Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the May 18th, 2026 meeting of the Menlo Park Planning Commission. I'm Chair Ross Silverstein and I thank you for joining us this evening. Established by state law, our city's planning commission is composed of seven volunteer residents of Menlo Park appointed to four-year terms by the city council. According to California state law, the planning commission shall do all of the following. Prepare, periodically review and revise as necessary the general plan. Implement the general plan through actions including but not limited to the administration of specific plans and zoning and subdivision ordinances. Annually review the capital improvement program of the city or county and the local public works projects of other local agencies for their consistency with the general plan pursuant to Article 7. endeavor to promote public interest in, comment on, and understanding of the general plan and regulations relating to it, consult and advise with public officials, agencies, public utility companies, civic educational professional and other organizations, and citizens generally concerning implementation of the general plan, promote the coordination of local plans and programs with the plans programs of other public agencies. In addition, the Commission reviews development proposals requiring a use permit, architectural control, a variance, minor subdivision, as well as environmental reviews associated with these projects. When applicable, the Planning Commission reviews below-market rate housing agreements associated with these applications. The Commission is the final decision-making body for these applications unless appealed to by the City Council or to the City Council. The commission also serves as a recommending body to the city council for major subdivisions rezoning conditional development permits, zoning ordinance amendments, general plan amendments, and environmental reviews associated with those projects. If applicable, the planning commission also reviews and makes recommendations on BMRS agreements associated with those projects. Staff in our city's planning division are responsible for processing development applications, as well as for both implementing and amending the general plan zoning ordinances and related policies in order to further the goals of the city. We encourage your active participation, whether you are an applicant or interested member of the public, and there will be an opportunity to speak publicly for each specific agenda item, as well as for general public comment. With that, I will call the roll. Commissioner Beruzzi. Present. Commissioner Eric. Present. Commissioner Schindler. Here. Commissioner Sillin. Present. And I am present. So we have five commissioners in chamber, which is a quorum with two commissioners absent. The next item on our agenda is reports and announcements. Ms. Sandmeier, are there any staff reports or announcements this evening?

Good evening, Chair Silverstein and commissioners. So we have three items at City Council tomorrow night that have come before the Planning Commission for a recommendation. Those are the ADU ordinance, that's the introduction of the ordinance. We also have the Metta East Campus CDP amendments, as well as the anti-displacement plan adoption. That concludes my announcements, but I'm happy to answer any questions.

Do any commissioners have any questions for staff about those announcements or any reports or announcements of their own? Seeing none, we'll move to item D, the public comment portion of our agenda. Under public comment, the public may address the commission on any subject not listed on the agenda. Each speaker may address the commission once under public comment for a limit of three minutes. You're not required to provide your name or city of residence, but it is helpful. The commission cannot act on items not listed on the agenda, and therefore the commission cannot respond to non-agenda issues brought up under public comment other than to provide general information. Please know that if you're here tonight to comment on one of our agenda items, you will have a chance to speak when we get to that item on the agenda. To learn how to participate, I'm going to turn it over to our clerk this evening, Mr. Turner, and we'll begin the public comment period.

Thank you, Chair Silverstein. So if you would like to give public comment and you are in council chambers tonight, please fill out a comment card and hand it to me. It should list the agenda item. So if you have any general comment, just say general public comment. If you are participating via Zoom tonight, please click the star, the raise hand button on the bottom of your screen. Or if you are calling in tonight, please click star nine on your phone and that will alert staff that you have a public comment. So I'll give it a couple seconds here for general public comment.

Seeing none. Great. We can close the public comment portion of our agenda and move to the consent calendar. Item E1 is the approval of minutes from the April 13th Planning Commission meeting. Mr. Turner, can you please open public comment for that item?

Yes. Once again, if you would like to give public comment on the consent calendar, please fill out a comment card and hand it to me. Or if you are online, press the raise hand button or click star nine if you are calling in.

Seeing none. Seeing none. We can close public comment. Do any commissioners wish to pull item E1 from the consent calendar? Seeing none, I'm going to call a vote. All those in favor to approve the consent calendar, raise your hand. And that passes unanimously. Moving from item E1 to F1, this is regarding a use permit revision at 725 Cotton Street. At this public hearing, the commission may consider and adopt a resolution to approve a use permit revision to add floor area to the first floor in the rear east corner, along with some window and door modifications and gable modifications along the roof for an existing two-story single family residence on a substandard lot with regard to lot number width in the R1S single family suburban residential zoning district. The original use permit was granted in 2000. The applicant is also requesting to maintain a fence greater than four feet in height within the front yard setback. Determine these actions are categorically exempt under CEQA guidelines section 15301's class one exemption for existing facilities. And Mr. Pruder, I believe you're the staff lead on this project. Are there any updates from staff?

Good evening, Matt Pruder, Associate Planner. Thank you very much, Chair Silverstein and other planning commissioners, members of the public. At this time, I have no updates for this project, item F1, but I would like to point out that the applicant team is here comprised of the architect, Kendra Rosenberg, and the property owner, Ben Janowski, and they are not intending to provide any presentation, but they are here to answer any questions as well as my, if there are any clarifying questions you may have at this time. Thank you.

Thank you. And before we get to clarifying questions, I just want to give a disclaimer that I know the applicants personally. That's not going to affect any decision we make tonight. Do any commissioners have any clarifying questions for staff or the applicant? Seeing none, we can move to public comments for items F1.

Thank you. Once again, if you would like to give public comment on item F1, please fill out a comment card and hand it to me. Or if you are online, raise your hand. If you're calling in to tonight's meeting, please click star nine. And no public commenters.

Seeing no public commenters, we can close public comment for this and bring it to commissioner discussion. Do any commissioners have any comments or anything to say about this one? Commissioner Sillin.

Thank you. So my understanding, and staff, please correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason this is coming before the commission is because this property is under a use permit from a different change from the year 2000, and so any further changes that are substantial require a use permit no matter what. To me, these changes seem relatively modest and minor, and I don't see any reason not to approve this.

Hearing that, do any commissioners see any reason to not approve this?

I move to approve item F1 as per staff recommendation.

I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Seeing no further discussion, I will call a vote. Commissioner Beruzzi.

Yes.

Commissioner Eric? Yes. Commissioner Schindler? Yes. Commissioner Sillin? Yes. And I am a yes, which passes unanimously. Thank you. We can now move on to item F2 regarding the architectural control and sign review at 1215 El Camino Real. At this public hearing, the commission may consider and adopt a resolution to approve an architectural control permit revision to replace exterior materials and colors to modernize the existing building, remove the existing tower element from the roof, Reconfigure the existing storefronts, including a new straight and full height storefront along the parking lot, and square off the recessed entry of an existing building at 1215 El Camino Real in the SPECR El Camino Real downtown specific plan zoning district. The project is also requesting sign review for one internally illuminated sign on the building facade facing Oak Grove Avenue, and one internally illuminated sign on the building facade facing El Camino Real, with both feature lettering greater than 18 inches in height. We must determine this action is categorically exempt under CEQA guidelines sections 15301's class one exemption for existing facilities. And Mr. Poi, I believe you're the staff lead on this project. Does staff have any updates to the staff report?

Thank you, Chair Silverstein. Staff doesn't have any updates to the staff report at this time. I believe the applicant team is here virtually and is intending to make a short presentation.

Great. We can pull that up. Thank you.

Hello, commissioners. Are you able to hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead with your presentation.

Yeah, I apologize. I was just trying to get set up as a panelist here. Thank you for this time tonight. We were here a couple of months ago presenting this project and the Commission had some comments and concerns and suggestions, recommendations for our project. And so we have gone back and worked with the client, Citibank, to make some adjustments to this exterior design. So that's what we're here presenting tonight. the um previous uh so this is uh previously was a First Republic Bank um it's currently vacant and so Citibank was going to take over this and wanted to make some improvements to modernize this bring it up to where their standard look and feel and in the previous application the commission had concerns about the white brick um And not in character with the neighborhood that they were wanting to see and the contrast between that and the blue paneling on the side on the band above below that. So we have gone back and work with Citibank to have more of a beige color of the brick to soften that give it a little bit more of an earth tone and the paneling has been changed from the metal paneling to actually have a back painted glass to give it a little bit more depth and not have such a flat appearance on that. So those are the major changes that we have made to the exterior design. In another question that came up with was concerned for lighting at night and how it look. And so we have taken the opportunity to add a nighttime desk rendering to kind of help show what this would look like in the evening hours. So we have that included as well. And then lastly, we have reconsidered and worked with Citibank on the request for the signage. As Brian stated, that we have a request for a sign review for a larger than 18 inch letter sign. So we're still, Citibank is still requesting a 24 inch high sign to provide, promote better visibility of their branch. We've included some additional information to make our case for this. We have the street view as you're approaching the city bank from a distance, showing that with the smaller sign, it is more difficult to see. The larger sign allows you to see further, be able to make any necessary lane changes, make safe returns. There are also two other banks in the very near vicinity here in the district that have larger than 18-inch signs, both on Santa Cruz Avenue. There's a Chase Bank and a Wells Fargo, and, of course, the First Public previously. But Chase and Wells Fargo are existing banks currently that are direct competitors to Citibank, and Citibank is requesting equal consideration for their signage size. to be remain competitive in the marketplace as well so those are the adjustments and the additional information we have for our application and happy to answer any additional questions that you may have thank you do any commissioners have any clarifying questions or either staff or the applicant commissioner sillen

Thank you. Yeah, I just want to clarify this. The signage then, is it the same size and scope as last time? You're just adding more examples to justify, or has anything changed with the signage between this meeting and the previous one?

The size is the same size. Citibank is requesting to have this reconsidered to allow a larger signage.

And has the lighting of the sign changed in any way? No.

The only thing we did on that was to present kind of the more nighttime running to show kind of the glow that it will have at night. This rendering was not in the previous package, so we provided that for additional detail information.

OK, thank you. Yeah, because it's hard to tell compared to the previous renderings, but is this sign, are these separate letters that are each individually lit as kind of embossed, if you will?

Yeah, they are individually illuminated letters, individual letters that will sit on top of the glass background.

Got it. OK, thank you. I don't have any other questions.

Seeing no further clarifying questions, we can open up public comment for this item. Mr. Turner.

Thank you. So if you would like to give public comment on this item and you are in council chambers, please fill out a comment card and hand it to me. If you are online on Zoom, click the raise hand button, or if you're calling in, click star nine on your phone. We will give it a couple seconds here.

No public comment on this item. Great. I will close public comment for item F2 and bring us to commissioner discussion. The floor is open. Commissioner Seller.

Thank you. I did have one more question for the applicant. I remember last time The renderings of the lighting kind of had this interior bright white light for the interior illumination, and this time for that night rendering you're showing, it's more of a yellow color. Is that just a more faithful rendering of what it's actually going to look like, or has something changed with the interior lighting in terms of what you're putting in there?

It's actually just a more faithful, better rendering than it was last time. The last rendering was much more washed out than it probably should have been and did not accurately represent the materials and lighting quality.

Got it. Thank you. Yeah, my personal feeling is I appreciate that the applicant has gone back and considered what the nearby buildings look like. That was kind of, from what I recall, our main feedback was just the white color of the building really stood out compared to what's around it. Looking at the renderings, looking at the photos in the packet, and just my general recollection of that area, I think the new design fits in a lot better. In terms of the interior lighting, I remember I was the one that kind of had a quibble with that. I did have a feeling that it was more the rendering and not the actual lighting, so I'm okay with that. And the signage size... Um, I do think that it seems like a larger sign on a main thoroughfare, slightly larger sign is warranted, but I'm open to hearing others opinion on that. Um, but yeah, where I'm at right now, I'm happy to move this forward.

Commissioner Schindler.

Thank you, Chair. I also agree with Commissioner Sillen that the changes in material and the design, as well as the additional landscaping, those two trees, nicely respond to the feedback we gave last time, which was, excuse me, just directionally to soften the look and feel. So I think that was a, and also sort of that champagne colored metal trim that borders between the The tile and the blue painted glass, I think that's a nice enhancement as well. So I think those changes definitely satisfy the spirit of what we asked for, and I really appreciate it. I think it was worthwhile to have the continuance and bring the issue back. As it relates to the signage, I don't have any concern with leaving the size originally requested and still in the proposal where at least a couple of the letters will be up to 24 inches tall. I appreciate the additional supporting evidence, so the vantage point from down the street I also appreciate the benchmarking against the other banks in the area that have larger lettering than the city guidelines and were apparently approved by the city. Upon looking at those, I thought those instances with those signages are because they're more likely to be viewed from a pedestrian point of view, a closer vantage point. I think it's actually a bigger issue that those particular signs have a larger than guideline sizing. Were either of those signs to be put to me today, I probably wouldn't approve them. But with that context, I'm fine going ahead with the recommendation to approve them.

Are any commissioners not fine going with that recommendation? Seeing none, I would be happy to entertain a motion.

I move to approve this request as stated in the staff report.

And I'm happy to second.

Having a motion and a second and no further discussion, I will bring us to a vote. Commissioner Beruzzi? Yes. Commissioner Eric? Yes. Commissioner Schindler? Yes. Commissioner Sillin?

Yes.

And I vote yes, which is unanimous. Thank you, everyone at Citibank. Now we are moving to item F3 regarding a use permit at 1100 O'Brien Drive. At this public hearing, the commission may consider and adopt a resolution to approve a use permit for a change of use from the existing commercial use print shop to a church in an existing multi-tenant commercial building in the Life Sciences Zoning District. The proposed church is considered a special use and requires a use permit approval. The proposed modifications to the building to change the use would not affect gross floor area and no modifications to the exterior of the building are proposed. We must also determine this action is categorically exempt under CEQA guidelines, section 15301's class one exemption for existing facilities. Mr. Toye, are there any staff updates to the staff report?

Thank you, Chair Silverstein. There aren't any updates to the staff report. The applicants are in person, I believe, and the architect is online to answer any questions.

Great. Does the applicant intend on making any presentation or remarks?

Yes, the applicant is going to make some quick remarks.

Please feel free to do so. Yes, please. And make sure that the is close enough for us to hear.

Hello, everyone. My name is Andrea Monteiro. My husband here, Mr. Jose Monteiro, is here with me. And I'm going to just give a briefing a little bit about our history and why we're here. So basically, 29 years ago, my husband and I were invited to come from Brazil as missionaries to start a church with Brazilians and Brazilian-Americans that speak Portuguese. So we came, we started the church in Corte Madeira, which we have shared the building with Hillside Church of Marine for 28 years. We've been there for a long time in partnership with that church, and for sure we have a very well relationship with them. After the church in Corte Madre started growing a lot, we saw the need to bring a congregation to the peninsula. We've stayed in different places, different years. Lastly, we were in... 298 San Bruno Avenue, Brisbane, which we stayed over six years. However, the church building was quite small, no classrooms and no parking. So we started moving around and looking for a place that we could move into until we found 1100 O'Brien, which fits our needs. So we applied for the conditional use permit, so we can actually have this place for the community living along the peninsula area. Not only that, we have a third location in El Sobrante, which is a nice facility. I have pictures. I'm not sure if we can just show them our Corte Madera location so you can see.

Yep, I think our clerk is going to share the, no?

It's just a picture.

One second, hold on.

While he's looking for it, I'm going to just continue, and then when it's up, I'll show. So El Sobrante is a very large area with a lot of green areas and field, and it's a main church building in the classroom. So basically, it's our... and where we hold most of our events and everything related to the congregation. So 1100 O'Brien will be targeting the community here along the peninsula, like I said. Our main goal is not only our Sunday worships, but more than that. Our goal is to strengthen families and educate children and teenagers to a better future, to career planning, strengthening families so they don't go through divorce. So we want them to get acculturated and be educated. with strong bonds, not only with the American community, but also with among the Brazilian American community. So we value that. We wish to build a very strong partnership with the city of Menlo Park and respect our rules and regulations. And not only that, but also to impact positively the community here. And I thank you for the time. And not only that, okay, so this is Corte Madera location where we've been for 28 years already. And the other one, Okay, and this is our El Sobrante location where we hold a lot of our activities since we have such a large area there with extended parking and everything. So it's just for you guys to see that it's not our first church. We've been around for a while and we understand everything. you know, how to be peaceful when amongst sharing the area with other people. So just to be respectful to other people. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. And if you have any questions.

Thank you. Do any commissioners have clarifying questions? Commissioner Bruzi?

Sure, through the chair, I think this is for the applicant. I was looking at the site plan and thinking about the circulation here, and I noticed that There's a street in East Palo Alto that kind of dead ends into maybe like a wall behind O'Brien in a place that kind of connects with the church. And it looked, I didn't have a chance to go there in person, but it looked from Google Street View like there might even be like a connective door or something. And I was wondering if there's an easement there. or some kind of way that people from the neighborhood can access your services without needing to go all the way out to Willow.

You're welcome to walk through the front door. and walk inside the building to the main area? Is that what you're asking? Or do they need to go around?

No, it's not about your actual building. It's more, there's, I guess it's Monalto, actually. It looks like Monalto Street kind of dead ends. Staff, are you able to bring up a map? Is that too much to ask?

Dane is also our architect, is online. So if he can answer it, I'd really appreciate it. It's not a big thing.

Oh, yeah, here we go. So see right here, there's a little street that kind of ends right there where the arrow is. And it looked as though there might be a way for people from the neighborhood to actually access your parking lot without having to go all the way out. And I was just, you know, looking at your transportation demand management planning and bike parking and things and thinking that, you know, that would be nice if people could actually cut through there when they're walking or biking or not just driving to church. But I didn't know if that was a possibility or not, and I wanted to flag that for you just in case.

Okay, that should be possible. I'm not sure, though. Dane, do you have a comment on that? Is that brown area on the side there, the gate that is closed but could be open? Is that what you mean?

Yeah, that's what I was wondering. It sounds like something you all don't know yet, and that's fine. I just wondered if that was something you discussed or enabled. I don't recall discussing that. Thanks. Thanks.

Great. Seeing no further clarifying questions, we can open up public comment and feel free to be seated unless we have further questions for you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair Silverstein. So once again, if you would like to give public comment on this item and you're in council chambers, please fill out a comment card and hand it to me. If you would like to give public comment and you are online via Zoom, click the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Or if you are calling into tonight's meeting, click star nine on your phone.

Any public comments?

No public comments at this time.

Okay. We can close the public comment period and bring us to commission discussion. Commissioner Beruzzi.

So I'll just pick up this where I left off. The reason I was thinking about circulation here is I believe in the staff report, it talked a little bit about people from the neighborhood being able to access the church. And there is this large family neighborhood along with a middle school just on the other side of that wall that separates the O'Brien Life Sciences area. And we also know that traffic on Willow can be heinous. It's really rough sometimes during certain times of day. And so I was just hoping that this might be accessible to people through other means. And it's not dispositive for me. Like I'm not going to not vote for something because you haven't figured out whether this little like gateway to Narnia exists. But I would suggest looking into that as a way of, you know, growing your community.

Commissioner Erick. Thank you, Chair. Through the Chair, I have a question for staff. Does staff have any additional information as to why a church is considered a conditional use here and not a permitted use?

Thanks for the question. Yes, it's because churches are considered a special use in the zoning code. So every special use requires a use permit from the planning commission, regardless of their zoning district.

Okay, thank you. I have a follow up question. Do you have any information as to why churches are considered a special use?

Um, unfortunately I do not. Um, but we can look into that. Um, there's a list in the zoning code. Um, I'm not sure exactly when that was adopted.

Ms. Sandmeier, do you happen to know when that list was adopted?

Um, Stephanie, over 10 years ago, it was in place. When I started, I think part of the reason is to look at circulation and traffic and that sort of thing. Just how well the use fits within a neighborhood.

Okay, thank you. I have no further questions.

Sorry, as a follow up question on that same line of thought. I understand this is in the life sciences district. But does a print shop need a use permit in the life sciences district? Was there a use permit given whenever they moved in? Or is it specifically because it's a church and not the fact that it's not life sciences?

Yeah, the print shop was a permitted use, but the church is the special use and their neighbor also has a use permit on file because there's a church in the other tenant spot in this building.

Thank you.

Commissioner Schindler.

Thank you, Chair. I have a question to staff that exactly builds on the point that you were just bringing up. The staff report references the next-door neighbor church in the B-suite, saying it's not the original church tenant that was there at the time the use permit was granted, but that the use permit is still in effect as it's not restricted to a particular tenant. But given that this is, you know, the life sciences and, excuse me, light industrial, I'm curious if, and I think this is a broader question than this project, Under what circumstances, if any, does the use permit revert? So, for example, if the space reverted back to being used in a light industrial context, would it change? Or if the property were sold, would it change? Or if it were significantly redeveloped, would it change?

Um, so if the property were sold, um, and the uses continued it, the, the use permit would still be in effect regardless of the tenant or the ownership of the property. Um, I would just want to double check in general, the use permit just runs with the land. Um, I would want to double check if there is any circumstance that it like, uh, expires, but to my knowledge it would not expire. It would be allowed on this site.

So you would look for something specific to the original use permit being issued that would have been a condition of expiration or some other termination.

Yeah. So like some of our other use permits, for example, for like alcohol sales will actually have a condition that states it is for this tenant only. And we have files for all of our use permits that go back to decades that we will look at when projects are proposed or uses are proposed for certain sites.

Okay. I mean, given that the commission here has seen a number of significant redevelopment proposals in this neighborhood, I was just curious also as to the impact of, you know, a significant redevelopment too. But it sounds like the use permit would stay with the parcel, even if it were significantly redeveloped, for example, in a life sciences context.

Yeah, through the chair, I can add a little more clarification. So the use permit is tied to the site plan and specific conditions. So if one church leaves, another church can come in. If the site is significantly redeveloped with new buildings, then it wouldn't really work anymore because it's tied to the site plan and conditions and that sort of thing.

So a significant redevelopment would result in essentially the end of the effectiveness of the use permit for that particular land use.

Well, unless the redevelopment somehow incorporated the use, but if it's redeveloped for something else.

If it were not redeveloped as a church, if it were redeveloped as something consistent with the types of projects we've seen in life sciences recently here. Thank you. That was the extent of my questions.

Any further commissioner comments?

Sorry, move to approve the use permit as per the staff report.

I'm happy to second.

Seeing a motion and a second and no further discussion, I will call a vote for item F3. Commissioner Beruzzi. Yes. Commissioner Eric. Yes. Commissioner Schindler. Yes. Commissioner Sillin.

Yes.

And I vote yes, which passes unanimously. Thank you. And that brings us to item F4. regarding a specific plan amendment at 870 santa cruz avenue at it's going to be a long one so bear with me at this public hearing the commission may request for specific plan amendments to modify land uses allowed within the downtown station area main street overlay land use designation which is located within the el camino real downtown specific plan zoning district The proposed revisions include changing the animal clinics and hospitals use from not allowed to conditional, changing the animal retail sales and service use from limited to less than 5,000 square feet to permitted, changing the banks and financial institutions use from not allowed to conditional, changing the business services use from not allowed to conditional, changing the personal improvement services use from on upper floors only to permitted, and changing personal services general from on upper floors only to permitted. Regarding office uses, the applicant is proposing to allow existing buildings within the Main Street overlay to have an additional allowance of up to two thirds of the public benefit bonus floor area ratio for office uses if located in the rear half of the ground floor and or on the second floor, not containing frontage on Santa Cruz Avenue. and not increasing the overall square footage of the building, subject to a use permit and a public benefit agreement. Lastly, the applicant proposes to modify four use classifications across the entire specific plan area. One, business services, expand to include businesses that primarily provide goods and services to the public. Two, personal improvement services, remove spas, Three, personal services restricted, remove therapeutic massage services. And four, personal services general, expand to include therapeutic massage services, nail salons, biometric screening, and a broader set of small services, which include non-surgical and non-invasive cosmetic and aesthetic services, such as injectables, laser treatments, skin rejuvenation, and body contouring. We can also recommend the adoption of an addendum to the Certified Final Environmental Impact Report, EIR, for the specific plan. With that out of the way, Mr. Pruder, are there any updates to the staff report on this item?

Good evening. Again, Matt Pruder, the associate planner. I thank you for the question. We have a few updates. At this time, we've received a total of 87 public comments for this project. of which 21 were shared in the staff report and the remaining 66 were provided either via the city council message service or by email to you commissioners which we've basically sorted through and one comment, excuse me, expressed concern about potential jobs and housing impacts. And the other comments were all generally in support of the proposed project. For the comments that were not received via the CCIN City Council service, we have consolidated those and provided a printout of them in the back table. We provided some copies for anyone who'd like to see those. And additionally, those separately were emailed to the commissioners over the course of mostly today. And so with that, I have a staff presentation. And there's also an applicant led presentation by the property owner Todd speaker. So I can begin the staff presentation, but I'm happy to start with any initial clarifying questions if we'd like to do that first. Thank you.

Let's start with the presentations. And then we can ask any clarifying questions that arise.

All right, thank you for that. I will share my screen right now. Okay, thank you very much again is matt pruder associate planner today we'll be talking about the specific plan amendments project which is tied to an application and driven by a private property owner at 870 Santa Cruz avenue. And just as a quick clarify clarifying couple of slides we're going to go over the location here as many of you are aware, this is a question of. redefining some items within the downtown specific plan the El Camino real downtown specific plan specifically. the kind of center of the city, which runs along the major axes of El Camino Real, as well as Santa Cruz Avenue. And as you can see here with the multicolored parcels that are not gray, these are the parcels that are within what we consider the specific planning area. In particular, you'll notice, we'll do a zoom in in a moment, but the areas in purple are located entirely along Santa Cruz Avenue. And those are within a land use designation that is considered the Main Street overlay. And so we're going to be focusing a lot of attention on that, but that's not the entirety of the project. There are some other key important details as well outside that affect the entire specific plan. So I'll move on to the next slide here. And you can see here a zoom in of the kind of central downtown core. that shows the 870 Santa Cruz Avenue property, which is in that kind of light blue rectangle there facing Santa Cruz. And it's kind of at an angle, but you know, the general north is to the top of the screen. And what you have on the right side where the red long rectangular parcels are is Caltrain and the Caltrain Station. And so basically between Caltrain Station And Fremont Park near the intersection of University Drive and Santa Cruz Avenue are these purple parcels that comprise what is known as the Main Street overlay. This area is specifically Santa Cruz Avenue properties that are within the downtown specific plan. And so we'll be focusing a lot on those, but we also have a few use classification updates that would affect the entire specific plan. And so I'll quickly just go over some of these key items. Some of it I'll mention briefly and some of it I'll get into in more detail shortly. We have three key things here that were described in a little more detail at the beginning of the item. But the main things are that we have some land uses that are currently not allowed or in some ways restricted that would be allowed kind of easier permitting pathways for this Main Street overlay area, this land use designation. The second item is that we have for use classifications, ie the definitions of certain use types in the specific plan. That are going to be modified with this request and that would affect any property that is thinking of, you know, considering this use it will redefine how these uses are you know, slightly redefine some of them. For these first two items, I am going to turn it over to the applicant team. When they put their slide up, I will transition over and kind of go over their slide, because their slide is a little better in terms of explaining that. And I can, as staff, explain what their slide indicates. So we'll kind of go back and forth on that. It'll be a little different, but hopefully it'll be straightforward enough. And then lastly, there's this third item of a public benefit agreement. And so I will just go into the next slide to explain that in more detail here. And it is basically a few different characteristics that are very specific. And it's initially here to allow existing buildings that are on Santa Cruz Avenue that are within the Main Street overlay. Again, those purple parcels. that any existing building that seeks to have additional office and would like to have potentially something that goes beyond what is currently allowed, depending on the medical type of office or the non-medical type of office, it could be an increase of up to two-thirds, 0.067, of the public benefit bonus, only that type of FAR, not the base level FAR, but the public benefit bonus FAR, for office uses, so this could result in some existing buildings if they're capable and they have this kind of set of provisions that they could have potentially office use. But it would require a few more things so going into the next four bullets, we have the requirement for a use permit, as well as a public benefit. And for the public benefit, it involves this agreement. And so going into this a little further, kind of like how we've had other public benefit proposals that require pro forma, an actual economic assessment that goes over the assessed value and explains how that value is equal to or comparable to what the proposed bonus would be. That would be required. And then also there would be a one-time planning commission hearing. which would be kind of a take it or leave it situation where the planning commission would see this one time, the applicant would incur some risk and potentially could be approved or denied one time. And that could be appealed to city council, of course, but there wouldn't be a study session or several iterative attempts to kind of perfect that public benefit agreement. And lastly, any other project that's not, again, going back to that top bullet, not invoking the request for that special office square footage and is not an existing building, would have to undergo the same existing processes that we already have in place. So either you have two kind of pathways, so to speak. There could be some combination of the two, but it involves either a development agreement, which is a form of structured negotiations that involve a lot of effort with city council, subcommittees, and that kind of thing. And also there's the requirement to provide a public benefit on site. And again, that is not an option here for the top bullet of requesting that special amount of office, you have to if you if you if this moves forward and gets approved the proposed additional office would have to Request a public benefit agreement as their pathway. That's the only way that they could do this. They could not do it through a development agreement, they could not do it through providing a public benefit on site, so this is very specific. And unfortunately, it's a little minute detail here, but I just want to make it very clear stress, the fact that there's a very limited set of circumstances. For specific types of buildings that would want this specific slightly additional amount of office square footage so moving on a little more to go here. We have our next steps today's meeting, of course, following this decision of a recommendation by Commissioner, we would have the City Council meeting for the action on this resolution, which would be on June 23. And it's tentatively when we've scheduled it. That's our plan to have it heard on that date. And this would be effective upon the date of adoption. So whatever day the adoption date is, when City Council votes on this and ideally votes to adopt, That would be the effective date moving forward. And so just to be clear, this could come up and become a reality very soon for projects. But again, it would have a discretionary review process, use permit, public benefit agreement are required. We wouldn't see these popping up instantly. There would be like an application process that would need to occur that would come back to you separately. And that is all for now, but I'm happy to answer any questions. And with that, I maybe can stop here. If there are any questions for me, we can then transition over to the applicant team if you'd like to do that as well. Thank you all for your time.

Yes, if the applicant wants to give a presentation, let's go ahead with that.

Mackie, go to the next slide. Good evening, Commissioners, and thank you for taking the time to hear our proposal. And thank you, Matt.

I know you've worked hard on this one, so thank you.

I'm Todd Speaker with Windy Hill Property Ventures, and I'm here with my two business partners, Jamie D'Alessandro and Austin Osich. We are a local commercial real estate company focusing on commercial and multifamily projects in the Bay Area, primarily in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. I grew up in Menlo Park. I attended Los Alamitos and La Entrada, and my kids attended Oak Knoll. Jamie and Austin's kids currently attend Menlo Park schools as well. I have incredible memories as a kid spending time riding bikes downtown, going to the local card shop to buy the new release of Topps baseball cards, or going out to dinner with teammates and family after a soccer or baseball game. I have been all in on Menlo Park for decades, and I'm still all in on Menlo Park.

Next slide.

Downtown used to be a magnet for people. And that's what we're trying to get back to going through this process and the community outreach we've done. It's clear to us that residents of Menlo Park want the same. People want to invest in downtown. It's evident by the recent additions of Cafe Vivant and Clark's. Both those projects required a significant amount of capital investment. And we need to support them. And we need to give a reason for others to make the same kind of investment in our downtown. We also spend a significant amount of money renovating 870 Santa Cruz, and we think it's the nicest building on the street. But our proposal isn't just for our building. Sure, we benefit from it, but these changes are for the entirety of Santa Cruz Avenue between Caltrain and University Drive. Every building owner, current retailer, and potential future retailer or developer wanting to invest in downtown will benefit from these changes.

Next slide.

Downtown has a retail vacancy problem and has had this problem for years. Building owners don't want to invest in their buildings because they can't get the rent or the tenants to support their investment.

Next slide.

Developers have concerns investing in downtown because the zoning is too restrictive and the developers that have invested in downtown struggle to get a return on their investment with a successful retailer. Businesses want to come to downtown, but in a lot of cases, their uses aren't allowed.

Next slide.

The changes we are proposing meet the goals for the general plan and the downtown specific plan. Allowing alternative uses benefits the community by offering more services to the community members, as well as other businesses downtown by bringing more people to the downtown to support those businesses. These changes would allow for maximizing the benefits of frontage along Santa Cruz Avenue. Being able to offer smaller floor plates opens the doors for more retailers. For example, in our building, we have a very large ground floor. Our tenant Luminaire, a very high-end furniture store, would love to stay in our building, but they simply can't afford to stay in such a large amount of space. but allowing additional alternative uses in the rear of the building, decreasing the depth of the space that front Santa Cruz, it opens up the potential for them to succeed while offering a smaller space to an additional alternative business. Currently, many rear sections of buildings along Santa Cruz Avenue serve as storage, office space, and clutter, providing little interaction with pedestrians. Allowing alternative uses would bring life to these spaces. Increased flexibility is desperately needed to allow building owners to lease their spaces and allow businesses to want to be downtown and give them the ability to do so.

Next slide.

When talking to residents of Menlo Park about our proposal and exploring and explaining the need for alternative uses, one local resident asked if yoga studios would be allowed. I said, yes, fitness uses would be allowed if this is approved. His response was great. And my wife currently drives 20 minutes in traffic to Redwood City to go to a yoga class. We need to be more accommodative. it benefits the community and watch what then happens next. There's more demand at the coffee shop when the class gets out. There's more demand at the lunch spot when the class gets out. It allows people coming downtown for a specific reason to do other errands they are doing in other communities now. We need that kind of synergy in our downtown. Swap out the yoga example with pretty much any business and the outcome will be the same. To recruit these tenants, we need to adjust the size of the floor plates. Many buildings along Santa Cruz Avenue are simply way too big for retail alone. That's a key reason why so many sit vacant. Allowing a limited amount of office space at the rear of the building would enable smaller, more flexible retail floor plates. More office workers also bring more daytime foot traffic that benefits everyone along Santa Cruz Avenue. We need downtown to be a magnet for people. Those people support our retailers, which pay rent to the building owners, allowing the building owners to invest in their buildings, making the downtown more attractive for additional investment from outside developers. In closing, we have been working on 870 Santa Cruz since 2019. We invested a lot of time and money, and we believe in downtown Menlo Park. The demand is there, the money is there, we just need to adjust to that demand. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Mr.

Printer, do you have anything else to add? Yes, and apologies for the quick transition here, but thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for the presentation. Just adding on to this additional slide that was provided, there are quite a few number of details here, but I will quickly just go through the key things. And this highlights the two items that I brought up originally, which were, one, Opening up more use types along the Santa Cruz Avenue portion of the specific plan, the Main Street overlay. So we have these use types here that are all listed. And very quickly, there's animal clinics and hospitals. That's currently not allowed at all. That would become a conditional use requiring a use permit. Permitting the next one would be animal retail sales and service. That is currently... not allowed if it's greater than 5,000 square feet without a use permit. And the idea would be instead to make that a fully permitted use irrespective of the size of the footprint. The next one is the banks and financial institutions use. That is currently not allowed. We do have some existing banks that are on Santa Cruz that are very prominent, and people are very well aware of their existence. But the idea here is that in case some other bank or financial institution that meets the definition wanted to open up a business on Santa Cruz Avenue, they would have to do so with a use permit, as it would be proposed as a conditional use as well. So instead of being not allowed at all, for future, there would be a possibility with a use permit as a conditional use, excuse me. And then the next two items are very similar for personal improvement services and personal services general. Those two use types currently are only allowed if they're on the upper floors and not on the ground floor. And the proposal for both of these is to allow for them as a permitted use on any aspect of the building, whether it's the ground floor or upper floor. And there's no square footage limit in that respect as well. The last item I'll get to is the office uses, which is at the bottom of the slide. And then after that, I'll cover these use classification revisions that are being proposed. But with the office uses, There's a bit of a change here, and the staff report definitely has a lot of detail to this. But the main thing to note is that currently we have two types of categories. There's the non-medical type, which we consider business and professional office, and then there's the medical and dental type of office. The business and professional non-medical type only allows for up to one half of whatever your FAR is for your property. The medical and dental type is less than that. It only allows up to one third. The proposal from the applicant is to allow an existing building to potentially increase up to two-thirds of the public benefit bonus FAR. So this is getting back into what I was saying about the public benefit bonus being an option only in this instance. But it would have to be for an existing building. It would have to be in the rear half of the building. So using that existing building's footprint, half of that, and then knowing where the rear half of that building would lie. And then the other part would be that no frontage could be onto Santa Cruz Avenue. So it's very rear facing ground floor presence that would be proposed. And it would all add up to two thirds of whatever that bonus level FAR is for that property. And so that would be subject to, as I had alluded to earlier, a use permit and public benefit agreement requirement combined. And basically that sums up all office proposals for existing buildings if they wish to pursue something greater than the status quo of one half of FAR or one third of FAR, depending on the non-medical or medical type of office respectively. Getting into the definitions really quickly to close up, we have just four key things here. The first main one is that the business services use, it's mentioned in the slide on the third bullet, but it is currently something that is allowed for businesses and private companies. And the idea is to add language that includes the public so that any member of the public can go and use these services. These business services involve printing, scanning, A lot of electronic type of kind of like akin to a FedEx or UPS. But in our definition, it's currently restricted to private business and not to members of the public. So the idea behind this is to add the public to that definition, that use classification, so that members of the public can also be a part of the proposed business, business services business, if you will. The next one is in personal improvement services. We currently have the term spas in that use. The applicant has proposed to move the spas from that use classification to the personal services general. And then that transitions into the third change. Personal services general would have a lot more spa and wellness uses combined. And so what we have here is we include spas. We include the biometric screening, a lot of non-surgical, non-invasive cosmetic and aesthetic services, such as injectables, laser treatments, skin rejuvenation, and so on. And then additionally, the personal services general use would include therapeutic massage services. That aligns with the rest of the city. Outside of the specific plan, personal services includes therapeutic massage services as a personal service use. That is not restricted. So the fourth change, currently that is in the personal services restricted category. And so it would move the term therapeutic massage services from personal services restricted to personal services general, which does have an implication in terms of permissibility across the specific plan. So the idea here is that that too is included within this kind of spa wellness idea as a more comprehensive update to personal services general. So with that, I'm going to close my addendum to that presentation. And we're definitely happy to answer any questions you may have for myself or for the applicant. Thank you all.

Let's go to clarifying questions. Commissioner Schindler.

Thank you, Chair. Two questions, clarifying questions for staff. One is sort of specific and then one is broader and procedural. So you were just discussing some of the nuances of the office, the expanded office space allowances and the description including the part of the process requires a use permit. Could you merge that description with what we were talking about in the last agenda item where we were discussing the fact that a use permit moves, stays with the parcel And could you sort of fold in, for example, the use where an existing building goes through the newly proposed process, obtains the use permit, and then significantly redevelops? How does it work?

Thank you for the question, Commissioner Schindler. So it's a few items to go over in the answer. I think I'll start with one aspect, which is if a redevelopment is to occur wholesale, if they are to fully demolish the site and construct something new, that effectively eliminates the provision that was established with that earlier use permit. So let's say that there's a project that comes in, they get the two-thirds FAR, they do all these things that are in the proposal here to get that additional office, they put it on the ground floor, and a few years go by, another developer comes, buys the property, and decides to fully demolish the site. There is no longer an ability for that site to have that provision. And so if that clarifies it a bit on that note, the existing building is no longer able to basically carry over that provision, it would be ended with the demolition of said building

Thank you. I think I'm understanding the outcome that you're describing. I just have a question about the mechanism. So is that because in this case, the use permit would be written to explicitly say that? In the prior agenda item, the discussion was that in order for the use permit to terminate with a significant redevelopment, it would probably have to be a specific component of the way the use permit was drafted.

basically it's tied to the floor plan that received the approval. So once you've eliminated the floor plan in that ground floor and whichever other floors have the two thirds FAR, or maybe it's not fully two thirds, but it's more than what the current status quo allows. If they decide that once you have, you know, created the demolition condition and you've removed that, you've removed the floor plan that has that approval. And that is the basis for removing that provision.

Thank you. That's a very helpful clarification. My other clarifying question is sort of more process and procedural. In prior episodes where the Planning Commission has looked at revisions to the specific plan or any changes to a zoning ordinance, whether it's for a housing element or for something sort of in response to state requirements. Our first step, as best I can recall, has always been a study session. So could you comment as to sort of why we're starting without a study session and if that is an option available to us?

Sure thing. Initially, I'd just like to point out, this is an applicant-driven project. And so we've collaborated with the applicant team. And we did bring up the idea of having a study session. And so there is complete understanding and knowledge that this was an option that was considered. However, I think that the main thing here is that the applicant has worked with us to determine that this is the course of action they would like to propose. And so because this is an applicant-driven amendment, a package of amendments, It is something that, you know, they are welcome to propose in the manner they have. And so what they have worked out is a one-time meeting that would be the Planning Commission, one opportunity to decide. And this is different as a different type of request because it's not the typical public benefit bonus request. where if you look in the zoning requirements for the specific plan, you see that we have bonus level and we have base level, but the key here is this is outside of that. This is a different request of its own.

Thank you. I think that generally gets to the gist of my two clarifying questions.

Commissioner Sullivan.

Thank you. Just to follow up on that question, Mr. Pruder, so similarly in previous, this is the first meeting I've been to where something like this is being proposed by a private party. Could you educate us on, I guess, how that works? Like, can anyone in the city propose this that's a business owner or resident or anyone outside the city? Yeah. how are folks able to propose changes to our specific plan?

Sure. Thank you for your question, Commissioner. So it's kind of a few things to note. One, this is an application by a property owner that is interested in looking at, you know, future opportunities for developing their property, but also for the city. It's something that, you know, an applicant can apply for. It's another type of discretionary action. And so what we have seen before that's probably more common is when you have larger scale projects that involve, say, a zoning amendment or some kind of general plan amendment where the property needs something to change for a specific proposal. And those are usually larger scale types of projects. We see those from time to time. But indeed, it is possible for an applicant to provide a request to make some modifications like this. And what happens is this involves a bit of review with staff, but we also had a significant amount of review with respect to CEQA and the CEQA pathway as well as the tribal notification that was needed for that. And so a lot of other steps are required of an applicant. And so it is not a simple process by any means, but it is something that one could apply for. But I think it would also just depend on the extent of changes and working through feasibility and those kinds of things to understand what's desired.

Thank you. And how costly is this process for the applicant?

I guess if I may, is the question like what is the total cost or just generally what the cost could be? I mean, we have some initial fees when one begins an application and the specific plan amendments, I believe, are the same cost as a general plan amendment. But also we have in the similar manner with all planning projects that are PLNs. We have staff time that builds, you know, quarterly based on the staff time needed for review of projects, coming to this meeting, reviewing plan resubmittals and those kinds of things. So there's a lot of, I think, iterative work that occurs that could cause this to vary quite a bit, I would say.

Okay, thank you. I think that answers my question. I had another question about the public benefit agreement. So I just want to clarify that for this particular proposal, the only thing that would be... possible if you want that additional FAR for office on the ground floor would be a public benefit agreement. And that is specifically a payment to the city. It is never going to be like some sort of actual something that the applicant has to like build or commit to. And a second part of that question is, is this something, the dollar amount of that agreement, is that something that's fairly quantitative or is it something that is negotiated with the city?

Thank you for that set of questions there. So basically to start with, the actual public benefit agreement is for an in lieu type payment. And so there's one pathway for that. There is no potential for building something on site or building something offsite that would accommodate that. This is about a funding mechanism that is quantified. It is a quantifiable exercise, I believe, much akin to how we've seen public benefit and the community benefits in the Bayfront as well, where You have an economic study that determines based on the square footage that is desired. What that value is in relation to a payment. And so it would involve a similar economic process in terms of the study. And that would be part of the package that is reviewed the planning commission one time. And the other part I would just add is that this is Again, what you're looking at is basically in many cases. an increase of, it's technically 16, 17% more of non-medical office than the 50% because you're going to 0.67 or if it's one third medical 0.33 to 0.67, 0.4 of whatever the FAR is. So it's again, square footage numbers wise, I don't think you'll see this as a very monumental amount of square feet for any context. Most of the buildings and properties on the, you know, street itself on Santa Cruz Avenue are not so large. The general I think average size is I think 7000 or so square feet for most of the lots. So if you were to take that, take the FAR, understand that it's also the increase not not the full 0.67 necessarily it's it's the the delta the difference that's the amount that needs the economic assessment and so it is you know in most cases i would think square footage assessment of i would think no more than 3 000 square feet or less in many cases a bit less because most of the buildings again you do the math of There are three sub districts with differing FARs and so two of them have 2.25 as the FAR and so you'd have two thirds of 2.25 and then the difference of that with what is required by status quo. And so again, it might be 0.5, 0.6 FAR. And then you relate that to your square footage of your lot to get your amount of square feet that you're trying to increase. And so it's a very focused amount of increase that is, I would say, a little more limited in size that would be assessed.

Thank you. And if I'm understanding correctly, so the maximum square footage that a building could occupy with office if this were to be approved would be two-thirds of the total square footage. Is that correct?

Two-thirds of the total allowable square footage based on the FAR, but that's based on the public benefit bonus FAR. So again, 2.25 is in this property's case. They're technically D downtown as their zoning sub-district. There are also two other sub-districts a little bit to the east, closer to the Caltrain station, Station Area East, Station Area West. So those three each have an FAR. Two of them have the same 2.25. One of them I think is 1.75. I'd have to verify. And so it's using whichever FAR applies at that property of the public benefit bonus level.

Okay, thank you. And so if we're saying up to half of the ground floor could be used for office and up to two-thirds total of the building, then assuming the entire half of the first floor is taken up with office, which is a quarter of the total that leaves some room on the second floor, presumably, what would typically go there that wouldn't be office? Does that question make sense?

I think I understand. So you're saying if one were to max out their rear half of office and then they have some leftover office they can put on the second floor, but they may have a situation where there's some square footage on the second floor that could not be filled because they've maxed out their office. Is that... Yeah. Okay. So then there may be some leftover square footage. I mean, it is... possible for other uses to occupy, but I think at the same time it would be up to each respective applicant to assess how much they can fit in their building. And if they do go for the two-thirds FAR, what would that look like on each floor? I think they have to very carefully think about if there is some lost, you know, FAR that is miscalculated perhaps and not allocated in the right way. It may be the case that you may not be able to fill the entire rear half if you have to fill the second floor first, for example. And if that's fundamental, there may be an issue there. But I think it would be case by case. The other thing that's important to note is not every building has a zero lot line. And so there may be buildings that are smaller than, and there may be two-story that are smaller than what their FAR could allow them to be. So there is a possibility where the existing building footprint right now is not maxed out to be able to fill in all the way. That could also happen.

Got it. Thank you. That's very helpful. I should have a couple more specific questions and then I'll pass it along. So in Table 2, which is the list of classification changes for the specific plan, under personal improvement services, my understanding is that in this table what we're looking at is a definition of allowed uses under that use classification, personal improvement services. So in the first sentence, we have provisional of instructional services related facilities, including blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it goes on to say reducing salons and single purpose fitness studios, such as yoga studios or aerobic studios. Does the word reducing, is that like a term? a type of salon or is that introducing a intention of this section to reduce those uses? That word is just kind of throwing me off.

Yes, definitely. I see what you mean by that. That appears to just be an odd wording from, I'm assuming, when this was first adopted. So it may be the case that it's more about weight loss and reducing body mass, perhaps. But, you know, I think some of this terminology is not completely up to date and

Okay, so it's a type of salon. I think it's related to... Pardon my naivete. I tried to Google it. It didn't come up. Okay, last question. In table three of the staff report, there is... It shows the existing dwelling units in commercial square footage and then proposed and underproposed commercial square footage is a negative number. I was just hoping you could explain what's going on there.

Yes, that happens to be a project I'm working on. So we have the project located at 888 El Camino Real. That is currently a restaurant and it's going to be redeveloped to be a 41 unit multifamily development. And so they're technically based on the entitlements currently under review. Again, it's, you know, assuming these move forward, they get approved, they get developed and so on. We would lose that commercial square footage for that restaurant at 888 El Camino Real in preparation for the 41 units to be built.

Got it. Thank you for that clarification. I don't have any more clarifying questions right now.

I have a couple clarifying questions. One is very minor, but there's language that says animal clinics and hospitals. Can you confirm that that means animal clinics and animal hospitals and not animal clinics and human hospitals?

Thank you for the question. And yes, Chair, that is referring to animal-focused hospitals, not for humans.

So that is a single phrase, animal clinics and hospitals? Yes, yes. That is understood to be one phrase, yes. Now that's on the record. So if anyone asks down the road, they know. My second question is point of procedure. Do we need to vote on this item as an all or nothing based on what is presented? Or can we make changes to our recommendation for our recommendation to city council if we see fit?

You could make recommendations at this meeting in this action you make.

Great. And then my last clarifying question is, why would the office use only apply to existing buildings? For example, if a property owner wanted to demolish an existing building and build something new, and as part of doing that, they wanted to apply and use these provisions and get that bonus, it sounds like the language of existing building would not allow them to do so. Is that intended? Am I understanding that correctly? And is that intended?

You are correct in understanding that. And the main premise here is that a lot of collaborative work between the applicant and staff have worked out an understanding that this request for office is to be a very limited request. It is not something that is wholesale. It is not wholesale for the specific plans required. you know, different land use designations, but also on the main street overlay, it's very limited to existing buildings to not necessarily create a lot of, you know, considerable opportunities for office growth. It's really focusing on specific areas that are existing for limited square footage increases that are, you know, across certain very select circumstances.

Thank you. Those are all my clarifying questions. Seeing no further ones, can we open this item up for public comment, please, Mr. Turner?

Yes, Chair Silverstein. So I do have a number of comment cards. If you would like to give public comment and you're online via Zoom, please raise your hand. And I think I'll start with Zoom just to give folks in the room an opportunity to fill out a comment card, which are located in the back. So... If you have a zoom comment, please raise your hand or click star nine. If you are calling in to tonight's meeting.

And Mr. Turner, can we get a quick estimate on how many total comments there are between in person and online? If there are more than sufficient, we might want to limit comments to two minutes instead of three.

So we have eight comment cards and two raised hands online. So 10. Seeing 10, I think we can stick with the three. Thank you. All right. So first, let me get my screen here. Up first, we just have iPhone guest. You can... You can unmute yourself now, but please state your name for the record.

Hey, hi, everybody. This is Laura Milan. I am a Menlo Park resident. and mom of two young kids. Before I get to my main comment, I wanted to share a quick real-time observation. For the past year, city staff has directed everyone raising concerns about downtown's permitted uses to this planning commission application, saying that this is the process for engaging with the city on the issue. So tonight isn't just a developer request. Everyone who cares about downtown has been sent here tonight. So with that context, I am here to support the Windy Hill amendments as a means to drive positive evolution downtown. I spend a ton of time talking with entrepreneurs who would love to open community benefit businesses in Menlo Park and just about an equal amount of time talking to residents and neighbors who would love to see those businesses here. I think we're doing our city a disservice with our current restrictive permitted uses on Santa Cruz. And I'm also here to ask that you add one more thing. The package upgrades three uses from prohibited to allowed with a use permit. In that category, as you guys just discussed, are animal clinics and hospitals, one thing, banks and financial institutions, and business services. But there's a key use that's missing that really matters for Menlo Park, and it's small-scale commercial recreation. like the proposed Family Activity Center in the packet. Anyone who's spent time on Santa Cruz Avenue knows it's a vital social space for youth. And the packet includes a letter from a local business owner, another mom in the community who's trying to open a family activity center to give these kids, including her own, a safe and supportive space to congregate. So if we spend the years we've spent evaluating permitted uses and we leave this out, it'll be a major miss for Menlo Park families. It shouldn't be a controversial addition tonight. Most other peninsula downtowns do allow this kind of business on their retail main streets. including Palo Alto, Burlingame, Redwood City, and Mountain View, which expanded its allowance just last month to be fully permitted for this use case. So Santa Cruz Avenue is an outlier and not in a good way. The fix is simple, but it will be hugely impactful for families who will benefit, and you can apply the same upgrade proposed for banks and animal clinics to small-scale commercial recreation. So with that, please support the Windy Hill request tonight and allow this additional use. Thanks.

Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Miko Harris-Parker. You should be able to unmute yourself now. And then our first in-person commenter next will be Chris Coomer. Miko, can you hear us? Should be able to unmute. There you are, okay.

Okay, sorry about that. I was talking, I thought you could hear me. I just basically have one question for staff and you touched on it a little bit, but I would like to know what are the possible negative impacts to saying yes to this? If staff could answer that question, I would love to hear some of those comments. Otherwise, I'm not seeing much of an issue with going forward with this plan. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Chris Coomer, followed by Kimberly Lutkanen.

Thank you, Chris. My name is Chris Coomer. I'm a local architect and have been practicing in Menlo Park for 25 years. I'm here tonight not as an architect, but in my capacity as a business owner. First and foremost, I would urge you to support this amendment. I don't think it goes far enough, but I think it's a great start for how to broaden the tent for who gets to be downtown in Menlo Park and what kind of businesses we want to make our city more vibrant. We're clearly behind our neighbors on the peninsula in that regard. I just took a walk from here to Pete's and back to this evening, so many vacancies. And again, by broadening our tent and this ordinance would, or this update to the specific plan would do that, we would just be able to get more people in there. And on a personal note, my wife and I have had this business for 25 years. We've been looking to move to downtown the last couple of years. And it's been a struggle for our office to find the spaces, the types of spaces we would want to rent. So there's not a lot out there and it's not great. So again, the small office amendment wouldn't totally change the city, but it would broaden the opportunities for people like us to bring our eight person firm to downtown and hopefully make it a little more vibrant. So I would urge you to think carefully about this. I know it's a little unusual, but Windy Hill took a lot of time and clearly a lot of effort to craft this. And maybe with your amendments, I'd say to loosen things, but I would urge you to think carefully and really move this forward. This could be a great thing for downtown. We clearly need to fill the spaces and make the city even as vibrant as it was 25 years ago when we moved here. So thanks very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kimberly McCannon, followed by Kelly Flannery.

Thank you, commissioners. Thank you, staff. And thank you, Windy Hill Development Todd speaker team. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on this issue tonight. I'm very passionate about it. I'm a chief legal officer at a cybersecurity company. And I've lived in Menlo Park for over 20 years. And today, I stand before you as a Menlo Park mom and a tenant of 711 Santa Cruz Avenue, right next to Mike's cameras. I've raised three kids here. My first and oldest son went all the way through Menlo Park School Districts and is now at Stanford University. And I'm passionate about bringing my business concept to Santa Cruz Avenue. My concept is around a boutique fitness studio, specifically yoga and strength, and offering community events. that would be a benefit for the community. I truly feel growing up with these families here for over 20 years in Menlo Park, and I see folks traveling, like the one woman that was discussed, many miles to just take a yoga class or a fitness class. It would be great to have a business that keeps our families right here on Santa Cruz Avenue, where they can gather before class for a coffee, after class go grab shopping at Trader Joe's, or lunch, and also really thrive with the kind of community events, leadership training, and other opportunities for the community, including for kids. So I ask you tonight to please support this amendment fully and allow vibrancy to return to the streets of Santa Cruz Avenue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, our next speaker is Kelly Flannery followed by Marnie Foody.

Hi, thank you for having us this evening and I'm here to fully support everything that Todd and Kim have spoken about tonight. I have two children that go to St. Raymond's in Menlo Park and we're down here all the time. I'm also an interior designer and I, similar to the architect, had been looking in downtown Menlo Park for some space for retail and some office. I ran into some issues where the spaces were old, not well-maintained, owners that couldn't put money into them. I'm a former commercial real estate broker, my husband's a commercial real estate broker, so we floated the idea of purchasing some of these spaces. maybe getting them fixed up, getting a consortium of other people that would want to invest. The feedback we've had is just not good. Menlo Park is too sleepy, the uses are too restricted, you're just never going to get the rents there that make this pro forma work. And I would also implore, if you open up these expanded uses, what does that translate to in terms of rent per square foot? And at what cap rate and what sales does that increase? And at what kind of increased revenue, both from sales tax and rent and profit? the improved land values that you would receive as a city. And so long story short, I, I love what you guys have done with the Menlo park design district. I am still looking for space. I support Kim's use. I would love to be able to do yoga in downtown Menlo park. And I think a lot of great things have happened and I would just say, let's, let's keep going.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Marnie Foody, followed by Ben Irett.

Good evening, Council. Thank you so much. I'm Marnie Foody. I'm a 30-year resident of Menlo Park. I'm also the chair of the Downtown Menlo Fund. I'm here in full support of this amendment. Over the last 10 years, two major forces have changed community centers as we know them in this area. amazon and covid these forces trans excuse me transformed what people wanted in their downtowns communities no longer were interested in convenience shops people wanted opportunities to engage with each other through fitness family activities and wellness the other communities on the peninsula took action to address the looming vacancies they were experiencing In 2013, Mountain View heavily reorganized their commercial zone to allow for fitness uses. In 2016, Redwood City updated their zoning to allow for active ground floor uses along key quarters like Main Street. Instead of banning non-retail uses, they allowed active uses. that generated high pedestrian traffic. This includes fitness, boutiques, wellness, services, and entertainment. In 2021, Palo Alto amended their code to explicitly allow fitness and exercise studios, learning centers, personal services in the commercial districts. So what was the effect of these changes? These policy changes acted as a pressure release By allowing fitness studios, wellness spaces, and personal services to backfill the dark storefronts, they prevented long-term vacancies. Right now, Menlo Park has a vacancy of roughly 30%. Palo Alto Mountain View in Los Altos entered 2026 with a vacancy rate under 5%. We would love that here. Among the lowest and most stable of the entire San Jose metro area, taking action here tonight will expand the use clause, enable Menlo Park to rebound and become the thriving business center that we all want. As we focus on active uses, I would note that I don't believe animal services or financial services will bring a real active use. I suggest focusing more on the fitness, wellness, and entertainment type uses. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Ben Irett, followed by Kylie Holmes.

Good evening, Commission. My name is Ben Irof. I'm a 30-year resident of the city. I'm a former chair and member of the Planning Commission for five years. I'm also one of the founders of the Downtown Menlo Fund, which was created as a nonprofit last year to partner with the city and the community and the businesses to make the city somewhere that we really love. A key pillar to this is revitalizing the business district. I believe this is one of the priorities that the city council set for this year to revitalize the downtown business district. We're all aware of the high level of vacancies, which really drags the city down. We hear a very broad set of interests from the community to have businesses which provide health and well-being, whether it be yoga studios or gyms or places for kids to learn new crafts. And we see the cities all around us, as Marnie just mentioned, have already approved these use cases. I therefore want to express my support for expanding these uses, including the ones that are requested by Wendy Hill, but also the ones requested by Kim and others. And I will be the first to sign up for yoga classes at your studio. I could definitely use that. This will be a great start. I do want to mention one other thing. I don't think this on its own will solve our problem. I think we need to consider as a planning commission and as a city staff and as a council, what else can be done to improve the downtown and to get new businesses that really serve our residents there. I think something like a vacancy tax or some other mechanism that will really force some of the older buildings to be worked on and have new businesses in there. So I want to thank you all for your support and your time and helping us move the city forward.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Kylie Holmes, followed by Michelle Wagner.

Great. Thank you. Hi, I'm Kylie. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. I am a Menlo Park resident, parent of three school-aged kids, like many others here, and prospective downtown business owner. I'm here in strong support of the Windy Hill Ventures' proposed amendments to downtown zoning. As we all see very visibly, downtown is languishing. Vacant storefronts, low foot traffic, and very few businesses that serve the families who actually live here. This is not a demand problem, it really is a zoning problem. Prospective business owners like myself really want to be downtown. Landlords are desperate to rent their spaces. For example, as Laura Milan mentioned in her remarks, I have been planning a family activity center and arcade for Menlo Park, not covered by this current proposal. I have personally toured eight large spaces downtown over the last six months with a contractor. All spaces have competitive pricing per square foot. All spaces were vacant last November and all spaces are vacant now. The 2014 specific plan has really gone a decade without meaningful overhaul. Our land use designations are far more restrictive than the vast majority of downtowns across the Bay Area, and that really needs to change, and tonight is our first opportunity. Menlo Park is a family city. Our parks, schools, and neighborhoods are amongst the best in California. Our downtown should reflect that, and right now it doesn't. A healthy downtown requires a wider variety of businesses and services. Families, students, and professionals need a downtown that serves their needs. Retailers and restaurants need the foot traffic that comes with that variety. These things go together. The amendments proposed by Todd Speaker and Windy Hill Property Ventures are a very meaningful step in the right direction, and I urge the commission to support this in its actions today. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Michelle Wagner-Knapp, followed by Catherine Glass. And then this will be the last call for public commenters.

Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Michelle Wagner-Knapp, and I'm a Menlo Park resident, as well as an instructor at NPN Strength Studio. I see you, girl. I'm a local business owner and planning to open a wellness and recovery studio called Revive Memlo. That name will work, hopefully. Every week, I'm in the community working alongside neighbors who live and train here, and I can tell you the support for changes like these is overwhelming and palpable. People want more reasons to come downtown. They want businesses that serve their daily lives within walking distance. I'm here tonight in strong support of the proposed specific planned amendments to the Main Street overlay, because I believe they reflect the reality of how downtowns are evolving and what communities like Menlo Park increasingly need. Downtown Menlo Park's vacancy rate is a concern I hear from neighbors constantly. These amendments open the door to active people serving businesses that create consistent local foot traffic throughout the day, supporting surrounding restaurants and retail, and help activate storefronts that might otherwise remain vacant. That includes wellness and recovery studios like mine, personal improvement services like Kimberly's, and youth focused businesses like Kylie's. The kind of uses that give families and young people meaningful reasons to be downtown every day. A few specific changes I'd like to highlight. Expanding personal services general to include broader ranges of wellness and personal care services fills a gap in what our downtown offers residents. Go to Palo Alto, go to Redwood City. You have to drive 20 minutes to get to any of these things around the peninsula. And it's kind of sad that Menlo Park doesn't have this. Moving personal improvement services to permitted on all floors, not just the upper floors where it's hidden away, allows these businesses to have street-level visibility they need to succeed. The office use allowance in the rear of buildings is smart and balanced. It adds economic activity without compromising the pedestrian-facing character of Santa Cruz Ave. I also appreciate that the proposal maintains thoughtful oversight throughout conditional use permits where appropriate. This is not about opening the door to anything and everything. It's about allowing downtown to evolve in a measured and intentional way. I urge the commission to recommend adoption of these amendments. They're good for small business owners like me. They're good for downtown vitality and good for Menlo Park residents who deserve a thriving, walkable Main Street. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And our final commenter will be Catherine Glass.

Hi. I'm Catherine Glass. It seems like everyone today have three kids here in Menlo Park, one at Oak Knoll, one at Hillview, and one at MA. I also work downtown. I'm an art consultant at Stephanie Breitbart Fine Arts at 779 Santa Cruz. And I've been there for about five years. And the three spaces to our right have been empty. the three storefronts for as long as i've worked there and the two to our left were filled by a rug store for about six months until they were kicked out and that has now been empty for maybe two years um we are one of the only it's us and pensies are basically the only things on the block I am here to strongly support all of the proposed changes, including adding the entertainment, I forget the exact wording, but to allow for family fun activity center kind of things that we so desperately need. There's been nothing for little kids. ever until Rabbit's Foot opened and that has been hugely popular. It brings kids downtown, especially of younger ages where their parents have to come with them so you get more foot traffic and then you are forced to go to one of the ice cream shops afterwards. It is good all around for everyone for building community. We feel so outdated and so behind the times. We were in Burlingame this past weekend and it is thriving. You can barely walk down the sidewalks because there are so many families. out and about on the weekends and in the days. And I would like to strongly support all these great people wanting to open businesses and put their heart and soul back into our community.

Thank you. Any further comments online? No further comments. Great. Thank you to all the public commenters. With that, I will close the public comment period and bring us to commission discussion. Would anyone like to kick us off? Commissioner Schindler.

Thank you, Chair. I am going to start by expressing some appreciation for aspects of this proposal. And then I'm going to make a suggestion for how the Commission might proceed with this review and discussion and closure this evening. And I will stop after that and hold specific item by item discussions. But I have plenty. So I wanted to very specifically offer my appreciation and kudos to Windy Hill Ventures for their approach in this proposal. you know, they may have started looking at challenges that were being faced by a specific property at 870, but then looked beyond that to say, look, how are these challenges affecting other properties on Santa Cruz Avenue and even more broadly on downtown? They engaged, clearly engaged with neighboring businesses, neighboring other property owners, other local entrepreneurs and community members. So in my eyes, this shows true local leadership. And I also specifically wanted to identify appreciation for engaging in the city's operating model. So for using the tools that the city uses, we do to essentially run our municipality, right? We have a specific plan. We have zoning ordinances. We work on density, bonus density, community benefits. These are the tools that we use to run the city. This is the language that we speak. And I wanted to just, again, kudos for the demonstrated willingness to speak the language of our city and our existing processes. rather than trying to invent new processes or new economic structures or new stakeholders or new approvers. I have a lot of respect for that. And I ultimately believe that this is the kind of engagement that's going to lead to significant wins for Menlo Park, all areas of Menlo Park, but particularly for downtown. In fact, I'm so sort of enthusiastic about it. I'm going to reiterate something that's already been said here tonight. I'm not sure that this careful investigation has gone far enough. I think that there is an opportunity to go further. to look at more of the land uses, to look at more of the zones in the specific plan. And I think there was a comment made here tonight that the specific plan is dated. I think somebody said it's 10 years old, it's out of date. I agree. I'd like to see a more comprehensive review that doesn't look at just sort of a subset of identified land uses and a subset of the downtown zones. I'd like to look more comprehensively. There've even been examples already given tonight by public speakers here and folks who wrote in who said, look, you've missed something. Here's a land use case. Here's a land use that should be included as well. What happens if we broaden the dialogue, extend the time, and make it a more comprehensive process? What else could we come up with? So with that, I think I would... love to see a more, as I've talked about, a more comprehensive review. I'd also think that the planning commission here would have very valuable insights to respond to this proposal and also perhaps extend it. And so the context of a study session has been brought up and discussed. So I would like to, Chair, recommend that we proceed tonight almost as if this were a study session by discussing and responding to each of the specific components in this package of changes. and then contemplate continuing the topic to a later date in order to give the applicant and the staff time to respond to that feedback. So to the chair.

I appreciate those comments. I share many of the same thoughts and considerations, and particularly the notion that we could be missing something. And to date, the only information that we've received on this has been, again, for this specific meeting. And I know that the public comments so far have been very thoughtful. But to your point, Commissioner Schindler, it's not necessarily comprehensive. Some people think we can go farther. I'm sure there are things that are potentially missing. And given the limited windows that we have to make these various amendments. I don't want to close the door without being as thorough as possible. We'll see how far we get tonight on whether or not someone's comfortable actually making a motion and we're comfortable sending this over to city council. If not, I'm also comfortable continuing it. So I don't want to necessarily put a lid on the format, but we'll see whether or not people are comfortable with a motion if we can get something passed. Otherwise, if we need more time then let's take it. With that, I have a couple specific questions which I didn't want to ask in clarifying questions that might open up the door for some more conversation. And I guess two of those are to staff. I guess staff or any other commissioners here, I was not on the planning commission when we went through our housing element update, which in theory gave an opportunity to amend various specific zoning requirements for downtown. And I'm wondering whether or not that was a window in which these conversations were discussed. Did people bring up specific use case? I know that was focused on housing specifically, but if we're amending our zoning ordinances, was the housing element refresh a window avenue for these use cases to be amended? Or was that strictly on the housing side?

If I may, through the chair, just give me a moment. I'll just look up something real quick. Thank you. No problem. So just to clarify, this was, at the time in 2023, purely a housing effort focused on housing, increasing housing units. And there was very little limited discussion on anything involving commercial uses. It was mainly to involve meeting the RENA requirements associated with the housing element in state law.

Thank you. Thank you. And then a second follow-up question is, this is seemingly something that the community is pining for. And the reason why we're even reviewing this in the first place is from an applicant-driven process, as has been noted. If we didn't have an individual who was willing to go through the aforementioned fees and process and structure in order to propose this, then it's very unlikely it would have happened. is there a process staff undergoes is there a cadence where we do have the opportunity to as a community as a planning commission as a city council review these types of things i'm i'm really happy that we're having this conversation and i'm worried that we're only having this conversation because of specific actions that were taken by specific individuals um which are costly and there are very well other actions that other individuals are not taking and so what i would this ever have come up if it weren't for this specific process? And what can we theoretically do about that?

It's a good question as well. Thank you for that. Basically, chair, the process itself would have to be, you know, established and requested through city council and through the city council, it would be directed through the city manager to staff to work on said projects. And so I think, you know, it would really depend on city council's direction on making these staff led initiatives happen.

And when city council makes a downtown vibrancy a priority, one of the top five priorities, is that not direction to look into these? Or does the city council very explicitly have to say, hey, we think that a fitness studio should be allowed to be on Santa Cruz? I mean, is it that level of detail? Or is downtown vibrancy a window for these conversations to be explored?

There would need to be more specific direction than that. I think that's a starting point to kind of guide, you know, what the city is interested or concerned with. But more importantly, we would need, I think, a lot more focused, you know, detail and clarification from city council to direct staff through the city manager.

Thank you. If there are specific point of questions, then we'd love to bring you up. In fact, I do have a question for the applicant, if you wouldn't mind coming to the podium. Part of the conversation has been about existing floor plans being too large for some retail use cases and wanting to take advantage of back of house space for office space or something. A question is, if there is an existing space that is too large for the ideal tenant, is there a world in which you, instead of putting retail front-facing and then office space in the back, where you'd be able to have two tenants side by side in a more elongated format in order to have two smaller footprint tenants, but both of them being front-facing and, in theory, public-facing?

So I think I know what your question is. It's no office in the back and just making it retail, but about dividing it. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, if you could talk more into the microphone so people online can hear. But yes, that's my question, is if one of the concerns that we have is that spaces are too big, what is preventing an existing landowner from splitting their space side by side?

I tried to articulate this in the presentation, but it's because of the bay depth. So we go 140 feet back on our bay depth. I mean, dividing that into two or three, there's going to have these bowling alleys. So it just, it, and there are a few buildings, like we are a microcosm of multiple buildings downtown. So yes, this is applicant driven because frankly, if we waited for, you know, city government to, to do something, we'd, I wouldn't even be around. So it needs to be driven by an applicant, in my opinion, okay? And I do, and so for our building, it makes more sense. We have a very attractive back. that faces out to the parking lot. We spent a lot of money and a lot of time designing that. And we would have loved for our retailer to be successful, but it's too big. It's 12,000 feet. And in dividing that up into three spaces, it's just going to be three separate bowling alleys. But what we can do is put office in the back and then allow the front to be divided into two or three spaces, which are very manageable and very leaseable. And one thing I just want to comment on, I know that this is kind of like new news to you guys, and this is being brought to you just now, but we've been working on this for two years. All the community outreach that we've done, this is multiple meetings with the community, endless meetings with Matt and his team, And so, so this is not new to us and it's not new to everybody that wrote a letter and and into everybody that spoke so so when you bring up like a study session it's just it just. A very frustrating. So that's it but answer your question, yes, thank you.

Commissioner Eric. I think we're sort of jumping between process and commentary, but I think that's where we are. I think relevant to the applicant's point and sort of in response to Commissioner Schindler's proposal, I'm in agreement with Commissioner Schindler and Chair Silverstein about basically everything they said. I don't want to delay further if we agree on this and so my uh reference would be that if we can come to some agreement on uh recommending this to the city council that we recommend it and also recommend to the city council that they direct staff and the planning commission to have an additional study session or whatever we want to call it to explore potential further changes that would be my strong preference commissioner so

Thank you. Yeah, I want to kind of echo what everyone else has been saying. I think that I'm just going to assume, based on comments I've heard from other commissioners before, correct me if I'm wrong, but many of us feel strongly that our downtown could use improvement. I've heard this from the community all over. I moved here during COVID, so I'm a relatively new resident, but I've been on the peninsula for a lot longer, and my wife and I moved here from Santa Monica originally, which has, you know, third street promenade. And, um, at the time, at least it was kind of a bustling retail scene. So when we moved up here and we were deciding where to live, when she got a job at Stanford, we, uh, didn't have kids yet, so we were kind of focused on ourselves and having fun, and we were looking at different downtowns, and yeah, Menlo Park, suffice to say, did not make our top list, so we moved to Redwood City initially, and then we moved here when we started family, and we really like it here, but certainly downtown is not the major draw, so I totally understand the desire to make changes, and I know many, pretty much everyone in the community that I speak with is frustrated with Um, by lack of change downtown. Um, so yeah, I think like my other commissioners, I'm also very sort of surprised and disappointed that the city has not taken more of a proactive look at this, um, because When it's a public process, similar to, for example, the housing element, the other is a series of meetings. They're all public. Anybody can go back and look at it, see what happened. And there's a discussion. And so be it as it may, it's slow and clunky, but there is a benefit to that. And so I think that it would be nice to have some of that, if anything, to educate myself. I mean, I think that I feel... slightly unequipped as someone that hasn't explored um any sort of retail business myself um and doesn't own any commercial property i have trouble just you know judging which claims are true or not i do have opinions about what's being proposed tonight but i would certainly love to be able to ask a lot more questions and better understand and consider other things um So yeah, when I heard the public comment from Laura Milan saying that the city has basically been telling people that this process, this meeting that we're having tonight is the way to make changes downtown, I think that's shameful. I think we should definitely be, as a city, taking the reins on this process. not this proposal, but just improving downtown. So I certainly would very strongly support whatever resolution we make tonight that had come with a very heavy recommendation to council that we have more studies and time to look at this. I really appreciate, I echo commissioner Schindler. I really appreciate that we have a private party that was willing to spend their time and money on, on this. And yeah, Yeah, I would like to make a request to the chair that maybe we have a longer conversation with the applicant as sort of a subject matter expert, someone that's spoken to a lot of business owners, potential business owners, current property owners, current business owners. I just have a bunch of different questions about what's being proposed and things I want to understand. For example, one thing that just kind of boggles my mind is like, why would people keep buildings on santa cruz avenue empty you know i think a lot of people wonder that so that's an example um so yeah i i guess i would suggest that maybe we have a more robust discussion about the proposal in front of us um ask some questions about what's being proposed i i have a bunch of detailed questions and then um i understand the frustration of If the applicant is hearing that we want to have a study session and basically treat this as a way to suddenly revisit all of downtown A to Z, that's not entirely fair to the applicant. At the same time, I think we as a commission often feel like we're not doing enough proactive work and planning. So we're trying to figure out how to make both happen. I suggest we do try to move this proposal forward, but definitely try to also suggest to council that we stay this further. And I think hopefully some of our questions tonight will illuminate how there's a lot more to be discussed.

Commissioner Baruzzi.

Yeah, I share some of the frustration because I feel like we have such a limited lens into this. And the second public commenter, I'm blanking on her name, Ms. Harris-Parker had a really straightforward question for staff. And I'd love to hear from staff if they have thoughts on that. I have some questions, but I want to hear from staff first. What could go wrong? Why wouldn't we just say, yeah, we have all these vacant spaces. We should have done this yesterday. Now we have a chance to. I'd love to hear from you, and then I have some questions of my own.

Thank you, Vice Chair Beruzzi. So I think initially we would like to just emphatically state we don't foresee any potentially negative impacts from what's been proposed. I know there's a lot on the table in terms of the uses and a few different use classifications being redefined or expanded upon. But the main thing here is we've worked very closely with the applicant for nearly two years, understanding the proposal, understanding a variety of potential impacts, and if there are really impacts. We did a CEQA assessment that resulted in an addendum to the specific plan environmental impact report. And we also worked with differing divisions in terms of building staff, transportation, public works, engineering to understand any potential impacts. This is mainly focused on the use changes and bringing these different uses and activities. So we think about trips, we think about any of that as well. And I think the other important item to note is that nothing in terms of environmental impacts was greater than what was already identified in the environmental work that was done previously in the EIR. And so what is being proposed here is not seemingly presenting any specific negative impacts in terms of what we've assessed. And that's for the full package of the request that's been put forward here.

Okay. So I'm going to follow up on that. Just last week, city council, well, actually, no, here's a question for you. We know, we certainly know what the applicant wants. Like we, the applicant is a rare property owner showing up in city hall, in city council chambers, like with a name and an identity. And like, this is what we would like to do. There are so many different property owners downtown, and I've heard as many different stories about why there are vacancies. I know, for example, that when Shiok was evicted from the place where they had been for a long time, there were efforts to get them into other spaces. That was a permitted use case and that was an established restaurant that had a loyal following and they were not, you know, it took a long time. There were, I think people tried to get them into the place where the refuge was and that wasn't going to work. And so I hear about the vacant spaces on Santa Cruz Ave. I see them too. I don't know if the reason they're vacant is because people want to open a yoga studio there and that's not allowed, or if it's for some other reason. And I would have loved to have that information. And I don't know if staff know. And I don't know if the applicant knows either. And this is a question I have. I know this will solve the applicant's problem. I don't know if it'll solve the problem of all the other people that are trying to open businesses. So that's one thing I'm thinking about. Another I'm thinking about is SB 79. So we... We have a pretty significant change coming down the pike this summer that all land basically within a quarter mile of our train station, which includes almost half of the Main Street overlay probably, is suddenly going to be allowed to be redeveloped to heights up to 85 feet, as long as it includes a certain amount of housing. And I think that might change things for some property owners. And I certainly feel that, for example, if before we were to... This is where I don't know what I don't know. I don't know how long a typical lease is. And I would like to know if property owners downtown are aware of how much more valuable their property might be, given some of the zoning changes. And I'm curious about whether or not they might want to do different things with their property if they had that knowledge. How would they find that out? Some of these are like conglomerates, families, third generation, you know. So these are the kinds of questions I have, and they make me a little uncomfortable making dramatic changes tonight. I would say that what I'm comfortable directionally doing tonight, even though I share a lot of the concerns about process, is some of the really low-hanging fruit. that we've heard over and over again from people. Like I don't hear from people downtown. I hear that they don't want vacancies. I also hear equally frequently how tired they are of rug stores and of just sort of like big fancy establishments with one or two customers in them that don't really seem to be appealing necessarily to the families, to the seniors. It's not a place where you can go buy a kebab. It's not a place where you can drop your kid off. It's not necessarily community building. It's just large, expensive places not very populated retail places. So I like the idea of us having a lot more foot traffic downtown. And it sounds like there are several establishments that are interested in exploring like the, I'm sorry, I'm forgetting the specific title, but like the yoga studio, fitness studio, kids hanging out in a romper room type places, I think sound great. The things I'm less excited about, to echo Ms. Foody, are more banks and offices. I understand what you're saying. I hear what you're saying about the rear office space. I've also seen use cases downtown like Red Lantern Cycles where... um a place is just divided and you have retail front and back and i'm curious about whether or not we need to add more office yet um so that's sort of directionally where i am tonight and i'd be curious to hear where my colleagues are commissioner schindler

Thank you, Chair. I think Commissioner Beruzzi asked a great question, which is who really sort of can diagnose accurately the source of each of the vacancies or all of the vacancies? I don't think it's that simple. I don't think anybody here really thinks it's that simple. And I'll take it one step further, which is who actually thinks that they know the true answer to addressing, like once you know the source of it, how do you remedy it? And I know everybody in this room cares deeply about the question, and you've read the articles, and you've gone and visited other cities, and you've probably looked online. I know I certainly have. How much urban design and how many city planning documents can you read? How many online consultations? How many of the historical economic development documents that have been written for the city of Menlo Park have you looked at? Zillions. There's lots out there. And just off the top of my head, right, there are ideas like zoning-based planning incentives, completely overhauling the zoning to have sort of more form-based requirements the way that Redwood City did instead of doing things on a density or a height basis. You can have community development funds. You can have public-private collaborations. You can have community space developments. You can have different ways of handling transit and parking management strategies, which the city is kind of working on. The idea of a vacancy tax was floated earlier. Like, all or any of those... in addition to all of the things that we're talking about tonight, may actually be the right combination. And whenever we spend city resources, we are picking one or more of those. And again, I'm just... hungry to ask some of the questions Commissioner Beruzzi asked about the roots and to get into more color and more detail on the potential sources. That said, I totally respect the discussion that's been had up here about sort of getting into what's on the table. And so I'm ready to go and sort of talk about directionally the components of this package of changes that I think are good, just to use a broad description, and the package of things that I think are bad. So I read all of the, in detail, the letters that were submitted from the community, the 21 that were in the staff packet, and I have skimmed almost everything that's come in the last 24 hours. And the one thing that feels both objective and universal is foot traffic. quality businesses and family friend, like there's a lot of subjective words, but foot traffic is the universal. And I think like everyone would come up with a roughly consistent objective definition of what foot traffic is, how many customers and how frequently. So I use that as my starting point for thinking about what was good and clear in this proposal. and then comparing that against some of the things that are here. So I think it's already been alluded to by a couple of folks. As a result, I think, hang on, let me find the parts of my notes. things where customers are coming many times per year or even per month or even per week. The categories that address fitness, health, and wellness, personal improvement, personal services, definitely qualifies. And through community feedback, we've got specific examples of businesses that would like to be here. To me, that feels like something that we could get behind. I might have a refinement on exactly which label we give it for down to the specific, like first floor, second floor. So which of the specific labels we give it, whether or not it needs, how much involvement it needs in the planning commission. Animal and retail services, actually, I feel like given, I feel like could also be a high foot traffic correlation. Business services, I think so, but I'm not totally sure I could be talked out of it or into it by members of the planning commission. I do think that it could be associated with foot traffic, particularly because we're adding public access to the definition of a business service. On the flip side of things, I don't think that banks and office space meet that threshold. I don't think that they're the kind of sort of foot traffic and vibrancy driving things that we hear the public asking for. I can go into more detail a little bit later about some of my concerns about office space. But those are some of the sort of categorizations that I will start with. And as it relates to the proposed definitions of each of the four definitional changes, I don't have any concerns about those. And so to me, those are fine. And when we get into a deeper discussion about office space, I have more commentary.

Vice Chair Baruzzi?

Yeah, one thing I forgot to mention is that we're also in the middle of a parking management study, right? Staff, where are we on the downtown parking study? There was a demand management, I don't remember what it's called, sorry. I think another thing we need to be thinking about is access and accessibility. I would rather have a lot of people trying to come downtown and then solve for how we fit them in and whether we're putting more bike racks in or, you know, wayfinding, et cetera, and having the public, you know, fund a garage and then use our space more efficiently and things like that. But I want to know that, I just want to comment that we are actually trying to study this and it feels a little weird that so many different efforts are going on in parallel and they're not feeding each other. So I'm hoping that, I mean, that at least council can be informed by what you've learned so far on the downtown parking situation.

Thank you for your patience on this, Vice Chair Beruzzi. I was able to confirm we do have a study session that's tentatively planned with the city council on this parking management topic for June of this year. So about a month from now.

Commissioner Ehrich.

Thank you, Chair. I would actually love to discuss the office space thing since Commissioner Schindler brought it up. Well, I guess I'll say I am more inclined to support the office space for two reasons. First, I think the foot traffic point is a good one, and I think most people who work in offices work in their office most of the day, but they're also likely to do other things in that area. But the other point that I think is important, I am not a commercial real estate developer or a developer of any sort, so I am not an expert, but In my conversations with developers around Menlo Park, and in particular Presidio Bay Ventures and the Springline example, what they conveyed to me was that oftentimes office space effectively subsidizes other uses. And so if I could magically snap my hands and have a downtown, I probably would not one office space, it's not as vibrant. But I think it is important. I think we have to keep in mind that it is important to creating the conditions where owners can rent their property out, I think, to some of the points that have been made here tonight. So I think from an economic perspective, I'm inclined to support it as a way to effectively make other uses possible. And I think... If we were saying we're going to make changes that make it possible for the whole downtown to be office space, that would be problematic. But allowing this creative solution of having it in the back or on the second floor accomplishes what my understanding is that commercial real estate developers need to make these things happen. So I'm more inclined to support it, but I would be interested in other opinions.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that this proposal requires that if a property owner takes advantage of the ground floor, back half office space provisions, that the front retail facing, Santa Cruz facing portion is not vacant. And I know that there are temporary vacancies and then there are longer than temporary vacancies, but I'm wondering whether or not there could be a provision in there akin to a vacancy tax, which is very appealing in my mind, but would essentially allow for that subsidy to happen as a formal subsidy, as opposed to giving you the opportunity to do office space and then retain the front facing entirely vacant. And so I would want to couple those together to whatever extent we could.

I'd be open to that. I would also be interested in I don't exactly recall all of the points for how this would happen, but I think there would be some sort of review process involved in granting the extra office space, and so potentially that is effectively... But I'm open to whatever we think makes sense there.

Once office space gets granted, if the next five years remain vacant in the front half, that's not desirable.

I am inclined to honor... the fact that sometimes office space is needed to make this work. And I'm also inclined to honor the folks who have come before us tonight who I think are advocating for this and have put in time and I think are more expert than at least I am.

Commissioner Selin.

Thank you. On the office space subject specifically, I think Yeah, I was thinking similar to what Commissioner Eric was saying. Could the public benefit even be instead of a one-time payment to the city, instead perhaps a subsidy to put something in that retail street-facing location? I think what you propose of at least having it required to not be vacant in a way could solve for that. Yeah, I did just kind of want to comment on I guess I like that the public benefit agreement is not some sort of you know like many of our other things like a closed door negotiation about you know specific goodies like sports field versus this or that I like that it is like a specific figure I guess but on the other hand you know we get this money monetary payment one time it's not clear to me at least where that money goes maybe I'll set aside that question for later, but I was thinking, and especially in light of what staff said about this being like a temporary measure to fill space now and not have it be like a general move towards increasing office, perhaps having it instead of be a one-time payment, be an ongoing payment that would sort of create an incentive to later convert it to something else if there's an ongoing expense tied to it versus a one-time payment and then you have that office for a long time. So yeah, those are just some thoughts about that.

I actually wrote in my notes about thinking about the public benefit fee being on an annual thing. In theory, having ground floor office space incurs a public cost because we no longer have as much space that is serving front-facing public retail that people can enjoy in our downtown Main Street. That... Obviously, there are benefits to having office space. And I'm saying this from an economic standpoint, not from a colloquial standpoint. But the public cost is born on an annual basis to the public. And so if there is a one-time fee that is given for an office space that sits there for three years versus another that sits there for 30 years, those are not necessarily congruous. And from a... principled standpoint, in theory, that cost to the public or the reason why we do it in the first place is because every year that you have office space in the back, you're not having as much retail in the front. And I would prefer for the cost to be lower nominally and then just be on an annual basis because you are getting this either a monetary benefit because commercial is... more desirable or can yield higher rents per square foot, or also because of the public cost aspect. But yeah, to me, that's on an ongoing basis and not necessarily a one-time. Commissioner Schindler, and then I'll get back to you.

Thank you. I like the direction of that suggestion that was made just about there being a concept of an ongoing or recurring cost. Operationally, I think that would be difficult, but I like the concept. And I'm going to build on the language that you use, which is that there's a public cost there. a recurring public cost to having the office space, meaning it's not retail space. I build on that by saying there is a development opportunity cost of there being office space here. And what I have in my notes that kind of builds on that concept reflects this. I wish we were just looking at an office space FAR proposal that only applied to 870 Santa Cruz, because that's a space that's been redeveloped in a way that's aligned with the things that we're hoping for in our specific plan, with the height, with the additional sort of effort and investment. And I have reservations about offering up the proposed office space FAR changes for properties that aren't being redeveloped, sites that aren't actively investing more deeply in the city. And I think that... I'm not going to read all my notes here, but I do think creating that office space makes it sticky. It makes it less likely for future investment to happen of the kind that we are trying to moat and scent. And while it's true that when we redid the housing element, the end of 23, early 24, we did not specifically address commercial only. There were components in here about encouraging additional height, right? Yes, we included residential and mixed use density bonus incentives, but there was additional height. That's indicative of what we're hoping for. Bigger buildings, greater investment, And two of the community members who wrote in and whose letters are included in the staff packet make reference to the need for the owners of their properties to be making meaningful investments. I think there was a public commenter who also raised that again here today, right? Old buildings in need of development. And I am concerned about removing the incentive, removing, the motivation for that investment to happen. Yeah, I think that's the gist of all of these paragraphs of notes here.

Can I piggyback off that and ask through the chair a question to the applicant? Go ahead. Can you explain triple net leases to us? I've read this is a common format of lease in downtown Menlo Park. Am I accurate?

I mean, all a triple net means is, so the operating expenses are also, so if you're a tenant and you're paying a triple net rent of a dollar a foot, that is the rent that goes directly to the landlord.

the operating expenses the property taxes the insurance the maintenance all that gets built back to the tenant on a pro rata share i see okay all right that wasn't quite what i understood then but i guess uh we had we had a letter from somebody who was using who was renting a space not on santa cruz ave who'd expressed frustration that they had like plumbing expenses that they that were prohibitive and that they couldn't actually handle um and i'm again thinking about incentives right um you have a beautiful beautifully redeveloped building there are a lot of buildings in the main street overlay that have not seen significant investment in years i yes what can we be doing to incentivize that's i respectfully commissioner schindler i i disagree with what you said because i feel like

if more property owners along Santa Cruz, and I'm kicking myself for not having 20 of them in here tonight speaking as well, because I feel that I've spoken with them, and they agree with us, and I want you to hear what they have to say as well. But if you give them, if they know that they can... decrease their retail footprint within their building to offer smaller retail floor plates because you're allowing the office in the back of the building an office is not going to go to some like a like a business is not going to go to some crap building and have an office there it's going to need to get fixed up and be nice in order to rent it to an office tenant so i think that is an incentive because the because the rents for office are more it are higher than they are for retail. In our case, it's simply, we don't have an immediate issue with our building. We have a tenant that is a 10-year triple net lease. They have six more years left on it. They're just not doing well. And they would rather have a smaller piece of the ground floor, not the entire ground floor. So that's what kind of precipitated our... our application.

I'm sympathetic to that. I remember when Kepler's almost went out of business, it was a very similar situation. It was too large a space and they had to cut it in half basically in order to be able to afford it. So I'm sympathetic to the need to shrink footprints. I'm just curious about the need for it to be office. Is it just because it subsidizes things? Is Red Lantern use case kind of a weird one and that's not common?

It's a holistic thing.

Sorry, could I just ask you to speak a little closer into the mic?

You can pull it up.

Sorry, thanks.

We office in downtown Palo Alto and I eat lunch in downtown Palo Alto. I pick up stuff to bring home to the family from downtown Palo Alto. I absolutely believe now, if you work at a big company like Meta, that you have the food that's there, right? But if you're a small business and you have five, 10, 15, 20 employees, you go eat lunch downtown. Like you go eat where you're working. You set up coffee meetings. You set up lunch meetings. You have a beer with colleagues after work. Like it all happens close to your office. So I absolutely believe that that downtown Menlo Park needs this. They need more people. However you get the people downtown, that's what you need. Whether it's kids and offering like tutoring and daycare, which I know someone spoke about, whether it's pets, whatever, that you need people like the person that spoke about walking up and down Burlingame Avenue, and they couldn't even find room on the sidewalk. That's what we need. However, we get there. So

While you're up here, can I ask?

I asked earlier about two side-by-side bowling alley tenants, and your response made total sense. We're talking about the prospect of having office space in the back, but the back theoretically has a front currently facing the parking lots. In theory, there is a frontage to that. It's not on Santa Cruz, but customers could walk in there. Is there a world in which we make it super easy for, you know, we, we, we reduce any restrictions on use cases, but still say it has to be public facing. And we're not talking about office space, but still in the retail vein and would, um, existing property owners. I, you can either speak for yourself or your general understanding of the community, uh, be able to take advantage of the two different, uh, ingress points on both sides to have a storefront facing Santa Cruz and then a different storefront facing the parking lots outside. And that would just be another avenue for people to commerce.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Is there a reason why we would have to allow for office space in the back of Santa Cruz properties as opposed to another retail? Another retail, exactly. If your existing tenant wants to cut it in half, you in theory could do so and then open another storefront in the back, but facing the back.

I think there are certain types of retail that may, like I could think of one like a tutoring center, right? Like they don't need to be along Santa Cruz, but you're not going to get your traditional retail.

Anyone's window shopping at tutoring center?

So, and by the way, if you guys do choose to advance our application, it doesn't preclude you from going back and adding to it, expanding to it and doing anything post that.

Thank you. Commissioner Sillin.

Thank you. Yeah, while you're here, sir, questions I mentioned before, I guess, yeah, to the chair. Okay, I would like to ask you to just briefly outline the process up until now. There's mentioned the staff report of meetings with property owners and community members. I was just hoping you could educate us a bit more on what it's taken for you to get here, who you've been talking to, who the major stakeholders are in supporting the proposal.

You're bringing it up here. It started with Reaching out to Matt. Matt is who we worked with when we bought the building that was formerly the Flagel's store. And Matt was our planner in getting that approved. So we reached out to him and we worked through what the process would look like if we wanted to do what we're talking about, which is in a nutshell, expand the retail zoning and allow office off the back of the building. That's kind of the two things. And Matt kind of told us what we would need to do. And we have our land use consultant, Lisa Ring here, who helped us do the cross the T's and dot the I's and make sure the wording is all correct. But then what we did is we went and met with, you know, there's the Save Menlo crew. There's the Menlo Fund, which has a vested interest in wanting to make downtown Menlo Park better. We spoke with multiple property owners along Santa Cruz Avenue and multiple residents. So we've spoken with everybody that we feel has a vested interest in what we're trying to do.

Thank you. So can you speak about why you originally reached out to Matt in the first place? Because from what I understand, this proposal Well, clearly, as it stands, it's not just for your property. So was it originally just for your property and then decided to expand it to other properties so that you could help other owners out? And was the original list that you had in your mind like these changes that we're looking at now? Or were there any big changes that were made throughout the process based on feedback?

And this is Lisa Ring, our land use consultant. Thank you.

Through the chair. Yes, I just thought I could speak a little bit more to some of the day-to-day conversations that I, representing Windy Hill, had with Matt and kind of how it all evolved. Because originally Todd saw sort of a concern with his current tenant, but it became very clear in talking with the staff that this was a larger problem. And there were more issues. And so what sort of started off as, kind of looking at his own situation quickly grew to him talking to other property owners, getting their feedback, talking with staff about what they had heard from other people in the community wanting to open businesses. So it really was an evolution of, you know, it started off with a small piece and then kind of grew to this bigger issue of how do we address this as a on a more citywide basis, something that would work to have the whole downtown be improved and allow these additional uses and also to be able to create some sort of synergy. So from a planning standpoint, it really evolved and that's really how we ended up with this proposal. I hope that helps explain that a bit. Happy to answer any other questions.

Yeah, thank you. I think it just helps to understand um, where this is coming from. And I guess one other thing I was hoping to be educated on is, um, yeah, like in my mind, what's an example?

Um,

Well, let's just say if I were to buy a commercial building, presumably I'm looking at it on a cap rate. I'm putting in this much money, I'm going to collect this much in rent, that's going to pay back my investment, I'm going to make a profit. And so there's a lot of buildings sitting empty downtown. We've heard a lot of theories, I would say, as to why that is. But maybe based on the conversations you've had, how could it possibly be economically... beneficial, I guess, or optimal for a building to be held vacant for such a long time. One of the commenters who mentioned three buildings on each side being empty for years.

Leasing a building, like tenanting a building is expensive. There's the tenant improvements, there's the leasing commissions, there's the legal fees in order to draft up the lease and negotiate that with the tenant. It's not an inexpensive proposition, but I would look at this like... It's like an old house on a street, right? If somebody knows that they can do something with it, someone's going to buy it and make it better. There are owners along Santa Cruz that would sell their property. They just want a certain price. Well, if you expand the retail zoning, if you allow the limited office in the back, and there was vibrancy in downtown Menlo Park, and you knew that you can get the retailers there, then the property is worth more. And then you're going to get that investment.

But they are currently essentially losing money by paying property tax and insurance and whatever on a vacant building. Is that correct? And that's, I guess... Why would that be worth it to somebody? They're just hoping that they get a good offer in the coming years so they're willing to pay for now.

I mean, I'm in this business full time. I do this for a living. Up until recently, we had a 70,000 square foot building in downtown Redwood City vacant for five years. I was doing everything in my power to lease that building. Okay, so I don't think it's a – I can't speak to every property owner and every landlord downtown at Menlo Park, but to say that they're making a choice to leave something vacant, I mean, I don't know that you can say that. I mean, we've had – so Luminaire has C.B. Richard Ellis listing for sublease the retail space in our building at 870 Santa Cruz. Okay. It's been listed for 18 months. Zero proposals.

So the issue is not that you get proposals.

We have the nicest building along Santa Cruz.

So the issue is not that you're getting, like in the Redwood City example, you were getting proposals, but the rent wasn't what you wanted it to be. It was just no interest at all is what you imagine.

His office was dead. You know, it was the hangover from COVID.

You know, the work from home was, it's leased now, but my point is, is like we were doing everything on our power to try to lease that building and we couldn't. And so to say a property owner along Santa Cruz Avenue is choosing to leave their space vacant, I don't know that I would say that. I mean, I can tell you our building is a very nice building along Santa Cruz and a real estate agency is trying to sublease it for Luminaire and they have not had any activity.

Got it. Yeah. Pardon my assumption that it's deliberate choice um well in some ways it is in some ways it's not anyway um one more question i had is we recently did uh as part of the housing element a pretty major up zoning downtown or at least that was my understanding was it was a significant um i was one of the people um as a member of the public at the time, advocating for more. But anyway, it was still compared to what it was before, like an increase in height, density, et cetera. So that was why I asked staff during clarifying questions why right now we're looking at a negative square footage increase. So it sounds like another issue we're facing is not just filling empty buildings, but even people wanting to buy a building that's, let's say, one story or two stories and making it taller, bigger, more dense. Is that... a similar problem from what you've heard and based on your experience to what we're talking about with finding tenants where there's just no interest because of the lack of economic viability? Or is there anything else in terms of the actual zoning or other things going on that's preventing, from what I could tell so far, a lack of interest? It's not, well, leading to a lot of interest in upzoning downtown.

I think I understand your question, but there's not a lot of multifamily, like not a lot of housing being built right now. It's expensive, interest rates. And so the rent and the cost of build, it's not there yet. It's just starting to come back. It was kind of booming until 2021. and so i think the zoning changes that i don't i'm not up to speed with them but i think they will have an impact when when housing starts to come back like large high density multi-family right yeah i guess what i'm saying is my understanding is like let's say you have a vacant building and you're looking to sell it if somebody were to buy it

My assumption would be it would be a much better proposition to be able to buy it and add square footage versus just buy it, remodel it, and keep the square footage the same. And my understanding is we have recently enabled the ability to add additional square footage. I guess that would be up, not out, because it is Santa Cruz Avenue. And I'm not 100% sure if that has to be housing or not. Maybe we're both not sure, but... Could you imagine?

I mean, we couldn't, like if we wanted to build a third story on top of our building and make it office, we wouldn't be allowed to do that. I think we would be allowed to build a third level and have it be housing.

Through the chair. Yes, thank you for the initial clarification. Basically, a lot of the zoning updates as a result of the housing element EIR work a few years ago, the specific plan and across the city emphasized residential growth. And so there are a lot of residential development led initiatives and incentives within the specific plan that would enable something like Mr. Speaker's referring to. But again, it is focused on concentrating more residential growth in these buildings or these lots if they were to redevelop as completely new.

Okay, got it. So there's no currently, for example, I understand you acquired this building before the upzoning went into effect. So as a result of that upzoning, there's no additional opportunity for the property owner to add more commercial square footage. It's only housing, taking this as an example. Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay, all right. Thank you. Thank you for answering my questions. I think the reason I went down all these alleys, maybe it seems kind of away from the details we're just discussing, but I think one thing we're trying to understand is like, if we, um, want to have additional study sessions, thinking about what to do downtown, um, not that I thought I was going to find it, but there's no like simple answer on what we could do to unlock. It seems a lot of stuff downtown without studying further. It seems zoning changes, development standards, et cetera. Um, And in terms of, so if we're just talking about taking the buildings as they are now and enabling additional uses, enabling additional uses on the ground floor versus the second floor, enabling additional office, I think I do, based on this conversation, I feel more supportive of sort of finding things we can do right now to try to get some activity going. I don't imagine it would happen overnight anyway, but during that time, if we move some of these things forward, I think that would be, again, I would heavily, heavily, heavily want to, in addition to whatever resolution we make tonight, encourage city council to direct staff to study this further from a zoom out perspective. So that's kind of the reason I asked all those questions. And now maybe we can get back to the details of the proposal.

So it's getting late. I don't want to recess because we have so many people in the audience who are here for this specific topic. Unless commissioners feel strongly that we need to recess, I'd prefer to push through. If we can talk about specific elements that we want to resolve as part of this proposal, that'd be great. I think... To respond to what Commissioner Eric mentioned on passing this, and I guess Commissioner Sillian just brought it up, but passing this and then encouraging city council to do a study session to go above and beyond. I think that's fine. I have no, I do not have a strong conviction that that would go anywhere and feel that this is our shot. If we pass this and city council also approves it, they might say, yes, we should look into it. But I'm not confident that we would have that opportunity to do so. That being said, I don't think, after toiling for a bit, I don't think we should let that prevent us from... adjudicating what's before us on the merits and going through any specific elements we'd want to either tweak or change or add. I know some things have been brought up already, but if we can get into that portion of the discussion, if anyone has specific elements that they'd want to add or adjust, then we could start to go through those and potentially get to a resolution.

Commissioner Schindler?

I'm not sure if this is directly following the recommended guidance of the chair just now, but it is a follow-up on the topic of the office question and some of the things that I raised earlier, and it builds a little bit on Commissioner Sillin's point. I do want Mr. Speaker's feedback here on the example that he described about a property owner having to invest essentially to take what is storage space or the lunchroom in a retail space and turn it into something that's viable on the first floor for office space. I'm going to just create a verbal shorthand and call that the interior remodel. And I'm going to compare that to what happened with your building at 870, which I'm just going to call like a total redevelopment. And I think to refine my point, I am concerned that if they do the interior remodel, it's good enough. And the motivation to do the kind of total redevelopment that your firm did with that property diminishes. And we sit with something that's got a remodeled back of the building for another 10 years instead of there being a motivation and impetus to do a total redevelopment. And Commissioner, just to address, because the floor area limits downtown are, if I'm reading and recollecting this correctly, two, right, before you get into the public bonus density, right? Stan, the public benefits bonus. If there's a single-story building, they can redevelop. So there could be the kind of redevelopment that Windy Hill did on a one-story building. without residential. Is that a beneficial thing for the city? I think so. So I think that's the kind of thing that we're looking for more of, the kind of work that Windy Hill did. So to refine my question, can you help me think about the distinction between the interior remodel and the total redevelopment that your firm did and the connection or lack of connection between those two things?

I can tell you when we bought the building, we were thinking of an interior remodel. But when you start to peel back the onion, you almost don't save any money. Versus just kind of gutting it to the studs, which is what we did. So I can't promise you that other property owners aren't going to cheap out. But it'll be better than what's there currently. And I do think... And then they end up selling it. And then the next guy comes in. It's not going to happen overnight. But if there's the incentive for people to invest, they will. That's kind of the best thing that I can say. In the interior remodel... I mean, you're still, they're still going to add nice windows, a nice like storefront. Um, it would still look nice. It won't be a 10. It will be a seven. Um,

I thank you. It's just sort of helpful to hear your process as is the case with all of this, the specific stories of business owners or potential business owners and property owners helps tell the story. But your description of there not being a tremendous amount of difference between the interior remodel and the total redevelopment, makes me more interested in making sure that there's a compelling reason to just go forward with a total redevelopment. If we can do things that incent property owners to go all the way and make it attractive and make it accessible from the front and the back and to address the plumbing issues that one of the public speakers had and the the long-term investments that one of the other business tenants highlighted as being necessary by their property owners in their letter. Like, if we can motivate that kind of total redevelopment.

Density.

Yeah. Sorry, we did not adequately address SB 79, which changes the law and allows people, if they're building a two-thirds majority housing development, up to 85 feet in height. And I really do feel like if we're talking about juicing our downtown with like a little eight-person office here and a yoga studio there, the cities around us that have really got thriving downtowns have people living downtown. And we're talking about, you know, there's an inclusionary requirement, but it's not more than what we already have, right? So what I'm concerned about actually is maybe the opposite of what you're thinking of. If I could wave a magic wand and just have all the powers, I would let us do pop-up stuff downtown with minimal investment as soon as possible to get things happening. but I would not want to see people do what you've done because, sorry, it's nice, but once something gets redeveloped, it's kind of set for a while, right? And then 10 years later, we look back and we're like, wow, it's too bad that we didn't know, it's too bad we can't time travel and go back and give that person the ability to add the housing that we need that will help our downtown vibrancy and help our housing element and all the other things. So I worry that if people reset their property tax base and they have to recapitalize or whatever, again, not a developer, not a property person, except for the one house we own. But it seems like that's very expensive and that it fixes things that we don't necessarily want to fix downtown. So, I mean, I'm actually curious to ask the applicant. You also don't have a magic wand, but knowing what you know about the development potential... and the potential upside for downtown, not for your specific property, but for the vibrancy, what decisions should we avoid making that would cause people not to be able to take advantage of that as housing comes back and as that becomes a more compelling opportunity for people? And I'm thinking like, A 10-year lease on a Class A office, I'm throwing out terms I don't completely understand, probably freezes something for a while. And the investments people have to make to make it a Class A office freezes it for a while, right? So what can we do to not totally freeze things?

Well, I don't think you should be trying. I don't see someone signing a 10-year lease as a bad thing. They're making a 10-year commitment to our community, right? And so I view that as a good thing. And typically, the stronger financial companies are the ones that sign longer-term leases. less financially strong companies sign shorter-term leases. So I don't think a long-term lease is a bad thing. In terms of what the city can do to not make a mistake, I don't. I don't know the answer to that question. I know from a developer's point of view, density is always better, the more square footage I can add. Because you're buying the land, in a sense, when you redevelop something. And when you're buying the land, that's a finite size. So if you can build 2.0 FAR, on that parcel, you can pay X. But if you can build 4.0 FAR on that parcel, I mean, in a sense, it's almost worth double, right? Because you're able to build devices much square footage. But I don't think always what a developer wants is in the best interest of what the city wants, but density is your friend from a developer standpoint. Yeah.

But you bring up an interesting question, which is what is in the best interest of the city? It's not always what a developer wants. It's not always what a property owner wants, right? I mean, there are property owners downtown who are super happy to have, again, a property that generates like five sales a year, big sales. But it's not helping all the families that are looking for places for their kids to go, right? How many rug stores, again, can a city really support? So I think this is why we're kind of wrestling with this. Like, you're a property owner and you have a valid perspective, and it's really helpful for us to hear from you about that. It's just we're sort of juggling these longer-term strategic aims as well.

I will say, though... from what we proposed and what we started talking to matt almost two years ago to where we are today it was it's kind of everything's kind of come together with a lot of feedback from the community and and city staff um so i'm sure someone sorry did you want to say something

if that's possible i was just going to add that from a sort of outside planning perspective if that's helpful obviously you've gotten from todd the economic uh property owner perspective but um i do a lot of work throughout the peninsula and i'll just offer this up if it's at all helpful here is that um with the passage of um sb 79 i i don't you know that that is a big change that's coming to cities and cities are going to be implementing their own ordinances and how they deal with that, whether they have it in their downtown, you can exempt some parcels. So there's still a lot to come with that. There's a lot of talk about using it, but I wouldn't anticipate that on a wholesale in the downtown, everybody is going to want to invoke SB 79. There could be some larger parcels. There could be some at the periphery. There could be all of those things, you know, that it seems unlikely that it would affect all of the different parcels. And I think the way that this proposal is structured is you as the planning commission have the ability to to review these on a case-by-case basis which is something that the staff really we work through because in order to anticipate changing conditions you know something that the city wants to do later you retain that um that flexibility and also that purview so i think if something were to happen later and you start to see a lot of offices you know coming in you have the ability to say that you don't want that. And that helps you retain some control and address, you know, potentially changing landscape. So there's, you know, I see that you're sort of wrestling with all of these different questions of changes that are coming up, but I think this proposal still allows you to retain quite a bit of control when it comes to the change in land use for these different buildings.

Thank you. Mr. Sloan. Did you have any follow-up? Follow-ups on that, Commissioner Beruzzi?

No? Okay. Yeah, just, yeah, thank you for that additional comment. I think, yeah, this goes back to what I was saying earlier. I think there's a lot of stuff that we want to think about, SB 79, potentially, you know, other upzoning downtown. For example, one thing I'd heard is that One reason perhaps, and I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, but perhaps why a single story downtown building can't build a second story even today is because there's a parking requirement and there's nowhere to add the parking. Because think about like a building on Santa Cruz is kind of small. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But these are just things we should be studying, looking at, better understanding, hearing from other property owners, hearing from potential developers or shopping for buildings downtown. um but again yeah i think i'm feeling more and more like in the meantime i don't think that approving this would mean that we're somehow freezing downtown further because these things will take a while to play out and i guess i would imagine that if you have a one or two-story building and then you can do eight um maybe you could do like a lease buyout or whatever if the opportunity is that tempting so um I'm not too worried about that. I do want to ask staff about the public comment from Mrs. Holmes about the Family Activity Center and Arcade. I just want to clarify, is that use currently not allowed on Santa Cruz? And if so, why doesn't this proposal request that used to be added, is this just something that came in at the last second and didn't make the cut?

Thank you for the question. If I may just backpedal a little, I'd like a note of clarification that the majority of the specific plan is within a half mile radius per AB 2097 regarding parking. So I think it would be more important to note that on the main street overlay properties as a whole, no parking minimum can be required. So I think parking in general, where to park cars, where a site would need to park or have car parking is not, I think, germane to this discussion in relation to the Main Street overlay. I think that's one thing that probably should be noted, just as you'd noted it earlier, Commissioner Sillin. And back to your question on the small-scale recreation Commercial recreation, excuse me. That is not permitted at this time in the Main Street overlay. It's not... It has no potential as a use currently to occur. There's no path. There's no conditionality. There's no other type of ability. And so we want to just point out a few things here. First, we did not, you know... have this as a part of the applicant's proposed use changes. It was not something that was really covered over the course of the review of the project. We did talk about other use types and some items that did not ultimately make it into this proposal now, but this was not a classification that was discussed. And I think another clarification from the specific plan I'd like to point out on kind of the nature of these use types involving recreational activity, that there is a distinction here between personal improvement services and the small-scale commercial recreation. So there is language that mentions that the classification for personal improvement services is intended for more small-scale storefront locations, and it is distinguishable from small-scale commercial recreation uses that tend to occupy larger sites and generate more noise. item to note, just kind of how the specific plan is set up. Somewhat recreational activities within the context of personal improvement services. But I think it is quite clear when you look at the definition of small-scale commercial recreation, there is a pretty clear distinction. But there is some element of recreation within personal improvement services currently. But there is an important, I think, distinction to be made. And so I think with those items in mind, kind of I'll leave it there, but I think it's just important to kind of factor that in that there is a recreational element within the context of personal improvement services, but it is not, I think, to the nature of the commenter who reflected on it.

Okay, I guess I'm not totally familiar with her specific application, but generally Family Activity Center and Arcade, as someone with children, sounds great downtown. So I'm wondering if we as a commission did want to enable that downtown, what would that use be called and what other things? It sounds like this is sort of a category that maybe other cities have or we've heard about before. So what other things would that include if we wanted to add that? as a recommendation to council?

Sure. I think this would involve a few different kind of elements. I mean, one thing would be a likely expansion of a definition within the use classification. So if we were to consider this type of family fund type of recreation, if there's a reason to distinguish it from what we already have as our current use classifications and not include it, for some reason, in small-scale commercial recreation, we would have to either create a new definition in the use classifications or perhaps find a way to fit it in by rewording another use classification, which has been done for other uses in this case when we talk about spas being moved from personal improvement services to personal services general and so on. And that has occurred for other use types in this proposal, but I think that similar exercise would be needed some way of... maybe perhaps further explaining it further nuancing it or if it is also a matter of just literally going into the land use designation table table e1 where it currently does not allow for small scale recreation and we agree that that's the appropriate use classification for this proposal then that would end up ultimately requiring us to assess changing it to conditional changing it to permitted whatever the idea would be there but that that would be a separate additional review It could have a lot of other implications on timing and potentially CEQA review as well. I mean, we'd have a lot of other aspects to think about for this item, but it could be other items that are also added.

Okay, got it. Can you define perhaps what small-scale commercial recreation is? It sounds like you're saying there's already a use that this falls under. So if we wanted to just keep it under that and add it as a conditional use downtown, it sounds like you're saying there's a bunch of other stuff that would also be included with that.

Through the chair, I think I have the definition here. Classification includes small, generally indoor facilities such as pool rooms and amusement arcades, although some facilities may be outdoors, including dance halls, gymnasiums, handball, badminton, racquetball, or tennis clubs. Tennis club facilities less than 20,000 square feet. Classification may also include restaurants, snack bars, and other incidental food and beverage services to patrons. Is that correct, Mr. Pritter? Yes, that's correct. Thank you.

Is there a square footage maximum for small scale, above which it would be considered large scale?

We don't have a large-scale designation in the specific plan. We do have a second category, which Commissioner Schindler might have spotted, that refers to just cinemas. So the cinemas are just for viewing movies. So I think... You know, we have a mention here of less than 20,000 square feet. And I think it seems we haven't dealt with this, I think, a great deal in the specific plan. So I know we can look into this more to understand it and give a more clarified answer. But it would seem that the small scale threshold would be 20,000 square feet and anything above that I don't think is defined currently or is explained.

But if we permitted small-scale commercial recreation, then anything up to 20,000 square feet would fall in that. Based on the language, it appears that's the case. And if we wanted anything above that, we would need to carve that out explicitly and say it would be allowable above that.

Yes, it's a separate amendment, I believe.

Before I call on my colleagues, I just want to ask the question of whether or not we are running the risk of doing what our predecessors did 20 years ago by not being permissive enough. in the various use cases. And I know that the language in this current proposal gives future planning commissions a lot of discretion. And there would be use permit required for a lot of these different things. And given that we as a body and as a community would have the ability to opine and determine the merits of any given use case within these conditional use cases, Again, I want to go back to the question of why not open it up even further? Why not be more permissive on the get-go and allow for those case-by-case bases to actually come up? Because the reason we're here today is because some people before... us felt like it was important to not allow a yoga studio to be on Santa Cruz. And I don't know what the yoga studio of 10 years from now is going to be. I don't know if it's going to be a virtual reality arcade thing or if it's going to be something else that everyone's pining to do. And we didn't, think that SoulCycle was going to take off as it did, and now we're in this current deficit. And so as we think about these, I want to be cognizant of the blind spots we currently have today and not tie our own hands behind our back for the future. Vice Chair Beruzzi, and I'll get back to you.

I have two questions. One is that when we were talking about this threshold of 20,000 square feet, I realized I don't know what the typical size is of a downtown current retail storefront. That's not information that we have at our disposal and that feels relevant.

If I may, through the chair, I think we don't have a comprehensive data answer for that immediately. But knowing and working on this project quite a bit along the main street properties, the subject property that's applying here, the property owner's 870 Santa Cruz property is approximately 13,000 square feet. But most of the properties along the way are on santa cruz in this main street overlay are roughly half the size of that and they're about the same depth there's very little variation with lot depth but in terms of the the lot size you're looking at you know roughly 7 000 square foot lots for the majority along santa cruz avenue

Thanks. Okay, so I'm going to ask the devil's advocate question, kind of piggybacking off Chair Silverstein's observation, which I think is astute. Why will we not open it up to a lot of these other categories, but make them conditional? I mean, it's a pain. Somebody has to come to planning commission, right? Get a conditional use permit. But if somebody wanted to bring a candle pen bowling pizza parlor thing to downtown Menlo park, and we didn't, that wasn't specifically, it wasn't a reducing salon, you know? So we somehow inadvertently like tamp that down. That seems like a bad idea. So why wouldn't we want to expand the categories greatly but reserve the right to say no?

I think that's the question I exactly asked you, Commissioner Sillin.

Thank you. Yeah, I was kind of thinking around the same line. So when I first even looked at the staff report, I did have this reaction that, yes, it does sound nice on paper that these would all be conditional use permits, but on the other hand, I know we often talk about not wanting to add more red tape to applications. I was thinking, what if maybe we did make some of these just permitted uses without requiring use permit? On the other hand, yeah, we just had this discussion about commercial recreation. It's a long list of things. I would love to enable the Family Center and Arcade, but I don't know, do we want like a pool room on Santa Cruz Avenue? I don't know. What would that look like? Sure, it'd be nice to have the ability to review it as a planning commission. I guess one thing I struggle with is like, as soon as we add that as a conditional use, does that... If I'm someone that wants to open one of these types of businesses, there's already a lot of work that has to go into it by the time they come to us with a proposal. So if that proposal comes to us and we decide we don't like that use, are we going to be comfortable just telling the applicant no simply because we don't like the use or because we don't like the way they proposed it? That's what I struggle with. And through the chair, I wanted to ask... applicant for maybe like the business perspective of conditional use permits like when you have when you're speaking to potential tenants and they hear that they have to come before a planning commission to get a permit just to be able to open let's say a massage parlor or whatever does that create a level of hesitation or is that just sort of standard across the peninsula and they're okay with it

I think a lot of retailers would say if it's a conditional use, they're going to want the timeline. And that timeline sometimes can be prohibitive. So in the case of a building that's been vacant for two years, like we heard from one of the speakers, then yeah, they're probably more than happy to give you that time. But I can tell you, I would highly encourage that to, to tighten that up. I mean, I would ask Matt, how long does a conditional use process take these days?

I mean, through the chair, we typically have a four to six month window, so it can be a little longer for a smaller business to move forward with that. I would also like to make another point, if I may, through the chair regarding these different use categories and availability of capability and so on. We do have other land use designations in the specific plan area. Based on the earlier maps I'd shown in the presentation, there are five. And so the Main Street overlay is really the central core on Santa Cruz Avenue. It's very limited to that portion of the downtown. But you do have these other land use designations that have some variation in terms of allowable uses, permitted uses, conditional uses, and so on. And so in the case of the small scale recreation, for example, it's not prohibited across the entire specific plan area. There are some areas where that's possible. It is permitted in one of the five land use designations and it's conditional in two of the five. And so it is not allowed in two of the five as well. But at the same time, the point remains that across the specific plan area, there is some variation here. We have a very focused effort in this proposal on the Santa Cruz portion of the specific plan, the Main Street overlay. But at the same time, I think it's important to keep in mind that other areas of the specific plan do have kind of varying degrees of limitations and capabilities that differ from the proposal and also from the existing conditions here.

And I guess I'll note that As you're speaking, looking at that table, it looks like the only permitted uses on Santa Cruz Avenue, the Main Street overlay is food and beverage sales, general retail and restaurants. Is that correct?

Apart from the limited capabilities of upper floors for personal services general, personal improvement services, and then also how the office is laid out, there's LC, there are L designations. It's not a P. But that is correct that retail and restaurant are focused. And I think just to clarify some background in the specific plan, historically, when this specific plan was first adopted and being proposed, the idea. And I think this occurs within different parts of the specific plan. The notion that this would be kind of a retail restaurant node and kind of a hub for those uses. I think that was the spirit of what was originally intended. Now, whether or not that's relevant, whether or not the economy demands that, or if the public or if anyone wants that may vary. But the point remains, that was what originally I think this came out of. And it came through that effort to focus on Santa Cruz as this kind of location that would have that focus. And then there was also an intention then obviously at a smaller scale to have residential above the retail and restaurant. And that'd be it for the majority of Santa Cruz Avenue, specifically that street and the main street overlay. And so, you know, it's I think a more careful effort to limiting those uses was kind of what's resulted in the limitations we see today.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think, yeah, at one point, maybe folks like us waved their magic wand and they said, we just want retail and restaurants on Santa Cruz. And now maybe that's less common. Feasible than it was at the time. And that's why we're struggling. And that's why we're speaking today. So, yeah, I guess I'll just quickly go through going back to like the details of the proposal. I just want to quickly opine on where I'm at. So like in terms of the changes and uses. I think similar to Commissioner Schindler, I was thinking about things that kind of bring community together, things where you could see people kind of hanging out, bringing them to downtown. I guess I distinguish that from things where kind of you drive up, you do the thing, you leave, and you don't really want to stick around as much. and or things that would just have less foot traffic in general. So that was kind of my rubric in going through these. And so based on that, where I was at was I was not supportive of animal clinics and hospitals on Santa Cruz Avenue. That doesn't seem like sort of something that brings in community foot traffic if my dog is sick. I want to pull up to the front, bring my dog in, take it home right away. Um, not, you know, stroll down the street for coffee. Um, same with banks and financial institutions. I am a chase member. I go to the chase ATM myself. I see lots of people pull up in their car. They want to park right in front of the ATM, use the ATM and leave. If they're visiting the branch, they park in the back. They visit the branch. Um, Maybe they stick around, maybe they don't, but it just doesn't seem like the best use of street frontage on Santa Cruz. Business services, again, based on that list, printing, copying, blueprint, advertising and mailing, office equipment, rental, leasing, office security, phone and finishing, model building. Even if that's available to the general public, I just don't see that as bringing a lot of foot traffic. I would... not want to see like something that's you know blueprint services it's only for architects kind of not a lot of people coming and going on santa cruz i'm definitely in favor of you know personal improvement and personal services all the folks that want to open yoga studios exercise studios anything like that great um so yeah my big caveat on what i just said is kind of going back to the point that the chair and vice chair made, if we exclude any of these things, are we missing out on opportunity of something we're not imagining, like some sort of really cool financial institution that we would want on Santa Cruz Avenue and they come along. The flip side of that is, you know, do we want an applicant to go through this four to six month process to have their bank and ATM on our street and only to hear that, oh, it turns out, like, we don't really want that stuff. We just put that on the list because we wanted to see what else we could get. So, yeah, I think I'm struggling with that, but my inclination is just kind of, yeah, to stick with broad categories where I think there's unanimous, or not unanimous, but broad support and find other ways to perhaps enable the other things. Yeah. And regarding the office... I think I'm sympathetic to the idea that, yeah, the floor space is too big. We need something in the back. We need something that would subsidize the front. So if we can tie it to perhaps a requirement that the front is not vacant or some sort of ongoing subsidy to the front retail side, I would think I would be supportive of that. And then the change in classifications all seem fine. I think the one that... Again, just thinking about creating community, and I'm definitely not an expert here, but the only one that struck me as maybe not something that's as desirable would be like spa services for... I don't even know what to call it, like injectable hair removal, stuff like that. Again, I think that's when I think of places like that, frosted windows, people want privacy, people want to go in there, get their service, go home and recover. The rest all seem good to me.

So that's where I'm at. Commissioner Eric, if we have a specific question, then we can call you up. But if there wasn't, then I'll ask you to take a seat. Thank you.

Go ahead. Yeah, I want to make two points that are at least in my head related to each other. The first is simply to say that I appreciate all of the wise opinions of my fellow commissioners, and I think there's a lot of merit to it. I am inclined to support this proposal as is because I think it fundamentally modernizes what is clearly an out-of-date zoning code. We're dealing with language from the 60s or before then. And I think there's... a temptation to let perfect be the enemy of the good, but given how many theories exist on what's happening with downtown Menlo park, I just don't think we could know. And I think the best thing that we can do is to be expansive and a little bit permissive and also to trust what has been a two year process. Um, and so that's my first point. My second point is a little bit of, I guess, inside baseball in terms of how the city works, but I think this is an important point to make it. Another reason I'm supportive of this is because our role as a planning commission is to hear things that come before us and to make a decision. And tonight we have an opportunity to take action and to improve the city, maybe not exactly the way that all of us want, but I think to improve the city and, uh, to use a phrase that other planning commissioners have used to my frustration, unless and until City Council changes our remit, then our job is to vote on the thing. And the thing before us, I think, is broadly good, and so I'm inclined to vote for it. along those lines. So that was sort of like on my first point, my second point related, uh, several weeks ago during planning commissioner interviews, um, council member Combs made a point about, uh, that some planning commissioners, uh, I think I might've been one of them were pressuring staff to do this and that, and to have more proactive conversations. And he made the point that what the planning commission does or doesn't do, uh, should be determined by city council. I have thought a lot about that because it's obviously relevant to us and broadly, whether or not it's because of statute or just because of practically city council is our boss. I think city council member Combs was right. And given that he's right, I want to do a little bit of, I think as they call it, managing up to our bosses and to say that city council should strongly consider directing the planning commission and staff to have a planning commission that is more proactive. Other commissions in our city have work plans that describe what they want to work on. We don't have a work plan, and that's probably somewhat for good reason in the sense that we have things to vote on. But just as an example, you could imagine, I could imagine, planning commission having what I'll call a mini work plan. That's like three items per year, not that many. And if we had a mini work plan, I would get at least on my list would have been downtown vibrancy. And I think being proactive about that would have allowed us to avoid what we're all sort of bemoaning here, which is that we haven't had a chance to talk about this and work on this as a commission. And so even though work has been going on behind the scenes, it's new to us that But there's a way to avoid that, which is to take advantage of the fact that we're here. And so there hasn't really been a debate on this. And so I'm not claiming anyone, including City Councilmember Combs, is on a given side. But I will just say, now that this has been brought up as an issue, City Council should strongly consider changing the way that planning commission functions to make us a slightly more proactive body rather than entirely a reactive body. And I don't want to claim that if that was true, that we could magically fix downtown. But I think a lot of the things that have been bemoaned here tonight in terms of process could be fixed, or at least a step could be taken to fix them if we took advantage of the fact that we have this planning commission and in California statute and law, there's clearly a way for us to discuss issues more proactively. So I want to thank City Council Member Combs for bringing that up and to suggest to him, my boss, and to the rest of his City Council colleagues that they consider this as an example why they should consider a more proactive role for planning commission. the end.

We got a lot of applause. Thank you, Commissioner Eric. Totally agree with everything you just said there. I was also one of the people who was asking ahead of time on having more of that proactivity and would love to see it. I agree with you that what we have before us is this proposal and we should vote on it. I also think that we have the opportunity to receive feedback from the public. People have mentioned the small-scale commercial recreation as a use case. I would like to add that as an amendment to the current proposal if my colleagues are so inclined. I also... to Commissioner Sillin's points on nitpicking specific businesses and figuring out who's going to come in and then immediately leave versus come in and stay and hang out, I don't necessarily want to be a judger of that. Someone could go to the bank and then go right next door and grab a coffee and someone could go to the bank and go home. The exact same thing could be said about any given store or restaurant or anything. You could have it be more transactional or you could also have it be an opportunity to bring people into the downtown fold, and who knows what will happen from there. And so if you're taking your pet to the vet, maybe the operation takes a half hour and you use that time to go stroll around Santa Cruz. Who knows? So I'm inclined to approve the proposal, adding the small-scale commercial recreation. I do want to ask staff, because we mentioned this ahead of time around what those in lieu community benefit fees would look like. And in theory, those are all negotiated on a case-by-case basis. I brought up before the structure of that being on an annual basis as opposed to one time and also having some form of vacancy provision or vacancy tax for for properties that are leveraging that office space. And my question is, if those fees are going to be negotiated on a case by case basis, what avenue does the Planning Commission or would this proposal at all have to direct the nature of those fees?

I think just to start, this is not something that's negotiated, so we wouldn't have that component be a negotiable kind of situation.

Sorry, not negotiated in principle, but the amounts I assume, and maybe negotiated is a cavalier term, but it doesn't seem like there's a weight table that would be explicit on what those public benefit fees would be, and If not, then it has to come from somewhere. And so my question is, where does that come from? And then the follow-up is, what ability do we have as part of this resolution to direct the nature of those fees?

I think to start with, it would be imperative for the pro forma report to establish the methodology of how the specific calculations were made. And I think that's factoring in a lot of real time conditions. So, you know, I think the real estate market, I think about. the economy and what improvements might cost. And I think I'd like to just point out another important detail is that this in lieu fee money, this funding that would be generated from this public benefit agreement would be specifically dedicated to improvements in the downtown. So it's very much directed at downtown by downtown projects. And I think the other part to note is just with that in mind, the public benefit agreement type scenario would require appropriate economic consultants to provide this pro forma report that have the expertise, that have the knowledge of these factors in order to give us at that time, whenever that study is done, the conditions that created the methodology that they have. And so I think that's going to be you know, it's going to vary every time based on whatever the market's doing, whatever, you know, the city's development is doing. I think there are a lot of different factors that could play a role here. And I don't think that we would have one set, you know, like you said, a rate table or something like that, where we would know for a fact that it's exactly this much every single time. I think there's always going to be a desire for something that gets closer to that. But, you know, it would be informational and to help kind of create that understanding.

Thank you for the response. I acknowledge and am totally comfortable with the fact that it would not be fixed and set in stone and, again, needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis. My follow-up question, though, is as part of our conversation here and as part of what City Council will eventually vote on, is there any avenue to steer or direct the nature of those fees, or would it just be... what happens when they come up. And at that point in time, either the economic analysis or the planning commission at the time would be able to give feedback and opinions on those public benefit fees. I mean, I like, yeah, I guess can, can we, could I say, Hey, I like this, but I think the fees should be annual instead of one time.

I'd like to just start off by apologizing. I need to make a clarification. With the pro forma, I had erroneously stated that it decides what the rate should be. That's not the case. It's not dictating what an applicant proposes. I think it may help inform what an applicant wants to do, but the applicant is the one that decides what they're going to propose. And we're going to have this information with their application package to help determine guide the proposal so to speak but to your point now um i think there are a few factors uh to think about and you know i i believe that if you're getting into a separate topic of the fee structure or how we want to process the fee payment or perhaps rethink how fees are handled and it not be a one-time fee. I mean, that is beginning to think about a different process than what is being proposed tonight. And so I think that's something... That is opening up another discussion now. But also to your question of a proposal coming in, let's say, you know, we have all this approved and it moves on and it's adopted and then an applicant comes in with this idea. You go to this meeting one time. And the proposed value is presented to your commission and the commissioners have that opportunity that one time to basically either approve of it or perhaps negate it and say it's not appropriate and it could be denied. It could be, you know, a situation where you don't believe it's sufficient. I think There may be a bigger question on the grounds for which a denial occurs that I wouldn't want to necessarily expand on unless we have more questions. But I think this opens up a lot of other potential questions. But that's generally what this is about. I think the simple answer is take it or leave it. You have an opportunity here to agree with this when an applicant comes in, or you can say, no, this is not acceptable and it's going to be denied for that.

Thank you. So bring this back to the dais. Commissioner mentioned that he's comfortable approving this. I wanted to add that we add the small scale commercial recreation use case as permissible as an amendment to this proposal. Do any commissioners want to build off of that so we can eventually get out of here? Commissioner Eric.

I would also like to add a recommendation to City Council that they direct staff and the Planning Commission to conduct a study session on further zoning changes in the interest of downtown vibrancy.

I agree with that, and I think that I would like for that specific recommendation to be formalized as part of this proposal as well. Thank you. Commissioner Sillin.

Thank you. I would be supportive of recommending to council, I guess this is all recommendations, that personal improvement services and personal services in general would be permitted uses. I guess I don't know if it's worth the commission's time or the applicant's time to have to go through that. I hesitate to think of examples that we wouldn't support at least in a general scale or, or, um, I guess there's the, uh, sorry.

I think the proposal is to make them permitted. Oh, sorry.

Okay. So the C's are conditional. No, I understand. Um, okay.

As, as part of this proposal, the C's would be, uh, animal hospitals and, uh, animal clinics and hospitals, um, banks and financial institutions and business services.

Okay. Apologies. Uh, I think I'm okay then.

I would like to see banks and financial services taken out.

Away from conditional into nothing.

And by way of evidence, there are two banks on Santa Cruz Avenue that have been there since 2012. So they predate the specific plan. So to me that supports the point that these are fairly sticky and not foot traffic driving banks. uses. This is something that, of course, can be revisited at some point in the future, but I don't think it needs to be included in this round.

Commissioner Eric, given that I'm building off of your initial proposal, do you have any... I'm good with that.

I think that's reasonable.

I also am comfortable with that. I don't have a strong opinion on banks and financial institutions. Vice Chair Beruzzi.

Yeah, I'm same. And I will say, too, that speaking in support of the small eight-person office hanging out in the rear somewhere, I've worked in many of those offices, and I did go out and buy lunch every day. And so I feel like the precautions and the things that we're putting in place right now seem reasonable. I wouldn't want to see the balance sway too far in the direction of office, but I feel like we've got the right provisions in place.

Does anyone have concerns on, given that there is this dual entry right now for merchants on Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz as well as where our parking lots currently are on both sides, that if we add office space in the back, then that potentially reduces another avenue of customer traffic to there? Ultimately, I'm comfortable with the individual landlords making that decision on their own, and if they want to cut those in two, then who am I to say no? But I'm curious if anyone has a perspective on that. Go ahead.

Actually, I do have a concern that I want to understand more about. So if I'm again, like red lantern cycles, and I have figured out that what works for me personally is to have that sort of niche, like back space backing onto the parking lot. Um, am I in danger if we allow this of like losing my ability to have, like, do we, are we effectively making a case to landlords for getting rid of those kinds of uses? Small niche, interesting retail opportunities. Yeah.

But we're doing so for the sake of vibrancy.

Yeah. I'm a little uncomfortable with like the possibility that, you know, Yeah, okay. I'm sitting with that for a minute.

Regarding your question about dual entry, in a way I could see it as a good thing where if you have to go to Santa Cruz Avenue to enter the business you're visiting, then that creates more of a sense of foot traffic on the main street.

That's an excellent point.

I did want to revisit the... Office component. So it sounds like the idea of converting the fee from one time to annual is kind of a separate undertaking if we want to do that. Did you already have on your list or do we want to consider on your list the requirement that the front, the retail, I guess, street, main street facing side not be vacant as a condition of getting the office on the ground floor?

If we can do that, I would be very comfortable with that. The caveat being there are vacancies and then there are vacancies. And if something's vacant for six months because they're changing hands versus something that's been sitting there for five years, maybe I guess the person just needs to wait the six months. But yeah, overall, given the concept of subsidies and given that the purpose of this is to support the front by making it economically feasible to have for smaller fronts and the property owner can then still get money in the back, if we're not doing it for the front, then we're losing something. And so I'm comfortable with that, even as a blanket provision of... at least at time of application, if your front is vacant, then that's a requirement is that your front is currently leased to get the office space in the back.

Through the chair, could we get Mr. Pruder's opinion on that idea? Was that considered? If we recommend that to council, I guess, would that be something feasible to add at this point?

I think this could be something that you'd consider adding as part of your motion as a recommendation. However, I will advise that we did not assess this particular concept. I think the focus was really just on uses and permissibility. And then with that, some redefining of uses, but not requiring something of another use in order for a use to be in place.

I would love to get the applicant's perspective on if such a anti-vacancy requirement would be reasonable.

I think it's one of those... it's a good intention, but it's going to be very like difficult. So like I look at our building, right. And if we want to do this, then we're going to need to start spending more money. Right. Cause we've got to divide that ground floor space to make it so that you've got the office in the back and then you have the multiple retail bays up front. Okay. And then to invest all that money and then, um, Office leases faster than retail. That's just a fact. Retail leases take longer to get signed than office leases. So I understand what you're saying. And if you wanted to put a penalty in place, if the office was leased and the retail was not for a certain period of time, that seems like that's more manageable than just like, I mean, do you want a whole vacant building, you know, because you don't have the retail space lease? I think that's, it just doesn't, I don't think it's going to work. And I personally, if that's what you guys did, I would proceed to city council and strongly urge against that.

Thank you for the response. And I guess that just boils down to like vacancy tax in general, but that is not what we're talking about today.

I think it's something we should recommend to council as at least an idea to consider in line with what the applicant was saying, some sort of penalty for having a vacant front. And we don't have to decide right now what that needs to be because council's going to have to vote on it anyway.

To me, I think that would be better used in a study session on downtown vibrancy. If we have storefronts that are vacant for five years, then does a vacancy tax improve the incentives in order to do that or do something with it or reduce sizes or take advantage of these things that we're passing now? And if we do pass this, then in theory, there's all the incentive in the world and we're adding use cases. And if we still haven't solved it, then... I would say the onus no longer is on us, but is now on the property owner to lease out those properties. And as part of a study session, I would love to think about vacancy taxes. But I think for this purpose here, I'd rather be a little cleaner. Are we ready for a motion? Go ahead, Commissioner. You don't need to make a motion.

I was going to make a motion, so... I would like to move that we approve this as per the staff report with the modifications that the status of banks and financial institutions would not change and would remain not allowed with the addition that small scale recreation would be a conditional use in the Santa Cruz Avenue zone. And with the recommendation to City Council that they direct staff and the Planning Commission to conduct a larger study session on further zoning improvements in the interest of downtown vibrancy.

Second. We have a motion and a second and no further discussion. So I will call a vote. Vice Chair Baruzzi.

Yes.

Commissioner Eric. Yes. Commissioner Schindler. Yes. Commissioner Salen. Yes. And I am a yes, which makes it pass unanimously. Thank you all for your time. Now, before we get on to items F5 and 6, I would propose we take a five-minute recess, and then we can get out of here.

Motion to vote to extend.

Motion to extend the meeting to 1130.

Second.

All in favor? Passes. Motion to recess for five minutes. No one's opposed. Let's do it. Thank you. Are we back? Great, and we're back. Okay, we are now on item F5 regarding the development agreement annual review at One Hacker Way and One Meta Way. At this public hearing, the Commission may consider and adopt a resolution to determine that Mehta has demonstrated good faith compliance with the development agreements for its East Campus, One Hacker Way, West Campus, One Mehta Way, Building 20, and the West Campus Expansion Project, One Mehta Way, Buildings 21 and 22, and Citizen M Hotel for the 2025 calendar year. Review of the development agreements does not qualify as a project under CEQA. Mr. Turner. Are there any staff updates from the agenda packet?

I just have a bit of housekeeping. So we will want to open both items, F5 and F6. So when I'm done, if you could also read that as well. Actually, if you can go ahead and do that now.

Absolutely. Yeah, I wasn't sure if we were going to do them together or the same. I know it's the same staff report, but I'm very happy to consolidate. Item F6 is regarding the development agreement annual review at 1350 to 1390 Willow Road, 925 to 1095 Hamilton Avenue, and 1005 to 1275 Hamilton Court. Okay. At this public hearing, the commission may consider and adopt a resolution to determine that Peninsula Innovation Partners LLC has demonstrated good faith compliance with the terms of the development agreement for the 2025 annual review period for the Willow Village mixed use master plan projects. Review of this development agreement does not qualify as a project under CEQA. Take it away, Mr. Turner.

Okay, thank you. Now that both items are open, just to clarify, it is two separate actions on the two items. So one for the DA reviews for the East, West, and West Campus expansion, and then a separate action for the Willow Village DA. So when the time comes, we'll need two separate motions and two separate votes.

Sorry to cut you off, but can we take public comment as one item for both of those?

Yes, we can take public comment for both items as well. So to clarify some of the locations we're talking about tonight, the East Campus is what we sometimes refer to as the classic campus. That was the first meta. Then Facebook campus, or Facebook at the time. And it's formerly 1601 Willow Road, but it's now one hacker way. The West Campus has two separate development agreements. So one was the original West Campus, which is Building 20. And then the West Campus expansion, which includes Buildings 21, 22, the Citizen M Hotel, and then... an existing building that was part of a former project, but then incorporated into the West Campus Expansion DA. There's a map in the staff report that identifies each of the areas we're talking about. And then finally, the 2022 project that council adopted, land use entitlements for the Willow Village Master Plan, the mixed-use development at the intersection of Willow and Hamilton. After publication of the staff report, META provided the city with a supplemental letter regarding the Willow Village, which was included in the amended publication of the staff report. With that, I don't have any other updates, although we have the team members from Meta and Signature Online who would like to give a few remarks, and then we can answer some initial questions and then go into public comment for both items.

Sounds great. Let's go ahead with the presentation.

Do you want to promote Juan Salazar? Through the chair from Meta. There we go.

Good evening, members of the Commission. My name is Juan Salazar, Director of Public Policy for META. I'm joined by this evening by my colleague Kyle Kozba, head of our Americas Regional Facilities team, and also Eric Morley from our Signature Development team. We appreciate the opportunity to be here for the annual review of our development agreements. As reflected in the staff report, META continued to meet its commitments across the East Campus, West Campus, and the Willow Village development agreements during 2025. We're proud of the partnership we've built with the city and the Bellhaven community over the past 14 years, and I'd like to share a few of the highlights. Our 14th annual summer academy internship graduated 25 high school students from local high schools through our six-week program focused on STEM career training. And we also continued for our local community fund and scholarship program, which we run every year. supporting 26 local nonprofits addressing food insecurity, mental health, housing, and youth mentorship. We remain committed to being responsible neighbors and meeting our obligations here in Menlo Park. And Kyle and I, along with Eric, are happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Thank you. And then I'll just make a brief comment regarding Willow Village and just thank you to the chair and commissioners. My name is Eric Morley on behalf of Peninsula Innovation Partners. First, just wanted to thank the commission and professional staff for hosting the THE MEETING THIS EVENING. WE ALSO WANTED TO TAKE A MOMENT TONIGHT TO JUST UPDATE THE COMMISSION GIVEN THE ANNOUNCEMENT EARLIER THIS MONTH THAT WILLOW VILLAGE IS CURRENTLY BEING PLACED ON HOLD DUE TO SHIFTING REAL ESTATE MARKET CONDITIONS AND EVOLVING SPACE REQUIREMENTS I think in our letter to the city earlier, obviously after careful review, it was determined that the current environment doesn't currently support advancing the project of this type scale and complexity. Obviously, that decision to place the project on pause was a difficult one. And I think in large part because Willow Village represents a genuine vision for community-based planning. And I think the pause does not reflect on the quality of the project or the community effort and collaboration that we've shared over the last several years. I did want to share that as described in the staff report and in the letter that we provided to the city last week, Peninsula Innovation Partners remains in full compliance with the existing DA. And we do continue to those community programs that are outlined in the DA as it relates to a variety of local community programs. So just wanted to clarify that for the commission. I think Juan also covered the extensive programs that META remains committed to. And I would say moving forward, we're committed to working with your staff as we address the current application. And we concur with the staff recommendation and staff report. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. We can we can take any clarifying questions of staff or the applicant.

Seeing none. Can we please open up public comment for these two items.

Thank you, Chair Silverstein. At this time, we have public comment combined for both items F5 and F6. And just to remind folks virtually attending that you may participate virtually by raising your hand, pressing the hand icon on your Zoom interface, or if calling by phone, pressing star 9. That will notify us that you'd like to publicly speak. At this time, I don't see any hands raised, but we did receive one comment card in person for an in-person public comment request. I can introduce that person now if preferred, and we can begin that as well. And we can wait a little longer for the virtual commenters potentially. Great. Let's go ahead with the in-person comment, please. All right, thank you for that. Our comment card is from Pam Jones. You're welcome to come up to the podium. You'll have three minutes to speak. I will just put the timer up first, if that's all right. And then we can have you begin your public comment. I'm sorry, I'll just be one moment.

You can go ahead with your comment. Thank you.

in chairs Silverstein, vice chair Bruzi, commissioners and staff, and also Meta and Innovative Partners. I am Pam D. Jones, a longtime resident of Menlo Park, Belhaven neighborhood. I belong to several organizations, sit on several boards and program manager of Belhaven Empowered. I'm speaking for myself only and as a very close neighbor to Meta. About the Willow Village, for the record, I consistently stated the office space should be reduced by 50% and the housing double and include for sale condominiums to meet the Menlo Park housing needs. I recognize that Peninsula Innovative Partners LLC works for META and is authorized to speak on behalf of META only as instructed. The supplemental document states that we will continue that we will continue community programs currently underway through the time period as outlined in the development agreement. And they list seven items. The last paragraph includes, as part of META's multimillion dollar investments at Menlo Park, the Belle Haven Community Campus, which was approved on January 2020 and opened in 2024. Although outreach in Belhaven was underway, the Belhaven Community Campus was not part of any of the outreach for the Willow Village, nor was any of us under the impression that it had anything to do with the community campus, with the Willow Village approval, which came later, which was in 2022. I realize that META has several options for the land. Well, multiple options for the land. A few thoughts are wait until after the upcoming council member election for three seats to determine what the atmosphere will be like. Meet the minimum annual review requirements until 2037. or request rezoning to support repurposing the land for something like such as an AI data center hubs. And there's certainly a bunch of other ideas that META already has been running around in their head. I don't believe this was a last minute effort. It was META's commitment to housing, which was desperately needed as we were updating the 2023-2031 housing element that really drove the housing portion of the project. We were able to raise it some. Although Meta's employee footprint has shrunk substantially and the company focus has changed, we still need housing, particularly senior housing and lower income housing. And as we all know that it is a well-documented food desert. The grocery store promised to the Belhaven neighborhood and our newest residents in the high rise apartments and the residents actually on the other side of 101 would be served by the market. I'm looking forward to the conversations about how META will support the planned housing, the grocery store, and neighborhood serving retail, any of the non-office space and conference center portions of the Willow Village. The city has a housing element compliance target through 2031. Willow Village development agreement is scheduled to expire in December 2037. The conversation needs to begin now. What's going to happen moving forward and what the intention is. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Mr. Prudhoe, are there any comments online?

Thank you, Chair Silverstein. I do not see any hands raised or additional comment cards. If you like, we can wait some more or we could close public comment. Let's close public comment and move to commission discussion.

I'll open the floor. Vice Chair Brzee.

Well, I want to pick up the ball that Ms. Jones just tossed us and see if, through the chair, if Mr. Salazar or anybody else is willing to share thoughts on what's happening with Villavage. I can ask some very specific questions, like are you mid-cycle with a bunch of leases there, or is the office space that's currently there currently empty? I think a lot of people in the community are wondering what's gonna happen with that land. I've seen letters to the editor written about it. What can you share with us?

Yeah, thank you, through the chair. Yeah, at this time, we don't have a timetable to share with the commission. We also don't disclose, you know, occupancy due to safety, security, and liability for both our buildings and employees. So not in a position to share that at this time. And we'll certainly keep the city up to date and be coordinating with your professional staff as we continue to evaluate the property.

Any other commission comments?

Commissioner Schindler.

I appreciate that it was a difficult question to put the applicant team in a difficult position, but I just want to register like it was a non-answer. And I understand that this is a public forum and that corporate strategy and significant evaluative processes are not, well, there's sensitivity. But I also suspect that the applicant team can understand there's significant sensitivity within the community. There's sensitivity to commitments made, time and energy invested, and the hopes and aspirations that we have for all of the components that were part of Willow Village. So I'm going to ask it slightly differently. What can you tell us that will make the city of Menlo Park, that will make the residents feel more positive or more hopeful about future prospects?

Thank you for the question. And also, I appreciate your acknowledging the sensitivity around corporate strategy and et cetera. So yeah, and at this point, we have the project on a pause. I wish I could share more. I don't have more information. We don't have more information for the commission at this time. And so we certainly understand that concern. I did want to clarify that that Peninsula Innovation Partners is in is in compliance and has met all of its obligations under the development agreement. We certainly understand this process that we went through together in terms of community based planning, we recognize that as well. So as soon as we have more information, we will share that. But at this point, we have the project on pause.

Okay. Thank you.

Seeing no further Commission discussion, is anyone interested in

Sorry, I do have one other thing. Go for it, Commissioner Schindler. There's a reference in the staff report to the topic of the... I'm not going to read the whole thing. The one thing that's questionably in progress, right, that's been open about the construction, purchasing, and the sales tax and the use taxes, which has been open... in both of the annual reviews that I can remember doing and is acknowledged here as being on a path to compliance within six months. So the report labels it as in progress. I can live with that. It's been like that for the last two reviews. I, cannot envision this if this is still an open issue this particular item is open during the review in 2027 i can't imagine i'll be able to support an in progress attribution again just to clarify referring to um 6.6.1 c for west expansion this is an m tax item yes all right okay I did. Yes, it's, it's, I have the language here, but not the numeric. So I believe you are correct.

And that's on page two of attachment queue. Commissioner Sullen.

I did want to clarify maybe with staff that the Hamilton Avenue work. is essentially on pause. I mean, the last review we had, I was kind of the impression that there's like stuff was kind of moving forward, but essentially nothing's happening with that since the, um, the project is on pause. Is that correct?

Right. So we did have a number of items on-site improvement plans, final map for the project site, final map for the Hamilton Avenue realignment and various different permits that we were working through to implement the project. Now that the project has been put on hold, yes, we've been directed to halt staff's review of those items as well.

Thank you. I guess I'll just quickly express my reflection on the fact that, yeah, like with the housing elements, we the Willow Village housing units were a major component of our pipeline. And we just had a meeting, I think a month or two ago with the annual review where we said everything has to go perfectly in order for us to meet our goals. And now clearly that's not on track. So I think that's important to highlight. And, yeah, I just think it's it's very tough situation where we as a community depend on private development to basically provide basic services, including, you know, grocery stores and food. traffic improvements and things like that um don't have a good answer for that but yeah i think that's at least one of the many reasons i think that this causes kind of um disappointment in the community and um i i feel the same way at the same time um you know i don't think it's fair for us to sort of put all of our LRX in one basket. So I'm hoping we can find other solutions. Maybe Meta will come back with a different proposal. But yeah, I encourage us as a community, I guess similar to the previous item, to kind of come together and figure out what we can do as a city, as a community, to get the things we want and not perhaps rely so heavily on third parties that are active in their own best interest.

So I wasn't sure to what extent we should be talking about this. So staff, let me know about the conversation around Willow Village, opening the door for conversations around Willow Village housing. But to Commissioner Sullivan's point, when we were reviewing our annual housing progress report, We did talk about things needing to go right in order for us to hit our goals. Given that Willow Village is not going right, whether or not it happens at some undetermined time in the future, who knows? But we're certainly not counting on any of that at this point. Can you give the commission any staff perspective on what does that mean? And is it all hands on deck when it comes to Housing, is it just an understanding that some things fall through the cracks? What is the reaction that staff should have? And then I guess as a transference, what reaction should the planning commission be thinking through when we know that a potential avenue for major housing and community benefits is isn't going to happen? Like, do we and ought we to be reacting to this heavily?

Yeah, that's a good question. I know, you know, there is a lot of sensitivity and interest in how this will affect the housing element. That is something that sort of outside the scope of the DA review, but definitely, and the information is pretty fresh to us as well. It's only been a couple of weeks. So definitely something that we'll have to analyze. I imagine, you know, the official form for that would probably be next year's annual review of the housing element. Although there, I don't know, there may be opportunities somewhere between now and then if provided that direction. But yeah, I think it would have to be something we come back with at another time.

Thank you. Any more commission comments?

Commissioner Solon. I move to approve. Shoot.

Okay.

I don't want to do a separate motion.

Yeah, we do F5 and then we'll do F5.

Yeah, I move to approve item F5 as stated in the staff report.

We have a motion. I'd happy to second. We have a second from Commissioner Schindler. All in favor? That's a unanimous vote. Does anyone have a motion for F6?

I move to approve F6 as stated in the staff report.

We have a motion.

I'll second.

We have a second from Commissioner Baruzzi. All in favor? And that passes unanimously as well. At this time, I will close the public hearing portion of our agenda, and we can move to informational items. Ms. Sandmeier, are there any informational items that staff would like to inform us about?

Yes. So the next meeting will be June 8th. So it's three weeks away and we don't have the agenda finalized yet. We do have the SB9 ordinance update and single family development study session that was continued previously. And it looks like we'll have some single family homes and potentially the 500 ECR development agreement annual review.

Thank you. Do any commissioners have any questions or informational items of their own? Commissioner Erick. I will be absent for the June 22nd meeting. I will also be absent for the June 22nd meeting. Seeing no further commission informational items, I'm happy to adjourn this meeting at 11.27 p.m. Thank you.