up in this area as well as the current Greenhouse development across the street, it might 6
really benefit from a coffee shop and like a fast, casual place and maybe 1 more thing there. 7
8
So I think a little cluster could eventually be quite successful and I don’t think we need 6,000 9
square feet but it could be the cluster for the corner. And so think about that. And the 10
storefronts are getting smaller and smaller, so you can properly do 3 storefronts about 3,000 11
square feet. And I agree that there’s a good thing about this location where there’s no height 12
concerns in particular. And I think that the public comments that we heard that were 13
complaining about the height − thankfully, The Greenhouse development is across the street 14
and there’s some – it’s set back pretty far, so hopefully, things will be okay for those neighbors. 15
But what I really heard from them and what I really hear from neighbors when they’re 16
commenting on the San Antonio Area Road Plan is it’s about the traffic and the safety. And I 17
think that remains a concern here. So if we could address the traffic and the safety, I would 18
have no problem with 8 stories everywhere in this area. But unfortunately, as Commissioner Ji 19
mentioned and as Chair Akin mentioned, that’s just sort of not how things work here based on 20
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the data that we have seen to date and based on the experience that we’ve had with our 1
downtown. So that leads me to the downside where I’m very concerned about parking, vehicle 2
– car parking as well as bike parking. 3
4
And even if I didn’t think that the TDM was really optimistic, we run into an issue where the 5
TDMs are by and large unenforceable. And so as we move forward with this – if we move 6
forward with this, I would really – I think that we need some way to encourage, as part of 7
TDMs, a contribution into the City’s efforts or the San Antonio Transportation Corridor. I’m not 8
quite sure what those are because the San Antonio Road folks are working on that. But I think 9
that we need something where if we really see that the TDMs aren’t being met, that we put 10
some teeth in them somehow. That’s just not for this project but for all projects. Regarding the 11
comparison to Jack London Square – or the comparison to developments of – by the same 12
developer in Jack London Square. Jack London Square is one of the most happening places prior 13
to the pandemic in Oakland; it’s fantastic. And this is – why we certainly hope to get there with 14
the San Antonio area, the public commentor who mentioned that there’s 4 lanes here and 15
essentially no amenities and no transportation, I think that that’s really one of the challenges 16
here. So we have a much larger transportation problem and Mr. Goodfellow, the consultant 17
from the first item tonight, didn’t highlight this area as a good area for parking reductions. And 18
so I’m very concerned about that. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five or more people who are identified as present at the meeting at
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And this is possibly the most aggressive parking reduction that I have seen. Very concerned 1
about ending up like The Fay in San Jose. And I recognize that this is 5 years from now and that 2
we may make many changes between now and then but I know that it took decades, like 20 3
years, for the modifications for Charleston to happen. And so we’re – I mean it seems like 4
things are really picking up their pace but I would say that San Antonio and the problems facing 5
San Antonio are much more complex than those of Charleston because San Antonio borders 2 6
cities. There’s a lot more development happening. So I am not confident that in the time frame 7
that we’re talking about here we could see the transportation changes that we would hope for. 8
So I guess I’m pretty concerned about this. I wanted to address one more public comment; I 9
think it was from Mr. Levine about being excited about the possibility for people to live here 10
with unbundled parking. And I just wanted to point out that the benefit for – so as he said, the 11
benefit for that is paying a lower rent if you don’t need a car. I wanted to point out that for all 12
new developments, parking is going to be unbundled and so regardless of how much parking 13
we have in this unit – sorry – in this development, people will always have the choice to not pay 14
for parking if they don’t want to. 15
16
So that being said, I’m not confident about those numbers and have some very, very strong 17
reservations. Regarding bike parking, if we think that parking – reducing car parking is going to 18
be successful, I think we potentially need more bike parking because bike parking is what will 19
make it doable for people to go grocery shopping a little further away and to make it to other 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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
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parts of town a little further away without a car. So I’m glad to see at least there’s 167 spaces 1
but as I think about − let’s say there really is a hyper-local household here – unless they plan on 2
Ubering all the time, they’re going to probably need a bike because the public transportation 3
doesn’t really exist very well in our – doesn’t exist to get from all points in our – to get to and 4
from all points in our city. So those are my comments for now. Thank you. 5
6
Chair Akin: Thank you, Vice Chair. Commissioner Peterson. 7
8
Commissioner Peterson: Thank you, Chair. So my comments are going to overlap with 9
Commissioner Hechtman’s, like 99 percent. I want to agree on pretty much every one of those 10
points. The only point I’m going to give a different opinion is on the commercial and even on 11
that one, I’m not sure if it differs. I like seeing the commercial. And one of the things to point is 12
we’ve just – we’re decoupling restaurants from bars, so I do want to ask staff real quick, is that 13
space allowable to be a bar? 14
15
Jennifer Armer: We have not changed the regulations yet but it is possible that it could be with 16
a Conditional Use Permit. 17
18
Commissioner Peterson: Okay. So I think we’ve just probably answered somewhat exactly what 19
that space will be, especially if it’s the only one within a couple blocks there. Because I don’t 20
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recall any drinking establishments in that area. So at the first floor of a residential – I know here 1
in California Avenue, as soon as you put density of housing, you end up getting a bar pretty 2
quick. Other than that, I mean I – the other problem is if it becomes a liquor store, it becomes a 3
– we got a shop here in California Avenue that gets − a lot of the other businesses are upset 4
with because it attracts what they feel like are the wrong people, which is – I don’t know what 5
it’s called but they sell marijuana products or something like that. But I think the commercial 6
space and the reason why the commercial space speaks to me is because I’m frequently – I’m 7
walking or I’m taking public transit and it’s safety. As soon as I’m standing there late at night 8
and there’s a commercial space, there’s somebody there, so I’ve noticed the commercial spaces 9
attract more people just out of the safety of that space being there. So it’s not just a dark 10
corner but it’s a corner that has something going on. So those are the reasons why I’m in favor 11
of pretty much everything I’ve heard but I would like to see the commercial space stay even 12
though it’s a small space. You don’t need a whole lot of space for some of these commercial 13
businesses. 14
15
And so the other topic that’s come up a lot is transportation and I’ve heard Commissioner Ji 16
bring this up that this street is going to change. It’s obviously going to be bikeable. And we 17
looked at the previous meeting − we looked at different cross sections and is it going to be 2 18
bike lanes, 1 bike lane, a bike lane on 1 side, 2-way bike lane? And there’s a Caltrain station. So 19
while I agree right now that the building isn’t really tied into the network but we certainly do 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
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see that the idea is that this building is going to be tied into a larger, bikeable, walkable public 1
transit network. I think that’s going to obviously be solved. And then we’re − the density of 2
population that’s going into that corridor, it’s just simply going to dictate public transportation. 3
I don’t think the – this corridor is going to build out without public transportation. And then the 4
last point I want to make is that I’ve heard a lot of people talking about rideshare and that at 5
some point, there’s a break point – I think is what’s implicit where rideshare no longer makes 6
sense. I just want to say I haven’t found that point where rideshare is less expensive or more 7
expensive than personal vehicle ownership. 8
9
My spouse uses the rideshare as a home health nurse and one of the reasons why the rideshare 10
makes more sense is because she’s able to work in between locations, doing charting, whereas 11
if you’re driving, driving is work itself and you don’t get paid to drive and you can’t do work 12
while you’re driving. So that’s one of the things to think about when you think about rideshare 13
is that you’re able to do work while you’re riding, which kind of offsets the extra cost of it. Once 14
you bring in all the other externalities of rideshare, it’s really hard to make a valid case for a 15
personal vehicle ownership outside of just simply luxury or status or something like that. The 16
rideshare has really gotten to that point. Bring in the Waymos with no drivers; I’m not 17
promoting driverless vehicles but the price point definitely comes back in where you can have a 18
fully autonomous housing development like this where everybody really is dependent on public 19
transit or rideshare. So, I’ll end it there. And 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
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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 Peterson. I’ll cover a few things and then I believe we 2
have a few more comments from other commissioners. First, regarding the public benefits, I am 3
very happy to see the boost in unit affordability here. That echoes earlier comments but I just 4
want to reinforce them. Targeting low income is – we certainly need more of it. So that’s very 5
much appreciated. Regarding daylight planes and step-backs, I support the u-shaped design 6
that breaks up the massing on San Antonio. I think that’s a well done concept. I would like to 7
see some step-backs elsewhere but I am more than happy to defer to the ARB’s judgment on 8
that. So please discuss that with the ARB. 9
10
Just in passing related to that, I observed that the U is so deep, it might be a reasonable trade-11
off to make it shallower above level 3, so that some upper-floor units could be moved or 12
perhaps the size distribution of units could be changed. Something to consider; definitely not a 13
requirement. Regarding retail, one question I would ask the applicant to think about is what 14
uses might work in this space and if we need to make allowances for more uses in order to 15
find one that would work, then I think that’s something you should negotiate with staff. 16
Because as a PHZ, we might have more freedom to do that than we would in some other 17
places. Finally, my last comment concerns the easement and I support that. I think that’s 18
probably a universal opinion. That’s it for me. Commissioner Hechtman. 19
20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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
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Commissioner Hechtman: Thank you, Chair. I want to just pick up on one concept identified by 1
the Vice Chair, which I hadn’t thought about but she’s absolutely right. And maybe I hadn’t 2
thought about it because it’s really pretty rare when we get a project like this with such a deep 3
reduction in parking. And I just didn’t think of it but the Vice Chair did, thankfully. And that is if 4
you have less parking, you need more bikes. I think that’s absolutely right. I don’t know what 5
the number of them is but – for example, if a 2-bedroom unit there is potentially going to have 6
4 occupants and it’s bundled, so proportionately they’re going to get maybe 1 parking space 7
and 1 bike space. And there could be 4 bikers there. And so I think that there should be some 8
ratio –they’re providing 74 spaces, where according to the staff report, 184 are required. 9
According to the TDM report, 201 are required. I’m not sure which is the right number. 10
11
I noticed there were a few discrepancies in the TDM report, which Commissioner Ji has brought 12
up some. Another commissioner brought up some. Those clearly need to be cleaned up as this 13
moves forward but we should be thinking about some ratio of the parking you’re not providing, 14
those 110 spaces or 127, whatever it is. Half of those should be replaced with bike spaces. And 15
so then you have to find a place to put them and that really brings us back to the retail part of 16
that because they have to go somewhere. Another 60 bikes is going to take up space but I think 17
it’s important that that alternative be there. So thank you, Vice Chair, for voicing it. 18
19
Chair Akin: Anything further? Commissioner Ji. 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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
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1
Commissioner Ji: Okay. Now it’s time to go through the hard topic, which is the parking. So I 2
want to talk a little bit about Four12, the Oakland site. It’s 10 minutes walk from a BART station, 3
each of which has 4-minute headways. The walkability score is 97 with 3 supermarkets within 4
10-minute walking distance as well as 4 parks and a 10-minute walk to Jack London Square. And 5
if you compare this against the 39 other sites that Grubb manages, which I took a look at, and 6
all of them have either one of two characteristics or possibly both; strong transit, walkability, or 7
both. So this includes sites on Manhattan. These include sites in Berkeley, Santa Monica, LA, all 8
across, that either have some form of strong transit, really frequent service, and/or a very high 9
walkability score. So you can talk about some of these places in Chapel Hill or in Georgia that 10
may have some weak transit but are inside the downtown zone, had significantly ground floor 11
retail nearby. And if we compare that against what we have here, we have the lowest transit 12
score, which is out of 100. This is 25 compared to the lowest previous transit score of any other 13
Grubb property, which is 52. And are – the walk score is 65, which would be the lowest and 14
that’s probably because right now there really aren’t any amenities. 15
16
There’s really no feasible way for you right now to go to many of the amenities that you would 17
like to go to if you lived here. And for me, as someone who lives in South Palo Alto, who goes 18
on San Antonio pretty frequently, it is a parking lot. And so if, as Chair Akin mentioned, that you 19
end up having a job that needs a car. I am somebody who lives in Palo Alto who works at a tech 20
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
job who changes jobs pretty frequently; none of those jobs have been in Palo Alto. I am one of 1
those people that commutes 10 miles or more to my job. I think that it’s – would be imperative 2
to have a vehicle of some kind. In addition, many of my fellow tech workers have almost the 3
opposite problem, which is I make enough money and I like to go skiing. I have these kinds of 4
hiking hobbies that I can’t really do but I would like to do out in the wilderness. And that 5
requires a car of some kind to get there. And I think that the park – it’s pretty sorely under-6
parked. And one of the things that the Council has mentioned is this first-mover effect. So we 7
will probably be removing all parking on San Antonio; that’s pretty likely. I think it’s across the 8
different transportation products that we will have. 9
10
But unfortunately or – I guess fortunately, depending on how you look at it, there is no place 11
for the spillover parking to go. There is no residential neighborhood. Right on the Mountain 12
View side, it’s – if you’ve ever been to the site, it’s completely parked with RVs. There is – there 13
simply is no parking. And then it’s a little bit concerning for me about your – not just the 14
housing, also the retail. When we got a chance to go take a look at the Springline, which is a 15
project in Menlo Park, which is on El Camino, their retail was doing pretty poorly until they put 16
up these huge signs that said, “Hey, you can park down stairs around the corner.” And that is 17
what caused their retail to come to life. And the Springline is physically touching the Menlo Park 18
Caltrain Station. And even that was not good enough to get enough business for their retail. 19
They just kept turning over. And so providing no retail parking makes me pretty concerned 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 the retail that you have provided here. And so that’s a bit concerning. In addition, I will 1
talk a little bit about the potential uses. So Commissioner Peterson had mentioned that doing 2
rideshare is helpful because you don’t want to have to drive to work. You’d ideally like to be 3
able to work on your commute. 4
5
But let’s just take, for example, the carpenters who are in the room today. They can’t be 6
working on their job really if they’re not on the site. So whether they’re driving or they’re taking 7
a rideshare, it’s very unlikely that they’ll be able to work on their job there. And so this leaves 8
me in a pretty nervous spot about the parking. I’ll mention that during the presentation to 9
Council for this project, the applicant had mentioned how this project compares against other 10
projects to make sure that it’s in line. But the current presentation makes it more extreme than 11
every single other project that is in the area. With the proposed addition, you are now at 92 12
feet, which is the tallest out of all of the projects that are available here. You’re providing a 13
floor area ratio of 3.75, which is higher than your previous one, which again, is the second 14
highest of the 9 projects that you’ve provided and your parking ratio is somewhere between .38 15
and .4, which is less than half, almost a third of the nearest parking ratio. And during the City 16
Council prescreen, you had mentioned that, “Oh, the El Camino Focus Area has a 4.0 FAR and 17
has an 85-foot height limit,” which your new project is over the 85-foot height limit. But the El 18
Camino Focus Area requires a 1:1 for the parking ratio, which Councilmember Burt had 19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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.
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3. The Chair may reduce the allowed time to speak to three minutes to accommodate a larger number of speakers.
mentioned is that you can’t really take the bits and pieces of the Focus Area that you prefer 1
when designing a project. 2
3
We, as the Commission, and the Council, have looked to determine that those requirements are 4
what’s appropriate for El Camino and yet for example, the height – we said 85 feet is pretty tall 5
and we’re worried about a canyon effect for El Camino. That’s 3 lanes on each side. This is 2 6
lanes on each side. And so the shade effect that we’re going to see here is significantly more 7
pronounced. Because the street is just a third less wide. And l want to mention about The Fay 8
that Chair Akin had brought up. So we, the City of Palo Alto, probably do not have the funds to 9
subsidize a project that San Jose was able to. One of the reasons that was disclosed in the 10
public information about The Fay is that San Antonio decided to subsidize this project because 11
they are worried that neighboring developments might become really skittish and no longer 12
develop because there’s a giant building that is now vacant. I would hate to see the same fate 13
happen to this project. If this project were suddenly to foreclose, would this cause a ripple 14
effect across the other projects that we’re seeing across San Antonio? That’s pretty concerning 15
to me. And so all and all, I know that we are not making the findings today but this would make 16
me really nervous about Finding 3, which is the compatible with existing and potential uses for 17
adjoining sites. So that’s kind of my thoughts on parking. 18
19
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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 just want to plus one the easement, plus one to the additional bike parking. I have, other than 1
my work commute, tried to switch almost exclusive to biking. I grew up biking in the 2
community. I think that that’s important. My family of 3 that I live with at home has 3 bikes. 3
We’re trying to encourage reduced car trips and so I think having the additional bike trips is 4
important. I know, as someone who visits their friends who lives in these kind of developments 5
in Suburbia – like I have a friend who lives in Redwood City – that the guest parking is incredibly 6
important as well. Here, there’s already a minimum amount of residential parking and guests 7
have no place to park because of previously-mentioned parking issues. So that’s something to 8
think about. And finally, I know that as asked during my initial questions to staff that there is no 9
required daylight plane against the 808 project next door. But I think that’s something to think 10
about in that I would like to see potentially some step-backs against the 808 property. And I 11
think that’s a chicken and egg but it seems like 808 has decided to produce some setbacks and I 12
think I would like to see some here as well. Those are my thoughts. Thank you. 13
14
Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioner. Vice Chair Chang. 15
16
Vice Chair Chang: I just have one final comment, which is as much as I think the building is 17
beautiful and that u-shape is really nice in terms of the massing, if I were to make a trade-off, I 18
would make the trade-off – and I know that this is not how it works. It’s not Legos that you can 19
easily move around. But I would trade off a smaller U or the U starting at a higher point for 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.
more parking because I think that as Commissioner Ji – Commissioner Ji just did a fantastic job 1
highlighting some of the issues. But we want these people – we want this to not be people 2
warehouses, as I think one of our past public commentors has said. We want this to be a 3
wonderful place for people to live. And so those 2 bedrooms and larger units need the extra 4
bike parking. There needs to be some place for visitors to come. So let’s say we have some 5
seniors living here, anybody who has friends really but we don’t want people to be in the 6
building isolated. No people – we don’t want a people warehouse. So if I were to make a trade-7
off – and this is something for the applicant to think about – I wonder about providing more 8
bike parking and car parking for all of the reasons that many of us have mentioned tonight. 9
That’s it. Thanks. 10
11
Chair Akin: Thank you, Vice Chair. Has anyone not spoken this round? Are there any other 12
comments, Commissioners? 13
14
Commissioner Ji: I’m just wondering. Staff had that slide with 4 items. Did we cover all of your 15
items? I just want to make sure from that perspective. 16
17
Claire Raybould: I believe so. [Inaudible 221:15] retail parking. Sorry. I believe so. Yes, we 18
discussed retail parking. Hold on one second. And transition to neighboring properties. And I 19
think public benefits and specifically we were looking for any feedback on the affordable 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.
component as well as interest in an easement. So I think we generally touched on all of those. 1
Yes. Thank you. 2
3
Chair Akin: Very good then. I believe it’s time for a motion. Anyone – if no one wants to 4
volunteer, I’ll handle it but… 5
6
Commissioner Hechtman: Go ahead. 7
8
Chair Akin: Well, I’ll move the staff recommendation. 9
10
Commissioner Hechtman: Second. 11
12
Chair Akin: Mr. Tavera? 13
14
Samuel Tavera: Yes. Commissioner Ji? 15
16
Commissioner Ji: No. 17
18
Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Hechtman? 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 Hechtman: Yes. 1
2
Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Peterson? 3
4
Commissioner Peterson: Yes. 5
6
Samuel Tavera: Vice Chair Chang? 7
8
Vice Chair Chang: No. 9
10
Samuel Tavera: Chair Akin? 11
12
Chair Akin: Yes. 13
14
Samuel Tavera: Motion carries 3-2. 15
16
Chair Akin: Thank you all. 17
18
Vice Chair Chang: Can we speak to our no votes, 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.
Chair Akin: Would you – yes. I was just about to do that. Vice Chair Chang, since you spoke first. 1
2
Vice Chair Chang: Hang on. I got to pull up my notes. Too many screens going on here. Okay. So 3
I counted the votes here and I really have no objection to forwarding this to the ARB but I’m 4
voting no because of the signaling here. What I saw was that the PTC’s decision in February to 5
forward the recommendation onto the ARB has been misconstrued by at least 1 City Council 6
member and at least 1 public commentor tonight, that we’ve decided that 8 stories is right for 7
this corridor, simply because another project has been forwarded to the ARB. And that is not 8
true. That has been a big point of discussion for the San Antonio Area Road Plan. It’s not clear 9
that it has the larger community buy-in. And so that’s one point. The second point is we – 10
though we will not have the benefit of Council’s thought on the TDM before it comes back to 11
us, I will base my vote based on what I heard loud and clear from City Council regarding the San 12
Antonio Road Area Plan on Monday. And this project’s density absolutely applies to those 13
concerns. We have a transportation problem in this corridor. It’s a big transportation problem. 14
So I don’t think that it makes sense to have this level of density until it becomes clear that 15
having it doesn’t increase our traffic problem. 16
17
So as I mentioned on the prior item, we have a Level of Service F, F as in Frank, not X or – and 18
so the more cars we bring without a transportation solution, the greater our problem is. F is the 19
lowest Level of Service, I believe. So we would become F minus and whether we use rideshare 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.
or not, if we have our own cars, rideshare is still going to increase the transportation problem 1
here. More bikes is great in terms of eliminating traffic jams and maybe not worsening the 2
parking lot; that is San Antonio. But it comes with a safety problem. And so I just don’t have the 3
confidence right now and want to wave a big red flag regarding – I just don’t have the 4
confidence that we can solve these transportation problems. And even one development like 5
this is going to make things worse and we have 5 or 6 coming. So that’s my reason for the no 6
vote. It’s not so much that I don’t want to forward it to the ARB but I need to make sure that 7
people are paying attention to this. Thanks. 8
9
Chair Akin: Commissioner Ji. 10
11
Commissioner Ji: Yes. So Vice Chair Chang said most of my points but I want to echo the 12
signaling. I too have no problems with forwarding through to the process to the ARB but as the 13
representative for PTC on the Coordinated Area Plan and having been the PTC liaison for 14
Council’s San Antonio Road Area Plan meeting on Monday, I do think that forwarding and 15
moving these projects along has signaled to Council that – that’s been taken, as Vice Chair 16
Chang mentioned, by at least 1 council member as approval of these projects. And so just like 17
with 800/808 San Antonio, I did mention a significant number of the same reservations I had for 18
that project as well. And my no vote is primarily around these issues and making sure that this 19
is signaled to the public and to Council that these issues are important to me and that at 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.
time, I would not be able to make one of the findings given the project today. And that is how 1
I’m basing my vote. 2
3
In addition, like Vice Chair Chang mentioned, we have a pretty significant transportation 4
problem and I think Vice Chair Chang and I and Commissioner Templeton may feel this more 5
because we frequent San Antonio Road. San Antonio is the main way to which I get to many of 6
the – to the highway, to the amenities. In fact, this project is closer to 101 than many of our 7
transit projects. We’re in a transit desert. There are simply only 2 bus stops with very limited 8
frequency for this area. And the parking concerns are pretty significant to me. And the 9
Commission knows that I’m a huge bike advocate. I bike pretty frequently and the thing that’s – 10
and I’m very excited to see bike infrastructure improvements on San Antonio. But the project 11
today makes me pretty concerned and I would be disappointed to see a project like this 12
potentially fall into the same fate as The Fay in the future. Thank you. 13
14
Chair Akin: Thank you, Commissioners. That was an inspired discussion tonight. I appreciate all 15
of the points that have been made. 16
17
APPROVAL OF MINUTES 18
Public Comment is Permitted. Three (3) minutes per speaker. 19
20
4. Approval of Planning & Transportation Commission Draft Summary & Verbatim 21
Minutes of February 25, 2026 22
23
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1. Spokespersons that are representing a group of five 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: Moving on now, Agenda Item Number 4 tonight is the approval of the Draft 1
Summary and Verbatim Minutes for the meeting of February 25, 2026. And… 2
3
Samuel Tavera: Through the Chair, just did want to add for the record that Vice Chair Chang 4
was absent, so I would need her to abstain. 5
6
Chair Akin: Thank you, Mr. Tavera. Do I have a motion? 7
8
Commissioner Ji: Yes, I’d like to move the minutes as revised. 9
10
Commissioner Hechtman: Second. 11
12
Samuel Tavera: Yes. Commissioner Peterson? 13
14
Commissioner Peterson: Yes. 15
16
Samuel Tavera: Commissioner Ji? 17
18
Commissioner Ji: 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: Commissioner Hechtman? 1
2
Commissioner Hechtman: Yes. 3
4
Samuel Tavera: Vice Chair Chang? 5
6
Vice Chair Chang: Abstain. 7
8
Samuel Tavera: Chair Akin? 9
10
Chair Akin: Yes. 11
12
Samuel Tavera: Motion carries 4-0-1. 13
14
Commissioner Questions, Comments, Announcements, or Future Meetings and 15
Agendas. 16
17
Chair Akin: Now it’s time for Commissioner Questions, Comments, Announcements, and 18
suggestions for future Agendas. I have Commissioner Peterson, then 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 Peterson: Thank you. I just wanted to – I saw the applicant get up on video here. 1
I just – if they can hear me, I would encourage them to get business cards from the Carpenters 2
Union and just give them a chance to peddle their wares, so to speak, of their workforce that 3
they have there. That’s it. 4
5
Chair Akin: Thank you. Commissioner Ji. 6
7
Commissioner Ji: I would like to applaud staff and like the Police Department and any of the 8
folks working on the OSV issue. I have been avoiding Park Boulevard for quite a bit now because 9
it’s been pretty dangerous to be biking in the bike lane with the OSVs taking over a significant 10
portion but I did use the bike lanes today and they were very safe. There were no vehicles 11
anywhere in the bike lanes. And so I do want to − hopefully, Ms. Armer can pass along the 12
appreciation there for both the street sweeping effort, which I knew was part of Phase 1 of the 13
OSV project, and seeing some great progress there. And I think I want to echo that this is 14
something that the community has expressed to me as well as someone who lives in the 15
Ventura neighborhood. So thank you, staff. 16
17
Chair Akin: Any additional comments? The meeting is adjourned. 18
19
Adjournment 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.
9:52 p.m. 1
/ekl 2