City Council - Regular Meeting

i'm going to do that just turn on your camera this is remember i turned off the volume here yeah oh it's not even on zoom here yeah but those were on zoom right yes

Thank you. Sound check.

This is a public connection. Hello.

Yes, it's working. If two minutes or seven. There's a sign up sheet up front. If you haven't provided your name and information, please go up front and sign up. There's also speaker cards on that table in the back. And I put some of my business cards there in case you want to reach me later. Julie, are we ready to start? One minute.

Okay.

Let me know when we are live. Should we wait that one minute then? Okay, at 6pm. Now, we can start the meeting. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us. This is environmental impact report public scoping meeting that is being prepared for the proposed project. 1250 Oakmead Parkway. This is a hybrid meeting, we have participants joining us in person and online via zoom. A few housekeeping items, meeting location and online participation information can be found on city's website. And for our participants joining us via Zoom, there is the show caption button that you can see the live captions online. I don't see the PowerPoint, Joey. Can we get that up? Thank you. okay thank you so a brief round of introduction city of Sunnyvale is the lead agency for this environmental impact report my name is Sheila Bagley I'm the project planner here today we have Julia Klein principal planner and Shawn Mandarin planning officer from cities team we also have environmental consultants cities environmental consultant David J Powers and We have Nick Tostopied, project manager, and Christy Wise, principal project manager and vice president. And the applicant team is Lone Core Capital, which is the owner, and Dave Hopkins is the owner representative. And we have Ken Bush here in the audience as well, owner representative. Okay, this is the agenda of tonight's meeting. I will start by explaining the purpose of tonight's meeting. Then I will provide an overview of the proposed project, including the project location, the proposed development and construction phasing. After that, the city's environmental consultant will provide information on the CEQA environmental review process and anticipated timeline. And lastly, we will open the meeting for public comments. Before we get into the project details, I want to emphasize what tonight's meeting is and what is not. This is not a public hearing. No decisions will be made at tonight's meeting. We are still in the environmental review stage. The purpose of this meeting is to provide information about the project and EIR process and to receive input regarding the scope and content of EIR. So as you provide comments tonight, we are particularly interested in hearing about environmental issues that you believe should be studied in the EIR. With that, I'll provide a brief overview of the proposed project. The project site is located at 1230 through 1290 Oakmead Parkway. As you can see on the map, the site is located along the south side of Oakmead Parkway near Lawrence Expressway and Highway 101. The site is 7.93 acres in size and is currently developed with an office building. The site's zoning designation is Industrial Service or MS. and its general plan designation is industrial. The project is proposing to demolish the existing 176,000 square foot office building and redevelop the site with residential uses. The site will be subdivided into two parcels. One parcel will be redeveloped with five-story apartment building with 215 units and an attached five-story parking structure. And the other parcel will be redeveloped with 103 townhome-style condominium units within 17 three-story buildings. Together, the project proposes 318 residential units. And of those, 20% of the total units, 64 units, are proposed to be deed-restricted affordable housing. The site plan at the bottom of the slide gives you an idea of the proposed site layout, with townhome component generally occupying the larger western portion of the site and multifamily building on the eastern portion. In addition to the residential buildings, the project includes new landscaping, pedestrian connection, utilities, and frontage improvements. The project will be all electric with no gas connection, And the project's also targeting LEED silver certification. The rendering shown here provides an example of the proposed architectural character of the development. The construction of the project will happen in three phases. Phase one would involve demolition of the existing improvements and preparation of the site. for construction. Phase two would involve construction of the townhomes, which is anticipated to take about 24 months with excavation up to five feet and roughly 8,000 cubic yards of soil removal. And phase three would involve construction of the apartment building and the parking structure. This phase is anticipated to also take 24 months with excavation of the up to five feet and roughly 10,000 cubic yards of soil removal. Construction of the apartment building is anticipated to begin approximately six months after completion of the townhomes. And because of the construction phasing, the townhomes may begin to be occupied while construction of the apartment component still in progress. These construction activities and the potential environmental impacts associated with them will be considered as part of the environmental review. Now that I've provided an overview of the project, I'll turn it over to Nick who will walk us through the CEQA environmental review process.

Okay, great. I will be providing an overview of the project CEQA environmental review process, like Sheila mentioned. So there are the primary purposes of CEQA are to disclose environmental impacts, identify and prevent environmental damage, provide transparency in the decision making process, enhance public participation by offering various opportunities throughout the process to provide input, and to foster intergovernmental coordination between various agencies. The purpose of an Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, is to inform decision makers and members of the public about a project's impacts and to identify ways to mitigate or avoid those identified impacts. The EIR provided or prepared for this project will also evaluate a range of feasible alternatives that are able to attain most of the same basic objectives of the project while avoiding or substantially lessening the identified effects identified in the EIR. One thing to note, the purpose of an EIR is to provide information regarding the environmental effects of a project, not to advocate for a project's approval or disapproval. And there are four basic steps in the EIR process. The very first step is to circulate a notice of preparation of a draft EIR or NOP. And the NOP for this project was released initially on Friday, August 14th, and that circulates for 30 days with the circulation period ending on September 14th, which is a Monday at 5 p.m. While that NOP is circulating, members of the public are able to provide comments on what they think should be covered in the EIR. And during the circulation period, the city is required to hold a public scoping meeting, which is this meeting here tonight, to solicit input on the scope and content of the EIR itself. The written comments received on the NOP and the oral comments from this scoping meeting will be taken into consideration when preparing the draft EIR and any associated technical appendices. Once the draft EIR is prepared, it will be circulated for public review for a period of 45 days, and members of the public will be able to submit comments on the draft EIR at that time. Once the draft EIR public comment period is completed, the next step is to prepare the final EIR for the project, which will include responses to comments and any necessary text revisions to the draft EIR itself. After the final EIR is complete, public hearings will be held to consider certification of the EIR and consider approval of the project as well. So the EIR prepared for this project will describe the existing setting of the project site and the surrounding area. And it'll also identify potential impacts resulting from the proposed project for each of the environmental issue areas shown on the screen here. The discussion will also include standard city measures and project specific measures that could be used to mitigate or reduce potential environmental impacts. And when providing public comments during this meeting the primary questions that should be considered are what environmental issues should be analyzed. Are there any alternatives to the project that should be evaluated and what mitigation measures would help avoid or minimize any significant impacts. And with that I will turn it back to Sheila.

Thanks Nick, we will now open the meeting for public comments, if you're participating in person and would like to speak, please submit a speaker card, you can just give it to me. If you're participating remotely through zoom please raise your digital hand now, if you are joining my telephone you can dial star nine to indicate that you wish to speak. We will first hear from members of the public participating in person, followed by our remote participants. I have one speaker card here. Thomas Sartor. Sheila.

Sheila. Yes. um yeah well this is my first one here so i'm a neighbor of the building i'm actually the 1231 midas so i'm oh sorry whichever way i guess they can see the All right there's cameras each way i'm a neighbor of the project basically probably the most other than applied materials i'm closely the one most impacted since i'm right behind the project with a little multi tenant industrial building and. I guess as far as the impacts environmental, it's I'm more concerned with the impacts on my business. So just how plugging the residential in the middle of the industrial park will impact my ability to lease the building and how it'll impact the operations of my tenants. So of course there's the usual things of traffic increase and air quality, but I'm sure those will be covered quite well um my main thing is just I have do have a most of the operations are in the back of my property and so that's where deliveries are done early in the morning and late at night and there may be impact on the residents of this place which will certainly then fall back on me I'm sure so that's uh I think it's more appropriate for well that's something that should be ameliorated here and as part of the project I believe in terms of what's its impact is on on uh on the rest of the industrial park the The other side is just I want to make sure that we don't increase more vandalism or security issues in the business park, which tends to be pretty quiet at night. But just with the density of people that will be moving in, and certainly with teenagers and kids, we never know what's going to happen in terms of vandalism and such. And then, of course, it sounds like a five-year program that we'll be dealing with for doing dust and noise and construction directly behind me. That needs to be considered, and then just a little more specific things. I've been reviewing the plans for for the product, and there is a lot of there's a lot of landscaping, and the project seems to be fairly oriented towards walkways and stuff in the back of the property right behind my fence. So that's the i'd like to see how that works. um anyway those are the notes i have an email to to sheila that covers these points and looks like more time to supplement them so i appreciate it thank you thank you our next comment there is um sorry i cannot say this mr mcmanus thank you

Hi, I'm Chuck McManus. I also happen to be on the Heritage Preservation Commission. My wife worked in that building when it was Xerox Business Systems. And the concern I have, or the thing I recommend you check for the environmental impact, is there's an applied materials fab right behind that building. It used to be, I think, a JDS uniphase fab. Historically, as we've built, especially when we've dug into the ground in adjacent properties, there's been some leakage, some migration of chemicals that have moved from one building to the next. So if you're going to put families there, I would strongly recommend you do a thorough soil analysis, get a geotechnical analysis of the groundwater and the area underneath it. That's my contribution.

Thank you. Do we have anybody present in the audience who wish to speak on this item? Do we have anybody online who wish to speak? Stephen Mayer, next to speak.

Hi, my name is Steve Mayer and I live in Sunnyvale in the Fairbury neighborhood, quite far away from this project. But I would like to echo the last comment. There are semiconductor facilities within a short distance of this proposed project. It's not appropriate in any form or fashion to have residents next to semiconductor facilities. Semiconductor facilities use a lot of toxic materials and sometimes they have accidents. I don't know how you can possibly have residents next to chemicals like arsenic and there's a whole lot of other organics that get emitted from these semiconductor fabrication. I would like to let you know that Santa Clara has a similar situation where there's an apple, a secret apple fab located right next to apartments. That decision by Santa Clara was absolutely horrendous. Sunnyvale should not enter into any type of liability of having residents next to semiconductor fabs. This is an industrial area. If you look at industrial zoning, it does not allow for residents next to industry. And this is not light industry. This is heavy industry. This is toxic chemicals coming out of semiconductor fabrication facilities. So if you're going to do any analysis, I want an analysis of all the outputs of the applied materials and any semiconductor, any industry facilities nearby. Because I think what you're proposing here is absolutely bad for people's health. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next speaker online.

Sheila, we do not have any raised hands online.

Thank you. Anybody joining us through telephone?

Sheila, there are no raised hands on our Zoom webinar. And no phone calls are logged into this meeting.

Okay, thank you. So this meeting is scheduled to end at 7pm. We're not going to end the meeting yet in case somebody wants to join us and provide comments on the scoping of the EIR. So staff will stay here, but if you guys want to leave, you can, or you can stay. But as a reminder, written comments regarding the EIR scoping may also be submitted to me using the contact information shown on the screen. Comments are due by Monday, September 14 at 5 p.m., and additional project information is also available on the project website. You can use the link or the QR code shown here on the slide. Thank you. Yes, you can also grab a business card that are in the back. Thank you so much for participating.

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Hello, if we have online participants who wish to speak on the public scoping for the EIR, please raise your digital hand. We saw some new people join us. We already gave a presentation. So if you have comments that you want to share, you can still do that. Thank you. Again, as a reminder, written comments regarding the EIR scoping may be submitted directly to me on the email address showed on the slide. And the comments are due by Monday, September 14, 2026 at 5 p.m. It is 7 p.m. and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you.