Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. The regular meeting of the Oakley Planning Commission is called to order at 06:30PM. Before we start, I'd like to thank everybody for showing up and showing the community participation. I have been on the commission since it started, and I have never seen an audience like this. So thank you very much for coming. At this time, will the clerk please do roll call for us?

Commissioner Gaudi? Present. Commissioner Ireland?

Present.

Commissioner Oliveros? Present. Vice Chair Harvey?

Present.

Chair Price?

Present. At this time, we will stand in to pledge allegiance to the flag. At this time, we will have public comments for items not on the agenda. At this time, I do not have any public comment cards to speak on this. So we're gonna move to next item on the agenda, which is a consent calendar.

And I move for approval of the consent calendar.

I approve last meeting for to approve moving forward.

I'll second the motion.

Commissioner Gaudi. Aye. Commissioner Ireland.

Aye.

Commissioner Oliveros. Aye. Vice chair Harvey. Aye. Chair Price.

Aye.

Item 3.1 passes five zero.

And we now move to public hearings. Public hearings is item 4.1, the Bridgehead Industrial Park. Mister Storilla?

Thank you and good evening, mister chair, miss vice chair, and members of the planning commission, and to those in the audience. Give us one minute so we can pull up the presentation and then we'll show it on the screen. Alright. Thank you very much for waiting a second so we can get that set up. So tonight's item 4.1 is a public hearing on the Bridgehead industrial project.

There we go. And this is a basically a map of the city of Oakley. The two stars up in the top left corner show the general location of the project site, and there are two sites separated by the railroad tracks. So we put two stars there just to indicate the location. And this is a a zoomed in aerial view showing the North Development Area and South Development Area, which I'll explain a little bit more in this presentation and the site's proximity to other uses in the city of Oakley.

So this is, the purpose of the public hearing tonight is for the planning commission to consider adoption of two resolutions. One is pertaining to the planning commission's recommendation to the city council regarding an application requesting several entitlements that I will explain in a moment. And along with that is recommending certification of the project's environmental impact report. So there are two resolutions to take action on. This is a list of the requested entitlements.

So these this is what makes up the project. When the applicant comes to the city and submits an application for a project, oftentimes, there are different entitlements or different things that go with that project. And this is a summary. So the first one is for a general plan amendment, and that was to redesignate the general plan land use designation or the map, what's designated on the general plan map of the southern portion or the south development area from commercial to light industrial. The second entitlement is for a rezone, and the zoning is always required to be consistent with the general plan designation.

The rezone is to reclassify the zoning district for the entire project site, so both the north and south areas from their current zoning of Business Park Low for the North and River Oaks Crossing specific plan, which is a specific plan zoning in the southern property that at one time permitted three big box retailers including a Walmart for the entire project area to be designated to p one plan unit development district with with the preliminary development plan. The third entitlement is for a tentative map, and this is essentially a subdivision. You may refer hear these referred to as a major tentative map or a major map or a major subdivision, and this is to subdivide the three existing parcels. So there's one parcel in the north area, and there's basically one large parcel and then a sliver parcel in the south area, but it would be to subdivide the entire project area into 10 lots. Design review is an entitlement for the design of the project.

That's the landscaping, the site layout, the driveway locations, the building architecture, etcetera. And then there's a master sign program. So since this business or this business park, light industrial area would have more than six businesses, it has 10 buildings proposed. It kind of triggers what the city calls a master sign program. And the idea behind that's the same same thing you'd see in a shopping center.

The idea for that is that you get a consistent look and design of signage throughout the site including entry signs main project signs, wall signs, etcetera as opposed to having individual building owners come in with their own design plans and having, you know, unmatched signage. And then finally is a development agreement. That's an agreement made with the city council, and I'll get into the a few of the details on what's being requested in the development agreement. There's also the environmental impact report. The environmental impact report is an environmental analysis that looks over essentially a preset list of potential impact categories, uses thresholds to determine potential significance of impacts, and then looks at ways to either minimize, mitigate, or avoid those impacts.

And this is a required step, has to be taken along with any approval of any project. So as part of tonight's hearing, the environmental impact report has been presented as part of the project and the planning commission is being asked to also recommend action on the environmental impact report which the council would be required to certify as if they were to approve this project. So the existing conditions and the general plan and zoning, in its entirety, the project's approximately approximately 164 acres in size. It's bifurcated by the BNSF railroad tracks. And the north development area is approximately 76.4 acres with the south being approximately 87.6.

It's relatively flat site. As many know, it's currently cultivated with vineyards, and there are existing buildings related to the viticulture on the north site. The general plan designations are light industrial and commercial. The northern property is light industrial. The southern property is commercial.

The zoning is is briefly mentioned earlier is also split. The northern side is Business Park Low District, and the south side is the SP, the specific plan for the River Oaks Crossing specific plan. I know that map's a little hard to read, but just wanted to show it's kind of the same map that was shown in the close-up aerial from the previous slides. So the surrounding existing uses include single family residences, Marina And San Joaquin River to the north of the north development area. And there's a few there's a few homes just to the north of it on the same side of Big Break.

A construction company, single family residences, the Big Break Regional Trail, and the Big Break Regional Shoreline to the East across Big Break Road, agricultural land, light industrial uses, commercial uses, single family residences to the south across Main Street, and the Oakley Logistics Center, sometimes referred to as Contra Costa Logistics Center. I'm going to refer to it as Oakley Logistics Center to the north and west of the the site as well. And there's additional commercial uses south and residential South of Main Street. So the project description, this is just a kind of a title slide and showing one of the renderings for one of the buildings. But again, these the these are the requested entitlements.

So I'll go each go through each one of these just a little bit more. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on these slides because I went through these already but the north the general plan amendment is for the North Development Area. It's currently designated as LI and the South is the commercial. So this would be for actually the South Development Area to change it from commercial to LI to match what's on the North Development Area. And the rezone this would be for the entire project site.

Again, it would be it would be requesting a change of the zoning of the North Development Area from the business park low to light industrial and for the South the South Development Area from the sp two, the specific plan district also to the projects p one district. You may ask what's a p one district? So a p one district is a zoning designation that is specific to a project or a site in this case. And it's essentially like a miniature zoning code that applies to a project and oftentimes it will allow for flexibility with development. There may be things that are pulled from the existing zoning code of a relatively similar zoning district.

There could be things that are specific to the project. But essentially it lays the groundwork at a project level for things like zoning regulations use allowances and things of that nature. So the requirements for the P 1 District would be established as part of the adoption of the P 1 District for the site and the approval of a rezone would ensure the compatibility with the surrounding land uses and maintain substantial compliance with the city general plan. So this the P 1 District that's being proposed is very similar to what you would see in the light industrial zoning for the city. However, our light industrial zoning is very old zoning text.

It does not have many of the some of the uses that were called out in this P 1 District. So this kind of applies to a modern light industrial project. And then finally, there's preparation of a final development plans required for developments of a P 1 District. And the tentative map splits the side up into 10 lots, and each of those lots has its own building. So there's 10 lots, 10 buildings, and the buildings range in size.

From as I say as small as, but we all these are big buildings. So the small on the smaller side, it's just over a 117,000 square feet and the larger one is over a 100 936,000 square feet. Buildings 1 Through 5 is indicated on the plans are located within the North Development Area, north of the railroad Tracks Building 6 Through 10 would be located in the South Development Area. The the applicant they may touch on this later during their presentation, but their their phasing plan would be to do the South Development Area first Complete that before before the North Development Area begins. For the designer view, again, this is essentially required for new above ground buildings or structures or land development.

So in looking at design review, we ensure that the project being proposed is substantially consistent with the adopted design guidelines and any regulations in the zoning code or in this case the proposed P 1 district. It consists of the evaluation of we look at site planning. So all the sites laid out including building sidings setbacks to buildings orientation entries. So things like where the entries are located. What's at the entries the landscaping at the entries internal circulation truck turning radii things of that nature off street parking trees where trees are located.

How many are being proposed and landscape buffers trash enclosures. Make sure they comply with our storm water standards. And the other things listed there. As part of the diner design review process, the entire site layout would be subject to this review. So it's not just a portion of the site for for this project.

And here's just a few elevations that the applicant proposed. This is kind of looking at what's called Buildings 4 And 5. So this rendering kind of shows I guess what it would look like if you're on Vintage Parkway facing West obviously with no homes right there where the grass is, but that's what the building entries would look like on that side and then in the back kind of in the middle is one of the larger buildings would be located as proposed. This is looking sort of North along Big Break Road and Vintage Parkway is would be off to the right side about halfway up the photo. You can kind of see a break in the buildings that would be looking into the gap that we were just looking at in the previous rendering.

And then this is Building 6. So this is Big Break Road. I'm sorry. Bridgehead Road and this would kind of be maybe like where the hotel entrance is over there on Bridgehead looking toward looking Northeast towards Building 6 or the building that's up proposed along Bridgehead Road. And finally, this is Building 7.

This building is along Main Street. This rendering shows from the south side of Main Street looking Northeast again and it shows the landscape median. So there would be a landscape median that's conditioned to be built with this project in Main Street and what the project entry would look like there. And this is the conceptual site plan. So you can see the different building sizes.

You can see Building 6 on the far left Buildings 4 And 5 or on the right side. They're the first two as you go up and then some of the other buildings spread throughout. It also shows the it's I understand it's hard to see on this slide, but the entire project has street trees that line Big Break Road Bridgehead Road and Main Street as well as trees that line areas of the interior circulation network. And finally the well, not finally. There's one more after this.

But the master sign program is mentioned previously. It's really just to have a consistent sign design and to allow for any fluctuations from the normal sign ordinance. And this project has entry signs project signs wall signs and things of that nature. So this is included the master sign programs actually included in the pud document that's attached to your staff report. The planned unit development document starts on page 30.

And the last entitlement on this list is the development agreement. So the applicants proposing to enter into a development agreement with the city of Oakley. The city council approves those. And the proposed development agreement seeks a twenty year term from the date of its commencement, which happens thirty days after adoption of the ordinance that would approve it. And the key elements in the development agreement is it locks in the right to develop the property in compliance to the approved development plan.

The entitlement terms would be tied to the term of the development agreement. So what that means is, for instance rather than having a one year term or whatever it is on a design review and having to come back for extension that design review if approved as a part of this project with this development agreement would last for the term of the agreement. So it not only does it lock in the right to develop the property, but it locks in the method in which the property would be developed. So they don't have to keep coming back for more entitlements throughout the life of the the d a, we'll call it development agreement. There's annual reviews of staff and the applicant for the development agreement.

And then part of the development agreement is the developer would be contributing $250,000 towards the construction of an overhead railroad crossing at Bridgehead. As many people may know if you've ever driven down Bridgehead Road, there's a very narrow railroad crossing. It's an overhead crossing and that railroad crossing makes improvements to Bridgehead very expensive and not very feasible right now. The city has issues with flooding in that area when there's heavy rains. And so we feel that a widening out there is going to require additional work to that Crossing.

So this obviously wouldn't pay for that entire project, but it would be a step in the right direction. And then for the environmental review, there's just a couple terms I want to cover before I get into these slides so that the planning commission and and those in attendance are aware. You may hear hear the term CEQA and CEQA is an acronym for the California Environmental Quality Act. And CEQA is essentially the guidelines used to analyze projects in California. Projects is a word defined by CEQA for potential environmental impacts to disclose those impacts, to allow for public comments on the document, to mitigate if possible, like I mentioned earlier, to either minimize impacts, mitigate, or avoid, and there are thresholds involved.

So the point of CEQUA is if we could eliminate all potential impacts, that would be fantastic. But the reality is many impacts are not able to be completely mitigated or made to disappear. So with CEQA, the goal is to reduce impacts to a level of significance that's considered an insignificant impact. So there may still be an impact, but it's below a certain threshold, so it's not considered significant. And just keep in mind those words are they're part of CEQUA.

They're tied to CEQUA. So in this sense significant less insignificant. I said insignificant. The proper tournaments less insignificant. These are terms directly tied to CEQUA and the thresholds established in the guidelines and so forth. So as part of the project, an environmental impact report is prepared. We have experts that work on these for experts in air quality, biology, noise, acoustical analysis, things like that. And all of that analysis is put into what's called a draft environmental impact report.

I want to make sure

I'm not going into slides ahead of me. So that draft environmental impact report is made available to the public, interested parties, outside agencies, etcetera. Comments are received and eventually there's a response to those comments and I'll get into that in a second. So the first step, I've already gone through this, described, there's other things too that the CEQUA document does. It looks at alternatives to the project that would still satisfy the main project objectives.

Looks at how those alternatives may differ in their impacts from the proposed project and it kind of gives a breakdown of all of those for the ultimate decision makers and the public to look at and consider. And this is so I talked about impact, right? So there's impact categories. And on the right side, it lists all of the impact categories that are in a sequa document. So there's a checklist that's typically used and you can see that as you go through the document.

And these are the categories. So aesthetics, So this can look at anything from, you know, blocking scenic resources to something like that nature. Agricultural resources, air quality greenhouse gas emissions and energy bio cultural and tribal resources geology and soils hazards hazardous materials hydrology water quality and use planning noise public service utilities and transportation or traffic. And this just given a rundown. This is in your staff report as well, but this just gives a rundown of kind of the timeline the sequel document goes through once it's ready for public consumption.

The notice of first, the notice of preparation is issued. So once a once a lead agency, we'll call it the lead agency is the agency responsible for preparing the document, that would be the city of Oakley in this case. Once it's determined a CEQUA document is needed or an EIR is needed, a notice of preparation is sent out. So that goes out. It's made public. It goes out to outside agencies and and other interested parties. And that just says, hey, we have a project. We're gonna do an eir. And it allows for early comments to be received. We also did scoping meeting right here in this room to solicit public input on this potential project and the CEQUA document at hand.

So that was done. Those comment letters are included as an attachment to the draft September, the draft EIR was completed. So it was it was all done and it was ready to to be sent out. And so it was circulated. And that was for forty five day public review period. So during those forty five days, the city did receive some public comments on the draft EIR. And those are those are basically what we're gonna get into next. So those public comments are what helped to create what we call the final EIR. And then also in we sent out the notice of availability so that tells people, hey, this EIR is out there. It's time to come look at it.

Comment on it if you have comments. And of course, we put it on the the city website as well. So then the draft year of public comment closes. All the comments are gathered. They go back to the to the experts and and they do what's called bracketing of the letters.

So they look at each comment letter, they bracket each comment, and they provide a response to every single comment that was received within that time period that addresses the draft EIR. And that is kind of the bulk of what's in the final EIR. And just know that when we talk about the draft EIR, usually when you hear draft, you're thinking it's not the official document. It's just a draft. It's not the final. And it can get confusing with CEQA. It's different with CEQA. The draft EIR is the final document for the draft EIR. It is just that it they call it a draft EIR because it still has not received public comment. But it is the official document.

It's the one that goes out for public comment. The final eir is a separately bound document that together with the draft eir make up the project EIR. So you may hear me refer to the EIR and just know that that refers to the whole of the EIR, the draft EIR and the final EIR. So the final EIR includes the revisions to the draft EIR text if there are any, and there were a couple in here for this one, and what's called a mitigation monitoring and reporting program. Sometimes just referred to a mitigation monitoring plan.

They're called different things. But essentially what they are is they are a summary, a table summary, in our case we do tables, that list all of the impact categories where there are potentially significant impacts, what the proposed mitigation is, what the resulting level of significance is after that implementation, and then who the responsible party is for ensuring that mitigation is done. Because it's not the applicant. It's gonna be the community development department or the building division or the public works and engineering division or maybe an outside agency. So there's different parties that that may need to be involved in ensuring that these these mitigation measures are implemented in the time that they're required to be implemented.

That's all in the MMRP. And then finally, the final eir is required to be made public at the same time we do the notice of public hearing, so at least ten days prior to the hearing date. And that was that was put on the website on January 9. So just to summarize the draft EIR, we did receive three comment letters within the public comment period. The final AIR includes all three of these letters along with the responses to comments to all three.

We did receive a fourth comment letter which was outside the public comment period, and it wasn't like five minutes outside. It was, like, days, like, ten days or so outside the public comment period. So that is not included in the final EIR. However, we have included that comment letter as an attachment to the staff report as well as our consultant's response to that letter. That's also attached to the staff report for the planning commission's consideration.

So they they still did respond to it. It's just not a part of the final EIR. So the staff report also call attention to what's called significant and unavoidable impacts identified in the EIR. These are impacts that even with avoidance, even with mitigation or reduction, they're still found to exceed a a certain threshold of significance. So they're labeled as significant unavoidable.

And there are three areas. So the the first one is the conversion of prime farmland, unique farmland or farmland of statewide importance to nonagricultural use. Second is to conflict with or obstruct implementation of the applicable air quality plan during project operation. And the third is to result in a cumulatively considerable net increase in any criteria pollutant for which the project region is nonattainment under an applicable federal and state ambient air quality standard. And those are the only three I don't mean to say only, but those are the there there are no others.

So it's just this slide. These are the three significant unavoidable impacts that the EIR identified. And because there are significant and unavoidable impacts, when certifying an EIR, the decision making body is required to make what's called a statement of overriding considerations. That is something that gets baked into the findings for certification of the EIR, and it is essentially, in this case, it would be the city council saying, we understand there are significant and unavoidable impacts associated with this project. However, the benefits of the project been weighed against those impacts, and this is the statement that they make to basically say that the project is still being seen in a favorable light.

So these are just a quick analysis. I know this is going a bit long, but I wanna be sure to be thorough for everyone's benefit. I'm not gonna go through all these, but I just wanna point out that there is a resolution attachment 12 to the staff report, and that includes required findings for each of the five entitlements that were listed earlier. So the general plan amendment, the rezone, etcetera. And this just summarizes what those findings are.

So I can I can say that staff was able to make the required findings for all of the entitlement requests? So we did that for the general plan amendment, the rezone, the tentative map, the design review, the master sign program, and the development agreement. And again, the draft findings for the certification of the project's environmental impact report and approval of the various entitlements I listed can be found in the proposed resolution. So attachment attachment 11 is the resolution that would recommend the city council certify the EIR. Attachment 12 is the resolution that would recommend the city council approve the project entitlements.

And this explains what those two resolutions are. So I don't wanna get ahead of anything here, but this is before if if and when we get to that point, I just wanna make sure that it's clear there are two resolutions to be acted on tonight. And I wanna make sure that when we get to that point, that's that's done properly that we do address them as separate resolutions. So written public comments. When when the project is about to go to hearing, a notice of public hearing is is made available, we send it out to the state law requires that we send the notice of public hearing out to all owners of property.

So it will go to the mailing address of the property owner, that own property within 300 feet of the project boundary. And the city of Oakley City Council years ago said that's not good enough. We want to expand that that distance. So for all notices of public hearing, all CEQUA notices, all notices of work sessions when we have them, we don't do 300 feet. We do 500 feet.

And you can imagine, as you expand that that buffer from the project boundary boundaries, you know, it captures more and more properties. So there may be a case where one neighbor got it, one neighbor didn't. They're probably on the other side of that 500 foot line. But if that 500 foot line touches any portion of a parcel, that owner should be mailed a notice as long as the county assessor's office has a mailing address for that owner. If if if anyone is not an owner of a property, perhaps they're they're renting a home or something, they may not have received the notice if they live within that 500 feet.

So, yeah, we do 500 feet. It it helps us reach more of the public, and it's something I think the the city council's proud that they made a policy for us and that that we're proud that we do because it reaches more people. So once that's done, the public come we we can receive public comments. So they typically don't come in right away. Much like today, they typically come the day of the hearing.

So we received a lot today. The inbox was filling up. And we have a really cool system where we have an online public port, online comment portal where folks can go in and submit public comments online, indicate whether they're gonna be at the or they wanna speak at the hearing or not. And hopefully, chair, you have that list of all the public commenters that submitted online comments and who who may be here tonight and want to speak. So those have all been forwarded to the planning commission.

We also received a couple of other letters and and that sort of thing. Those have also been forwarded to the planning commission. There's one I call out here that came from Golden State Environmental Justice Alliance. They sent in a public comment letter late this afternoon. The planning commission I think has a hard copy. And it's also in the public binder. So we put it out in the public binder and all these public comments should be in the public binder. And I just wanted to point out this letter. There were there was an email and then there was like attachments. So the email and one of the attachments is included on your on the dais.

The second attachment is a part of the final environmental impact report. So the the commission already has that. It's already in the public record. I just wanted to point that out. It is the comment letter they submitted for the draft EIR.

Word of the day in my email is data center. And this was a recurring public comment was on the use of a data center. So I just wanted to to kind of address this early. I know it's a point of contention, and I wanna I wanna kind of explain what staff has analyzed as part of this project, what we have been presented with, and then hopefully that can help lead discussion as we move forward. So a data center is one of the several proposed uses that could occur at the project site as indicated in the proposed planned unit development.

To date, as early as probably an hour and a half ago, I've confirmed there are no known users for this project. All future proposed uses will need to be analyzed for consistency with the analysis that's been done in the environmental impact report. So I wanna be clear. I know there's a flyer going around. It said stop the AI center next to Vintage Parkway or something like that.

They're not proposing a data center next to Vintage Parkway, but that doesn't mean someday they might not. Right? It's just not being proposed right now. So I just wanna be totally transparent about that. But I do wanna let the commission and the public and the applicant know that I'm here to help guide discussion on this topic and and to assist in making a recommendation to the city council that can ensure that this project as a whole can be held to the standards that are in the EIR.

And if necessary require additional environmental analysis should something like a data center or other utility rich use be proposed on the site. So I wanna make that clear. We are here to assist in in that discussion and come up with solutions. And if we get to that point, I'd be happy to share some ideas that that staff has and and have discussed with the applicant that could be pretty good solutions for how to move forward with this. So ultimately, staff does recommend that the planning commission approve the proposed resolutions recommending the city council certify the project's environmental impact report and approve the project, I e, the project entitlements.

And, again, there are two resolutions that should be acted upon separately. I have this slide up, but I wanna go through it first. So it does say questions for staff. So I just wanna kind of help, if I may, chair, guide the meeting a little bit just because I've been through a lot of big meetings like this. So the planning commission may have questions for staff like right now and we're happy to field those questions.

I do wanna point out that the applicant does have a short PowerPoint presentation and typically they're, per the chair, they're allowed to give a presentation of their project. This is a large project so if staff could help influence that at all, I'd say usually it's limited to ten minutes. It may go a few minutes over if they needed the time, but it is a lot to cover. So the planning commission could ask those questions now. Alternatively, let the applicant present their project, then ask questions of staff and or the applicant.

And I do wanna also point out the planning commission can ask questions of staff at any time throughout this public hearing before it opens, after it's closed, at any time. So you may get all the way to deliberations and a motion. And then before a second, have a question. We're happy to answer any questions. So we're available throughout the entire hearing. With that said, that is my last slide. So that concludes the presentation of the project. Thank you for sitting through all of that. I know it was a lot. And for the commission, we would ask whether you'd like the applicant to come up and give their presentation first or if you have any questions you'd like answered before that.

I'd like to ask some specific questions about the existing EIR if that's okay.

I think it it may be beneficial for us to hear the applicant's information, let them do their presentation, and then to ask questions

Will it address

know it's not the order

specifics of the EIR?

Whatever you like. Yeah. We're here.

Well, unless we know that that will address all of the questions.

Yeah. I just think it might be a good idea to hear all the material, all the presentation, then ask questions. If it doesn't cover it, we're in the same spot. But if it does, you know, we have a lot of people waiting. We might save a little time.

So at this time, does the applicant please come forward and make a presentation?

We're gonna switch the presentation up real quick, chair. Also, I should have pointed out, we do have Rod Stinson and Jesse Farney with Rainy Planning and Management who were the main consultants that worked on our ER to help address any questions that may come up on the environmental study. Great. Thank you.

All set? Well I'll start. We've got a busy night. I'm going to keep my presentation very short. Ken did a great job of walking you through the project. I just wanna hit a couple high high points. My name is David Babcock. I'm an architect and a planner, part of the team. We also have a couple members of the Klein family that would like to speak. We have the developer here, architects, civil engineers.

So we have our team here to answer any specific questions that might come up during, you know, something that that I don't cover in my presentation. But before we get into that, I just wanna thank staff. Very professional, very expertise in in working with us and understanding how the process works. I want to thank Ken, Billy Lee, and Kevin for their work on this project. It was very nice to work with a professional team.

Going to the first slide, wanna, I wanna invite two members of the Klein family to tell a little bit about the history of their family and within Oakley.

Hello. Hello.

Hi. Hello, everyone. So my name is Hillary Klein. Is my sister, Megan Klein. So we just kinda wanted to share some history about the Klein family in Oakley and this area. So my dad is Fred Klein. His grandparents were Giussapina and Valeriano Jacuzzi who settled in Oakley in 1924. So Valeriano was an Italian immigrant. He had found out about Oakley from his brother who had already settled here. He really fell in love with the area.

It was a super agricultural area back then. It was all farms. And they ended up purchasing a 162 acre piece of property that was ran as a self sufficient family farm at the time. So they had almonds, had orchards, they had grapes, they had livestock, all sorts of animals, and they had they raised eight children there. Meanwhile, they also were starting a business Jacuzzi, was over in Berkeley.

So they first started in aviation. Then it was agricultural water pumps. And then it was the whirlpool bath and and all of that history. My dad, Fred, would spend summers growing up spending spend summers growing up at his family farm. Really fell in love with the agricultural side of things as well. So he moved here full time in 1973 when his grandfather had passed away. So he was still in high school. He moved up here to help his grandma on the farm. And he attended Antioch High and then Los Madonos College. Then UC Davis where he studied agriculture and viticulture.

He then moved back and he learned or he took the family vineyards and was farming those in a more serious way and then was helping local farmers pull out the almond trees and orchards that were really prevalent at the time. They had kind of reached the end of their economic viability. At that time, he leased a small winery on Sellers Road and started Klein Sellers. So me and Megan still both work at Klein Sellers in the wine industry. So we kinda wanted to share a little bit about that industry and how it's going right now.

It's been a really tough five years in the wine industry, especially for Zinfandel and some of the big reds. That's what's actually planted on this property. So just in general, people are drinking less wine. People are more concerned with health. There's other other alternatives such as cannabis.

Ozempic is really impacting it as well. So we have seen the demand for wine in general just go down a huge amount in the last five years and specifically Zinfandel has been the hardest hit category, which is what we mostly grow and make out here. That is also combined with the age of this vineyard. So it's beautiful, lovely place that we've been so lucky to work with. The yields have declined by about half in the last five years.

So vines do have a lifespan. And it's been really difficult just with both of those things combined. So that's kind of the impetus behind this project. It's just no longer really an economically viable place for us in the wine industry right now. Anything else? Did I miss anything? Thank you.

Yeah, I thought it was important to give a little bit of history because this is their land, this is their family. They've worked this land for a long time. It's no longer viable. Can you go to the next slide? Because I think I can skip this one because they've already talked about the challenges of grape growing and the yields. This slide, again, you've already gone over. There's a north area, South Area. You've talked about the streets. We were very sensitive to the surrounding areas when we initially met with the city and started talking about how how do you approach a master plan business park? And two things came out right away.

One is traffic and the other one is a big break road and the proximity to the residential. So next slide. We spent a lot of time, you know, going through, you know, we don't want we don't wanna create a project that is creating problems for the city. So we are very sensitive to how do trucks get in and out without impacting the entire city. It's right next to 160, a great plus.

Trucks get in, get out. So all of the northern development is accessed off of Wilbur and, you know, stays off of any of the other streets. The lower southern portion is accessed off of Maine. Big Break was the one we really focused on. And Theresa's here from HVA Architecture and can talk about the way we analyze that area and came up with a number of different schemes and concepts to make that work.

Next slide. This is the circulation pattern I talked about. The black lines talk at the top coming off of 160 on Wilbur on the Industrial Way, coming all the way back to the east side of the project. We can actually service those small buildings from that side without going on to Big Break Road. Same thing on the South. We can come in off of Maine. The the one small building 6, we can come off of Bridgehead. But a lot of thought, a lot of concern. We wanted to make this the best we can. And those were the those were the decisions that went into the the master plan.

Next slide. So as as planners, we we wanna come up with a vision. It's in the PUD. We created a a document that that people would come along in the future. They go, okay.

What can I do? What can I do? Is is what we're trying to do is set it up so that we can capture great tenants tenants and create an environment so that it's an attractive project that people would wanna come and lease and be a part of that community. So that was part of creating a vision of what this could be as a state of the art business park where we can attract great tenants and and have a viable successful project. The other benefit is it does have a significant impact to the economic viability.

It creates jobs, creates income for the city, and that's part of creating a successful project. The more successful it is, the more benefits you get out of it. So we started with that in mind. Let's create a really good, well thought out design landscape, have it integral with the signage. Everything works together. It all feels like it's all one complete project. So signage will look the same. It won't be different. The architecture will look very similar. It won't be hodgepodge all over.

And then finally, we wanna take advantage of the close proximity to the freeway. Right now, real estate is changing. It's constantly moving. It's, you know, we didn't set out to develop a data center that was never in any of our conversations. But as the world changes and all of a sudden you start hearing about stuff and you go, okay, would that work, would it not work?

And so we try to include whatever. Like what could, what's the future going to look like and from the land uses. And as Ken mentioned, whatever goes in there has to pass the CEQA and all of the studies that have been prepared. So we understand that and that was a part of our thinking. Next slide. Phasing. Ken, you already went through this. There's a couple phase one. It's a small building on the west side of the property. Phase b is the buildings, the four buildings you can hit.

Does it work? Maybe not. There it is. Four buildings along Main Street. The next phase is up on the north portion, the two two buildings up there. And then we broke out the final building d and then e. And this is all, you know, anticipated in six to ten years depending on market demand. Hopefully, this will be an attractive project where people feel like, okay, it's an industrial area. It's entitled. It's all ready to go.

It'll it'll just help with the with the leasing and the promotion. So the the idea was, you know, wait till the end and and, you know, develop the the West Side first. So that's our phasing plan. I think the next design was a design approach and I'll let Theresa talk about that.

Good evening chair and planning commissioners. My name is Theresa Goodwin with HPA Architects and I'll share with you our design philosophy looking at both the site plan and building design and how we've responded to surrounding uses and also supported the site for safe and efficient on-site circulation. Starting with the site plan, we've strategically located the smaller buildings adjacent to the existing residential uses to the East and Southeast. That allowed us to locate the larger buildings inside of the park and to the West where we have existing industrial uses as our neighbors. We also provided adequate on-site auto parking adjacent to each of the office entries for each building and clear truck circulation on-site with truck queuing available on-site.

So we do not have trucks backing up onto the local roads. On the next slide, zooming in, this is looking at the three buildings on the furthest east. I rotated on the page so the buildings are a little larger. Here you see that we've located the office entries on the East side of the site with both auto parking and landscaping. These provide a buffer adjacent to the residential, and the buildings properly screen the industrial areas which are located at the rear.

On the next slide, let's show you what the buildings look like in elevation. The top is what you'll see from Big Break Road. That elevation is representative of the three buildings that will face Big Break Road. So you see we have two story glass for the office entries on both ends of the buildings. And we use glazing, articulation, vertical and horizontal to break down the mass of the building, and create a high quality architectural presence. We're proud of this project, and we really think it will help attract those top tier corporate tenants in this business park?

How am I doing on time? I'm about to wrap it up. J B 2 is the developer on this project. They've been great to work with. Tons of experience, a lot of knowledge on how to how to put these projects together. Next slide. The benefits. You know, per the city's study, the fiscal study that came back, there was a lot of good information out of that report. 1,100,000.0 fiscal surplus to the city's general fund, creation of 3,500 new jobs, 3,700 construction jobs. More importantly, I think it's a really well designed project.

It from what we were trying to reach and and trying to be sensitive to the scale, to understand the impacts and you balance out the benefits of creating a business park right next to an existing industrial development. We think this will be good addition to the city. And finally, just listening to the Klein family, their commitment to the property and to the city has been very impressive. They wanna wanna see this vision now that the the wine industry is is changing. This is a good vision for the future for that property.

And with that, that concludes my presentation. I do ask, we are asking for your support and your approval on this project and appreciate. We're here to answer any questions.

I'm gonna Thank you. At this time, I'll ask for any questions from the planning commissioners.

Hi. Yeah. I'd like to ask some specific questions about the EIR standards. So does it address noise level ordinances twenty four seven?

Your question was does the EIR address noise?

Yes. Noise levels, decibel decibel wise specifics.

It does. So there there is yeah. The EIR covers noise. Mhmm. There are a few different mitigation measures that are required of the project in order to bring down the the noise levels in the project.

One of them is a sound wall on the northern portion of the north property between the existing residences next to the marina and the project site. The buildings along Big Break Road would sort of act those would act as a as a sound barrier from the activity inside the site for anything to the east. There's also what's called quiet pavement that is proposed for an area along Big Break Road. And even though as as the applicant had stated that truck access like like semis and trailers and and that sort of thing basically passenger vehicles and maybe delivery vans will be used could use Big Brake Road to access the office space and make small deliveries. Nothing else will really be going up Big Brake Road as a part of this project.

But there's quiet pavement on a stretch of that road like from where the houses start up to the project entrance. There's also a patch of it that would be required on the South Port there's a portion on Main Street before you get to the main project entry where there will be a heavier increase in traffic. So quiet pavement and the sound wall. I may be missing something there. But and then other than that, ongoing sound for the project is subject to our existing sound ordinance. So so the

city 45 decibels at night?

Yeah. I don't I don't wanna try to pull out exactly that number. I we have a code. We have an ordinance. And, yeah, usually, the average daily nightly, so it's something that people get it's easy to confuse. That doesn't mean no sound can exceed 45 decibels. Mhmm. That would be I mean, a whisper could almost do

that. Okay.

What it means is that at a certain distance, the average sound either day or night cannot exceed a certain decibel level. So there may be times when it's slightly higher and maybe times when it's slightly lower. And the way it averages out is sort of where that sound thing comes from. The ordinance also our existing sound ordinance also has, like, single source sounds. So things like alarms, banging, something like that, and construction noise sounds.

So there could be times short lived construction noise, things like that. But overall, as EIR has found, the project in operation should should not exceed the sound thresholds in the general plan and the noise ordinance. And should they, we have a method to deal with that, and it's it's called our code enforcement division.

K. Great. And as far as water usage, is it would there be a requirement in place for using recycled water? Any percentages that would we would be looking for there?

There is no such requirement in place simply because the infrastructure is not in place to have recycled water brought to the site.

And a final question. What would the height limits be for the project?

I think the height limits are 60 feet for the buildings. They're not all at 60 feet. That's in the p u d. I may look it up just to confirm and get back to you if I was wrong.

Thank you.

I I can go later. Have quite a few, so if anybody else covers mine, I don't wanna double up. So if any other commissioners have questions, I'm happy to

go last. Go ahead.

Oh, okay. That works. First I'd like to say, you know, I'm encouraged at the potential for this project for economic growth and what it represents. It's jobs, investment, long term economic growth. And I want to make sure that I make it clear it's a positive objective that I see. My questions that I'm about to ask are not about opposing this. It's about making sure that growth is done in a smart and balanced way, that this growth does not impact residents, other operations, infrastructure, public services in any way. That being said, I've got a few questions that I just want to confirm my understanding. And some of these may be better for staff, some for the applicant. So I apologize, I'll try and keep them.

My first area I would like to ask is about use mix and employment outcomes. We talked a little bit in the report about how we've got possibly 3,500 jobs and some money, sorry. Coming to the City General Fund, and it's obviously a phased project, but my understanding is that the mix of what's coming is not predetermined. We're not saying it's just a data center, battery, truck yards. It's whatever the market is what's going to happen.

Employment levels are not being tracked or enforced at any phase, is my understanding. My big concern here, or not big concern, but one of them is that, especially if we're doing this phased, some of these permitted uses may have lower employments than what our targets are. I'd just like to understand is do we have any policy tools, and again, this is a question for city staff or actions city council could take that as we go forward, we can reevaluate and if we need to put any barriers or any changes as we move forward.

Yeah. To answer that first question, so the the short answer is are there any tools in place to enforce employment numbers of any given business? There there are not. There are no tools in place to do that. It wouldn't be unique to this project. I think anytime a new use comes in or a new proposed use, it may be an entitlement. Things like that are looked at. We look at the types of jobs it could create, whether or not it can assist in our jobs, housing balance, and things of that sort. But, there is currently nothing in place that would say if you do not have a use that has x number of employees, you cannot operate in in Oakley. Right?

So that that is not in place. Whether the city council could do something that's entirely up to the city council, I would be way out of way out of my league if I were trying to answer on behalf of the city council. So I will not even attempt to do that. I think that answers your question.

Yeah. So moving on, I have a similar question in regard to noise. We covered the fact that long term noise and construction is covered in the I understand that. Ongoing noise, we've got noise ordinance. One of the concerns that I have, and again, I have a little bit of experience with industrial parks and equipment because I really didn't see anything in the plans, is mitigating specifically rooftop.

And I apologize, I know this is very pedantic, but rooftop and mechanical equipment noise. You have big HVAC units or air compressors that often in industrial settings can sit on roofs. And I think there's probably a better question for the applicant is I'm curious if in the design guidelines or anything for these buildings, if any kind of walls or parapet construction, I know that's quite common with these types of buildings, anything can be done just to mitigate that type of noise for light industrial use. And again, that might be a better question for the architect. I think it's

a great question for the architect or the applicant to answer.

Yes. Short answer is yes. We are I mean, it's a fairly typical issue that comes up with every industrial project is how do you hide the the equipment. Obviously, different tenants have different requirements. You know, some have no air conditioning and it's just a open shell. Others would have very sophisticated. So it's hard, you know, upfront. We we we think about it when we're designing a building. Yes. There are parapets.

Yes. There are most of the improvements have been in the actual equipment itself as opposed to the architecture. The the whole industry is changing because it's a sensitive issue. And it's it's really right now, it's hard for us to, you know, pinpoint who's gonna be there and what the what the issues are gonna be. So we've we've designed it to to accommodate as many people as we you know, different types of uses.

You know, that's what I like about this project is there's some small buildings, couple real big buildings. So there's a lot of flexibility to attract a lot of different tenants. Whether there's manufacturing involved, whether it's, you know, logistics, we don't know yet. And we're trying to just capture as many opportunities. And then if if, you know, every every tenant has something special.

And usually, they're the first one that wants to change something in a in a PUD. Unfortunately, it just, you know, everyone has their their specific requirements. So we're trying to keep it as as, you know, open as we can. If there are specific HVA issues, yeah. We understand we're right next to a residential area. We have to be good neighbors. The thought is let's do the right thing.

Thank you. My next question is I think probably why a large portion of the audience is here is asking a few questions about the potential use for some of this for data centers. To confirm my understanding, again right now we don't have any specific tenants identified. Proposals that exceeded the EIR limits would require additional review. And so at this point, essentially, if a data center goes in that exceeds these limits that we have that's in the draft that's or I guess in the final EIR, that would have an additional review step.

Yeah. That's essentially how this would work. So if a use were to come forward that far exceeds the analysis in the EIR or that even just exceeds the analysis in the EIR, there would have to be additional steps taken. You know, when it comes to something like a a data center and we've never dealt with a data center. I don't know of one that's been, built locally, perhaps there has been, but, and it was something that, had a had a high water usage or high electricity usage.

The site is not equipped to handle that. So there are so many additional steps that would need to happen, including working with the utility providers, Diablo Water District for will serve letters, PG and E for additional capacity, and that could even include off-site infrastructure improvements. Who knows? We don't know. There's not a project proposed for a specific building to be a data center. That sort of detailed analysis on a specific type of use in a specific building has not occurred. So the EIR looked at what's kind of laid out in the general plan, light industrial, what the average type of uses would be, and did its best to analyze those impacts without having specific uses identified.

Thank you. And this is kind of my last question. I apologize. But one other application one other possible use for the land that I had a little bit of questions about is truck and trailer storage mainly because it's kind of a low employment use for the property. My understanding is that this isn't again, we're not planning on any preexisting businesses but is there anything that can be done about enforcement of that's not what this property is going to become again trying to promote positive economic activity not just a storage yard?

Yeah. You know, I'm gonna I'll provide staff's response to that. We may want the applicant to to fill in a bit on that for what their intention. My understanding is that there there is a use listed in the PUD for truck and trailer storage. I did ask them about that because I think we all we all thought the same thing.

Is this just gonna be a truck yard or or something? And the response that I got is if I'm interpreting it and understanding it correctly is this is for the intent of the truck and trailer storage are for trucks and trailers that are actively working as a part of the existing businesses. And they may drop off a load. They may be unladen, and they may need to sit while someone takes another trailer somewhere and come back comes back to pick it up. So I don't think the intention is for this to be rent out truck and trailer parking for a bunch of trucks and trailers that have nothing to do with the other businesses.

We may wanna ask them for their input on that to make sure I'm not mistaken. But, yeah, that's how I understand it.

Yeah. Is that something we can get the applicant to speak about? I mean, I saw it's mostly buildings and auto storage, but

Hi. Commissioner Ireland. I'm Jason Bennett with JB Two Partners. That's absolutely correct, what Ken just said. This would be an ancillary use to what else is the other uses that are happening in the park. And frankly, what we've been seeing in the industrial real estate world largely, and it's it's been happening on a I'd say on an exponential basis in recent history, the the ability to have that ancillary trailer parking is really the key to attracting these users to the parks in the first place. So a lot of the parks set in another way that don't have that can't accommodate that are simply not being used. Those jobs aren't being created.

Thank you. Those are all the questions I have, chair. Thank you.

I have a question, Mr. Scharl. So all the businesses that are gonna go into this complex are gonna require a city business license, which means they will come to the planning department and apply for that. So we'll know what type of businesses are gonna go in there. And they have to be approved by the city before these businesses can open up. Is that correct?

Yeah. That is correct. Every business that goes in here will require a city business license. They may require tenant improvements to do modifications to the interior of the buildings for certain occupancy levels through the building code and things of that nature. So, you know, we don't have like very detailed floor plans right now.

We don't know. There could be a 300,000 square foot building that has four bathrooms and two kitchens and that's it and the rest is just manufacturing or whatever or we could have something that's much more intense. So we really need to see what the uses are as they come in and so long as they comply with what's in the PUD whatever gets adopted for the PUD should that happen. That's kind of what we would base on. So it'd be like looking in the zoning ordinance to make sure use is permitted in a certain zone except we'd be looking in the projects planned unit district, planned unit development district to make sure that's the case. But short answer, yeah. Every business that operates in the city is legally required to have a business license. And yes, planning does review those.

Thank you. Any other questions from the planning commissioner?

Alright. Thank you so much. I do have just a couple clarifying questions. For the Klein family, thank you for for sharing. I just wanted to confirm, the the vineyards that you have, is that in the South and North, or was this just in general you have vineyards here or had vines, a vineyard?

We're in both the South and the North.

You have both in the South and the North. Okay. Alright. Thank you. It was mentioned that and I'll get to why I'm asking that. There there was a mention that there will be we will be attracting top tier tenants. Question to the applicant. Based on the data that you've seen in this type of infrastructure, what type of top tier tenants normally do we attract based on the square footage available?

You know, as Dave commissioner Olivarez, thank you for the question. As Dave Babcock mentioned earlier, what we tried to do, one of the huge advantages of this proposed park is the blank canvas nature of it. And as he pointed out and others have pointed out in these presentations, we run the gamut from roughly a 100,000 square feet up to 900,000 square feet. And in doing so and having that kind of offering in the park, we can attract small local users who have growing businesses, regional users, corporate, you know, users who are sort of fortune 100 type users. I think you've seen in our neighboring park, the Oakley Logistics Center, some large corporates who have come in and and have very high quality space there.

I would expect some of their peers would be interested in space in our park as well. We've designed this. What we specialize in as developers is working with those types of users, designing and constructing class a logistics space that really suits their needs, fits with their corporate image, brand expectations, etcetera. We work with them around the country so we understand how they like to use this space, and we're just we're trying to design this in the most flexible way possible so that we can I can't point to a single user that we're speaking with at this point, but with the breadth of users that we do work with and have worked with over the course of our industrial development careers, we understand, generally speaking, what they're looking for? And we're really trying to design this project with that in mind so that we have the opportunity to cast the widest net, bring in the highest quality users with, you know, the the best sort of operational characteristics that we can.

And is this partnership and and, Ken, maybe you might answer this as well. Is this a partnership with our economic development team with Harumi to be able to get these type of businesses?

Alright. Yeah. Our economic development court. I'm gonna get her title wrong. I apologize for that, analyst. She helps throughout the entire city. So, you know, she's look Harumi is looking at she's looking at ways to bring business into the city, to retain existing businesses into the city. So attract and retain, that's part of her her main goal. This project would be no different than that. So she would be there to help help people meet each other whether that be, know, prospective tenants or businesses.

She could put them in touch with the brokers for the property or the developer. But it wouldn't be her her sole job to do their work to go out and do that. So she's she's another component of it that her interest is for the city of Oakley, not necessarily the the landowner developer, although those those two interests often align.

Thank you. Alright. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Now I have one more question. You mentioned earlier the plan a that might be the potential to to kind of start, the phase a. You mentioned there was potential, obviously, roadways roadways, water waterway excuse me, waste and water management drainage basin. How will how will all this be kinda funded and paid for? Is this kinda how does this impact our residents of Oakley?

The project would be entirely privately funded. Okay. Is is that your question?

Yes. I just wanna make sure that I understand that there's, like, no additional, oh, and we're gonna raise your taxes for water or for this or that just so we're not

No.

The developer is conditioned to do full half width improvements of bridgehead road frontage, big break road frontage that includes curb gutter sidewalk, bike lane striping, and or class four bike lane on Main Street. It's also conditioned to do a new median in Main Street which is a long anticipated improvement to that portion of Main Street. So yeah, it's all privately funded. Some things may be reimbursable if they're in our capital improvement project or our long term traffic impact fee program. If the developer comes in and do them, they may it may be reimbursable, but everything everything is privately funded.

Okay. Thank you. This is just really my last comment. You know, I'm looking at our Oakley vision statement, and it reads, the city of Oakley celebrates our unique Delta lifestyle and small town feel where we live in safe, dynamic community, work together to build the future, and play in our own backyard. I just wanna make sure that whatever decision is, does this really embody what we're looking at at the end of the day?

Any other questions for the commission? Yes.

Yeah, as the other commissioners here, I want to ensure we balance jobs and economic development with our long term land use vision, transportation safety, environmental quality, and a clear, defensible CEQA record. So, yes, I do have a few questions. One is, reading through these comments and stuff like that, the public has alleged the project conflicts with general plan figure 3.7, the circulation plan, and figure three-eight, bikeway network plan, because the site plan places buildings where the vintage parkway extension and bikeways are planned. Can staff identify where in the final environmental impact report This is analyzed and explained whether approving this requires a separate general plan amendment or if not.

Quite a big document to just pull that one off the top of my head, to be honest. So the I can answer, you know, just talking about what's being proposed here. Keep in mind, the the property in the Northern Development area is designated light industrial. So when you're talking about the general plan and what the general plan envisions for the city, it's light industrial on that property. Not open space, not Delta Recreation, which we have acres and acres of in other areas.

For the Southern property, what the city has approved is three big box retail stores including a Walmart and several 100,000 square feet of large big box retail, which at the time that was proposed, many comments came out against that because it would kill small business, etcetera. This project would replace that. It would basically erase that zoning from that southern development area, that South development area, and instead replace it with this business park thing. I'm not sure about the Vintage The Vintage Parkway extension. So when the Oakley if that's talking about an extension of Vintage all the way to Wilbur, for instance, that's all private land now.

So that when the Oakley Logistics Center was built, those are private streets. Those are not public streets in there. This development would connect to that. The the two property owners need to work together to figure that out. That's the plan there. There would be a bike trail. So the the Big Break Regional Bike Trail will continue. This project's conditioned to do enhancements to where that trail would cross Big Break Road. It would then continue along the northern boundary of this and connect up to where the kinda cul de sac is in Oakley Logistics Center to continue north and then further west. So this project would help do a a beautiful wide, you know, 10 foot wide bike trail there for the Big Break Regional Trail.

It's also conditioned to do pedestrian improvements over the at grade railroad crossing on Big Break Road because right now it's just, you know, there's nothing there. And if this project were to be developed, you're going to have resident or you're going to have employees that may be using the bus stop on Main Street to gain access to their employment and get back and forth to home. So that's an important aspect. I'm really glad our our I give credit to our public works department for coming up with that idea to do that. The Vintage Parkway and Big Break Road will have it'll have widening on the side of the project, so it will have curb gutter, sidewalk.

It will have improvements for safety as well as it's at least found that a four way stop would be required at Vintage Parkway and Big Break. There will be crosswalks put on all four legs of that for pedestrian safety. And the project's also conditioned to do a traffic signal study, a warrant study to see if a signal is warranted in that location. The same goes for the big the Bridgehead Road and project entrance. Project will also be doing a fourth leg to the Live Oak And Main Street intersection where the main main project entry is off of Main Street.

They also would be adding a class four bicycle lane on Main Street, which is a bike lane that's separated from the traffic either through bollards or a parking lane or something else of that nature. So in general, the improvements that are required to the public infrastructure as a part of this project should be leading to to increasing pedestrian safety by the addition of curb, gutter, sidewalks, and additional striping for bike lanes and or just bike lanes on their own along with the crosswalks and the extension of the regional trail.

Okay, thank you. Also, I know we haven't really stated the data center's going to be going in, but if something does move forward, what are the projected electrical demand and has PG and E confirmed grid capacity for all this to be happening?

I have no idea. You can ask the applicant for that.

Backup generators. How many backup generators are anticipated in the fuel types and what will be allowed and what limits are placed on testing frequencies and durations?

I don't think the project is proposing anything of that nature. Again, it's a great question but until users are known, it's hard to predict those things.

Okay, cooling systems, lines with sometimes there's long term droughts that we have through here But is the Diablo Water District able to have the capacity to handle this?

The project has a will serve, they call it a will serve letter. Said Diablo Water District?

Yeah, well I mean

Yeah, the water. So yeah, they have a Diablo Water District provided a will serve letter. And you know, at one time they were anticipating over 225,000 gallons per day when it you know, for the commercial project and and the light industrial land use. This project's gonna use far less than that. I think this project, you know, just as kinda studied and proposed, again, no data center being proposed is well under a 100,000 gallons per day by factors of a couple of 10,000.

So somewhere around 72 or something. So yeah, the Delta Or Diablo Water, no you're saying the wrong thing. Diablo water district has provided a will serve letter for up to at least that amount. And they're, I don't want to speak on their behalf but based on the current land use, they have capacity for more.

Last question. Thank you though. Like long term land use commitment once built, how adaptable are these buildings to future non warehouse uses and what protections exist if market conditions change?

Yeah, it would be the planned unit district that's proposed with this. So that's gonna lay out all the allowable uses, permitted uses, and it's very specific. Doesn't have, if you go to our zoning code now, there's tons of uses. Some of them I've I've never seen come to the city. I mean, there's some things from way back when.

So this would be essentially limited to the uses that are in the planned unit district. And should anything come forth that is not permitted and they really wanted to establish it, they would be required to come back and potentially modify their zoning document their PUD to have us look at what the impacts could be from that project and whether it can be added to the PUD. So that's kind of how PUD's work their benefit and that they give them flexibility in designing the project. But they're very specific to what they allow. I mean, they have a lot of uses in there that could cover a lot of types of warehousing and things like that.

But let's just say in the future the project's dead. Doesn't work out thirty, forty years down the road and they want to do residential or something depending on state laws and everything else. It's not in the PUD so that would come back and we'd have to look at that.

Good? Thank you.

No more questions. Alright. So at this time, we'll move to the public hearing. And looks like we have 55 speakers that are wanting to come forward. So I will call you up. And you have a limit of three minutes to speak. There's a timer that's gonna light up here. When you get down to the one minute mark, the yellow light will come on to tell you that you're about out of time. And then when the red light comes on, your time is up. So please limit your time.

We've got lots of folks that wanna speak. I'm going to go ahead and call on the ones that turned in their applications online. And so the first one that comes up is Leslie Smith. Please come to the microphone in front. Next one is Roy Smith.

And then we have Jay Friend.

My name is Jay Friend. As stated, I would like to urge the rejection.

Would you pull the microphone down just a Thank bit while you're you.

Is that good? Yes. Okay. I would like to urge the rejection of this project. Building an industrial park so close to Big Break at all will endanger and displace wildlife and destroy plant life.

We keep complaining about coyote sightings, but we're pushing them out of their homes already. Tearing down the trees is gonna impact air quality, and they're already trying to, you know, just override their air quality impact instead of fixing it. The potential building of crypto mining and data centers would also continue to damage the environment. They use a vast amount of energy, emit large amounts of greenhouse gases that are harmful to breathe in and linked to health issues. Small AI data centers are capable of using up to hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.

Obviously, that number varies. But most of that water needs to be potable. That comes from our drinking water, from our delta, and it evaporates and what's left becomes contaminated. So the possibility at all of having tens of thousands of gallons of our drinking water every day being taken, polluted, draining the delta, and once again endangering the wildlife, not okay. This plan is set to boost the economy and create new jobs, promises to modernize and enhance the land and keep up with trends, and that's really exciting.

But the majority of those jobs will be temporary, and we wouldn't need those jobs if we stop building houses we don't have room for. But they make money. The proposed budgets from the previous and current fiscal years estimate that 33% of our revenue comes from property taxes. They're profiting just from us being here. The majority of the revenue from this plan is also gonna come from property taxes.

Only 8% of our expenses are estimated to go to community development. The reason that we're allowing community development right now is because we're not paying for it, and we're making money off of it. When was the last time something new was built that actually genuinely benefited the people? How many new gas stations do we really need? It took us over a decade just to get a new grocery store.

Small businesses are struggling right now, so we don't need any more warehouses or data centers or big businesses. I've done my research, and it would be abhorrent to approve this plan knowing that it even risks such harm to the environment and the population just for dirty money that residents won't be seeing.

Thank you very much. Next we have Karen Groom.

Good evening. My name is Karen Groom. I'm a forty one year resident of this city. Oakley proclaims itself a place for families in the heart of the Delta. My children grew up in the Vintage Parkway neighborhood riding their bikes to school, skateboarding to their friends' houses.

Now my granddaughters live there and do the same. As one of the few Oakley neighborhoods with direct access to the river at Big Break Marina and the Big Break Regional Park, our children can easily ride their bikes and scooters down to enjoy these unique resources. A few years ago, tragedy struck when one of our neighborhood children was hit and killed riding down Big Break Road to the park. Now you propose to build a massive commercial development on the edge of our neighborhood, a business with parking to accommodate 1,763 vehicles, not to mention the 872 trucks and trailers. I don't have the exact figures, but I am confident that this will easily increase auto traffic on our street by 1000%.

As a result, children will no longer be free to traverse our neighborhood to ride to the marina to venture to the regional park. A city that ostensibly prides itself on providing park access to its children is making it too dangerous for our children to venture out on their own. If Oakley moves forward with this development, it is clearly not for the betterment of our families and community. It is a decision solely based on financial gain purchased at the expense of community quality of life. If you decide to move forward despite the cost to the heart and soul of this community, then at least have the decency to come up with a new city motto as Oakley will no longer have the right to proclaim itself a place for families in the heart of the Delta.

And while you're at it, we will need to scrap the city vision statement as we will no longer be a safe community where we can play in our own backyard. Finally, I would say to you elected officials, it is a duty of our governing body to act as a steward of our city's heritage, not as the agents of its destruction.

Thank you. Eli Marvin.

Thank you. I'm gonna keep this really short and sweet, so I'll read from my notes. I'm here today as a concerned citizen to voice my strong disapproval of this proposed plan. My main concern and disapproval is regarding the possibility of a data center in this industrial structure, whether it be part of the proposal now or in the future. This industrial center could put a massive demand on our resource strains, our local infrastructure, environment, constant noise, intrusive light pollution. And on top of all this, property values are negatively affected. Families do not wanna live next to large industrial facilities. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, I have David Bonson.

Thank you for your time. My name is David Bonson. I have lived in Oakley, California with my wife and my young family since 2005. I currently reside in Vintage Parkway, and I am asking you to vote against this development. The quality of life in Vintage Parkway is unique.

We have the delta breeze each night. We have windows open during the day. We have cool falls, nice springs, beautiful summers. The addition of a industrial park will with 60 foot tall buildings lining our big break road, we'll change it from Big Break Road to Big Building Road. It'll be a blight on our subdivision with neighbors looking out of their backyards and instead of seeing the beautiful trees and hearing the breeze, hear nothing but truck trailers moving.

The possible addition of a data center will take over 2,000,000 gallons of water per day to power, which will spread tons of contaminants into our area. Should you decide to move forward with this data center in our area so close to vintage, I would strongly encourage the five of you to buy a house in our subdivision. It's a beautiful subdivision and experience this that we're going to experience should you approve this project. Thank you. Thank you.

Tracy Hetherley.

My name is Tracy, and I have lived in the Vintage Parkway neighborhood of Oakley for thirty four years. And I, like everybody else here, would like to voice my concerns about the Bridgehead industrial project. I have tried to read and understand the environmental impact report as it was written back in September. However, it seems to me the report is more concerned with the construction of the project, not the long term effects. Also, it is based on the idea that the project would be somewhat mixed use, light industrial warehouses and commercial.

But now the developers asking for the project to be rezoned. I feel this request is to pave the way for the entire project to be data centers. The EIR does not take into consideration the impact on all of us if they are allowed to build data centers. The constant noise and vibration along with the lights on twenty four seven is not being addressed. Neither is the tremendous amount of water needed to keep these massive computer systems cooled or the strain on our electrical grid when the data centers are up and running.

Both of those issues will cause our utility bills to rise. And don't forget the pollutants that are released into the air when they have to use backup generators due to the electrical grid failing on a hot summer day in Oakley. I researched Oxford Oakley, which is the LLC the developer formed for the Bridgehead project. In their document, data centers are mentioned no less than eight times. But yet, they're not mentioned at all in the staff report.

That seems strange to me. I would request a little more transparency. You just brought it up tonight for the first time. So keeping these concerns in mind, I urge you to reject the proposal to rezone this project. At the very least, ask for additional testing on how these data centers will affect our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Michael Duprey. Amanda Siro, Margarita bark Vargas. And Taylor. Savannah Rogers.

Requesting not to speak.

Chair? Chair? If I may, I think the list you have that you're reading from

Right.

Included all those that submitted online comments, and you've you've gone past the list of those that wish to speak.

So we'll go to the green cards.

Thank you.

Daniel and Virginia Jester. Jasper Willebroek.

Good evening. I am a lifelong resident of Oakley. My grandparents bought the home that I live in on Weibel Circle which is less than point two miles from the proposed location, I did not receive a notice. Linear feet, by the way. My grandparents bought the house I live in in 1991 when it was built.

I grew up here. And I come to you as a concerned citizen asking you to reject this project. Data centers being of concern because it was listed in the project proposal as possible uses for the buildings. Any data center would use more power putting an increased strain on PG and E, which has already been noted. If it pools water from the Delta or from the Delta Diablo Water District, it will have a detrimental impact on the environment and everything that relies on the Delta, including the farmers and the Southern Californians who rely on it.

We don't want too many tunnels. So, we definitely don't want any kind of data center, not even the possibility of it, now or in the future. The EIR stated this project would have an unavoidable impact to air quality regardless of who the tenants end up being. Air pollution itself has been linked to cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The young, elderly and immunocompromised, a group of which I belong to, are at higher risk.

Not only will the proposed project worsen air quality, and especially in the immediate area where hundreds of families, including mine, call home, it will also, like I said, put an increased pressure on existing infrastructure. The project will also increase noise pollution, which has also been linked to cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and stroke, and can also cause or worsen anxiety or tinnitus, something I personally already have from my time working with computer servers in the Marine Corps. Maybe you noticed I didn't that under those project pictures, they left out the homes that would be directly next to those buildings and the mobile home park that is on Bridgehead Road by that hotel. They've been threatened time and time again by progress. And now they are again and now our community is.

The Klein family should not have to operate a farm that no longer makes logistical sense, but an industrial park that we will pay for with our health is not the answer. I am asking you as a lifelong Oakley resident who went to Vintage, Delta Vista, and Freedom, who worked at UPS in Oakley, and as a veteran of the United States Marine Corps to veto this project to the rezone of it, to care more about the health of these residents in this community.

Thank you very much. Jim Pedersen?

Hello, everyone. My name is Jim Pedersen. I'm a fifth generation Californian. I'm born and raised in Concord, but also had grandparents that lived out in this area and have much of my family buried in Union Cemetery. So we've been around this area a long time, just like young ladies over here.

I am concerned about this in the sense that, you know, mainly what got me fired up was the data center aspect of this. But I'm very concerned the fact that you have 10 buildings that you're proposing building and saying, well, we don't have any residents or any people that are actually gonna be in these buildings. We don't know what's gonna be in those, and that's gonna be just this wild card that you have to deal with. And unfortunately, the only segment of the the right now, the stock market that's doing well actually tends to be in AI, as we all know. And that's potentially the Trojan horse in this whole thing.

And I think that's why a lot of people here are up in arms. And it's not just the 60 foot tall walls, which, I mean, this is an 18 foot ceiling or 16 foot ceiling, but look at three times that. Is that what you wanna see when you come into town? So the other thing that I have to say as a as a long term resident of California, throughout our lot my entire life, we've talked about water conservation. It's always in drought.

We're always talking about drought. If we're not in drought, then we're talking about when we're going to be in drought. And we are always asked to not water our lawns, to eliminate our lawns, to do things, you know, take shorter showers, not wash our cars, all these kind of things. We're told to not use our dryers and our washers during certain peak hours. But it never seems to come back to businesses that way.

And I just I just have to say, I I get very disgusted when when we just give in to that. So I'm here just to say, listen. I don't have a problem with necessarily building something there, but I think we should know what it is. And for certain, have some kind of veto power on that. Okay? Thank you for your time.

Next, we have Jason Lindsay.

Good evening, commissioners. I'm Jason Lindsey, president, president and business agent with the, Iron Workers Local three seventy eight District Council of Iron Workers, and I'm here tonight representing over 250 Oakland Oakley households who are members of my union and those families that make their living as electricians, sprinkler fitters, plumbers, and sheet metal workers. We have a long history of building partnerships with developers whose projects we believe promote sustainability and create greater equity in the communities that our members live in. We believe this project embraces sustainability principles that will promote equity for our Oakley members. One of the critical issues in East County is the jobs and housing balance.

We created disproportionate share of the region's greenhouse gas emissions due to this imbalance. Oakley families suffer as available job opportunities force parents into long commutes. The proposed development is a very well designed multiphase development that offers a wide range of spaces to draw small to large scale businesses to Oakley. Over Over 3,500 permanent jobs will be created. This is exactly the kind of project that we need to get drivers off our freeways.

The project will also provide workforce related community benefits. A couple a couple of thousand area residents will be employed in its construction. Oakley apprentices who are enrolled in the area's training programs like ours will have the chance to learn their trade and build their city. That means more opportunity for Oakley and East County youth and at risk workers to gain entry into a career pathway that puts them firmly in America's middle class. This is a small project a smart project, excuse me, providing good local jobs. Please support your staff's recommendation to affirm this project and send it to council for a final vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Next one is Ike Gatewood, e I k o. Thank you. Sorry about that.

That's okay. It's Eiko, but thank you for listening to me. I'm a fairly new resident of Oakley, little over three years. And part of the charm of moving here was your city charter, you know, good for families. I I didn't wanna come and move here and see box warehouses. I could've moved anywhere else. If I knew this was going to be here, I probably wouldn't have moved here. And I feel for the Klein family. It's your land. But warehouses, isn't there something else that would fit the city charter and our vision better?

Please. Please vote no. I know the city needs money, but are we that desperate to to change the feel of Oakley? This is going to be permanent. Twenty years, thirty years. Once it's up, it's gonna be permanent. I'll be dead by the time it's gone. Please reconsider. Vote no. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oram Moab?

No.

Did I pronounce that wrong? It looks like it's C O R A N M O, and then I can't read the rest of it. Okay.

Alright.

Thank you. And this makes me really happy to see this planning commission and this vibrant discussion that we're having. You know, that's what this was created to do. So I think that this is an important part of our community. But I come here not as a citizen and a homeowner of Oakley with many concerns, and I think that, miss Olivera's, rhetorical question about how it fits into the general general plan, really speaks to that.

But I'm only here, as the liaison to the Diablo Water District. So I'm a board member with the Diablo Water District, and so I'm here to speak to the EIR. Alright. So, I think miss Harvey's question about using reclaimed water, and I wonder where mister Strelow got his information about infrastructure on that because I don't know any discussion that's happened about using reclaimed or recycled water. So I'd like more information on that.

Then our general manager, gave a written comment, and I wanna speak to that. So, about 16.7% of the site could be used for data centers, and it seems kind of strange to me how, oh, maybe data center, maybe not. But the actual allocation of end users about they're requesting, and we're able to plot supply about 71,287 gallons a day. That's what we're on board for. But the data center, if we had 16.7% data per centers, and we could have a lot more than that, there's no limitation.

They could increase the number of data centers. That would require 300,000 gallons a day. So I think that the numbers don't add up, and I think that the potential, water use should be studied further. We need, we need more on the EIR. I don't think this EIR adequately addresses the water concerns, for the district that we would be purveying that water for.

And then also, couple other points I have here. We need to delay this decision. So for the EIR, we need to delay the decision of of supporting, this final EIR. Pending more time for public input, including from the Diablo Water District given that this is a massive set of actions being contemplated. So the right course of action is to further evaluate this project and allow stakeholders and agencies such as the DWD to engage because we have not been engaged in this process in a meaningful way. So thank you for your time. Thank you.

Jonathan Drescher. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Jonathan Drescher. I'm a field representative with the Carpenters Union Local one fifty two covering Contra Costa County. I am speaking here tonight in support of the Bridgehead Industrial Project and urge the approval of staff recommendations to move the project forward to city council.

The developer is committed to using a union general contractor that will ensure working men and women will be able to work on this project in the community they live in. This will also create more time with their families and a better quality of life. They don't have to travel to San Francisco or San Jose for They will be earning a living wage with benefits such as health care for the worker and their families, ensuring they will not be be relying on public subsidies. They will be learning a skilled craft that will benefit them for the rest of their life. The project will also provide and create apprenticeship opportunities that will fill the pipeline with a skilled workforce that is badly needed.

The developer has also agreed to labor harmony for this project, ensuring there will be no labor issues, and the project will get done on time. Again, I urge you to move this project forward to city council, and I approve this project. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, Vanessa Ile.

Hi. My name is Vanessa Ayala. I'm a member of local three seventy eight as an ironworker. I am an apprentice currently. This project will definitely help a lot of apprentices get an opportunity such as carpenters, electricians, iron workers just to get the experience.

As of right now, a lot of apprentices do have to do a long drive, and it definitely does cut out a lot of the time that we spend with our families. I ask that you consider this project to be it's basically gonna help us out a lot. More experience that we get, especially closer to home, is basically gonna motivate us a lot. And this is also gonna help a lot of people get a lot of jobs. A lot of jobs that we do need and a lot of revenue that is gonna help us out in the community since we are struggling a lot.

I ask that you please consider this project. Please support us. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next, Roger Hammond.

Good evening, and members of the board. My name is Roger Mammon. I've been a resident of Oakley for the past forty three years. It's been my pleasure to serve the city of Oakley for twenty years as the city council appointed me as the unofficial liaison in Delta matters. And as many of the people have talked tonight, it's all about the water.

I'm the president of the West Delta chapter of the California striped bass. I'm a past president and board member of the Lower Sherman Island duck hunters, and I'm also a founding board member and secretary of Restore the Delta. Our Delta is the largest tidal estuary on the West Coast of both North And South America. It may be the last inverted delta in the world. The other inverted delta was in Portugal on the Tagus River, and it was salting up.

Our delta is salting up right now. We could lose it if we don't get more flows through it. It is the most studied waterway in the world, and it's been that way for over sixty years because of the ecological decline, invasive aquatic and animal species, and lack of delta flows through our system. Our delta once had abundant fisheries, and they have been in decline decline since the state water project went online in conjunction with the federal project in the nineteen sixties. In fact, all of our native fishes over the past two decades had declined by 90%.

Salmon fisheries have been closed for commercial salmon fisheries have been closed for the past three years because of poor water management. I bring all this up because of the potential of an AI center in this project. These centers are known to use excessive amounts of water. They discharge heated water back into the system, which kills or destroys aquatic life in that those areas. Our Delta cannot afford to lose any more water that's already being exported down to Southern California.

Our our city prides itself in being a place for families in the heart of the Delta. Don't let an AI center destroy it. Restore the Delta prepares a 20 page report on the threats to the Delta and the environment and the Delta communities. I will give it to, Leslie over here so she can make copies of it. It has a lot of good information on it that you should consider. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Colleen.

Hello. I'm a Vintage Parkway resident who's lived in Oakley for thirty eight years now. On January 12, I received a notice of public hearing about a rezoning and to speak now or forever hold my peace in case this matter was ever challenged in court. So here I am. First of all, I asked for transparency from our leaders in this matter.

After reviewing the Bridgehead industrial project description and the staff report, it is my opinion that the developer wants to rezone so he can build data centers in our backyard. It's mentioned multiple times throughout the report. So if that's true, how many of the 10 buildings will be equipped to function as such? Is there projection at build out report available? What kind of strain will be put on our infrastructure and resources and who's really going to pay?

One of the advantages of not being first is that we can learn from others. One Google search can tell you the pros and cons of living next to a data center that other communities have experienced. What assurances do we have that we won't have the droning sounds or vibrations emitting from the data centers twenty four seven in affecting people's health? I don't wanna live with that. Would you?

I'm not opposed to progress, but I am opposed to data centers too close to residential areas. This is a situation that affects all Oakley residents and we deserve much better. Imagine the interest you would have would have received if you sent notices to all residents and not just those living within 15 feet of this project site. Oakley's motto is a place for families to live, work, and play in the heart of the Delta. Three sixty feet tall buildings butting up to Big Break Road and encroaching on the marina area that maybe data centers doesn't quite fit that vibe.

I strongly urge you to take pause and reject the rezoning effort. Thank you.

Thank you. Alexandria Diaz.

So I've been in Oakley for three years, and this project is in conflict with all the things that I love about living here, all the reasons that we chose to move to Oakley, and I echo the rejection of the project. None of us in this room would like to live near this type of industrial park. The lights, the noise, the constant traffic, the drain on our resources. Oakley is a place for families, and my family does not wanna be near this type of development. I sympathize with the low yields for the Klein family, but it feels like this is not in the best interest of Oakley or the community. And this may be your land, but this is my home.

Deborah Sedran.

I've been a resident here for thirty years, my husband his whole life. He's 62 years old. I'd like to say to the developers, build it and they will come. I had a whole speech scheduled about listening to everything, hearing about the reports, building empty buildings. What does that tell us?

We don't know what's going in there. And if you give them a twenty year without knowing all the legal jargon, twenty years to figure it out, we're gonna have to fight every step of the way. So to the people of Oakley, if they try to build it, I'm gonna fight it. Just know. And we hope that living in this community, raising our children here, you will all help us and do what you're supposed to do.

Look out for us because nobody's doing that for us these days. And we need to know what's going in there. I would not want that next to my children to see that every day. Fishing tournaments. Who wants to come down there and see these monstrous, you know, these monstrous buildings as they're bringing in their bass boats? You know? And who who wants to see that kind of stuff? We we just don't know and that's what's bothering me is to build empty things and say, well, you know, we got the elite coming in, but we don't know who that might be. And data centers are egregious. I know you've said that we don't know that they're coming, but we're right on the water.

We are prime property for those kind of facilities. And there are case studies coming out. Look them up of what the damage these do to communities and to, you know, indigenous lands, we've had out here by the Delta. If anybody's from around here, know about the indigenous people who used to live here. And the burden it put puts on the on the workers.

And I feel for the union workers and I understand their plight. But two months worth of training isn't gonna protect twenty years of pollution and chemicals and who knows what that are gonna be going into those buildings. So just put a moratorium on it. Do some more research. Find out some more details and protect us. Thank you.

Thank you. Cheyenne Gomez.

Good evening. My name is Cheyenne Gomez. I am a business agent of I b and the president of IBEW Local three zero two, which is the electrical union here in Contra Costa County. I'm asking for the support of the staff's recommendation to vote and send this project with your endorsement to the city council. We appreciate that the developer has made a commitment to have a local construction workforce build this project.

Alone, I have a 124 members who live in Oakley who have the potential, and some of them being apprentices who have the potential to be able to build their community, to be able to work close to home, to not have to commute two to three hours on the road to get to and from work, which can improve their family time at home. It's you know, being able to work on a project in your own hometown can be life changing, And I hope you guys support it and thank you for hearing me out.

Thank you.

Mike Orbeck.

Thank you all sitting up here listening to this stuff and everybody that's here. Thank you for exercising your community job to pay attention to what's happening in your cities. My grandparents have lived in Cachacossa County since World War two. We still own the small commercial property they built at 3385 Main Street here in 1980. My father was a chiropractor for thirty years before he retired, and I still maintain that property here.

I'm a local scout master. I spent a lot of time at Big Break with small scouts, scouts that are interested in making sure that they become leaders in their own right, but also that they become stewards for the environment. And if you know anything about Big Break, you know how much work has gone into rebuilding that ecosystem and would be a terrible thing to waste the effort there. So while I appreciate the extensive biological, cultural, and agricultural, archaeological mitigation measures outlined in the draft, I am concerned that the EIR has, as currently written, may not adequately analyze or disclose certain reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts associated with the full range of industrial use as allowed in this new zoning. As we know, this is a zoning certification.

You can say no. You can say no. You are appointed by the city council. These are the constituents. They are asking you to turn down the zoning.

The zoning does nothing except make sure that it gets rezoned in an appropriate thing. So we can look at those entitlements. Specifically, if we look at water demand and cooling related impacts, the prezone zoning permits high intensity industrial use. It can include data centers and other water water and energy intensive facilities. And while it evaluates the general industrial development, it does not appear to provide a project level or worst case analysis of that water demand associated with such usage in cooling systems, operational water consumption.

Cumulative impacts on local and water supplies. We know that the Thule Dams in our delta can fail due to exactly what the fishery guy was talking about. We don't know. This California sits in a seismic area if there are data centers. Seems like a really bad place to put them.

But also, we do know that we don't have enough power sources around this area to take care of the constituents as well as the businesses. And we all know that in America, the businesses get it first and the constituents get it last. These impacts appear reasonably foreseeable and under the proposed entitlements, they should be addressed. And what we can do is say no to the zoning and go back and actually do the work. So as we look at that, my job for being here is to make sure that this gets on the record so that when we have to come back and revisit it, if it does get zoned this way, that we can look at those cumulative impacts and we can make sure that the city of Oakley and the surrounding region, particularly with respect to water use, energy demand, and greenhouse gas emissions, get sufficiently detailed to make a correct decision.

Thank you. Bud Shadell.

Thank you for having us here to talk about this subject. My concerns is, again, the water. Yeah. I've been with Roger up to the the state capital several times trying to protect our resource for this area. Fighting plain loads of constituents coming from Southern California to get your water. So think about that. Really. Thank you, Roger, for your fifty years of doing this stuff. I've learned a lot. But anyways, I I it sounds like there's a wild card in this deck of cards that maybe will put us a center and maybe not.

We don't know. Well, you know, it's kind of interesting. I was listening to the news and I looked it up. It was like, you know, Meta and whatnot wants to get portable nuclear centers even for some of this stuff. You know? What's that on the back of a fit, you know, a big rig? I have no idea. You know? So, I mean, you know, there's all these. And they use, like there's, like, 56% of electricity used for power centers right now are using fossil fuels right now.

Okay. So think about that. So, again, with all these electricity problems, and I've seen my bill go up a lot, It just I really can't see PG and E giving my my people here a break. Not really, especially after the fire thing and seeing what Northern California turned to do. And actually meeting Aaron Brockovich once. It's kind of an interesting dilemma we're in. We we just don't have the power, number one. We don't. Okay. We don't have the water, and I'm really worried about the water.

I've been doing research on Marsh Creek here. For the first time, we actually found the the spawning for the salmon. Water was the right temperature for the last month and a half because it's been cooler. The poachers got all the fish, but anyways, they should have had a chance to spawn. Okay? So I was hopeful in that. And that that data just we just found that data. Anyways, I just don't feel it's a good fit. It seems like there's a lot of blank spots in the book. In other words, fill in your own pages and let's make it this later and, oh, it's gonna be a kumbaya moment.

So that's that's kinda how I feel about it. And I know everybody here I just look at it as putting water back into the delta. I've read a lot of it. Puts it back in between 75 and a 104 degrees when it puts it back into the delta after doing it. So, you know, our fish are already getting fried with the weather the way it is. You know, I don't need them parboiled.

Thank you. Looks like Naylee Nason or n e l l y.

Can you read that?

What is it?

It's Tommy, but the name's Nayeli.

Hi, Ellie. Are they there? Okay. Josh Randalls?

Good evening, commissioners. I've grown up in Oakley since '96, and I've seen the vineyards go, the orchards go, many changes to the city. This change, I don't find is going to be a benefit to any constituents within the city. I live on the far side, off Laurel, and, like, the pollutants from this project are gonna make my way make their way to my home. And I have two little kids that I plan on having them grow up in this city, and I just can't see how this project is a benefit to them.

With that, I have a few comments on the EIR with the noise on mitigation. If it doesn't end up being enough to meet building code for these existing homeowners, the 45 decibels for interior noise, what conditions can we place on the project to get the mitigation to that level? Its current building code would be 45 decibels. So the existing homes, I wanna still see that they're under the 45 decibels when this project starts, if it does. With that, the water usage, especially towards data centers, and the battery storage as well in the PUD, I don't think that analyzed through the ER.

I'm not sure at what point the environmental analysis needs to be done on the PUD or if that's already happened, and that's how this is coming to fruition. But I I I don't think that's been done. The design review doesn't give a great picture of the off-site main street improvements, And my concern is the trucks and the turn lanes with the main focus being on landscaping and the median. Are they gonna be long enough to queue up a couple trucks? Because especially during commute time, you go to Dutch Bros, you're having trouble even making it out of there to get on one sixty to go to work.

So adding truck traffic during that commute time, it's gonna be rough. Then to data centers directly, the technology could soon be outdated. There's improvements being worked on and suggested by top AI companies such as XAI. And with Tesla putting AI chips in their cars, they're trying to make data centers obsolete by using the cars for those reasons.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Leticia Randalls.

Good evening Planning Commission.

My name is Leticia Randalls and I come before you tonight as a concerned lifetime resident of Oakley, California. I do not consider myself a not in my backyard person and I do believe myself to be a pro development person. But while I'm not directly opposed to the Bridgehead Industrial Project, I do strongly oppose any wording or verbiage that will make it easier for the development of a data center within the boundaries of the city of Oakley and request strikeouts of any such callouts. Data centers are proving to be a real Frankenstein's monster and that it does not uniformly fit into descriptions for commercial zoning or light industrial zoning with what some municipalities are reporting in polluted air and water more akin to heavy industrial use, which does not conform to the approved general plan for light industrial land use designation in this area. The I r EIR two found air quality issues to be significant.

I'm afraid that applicants request for inclusion into a p one planned unit development is an attempt to shirk zoning regulations in an area that is within close proximity to many homes. I cannot locate any regulations for data centers within the city's municipal code and as such, do not believe it is safe to make any approvals for a data center to be an allowable land use within the project, especially for the city, especially before the city has had the chance to deliberate on how to manage such a use with the help of public input. While our general plan policies encourage employment opportunities and the job creation as a whole would be beneficial during a build stage, I'm hearing a lot of union support, but I did not personally see anything that would that's contractually obligating the developer to use trade unions. It will greatly diminish once construction is complete and data centers do not themselves retain many employees and will not be a great source of employment. I do not know how many of the 10 buildings would become data centers, but even one I believe would be inherently detrimental to the community's public health, safety, and welfare of all Oakley residents.

Oakley's motto is a place for families in the heart of the Delta and we should not put a few pockets before the well-being of all Oakley families. My request is that data centers not be allowable, not be an allowable land use within the project and that future municipal code changes be made to classify data centers as heavy industrial use. I also believe a wholly new section needs to be created within the municipal code to deal specifically with the dangers that data centers bring as to not be detrimental to the well-being of the city and its residents. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Cadence Hansen. Last name Hansen.

Good evening. My name is Cadence, and I am a resident of the Sandy 0.3 mobile home park that is on Bridgehead Road and will be directly facing the vineyard and proposed buildings. As a young adult, I already experienced difficulties with the traffic from the Amazon plant or buildings that are already right there. And I just don't see this as a good idea for our city. And I would love to keep living here, but I don't think I would see myself living here if I still saw that. So, thank you.

Thank you. Christopher Hanson.

Good evening. Thank you for your time. Yep. I am Cadence's father. I wanted to come and propose or be against this because living in Bridgehead, we already live in a part of Oakley that not a lot of people wanna live in. We have been there in that mobile home park forever. We supply low income housing to 46 different families. And over the last fifteen, twenty years, that park has been completely cleaned up. It's all full of just small families that are all trying to do the best they can. We already suffer from the added traffic from Amazon being just down the street.

I am recently on disability, and I have been walking all over that neighborhood more and more trying to get out and get exercise. And I would implore you to come on a walk with me. There are bottles of urine strewn up and down the roads all around there from the Amazon people coming and going. What more pollution, how much more traffic are we gonna have to deal with over there in our little corner? So I just wanted to come and speak my mind. Thank you.

Thank you. Mariah Williams?

Hi. I'm Mariah Williams and I am the aunt of Cadence. Now she's the one that was back there. And so I have been visiting and have lived at that same place that they're talking about, Santa Pointe 3. I am not in Antioch right now. I'm in I mean, not in Oakley. I'm in Antioch. I'm on the board of parks parks and rec there, so I spent a lot of time going over proposals and ways to help our park. I wanna say, looking at history, we've seen this before many times where people come in and offer a great exciting project but at the hands of our environment. How can we say that this development is gonna help us if we don't have a full knowledge of what's gonna be put there?

That to me is omitting the truth. To me, that's omitting the fact that there will be economic justice because we don't know if people are gonna be working there. Yes, we will have contractors and that sounds wonderful, but there are so many other opportunities for people to be part of than building a site that people do not want in their backyards and a site that is gonna be full of probably environmental destruction. Like a speaker before me said that the salmon are now spawning because of the good temperature. I personally go to Big Break all the time and love to visit there.

And as we know, if you like to boat, there's algae that happens, really toxic algae. And that's from pollution. If the water is not the right temperature, it creates toxic algae. That right now is finally going away. Don't we want an environment that we can actually have fish, people can swim in? We're not gonna be afraid of having our pets die because they jump in the water. I personally want a clean delta. Another thing is there's no financial guarantee like I talked about earlier. So there's no financial guarantee, but there is a definite guarantee of economic, mean, environmental destruction, then what's the point? And if it is an AI center, we all know the water it takes.

And we're not sure what kind of generators will be used or the smog because we simply don't know. I want to say as someone who votes on things, sometimes we feel pressure to say yes because other people are. And you guys up there have a lot of power and, you know, be someone that you, when you leave, you said you voted the right thing. You want to be remembered as someone that protects our environment, as someone protects our kids, protects our animals and our land. We have a short life here, but our decisions impact the rest of our future.

You might say, oh, this gets me a good job now, but what about your grandkids? Are they gonna have a good, safe, clean water? With the world the way it is, with there's so much bad stuff going on, you have a voice to be be there and to say, take accountability and say, you're voting no on something that's gonna hurt everybody. So thank you for your time and thank you for voting on the right thing.

Thank you. Nicholas Zorowski? I might have murdered that last name. Nicholas? Zaragoza? Okay.

Hello.

I am Nicholas Zaragoza, and I've lived in Oakley all of my life. All twenty one years of it, and I have gone up and down Vintage Parkway on a skateboard, on a bike. I've been down Big Break on a skateboard, on a bike, and I've been down Main Street on a skateboard and a bike. I've walked down that Main Street. Yes, we need improvements on Main Street, but it does not need to be through a rezone of Bridgehead.

There's so much traffic that's already been created by that new safe way that has been implemented. I do delivery. I drive up and down these roads constantly. I have now been impeded again and again, slowing down my day, slowing down my time getting home, and spending my time with my family. And these days get longer and longer the more traffic we put in to our community.

As miss Oliveros said on our planning commissioner, who are these a list individuals? We don't get a solid answer from our applicant. The there was no generalized company stated or individual marked. We don't have any of these how do I put this? We don't have a lot of the stuff that is we don't have the infrastructure to be giving into more stuff.

Maybe we need more schools. Maybe we need more things. These situations we cause are causing our schools to be overflowed. We're buying more and building more houses. These houses do not further the ability to bring in more people. We have an overflowing Freedom High School. Freedom High School is overflowing. To say the least, and to wrap up everything that I wanna say, I oppose this. And I wanna say, if it is brought in as anything, I would like you to consider putting a solid ban on AI data centers. That is my final statement.

Have a good day.

Thank you. Bud Chandler?

Is that it? Any more cards? That's it?

That was a bunch. All right. All appreciated, by the way. At this point, we call for the close of the public comments and move to see if we have any comments from the commissioners on moving forward.

When you say comments, does this mean that we make some some sort of a motion or is that the next step?

I would say at this time, the thing the commission could be doing is either asking more questions, having deliberation on the project, trying to work out any of the comments they may have received, if they have any follow-up questions for staff or the applicant they'd like us to address, any of the public's comments, that may have come forth or just from the commission. But typically at this stage, the commission would deliberate on the project, and see if there's any solutions, anything that could be done. And again, as I stated in the presentation, I'm happy to help guide that. I I don't want this to be my discussion. I want it to be the commission's discussion.

But I'm happy to to help however staff can help.

Okay. I do have a question real quickly, from one of our Oakley citizens. You mentioned Diablo Water. You were the liaison for Diablo Water. And I guess my clarifying question is, has Diablo Water district been engaged in any of this?

Yeah. I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna address specifically kind of like accusations or comments that have been made from the public. We have a will serve letter from Diablo Water District that is attachment l to the environmental impact report. So they've been engaged since very early on.

Okay. Thank you. I know I have one.

Yeah. We we have a, chair. We have a will serve letter from Diablo Water District. It is included as attachment l to the environmental impact report, the draft environmental impact report.

Okay. Thank you.

Can we request further review of the environmental report so we can find out more about water capacity?

I think I think what I would from staff's recommendation, what I would say is I would ask the commission to address some of the concerns or let staff know if there's any concerns you have with what's currently being presented because we may have solutions to those. We may have ideas for how to move forward to how to make a recommendation to the council to hold the project up to a certain standard that the that the commission may see fit for that. I think the tools are in place. There there's a very extensive study in place. It is true that we don't know all the users, but you know the Safeway Center was built.

We didn't know all the tenants there either. It's it's this is

Chair,

can I ask you for order, please?

Excuse me. Audience members, please. This is not a time for audience comment. We need to keep order. Please allow the deliberation to continue.

We're we're at the point where the commission needs to take a direction with recommendations or moving this resolution forward.

So you have a staff so I have a staff question. So are we allowed to ask to say that if they say no data center? Is that part of the question that we can ask for?

You could have the applicant come up and see how they feel about that. I was going to suggest because if you look in the planned unit district, you'll notice all of the uses are listed as permitted. In in a typical zoning district, have as you guys know, you have permitted uses and then you have conditionally permitted uses. All of the uses in the PUD are currently proposed as permitted uses. So I was gonna suggest what one potential solution could be is if you were to make a recommendation to the city council that you would recommend that data center in this case be made a conditionally permitted use in the planned unit district, that does a few things.

What what that does is a conditionally permitted use is not permitted by right. So I believe it may have been chair that had mentioned or someone had asked earlier, I apologize, who asked if businesses require a business license when they come in, and they do. But that is not a discretionary action, a business license, approving a business license. It's a ministerial action. If you come in, you get a business license.

We do check for the allowance of the use whether it's permitted or conditionally permitted during that time, but the business license itself isn't really something where we're adding conditions on a project or anything like that. A conditional use permit would require, in this case, data center, if it were to be data center, to file for a conditional use permit. That creates a discretionary action and a project that's required to be approved, and that really closes the gap if there were any gap between a business just coming in and operating and a business that needs to go through additional analysis. What it also does is it also creates what CEQUA would define as a project under CEQUA law, and that project would then be subject to CEQUA analysis so that any conditional use permit that had come that comes in for use on this property would be subject to to being qualified or defined as a project under CEQA. And as mentioned earlier, I believe it was commissioner Ireland that asked the question, where could the uses be analyzed, you know, for consistency with the e n r e EIR.

This would really close that gap and require that conditional use permit to go through that process. At that time, whatever building it may be, whatever the the square footage may be, whatever the floor plan may be, all those things would be proposed at that time, and we could really do a more in-depth analysis. When I mentioned the infrastructure isn't there for recycled water, I meant there's no pipes going to the site for recycled water. They can't just simply hook up to recycled water. It is something that we have been in discussions with with ISD and so forth on opportunities for that because they do produce water that could potentially be recycled.

At this time, the infrastructure is not in place to have it just plugged into the site. But there's several things. So if the applicant were to come forward, data center, lots of people have mentioned tonight, it's not even possible. PG and E will never approve it, but let's just say they get through all those hoops and they propose it. This would ensure if it were a conditional use permit, there's an additional discretionary action to take place.

They need to come back to the decision making body for approval of a conditional use permit. It is a public hearing. And we could ensure that whatever the specific usages for utilities that the infrastructure's in place and the capacity is available. Not only that, but that any incidental impacts that could occur from that use of whatever utility is is either consistent with what's been analyzed in the EIR or exceeds it and would require something additional to the EIR. Either a tier off the EIR document or something else per sequel law.

So that was gonna be my recommendation. I started thinking about this when I saw a lot of the comments come in for data center and I realized man, yeah, it's not something we've talked about with the applicant is like, hey, we really want to do data centers. This is all about data centers. So yeah, of course, it's, you know, we call out what the proposed uses are in the resolution and the staff report. It's in the PUD and so forth.

But that's why there's no special attention brought to it. A lot of the discussion started today when the public comments started coming in. So that's kind of my my first if I were to recommend from a planning perspective how we can address this and give the council a recommendation from the planning commission on how you want to address this potential use of data center. That would be it. Make it a conditional use permit in the planned unit district.

Would one of the members like to make a motion with that in the resolution?

Yeah. When we get there, I definitely think that would be something that I would support. I mean, just in general.

I think

we're clearly at the deliberation stage even though we are asking some questions. You know, I I definitely wanna say thank you to everybody who came to this meeting. I've been doing this for not that long, but this is certainly the most well attended I've seen. And communities are definitely what we make them. I always say that, and I appreciate those that came. You know, I think this is this is an opportunity for us. I know there's a lot of questions and concerns, comments about what if this is going to come because we don't know. To me, is it's not that's not scary. That's a it doesn't limit us. This just opens us up. I think I would support the conditional use permitting adjustment for the resolution because I think that's a good balancing act here. I looked through all of the comments, I wrote down everything everybody said.

The

people that opposed were that the data center is almost to a T what is the primary proposal here. So I think, again, think we're not done deliberating if anyone else has any comments. But in general, I think I would support it with the CUP added.

Center is not the only It's

not even happening.

So this is the public comment has already finished. We're deliberating right now to find out how to move forward to make our recommendation to the city council. And this is the place where the data center looks like it's a big sticking point, and we need to put a bullet in there that absolutely limits that when it's going forward that it cannot go forward at as with a data center on it as part of our recommendation to the city council. City council has a final approval on this. We just make a recommendation to them from what we've seen tonight.

If if I may, thank you again to all of you. I think having you all come out is amazing, and this is one of the reasons why I joined the Oakley Planning Commission, because if you wanna see change, you gotta be the change, and you are here, proving that. So thank you. In terms of just whether or not this moves forward to the city council, is there any way because just as myself, as a mother who takes her kids to Big Break, and I love being there. I enjoy it.

It's beautiful. It's part of what makes us unique. It is a gem for Oakley. And I too personally don't wanna see a lot of of of that infrastructure there. But if it were to be passed by the city council, can we revisit the design of it? Can it be to where, one, it may not be a potential eyesore? Two, could it be some sort of, like, you know, maybe the facade of the building, there's some sort of artistic delta I don't know. Something. Right? Like, what can it what can we do to make it just a little bit less Industrial.

Industrial, I guess I can say. Right? You know, because, yes, to the client family, I get that. I mean, that really sucks that you guys don't you know, that the wine industry is going well because I drink a lot of wine. No. But and I go down to Brentwood, and it's unfortunate that we can't create these type of businesses of having a winery here or any of those. Right? But what I'm getting at is how can we shift the way the design is? That would be a recommendation for me just to really look at that design.

Thank you for the

Okay. Guys. Thank you.

For

for design architecture on the buildings, design of the buildings, there's a there's a couple ways we could potentially look at I'll let that finish. There's a couple ways we could potentially look at that. You know, what what I would there's probably a recommendation that could be made or direction to staff that prior prior to meeting with the city council, we'd be happy to go back, speak with the applicant, their architect to see if there's any opportunity for that. If if that were to be the case, it could be something that's we could add into your recommendation into the the design review section of, the resolution for the entitlements that you're also you're also requesting staff to go back and look at other things. I would ask if that were to be the case that we have a little more clear direction, if there's any specific, buildings you'd like us to look at or any specific ideas, so that we just have a little more guidance if that were to be the direction you go on on where to even start that conversation.

I think it's something the commission would include in any motion for that specific resolution.

Yeah. And I mean, I would put this back to j b two. Right? You all are based in in Georgia. So what are some of the things that are what are some of the non cookie cutter designs? Right? Let's think outside the box when it comes to implementing something in a small town like Oakley. So, yeah, we can also do the research, but I think as partners, they can also come up with some proposals.

Understood. Thank you.

The recommendations from the

I mean, I don't wanna step on anyone's toes if there's still deliberation to be had, I'm prepared to make a motion. So since there are two proposed resolutions, it sounds like the conditional permit use would be appropriate in number 12, the project entitlements. Is that correct?

Yeah. We would add a we would add a condition in there to to modify the PUD under the rezone to to move data centers from permitted to conditionally permitted. That means they they would require approval of a conditional use permit. So

my next question is, do we need to make these resolutions or sorry. There's two resolutions we need to approve. Do these can be separate motions, or should I motion them together?

I think you could could motion them together, but they they yeah. They're adopted separately. They should take votes separately, but you should probably motion them together. I would actually defer to the city attorney

I gonna

say city attorney, if you have a recommendation, should I make a motion for two separate motions and start with the draft EIR or do them both together?

It's totally within your discretion. You can make one motion together with those two conditions or those two recommendations for city council, ultimately being that these are recommendations to city council.

Thank you for the input. Then I'll make one motion to approve both proposed resolutions recommending to the city council with the addition of the project entitlements being adjusted with the conditional permit use as discussed with city staff. If we need some more clarity on that, I'm happy to add it for data centers.

Staff staff does not need additional clarity on that portion. I know there was still another request as well. So I don't know if that was gonna be part of your motion or

if it

would be part of a second.

Ken, I'm I guess I'm just I wanna make sure I'm having good clarity and understanding. If we are not if I personally say I am not approving this motion, is that something that is that something that is also proposed to city council?

If you were saying

I'd like I don't wanna move forward with the rezoning. No. Right.

Is that

You're you're making a recommendation to the city council. The planning commission is making a recommendation to the city council

Okay.

On the on the, entitlements and the EIR.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying.

I don't know if that clarified, but that

Well, that for me, know where I wanna go with it.

Do we have a motion?

I believe I made a proper motion but it does not have a second.

And a second?

I'll second it. So

now we go to a roll call vote. Madam clerk?

Commissioner Gaudi.

Order, please. Order, please.

Sup? Not bringing jobs.

Aye.

Commissioner Ireland. Aye. New buildings for Amazon in Oakland. Commissioner Oliveros.

Nay.

Commissioner harp vice chair Harvey?

Nay.

Chair Price?

Aye.

Proposed resolution passes three to two.

Let's take a break.

Yeah, we can come back here

every week. We're going to fight. Five minutes.

There's no industry open.

Oh, we're not done. Let's take five

minutes.

Can we get a recommendation from the city attorney? I believe we'd like to take a five minute recess and then resume. Is that appropriate? Leonard, can you call for that? Hi.

Jackass.

And

we don't get the final vote anyway. The final vote's on the governor's

No. Sorry about that. Having you to sign it.

They just maybe they'll So, we have no regular calendiners, so we'll move on to reports. Staff members?

No reports from staff. Just we'll go back to our regular meeting on in February. So the the first Tuesday in February will be our next planning commission meeting. Thank you.

Any reports from planning commissioners? A request for future agenda items. There there are no work sessions. Therefore, be no further business, the meeting is adjourned.