Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening. This is the Planning Commission meeting of the City of Folsom on August 19th, 2026. We're gonna call the meeting to order at 6.31. Karen, will you please call the roll to establish a quorum?

Okay, Commissioner Barcelona? Here. Hurst? Here. Herrera? Here. West? Here. Ross? Present. And Reynolds? Here. And Commissioner Laney's absent.

All right, thank you. Would everybody please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance? Okay, thank you very much. Right now is the time where we have citizen communication, so if there's anybody here who would like to address the commission on anything that is not on tonight's agenda, we welcome you to approach the dais now and bring that up to us with a three-minute limit to present. Seeing and hearing none, we will close the citizen communication. Commissioners, there actually is an amendment to the minutes. I don't know if you all looked at the minutes. The actual square from the green sheet was in the minutes, which was a little awkward. I had never seen that before, so I raised it with staff. So we just corrected it to make sure that the language from the green sheet was in the minutes rather than all the graphics and that such thing. so we did an administrative amendment i actually have a copy if anybody wants to see it but it's pretty cut and dry and very very stylistic and administrative so if everybody's okay with that um any questions or anything or concerns on the minutes okay with that karen please call the roll on the minutes

Commissioner Barcelona? Yes. Hurst? Yes. Herrera? Yes. West? Yes. Ross? Yes. And Reynolds?

Yes. Thank you, commissioners. Next up, we're going to new business. And our first item is, go ahead, Karen, please call the first item.

MSTR 26-00023, FLB Entertainment Center Expansion Project and Determination that the project is exempt from CEQA. Your project planner is Josh Kincaid. Good evening, Josh.

How are you doing?

Good evening, Chair Reynolds, commissioners. Doing well, thank you. Let's get the PowerPoint going here. There we are. All right, so yes, this first project for you this evening is the FLB Entertainment Center expansion. This is a design review and conditional use permit application. The project is located on two parcels located at 511 East Bidwell Street. The project site is within the C2 zoning district and is located inside the East Bidwell corridor general plan overlay. It's surrounded by the Bidwell Studios Apartments. Sorry, I'm on the wrong page here. There we go. We're one page too fast here. Yes, so it's surrounded by the Bidwell Studios Apartments, which you can see here. The Folsom mini storage business is behind that, both to the west. There's a U.S. Bank building to the east. The post office and Kohl's buildings are to the south, and there are commercial uses on the other side of East Bidwell to the north. The front of the site is developed with the existing buildings and the parking lot that you see here. And the rear of the site includes a dirt lot, you can see down here on the right, and a gravel lot that's kind of been overgrown over time on the left here. So the existing building was first constructed in 1961 as the Folsom Lake Bowl and has operated as a bowling alley with a bar and grill since that point. Between 2007 and 2020, there was also a card room within the building that has since closed. The business is now called the FLB Entertainment Center. A barbershop opened at the location about 15 years ago as well. The property is located within Folsom's Central Business District vision plan area. And you may recall that this plan is intended to revitalize this commercial corridor along East Bidwell. So with that in mind, the FLB owners are proposing a remodel and additions to their property consistent with the goals of that vision plan. So as part of the proposed project, the applicant is seeking to add an outdoor entertainment area, an addition for a new barbershop location. in addition for a new arcade, expanding the parking lot, updating the existing landscaping, providing a new trash enclosure, interior improvements such as a new kitchen and dining room, reutilizing the existing barbershop space with two party rooms, also providing additional storage space and an updated building facade. So these modifications do trigger a commission level design review and the outdoor entertainment area would include live entertainment which triggers the need for a conditional use permit. So here's the proposed site plan with the building additions shown in blue. These guys here. And the new outdoor entertainment area on this side with the beige and then purple. You'll see that there is additional landscaping proposed throughout the site, including along the street frontage, along the building, and throughout the parking lot. At the southern end of the project site, the applicant's proposing to add on to the parking lot in that existing dirt lot down here as, excuse me, while leaving the kind of overgrown gravel lot to the west as it is. With the additional entertainment use, staff analyzed the project as a whole for parking. We found that adequate parking existed for typical operations as it's not anticipated at the bowling alley and restaurant. and outdoor entertainment area and arcade and barbershop would be at their peak at the same time. So we did a more holistic look at parking as you see in the staff report. So staff found that with the additional parking provided that adequate parking existed. And in the case of extremely high demand, the owners are able to open up the gravel lot it's fenced off currently. and to provide adequate overflow parking as needed. We're not sure if that would ever get to that case. Everything would have to be going Very gangbusters for that to open up, I think, but they do have that available. As part of the project condition, staff also require that the project have its own fire line, as it currently shares one with the neighboring property to the west, and that the owners grant a permanent storm drain access and maintenance agreement for the new storm drainage being installed throughout the area by the city. and they were agreeable to those conditions. So now looking at the floor plan, you can see the pretty large arcade down here, and the 12-seat barbershop that are being added, along with a takeout window over here, and the remodeled kitchen and green and dining area. The outdoor entertainment area, as you can see here in the blue, includes an elevated stage, I'm pointing out here, and bench seating, patio dining, a bar, games, and a children's recreation area. Staff is requiring that an appropriate grease control device be installed with the new kitchen coming in. And regarding the outdoor entertainment and general use, the applicant noted that while the FLB Entertainment Center is open until midnight, live outdoor entertainment would only occur until 10 p.m., at which time the city's noise standards do get more stringent. We do have the Bidwell Studios apartments located about 250 feet away to the west of the stage, as well as the Bidwell Place apartments located about 500 feet away further to the west. So the business will be required to abide by the noise standards of the city with regards to noise discernible from residential properties. Staff notes that the stage would be surrounded by a 20-foot wall, as you'll see in the elevations around the back of it. And at the location of the new arcade, as you can see here, would also help dampen additional noise to the residential uses. Staff did provide a condition live outdoor entertainment not go past 10 p.m. and use that use of the outdoor amplifiers for background music not go past midnight because they do anticipate to use that outdoor area have folks out there just not have the live entertainment going until midnight. And we also condition that the outdoor speakers are oriented away from the surrounding uses. So I'll note that in the staff report, it's referenced as condition number 75, but it's in fact condition 74. So with this condition in place, as well as staff's ability to continuously review the business for compliance with noise standards, we do support the conditional use permit portion of this application. So with the site components and CUP discussion done, we'll last look at the building design itself. The applicant's looking to refresh the exterior of the building with light gray ACM panel fascias, dark gray corrugated metal fascias, beige stucco walls, gray concrete block walls, and red brick column accents. You can see the outdoor area on the edges of these images. On the left up here, and on the right up here, that's the outdoor area. And they have string lighting, sailcloth shade structures, covered dining area, and that 20-foot tall stage surround. Overall, staff found that the proposed building redesign provided a cleaner, modern update to the existing building and found that it was consistent with the surrounding development. Signage is not proposed as part of the submittal. It would be subject to staff-level review unless it's proposed to go beyond what's allowed in the code. In which case, it'll go in front of the commission. Here we see the other elevations as well as a close-up on the bottom of the patio area. The patio area is proposed to be surrounded by a three-foot wood fence with a decorative metal fencing with a wooden cap on top of that. Staff worked with the applicant to ensure that this area was open visually so that passersby could see activities going on in the space, thereby better activating the streetscape consistent with the central business district vision plan. And overall, staff felt the addition areas blended nicely with the existing building and we do support the architecture and design as conditioned. And we're particularly pleased that they were able to get this patio visible from the street. The applicant did provide the colors and materials board if we want to reference that in our discussions. And with that, staff found that the project was exempt from CEQA under section 15301, existing facilities. We sent a public notice to neighbors within 300 feet and placed the notice in the telegraph. and we did not receive any public comments. So with that, we do recommend approval of the project as conditioned. We could take any questions, and the applicants and their, excuse me, the business owner and the architect are also here on the applicant side. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Josh. Commissioners, are there any questions of our staff? Commissioner West.

It's more of a curiosity, just on condition 50 about the new water line. So is the adjacent property owner being required to have construction on their property to create two different water lines to go to the two different properties? I'm just curious how that works on something like this where they're sharing a water line right now.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the technicalities of it. I could follow up with our utilities division if, you know, there's curiosity there, but... Yeah, I'm just worried about, like, could that cause, like, delays to the other property owner, like, not wanting to have to deal with that kind of...

effect on their property from this?

Right, right. I believe all the work should be done on this property, but I can verify.

Okay.

And they were given that notice and didn't seem to be concerned about that. And the property owner might be able to speak to whether they've also spoken with the neighboring property owner about that. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions of our staff? But the notice wouldn't have said something to the neighboring property owner about the fact that their line was affected, right?

The notice wouldn't have, but it has a link to the staff report, and that's where that discussion is. They would have had to read the whole thing.

That's a good question, Commissioner West. Anybody else have questions for staff? Okay, seeing and hearing none, thank you, Josh. Thank you. At this point, we bring up the applicant, so if you'll come on up and... introduce yourselves or yourself and we'll take it from there.

So I'm getting a little presentation ready from them.

Hi, commissioners. My name is Dan Dreher. I'm one of the co-owners of FLB Entertainment Center, soon to be Wally's Entertainment. And I thought I'd start off with kind of telling you guys where we came from. So here's a couple of pictures that have actually surfaced on the Internet going back to 19. Well, this is a grand opening day in 1960 and the 61 and. As you can see, it's kind of fun as we click through these to see the outfits that everybody's wearing. This was on opening day. We have a guy bowling here in a suit or in a tie. And then we have, back then we were allowed to smoke inside the businesses, so he's taken advantage of that. Got some guys, this was a section that people used to be able to sit down and watch people bowling. And then this is what the bar used to look like back in 1961. If you look closely, you can see a lady there in her mink coat. This was a big, big deal in the city of Folsom when Folsom Lake Bowl first opened. A lot of people came from miles around to see the bowling center and see what was built. It reminds me of a lot of Samstown and the people that were bartending back then. And then you can see some people coming in for the grand entrance with the construction sign up still up on the wall of the construction company that was building it. And then people signing the guest book when they were coming in for the first day's entrance. And then this is the last one that they showed us, and this is some folks sitting down looking at the machines in the back, which each machine had 10,000 moving parts per machine. And we've since upgraded, and we don't have as much of a headache with maintaining those anymore. So, a little history about us. Our family, the Dreher family, bought Lake Bowl from the Wiggett family, and that was back in 1979. We owned and operated the bowling center ever since, growing it, remodeling it, fixing it up. improving it, being a big part of our community, also living locally and working inside the business on a day-to-day basis. In 2015, we opened up Wally's Pizza Bar in Cameron Park If any of you guys have ever been there, it's a pizza restaurant, pizza, pasta, salad with amazing wings up in Cameron Park, right off the freeway. And it's been an incredibly successful business. And so we are looking to bring our Waller's Pizza Bar concept down to Folsom. And it's been very the rumors have been spreading and people are getting very excited about this option of having our Waller's Pizza Bar concept in Folsom. So we have decided we're going to be rebranding the FLB Entertainment Center to Wally's Entertainment. And that will come with all the new features. We've always looked at, over the years, making the inside better and better and better. And we weren't as focused on the outside because we wanted people, when they came in, to not only have great service but also have an amazing place inside. So we've always focused on the inside. This is the first time that we're focusing on the inside, improving our food offerings, and also expanding to completely remodel the outside of the building. So it'll be a whole new look, a whole new feel, but the same great service, and it'll be more of a family entertainment center. So we're really excited to bring this to Folsom and have the next evolution in our family business.

Well, thank you, Mr. Dreher. Fun to see the old pictures. Thank you for bringing those. Yeah, that's really nice. Are there questions for the applicant? actually have a couple really um so the when we looked at the overhead i i mean i actually went out there today just to i like to go out and kick the tires and just kind of see what i'm what we're dealing with um the the lot and i mean the stuff in the back um so you're actually going to pave the one that's open for parking now and and that'll become a parking lot is that correct so there'll be an overall expansion of the parking lot uh that'll be uh there's a section in the back that's

more of a, what would you say, more of a graveled section currently that will be over-paved. And then the paving will, there's a fence that's currently there right now, it's kind of blocking the overflow parking. And occasionally, usually once, twice a year, Intel will have a large party where at one time they'll bring their whole, They'll bring multiple departments at one time, and we'll open up the back lot, and they'll have parking back there. That section is actually going to be reduced, and it'll be paved into that section. So the fence will go away. There's a grading plan that's being done. All the grading will be rescaped that area, and then that back section will be graveled. So it won't look the same as it does right now.

Yeah, right now it looks a little overgrown with weeds and almost like a fire hazard. Everybody's...

For years, they've asked us, what do you plan on doing with that? And we've never really done the answer to that.

And I still have that question. But it's parking, essentially, because you're liable to need it.

Yes. And our thought is also using it for the employee parking as well. Okay. Yeah. okay and then um one other question um i noticed there's some shipping containers out there are those going away those are part of the construction uh there's gonna be a lot of things that were a huge remodel as far as new booths that are coming in new tables that are coming in new chairs that are coming in kitchen equipment that's coming in and because our goal is to keep the entertainment center open during the entire time we're going to be doing it in phases so they'll be working on one section then working on another section and another section and so using the ship utilizing the shipping containers to be able to store everything is going to be essential for us to be able to keep the project moving and will they get removed once the project yeah it's just temporary storage okay yeah okay very good all right anybody else commissioner hurst

Hi. Personally, I drive up to Wally's with my family pretty frequently, so I'm excited to hear about the expanded food options. Thank you. I'm curious about the entertainment center changes. I go to FLB occasionally with my daughter, and she's very interested in the machines. Could you speak a little bit more to what your vision is and how this is going to be more options for families? Sure, yes.

So the goal is that... First and foremost, the bowling center stays the same. We've done a lot of remodeling to the bowling center, new machines, offering a new game that's not offered in anywhere within, I would guess, probably about 50 to 100 mile radius called Hyper Bowling, which is a lot of fun. And so the bowling center, all the changes there will stay. and likely more changes coming in the future to improve it, make it even nicer. We're adding a arcade area, which is gonna be like a Dave & Buster style arcade, those style fun games for the kids to play, and that will be in the new area, the new building area in the front of the building. The outdoor area, we are working with a couple different outdoor entertainment, kid entertainment, Groups that will build play structures and swings and areas that the web areas that the kids can crawl through. It's all going to be brand new, state of the art, all with the protective fall zones and everything's going to be done with a, you know. accredited company. And that will be an outdoor area that will be free for the kids to go play while their families are dining. And then we'll have a big grass area in the front of the stage area where we'll have cornhole and life-size Jenga, fun games like that. And then we'll have outdoor seating for families to enjoy outside dining as well as inside dining. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Anything else? All right. Thank you, Mr. Dreher. We appreciate you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming. Okay. Now is the time in the agenda where we ask, is there anybody here who would like to address the commission on this item number one on the Folsom Lake Bowl? Okay. Seeing and hearing nobody rush up, I will close the public hearing. Commissioners, that leaves this item to us. What's your pleasure? Commissioner Ross.

I would just like to say when I saw this project, I was very excited. I had many birthday parties at the bowling alley growing up as a kid, and man do I wish that there was a play structure like that when I was growing up, and my parents would drag me there so they could bowl. So I'm very excited for this remodel. I think it's going to be great for this area and for the community. I can tell that you're very thoughtful about how you put it together, and it really speaks to what we're looking to see in changes in this corridor, making it walkable, making it bikeable,

accessible to all everyone in the community in the area so I really thank you I'm very excited for this project okay so that was addressed to us right okay very good yes it was addressed the committee anybody else have any input before there's a motion or is there a motion Commissioner Barcelona I'll move it okay don't have it up on my screen yet oh that's true I must say I felt the same way. When I did go over there, I was concerned about that one lot that's overgrown right now and has the containers on it, but I feel satisfied that those are going to be removed after the construction, so I appreciate that.

ahead commissioner barcelona all right i'll move to confirm staff's determination that the flb entertainment center expansion project is exempt from sequa under section 15301 existing facilities in a proven application mstr26-00023 for conditional use permit and design review for said project located at 511 east bidwell street Based on the findings findings a through K and subject to conditions of approval conditions 1 to 74 Attached to the staff report Thank You commissioner.

We have a motion. Is there a second second committed seconded by Commissioner Hearst any discussion on the motion on the floor? Hearing and seeing none Karen, please call the roll Commissioner Barcelona.

Yes Hearst. Yes Herrera. Yes West. Yes. Yes and Reynolds.

Yes Congratulations to the Durer family. Thank you for doing your business in Folsom, and we look forward to it becoming a Wally's. Thank you. All right, our next item is item number two.

Go ahead, Karen. MSTR 26-00043, Raising Cane's Restaurant Project and Determination that the Project is Exempt from CECLA. Your project planner is Josh Kincaid.

Okay, welcome back, Josh.

And me again. We'll pull up this PowerPoint too. There it is. Alright. So our second project today is the Raising Cane's Restaurant. This is a design review and plan development permit modification application. So the project is located on a vacant parcel within the Broadstone Point Shopping Center on the corner of East Bidwell Street and Iron Point Road. The center's located at that intersection. It's in the C3 General Commercial Plan Development District zoning designation, and it's surrounded by restaurants, including some drive-throughs. Got a drive-through here and here. And we've got retail and restaurant use here. We've got a, and two hotels. 2575, there's another hotel to the south of that as well. And to the north, the other side of Iron Point Road is additional commercial retail uses. So here's an image of the project site. It is the last undeveloped parcel within the shopping center, and it's surrounded by existing access roads, as you can see here, as well as sidewalks and frontage landscaping. This is the view along Iron Point Road. So here we have the proposed site plan. The applicant's proposing a 3,300 square foot Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers restaurant and an associated two-lane drive-through parking lot, landscaping, and an outdoor eating area. Two access points are provided to the east and south sides of the project site here and here with Iron Point Road being on the north here. Staff found that the project was meeting all relevant development standards as described in the staff report. Regarding floor area ratio, the project would actually be under the minimum floor area ratio of its general plan designation. However, we do have a general plan policy that allows for that when significant amounts of the business are being done outdoors. And we've used that policy in the recent past with the Quick Quack project and the Dutch Brothers project as well. And given the double drive-through here, we do expect a significant amount of the business to be done outside of the building. So we felt that the use of this general plan policy was appropriate in this case. With regards to site circulation, access, and traffic, a transportation analysis was prepared for the project, and that analysis found that the proposed drive-through provided sufficient storage to address peak queuing, and that the site was laid out in a way that would not interrupt traffic outside of the project site. Staff did also provide a condition, as recommended by that transportation study, that if in a peak-peak scenario, the drive-through starts overflowing into the access road, that this east entrance is blocked, from entry and which would get additional queuing flowing through the project site rather than onto the access road. Regarding traffic, the study found that the project would contribute to an intersection at East Bidwell and Iron Point Road that would already be below the General Plan's level of service standard under build out of the area. Hello. That said, the city is currently in the planning phase of its East Bidwell Street operational and pavement rehabilitation project, which would in part help alleviate traffic along this intersection. As part of that effort, staff has asked that Raising Cane's dedicate up to 15 feet of right-of-way in front of their project site. So here's the property line here. So we'd be asking for up to 15 feet of right-of-way. for an additional right turn lane that's part of that East Bidwell Street project. In doing so, they would lose some of the landscaping in front of that building and their drive-through canopy could encroach a bit into the 25-foot front setback, but staff did support this part of the plan development modification request as it does retain a sidewalk in front of the property and a good amount of the landscaping while providing a better driving experience for those utilizing the center as well as the city as a whole. So we felt the plan development modification was justified. So here's the proposed landscaping plan. Staff worked with the applicant to ensure that adequate landscaping and tree shadings provided throughout the site. We even got an additional tree added to the project site. to provide some better shading in that area. They weren't able to add more trees without dipping below the parking requirement for the center, and given that the site's a bit isolated by being surrounded by internal roadways, customers would not be likely able to conveniently park elsewhere. Regarding non-vehicular access, the project is required to provide six bicycle parking spaces. The site is also accessible to pedestrians via the sidewalks on the north side along Iron Point and an existing sidewalk along the west side. That sidewalk leads into the project site here and goes directly into the building. And that access road, I should state, is also accessible to the interior of the project site via an interior crosswalk. With regards to noise associated with the drive-throughs ordering system, staff felt that the proposed landscaping trees that we can see over here provided a good buffer between the order boards, which are located up here. and the surrounding uses. With this landscaping in place, staff didn't believe that additional conditioning was required for those order boards. Also note that the most sensitive use in the area is the hotel located about over 250 feet to the southeast of these order boards. That hotel is also located about 200 feet from the existing Taco Bell drive-thru. the order boards as well, and that use was not conditioned to have, it didn't have any conditions related to the noise of those reader boards. And staff doesn't have any code enforcement complaints on file regarding the sound from that drive-through. So with that, staff does support the planned development permit modification portion of the request as conditioned. Moving on to the design review requests, the building's design would include a mix of stucco and brick masonry, colored earth tones, as you can see here, with black matte steel and red reclaimed metal panel accents. Roofing materials proposed to consist of beige concrete tiles. Staff determined that the applicant incorporated many of the essential design elements required by the Broadstone Point Plan Development Guidelines, and includes appropriate architectural detail on all four sides of the building. I will note that the signage is, again, subject to separate staff level application, but our preliminary review of the signage that's shown on these plans did not raise any concerns. Here we have some images of the proposed colors and materials for reference again. And here are some 3D renderings of the project site. You can see the covered outdoor eating area here as well as their signature red number one made out of the reclaimed metal that provides a nice accent to break up the other earth tones on the building. So as conditions, staff found that the proposed building is consistent with the surrounding development, both in scale and design, and we do support the design review as conditions. And because they did go to the trouble of producing them, here are some aerial renderings of the project site that the applicant provided. These images also show the roof parapet, which is designed and conditioned to shield roof-mounted equipment from public view. We found that the project was exempt from CEQA under Section 15303, new construction. And again, we sent a public notice to neighbors other than 300 feet, as well as posting it in Telegraph and received no public comments. So with that, we can take any questions on the project, and the applicant group is available as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Josh. Are there questions for our staff? Commissioner Ross? Thank you, Chair.

Josh, I had a question regarding the sidewalks. I don't know if you can go back to the site plan for me. Sure. Thank you. So I see there is a sidewalk that just kind of comes to an end along the private access road from Iron Point Road. And I'm assuming that would be crossing towards the hotel? Yes. OK. Now, if you go to the other corner of the lot, there is a four crosswalk experience there, and there's an in-ground brick crosswalk that is not integrated into this project. I'm wondering why we don't have sidewalk and integration with that crosswalk on that corner also.

Yeah, the applicant might be able to speak a little bit to the thought behind the project design. From our perspective, we felt that, if we can go to the, there we go, the aerial here, we've got from the hotel here, there's an existing sidewalk And crosswalk. Right. That leads to this sidewalk here, which could lead into the project site. And there's also the crosswalk up here. So we felt that those were adequate to serve both the internal folks staying at the hotel and anyone coming from Iron Point Road.

Okay. I just think that's a very long path to walk, but it seems to be a much shorter way to go to the other intersection. And there is sidewalk along the hotel that goes that way and crossing there. So I was just curious because that would seem to increase the pedestrian circulation in this area in a safe manner. But thank you for showing the aerial. That's helpful. You can actually see the in-ground crosswalk. Talking about this here? No, further down on that same road. Keep going. Right there. Right there. Got it. Thank you.

THE ONLY, I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND THE POINT THAT YOU'RE MAKING THERE. I THINK ONE OF THE OTHER CHALLENGES FOR THAT IS IT DOES PUT THE PEDESTRIANS CROSSING THE WHOLE DRIVE-THROUGH ENTRY WHICH IS AGAIN NOT IDEAL BUT WHERE AS THE Admittedly, it's a little bit longer route, but that route that Josh was pointing out leads directly to the entrance into the building, as opposed to having them cross across where the the the the one of the main entries for the drive through and the parking area.

right i just i just could see a pedestrian going that way because there's pedestrian access that way and then running into this problem and not knowing how to get there right so i i don't like seeing right half done access because it confuses people and then they end up going across planters or entering other ways and if you have the potential for people to get hit that's my only point on this you know Because if you if you ran the sidewalk along this the front edge of the property of You know along the south side towards the hotel then I think people would walk that way as opposed to going across at the entrance where the Drive-through is But I won't be labor my point. Thank you.

I'll ask the applicant if they thought about that You might have a little more insight as to the site design.

I really appreciate it. Thank you, Josh

Thank you, Commissioner Ross. Any other questions, commissioners? Josh, I have one. As far as you said that East Bidwell improvements are in the planning stage. So compared to when this will open, I mean, I guess we probably don't have a hope that that extra lane would be in by then.

No, I think work will have, based on my conversations with Public Works, work will have begun. on the East Bidwell improvements and the Iron Point improvements by fall of 2027. And that is about, depending on building permits and everything else, about when Raising Cane's would be looking to open. So there would be a gap between this opening and when the roadway improvements are anticipated.

But essentially, there's a sidewalk there now, and that'll have to be taken out, right? Yes. At the front of the raising canes. So what'll be there in the meantime when there's no construction going on and they've dedicated the space?

Well, we wouldn't tear anything up until we're ready to do that project. And so we're not saying it needs to be dedicated as part of the approval of this project. It's more we have the irrevocable offer of dedication so we could get it dedicated when we actually need it and when we know exactly how many feet we're going to need. We need up to 15 at this point, we know, but until we actually get out there, you know, get the document fully created and get everything measured, we don't know exactly how much we're going to need.

Okay, but the requirement on the applicant now would be to only landscape through the point where that 15 feet would start, right?

Yeah, I mean, they're landscaping, they're retaining that existing landscaping up there and...

they're only landscaping within their you know within the projects that the 15 feet would be somewhere up here so they're it's all existing landscaping right now okay all righty okay yeah i just been i'm as you know a little bit concerned about that intersection with adding a lot of traffic to it okay all right any other questions of our staff okay hearing and seeing none thank you josh thank you and we'll bring up the applicant please come on up and introduce yourself and Give us your spiel.

My spiel might be a little shorter because Josh did such a great job with his presentation. It was very thorough. Thank you, Josh. Ryan Hooper, Chair Reynolds and members of the commission with Thatch and Hooper, we're the Land Use Council for raising canes on this project and many others. Thank you for your time tonight. We're excited to be here and present our project on what staff had noted was the last vacant piece of property. It could use a little fresh life to it, so we're excited to come in. This has long been identified for auto oriented uses so i think it's a good fit i think it provides a nice amenity for the adjacent hotels as well with respect to traffic i know traffic's been a bit of a an issue not so much because of what raising canes adds to it but the existing condition plus what raising canes adds to it however much of the reason raising canes selected this site is because of the fact that there's so much activity and and traffic in the area now that much of their customer base would be passed by trips as opposed to um being a destination type use that would attract people from from all over so i think that that's a helpful mitigating uh point but we look forward to providing the right-of-way and being part of the solution hopefully um to reduce the traffic in that in that area A couple of things that I wanted to mention with respect to the accessibility. There is the brick walkways. We tried to structure the pedestrian experience so as to avoid the parking lot as much as possible, hence going down the edge of the site to avoid conflicts with what's a fairly tight parking lot with cars coming and going from the parking spaces as well as entering and exiting the drive-through. So we thought keeping the pedestrians out of that area would be the safer approach. One idea as you were, Commissioner Ross, talking about your concerns was perhaps there's an opportunity for us to work with staff on some directional signage. Might help make it a little easier for people to know where to go and then they wouldn't maybe traverse things on their own um create potential you know safety hazards so with respect to that i think that might be an option we'd be happy to um to entertain and with respect to noise um you know josh and i went back and forth a little bit but our our math uh resulted in 310 feet from the order board to the edge of the hotel i don't think there's an issue there i think there's heavy tree canopy that's a really significant distance And in addition, the project has to be consistent with the city's noise ordinance. And failure to do so would result in citations for our client. And as staff noted, the other fast food restaurant that is indeed closer hasn't even had any reports of an incident. So we think that's good news. The other good news is what this project's bringing. It brings 50 to 75 jobs. It brings a range of pay from part-time employees to full-time employees to store management and the like. So it's an opportunity for more employment, which is always a good thing. We were proud that we were able to get the CEQA exemption here. I think it speaks to the fact that the project doesn't create traffic issues on its own or it wouldn't be eligible for the CEQA. exemption we're also happy that you know as part of the public outreach no objections or negative comments came back so we're very pleased with that and hope that urge you to approve the project tonight We're here. I've got Kelly Agnor with Bison Permitting, who has been helping with this project, as well as Tatiana Braun with Kimley Horn. They did a lot of the technical work on the project. So we're here to answer any questions that you might have this evening. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Hooper. I should have asked this ahead of time, but I did meet with the applicant ahead of time. Is there anybody else who did? Commissioner Herrera, Commissioner Hurst, anybody else? Okay, just to put that out there. Any questions for Mr. Hooper or anybody on the team? Okay, Commissioner Hurst.

Hello. I won for the good of the order. I know the answer to this question because I brought it up in meeting. But regarding the parking spaces, as I see in the application, there are 28 and a number of staff would be on site at the time. Just curious to elevate, what is the plan for staff parking?

The plan for the staff parking is to locate those spaces in the area where if we needed to implement the traffic mitigation plan, that traffic mitigation plan would be such that the cars being held to enter the drive-through queue would be blocking those spaces. So there would be staff who are already there not coming and going with regularity like the customers. And so that's where they would be located. There's 13 employees per shift, so it kind of gives you an idea of the number of car spaces that would need to be utilized by employees. And it's something that Raising Cane's wants to ensure that they have enough parking for their employees and their customers. It's not a recipe for success for them. So they have found that this is a number that works and functions well for them. Of course, no problem. is there a reciprocal is it reciprocal agreement with yes within within that center so right if worse came to worse your employees could park over by sam's they could and it's not ideal just because of the you know the issues that we already talked about with you know um being able to traverse the the lot but that that option exists but we also wanted to make sure that we designed the um the project to be standalone that it could handle its own uh parking needs okay very good anybody else questions commissioner ross

Thank you for talking about the sidewalk. I don't know if this is possible because I don't think you have control over the road, but could we paint that brick-inlaid sidewalk black so that people don't see it?

One of the funny conversations we were having outside before the meeting started is we were talking about the brick walkway, and I had suggested that a lot of benefit would be had by power washing it. It looks like it's pretty dirty and old, and I don't know what that would do just to freshen it up. but it looked like just as construction and other activities, you could just see a lot of dirt tracks and whatnot that make it harder to see, but we would be amenable to working with the association on trying to help look at options like that. We don't control it, as you mentioned, so it's not our decision to make unilaterally, but I think anything that helps reduce safety impacts to potential pedestrians and customers is something that we'd be very much supportive of.

Okay, thank you. Can I just clarify which brick pathway are we talking about? The entryway from Iron Point?

No, it's in the private corner where they have, it's a four-way stop and there's three inline brick crossings. Oh, okay, inside the center. And one goes to this lot, but they're not using it. So it's like a no man's crosswalk. Okay. And I was wondering if we could paint it black, then you won't see it and then maybe no one will try and use it. But I don't know if that's a condition we can put on this or, yeah.

Given that it's off-site, I don't think it's a condition that we could make the other property owner do for this project. Thanks, Josh, yeah.

Any other questions for the applicant? Okay, thank you, Mr. Huber.

Thank you.

All right. So now we will open the public hearing. Is there anybody here who would like to address the commission on this item? I see one, so come on up and please introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm Kurt Biddle. I am the manager for the association that Raising Cane's would let go into. And I just wanted to say I manage the owner's association. So I'll bring up your suggestion. And I'm not a decision maker, but I'm sure they'll be open to some things. The applicant has received approval from the association. They went through our process. They met our CCNRs and they met our concerns. They were very easy to work with and were forthcoming with information. So we support this use and we're excited to see this empty lot be developed. Thank you.

Thank you for being here. Is there anybody else under public comment who would like to speak? Okay, hearing and seeing none, we're closing the public comment. Commissioners, it is now up to us. What do you wanna do about item number two, raising canes? I think with that, I'd be happy to make a motion as long as it's the same one that's in my packet. It looks like it is the same one, but I'm gonna move to confirm staff's determination that the Raising Cane's Restaurant project is exempt from CEQA under section 15303, new construction or conversion of small structures, and approve an application MSTR 26-00043 for a design review and plan development permit modification for said project located at 2565 Iron Point Road based on the findings A through Q, and subject to the conditions of approval, conditions one through 71, attached to the staff report. There's a motion, is there a second?

Second.

Second. Commissioner West beats Commissioner Herrera, so Commissioner West seconds. Thank you very much, Commissioner West. Is there any discussion on the motion on the floor? I too am excited to see this dirt lot paved. Not paved, but I mean with a use, because we've been looking at it for a long time, and it's very nice to see that. No other discussion on the motion? Okay, hearing none, Karen, go ahead and call the roll.

Commissioner Barcelona? Yes. Commissioner Hurst? Yes. Herrera? Yes. West? Yes. Ross? Yes. And Reynolds?

Yes. Okay, Raising Cane's, thank you for doing business in Folsom. We look forward to it. All right, and for those of you who travel, thank you for coming all the way here. Okay, next item is item number three. Karen, will you please go ahead and call that item for us?

ZCAM 26-00085, zoning code update, density bonus ordinance update. Housing Manager Stephanie Henry will be presenting.

Okay, we get a change of scenery with Stephanie. Relax, Josh, take a deep breath.

Okay, thank you, Josh, for putting this up for me. Good evening, Chair Reynolds, commissioners, Stephanie Henry, planning our community development department. So this next item before you this evening is a proposed update to the city's density bonus ordinance, which is located in chapter 17.102 of the city's Folsom Municipal Code. So state density bonus law was enacted in 1979, and it requires cities to provide density bonuses, incentives, concessions, parking reductions, and waivers to development standards for housing developments that include qualifying levels of affordable or senior housing. The purpose of this law is to incentivize the production of affordable housing by allowing developers who include specified percentages of lower income units to exceed what the local zoning or general plan would otherwise permit. And as part of statute, cities must grant a density bonus and the related incentives, concessions, and or waivers if a project qualifies and requests them. So the city adopted a local density bonus ordinance in 2002 and then updated it in 2005, and since then we haven't not had any updates. However, the state has amended density bonus law numerous times over the past years, especially the past decade. And as a result, our density bonus ordinance is not current with statute or state law. Recognizing this as part of our housing element update, we identified a program to update our density bonus ordinance to make it consistent with state law. And we were proposing to do that as part of the city's zoning code. Update that we are proposing and since that has been delayed We are now just moving forward and taking this on as a single update to the ordinance So I think before I Discuss the proposed update to the ordinance it'd be helpful to highlight kind of provide a high-level overview of what state density bonus law says Basically, as the name implies, it allows density bonus to projects that are housing projects in exchange for affordable housing units. And there are three primary categories of the benefits, which is one, the density bonus or the additional units, two, concessions, and or incentives and three waivers of development standards. And I will touch on all three of these kind of benefits throughout the next few slides. So with respect to additional units, the additional units that are permitted under state density bonus law are proportional to the percentage of affordable units provided. And on this slide, I've included a table to the right that kind of summarizes how this works. I think there's a few important things to point out. First of all, there are numerous types of projects now that do qualify for density bonus provisions or allowances. So you can see those types listed in the left portion of this table. And then for each type, they have their own unique percentage of required affordable units to qualify for the density bonus. And then for each type, they also are permitted or granted specified proportional amount of density based on the units provided. So for example, the first one is very low income. For that category, if a developer proposes to develop 5% of the units in their development as very low, they could receive a 20% density bonus. and then it slides all the way up to 15%. If they provide at least 15% of the units as affordable, they can receive the maximum of 50% density bonus. So this is a summary. It doesn't show the table that would be shown in the statute that lists every single one of these. But I think it's important to point out that it's pretty complex. And this is continually changing with new amendments. On the left-hand side of the screen, I just tried to illustrate a quick example of how density bonus works with the units. So if the base project is permitted a maximum of 100 units on a project site, and they propose to build 10% of those units, or dedicate 10% of those units as low income, that would be 10 of the 100 units, then they are eligible to receive a 20% density bonus, which would be 20 units. So the 100-unit project could develop at 120 units with the density bonus. Regarding incentives and concessions, a project may receive up to five incentives or concessions, which are modifications to development standards intended to offset the costs of providing affordable housing. Common examples are reduced setback requirements, reduced parking requirements, flexibility in building materials or design standards, reduced width for driveways or private streets. I'm sure many of you are familiar with our Habitat for Humanity project, They received a density bonus for that project. They had a reduced rear yard setback for the smaller cottage units. And they also, the homes are built with single car garages instead of a double garage. The typical standard would have been a two car garage. So they received a parking concession. the number of concessions on or incentives that a project may seek is dependent on the percentage of affordability of the units as Illustrated in this table. So again, the statute has another table for us to reference when we're looking at density bonus law And you can see there's up to the five concessions I With respect to waivers of development standards, a project may receive waivers from development standards that would otherwise make the project physically impossible to build at the permitted density. Common examples would be waiver of maximum building height, waiver of story limits, like two to three stories, waiver of front, rear, or side yard setbacks. And then another component of density bonus law is that it allows a density bonus applicant to request to use parking ratios that are established in the statute, and as shown here in this table. And they can receive these parking reductions beyond any incentives, concessions, or waivers. So this is a separate aspect of density bonus law and another benefit. So with regards to, or I guess what I should say before I move on is, as you can see, there's a lot of different nuances to state density bonus law and as these things have evolved, jurisdictions have been trying to keep up. Many jurisdictions have staff and can support dating of their ordinance, so they will update them periodically to keep up. We do that with our ADU ordinance. But we generally probably don't have enough staff to keep up with the amount of updates that would be required to keep our ordinance in total alignment with the statute and keep all the detailed information. So with this update, what we are proposing to do is really kind of strip our ordinance down and overhaul it by repealing it and reacting it to align with the significant changes of state law, but to focus on referencing state law directly and avoiding the incorporation of the statutory language or tables into the ordinance that would become quickly obsolete. Our ordinance does outline some city specific procedures, but the goal is to avoid redundancy, maintain consistency with future legislative amendments, and provide a streamlined framework for staff and applicants. This is a busy slide that kind of goes over some of the significant aspects of the ordinance. It specifies that the number of allowable incentives or concession is determined by state density bonus law and that qualifying projects are eligible for these incentives and concessions even when no density increase is requested. so they don't actually have to request to build additional units beyond the density. That's part of statute, but it clarifies it in the ordinance. The ordinance also establishes that applicants may request an unlimited number of waivers of development standards and clarifies that the city may not require any type of feasibility analysis or alternative designs in connection with the waiver request. And with regards to parking ratio, the ordinance clarifies that the parking requirements for housing development that qualifies for a density bonus shall not exceed maximum parking ratios established by state law. I also wanted to point out that we did circulate a green sheet for you this evening. That green sheet, we noticed a few discrepancies with how we spelled city, capital and not capital, as well as ordinance, so we cleaned that language up. But we also added a couple clarifying sections to that. to the ordinance. One of the sections that we added was in past practice we have allowed developers to actually go below the minimum density on an affordable housing project as a concession. And we wanted to add language in our ordinance that identifies that specifically. And then a couple other just clarifying items. So the next steps are we are hoping to take this proposed ordinance update to city council in September for both first reading and then second reading and adoption. After that, the ordinance, if adopted, the ordinance will go into effect 30 days after the adoption. and then we are also be required to submit the updated ordinance to the California Department of Housing and Community Development so they can review the ordinance. And with that, staff's recommending Planning Commission move to recommend that the City Council adopt Ordinance 1374 and Ordinance of the City of Folsom for the repeal and reenactment of Chapter 17.102 Density Bonus of the Folsom Municipal Code and determine that the project is exempt from CEQA.

Okay, thank you, Stephanie, and thank you for the primer and a reminder about how density bonus law works. I wasn't aware that some of those tables were actually in the law, so that's amazing that the legislature grappled with how to nitpick that. anyway um are there questions for our staff about this item can you real quick just look at the green sheets with us and explain like the the one you mentioned because i see we don't have page numbers on this but um the third page is where they start the great big the great big paragraph is the one you mentioned okay And then I noticed we've got something in here saying, as determined by the city and its reasonable discretion, we're not getting ourselves in any trouble by giving ourselves discretion about something, are we? With state law?

Well, this will go to HCD, so they'll let us know. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Okay, and that item number two is the one you mentioned. And then everything else is, and then... unless voluntarily agreed to by the applicant on something else.

Yeah, and those are the three.

Okay, and then everything else is just the city, city, city. Okay, all right. So no questions of our staff? Commissioner Harris.

I have something of an administrative process question, which I'm not sure would necessarily be addressed in this ordinance, but to the extent that this ordinance really sets the framework for what the city can and can't do with the approval of these projects and all the math involved in determining density bonuses. is there opportunity for if the city wanted to weigh in on a preference for certain types of bonuses that would would that be done through ordinance or would that be done through like a city resolution or is it just at the applicant's discretion more so than in the city's discretion i would say it would be at the applicant's discretion but

I mean, the city can put in place policies and programs in the housing element to encourage different types of development. That might be an avenue that we could use.

Thank you, Commissioner Hurst. Anybody else have any questions for Stephanie? Okay, thank you very much, Stephanie. Very good update and education for us, re-education for us. Okay, now we will open the public comment. Is there anybody here who would like to comment on this item to the commission? Hearing and seeing none, we'll close the public comment. And now it is up to the commission what they'd like to do with this item. Comments, concerns? Commissioner Barcelona, go ahead.

It's not on my screen. Can't do it without the screen. OK, hold on. Here we go.

OK.

I'll move to recommend the City Council adopt ordinance number 1374, an ordinance of the City of Folsom for the repeal and reenactment of chapter 17.102 density bonus of the Folsom Municipal Code and determine that the project is exempt from CEQA. And I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second from Commissioner Ross. Is there any discussion on the motion on the floor? I think I'd like to take the chair's prerogative and ask our staff a question. The update of the zoning code, what's the guesstimate on that?

Yeah, so we're actually now reengaging, we had take, we had taken a fairly significant pause on that, because of all the changes with state law, and then also just the volume of work that we were seeing, which pulled staff on off of a lot of the long range stuff we were working on and onto to current planning efforts. So we've reengaged with our consultant, and we are expecting to finish it up next by the end of next year.

Okay, very good. Thank you, thank you very much. Anything else, any discussion on this motion? Hearing and seeing none, Karen, please call the roll.

Okay, Commissioner Barcelona? Yes. Hurst? Yes. Herrera? Yes. West? Yes. Ross?

Yes.

And Reynolds? Yes. Okay. Stephanie, thank you for a very thorough job on this. Appreciate it.

Yes, that was great.

All right. Next up, we're going to talk about South of 50 and what the status of everything is over there. And as you remember, we had some confusion in the past about how many oak trees there were left to take, how much commercial is left, how much commercial has been swapped out for residential, et cetera, et cetera. So that is why we're having a presentation on this now from Desmond Parrington.

Yeah, hi, I'm does been parenting planning manager with the community development department. Unfortunately, Jessica brand who did a lot of the work on this is not able to join us tonight. She's ill. So I'll be handling this for her as well as giving the. The planning report later at the end of the meeting. So with that, this is a special presentation. We wanted to give you a little bit of background just on the history of the Folsom Plan area, what's happened in the past, what's going on currently, and what's expected in the future. And we're going to look at a variety of different aspects. To her credit and to the chair's credit, I think this was a good time to do this. And in fact, I kind of wish that we had done this a little earlier, just given the volume of projects that we've come to the commission in this area. But I'll start with the outline here. So we're going to touch on the background and the history, talk about the build out of the specific plan, really talk about infrastructure planning and development, and then all the public services and facilities that are to happen down there. and then open space, which is a real key part of the specific plan, and then the oak woodland tree canopy preservation. We'll then talk about a number of opportunities, as well as challenges that we're seeing down there, and some additional, we'll provide some additional information and resources that you can look up on your own time if that's interested, or you can refer members of the public to it as well. So first I'm gonna start off with what is the specific plan? So it implements the goals of a general plan for a designated area. These tend to be kind of larger areas. There's been a number of them that have been done in Folsom. This one happens to be for, obviously for the Folsom plan area specific plan. But the important thing about them is they're a comprehensive tool for helping to plan and realize the vision for development of that area. They have to be consistent with the general plan, and they... They're adopted through public hearings, but unlike the general plan or the zoning, for example, they have to include implementation measures that get into the details of that development. And what's unique about them is they have to include a financing component. So it's not just, okay, we're going to put together a pretty plan, like a vision plan or a master plan. A specific plan has to have specific implementation tools, including financing that lays out how this is going to be planned for and how this will be built and financed. So as I said earlier, we've adopted a number of these throughout the city. There's several in the Broadstone area. There's the Willow Springs. There's quite a few in the city. This one just happens to cover the Folsom Plan area located down here. It's about 3,500 acres. So just to give you a history of the city and its growth through kind of annexations, because, again, we annexed this area down here, is that the city has kind of long been a community. While we incorporated in 1947, the city of Folsom has, or the town, if you will, has been around since the 1800s. with the terminus of Sacramento Valley Railroad, the gold mining activity, the first powerhouse in the western U.S., all of that. So we incorporated in 1947, and it was basically, as you can see right here, really around the historic district area. And then between 1947 and 1970, we really expanded to the east up here and then up to the north across Lake Potomac. Then we had another major expansion between the 1970s and really up into the 80s that we moved out to El Dorado County and then also Yeah, really a lot of this was out in the El Dorado County area. So you've got Broadstone and you've got Empire Ranch, the master plan communities that were predominantly developed by Elliott Holmes. A lot of this was related to the location of Intel arriving and a major influx of workers because Intel at its peak had about 5,000 workers. Right around that time, we adopted the 1988 general plan and that guided development for the next 30 years. But then there was a lot of discussion about what was gonna happen south of Highway 50, and there was a growing interest by landowners and developers down there about developing this area, but there was a real concern about, okay, whether the city of Folsom was going to control that, or whether Sacramento County was gonna control that development and growth. So there was a process between 1999 and 2012, which I'll get into more detail on, to ultimately annex that area. And then in 2018, we did a comprehensive update to our general plan. And then at that same time, we also annexed this area to be our southern courtyard for the city. So this kind of shows you the expansion that occurred over time. So specific to the Folsom Plan area, the area south of Highway 50. So in 1999, there was all this discussion about the future growth of the city south of Highway 50 and who was going to control that development. And in 2001, LAFCO, the Local Agency Formation Commission, which is an arm of Sacramento County, and they are... handle the growth of cities and special districts that are looking to change or alter their boundaries. So in order to be able to annex an area into the city, it has to be in what's called your sphere of influence. So we amended the city's sphere of influence to include this area down to White Rock Road. And then there was a lot of planning and workshops with the community about what the community wanted to see in this area as part of this specific plan. So there's a number of kind of key issues there. Obviously, water was a big part of that. Transportation infrastructure was part of it. Parks, schools, and facilities. And the other part of it was that the North wouldn't be subsidizing the growth of the South, that it would pay its own way. And then another really critical issue, because during this period we were going through a drought, was whether there was going to be sufficient water to serve this area. And so the voters ultimately decided and voted 70 percent pretty overwhelmingly that they wanted to annex this area into the city. And they they wanted to make sure that it abided by these kind of key things that were outlined in Measure W, which is now part of the city's charter. that talked about preserving the open space, keeping 30% of that area as open space in perpetuity, and then making sure that it paid its own way, making sure that there was sufficient water, making sure that it had all the services and facilities that was necessary. So then after that, there was a whole visioning and land planning exercise that that went on to identify how the parcels would be created down here and how this area would be zoned for development, which ultimately related ultimately resulted in the adoption of the specific plan. And then finally, in in In 2012, after all the specific plan had been done and all the environmental work had been done, the local HC formation commission approved the annexation And it was ultimately annexed into the city at that time. Between 2013 and 2014, there were a number of specific plan refinements and amendments. I'll talk about those a little bit later. And then there was... Beginning with the site work, there was over $250 million of investment in backbone infrastructure, pipes, sewer treatment plants, lift stations, I'm sorry, sewer treatment plants, sewer lift stations, water pump stations, water tanks, roadways, trails, all that kind of stuff necessary to allow the development to begin. And then in 2017, the first building permit was issued, and by 2018, we had the first residential home occupied. As of today, there's about 4,900 homes, single family homes that have been occupied along with two apartment projects, two elementary schools, two commercial projects, one medical office building, one fire station, a number of parks, trails, and open space that are all either completed or under construction. As I said, with the adoption of the specific plan that was adopted in 2011, and along with that was an environmental document, it was an environmental impact report which is required under the California Environmental Quality Act, along with an environmental impact statement, which is required under the National Environmental Policy Act. And the reason why that it had to be satisfied both federal as well as state requirements is because the federal agencies had jurisdiction over some of these areas, like the Army Corps of Engineers for areas that are wetlands, things like that. So this was the original specific plan, and there are some kind of key differences that I want to point out as we look at this. So as you can see here, there was a lot more commercial development here, and then much bigger here. The town center was shifted further down and was actually quite a bit narrower. And then the high school was to plan to be here a private school was going to be here and But there were a number of refinements a lot of that was driven by the economy because we all saw after the the boom of the Internet You know retailing changed quite a bit so We'll bring this up here. So here's the specific plan today. So I'm gonna highlight a couple things. So you can see here that this larger regional commercial serving retail, it was kind of envisioned to be a power center, was really, was pared back and the town center was enlarged. This area went from primarily commercial to primarily residential. The high school relocated over to this area from this area, and the middle school most recently moved over to this area to do a combined high school, middle school. They're still separate campuses, but sharing some of the same facilities in order to achieve some cost savings. All of this land is controlled by a variety of landowners. Westland Capital Partners and its affiliates are one of the biggest ones. But you also have Elliott Homes located here. Elliott Homes also owned and then ultimately sold off this area right up here. This is called Broadstone Estates. And then in addition to that, the new home company owned most of Russell Ranch. Other areas, predominantly the commercial areas are owned by Eagle Commercial or Eagle Office Properties, which is a ownership group. And then lastly, this area, which I'll talk about a little bit, is still owned by Aerojet, but they have an agreement to sell this to Westland once the remediation there is complete, and I'll talk about that a little bit more. And as a result, the city has these amended and restated development agreements with each of the landowners laying out their responsibilities as well as the city's responsibilities regarding the development of this. The specific plan is not just a standalone document. There's a lot of other pieces that implement this. Like I talked about, specific plans have to have financing plans to show how they are actually going to pay for all the infrastructure necessary to ensure that that specific plan builds out. So we have right here the public facilities financing plan. It's a very detailed financing plan. that identifies how impact fees and community facilities districts and other things are going to be used to underwrite the infrastructure and pay for the development of the infrastructure necessary to serve the area. In addition to that, we also have an open space management plan and operations and management plan for how the open space will be maintained in perpetuity by the city, how that will be funded. and controlled. We also have a variety of other documents here, including we've got, there are several design guidelines for the kind of the community space here, but also we've got design guidelines for like the central area, for Russell Ranch, for other developments throughout here. So the specific plan has built out in a number of phases. Really, it started with Russell Ranch by the new home company. They were one of the first to develop. Then followed by this area owned by Westland called Mangini Ranch. This was their first phase. And you had developers such as KB Homes and Mancini. And yeah, that were active down in that area. And then you can see these are some of the first developments. This is Russell Ranch here. This is Mangini Ranch. Mangini Ranch here as well. So you can see the early construction here. THERE. THIS IS A PICTURE OF THE FIRST HOMEOWNER WHO MOVED IN, GOT THEIR CERTIFICATE OF OCCUPANCY AND MOVED IN IN 2018 ALONG WITH OUR CITY MANAGER AND THE POLICE AND FIRE. IN THE SECOND PHASE, We had Carr Ranch, which is located here, White Rock Springs Ranch, which is located here, Mangini Ranch is kind of phase two, and then the Toll Brothers development in this area, which started here and then has worked its way across. There was quite a flurry between 2019 and 2022, and even before that, of all these different maps that got entitled and built out over this time period. Since that time, we've seen Lenar build up this area. This area was sold to Lenar by the new home company. And so Lenar developed this area here. Broadstone Estates was sold to Woodside Homes and to Shawwood, who developed this product. We had UC Davis, the state of California, purchased parcel 61 right here. And then that was shortly followed by Dignity Health buying this parcel right there, along with Lewis Homes buying these two sites for rental townhome development. Then we had... This area down here is Mangini Ranch phase two, and then Mangini Ranch phase three. And then in this third phase, Folsom Heights, although it was one of the first projects to get their final map, they had put off actual development for a number of years, and they are now getting going on that as well. Toll, I didn't flag this area, but they now are wrapping up their developments here. In terms of future development, Before you was the Toll Brothers project. That's 1,424 residential lots that will be developed in this area, along with a new school, a fire station up here, a new park. And then the high school and middle school sites will be developing. Then we have the remainder of Parcel 61. This area was one parcel that's been kind of subdivided after UC Davis bought this chunk. and then the industrial kind of office properties up here, and then the town center and the surrounding kind of single family uses. So we actually have an application in from Taylor Morrison, which you'll be seeing in the fall, which is looking to develop this area here, up here, and this spot right there. So this is the build out of some of the projects. This is our fire station 34. This is the shops at Folsom Ranch, which is the first small commercial center in there. It includes a bank, sit down restaurants, Some drive-thru restaurants. We have Mangini Ranch Elementary, which along with Alder Creek Elementary, which is the first two elementary schools. And then we've got some of the projects here. I believe this is either, I think this is Lenar up in Russell Ranch. One of the most critical aspects of this whole effort is because this is 3,500 acres of greenfield areas, all new infrastructure had to be put in here. And so this map shows all the backbone roadways. And one of the things that kind of happened kind of midstream in terms of in terms of the development of this backbone infrastructure was a recognition by the city that we needed to look at alternative ways of maintaining traffic flow, but doing it in a more safer and controlled way than typical signalized intersections allowed for. So the city actually in 2024 adopted um a new roundabout policy that would allow for many of these intersections to the west of east bidwell because these had already been built to start installing um roundabouts the roundabouts the benefit of the roundabouts is that it helps to keep traffic moving but it keeps it um going at a little bit slower speed and there um It provides a little bit greater visibility for pedestrians and cyclists. In addition to that, as you can see here, is that while we have two existing interchanges here at East Bidwell and Prairie City, two additional interchanges and one over-crossing, were planned to develop along with this. So the city's focus has really been on the Empire Ranch interchange and getting that off the ground. The next focus will be on the construction Sorry will be on the oak avenue interchange this is an over crossing at roeberry that will connect up to iron point but won't go any further this this will provide connection kind of throughout the city and then down to the new high school there at the oak avenue interchange. I'll talk a little bit more about the interchanges in just a second. Here you can see some of the early pictures of East Bidwell and Alder Creek Parkway and Grand Prairie as they were under development. And here you can see kind of the landscaping of the medians and the areas adjacent to the roadways. So as I talked about earlier, we've got Empire Ranch, East Bidwell, the Roebury Road overcrossing Oak Avenue Parkway and Prairie City. So we have two new interchanges and an overcrossing. It's anticipated that the Empire Ranch interchange will go first. We're pretty far along. Public Works is pretty far along. in terms of the design and the environmental clearance on this one. They're just waiting for the final Caltrans approval, and then really the focus is gonna be on the funding. So we have been collecting development impact fees, but because this serves more than just the development down here, we can't saddle all the development down there with was solely with that interchange so it's a variety of funds that will that will fund that it's most likely that that will be an over crossing first it will be built in phases with an over crossing first and then the interchange elements added on uh later part of that is political because caltrans has um generally been not looked favorable favorably or favorable more recently on adding interchanges because of concern about increasing capacity on the highways. And then the same approach will be taken with Oak Avenue, probably an over-crossing and then interchange later. This shows you, I know this is a little hard to read, but along with all this backbone infrastructure in terms of the roadways, it was critical that all the water and sewer pipes be put in as well. And so not only do we have the pipe sizes here in terms of 12 inch and 24 inch and so forth, but this kind of identifies The phasing of it, and it's broken down into zones. So the whole city is regulated by different water zones. Those water zones have to maintain a certain pressure in order to provide fire sprinklers and hydrants and also. uh pressure to the homes they also have um booster pumps or you know water pumps for pumping moving that water and storage tanks to provide um excess capacity and help to maintain the pressure so this just gives you a very detailed illustration of that in terms of the sewer infrastructure there's lift stations at these two locations identified here Again, designed to serve the plan area. Because you've got a fair bit of topography in this area, the lift stations are necessary because not everything can be gravity flowed. One of the aspects that was a little bit more controversial, certainly when we went to the city council, was with regard to the drainage basins. As you can see on the original map, the drainage basins are identified by these dots because at the time, this hadn't been all plotted out and engineered and figured out, okay, how... what the size of those drainage basins needs to be. So this gives you an example, these are two drainage basins, they're two dots, in reality this is what that drainage basin looks like. And I think one of the areas of concern was that drainage basins in the kind of defined print of the specific plan drainage basins are allowed to be in open space areas. There are elements of infrastructure that are allowed to exist in open space areas, things like telecommunications facilities, drainage basins, those kinds of things. And there's two different types of open space areas which I'll talk about in a little bit. There's kind of your passive and your conservation open space areas. But I think this, gives you a sense of kind of like the heartburn and the concern that there was because this was in an area that happened to have also that was open spaced, but it had oak woodland canopy. And so that was the concern is like, yes, this is allowed, but that's going to impact more oak woodland canopy than was originally anticipated. And again, I'll talk about oak woodland canopy in a minute. As the project, as the specific plan has built out, most of the backbone infrastructure is now in on the eastern area. The owners group, the new home company and Westland actually formed improvement companies to put in all that infrastructure first to allow for development to occur. Now that development is occurring, It's been a kind of a different approach here in that we had to work with the developers and the landowners to figure out a phasing plan for all the backbone infrastructure. So this identifies the responsibility of the various different developers or land owners with regard to the build out of Alder Creek Parkway, for example, because right now it's just from about here onto here, it's just a service road. It needs to be built out in its entirety. The same thing with Oak Avenue Parkway, again, down from the interchange down to the school. The high school that needs to be built out. Same with Haven Parkway here. Prairie City Road. So all of these Sierra Parkway, all of these different roadways. And in addition to that, there are you can see over here, there are. water tanks and booster pumps that need to be located in various different areas of the city because the specific plan is primarily covered by zones three and zone four. So additional infrastructure, they had to put a two million gallon tank in for zone four. There is a booster pump station for zone four required, a booster pump station for zone three, and then these two These tanks are already are triggered at a certain number of units to be developed. And again, this is all necessary to maintain the water pressure and the services so that this areas can be built out. The other element of this of the specific plan was to include on transit to serve this area so. This area right here is on arrow jet property and. And. This area is called the Glenborough Master Plan. This area was anticipated to actually develop before the Folsom Plan Area Specific Plan, and then Easton Valley Parkway was gonna go from the Hazel Light Rail Station along Easton Valley Parkway, connect to Prairie City, and then go from Prairie City along Alder Creek Parkway, dropped down Westwood to Savannah Parkway, and then out. It's not quite clear where this was going because there really isn't development down here, but that's what was shown in the specific plan. I think at the time, Sacramento Regional Transit, in discussions with the landowners, were hoping that this might be a bus rapid transit line. Bus rapid transit is buses that run in their own dedicated lane, they're high frequency, 15 minutes or less along that. But in order to get funding for that, you have to have really high densities along that route to be competitive for federal funds. And While we have areas that will ultimately be competitive, like around the town center, we don't have that throughout the area. So in recent discussions we've had with RT about getting transit down to this area, they have indicated to us that they do not think, and we agree with this, that that area is going to be competitive for bus rapid transit. We don't have bus rapid transit right now in the entire Sacramento region. There have been efforts to get that on the Stockton Boulevard corridor, but even that has been more high frequency bus rather than a true bus rapid transit system. So instead, we worked with Sacramento Regional Transit to redesign Alder Creek Parkway and remove the really large median that was supposed to be converted to a bus rapid transit route. And instead, RT informed us that they could still provide ULTIMATELY UP TO FIFTEEN MINUTE SERVICE ALONG THAT CORRIDOR BUT IN MIXED FLOW SO WE AS PART OF YOUR APPROVALS FOR THE TOLL PROJECT THAT ACTUALLY THERE WAS A MINOR ADMINISTRATIVE MODIFICATION THAT REDUCED THE MEDIAN FOR ALDER CREEK PARKWAY ALLOWED FOR A LITTLE BIT MORE OPEN SPACE ALONG THE EDGES AND THEN allowed for the bus to travel in mixed flow lanes, because there's two lanes in each direction there. But what we are currently working on with Sacramento Regional Transit is to try and get an initial transit down to this area particularly in this area where we've got the major employment centers with UC Davis Health and with Dignity Health. UC Davis has a 100,000 square foot medical office building that's been operational since last September, and Dignity Health will soon have, probably late next year, will soon have their 90,000 square foot medical office building. And again, these are the first phases of multi-phase development for these two sites, which will be medical center campuses. The idea eventually is to, this is to help serve employees and particularly residents. So, you know, get to these areas, but ultimately we're looking at longer term this is just the first kind of the initial steps that implementation so we are looking at either modifying the f-10 route to add an additional leg to serve this area or potentially running a new route that would primarily serve the East Bidwell corridor from the historic district down to this area so we're looking at a number of different options and looking at potential costs and and partnering potentially with businesses in the community, including the healthcare providers. While we have been collecting money from development for this, that money can also only be used for capital improvements rather than operations. And so that's where often the gap is in these transit projects. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about infrastructure planning and development, but specifically focused on funding. So all the backbone infrastructure in the planned area is supposed to be funded through the establishment of one or more community facilities districts, along with impact fees and private development financing. So we have, you may be familiar with what's called land secured financing. These are called mellow roost districts. Another name for them is community facilities districts. So what happens is that the land owners, when they're getting ready to develop, they will form a community facilities district. They establish it because it's a vote of one, because that's the landowner that votes for this. The city then issues those bonds. Those bonds are then paid back by the homeowners and the businesses that buy those homes. So it's a fee that they pay back over time. That money that they raise through the sale of bonds is then used to pay for the infrastructure and some of the facilities that are necessary to support the development of the area. So I want to talk a little bit about some of those facilities. You can see on this map, there's a whole series of parks. We have two kind of regional serving parks. This is Community Park East and Community Park West. And then we have a whole series of neighborhood parks. The green area up here, this is actually a private open space area associated with the clubhouse for Russell Ranch that the Russell Ranch community has benefit for. We have a fire station and then a future police station in this area, and we'll have a fire station around in this area as well. We have five elementary schools. So we have Mangini Rance Elementary, Alder Creek Elementary, and then the next elementary school to be built will be in this area. In terms of the parks that have been built, the... We've got Prospector Park down here, right next to Mancini Elementary. And then the next park which is being designed right now is Jackrabbit Park. And then Fire Station 34 right here was just complete. And Prospector Park was completed on 2025. So this will be one of the other main priorities after Jackrabbit Hill Park. And then these parks will develop kind of later on. WANTED TO TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE OPEN SPACE, BUT BEFORE I DO, THIS IS COMMUNITY PARK EAST, THIS IS COMMUNITY PARK WEST, SO THIS KIND OF SHOWS THE SERVICE AREA FOR THOSE PARKS. AGAIN, THOSE ARE LARGER SERVING KIND OF MORE REGIONAL PARKS, AND THEY'LL HAVE A LOT MORE AMENITIES THAN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD SERVING PARKS. So, you know, like an aquatic center, there'll be a lot of sports fields and things like that. So with regard to Measure W that was approved in 2004 that I talked about, 30% of the of the acreage here needs to be preserved as open space. And there's two types of open space. There's passive open space, like in this area, you can see here on the light green. That's where you can have like walking trails and you could have bike trails go through that. But then you have your preserve open space. These are sensitive biological and cultural resource areas. Like in here, for example, this kind of follows the pathway of Alder Creek. And again, you've got sensitive species there, sensitive habitats. And generally, those areas, you can't have a telecommunications facility there. you can't have a drainage basin in those areas. They're supposed to be protected and preserved and no developments allowed. In terms of the open space, there are a number of class one and two bike trails throughout the area. The class two bike lanes are those that are kind of on the streets, and then you have the separated bike trails, which often run through the open space areas. And then these are the blue here are where there are pedestrian signals to help for pedestrians and cyclists cross those areas. Currently, there are about 15 miles of trails out of the 30 that have been completed so far. You can see the ones in blue have been built and are open. The ones in Mangini Ranch are currently under construction. The ones that are in design are in yellow here. So you've got these extensions along White Rock Road, which is also known as the Southeast Connector. And much of that connector, at least in the Folsom portion, has been built along here. And then ultimately in the planning stages, Parks is working with the City Arborist and with design firms and environmental firms to plan this in a way that it doesn't impact the preservation areas that I was talking about, but also doesn't result in any more oak woodland canopy loss. So moving on to the oak woodland canopy issue, this was the original diagram in the specific plan, and this shows the entirety of the oak woodland canopy along with isolated oaks. All of these are kind of concentrated on the western portion, so while you had some topography over in Russell Ranch, you didn't have the kind of tree issues that we do here, because we have both topography and entry issues here. So the woodlands are located both on open space areas as well as on areas slated for development. But one of the crucial things in the specific plan is at the end of the day, we have to preserve 396.52 acres of oak woodland canopy in perpetuity. So as you can see here, the areas that were generally slated for development show the removal of those oak woodland. But again, this was done very early in the specific plan when not all of the grading and everything like that had been figured out. And so, as we talked about with the toll project, they're only showing the actual roadway for Alder Creek, but in order to get that roadway in, you have to do grading around there. The same thing with the detention basin that we talked about earlier, it showed, there was some area for that detention basin but in reality this whole area was was affected that's why there was those issues with the toll project that we brought to your attention, because with the toll and Taylor Morrison projects, we are coming very close now to that 396.52 acre threshold. And so that has implications for the development of these other sites here and here, which are predominantly zone for office and industrial uses. So there are... In addition to kind of the challenges that we have with the oak woodland canopy, there's a number of other kind of opportunities, but also still some challenges that I'd like to go over with you, and I'm happy to answer any questions at the end. So there's been a lot of interest, understandably, given the congestion that we're experiencing at the East Bidwell Interchange about when Empire Ranch Interchange is going to get built. particularly because Folsom Heights is now starting to get going on their development. So this shows you the design for – sorry, this is flipped a little bit. This is – that's north – no, actually, that's north going that way. So this is – This is Highway 50, and then this is Empire Ranch up here, and this is the Folsom Plan area, and then Folsom Heights over in this area. So you can see that this is the design for this kind of half cloverleaf design, but ultimately it will be an overcrossing first before it becomes the full overcrossing. And then that will allow folks to travel on Iron Point to get up to the interchange at... up there in El Dorado Hills, or to go down and be another way to get to East Bidwell and the interchange that way. The other challenge is that the build-out of the non-residential and the build-out of the multi-family and affordable development has taken, I think, a bit longer than anticipated. We're just now getting to the parks over here. Haven't gotten to this park yet. There's been no development up here. This is a mixed-use parcel. And while Dignity is working on their first 90,000 square foot development, the rest of the development here may be a ways away. We do have a development here that's just come in, the plaza at Alder Creek, which you'll be seeing later this year. And then the construction is going on right here at Alder Creek Marketplace, which will provide the first grocery store down in the Folsom plant area, which will be a safe way along with inline retail and a gas station there. But, you know, Typically what happens in these new growth areas is that you have to reach a certain kind of milestone in terms of the number of units before you see major commercial development coming in. And so we're finally slowly starting to see that. But again, we've got the challenges here, over here with the Oak Woodland. And then of course there's the challenges of financing the school district. you know, financing and then ultimately developing the high school and the middle school site. So their next elementary school will be here along with the development of Jack Rabbit Park, which the city will be doing. Here are the multifamily and affordable sites. We've only had two multifamily developments go forward. This is Mangini Ranch apartment. It's 150 deed restricted units. That's the only affordable project right now. And then this project right here is the Atwell Apartments. That's 253 market rate apartments down there. The rest of the multifamily projects, for example, Alder Creek Apartments here, Independence at Folsom Ranch right here, And these other multifamily sites have not yet moved forward, despite the fact that we've seen a lot of multifamily north of the freeway. What we've been hearing from developers is one of the big constraints is the fact of land cost coupled with the Melrose fees and the impact fees. Impact fees on average range from about $70,000 to $100,000 per unit down here, compared to about $20,000 to $30,000 north of the freeway. That's because a lot of the infrastructure, all the infrastructure by and large, and the facilities are all in up here, they don't exist down here. The other thing to point out is that we did work with the landowners to ensure that the Folsom Plan area got their fair share of affordable housing, that it wasn't just concentrated north of The of fifty I know there's been a lot of kind of kind of grumblings about the affordable housing development projects that why is it more happening South of fifty so we have a hundred and fifty units here on this site has is deed restricted for affordable. This site's deed restricted, as is that. This site is deed restricted, and this site right here will be deed restricted. So ultimately, we anticipate about, when you count Manjiti Place already there, about 1,000 units of deed-restricted affordable housing for low and very low-income households in the Folsom Plan area. That helps us long-term achieve some of our housing element goals that we have to satisfy to stay compliant with state law. Like I said earlier, with the Toll project, and then potentially with the Taylor Morrison project, so being that that moves forward, there are a number of key backbone infrastructure pieces here. So this portion of Mangini Ranch, which I'll actually talk a little bit about in my report out to you, this will be built by Toll and by the school district, and then This area of Oak Avenue Parkway will be built by Toll Brothers in phases. This will be kind of the first phase, the second phase, and then third phase. Toll will also build out Haven Parkway. and then Toll and the other developers, Taylor Morrison, the ones up here, will fully build out Alder Creek Parkway, which will provide an outlet for folks to get to the Prairie City interchange. In addition to that, Toll will be building a portion of Prairie City Road. We will be bringing forward to council in September a memorandum of understanding with the county, the adjacent landowners over here at Aerojet, and along with the quarry truck operators, which are down here, because this is a quarry truck route as well for the gravel mines, to... to agree on a new ultimate configuration for Prairie City Road. There was a little bit of a disconnect between what was in the specific plan and what was in the county's general plan and what the quarry truck operators wanted. So we were able to negotiate and agree on a redesign on this that satisfies both parties. I wanted to talk a little bit about Area 40. So the Toll Brothers Project is up here and around here. This is White Rock Road. This is Toll's Regency Project over here. And then... the new high school will be over in this area. So this was part of the Aerojet Superfund site. It's called Area 40. They've gone through their, it was always envisioned to be part of the specific plan, but it was always contingent about it being cleaned up to a satisfactory level to allow for development to occur. So it's gone through its review and remediation process through the Department of Toxic Substances Control with the state. However, the state hands it back to the Environmental Protection Agency that has the final kind of say on this. And so the Environmental Protection Agency is doing their final review. And then ultimately, when they give their review, When the EPA gives their sign off and indications that it's ready for development, then ultimately that will transfer over to Westland, the landowner, and then will be slated for Community Park West and. and then some adjacent development here. In the event that the timeline that's in our development agreements isn't satisfied, because there's certain triggers in that development agreement, and the EPA is still not signed off on it, that's why we have that alternate site that we brought forward to you a while back, which is up in the north and then down here in the south, as an alternate park site for Community Park West. One of the other things is the town center. This is an amazing opportunity to do really something that's unique and a gathering place for the entire community. It's a major piece of the specific plan. It's really one of the highlights of the specific plan, but it's also the toughest development to do out in the suburban area because you're trying to do a product that isn't typically done out in suburban areas, so it's often more difficult to do financing, because you're talking about much higher densities, mixed use, Paseos and open space, just really kind of unique developments. So this kind of shows you the kind of ideas envisioned. To give you an example, I mean, if you just go up Highway 50, El Dorado Town Center, it's something similar, not quite designed in the same way, but it has that mix of uses with apartments, movie theaters, restaurants, a town, you know, kind of a main town square, some open space for gatherings. So it has a lot of those elements there. This is... the goal here. Unfortunately, it will probably be one of the later phases of development because of the challenges in doing that kind of innovative development.

As I mentioned,

to you on this is the what we agreed upon with prairie city road so this is looking north from alder creek parkway up to the interchange this what this section was consistent with this with the county's general plan but south of alder creek parkway they had in their general plan six lanes of of six lanes of traffic going south to White Rock Road. Our specific plan only identified four lanes. Part of the reason why this didn't get reconciled was because it was anticipated that Aerojet and its Glenborough development was going to actually precede the development of this area and that this would all have been taken care of. But it's been the reverse and we've actually developed at a much faster pace than anticipated. So to make sure that we didn't have to reopen the county's general plan, or you know, do new environmental analysis on our own, we came up with an interim solution south of Alder Creek Parkway, which will have this area here be a larger median that can ultimately, if it's really necessary, can accommodate those additional lanes if the county deems that they're necessary as a result of the truck traffic. The other thing is that we have been, the county has been collecting and the city has also been receiving funds from the quarry truck operators, which will help to fund things to address wear and tear and noise associated with the quarry truck operations with their gravel trucks getting to the freeway. So that'll include things like rubberized asphalt, sound walls, those types of improvements. And then we also will have class one bike trails to get, originally we had bikes in a class two facility. We all agreed that that was not optimal, just given the quarry trucks and the speed of traffic likely on this roadway. So now we have a class one bike trails on either side, which I think is a big improvement. One of the other complications is that when you go south of Alder Creek Parkway, there are power line poles, high voltage power line poles here with SMUD that will ultimately need to be relocated over to this area. So as I talked about, those are a lot of kind of both the opportunities, particularly with the town center and the opportunities for additional commercial and office development here and the build out of these existing medical center campuses and the South Point Center down here as well. But as I mentioned, there are some challenges that we're laying out as well. The next projects you will probably be seeing will be the plaza at Alder Creek, which is right here. Hoping in the next year or two, we'll see a grand opening here of the Safeway and Alder Creek Marketplace. And then I think the next big residential project will be Taylor Morrison's project that kind of covers this area surrounding the town center. So that concludes my presentation. We have a link here that you or the public can access that has the whole history and all this information about the Folsom Plan area. We also publish monthly reports on building activity that are posted here in terms of the number of building permits issued, the numbers of certificate of occupancy. It has the specific plan, the design guidelines, all the environmental documentation. I did fail to mention that last year that we did do a number of changes to increase the density. So I mentioned the deed restrictions, but we also changed this from general commercial to mixed use. We rezoned this from industrial to multifamily, changed this from community commercial to multifamily, and then changed this from low density multifamily to medium density multifamily, and then we upped the allowed densities and heights in this area as well. So a lot of this was done to help with our housing element, but we also wanted to try and concentrate more residential development in this area to help support the retail uses that we're going to be going in there. Because as we all know, retail and restaurants have been struggling just in this economy. That concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. We're hopeful, keep your fingers crossed, that we'll actually be able to potentially do a field trip out to the Folsom plan area so we can actually be on the ground and see some of these elements point out some products that have been pretty innovative, products that have worked well, some things that haven't worked as well, and we can talk about all of that. So I'm hoping to make arrangements. We'll probably do that when it's a little cooler, hopefully in October. So stay tuned for that. We'll coordinate with all of you about potential dates, but there's a bunch of legal hurdles that I have to do about Brown Act and all that kind of stuff. So happy to answer any questions. And again, thank you for your time.

Thank you, Desmond. That was very thorough. Any questions for our staff? Commissioner? Do you want to start asking? No, no, I'm going to let everybody else do it and then I'll ask.

Okay, thank you, Chair. Desmond, that was great. I really appreciate this. What happens if we meet the oak tree canopy? What do we do then?

Yeah, so that's a series of ongoing discussions right now. One of the things that we laid out in the toll staff report, if you recall, is that ultimately, if we hit that threshold, then the next project will have to either significantly downsize the project to fit in without impacting the Oakwood and Canopy, or the landowners will have to come back to the council and see if the council would entertain a specific plan amendment to reduce that threshold. The one thing that we are doing with the Toll project, again, you In their 107 acres of oak woodland canopy that they're impacting, they were pretty conservative, and there's a 20-foot buffer that they counted as a loss around that oak tree, around that oak woodland canopy. So we've got environmental consultants that are actually monitoring that throughout the life of the toll project, and we'll be, along with our urban forester, that will be monitoring that to see if that 20 acres of oak woodland canopy could potentially be added back into the total. But we won't know that until we get through these different construction phases with the Toll Brothers project.

Okay, so a follow up to that, um, I know that there is planned a bunch of bike paths running through that oak wood canopy, and those are not designed yet. And as far as I understand, they aren't quite determined what that layout might even look like.

Yeah. So if you if we go back to this, Yeah, so if you go back, you can see, but this is all relatively kind of high level. That's a general idea of where these are. The city is ultimately responsible for building these, and so Parks and Recreation Department right now, the trails manager, Brett Bollinger, is actually... looking to bring on not only environmental consultants but a design consultant to see what kind of routes they can do without one affecting the preservation open space which runs throughout here and two if impacting the oak woodland canopy so the you know the trail alignment may be modified depending on you know how they do that. And they'll be working closely with Amy Nunez, the city's urban forester, to see whether that can be done. And in some cases, you know, we could end up with, you know, like dirt walking trails as opposed to the 12-foot fully paved paths you know trail in some areas or they may have to reroute it so that it runs maybe closer along the power line corridor but maybe doesn't dip into the heart of the oak woodland those are things that will need to be determined as they as they go go through all of that well i guess my concern would be that we get put the projects up and we hit the threshold and then we can't get the bike lanes

Or the bike paths?

Because the timing seems... I think there will be a way to get the bike trails in here. They just may not be exactly on the routes shown right here because they may have to skirt this or put a bridge across this. things like that to avoid the preservation open space, or they may have to jog here a little bit to avoid you know, the oak woodland canopy and the drip line of the trees. So that's what they're assessing right now. So as you can see, let's see, I think this is, yeah, so you can see that, you know, they've built all of these, and now what they're looking at is, okay, do the designs for these ones, you know, all work? So that's what they're assessing because, again, they may have to modify them and put their maybe, you know, closer, closer in and or down the power line corridor where there aren't as many oaks.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And then I think you stated that if we do hit this threshold, it could go back to city council for an amendment. It wouldn't need to go before the voters, even though it was a voter approved.

No, so the voters didn't approve the 396.52 acres of oak wood and canopy. What the voters did approve was the 30% open space. Ah, okay. So the 30% open space has to be maintained. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. The projects have maintained that. In fact, we're actually about 35% open space currently right now with all the anticipated development that's shown. The problem, really, and I think the concern that came out of this from some of the council members was, if you will, the fine print that's in the development standards in Appendix A, which identifies in the allowed uses table what uses are allowed in the passive open space areas. Like I said, things like telecommunications facilities, utility and drainage basins. So those types of things are allowed there. Unfortunately, because of the sizing of those basins, again, keep in mind the standards for for detaining stormwater have changed since this was all originally planned to today. And so those low impact development standards which require much more in the way of retention have increased and as a result, those detention basins have increased as well. So that's what we're running into with these impacts like in this area to the Oak Woodland canopy.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Before we get off oak woodlands, while we're on that topic, it'd probably be good to take one topic at a time if we're going to have a lot of questions. Can you talk a little bit about the numbers? So 107 acres went to Toll Brothers, oak woodland canopy, give or take 20 because we might earn another 20 there. But then how much is Taylor Morrison expected to take and how much is left after that?

The preliminary estimates from Taylor Morrison's around 20 acres. So when you start with the Toll Brothers project and you net out the 107 acres that they have, then we've got about 30 acres left to play with before we run up against that threshold. And so the Taylor Morrison project, again, we're still in the process of evaluating that. It's looking like it's about 20 acres. And then there's the interchange area here, the Oak Avenue interchange, which goes up into this area. So we're also evaluating the design of that as well. So those are the things that we're taking into effect.

So we don't know what acreage that would be yet because the design's being discussed? Yeah, that's correct.

I think the real concern is properties like this where almost the entirety has some level of oak woodland here. This can be worked around. You actually have this area that could be developed if they had needed to scale back the project. Same up here, this area, it's kind of a bit scattered, so this might be more challenging, and there may be some challenges down in that area.

So feasibly, there might not be room for any more commercial after we approve.

That is one of the- If we approve Taylor- Yeah, that is one of the concerns, yes, yeah.

All right, other questions on Oak Woodland? Yes, go ahead, Commissioner.

I have two questions.

Go ahead.

Okay, all right, thank you, Desmond. So I walked that property last year with the developer and with a former city manager and some folks. My understanding is that the city arborist has not been out to the site yet. Oh, no. She's been out to the site multiple times. Has she?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Yes.

All right. So has she done an assessment of the health of the trees?

So there has been an assessment done of all the individual oak trees. The rules governing the isolated oak trees in the specific plant are different from those of the oak woodland canopy. So the canopy area is just seen as the canopy area. The isolated oaks were evaluated based on arborist reports, and then she's gone out and and confirmed many of those oaks that are slated to be removed, because they have to be classified, so he verifies that classification. So they have to be classified in terms of health from like one to five, and I forget which one's the, one and it's super healthy, and then the other one is like diseased and not healthy, and yeah.

And my understanding when I walked the property was that some areas of the canopy are diseased.

That may very well be the case. With the drought and the heat that we've had in the area, there's been a real struggle for these oaks. So we haven't seen, and oaks are slow growing, so we haven't seen a big kind of expansion of that oak woodland canopy over time.

yeah just it'd be good to I have that all identified before we start reviewing and approving projects when I was on the Commission back in the 90s we preserved a lot of oak trees in town that are all gone now because they just don't make it over a 20 or 30 year span and it was for nothing so we just need to be pragmatic about it yeah

Does the oak tree canopy rule apply even if the trees are all dead?

No, I mean, we don't have, I mean, there may be some trees with disease, but there's not large strands that are dead out there. I mean, I can confirm that with Amy, but there's not large areas that are dead out here. It's just more that they've been stressed for a while because of the drought and the climate change that we're dealing with.

Okay. So if there are dead trees, it wouldn't count for or against the canopy number?

Well, yeah. Generally, while there may be diseased trees, we don't have, at least to my knowledge, I'm not aware, based on my discussions with Amy, that there are large areas of dead trees. But this, so E-Corps, which is an environmental consulting firm that prepared this map as part of the specific plan and remains engaged, and their arborist works very closely with Amy to kind of monitor This and then develop the, um, for lack of a better term, an accounting mechanism to keep track of the loss to make sure they don't impact any more than we've allowed them to. and that the oak trees are actually protected, that are supposed to be preserved during construction, that those are protected. And then the ones in the buffer areas are reassessed at the end of each construction phase to see whether they are likely to continue to survive or whether they're going to likely die as a result of the grading and construction around them. So there needs to be an accounting of that

And how was the 396.52 number arrived at? Is that like a percentage?

I don't really know. It seems so odd. The best that I can tell was there was a desire to protect this area, but there was also an acknowledgement that the entirety of the oak woodland canopy, that some areas development needed to occur in this area, particularly along the freeway frontage, and then with the backbone infrastructure going through, there was going to be some level of loss. And so I think ultimately I would assume it was a compromise between kind of what the developer wanted to develop and then the city's desire to preserve kind of as much as possible. So I think, yeah. Yeah, I think overall there's, and I apologize, I think overall there was about, I'm not sure, yeah, there's, yeah, there's, Yeah, I need to go back and double check that. So yeah, but yeah, there's...

The founding fathers determined that it was okay. That's fine, that's fine for now. Okay, any other questions on oak trees before we start asking other questions? All right, any other questions? Commissioner Herrera.

thank you desmond that was very thorough and educational um myself and a contingent of my neighbors are very very curious about the empire ranch exchange because that feeds where we live and yeah people know i'm on the commission so they're constantly asking me about it you did mention that about it being an over crossing first correct would that bring people from the south over and just make east pitbull even worse

I don't know necessarily. I mean, you know, generally traffic flows kind of like water. You go to where areas of the least congestion. So, you know, if I'm a driver and I'm coming from this area, I'm going to go north because the volume of traffic on the El Dorado Hills area entrance um there is less than what you're seeing at at east at east bidwell you know alternatively when alder creek gets punched through you know you're going to head over to prairie city because you don't have the as as much as you do at at east bidwell so i think you know that's kind of More likely what you're going to see, you know, there'll certainly be some folks that may add to the congestion there, but we're also doing improvements along the East Bidwell corridor and at Iron Point to help improve and get traffic.

moving so it's not backing up onto the onto the freeway um and that people are able to make their turns and clear out those turn lanes um more quickly because my my commute used to be empire ranch road saratoga yeah and you know once you get to eldorado hills it narrows down to one lane yeah and then that can back up especially where you got starbucks right there on the corner so i can see people wanting to go that way that starts backing up then they go over iron point and they go back down

And again, not to point out the obvious, but I think the pace of development, I mean, this was kind of seen to be like a 30-year plan, and it's developed much faster than that. And I think what we're seeing, particularly in this area, is just the infrastructure not being able to keep pace with the pace of development. And these big things like interchanges, they are astronomically expensive and they rely on multiple funding sources. which has complicated the thing, especially given the uncertainty at the federal level and the change in policies at the state level. Because Caltrans didn't object to any of these interchanges when we adopted the specific plan, but now that we're actually trying to do them, they've gotten new policy direction about not wanting to do interchanges, heads down. our focus on getting over crossings because that's easier to get approval from Caltrans.

I remember when I first moved to Folsom in 2000, we backed up to Iron Point at Oak Avenue, and we'd heard about an off-ramp there for 20-plus years, and that's supposedly now the second one behind Empire Ranch.

Yeah, things shifted up to this as more of Empire Ranch built out than the focus shift to the Empire Ranch interchange. And the interesting thing is, like I mentioned earlier, Folsom Heights actually was one of the first projects to get their tentative map approved. It's just that unlike Russell Ranch and Mangini Ranch, they didn't move forward. They got multiple extensions on their tentative map, which is allowed under the law. And so they're developing actually later. So it, yeah.

Well, you just know you've got a lot of people pulling for it. Yeah.

And while we're on the interchange, the picture you showed us showed that the design actually does anticipate the full interchange. So that's what's before Caltrans now for approval. So is it expected that Caltrans will approve the entire thing?

I believe so, yes. But we're telling them, but we're gonna phase it? Well, I think from a constructability standpoint, and also in terms of getting funding for that, it's a little easier for the state to get, let me go back to that. Hold on a second. Yeah, so I think it's a little easier to get funding. I mean, we could certainly have Rebecca, our public works director, come and talk or Taraj, our principal engineer, talk more about the project, but... I believe that they're talking about building it in phases even though they're getting the ultimate design approved by Caltrans. The ultimate design will include the full interchange.

Okay, but we won't really know. I mean, it just smacks of, oh my gosh, we have to wait till a change in a governor's administration in order to get Caltrans to come around on its policy before we can do that, and that's a little scary.

Well, I... I think ultimately we've got this queued up in the Sacramento Area Council of the Government's Metropolitan Transportation Plan. It's in there. Oak Avenue is in there. So they're in the necessary planning documents. And that Metropolitan Transportation Plan identifies the region's priorities for funding. So then when we go to the feds, we go to the state, we can identify that these are priorities, that these were approved in specific plans. There's more demand right now than there is funding, and so we have to get in line. And at least at the state level, a lot of the priorities have been focused on kind of multimodal transportation improvements rather than ones that are focused primarily on cars. But the intercrossings... typically are multimodal because it's a way for cyclists as well as transit to get across to the, and pedestrians to get across to the northern part of the city.

So hence it'll take a lot less money to be able to just do an over-crossing and that's why we're gonna start there because we don't have to raise the money for the whole thing. Yeah, and we can do it in phases, yeah.

Yeah, it's not that we're abandoning the interchange. That's not it at all. But just given the cost of these things, they have to be phased just from a financial standpoint.

Okay. Any other questions on the interchange? Commissioner Ross?

So I think you said there was a development, a tentative map already approved on the side facing El Dorado County, right? It's being developed now. Is that correct?

Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah. Let me go back to the map here. Yeah, so this area here is Folsom Heights.

And there's no connection between that side of the town and El Dorado County on the other side, is that correct? There's no like roadway. It's just White Rock Road.

Yeah, we had, originally there was going to be a connection right here into this neighborhood. This was actually, I think it's this neighborhood. This was originally stubbed out and was anticipated to connect here. The developer had planned to have a roadway connect here, but the neighborhood here was vehemently opposed to it. I think I said I'm planning commission for Eldrida County when that came before me too, if I recall.

And I think it was the only no vote because I was like, yes, please, we need the connector. So my question now is how much coordination is happening with El Dorado County when it comes to White Rock or Saratoga where we're having to connect and we are not really doing that efficiently?

I believe that there's definitely coordination with El Dorado County and our Public Works Department over the southeast connector, White Rock Road.

I do that too, it's okay.

But in terms of additional connection here, I'm not aware of any. And like I said, there were a lot of, I believe, unfounded concerns about residents from Folsom going through neighborhoods to get to the El Dorado Hills and El Dorado Town Center.

Can I ask a question like transit related? Is that okay? We're kind of on transit. um this is like i'm sure this was talked about and i'm wondering if you just give me a little history we have an existing rail line that is used for like boxcar racing that connects this side of folsom with the other side of folsom and goes under the freeway was there any discussion of putting like a little trolley that people could ride on it would take them across and reduce some of that car congestion of people getting to all the palladio and all that development over there

Yeah that that would be great but that's a whole nother discussion with the Sacramento Placerville railroad authority the city does sit on that on that board but. that organization has long kind of envisioned more of a kind of a tourist-type train going up from here to Placerville. On that rail line?

On that rail line, yeah.

But there are fairly... Well, that's fascinating. Yeah, fairly significant challenges because this, it would require...

Well, there's tons of crossings. There's tons of crossings across there, right? Throughout the whole project.

Yeah, there's crossings through the project, but the real... problem is this area on White Rock Road, because given that this is supposed to be a connector with relatively higher speed traffic, having a train go through there would be problematic to the PUC, the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates railroad crossings and things like that. So that would potentially need to be an underground or above ground crossing, which would be... quite expensive okay so i i can't really speak too much to that because that's a whole another authority and a whole another political discussion um with regard to that i think that would be an interesting concept um yeah i guess i'm just trying you know we know we have traffic problems right and all of our disc development around here is really car centric you have yes you have commercial far away from resi from residential you're gonna have to get your car and drive there right so

And I was a little disappointed about the bus rapid transit. I mean, I understand the reasoning. So I know you showed us that little carve out of a little bus route that's going to stop at this commercial center. Is there any plan to extend bus routes into this whole area sooner rather than later? So going back to that,

So the idea is to ultimately have something that runs along Alder Creek Parkway and connects up to Prairie City and then links either with the Iron Point Station or with the Hazel Station. But right now, until there's development in this area, you're not going to, financially it doesn't make sense for transit to service, whereas we do have from both patients as well as employees at these medical center campuses, and then this will touch on the town center. So once the town center develops and the rest of this area develops, then there will be a case to be made for putting transit to serve that area.

Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions? I don't actually have any. No? Okay. Desmond, do you have any closing remarks about this?

No, I just, I hope this was helpful. It was very helpful. And then, you know, this, I think this should be useful as you continue to evaluate projects as they come forward from this area. Like I said, I expect the Taylor Morrison project to come before you in the fall and Alder Creek Plaza probably in the fall as well. I'm sorry, the plaza at Alder Creek before you...

I think I'd like to have a copy of your PowerPoint just for future reference.

Yeah, we can put it up on the website and we can distribute it to you all.

Yeah, I think that's a really good reference point for us for future. Okay, okay. We really appreciate your work here, Desmond. Thank you for taking the time tonight and everybody, thank you for bearing with us as we did that. All right, next item is Planning Manager's Report. Desmond, you're gonna give that for us, huh?

Yes. Um, so, um, in, in terms of staff level design reviews, um, we just had, uh, four, um, staff level design review view since your last meeting. Um, one of those was a commercial repaint. One was for a, excuse me, an ADU and the other two were, um, uh, some single family home renovations and additions. The one thing that I did want to call your attention to is that we recently approved a minor administrative modification for a slight change in Manjiti Parkway.

So actually it may be helpful to show this up here.

I think late last year, the school district came forward with a request for a minor administrative modification to relocate the middle school site from here to this area so that they could do a joint campus that would help to reduce costs for the development of that school along with the high school. They requested a minor administrative modification, but since we felt that this was of fairly significant public interest, we have the ability to escalate these to the commission and or the council. So we escalated it to the city council, so there was a public hearing noticing and information about this available to the public. As part of that, the school district identified that this would actually use Mangini Parkway to accommodate the traffic associated with both schools would go from a a two-lane road to a four-lane road in this segment to accommodate the kids and parents and everybody going there. What the school district failed to kind of identify was that this was indeed changing from two lanes to four lanes. So... They, along with Toll Brothers, submitted a minor administrative modification just to clarify that for us. So we did that modification. So Toll will be building the two lanes on the north. The school district will be building the two lanes on the south, which will ultimately result in a... a two lane configuration. This will allow for through traffic to get through while people are dropping off kids or picking up kids and so forth in that area. Because the school, the high school in particular will serve residents from Rancho Cordova as well as the Folsom Plan area ultimately. So it'll be coming from both directions. So I just wanted to clarify that. And that that was done at a staff level because it met all the criteria, the plans had already been shown to the city council. It's just that they hadn't called out that that lane change in particular. So the next meeting will be on September 16th. We do anticipate several items for that meeting as well. And then I'll keep you updated on the potential for a field trip, hopefully in the fall.

All right. Any other questions of staff or anything else under the good of the order? Hearing and seeing none, we are hereby adjourned at 9.17.