Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

33,000 square feet from what was originally approved by the original master plan. Also increasing building coverage from 50 to 60% and removing floor area ratio from the PD. This kind of allows for buildings designed to be governed by the maximum building height, building coverage, setbacks, and the overall design rather than the floor area ratio. But removal of the floor area ratio requirements is actually just a cleanup. It's consistent with recent City Council actions that removed floor area ratio requirements from all of the mixed use flex zoning districts.

The amendment would increase the maximum permitted building heights from 55 to 65 feet allowing up to six story medical office buildings. The change is intended to support modern medical campus designs and also accommodate the structured parking that was proposed allowing the vertical development kind of supports the structured parking but also reduces kind of the overall spreading out footprint design and allowing for more opportunities for internal better internal circulation, site organization, and also open space opportunities as the final site plan develops. The conceptual site plan and also any photo simulations shown were mainly provided for illustrative purposes only. All future buildings and their design, including elevations and architecture will be subject to future design permit review. Also, wanted to note that during earlier portions of this review, CAL FIRE did raise a concern about potential interference between the increased building height and emergency microwave communication signals.

As a result, the city produced a tech technical study that concluded that that evaluated the issue and also confirmed that the proposed building height increases would not interfere with any emergency communications. So as a result, no mitigations were required for that. Parking for the medical campus will be regulated through the PD master plan, so the proposed amendment updates this requirement from one space per every 200 square feet to one space for every two fifty square feet. This change reflects current medical office parking demands where patients are staggered and supported by telehealth. That also anticipates the use of structured parking, which reduces surface parking and aims to improve the circulation of the site.

However, again, final parking counts, layouts, things like that are preliminary at this stage and will be reviewed at a future design permit stage. So in your packet you'll see a complete list of the proposed land use changes that would be in attachment two the red lines, proposed red lines specifically page 24 and tables one point one and one point two kind of shown a little bit illustrated here for you. But I wanted to call specifically to certain proposed changes. So there was a proposal to add assisted living facilities as a permitted use. Also changing residential care, skilled nursing, daycare, and farmers markets markets from originally conditionally permitted to permitted.

Medical office and outpatient hospital uses still remain permitted but the city really wanted to, really worked to continue and have the medical uses be the primary focus of the medical care. So, we worked really hard to come up with a framework that still worked with the applicant's goals of providing them flexibility while still maintaining the overall intent of the master plan. So this is the framework that the city is proposing to be put into the master plan. A minimum of 75% of the total developed square footage must be medical uses. Conversely, a maximum of 25% of the total developments total developed square footage may be developed may be for non medical uses.

Non medical uses must be must remain subordinate in scale and function to medical uses. A minimum of 50,000 square feet of medical uses would be required before the city is able to issue any permits for non medical uses unless those non medical uses are being proposed concurrently in the same phase. So, with that, staff feels like these safeguards kind of provide that balance and flexibility, long term consistency and still maintaining the consistency with the overall original intent of the master plan. So a final subsequent environmental impact report was prepared in compliance with CECOA. This analysis focused more on the increased, the changes in the, specific changes proposed with this amendment.

So the environmental analysis evaluated potential impacts related to air quality, greenhouse gases, noise, transportation, aesthetics, and utilities. Again, these were associated with the increased development intensity and the updates to all of the land uses. In the end, the SCR concluded that the proposed amendments would not result in any new significant environmental impacts or more substantially severe than those that were previously analyzed. Any of the identified impacts in the report were reduced to a level less than significant through implementations of the mitigation measures which are incorporated in the mitigation monitoring and reporting program. All of that would be applied to any future development.

So evaluating the project against the required findings for a zoning amendment and also amendment to the PE master plan. The project is found to be consistent with the city's general plan, consistent with city policies that relate to delivery of healthcare services, employment generating uses, and economic development. Also consistent with the overall intent of the PD zoning and framework. The site is physically suitable for the proposed development and adequately served. Compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood residential commercial uses will be ensured through future design review.

This includes all of the building design, height, massing and buffering and then all of the required CEQUA findings can be made based on the final subsequent EIR. So based on the analysis presented in the staff report, staff recommends that the Planning Commission recommend to the City Council approval of the proposed amendments. This recommend includes approval of the plan development master plan and zoning amendment and also certification of the final subsequent environmental impact report. Staff believes that all of the proposed amendments including the ones that staff suggested balance flexibility for future market conditions while still providing that clear intent of the original master plan to deliver a primarily long term medical campus. So if recommended by the Planning Commission the project will proceed to City Council for final consideration and action.

With that staff is there any questions?

Nice report, thank you. So before we get into questions, remember that since there's not really a proposed site plan, there's gonna be a lot of questions that only the applicants gonna be able to answer. It, we'll start with you Liam. Sure. You have any

for Joey? Just a few clarifying questions for us and then we'll have a general discussion after that. Okay. Hey, thanks Joey. Nice presentation, as always. Couple of quick clarifying questions. So first question you're saying, so staff is recommending all of the proposals in here. You're agreeing with these proposals, correct?

That is correct.

So when it comes to the changes from conditional use to permitted use, what was the staff's thinking why you would change it from conditional to permitted? Why would you agree with that?

We understood that their goal was to provide flexibility for whatever future plans they may have. Staff did have concerns about ensuring the overall primary medical intent of the master plan and any future plans, which is why staff worked really hard to develop that framework that's included in the red lines.

I wasn't just asking about the framework. I was also asking about the permitted uses. So you're suggesting and agreeing to change from conditional use to permitted use, right? What was the logic of that? What was your thinking on there? Same idea? Just to give more flexibility or? This is a question for staff. Are clarifying my question or are you answering? No, I'm gonna assist Joy a little bit. Well, why don't you let him answer the question?

Well, he's pausing for it. And I think the

intent Yeah, but let him think about it and answer the question.

The intent is clear, right? The intent is to remove a barrier so that the applicant has more certainty that those things can go in there. Remember, the only thing you can do with a conditional use permit is add mitigation. You can't deny it.

I could add a bit. So the move from conditional use permit to permitted by right was at the request of the applicant. And when we saw that, we thought it does provide flexibility and diversifies the potential use of that could be on-site but there was no limitation if it was permitted by right which is why we came up with the guardrails of only a certain percentage of that square footage could be those types of uses And so that is now in the report or in the PD as a proposal.

But you obviously, again, question of staff. I'm asking staff's opinion. We'll have our own opinions, right, which is fine. But why did you feel like you needed to put in that framework? What were you seeing and what was being proposed that made you add that? Framework? There a question?

When you have an established plan development that sits on the property long term. And you also want to make sure if this property is meant to be medical, but we want it to be flexible for the applicant, you want to put certain guardrails there so the whole thing couldn't flip to a giant assisted living facility just because it's permitted by right so we're able to by adding the guardrails we're able to give that flexibility for the diversification of land use but it limits it from becoming something other than 100% medical, or 75% in this case.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, I understand. And one other clarifying question, either one of you, is, I don't know the answer to this, but is assisted living, residential care, skilled nursing, do they qualify as medical or not? I would think not, but

In some instances, skilled nursing can.

Can, okay.

But assisted living does not.

Does not, okay.

Yeah, it falls under kind of, some of them kind of fall under a gray area, but that's why we specifically defined that it wouldn't be counted towards the medical cap.

Okay, all right. One other question, chair and then I'll be done. Where was it again? You said about the parking standards. Where was that?

You said that it, you said verbally it reflects typical medical office parking, but actually it reflects contemporary medical offices. What what what does that mean? If there was, for example, a hospital ultimately ends up here, actually that's never going happen, but maybe, right? You would think that the parking requirement for a hospital as opposed to like an in and out medical facility would be quite different. So what contemporary versus typical? You're looking at medical offices, not necessarily in a hospital, right? Is that right?

Correct, yeah.

Because obviously where this is located, you know, spillover parking, I'm not sure there would be that type of a problem, but spillover parking could be quite problematic for the neighborhood. Right? So okay. Alright. So that was the thing there. Okay. Thank you, chair. I have more comments later, but David?

I don't have questions for staff. Just the applicant.

Okay. Thank

you, chair. So can you jog my memory a little bit? Because I know it's been a few years now since we we last had the the initial conversion for again, you can remind me the entire site was about 50% or so converted to residential use to help support the medical. Can you remind me again what that percentage was with the original site, which was already set off for nonmedical and what currently is now set for medical.

So just to clarify, you're looking for the in the original master plan, what was the original estimated square footage for residential versus medical?

Yes. So I forget what the the map says, I

don't think it actually describes how it was split before. But do you know

what the total area that was split into residential was?

What it was originally approved for or what is it currently?

Currently. Because I think originally, wasn't it all supposed to be medical, if I'm not mistaken?

In the original approvals, it was supposed to be closer to, like, a fifty fifty split between residential and medical. And I can look up what the current actual recent vesting map shows you.

It was a fiftyfifty split and there was a lot of discussion about the public benefit aspect because there was a lot of concern about the residential. So the residential piece put in some of infrastructure for the medical piece as part of their public benefit. But from a site area, it was about a fiftyfifty split. Total square footage approved on the medical side, as said in the PowerPoint, was 125,000 square feet.

Okay. And before we had that discussion, originally the site was intended to be all medical?

No, this came in as PD in order to do this split. That's what they had proposed for. They wanted to do medical on it but they needed the residential to pay for the medical and that's how that started. They have since been able to sell the medical side to a medical user who would then develop a medical site.

Okay. And so the reason I'm asking is because I think how I'm understanding then is originally the site was split fiftyfifty, 50% residential, 50% medical. And then now of what is intended for medical, we're looking at further splitting it as I'm understanding you can help clarify if not, 75% for medical and then 25% additional medical. Is that correct?

Well, you'd actually get because of the 70 five-twenty five split with the addition of the additional 150,000 square feet, you would gain more medical space.

Than previous?

Than previous, correct.

Got you, so square footage wise you're getting an increase than It's use gonna be if you're just looking at the space is less.

And just to clarify, there was always intended there would be some component of the medical site that would be commercial, non medical commercial, but it's supportive of the

medical. Correct.

Okay. And so to that that comment then, was the initial residential not that component? It was supposed to be on

this side? No, the medical side also had a non medical commercial component as well.

Got you. Okay.

And that commercial component, if you recall, was closer to Juan Hernandez. They had talked about restaurant and some other uses that would support any medical user visiting the site that has since gone away as far as ideas But we don't know what type of use will or what fashion that roughly 69,000 square feet of non medical use could be incorporated into the overall site.

Okay. And so that's probably why we're also seeing, for example, the financial institutions or the banking institutions has additional uses that they want to expand further with that non medical component. Right. Okay. Anything else? Let me check. I think there was just one more. Okay. Oh, so, again, you can also maybe jog my memory, spend some time. Was it initially intended for, like, clinic and medical use? I mean, hospital use when they were initially planning the medical portion of it?

That was what was desired at a hospital. Mhmm. But a medical center was also a possibility. And that still remains to be the case. We just don't know what they'll be able to actually develop on-site.

Got it. And so that could include, for example, hospital, clinic, urgent care, medical offices, entire variety of different medical services. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. That's all I had here.

Thank you. Joseph?

If memory serves me right, the commercial square footage in the original design was like 10,000 square feet. So 25% is a lot larger than that. Tell me how you get from four floors and 55 feet to six and sixty five feet.

Or lower ceilings, yeah.

I'm not understanding that question.

Current height limit is 55 feet.

Correct.

And it's four stories. How do you get to six floors in a 10 foot increase?

You would dig down. You'd have a basement. You'd there's a number of different ways to do that, figuring 10 feet per floor.

Okay. Is the 10 feet cover the parapet for surface equipment?

No, parapet would be.

Above that?

Above that. Just based on our code.

And 10 or 15 feet is required for every elevator? Above that?

Correct.

So the actual highest point would be somewhere near 80 feet?

Not necessarily. Depends how it's overall designed. And remember, anything we're setting the base box, then during design review, the actual design comes forward. Whether that is a hospital with an elevator outdoor garden and other equipment or some other type of development with

Every multiple story building's gonna have an elevator.

Correct.

And you're saying they gotta go down 10 feet?

No, but that's a possibility. We're setting the box, Joe, or Commissioner Miller, so it's

No, all I'm saying is you're setting a box that seems to be forcing an increase in the building of the project.

It's, we're setting a box that allows for an increase. It doesn't demand it. It doesn't force it.

But the height forces it to go down if you want six floors.

It could, absolutely.

Okay.

The scale and function in the non medical as I recall, the skilled nursing unit is non medical, therefore it comes out of the 25%.

In our definitions of skilled nursing, it's included in medical.

That's not what the report says. No, the report says all these uses are non medical. Unless I misread it. I mean, can come back to discussion, right? If we wanna revisit.

That'd be great.

Okay. You checking with the report?

No, it's there. It's in another place. Okay. Okay.

Do you have anything else?

Not for now. Paul?

Thank you, Chair. Joey, thanks for your presentation. The only question I had is that on your last slide, in addition to approving the proposed zoning amendment change, you're asking us to certify two reports. One is the environmental impact report, the SEIR, and MMRP. Do we have those reports? I mean, are we certifying something we haven't seen or I haven't looked at? I mean, I haven't did you show us the findings of those reports in the presentation? I just fell asleep on it or something?

They should have been included in your packet and they should have they should have been included and we are just recommending to city council to certify the environmental documents.

Okay. But your presentation didn't have any kind of you know, what were the findings of those reports? What were

the

takeaways of those reports? Can you tell us how they were carried out and what the findings were so we can actually?

Yeah, so the.

And you don't have to do that now. I just want I'm

just raising that question. That's the

only question I had, sir.

Okay.

So it was analyzed in the report. The Essentially, the environmental document, the subsequent environmental impact report took a look at the proposed changes by the amendments and also the proposed changes to the land use, Took a look at all the impacts, took a look at things, impacts such as impacts to greenhouse gases, transportation. Me aesthetics So

rather than that now, what I would suggest is that you should have come with a summary of what those things were to us before we certify it?

The Planning Commission is not certifying the document. You're making a recommendation to City Council. The EIR when it was released in draft form was handed out to all the commissioners with the proposed MMRP that came out during the final EIR. So

all

of that information was presented well before we got here. I think the circulation for the draft was the middle of last No.

Ended in November. October?

Yeah. So it it's.

Yeah. Okay.

And it was a huge document that we provided. Yeah.

Yeah. But there is a summary of it in the staff report and basically it did not find any new significant environmental impact.

Okay, that's good to know. That's all I asked. Thanks.

And there is a finance effect that is located in your resolution.

Okay, yeah.

I just would have liked to see it in the presentation.

Chair Wilson? One more question? About Joe's question, I found the paragraph in the report.

Okay.

It says skilled nursing facilities and long term supportive healthcare, residential uses such as nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and residential care facilities shall not be counted towards the minimum required medical use of square footage.

That is correct. I misspoke.

Okay.

Our code does, we had a lot of debate about skilled nursing and whether or not that counts as medical or not. The rule that's in the plan development and the red lines classifies it as a non medical use.

Which is good. Okay. And then there was one other just to clarify what medical uses are, right? Did you already cover this, Janet, if it did not? Medical is limited to facilities providing diagnostic treatment, diagnosis treatment, surgery, imaging, or outpatient clinical services on a nonresidential basis, including hospital facilities, medical office buildings, and outpatient facilities, clinics, diagnostic and imaging centers, and similar uses consistent with Morgan Hill Code Title 18. So, it's pretty specific.

Do you have a question on that?

No, he asked for clarifying so I thought it be good for all of us to hear that. I do have one other clarifying question. The original, sorry Jen.

That's all right.

The original, So we're saying, Joey, it's gone up by the square footage has gone up by, like, a 120%. So it was a 125, went up to two seventy five, but I mean, that's one fifty, not one thirty three. But anyway, isn't it? One fifty? Yep. Right? A 150,000. So it's like almost a 110, a 115% more. How practical was the original plan then to only have a 125,000 square feet? Like, it just the whole thing just doubled in size and more, which maybe is good. I don't know. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying it's a lot.

In terms of practicality, I would probably defer to the applicant to let them speak to that. They're the ones that requested the amendment. They can kind of speak to the flexibility that they're looking to provide in the future.

Okay. Alright. Thanks.

Anybody else? I have one kind of strange question for Joey and Jennifer. So the farmer's market, we already have a great established one. How do you have a farmer's market at a medical center? Especially if you look at their proposed or or conceptual site plan? Because I'm not sure they're closed. Right? Where are gonna put it?

Typically, and and my experience is is with Kaiser. All the Kaiser's have farmers markets on campus. They're not permanent. They happen every Friday or every Wednesday. Okay. And we weren't sure why they added that in here, if it was an ancillary use and happened twice a week. It doesn't need to be in the PD, but it was nice that they called out what they envisioned to have. And I don't know about Sutter operations, I'm not a member, But I would expect it's relatively the same as Kaiser.

Yeah, just building on what kind of Jennifer is saying is something that we've kind of see along the lines of kind of providing a multimodal access to healthy foods, healthy living. Yeah. And so instead of requiring the city to kind of go through administrative, temporary uses and stuff like that, it was just kind of outlined in the PD to kind of be allowed outright. But it's not a use that's typically that we see on a permanent basis.

Okay. And

and I would just I I am a center member, I haven't seen their Farmers Market. But I Saint Louis also has a Farmers Market once a week. Okay. But it's the same idea.

And so does the VA Hospital up in Palo Alto. Have I been up there in that complex?

I mean, I could see how they tied into nutrition and stuff. It's just, you might get a little pushback from the quote permanent one.

They they might be a little different too, right? Yeah. Because of the the healthy thing. All I know is is is I've been up there with my son and they were there. Yep. They had all kinds of boost and stuff going on as much for the staff as for the patients and their families. Beautiful. Okay.

I kinda wanna build on upon upon that and working on healthy neighborhood for all. There were some desires for additional opportunities for access to healthy foods, especially in this part of town. So, hopefully, by allowing something like this, there's just opens up more opportunities.

And I think the same thing is true with the daycare. That's there for their employees as much as it is for anybody else.

Beautiful. You. So do we have the applicant? Do they wanna

Can I ask before the applicant comes up? It sounds like there's a new owner. They would they take a second to introduce themselves and who they are?

What they do? Once we open the public hearing, he could tell us.

Yeah. Well, if you

could ask him to do that. Okay.

So we're gonna open the public hearing. Does the applicant I think they're online. Correct? Jenna? The applicant.

Afternoon evening, commissioners. Yes. Vahram Masahian with Sutter Health online. Don't have a a formal presentation for you. Can you all hear me?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. Great. And I don't have control over the video, but I'll just say that, you know, we opened our primary care clinic in the adjacent existing medical office building in March 2025. And we are growing our primary care base. And as that primary care base becomes established, we would be looking to develop the site, the Rosewood site, for specialty care or added primary care or urgent care, hospital, we don't know at this point in time.

We don't have active plans for development of the site. But as we become more established in the area, we will study how the site can best support access to health care in and around Morgan Hill.

Okay. We

don't have a specific timeline or defined proposal, as mentioned before, happy to try and answer any questions that you may have.

Okay. Shall we start with Liam? Yeah, sure. Sorry, is it Vahram? How do pronounce your name again, please?

Yes, it's Vahram. Yeah.

Oh, we

can see you now. Hey, good to see you.

There we go.

There you go. Alright. Couple of quick questions for you. So, well, one of my questions is going to be is what are you thinking and do you have any plans, but it sounds like not really yet, right? Still probably too early for that. We understand that. Just trying to get a feel for what you guys are thinking. I'm going to come back one more time to the topic of permitted uses and so on, right? And what is the thinking around adding in and getting permitted uses for things like assisted living facilities, residential care? Is that typically part of your model that you put that in with your hospitals that you mix all that together? What was the thinking behind asking for that?

Working with staff, we were trying to, I think, devise accessory uses or uses that could be compatible to the primary use, which, you know, from our perspective, we would be interested in the medical use. But I think working with staff wanted to create a little bit more flexibility in other land uses, which would benefit from being proximate to a medical, either inpatient or outpatient campus.

Okay. And what do you think of the proposal of the medical campus framework? The 70 fivetwenty five, you see that to be something you guys can work with? Any concerns with that?

No. I think I think it's a good ratio, especially with with the increase in square footage. And I believe that was a question that was asked earlier about, you know, going from the going up to 275 square feet allows us to grow the medical portion. And the way medical facilities are built these days, there's a lot more space required principally for ADA and accessibility. Quarter widths are getting larger and facilities are just growing to serve a similar sized population as before.

So having the additional square footage is definitely something that was of interest to us.

Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Chair.

David? Yeah. I just had a question on what your thoughts are for traffic safety, specifically pedestrian and bicycle improvements. Just wanna ensure I mean, I know our recommendations to move on and and provide a recommendation to the council, but are we gonna have assurances that I heard the word multimodal. You're talking about access. To me, those are keywords. Are we gonna have bicycle pedestrian improvements planned maybe around Juan Hernandez for employees, for visitors to access without using cars? I don't if that's a city or a design question.

I'm speaking from the applicant's standpoint. I would think that at the time when we actually are ready to move forward with the submittal, working with staff, we would be making pedestrian and safety improvement measures, bicycle facilities for principally, I would think, for our employees, although some patients may choose to ride their bikes. But, yes, I would think that that would be a part of the approval process you know, when we move forward with a proposal.

Wouldn't that be, Jennifer, during the design permit? Yes.

Yes, that's when that would occur.

Okay. So, at this point, when we're recommending the city council move forward, there's no stipulation that moving forward with the idea that there's going to be bicycle pedestrian improvements starting from San Juan for access to it to see that in the final design rather than it not be there and start from scratch?

Absolutely. Would be

part of No. This is recommendation and moving on. This is not final design.

We don't

have plans or renderings yet. I just wanna ensure that. My other question would be a parking structure. We were talking about a possible parking structure. Do you think that's kind of a little too soon to assume we might need a parking structure at this facility? Or do you think the surface parking could dominate for now. I mean, how soon do we want to start talking about a parking structure? Is that going to be ended? Is that another design phase? Am I always checking the gun here on design questions? Or

I think the idea behind the parking structure is thinking about the maximum box that could potentially be built out with that maximum square footage, accommodating all the parking, reducing some of that surface parking and kind of preserving that area for circulation patterns, pedestrian circulation, landscaping, buffer zones, things like that. The idea was to include the idea of a parking structure at this point for sequel analysis purposes.

Okay. Those are my questions for him. Thank you. Thank

you, Chair. So I guess maybe starting off, I'm just curious if you can walk us through what opportunities you see in the the Morgan Hill area and the surrounding area, whether it comes to the market on health care needs and so on?

I I'm not a I can't say that for sure what the needs would be in the future currently. We have the primary care clinic that is both adult and pediatric. A whole range of specialty care clinics could be something that we would definitely be studying. But at this time, I don't know, I can't speculate on what the needs are. Like I said, it's only been less than a year, or coming up to a year that we established just the primary care clinic.

So I wish I could answer your question more directly, but I don't really have an answer on the on the additional service lines that we would that we would be looking to expand and build on the on the parcel at this time.

What about the nearest Sutter locations to the current site? Is there like a gap, for example, in the areas where Sutter is serving? Is that why, for example, Morgan Hill is of interest to Sutter to establish medical uses?

Yeah. I mean, we have plans for building a hospital in Santa Clara, which is, you know, well north. But that is our biggest development plans in the whole system, actually. From within Sutter, it's our largest project. And we're looking at an expansion south, and this would be an initial step in that direction.

We have clinics in Los Gatos and Santa Teresa. But in terms of additional clinics in the surrounding area, I'm not sure.

And as you talk about specialties, I think just kind of coming from my personal experience, I think one of the items that maybe could also be for further consideration, I'm kind of talking a little bit outside of what's directly in our purview, within South Santa Clara County, one of the largest areas of need when it comes to emergency care has historically been, like, trauma centers or trauma care, I mean, depending on what it used to be, burn care, stroke centers, and so on. So when it comes to those types of emergency needs, like for example, if someone requires trauma care because of a vehicle accident that may have occurred in a Gilroy area, they have to be airlifted, for example, to the nearest trauma center, which may be like regional. So that's why I was curious to understand what, for example, you might see as potential opportunities for expanded specialty care within care for or expanded care and necessary care that the community may need in the South Region. So maybe more of a comment or a consideration to look into that when it comes to potential areas that you may be exploring. And again, I'm coming in that with the understanding that you just really have about twelve months of thought planning and so on that went into where you're currently at now.

So also a question too. So when it comes to mixed use, I know you kind of mentioned that this is probably more driven by the city. Is mixed use necessary for the development that you historically do with your medical campuses?

Typically not. The uses are usually focused on whether it's outpatient, ambulatory, or an inpatient acute. When I say inpatient acute, that's a hospital. Outpatient ambulatory could be a medical office building or a surgery center where someone seeks care and is not admitted for an overnight stay, the uses are typically limited to medical in nature. In some instances, some assisted living, as mentioned before, are located nearby or senior living.

But we usually see a focus of medical uses in our campuses and surroundings.

Okay. And another closely tied question in regards to what we're looking at as well is what does your build out typically look like? Do you typically do phased build out? So you have 20,000 square feet at a time. Do you do the entire structures at a time?

And the reason I'm kind of getting at this too is because one of the, I guess, stipulations we have is 50,000 square feet of medical uses required before nonmedical. Is that even something that you typically do? For example, if you're right now, you do your market research, you see what the needs are, what specialties may be needed, medical uses and so on, really that the crux of what you do as a health care institution. You do that research. You find out what you exactly need.

Are you gonna build out 50,000 square feet at a time? Are you gonna build out the entire campus typically? How does that typically work? And kinda understanding whether the the 50,000 might be more arbitrary, or should it be more than that given the the primary use that you typically do and the primary development that you do?

I would assume it's gonna be phased because there's an existing building, one story building that eventually is gonna disappear. So they're going to want to have the new clinic in place before they get rid of that. So it's going to have to be phased to do that. Sure.

Yeah. It it it it also really depends on on the market and what what the needs of the community are and and and what sort of services we're we're looking to provide. But 50,000 square foot building is is is not is not necessarily a big building from our perspective. That's a decent sized medical office building or surgery center.

But

there is an economy of scale as to building a larger building and maybe shelling some of the space and having the ability to expand into it. It's really too early to say here exactly what we would do, but in many instances, we'll propose a project that has some shelf space that we can expand into to allow for future expansion and adjacencies so that we're thinking about different service lines that can be proximate to one another on different floors.

Sure. So as an example then, if for example, the minimum becomes 100,000 square feet of medical use before non medical can be built out, how would that affect the development that you have possibly planned?

Well, they don't have one planned right now.

Possibly, down the line.

Okay. I think we're getting too far into the weeds. All we're trying to

do is give them the opportunity to

come up with a design with the new parameters. I I think we're pushing it too far down the road to figure out exactly what they're gonna build.

They don't know

yet. Sure. But I do think it's relevant because based off of the framework that we are gonna be voting on, I think me, one of the important items is to make sure that we have medical build out before nonmedical and a substantial amount.

Well, that's

what they have to do.

But 50,000 is not considered a substantial amount

as Well, that's his he's talking about the building size. Yes. Only. It doesn't mean it won't serve the purpose.

So if you if you can answer that question, please.

I I appreciate the question. I don't know the answer to it. But but I think that from our perspective, we would be looking to make a to move forward with medical uses as a health care organization before anything else. As to the size of that, it's I don't know. I can't answer at this point.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I had, Chair.

Okay. Joe?

So in in your best judgment, we're talking gross square footage here. You're talking of you made comments about buildings growing in size due to requirements. Other requirements put on you for building buildings and supporting ADA and everything else, what's the net loss due to those on your buildings?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Net loss of

I'll I'll phrase it another way. If you build a 100,000 square feet, how much actual medical use space do you get in that 100,000 square feet?

I'm not sure what what sort of efficiency factors we have for for different uses, for different medical uses. What we see is we're building buildings at least 25% larger than before to get the same equivalent equivalency approximately.

Okay. But that that still doesn't get you to the net number. It says the rate of increase. But what what's the net number? So, I mean, like I said, if if you you're telling me that net has grown by 25% over the recent years, but you haven't told me where it started. I'm trying to understand if we talk about 100,000 square feet or 200,000 square feet, does that mean you really get 150,000 of usable space due to the loss to hallways, you know, elevators Yeah. Stairwells, and everything else?

Yeah. That's probably a fair fair estimate. You're right.

I mean, approximately, I that's a that's a fair approximation. It also depends on whether we're talking about an inpatient facility, a hospital, or an outpatient facility.

Yeah. I believe that. Yeah. Okay. So it's hard to decide, but it's an important number. Right? I think we've lost you or at least lost the video portion.

Yeah, he's gone, Gina.

The video is definitely frozen.

You shocked him Joe.

Did you have another question for

him? Yeah. But I think I know what his answer's gonna be based on some of his other answers. If you wanna go on, let's go ahead and go on.

From me. Thank you.

Okay. Do we have any speaker cards?

We we do have one speaker card. Eli Robles.

Good evening members of the Planning Commission. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Eli Robust. I'm a field representative for the Carpenters Union Local four zero five based in San Jose. I represent more than 57,000 hardworking members across our region.

More specifically, 5,700 members from local four zero five and nine thousand one hundred forty four. Tonight, I ask you to consider the item and the decision to approve the Rosewood Medical Campus master plan. I urge you to also consider how this project will be built and who will be building it. Hospital clinics and housing are about people, not just buildings. For many people at Morgan Hill and surrounding communities that will visit to the nurses and the doctors and everyone working in the hospital, but also all the men and the, women that will be involved in building these facilities.

That's why choosing a responsible contractor is critical. A responsible contractor is one who values the workforce and investment in them. One who ensures workers are paid area standards wages so they can afford to live in the communities they serve. One who provides health benefits so workers can care for themselves and their families. One who offers retirement security so that after decades of physically demanding work, these trades peoples can retire with dignity.

Equally important is a strong apprenticeship program, one that creates pathways for young men and women to enter the trades, gain skills and earn while they learn and become the next generation of highly trained craftsmen and women. These programs don't just build careers, they build safer job sites, higher quality projects, and stronger local economies. As you move forward with this project, I respectfully ask that you prioritize responsible contractors who will uphold these standards. Doing so ensures that this project delivers not only housing, but long term value for workers, families, and the community as a whole. And I would just also like to ask the applicant if they haven't had any talks with any certain general contractor on the site.

But thank you though for your time.

Thank you.

Jenna, anybody? Any other speakers?

Hi.

Online or in person?

I don't see any raised hands.

Okay, so we'll close the public.

Are we finished with the applicant too? Was Joe finished or?

Is he back?

He's back, yeah, he's back, yeah. Oh, he is, okay.

We will do that then.

Joe? Yeah. So,

guess the follow on question of that is, I'm assuming you took that net number into effect when you talk about 275,000 square feet of medical.

Yes, we did.

Just to

clarify that, I understand there were some questions earlier about whether that net increase was actually 150,000 or 133,000 as we previously mentioned in the report. So the original master plan approved approximately 100 and let's just say 125,000 square feet. And so accounting for the existing medical building, if you add that on to that, the difference between that total and the 275,000 would be approximately 133,000 square feet of net increase.

Okay. Yeah, but

that's, I'm not looking at it that way. I'm assuming that at some point the existing facility goes away because that's what it says in the documents, documents, right? When I was talking about in the existing building, I wanted to make sure and I was fairly sure it was, but whatever the net is, it's increasing. So, you get less actual square footage of medical use per building than what you got ten years ago. Keep all I'm saying?

Because the hall, like you mentioned earlier, the hallways are wider, everything's bigger, handicap causes, and those regulation cause other things to go on, but he's accounted for that. So we're not really getting 275,000 net usage area. We're getting something less than that. Correct. Right? Yeah. Because of all that stuff that takes it up.

Right. $2.75 is the gross square Right.

And I just want to get a

An edge of the building.

For what that was. Yeah. Right? Absolutely. To make sure I understood how they get it. So, it turns out to be less. And where that comes into play is, to me, is in the framework. I have other questions that we'll get into discussion with later, right, about the framework and if it is sufficient to protect what we need for the medical.

I would like to clarify the question you were asking about height.

Yeah.

So six stories or 65 feet is for a parking structure. For medical, it's four stories or 65 feet.

Ah.

So, and that's in the red lines on the

PDF report says medical office buildings at 65 square feet gives you six floors.

Then that was an error. Okay. Yep.

Okay. So that helps clarify. So we're only talking about four story or in case the applicant is here, we're talking about four stories or three. Now, that still probably doesn't cover the elevator height. Correct. Above the parachute. So, portion of the building will be a fair amount higher, similar to one of the latest hotels.

Our our code does allow for increases in height for those types of mechanical Right. Uses and parabets.

I wanted to make sure everybody is Yeah. Was clear. Okay. So that doesn't mean you have to force down, it just, we're on the surface, we're going straight forward.

But in the case of a parking deck, you might

Yes, they even suggest that Okay, might go down a little What were we? Anything else? No. I'm

Okay. Paul, you're good? Any other questions for the applicant? Thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Joey. So we're gonna close the public hearing and open up discussion. Liam? I'll start. Yes, sir.

So, you know this development has a long, very long history for those who have been on the planning commission, about six, seven years. I don't how many years we've been talking about this. At least five, if not six. And we've had concerns about it from day one. It's gonna be a hospital, it's gonna be a massive medical facility, then half of it gets sold for housing. That was the justification was we need the money and the funding to kind of support the other side. Well, I guess that didn't work out because they did what I predicted they did, they sold it to somebody else. Right? So so much for all the need for all the residential. I never support that from day one and actually still don't, but it's built now and went up in record speed.

I wish medical stuff would go up as fast, But maybe thereis a whole different regulation around that. But, but, Iim very encouraged to see that Sutter now has this project because the likelihood of something medical going in there has just exponentially gone up, which is encouraging, finally, to see somebody who's actually gonna do something. And I understand the situation where they don't really know, and I I could understand that. They wouldn't really know yet. And even if had ideas, I'm sure there are enough things that they could share yet, probably not developed enough to do that.

But encouraging to see something medical. But this project still kind of waves some red flags for me. Right? And, maybe for staff too, I'm not speaking for your staff, but I'm just hearing what you said, where you had to put in a framework on top of this to ensure that medical actually gets built, right? Which concerns me that there's still a lot of focus on non medical uses. So, I like the framework. Mohammed, you said earlier, I'm not sure if the 50,000 fee is going cut it. You know, what this is basically saying is that you can build 25% of this medical and then you can do all of your other non uses. It's better than nothing. Mhmm.

And the $20.75 25, I like a lot. What I don't like, what I'm not gonna support tonight if this is what we're proposing, is to change the other uses to permit it rather than conditional. I would like to keep the conditional. I propose a change to make them conditional. And if we if we decide not to do that, I'm not voting to approve this because I don't agree with that. I don't like now it's just again, I'm giving one commission's opinion here. Right? It just feels like we talk about everything else but medical. In a facility, it's supposed to be medical. Now we wanna put in assisted living.

And, again, I'm not saying assisted living isn't necessary or residential care. But I tell you from my experience and the conversations we're having over budgets in the city, they put a huge burden on the city. They make no contribution, and they take a lot out when it comes to things like fire, ambulance, services, that type of stuff. Right? And make no real net contribution.

So I would propose that we keep those uses as conditional so at least we have the ability to have a conversation about it before we approve it. But other than that, I'm okay with the general idea. I like the additional square footage. I think the parking, if there's a multistory parking structure, would probably be good enough. Notch, I'd be interested about the other commissioners have to say about the 50,000 square feet. Is that enough or not? I think it's kinda borderline for me, but I'm gonna make that proposal. I'll let everybody speak first, but that's what I would do is not approve the change from conditional to permitted. I would rather keep it in conditional, but I'm I wanna it'd interesting what all the other commissioners have to say.

Thanks. David? Thank

you. Yeah. Again, thank you for the report. Good luck. As

far

as my view on this, I mean, anything that helps support local health care access is vital. You know, I came from city of San Jose, moved to Morgan Hill. So seeing that difference of access to to to medical care is vital. I actually had it in my notes of one of the reasons was it creates jobs. So that was kinda unique that we had a speaker speaking to that and I'm all for that as well. This is an opportunity for local jobs locally for local residents. I think that's great. I think this also strengthens Morgan Hill as a regional medical hub. I've got a family, I got kids if there's an emergency. I want options.

I want things that are open. I've already had to go to urgent care for my kids a couple of times. So I know that stress of having those options. I am concerned though that to make sure that we maintain the seventy five and twenty five on that land use. And I know we can't make, we can only make recommendations. We can't make stipulations. We're not there yet. Definitely looking forward to seeing at least renderings and designs because then I will piecemeal that in a discussion further down. But I think making sure that there's a requirement of the medical space being used first is vital as well. Again, we can't make that as a stipulation.

It can just be maybe a recommendation upon this recommendation. But with that said, I definitely will be recommending the city council to certify SEIR as well as the proposed zoning amendment. So that's my opinion.

Thank you. Thank

you, Chair. I had a quick point of clarification here. So the current building that's on-site, do we know what the current square footage is and it's single story?

The current the existing medical building is approximately 15,900 square feet.

Okay. Thank you for that. To your comment there, Commissioner Liam, I completely agree with what you've actually said so far. And I think you would put it a lot more eloquently than myself. So I would say I agree to many of the points you mentioned, including the conditional use permits.

I do maybe if you know staff want to further elaborate on I know that discussion a little bit earlier didn't elaborate on it, but I think I I'm coming from the the perspective of making sure we have the medical use built out as much as possible. You know, going back historically with what was initially intended to be medical, got the residential, you know, that the claims of what it was needed to start the medical and so on and the back and forth. So absolutely, when it comes to the findings of the public benefit, I am 100% in support of the medical use. I think it's absolutely necessary. Talk about the gaps I've seen having worked in in prehospital care and emergency care that this part of the county absolutely does need.

So 100% support of the medical uses, and I absolutely do want to see that built out. I think the the concern being is, for example, if I wanted to go in and, you know, build maybe another 35,000 some square feet, I can go ahead and start building the nonmedical. And I think the the 50% also is about 20% roughly, if not less, for the total build out. And so, again, that's also my my concern too is making sure we can get the medical built out. And as I'm here I was hearing the applicant, does it seem like 50% is seems like a relatively small component when they are doing those large

You mean 50,000 square feet?

Yeah. Sorry. 50,000 square feet is a is a smaller component. Doesn't seem like that's typically what what they do when it comes to once they know what their plan is gonna be. But regardless, I think what gave me the reassurance too is learning from the applicant that they really aren't focused on the nonmedical.

Right? They really want the medical use, and that's completely in alignment where I think what we're hoping to get is the medical use. So whether the nonmedical becomes ancillary eventually, allowing that, you know, flexibility for economic reasons and so on, I think that's okay. But I think having the full medical use built out is of most important. So to to what you said there, commissioner Lee, I would be in agreement with if you had put a promotion, keeping the the uses as conditional that are nonmedical and really focusing on the medical build out.

So that way, you know, the community can get those services, and the applicant can really focus on what they wanna focus on, which is medical uses. Compatibility, I think that's probably for a later discussion when it comes to design review. I think I I looked over the findings too, and

I think what we have so

far is consistent as long as we can really focus on those medical uses being built out first. I saw Hatcher.

K. Joseph?

Just a little bit of detail because I understand all the, there's a detailed parking analysis in the transportation part of that. How many parking spaces were committed to the residential and shared?

Let me look that up and get back to you.

Okay. I'm sure there is a shared component. I have a lot of concerns about the framework because it focuses on the the square footage and as you add non medical it could eat up the parking, right? And I want to make sure that the parking component has all its parking locked up so that they can grow out to the 275,000. What I forgot to ask the applicant was, do they think that as much as they will ever need?

Or maybe they'll need three and fifty thousand square feet, right? And that becomes harder to get to as buildings get built and I'm not sure I'll let without looking at the detailed part, how much overlap, how much non adjacent hours usage is there. It depends on what the medical uses are, but there's a thousand plus parking spots if the parking structure is built between the ground and the 900 and some that are in the structure?

It's unknown at this time whether or not, I mean, the structure could be attached to a building. It could, the buildings could come in very low slum and we don't need a structure. And it's also very conceivable that as they're working with the two seventy five, if they got that approved by City Council, as they're designing the project they could realize they need another PD amendment. So as time goes on the needs will change and that's something that we've seen that's why we're here now today because since this was originally approved at 01/2025 the needs have changed and how things develop have changed. So if they're five years out on coming back for a design permit, it's a fair bet that they're gonna recalibrate what they actually need out there.

They are working from an actual PD with a list of uses. They recommended certain changes to that. We didn't throw it out and start over. It was just an amendment. So they looked at different ways to handle this.

There are some things that they've asked to be moved to permitted by right that are ancillary like the farmers markets and there's other things that are very impactful to the site like if residential care facility or a skilled nursing facility as far as access and size. So I think what we're trying to do here is create a box that allows the design of this facility to move forward and for Sutter to figure out exactly what services they can fit in here. And once they get far enough along on that journey, that's when we'll know whether or not they need the three fifty or if they're good at two seventy five or they're only gonna build 200, whatever it might be.

Yeah. So on the framework, especially after the applicant said they had a tendency to shell part of a building that they think they'll need in a few years. I think the fifty, zero square feet is too small. I think it needs to be higher. And it needs to not include the shell portion of a building.

I think that is Higher is great, but you need to include the shell. You can't go on effective medical square footage because that's gonna be different based on any type of medical use that's provided. Mhmm. So you need to look at the gross square feet of the building.

So, if they take one of the big buildings and they build 50,000 square feet of it and it takes them seven or eight years to occupy the other 50,000 square feet, how do you guarantee that it's there? You've gotta put an upper limit or a paced limit so that the non medical doesn't scale too fast.

So, what could be a possibility is that 50,000 switches to 100. And they need to have 100,000 square feet of medical or we keep it on a lower number and you put occupied. But what I wanna not do is look at the efficiency.

I know, I'm not talking about the

Okay, that's where I thought talking you were about

the net. What I'm talking about is the gross size of the building, right, in terms of that, because the net will vary by use. Okay? What I'm talking about is the gross. I don't want 50,000 square feet of medical office building enable, I don't know, what is it? 150,000 square feet of non medical. So that's part of that. The

7,525, you beat that 69,000

So and 70

it doesn't all happen at one time, Right?

Let me ask a stupid question. What difference does it make?

Honestly, what difference does it

make? If it comes in before they fully design the whole rest of the project and they need 300,000 square feet instead of two seventy five, it's gone.

But they don't know, Joe. Nobody knows.

That's right. That's the right. There is a 100% uncertainty.

And it could be they only need 75,000 square feet of medical.

The I understand the framework is it's gotta be 75% medical, 25% Non medical. Non medical. If they build 68 or 69,000 of commercial, then they Then they have to build. Then they have to build the medical. So it's not that it's not that they can build 50,000 of medical and 69,000 of non medical because that would not that'd be closer to like, what that would not be 25% non medical.

Okay. But in ten years, if they say, now we need 300,000 square feet. Right? Because it takes them that long to get there and it's gone. We've defeated the purpose.

That that could happen.

You're right. No. I don't want that to happen.

Well, there's really no way to prevent that.

Joe, do you have a proposal?

Well, hang on a second. I think we're getting way too I know it's very hang on. Let me finish. I know it's difficult because there's no proposed site plan and buildings. I get that. So but if we don't give them permission to start something, nothing's ever gonna happen. It's gonna be another six years of looking at weeds. Thank you. Can I go, Chad? Yes.

You're right on the spot. I'm gonna support this because there are several reasons. One, I think you guys mentioned that South County has a lot of needs in terms of medical facilities. We talked about jobs. And the brand, Sutter, that's what they do.

They do medical stuff. At the end of the day, this is a this is a for profit business. And I don't wanna handcuff the applicant because I actually wanna see something get done. And that site has been vacant for a while. Given our current economic climate, It may take ages for anything to get done or never. So I wanna give the applicant as much flexibility as possible to get something there that creates jobs that has some medical in there and Sutter can make some money. So I'm for it.

If we can go back to what's approved right now, there is no framework. The only note in that area about nonmedical uses, they must be in conjunction with a hospital or other medical. There's no square footage limitation. That's the only line. So putting the framework together that staff has come up with has meant to, as much as we can, avoid the unintended consequences of a PD five or six years down the line, which we find all the time with the existing PDs that we have, where someone's like, nope, I can do that.

That defaults back to the old code where you can't tell me now. And we're trying to forecast the future or at least put as much of a guardrail on what we really want out there, which is the medical uses. And there's other ways to do it and if folks are uncomfortable with the 50,000 start, let's bump that up but it could end up resulting in someone coming in and asking for permission to be more flexible. We don't know and we won't know. I don't know if Edith has any thoughts on the guardrails that we've developed.

We we actually it's because of Edith that this framework actually got developed. She and all of our review and staff review, she called out, hey, how do we keep the non medical from outpacing the medical? And we sat down as a team and figured it out.

Thank you, Jennifer. I'm going to jump in and join the very good dialogue that is taking place this evening. Good evening, Planning Commission and teammates. I wanna take a minute to breathe and just reflect on the fact that we're here. This is a tremendous milestone for this project.

A project that is now being certified hopefully with an EIR to provide medical services to this community, which is absolutely wonderful and something we've been working towards. In the recognition and the need for flexibility, what you have before you is exactly that compromise. Something that offers a business friendly, flexible environment to the applicant and that allows other commercial uses that in many ways were part of the zoning that was part of that side prior to the medical. So, in reality, a lot of those commercial uses are well within what could have been proposed at some point or another. But we do want to hold them pointing towards the medical.

What you have before you is that framework that gives them the flexibility, yet at the same time demands that the medical component always moves ahead and with priority over the other non uses. As you're looking at this dialogue and the conversation vis a vis, what should actually have a CUP versus not? The only comment that I wanted to offer you is from if we were to put on our economic development hat, a lot of the commercial uses might be okay if they're job generating, revenue generating, and to a great extent in conformance with the zoning for the site. Uses that do provide a little bit of reservation that could end up moving forward are the ones that we're trying to set some limits, the nursing home, the skilled nursing, or some of those more quiet uses that in some cases could be considered medical in some way. Those are the ones that we are wanting to make sure that do not overwrite and overtake the entire site.

So, I think the dialogue you have here today is super very much appreciated and on track. At the end of the day, we don't know when Sutter is going to be ready to develop. The reality is that this project might take many years before something comes before us. And, when you debate the question of how high do you set the bar, I think that's a little bit challenging and maybe that requires, should you want to continue that conversation, I do think that we should pause and process that information a little bit more. Because if you set the bar too high, you might place the applicant in a position where they won't be able to stack up their development.

And we don't know their business model. We don't know if they are going to choose to go with something bigger or they are going to choose to face it in. So that's the only thing I wanted to offer you. Again, thank you to staff for the good work and thank you commission for the good dialogue this evening.

Thank you. Okay, now

I got a couple questions.

I wanna clarify for Paul one thing. They're nonprofit Sutter.

But that doesn't mean they don't.

No, no, I understand.

I'm just All I'm saying is Kaiser made about $6,000,000,000 Okay.

So Joe, do you have a proposal? Because I I We're not we're not gonna just say for a second. We're not just I mean, I think what you're saying, which is what we're all saying. I love the framework. I think the framework is terrific. Right? It's better it's way better than what we had. Maybe the question is the 75, 25, I'm okay with that. The 50000, unless you've got another number in your in your head, throw it out and let's discuss it. Right? Hang on just a second.

I wanna make sure skilled nursing, assisted living, all that stuff is non medical.

Correct. If you look at the notes of the red lines of the PD, page 25, it's in there. All the uses that are medical and all the uses that are non medical. Okay.

And the frameworks

My question is, and maybe this is the applicant or somebody else, How big is a typical skilled nursing unit in square footage?

Typical is difficult to say. It could be a residential small care or a small residential care facility and there's six people. It can be skilled nursing facility of 25. It could be 200. It really depends.

Skilled nursing at Valley Medical Center in Morgan Hill. They put skilled nursing in there. They originally used it as pandemic and it's all the bedded area, the inpatient beds, rooms in that building. It's forty, fifty thousand square feet. If that comes out of non medical, How do we account for that?

Because I think in one of the findings of fact, and I can't find it in here, a skilled nursing or assisted living is a very heavily desired facility because it generates patients very close by, right? And so, if that happens and we've already done something, we've lost a potential.

We have not lost the potential because that is the guiding rails that we put on this project now. There is no stopping anybody who owns this property and wants to develop it from coming back to you for a change, coming back to you for an amendment, saying hey, know the 70 five-twenty five split is great, we're gonna do a 70,000 square foot residential care facility here but we'd also like to put in a restaurant and a retail store to serve the community. We need more square footage for non medical. Can we change the PD? That is something that can happen at any time. There's no limitations on how many times a PD can be amended.

But if somebody comes in and says they wanted skilled nursing now in there, you don't get a 10,000 square foot restaurant to earn anything else.

That's what I'm saying. They would have to do an amendment to the PD. No. Yes.

No, you said 60,000 square feet is non medical and it's permitted.

No. I'm not understanding.

There are certain uses that we're putting them on check, right? You have the medical uses green light, you have a set of permitted uses green light, you have a set of uses that we're saying they could be permitted. However, this set of uses, assisted living and what have you, this other set of uses have to be in check with a proportionality of the rest of the medical use.

Absolutely. And you're not hearing me. Those are critical to the medical and they may be big enough to take everything that you've got in the 25%.

Understood. I think I heard you say that they could be part of their business model.

They could be No. No. What I'm saying is by taking them and saying they're permitted, okay, they could use up all the things. If they're not the first one that comes in the door, we've lost the opportunity to get a very great support of the medical center.

But Joe, can I just ask a clarifying question, Joe, what you're saying? So, it's 69, what did we say? It's like the max we're saying 25% is 69,000 feet. Let's just say it's 69,000 square feet. You're saying they could propose to come in and say I wanna build a 69,000 square foot assisted living facility, right?

No, anybody could come in. Not Sutter because there are permitted, under the recommendation, are permitted non medical use.

Sutter owns the property.

Sutter owns the property,

right? Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

No one's gonna build a scope.

But Sutter, maybe they say they do it, but if we built 20,000 square feet or 30,000 square feet of something else, that opportunity goes away.

It doesn't because they then come to the Planning Commission and say, hey, we'd like to change this because we wanna get a skilled nursing facility in here.

Okay, but does that mean that our primary medical facility now shrinks?

Well, might not. They can't get 69,000 square feet of skilled nursing if they haven't built out the full medical campus to the maximum square feet. There is area left over where they could add on

so where's the pacing that's the part that

they need 2025% of whatever they build can be non medical but that means 75% of whatever they build have to has to be medical they can't get 69,000 square feet of skilled nursing unless they built out the full capacity of the medical.

No. Not the full capacity, Don. 20 foot only 50,000.

No. No. No. They have to they have to build 50,000 before there's any non medical.

Right. Right.

But they but 25% the

75% of whatever they build has to be medical.

Hey. They're not gonna build anything unless we approve this. How about that?

Okay. But the the framework is great. I just don't think it's bulletproof. It isn't. Nothing's bulletproof

because they can come back and change it. We can't legislate them out of everything.

I'm not legislating them out of everything. I'm trying to keep the focus on the primary. Mhmm. Right?

I I think by the definition of the name of the company, I think they'll do that.

The only way to lock down an absolute is if someone here can forecast the future.

Hold on.

Nobody can. But what we've done Let

me go to the I mean, was AI. See what it says.

I can

offer you that this framework was shared with the applicant to just ensure if there's any concerns that they may have. I appreciate the synergy of some of these uses. I think that the guardrails are really intended to keep the applicant in delivering medical services to the community that are not under the umbrella of assisted living. And I think this framework could be changed if you feel that it's appropriate to change the percentages. We don't know.

This was sort of our approach, which was not challenged by the applicant. I think that what would be most helpful in the conversation is for us to understand what you're solving for. Commissioner Mueller, if I'm tracking where you're headed with this, you're trying to explore the how do we make sure that we're not setting ourselves to restricted to ensure that the medical does come in. That's sort of like what I'm hearing. I'm also hearing

I'm hearing that he's concerned that the non medical won't the non medical won't will all get taken up by assisted living or or that that sort of use. And then there won't be square footage left over for the restaurant, whatever.

That's possible. Right, Don?

That's possible.

Any of those are possible, but we don't know. Right? What we do know, Joe, is that they can only build up to 69,000 square feet. That could be one facility, or it could be five different facilities, right? Right,

well, it could, and I would say, but it's important to keep in mind, if if the letter comes back and they say, we only want to do 75,000 square feet of medical that doesn't mean that they can do 75,000 square feet of medical and 69,000 square feet of it's proportional so if they did come back with if they only want to do, they can only do 25% of whatever the medical is as non medical.

That's correct. Just

building on what Don is saying. So based on the maximum square footage that is being proposed the 275,000 square foot. So, the way that the framework is written, the only way that they are able to get the 25 maximum 25%, so 69,000 square foot, is if they build the full 75% of medical, which would be, you would get the approximately 206,000 square feet of medical uses.

Okay. You're putting a rate, a proportional rate in that. Okay? I didn't read it that way. There's no proportional rate that says that you have to build at the at the 25 of the existing or the current constructed or under constructed. I didn't see that connection in there.

So Joe, are you reading it as you build 50,000, you get the 69? Yeah. Okay.

It does read that like.

No, no, no, that's fair.

It does read like that and I agree with Joe. If it's what you described Joey, where it's proportional, that's much better control. But it doesn't read like that, right?

And that is the commission, we would love direction from the commission on which option of interpretation you would prefer and we will update the language for the council

would based on that. Say it was proportional, much better.

Yeah. Go ahead. Language here says a minimum of 75% of the total developed gross buildings square footage within the medical campus shall consist of medical uses. Non medical uses shall not exceed 25% of the total developed gross building square footage.

I think what Joe

was saying, just hang on for a second. Think what Joe was saying, if I hear you correctly, right? Let's just play out a scenario. And like I said, great that solar is doing this, but it's gonna be medical. Right? But let's play out a scenario. It says you gotta start with 50,000 square foot of medical. Right? Is that what it says? Okay. So they build the 50,000 square foot of medical. Right? Then they say, well, that means now I can go build up to 69,000 square foot of nonmedical.

Yeah. And and and that may not be as clear in the staff report as it is in the actual ordinance itself. The actual ordinance is what what either those were. So it's more proportional. It's it's proportional.

So if you do 50,000 square feet of

medical That I could have.

Can only proportionally build nonmedical before we have to bring before we have to build more medical.

Right. It doesn't it it Okay. 50,000 square feet of medical doesn't open the flood gates to build all these.

Okay.

It's specifically the ordinance's non medical uses may be approved concurrently with medical uses provided that the development phase includes at least 50,000 square feet of medical uses and the project will remain in compliance with the 75% minimum medical uses and 25% maximum non medical uses build out.

It still doesn't read right down.

That doesn't sound like what you just It's actually close. It's close. It's actually close, but the way you read it there as per or indicated it is proportional. That makes it that also makes the 50,000 square feet a lot better. Okay. Right? Because that keeps the the number small. Right? If it's proportional to the actual built.

Yes. Yeah.

The only thing that would be better when you get to the larger buildings if it was built and occupied since we know they build shelves.

Well, I mean, we can only go so far, right? But I'd be happy with build. Do we have a motion? Yes.

We actually do have a motion. We have a motion to recommend that the city council certify the final subsequent report to SER and also to the mitigation monitoring reporting program and recommend that the city council approve the zoning amendment and plan development master plan amendment for the Rosewood Medical Campus project.

Don't we have, can we do them in one motion or don't you have to

It's a recommendation. You can do them in one motion.

Second. Can I make an alternate, do we have to vote on this? Can I make an alternate motion?

You can offer an amendment.

I'd like to offer an amendment to not include the permitted uses, keep them as conditioned. I'd be happy with the rest of it, but that would be my amendment.

So the question is, is that acceptable to make her second or do you wanna

May I ask a clarifying question, Don?

About the motion?

About the, she's clarifying motion. Yeah. The permitted uses, is that the entirety of the list of permitted uses? Is it the change from the previous set of permitted uses to what is now being recommended?

It's

the if I'm reading it again, if I'm reading this correctly, it's asking for specific uses to be switched from conditional to permitted, like assisted living facilities, change residential care, skilled nursing, day care, and farmers market from conditional permitted to permitted. I'm my proposal is to keep them as conditionally permitted.

To clarify, assisted living is an addition. That's a new addition. That is a use that is newly added to this list.

And I'm okay adding it to the list as long as it's conditionally permitted.

So as I understand the offer of a friendly amendment would be to keep the uses that are currently conditional conditional and to add assisted living as a conditional use. And then the question is if that is acceptable to the maker of the motion

and the second. Can I explain my logic for a second? Yes. It's purely to bring it back for discussion so that we understand what's going on and before someone pulls the plug on something, is everything still in compliance? I'm still concerned about everything being nonmedical. I know the percentages helped out, but it's just to bring it back to the table. Okay.

So the the proposal with the one change is to make the assisted living instead of being permitted be conditional. That's what's on the table as a motion.

And the farmers market and daycare also would remain.

It's remain conditional. And the farmers market and the daycare would remain conditional permitted. Right. May I ask?

And. Question. To clarify, and hotel would remain conditional?

And what? Hotel.

Is it already conditional?

It is currently conditional and as opposed proposed as the changes, it was proposed to be changed to permitted.

That would also be conditional.

Hotels, that wasn't listed on here.

Yeah, was.

Hotels, none of them. Yeah. It's not on the PowerPoint. Okay.

It was not listed in the PowerPoint, but it was listed it's listed on the proposed red lines.

And in the staff report.

Okay. I did reset. So, again, to be clear, I'm saying leave everything that's conditional as conditional. And if we're adding assisted living facilities to also make that conditional. Okay. I got two questions.

First to the motion maker. What do you want to have happen there?

What do you mean?

What's the purpose?

I think

you're doing an

amendment. I understand that. Why are you wanting to make it conditional?

Because I want to be able to have a discussion prior to any of this, any these type of facilities to be constructed there. I wanted to come back to the Planning Commission. I wanted to have a discussion. I want to understand the logic. I want to see where we're at and see if it's still appropriate. This could be ten years time, by the way. You know? Who knows? Right? We might still be here, Joe. Who knows? Right? That's why I wanna do it. I want to be able have a discussion. I don't want like I like I said from the very beginning when I did my initial feedback, I just find this whole project, which was all medical. The last thing we're seeing is medical. You know? And it just still bothers me to say, want us to have a conversation about it. Okay. I'm not saying I would refuse it. I'm just saying I wanna have a conversation about it.

Okay. But I what's the purpose of the discussion if there's very specific findings that are unrelated to that that you have to make or not be not be able to make to turn it down?

I understand that. I understand that. But at least we're at least we're able to have a conversation about it. And we have influenced conditional uses before. Right? Very effectively influenced conditional uses before. I

think it's

You don't have to agree, Joe.

So I'm not sure it's

Who seconded the motion?

Chair did.

But he wants to have a discussion knowing that the findings are such that you have to

say Let's get the motion firmed up and then we can Okay. Then we can do that.

Let me find out who's in favor of that amendment.

Well, think first is it gonna be a friendly amendment is the first question. So that's the question first.

Yes, I would go along with the suggested amendment.

And then the clerk and then the chair if you would go along with that.

Got it.

Okay. So then if you want to continue with your amendment push it down and you could make a substitute motion.

I'm sorry. I've lost you now. So I made a substitution. You agreed. You asked for a

friendly amendment that was Yeah. Declined.

But So

now if you wanna make a substitute motion, you can make a substitute motion. Which is your motion?

You can just

say, I'll make my motion of substitute motion.

I'll make my motion of substitute motion.

Second. Okay. So, there's a motion in a second. So, now, there's a debate over Commissioner Downey's motion.

How dare you debate by motion?

The question I have done.

So, basically, we're deciding of this group who approves Liam's proposal.

So, as I understand it, there's currently currently two motions. One motion

The substitute motion. So the substitute motion is what we're debating?

Yes. Okay. And I would just go back to what Commissioner Liam was saying is, I think we're really losing focus of the medical uses and having some of these items that, first of all, I don't think, you know, Edith from maybe an economic development standpoint, when you're looking at, for example, even like residential uses, right, we still have the mixed use residential uses as permitted. We still have some of these other nonmedical uses that may not necessarily be revenue generating, may be may not be what's intended by economic development being permitted in those nonmedical spaces. We know that we want medical, and that's really the focus we want.

Right? We also know that we wanna maybe have more focused economic development uses, yet we're still looking at noneconomic development uses. And so the least I think we can look at is keeping it as a conditional use because you can make findings depending on what specifically is proposed, but I get your point there, Joe, right, is maybe we don't even want them to be permitted. Right? If you if you really just want medical, you can go the extreme, not allow any other permitted uses and just focus on medical uses, and that really just hones the focus immediately. That's, again, one extreme end of it. I think there is that opportunity to condition So Chair,

what I suggest for us to move ahead is we need to vote on the friendly motion that Liam suggested. It agrees to

be added, correct?

The substitute motion, I think.

The substitute motion. Yes.

So we need

to take a vote on that, chair.

Okay. Did some Well, and and that's called the question. Is everybody ready to vote?

Are you ready to vote on the substitute motion that we I will Which is to make

legal clarification. The question I have, Don, is under a conditional use permit, you have to be able to come up with a needed mitigation before you can turn it down.

Yeah. So the conditional use permit is, I mean to commissioner Hippi's point, if you don't want it, you don't make it a conditional use because you can't deny a conditional use permit without making findings that are hard to make to deny, especially in light of the various uses that are being proposed to be by right. There are uses that are virtually impossible to deny on a conditional use permit. All you can do is condition them, and the types of things we would condition them on are the kinds of things that they're going to do anyway. So what it does do is it brings it it makes them go jump through a hoop to come back to the Planning Commission, but you ultimately don't have discretion to deny it.

If you want it, if you don't want those uses, then don't make them permitted or conditional, make them prohibited.

Building off of what Don is saying, because it's currently listed in the currently approved master plan, our current conditional findings of approval for our conditional use permit is really hard to find in order to deny that CUP. So by adding the CUP requirement for some of these uses, is just adding on an additional administrative or cost burden to the applicant. Now, in recognizing that the city and everybody wants to preserve the primary medical use of the site, that is why staff worked so hard to still provide flexibility to the applicant but also come up with a robust framework that can ensure a primary medical serving facility.

The only thing I'd add to that is the reason we're talking about all these other uses is that the medical uses are easy. Like, yes, it's gonna mean, yes, we all want this to be primarily medical. That's the reason for the framework, but those are easy. The other stuff is what we are having. The reason we're talking more about the other stuff is because that's not as easy. That's the we really want that stuff because we wanted to support the medical. But it's not that our focus is on those things. It's that the medical is not that's a

no brainer. But you almost make it sound like you make it sound like, oh, conditional use premise, what's the point of that? Right?

Well, point But the

point of them is that you do have to have a discussion. We've got everybody we have conditional uses all over the city. Right?