Planning Board - Regular Meeting

The evening is Monday, June 22nd, 7 p.m., and we'll begin today's planning board meeting. And to kick us off, we'll have Board Member Ruiz lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Stand up. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you so much for that. And just before we formally kick things off, I would like to share some rules about meeting conduct. This is official business of the city of Alameda, so please no disruptions. For those both in the room and online, they are listening in, so let's be respectful for everyone for sharing their views. And if not, there are some consequences according to penal code section 302. there are warnings and continuity violations will lead to additional action. So just wanted to say that so we could convene this meeting with no disruptions. And with that, we'll go ahead and start with roll call.

Good evening. Board Member Hom. Here. Board Member Ruiz.

Here.

Board Member Ariza.

Present.

Board Member Wang. Here. Board Member Saheba. Present. And President Cisneros.

Here.

Okay, we have a quorum, and Board Member Hsu is absent today.

Okay, noted. And do we have any non-agenda public comments?

Okay. Actually, there's agenda changes.

Oh, do we have, sorry, agenda changes?

I don't think so.

Yeah, I think potentially we might want to move 5B in front of 5A. Maybe it's a heavier meeting agenda item. I don't know if the board agrees.

I would agree to that.

Yeah, okay.

And we don't have to make a motion for that, right? We just make that change?

No, you should do it by motion. Okay.

Do we have a motion? Do we have a second?

Yeah, I motion for the change in sequence of agenda items 5B first and 5A.

I'll second. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed and one absent. Okay. All right. We have the agenda change. And then moving on to agenda item three, any non-agenda public comments?

I don't see any hands raised online, and I have no speaker slips.

Okay, great. And then moving on to the consent calendar, do we have any discussion? If not, then do we have any public comments for the consent calendar, which are the draft meeting minutes for June 8th? No public comments on that? No. Okay. And we do have an absence, Board Member Deweese, from that day. So do we have a motion?

Yeah, I'll move to adopt the consent calendar.

Okay. And a second?

I'll second.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. I abstain. Great. All right, and moving on to regular agenda items, so formally 5B, which is a review of the Harbor Bay Parkway project for the Oakland Roots. This is a public workshop. Do we have a staff presentation?

Good evening. President Cisneros and members of the planning board, Brian McGuire, Planner 3, here to present item 5B, which is a planning board study session item or workshop on the Oakland Roots proposal to host professional soccer matches at their existing headquarters and training facility next to the Oakland Airport and the Harbor Bay Business Park. You can see in the image here, So a photo simulation of what game day atmosphere might look like with a full house and amenities primarily in the existing parking lot behind the office building, which is off screen left. In case you aren't familiar with the site, 1150 and 1220 Harbor Bay Parkway are at the southeastern tip of Bay Farm Island, basically as close as you can get to the airport without being on port property. Of course, this was the former home of the American football team, the Oakland Raiders, before they moved to Las Vegas. 1150 on the left is the training facility and the practice fields, and then 1220 on the right is the office building and parking lot. The Roots proposed to install modular grandstands, including a press box. and seats for up to 7,600 fans, plus some field level seating. And bring in food vendors, merchandise booths, and temporary restroom facilities for games. The Roots are proposing to host about 24 professional soccer matches per year with up to 8,000 fans in attendance. The games will be primarily on Saturdays with some Wednesday evenings. The game times dovetail nicely with the business park's typical 9 to 5 workday. In addition to those larger events for the Roots, they anticipate about 10 additional events with between 500 and 2,500 attendees. The Roots have been very clear that they are not proposing for this to serve as any kind of a music or concert venue. The routes are proposing to rely on the existing supply of surface parking in the business park. They're in discussions with a number of the property owners in the area and working on shared parking agreements. Obviously, those can only go so far before the project is approved and in place, but it's a work in progress. We estimate that there would be a need for about 3,200 parking spaces on game days for a sellout crowd. The routes inventory suggests that there are about 5,200 spaces within a half a mile walk, which is about 10 minutes walk from the facility. The routes are also proposing a BART shuttle and would provide valley bike parking for up to 400 people, which if the Park Station USA versus Australia watch party from last Friday is any indication, there's some overlap in those bike users and soccer fans in Alameda. Just here, since this wasn't in your package, there's a sort of photo simulation of a street level look at what the back of the bleachers would look like from Harbor Bay Parkway at the ground level. The existing training facility there on the right and then you can see the back of the grandstand and the light facilities there. The routes would need use permit and design review approval. The site is in the commercial manufacturing district. And the closest use in our zoning code for this would be similar to like an auditorium or maybe a theater type use, but conducted outdoors. So the outdoors part is why this would be subject to the conditional use permit process that we're here to discuss. To be clear, we're not asking you to approve the project or make findings tonight, but in order to approve the project at a future meeting, the planning board would need to be able to make a number of findings. In addition to the use permit findings, you would need to make the standard design review findings as well as make a secret determination. Our analysis of the project is not complete. However, staff anticipates relying on the 2021 general plan EIR, which anticipated significant increases in employment in the business park and therefore increases in vehicle miles traveled. We think the project would be eligible for CEQA streamlining pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15183, projects that are consistent with the general plan where an EIR was certified. The staff report included a number of draft conditions of approval covering what we think are the areas of most interest to the planning board and the community. That goes from how many events at what capacities. We would require a detailed traffic control plan approved by the city engineer and public works director, safety and operations plan approved by police and fire for game day operations, number of security staff, sworn police, traffic, you know, emergency personnel, et cetera. We've talked a little bit about some of the transportation management solutions. I think the applicant will cover some more of their strategies. The project has to comply with the city's noise ordinance, needs to go through FAA review, mostly for the lights, which are tall enough to catch the attention and need to be probably lit appropriately with those blinking red lights, as well as review by the airport land use commission before the project can move forward for compatibility with the airport. We're also mindful of the city's dark skies ordinance and the need to make sure these modern LED fixtures are shielded, projected downward towards the field, and not causing excess light and glare beyond the project site. We're also suggesting the project be subject to an annual review since this is a unique use for us, and we would want to regularly check in to see how we're doing, what can we do better, and give the planning board an opportunity to weigh in and the public a sort of routine opportunity to check in on compliance with the use permit conditions. The staff report suggests some questions for the planning board in order to frame the discussion. Basically, are we on the right track with the draft conditions of approval to ensure the project is compatible use? We're waiting on completion of the formal traffic impact analysis, which would include a trip distribution model, which will tell us how many people at the end of a game are going down what streets, and are they primarily predicted based on the understanding of the origin destination that routes have have experience in their previous three homes, including Laney College, Cal State East Bay, and the Coliseum, of course, and where their fan base is coming from, and obviously what the site characteristics would dictate. And that trip distribution model, among other things, will give us sort of an idea of what we need to put in the traffic control plan to address anything we're hoping to minimize or avoid on those game day operations. Also, this is not an office building or an apartment building with your standard architectural package that the board's used to reviewing. I mean, these are bleachers sitting in the grass with some temporary facilities. So we also want to make sure the board is comfortable with what's provided in order to make the design review decision when the time comes, or is there additional information that the board needs? um we did receive a few uh pieces of written correspondence which are posted on the project on the staff report webpage including a couple of letters from the chamber of commerce and downtown alameda business association supporting the project as well as a property owner in the business park who call it qualified support expressed some concern about the weak weekday potential impacts for games that happen on weekdays in terms of conflicting with traffic and parking needs in the business park. Lydia Tan from The Roots is here and has a presentation as well. If the board would like, we might suggest you hear their presentation before we move on to any questions. Thanks for your time.

Great. Thank you so much.

Good evening, President Cisneros and members of the board. I'm Lydia Tan. I'm the Chief Real Estate Officer for the Oakland Roots in Seoul. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak with you today. I'm going to talk a little bit more in detail about certain aspects of this. OK, awesome.

Which one?

OK, go into a little bit more detail on a few things. So the first is just a little bit about Yeah?

What am I not doing? Okay.

OK. Anyway, so the Oakland Roots and Soul, we are a professional organization, but very much steeped in mission and purpose. And everything we do has essentially a triple bottom line around being an excellent sporting team, doing well for the community, and doing well for investors as well. Our club structure right now, we have a men's professional team, the Oakland Roots. We have a women's pre-professional team called the Oakland Soul. And then we have a youth development academy called Project 510. As Brian was mentioned, we occupy the former Oakland Raiders facility. That is our corporate headquarters, as well as our training facility for all of our teams as well. Some photos of the area. We occupied on a year-by-year license that was given to us by the County of Alameda and City of Oakland since 2021. And so since then, we have been not only using the facility for ourselves, but also for a number of other civic and corporate uses. And just here is a list of the kinds of things that we've been having on site, the events that we've been sponsoring on site since our being able to call this our home. Since, let's see, summer of 25, so for about a year now, we were able to enter into a long-term lease. And it's been able to actually allow us to think a little bit more strategically about how we use the site. It actually is the reason we were able to attract the Australian national men's team to use the training facility during the World Cup. I just left an Australia event just now where we had 500 Australian fans come and root their team as they're watching them play practice. Just some photos of things that have been happening both with the community. And then also on June 3, we had a community training session where we had about 900 local community fans come in and were invited to observe the Australian national team as they were practicing. So we learned a lot, actually, about that particular event in terms of working closely with the city around transportation, logistics, and parking. And we were hoping to be able to take those lessons learned to apply them to next year. We've also been starting to spend time in the Alameda community, just a few lists of things that we've been involved with, and working closely with a number of Alameda-based companies, both in terms of having them as partners, but also working with a number of businesses in terms of actually being vendors and suppliers to the company. So as Brian mentioned, we are proposing to build an interim venue, bring in some stands, and do some pop-up activation during our event days. If you've been following the team, you know that we've had quite the story in terms of trying to find our permanent home for our teams. As you can see, we've been in four locations over the last six years. The main three are down at the bottom here. With the Oakland Coliseum still so very uncertain, and we're getting more and more feedback that even 2027 is going to be very difficult, we've had to really pivot and think about what 2027 looks like. Eventually, we do expect to be either at the Oakland Coliseum or at Howard Terminal. We are talking to both the port around Howard Terminal and as well as the future developers of the Oakland Coliseum as being our permanent home. But for the next three to five years, while those two plans are moving along, we'd really like to find a place that we can call our home. and not have to move every two years. It's very disruptive for everybody, including our fans. So as we've been looking at a potential new home, these are kind of the vision and goals that we put out. We'd like to be close to Oakland, Alameda, the inner East Bay. That's where the bulk of our fans are. We really do want to provide an amazing, intimate experience for our fans. We'd love to feel both the roots and the soul at the same place. Right now, it's financially uneconomic to actually feel the soul at the Coliseum. And we'd love to be able to bring that parity to the two teams. We'd love some stability for a little bit so we can focus on other things. And more control over the facility. Right now, we're a renter. We're a day-by-day, event-by-event renter. And we'd love to be able to actually control our venues so that we can make it available for other community events and experiences. So to date, we have been out talking to stakeholders in the community about this idea. The top five, we have had interaction already. We're going to be talking to the Harbor Bay homeowners association later this week. We've been getting some really great feedback, lots of good interface, interaction, lots of very smart questions. As you might have imagined, these are sort of the top four that have come up. One is certainly transportation and traffic. The other one is simply parking, how are we going to handle parking, sound and noise, and then lighting. So I thought I'd go a little bit into each one of these. As Brian mentioned, we're still working on all of these plans. This is really work in progress. But the ideas that we've come up with to date, one certainly is to reduce auto volume. Encourage our current BART users to keep using BART and provide a shuttle to and from the BART station. Also provide incentives for high occupancy carpools. So for example, anyone with four or more people in the car, you get free parking. You get to park right near the facility, those sorts of things. Secure bike valet as well. Making sure we avoid the neighborhood streets. Encourage use of Hagenberger and 98th Avenue for non-locals to make sure they're out of the neighborhoods. Incorporate local traffic-only signs in certain places. So as you're leaving Harbor Bay Parkway, encourage folks to go out Ron Cowan Parkway and not turn left onto Harbor Bay. Those sorts of ideas we've been talking with our traffic consultants about. And then in terms of just managing the safe streets and managing traffic flow, making sure that as a ticket holder, you know exactly where you're going in terms of your parking assignment, making sure we have traffic control officers on the street to make sure the cars are going where they're supposed to go and pedestrians have a safe way to cross streets. And then geofencing, especially for rideshare, so that the Ubers and the Lyfts know where to drop off and pick up, and they're not just doing it willy-nilly in the streets. And then we've also been talking preliminarily with the city about potentially traffic signal management to allow flows go a little bit more smoothly outside of the regular business park hours. Really quickly on parking, as Brian mentioned, we think we're going to need about 3,100, 3,200 spaces. We're targeting about 2,100 to be in the park itself, and the rest would be either out on Hagenberger or up near the Coliseum BART station. So that shuttle I mentioned would not only be shuttling BART riders, but also parkers that are parking along the route as well. Just very quickly, as Brian said, we've been talking fairly intensely with a number of folks, but this is just an illustration of how we might actually station traffic control officers to make sure the intersections are protected, pedestrians know when to walk, and folks aren't necessarily jaywalking when they're not supposed to. Other concerns, the lighting. As Brian mentioned, we will be using LED directional lighting. We're working with a lighting manufacturer that does a lot of sporting events. And just a couple of examples of the kinds of things they do to make sure that the light is going where it's intended to go. And then sound and noise, we have been working with ideas with our acoustic consultant. The things that we've come up with to date are, as you can see, the pink oriented most of the fans to be facing away from the neighborhoods. We hope they yell. We hope they cheer. our team on, but they're doing that towards the airport and the airplanes that are flying overhead rather than towards the neighborhood. Amplified sound would be on the north end facing and then directed towards the airport again. And then just turning down the volume, we've been talking a little bit about how many dBs would be acceptable to not impact the neighborhoods. So we're still talking through these things. We're still testing. But these are the ideas that have come up so far. And that's really it. We're really excited about this idea. We like the idea of having an intimate venue to celebrate the community, the team. And we really look forward to hearing some feedback from you, questions that we haven't answered yet, things we should be thinking about. Really appreciate the time. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation. And with that, I'll bring it back to the board for any clarifying questions. And then we'll open up for public comment, either for staff or the applicant. Vice President Ariza.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I'm wondering, so I think you mentioned, Brian, that there's going to be a traffic study that is in progress, but we don't have the finalized version yet.

Correct. We don't have the finalized version yet. We're expecting to get the draft of the trip distribution model, which basically is like, you know, you can imagine like a heat map that says like, you know, 60% of the cars are going to go this way, 30% are going to go that way, 10% are going to go this way later this week, which will feed into the final overall traffic impact analysis and plan in terms of how to manage that.

Do we know at what time the games will occur?

Yeah, I think the assumption is probably Saturday afternoons or evenings, and then sometimes on Wednesday evening would be the most common other time. Does that sound right?

Great. Thank you. Board Member Ruiz. Thank you for the presentation. Just a few questions. By the way, full disclosure, I had a private conversation with the applicant today. So I know some of these I've already shared with the applicant, and just reiterate it again. During, when we receive the traffic, the final traffic study, will we describe the frequency and capacity, would it prescribe the frequency and capacity of the shuttle service?

Yeah, I think we would want to understand that as staff, absolutely.

Yeah, and because I'll be interesting to see where the pickup and drop off locations are because I don't recall seeing that on the plans. Had that been, maybe I've missed it. The shuttle pickup and drop off location.

Yeah, we haven't determined them yet. What I would say is a couple of things on the shuttles. One is, as you might imagine, vans coming in and leaving, it's pretty condensed, even though we might have our gates open an hour before, an hour after. So we want to make sure we have enough shuttles to actually move folks as quickly as possible so that it's a good experience and they keep using the shuttle. The second is that we are working with the operators of the Harborbank shuttle system. They know that route. They know exactly how to get there and back. And so we're working them with right now, given their experience, to help us design a shuttle system and plan that we think will be successful.

And then same thing with the bike valet. I'm not seeing that on the plan yet. That location is still?

Right now we're proposing the bike valet is in the, we have a front parking lot right off of Harbor Bay Parkway.

Would you mind showing, pulling up the plan? I probably missed it on the site plan. Forgive me.

So it is literally right in the front. So it'll be, and then we are working with Bike East Bay to be our bike valet.

Okay, all right, great. And then just a comment on sheet. There's SP-02, note number five is missing that keynote. And I know you emailed me back. It says that that is actually gate location. I just want to make sure that's reflected in the record because the drawings didn't show what that keynote was. one last question in terms of noise and light would you be are you planning on having any fireworks I think that's that's a big no I think our fire department would would say no even if we feign to ask okay it's just a question

Thank you.

We weren't planning.

And just as you can see, Board Member Ruiz, you can see the bike valet way at the top, which is right at the corner of Loop Road and Harbor Bay.

Yes, I did miss it. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other? Board Member Wang, and then Board Member Sahiba.

Thank you. A question for staff. We just had a use permit that triggered a desire to go back and rework the city's noise ordinance. I'm wondering if you could advise us on how you're thinking about decibel level control in this use permit relative to the work stream to revise the noise ordinance.

Well, maybe I'll start on this, how we're thinking about it here, and then in terms of maybe Steve or our city attorney's staff can speak to the larger process. But I think as part of our review, a big part of that analysis that we're working on right now and the applicant's consultant is working on is, How are they designing their sound system? How are they modeling the sound so that the project as proposed is consistent with our noise ordinance? Obviously, this is something that's been before the board a lot in the last year. And so obviously a little different location next to the airport, a little different context, probably 1,100, 1,200 feet to the nearest residential properties to maybe some other projects you've discussed recently. But in terms of how it fits with the broader process, I'll defer to others.

Yeah, I would just say we are looking at the noise ordinance and various exceptions that might be written in. Currently, the primary exception is events in a public park during certain hours. And so this is an example of another category that might be added as exceptions. I'd say like a school sports field is largely exempt from local regulation. I think an approved use permit sports field might also either be exempt or have certain hours or other limitations under our amended ordinance that we're considering.

But from a sequencing perspective, it sounds like the amended noise ordinance may follow the desired approval timeline of this use permit.

It could. And so that's why we're doing the CEQA analysis is to come up with the best plan, modeling, and mitigation.

Okay.

Yes, I think what you might find with potentially a final proposal, if we come back hopefully in a couple of months for the board's consideration, would be a very detailed plan that is potentially more restrictive than the applicant in a perfect world would prefer. But in order to fit within, be able to make those findings and ensure that it's compliant, it would be built to sort of fit within the current framework. And then if some other process, you know, gave more flexibility to that in the future, that would be a separate sort of independent process that would be separate from whatever decision was before the board in the near term.

Okay, thank you.

Board Member Zaheba?

Yeah, thanks again for the presentation. I had a question just regarding vehicle access and shuttle route. I know years back when we had sports teams at the Coliseum, I live on Harbor Bay, the AC Transit used to run a bus over to Oakland Airport and then the direct shuttle from, I guess, the air train. That takes you from there to the Coliseum. The vehicle access shuttle route, has there been consideration taken for folks to get to Oakland Airport and then a shuttle from there to the stadium? Because that would be an easy way for folks to reduce the route as far as the shuttle system goes.

Yeah, I see what you're getting at in terms of, I think it's an interesting thing to explore. I think off the top of my head, a couple of things. I think every time you add a seat to a trip, the less desirable that trip gets, even if the trip... is as efficient from a time. You're assuming good connections. You're also introducing a not insignificant fare, right? I don't know, another $8 or $9, $8 maybe, give or take, for that driverless monorail to the airport. So I think those would be some big considerations for the viability and the desirability of that product. But it's definitely something we could explore.

Yeah, that sounds good. And then I guess eventually when the plan comes back with the shuttle stops, the Uber and Lyft drop-off areas will be clearly identified as well on that. Yes. OK.

Yes. We've had some experience, obviously, with the Australian men's national team here for the World Cup with some events this summer in terms of starting to stress test what is that operation look like and and how do we how do we manage those things so it's been useful so okay thank you

Any other questions from the board? No questions, just comments. Okay, great. I had a clarifying question just because I started getting confused with the parking spaces, availability and need. So is it a need for 3,200 spaces or... I'm just wondering what the actual calculation is.

I think the applicant's preliminary number in their presentation was a little over 3,100, maybe 3,116 or 3,118. I did the simple math that said basically based on their experience with other facilities, Cal State East Bay being the most comparable to this site in terms of transit access, et cetera. Conservatively, we're assuming about two and a half people per vehicle coming to the site. Do the math, 8,000 divided by 2 and 1 half got me to 3,200. We're going to get some of those people to use transit. We're going to get some of those people to bike to the site, especially Alamedans hopefully will take advantage of that opportunity. But then you throw in staff, security, et cetera, probably comes out somewhere in the wash. But I think the final traffic impact analysis and transportation plan will include those detailed numbers.

Yeah, got it. OK. Yeah, I guess it's sort of a comment, but a question too. Because if there is the opportunity to have up to 5,200 parking spaces, which I think that was or I don't know, the numbers are all over the place, either 4,000 or 5,200, you know, why not have those parking spaces available? It sounds like maybe some of them will be available at the other sites where there will be shuttles, but just in case, like maybe to be conservative, I do wonder just like how we might want to

consider that so anyways whatever the need is i just um i think the point of my question is like being able to take advantage of those shared parking absolutely and just maybe to add a little um context to the those numbers i think depending on how you slice it is it are there 4 000 within a reasonable distance is it 5200 within a 10 minute walk etc That's a census of the parking spaces. It's an inventory in the business park. It's not a list of property owners who have said, yes, you can use this for these events. So somewhere in the middle, those things are going to come together. Hopefully, you know, there will be an expectation that the applicant provides sort of the critical mass needed, but they might not get all the way there, so they need a supplement. you know, other sports stadiums or venues, it's not uncommon for different property owners to put their, like, as opposed to, here, Roots, do your thing, you know, give us our cut. They might just decide, hey, we'll run our own parking lot on event days, right? You go to a Giants game, you see lots of things like that. So there's a mix of the team providing sort of the bulk of the spaces, and you could imagine other property owners either saying, hey, Roots, cone off our parking lot. We don't want anything to do with this, or we're going to do our own thing, or hey, great, go ahead, let's get the agreement worked out in time for your season. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Great. I think those are all the board's questions. And with that, we could go to public comment.

We'll begin with in-person public comment. But if you're online and you'd like to speak, please raise your hand in the meantime. Our first speaker is Marie Kane.

Good evening, President Cisneros and members of the City of Alameda Planning Board. I and many of my neighbors on Bay Farm Island are extremely concerned and opposed to the possibility of the Oakland Roots and Seoul sports clubs hosting professional soccer matches with up to 8,000 attendees at 1150 and 1220 Harbor Bay Parkway, which is so close to thousands of our residents. We kind of feel like Bay Farm and Harbor Bay are like the stepchildren of Alameda. And I'm just wondering how this is going to benefit the city on the whole. The proposed facility hosting up to 8,000 attendees and the increased traffic will detrimentally affect our air quality, our traffic situation, and most importantly, our ability to evacuate in the event of an unplanned emergency, earthquake, fire, or other natural disaster. We have only two exit routes from Bay Farm Island. If something happens then, the cars there will totally block that whole exit, and we'll only have one exit route from Bay Farm Island. Please consider that lives could be lost due to your decisions. This is not an appropriate place for this big of a venue with this many people coming in. The location is also very close to Waters Edge Lodge, a senior facility, and close to a multitude of residential areas that house many seniors and children. Naps, sleep, pets, and the quiet enjoyment of our homes will be affected. Please visit the Roots current games at the Coliseum and note the current noise factors and the ongoing noise factors after the games are over. The noise can now be heard at our homes, even from the current Coliseum location. This Bay Farm Harbor Bay location is absolutely not appropriate for this kind of venue. Detrimental effects would absolutely outweigh any beneficial effects. Allowing these events to occur in such close proximity to our residential areas would be a travesty to us all. Please do not let this project move forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Stephanie Brocier. Excuse me.

Marie actually covered pretty much everything that I wanted to cover, but one of my concerns is It's stated that you're going to encourage people to take Hagenberger 98. How do you stop people from taking Island Drive and Harbor Bay Parkway? That's our access point, especially Island Drive for the residential portion of Harbor Bay. And as it is, I mean, we get jammed during regular commute times. during school times. And if people can find an alternate route to one that's backed up because of people trying to get to the facility via 98th and Hagenberger, that they're going to try to find another route. So encouraging somebody to not use local trafficways to our residential homes, how are you going to implement that so that it's a fact and not just an encouragement? The other thing is that currently with the roots, I had to go online recently during one of their games because I kept hearing thump, thump, thump, thump and my windows were rattling and I had to actually drug my dog because of the noise and the fireworks that were going on. It's a possibility that we won't be able to have it, but I think it's a given that we shouldn't have any fireworks out there, period, because of the proximity of the homes and the noise that it creates. And again, the decibels of noise are the big concern to me. In Harbor Bay, we're already hearing from San Francisco when they have their festivals on the wharf and Treasure Island. And you're hearing all the noise from that. And our windows are again shaking over where we are. And it goes on till 1 o'clock in the morning for those kind of things. But I'm hearing it already from the roots at the arena. Or not the arena, but at the field in Oakland. It's just going to be closer. And that is a big concern. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

Our next speaker is Melissa DeBoer.

Good evening. Good evening, members of the board. President Cisneros, how are you this evening? My name is Melissa DeBoer. My husband and I have been residents of Bay Farm Island for the past 18 years. We are here this evening to voice our support for allowing Oakland Roots in Seoul to host matches at their training facility located in the Harbor Bay Business Park. We understand that traffic is a major concern, but we see this as a sign of success, not a threat. The influx of traffic on game day represents visitors coming to Alameda, spending money at our restaurants, filling up our hotel rooms, and placing Harbor Bay on the map. To us, this isn't any different from a weekday where there is an influx of employees Working in the business park, we see these employees purchasing from our local Starbucks, grocery shopping at our local Safeway, having lunch at La Penca, Laval's Pizza, and China Villa restaurants. During the week, employees are using Ron Cowan Parkway as a main thoroughfare to and from the business park, which would be the same for game days. I do not see any cars coming through our communities during the weekday from employees being at the business park. Another concern that has been raised is noise, of course. As a Bay Farm resident, we hear noise coming from the Oakland Coliseum during Raider games in the past, as well as San Francisco during a major music event, and most of all, the Oakland airport. We commend the Oakland Roots and Soul organization for being very cognizant of this concern and working with acoustic engineers to design a system that would direct sound away from our communities. In closing, my husband and I feel that hosting game days at the Oakland Roots and Soul facility would be beneficial to our island community. It's soccer in our backyard. It's a family-friendly event. Please allow this project to move forward. Thank you for your time and enjoy your evening. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Judy Stanton.

Hi, I am also a Bay Farm resident of very careless children who wander into the streets despite me cautioning them. So I care a lot about traffic. I go to work at 6 AM every morning, so I care a lot about noise. And I am fully in support of this. I think it's a great idea. I think it would bring life and energy to an area that I think is so completely underused and underutilized. There's so much space there. It is unlike places on Park Street, which border on houses. This is out next to the airport. If any of you live on Bay Farm, you'll understand the noise from the planes and the airport. I am not worried about the noise from this overtaking that. I also think it's just a great thing to bring to our community. As a parent of tweens, there's very little for them to do on the island, wholesome activities that bring people out. Mostly they want to go hang out at South Shore, and we all know what happened at South Shore a couple weeks ago. So I love the idea of bringing wholesome family activities to our neighborhood for our kids and families to get excited to go to. It's true, as Bay Farm, we do sort of get treated as the stepchild of Alameda, and I think this is a great way to change that and integrate and make this area more vibrant.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

All right, seeing no more in-person speakers, I'm going to start unmuting our online speakers, beginning with Madeline Sadiq. You should now be able to speak.

Good evening, President Cisneros and members of the Planning Board. My name is Madeline Sadek and I serve as the President and the CEO of Alameda Chamber and Economic Alliance. I'm speaking tonight in support of Oakland Roots and Souls' proposal to use the Harbor Bay facility as an interim match venue. The Chamber views Oakland Roots and Souls as much more than a professional sports organization. Since locating in Alameda, they have become an active community partner, working with the local businesses, supporting youth programs, and participating in community events and investing in relationships throughout the city. From a business perspective, this proposal presents an opportunity to bring new visitors and economic activity to Alameda. Match days can really benefit local restaurants, retailers, hotels, and service businesses, which showcases Alameda to audiences throughout the Bay Area and beyond. The Chamber encourages the Planning Board to evaluate this proposal and to consider the long-term value Oakland Roots and Souls brings to Alameda as an employer, community partner, and economic driver. Thank you for your time, your service, and your consideration for this project. Thank you.

And proceeding to our next online speaker, Kenneth Chen, you should be able to speak now.

Hi, everyone. Good evening. I represent the school and the church that is in the business part, Coastline Christian School and Bay Area Chinese Bible Church. And we do have mixed feelings about this because on one end, of course, it is having a professional soccer team near the school really would encourage youth to play. We do have a soccer team, so I'd like to eventually connect with someone at Roots and see if there's an opportunity to collaborate. But at the same time, we also have a church that comes in on Sunday, and I believe I heard only games on Saturday and Wednesday. So I'm not sure if that is for sure, because that would be a great relief for the church, because otherwise, of course, the concern is that if there are games on Sunday, that would severely impact how we worship. And I do believe there is another church that's much closer to the root. They're called Acts 2, and they are going to be probably a bit less. So that's all my time. Thank you.

Thank you. And Mr. Swire, how many more speakers are there? OK, so maybe one. I just wanted to double check.

No more?

There we go.

OK. Rayla Graber, if you'd like to speak, you are now unmuted.

Yeah, hi. I live on Bay Farm, and I have a number of concerns. I don't know if I can list them all, but the traffic is very concerning. As one speaker said, yes, you're going to encourage shuttle riding, but what is going to be encouraging to them. Are you going to give them cheaper parking at the Coliseum than if they come directly to the site? Will they pay higher parking? That might be an incentive. Otherwise, I can see people coming through Fernside, exiting High Street and coming through Fernside. is a very direct route if they're coming from that part of the mainland, you know, Berkeley, Oakland, et cetera. I don't see people going all the way to 98th and then going down round con highway um i'm concerned about um are you going to be serving liquor is liquor going to be served um that wasn't brought up so i'm just bringing that up uh police You know, soccer is known as a very spirited game with a lot of spirited fans. So are we going to need additional police? We're already low on Alameda police. We're already short-funded. So have we thought about that? And actually, what is going to be the benefit to Alameda? I mean, this Roots is already putting on little events in the community or whatever they're doing that supposedly is very positive. That's great. when i hear all this all the all the jumps and hoops that the city of alameda is going to have to go through to put this thing make it come into existence how much is it costing the city and what are we going to be getting out of it I mean, it's all nice about, oh, you know, the community, this and how nice. Just think about the other effects that this business will have. And monetarily, are we going to come out even? Are we going to come out in the hole? And why should we? This is a business, and they need to operate as a business. And that may not be appropriate for our community. There are other places for them to go. And we don't even know that it's going to be limited to five years. They may want an extension. They may never find another stadium. They haven't said they've got a stadium that it's a sure deal.

So for goodness sakes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your public comment. Appreciate it very much.

There are no further public comments.

Okay. And with that, we'll go ahead and close the public comment portion of the evening, and we'll bring it back to the board for deliberations. Again, this is a study session, so no formal action will take place, but this is an opportunity to give guidance and feedback. Board Member Hong.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate, first of all, staff and applicant bringing this to us at an early stage. I realize this is at a preliminary stage. So even though I have a lot of questions, I realize that the answers are probably premature to ask these questions now. I don't have any preconceived notions or opinions about this use, but I do have a lot of questions. And I'm hoping that when the use permit application comes before us, these issues will be addressed. So let me kind of list the items in my mind that I would like greater clarity and information on. Some of these items have already been brought up. As far as environmental issues, the number one issue is obviously traffic. That's been voiced today. So getting to understand, you see the traffic analysis and understanding what the traffic program is from the applicant would be really beneficial as far as like the shuttle program. How many shuttles? How do you encourage shuttles? How do you discourage traffic? Are you going to charge for parking? Just kind of understanding the traffic management and parking management program would be important to me to understand. One of the questions, I don't know how large of a fan base the Roots and the Soul have. But if there's expected to be fans coming across the bay, I'm wondering whether the Harbor Bay Ferry might be an option, if there's enough ticket buyers that want to view these games from across the bay. That could help with the traffic. I do want to understand how you're going to discourage traffic from going through the residential streets. Matlin Drive is a drive that could be impacted with a lot of residential homes on either side. So be interested and see how that street could be prevented from having adverse impacts of the traffic. So that's kind of one area that I think additional information will be needed. I think it seems that everyone agrees to do that. Another environmental issue that's brought up is about the noise. So I'll be interested in understanding what type of controls or program will be proposed to mitigate the noise from these evening games. Evening noise even travels farther. It would be interesting to understand what kind of controls or programs will be in place regarding noise. A third item, a lighting plan. I think you mentioned, I'm assuming you'll be submitting a new lighting plan. It sounds like you're proposing some modifications. So I'd be interested in seeing that to ensure the dark sky requirements are in place. I don't know the adjacent area that much. I don't know where there's wild wetlands right next to where the Oakland fields are. But if there are, I can understand how impacts on adjacent wetlands, if there are, to wildlife, how that would be mitigated also. So that's lighting. I mentioned the shuttle already. I'll be interested to know. The community benefits that this lease can offer, you mentioned there'll be unlimited uses for groups up to 500. So I assume that might be related to some community events you're willing to provide to the city. So it'd be good to understand what you're proposing there and whether, you know, There's a cost for it, whether it's cost-free, just kind of what community benefits the fields can offer to the community. So interested in knowing that, as well as more details about the actual schedule, talking about 24 events with up to 8,000 and another 10 for 2,500. So interested to know a little bit more about the schedule. Let's see, what's another item? Oh, trash. It'd be good to understand how you will maximize recycling and minimizing the use of trash using non-disposable containers, wrappers, et cetera. I'd be interested in seeing a proposal on how you will minimize trash generation from these events. Forest Community Outreach, you mentioned Harbor Bay, Iowa. You're going to reach out to them. Well, a lot of the residents, especially along Matlin Drive, they're in the Bay Farm community. They're not part of Harbor Bay, Iowa Association. So it seems since they're probably the most closely impacted by this proposal, I'd like to see a concerted effort to reach out to those neighborhoods to get their input. I do appreciate this transparent event. transparency right now, and I'm sure you're going to be doing that, but why just make sure that those neighborhoods are involved in the public dialogue. And let's see, final comment is the annual report. I'd like to understand what criteria is going to be used, needs to be reported out that will come back to the planning board for review. So outlining what those requirements and reporting standards are would be good to see. So those are some of the items that came to my mind as far as things I want to make sure that when a use permit comes before the board that we have a clear understanding of how these issues would be handled. So otherwise, I appreciate the opportunity for us to provide early input.

Thank you, Board Member Hahn. Yes, Board Member Deweese. Oh, did you raise your hand first? How about you? OK, Board Member Sahiba.

OK, thank you. I appreciate, well, thank you for the presentation again. And thanks for all the public comment. That was very insightful. Also, I think Board Member Hom covered a lot of the operations side of it, which I agree with all his discussion points. They're going to be critical to get a global understanding of really how the operations of this facility is going to work. I'll focus a bit more just on the design aspects and some things that I think could through this use could really be beneficial. And I've been a resident for Harbor Bay over a dozen years or so. I'm excited to see something like this potentially arrive. First off, I'd just say that the island community that we're on does do a lot and prides itself on sustainability, and I'd like to hear more about potential sustainable implementations that may take place through this use. Just throwing out ideas of, on game day, I see that the rendering shows a series of uses that are in the parking lot that I think if there were some Permanent solar panels installed or something then that would become the roof covering for let's say a stage or Some of the other tents that have been put up sort of temporarily But that could also have multiple factors of obviously providing power for some of these uses but also for your your facilities I'd also just consider lighting specific to the parking lot, because I understand the lighting for the field. But I think that based on the use of this parking lot or the use of it as being a pre-function space into the field, I think lighting is going to have to play a critical role. And the impact of that should be studied. I'd also just push the group to explore potential design strategies for the parking lot in the sense of how striping occurs and such. If it just feels like you're occupying a parking lot, that's sort of the bare minimum. Of course, there's going to be a lot elements staged on the parking lot that will help transform it. But I think way finding is going to be really important, how people get from the lot to the field. And maybe that's a design opportunity, really, to stripe the parking lot in a different way that doesn't feel like an afterthought when game day occurs, I think. with minimal expense on just how it's painted and such. It could really provide that arrival opportunity that feels a bit more special before you enter into the field. Overall, I think I'd just like to reiterate that the arrival experience after you get off, whether it's your parking or coming by shuttle or bike or Uber or Lyft, I think there needs to be clarity to that. And I think the clarity. will make sure that we understand as a board just the way that not only how you get to this facility, but that there's clarity on how you maneuver through it. So I think with that, those are my comments. And yeah, really appreciate the concept of bringing this type of venue to Alameda. So thank you.

Board Member Deweese? Thank you. First of all, I want to thank the applicant and also the residents for voicing out their concerns. And this is how this process should work. But before I go on to my comments, one of the speakers alluded that the city is making concessions in this project. And this is a question for the planning members. From what I can see in the staff report, I don't believe the city is making any concessions in terms of economics, but just would like to clarify that on the record.

That's correct. The applicant's covering all costs of, obviously, the application process, as well as the expectation would be any game day operations. We have users that need police support for their routine events, and they have to cover those costs, et cetera. They will have to pay for that, right? They have to cover those costs.

Exactly. OK, that's my understanding as well. But I want to make sure that is said on the record, so we don't have other false facts floating out there. Okay, thank you for that. I agree with Board Member Hom's comments. I'm not going to belabor that and then reiterate. I would like to just want to say that when the Conditional Use Permit application comes back and when we receive the final traffic studies and traffic control plans, I would like to see how you plan to mitigate Bay Farm Bridge traffic. that should be included in in that study and Definitely in the final Conditions of approval when we if we get to that stage We will want to make sure a firework is specifically excluded in the use permit So those are just my concerns in you know, in addition to what board member home had already it reiterated. In the past few years I've seen a lot of businesses left Bay Farm Island, a lot of businesses closed in the shopping center and it would be good to see some economic engine to keep the busy streets more eyes on the streets is good for the community rather than the vacant lot and the vacant site. I think that's more prone for vandalism and other activities. And I think if we can move the project forward that provides positive impact to our neighborhoods, I can be in support of this. At the moment I'm suspending my judgment until we have further studies to make sure that all the neighbors concerns are addressed.

Thank you. Any other comments? Yeah. Vice President Ariza.

Thank you. I just want to say I totally agree with all my board members' comments. And thank you to the applicant and to staff for bringing this to the board early. If I understand correctly, there needs to be a CEQA report. So that will definitely help clarify all these questions about noise impact. And then the traffic study will help also answer some of the questions of really what is the impact of potentially 8,000 people coming into the site to see the games. I do feel that it is a positive use for the site to have. And at the same time, I think that we don't have enough information to make any decisions. I think this is a preliminary workshop. So we are just kind of listening to everyone and considering what the impacts could be. I am definitely more concerned about games during the week I think that just thinking about it without even having any studies in front of me, it seems like the impact of that kind of event on a Wednesday night just would be a lot more, potentially a lot more just make the neighborhood not like a nice environment during the week. But I think a Saturday night, it's probably more appropriate for that kind of event. In any case, until we don't have more details on the schedule and the CEQA determination and the report from the traffic study, we won't really know exactly. But I do agree that it would be good to know the point of arrival or the point of entrance, just as far as the design also, to understand how all these people are going to be coming out at the same time from the from the field to the parking lot or from the field to the street, because that is a lot of people. And I don't really see that kind of open space yet. It seems all very kind of close together, just from looking at it in the site plan. So it would be good to understand that, too.

Thank you. Thank you. Board Member Wang?

Thanks. I generally agree with the very thoughtful and forward-looking comments from other board members. I just have one comment. I think that traffic control is good. Having a robust transportation plan, including shuttles, is good. I do think, you know, we got a comment about encouraging use of certain streets and discouraging uses of other streets. I do think there's something there. We can provide recommended routes for people online. We can communicate to them, to ticket buyers, what streets we want them to drive on. But I do think, generally speaking, globally, we are a little bit at risk of underestimating the type of user who misses all of those cues and just follows what Google Maps tells them to do, right? And when Google Maps, when the algorithm picks up that there's a lot of congestion over here, it's gonna say, go over there. And so I would like to encourage staff to think more proactively about that, about how do we solve for that. I think staff knows very well that if you sign streets a particular way that you can actually shape what the algorithm does. So I'm not saying that we're there. I think we're here just to have a discussion today. But when we understand, I think, the potential impacts a little bit better, I think we should be prepared to think more proactively about how we shape the way that traffic flows down our streets. Yeah, that's all I've got.

Great. Excellent. And I, as usual, appreciate very much my fellow board members for basically summarizing all my scattered thoughts so cohesively. And I agree with Board Member Hom's series of questions. And I did want to disclose that I also reached out to the applicant and had a very similar train of thought as Board Member Wang, where I just used ChatGPT. And I was like, how can we direct the traffic to avoid these residential streets like Fernside and High Street Bridge, Harbor Bay Parkway? And apparently there's like apps that patrons can use when they pre-purchase tickets. And as part of the Transcendent Traffic Management Plan, they could coordinate with Google Maps and Waze. So those are some of the things that I'd love to see just some research on that when it comes back because I agree with a lot of the concerns and sentiment already brought up. And, you know, just... Circling back to what Board Member Deweese brought up in terms of this not necessarily in a cost but an additive to our community in Harbor Bay which hasn't had a lot of economic activity or attention. I think this could be a really great opportunity for this part of Alameda that's been the step cousin or whatever we want to refer it to. I think it's an exciting potential addition given some of these questions and concerns that we just want to have a better understanding of. So tentatively excited to see what comes back and look forward to drilling in further. Is that helpful for the staff and applicant in terms of direction?

Yeah, that's fantastic. A lot of good discussion and ideas for what to bring back with more detail. Good feedback from the community. I've got some ideas there too. I think we've talked about the use. We've got some comments on how to improve the sort of the site circulation and design and the arrival and how does the site function in terms of, you know, so if we're feeling good, that that's a pretty good list of what we think. I think we've got our marching orders. Thank you very much.

Okay, great. Yeah, and thank you again to members of the public for participating both in person and online. So thank you, everyone. With that, we'll go ahead and close this agenda item and move on to the zoning ordinance update for accessory dwelling units.

Thank you, esteemed planning board. President Cisneros, thank you very much for your time. The item before you this evening is, as you mentioned, a resolution to recommend approval to the city council of various amendments, text amendments, to the existing accessory dwelling unit ordinance. The presentation I'm going to go through includes a lot of information that you may recall from our discussion last month. We held a study session in sort of early mid-May, and we got some really great feedback from the board on sort of the policy direction we wanted to take for some of these amendments. But I am going to go through some of this information again just to jog our memories and provide a little context, and then we can very quickly go through what the amendment looks like based on your feedback from last month. So once again, our ADUs and JADUs, accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units, are a means by which residential property owners are able to increase the density of units on their lots. They're generally considered more affordable, easier to build, and they have streamlined permitting pathways in state law that make them easier to build. Because we have such a significant obligation under our regional housing needs allocation, our RHNA, the housing element that we have adopted really emphasizes the importance of ADUs in achieving those goals and notes that we should be annually reviewing our ADU ordinance to make sure that it's meeting the expectations we have for achieving that RHNA. And so to that end, we have a number of state laws that have changed in the past few years impacting ADUs. Most importantly, I'll remind you, is AB 1033, at least for our conversation here tonight, because it allows local jurisdictions to opt into the ability to convert ADUs to condominiums. And so that took up quite a bit of our conversation last time. We'd love to share with you how we navigated that, but then there's some other state laws there as well that we needed to put up there to just acknowledge that we've made some updates to the ordinance to comply with those. You may recall we had a number of policy questions that we brought before you during our study session. And while the board's direction was not to take action on all of these, I wanted to make sure that they were all up there just to remind you some of the things that we had discussed. And I'll go through these on sort of a case-by-case basis as we proceed. So the first is our ADU condominium conversion, whether or not to allow it outright. Generally speaking, the board seemed to see this in a favorable light. And so staff drafted sort of a second subsection to the ADU ordinance that will provide a process and standards associated with the conversion of ADUs to condominiums. That process is primarily derived from sort of our existing processes for condo conversion as well as just obviously complying with state law. Happy to dig into that a little bit further, but in the interest of keeping us moving along. The next item that we discussed was the front yard setback. Currently, there is no explicit front yard setback applied to non-statewide exemption ADUs in the ADU ordinance, although there are, of course, front yard setbacks applied to most residential properties in the city. The direction from the board was to apply a more explicit front yard setback in the ADU ordinance, but to ensure that that front yard setback would be commensurate with the expectations for sort of the residential properties on that same site. And so we did draft provisions that reference the section of the code that provide exemptions for substandard lots, for example. So that's in the city of Alameda, lots that are under 100 feet in depth. And the existing ordinance have allowances for reduced front yard setbacks, and so too would those apply to ADUs as currently written. Otherwise, the typical front yard setback of 20 feet would be expected to apply. Moving along, the number and type allowed. You may recall staff had suggested to you that there were parts of our ordinance currently that sort of are more permissive than the requirements under state law. This was always intentional. However, the question we wanted to pose to the board was whether we wanted to continue to have unlimited caps, specifically on the conversion of existing multifamily housing areas into new ADUs. We've kept that uncapped at your direction. And the only other sort of changes to that section that were made were to comply with state law. So for example, increasing the number of detached new ADUs on multifamily properties to comply with the new equivalent number of multifamily units on the site or up to eight. So we did keep our uncapped provision there for the conversion of existing multifamily portions of the home. And the intent is to have that remain and to exceed the permissiveness of state law. Just keeping moving here, this is a conversation we had around legal nonconforming additions. So it's not uncommon for ADUs to be created out of existing accessory structures that are converted. And oftentimes, existing accessory structures in the city of Alameda have legal nonconformities. That is to say, they may be not respecting setbacks or other provisions of the code because they were constructed prior to the effective date of those provisions of the code. In these cases, there are situations in which that converted structure may have portions of it that are new. And so the direction of the board was to ensure that those newer portions, the expansion of those existing structures to be converted, would comply with the setback provisions applied to ADUs in general, ensuring that any of the existing legal nonconformities would not be expanded to the extent that they would create negative impacts on surrounding properties. And finally, getting into some of the sort of less substantial questions, this is, of course, removal of existing parking and existing policy that the city has. We do currently require that if you were to convert a garage to an ADU, in the resulting driveway, that is the distance between the front of the garage and the front yard property line, is less than 18 feet, we would require that that applicant remove their curb cut and driveway as part of the process. And the reason for that is to ensure that a typical car parked in that less than 18 foot depth driveway may encroach into the sidewalk, blocking pedestrians' ability to use it. And so the intent is to remove those curb cuts so as to remove that issue. So we have gotten direction that that seems legitimate and makes sense to continue that practice. And so we've just created a little bit clearer language around that in the ADU ordinance to make it very explicit that that is our policy. Impact fees, a little bit more interesting here. The impact fees, starting off with the housing element, I think we noted during our study session that the housing element does commit to us that we will continue to waive impact fees for ADUs, in part because the intent is to incentivize these types of construction, but also because state law requires that we waive impact fees for most ADUs. Specifically, the only impact fees that we could apply would apply proportionally to those portions of an ADU over 750 square feet as they would to a single family residential dwelling. When we began talking to the permit center staff about what that might actually look like, it quickly became clear that in order to sort of figure out what that sum would be, we'd need to do a sort of case-by-case analysis, because you can only count the impact fees towards those portions of the ADU that are over 750 square feet. Not only are many ADU applications that we receive under 750 square feet, but in addition to that, The sort of accounting required to figure out what that impact fee looks like for a given ADU would have required a substantial amount of staff time. We quickly realized that the adopted master fee schedule for 2026 to 2027 actually included a new row specific to ADUs in our development impact fees that set the new rate for development impact fees on both ADUs and JADUs to zero. As a result, we can come before you and tell you that the projected revenues from any impact fees without any changes to our current master fee schedule would be zero. I felt that that covered the issue, didn't feel like we needed to investigate that much further. And then finally, the board gave very clear direction to limit the deed restrictions applied to JADUs to only those required under state law. This would omit a current provision we have, which requires owner occupancy for JADUs in their deed restriction. It's worth noting that under state law, that would have had to have been amended if we did want to keep it to be limited to those JADUs that share sanitation facilities. That being said, we did omit that requirement for the deed restrictions in the interest of providing a very streamlined pathway for those JADUs to submit that recorded deed restriction as part of their application.

And then finally, we did have a number of sort of what I'll call cleanup edits.

Generally speaking, these include replacing design requirements with design considerations, as required by state law. And as pointed out by one of the public comments received by the Housing Defense Fund, clarifying that state-mandated ADUs are not subject to the city's tree preservation ordinance, again, just in compliance with state law. We also updated references to government code sections. And then very simple cleanups. And thank you specifically to Board Member Wang for pointing out some typos that we needed to correct in there. The intent, because we received those comments without the sufficient time to update the exhibit, our intent is to bring a revised version of the ordinance before city council that will address all of those typos or punctuation errors that you had noted. in your comments. And then the only other thing I wanted to address was we'd also received a comment from the board regarding tenant protections and what types of tenant protections would be offered to ADU condo conversion the residents that are currently living in those ADUs, assuming these are existing ADUs and not proposed. And we just thought we'd share that there are fairly robust tenant protections under state law that include things like 60 to 100 day noticing timeline for existing residents, first right to refusal. And then, of course, we also have fairly robust local rent control provisions that we suspect will help with that as well. But certainly, if the board were to direct us to include additional tenant protections, we could happily incorporate any of those that the board sees fit. As previously noted, but just want to make sure this is clear because they were received a little bit late. I didn't know if all the board members got an opportunity to see those. We did receive two public comments in favor of the amendments, one from the Casita Coalition and the other from the Housing Defense Fund. Both pointed out that the The process of allowing ADUs to convert to condominiums increases the range of housing types available for prospective homeowners. They offered their support, although I will note that the Housing Defense Fund public comment also offered some suggestions to us on how best to comply with state law. And with that, I will put it back to the board for any questions you may have or clarifying comments staff can provide.

Excellent. Thank you so much for that recap and some updates. I'll bring it back to the board for any clarifying questions. Yes, Board Member Hong.

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions, but the main one I'll throw it out for now is regarding condo conversions. I appreciate that you wrote up that whole section. And I'm thinking there's a requirement, as I understand it, for CC&Rs, it makes sense, and a homeowner association. And I guess that's what I'm questioning, whether you really need a homeowner association for these type of... of conversions when there might not be any common areas. So what I'm thinking of is, for instance, in the city, there's a whole host of examples of flag lots, where someone owns a single family home in the back, in the front, and you share maybe a common driveway. There are situations like that in my subdivision. There's no common areas. I'm not where they need to like file a create a homeowner association Which then requires and a reporting to California State Board all of that does the state law only allow a Condo HOA situation or can it also be something a little bit more simplified? If there's no common areas

So, and I'll preface this by saying I'll likely defer to our city attorney's office on anything beyond what very surface level response I can provide. My understanding is that the requirement, that this is very much ADU condo conversion is specifically permitted, but subdivision of a primary unit in an ADU is not. And what you're describing sounds to me more like an actual parcel map or a subdivision of the physical land itself. Short of that, because that is not permitted under state law, only a condominium conversion is, which would entail only the structures sort of being conveyed separately. And as a result, you'll always have the sort of property that the structures are on as a shared resource that needs to be managed through the HOA. Specifically to your question as to whether or not state law requires it, I would assume so, but I would defer to the city attorney's office.

Yes, that's the way we would analyze it, is that the structure is owned, but that the underlying real property is owned through a condominium property right. And the state law that authorizes this type of conversion does require compliance with the Davis-Sterling condominium

Laws and that does require a homeowners association I could just add I would say that there's a whole section in your draft ordinance.

That's essentially drawn from state law the whole section about Section F is all about state law, and this is a requirement. If you opt into AB 1033, ADU condos, you have to include this in your ordinance, which is about a condo plan, a subdivision map, the HOA, CC&Rs, and so on and so forth. So we either have to do that, or we can't adopt this ordinance.

OK. So unless the state law changes down the road, we're limited to the condo solution, which could be pretty onerous for just two homeowners. OK. Thank you.

You can also do an SB 9. parcel map, essentially, if the lot is large enough for that. So that's another alternative. Thank you.

Great. Any other clarifying questions? Looking on this side. I'm going to Board Member Deweese.

Thank you for the update. A few questions. I appreciate you incorporating the state mandated regulations and the non-state compliant mandated regulations, but one thing that's not clear is can the applicant do both? What is the final number? Let's say if I do some that's state mandated and some are not, does that mean that all of my ADU numbers are balloons?

Thank you for your question. The short answer is if you do not comply with all of the provisions of the state exemption ADU, that is the 66323 units, then you are not a 66323 unit. You must comply with all of the provisions of that government code in order to be considered that type of statewide exemption ADU.

But what I'm saying is they can potentially do both, right? Can the applicant do both?

No. So in order, either you are or you are not a 66323 unit, a statewide exemption ADU. You could have multiple ADUs on a lot, in which case you may have one statewide exemption ADU and one non-statewide exemption ADU. Right.

That's what I'm saying. But you can aggregate both. You can have several that are state compliant and several that are not state compliant.

That is correct.

And that's allowed under current. And that's the intent.

The ADUs are considered on an ad hoc basis. Each individual ADU is considered independently for everything but the number and type allowed on the lot. And that isn't influenced by the statewide exemption, the overall number.

Okay. And then thank you for clarifying that. So the answer is yes. Question on section E3, subparagraph A. Give me a second. Let me find the page. That is on page two of the red line. Oh, I'm sorry. No, this is E.3. E.3, yes, paragraph. Under maximum height. That's it. Okay. So paragraph A states attached ADUs to conform with the maximum height standards for primary residential structure permitted by the subject property zoning district. What happens if the primary structure has been grandfathered and it exceeds the current zoning height?

So this is a function of state law. This language is pulled directly from state law for attached ADU height maximums.

No, no, no. This is E. This is under E. So it's for non-state mandated ADUs.

Right. There are requirements outside of those requirements for state mandated ADUs that apply to non-state mandated ADUs and limited jurisdictions authority to regulate them. So we are limited in our authority to regulate non-state mandated ADUs that are attached insofar as their height is concerned.

Right, but what I'm saying, did you understand my question?

The answer, I think, to your question is if there were a legal non-conforming height, then they would need to comply with the height in the underlying zoning district. That is my understanding now. If you have a legal non-conforming building and you're just converting a portion of it, I don't believe we can require you under ADU state law to revise the height of that building to be lower and therefore comply with the zoning district, as long as you're not raising it.

But based on? So I think that- But that's not what it says here. I understand what you're saying, but what you're saying is not what's written.

I think there are two categories, if I may. There are two categories of ADUs. One is the state mandated ADU, and state law designates how we regulate those. The second category, we have a lot of flexibility. And so if you wanted to be more liberal by allowing an ADU to not conform with the required height in that particular zone, then you could do that. Right now it's written so that it it should comply with the height in the zone. But that is a policy call for you.

Right. That's my question. And I'm questioning that. Right now, it's written. If I have an existing primary structure that, say, is 20 feet in height, and the zoning code only allows 18. So it's already existing non-conformant. Right. Around conforming structure, right? In your hypo. Right. Right. So let's say if I add onto it, add to an, it's not internal conversion, but it's added to it, am I required to be, based on it is written, 18 will be the cap. Even though the main structure is 20, can I go at 19? That is my question. But based on it currently is written, no. The answer is no.

Can I clarify a little bit? Yes. Just because it sounds like we're talking about the ADU height maximums, this would apply to the height maximums with the underlying zoning districts, so generally like 30 to 45-ish feet for residential districts. So this isn't referring to like your 16 through 20-foot ADU height maximum. This is referring to the underlying zoning districts.

Okay. So this is just the primary structure only, not for...

It is exactly the situation you were describing. But let's say, for example, the district had a 35-foot height maximum, and your existing structure had a 40-foot height. You're correct. As currently written, a new attached ADU constructed off the rear would need to comply with that 35-foot height maximum. But because of the provisions of this code, it can exceed the typical ADU height maximum of, say, 18 feet.

OK.

So that's what the intent of that provision is.

OK. All right. Understood. Thank you. Then another question. Sorry, I have a lot of them.

That's great.

Page number five in the red line under paragraph F about junior ADUs and list about the following standards. That means all of them or some of them. It says, junior ADUs shall be permitted ministerially if complying with the following standards. My question is, is the intent that you need to comply with all of them or some of them?

All of them.

Okay, let's clarify that. Understood.

I would just clarify, except that some of them say may.

So that's the question. It's not clear.

Right. So I think it's clear. You either shall or you may.

I think, okay, there's a lot of mays.

Yeah.

Okay. So that means it's not all of it.

All of the shells.

The language can be a little more clear. So again, we can get into the suggestions. This is just questions. I'm trying to understand intent. Page number six. Paragraph number eight, subparagraph A, lowercase a. What's the thought process behind prohibiting short-term rental of junior ADU?

It's required by state law.

Got it. Thank you. And then back to... This, the whole list of, you know, F, that whole junior ADU list of compliance, when you talk about ministerial approval, why is this not part of lowercase I-1 when we talk about approval process?

I believe because there are development standards contained in this section, and we were trying to distinguish the portions of this ordinance by the type of ADU proposed, that is to say state mandated, non-state mandated, attached and detached, and then finally JADUs. And so that was sort of the formatting intent, whereas I, the application review process, is exclusively to do with the sort of sort of just the process, right? Not necessarily any development standards or expectations for how the unit operates.

Okay, so... But you also talk about ministerial... I don't know if I buy that argument at the moment, but we can discuss that later. That's all my questions for now. Thank you.

Thank you Any other clarifying questions from board members?

Yes, remember, huh? I'm trying to find that section. I apologize. I can't find it But there's a section that that talks about if an existing structure does not meet the required side yard or rate yard setback I think mainly You know say the structures right on the property line or say The wording and I apologize. I can't find it. I had it this morning this afternoon It says that you can Read you can rebuild that structure as long as you stay within the dimensions of the existing structure Does that mean both? setback and height. But for instance, you have an existing accessory structure that's maybe 200 square feet. You can rebuild that structure. Say it's going to be larger. Say you're going to propose a 600 square foot ADU. Does that new structure, except where the footprint is, does that need to be the new footprint portion of the structure? So does that need to be set back four feet, or can it be continue the line of the existing ADU? So that's one question. Second question is, what if that structure is only, say, 10 feet tall? Can they build up to 18 now?

So there are a couple of different nuances here. I want to just make sure I'm kind of addressing them correctly. So all of your questions have to do with existing accessory structures that are either being demolished or converted.

That do not meet the current setback.

That have legal nonconformities, exactly. So the section that you're looking at, just to kind of clarify for everybody, is under 4A. So this is on page three near the bottom.

Oh, OK. Thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah, I think just so we're all on the same page.

It reads that no setback shall be required for an existing accessory structure or a new structure constructed in the same location into the same dimensions. And then it goes on to say, for the purposes of this subsection, dimensions shall mean the exterior width, length, and height of the accessory structure up to 18 feet. So that is intended to convey that the existing structure, if, for example, there was a 10 foot high structure and it proposed to increase the height, it would not be able to take advantage of the reduced setbacks under this section. So it would either need to comply with the four foot setback Or it would need to comply with the setback allowances under a different section.

Okay. So in other words, if they wanted to build a larger or just a larger ADU, they could either stick to what the existing structure allows or they would need to comply with the other standards. I'm not...

That is correct. The only exception I would offer to that is statewide exemption ADUs. If, for example, for non-statewide exemption ADUs, then yes. You would need to comply with that. Now, it's worth noting that we also had that provision we talked about that is something we discussed last meeting, which was whether or not we should permit an existing legal nonconforming conversion to expand along that existing nonconformity. We did not incorporate that kind of a provision into the ordinance, so any expansion would need to conform.

They would need to meet the four feet. Okay, okay. Thanks for clarifying that, because I remember we had that discussion last time. I couldn't understand where the ordinance landed on those issues.

Great. Any other questions? Seeing none, I did have a follow-up. And I appreciate you bringing up the tenant protections that we have currently in our city as well as with state policy. And my question comes from the written comment that came in. And I and I believe board member home mentioned last time Suggesting the first right refusal potential option And I couldn't quite follow what you were saying Is it that we already have that in place in the city because I don't think there's like a statewide like policy for that As we understand it there are policies in place that would require first rate of refusal for the existing tenant. Yes, okay per the city of Alameda's

I can get back to you about where exactly that provision lives.

OK. Yeah.

But my understanding is that, yes, they are currently required to offer first rate of refusal to the existing tenant.

OK. OK. That is helpful for me. OK. That was my only question. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And I guess if no other questions from the board, we can open up for public comment.

So far, I've got one speaker in person. If anyone online would like to speak, please raise your hand. Hank Hernandez.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, members of the board. My name is Hank Hernandez. I'm a longtime Alameda resident and president of Alameda Tiny Homes, your local ADU builder. I'm in full support of clarifying our ADU ordinances and very excited about implementing AB 1033. But I want to flag three issues before you adopt it. The first is design review, item I2. The second is parking, item G1. And then last is roof pitches, E3B. On the first subsection I2 on design review, as written, a new detached ADU designed with an integrated rooftop patio could be pulled into discretionary design review because the ordinance treats the deck as separate from the ADU itself. ADUs that qualify under our section 66.323 are exempt from design review by state law because we're trying to encourage new housing. Subjecting an integrated patio to discretionary review effectively imposes a discretionary condition on an ADU, which is exactly what our state law is meant to prevent. I argue that a modest patio gives ADU residents access to real outdoor space and meaningfully improves their quality of life. I'd ask you to clarify that an integrated design that includes a rooftop patio is not grounds for design review, while leaving decks that are added to existing structures converted into ADUs under the normal design review process. Second, subsection G1 on parking, it requires that remaining driveways be at least 18 feet long or they must be abandoned. That's longer than necessary, and removing driveways and curb cuts eliminates the most practical place for residents to do EV charging. I'd ask the board to shorten the standard to the 15-foot compact length which would allow people to continue to use EV chargers there, or better yet, strike this whole subsection and handle it as part of a comprehensive review of our parking standards under 30-7. Third is subsection E3B on roof pitch, which allows the extra two feet of height up to 20 only if the ADU matches the primary home. But the ordinance doesn't say how closely it has to match, how that's measured, or what happens when the primary home has more than one pitch, which is common. In practice, this pushes builders to lower interior plate heights just to hit a specific pitch instead of focusing on what matters, which is a livable unit. I'd ask the board to drop the pitch matching requirements so we can design two-story homes without artificially lowering ceiling heights. Thanks for your time.

Thank you. Thank you so much for those comments. Next speaker?

Next speaker is Mark Gonier.

Thank you. Yes, my name is Mark Gagner. I appreciate the time, President Cisneros and the rest of the board members. So I'm here to speak in favor of the ADU condo conversion ordinance that's being considered this evening. you know every day we read in the newspaper and hear it all over the media about uh housing and affordability the ability for families to you know even just to start a family and to have home ownership today and i think the ability to um giving giving uh community members the ability to create housing, housing that gives them the option to be able to sell it, is good for the community, good for everyone here to add affordable housing. So particularly in the discussion around starter homes. Because typically ADUs are smaller in size, they're more modest in size, and so they can potentially be much more affordable for those that are looking to, you know, get out of the ongoing renting and just, you know, paying rent every month and actually start to build equity in terms of a home. So my situation is a little bit unique probably. My business partner and I, we acquired a six-unit apartment building. It was run down. It had been vacant for nearly 10 years, as we understand. It's in a beautiful neighborhood on San Antonio Avenue. And so we spent two and a half years renovating this building. And it's got a broad mix of units from studio to one bedrooms to a two bedroom to a couple three bedrooms and even a four bedroom home. And what we've determined is that we think the highest and best use of this property is to actually condoize it. and sell those off as starter homes for people because we foresee the pricing would be very modest and achievable for home ownership. The challenge is that we took the six-unit building and we created an additional home, so now it's a seven-unit building, and that was created by an ADU law, but now we can't do the strategy of, you know, selling the property as individual units because one is an adu and i know that that's what you're considering i've spent you know several months talking to tristan about this and so we're very excited about the opportunity for you to consider this we think that it is really a path to the city you know helping do its part to create more affordable homes thank you very much thank you thank you great timing um any other public comments no other speakers

Okay, great. Before I bring it back to the board for discussion and feedback, I was wondering if staff had any reactions to some of the public comments. It sounds like we have some experts in the room and they had some pointed suggestions, so I'd be curious just to hear some reactions. Or if you need time to digest, that's fine too.

I don't think it's staff's opinion that anything that came up in the public comments is something that we have strong opinions on. I think at the end of the day, it's the board's direction that we're going on. I don't think it's difficult to imagine the counterargument to any of these questions. And so if you have specific questions about why staff might have previously adopted a particular position or how we came to that conclusion, I'm certainly happy to answer any of those questions. And, yeah, otherwise I think the comments were fairly self-explanatory, so I won't try to go too deep into detail with those.

Okay, great.

I would just add, I think on the parking question, there's a separate section that is not – discretionary on the part of planning, which is the public works code says that abandoned driveways shall be removed and the curb re-established to provide public parking on a public street. And so if a driveway isn't usable leading to a legal parking space, then it is supposed to be removed. And we see this occasionally on commercial streets as well as on residential streets. And that's at the discretion of the public works director.

That's helpful. Thank you. And with that, I'll bring it to the board.

I seem to be very opinionated tonight. Thank you very much. I know I have a lot of questions. I really appreciate your patience in walking me through those. A couple of things. Again, these are suggestions. There are, when we are writing ordinance, I always look for clarity and in terms of verbiage as well. I know there's a lot of references about subsection E, subsection D. It would be good to say subsection of this ordinance or subsection of what. You know, I'm trying to figure out which subsection. So that's just a general recommendation. five of the redlined version, recommended design consideration. I think that's page five. Yeah, five over 12 in the redlined version. Under A, it says the design of attached accessory dwelling unit should match the same material, et cetera. I would say match or complement. because you are wearing a checkered pattern shirt. But I'm sure that you don't have a checkered pattern pants, because that would be a lot. That would be matchy-matchy. And I think compliment, that's where we're going here. So I would like to see that word. added. And that would apply to the roof form as well. I wouldn't, you know, I hear the speaker's recommendation about roof pitch. I don't know if we should really match that rather than allow more flexibility of complementary slopes or, you know, design. Look for complementary rather than match. And in terms of the roof deck attached to ADU, I think maybe under a certain size, it should be part of the ADU rather than a certain design. So I'm curious, open to hear what other board members' comments. If we limit to a size, if it's smaller than this, it's attached to the ADU. It's part of the ADU. Don't mandate a separate design review. That's my current position, and I'm curious to hear what other board members' thoughts on that. In terms of parking, thank you, Director Buckley, about your comment, your refresher on the public work. Rather than mandating here, I would rather refer it back to the public work section so to avoid conflicts and if we rather so that we're not overriding them and vice versa. If Public Works is governing, you know, quote unquote, what is considered abandoned driveway and go from there rather than creating our own mandate, I can potentially be in conflict with that. So that's my thoughts on that. In terms of the section on Condo conversion and thank you for I believe this is the first time we look at the condo conversion section, right? Okay. So are you ready? I Appreciate the thought process again in terms of Ordinance, I don't know if you want to use language that if you are considered as a if you're you if you're you know we want to avoid using pronouns in ordinance I Was just remove any reference to if you're considering if you're a condominium if you know all those pronouns Change to if the applicant or if the application the applicability make it third party So it sounds like an ordinance rather than you're talking to neighbor And again, that's from the state law, but I think we can probably do that kind of change and it'll be okay.

I

Okay. Thank you. So this is verbatim from the state?

It's verbatim. That's scary. Okay.

Okay. Then the second thing is I know there's a lot of.

It's a notice to consumers. So it's meant to be targeted to the reader as a consumer.

So do we need to include the notice to consumers in our ordinance?

Yes. Because this is a mandate to the developer that you shall do these things and it shall say this.

Okay. Because I feel like a lot of this, I guess, is from consumer protection. But for example, in terms of when I'm reading about all the lender requirements, that has nothing to do with zoning code. We have no purview in... mortgage requirements, et cetera. I am very confused on why this is in our zoning code. Is there any way we can just refer back to state mandate and call it a day? When I'm reading this, all these notes about paying off your current lender, securing a lender approval, I feel like that is an overreach of the purview of this board. We have no governance in that. We're not a consumer protection agency. Why do we have this in our zoning code?

I think because state law references it. And so because we're drawing on that, it's- Then we just refer back to the state law.

We can look into it, but yeah.

I'm sorry. What we typically like to do is we like to give the applicant just one document and have all of the regulations codified in the same document so that the applicant doesn't have to go and look at the state law.

And what happens when the state law changes?

Yeah, we probably should. should make a reference for that in this ordinance. But I also will say that you're right, this is a zoning law. Many cities codify their subdivision ordinances in a different section, which we do as well. And so you tend to see this type of language more in a subdivision ordinance rather than in a zoning code ordinance. So that's why this may not feel as traditional as

My concern is whenever we copy state law verbatim, rather than doing a reference, once they update it, there will be a potential for conflict. So I'd rather refer to it than copy and paste.

I will note that we do have an administration section at the very end of the ordinance that does authorize the planning director to basically ensure that the procedures remain consistent with state law. So assuming that whatever changes are made to state law are relatively minor and we can make findings of consistency, it does seem like we could build that expectation into the ordinance itself without necessarily needing to sort of atomize the standards into different places so that an applicant has to go look at state law and our code. That could be one possible solution.

OK. But you hear my concern. I don't have a solution for this, but you hear my concern. And again, this is the first time I'm seeing this. And I appreciate, I think we're going in the right direction. But those are my concerns. And also getting back to the earlier comment about ministerial review for JADUs and how it was pulled away from all the other review processes he sees. I have been, you know, as a practitioner, I read the code. I find, oh, under approval process, I'll see all the approval process. And then later realize, darn, I missed a section because it was somewhere else. So it would be good to maybe we refer that, you know, for JADU administrative process to see this other section if you want to pull it out separately. But I think when we're talking about ministerial process for both, it should be added in there. So...

I think the process for JADUs is the same for ADUs, though, with the exception of the deed restriction.

With the exception of what? The deed restriction. Right. Right. So anyway, I just feel like the ordering is not, it doesn't follow properly. Okay.

Thank you.

Those are my comments. Thank you.

Board Member Hahn? Yeah.

I appreciate the comment that Board Member Ruiz brought up. One possible solution, I'll throw this out, is that you have the ordinance reference to state ordinance, but you can always state the requirements and the conditions of approval, or you can have a... Closer to the mic.

Oh, yeah.

Or you could have an information sheet that has all that information provided to the applicant. So that could be one way, in my opinion, that you don't have to reference the exact language in the ordinance. You could have it in the conditions of approval or part of the subdivision agreement, whatever it is. Or it's kind of this informational handout to anyone that is interested in a condo conversion. I think that could satisfy the requirements and comply with state law. Anyway, I just throw that out there, something to consider. Just following up on some of the comments that Board Member Ruiz made, and I agree with her, the patio issue, I wonder if, looking at the ordinance, it doesn't really define what size patio. So you might consider if it's some size under a certain square footage, and maybe is at least x number of feet away from the property line, that that might allow for a more streamlined approval rather than a full design review. So that's just an option there. The roof pitch, I agree with the applicant. It makes a good point that when you refer to the roof pitch of an existing house, it could be all kinds of roof pitches. So maybe what I sometimes see in this for primary structures that you allow a little bit higher height if the roof pitch of the structure is over a certain pitch, so that it's not directly referencing the roof pitch of the existing house. Because that could get confusing, too. So I see the rationale for an allowance if you have a steeply pitched roof. Sometimes they do averaging of heights, which gets complicated to deal with. But I agree with trying to define that a little bit more clearly. And then with parking, I'm fully supportive of limiting the driveway and the curb cut. But if there's a need to reconcile what public works requirements are so that there's not an internal inconsistency, that makes sense. And then one of my other comments is this is getting into the weeds of impact fees, only because I've just had to deal with this in another city. First question, does the city charge water and sewer capacity fees for ADUs?

No, to my understanding, we do not. But we can double check on that.

You might check that. And if the city does charge it, you might want to specifically mention the ordinance, whether the city wants to waive those fees or not. Because they're not considered impact fees under state law. A city can actually charge water capacity and sewer fees, even for water. ADUs under 750 square feet. You can't charge for converting an existing space, but you can charge. So there's a difference that I found out in administering the ordinance. The other issue under AB 937, I believe that if there are fees charged to ADUs, such as the large ones, they're deferred until occupancy stage. So I don't know whether that needs to be clarified in the ordinance. Or maybe it's just part of the fee adoption and not part of the ordinance. I just want to mention that. I think those are pretty much my comments. Thank you.

Great. Any other comments? Board Member Wang and then Board Member Seguiba.

Just a clarification on the point about decks and design review. So the way that I read the language as it's currently written is that if an ADU were to include a deck that this ordinance isn't intended to pull the ADU into a discretionary review process, but somehow the ADU proceeds ministerially, but the deck is now under design review, right? but I think what the comment that we're entertaining here is that Practically speaking is it really realistic for those? For two things that are combined physically to proceed on separate paths like that I think I think there's one view that basically says you're either ministerial or not. If you're part ministerial and there's another part that's subject to a planning board hearing, then if you're an owner and you were Relying on a ministerial review, you know the the choice that's in front of you is perhaps well, maybe I need to just Abandon this deck if I want to build my project on the timeline that I thought I would build it on So I guess I'm If you don't disagree with that characterization, I do think the comments from Board Member Ruiz and Hom I agree with. I think that we should do our best to include a ministerial pathway for decks or balconies or patios of a certain size. Oh, did you have a thought?

Just a clarifying comment. And first, I do want to point out that Board Member Hom mentioned maybe relying on an existing threshold for decks. There is one in the provision of the ordinance that talks about how we calculate floor area. And decks under a certain threshold, I want to say it's 50 square feet, are considered differently. So that might be a place where we can kind of say, well, there's an existing threshold for small decks. We could look at that. The other thing I wanted to point out, just in your earlier comments, you said, you know, decks, patios, and so on. It's not all decks. It's not even patios in general. It's second story decks, specifically. And the consideration primarily that is kind of undertaken when we go through those design review is to do with privacy shading and view blockage. The current requirement doesn't so much consider the ADU as a partial discretionary review, so much as it says, if you would like this accoutrement to the ADU, because it is not necessary to create the ADU, the roof deck is neither necessary nor sufficient for the ADU, that you could either keep your door, move back your balcony so that your railing is just against the door, creating like a little Juliet balcony. And then you can still have your flat roof there, but because the railing is by the door, You can simply change the location of the railing to make it a roof deck or not a roof deck. That's how we navigated those from a ministerial perspective. And so the fact that the deck is not an integral part to the ADU, it's more of an option added to it, was the reasoning behind why it was considered discretionary rather than the ministerial portion. I just hope that was a little bit more clear then.

Yeah, I think that, yes, I think that's helpful. I do still support the notion of a threshold to have a full ministerial pathway. I think it would be a good idea generally. I do have a second comment that's a little more global. Just zooming back out, I think, to the condo conversion concept. We got a public comment on this. I want to echo and agree and reprise some of the comments that I made in prior hearings, including in the hearing where we had more of a workshop on this topic. Yes, we are in the midst of a long-running housing affordability crisis, and I don't think there's really much debate about this. That has to do with a chronic and long-standing housing supply deficit. So here, I think when we're talking about the ability to condo an ADU and sell it off, I would say here that I don't expect that would meaningfully change our housing supply picture. You know, I think there have been arguments to that that have been made that say well, maybe it'll encourage You know some some owners to to create ad use and sell them and I think that would be positive I think that would be a positive addition to our supply Probably on the margins probably not gonna help us in address housing affordability or housing supply in a meaningful way in a structural way so in short is it going to move the needle really on housing supply I don't think so is it going to move the needle in reducing in reducing our rental housing supply I don't really see that happening either I think what we're talking about here is making it a little bit easier for people who are contemplating various decisions related to their property, creating an ADU, thinking about their future income streams, thinking about one time income coming in I think it just to reprise some of those comments it creates a little bit of flexibility and that's a good thing so I just wanted to put that back out there because we did discuss this already didn't want to take that for granted here I think it was worth reprising thank you board members

Sure. Thanks again for all the public comments. I think most of my fellow board members have addressed a lot of the issues that needed to be sort of discussed. I do want to just respond to one of the public commenters. The the the other curb cut issue is pretty straightforward I will say that I know there was this discussion of a compact space versus a regular space We just can't control the length of a vehicle. That'll be parked there and I think that's that's a that's kind of a hard hard thing to regulate so I think it makes sense what the ask is here for making sure that we hit the minimum standards for parking stalls to allow for that curb cut to still exist, being the 18 feet of length. I will also say on the specific to also the point that we've, I think, spoken about a bit on the decks and whether they're ministerial or not, It sounds like from what you described there's clear square footages and dimensions and sizes where it can be ministerial or it's under a separate section?

It's an unrelated section of the ordinance that regulates how square foot area is calculated for such decks. It does not currently have to do with administrative or discretionary approval. It doesn't currently have to do with ADUs at all. But it is a separate section of the code that does reference small decks and establishes a square foot threshold for what that means.

Does it establish the canopies or roofs specific to that small deck?

Not to my knowledge.

So that's where a little bit of the, I can see the challenge of even just a ground floor deck, let's say, if you're trying to create a little bit of a canopy over that and that structure is attached to your ADU, then is there a challenge there?

Unless the finished floor height is above the first story, it would not trigger design review. So it would only be in the case of a roof deck or a rooftop patio of some kind that that would trigger that design review. So the height is relevant up to a point, but once you're past that second story, it doesn't matter whether your roof deck is on the roof of your second story or your first story or somewhere in between, right? It's just...

A ground floor deck with a canopy. Would not trigger design. Would not trigger design. OK, I just wanted to make sure. So it seems like there's clarity there. And if it's connected to the ADU design, then it seems like that should be fine.

For canopies, patios, decks under the first door, yes.

Under the first door, yeah. OK, got it. All right, thank you.

Thank you. Board Member Deweese. So on that note, I have a question. So let's say if we have an attached ADU that happened to be on the second floor that we added. If we confer part of the second floor storage to ADU and add onto it on the second floor, and then I add a deck to it on the second floor, so that would trigger design review.

As the ordinance is currently written a second-story deck even attached to a primary dwelling would trigger design review Presumably if we adopted some sort of threshold here, it may depend on the size of that deck But as it's currently written yes a second-story deck even if attached Would trigger design review to the primary structure But if it's to the ADU Then it does as well regardless of whether the proposed second-story deck is attached to the ADU or attached to the primary structure, it requires design review.

Yeah, I mean, I would just say we do these all day long. These are bread-and-butter design reviews. And we're even doing one right now for the housing authority that is repairing some parts of a building, and they're adding a landing and some stairs. It goes through design review.

But design review through the zoning administrator?

Yeah, it's not ministerial, but it's at staff level. We issue a notice.

Staff level design review, not planning board design review.

Correct, correct.

That's helpful.

It is never the case. It never comes to you. You don't see these. No, it's a very straightforward process. But it gives notice to the neighbors because there could be a privacy impact. And the ordinance provides that the purpose of the design review is for privacy, light, and views. And so the idea is, if we need to, we can ask the applicant to set it back, or put up a railing, or reorient it to the backyard instead of to their yard. And so that's the kind of feedback that we get, and that's what we do in design review. And by having the review, keys the designer to the fact that these are the things we care about. And so before they come to us, they think about these things, and then they design it appropriately. And then we don't have to really do much. But if we didn't have the review, who knows what they would come up with? And we'd have no recourse. So that's why we do it.

Thank you for the clarification. So does that delay the ADU approval? You just bifurcate the two?

We can bifurcate it. As Tristan said, we can deal with the deck railing and the deck access and paving separately, or it could be part of the building permit. It could be revision to the building permit, things like that.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Any other comments or feedback? Okay. Well, maybe would it be helpful for you all to repeat back some of the suggestions that you've heard so far? Okay. Let's do that.

It would be helpful to go over some of these. And also, if I could just clarify a comment you made, Board Member Sahiba, I think I just wanted to clarify the first comment you were making and just understand what exactly you were going for there. Can you just kind of repeat to me back how exactly you wanted to?

Specific to the off-street parking?

Yes. It was a little unclear to me whether you wanted to keep the 18. Oh, yes. No, I did. OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just wanted to make sure I understood that.

I just wanted to address the fact that there was a comment made about compact stalls. And I was just saying that it's hard to regulate the type of vehicle that gets parked there.

I totally agree. Just wanted to make sure I understood correctly the feedback you gave there. So I mean, there's various comments throughout about sort of language, for example, the references of subsection, what subsection are you referencing, things like that. But primarily, sort of the more meaty changes have to do with, I did hear some comments about, generally speaking, allowing the roof decks to proceed without any sort of design review under a certain threshold. And I heard some suggestions maybe being the size of that or the location on the property. So if it's sufficiently set back or if it's sufficiently small, maybe if it's both, then we would consider allowing that to proceed without design review. Likewise, it sounds like...

Sorry, can I... Oh, go ahead. I'm just curious now that we know with more clarity that the zoning administrator, do we... I just wanted to watch that.

That doesn't apply anymore. So we... It's a zoning administrator review that...

Can I clarify what I think I'm hearing? Sure. Are we saying that design review for roof decks can proceed as currently written with the assumption that the design review will take place at the staff level?

I think so. I think. Yes. Do we all agree? Yes. OK. Yeah, that's fine.

And of course, design review at a staff level can be appealed to the planning board.

It's still noticed though, right? It's still noticed.

It's noticed to folks within a roughly 100 foot radius of the subject property.

I wonder if you need to do 300-foot notice.

Yeah, I'm so sorry, one more time. I'm just kind of wondering whether you have to do a 300-foot notice.

Sometimes with these minor, they just say, you know, just notice the adjacent neighbors. Yeah.

For a little small deck, 300 foot seems kind of... We can certainly look into the radius that's required for that kind of a design review. Okay. Sorry, going back to some of the more meaty changes here. So if we're good with DR on roof decks, state law regarding condo conversions may be better incorporating a reference to state law and exploring options for reducing sort of the repetition of that language there. I also heard a suggestion for maybe a handout to supplement that. I heard a conversation around better defining roof pitch and even roof form and what that means, basically allowing for greater leniency when we talk about matching the roof pitch, or at least a greater ability to have a complementary roof pitch, maybe not a perfectly matching roof pitch. Same goes for these attached design considerations, this idea that it's compatible but maybe not exactly matching. The intent to reference Public Works parking requirements rather than sort of taking those on ourselves in the ADU ordinance Maybe deferring to them a little bit as far as their standards are concerned And then of course preserving that requirement for the 18-foot parking or removal of a curb cut where that's not present Other than that I do have you know language updates that are pretty minor, but I think that covers sort of the meatier updates. Were there ones that I missed or things that needed further clarification?

Any others?

So we're gonna need a motion for this right or are you yes, we are we do have a resolution requesting the board The staff is recommending that the board adopt a resolution recommending to the City Council approval of the ordinance But was there was there consensus on all of these points

I think so. I just wanted to make sure those changes will be incorporated and whoever is ready to make the motion. for recommendation to the city council. Could I just ask one quick thing?

Yeah. Some of the comments you mentioned was like consider this or consider that. Are you clear what you're gonna be revising? I guess I just wanna make sure that we recommend approval of this. Maybe you might restate what the actual changes are versus what the staff will be considering.

Yeah, so I think the considerations were primarily related to the roof decks. So we can kind of omit a lot of that as far as if we're going to proceed as currently written with that. As far as the state law around condo conversions, I think we need to explore options with the city attorney's office to find out sort of how much of that we can omit and how much really ought to be retained in the ordinance. As far as the better defining the roof pitch, I think the intent is to build sort of leniency into the ordinance. And so the language would likely change to state that there's some level of variance that we can accommodate as far as not matching the exact roof pitch, probably taking away the word match and saying consistent with the roof pitch of the primary dwelling, something to that effect. As far as the reference to Public Works for the parking, I think we would likely specifically call out that code section, maybe omit some of the existing language in our own, if only keeping the stuff that reiterates what's already in the Public Works ordinance.

I think what we'll do is we'll take this resolution and we'll include these recommendations as part of your motion and then we'll redraft the ordinance and we'll make those changes as we proceed. can best interpret it. But I think we're pretty clear. OK.

I just want to make sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Since you're asking us to make a motion tonight.

Yeah, yeah. And then the council, obviously, will have its own thoughts. And so they might wordsmith further. So I think it's bound to change a little bit here and there.

You had a comment?

Yes. Thank you, President Cisneros. The question for the staff, is there a deadline to send this to the council?

No.

Can we ask you to come back again so we can see the final version?

Yes. You can.

If there's no rush, mainly because there's a lot and some substantial changes, especially this is the first time we saw the condo conversion. Language. Language.

Yeah. If it pleases the board, I'm fine with that. And there isn't necessarily a rush? If there's a rush, then they're different.

Do we have it on the calendar for

We have not yet posted it to Legistar, nor have we sent out public hearing notices. It is slated to go before the city council with the assumption that the board will move it forward.

But the workflow is in motion.

I'll say that. Can you just continue the public hearing so you don't have to re-notice it?

I think the director was referring to the public hearing for the city council. Has that been noticed already? It hasn't been noticed, but we've reserved a date on their agenda. Yeah, but it has not been noticed.

Correct. What's the drawback of...

been in motion but not notice for the City Council well it just it just means we're gonna have to come back and do this all over again for one thing and then it does delay getting to council and so it just delays the implementation of these changes which I don't think your suggestions are substantial I think it's wordsmithing which we can totally do I think you have consensus we have consensus I don't think it's complicated.

Yeah. I personally don't have a strong feeling, but I know my fellow board members had some pretty hefty feedback. So I could see the case for it coming back. Yes, board member Hahn.

I don't mind it coming back, but then this part of me is thinking these changes are, as you restated them, pretty clear to me, and they're not major, so I don't have a discomfort in not seeing it again. But I defer to the rest of the board. If the board really wants to see it, to make sure the wording, as we stated, I'm fine. The only question was regarding how much can we reference regarding the state legislation. And I would defer to the city attorney. I think our comment was try to take as much of it out as possible, at least the noticing wordage. So that's kind of more like a city attorney term. And I'm fine whatever you determine. But quite honestly, I'm comfortable acting on it tonight. I don't see these changes are that major, but at the same time, I don't want to just, you know, if there's a desire to see them again, I'm fine with that.

Do we need to take a vote on how many of us feel comfortable passing? Or do we just, someone makes a motion?

Can I make a motion and then we see what? Yes, we can see how the chips fall. Yeah.

I'll move to approve the draft resolution to recommending to the City Council that it adopts the amendments to the code to amend provisions related to the accessory dueling units with the amendments that we talked about regarding the was it the parking.

You could say as stated by staff.

As stated by staff, yeah, because I don't remember them all. But I think there were four, you know, kind of just revisions to the language, mainly, of the wording of the text. But other than that, we move... I move to approve the... The resolution recommending the draft resolution recommending to City Council that it adopts the amendments I'll go ahead and second it

Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

No opposed.

And no abstentions. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you very much.

All right. Great. Yeah. Thank you for that. And many thanks to my fellow board members for the wonderful comments and, you know, and going back to the conversion or you conveyance. Policy it's a big step for city of Alameda so I appreciate us wanting to be mindful about it being reflective and of You know what we want it to be and I so appreciate remember Wang's comments of you know Being mindful of like the rain comment received about tenant protections. So I appreciate staff elevating that And you know, we probably won't see huge dent in a do home ownership and it's a step forward so Excited to see how this evolves. So I Thank you, staff and to members of the public and to everyone. With that, we'll close this agenda item and move on to staff communications.

Yes. In your packet there's a list of recent approvals. As we discussed, there's four design reviews and one certificate of approval related to various residential additions, a second story deck, and ADA compliance improvements and things like that. So we're handling all of those at the staff level. They're still in their appeal period. I ALSO WANTED TO TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO RECOGNIZE BOARD MEMBER SAHEBA. WE HAVE A CERTIFICATE OF APPRECIATION FOR YOUR EIGHT YEARS OF SERVICE. I WASN'T HERE FOR ALL THOSE EIGHT YEARS, BUT I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DID A LOT OF GOOD WORK ALONG WITH YOUR FELLOW BOARD MEMBERS WHO some of them who are here and some who have rotated. And so I don't know if there's anything anyone else wanted to say, but you've served out your term limit. And so you're welcome to stay as long as you can until your replacement is found, which will be big shoes to fill.

Anyway, congratulations on your eight years of service Thank you Yeah, no, I'm just Plus one to that. I I looked at when you started in 2018 like my goodness like you've been Such a wonderful community volunteer and leader and You were here when I joined the board and very much look up to you and valued your professional expertise and perspective. And all your comments that you brought really show your experience. And, yeah, just very grateful for your partnership over the past few years. So, yeah, just thank you. Yes, Board Member Hom.

Yeah, I just want to say congratulations. It's been wonderful working with you. I've worked with board members for seven out of eight years. So I've always admired your thoughtful comments, especially your design perspective. I think it's so important. It kind of illustrates the importance of having an architect on the planning board, so having that design expertise. I know we still have Teresa, so thank God. But your insights on the design, and you analyzed the projects really well. So it's almost like I always depended. Oh, board member Sahiba, I'm sure, will talk about the architectural design and come up with some wonderful comments, which you always do. So you're going to be missed on the board. But I know you're going to continue on for a couple of more meetings, at least. So no big rush in filling this position. So we'll see you at future meetings. But I just want to say it's been a really honor serving with you. You kind of elevate the standard of what a board member should be.

Yeah. Thanks. Great. Yes, Board Member Dewey. Ditto.

Yeah, eight years. As a relative newbie here, I think it's been two years for me. I wanted to share my appreciation for you board members at EBA. I recently learned from you the story of how you became a board member eight years ago. So if anybody doesn't know the story, you should buy them a coffee and learn about it. It's kind of interesting. I've always appreciated your very thoughtful comments. You don't get heated. You don't get excited, which I think there's something to say for that. I think that's really cool. Thank you for those of us who are newer, thank you for showing us how to be a good board member.

What are you going to do with all this extra time?

I still have a day job. Well, yeah, no, it's been my honor and pleasure serving on this board for the time that I have. I will say when I joined, I really didn't know what I was getting into. And I probably have learned more than I've contributed, I believe. And I think all the board members, current ones and the ones that have previously been here, I think just the dynamic and the structure of this board is really unique. I've practiced. in architecture in a lot of other jurisdictions and gone in front of various boards. But I always felt a level of diversity and sophistication with this board that I think is really strong, and I think will be in the future. So I appreciate everyone's kind words, and good luck in the future.

Thank you, and congratulations again. Wonderful. Any other staff communications?

Nothing else.

Okay. And no public comments on that? No more folks coming to celebrate? All right. With that, moving on to board communications.

Yeah, I just wanted to share that I will be stepping down from the board. I've been four years with the board, and after a lot of thought, even though I really enjoy and I really learn a lot from being here, and I'm glad to serve right now, I just feel I don't have the bandwidth. So I don't, yeah, I feel that's why I need to step down. But it's been wonderful to be here. And, of course, I'm going to stay until there's a replacement. Very good. Thank you. No rush.

Okay. All right. Well, we'll reserve our departing words in the future. But, yeah, thank you so much for your service. And, yeah, we'll enjoy the time we have until your replacement comes. So, yeah, thank you. Any other board communications? If not, then do we public comment on that? Moving on to non-agenda public comments. Anyone from the public could speak for three minutes on an item that wasn't on tonight's meeting. Okay. We will close non-agenda public comments, and it is 9.46, and we are adjourned. Thank you.