Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the August 24, 2026 meeting of the Menlo Park Planning Commission. I am 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 and 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. endeavor to promote public interest in comment on and understanding of general plan of the general plan and regulations relating to it. Consultant advise with public officials, agencies, public utility companies, civic, educational, professional, and other organizations and citizens generally concerning the implementation of the general plan. promote the coordination of local plans and programs with the plans and programs of other public agencies, and perform other functions as the legislative body provides, including conducting studies and preparing plans other than those required or authorized by this title. In addition, the commission reviews development proposals requiring a use permit architectural control of variance, minor subdivision, as well as environmental reviews associated with those projects. When applicable, the planning commission reviews below market rate housing agreements associated with those applications. The commission is the final decision-making body for these applications unless appealed to by the city council or to the city council. We encourage your active participation, whether you're 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. Vice Chair Beruzzi.

Here.

Commissioner Eric. Present. Commissioner Farrick.

Here.

Commissioner Headley.

Here.

Commissioner Schidler. Here. Commissioner Sillin. Here. And I am present. So we have all seven commissioners in chambers, which is a quorum. Next item on our agenda is reports and announcement. Mr. Parada, are there any staff reports or announcements this evening?

Yes, thank you, Chair Silverstein and members of the Planning Commission. One report from staff. So since the Planning Commission's last meeting, the Council did review on August 11th the 335 Pierce Road project, specifically the tentative map and the request for a fee waiver, fee concession, I should say, excuse me. The Council did approve the map unanimously and denied the fee waiver request under state density bonus law. So I wanted to provide that update to the Planning Commission. And that concludes my reports and announcements.

Thank you. Do any commissioners have reports or announcements of their own? Vice Chair Bruzzi.

Yeah, I just wanted to welcome a couple of Boy Scouts from our community to the council chambers. I think they're working on some kind of civics badge, and I think it's super cool to have our kids showing up and learning what we do, even when it's not that exciting. So welcome, Scouts.

Thank you and welcome. Seeing no further public comments, we will 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, district, or city of residence, but it's helpful. And 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 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 in the agenda. To learn how to participate, I'm going to turn to our clerk this evening, Mr. Ball, and begin the public comment period.

Thank you, Chair Silverstein. Assistant Planner Matthew Ball, if any member of the public in the council chambers wishes to provide a public comment, please provide me with a comment card from the back table. If you're joining via Zoom, please press the hand icon, or if calling in, please press star nine on your keypad, and staff will be notified of your desire to speak. If multiple people are speaking from the same account, please let us know at the beginning of your time, and we will make sure each person gets a chance to speak.

Seeing no public comments, I will close the public comment period. The next item on our agenda is the consent calendar. Tonight there is one item on our consent calendar, the approval of meeting minutes from the August 10th Planning Commission meeting. Mr. Ball, can you please provide instructions and open public comment for item E1?

We are now taking public comment for item E1. As a reminder, for those participating in person, please provide me with the speaker card located at the back table. For those attending virtually, please press the hand icon. And for those calling into tonight's meeting, please click star nine on your keypad to notify staff you have a comment. This will now be the final call for item E1.

I'm going to close public comment for E1. Do any commissioners wish to pull item E1 from the consent calendar? Seeing none, I'm going to take a vote for the approval of the August 10th minutes. All those in favor? Passes unanimously. Now we will move to item F1, the public hearing item regarding 880 Cambridge Avenue. At this public hearing, the commission may consider and adopt a resolution approving a use permit to demolish an existing attached one-story duplex residence to construct a new two-story single-family residence on a substandard lot with regard to minimum lot depth and lot area in the R1U zoning district at 880 Cambridge Avenue. The proposal includes an attached accessory dwelling unit, which is permitted use and not subject to discretionary review. The project includes one development related heritage tree removal, which was reviewed and conditionally approved by the city arborist. The Planning Commission may also determine this action is categorically exempt under CEQA guidelines, section 15303 is class three exemption for new construction or conversion of small structures. Mr. Chan, I believe you're the staff lead on this project. Are there any updates to the staff report at this time? Thank you, Chair Silverstein, members of the commission, Calvin Chan, senior planner.

There are no updates to the staff report for 880 Cambridge. Staff would like to note that project representative Aiden Marvick with Arcanum Architecture is here in case there are any questions. Thank you.

Do any commissioners have any clarifying questions for either staff or the applicant? Commissioner Headley.

Yeah, I need to recuse myself from this item.

Thank you for letting us know. Commissioner Sillin.

I will also be recusing due to the proximity of my residence. Thank you.

Thank you. We will see you after Item F1 closes. Sure. To inform the members of the public on why a commissioner might recuse themselves, the General reason is for any potential either real or perceived conflicts of interest. In the case here, the two commissioners live within close proximity of the project, and there's a possibility that the development of any given project near where someone lives could either affect their vote or affect their willingness to vote a certain direction for that item. In this case, they plan to reuse themselves to eliminate any potential appearance of conflicts. Do any commissioners have any further clarifying questions? Seeing none, can we please open public comment period for item F1?

We are now taking public comment for item F1. As a reminder for those participating in person, please provide me with the speaker card located at the back table and for those attending virtually please press the hand icon for those calling into tonight's meeting please click star nine on your keypad to notify staff, you have a comment. This will be the final call for this item I don't see any I don't have any comment cards or hands raised so cherry may continue.

Thank you. We will close public comment and move it to commission discussion. Do any commissioners have anything they'd like to comment on regarding this project?

Vice Chair Bruzee.

So it's a lovely project and I can, you know, it seems like the kind of thing we would normally approve. I just want to make a note that from reviewing the plans, this used to be a duplex and there's a state law that, basically requires that when we take out two units of housing, we don't replace it with one. And so as I understand that the applicant is using state ADU law to accomplish that, they're building a single family residence with an attached ADU. I will note from the drawings that it sort of looks like it's pretty much designed as a single family residence and that the ADU is a bit of a technicality, right? We're looking at a single family house with two upstairs bedrooms, which share a bathroom. and no downstairs bedroom except for the attached ADU, which has a really nice walk-in closet. And I think it's a lovely residence. I wouldn't have any problem approving this. I just want to note for the record that this is an interesting use of state law. And that doesn't give us grounds to say anything about it. But I do think that as we're thinking about increasing housing stock in our community, especially affordable housing, Yeah, it'd be nice to note where it's happening and maybe where it's not quite happening. And I guess I did have one question for staff. Is there any instance in which this project might be later converted into, you know, we have rules about attached ADUs involving solid walls. If this changed at some point in the future if the family that it's being built for now or a future family was to say take out a wall that's separating an attached at you from regular residents would that be something that the city would note if it came for an application, and is this something that. We would have jurisdiction over.

Thank you, Vice Chair Baruzzi. Do you mean connecting the ADU to the primary residence with internal connection?

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

So I don't believe that there would be any type of additional scrutiny. The ADU by itself currently has independent access. It's not internally connected. But if for some reason there were some desire by a future owner to do that, they would be within their right to do that.

They would be within their right. They wouldn't need a permit from the city.

Okay, so sorry, I think I might have misunderstood your question. If the question is to remove the ADU and then combine it with the larger primary residence, no, that would not be allowed because that would be a violation of that no net loss provision. But if the future desire is to add an internal connection to the ADU to the primary house while retaining the two units, that would be allowed.

So one final question on this, I don't wanna, I know we have a big item coming up later. What constitutes retaining the two units in the eyes of the city?

There are the specific basic requirements for ADUs that would have to be met.

Okay, I'm done questioning.

Any further commission comments? Seeing none, I'm happy to make a motion to approve item F1. Do I have a second? Commissioner Schindler.

I'm happy to second. And I acknowledge and appreciate just the clarity of the questions from Commissioner Baruzzi. It's always good to surface this in light of housing issues.

With a motion and a second, I will call the roll.

Vice Chair Baruzzi.

Yes. Commissioner Erick.

Yes.

Commissioner Farrick. Yes. Commissioner Schindler. Yes. And I vote yes. So we have five yeses with two recusals. I'm going to pause for just a moment to allow Commissioners Headley and Sillin back into the room. While they take their seats, we can move to item F2, a public hearing regarding 550 Ravenswood Avenue. At this public hearing, the commission may consider and adopt a resolution approving a use permit to operate a private fitness studio in a 6,134 square foot tenant space within an existing building in the downtown station area retail slash mixed use land use designation of the El Camino Real downtown specific plan zoning district. Private fitness studios are considered personal improvement services and require a use permit to operate in a space greater than 5,000 square feet within the aforementioned land use designation and zoning district. The proposal would not affect the gross floor area and there would be no exterior modifications to the building. The commission may also determine this action is categorically exempt under CEQA guidelines section 15301's class one exemption for existing facilities. Mr. Toye, I believe you're the staff lead on this project. Are there any updates from staff at this time?

Thanks, Commissioner Silverstein. There are no staff updates at this time. The applicants, Dwayne and Charisse Carlisle are here in person as well as Alyssa Tibbetts is virtual and they are available to answer any questions.

Thank you. Do any commissioners have any clarifying questions for either the applicant or staff at this time? Seeing none, can we please open public comment for item F2?

We are now taking public comment for item F2. As a reminder for those participating in person, please provide me with the speaker card located at the back table. For those attending virtually, please press the hand icon. For those calling into tonight's meeting, please click star nine on your keypad to notify staff you have a comment. And this will now be the final call for item F2. I don't have any comment cards, nor do I see any hands raised. So chair, you may continue. Thank you.

I'll close public comment and we can bring it to commission discussion to any commissioners have anything they'd like to comment on regarding this item. Commissioner Schindler.

Thank you, Chair. Through the Chair, I do have a question that's more curiosity-based for the applicant, which was just with regard to the length of the lease on this particular property. I ask only because back in May of 2025, we saw the former occupant of this building come to us when they were moving to a new location. And they said that despite a long lease, it was ending this year in 2026 with no option to renew. And since this commission tends to be interested in development cycles, how long things are occupied, who they are occupied with, it helps us just to understand the market dynamics to have that perspective. So is that a question? that we have the appropriate folks here to speak to, or is that a question you can answer, Mr. Ball?

I think that would probably be a better question for the applicant team. I'm not sure if Matthew, if Alyssa wants to speak to that, or Dwayne and Sharice, if you want to come up to the mic.

I can answer that.

Can you hear me? Yes, thank you.

Yeah, so this is about... three-year lease because you may, I don't know if it's been submitted yet, but this site is going to have an application submitted for redevelopment.

I believe I heard you, but we're having just a little bit of trouble hearing you here in the room. Could you just repeat that?

Yes, I was just saying that it's a three-year lease, a short-term lease. Can you hear me? Yes, thank you.

Yes.

I don't think it's been submitted yet, but where you eventually a application for redevelopment will go in for this site, hence the no option to renew for the previous tenant.

Thank you. That's very helpful.

Do any commissioners have any further comments? Seeing none, would anyone like to make a motion? Commissioner Selin.

Yeah, thanks. I just had a quick comment, and then I'm happy to make a motion. I think given that it sounds like the building is planned to be redeveloped, this is sort of moot, but just looking at the vision goals for the development district in the staff report, it said there are two goals, activate the train station area and expand neighborhood services to ensure a vibrant downtown. I do think that having, especially on this side of the train station, it's great to have any services for the community. We have the coffee shop there and having something to fill the empty space is great. don't know what the true definition is of activating the train station area but i think um to me like even when access was there having a private studio is not ideal and i'm i'm happy to support this application i'm not here to like stomp on anyone's um property rights i just wanted to make a general comment that it would be great to have something there that's more publicly accessible. And I noticed the staff report mentions the business has plans to consider, you know, events for the public, for the community. I just think it would be great to have as much of that as possible. So all that being said, I would like to make a motion to approve the use permit for 550 Ravenswood as stated in the staff report.

We have a motion. Would anyone like to second? Second. With a motion on the floor, I will take the roll. Vice Chair Beruzzi?

Yes.

Commissioner Erick?

Yes.

Commissioner Farrick? Yes. Commissioner Headlee? Yes. Commissioner Schindler? Yes. Commissioner Sillin? Yes. And I vote yes. So item F2 passes unanimously. With that, we can move to item G1, a study session with Presidio Bay Ventures regarding 345 Middlefield Road. This is a request for a study session on a master plan development to comprehensively redevelop the former USGS campus located at 345 Middlefield Road with a residential office and neighborhood serving commercial mixed use project. The proposed project includes requests for a development agreement, conditional development permit, zoning ordinance amendment, general plan amendment, rezoning, below market rate housing agreement, investing tentative subdivision map. The project would consist of approximately 713,000 square feet of office space, approximately 43,000 square feet of non-office commercial and amenity space, 670 multifamily residential units and approximately three acres of publicly accessible open space and environmental impact report will be prepared for the proposed project in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act sequa. Mr. Turner, I believe you're the staff lead on this project to staff have any updates at this time.

Yes, thank you chair silver seen. I will start with a brief introduction and then we'll move to the applicant presentation so tonight, we will be holding a study session for the redevelopment of three four five. Middlefield Road. Purpose is to gain initial feedback from the commission and the public on the proposed project. No actions will be taken tonight. It's purely an opportunity to explore the project and receive some feedback. So quick agenda, as I said, I'll give a brief introduction. Then the applicant has a presentation. We can take some initial clarifying questions from the commission to staff or the applicant, move into public comment, and then bring it back to the dais for commissioner discussion. So the project site is the former USGS Western Region headquarters located at 345 Middlefield Road. The property consists of two parcels, approximately 17 acres in site between Willow Road and Ravenswood Avenue. The current property and the property is currently zoned PF, which is public facilities, which generally allows use of the site by city, state, county, and federal governments, as well as public schools and other public facilities. Other uses that are not government uses can be allowed in the PF as conditional uses. Very quick project overview which the applicant will go into more detail on project would demolish all buildings on site, except for building 15 which we will call building a in the plan set. And then the project consists of approximately 713,000 square feet of office. 300,000 of that is net new. This will be in three office buildings and then an expansion of building A with three additional stories. There would be 670 residential units, two of the, there'd be two purely residential buildings, and then one mixed use building, which is also the amenity building. Approximately 40,000 square feet of neighborhood serving retail and commercial, and then six acres of open space, three of which would be publicly accessible open space. The project would need the following entitlements in order to enable the proposed project. So the applicant's requesting general plan amendment, zoning ordinance amendments, rezoning of the property. They're seeking a development agreement with the city, a conditional development permit, and then we would do architectural control, a vesting tentative map, and environmental review, which will be in the form of an EIR for the project. After the applicant's presentation and public comment, we have the following suggested topics. This is not an exhaustive list of items the planning commission can talk about. So feel free to ask questions, discuss other topics, leave some of these topics off. It's open for commissioner discretion and discussion. We do have a couple updates to the staff report. So in the policy section of the report, we talked about a five hearing limit because the project is a housing development project. So since the project doesn't comply with the existing zoning and general plan designation, although it's considered a housing development project still, it is not limited to the five public hearings. And then we did receive one additional email after publication of the staff report from Patty Fry, which is sent directly to the commission. There's a copy by your computers, and it generally had concerns about jobs, housing and balance, additional traffic, and then urges the commission to discuss what uses would be appropriate for that site. And the next steps after the study session, we'll provide the applicant with the feedback from the study session. We'll continue to review the plan set, the documents, which are currently in what we call completeness review. So that'll continue. We will select an EIR consultant and then hold a EIR scoping session in the near future. And with that, I can pass it over to the applicant.

All right. Good evening, everyone. Can you all hear me? Excellent. First of all, thank you commissioners for having us tonight and thank you to staff for coordinating this event. We're really pleased to be here to discuss our project. My name is John Maney. I'm with Presidio Bay Ventures. I'm joined tonight by Tucker Marshall. We're collectively, the leads of the development project on behalf of the owner of 345 Middlefield. It's USGS Menlo Park LLC. Again, we're really pleased to be here with you all. We're going to go through a brief presentation on the screen. We'll touch on sort of the rationale behind City Council Chambers, The mixed use development that we're proposing for the former usgs campus will talk through some of the architectural character open space character and then we're happy to address any questions that have been submitted or they come up as we move through tonight's meeting so. City Council Chambers, crystal next slide. wonderful so i i touched on this presidio bay we're a san francisco based developer but really uh the bay area is our home um mixed use developments and generally place making is something that we're very passionate about here in menlo park um we we've had a presence with the development of springline which we developed uh in the early 2020s and continue to It's sort of helped us refine our belief that mixed-use projects can really cultivate a really great community by having each of those uses, whether it's commercial, residential, retail, and open space come together, support each other to create an even greater end product. So ultimately, that's what we're hoping to do. develop at the former USGS campus. Mr. Turner already touched on some of the site context, so I won't belabor the point. Former federal campus, USGS, of course, had begun vacating the campus many years ago. With that, Dating back to as early as 2019 we began to study this site and the potential that it held for being. Potentially a really great site for a mixed use development of note immediately adjacent to our site is the former Sri campus which is currently going through entitlements as. park line, and then to the south and the east, we have residential neighborhoods, including Winfield Oaks and Homewood Place, which all of that context is very much informed what we'll be presenting here tonight. And the last thing I'll touch on before I turn things over to the much more technical Tucker here, is just the level of community engagement that we've attempted to pursue with respect to this project. Again, Menlo Park has been our home for many years now, and we've been looking at this site as one that potentially could create significant housing and a really great mixed-use community. Specifically, since closing on the property back in July of 2025, we've conducted several rounds of community outreach and engagement, including workshops where we've welcomed neighbors and the surrounding community in, site walks with residents from the community. We've taken all of that and used that to really inform, again, what we're presenting here tonight. So with that, I'll turn things over to Tucker here.

Thank you, John. Stepping back out for a little bit, you know, when we thought about this project originally as part of the initial acquisition and going through this last few years, you know, why mixed use? Obviously, John touched on the successes of Springline. Presidio Bay were big believers in mixed use in terms of just the experience it creates as well as the community it creates. So, and this one became available. Obviously, it's not very often that 17 plus acres become an opportunity for us to get plugged in. And so, especially when you look at the local site between park line, commercial aspects, as well as the residential, it really becomes a perfect opportunity for a mixed use community. And so leaning into that and having a roadmap in front of us as parkland was initially going through its final approvals really did become kind of a shining star for mixed use development for us. And you may ask why 670 homes, you know it's a lot. We are big believers in providing residential at Presidio Bay. When you look at the scale of density, the current proposal is about 38 dwelling units per acre, which is a little bit more in spring line, but not much. And so it's kind of a test case for us in that mid-rise residential development, especially in a mixed-use kind of setting, does work well. especially when you start to consider all the step backs and step downs that we would naturally have as part of this. And you know, we're with 670 homes, you can really develop a large variety of unit types, which we're proud to have in this incurred proposal, as well as a large amount of BMR units. And on the flip side of that, obviously, we always get the question of why commercial office when we need so much housing? And it's true as it's always been that commercial office does make everything else pencil, especially in a mixed-use development. So when you're providing 670 homes, With a bunch of open space, community benefits packages, all the infrastructure it takes to redevelop, office does make it pencil for us. And we've seen, especially at Springline, that new office does do well. And so the current proposal with its amount of office, we think does a good job in balancing out and providing a jobs housing balance we can be proud of. And all of the building heights and zoning standards have pretty much been developed based off of what was approved at parkland. And so we're not hoping to kind of really to get that and kind of use what was approved by the Community and by yourselves and move forward. And so what does that look like from a high level program summary? So I mentioned the 670 units plus 70 in the housing units to jobs based off the San Mateo County Nexus method of calculation. Obviously we are big believers in childcare as we have a few different developments up and down the peninsula, so the maintenance of that on site, as well as the substantial public available open space and total open space, and amongst others, including covered parking and a good amount of distributed bike parking across the site. And we think, when you look at those numbers in total, it does create a balanced mixed-use development that we can be proud of. And what does that look like? I won't stare too long, because I know a good amount of you have been looking at this site plan. But in blue, we obviously have the commercial Building 15 or Building A along Middlefield assigned to the portion of the site that would be closer to the commercial, and then the residential closer to the residential. All of the parking for the commercial is all subgrade. And then the above ground and one below ground for the residential is all in a Texas wrap style. So every edge is kind of activated with residential units. You don't really have any kind of dead parts of the site where either there's above ground structured parking or services. Like every part of the site is meant to be lively. and drive kind of the level activity you would expect from mixed use development. And then just to touch on the building heights, like I mentioned, the non-residential building density standards and height standards are based off of what was approved at Parkline. Admittedly, we do have more density here than at Parkline for the residential. And that's, as I mentioned earlier, to get to that 670 homes. And, you know, we... believe 670 is pretty much as much that could be provided within these standards without going at a high rise, which we've heard throughout the community outreach process of how, you know, we would never want to go there. And that's not something we believe in in this in kind of context is anyways. And then when it comes to on the right hand side, the various service entries and the back of house stuff that you don't really want to experience, we worked really hard with the architect teams to make sure that's all on the surrounding loop road. Nothing that really impacts the kind of publicly accessible experience in the in the central area where the redwoods kind of frame the event lawn, or any of the other neighborhood, the accessible parks, whether it be the play area, the park towards Homewood place or the entry canopy or survey park. When it comes to connectivity, on the left is your vehicular diagram. The main access to this site will be and continue to be Middlefield Road. We are only maintaining access to Homewood Place from an emergency vehicle access standpoint. We do anticipate and hope there will be enhanced connectivity with Parkline now that their new proposal is out and that we can make sure whether it be Seminary Drive or elsewhere to enhance those points of connection, especially from a pedestrian and bicycle point of view. So if you go to the next slide. On the left-hand side is our bicycle path and parking diagram. So we have various Class 3, Class 1 on-site bike paths connected to the bike paths on Middlefield Road. If you're living in Lanefield Oaks, you can bike through the sites, connect through Park Line, and go down to Burgess as proposed. If you're a pedestrian, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, we're big believers in the porosity and make sure that all parts of the ground floor are accessible and active for the community. And so, as you can see, kind of on the right hand side, that diagram shows the level of pedestrian access to the site that we anticipate and hope gets developed. When it comes to the edges for the project, this has been a focus of us up at leading up to the last pre submission in June. is working on middle field road, whether it be from a civil engineering perspective and the signal ization. Making sure all the right away improvements, whether it be the undergrounding of lines are all integrated as well as just a beautification standpoint. having the canopy trail and relushing those redwood trees along Middlefield Road. So if you're just a community member driving by on Middlefield, you kind of experience it from that point of view. Or if you're somebody coming home for the end of the day, you know, the front door of the project feels pretty good. And then when it comes to our edges on Homewood and the more residential sides to the south and to the east, we have the new neighborhood park that we're proposing with the included dog run. We have a greenway, which really doubles as a fire access lane for the site. This is somewhere where kids can go biking or you can walk your dog through it on the way to school. Burgess via park line there's a lot of walk up units there for residential so it's meant to be kind of a front porch or back porch for everybody living on that ground floor. it's it's a concept we're pretty proud of, and we hope kind of stays with the project and then, when it comes to the edge media to the homewood neighborhood. If you go back one there's those Chinese elms that was actually something we learned through our site walks back in March and April. It was the importance of maintaining those to those neighbors and so we've worked with the project arborist and city arborist to make sure that those trees are protected and remain through the construction activities as proposed. The open space strategy as mentioned a couple different times six acres of total open space half of that little more half that is publicly accessible. As distributed across the various park spaces, whether it be survey park the central event lawn neighborhood park the publicly accessible play area between the two residential buildings. The seo is between the office buildings or the greenway itself. There's 121 heritage trees on site, so 58 of those we're able to maintain and protect, including all of the major redwood trees on site and a good amount of the oak trees. For the ones that we can't maintain just due to outlines or grading of the site for accessibility or the introduction of horizontal infrastructure for new streets, we are gonna provide a replacement value of about a million dollars in new trees across the site. And just in terms of amenities and public events, I've touched on a good amount of the publicly accessible amenity spaces. But in terms of events, as you know, we're owners and operators at Springline. We're big believers in public events. Obviously, this is a slightly different location than Springline. It's more neighborhood focused. And so these events would be curtailed to that setting. Our project description has a good amount of detail in terms of what would be offered, but generally looking at kid-focused or dog-friendly types of events, wellness activations, a few seasonal things to keep it lively like summer nights, but nothing like large events, no large festivals or anything like that. Something that the local neighborhood could attend or if you're living on site, it would be something to look forward to. And I won't spend too much time on the massings and modulations. I will just say that we worked a lot with our two architect teams through the various design standards, which were originally modeled off of Parkline's approved design standards. The non-residential design standards were pretty much a one-for-one. in place, but in terms of residential, obviously we have a little bit more density here, so the design standards are slightly amended just to address that increased density. But as you look at any of the renderings or elevations, you see we still are providing a really substantial amount of articulation, modulation, and massing breaks that we feel are pretty appropriate for the setting. And then just in terms of the overall feel of the materiality that we've been trying to instill from the beginning, we've always talked about this concept of the forest at Menlo, whether it be our initial outreach presentations or the sidewalk. The feeling of the redwood trees and the openness of that landscaping on the site has always been something that struck us. It's kind of, we have this idea of also being along the San Francisco Creek that we've been trying to instill through the landscape design. And so really trying to layer in this idea of texture and lushing out the understory of the redwood trees is something that's not just permeated into the landscape design, but also into the materiality design and will into the detailing of each of these buildings when we get to that point. And then this is just kind of what it looks like at this point. Building A, as you see in the top left, that's kind of your front door to the site, Survey Park. On the left-hand side, Building A with the additional mass timber floors. So as you're driving by the site, this would be pretty much your view through the redwood trees. On the top right, you have Building E, which is you're looking at the retail at the bottom, whether it be like like a cafe or a grab-and-go or restaurant type of institution, and then an amenity above that. Buildings C and D are larger residential buildings. Those are the Texas wraps. So you can see that you don't really experience those parking garages within. And then the publicly accessible play area sandwiched between the two of them, meant to be offering to not just people on the site, but then our local neighbors as well. And then on the bottom right is neighborhood park, which is meant to be a family focused safe play area with an associated but separated dog run so people can have their dogs they're playing while they have their kids out on the lawn area. And with that i'd like to thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Before we open public comment, do any commissioners have clarifying questions for either staff or the applicant? Commissioner Sillin.

Thank you. I'm wondering if staff has any information on what the current occupancy level is of the USGS buildings. Are they basically vacant and what the what the trends were per the staff report. It sounds like USGS started moving out in 2019. Is there any data around that time or maybe 2018 of how many people were coming in and out versus today?

I think I might defer that to the applicant. I don't think we as staff really have information on the USGS's operations when they were still there. I know they were gradually moving out, but the applicant might have a better idea.

Sure. Thank you. What I can tell you is the site is currently vacant with the exception of one tenant, which is GeoKids. GeoKids is a nonprofit, or rather an unaffiliated with the GSA child care operator that had previously existed and continues to exist on site. All of the GSA operations began moving off site, I believe, around 2020, and about half had relocated by around 2022. In terms of the total occupancy, I'm not sure exactly on the numbers. There's about 413,000 square feet of existing office and ancillary uses currently on site.

Thank you. Vice Chair Brzee.

Yeah, I was wondering if you could explain a little more about the math that got you to plus 70 units of jobs housing balance. That was interesting to me.

Yeah, thank you, Vice Chair Brzee. So the math is a direct transfer from how it's calculated. It based off the San Mateo County Nexus study. And we had taken the calculation directly from the Housing Commission staff report from 2018 for Menlo Park. And the way the math types out is you have For net new office, you have a creation of three jobs per 1,000 square feet. And for retail, it's 1.5 per 1,000 square feet. And then you consider the number of jobs or employees per household. And that's calculated as 1.53 per household. And then you take that total number, which we had required to just net out 599 jobs. And then our provision is 670, but it was on the decimal. So we provided a plus 70.

Thanks.

And in your presentation, you mentioned that part of the density considerations had to do with setbacks and step downs. Can you elaborate on what those considerations were and whether or not that actually affected what the end result could have been or was or is?

Thank you, Chair Silverstein. Just to elaborate, when you talk about modulations and planning design or anything like that, articulations, it's something that we expect when it comes to making sure the mass doesn't feel as massive. We always expect to have to step back on top floors, break up long facades with massing breaks, like as we do in this one. Those kind of chunk plays usually take a significant number of units away rather than from the original box. And so when we had provided the 670 in the original application, we had already done some of that work to get close enough to feel that that was appropriate in anticipation of additional stepbacks. And and modulations that would be required and in our recent mission when we started to propose design standards based off of parkland we found that when we were going through those line by line, we were able to maintain our original. kind of strategy and design for those modulations massing step backs I think step downs and sort.

I guess my follow-up question is, were those required or imposed on the project? Or was it more aesthetic and based on your general understanding of what works, what works within the community, what your expectations were on feedback? Or was there something that said you have to have various setbacks, there are various considerations in terms of height and I guess the level of imposingness that these buildings would have at the street level?

Yeah, thank you for the clarification. It's a bit of both, to be honest. We understand the aesthetic appeal when it comes to breaking things down. That's kind of how you understand planning in California, for the most part. But in terms of the expectation, as a developer, we're very used to having to do those. And so when we are looking at what was approved at Parkline and seeing those design standards, We came to expect that that would also be not required of us, but behooved us to kind of get ahead of it and to work that into our design intent from the get-go.

Can I add to that? Feel free to, yeah. So... design standards like uh setbacks a lot of that was informed as tucker said from our neighbors when we came up with and it's in the presentation we didn't really touch on it but when we came up with the initial sort of vision for the site plan um we were looking at The original park line designs that had commercial located sort of on that that southern or call it plan south border of their site, so we had concentrated our commercial adjacent to that commercial we concentrated our residential uses adjacent to. the existing residential neighborhoods. So when we're looking at how to build in massing breaks, we really looked at concentrating those along the sort of borders of where the Linfield Oaks and the Homewood Place neighborhood neighbors are so that the perceived height right for those neighbors would just be diminished.

Thank you. Any further clarifying questions? Commissioner Sillin.

Thank you. Okay, I believe this one's for staff, which is about the PF zoning designation public facilities. I was just hoping to get a better understanding of the current zoning. Two part question. First, am I correct in understanding based on the staff report that that basically give USGS or whoever has that designation like carte blanche to build on the law i know staff report said that they would typically get public input but could they technically have built essentially anything or could you clarify that and then part two is um yeah what is that designation typically used for in the city what is it intended for good questions um so the public facilities district when it

it doesn't so much give free reign to build anything. It's more the uses that are allowed there. So for example, a more recent example is the MPCC, Menlo Park Community Campus. That zoned public facilities, but the actual construction of the building needed to go through a standard architectural control process. So to the extent that

Hmm.

The federal government is a little bit different. A lot of their regulations sort of preempt city regulations. So back when the campus was developed, there was a little bit more, I guess you could say, free range on their part. But for example, if it's a city property, we would go through an architectural control process. As for the second question, I think I might have touched on it. Public facilities is basically supposed to be for public use. So City Hall campus, this is all public facilities. Most of the public schools in the city are public facilities, etc. So... Does that answer your question?

Yeah, and just a quick follow-up. You said it's about the use, not having to get use permits for whatever you're doing on the parcel. So regarding the square footage, the heights, setbacks, etc., do we have development standards for that kind of stuff?

There's very limited. There's a maximum building coverage requirement that can be modified through a use permit if the property is a certain size. But other than that, things like setback, height, et cetera, are kind of controlled through the architectural control process.

OK.

Sorry. Floor area ratio, not building coverage.

Thank you. That answers my question.

I don't have any other questions. I have one more clarifying question for the applicant. In the presentation, you guys mentioned that the office space makes the project pencil. The implication being that a housing-only project would provide either less ROI or is less valuable overall. Is the same true for the neighborhood serving commercial portion of the development? And could you elaborate a little more on either your expectations at this project or your experience in Springline on how the, I guess, the ground floor commercial helps or hurts a project pencil?

Great question, thank you. So a couple things. I mentioned sort of at the top of our presentation, a lot of the design standards that we applied here were sort of informed from lessons learned from Springline, right? So at Springline, we developed 200,000 square feet of commercial office space, 30,000 square feet of ground floor retail, and then 183 residential units. We found that that ratio of about 1 000 square feet of office space to one residential unit is a very strong ratio we we know that employing that ratio we can get a project to pencil um so that's what i mean when when we say the commercial subsidizes the the residential right now um and standalone residential projects um getting to a return on cost that would make us feel comfortable to move a project forward today uh on a standalone residential it's very difficult to do with the subsidization of the commercial return on cost that blended return is substantial enough to allow us to move forward uh to your second question about the retail so retail was really critical has been really critical to our strategy um not that that does not however mean that retail PENCILS ON ITS OWN IN FACT QUITE THE CONTRARY. WHEN WE LOOK AT RETAIL SPACE WE LOOK AT IT REALLY AS SORT OF A LOSS LEADER BUT WHAT IT ALLOWS US TO DO IS IT PROVIDES AMENITIES THAT ULTIMATELY cause our our office our commercial spaces and our residential units to lease and to be much more attractive to uh to the market so uh the approach that we've taken historically with retail space is we've actually financed or subsidized uh pretty much the entire build out of those retail spaces uh and then most of our lease structures are structured as a revenue share Basically, that protects or subsidizes a retail operators sort of entry, you know investment and then on the revenue share point protects their downside and months where. operations are down right, and then we expect that we're we're getting some of that back, but ultimately again we view retail really as a Community benefit and as a loss leader that helps make a project. over all feasible, but as a standalone, we don't look at it as being feasible necessarily. Does that answer your question?

That absolutely answers my question. Thank you for the context. I do have a quick follow-up. The ratio of retail for Springline versus this project will be higher. Do you believe that the existing proposal will do enough to serve the office and residents? And is that going to be sufficient or... or will those residents and or office workers also feel like there's not enough for them if they're going to lunch or dinner or anything there, strictly from this project alone?

Yeah, great question. And again, Tucker touched on this, that we look at the former USGS campus and the Middlefield Corridor as sort of a different market than downtown, right? And therefore, the residents have different, the existing community has different desires, right, relative to what exists downtown. We know that traffic is something that people don't want to see an increase of, right? We know that people are very passionate about their businesses downtown and seeing those businesses be successful. So we did not necessarily feel that the former USGS campus was the right site to create a new retail district. And therefore, what we are providing is viewed much more as community serving. It's sufficient to allow commercial office tenants to leave their office building and be able to grab lunch or get a coffee or have a meeting outside of the office. it's sufficient for your residences to walk outside and feel like they're in a vibrant environment that actually warrants spending time within the park and not having to go on a stroll to grab a coffee or what have you. At the same time, we think that that's something that will serve the greater community. There's also The site is very walkable to Burgess Park, is very walkable to downtown, to Springline, and to what we expect to be 40,000 new square feet of retail space just off of Ravenswood. So we think that there will be sufficient retail to support everything that we're proposing.

Thank you very much. Commissioner Sullivan.

Thank you, you reminded me of some just a question I ran into when I was going through the plans. For. Building E was described as mixed use, which is residential plus retail plus amenity if i'm not mistaken so i'm just wondering if you could distinguish what in the proposal is an amenity versus retail like what are those two things mean.

Thank you, Commissioner Zun. So the ground floor is all planned to be retail. I mentioned earlier cafe, grab-and-go, restaurants. All of that is retail throughout the proposal. Amenity is admittedly a little bit general now for us. We don't have an operator on board. We expect it to be all private amenity. We don't know who exactly it's gonna serve. Imagine on-site tenants. But we don't have a sense of program and operator, yet, but that those would all be above ground so second floor and above to serve tenants on site. The delineation is is about 10,000 square feet for the retail and about 30,000 square feet for the amenity.

Great Thank you.

Any further public or any further clarifying questions before we move to public comment.

Yeah, one last question. And again, I feel it's funny in a study session like this, the delta between clarifying question and probing question that we'll ask after public comment. It's a little bit fuzzy in my mind. But this is a quick one. This retail that we were just discussing, are you envisioning that it would be accessible to residents not during just regular business hours? Or is it going to be like a cafe that's functional during business hours to serve office employees. And if people happen to be home or nearby, they can also get coffee then. Like it would be open on the weekends, for example.

Good question. And the tough part of the answer is that it somewhat depends on who the operator is, right? But our intent would fully be for it to serve the community during work hours, after work hours, in the evenings, and on weekends. We would strive to find an operator that would be able to make that happen. I think it's something we learned even during many of our site walks where we had residents walk over and they pointed out, you know, restaurants that used to exist in walking distance that they love that they can no longer go to and having that sort of, you know, community gathering spot restaurant, you know, for weeknights would be something that they wanted to see. So yes, that's the intent.

So like a mini Cafe Baroni kind of situation. Great.

Seeing no further clarifying questions, Mr. Ball, can we please open public comment for item G1?

We are now taking public comment for item G1. As a reminder, for those participating in person, please provide me with the speaker card located at the back table. For those attending virtually, please press the hand icon. And for those calling into tonight's meeting, please click star nine on your keypad to notify staff you have a comment. This will now be the final call for item X. We have five comments for, five in-person comments, starting with Kia Shepherd, followed by Peter Lazak, followed by Alexa Combs, followed by Miller Hartstein, and lastly, Mayen Zelman. And as a reminder, you'll have three minutes to speak. Give me one moment while I set up the timer. Okay, the floor is yours.

Me, a Menlo Park resident, born and raised here for 40 years, all my life. I've also attended Menlo Appleton High School. I was here when USGS was here. So being here and listening to the applicants is kind of nostalgic for me. I am also a member of the IBEW, which is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. So not only have I lived in Menlo Park, but I've also developed buildings, commercial, retail, things like that. I currently work for a contractor at Slack. And so I'm very familiar with how things are built and how things are going. I am in support of this study session for Presidio, myself as well as the union that I represent. What really piqued my interest this evening is listening to the presentation and the applicants speaking about how many jobs they can provide in construction. There are people who live in two buildings to three hours away from where they work. And so working on a potential housing building or a mixed-use building with the potential to live in the area where we work is very important. I'm very fortunate because I live here on the peninsula, but there are people who do not. In general, the IBEW does support this study session, and we would also look forward to maybe working with Presidio Ventures for any development. So thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Good evening, Chair, members of the Planning Commission. My name is Peter Lezak. I'm here representing the owners of the McCandless Office Buildings, 525-535-545, Middlefield Road. We're the property that's smack in the middle between Park Line and the USGS site. And our site does not have any access off Middlefield Road. So all of our tenants and residents employees come in off of the adjacent two roads. One park line refers to as D Street, the other is Seminary Drive. And so the challenge concern we have is that there's fairly significant traffic proposed between these two projects. There's already significant traffic on Middlefield. When you look at the EIR traffic study for the current park line project, the access off of Seminary is already going to be an F, And with a new intersection, traffic signal there is going to be a D. The queuing, which I provided sample of in the letter that I provided in the comment, will show you that the stacking on the queuing is already so bad on the park line project that it will be almost impossible to get out of our site. That doesn't account for any of the traffic queuing going on on this site because they haven't done their study yet. So we're very concerned that between the two projects, between Parkline alone and the two projects, that there's going to be significant traffic and access impacts to our property. We're working very closely with both parties. We really appreciate Presidio Bay. They are a good developer to work with, and we hope to be able to work these things out as the process goes on. We would note that we just don't think this particular site is appropriate for this level of development. When you look at what Parkland went through, most of their higher density is transit-oriented development, very close to the Caltrain station. The areas away from that, they transition out. They're looking to trade out some of their proposed design right now to doing some townhomes adjacent to our property. We think that's appropriate. We think the single-family neighborhood adjacent to this particular property should have buffering of, say, townhomes 16 to 20 of the acre. not really high density housing like this. We recognize that we need housing in the city and that the city has a housing element, but we don't think that this is the best way to do it. We need a combination of balance between the right product and the right place. Also, I would note that in Parkline's design, they showed of their 800 units, 251 to be affordable units. So that's a 31% affordable housing ratio. These folks are proposing 15%. What we need for our housing element is affordable housing. They should increase their affordable to at least 30%. So we'll continue to make comments as the process goes along. We appreciate your feedback and thank you for letting us comment at the study session.

Sorry, before you go, can I ask a quick follow-up question? Are your concerns with traffic and access specifically related to construction or upon project completion as well?

Oh, no. The EIR is completely post-construction. Thank you. So construction, traffic, noise, all those things are an additional set of comments that I made. They're even worse. So thank you.

Next, we have Alexa Combs.

Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair, and Planning Commissioners. My name is Alexa Combs, and I'm president of the GeoKids Board of Directors and have two children who are proud alumni of the school. As you've heard, GeoKids is an early childhood education center. It's currently located on the property, and we've been there for nearly 40 years. I'm speaking tonight to share both my own and on behalf of GeoKids' strong support for preserving childhood education on this site. First, I do want to express our incredible, how incredibly appreciative we are of the support and collaborative partnership that we've received from Presidio Bay thus far, including their commitment to securing our lease extension at the site and also recognizing the value of childcare on the campus. I've been on the board since the campus was initially for sale years ago and when Presidio Bay was actually first interested back then. And even at that time, their engagement and support of GeoKids was clear, and I'm really grateful that ultimately they purchased the property, and we've got the opportunity to partner with them and continue GeoKids' legacy in Menlo Park. As you probably know, ensuring that high-quality early childhood education And geo kids remain on this property is critical, not only for our current families, but the bottom and the park community and the local workforce access to early childhood education is essential piece of our community infrastructure. So we urge the planning commission and the city continue to continue to prioritize protecting early childhood education facilities like geo kids as part of the plan for a three 45 middle field road. Thank you for your time and support.

Thank you. Next, we have Miller Hartstein.

Hello, everybody. My name is Miller Hartstein. I go to Hillview Middle School. I'm a Boy Scout in Troop 222. My question is about schools. Does each developer have an obligation to consider the impact to schools when building the 670 homes? Thank you.

Thank you. And lastly, we have Mayan Zelman.

Hi, I'm here to speak on behalf of Geofields Early Childhood Center. I'm the executive director. My name is Mayan Zelman. And to second everything that Alexa said, we're incredibly excited that Presidio Bay has purchased the property and that we have at least signed with them to be able to stay. We currently serve almost 90 children from infants all the way up to ultra preschool, the equivalent of TK. And like we said before, it's incredibly important to preserve quality early childhood frameworks in our community. We serve a lot of the families in Willows and Linfield Oaks and in all of Menlo Park. So we're very happy that this project is happening. Thank you.

Thank you. And that concludes our public comments.

With that, we will close the public comment period and can move it back to commission discussion. Would any commissioner like to kick us off? Commissioner Schindler.

Thank you, Chair. I have a series of questions that I think are probably gonna be for the applicant to start with. I'm gonna try and structure my questions kind of starting at the 30,000 foot level and then dropping down and getting more specific with my questions, but perhaps handing off to other commissioners sort of in between my tiers. So I think the Presidio Bay presentation and some of the responses to clarifying questions really hit on the leverage of the development, the initial rounds of plans by looking what happened over at Parkline. And so I appreciate sort of the background context on how different uses were selected. You know, you talked about getting the question, why office all the time, right? And so I think that's very much a question that I would have asked. So thank you for getting ahead of it. But I'll build on it a little bit. We've now not seen the second round of Parkline here. Um, but the phase two proposal is public and it has pivoted a little bit from what we've discussed. We've discussed here, right? They've, they've changed the mix of uses, um, and essentially dialed down the office and dialed up the residential, um, from phase one to phase two with a particularly with a heavier emphasis on, um, homeownership, right? So, so residential that can be owned. Um, So did you consider either in this phase or sort of ongoing a for sale housing or residential component of things in the mix?

Started analyzing the site we studied homeownership and townhomes as sort of a primary use in fact We anticipated that that's where a lot of interest would come from in terms of other buyers ultimately we veered away from that approach because We were able to provide significantly more density from a housing perspective So more units by taking the higher density mixed-use approach that we took Ultimately i i think uh a reasonable ratio would be you know 17 units to the acre uh if this were to be sort of a densely populated townhome community um and we're providing you know well more than that right and ultimately that that's what we believe that the community wanted to see uh was more housing and i think certainly folks who have

heard feedback from this planning commission on multiple developments always hear a recurring theme of please more housing density. I think the thing that was interesting to me is the additional residential right for sale residential wasn't a substitution for other residential it was swapped in for when they dialed down the office um so again it was sort of you know they're roughly at two-thirds residential and one-third office at this point in terms of square square footage um so i think that was sort of my question have you considered that the is there anything in your analysis or anything in recent dynamics in the market that would change that balance.

So I don't want to speak on behalf of Lane or sort of what drove their shift. What I can tell you is we feel very confident that there is demand for the commercial product that we're proposing. We're seeing sustained demand at Springline and recognize that that will translate into what we're intending to deliver at the former USGS campus. If we were to increase some level of, or let's say incorporate some level of lower density for sale product. I mean, the real byproduct of that would be something has to come away, right? And so we'd either be carving away at some of the higher density units and substituting that with lower density units. We would be condensing or, you know, diminishing the amount of public open space that we can provide, which we don't want to do. I don't know how much we touched on this, but the whole concept of the site plan was designed around retaining all of the existing redwoods. And so that was the first thing we did was we studied where the redwoods, it creates that fantastic sort of open space at the center of the site and to add or incorporate lower density housing without diminishing the other two commercial or residential uses would impede on our ability to create a really meaningful open space program. And then the final piece is substituting For commercial office space, again, we feel that the commercial space is really necessary to delivering the amount of rental residential units and to start sort of carving away at that commercial component, even if it meant bringing in some for sale units would be significantly sort of impact the economics on the rental side. One other piece I realize I'm rambling on here is there's sort of a required scale within the lower density for sale product that you need to hit to be able to make it work. So for example, creating, you know, a small enclave in substitution of one of the commercial buildings of, you know, 25 units would not necessarily be something that would be feasible. We would be looking to do something really, my understanding, not that home building is by any means our bread and butter, but we would need to do, you know, between 50 and 100 homes to be able to make it really make sense from a scale perspective. And it just totally shifts the sort of intent of the program.

Thank you. That's sort of very helpful just thinking about the specific development or uses at that 30,000 foot level. I'll ask sort of one more series of questions at the 20,000 foot level and then perhaps turn it over to other commissioners and I'll bring my detailed questions back later. So in the context of residential housing, It was mentioned in the presentation and it's been brought up that right now the proposal is 17% affordable. And I think a question that the city is constantly asking ourselves is what can we do to provide more, to provide better affordable housing. And so there's also been this ongoing public discourse in Menlo Park about whether there's something the city could do with financial incentives to help address this question. So as experts sort of in this area and having been through analysis and trade-offs and looking at all some of these different residential cost structures and revenue structures. Can you help us understand what kinds of things could be done if you've ever done these things or if you've heard of them to have the city involved in either helping to cover a financial gap to bring up the percentage of affordable housing above 17%, to double it, for example. We'll just throw a number out there. Or to help fund specifically sort of lowering the AMI targets for the affordable units that are already planned. So I had an opportunity to share sort of this line of questioning, this line of thought with the Presidio Bay team. And so I think they had some very interesting thoughts to share here, and I think it's worth surfacing in this public venue.

Sure, thank you. I'll take this one maybe in a few different parts. And so I'll start by sort of talking through the math equation that you laid out of, okay, what is the impact to the project's economics if you were to maintain the same? So we're proposing 17.5%, 17.6% BMR units at an average AMI of 80%. So a range, but averaging 80%. So if we were to double that, that inclusionary percentage from 17 and a half to call it 35%, the impact from a cost perspective in order to hit the same returns, where, what is the gap that we need to fill is sort of the way that we think about that, right? What's the shortfall is about 60 million. And that's without necessarily, that's purely just looking at, the return on costs. So taking that doubled inclusionary percentage, the impact on net operating income, the return that we would otherwise be hitting and what's sort of the gap in financing that you need to fill to be able to get to the same place. So it's about 60 million. There are other implications as well. Financing is one that sort of jumps out as you start really toggling that inclusionary percentage, certain financing sources maybe come off the table. Now, there are other financing sources that are available for deeply affordable projects or you know, deeply restricted projects. But again, it just sort of changes the equation of what we're producing. So maybe I'll circle back to that. So that's if we doubled the inclusionary percentage to retain the, the inclusionary percentage at 17 and a half percent, 17.6 and bring down the target AMI level to maybe the very low, very low income, call it 50% AMI is an impact of closer to $25 million. Okay. And then obviously you can play with those levers and sort of see a range of outcomes. So that's one. You asked the question of what are ways that the city can sort of help, you know, incentivize more inclusionary housing. I mean, I think subsidy is obviously like the one that we think about the most, and that can even be in the form of sort of reallocated impact fees, right? Or if direct subsidy is not necessarily on the table, indirect subsidy, right? There are joint powers that – I actually don't know if Menlo Park is a part of any joint powers authorities, and then bond measures. But, of course, those aren't really decisions for us to weigh in on. And then just to address the question of – we're proposing 17.6%. Why aren't we proposing a higher inclusionary percentage? And this, again, kind of goes back to the approach with which we took to this project, which was we came up with what was the sort of highest density rental housing program that we could support from a massing perspective and kind of planned around that, right? And that's how we landed on the amount of commercial product that we're providing. It's how we're landing on the inclusionary percentage. And so as you start to play with any of those levers, it just has implications on sort of what the overall project can support. When you see projects go really above and beyond and produce something like 30 plus percent. Typically, it's because a site is actually being sold off as 100% inclusionary, which is just, again, a very different model. We take a lot of pride of ownership of our product and being able to sort of oversee all of our operations. It helps us ensure sort of a cohesive experience to all of our residents and office tenants and folks who are coming to enjoy our open space.

Thank you. That was really comprehensive and very informative for me, and I suspect for other members of the commission and certainly for members of the public. Just a final follow-up. I'm most familiar with the work that you guys have done at Springline, but outside of projects here in Menlo Park, have you utilized any of the kinds of strategies that you were talking about in terms of collaboration with a municipal government to just help increase the density or increase the affordability?

Yes, thank you. And yes, we've undertaken processes like development agreements that we anticipate that we're going to have to go through here and other sort of very planning-oriented processes when it comes to things like density bonus or increased inclusionary housing, a project that comes to mind that we can speak to. We delivered 193 residential units in San Francisco in 2023. We first started entitling that project in 2016 and encountered many hurdles. But over that sort of process, we actually worked with the city to reestablish a new density bonus program called Home SF. What that did was it created density bonuses or incentives for hitting certain inclusionary thresholds. So in that case, we increased the density from 67 units, as was permissible by zoning, to 193 by increasing our inclusionary percentage from what I think at the time was 10% required, maybe it was 15, to 25%. Subsequently, after delivering that project in 23 and 2025, we recapitalize the project and entered into a subsequent or sort of a layered on top, a new regulatory agreement in partnership with California Municipal Finance Authority, CMFA. where we took the inclusionary percentage from 25% to 50% within the building. And also brought on a nonprofit partner to sort of help oversee and administer those affordable units. It was really sort of a response to where the market was at the time, and what the neighborhood needed, which was more workforce housing. And so as we were approaching our recapitalization, we were able to sort of structure that. Yes.

Thank you. Super helpful. I do have a list that goes on and on about questions like amenities, but I'm going to turn it over to other planning commissioners to ask questions and I'll circle back later maybe.

Vice Chair Bruzee.

Yeah, can I just quickly piggyback off this line of questioning while we still have it fresh in our minds? So What would it take for something similar to happen in Menlo Park? Are there density? I just heard you say that the massing is kind of the key limitation that you're looking at. And is that something that the city could revisit? Is that a conversation that we could have?

So, candidly, we are sort of defining our own zoning or design standards development standards as part of this process because we require a general plan change in a zoning amendment we're creating our own zoning designation so thank you Tucker So yes, in theory, we could certainly look at sort of pushing those limits. I think there's sort of two main constraints there. One is a cost constraint. We're currently sort of at the peak height that you can build before you trigger type one construction. So that's moving from stick build to steel concrete construction, which increases your cost by... potentially 30 plus percent. And so the reason that's relevant is you can make it work, but to justify moving to type one construction, you have to add significant height to really make it make sense. So that would not be taking the building from seven stories to eight stories, but more likely taking the building from seven stories to 15 stories. Which brings me to point number two, which is I don't think there's a huge desire of our sort of immediate neighbors to see substantially more height. So instead, when we were looking at, again, going back to sort of coming up with the ideal massing and site layout, we thought about, okay, what's sort of the maximum density that we can provide while maintaining a type five construction type.

So follow up question to that, actually, had you considered using mass timber construction and would that have changed the calculus?

We do have mass timber, but for the commercial building, building A, it is more costly to do mass timber. It's type three, so it's a little bit different. It changes your floor to floor height. It's not something we've studied directly just because this model that we're employing, the Texas RAP, tends to be the most feasible. You see it kind of popped up and probably not recognized it up and down the peninsula because it's become kind of the way to build at six to seven stories, given the financial feasibility of doing a type one garage and then layering type five over that with a private podium on your level two or three. No, you really, I mean, they are still updating codes. CBC is still getting updated. As of now, constructed projects, you can see Oh Wow is doing some in Oakland, iRise, but at six to seven stories, you don't really see it yet. You see it coming in in the 12 to 15 story range.

Yeah, I think I heard that the Molly Stone development in Palo Alto, they had been trying to use mass timber, and I don't think it ended up working out, but it was something they were considering, so... So let me pivot quickly to another thing I wanted to... Well, actually, let me follow up with one more thing. So I know that there's been starting to be a little bit of aesthetic backlash, let's call it, against the way that buildings have been massing larger developments with the articulated... frontages. And there have been conversations about that adds expense and decreases the number of units that people can offer. And I'm curious if this is something that we could poke at a little bit, if there are ways to use ornamentation or something like that to break up facades instead of just having, I don't know what the architectural term is, but you know what I'm talking about.

yeah those are called like long facade standards or overall building modulation standards, the design centers that we have proposed our draft we dissipate there being some back and forth on those in the processes ahead. In those you'll find things like articulation or could be construed or imitation. as well as the other ones I just mentioned. Our design as employed now and working with our residential architect, Archie Architecture, who we work with a lot in San Francisco. We did that initial design without having done design standards in a draft form yet. And the reason that we felt so confident in that design is because we've worked with them a lot in the past. And we know that the more of the articulation rather than ornamentation, And the quality of the design and the architect we're working with is a product and end product that we're we will and we're very confident we'll be we'll be proud of just having our previous work with them up and down the peninsula as well as in San Francisco. So we like to think of the direction we're going isn't ornamentation, but it's really, you know, elegance, it's a clarity in the detailing that provides articulation.

So what's the DU per acre of that development in San Francisco that you were just describing where you were able to increase the affordability levels?

So that site is just under one acre, and it's 193 units.

Okay. So for the audience, what does that look like in terms of building height and mass and that kind of thing?

Oh, yes. So... the the building is shaped as sort of a uh s-shaped donut if you will a sigma sign maybe um lowercase uh and it's it goes as tall as seven stories i i don't want to sort of step on my words here too much. It is podium on the first two levels. The site is on a slope. So you have a parking garage that starts at grade and then goes subgrade. And the height tops out at about six or seven stories above grade. And then again, 193 units. So actually, the height is not overly dissimilar from what we're proposing here at seven stories. the site is again, just more sort of densely packed at 193 units to the acre versus what we're proposing here is call it 38 units to the acre. But if you were to sort of carve the portion of the site that is residential only and look at our density, it's about, call it 70 units to the acre. And so call it like somewhere between a little less than a third of the size from a density perspective. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think so. I'm just trying to understand how, you know, how we can have more housing here, basically. Okay, so quick, another follow-up question, and then I'm going to, actually, I'm going to shift to one thing I was very intrigued by. So I've recently been reading this book by Henry Graber, Pave Paradise, about parking. And there was a really interesting case study in the book about the Gates Foundation in Seattle, and how... they massively changed their employee commute patterns by charging for parking. Not like by charging for a monthly permit, but basically charging by the day. And there was something about that that really affected behavior patterns. So that employees would, they didn't think of a parking pass as a sunk cost. It was something that they were looking at each time and making a decision about. So Maybe they would choose to commute via transit or some other way, you know, several days a week, but not all the time. And anyway, it was a significant enough difference that I was thinking, you know, one of the big issues that we're looking at in this middle field, Ravenswood, Willow corridor is a pretty significant increase in density and development, all kind of coming online around the same time. you know, including potentially that of which we dare not speak over where Sunset is currently. So I'm wondering if there are ways that you can be creative about parking demand. And I know that typically what we do, and I don't want to oversample on Parkline, even though I understand the temptation, is to just, you know, go with a standard TDM. But I'm thinking that with all of this coming online at the same time, for climate reasons, for community reasons, for your own employees and residents, it would behoove us to be a little bit more creative than we have been before and to be maybe a little more aggressive. And I'm wondering... I think this is just me saying, you don't have to have an answer, but I would love, you know, personally, if you come back for, you know, to see less parking and to see parking priced in a way that disincentivizes people to drive when they could otherwise come by some other means. And so, you know, the counterpart to that is all the usual TDM stuff, transit passes, et cetera.

Yeah.

Thank you for the comment. I mean, we do have a TDM plan, and it does do all the basic stuff that you were just mentioning. Our baseline, which we envision is just a starting point for this process, is a 35% reduction in traffic. We have had conversations about increased connectivity, whether it be ways to maybe conjoin with our client potentially, or you mentioned the pay per day. We haven't marked any of that stuff, but we anticipate this being a conversation, whether it be the DA or otherwise, as things move forward. When we started the process with community outreach and started hearing from the community and their worries about traffic, we knew from day one that that was going to be the big question for this one. And so we hired hexagon on early to be our transportation consultants, we know from their prior work with. With mental park they're well regarded and had good insights into the park line process, and so we really wanted to leverage those as much as possible. And we're open to being creative if it's you know partnering with others if it's like you say charging per day and that's the answer. We're open to being creative to getting that reduction down a sufficient amount so that we're not creating undue traffic that can otherwise be avoided.

Yeah, I think recently we were looking at the development agreement for Parkline, sorry, for Springline, so many lines. And I think I asked Cyrus, you know, if you could do it over again, would you build as much parking as you had at Springline? And he said, no, you know, it's a lot, it's expensive. So yeah, it would just be great to see less parking and more creativity on that front. Thanks.

A follow-up question for staff on that same line. Would a provision like ensuring paid parking for office tenants or the decoupling of parking between residential Is that something that the planning commission could impose as part of a development agreement or as part of a condition? Or is that something that essentially you need to meet the general TDM standards, which has a point system essentially, and the commission doesn't have the discretion at that level of granularity? And I'm not suggesting this. I'm curious as to the scope.

So that's a good question. So I guess just to start, the applicants kind of touched on this. We are essentially We would need to create a new zoning district. Probably not. Probably wouldn't be best for that sort of requirement to go in the zoning, but could be something that the city explores as part of a development agreement. We are very early days, so that's good feedback, but potentially, yeah, it could be negotiated.

Thank you. Commissioner Headley.

Yeah, I have a question. It's going in a slightly different direction and picking up on one of our public commenters about schools. And this might be a question for staff. Like at what point do we partner with the school district to figure out the impact of all of this development and to make sure that whatever it is we're doing is appropriate?

So the EIR does study impacts to public facilities, public resources, you know, water at school being one of those. We will end up doing a housing needs assessment, which sort of touches on... requirement not requirements, but the need for school services so generally the ir will probably be where that is discussed.

I guess I have a follow-up question in terms of how, like if land is at a premium and the schools are already built out, like at what, how does that process come together so we make sure we have enough schools for all the kids that we imagine in the future of Menlo Park?

I think almost all of our schools are one story.

Okay, so maybe there's some bond measure that happens where the schools are go up in height. And is that more for the school to figure out later? Like once they understand the EIR, and then they're like, okay, you figure it out? I guess it's a broader question about planning that I am hoping to be educated on. So thank you.

Commissioner, Rosie, and then staff, if you have a response, I'm happy to hear your expertise.

Well, staff definitely will have more expertise. But my understanding is that there was a point at which we were even talking about carving out a portion of the site for the schools. And then my understanding, correct me staff and Presidio Ventures people if I'm wrong, is that the school district did not feel that they could avail themselves of this at this time. Enrollments have been trending down. So, I mean, the school funding is complicated. We're a basic aid district, so it's not like they get money for every new student that comes in, but they are not full.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Mr. Prada, do you have a follow-up? If not, that's fine.

Sure, thanks. Yeah, the one thing I was going to mention is that Mr. Turner is absolutely correct. The EIR does have a public services or... section that will analyze impacts to special districts like the school districts. There is also a provision where the school districts do charge impact fees developments to offset the impacts of increased development. So square footage, number of housing units on the school so that that impact fee would be assessed on any project as applicable. So that is one way that schools do mitigate those potential effects of development. So I just want to kind of clarify that, that that's often something we talk about here.

That's really helpful. Thank you.

Through the chair, just a quick follow-up question. So I know that in various developments, we've also seen like a more comprehensive financial impact analysis that actually looks on at the economic impact on city revenue schools, fire protection district, like sort of all the different aspects of public utilities. Would a project of this scope in this timing also have a component like that?

Yes, we will also conduct an FIA for this project.

So I'd like to bring a line of thinking for discussion among the commission, which I'm still trying to wrap my head around and want perspective on. But there have been both public comments as well as conversation today around the concept of the jobs housing balance and how we think about office space versus housing within developments like these. And for anyone who's seen me comment on the commission here will know that I'm a strong proponent of housing and more housing within Menlo Park. But I also, I don't entirely feel comfortable around a lot of the discourse that is used when talking about jobs, housing balance. I think the implication is that we have too many jobs and the only thing we need is housing and any more jobs is just going to create more traffic or more concerns. And as long as we just only build housing, then we'll be able to solve all of our problems. Um, and I don't, I, I guess part of my overall concern is that the development pattern over the last many decades around the country and around the peninsula has been to some extent to isolate housing from commercial, from office space. We've done that through zoning. And a lot of that isolation has created a lot of the traffic woes that we see today. And to whatever extent we are concerned with the very hyper-local nature of the job housing balance within Menlo Park, I can appreciate. But at the same time, the more people who have the opportunity to work and live and shop and eat and recreate within our community as opposed to commuting far distances. And we have people who live in Mendel Park who work outside of it. And we generally have a lot of sprawl. And I'm trying to figure out whether or not I should care about this concept of job housing balance, whether or not we should be asking a developer to scale back the amount of office space in order to provide for more housing. ROI aside, and regardless of to what extent office space is subsidizing the housing, because I think I fundamentally believe that having a balance of all of those things is important for Menlo Park. And I don't think we have enough of that. I mean, if everything was kind of perfect today, then maybe I might feel differently. But I feel like we're still striving to have a lot of these mixed use developments. And everyone I've ever talked to about Springline says that that element is something they really appreciate about it. And obviously, the numbers matter, and the scale, and everything is very nuanced. But I would love to hear other perspectives around whether or not when we get public comments around jobs, housing balance, or this is creating too many jobs. Is that something that is concerning? Commissioner Sillin.

Thank you. Good discussion question. I think, yeah, with respect to this project, I am one of the people concerned about jobs, housing balance. I'm receptive to what you're saying about the idea of mixed use. I definitely also appreciate Springline and the fact that it's sort of vibrant during the day and maybe in the evening hours. That's nice to see. I think, and I don't have official numbers, but even before I became a planning commissioner, one of the things that would rattle off the top of my head is that Meta alone has office space sufficient for roughly the population of Menlo Park and Menlo Park. So I think we already have a lot of... let's say jobs capacity in Menlo Park for Meta alone, but not to mention, you know, Sand Hill Road and all the other office buildings we have, Snowflake, et cetera. So I do think that even if you look at it on a local level, there's still a big imbalance. Now you could say, okay, well, should we be building housing, let's say on the other side of 101 from Meta for people to work in Meta? Um, well, for one thing in our housing element, we decided district one, um, you know, for better, for worse has had enough housing concentrated there. So we're kind of looking to spread it out at this point. Um, but I also think that's, it is, you know, close enough. Um, and again, that's just meta is just one example. There's other office buildings around here. Um, so yeah, that's kind of my thought. I obviously, uh, appreciate that the applicant saying that they tried to maximize the housing and work out from there. So I don't exactly have like something in my back pocket of like, let's just do this. But, um, I would definitely like to explore as much as possible what we can do to increase the housing. I would encourage, you know, city council to be open to things like fee reductions, et cetera, to make that work. But I'll leave it there for now.

Maestro Bruzy.

Yeah, I do agree with you in general that If we were starting from scratch, having mixed use throughout the city would be great. I mean, you know, if we were going to do a master plan for a new city of Menlo Park, I think that where I get a little bit hung up is that we have fairly new office, massive office park type developments, you know, with tons of jobs. I think I just looked it up in the ratio of jobs to housing to residents is like 4.7 jobs for every resident in Menlo Park right now. That's a lot. And then we have massive acres of land that are dedicated to single family usage that are, as we know, because we see them every week or every other meeting, you know, being redeveloped into ever larger, more expensive single family units. And so we don't get that many bites of the apple to create missing middle and more affordable housing. There's just not that much land that hasn't been redeveloped that comes before us and leases on places like a big five or 15, 20 years. And so, you know, every time we read that to the housing element, hoping that it will redevelop and it doesn't. it does put more pressure on these precious parcels that we do get to look at. So I don't have an answer, but that is kind of how I'm thinking about it. I do like mixed use sort of aesthetically and from a lifestyle perspective, and I especially like it the closer to downtown we get because I think that people who live there can do a lot of trips within the three to five mile range, and people who work there could conceivably throw a bike on a train and get there pretty quickly. I just, I still think we need, you know, we're going to have a housing imbalance no matter what we do. And we're going to have trouble making our affordable units for, you know, our 2031 deadline. And so that's, that's why I feel like we need to keep pushing. And for me, the way to go is, is probably height and massing or, but, you know, this is why I was asking those questions.

Commissioner Sillin.

Thanks. I did just want to revisit one more time with staff, the current zoning, because one thing I'm thinking of personally is when I joined the planning commission, Parkline was sort of already, I think, past the EIR phase. And so by the time we got to that point, there was a sense of take it or leave it in the sense that if we wanted to make like huge changes to the project, they would have to start over. And then the question was, well, okay, what if we did nothing? Then it was, you know, we would look at the current zoning for SRI and see how many employees they could have there, which is a pretty significant number. And that always felt like an option on the table. So I guess my question is, With the current zoning, what is possible to have at this parcel for a private owner? Like, what would they be able to build there?

So I feel like I should have clarified when I was explaining the public facilities. So the code talks about conditional uses as... I'll read it directly. So I don't miss anything. So all uses of existing facilities, and or property by entities other than the above mentioned governmental agencies. So generally, they would be limited to using the existing facilities for if they wanted to come in and do private offices or something like that. Instead of constructing new facilities. And that residential

So sorry, just to clarify, as it stands today, the existing buildings that are there could be used without a permit for any use.

they would need a, they would be conditional use. So they would need a use permit, um, to occupy the buildings for private uses. Okay. A government agency could go in like the city could buy it and use it, um, without any discretionary approvals.

Okay. Thanks. And then, um, another question I have is you mentioned the housing needs assessment for the EIR. Um, what I guess for the square footage of the commercial, I'm trying to think of a word in my question. Given that the building is vacant right now, would it basically take the net, the total commercial? Because in the presentation, to calculate the 70 units for the jobs, housing, and balance, the presentation said, oh, there's 70, we're 70 housing units over. That was based on net new square footage. For the housing needs assessment in the EIR, would it be done similarly? Or would it be done on the total square footage of commercial, including what's already there, even if it's being demolished and rebuilt in some new form? And what is used to calculate? Like, and again, here is three, I think three jobs per 1000 square feet. Can you please remind us in the housing needs assessment how the calculation works?

There's a couple layers to that, so I'll try to answer them. So typically in the context of an EIR, an EIR usually assumes that an existing building or development is occupied with whatever the allowed use is. So the housing needs assessment, the EIR generally, but the housing needs assessment to a degree would calculate both like the net new, it would calculate, you know, what the current use would support as far as housing, housing units, but it would focus more on the net new and like change of use and So that's one thing. I am not an expert on... the density that they assume in the households per square footage. I think the applicants took some of those numbers from San Mateo County nexus study, which the consultant that we end up using for the HNA would probably use similar methodology in calculating that. Was there a third part to the question?

No, that's it. And given the answer to the first part, I'm less concerned with the second part. So thank you. I wanted to make some general comments about the project, but I want to leave room for other commissioners to ask their questions before I do that. I have one question about parking.

And Commissioner Schindler has a question.

I'm sorry, you probably go ahead with the parking, but I wanted to respond to the question that you posed to the commission. And then I did have a set of questions related to the amenities. So do you want to do parking first?

No, you can go ahead.

Okay. So just trying to reflect back on some of the questions that you posed sort of for broader themes, but applicable in the context of this project. The question about the jobs housing balance. So I'm not familiar with the specific methodology of the San Mateo County Nexus study, but I'm definitely going to go geek out over that. I did, as this commission knows, geek out over sort of how RHNA numbers get assigned. And I just, my understanding of that, which I'll recap very briefly, helps inform my answer to your question, which is at a very high level, a job's housing balance isn't a city-specific question. It's more at a county level. And that opinion was informed when I went back and looked at how these RHNA numbers that, which obviously Menlo Park has one, as does every other municipality in the state, right? And so two of the factors that go into thinking about RHNA numbers are job proximity, as measured by auto distance, so essentially jobs within a 30-minute commute in a car is a consideration, and jobs within a 45-minute commute during transit, during a peak morning period. So to me, thinking about a you know, a city like Menlo Park, which is very uniquely shaped, right? Like we have more in common with our neighbors on the north side and the south side. Like we should be looking at things at the very least with our neighbors, maybe our county, maybe like four neighbors in each direction. So I am not particularly concerned about a jobs housing balance, certainly not within the context of a singular development. And I am concerned about having more housing for sure, absolutely. But I'm trying to sort of think broader and outside of specific municipal borders. So in terms of mixed use, 100%. I think that is a goal to be aimed for in anything that we're developing, particularly in proximity to transit corridors and other high density service quarters like El Camino and downtown. And that's going to inform some of my questions that I have later about amenities and who has access to the amenities and what the right balance of the amenities are within this development and what the right balance of amenities are between this development plus Parkline version two, or if there's ever a future version, because I think there's some balancing to be done there. And then my one other thought in response to your question is that I would be... I would be very, very careful about overprescribing what we require people to build in terms of types of development. Because I do still want to be a city where people are, where developers feel like it is a good idea to invest and invest. there's a fine line from the reading that I've done, right? I've not, in my five years in the planning commission, I've not personally experienced it. I don't, but I know that it does happen for sure. You can be overly prescriptive and you can crush development of any kind. So that's something that I would like to be thinking about when we become prescriptive about development types. Shall we do amenities or did you, you wanted to get some questions about parking?

Yeah, I had a question about parking for both staff and the applicant. From a staff perspective, is it my understanding that as part of the process of rezoning this land and essentially going through the whole process, we would be able to impose our discretion on what minimum or maximum parking ratios might be required

Yes, that would be in the realm of your discretion.

Thank you. For the applicant, could you walk me through a little bit of the thought process around exactly how much parking is currently proposed if we required a maximum parking that is below what you currently have? Would that make... The units less desirable, both from a office space or from a residential standpoint. Did you craft the exact ratio of parking spots to square footage and or units in order to balance those out or. theoretically would a maximum parking allowable be a relief? And then you, I mean, I understand parking is expensive and usually does not pencil out, but it is necessary as a function of making the entire project affordable. And so curious as to your thoughts on if we said, hey, we think there's too much parking, would we be able to add more density? Or is this the minimum that you would recommend in order to make sure that everything works?

Thank you for the question. I'm sure this might require both of us, but from an architectural and design perspective, we started out with the mixed-use district standards as just a starting point to figure out kind of the realm we're in. We have some proposed maximums. The office is like 2.25 per thousand. That, generally speaking, is kind of right where the market kind of requires it at a minimum basis for just to lease up office space. From a residential perspective, we're a 1.2 per dwelling unit. You see a lot of places going towards the 1.5. We certainly don't want to go towards the 1 because then you don't have any visitor parking. And so when it comes to development like this, you know, 17 acres feels like a lot. But with all the program that we're proposing, the parking actually ends up being a part of the problem in terms of trying to find places for it to fit. So that's why you see a good amount of subgrade when typically residential, we wouldn't go subgrade because it's more expensive on three or every single residential building we're actually going at least one floor below just to make sure that we can get to the minimum amounts that you need to lease up in today's market and so in terms of the overall parking count of just over 2,500 it is a lot of parking but it is is pretty much the baseline in which you would need for leasing any of these various programs today.

well said i just a couple things um to add and first i'll note uh our parking consultant watry is fantastic uh and regularly quotes excerpts from uh the pay paradise book that uh the vice chair beruzzi referenced so um i'm glad to hear it getting shouted out um The question about if we were to reduce parking, could we increase density? Because of the way that we program the parking, which is within the commercial buildings, all subgrade. you don't get anything on the commercial side and the residential buildings, it's all wrapped. So there's maybe some configuration, but ultimately you really don't get a whole lot. And then our one sort of workhorse parking garage, which would otherwise be a standalone parking garage. We've, We very intentionally programmed so as to not be delivering a standalone parking garage. What we did is we took the area where we needed a parking garage for overflow parking to hit the required ratios that we believed would be necessary from a leasing perspective. a great tragedy would be if we all spent years entitling this project and building this project, and then none of it leased because we didn't have sufficient parking. We wrapped that garage with active uses, so being residences, the amenity and retail program that we'll get to, and then in an effort to try and make it as sort of adaptable as possible. We actually put an active use on the roof of the parking garage as well. So they're really, that being said, we've experienced what happens when we don't provide sufficient parking. The reality is, even though we are close to transit and and we're going to be undertaking several measures to uh improve accessibility to our site multimodal non-tra non-vehicular access to our site uh we still need to make sure that we're hitting minimum ratios to allow our our office space to lease and to provide parking uh for our residences i also want to bring up one other concern that has been echoed a couple of times during some of our site walks with uh neighboring residents, which is when we've referenced ratios that, again, we think are sufficient, and ultimately we believe that in mixed-use projects like this and with the transit measures that we're implementing, just generally the trends that we're seeing, car traffic will be decreasing over time. One of the concerns when we reference we're providing 1.25 cars per resident of neighbors is, well, that's not enough parking. And when those residents can't park or they have somebody visit, they're gonna park in my neighborhood, right? And so I think there's a bit of an optics battle that we need to ensure as sort of stewards for our neighbors that we're providing sufficient parking, that we are therefore not going to be taking over the neighboring streets with overflow parking. And sorry, one last point that workforce garage, it is structured actually a shared, a shared parking program. So what we've done is we've designed the parking so that during heavy traffic, like working hours, right? The office and retail tenants will be using that space. And then on off hours, residents will be, you know, using that parking garage for overflow parking. So again, it just allows us to bring that parking count down as low as possible while still ensuring that we're providing sufficient parking.

Did you have a comment, Christian or Rosie?

Yeah. Can I just, sorry, you had mentioned the ratio for commercial that you thought was the right, the sweet spot. Can you tell me one more time?

So 2.25 per thousand square feet. There's a wide variance in sort of what our market standards historically conventional thinking would be somewhere closer to three to 3.3. So actually 2.25 is as being relatively aggressive. But we believe that we're providing the sort of transit measures that help offset that. And ultimately, given the use that we anticipate here, we're providing sufficient parking.

So I'm asking because in the revised plans for Park Line, which is right next to this It looks like they're looking at actually a much lower ratio. And I'm wondering, as you're sampling on their experience and thinking about what might work, I know it's a little farther away from the train. But I think what I'm looking at is a total commercial parking of one, like including retail, under 2,000. So I just, yeah, just wanted to throw that out there.

We'll certainly study that. Okay.

Yeah, and they're a little ahead of you. So maybe, you know, if that ends up being...

Yeah, I will say we have had experience of delivering our own projects where we provided sub two parking stalls per thousand square feet. And on the commercial side, it can be difficult. Again, our experience only. So it's certainly something that we are sensitive to. Of course. You know, I think location is important at Springline. Tucker and I stopped in for dinner before coming here and parked in the parking garage, and there was plenty of parking available. So I think it can totally vary, but I think the important thing for us is to make sure that, at least from a leasing standpoint, we're able to provide those minimums so that, again, the project is able to lease and be successful.

Yeah, okay.

Commissioner Schindler, did you want to continue?

Yes, thank you. I think my questions are more, I'll try to make them thematic on the amenities. Many people have spoken about the importance of mixed use, right, which is sort of most successful, as I understand it, when you have facilities that the residents of the office or the residents of the homes can use as well as people from the adjacent communities. So I wanted to be sure that I understood for the possible amenities like who was assumed to be allowed to use things and then within that group of who was permitted, allowed to use the facilities, who might you expect to be the primary users? And so I think restaurants or food and beverage is fairly straightforward to me, right? The daytime office workers, residents on evenings and weekends. But there were a couple where I was less clear about what the assumptions might be. So some of the amenity space was allocated hypothetically for a co-working space or a gym. There's a sport court on top of the parking garage. And so I guess those are my... Who would you assume is... allowed to use those, and then who you think probably would be the most frequent consumers of those amenities.

I'll address the first part, and then, I don't know, Tucker may have some helpful context to add. The split that Tucker referenced of 10,000 square feet of retail versus call it 30,000 square feet of amenity is sort of the dividing line between call it like public publicly accessible services and and private amenity for the tenants so. And obviously this is not accounting for the the public open space of which we're doing about three acres, and all of that is publicly accessible. The retail is sort of just that it's it's public serving retail. The amenities space is envisioned as as sort of private amenities for the tenants, whether it be, you know, on the commercial or the residential side, and that sort of addresses more of like the program to call it like wellness fitness uses. So I don't know if you have anything that

Just a little bit extra color our project description has a good amount of information and then the exact delineation between what we're considering public amenity first private many down to the square footage so it's just helpful the way to kind of think about it, and just listen to us talk. In terms of the actual private many how operates obviously we're really early in the process we don't have an operator on board. they would obviously probably be offered to tenants on sites. But to say, you know, if there's a paying member of the neighborhood were to try to get access to the amenities, we're not discounting that and saying that that's not possible. We just haven't gotten that far in the process to be able to say whether that's the case or if it's office tenants and residents only.

Understood that you want to be sure that Those amenities add to the attractiveness, both to the office and the residential. But I do think there's sort of an incremental opportunity here to add value to the community, right, and sort of bring people into this particular development. who live nearby. And maybe even there's a very specific consideration for synergies with the Parkland folks. Because again, I'm not deeply, deeply immersed in version two, but it looks like their amenity building is gone in favor of sort of this retail village. And I don't know if that means the gym is gone, but there might be an opportunity there. They're leaning into these nine small retail spaces, which I imagine could be a big draw for your residential tenants and the office tenants and vice versa. I'm assuming, another amenity question, the childcare center continues to be open to the same community scope that it's open to today, as opposed to narrowing it down to office or residential tenants.

Yes, good question. Within that 1030 delineation, the 5,000 square feet is not including the childcare space. So the child's childcare square footage was accounted for in the commercial and in the office square footage, because that's the building that it's located in. The intent is that that remains open to the public. You know, we currently are working with geo kids, or actually have extended their lease at the site and certainly are, you know, welcoming collaboration and openly talking with them about whether a long term home at our new facility that we're building out is something that they're interested in. We've also met with members of the school board to try and understand school districts needs from a space perspective as well. But yes, that's separate.

Okay. So, for example, if the school district came to you and said, we are interested in community space, is that something that you would consider opening up in the amenity? Because there's meeting space, right? There's community gathering space planned in the amenity, in building E in the amenity center. Is that something that you would consider opening up to a use case like schools or school function is?

Yeah, I think we would consider everything as part of the conversation without blocking out possibilities. The important thing to remember is when you bring in these other uses, they all have their own requirements for loading logistics, which have a big impact on site design. And so one of the reasons we really like Building A, and it's thought about Child Care Center there, is if you look at the site plan, we have all direct drop-off areas. If you were to try to do that in an amenity building, which is at the center of the site, doesn't really have opportunities with the site constraints to provide a direct drop-off, and is part of the shared parking program for the rest of the site, it doesn't really become conducive to where you would want safe drop-off areas or intermingling of populations. So that's why Building A kind of offered a unique possibility to offer a childcare center.

And I may not have been super clear. I'm not thinking sort of about school uses that involve children. I'm thinking about sort of community gathering spaces or office space or educational, you know, teacher educational opportunities, I think. Yeah. we had member of the school superintendent come at various points and talk to us about those types of office space in the context of Parkline. I don't think that played out, but that was a discussion point.

we had had similar uh conversations to try and assess what the the school district's needs were yeah um and and those conversations have been ongoing uh so yes i think to tucker's point we're we're certainly not ruling anything out again right now we were i think the amenity space feels like sort of a critical component to providing a service for you know the the tenants on site um however We're obviously proposing to produce a lot of new office space that could potentially serve additional uses.

Thank you. And I did want to just specifically show my appreciation for continuing the support of the Child Care Center. I think it speaks well that the leadership team from GeoKids was here tonight. I think that is a community benefit, for sure, to continue to offer that. I think it's important for community development. for the immediate sort of neighborhood, but also for the economic development of Menlo Park. So I think that's a huge win. And then my final amenities question was, why is the private clubhouse on the roof of Building E just for residents of Building E?

we haven't made just like i mentioned earlier we hadn't made any stipulation about offering to any specific population so okay i thought i thought it said it was a it was specific to residents of building e okay got it thank you for clarifying that or rather it'll be the same program it's not being carved out as sort of a separate program from the rest of the amenities

Okay, got it. I think those are my amenity questions for now.

Vice Chair Bruzee?

I had two follow-up thoughts, actually one clarifying question. So I want to circle back to way earlier the line of thinking that Commissioner Schindler introduced, the question about what it would take to increase the percentage of affordable housing. And then my quick back of the envelope calculation was we're looking at it like a half million dollar per unit, something like that, right? I think you'd said to double, I think there's like roughly 113 units and you're saying it would be 60,000 or 60 million. I don't know if I did my math right, but does that sound roughly in the ballpark?

Yes.

Okay. So through the chair, I'd like to ask staff quickly about that. Yay, staff. We're going to pay attention to you now.

Yeah, I'm going to chime in here and say Mr. Turner and I were talking about something, and if you could repeat the question. It's on my phone. Okay, great. I was distracting him.

No, no, it's okay. So just to refresh your memory, about an hour or so ago, Commissioner Schindler had asked about this idea that's been circulating in Menlo Park lately that maybe if we wanted to have more very low-income housing, we could, you know, pay a private developer to, we being the city of Menlo Park, could pay a private developer to change the balance from 80%, the average from 80% AMI to say 50%, and or just pay a developer to add more affordable units to make up the delta. And so the back of the envelope calculation that we got from Presidio Bay today was, it would be about, for them to increase the number of units They're looking at, you know, 60 million for like 113 additional units, something like that, right? Roughly. So in your experience, staff, what are the sources for that kind of funding if a city were to undertake something like that? Like what's in our BMR fund right now? Is it roughly, is it anything close to that scale?

Don't quote me on this. The last figure I heard from our housing department was roughly in the scope of like $3 million in our BMR fund. And Kyle can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe we were thinking about doing a notice of funding availability towards the end of this year. So presumably by the time this... project came around, that $3 million will be gone. Hopefully, we will have other projects come on board to pay back into the BMR fund, like some of the larger life science projects we have in the pipeline. But nothing close to $60 million. each of those projects probably will pay a couple million each. So from like a city funding, from the BMR standpoint, BMR fund standpoint, it wouldn't go very far from, from what they're saying. Um, so then it would have to be other sorts of funding sources from, uh, I don't know, state tax credits and stuff like that, um, that typically go to 100% affordable projects. Okay. Um,

And is there a precedent for a city raising money for something like that through like a bond measure or something? I know there's a state affordable housing bond, but I'm just curious. I just want to kick this idea a little bit more so that we can understand the dynamics as a city. How do things like, you know, if not through our own BMR fund, how would something like this get funded by a city or would it not?

maybe I can chime in. I think that's something we can certainly look into. I think it's very difficult is the short answer. Um, and the scale we're talking about, as Mr. Turner said, our BMR fund really can't do that. Um, and we'd have to look into whether or not that would be something that the city would even consider from a policy standpoint. There's a lot of implications here. We can certainly explore. Um, I think though, um, That's something that we can talk about with the applicant. There could be a potential to discuss with the development agreement some sort of ways to increase the number of units. But I don't know if the city can at this moment participate in that financially, just where the city's budget is, where the BMR fund is. That's just not really at this moment somewhere the city is. We can certainly look into it.

No, thanks. That's okay. I just wanted to just get a rough sense of scale and what's feasible and the viability of that concept. Okay, totally different thing. It just occurred to me that because we're talking about synergies with Parkline, that another cool opportunity might be merging some of your TDM. And I don't know if you're already thinking that way, but figuring out how permeable and intermeshed your sites are such that you could even share a shuttle that goes to the train station or anything like that. Just putting that out there as something to explore.

And we're open to the exploration. We've had discussions internally about what that would even look like. I think they're offering funding, ParkLine is part of their TDM, for a shuttle program. So it would be like additional funding from our behalf and try extend that shuttle or a different format. We're open to those conversations. Certainly just from a practicality standpoint, it seems to make some sense to connect all of us to Caltrans in that manner.

Do we have any other commissioner comments on the study session? Commissioner Eric.

I'll be brief mostly because I agree wholeheartedly with mostly everything that's been said here tonight. First and foremost, I just want to say I'm super excited and really appreciative of all the work that has and will go into this. It looks like it's going to be an asset to Menlo Park and I'm personally looking forward to it. I Also would encourage you to build as much housing as possible. And I will, I think, take up some of the mantle that's been discussed here. But explicitly, I think the mantle that should be attributed to former planning commissioner Andrew Barnes, who cared a lot about spaces for... uh, kids and teens in particular. Um, and so if there's an opportunity for a community amenity or something like that, um, to be a clubhouse or a space for kids who could play on the sport court or something like that. Um, I think there's, I saw a lot of amenities for younger kids and my kids are younger, um, but they're going to be older, I guess one day. So, uh, I think that would be something cool to look into. And then maybe it's not the biggest thing, but I just want to express appreciation for the bike transportation plan. And I didn't totally understand if this was the case, but I hope it will be true that someone could bike from middle field through this development through park line, potentially under El Camino and some future tunnel that hopefully does exist.

Um, I think that would be a really cool thing for Menlo park.

So hopefully we can do that too. I think that concludes my comments. And again, I just want to say thanks.

I'm going to use that to just add one last comment that I had written down earlier. Um, there's a current bike lane on middle field that is separated but not protected. And the amount of in and out traffic that will be generated along middle field will significantly increase. I imagine we'll get into more details in the future, but do you have thoughts on how to manage those conflict points with the existing bike lane?

yeah i'll do my best to speak to it our current project plans, you could look at the civil plans and they have an exact outline of how we would imagine it. But in terms of like the classification is it would still be separated the current is just a protect I think it's just painted and without installing like curbs with planters which would change all the drainage are. Our best kind of manner to approach that is obviously through painting again, but then installing those kind of lighted bollards along the frontage, which is as far as we can kind of control. And that's what our current baseline assumption is, is to do that, given the feasibility without having to change how the entire street frontage essentially drains.

So that impacts the separation of a cyclist versus a car that is driving along middle field. My question is more what's happening with the cyclist and all of these cars that are now coming in and out of middle field. They're going to be a number of different incremental conflict points. And I'm not sure if... I mean, I'm assuming that there's going to be some form of stop sign. But, I mean, maybe, I guess. But that concerns me more because we're just going to have a lot of cars that are focused on getting onto middle field or off or left turns or different things there. And that bike lane is not very safe.

It's a great point. So there's the two intersections. There's seminary, middle field, and surveying middle field. We have, in our improvements, surveying middle field. And within that, we have signalization. Within Parkline's improvement plan, they have signalization of seminary and middle field. So both of those would be signaled and inherently have pedestrian and bicyclist safety measures for anyone crossing middle field. In terms of our in and out traffic, we are introducing within the survey right away a dedicated right hand turn. So it's a little bit less of a collision kind of opportunity, I guess. We are still continuing to study that with Hexagon and with Lang and our civil engineer to see what else measures we can kind of add for pedestrian safety and bicycle safety. But that's where we are at this point.

Thank you. And through the chair, maybe from staff, we could just chime in as well. So certainly, uh, the middle field road corridor will be looked at by city staff, especially our transportation team, engineering team, as well as planning, uh, regarding the entire, uh, segment between Ravenswood and Willow here. Um, given the parkland development, this development, um, is certainly something we will look at for kind of the overall traffic from a vehicle, from a pedestrian, from a cyclist standpoint. So there certainly will be an analysis by staff of this and kind of identified any improvement measures that are required per the city's adopted plans, policies, ordinances, general plan, that type of stuff. So certainly there will be a broader discussion about the frontage and then the treatment along the middle field. So I just want to set that stage. We're in the really early stages right now, so.

Thank you. And although you didn't mention it, I believe part of that study is going to not just stop at Willow, but extend to Woodland, which is very dangerous.

Understood. Thanks for the feedback.

And a plus one, the Woodland. That was, yeah.

Yes. Any further discussion? Commissioner Sillin?

Thanks. So I just want to kind of summarize. I was kind of in question mode. I want to summarize my feedback or my thoughts on the project. So I'll start by saying I certainly think this is way better than what's there today, which is seemingly a vacant office park. I think there's some cool buildings there. We did a little tour of it. a long time ago, a little bike tour. It's part of the housing element and it's a really beautiful property, lots of redwood trees. I'm glad you're preserving those. I think that Most cities of our size, our population, are not looking at projects like these on their planning commission agendas. It's beautiful. It's aesthetically pleasing. I really appreciate the mixed use, like I was talking about before with Springline. I appreciate that it's community-minded, that you're keeping the redwood trees and generally the Menlo Forest idea is great. I really appreciate the synergy with Parkline in terms of like even the development standards, because, yeah, I think that having more aesthetically consistent architecture within the city will just create a more pleasant feeling as you drive through or pass through on your bike or whatever. So I love that. And like others have said, I really appreciate the support for geo kids and childcare. That's also someone with little kids. That's very important to me. And so, yeah, it's a really cool project to even be considering, I think, for Menlo Park. So on the flip side of that, I think I've already kind of voiced my concerns about jobs housing imbalance. I mean, I think that just my own story of joining the Planning Commission when I was living in Redwood City, I started kind of participating in housing advocacy and just noticing that The idea that I think has been at this point mostly agreed upon by people that we have a lot more space for workers than residents on the peninsula. And that's been kind of a pressure cooker that's been building up over time. And even five or six years ago, Redwood City was lauded. in the newspapers for building more housing, but that always came with a lot more office. Like, for example, if you drive down El Camino right now towards downtown Redwood City, there's the new development on the right-hand side, Elko Yards, I think it's called, really big office buildings there. I think they're still working on the residential component. But so to me, the trend is continuing still. I don't think we've even stopped the trend. And so I am very concerned about continuing that trend and The impacts of that trend, I think, are pretty clear. It's cost of housing. So, for example, the rent in Menlo Park has gone up roughly 30% in the past 10 years, which is roughly $1,000 a month. Housing prices have gone up much higher than that, like 40% in the past five years. And that's a million dollars for a house increase in price. That's a lot of money. um and what that results is in kind of a changing community you've in the housing element there's a lot of talk of like our changing demographics um people priced out people moving out um including friends of mine so that was the main reason i got involved in like local politics and joined the planning commission and so yeah i do feel strongly that um this project does not improve our jobs housing balance. And I think that basing the jobs housing balance in the EIR on just the net new square footage is very flawed, especially considering the building seems to be vacant now. Um, so presumably whatever people were working at USGS, um, or many of them, if they were living nearby, um, could have moved out of the city. So whatever housing needs were created by those folks are gone. And so now if we repopulate the whole campus with a whole new set of office buildings and new workers, I think that will create a huge strain on housing. And I mentioned in the park line EIR how there was this calculation they used to figure out the impact of Menlo Park, and that's based on how many people commute into Menlo Park to work and how that number has been steadily going up over past decades. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. We build more office, which results in less people living locally, more people commuting in, which then... Oddly enough creates less of a demand for housing, according to our housing needs assessment, which seems very backwards so there's that plus the fact that it's per staff will be based on just the net new square footage that concerns me. And my other main concern is definitely the, I guess, circulation. I mean, I'm generally, I'm big on cycling and walking, but I did live on Los Angeles where gridlock was a major issue. And it does seem to me like having the only access off of Middlefield for this project, plus Parkland next door, Middlefield being a one-lane road in each direction, and the high school right there is just going to be a problem. Again, we could talk about the studies and doing analysis, but my understanding is that for the EIR, the studies for traffic relate to vehicle miles traveled now. We're not looking at level of service. And Again, based on all these calculations of we're only looking at new square footage of office, that might look really good. So in the EIR, this might come out to like a really beautiful project that's going to magically reduce car trips versus today. But I don't think that's the reality. I think the reality is that, again, it's currently vacant. So it will be the net new office plus the office that's sort of being rehabilitated. And I think that's going to lead to basically gridlock on Ravenswood, maybe Willow, certainly middle field. And regardless of what we think about, you know, reducing the incentives for driving and in a way, like you could think of gridlock as a good thing because people will get frustrated by that and switch transportation modes potentially. I just don't think that's a good, for lack of a better word, vibe for Menlo Park to have so much gridlock in the city. And again, it's a beautiful project. So for what, I mean, it is a beautiful project with beautiful buildings and park space and lovely amenities. So it's not for nothing, but I do think that we, and this really goes to city council because they'll be the main decision makers on this project. I think the community and city council should really think hard about our needs as a city and what we're willing to sacrifice. I think, you know, given what staff has said about the current zoning, it does seem like what happened here is. Presidio Bay bought this property with the current zoning, it seems like there's not much to do with it. So the assumption was always that it was going to be redeveloped. And so now what's happening is a conversation with the community, this study session being part of it to figure out what makes sense financially, but what makes sense for us as a community. And again, with SRI, with Parkline, I sort of felt like I had my hands tied saying that you know there's this alternative of doing nothing but in this case i don't feel that way um and so i think that yeah i personally feel like i would really like to see a a material change to the project um but it's it's really up to council to make the final decision so that's just my opinion can i ask you some follow-ups on that yeah of course the discussion

Yeah, so great comments. I totally appreciate the perspective. When you think about the needs of Menlo Park, and we talk about traffic or gridlock, and we talk about jobs and housing and different things, is your vision for the ideal project at USGS something that is significantly scaled back in general in order to combat hyper-local traffic concerns, or is it more what was previously discussed around a shift, a balance shift from having potentially less office space and more residential space, but Keeping, let's just say the gross square footage similar, which I don't know if that would diminish those traffic concerns that you mentioned. And how does that, I guess, how do you think about that when you think about the needs of Menlo Park for a project like this?

Well, again, given my understanding of just even the jobs housing ratio within our own city, I do think that there's a lot of people that want to live here that work here. So to me, my answer to your question would be a shift rather than a reduction. And I understand that you guys have had community engagement and people have voiced concerns about taller buildings uh granted i don't live next door to the project but i don't particularly show those concerns as much again assuming we can make it work in other ways and part of it comes back to what i was saying earlier about like what are we willing to sacrifice so perhaps i don't know if i'd want gridlock in any situation but I would maybe feel differently about it if it was housing, um, for teachers and, um, you know, I'm not saying just a hundred percent affordable, but if it was housing for people that want to work locally, I think that type of traffic could be more tolerable and that type of traffic could be a lot more, um, addressable by having more local transportation. Um, like we have a shuttle, maybe the city show that we have, maybe it could run more frequently. Maybe, um, If a lot of people work at Meta, maybe there could be a shuttle there, et cetera, versus if it's people just coming in from all over the Bay Area to work at local offices, that seems a lot harder to figure out because people come from all over.

Thanks. Thank you. This is gonna be the end of the study session if people don't have anything else to say.

Vice Chair Baruzzi.

I think that the one alternative that I heard for Presidio Bay was that they were considering that Wood-Pencil was this like 17 DU an acre townhome concept. And I think that from a city perspective, there's a lot of downside to that as a trade-off. So I, you know, for me, when I look at those two as viable alternatives, I prefer what I've seen tonight to that concept for the space in this location, given our needs. And given, you know, the trajectory our city has been on from a revenue standpoint, from a services standpoint, from a tax base standpoint, etc.,

Great. Thank you, everyone. And thank you from Presidio Bay Ventures. Considering this was a study session, there's no motion required. And I thank members of the public for listening in. And I will formally close item G1, regular business, and move us to informational items. Mr. Parada, does anyone from staff have any updates on upcoming planning commission meetings or agendas?

Yes, thank you. The next Planning Commission meeting is on September 14th. The notice hasn't been sent out yet, so this is tentative, but we are tracking potentially a study session for the Park Line Phase 2 project at that meeting. So stay tuned. And then potentially the mixed-use development project at 800 Oak Grove for entitlement review, which would include some actions by the Planning Commission and recommendations to the Council as well. So stay tuned. Notice goes out at the end of this week, but those are two items we're tracking. Commissioner Solon.

If it's appropriate, could you repeat the second item, the address?

Yeah, 800 Oak Grove Avenue.

Thank you. And then a couple months ago, we talked about the eventual redoing of our lot split ordinance. Do you have any updates on when we might see that as a second go-around?

Yeah, I appreciate that. We don't have an update. We are working on it. We're juggling that with a number of large projects we're processing currently at this time. Hopefully we'll have an update soon, but we don't have a meeting scheduled to bring it back.

Staff, do you have any sense of whether or not we have any SB 79 project submissions coming in? Is that something you can answer?

It's not agendized. I'm hesitant to answer. I'll just say we don't have any current projects on file. I'll answer it that way. But I want to be cautious about Brown Act and agendized items here.

Do any commissioners have any informational items they'd like to share? Seeing none, I will adjourn the meeting at 9.54 p.m.