Planning Commission - Special Meeting

Evening everyone. It's 5:01. So I'm going to call this meeting of the Los Gatos Town Council and Planning Commission to order. Um clerk, can we have a role please? Commissioner Thomas. Commissioner Stump. Not on yet. Commissioner Sardi here. Commissioner Mayor.

Commissioner Bernett here. Barnett or Bernett? Bern Bar Bernett. Bernett. Okay, we have Barnett now too. Vice Chair Barnett here. Chair Burch here. Council member Renie here. Council member Hudis here. Council member Vadami here. Vice Mayor Risto here. Mayor Moore here.

Um great. Thank you very much. Um so being that this is a special meeting, we'll move to verbal communications, but verbal communications is um only for matters listed on the agenda. So we can take comments on item one and there will also be an opportunity to comment on item one. And we have one comment from Gus who testing. Okay, I'm going to make this quick. I'd like to thank you guys for actually publishing something that's that's uh in here for this meeting. Unfortunately, there's only three people in the the that showed up for the public. I think that um you should still give us 10day thing and maybe the only other thing would be is if you can move it to you know because 5:00 everybody's coming home and uh you know 7:00 would be a little better or you know or they can write in but that's those are my only two things on just in the general public. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now move to item one. um which is our only item this evening which is to review the process on an update to the Loscatoos objective design standards for multif family and mixeduse development throughout the town and provide any feedback or direction. And before I turn it over to staff, um I think we have a u council member Hudis.

Yeah, thank you. Um, as you know, we've revised our uh agenda policy and minutes policy for meetings, including uh study sessions. And so, um, one of the things that we allow for is the ability to capture something other than just action minutes. Action minutes can only be on things where you take a vote on and make action. And study sessions pretty much don't have that. So we have a lot of people assembled here today. Uh a lot of expertise from our uh planning commission and our outside experts. And so I would uh move to capture FAQs from uh this meeting uh that would then be provided uh with the uh the minutes.

Is there a second? I'll second it. Okay. Any comments on the motion? Um, from our discussion last night, does staff have clarity on on what FAQs would approximately look like? Um, I would imagine that it would be the same as yesterday that staff would have the discretion to provide the questions. Okay, great. Um, with that we will take a vote. All those in favor? I. Any opposed?

None. Passes unanimously. Okay, great. Um, uh, so I'll now turn uh things over to Sean Mullen, our planning director, planning manager.

Thank you. And good evening. Since uh April of 2025, at the council's direction, staff's been coordinating with our consultant team uh made up of Lisa Wise Consulting and staff from the urban um planning partners on the development of additional objective design standards in the areas of high quality building design, architectural style and height transitions. The project has achieved several um important milestones to date, including uh baseline research, conducting focus groups, and a community uh openhouse. The purpose of this study session is to provide the consultant team with input and direction prior to the preparation of an administrative draft of the revised objective design standards. Um and to lead the study tonight, uh the study session tonight, I'd like to welcome two members of the consulting team from Lisa Wise. Uh this is Monica Sidlick and Cal Kurtz.

Thank you, Sean. Uh good afternoon, council members and planning commissioners. Uh we're very excited to be here before you all um to talk about the project that we began with um with Sean and Joel um of the of the planning department um a little bit uh almost a year ago. Um, so a little bit about us first. I'm Monica Siblick, senior associate with Lisa Wise Consulting. I'm joined by Cal Kurtz. Um, Lisa Wise Consulting is uh we're a land use planning um economics and implementation firm. Um, we work all over California. Um, I'm based out of our San Francisco office and we do we do all things land use planning. We do a lot of housing elements. We do a lot of zoning code updates and especially in the last five years since the passage of SB330, we do a whole lot of objective design standards. Um, and these of course are very tailored uh to every community that we work in. Um, we've been we've done objective design standards or ODS uh for big cities and small towns and everything in between. Um, and we're we're very glad to be here to share our progress so far and most of all not to speak but to hear from from you all. Um, so let's advance to the next slide. And to whom do I direct that request? Okay, great. Thank you. Um, right. So I'm Monica. My background is in architecture. Um, and I'm an urban designer at heart and I'm joined by Cal who is an architect. So we put we have a lot of good design thinking. um when we put our heads together with the the urban planning partners team and Sean Mullad and and Joel Joel Pollson. Um next great um so we know that you are all familiar with objective design standards having worked on and developed and adopted standards

just a couple of years ago. I guess they're uh a little over three years old as I understand it. Three years. Um so as you know there are objective design standards which pick up where the development standards leave off looking at building and site design for all residential development that is not single family right so multif family and mixeduse residential development. Um, we're starting with the very solid and robust set that you have and learning from how the town has used these over the last few years and uh having you all of course have identified where they don't quite meet the town's expectations and where they fall short of really um guiding design in the way uh that the town would like to see and the community would like to see. So, we're starting with a good set of standards and figuring out where to go from there. As we do that, we'll making we're making sure that we implement the town's general plan uh policies and goals so that we're consistent with established policy direction and of course stay compliant with SB330, which is really at the heart of this exercise. And so we learned when we began this project that the focus is really three items that you all have identified maybe a year or so ago, right? High quality building design. What exactly does that mean? Let's try to put our finger on it. What does it mean for multif family and lascatos height transitions? Let's look specifically at where these higher density projects abut and meet single family single family homes. Those adjacency conditions are very important to the community. And then let's look at architectural character in details. And what does that mean? Which details? What do we mean when we say character? We've been brainstorming about that with the

community for about a year. And now we want to talk about it with you. Okay, next slide. So we know you know this having already developed ODS, but it may be worth repeating. Objective design standards involve no personal or subjective judgment by a public official, uniformly verifiable. They basically are the the basis for the required ministerial pathway that the state has um has mandated that all local municipalities must allow for multif family development. And so it's fairly easy to come up with examples of what's something that's subjective and something that's objective. Um but generally speaking, clear expectations and the idea is to streamline a ministerial review process. Okay, let's move on. Uh so we want to talk a little bit about what we've done since we first began working with Sean and Joel um a little bit less than a year ago. So we kicked off the project in April um which involved pouring over established policy looking at recent uh projects that you've seen um projects that have been built applications speaking with the town staff about review of those projects. What have been sticking points? What is what have been issues? Um and then and especially applying what has happened in trying to apply and working through applying the existing objective design standards. Okay, we we documented our findings in the type is a bit small here but site analysis and evaluation memo our our technical analysis. Let's go to the next slide. So we documented everything that we needed to document at the start right

existing code standards the basic development standards that were not touching F density setbacks height the basics we documented existing policy we looked at we looked closely at the north 40 development and the specific plan all of the record of community input that was been received about objective design standards during the development of and adoption of the design standards. Um we just took stock of of what's our starting point. Let's move on to the next slide. We held some focus groups. So uh we worked with staff to identify individuals uh with experience using the code uh knowledgeable about the development environment in Loscatoos. and we talked to a total of eight groups, 29 individuals, um 30 to 45 minutes each, and we documented our findings. What did what did we hear? What did we what did we ask? And what did we hear? And what did we learn? Um I believe the write up of these reports that I'm referring to are included as attachments in your staff report. Okay, the next slide, we documented recommendations largely for for the staff. Okay, here's what we see. Here's what we've heard. Here's where we want to go. These are the parts of the objective design standards that we're going to change based on input from from staff and community and new sections that we'll add. Um, so that's documented in a memo and sort of at a glance on the next slide, we generally see what Okay, so the existing design standards are in two sections. The sections that we've colored gold, just minor edits, nothing too big. The red ones, more substantive edits based on this isn't really

working. It's not describing the kinds of development we're seeing. Um, we want to tweak it a bit. We want to make it more specific. Um, and then we are recommending adding a few new sections where okay, this this warrants a brand new section and a whole new set of standards that'll reflect what we've been seeing and talking about. Um, so entrance design, windows and doors, materials, colors, and architectural details. Okay, let's move on to the next slide. Uh, we held a community openhouse in December. uh we had a series of boards, three or four boards in uh each in four or so stations. I think we had 11 boards. They were very busy. Uh we had uh the topics of the boards are listed here on this slide. What was lovely about the the uh workshop is that people came. We had a lot of markers and people uncapped the markers and just um got busy with the boards and they're so marked up and we had a lot of good discussions um with all the members one-on-one small groups and we got truly a lot of great feedback at that workshop. Okay. And next here we are tonight. Um, we're here to review some working design ideas that have emerged from this process so far. And most importantly, we're here to ask you to consider how should we reflect what we've heard and what we've researched and documented in the updated standards. We have a handful of ideas to show you. Um, but we we want to hear from you so that we know that we take these recommendations in in the right direction. Okay, let's uh let's start looking at at some at some standards. So, um if we think back to the slide with the gold

font and the red, there are a lot of sections where we're not anticipating major changes. Generally speaking, the standards you have work. They're working okay. Um then there are some sections where we we understand that they're not working so great. Maybe the graphics aren't aren't representative of the kinds of development that you are seeing or hope to see. Maybe they're not as keyed as closely with the development standards in as in the code as you would like them. Or maybe they're just falling short a little bit for any number of reasons that we've been working out with uh with the staff and the community. Um, so to start out here, we're here are some sta some some content from your existing standards that show some options for massing um, and options for or requirements for uh, how to shave down the mass of a building that the height and setbacks alone allow. We heard that they're generally inadequate. They don't address adjacency to single family, residential, and they also don't address all the different types of development types, product types. You hear that term used. It doesn't they don't address um buildings of the range of scale that you'd like to see, town home development. So, we want to make sure that they're comprehensive and they and that they show options that might be right for the scale and type of development that you'll see. So, if we go to the next slide now, in the next handful of slides, we've got these brownish fields toward the top of the slide, which is really what we're what we're hoping to questions and ideas that we're we'd like to present to you where we'd like

to ask you to think about what are the right options, what direction do we want to go, what are some ideas that will help craft helped us us craft the standards. So we want to think about instead of shaving off portions of a block, we want to think about how does this building relate to adjacent development to the right of way. How can we uh require the building to be um to to be uh composed of of modules and a certain rhythm. We we'd like it to be a little bit more descriptive of what we think you may want to see. So here are some examples. Maybe we want to step back upper stories to preserve uh what we sometimes refer to as the street wall or the the height of the building at the right of way. We may want to require four courts which is the building is really stepped in for a big chunk of the massing of the of the front the facade uh for either common open space or public open space. Maybe depending on the right of way, one is more appropriate than the other. Um, and perhaps limiting building uh length or building modules. Um, and how may that vary along different rights of way or for example, this building on the right is a is next to a single family home. What are these dimensions? Um and it can be hard to um to formulate ideas, examples of development essentially anything that um um any reactions you have to building to uh uh module size, height with respect

to width at the right of way is helpful for us in developing standards. So the the first thing we want to put to you is let's think about building massing and how we can um we can refine the standards you have and then update the graphics so they look like what you expect to see. Let's move on to the next slide. The same we'd like to ask the same question for town homes but of course it's a little bit different because this is a different development type. So, do we want massing changes that correspond to units? Or perhaps mass perhaps that's not important. Massing changes don't need to correspond to units or maybe there isn't a need for massing changes at all. Uh we'd like to just discuss these options with you. Next slide. The figure on the left shows some standards that your code already describes is it. So the co for some of the zones that support multif family housing um do require the stepback shown which is a foot of building height increase. every foot of building height above 20 feet must be stepped back by one foot. So we presented that we we drew it out and presented it to the community workshop along with a series of options. Um is this do we want to stick with this? Where is this appropriate? Um and what are some other ways that we could we could uh require buildings adjacent to single family to be stepped back or shaved back? um the the um image on the right was sort of

the the the preferred option from that workshop. Um, but of course we want to ask you um, and you know there's a lot to think about here in terms of how the building feels um, from the abuing single family home. Um, what's visible? If there's elevated open space, how how does that adjacency work? Um also we think in terms of construction costs and feasibility and um if you allow the building on the left that may not be a feasible building envelope in many cases. So we want the standards to be something that that work and that really guide applicants into something that that they can that they can build and that's palatable to the community. Uh let's move on to the next slide. So part of our charge was to look at building at at quality and character high quality building design and architectural character. So generally when we think about that we we think about materials and colors. Uh so we put some thought some thought into what are appropriate pallets of materials and ranges of colors and how do those two things work together and how do they how do they work with massing. Um this is something we can and do right into objective design standards. Um so we want to get it right for the town of Lascatos. Um so here are a few examples of how um material selections can impact um a a building and how it looks from the ride of way and how it contributes to a neighborhood. So should it be largely

one one material or is a range of materials um desired by the community? We heard that the community dislikes too few material changes but also too many. So we want to get it just right. Um and then over on the right hand side of the slide we have a few takeaways from the community input so far. Okay. And next slide. Um a little bit more about materials and colors. So we think about um when we when we think about um town home design, we also think about the rhythm of units and color selection and how do we want to express building design and variety and um diversity of units in a single project with a pallet of materials. Um when we think about regulating materials and colors and um the details of design, we also want to think about how prescriptive do we want to be? Do we want to sort of lay off and generally speaking allow more flexibility on the part of the applicant or do we want to really be very hands-on and prescriptive or somewhere in the middle? And that's where we need your guidance to figure out like maybe we just uh provide a list of prohibited materials. That's that's okay too. But we need to we want to talk about um what's right for lascato. Okay. And next slide. Um right. So if we do assuming we do want to uh regulate color, how do we do that? Let's figure out a way to quantify it. So this is something we've worked on with other communities. Um, generally speaking, we regulate color by uh saturation, hue, saturation value.

Um, perhaps light reflecting value. Um, and we can and will develop uh figure out the right range of colors for what the community would like to see. Um, next slide. Think I'm going to hand the um mic over to Cal who would take the next handful of slides. Thank you. Um, next we asked the community about roof design. Um, you'll see a few different images up ahead above you. Um, one thing we heard very clearly was that um, roofs that which do not have any eve um are not preferred and that the community would rather see a deeper eve on pitched roofs. Um, so you see those two images compared there. Um and our question to you is should we regulate perhaps the required minimum eve depth to ensure that we don't have any um flat eaves? Another question that we posed to the community was about parapits. So you'll see um the more left image of those two uh has a flat parapit. So there is no cornice or any um architectural relief at the top. Um it just goes straight up and is flat. and the community didn't really appreciate that design. Instead, um the image on the right on the far right has a cornice um has a few different details to the parapit which provide additional architectural relief and provide kind of a top to the building and and that was preferred by the community. So again, our question to you is should we regulate this? Is that being too prescriptive or would it be helpful to require that uh flat roofs have a cornice or an overhang to make sure that the top of the building is properly expressed? Um, next slide please. We also asked the community um how they felt about different window design. So

you'll see on the left uh there are various flat windows and by flat we are referring to the frame of the window itself is flush with the wall. Um and the community didn't really appreciate this design felt it looked cheaper. So we asked them would they prefer to allow for example um that an applicant could use one of three different options. So, we're still allowing some flexibility, but saying that a window must either have trim of a certain dimension. Uh, we gave a dimension of 2 in um a recess so that the window is recessed kind of similar to a lot of um Spanish style um architecture, a minimum of 2 and 1/2 or or whatever dimension makes sense, or that a window must have a lentil. And again, we gave some dimensions for those as well. So our question to you about this is are those three options desirable, acceptable, should we be regulating dimensions? Um any feedback that you have on this is very helpful. Next slide please. We also asked the community about entry design and again we pose this question to you of how prescriptive should we be? Is it enough to say simply that entries, especially the primary entry of a multif family building, that that entry has um a certain dimension of overhang to allow for weather protection? Or do we want to be more prescriptive and regulate things like um if there is a stoop or other sort of entryway, it can only be a minimum or maximum of a certain number of feet above grade, for example, of a certain number of steps effectively. or do we want to require more articulation in the form of columns or overhangs um

or or other features to really express um that this is the primary entrance of a building. And it's important to think of the fact that we are reg we are talking about multiple different building types. So keep that in mind as well. We're talking about mixeduse buildings. We're talking about multif family and we're also talking about town houses. So if it's desired, we can talk about each of those in a different way. Next slide, please. Um lastly, we're getting into building placement, landscaping, and open space. So we have um up on the screen what your current standards say. Um and currently they regulate by minimum percentage of open space. Um they talk about some minimum dimensions. Um and a little bit about a landscape buffer with a wall um between multif family or mixed use and residential zones. Next slide, please. So, we'd like to ask you um is are these standards enough? Uh do we want to take it a step further and regulate um more dimensions about those open spaces um to ensure that they that the landscaping provided isn't simply leftover space? Um do we want to think more deeply about landscaping buffers between multifamily and adjacent single family residential? And we also want to ask you about what about when the open space is elevated. And by elevated I mean perhaps it is a terrace or it is a balcony and perhaps it is um adjacent to a single family residence or it may be visible from a right ofway. So do we want to regulate um the balconies and their visibility?

for example, requiring that um a a balcony perhaps can't just have uh open railing where you could perhaps see up into somebody's balcony or is that acceptable? Do we want to um ensure that any terraces overlooking uh single family residential that there is um something mindful about what we are allowing to look over uh single family residential. So all these things we would like to hear your thoughts on. And next slide please. That is the end of our um of the questions that we have to you. And now we would like to hear your thoughts on all of the items that we presented.

Thank you very much for the thorough presentation. Very helpful and and appreciate all of the uh detailed information. Um so what I'll do first is open up public comment and then um for everyone on uh the deis here maybe start thinking about um the specific feedback you have on each of these. Um it might make sense for each of us to go down and share our uh specific perspectives. Um I have one speaker card on this item from Gus who okay. Uh that was kind of different because I it was all three stories and four story pictures and this is a town and I think most of the residents want to keep it a town and you guys um already have problems. Um I was to bring in I I have a a little bit of background in I was a general contractor for a dozen years before uh things happened. But um you know and I've worked like uh in hillside you know they do have hillside regulations and stuff like that. So I think I think most people in Los Gatus would want to keep it keep it to two stories. They don't want the high-rise. The biggest thing is uh the traffic. Um I I've recently discovered uh and I talked to the the you know um traffic coming in and parking you know you when you when you have these the parking like on these big buildings you know it says uh the north 40 922 spaces and you you lowered it down there's requirement and it's 768 you know those types of things. um across the street, you know, Cat in the Hat. You people talked and uh I I

remember the the principal, you know, if you remember him coming across and and I have the minutes here. Uh there's there's 18 people that spoke. Only two people from one family were against it, but everybody was against it and and two people were for it because of these big buildings and uh it's not safe. The safety is the the the number one thing. Uh colors and stuff like that. Yeah. If if it's seen, you know, when I built um we did have I had to, you know, do a color chart and say what what we're doing it. But I think you're putting way too many regulations as a a builder and somebody dealing with homeowners that built and had to deal with uh the building department at times. Um it's you it's just like okay, I'm going to try to do this and this and it's just you're you're turning homeowners against you already when you you're doing all these regulations. Try to keep it simple. let let the architects and and you know work it out. It's it's the big buildings that I think the town people don't want and just having one consultant, you know, let the architects if if they sat down with architects or general contractors, it would help too. Thanks for listening. Any questions? No. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now go to Lee Figo, who will be followed by Karen Yamamoto. Good afternoon and um we love Losatis. Our family is is very much entrenched here uh and we love the character of the town and at the same time how welcoming it is to new residents. However, um what we're seeing being proposed in these multif family dwellings uh does not fit the character of the town. Some of the guidelines and the regulations that that I've just watched being presented are concerning, very concerning. Uh for example, one of the items was um for the townhouse massing, one foot setback is currently required in the town for every 10 ft of high. Well, a 1-oot setback is not adequate at all. Um and the drawing that was shown as a sample of the 1ft setback doesn't show one ft. It looks like it's about a 5-ft setback. So, I think there's a m an error in that slide. Um, the color style, uh, the materials all need to be monitored and managed by the town. Um, because that's what sets the character of the town. The sense of neighborhood and the folks who are already residents in town chose to be here for a reason. They want to preserve the character. And um my wife and I have lived in seven other houses in four countries. And when we came here, we knew this was it. This is where we want to stay. So please protect, preserve, and further enhance the character of the town without changing it to look like uh storage sheds like we see on the north 40 phase one.

um that's not the character of the town. So, please stay involved, engaged, and and let's make our town a a place that we want to stay in. Um some of the other things the with the multi- family units um the different setbacks of around balconies, windows and so forth. All of those add character to a building instead of looking like a uh you know a toaster oven or a microwave oven. Please stay on top of this challenge. Um, otherwise I can't think of the consequences in a nice way. Thank you. Karen Yamamoto.

Hi guys. Um, I'm Karen Yamamoto. I was at the um the open to the public meeting. Um there's a couple of things that I was looking at and um want to emphasize especially with trying to look um I believe it was slide 15 where it has the existing base zone standard where it there's a set uh back from like 20 feet from and then it's like stepped When you have a house and you have a huge building, I mean, I have a one-story house and I'm thinking about what's going to be built behind me. It needs to go further back the higher it goes because they look down upon us. And it's like invasive. It's invading my privacy. It's going to invade my privacy. It already does right now with the business that's behind there, but houses are a little bit closer. So, I'm kind of concerned about that. And I really like the whole idea about having it 40T. The higher it goes, 40t back from my backyard. Nice. Um, so that's something privacy issues. I was also wondering why you guys didn't come up with on that the top where there's the rooftop. We were talking about how it can be dangerous to have a flat top where there's can be a patio setting on top because

our winds, you guys know our winds in Lasatus can get really dramatic and things can be flown off and like a rail I believe was actually mentioned or some kind of protective way where it just doesn't fall off the roof. Um, so that was another thing that was not mentioned in this presentation. And I did believe we went over colors, but those were the major ones with the roofs um, and the windows. And hold on, I'm trying to remember the last one. Oh, and then Lee mentioned about the setback. It's also a safety measure when you have a building that's right there on the sidewalk and it is the sidewalk is very narrow. You're trying to walk past people and there's not a little bit more room for setback. It becomes dangerous especially with the main street build. Um that needed a better setback. Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions?

All right. I will now turn to the uh council and planning commission for questions of staff or feedback. Council member Renie, I'll just start excuse me start with a couple comments. So, one thing we need to think about is we're we're I I guess we're focused on multif family buildings and most of these multif family buildings are going to be coming with a certain amount of below market rate units which then allow the developer to ask for um exclusions or waiverss from the objective standards. So, anything we put in here they could ask for and be entitled to. So I think the the objective standards um we we need to find this balance that helps them think about how to make a good design but not inhibits them so much that they can't get their economic value out of it. If we go too far they'll they'll not bother and just just wave it. So as we think this through we need to keep that in mind. A a a couple things that jump out at me. I'm not really in favor of of regulating colors. We do that in our hillsides. I It seems to be sort of a big section in here, but I I don't you know, people are going to build their house and then later on paint it some other color. And I I don't think we want to get into color regulation. That's just one of my thoughts. The areas that I'm most interested in is how do we create some transition when somebody wants to build a large building next to single family homes? what what what are the best objective standards? Again, going back to my point, we don't want them waving them and just building whatever they want, but we want to give them some good guidelines to make it work better with

with those those neighborhoods. Um, I don't know the exact answer to that. I'm I'm listening and hoping um to get some input there. And one other thing that really also jumped out at me is some of these material changes are when there's too much material change, it's it's too chaotic. I like that you've got a lot of comments from people about we want some material changes and color changes um to break it up, but if it's too much, it gets chaotic. And I think one of your examples you had colors changing everyone, but the the form was the same. So that was okay to me. It it it but if you if you change color and change the the shape and the form at the same time, every one it then be to me becomes too chaotic and busy. So those are just sort of some starting thoughts.

Yes, council member.

Thank you. So I would agree with that. But um having served on the planning commission for seven years and now on council for five years um I have seen a lot of um objections and appeals and it's usually based on privacy issues and bulk and mass issues. So, I'm most interested in um establishing standards um that address uh the different massing options for the multi- uh family buildings and the maximum heights that are adjacent um to single family residences. To me, those are the most pressing issues. Um, but I'm thrilled that uh over the detail um that these studies and that the consultants came up with, I think this is really a a good move going forward for the town of Lascatus to protect the charm and character that we all so love.

Yes, Council Member Hudis and then Commissioner Bernett.

Yeah, thank you. Um, this is really good progress since uh we started working on this on the planning commission. Oh man, I guess it was uh six, seven years ago. And we've evolved from just what I would call tape measure objective standards to things that are still objective, but uh not only the the the tape measure standards. Um, so, uh, I did I hope that the material that I provided at our council meeting in October 24, um, was provided because it did include examples um, from a number of other uh, local cities um, including PaloAlto, Santa Cruz, and then Pismo Beach, Grover Beach, Pleasant Hill, Oakland, and Larks. And we didn't at the council, we didn't adopt all of the five areas, potential objective standards, but we focused on these three. And so, um, I'm still hopeful that we may come back later and do something on views as there are some cities that have those. They're not included now. Um but I wanted to focus on the height transition one for a moment because I think that one um for the reasons uh that we heard um from the public is not only an issue of invasion of privacy. It's also safety and having um a tall a very tall building overlooking uh someone's backyard uh where they may have a pool or they may uh just have a patio um can present a safety issue. And so council member Renie raises the issue that developers

can wave standards. Yes, they can wave standards. um and even the ones regarding privacy, but the ones regarding safety are not necessarily waveable. And so I wanted to focus on an idea about this. And um I think the work that was done in here on uh showing a uh setback within the property is good but I don't think it necessarily uh the step back rather the stepping back of the building one foot and etc. But I think there's also a possibility as PaloAlto has regulated um to not allow certain heights within 50 ft of a property line. And um so I had been thinking about this for a while and have um a little bit of a proposal on this one uh to consider and that is you know given the issue about protecting the safety as well as trying to avoid in invading privacy. um where you have a large or a multifamily adjacent to lower density development. Um that we think about in that 50-foot space um regulating the height. And so my proposal just to throw out there would be that a building that shall be limited to the equivalent of a threestory height

abuing a onestory um uh building. and that a fourstory height would be the maximum abuing a two-story residence and a fivestory height would be the maximum abuing a three-story residence and so um that would be an additional way of looking and I think something you know that could be accommodated by addressing the safety issues uh of putting um very tall buildings adjacent to much smaller buildings. So that's that's the main thought that I have there.

Commissioner Bernett, thank you for that. Actually, uh, Council Member Renie and uh, Hudis and Mary Badami did mention things that I were on my mind, but I also wanted to compliment uh, you on the work you did and the staff because compared to the objective design standards of 2023, it's a big improvement and I think you listen to the residents, the architects, and the developers. I know there were some differences of opinion in th those areas and that you highlighted the most important building standards and changing into section B which is going to be giving more emphasis and I think those are the priorities and um I think it's uh was very important of what uh Councilman Renie mentioned that we're we're do get in a bind um because of we can give waivers and concessions and then that goes away. So, um, and I did reading through all the materials, it it was mentioned many times that certain parts of Lascatis, I don't know what's possible with staff for zoning changes that they would have a little higher standard of design and I it's probably not possible because these are objective design standards and it's ministerial and they're entitled to it. But anyway, we can um help the developers hear what we say and give in certain ways that um they work with the town. But I was very pleased with your pres presentation and I think a lot of hard work went into it and I was very happy with uh most of the things. Thank you.

Yes, council member Bami. Thank you. So, um, my question, um, is for staff as a followup to council members Huda's, uh, comment about safety, which, you know, I agree with, but, would safety factors fly as far as legalities go, um, in consideration of the Housing Accountability Act. I mean, you could always be in fear of, oh, something if it gets windy enough, something might fall down on me. Is that grounds to include that legally as an objective standard?

Um so the housing account I'll start at the beginning. Um the housing as you know the housing accountability act um authorizes the town to deny projects based on health and safety concerns um that are contained in an objective written standard. Um, and so the evidence would need to there'd need to be evidence supporting um an assertion that the standard was based in safety concerns. And so there would need to be um information explaining how a setback was related to safety concerns.

That's helpful, but I I'm just kind of curious as to what kind of evidence one could produce. I mean, examples of evidence would be um information the town got from an expert or um if there was testimony that was heard before the legislation was adopted um or a study of some kind. Um and so there would need to be a basis for having adopted that standard in order to preserve safety.

Okay. I I mean I I like the idea of it. I just want to make sure that it can fly. Um well, as they say, the devil's in the details and so um it would depend what evidence was presented to the town. Thank you.

Yes, please.

Looking for comments. I have a few. Um, understanding that this is your uh livelihood, I assume you're dealing with other communities that also struggling to achieve objective standards to maintain their community characters. Um, council member Hudis mentioned PaloAlto. I've reviewed those and they have actually objective standards and and suggestions which are not binding but uh sort of expand and elucidate on uh the objective that we're trying to achieve. So I thought that um it makes sense to look to other similar communities. I happened to stumble on U Pacific Grove which adopted interim objective standards in 24 and they include all of these topics. building layout, orientation, massing, articulation, building materials and colors, entrances and doors and windows, roof treatment, parking and landscaping. So, a lot of communities I know have spent time and money trying to get to uh yes on approving objective standards that are enforceable. So, um I'm sure you're doing that anyway. Wanted to mention that. And then um here oh so in my real estate practice for 45 years I represent hundreds of homeowners associations and what troubles me now what we're seeing is um there's no place for a meeting even though uh the law requires meetings and I understand recently you know they're allowing uh virtual meetings but nevertheless I think it's important for community building and for you know reasonable lifestyle of people to have some place uh to meet in common uh and to help create their uh community. So if that could be achieved

through some kind of an objective standard I think that that would be very very helpful. Um sure Mr. FGO's mention of um the insufficiency of a one- foot setback. I don't think that that's meaningful and some relief is what we're looking for to show um articulation and let's see I've heard that there's an issue about enclosed parapits and I always thought that that was a dangerous situation but now I've heard that for fire safety maybe with safety materials enclosed parapits are an advantage so I just wanted to throw that as a possible uh topic for consideration. Um on the topic of uh privacy, PaloAlto really spent a lot of time on this issue and has some relevant uh guidelines uh that we discussed in our earlier um efforts to draft objective standards. And I think that's basically what we want to offer. Thank you so much.

Great. Vice Mayor Risto and then Commissioner Stump.

Thank you. First of all, I appreciate the presentation and also the fact that you reached out to so many members of the community. It was particularly interesting to see which buildings members of the public liked and it was nice to see that there was some variety. I mean, clearly our favorite old buildings downtown, but also the library, which you know is very different, um, steel and glass. And one of the things I think about with objective standards that makes it a little more challenging is we I've said this before, we're not downtown Santa Barbara, so not everything is one architectural type. And so that makes it more challenging because I would have a hard time picking standards that would work with one architectural style and not another. So, you know, I agree with a lot of the residents that said maybe these should some of these should be suggestions. I like the idea where we have standards if we could have examples and flexibility in there. Um I do think in terms of color, you know, when you look at the colors, it's like, oh god, we don't want pink, we don't want this. I would not want to regulate color because if we're picking it, these do have to actually be tape measure standards. And if our tape measure comes out and says it can be this level of saturation or that, you know, when I look at the example, that would preclude black and white. And you know, if we went back 15 years ago or 20 years ago when Oldtown was first built, um, it was kind of an off-white color and it was more the muted colors. Now it's been freshened up and it's white and black and it looks crisp and it looks modern. And to have banned those colors on a large building, I think doesn't foresee what will be in style. I've also seen very tasteful muted buildings that are gray that have a splash of a lime green door or something. And so I think getting into those level of details um does not leave any flexibility for the

future or for changes. Um I do I'm constantly looking at buildings that are beautiful and trying to understand what makes them look so and it is a lot of personal taste but when I look at the buildings that people brought up that they really liked you know um the Rankin building the Kyatta building the Beckwith block etc what strikes me is those buildings are close to the sidewalk they don't have big setbacks they're very pedestrian friendly they don't have homes next to them so I think when we talk about privacy and stepping. I'll get to that, but I think a facade that's really broken up in the front actually can be a mistake depending on what the building looks like. So, for example, where you gave the idea of like a fourcourt, that is a very strong building with a strong face and yet it looks very welcoming and opening with the fourcourt. Um, I think some architectural styles would just look funky and formulaic if we arbitrarily broke them up. Another thing I think about is if we talk about every 10 feet or every five feet make a break, make a break. Every new building's going to look the same. Um I don't know if we can talk about percentages or if we can talk about, you know, two sides can be here. I look at the high school building. That wouldn't work with our our objective standards. And yet, I don't think anyone would say that we could improve on the main high school building. So those are the things I'm kind of thinking about. I do agree with the residents who don't like roof without eaves. I think some eve amount. Just a little bit of beefiness to that gives a more substantial look to the building, even a modern building. Um, and I think the the stepping in my opinion shouldn't necessarily be on the public facing side. It should be if it's adjacent to a much smaller building. And I liked the idea. I think

it was council member Hudday's where maybe it's a two-story differential max next to a smaller building. Um, and to me I cannot even imagine a height danger of having a height differential. I don't know that that's a safety issue, but I do think it's a um it's a stepping, it's a fitting, it's a transition. Um, I think where we'll run into trouble is if somebody owns a lot and they're trying to maximize their square footage on it, they're not going to want the wedding cake look. And I think sometimes when we prescribe a certain setback, you know, I've heard architects talk about you're building a wedding cake and that doesn't work. Um, but I think it's a good suggestion to have some level of stepping back. And oh my god, there were so many things. Oh, in terms of banning materials, I think that would show a lack of imagination on our part. I can't think of a material I mean, I could probably think of materials I would ban, but they're already banned, like asbestos or something else. Um, if I live in a historic home and until recently, you could only have wood windows. And then one of my neighbors down the street who was remodeling her house came forward to historic preservation and they're like, you know, it has to be a wood window. So she brought a clad window and a wood window, held them up and said, "You tell me which is which." And they couldn't. And so I think like trying to say that we don't allow certain materials gets tricky. Um and I can't think of any that you know if you say no plastic, well I don't know where someone would use it or how it would be used. Um I have a And then I you know what I think about with the most beautiful buildings is Oh, well, okay. Um, one of the things when we talked about materials, I like the primary, secondary, and accent better than the crazy variety. I think we've seen a lot of shopping centers. We've seen a lot of newer buildings that

it's like, oh, we're going to do this material and that material and this, and I don't think most local Scottton feel like that fits in. I don't think it's horrible, but I don't think it fits with what we're looking for. Um, so I think we trend toward the traditional. I think modern buildings like the library or the Netflix buildings totally fit in. Um, but there's other more modern takes with that don't work. So I don't know how we get there. And there was one final thing, but I can't think of it. So I'll let somebody else talk. Thanks.

Great. Commissioner Stump and then Chair Burch. Just a couple of points. Um let me begin with uh materials. I think one of the things we need to keep in mind as it relates to materials. Um while not our entire town is within the WOOI, the wildland urban interface, um we are a town that overall faces the threat of fire. So, one of the things I'd like to see us do is still be focused on, I'll put it this way, fireresistant materials that are used. If you took a look at photos from Aladena, if you took a look at photos from Pacific Palisades, the one thing you can clearly notice is that for the houses that survived, the building materials that were used on the homes, and many of them, of course, were more recent builds, uh, are the ones that survived. And so uh even as we look at multif family obviously we should be keenly interested in the kind of materials that are being used and again I would just call them you know fire resistant materials. Nothing is really truly uh fire uh fireproof. So that would be one point. I have to apologize my audio cut out as council member Badami was making some points I believe about public health and safety. uh and this may be I don't want to call it off topic but maybe out of scope as we have considered SB330 projects uh density bonus projects you know that qualified under density bonus whether they qualified under builder's remedy and of course this was during the period of time these were applied for when our housing element was not in place and as we've heard concessions and incentives may only be denied under certain circumstances including

public health and safety, but only if we have objective standards which cannot be mitigated. And I know as a planning commissioner, we had to sit there and scratch our heads often because we would ask about public health safety uh objective standards and we would sort of defer to the fire department. we would not really have very good answers about objectives that really address uh public health and safety and and maybe we would have been in a different spot if we had you know focused on those. And so my encouragement would be while we're not really focused on those this evening that we definitely should be looking at uh some type of follow-on effort that would really take another look at public health and safety from an an objective uh standard standpoint. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Burch.

I won't um be too redundant um because everybody has said some really really good points. So, I'll just stick to a couple things that I think to me are a bit maybe lowhanging fruit. For example, I agree on the idea of colors. I think you can get too prescriptive if you start limiting colors at that point. Do we start limiting shades of certain colors? And I think that it's a slippery slope slope. Um I think the roof design is a pretty simple thing to discuss. Um I do agree that um we shouldn't have buildings with no eaves um or the flat parapitut. I think we can rather than try to put defining measures around the size. I think it should be appropriate to the architectural style and sensitive to the neighborhood um to determine what that should look like. And I think staff is probably quite good at making those determinations. The same with windows. Um, I agree windows should have trim, recesses, or lentils. And again, I would say rather than um make a determination on the size of those, again, they're appropriate to the architectural style and sensitive to the neighborhood. Um, I think on materials, it's not always the type of material um in construction, it's the quality of the material. And I would perhaps recommend that instead of focusing on materials we don't want, we work on a language about the quality and the durability, the fireproofing of those materials. Um, I've seen buildings with almost every type of material, maybe not plastic, but probably coming. And I have certainly found that the aesthetics of that material is very much tied to the quality. So I think that that might be a better way to approach that. Um, I think there have been great ideas here as far as the height next to residential. Um, and then the last point

I had was on entries. I actually think we should be a bit flexible on those. I again think there are so many architectural styles and so many different types of neighborhoods in town that I would just recommend that you know there be an entry, but perhaps that entry is very sensitive to the architectural style on the adjacent neighborhood. Thank you. Commissioner Sordy,

thank you. Um, and I'll try not to be redundant because I heard a lot of great ideas and I agree with all of them. Um, I guess just to start with some bigger points, I guess I um, and I really appreciate the presentation. Thank you for I really like the way you organized it. Um, when we get to this point where we're getting into more detail and we're going past development standards, well, the ones we used to have were a little bit more vague. These are more detailed. I feel like we start to cross over into design guidelines a little bit more. And the one thing I think is just really really important is that we we really give the architect and designers the creativity and don't pull it back because it's just, you know, those are the people that I think are the experts. Those are the people that have lived a life of um study and and education when it comes to how to design things, right? And it's just really important for us to exploit that creativity as much as we can because that's really what's best for the community. Um we always have an opportunity to comment on their designs, but striking things out is not a good idea. Um um and so I agree with a lot of the comments that were already made about color. Um take a Victorian for example. And Victorian is a the type of architecture that just wants to yell out loud, I'm I'm here. And you use bright colors to celebrate it. And so I wouldn't want to, you know, uh take away color. I certainly wouldn't want to strike out building materials like stucco because then you're doing away with Spanish design, maybe some Italian designs and things like that. Um, so those are kind of bigger bigger picture comments. Um, and then I'll just kind of I just jotted down a few things. The four courts I thought were kind of interesting. I think four courts speak more to um larger more grandiose properties. We don't have the benefit of having any really great big properties, but you know, some might come along. Um, what else? Um, I mentioned the materials. Don't want to don't want to prohibit them. I do like the um the comment about sticking to higher quality materials because that's obviously something that we can we can really focus on. Um

I I totally get the the nove um I actually live in an ADU that's a Scandinavian design and has no eaves and it works great for an ADU. I don't think it works great on a big building. So I'll go with that. Um yeah, I guess that's about it. I don't want to um just repeat what others have said. I thought we heard a lot of great ideas. So um I'll leave it at that. Thanks.

Great. Um I'll chime in with my thoughts. So um yeah, largely agree with everything that has been said. Um uh throw a few out. Um agree with what's been said on the the stepbacks and four courts and masking changes. I think those are all good ideas. I think the stepbacks are probably my single biggest interest. I think this really I think the the original impetus for this discussion and this review of our objective standards was these large developments against single family homes and we had a lot of discussions and a lot of heartburn about some of those. Um and so I think the stepbacks are a you know sort of fundamental fix to that you know concern. So I think that's you know my most the height transitions and stepbacks is probably my most important on all of this. Um materials and color agree with what everyone has said. I that's not what I'm looking for in this update. Um roof design, I think adding dimension and intrigue, sort of what to to what um I think Chair Burch was saying, you know, trying to to do some of that but not getting overly prescriptive there either. Similar thoughts on on windows and entry design. Um that wasn't really what I was thinking with this update. So, that wouldn't be my my focus area. Um one thing that I think hasn't been touched on a whole lot yet is the question about open space and landscaping. I actually think that's a really important aspect of this. Um I think when you have uh larger developments that that have meaningful and usable open space um I think it really uh softens them. I think we saw that with you know the the north 40 phase 2 that came forward that there was a lot of support for having a large central open space that I think makes that sort of development a little bit more palatable. Um, and so I I really like that. And I actually don't mind elevated open spaces either. I much prefer elevated open space to no open space. So, um, I think that's important. And just to give y'all a couple of examples of of things that this, you know, both of these bodies have recently looked at. Um, I'll give a personal

perspective on a good and a bad example of what we recently approved. Um, a development called Genuine Automotive. they did a really interesting thing where they with their open space where they created um uh basically their their um I forget what it's called what is it called when

bioail their bioail became usable space which was really interesting and and created more you know a little park for a relatively small development and at the other side um you know not to disparage it's again a recent development um approval but the loss lodge had a large sort of bio swale space that looked like green space on a when you look at the design and then it it you know it's not usable actually. You can't really you can't walk your dog there. Um and so I think that's um uh would be great to be included in this. And so you know to wrap up I would say focusing on on the large multif family residential pieces and how to mitigate those you know particularly negative impacts of um looming large buildings over single family neighborhoods. Um, you know, there's it was good information and good ideas on on town homes and condos in here. What I would say on that is I think we actually have a lot of attractive town homes and condos that have been developed over, you know, the last 50 plus years in town. And I so I'm not particularly worried about how town homes and condos are being developed. I'm I'm more concerned about large multif family um development. And then a a couple of folks touched on this. I I think if we can create an objective health and safety standard through this process, we should. Um now, I don't know, you know, I know um we've been talking about this for I think over a year. Uh but I I you know, to the the planning commission's point, I think it would make um the planning commission's job a lot easier if when there was if there was an objective health and safety standard that we could point to um when there are concerns about that particular aspect of a development. Okay, it seems like everyone said their piece. Do you have any questions for us about um you know, it seems like there was some consensus around some ideas. Um uh do you have enough direction to move forward? Do you have questions for uh

the planning commission and town council? Thank you all so much for all of your great feedback. It's very helpful. Um, a few of you touched on this, so I I wanted to get your thoughts. Um, it seemed that um, one one strategy we've taken with other ODS in the past for specific standards is providing applicants with options. And what I mean by that is for example when it comes to the massing uh standards instead of simply saying you must do this we provide you must do one of the following and maybe there are three different options um that the community feel um are are good options for addressing massing. and we presented a few different options. Um, and I know it was one of the earlier slides and some of you definitely talked about it, but it would be great to specifically get your thoughts on if we were to give the option of when you are um across the street from single family residential or perhaps even just along any right ofway. Should we give three different options to an applicant such as you must do one of the following? Either do a step back for a certain percentage of your upper story or you must provide a four court of these dimensions or um your building can be no wider than a certain distance. So that that's just an example and I I apologize again it was very early on in the slides but if we could get your thoughts on if providing um multiple options is a good idea if those three options perhaps are are um good ideas

for Losatos um and again when they should apply is it when it's across the street from a single family residential is it across the street when it is um a budding right ofway. Um any any insight that you can give would be very helpful. Thank you.

Uh thank you for that Cal. I'd like to just add on to that question a little bit and if it's possible to to uh project the presentation so that I can or we can um advance to a slide to Okay, great. And while that's getting pulled up, are there any other questions you want us to address? Um, so we're not going back and forth and back and forth.

No, there aren't. Um, I just have a couple of follow-up thoughts on to K's question. Um so first I'm going to just advance a few slides or ask ask you to advance um past the slide that says thank you right it's number it's 25 just a little bit more uh we developed this diagram to help um discuss some of these ideas with the community um at the December workshop. So, as Kyle was mentioning, you know, we want to think about options, what's right, where, and we wanted to draw the community's attention to the fact that we have a lot of sensitive adjacencies. We have, as you can see, like, okay, so at the sort of bottom of this diagram, we're showing a situation where you're on a major right of way um versus some um perpendicular rights of way, which are narrower. And then we have situations where we've got large buildings abuing single family homes where we just so show the footprint here versus town homes abuing single family homes. Um we also have surface parking areas abuing single family homes. So we just wanted to demonstrate that we're thinking about all of these adjacencies and when we develop standards as K was saying we we may frame them in terms of do one of the following right if I'm interpreting that right um related to that I'd also like to bring up the point that the existing standards use for for a few not all but just a few

standards sort of a point system and what we understood from the community is that it may not be working out quite as intended. Um, so we'll we're recommending rethinking that and instead of collecting points, zeroing in on specific design topic areas and doing what Cal is describing. Here are some design elements to achieve the goal. Do one of the following. Do two of the five. Something like that instead of collecting points. Um so yes, our question is thoughts on on these sorts of um strategies to uh to comply with the set of standards that we'll end up with.

Great. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Annie. Then Chair Burch,

just just a quick thought. So I I do like the idea of giving options. Um, you know, that's part of what creates different architectural designs and makes things work. One thing I'm I'm struggling with in my mind a little bit is if I'm trying to break up the mass of a building on a public street, lots of options make sense. If I'm trying to fit it in next to some single family homes, some of the options may not make sense, and I'm not sure what those are. So I'm, you know, I might want to make it different depending on what we're trying to do with it.

It's almost exactly what I was going to say because you had asked, you know, where should it be applied? And I think if you asked anybody in this town, they're going to say everywhere,

right? Like it's not just across from a busy street. It's not just right next to a home. It's anywhere that a building is impacting the area around it. But none of those are are the same. So I don't I do like the idea of having a choice. I just wonder if that isn't opening up something where there are so many choices depending on what it's next to that that becomes a very difficult task. I don't know what other communities have done in this instance. I'd be curious to find out. And if they did have a way to provide options, but maybe those options aren't the only options. If the architect came with a good solution that again was sensitive to the architectural style in the neighborhood, they work with staff to determine that.

Yes, please.

Thank you very much. Um, one thing that might help with this discussion as well is what we've heard from the community, what we've heard from all of you, it it seems that it still makes sense when a property is sharing a property line with a single family residence that the maximum height within 40 or 50 ft of that property line being limited to I believe some suggested three stories depending. I think that conversation is a separate conversation and should still be a part of these standards. So rest assured we we absolutely understand that that is a priority. Yes. Absolutely. So instead what I would like to focus this this little discussion on is when we're talking about the part of the building that faces a right of way. And if if the answer is all rights of way, we want these standards to be provided, then absolutely understood and we can do that. Or if it only matters at major rights of way or across from single family residential rights of way, that would be very helpful to understand your priorities there. Thank you,

Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. I mean, first of all, I do think choices are critically important. It's been stated, but I think um we have a variety of multif family housing coming forward. Um some potentially is, you know, taller than seven stories, some three stories. And so one approach is not going to work for all of them. And then hopefully, if we're lucky, there will be different architectural styles in which case, for example, a fourcourt might make sense, and in other cases, that would be ridiculous and something else would work. So having those options I think will allow different architectural styles and different someone to a good architect hopefully to pick the right option that works for their building. For me and it's going to be different for everybody. This is why there's so many of us up here on a major right of way. I'm less concerned with breaking up a building. Um, I think, you know, I look downtown and we have tall facads up to three stories and that's right up against the sidewalk and that's normal. Um, so I think for example on Loscatoos Boulevard in a commercial area, it's okay to have two or three stories straight up. I think the stepping needs to happen on the privacy side. Um, if someone if there's an area where you're across the street from single family homes and it's multifamily, then I think there probably should be some step back or relief in the front. So, I think that context is important to me. If it's on a large commercial, you know, six lane road, there's a different standard than if it's um on a four-lane road. Does that answer your question at least for or am I answering it somewhat for one person?

Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. Great. Council member Hudis.

Um, so this may be a little bit off topic, but I'm seeing on the site design topics the vehicular access and circulation point. And this came up in a recent hearing. Um but it really was more about um the phase one of the north 40 development um where there were I think about five streets that are constructed that it's impossible to make a turnaround and um I think that the ones in phase two were shorter than that and so the fire department signed off on it. But I'm when we were talking about health and safety, having um uh a street that's too short so that you actually have to back out of it if there were a fire in a garage. And they were all garages lining that particular um access route. Uh, I'm hoping that we can take another look at that because um it was terrifying to go down that street and then have to back out of it with people coming around going into their garages and and then imagining that what if there was a fire in a garage and somebody had to back out of that. So again, I don't know if it it doesn't really fit the main three categories, but since we've talked about vehicular access and internal circulation within off- streetet lots, that one fits completely in that particular topic. And I can give specific street names of the examples u where I was terrified.

Yes, Commissioner Barnett.

So as I look at your page 25, which is is really fascinating, I feel overwhelmed by the number of possibilities and permutations and combinations that could be made with all these factors. And I was wondering does it make sense to lock any of them together or should they always be considered independently. Okay. Um can I ask a little bit more about your question? Um, are you asking about um separate sections and groups of standards for specific design elements within the objective design standards document? Um, and concerns about perhaps one standard conflicting with another in a different section.

That would be one example. Um, and the other one is just the complexity of putting all this uh multitudinous uh information into objective standards and capturing really everything that we're trying to accomplish. Maybe that's something you can do with a long enough document. But um just looking at it for the first time, it seems overwhelming.

I'd have to agree. I mean, I'd say the objective design standards projects are overwhelming and there there is a lot to consider. Um, I would say in general, um, the the basic development standards for any project are already established in the zoning code. And that's that's the basics, right? High density setback from the property line. um and also upper story stepbacks in some instances and that is the case in your code. So the basic outline of the size and shape and placement of a building on a site is already established. So when we work through each topic, it's it's doable, right? We have a building envelope that the building that the develop uh the the code the zoning code allows and and it is doable. Um we do think about if we can um advance to slide 28. Uh this is something these are some diagrams that we shared we developed and shared with the community. Um, sometimes some design standards work with some design standards but not others, right? You want ultimately a building to achieve and demonstrate building integrity. Um, and we talked about that for some buildings maybe no eves is okay, but generally speaking, we want to see eaves sort of all of the above, right? And so sometimes we talk about design pallets. If you're going to go with this style, then you need to demonstrate

if not all of the above, most of the above, right? So, so we do tackle this um this sort of overwhelming nature of of design standards um to some degree, however, is appropriate for each community. But that is that is one way to to tackle that. I think that's very helpful. Other thoughts? Did you want to? I have a question, but I'll wait. Another question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, please go ahead.

Yes. Um, back to B4, the point system. when projects come before the planning commission, I think it would be very helpful to continue to have that point system because they're required to do a drawing. So, visually, it's very I'm a visual learner. I think a lot of us are. So, when I can see something and um you know, you can count off what it what it's talking about, the windows, the landscaping. I mean a lot of things go into that that uh design that they would be required to uh provide. So I would personally as a commissioner feel that that's a really important element for planning commissioners to make a decision to see visually what it would look like. And most of these projects are the ones that are becoming they're going to be the larger projects. So it would gives you a good idea of what you know you're really looking at and how they have uh addressed some of our concerns. So uh I hope fellow council members and commissioners might consider that of keeping that part in instead of taking it out. Thank you.

Um and I'll just chime in that to your original question. I think these three options are very good. Um, I think uh uh presenting options is a good thing and I think in different context each of them could make a lot of sense. Um, though I do agree generally with what Vice Marista was saying that I'm not nearly as concerned on a lowcost boulevard if you have a uh, you know, putting the mass in the front actually makes a lot more sense than having um, it in the back where you have the neighborhoods. And so, um, I think especially when we can encourage, you know, more walkable, bikable neighborhoods where you have, um, you know, entry points into the the building on the on the the major corridor, I think that's a good thing. And then to the I'll just say to the the points piece, what I heard you saying is is an an alternative to the point structure. not necessarily throwing away the what that leads to in the the decision-making criteria, but just an alternative to actual points, which I do think makes sense. I would support that. And then, um, Monica, you had a question.

I did. Thank you. Uh, thank you for those comments. That's this is all such helpful feedback. Um, I want to go back a moment ago. We were talking about vehicular access and kind of what we mean by that and its place in the standards and it occurred to me that it would be helpful to hear from you all. Um, one thing we think about uh when we address vehicular access and objective design standards is entry points onto a property. Um, so thinking about the major rights of way and walkability, one thing we can and and would regulate is how many driveways can you have, right? What to what extent do we want to uh maintain the continuity of a of a um a walkable uh comfortable uh major right ofway? Um do we want to pull them on to secondary streets? And then also I mentioned a moment ago the setback is what it is. It's in the code, right? But the design of that setback area that's related to if you know how many driveways do you want to allow um and how what do we want to require to make sure that that frontage is usable, comfortable to the extent that we want it to be, right? Okay.

Yes, please.

Um I would say as few driveways as possible on the main ride of way. Um, from a walking and biking perspective, driveways are just absolute hazards. Um, not only sometimes there's grade changes, although I think we've fixed that with some ADA things, but cars coming in and out and constantly cutting through the sidewalk makes for a very unpleasant um, feeling. Um, one of the things I love about the certain parts of the Alman Grove downtown is alleys. And so there's entire blocks that don't have any driveways going out to the street or at least they didn't. There's a couple that have snuck in. Um but I think that really destroys the pedestrian experience to have cars driving through your sidewalk. Um, so to the extent that the and also from a traffic flow point of view, cars coming in and out, it's easier to have it on the secondary streets or I mean I don't know this may have been part of our rescended one of our sections, but in the general plan 20 240, one of the things we had envisioned along Loscato Boulevard ultimately was kind of a connectivity in the back behind the buildings that would connect parking lots behind the buildings so that if you pulled into a lot behind one commercial building. You could connect to other lots or connect there. Sort of like what we have downtown where the parking lots are in the back and you don't have cars pulling right up in front of Kerry Nation or something, you know, through the sidewalk. So, that would be my very strong bias. And I think for a very long time, this community has asked for that because the Boulevard specific plan talked about more walkable. Um, and I think to the extent that we could continue to encourage that, um, I think kind of arbitrary large setbacks on a building lead to sort of wasted space and less walkability going in, but driveways are absolutely the worst. So, thank you for

bringing that up. Chair Burch,

I do want to bring up a point to discuss about the idea of having, you know, multi-story buildings right up to like the sidewalk on the Loscatos Boulevard because that was in the Boulevard plan for a very long time. And I've been on the commission long enough to know that there are people that brought up applications that followed that to a tea and it did not work. And I think if we're going to say that we want it that way, so walkability, then we need to talk about what is on that side facing the boulevard. Um I think there have good examples of buildings that have maybe their entry isn't right off the boulevard, but they've created, you know, walkways towards the um entry or what are upper or off the boulevard and there have been things brought before us that were a long blank wall and that is not creating walkability. So, it has, if we're going to have it right up against the sidewalk, basically, there actually has to be interaction between the sidewalk and the use of the building because we watched multiple applications spin probably for over a year. And I don't feel like we did anybody any favors by not being more prescriptive in this instance of what that looks like. So, I would appreciate better language around that for future applicants. I

think that's a very good point. Yes, Vice Mayor Stone. Yeah. So, I don't know. I mean, one of the things I would prefer is that either a primary or the primary entrance is on the the frontage is on the Loscatoos Boulevard because to Commissioner Burch's point, there are shopping centers that were put in that are supposed to be walkable, but to go there, you basically have to walk around the entire building through the parking lot to get in. and that defeats the entire purpose. So, um I that certainly is an objective standard, right? A functional entry along the pedestrian access.

I'll chime in and then go to Council Member Hudis. the um I think again to give some examples uh for this the new Whole Foods that's going in while I think is you know uh good and a big improvement over an empty car lot. Um uh I live in that neighborhood and I have to walk through a large parking lot to get into the to walk into the Whole Foods where I will not be driving a car. I'll be walking or biking to there and then um walking out with my groceries back through the parking lot, which is not ideal versus the genuine automotive development where there are actual entryways onto Los Scatos Boulevard.

Council member Huis. Um yeah, just kind of play back some of the developments that have come before us recently and I don't think they all fit the um formula that the main entrance should be on the major um on the major thoroughare. The one I'm thinking about is the cafe do project um where the main thoroughfare is uh East Main Street, but they constructed the entrance to that off of Church Street in the back and that does seem more appropriate. Um so, um you know, I think we'd probably want to review a number of these um to see whether that rule makes sense. uh completely or whether there might be other circumstances.

Chair Burch, I just want to clarify my comment was more limited to the Loscatos Boulevard. I do understand that the buildings downtown can function very differently. So, my concern was very specific to the boulevard.

Council member and and I'll go back to I've forgotten now who made the original comment. It's it's about interaction between the sidewalk and the building and we keep using entrance, but you know, in the old days when we used to have more retail, you want ret you want people to be able to look in windows. That's that's an interaction. Also nowadays, you know, there's less retail to to to spread around. But, you know, there's got to be it's not just entrances. It's other ways to interact with the building. Being able to look in windows or having false displays there or something. Great. Um, I think this has been a very comprehensive discussion and a big step forward on an important project. So, um, anything else for the council and commission? Look to staff.

I just want to thank the commission and the council for all the valuable feedback. And um, we'll go back and continue the work and the next step would be uh, getting an administrative draft for internal review and then um, ultimately a public review and then we'll start with the planning commission and start advancing the document. So, thank you. Great. Thank you very much. much appreciated. Um, without further ado, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.