Planning & Transportation Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. I call to order the March 25th, 2026 meeting of the Planning and Transportation Commission. Mr. Dvet, would you call the role? Uh yes. Uh Chair Aken here. Uh Vice Chair Chang here. Uh, Commissioner Hecman, Commissioner James here, Commissioner G here, Commissioner Peterson here, Commissioner Tippleton here. For the record, we have quorum. And Commissioner Hecman hopes to join us a little later tonight. For the record, Assistant Director Armor, do we have any agenda changes tonight?

Good evening. Uh, we do have one agenda change. Uh we are going to move the public com comment on items not on the agenda to the end of the agenda after item four.

Thank you. Make a note of that so I don't forget it later. Next we have the city official reports from assistant director Armor and senior trans transportation planner RCA.

Good evening. We'll share a quick PowerPoint as usual about upcoming meetings. Um first we have planned for your April 8th meeting a discussion of alternative housing. This is in relation to one of the housing element implementation programs and a first review of a new planned home zone at 788 San Antonio Road. Second here, April 29th, we currently have tenatively planned a consideration of a tenative map at 4103 Old Trace Road and a uh the next consideration of stream protection ordinance. We do also expect at that meeting to conduct the election of chair and vice chair for the next meeting. Um, assuming we do have um the two spots that we've we've gotten direction from council on the the two spots that were open for recruitment. Uh, I do want to thank um our commissioner Peterson and and Vice Chair Chang for um participating in the interviews that the council did conduct on Monday. Next for uh council dates on the 16th, we did uh have approval by city council of the project at 2100 Gang Road for the project at 4075 El Camino Way. That was also approved based on the planning and transportation commission's recommendation for a reduced size project. and uh the bird friendly design ordinance was also approved uh with only minor modifications. Uh upcoming meetings, April 6th will be a discussion study session of the San Antonio Road area plan that you'll be discussing tonight. That will be with

council on April 6th and April 13th. They will be considering um the a decision on the project at 366 El Camino Riale um that did come before PTC for recommendation. That concludes my presentation and I will pass it on to transportation.

Thank you and uh good evening chair, vice chair and members of PTC. My name is Azie Arce, senior transportation planner and here with the March 25th, 2026 office of transportation updates. Um next slide please. Uh just starting with a quick note about a smaller yet impactful project. uh the street improvement with new ballards and signs installed on Carfree Ramona Street replacing the temporary water filled orange barriers. Um so if you get a chance, go check them out. Uh next slide, please. Um an update on the ongoing analysis for a temporary Churchill Avenue rail uh crossing closure. Uh this has been a fast evolving issue for both city staff and the community uh with substantial work uh in coordination with the California Public Utilities Commission, CPU and Cal Train. Uh OOT staff attended a very well attended community meeting on March 12th and many people spoke about their concern about youth mental health and access to lethal means represented by the tracks in this location. On March 17th, uh, OOTT staff held a diagnostic meeting for the Churchill Avenue, uh, temporary closure effort, and this is a key step in understanding the process of evaluating the implications of a potential temporary closure. Uh, many thanks to OOT staff, uh, Ripenbatia on excellent preparation for the meeting, including assembling a multi- agency team and draft concept designs for the team to discuss. So, progress is is is well underway. Uh and lastly, a note on here that there is a meeting, a city council meeting scheduled for April 13th to present those options, uh receive direction and next steps. Next slide, please. Uh at the regional level, uh Santa Clara County is conducting a foothills expressway multimodal feasibility study. This advances the county's active

transportation plans recommendation for a continuous class one shared use path along Foothill Expressway and Juniperosa. Uh the county shared two alternatives for the corridor and is asking for community feedback on a preferred alternative. Um and there are some upcoming engagement opportunities that we just wanted to highlight for the community. There is a survey open now until uh April 15th and a virtual community meeting on the topic on Thursday, March 26th at 6:30. Uh there are some links on um the uh the the slide as well as the project web page. If folks are interested in learning more, we encourage folks to visit the project web page. Uh and lastly uh also at the regional level this time BTA the valley transportation authority initiated a new effort uh the across barrier connection plan ABC plan. This effort aims to develop a prioritized list of locations for pedestrian and bicycle improvements across limited access freeways uh in Palo Alto. This is uh Interstate 280 uh US 101. So think uh Embaradero crossing, San Antonio crossing. Uh so there's upcoming engagement opportunities and the community is invited uh to take another survey. This one opening on April 1st through the 26th and also hosting a virtual community meeting uh on April 22nd. And the project web page is also on this slide if folks have more uh for more information. And that concludes my updates for March 25th. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Armor, Miss Mr. Arce. Commissioners, do we have questions? I have Commissioner Templeton, then Commissioner G. Uh, yes, Mr. Arce, thank you for the update about the Church Hill crossing conversation. Um, I just wanted to um

clarify um part of your statement just for the purposes of making sure we all understand what the issue is. you mentioned the lethal means um is the having the tracks in that area and it's slightly I'm being pedantic here but it's not the tracks it's the atgrade crossing that is accessible to pedestrians bikes and vehicles so if without moving the tracks if that atgrade crossing was eliminated it would remove the lethal means from the school district adjacency Um, so, you know, it's a really good conversation and it's good that everybody has been coming out and talking um to the city staff and um making their thoughts known. I think did you say there was still a survey open for this one or is I know there was, but I don't know if it's still open.

I am not aware of a survey open on the Churchill Avenue topic. If if you go to the web page, there is um a form field there where people

right able to give some thoughts. So um I just encourage people to think about that and um what we can do to make it safer because um as as you mentioned there was an analogy made about access to lethal means. Um no one would want to leave a loaded gun on a on a school property or adjacent to it. Um and so that's the conversation that was had. uh at least that's um what was discussed at that meeting. So just appreciate you being clear about it's it's not the tracks itself but it's the outgrade crossing that we're trying to work on. Thank you. Thank you Commissioner G.

Thank you chair and thank you Mr. Arce for addressing the signal phasing question that I had at a previous meeting. I was wondering if you could shed a little bit more light onto it. Uh I know you've provided an email that says that um well actually I was wondering if maybe you could explain some components of it. For example, you mentioned that this is tied to a train preeemption program. Is this only impacting the meadow crossing in particular or do I personally just feel it more because I drive the meadow crossing? Like is this issue that you've identified here also occurring at the Charleston Churchill and other crossings that we have? Uh, Commissioner G, I apologize. I I'm not uh the best person to answer that question, but we can definitely relay that to our traffic engineers to give you the best answer.

Okay, just to summarize for the commission on this email that was sent to everyone. Uh the question that I posed on February 25th was about why at the Meadow crossing I noticed some skip signaling. For example, coming from the El Camino side on West Meadow going across the tracks, it skips two or three signals at a time which causes pretty severe backup in that area. And according to the email sent to us from Mr. are say they had mentioned that quote the behavior observed is tied to the train preeemption programming at this intersection because Meadow Alma is located immediately adjacent to the rail corridor the traffic signal is programmed to prioritize safety and clearance when the train is approaching but I didn't notice that this occurs at any of the other intersections at Charleston or at Churchill. Go ahead

through the chair. Um I I can jump in and just share that that is standard practice when we've got the the railroad the train coming through that it is going to get preeemption over the cross traffic. Um and so we can confirm and if it's otherwise we we can let you know but um it is standard at at all of those intersections. I think it's safe to say that Commissioner G and I when posing that question were aware that that was a standard practice. I think what he's trying to identify is anomalous behavior and so we were trying to alert you of that, right? Okay.

Yeah. So the specifically the skip signaling that I noticed is not when a train is present like the there is no train present. I totally understand when the skip signaling is there. Um but I would like to to to have staff look into this so that would be great. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you commissioners. Any further clarifying questions? Nothing. Um, I would just like to ask if you had uh a chance to connect with uh Nathan Baird to uh get an update on his parking u meeting efforts.

Uh short answer is yes. We uh reached out to uh Nate to inform him of the commission's interest in receiving more information around uh parking policies and updates around the parking management program. Um so happy to uh uh relay that information or we have relayed that information to him. Uh and we've discussed it could come in either the form of anformational report or an email or another type but uh the message has been relayed.

Great. Thank you very much. We're looking forward to that. No other questions. Right. Agenda item number two tonight is a study session on the San Antonio Road area plan. The staff report begins on packet page 8. Uh commissioners, we expect more than the usual amount of discussion tonight. So, we're going to experiment with time limits uh to see if we can spread the discussion for each round um around more evenly. Um we'll limit ourselves to 3 minutes each for clarifying questions and then 5 minutes in each round of the general discussion, but of course uh we'll have as many rounds as we need to make sure everything is heard. So, the ARB uses this and uh you may remember it came up during uh our last joint meeting with the ARB and it seemed like this might be a good opportunity to try it and see if it works for PTC as well.

May we have the uh staff pres Did you see my hand raised? Pardon me. No, I didn't. I just wanted to uh encourage you to check and make sure we all want to participate in that idea in case you wanted our input. Um, sure. Well, it's good feedback. I was not in favor of it with the ARB and I don't think it's necessary here because I don't know what problem we're trying to solve, but I'm open to if other people feel like we need to be limited or run this experiment. I mean, it's fine with me, but I don't see yet what the problem is.

Yeah, I'd like to run the experiment. Um, and I'm not convinced that it will make a difference either, but this is the best way to find out. Vice Chair Chang, when the chair suggested, I thought it was a good idea just because I'm worried about how late we're going to be here tonight. So I thought any experimentation it might result in the same outcome that we have but I thought any might move the needle towards us speeding up a little bit was a good thing to try. So how will we know if we're successful? We can discuss afterwards if we want to or maybe at a different meeting.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't feel like we've hit this problem before and so I don't know that we need to experiment solving it. However, if that's what you guys want to do, we can do it. I just don't know how you're gonna feel about it when it's imposed on you in the future. Well, no, no, no. Because it won't be imposed on you guys. The what I was trying to accomplish with this suggestion was to make sure that we didn't have one round with very long discussion that limited the ability of the other uh commissioners to contribute in the first round. U so it doesn't I don't think it will make things faster but I think it may spread the load more evenly. Um, now whether that turns out to be worthwhile may be entirely subjective. Um, but we'll see. Commissioner G, just a quick aside, is this a pilot program that we can revert or No, just kidding. Uh,

but but I'm not kidding. That is exactly what I have in mind. Thank you. Anyway, so uh I don't know. Maybe we I'm curious about the idea. I think the idea of having a shorter first round I think could warrant some merit, but I think having time limits afterwards may not. So just making sure that everyone gets something in before we all dive in could be useful as kind of a first level, but I don't know if having this for subsequent rounds makes as much sense.

Thank you all. And it may turn out that we don't need it. We don't always speak more than 5 minutes for a round anyway. We're the best controlled commission there is. We're so good. Like, we don't even need to rein ourselves in. So, anyh who, I just kid. All right. Uh, may we have the staff presentation?

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Robert Kaine. I am a principal planner with the Department of Planning and Development Services. I'm here to talk to you tonight about the San Antonio Road area plan. You might remember we came to you uh last fall back in September when we were in our earlier stages of the plan. Since then, we've been doing a lot of work in developing um some potential alternatives for the plan um which you can find in the packet that was published for this meeting. Um we're not going to go through everything in that packet uh bit by bit because it is quite a long attachment that we provided you. Um, but I'm going to give you uh just a brief reminder of the project, talk a little bit about timelines, our philosophy of how we got to where we are right now, and then uh request some specific feedback from the planning commission, uh, planning and transportation commission. This feedback will be included to the city council, which we are scheduled to go to the first Monday of April. Um, we've been going to lots of other boards and commissions which we'll maybe talk about a little bit. Um, but uh, I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about the subject. Next slide, please. So, just a brief rundown, a project update, um, our overall design strategy, and then what our requested feedback is. Next slide, please. So, as a reminder, the San Antonio Road area plan covers about 275 acres in the southern portion of Palo Alto along the Mountain View border. It includes uh a nearly 2-m length of San Antonio Road from Alma all the way to the bay um and several important intersections and pieces of cross streets at Alma, Middlefield, Charleston, um as well as East and West Bay Shore along 101. Um, currently it contains a mix of industrial, office, service, commercial, and residential uses. The adjacent

adjacent neighborhoods on both sides of the plan include a lot of single family residential homes. Um, and the southern part of the planned area is adjacent to the San Antonio Cal Train Station. Um, we're hoping with the plan to create a more livable community, um, improve mobility and safety throughout the corridor as well as support the city's sustainability goals. We're also looking at how to enhance economic vitality and we're going to in the end hopefully have a plan that includes zoning and development standards for the area as well as implementation tools and strategies including um financing uh ideas as well. Next slide please. So we are currently nearing the end of phase two which is where we developed these land use and mobility alternatives. Um, as you can see, we've gone to several other advisory boards and committees uh during the month of March. Uh, we've also done some public outreach. We had a community workshop at the beginning of the month. We are currently running a survey which uh people still have a few more days if they wish to take that's located on the project website. Um, and then uh we also were at the KAB farmers market the other weekend engaging with residents there as well. Um once we conclude this phase, we will then begin developing uh policy recommendations and uh really drilling down on um specific portions of the plan uh and hope to come back to uh all of the relevant bodies uh for a hear for um study sessions or action items near the end of the year. um most of 2027 we envision uh finalizing the draft plan as well as conducting the environmental review and we hope to uh have final

adoption of the plan uh in early the first half of 2028. Next slide please. So in order to uh manage our development of this plan area, uh we felt that uh it wasn't appropriate to try to have the same um recommendations throughout the entire 275 acre area or along all of the uh multiple miles of roadway. So we've broken the plan area down into smaller, more discreet sub areas. Uh we're focused on redevelopment of infill of um where there's currently low density commercial with higher density residential and mixed use uh products. We're looking at where to include parks uh plazas and other third spaces that will be community gathering places. Um we're also considering how to improve the roads um themselves and make them uh you know they're already very traffic focused but they can be improved from that focus as well as uh improving the ped bike experience uh throughout the plan area and looking to add transit and improve connections to transit as well. um including not just the words themselves but particular influence particular um focus on the intersections. Next slide please. So as I mentioned uh the first thing that we tried to do to uh organize the plan was to create sub areas. Um we have identified four different sub areas that we think there will be a lot of change occurring in. This is based on either development applications that the city has received or interest that has been expressed by developers to city staff. Um those areas are central San Antonio, which is essentially from Middlefield to

East Charleston, but also includes um a couple parcels uh just west of Middlefield, including the current Toyota dealership. Then there is uh north and south Fabian areas. Um, South Fabian uh includes some institutions that are not likely to change like the Jewish Community Center um but also other uh areas other properties that we've seen developer interest in. North Fabian is primarily currently the Maxar site um but also some other commercial across the street across Fabian Way from there. And then the fourth area is what we call the CTI area. That's because it contains commercial and transport streets and industrial avenue and those uh it's easier to say the first letter of each of those streets then say all three streets every time. Um that area is a mostly um lowcale uh you know one to two story commercial light industrial some community services currently in that area. that there is developer interest in uh consolidating some of the small lots. It's right now it's many small lots and like the Maxer site which is a 125 acres site. Um but there's interest in consolidating lots and maybe doing um something uh at a larger scale in the CTI as well. In addition to those four primary areas that we're focused on, um there's also areas uh of the plan along east and west beayshore and along Alma where there is limited potential for additional development there as well. Um and then uh areas that we call the areas of stability. Those include the greenhouse um development and other uh condominium town home developments along South San Antonio that because of ownership structure um are unlikely to turn over and and have new development. Um it also includes we've also included in this the Green Meadow neighborhood.

Green Meadow is not part of the area plan. However, with the recent passage of Senate Bill 79, they are within the area affected um by that as being within a half mile of a major transit stop. Um but even so, because of the uh small lots, individual ownership, and high value of those single family homes, we don't expect there to be much change occurring in that area, even though the development potential has been increased by the state law. Next slide, please. So, we're looking for feedback on a few things. First, uh the overall plan direction. Um are uh does do commissioners have thoughts on the overall plan scope, direction, and timeline that we've discussed. Uh second, about the sub area classification, how we've broken it up into these discrete areas um and labeled them as primary, secondary, and areas of stability. Um, we're looking for feedback on residential density and building heights, which are pretty tied because the building heights directly impact the density in in realistic cases for most developers. Um, we've got three main options throughout the plan area. One is to uh maintain a 60 foot height limit, which is pretty common throughout the plan area already. Um, which would be about 90 dwelling units per acre. Um the next is to go up to 90 ft in height which would allow up to eight story mid-rise development and approximately 135 dwelling units per acre. Um and that seems uh from our analysis to be the most financially feasible um way to get multif family uh apartments into the plan area. Um and then the third option is to allow high-rise which uh moves away from um wood construction into

steel construction. doesn't start turning profitable until you get to somewhere between 160 to 250 feet. Um we haven't set any official limit should that be the direction that um advisory boards or the commission or the commission or the council wish to go. Um but we're providing it as an option because it does give the developers a lot more flexibility. Um we don't necessarily think there will be a huge rush to build this model type because it is very expensive to do. Um but with that flexibility uh there also comes benefits which we'll talk about with the the residential and commercial mix. Um so we're looking for feedback on whether we should ignore any of these or remove any of these uh height tiers from uh future development. Um and on the low end, we think that uh the these heights could yield uh the potential the capacity for 3,800 new units. Um at the high end, the capacity for 7,400 new units. Not that all of those would necessarily be built. Um certainly not in the short term. Next slide, please. Um, we're also looking for some feedback on uh whether or not we should vary building heights by location. Um, we got some feedback from the ARB on this, so we wanted to bring that to you as well. Um, we heard that perhaps we should allow highrises along 101 and along the interchange. um but that we should maybe also restrict heights um in areas that are directly adjacent to single family residential properties. Um for office development, we're looking for feedback primarily for the CTI area, which is where we're looking um to potentially add new office. Um there's a pos there

are a couple of scenarios that are provided in the packet where we do residential development only and don't allow new office and research and development. Um and then there are two options that allow research and development in office space. Um one essentially does not increase the the net amount of office and research and development space between the Maxar site and what's currently in CTI and we would put a cap that that does not that basically requires a one for one demolition and rebuild. Um and the second would be uh a more generous allowance uh up to initial 150 or maybe 200,000 additional square feet of office and residential be that's net new beyond what the existing is between those two areas. Um under either of those scenarios planwide there would be a net reduction in uh commercial space as many of the buildings are expected to transform to residential. Um but we didn't want to just compare the entire plan area. We wanted to compare just uh this area near 101 when we're looking at whether or not we wanted to stay stable or allow a uh some amount of net increase. These two neighborhoods are also uh currently park deficient. They're more than 10-minute walk to any publicly available open space um including the Baylands, including Ramos Park, including Cberly and Middle and um and Mitchell Park. So we would like to add additional park space in this area. Um this could be done uh as part of the development um process especially if the max site redevelops as a large u parcel. Um there might be a way to incor it would be easy to incorporate open space there. Uh and we think that if there is partial cons consolidation in CTI, we

could have a similar but perhaps smaller um influence there as well on parks. And when it comes to those, we're interested in knowing whether or not we should focus on uh a large consolidated neighborhood park in each of those areas or have dispersed smaller parks located throughout the neighborhoods. um whether or not they should be interior to the neighborhoods or adjacent to the major roads and whether or not uh they should be colloccated with retail such as cafes, ice cream shops, um and those types of things that people might go to and then sit in the park uh and enjoy what they've just purchased. Um next slide, please. We're also wondering if we should be looking to add additional parks and plazas at other key intersections such as Middlefield and San Antonio. Um, which is not as uh park deficient, which is not park deficient, but could still benefit given that there's so many new residents that we're expecting to have uh within the plan area. Um, another item that we're looking for feedback on is ground flooror retail. Um, we've heard a lot about struggles with ground flooror retail, um, from the developers perspective. Um, and staff is wondering whether or not we should focus that on the new neighborhood areas at the north end of the plan. um or whether or not we should also include it in the central San Antonio area, which might have some challenges given that we don't anticipate there will be enough foot traffic along San Antonio or potentially enough parking to really um bring people from outside of those buildings themselves to retail in those buildings. Is it still valuable to have the push

for retail on the ground floor um as the city has currently uh tries to include in these types of developments? Next slide, please. And this is not just a land use plan, it's also a transportation plan. Um, so for mobility, we're looking for feedback that's sort of general um in terms of whether or not uh our improvements should be um more modest and quick and easy to implement or if we should be going bolder and doing more developed things. Um, you know, bicycle paths are something that are particularly um in a wide range. We could do on street bicycle lanes um that are still separated from traffic but are perhaps less comfortable uh and perhaps not as safe as a sidewalk level facility. Um and we could do multi-use paths on the sidewalks which consolidates the need for land but also provide challenges when you have conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists. Or we could do full uh separated sidewalk level separated bikeways and sidewalks that are separate from each other. Um which are uh highly desirable um but also very expensive to implement. Would probably require us to rebuild the curbs uh along San Antonio Road for example and possibly on Charleston as well in order to accommodate this. Um so there's a lot more to do to get that done. Uh another possibility could be to start with uh option A which is the street level um bike lanes while we're then building towards one of the other options uh later on. Um and so we're specifically looking at that one section between Middlefield and Charleston as an example of how we can build out. It's in your packet and on this slide, the three different options that we've laid out

for you, as well as the portion of East Charleston, south of San Antonio um between there and the city of Mountain View and how to uh build better uh bike and pedestrian facilities there that we then would work with Mountain View to hopefully connect as they as they cross the city boundary. Um next slide, please. That concludes my presentation. We have uh just the next slide is the main topic areas that we're requesting feedback. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present and we're looking forward to answering your questions. I'm here. We also have uh our consultants here in the room. We have our subconsultant for transportation as well as um Sylvia Starlac uh the transportation planning manager for the city um available on virtually if you have questions uh for any of us. We're happy to take them.

Thank you, Principal Planner Kaine. Commissioners, do we have any clarifying questions? Commissioner G. Thank you, Chair. And am I looking over here? Okay, perfect. The clock's running. So, my first question is, it's not listed anywhere in the slide deck, but how long generally are we thinking this area? Is this like a 20-year plan, a 40-year plan? How long are we looking here? Yeah, we're looking at a 20 to 25 year plan.

Thank you. And I had a question that's a little bit more um kind of about the wording. So, we described this as an area plan. I was wondering if there's a difference between this and what a specific plan is. Is this our version of a specific plan? Those can be used interchangeably. Okay. So, for the purposes here, they are the same. Yes.

Okay. Um, thank you. And then I had a question about slide number four, the project timeline. So my question here is I see that this is coming back to the PTC for analysis and policy recommendations. Can you help me understand what's different like what kinds of different levels of feedback we'd be providing at this level versus the next level so I can tailor it towards what would be helpful?

Sure. So, we're hoping at this level to get sort of big picture framework type feedback. That's what we're hoping to get. Um, eventually in in June, we want to go back to the council and have them have a vote and say these are the main alternatives, the main things we want to see done. So, the things we talked about about, you know, what are the preferred heights, what are the preferred types of bicycle facilities, what what do we want to see in terms of parks? And then we're going to take all of that and we're going to start writing specific policies of how do we get to that bigger picture. Um, and so when we come back in the fall, uh, we'll be looking for feedback on whether or not those policies and those specifics match one match with what the framework that we decide on now and also how we can improve those um, if they're not getting us to where we need to go.

Yeah. So let's take concretely like some of the questions you asked about like height and density. So if we provide the feedback here, what's the difference between for that in terms of what we have now and the policy recommendation? Like help me parse out the specifics here. Yeah, I mean we'll be looking at like details like let's say you say X height, but then it should transition across Adobe Creek or down to Adobe Creek or something, right? So in the next phase for that we would begin writing the policy and the zoning of what does it mean to step down building height to Adobe Creek kind of that finer grain detail. All right. Thank you.

Thank you Commissioner G Commissioner Peterson.

Thank you Chair. Um I have two questions and I'll try and fit those within my my allocated time. So, I'm pretty sure the last time this came up, I think I asked the same two questions. So, I'm just going to start off with those is one and as Commissioner G asked, what's the timeline of this? So, it's going forward longer term I think is generally the answer is there's an anticipated amount of sea level rise in the future. So, how do you want us to consider that or should we just be blind to any potential impacts in the future and just assume whatever policy decisions we make now will get, you know, figured out later on?

I'll jump in and say that that that is something that would be looked at as we look at the environmental review for this. But expressing concerns or interest in having any of these policies developed with that in mind is helpful at this stage.

Okay. And then the second question I have is also water related. We have a um repairarian corridor um policy in front of us that's still going. And one of the key pieces was on the other side of 101 which you're showing within this um this plan where there's a small area adjacent to the balins. Same question. How do you want us to consider the crossover between those two or should we just take this as a single item and just not try to think through how would this work with the corridor? As we develop the policies, we'll ensure that this does take into consideration any stream corridor protection that has been adopted either by reference um or with modifications to this plan since that is expected to u move forward to conclusion prior to any decision on the area plan.

Okay. And so it's safe to to say because I do see the clear separation between these that these are not intermingled enough that uh it's going to be a problem. They're they're separate enough topics. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Peterson. Commissioner Templeton.

Thank you. Um on slide five, you have um designated some areas with little circles that are bike and pedestrian improvements. And um I noticed the Charleston and San Antonio road. Um this is one I worked on right at the very beginning, probably seven or so years ago. And um at that time the city said, "Oh, you know, the other side of that intersection is Mountain View. It probably still is, but I see it here." what is the can you clarify what is the scope of the kind of improvements we can make in that area?

Uh, sure. So, it's a little tricky because there's a portion of Charleston where one side of the road is Mountain View and one side of the road is PaloAlto. Yeah. Um, if you're heading towards Costco from San Antonio down Charleston, um, there's a KFC and a Taco Bell that are right next to each other. Mhm.

One of those is in Mountain View and the other one is in Palo Alto. Um that's where the dividing line is on that side, but on the other side of the street, the dividing line is further down just before the the former Best Buy. Um so we we are somewhat limited in what we can do because we can't cross the city boundary. Um, we'll have to coordinate with Mountain View, uh, which we're currently doing, um, to try to make sure that any improvements move through, um, and and feel seamless to a bike rider, uh, or a pedestrian. Um, but it is there is there are some challenges with that intersection. Uh we are looking at potentially um tying into the 101 interchange um which is which will have a grade separated crossing across San Antonio um to get from one side to the other and and trying to direct people to use that instead of using the intersection if they're walking or biking. U but also making improvements um you know and I don't know if you want to talk about some of the improvements we could do. I don't know if you're interested in hearing that level of detail.

I I I am interested and I don't know to what extent you're crossing the our imaginary boundary here about what's clarifying and what's not. Um so before you answer my my point about this that's clarifying is are are we actually able to work with Mountain View now because 7 years ago we were not. We were told explicitly, don't talk about improving the safety at this horrible intersection because Mountain View is in a whole another planet of communication that we can't access. So, uh, we do have good communication currently with staff in Mountain View. Um, right answer. I love it. Thank you. That's great.

Thank you. And feel free to go ahead. You feel free to run out my time. I'm just going to point you to packet page 130. And that section there goes over the alternatives that were laid out for the intersection in Charleston. There's still work to do. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Great. Thank you for that reference. Any further uh clarifying questions for staff? Seeing none, uh, Mr. Teta, how many requests for public comment do we have?

Um, through the chair, I've not received any public comment cards on item number two. Um, if there are any members of the public that would like to speak on this item, I would like you to raise your hand. Uh, we do have two at the moment. Um, give me one second. Our first speaker is Sherry uh is Amy L. Amy, you may now speak.

Sorry. Can you hear me? Uh yes, we can hear you.

Okay. I'm on a friend's computer. This is Penny Elson. I'm a resident of Green Meadow, a member of the keg. Tonight I'm speaking as an individual. Um, the Sarah area can carry a lot of new housing though. A 25% increase in citywide dwelling units, the upper range of development potential this plan envisions, which by the way exceeds the total state mandate housing mandate for PaloAlto by almost 1,000 units plus office space. is a significant change that requires massive investment in infrastructure and community facilities to support it. How will this be funded? We haven't yet seen a traffic study. We know land use has to be decided first and there's an order to these things. What we'll but in my experience what we study in the EIR usually gets built. Um so I want us to really think about what it is that we want built in these areas. There's a great deal of community concern about traffic impacts of this development. Maintaining travel times on San Antonio Road and its Middlefield and Charleston cross streets is a key issue for residents who commute via 101 to regional jobs. There are also worries about congestion on San that that congestion on San Antonio Road may encourage diversion of traffic onto neighborhood bicycle boulevard and school routes. Please define what you will study in the EIR traffic analysis. I think we should be looking at cumulative traffic impacts of growth planned in Peloto Mountain View. I think a moment ago you just talked about that. We should also be looking at what Google's doing nearby um and the VTA 101 interchange plans. Renovation and development of Cubberly is an important piece to this puzzle. We need a fully functional Cly community

center that is well connected by all transportation modes to the Sarap areas and existing PaloAlto neighborhoods. Sarap and Coberly work should actively incorporate Cberly and Mitchell Park superb block as an essential community hub. The average PaloAlto citizen does not seem to understand the scale of housing growth that's coming. somewhere between 21 and 25% increase in citywide housing units which will result in similar population increase. We need to be talking about this. I see little bud budget money earmarked for such investment. Again, how will this be funded? And finally, regarding retail, there's been some discussion about not requiring retail along San Antonio Road. In my view, this would be unwise. It could undermine ground level vibrancy that's essential for walkable environments of this urban scale. Also, there are certain service certain services really do need to be immediately available to people as they commute to and from work. And I just want to remind us that we've been one of the reasons we're putting all this housing here is because there's a train station nearby and people are expecting foot traffic to that train station. So when I hear the PE I when I hear staff say that there won't be sufficient foot traffic to support retail, I wonder it seems like we're talking out of both sides of our mouths on that. Um so let's let's be careful about that. And finally, I want to say that I was

this concludes your time. Oh, thank you. Sorry. And thank you. Thank thank you for your comment. That was very comprehensive. And uh to the chair, I want to apologize. Um, we do have some tech issues and so I accidentally started the wrong clock. Um, and that was on my on my fault. So I will ensure that the clock is displayed for the next speaker. Um, our next speaker is Sherry. Sher, you may now speak.

Hi, thanks a lot. Um, I appreciate all the work that you've done. Um, I actually live in this area and I don't know if any of you guys do, but I'm super super concerned about traffic on San Antonio. I mean, in this entire area between 101 and Alma, there's probably 1500 residential units, which includes some affordable housing, some multi- uh family stuff. Um, and we're adding 4,000 to 7,000. And I I'm just concerned that San Antonio is going to become a parking lot. And the cross streets, we're already seeing that there's so much more congestion than there was five years ago on Legghorn, on Middlefield. People have trouble making left turns onto Middlefield already. So this makes me super concerned about the discussions around uh you know building heights and all of this stuff. So um related to that and again Mountain View is building at on the whole CVS area on El Camino on California Avenue highdensity residential the Kohl's area. So it's not just us half a million square feet of office space right next to this. So, uh, traffic, traffic, traffic. I we can't lock everybody who lives here in except in the middle of the day on a weekend or something. Um, in that vein, I think that we should be conservative with how we allocate the bike space. I bike on this street all the time. It is a nightmare. The but the physically separated lanes would be a huge win. We don't need to use up the sidewalks. We should preserve the canopy, but I also think we're going to need some kind of a a shuttle or a bus lane or something that goes up and down this street. I don't know what, but we should be careful with allocating bike space in my view. Um, and then finally, uh, I I strongly object to building any office space whatsoever. We have plenty of office space in Palo Alto, arguably far too much. And the less that we address our

Aback ratio, the more the state's going to keep coming after us. It is just insane to me that as part of this extremely expensive, extremely disruptive project, we're considering digging ourselves a slightly smaller hole by bit by building office space. No, I just think that's a terrible idea. Um, finally, I just want to add a note that on parks, um, I think parks, large parks provide much more value than small parks. Uh small parks there are substitutes for them. You have plazas etc. You don't want to just provide a bench for the ice cream store. I mean a large park you can play sports, you can have events, you can have, you know, July 4th festivals, whatever. And it's just they're irreplaceable and only something the city can do. So I am a strong advocate for large parks. Again, thank you so much for the effort that you're putting into this and please pay attention to traffic. Thanks

and thank you for that comment. Our next speaker is John P. John P, you may now speak.

Um, I I actually live in the greenhouse uh project uh condo. Um and like the other speakers, I am concerned uh with uh traffic. Uh I I think there's a reasonable consensus that traffic in that in that area be between Charleston and uh Middlefield is is already uh barely tolerable. and u bringing and I I don't see anything in the plan yet that speaks to improving the traffic, the weight times, the the complications. Uh what I do see is the parking lane uh being uh taken away from the people who live there uh and converted into uh bicycle lanes. I I don't think that's a good tradeoff. U looking at the at the situation, it it seems like we have, you know, three problems we're trying to solve. Uh traffic, uh bicycles, uh pedestrians, and I don't I just don't think there's enough space on San Antonio Road unless you start to take land away from the current residence. I don't think there's enough space on that road to solve uh to come up with a good solution for bicycles, for pedestrians, and and for traffic. Um, so instead of, you know, beating our head against the wall, uh, let's perhaps we should think outside the box and move the bike lanes off of San Antonio and perhaps to Monthros or one of the, uh, roads in the

neighborhood that that runs parallel. Conveniently, Montrose runs from uh Charleston to uh Middlefield and and it's right ac and and there's a traffic signal at that point and the other side of the traffic signal currently is a parking lot for for Coberly. So, you know, with a little reconfiguring configuration of of the plants, you could perhaps have a nice bicycle path uh in in that most troublesome area that the 6 and 700 block of San Antonio. Again, it's the part of San Antonio that runs between Charleston and uh and and Middlefield. So, I think that should be explored. uh and and and I I guess I'd like to congratulate the uh the people who are doing the planning. Uh so they put a lot of effort into it, but I think there I think this particular problem uh doesn't just doesn't have enough space to do what everybody wants to have wants to see for that part of San Antonio road again. So, please think outside the box and think about moving bicycle lanes off of San Antonio completely and into uh a parallel neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comment. And through the chair, I have not received any more requests to speak. Thank you, Mr. Tiverro. Uh Miss Armor, Mr. Kaine, would you like to follow up on any of the public comments before we begin discussion? No, but if if any of the commissioners wish to um ask for clarification based on that, we are happy to answer those questions. Also for the record, noting that Commissioner Hecman has now joined us. We have confirmed he uh given the character of this item, he can uh participate in the discussion this evening. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Armor. Uh welcome, Commissioner Hecman. You're just in time for the general discussion. Thank you. And I'm sorry I'm delayed. I was able to uh listen to the broadcast from uh 6:15. So I know about the clock and and I was able to hear um the public the thoughtful public comments of all but the last uh public commenter. Excellent. All right. We are now open for uh first round of discussion. uh be sure and um address the high level issues that uh Mr. Kaine requested of us and anything else you would like. We'll begin with Commissioner Dr. Peterson and then Commissioner Templeton.

Thank you, Chair. Uh actually wanted to follow up on one of the uh comments by a caller. Uh so maybe it's a little bit more clarification, but it it works fine for here. So, one of the callers uh said that they support larger parks rather than parklets. And so, that raises the question, how large of a park is available to be placed in this location in general in numbers of acres? So, in the CTI with the small parcels, I think the size of the park is very limited. um you know it would take I think a lot of effort to get anything really over an acre that's aggregated. I think the Maxar site has um a lot of different issues and and there um you know you know not speaking to financial feasibility there but you know there there's a lot of space there. So I think you could easily get something around 4 plus acres um you know in size location wise and space-wise.

Okay. So about 1 acre is generally what we're thinking about. It's one park for one acre or two parks of one acre each. I I think you might be in CTI. I think you can get one space that's probably somewhere between a half acre and an acre and plus some smaller things and pose and other things that function as publicly accessible open spaces and gathering places. Okay. So, it's one park or one acre for the whole region. No, I think within CTI, you know, we kind of looked at between one and three acres.

Okay. um in that neighborhood in in the Maxar site, you know, I think MA Maxar, you know, there's a lot of different factors, but from a strictly space perspective, like you could have a a larger park there. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. Appreciate it, Commissioner Templeton.

Uh thank you. I'm just going to run through things. Um, I like the sub area classification that you have proposed. Seems sensible to me. Building heights. Uh when I when you were initially talking about it, I thought, "Oh gosh, you know, I'm not excited about highrises, but you mentioned um the idea of potentially having um spaces near the highway that are not adjacent to existing single family homes be a site where highrises could be supported." And I'm intrigued by that. So, um, I'm I'm was thinking about crossing it off, but I'm kind of okay with hearing more. I'm a little open-minded to how that could work out. Um, especially because of the proximity to uh the highway. The um initial concern I have with that is just remember this is migratory bird paths. You don't really want things to get too tall over there because then this whole bird strike situation just going to get really worse. Um so I still want to see it kept um on the lower side, but I'm I'm intrigued to hear more about where some taller buildings might fit in the city limits. Um would it be helpful for us to share the list of topic areas we were looking for feedback on? We could do that.

Yeah, I'm just going through the slide where all the questions were asked. Um so uh but yeah, have it up.

Office development. Gosh. Um, you know, I worked uh for a long time in offices on the other side of the highway here in Mountain View and um as a lot of office space and finally they're adding some residential. Um, we've been the residential for some of that office space that exists across the way. I'm not sure how much more we need here, but I liked the idea that you said if we do add it would be replacement or less. Um, so I'm intrigued by that. I do think about um, you know, just planning um, design philosophy and how it's important to have these spaces that are active during the day and the evening for optimal safety. Um so to some extent there's uh some value to having people around during the day so that it doesn't become vacant um and and encourage crime. So I'm okay with that as well. Um just you know some same amount or less um is probably the best for PaloAlto. Um parks love the idea of parks. I um I strongly feel that people who will live in these new developments will use the bayands as the park if they can get to it. And that's one thing that we haven't fully addressed with this plan is how we're going to operate with adjacent organizations to make sure that that pathway which will be used is safe. Um, we've talked about this before, but it would be fantastic to, you know, have a a footnote that says, "And here's a similar project that's adjacent to ours where this kind of access and safety will be improved because I do know what's going on." And we even had, I think, uh, Mr. RSA talk about a little

bit this morning or this earlier this evening. Um, but I people got to have somewhere to take their dogs out. like I I would love to have a a big space available, but there is a really big space not too far away. Um so I I just want to make sure we're thinking about having some space um you know suitable for a dog walk or a stretch of the legs. Um it sounds like you you have different kinds of open space in mind and that will probably cover it, but just weighing in on that since you asked. Um, groundf flooror retail. Yeah, I housing is so much more important right now. The question is, will it add value to the housing if the ground floor retail is there? We heard one public comment that said potentially it would. Um, but I just worry about the vacancies and that will make it less safe. So, we really have to think about safety. If if I were to have my brothers about the ground floor retail, I would want it to be, you know, um, family and community oriented kind of businesses, dance studios, taekwond do, coffee shops, those kinds of things. Um, so that's where I would start. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. first year check.

Okay. Um I'll cover what I can in the first five minutes and then save the rest for later. Um first of all uh on regarding So I'll just go down the list of requested feedback. First of all, it's a tremendous amount of work. It's amazing what's been accomplished in this short amount of time. So, thank you to everybody who has um put in all this work and thank you to the public commenters for diving into this large amount of information and coming back with some um concrete feedback. Uh so I think the sub area classification makes a lot of sense and it makes it a much more manageable manageable uh way to think about it especially the idea that certain areas are more likely to develop than others and also because it is such a large area sort and because it's going to have the density that makes it equivalent to some of other to certain to basically all other other neighborhoods in Palo Alto. It does make sense to sort of think of the character within um section by section. So, I think that's great. Um, so the I'm going to take the office development first because I think it relates to the residential density and building heights to some extent. I align my comments completely with the comments of uh our public commenters who were very concerned about office development. this what's being proposed here is going to greatly change the character of this part of our city and that can be a good thing but it is very very expensive to do so and it's going to have a lot of impact um transportation wise and I haven't seen anything that convinces me that what is currently almost a parking lot won't become a complete parking lot with respect to San Antonio and Charleston. Um, so until I see so we're we're trying to create more housing and the reason why we're trying

to create more housing is because we've got our jobs in imbalance. So if we're putting all this work in, I don't know why we wouldn't just tread water even within like we want to I I just really don't think that we should build office either. you know decreasing the amount great treading water and replacing uh no so there were options so I don't think CTI B3 and CTI B4 are great ideas with respect to the residential density and building heights um again what I what I'm looking at is packet page 81 one and packet page 81 talks about a 20-year buildout. So, right now, this current arena cycle has 1500ish 1500 approximately units slated for this area. What we're talking about is dramatically more. However, in this Reena cycle, we put 25% of the arena housing in this along this one street. So it's a very small part of Palo Alto. It doesn't make sense to me that in the next several arena cycles because we talked about this being a 20 25 year plan that we would put proportionally the same amount of housing in this area of the city. Like it makes sense to spread it out so that all the impacts aren't all in one place. And also just imagine like we can't have all the kids that show up commuting all the way to the other cross of the other side of town in North Palto where their schools will be empty, right? So it just it doesn't we need to think about the right. Let's let's say we continue this pace of development.

That says to me over three arena cycles it's around 4,500 units of housing, right? So three times what we have now. If you look at packet page 81, the lower density alternative projection says 3,800 to 5420 units of housing. Why we would want to do more than that, I don't understand because it doesn't make sense to put all that housing in along one street. we can do it in other areas and we need more housing but Stanford Research Park is there and that would disperse the transportation impacts. So, um I'm sort of towards lower residential density and lower building heights be based on the 20-year buildout and based on the fact that we decided to put all of our housing for this reena cycle in this this part of the city. and that doesn't seem to make sense um to continue as a as as a strategy necessarily. Uh so that's it for the first four and my time is up. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair. If Commissioner Hecman,

sure, why not? Um okay, so first of all, um tremendous job on this draft plan. Um, I was really blown away. I was not um I know people have been working on it, but I was not expecting it to be so comprehensive, which it is. Um, I wasn't expecting it to be so helpful with its breakdown of some conceptual alternatives, which it has. Uh, and so I think it it it's it's a terrific start. So, I want to thank staff and the consultants uh uh who did that. Um o overall my my overall comment is is we have to decide through this process whether this plan is going to be aspirational or implementable because there's a difference and I would like us to eventually get to a plan that is implementable that has some tether to reality um uh both in in terms of land use and economics and so I and I I think some of my comments sort of flow in that action um sub area classification. I I have no issue with the way the map has been uh broken up um in the draft plan. Residential density and building height. So when I'm looking at this plan, you know, I was trying to think about it in the context of PaloAlto and and I I want to call it this is New California suburban because it's it's I mean Palo Alto is a suburban city and and typical in a lot of ways. Um but but with uh the housing demand and the state housing requirements, we're being forced to densify and and that's going to make sort of a new looking suburban city and and so

what I'm seeing is we're we are going to try to protect our lowdensity res existing residential areas. Um and we're going to have to make pretty dense um the other areas. And so this one and the whole El Camino corridor, that's where it's going to happen. So uh in general terms, we'll get to the specifics later, but in general terms, um I like the the basically eightstory buildings, shorter buildings adjacent to the lower density residential. Um, and I I don't think that uh highrises, 16, 25 stories, whatever, are part of the new California suburban. I think that's something else. That's something for bigger cities. Um, if you know, you can avoid it through builder's remedy uh projects. But, but so that's my feeling. Um, on number three, uh, office development. So um I get it. Um we have a uh dislike of office uh though it has you know really made Palo Alto the destination it is. Um but we have aging office stock and um I don't want PaloAlto to be the place that tech vacates because the only spaces available have become decrepit. Um, I think we have to turn those things over. And so, and I think that that in order to spur the kind of residential density we're looking for in this corridor, we need to incentivize by allowing at least a one for one replacement of office because economically, if we don't allow office here, you're not going to get residential uh any place there is an

office because it won't pay to change. So we want to encourage that behavior by um allowing them to build a new structure with office and residential. And I think this is really and it's mentioned in the uh the plan. This is a place where TDRs uh I think can play a really useful tool um to let the office move around um and to let the residential move around. Uh parks and outdoor space. Yes. Um, I like the larger parks offset um from the main boulevards. Um, uh, so a little bit interior, uh, ground floor retail. Um, um, uh, I'm going to talk about that when we talk about the San Antonio um, uh, middlefield intersection. Um, uh, because I think we need not ground floor retail. We need a shopping a a shopping center, a shopping district, a central place. Um so I'll talk about that more later. And mobility improvements. Um yes. Um I'll talk about the details later, but but absolutely I like the direction that we're looking. Thanks.

Thank you, Commissioner G. Then Commissioner James.

Thank you. And I will say that thank you to staff. I'm part of the community advisory group. I know how hard staff's been working and we've had lots of meeting and I really appreciate the community engagement and the thoroughess of the presentation like our other commissioners. I had a quick question about uh the South Fabian area, the drawing of it. So, as discussed during the ERB meeting, many of these buildings may not be changing. There's like the JCC and there's another school that designated itself as its forever home there. I'm wondering if you know how many of those parcels actually are developable because you listed it as one of this um the primary areas here and also including the the bottom half cuz I think that potentially the the part that's on the I'll just say the bottom of Charleston there or like Charleston kind of cuts that area in half. Is there a difference between these two areas? So those are my two questions for for right now. Yeah, I the the area has seen applications in right there's the one on the the northeast corner of a sevenstory building and while the there has also been an application between Charleston and Fabian um that little uh like directly across from that intersection south side. Now that application has lapsed but there has been developer developer interest in that area. So, it's a smaller parcels. It might take longer for that area to develop because sites probably need to aggregate to get to a a feasible parcel size.

And what about the portion that's on the bottom half of Charleston in that area there? Well, that's one of the areas that I was speaking of. Oh, that has the smaller parcels. Yeah. Like, you know, where there's Fabian kind of makes that queue. Yeah. like between Charleston where Fabian makes that queue there has been a development application in it has lapsed but that does show that there there has been some interest in that side.

Thank you. Um I also appreci I just want to step back and say I appreciate the urgency with with the work here because as you've stated there are many projects and the faster we get this area plan out the faster we can make sure that all projects that are in the pipeline can conform with the standards that we the city would like to see here. I am wondering potentially if maybe that area that's down there on the bottom half, the little queue that we just mentioned may belong potentially with central San Antonio. And the reason I say this is because when you walk that area, it's the kind of queue part exits you out onto central San Antonio. And from talking to folks who live there, just kind of walking by, I've noticed that they tend to walk to the ramen place. they tend to kind of from a behavioral standpoint participate more potentially with the folks on central San Antonio that are on that the I guess the left side of the map here. Um so that's one potential option that I would like to say although generally I would say the areas here drawn are um are great. My other question is we you've spent a lot of time both in the work but also in the presentation about North Fabian which primarily is the Maxar site. what is the likelihood that we're seeing that this may actually redevelop at this time?

So, uh we were in uh discussions with the property owner as representative about what they could potentially do there as a residential site. Um they then decided to offer the site up for sale and have marketed it as a potential residential site. So, I can't fully answer what will happen with that site until we know if the sale go a sale goes through or if the owner decides that they don't want to sell sell after they get their offers. Um, but we think that there is definitely interest in doing something there. I can't tell you if that's short-term or if that's longer term. That'll depend on who the owner ends up being. That's helpful. And then my other question is most of the information provided in the packet for the North Fabian area is the Max site, but you've drawn a bunch of items on the other side. Is there do we see any projects there or is that just lumped in because it's part of the focus area?

I you're speaking about the other side of the side of the Sorry, I'm just using the map here. I mean that those sites I mean under current uh zoning allow residential and you know we we'd probably see them in in similar densities as the ARB spoke and some people hear about you know looking at standards that may go down to Adobe Creek. Um, but there's a few schools there, but and then there's an office building which, you know, just like any other area, you know, has the potential for redevelopment. So, I'm out of time. I got to item two. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner G. Commissioner James.

Um, thank you. Um, uh, I also appreciate the, uh, the work and the, uh, the breadth and depth that's gone into the, uh, this packet. Um uh the sub area classification u makes sense to me. The ideas that others have expressed about kind of thinking of them as neighborhoods uh with with some you know with some differences that that uh are helpful. Um as far as residential uh density um I've kind of uh oscillated a little bit on the uh on this height question. Uh but uh Commissioner G and I both were fortunate to to u go to the League of California Cities and um it was it was very very enlightening. Um what one of the things I think I appreciate more is how developers use this board of um of legislation to to be able to kind of um change the nature of the project, right? And so particularly the the density bonus that they they can get with um with uh providing affordable housing. I'm starting to think that we should begin our negotiation, if that's the right way of thinking of it, at five stories because it could potentially double. So I don't really want to start with eight stories and then double with with housing bonus. So I feel like that's important. I think the other uh thing that that makes me u feel that way is that we can see on San Antonio some existing uh five-story hotels that I think feel very comfortable with the scale of that street. You know, um they're nicely uh there's there's green greener around them and there's setbacks and and they're nicely massed buildings. uh we may not get uh that that level of finish here, but I think it's it's sort of proof positive that that five five

stories can can actually uh comfortably fit along San Antonio. So I think those two things make me um feel strongly in favor of fivetory 60 foot over uh over higher buildings for that for that type of building. Um I uh am not opposed to town houses um in the Maxar region if that is if that is sort of how that develops uh became more aware that uh from the developers perspective that's where they think the market is that's what they want to build that's what they believe people want to buy um I think it's um makes sense to be aware of the marketplace that's we're not building this with our own money um so I so I am I'm I'm um fine with with with those in in the proper setting. Um I was kind of interested in the um uh the high-rise option. Um I came back from this conference feeling like everybody was running away from that kind of building. I guess not because because it looks like um Mountain Mountain View has one that's right across from CTI that they're they're planning. Uh but my general sense and I'm curious about yours is that you know the cost of building a steel structure is is high but but more importantly or or uh is is there's something I fully understand but about a liability uh insurance for defects in the building and this seemed to be to be um a big hurdle for for developers of that kind of building and I just wonder how I mean I know we're talking about 20 25 years here but I wonder how viable you think those are maybe now and would they seem more viable in the future?

I I think you know it's hard to predict exactly what development trends and costs are going to be in the future. Uh I agree that right now it is significantly more expensive to build a high-rise than it is to build these 60 foot or 90 foot structures. Um, so there's actually a gap that we found that between 90 ft and 160 ft it doesn't make sense to build because you're not going to get the return on the investment for that height. Um, and then beyond that there's a potential but it depends on the very specific factors of that particular building and location.

Um, so we don't know that a developer will propose a high-rise if we allow it. Um, but our thought is that if we have that flexibility, if someone thinks they can make it work, um, we can have policies that say if you choose to do a high-rise, these are the things you have to do, um, in in the community on the property to make that work as an option. Um, but if we're opposed to that level of height entirely, we don't even have to have it as an option. Um, and I'll let our consultant add. I just want to add to that that that is very specific to residential. Office is a different animal because office is out of steel and concrete already. So the the increased cost to go to a high-rise is not significant. And that's why you see I mean generally across the South Bay you see 8tory 130 160 foot buildings. They're all high-rise um for office. Then the Mountain View project that the application in is actually an 11story 170 ft high office, but the residential on that side is below 90 ft and eight stories.

Okay. Um so I guess I um you know the only place I could sort of imagine something higher would be adjacent to like where it's higher, you know, on that side. Um um moving on to um parks. I'm I'm I'm Can we uh Oh, did I run out? Try the uh try the time limit and see if it works out. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner James. Believe me, we we will have another round at least to go over these in more detail. All right. Uh for my comments, uh I'm going to approach this a little differently. Uh, I'm going to take a deep dive into the office occupancy discussion because although um, Miss Armor and Mr. Kaine have heard this, the rest of you commissioners have not. Um, but of course, I want to begin by saying I'm in awe of the tremendous amount of work that's gone into this. Not only the attention to detail, but also the depth of creative thought that's gone into it. Um, and how quickly it's all come together. I wish I had another two days just to go over the mobility options. It feels like I barely scratched the surface on that. But office occupancy, um the hypotheticals that we see in the plan today are based on VTA's estimate of 300 square ft per employee. However, a Kushman Wakefield study estimates Silicon Valley's average at 191 square ft per employee, considerably denser. Tech is even more dense, currently tending toward about 130 square ft per employee, and very high density tech offices have as little as 80 square ft per employee. So, I recommend googling Silicon Valley office space per employee as a start if you'd like more information. But there's another constraint. Um on packet page 152, you'll see that at current capitalization rates, office lease rates have to go up by roughly 10% just for the prototype offices in the plan area to be feasible. So higher lease rates require tenants to pack in more employees per square foot to manage costs. So there's another factor driving employee density. Um, I think the bottom line is that if

we build offices in the plan area, there are going to be a lot more employees than the current plan estimates. Um, and by a lot more, I mean conservatively 60% more and for tech at least 100% more. Um if we were to build as much new office as the plan envisions, uh the extra impact on parking and transportation demand would be huge. Um I note that we underestimated office employee density downtown and that's one of the main reasons we had to implement permit parking in the neighborhoods for employees. Uh we don't have that escape hatch in San Antonio. So we have to do a better job of getting it right. Um finally at the densities I'm talking about here the jobs housing imbalance that's discussed on packet page 37 would be drastically worse. Uh in scenario three the new offices in the CTI sub area alone uh could offset the entire housing gain across the whole plan area. Um, so for this discussion, I don't I certainly don't support net new office space, but maybe more accurately, I don't support a dramatic increase in the number of jobs in the area because that's what drives the jobs housing imbalance. So at the higher densities I'm discussing here, that implies a reduction in square footage for office. We really only get one shot at this. If we develop too much office too early, those sites are never going to be available to redevelop with housing. Um, and we won't be improving the city's jobs housing imbalance overall. So, when

it comes time to create policy for this area in the next round of development, um I'd like to suggest either an office space cap for the area or a requirement that balancing amounts of housing be entitled before office is entitled. Um hopefully that'll provide an incentive to develop early and to develop without an imbalance. All right. In my next round, I'll talk about some of the more detailed things that you've asked about. Thank you, Commissioner. Dr. Peterson, next round.

Thank you, Chair. So, returning back to Parkland, I can see now that you essentially have an AB option with large parks or smaller parks. And then I do feel that larger parks are um preferable. Uh I live by California Avenue and I think that's a that's a region where we do have larger parks and even as it is the parks almost feel too small but I see the community using those park spaces uh tremendously. Uh we have three parks in that area and so in this new San Antonio area we're talking about adding two parks which of course we do have the large bays which is almost comparable to the Stanford dish area that we have near California Avenue. So, it's a very similar type of layout. Um, and people use I think the space is going to being about the same. So, one piece of the park is, of course, people with dogs. They use the park quite a bit. Um, but the other one is, uh, you know, the kids in the community, that's their gathering point. Uh, there's always people sitting in the park. Uh, we have retirement homes. A lot of times the retirees are out there sitting in the park. So, one of the questions is what is the requirement uh of park space per 10,00 residents and are we going to be able to meet that requirement? Cuz it doesn't look like the the amount of acreage that we even have on the high end is going to make it for what we're talking how many thousand residents moving in there.

I'll start with a couple of points. one um when I've dealt with um like the state law requirements for parks per um resident, it generally is done at a city level rather than an area level. Um and so in that case, we've got a lot of open space for the city of PaloAlto. Um we're we're not deficient overall. Um but as has been identified here, we are trying to make sure that it the distribution and the access is available to um to the new residents and um people who will be in this area.

Yeah. So, I I can add that um in our planning documents citywide that we do have a goal of having 2 acres of neighborhood parks plus 2 acres of district parks for every thousand resident uh residents and um 5 acres of neighborhood park, district park, recreation facilities, and open space as well when that's looked at as part of our parkland dedication um goals. So, uh, if we're talking about 4,000 new units potentially, that's perhaps 10,000 new residents. Um, I I don't see us adding 40 acres of parkland in the planned area, but that is something that as a city, as um, as as Miss Armor mentioned, we'll look at, you know, at, you know, how we're managing all of the open space throughout the city. But we do think it's important to add neighborhood parks to these two areas specifically that are currently more than 10-minute walks from from either the Bayands or any other neighborhood park.

And new development would be required to either pay either provide open um area parks um or pay an inloo fee, you know, or pay um a fee towards maintenance of parks. There is that that's part of new development. um that would be required and so that is one tool. One of the things we we are looking into as part of this is what you know including that tool at what level that should that be set for this area um and what other tools might there be to ensure that there is um open space available.

Thank you. So for those reasons of the the almost 1 to 10 ratio, you know, 9/10 below where we might want to be, I would be more in favor of having more parkland with larger parks uh that you have laid out here than the smaller parklets. And then even in the Baylands, when you think about it, it's really just pathways. I mean, a lot of the Bayland Park is not necessarily uh it's a marsh, right? So it's uh if you measure the the acreage of the pathways in the bay lens, it starts shrinking down and then sea level rise of course is going to shrink things a little bit more. So those are the reasons why I would be in favor of keeping the larger parks and trying to keep on the high end of that in this region. And in my last 15 seconds, I'm just going to prefeed my next point that I'll bring up next, which is going to be um accessibility to the Cal Train station. looking through this, I think that almost it needs to parallel like the Highway 101 uh walkway. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Commissioner Templeton. Thanks. Good points on the park stuff. Um what is the highest um tallest building over in the JCC Mold area? I'm sure you provide. I'm sorry I don't remember. I I believe it's about six or seven stories. I can look it up right now,

but it it's in the mid-rise category. So, it's I believe Yeah, they're four over two it looks like. So, it's about six stories. Okay. Um, that's interesting. I feel like that's pretty tall. Like when I've been to the facility, I think that's tall enough. Can you clarify any more about the comment about doubling that the Commissioner James made? So, uh, I'm not an expert in state density bonus law, um, but there are concessions that developers could request from cities, um, or waiverss from local standards

if they provide, uh, sufficient affordable housing and other criteria that the state has laid out. So are we now in the position that laws designed to increase housing availability are asking are putting us in a situation where we have to set our heights lower to navigate around these laws. I so one thing we've done is try to create alternate pathways. Um, that's one of the things that the HIPP uh program does, the housing incentive program, is we say if you don't follow the state density bonus law, and and follow our process instead, we will give you certain uh benefits to following our process. Um, I don't know if uh the assistant director has more to say

or Mr. Yang. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Yang may actually have more to say in terms of what the opportunities are, but yes, we that is part of the reason that we've had things like the El Camino Real Focus area to try and provide some of the things that could be done potentially through those other pathways um but with a little more control in terms of the things that are particularly important and of concern to the city.

Mr. Yang. So I would just reiterate that um yes it is um possible for developers to use state laws like the density bonus law to you know go beyond the the standards that we create. Um, and I guess I would just add while it's theoretically possible for them to ask for a 100% density bonus, um, realistically what we see is, uh, that they qualify for bonuses between 20 and 25%. Um, so and that is a bonus. it's probably going to be expressed in terms of F um that they will get 20 to 25% additional F. It's not necessarily a 20 to 25% increase in height. That all sort of depends on how the site is laid out.

Um thank you. uh worst case scenario is so the thing about density bonus it we don't we really can't control height um under state density bonus law we can control we're being asked to control height right now

right but I guess when you're trying to think about you know what is the worst case scenario what state density bonus law allows us to control uh in terms of setting the base that that then gets a multiplier added to it is F or density. But um if a developer wants to create a very skinny and very tall tower with that density, they are allowed to. So there's at the same time they could uh they could build something that is within the height limit that we set uh but just has

fewer setbacks. So, I am in an unusual situation where my time with you is being controlled. So, I'm going to throw this out and see if you can answer. I don't think your time is being controlled. Um, so what you're saying here is if we want to limit uh buildings to uh five between five and eight stories, it still could be interpreted in such a way that a 10-story or 12story building could be built. Is that correct?

That is correct. I will jump in and remind you though that the above a certain height then it it is difficult because it changes construction type for housing and so that does provide some consideration in terms of expectations. This is a lot of mental gymnastics to try and put down in into law. I mean it it really does um defeat the purpose. So it's frustrating. A recommendation might be to consider what is our vision for this area. What is it we're looking for? And then when we're coming through with policy, we can keep in mind the concern about the impacts of this. You guys can figure it out. That'll be great. Thank you guys.

Thank you. That was a very useful discussion. Vice Chair Chang, then Commissioner G.

I'd just like to chime in. I remember us saying, "Oh, we we want this height, then the F that corresponds to it is this because that was the way to do." And then they could get up to 100% of that F. So that was that's the way to think about it. So they'll translate our heights into FS. Um, okay. So I just wanted to say I um really align my comments with those of uh Commissioner Sorry, it's late for me already in a different time zone. um uh with Commissioner A with Chair Aken regarding the concerns about uh office occupancy. I'm very concerned about that and that was also why I wasn't interested in new office development. Um and then also with Commissioner James regarding the uh 60 foot kind of because of the uh density bonus issue um where so in general moving to specifically two heights is it possible to pull the slide back up that

um so the one with the questions?

Yeah the one with the questions. So, regarding um specific office heights, uh I think 60 ft is good in general for the whole area. The one area where I think it might make sense to go higher and this is going to be connected to some of what I say about retail is potentially in North Fabian kind of along the freeway there. And I think we also discuss I think Commissioner Templeton also discussed something like that too. Um but we want to be careful with birds. Uh with respect to retail, I it the the nearest retail to this area is going to be, you know, the area the new development on the Mountain View side um and Costco and that whole area and then um the Carmel Village area at San Antonio and El Camino. And so it would really be good to have retail in this area. Um my first preference would be something like what uh Certino has done for Velco. It's been an amazing it's a very very vibrant area, their main street area. Now I don't know enough about I'm sure um staff and consultants have considered things like that and maybe it's not feasible but when I look at the acres that we're talking about here in the north Fabian area so uh Velco was about 50 acres we have potentially 24 and a half with Maxar and up to 35 with um in that North Fabian area. So that seems to me to be quite a bit where we could do ground floor stuff with housing on top and a little bit of, you know, open space and make it an incredibly incredibly lively area. So if you go to the main street area of Certino, um it at at late at night on a

week night, it's busy. There's a lot of people there and we always talk about wanting things to do in Palo Alto. So this could be things to do. And because it's also next to the freeway, it could be potentially a good, you know, I commute to Certino to go get those things there. So, this could be also a draw for um other people. And so, that's just kind of my brainstorming thought, but if that is not possible, because it might not be possible for a whole host of reasons, then I would like to see retail in other in in another area. And I think what we've learned with everything that we've done with retail is we need to concentrate it. And so I look at the central San Antonio area as the most appropriate for that. Um and we've already got some hotels in there and they al they already have some um some pretty good restaurants actually on the ground floor. So if we were to have ground floor retail there, it would be really and and to require it. I don't think we can do it organically, right? But I think we need to kind of specify where we want that density. Now, I'm also not privy and I haven't done the analysis to understanding which of those sites in the central San Antonio area have already have plans that we've already approved that don't have ground flooror retail. But I would love to have a section where we would see, you know, student like the middle school students hanging out after school and something for them to do over in this area. Um, so I am going to stop right there and save my other comments for another round.

Thank you, Vice Chair and Commissioner G.

I will attempt to play some catch-up since I'm still on item three. Um, but I kind I want to jump back on Commissioner Templeton's comments about what is the height and the density that we're looking for in this area. And as part of the KAG and also what I've been hearing from the commissioners here is something between five and eight stories seems approximately appropriate and I want to call attention to the state and state bonus specifically around a 0% bonus. So that's something that we learned about during the planning commissioners academy that other cities are seeing where you can apply the state density bonus with 0% additional bonus and still get waiverss and concessions against what we have designed for an area. So with that, that makes me a little bit more nervous about approving the or suggesting the eight story midrise because we could say that and then all of a sudden they're like, well actually that is what we want to build, but we want more waiverss and concessions than what you already have. So maybe that's like we required ground floor retail, but now we're going to remove it. We were going to put a loading zone in the front, but we're going to remove that. Like I think that I'm pretty nervous about the application of the 0% bonus and I hate to describe it in the way that Commissioner Templeton said, which is we are lowering our requirements so that when they reapply an ED bonus, then we cut back to what we want. Like I feel like we're playing some mental gymnastics here, but I I think that the 60 ft option creates this opportunity that if they would like to apply a state density bonus, we don't get severely impacted from getting something that we wouldn't like to see. In addition, I want to talk a little bit about the financial feasibility.

And the financial feasibility of projects a couple years ago was fivetory mid-rise is what was most financially feasible. And all of a sudden now we're seeing that eighttory mid-rise is what folks want to see. And if we kind of point back to what uh chair Aiken had mentioned on packet page 151 about residual land values, you'll see that it appears according to this diagram that five story and eight story office have negative residual land value which I I'm curious about uh the impacts of that in Paul Alto because we see that there's a significant demand for office space. So that's kind of curious to me. But previously on packet page 149, you'll see that the fivetory multif family and the eight story multif family are kind of hovering around the land value line. I don't know if it makes the most sense necessarily to work towards what is financially feasible at this specific moment because even before we finish approving the San Antonio road area plan, the financial feasibility of these different sizes may change. So that's my perspective on the residential density and building heights. I also think that if there was a region that could potentially we may want to see some kind of height transition. I would agree with vice chair Chang about along the highway. So either that's in the north Fabian side kind of in the back. I believe that in one of the diagrams staff has already identified this. I believe this might be packet page 55 where you can see the potential site configurations for the Maxar site. So I would I would be interested in ones where the higher density is located along the outside. In addition, another area where potentially we could see

uh higher density or height could be in the CTI region along the mountain view site. The Mountain View site, as previously discussed, is already 11 stories. So, putting something that is on the eight story side of things, I think I wouldn't be opposed because it's a relative transition, one may say, with the frontage against Mountain View. Okay. So, now in terms of office, I will just plus one what the vice chair and the chair have mentioned. I won't go into detail there. And then for the parks and outdoor space, I guess uh I will preempt some comments by saying I think that it would be helpful if maybe staff could describe some parks in Palo Alto that are the relative sizes like what is a Palo Alto park that is.5 acres 75 acres, 1 acre or 2 acres so that the rest of us here can help understand what that is like. So that's my I think that might be helpful to pull up if you could at some point. Yeah, I can point to some of those. Um, well, Commissioner Chang, you brought up Velco. That is actually a halfacre plaza. Now, it's surrounded by diagonal parking and stuff, so it's a little bit separate than the retail next to it, but that is a halfacre. Similarly, the the Lanssby project which is um just on California Street and San Antonio on the on the north side of California Street, that is also about a half acre open space, which I think both of those are are are good examples of, you know, tight little urban spaces. Particularly the Lansby has a nice green aspect to it. I'll have to come back to you on the the other size ones.

Not to jump my time, but I just think it would be helpful to describe Palo Alto areas. Uh I know that and also like for those who live in Palo Alto and may not frequent some of these other areas. So, thank you, Commissioner Commissioner Hecman or Commissioner James. Do you have something for this round? Commissioner James, I don't know why your light is misbehaving.

Thank Thank you. Um um so yeah, let me sort of run through this. I I want to say uh we were just talking about uh height and density. Um I agree with Commissioner G and others that um if there is a an area that's more tolerant of height, it would be along that 101 on the Maxer site or adjacent to um um to uh on the other side on the CTI site. uh next to Mountain View. Um the in terms of parks, uh I I prefer public facing uh big parks over small green spaces. Um I think they're better shared spaces uh that encro encourage social interaction. Uh I have the pleasure of being a couple of blocks from Johnson Park. Uh and it gets lots of use, lots of use. And I I like um the way people interact there. Um I think uh the feasibility analysis on uh packet page 143 shows that two twoacre parks uh appear to be financially viable if I read that correctly. Um you yeah an aggregate of of that in the CTI is potentially financially viable. I will note that the CTI has a bunch of small lots. aggregating space in the CTI we we could aspire for the largest possible but it is it is very difficult

um I guess I was thinking and it wasn't clear um you know 2 acres I feel like more on the on the Maxar um um site uh seems was what was what I had in mind and and um thinking about the CTI site uh imagine a smaller park there uh kind of centrally located to that neighborhood seems like it would be a good choice um commercial and retail Um, uh, Commissioner, uh, Chair Akin, um, uh, got into that much more deeply than I thought about it. I think the the guiding light there is is not to hurt ourselves. Um, I mean, I I I don't I don't want to hurt ourselves in terms of economic growth, but I certainly don't want to hurt ourselves in terms of uh, the ratios of office to job, I mean, housing to jobs and make our life harder in terms of arena numbers. So that I feel like that should be kind of the guiding principle there. Um, uh, pedestrians and bikeways. Oh, ret I guess retail. I mean, I feel like if retail is done right, it can be a big benefit to the neighborhood. I am not going to say that I clearly know how to how to steer that um to that outcome. Uh, I would love it. I mean, we're if we're going to try and um have u pedestrian bikeways commuting to trains, you know, I would probably trade a uh a floor of height for some ground uh floor retail if if that's a if that's a possible trade or negotiation with a developer um to get some along central San Antonio uh where I think it it might do well um or where it maybe is is needed. Um the um pedestrian and bikeways. Uh I I strongly favor the the separated uh those be separated from the roadway by green space and trees to kind of soften the experience uh of walking

and biking next to a very busy and uh at times uh intimidating uh road. Um uh you know and I also feel like it's it's got to be welcoming. You know, you can't be um in the road. You need to you need a you need a little bit of um safe space there. Um specifically, I like the the left side of alt uh MSA number three. Um and I I have a sense that it might be that we could do just one side of the road if you have both the bike and the pedestrian separated and green space and and safe cross crossways to the other side. But I'm not sure I'm right. But that's that was my that was my takeaway. Um, and I think that's Did I miss anything? I think that's it for me. Lightning round.

If if I may. Um, there's some questions about parks. So, if you're familiar with Bowling Green and Heritage Park in PaloAlto, those are both about 2acre parks. Yes. Cameron Park is about a 1acre park. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That's very helpful. Commissioner Hecman, I don't see a light, but I would like to hear your comments.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, first let me understand sort of the flow of our discussion tonight. Are are we going to get to a point where we each take a turn talking about central San Antonio, for example, or are we just doing it in this format and we can just talk about whatever area we want and try to associated with one of these seven items? Um, I had asked Mr. Kain what organization he preferred and it sounded like you were leaning more towards the the type of subject matter discussion we're having now rather than an area specific one. Okay. Do you nevertheless I assume you were prepared to accept area specific comments.

That's correct. If anyone has any area specific comments, we're we're certainly open to them. But we did think that it was more useful to go through topic by topic than go through every single sub area and up and down vote on every alternative type of discussion.

Okay. All right. Thank you for that clarification. So I'm I will as part of my clusters of comments make the sub area comments that that uh I want to make. Um, and so I'm going to actually uh start with the the central San Antonio. Um, I like the uh CSA A2 alternative, which is the 90 foot limit. Um, I I have heard my fellow commissioners talk about, you know, the fear of what density bonus could do. Um, and and I just I guess I have a couple responses to that and and one of them the assistant director has really already made. If we cap it at eight stories and somebody wants to use their density bonus to push it up to, you know, 25% 30% to 11 stories, fine. Because the reality is that won't pencil out. They have to change the entire structure of the building. And so they're not going to do that. And so if they don't do that, they're going to look for other waiverss. Well, if the waiver they want is to knock out ground floor retail, and and again, I'm not a big believer in in that in a lot of instances, it's only because it's not profitable. They view it as not profitable because developers want to build things that make money. And so if they're looking for a way to avoid groundf flooror retail, it's because they think it will lose money, meaning it won't generate enough rent and and could be dark. Uh and so I think I have maybe less fear uh than my fellow commissioners that um that by going to the higher level uh we'll get a uh an issue with that. Um I also Okay. Um can we pull up a map of uh central San Antonio please? Um so so uh Cat Stevens has a song where where do the children play? I think most of us should know that. Um what's lesser known is that he wrote another song that he never um finished called where do the

parents shop? And and when I look at this whole plan, that's really the big question I'm asking. And it's not where are they going to take their dry cleaners or or you know, where are they going to get their shoes repaired, it's where are they going to buy their groceries, right? So, so and and we're thinking about all this density primarily residential in this San Antonio corridor. And and I think the logical place to put a Safeway or a a a fullervice supermarket like that is on one of the three corners of San Antonio and Middlefield. Um all three of which are in play in in this uh uh plan, which isn't popping up, but that's okay. I think we all know that intersection pretty well. Um, you know, the Toyota dealer. Um, Summerwinds wrapping around the gas station. Um, and whatever that marine store used to be a marine store is on the other corner next to I think Mike's Bikes. Whatever.

Used to be West Marine. Yeah.

Yeah. West Marine. Right. So, so you know, you've got you've got a Piaza, which is a great store, but it it's not my choice of uh everyday shopping store. Uh I for some people in that area it is because it's super convenient. But you got all these people. They're they're not maybe gonna they should have some competition. And um my brother uh lives in downtown Seattle in uh a high-rise that has a Whole Foods at the base. Right now it's not totally comparable because it I mean that that's whatever 25 30 stories and it's got housing in it. It's got office and it even has a hotel in it. So right so that part that model isn't comparable but maybe there is something here that could be you know parking with a grocery store with some other something else on top housing right where you take an elevator down and do your grocery shopping um and so so but but that doesn't seem contemplated in any of the alternatives and and I think that's something that people are going to need they're going to need to shop and While I heard the vice chair talk about maybe some image of that at the Maxar site, I remember the discussion um um regarding the redevelopment of Edgewood Plaza and a grocery store there. And one of the big knocks there was some some an effort to not have to put a grocery store in there because what we learned is grocery stores like 360 degree customer coverage. In other words, they want people to be able to come from every direction to shop. And they didn't like that Edgewoods place because it only had 180 degree, right? Because that it's, you know, 101 and the balance. And that's the concern I kind of have about the Maxar site for a big grocery store. It it doesn't have that kind of coverage more central um uh you

know, more central in this San Antonio middlefield. And so I'd like and and maybe some consideration was given to it and and there were reasons why it was you know ultimately decided against and if so I you know I'd love to hear those but but I I think we need more uh major shopping not not you know mom and pop uh retail along uh the street. Thanks.

Thank you Commissioner Hecman. Uh I think it's my turn. Um, I'm going to get into the more detailed points now. Uh, as for height, uh, so I'm taking my cues from the prototype feasibility studies that start on packet page 146. And as a way of trying to summarize those, uh, please correct me if I'm wrong here. Town homes are feasible. Five-story multif family is not feasible unless rents rise by at least 10% and cap rates decline. Eight-story multif family is not feasible unless rents rise by at least 10% or cap rates decline. Uh fivetory office was not feasible unless cap rates decline a lot but there's some concern about that diagram. I may have misinterpreted it. Eightstory office was not feasible unless cap rates decline or rents increase at least 10%. 9 to 14 story not feasible. Um above that we begin to to get into expensive but feasible again. Now to me that says that if we're going to get any development in the foreseeable near future we have to target 90 foot height limits. Um, and I think that's also consistent with the recent changes to applications elsewhere on San Antonio like 800 that we've seen. Um I am nervous about limiting height to 60 ft specifically if we say we're doing it to avoid the consequences of density bonus law because the state could very easily identify that as a constraint on production and there would be consequences.

So I'm reluctant to use that as a tool. um parks. I don't have a strong opinion on this uh but my inclinations are to avoid small linear parks because of the risk that the spaces get privatized which is something that we saw repeatedly with PCs. Um I'd also avoid a park fronting on Charleston because of the noise and safety hazards. So for mobility, one of the defining characteristics of Silicon Valley is job mobility and that's because people change jobs frequently, more frequently than average for the nation. And companies grow, shrink, and move here very frequently. Um, the jobs in Silicon Valley are really spread out and that means on the average the most attractive job for you is probably not going to be within biked pad distance over your career. For certain points of your career will be and for a lot of your career won't cuz most of the jobs are just elsewhere. Um, so I think that argues for a priority to at least maintain the effectiveness of longer distance transportation. Um, and I wonder if that should affect the mobility priorities that are shown on packet page 25. Uh, you already have improving access to Cal Train, which is an essential one. uh but maybe you should raise the priority of that and add uh improving access to 101 or maintaining truck route capacity which is also an issue on San Antonio. And some of these things are mentioned in passing on packet pages 90 and 95, but they're really pretty buried. Um so I know you're aware of the issue, but just questioning whether it should

be made more visible. Um, finally, uh, related to the public comments for the mobility alternatives that remove on street parking, uh, where does the parking demand go? Do we need to anticipate building parking garages, public parking garages here? And if so, where would they go? Have a minute left. Um, I don't have much insight on locating retail at this point. If you do build a lot of office, beware of retail specializing to support the daytime workers rather than the residents. Pre- pandemic, we were beginning to see some of that downtown. Um, according to the consultant we had with retail revitalization, concentrations at intersections are particularly important. This is supporting of Commissioner Hecman's and Vice Chair Chang's comments. All right, that's it for me. Commissioner Peterson for the next round. Oh. Um, we have uh the issue of a break has been raised. I was going to go through to the end of the item, but if we need one now, that's perfectly okay.

End of item two. Yes. End of item two. That sounds like a vote for a break now. I think so. All right. Very well. Uh, let's do a break now. 15 minutes. Return at 8:25.

back. I think so. And for the record, Commissioner Templeton has had to leave um and so she will be missing the remainder of the meeting. Thank you for that. All right, let's resume this third round of discussion beginning with Commissioner Peterson. Thank you, Chair. So, one of the things is back on the parks. I heard the the topic that the parkland and is it CTI? I'm starting to learn the names of these sections. Uh

could we have the slide again just so that we can organize? Thank you. So the uh is that is it's it's difficult to put together a park simply because you have to buy the lots and bring them together. Um so I guess that is a concern on uh are we able to give feedback and say if it comes up and you're able to put together a larger block of of lots then go ahead and do that but if not I mean you know we all understand reality. Yeah, I would say that that would be good feedback is would be like one direction would be yes, we want to see the largest aggregated park possible in that area. Another avenue of feedback like the would be well no that's an area that you know a halfacre plaza/park is appropriate. Both of those are like kind of two different directions.

Okay, I'll leave that one there. And so now I'm going to pivot to real quick. I've heard a lot of the discussion about the the height of buildings and what's feasible and you know as they say pencils out that I just want to you know bring it to everyone's attention that with the the AI revolution it's it's drastically changing the construction industry you know our past experience of what could be built and what you know pencled out uh you can just throw all that out the door it's it's really changing I mean the fundamentals of uh labor equipment and material are still there but really what's changing ing is the degree of mistakes that you make. You know, we all hear about RFIs and change orders and you know, in the industry, we know that's where the money is. But, uh, it really is changing it because with better planning, better design, uh, it's it's just really it's it's taken that whole game out of the industry and as I say, sharpening the pencil. So, I think that could change uh, a lot of the the kind of the assumptions you've been building off of what past 15 20 years was real. The next 15 20 it could be different. So now pivoting to my topic is I want to talk about mobility and so because I use Cal Train I I haven't had a car since 2008. Uh you know 100% walk public transportation little bit of lift. So because that I'm pretty familiar with all the Cal Train stations and just how to get around Palo Alto in different areas and in particular San Antonio station is just incredibly awkward to cross Alma. Um, you know, it's like that old game with the chicken or whatever. You're trying to get across the street. I mean, it is a difficult street to cross. I mean, it's it's a lot of lanes and in that section, people are not slowing down. I mean, that's like a it's it's like a high-speed uh through throughput and then it's got the weird uh um you know, kind of on-ramps where, you know, when they've redesigned stuff, it's got these little weird streets and then even when you look at the picture there where you talk about the sidewalk,

I mean, that's not even a sidewalk. It's just like a concrete, you know, kind of it is a sidewalk, but it has doesn't really have the curb. I mean, you feel like you're actually standing really on the street there. So, I want to just encourage that. My feedback is to really rethink that entire intersection of how do you get from that Cal Train station, you know, if you go to California Avenue, you have the uh underpass and you can cross the all through Alma, but here you don't have that same underpass. We have the overpass, uh, but you don't have that same design, uh, focus that you have like over on Highway 101 where you're looking at how are we going to get over to the Baylands. I saw the the overpass. You almost need that same type of uh, redesign of how do you how do you pull together? It's almost like four squares there cuz you got the commercial on I think that's even Mountain View. Uh, then you have the uh, the Cal Train. Um, you get over there's like a lumber yard there and then you have that residential area in the in the fourth uh corner and they really none of those tie together. If you stand there, it's it's almost a little bit awkward to go to any of those four corners from that Cal Train station. So, um, looking at what you have there, I don't think it's really it's technically probably walkable, but it's really not welcomingly walkable, right? It's it's uh you have to know where you're going and where you are to be able to navigate that intersection. And in fact, one of the things I saw is that from the Cal Train Station, it actually shows in some ways the the bike path is you go to the right of that commercial space. I don't know what what business that is there. It's like a a tech company and you go around it to the right and then come back around to San Antonio. and it never crossed my mind to cross that street, go through that tech thing, and then come around the back of it. I've always tried

to kind of cut to the left of it, through that on-ramp. So, I think some of the stuff like that that you have in there um just needs um probably more attention and probably more money putting at figuring out that intersection. So, that's my feedback there from as a from a walkability standpoint. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Peterson. I see no lights on. Who's next? Vice Chair Chang. Okay. Hopefully this is my last round if I can do it. We'll see. Um, so just wanted to make a few comments and clarification. I love Commissioner Hecman's idea about a grocery store when I was speaking about um doing retail uh in the North Fabian area. It wasn't about a grocery store. It's kind of more Santanaesque, but we should all go to Velco and go hang out there and visit the really cool stores that are there and take a look at all the housing that's there and the green space that they've got. Um I one more note about density. I'm trying to make sure I tick off all my notes for the max for the maxar density. I thought that the alternative MB1 was the one that I would go for. So that's kind of keeping the stat um it's still decently high density with 40 dwelling units per acre. Um but my caveat to that would be if we could actually do something like Valco and again I don't know what all the levers are then I would be like sure let's do some higher density there. And I had already said earlier that the edge of the Maxar site might be a place where it really makes sense to go higher too. Um, okay. Uh, also wanted to make a quick comment about office. We actually have

brand new office in our city that still has yet to be occupied. Um, like at 441 PageMill where the Olive Garden was, there's empty building. There's also abandoned older buildings. Um, and there's a new one on Park Boulevard that's new but hasn't been occupied. Uh, I think the in Menllo Park spring lines got a lot of vacancies too and it's brand new. So maybe we don't need that much more. I don't know the I'm sure you staff and consultants have done a lot of projections but um I remain not in favor of more office. And then finally um wanted to talk about um parks and then mobility. We'll see if I can do it for parks. I'm in alignment with um my colleagues that bigger bigger swaths of park rather than small little little parks. Um what I would say is that I recognize that in in CTI it's going to be difficult to do that. Um, so I don't think any park space below say about well definitely below a quarter of an acre is that valuable because if you think about Escandido Village in Stanford and the way uh where the lowrises are, the little park in the middle of of a bunch of family units effectively becomes people's backyards. um which is lovely for those people but it then becomes less usable in a way just in the feel for uh everybody else and we really want access to this green space for everybody. Similarly where the old mill used to be. So this is like uh under San Antonio and Elma like right around there. There's a a bunch of duplex house developments that gone up

and there's like a little quarter acre park there and again it's effectively the backyards for all these people who have no yard space and that's really valuable and really important but then it really only serves the people who are right there and so that's why I think kind of like halfacre is something more towards where we want to head. This is specifically for CTI. Of course, for um the Maxar side, if we can get something that is larger, that would be great. I think it should be accessible and visible from the um bigger streets around it like Fabian so that it actually serves the larger community rather than kind of being hidden away. Um I I with respect to CTI I think those because of Charleston and the noise there we would and traffic and everything we would want those parks a little bit inside as other commissioners have said. Um and then in the last 50 seconds um for mobility I actually I'm probably going to have to go again because I have questions for staff and consultants. Which of these options will ultimately allow the most tree cover? like not necessarily. So I'm interested in both impact to current canopy but ultimately because we want to be visionary about this area. Which of these options allows the option allows the most canopy?

My professional opinion on that would be alternative two.

Okay. Um so I think that I would be most in favor of two um for a couple reasons. Uh the first is that um you've got a sidewalk on one side that pedestrians can use. This is this is all prefaced on the predicated on the idea that we can actually cross the street, but you have an ability for bikes to go on the left side in both directions. So you don't really need to duplicate that on the other side necessarily. Um, and this section of PaloAlto isn't gonna feel like the rest of Palo Alto if it doesn't have more trees. It already isn't going to feel like the rest of Palo Alto, but we want the cooling effects of um, but we want to we don't want it to be a heat island over there, which it already sort of is. Uh, so those are my thoughts for now.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Still no lights. Ah, Commissioner G, followed by Commissioner Hecman.

Yep. Okay. Um, so I will talk a little bit about the park space. I won't go on too long because I feel like my colleagues have covered significant portions of it. I want to echo Vice Chair Chang's comment about a small park being not too interesting for several the reasons that she's already previously provided. I'm looking at packet page 66 with some of the different alternatives that you've provided for the park. And I think that having a park that's not on top of Charleston would be nice because Charleston's pretty busy. And I think that's kind of what the CAG had also said. So something kind of similar to what we're talking about here in alternative CTIA A3 the one large park seems to align with what a lot of my colleagues have said previously. I did have a question for staff about this this green arrow that's provided here. Is that technically park or like what what are we looking at here? So um there's opportunities to break down these larger blocks into smaller blocks and connect with poos. So one that we're showing is between um industrial and the mountain view project to really kind of connect those connect open spaces. So those are seen as kind of poos. They would be publicly accessible pedestrian pathways. so closed to vehicles and while you know they they may not be you know quote park um these type of spaces can provide you know nice outdoor space and connections and smaller places to be and connect

I do understand that I'm wondering from the from the park fees that the inloo fees that would these be used to pay for the po or do you think the po would come in as we work with the developers there. I would probably say it's too early to pinpoint that, but you know, we'll be looking at a number of ways to achieve the amount of open space. Um, and you know, it's very different between CTI and Maxar.

Okay. Yeah. So, I think that it is important as noted by staff, the blocks on the CTI area are pretty big. So having some kind of breakup would be induce more pedestrian activity in this area. Although I am curious more about the trade-off here between having those cutthroughs in the big park. I think you've heard from my colleagues here that having the big park is pretty important here. I am trying to look through the Can we pull up the side again with the questions? I also just want to take this moment to plus one Commissioner Hecman's comment about the the re the um the grocery store. I think that's a good idea. No idea how we'd implement it, but I think that would just be a nice addition for one of these areas here. So in terms of uh other uh in terms of ground flooror retail, one of the ways I think about the central San Antonio area is it reminds me a lot of what we're doing on El Camino. So El Camino is 100 ft wide. San Antonio is about 75 ft wide. The types of buildings that we're seeing on central San Antonio are seven or eight floors which is consistent with what we're seeing in the El Camino focus area about 85 ft. And with that we are trying to encourage lots of the retail with our retail nodes that we've provided for much of El Camino. And in my mind central San Antonio potentially serves as that here. So it's about the same size as the central node that we've described in the El Camino focus area. So I would be strongly in favor of considering retail requirements potentially for the central San Antonio

area and I think that it's okay that we are requiring it but if we decide that for whatever reason we can work with developers to negotiate some of that. For example, as we saw with 800, having a loading zone may take priority over having the the ground floor retail. But I think that in general, my preference would be to have as much ground floor retail as possible here in the central San Antonio section. And boy, does 5 minutes feel very short. So I will just pass again.

I have a feeling you'll have more opportunity in the next round. Commissioner Hecman. Chair, I've spoken twice and before I speak a third time, I wanted to make sure anybody that wanted to speak a second time had, including you. I believe we got everybody through two rounds.

Okay. All right. Uh so I'm going to kind of uh flow through some of these uh items and uh first I want to react to uh something the chair said I think maybe in his first remarks about sort of questioning some of the density um assumptions in the plan for office. Um and and I I have no idea what the correct figures are, but I I think um I'm supportive of investigating that comment to see if we are using the most appropriate measurements. Um because again, I'm looking for an implementable rather than an aspirational plan here. And so if we're underestimating the density, um we need to make some adjustments. Um, so, so I I think that's a an excellent point. Um, all right. Um, on kind of flowing through packet page 43, Central San Antonio. Um, uh, let's see. Um um consistent consistent with my thought that one of these three corners should be a grocery store anchored shopping center. I like um um CSA B2, option B2, allow limited commercial office space on the ground floor focused on professional service because I think that can complement as you fan out um really to the uh to the east from that intersection. Um that can that can provide some synergies with that that anchor even if the anchor's on a different property. Uh so I like that. uh going to 4748 which is south Fabian. Um I know I uh gave a plug for eight stories before but I did mention uh feathering down uh where appropriate

adjacent to lower density. And so here's an example of that. Um, I think the the uh let's see um I like uh A1 uh as which is the 60 ft height limit transitioning to the area north of it. Um and then that's on 47 and on 48 um um again I like uh B2 limited commercial office use on lower floors focused on professional services. Um so um you know that's it it's different from ground floor retail um um but it say uh presents some useful functionality uh that that again the idea is to get these new local residents um uh walking distance from some of the services they need. Um let's see going to uh packet page uh moving into North Fabian. So, you know, we've got the Maxar site and then we've got this strip on the other side of Fabian. Uh on that uh strip on the other side of Fabian, I like a 60oot max. Um because you've you want to feather to the lower density residential to the north of it. Um and um let's see. uh on the Maxar site. Um um I I guess you know I've heard some of the commissioners talk about wanting higher density uh on the freeway side and I'm just kind of wondering if that works. Right. We've got Summer Herald who built that townhouse development along the freeway up uh Beayshore and I'm wondering if that's I mean I wonder if that's better than eight stories of people looking at 101 if if there's you know more desire for that without you know so much visibility. So I was

thinking um at the east end I like the lower densities like 60 dwelling units per acre B2 but maybe B1 which is 40 at the east end. Uh and in terms of the height which is on 54 um so that's you know C2 which is the 90 with C1 the 60 ft. If we go with B1 at the east end which is again adjacent to the freeway. Um in terms of the concepts that are shown on uh 55 I like B and C. Um um because there's a lot of for sale in all the examples, but well actually this is a separate point. Uh in all these examples, there's a lot of um for sale, but will any of it be profitable enough to justify a 3acre park in the Maxar? So that's that's some math that needs to be done. Um and um back on the concepts on 55 um uh I think uh A and C with um I like the vision of more for sale along the highway. So I'll stop there.

Thank you. I again see no lights, but I anticipate Commissioner G has something more to say. Sure. Okay. Um I guess I will just continue where I left off. So um okay. So for the central San Antonio area, I was wondering, the ARB had mentioned the benefits of having some kind of back alley for management for trash pickup and other things. I don't think that's feasible here, but I was just curious about if that's been thought about.

Um, correct. it's would be very very hard to implement.

Okay, just want to confirm that. So as previously stated in the central San Antonio area, I would be in support of CSA A1 the 60 ft height limit and then the probably the for the land use alternative I think CSA B1 restrict all commercial uses for the reasons why the chair and the vice chair mentioned. However, I'm curious about the the potential carveout for the grocery store that Commissioner Hecman had mentioned. I also was wondering, you listed on packet page 43, consider connecting the bike path to I don't even know how to pronounce this. Wine widote. Is that something that we're actively still looking into or what's the potential feasibility there? So um you know that that that is a type of connection that would significantly impact that prop property but you know there's there's always possibilities of city purchasing property etc to make key connections. Um we we suggested and puted that put that in there as um you know the the direction was to look for ways to um lessen the block size and that is one location where a connection is possible to an existing street but again it would have to go through a private property and would be a significant impact on that property. Thank you. For the South Fabian sub area on packet page 47, the ARB mentioned that because significant portions of the section here are already pretty developed out that the SFA1, the

60ft height limit would be their recommendation. I support that as well. And for the ground floor uses, I think that ground floor retail may not be best for this area given that it's a little bit tucked in. Uh, and I would again, not to repeat myself, restrict the commercial and office usage for I think for South Fabian. And then on for the north Fabian area on packet page 55 that Commissioner Hecma had mentioned the my understanding from the the KAG is that the the folks from the community would prefer having the higher density along the highway because it's further away from the the residential areas and it would kind of drop down in height. So, this is an area where I think that potentially the 90 ft could work for the areas along the highway and kind of taper down towards the middle. And I think that here having a larger park makes more sense to me. So, something maybe in the realm of concept D or B would be my preference in terms of the park size. for the office. I'm again skeptical about that, so we won't go into that. But I really want to echo vice chair Chang's comment about the Valco area because I too also commute from Paul Alto to Certino to go and um visit those establishments that are there. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity there as well. But if I were to have the the retailer, I think it could be interesting. I don't know if we would end up having something where it's faced inside like in concept C or maybe potentially something that's more closer on the Fabian side, for example, concepts A or D. So again, I guess I will let someone else go this round before I continue.

Vice Chair Sh.

Okay, so I had a really quick question about the mobility improvements. There's a suggestion to put a bike path on Elma. Um, and I don't understand like c can somebody tell me more about the thought process behind that? Because even if the bike path is completely separated and off the road, Elma, I mean, it'd be like biking next to a freeway. Um, so I'm trying to understand like the value of it. So, I can say we have heard from some people that say that uh going that direction uh through the neighborhoods is challenging because of the circles.

Um and that people that aren't super familiar tend to get confused and just avoid it. Um, and so there would be a value to having uh a a two-way bike track on the east side of Elma that would help people get up into uh closer to one of the railroad crossings if they're looking to to go to the other side of the Cal Train tracks. Um, you know, we're still in the ideas phase. We're still listening to feedback. Um, but it would also provide a connection hopefully to the culturine station at San Antonio as well for people that live further north of the of the train station of San Antonio Road.

Further north. Okay. So, my thought on that is we have all sorts of really good bike paths that are pretty separated from the cars that make for a pretty pleasant experience in Palo Alto. And the way we handle it is like we have this is we have signage for the bicyclists to say this way to such and such a location. Um this way to cross over to Mountain View, this way to cross over to Los Altos. So I wonder if I understand that the circles are confusing cuz they are. It took me a while to learn them and I live over there, but it might be we might be able to handle it that way. Um, part of my um, negative reaction to a bike lane on Elma is that every once in a while I see a bike bicyclist actually biking in the car lanes um, on Alma. And it is just so dangerous. And I know that we can't stop people from doing that, but what I wouldn't want is for people to be biking and then go, "Oh, whoops. no more bike lane and let me just continue on Elma. And that's just not what we want. It's not good for safety. It's not good for traffic throughput. And I think there might be a solution that could just be solved potentially with signage if we That's just my two cents, but I haven't thought about the problem maybe as much as you all have. Thanks, I'm seeing no other lights, but I suspect there are other comments. So, I don't think we need to stick to the strict round structure any longer. So, please go ahead.

Do you want to go next? Do you do you have do you have comments you want to make? I'm I'm happy to go, but if

uh yeah, minor, I I've already called uh covered the things that I thought were important. I was just trying to figure out what the jobs housing ratio is at Valco because u the things that you like about Valco may exist because they built a whole heck of a lot of office there. And the last set of plants I have from 2019, the ratio is 3:1. If I'm just looking at units that I can uh pull off the web this instant, it looks like it's closer to 5:1. Um, but take that with a huge grain of salt. But at any rate, that's just pertinent to the comments we have about uh if you're willing to blow your jobs housing imbalance out of the water, what can you get for it? Yeah, you can get things for it.

Maybe I don't want. All right. Uh, Commissioner Hecman and then Commissioner Peterson.

All right. So, I want to move to the uh CTI and and the issue of the park size and location. Um, and and I really uh thought that there's a bit of analysis at packet pages uh 143 144 about how parks are funded. And and if I can collapse the math, it's pretty simple. Density equals more density equals larger parks. And there's probably a critical mass in there where if you don't have enough density, you get no part because it's too small. Um, and so again, I want this to be an implementable rather than aspirational document. So it it's not going to work if we say, wouldn't it be great if if all the CTI were townous in a three-acre park because the the numbers won't work. And so we, you know, we have to look at something different. Um so on uh packet page 66 um um as I mentioned before I like the one park um idea um off of the main street. So here off of Charlean uh Charleston a little more uh centrally located. Um, and I think one of our public commenters as I was driving in, I heard uh I think, you know, talked about the the benefits of that larger area just being more flexible. Um, and I heard other, you know, commissioners um, you know, resonate some other ideas. Uh, and so I really like uh that A3. Um, going to packet page. Oh, you want to run the clock for me or No.

Okay. I think we're past that at this point.

Okay. Fine. Fine. Um yeah, if I I I should finish in five minutes, especially if it never starts ticking. Okay, on packet page uh uh 74, um again, we're looking at this uh uh the CTI alternatives and and um I like uh B3, which is office and residential up to 90 ft, eight stories of residential, fivetory office. um um it's mixed use and and you know what I'm thinking here is is we replace the commercial in the CTI in kind and and if we do that um and again there are there are some maybe some density flaws here that need to be looked at but what I'm reading here is if we do that we may get the same amount of commercial plus a th000 residential units plus a park. And and I do want to clarify, I'm not talking about more commercial. I'm talking about the same square footage of commercial torn down and rebuilt as uh part of something else. Uh let's see. Going to packet page 85. Um I'm on East Bayshore now. Um, I I guess what I was when I read through this, it doesn't seem to me like there's much incentive to allow increased office in this location cuz that's the incentive we'd need to add housing, but this isn't a good housing site. So, if we can't get the housing, why would we want to uh bump up the office? Uh, there on West Bay Shore, the next page 86. Um I I'm just wondering if this office space would be more likely to redevelop

in this location as three threetory townhouse uh rather than the current H site um which is 90 dwelling units per acre. It's you know eight stories. Um and you know what are the economics? Um again I'm looking at this location. I'm thinking of um the Summer Hill project which is right down beayshore. they went townhouse. Um what makes us think that this would work um for for this other uh prototype. Um next on I'm going to go to mo uh mobility alternatives packet page 117. So I I love the idea of MS3 which is um or MS2 those are both wider those both involve expansion of the right of way but an implementable uh but but that requires you know acquisition of private property because not everything's going to develop at the same time. we've already um you know have have made some improvements. We'd have to acquire we but we would want it to be done uniformly. So I like MSA1 which is keeping within the required uh right ofway. Um we got existing 100.5 ft and that's all we need for MSA1 and so we don't have to change it. Um um uh I do note and and I think one of the other commissioners that that you know uh this one and three both involve removal of 101 spaces and where are those people going to park? Um so but

that's that's the one I like there on um u I like MS1 because it's achievable. Um, uh, pages 133 and 134, Charleston Road, south of San Antonio. I like um, uh, alternative number two, street section. The to me the main trade seems to be the inside lanes are 10 feet instead of 11 ft and we get a two-way bike line bike lane on one side. So um you know maybe there's a traffic safety issue there I'm not aware of. I mean maybe there's a reason that that that inside the middle lanes are 11 ft rather than 10. Um but that's what's attractive to me. Um, and then just a a question on the market analysis, uh, which is, uh, it's been referred to a number of times is predominantly on I was looking at pages 150 to 152 of the packet. Do an does it matter what is in the eight stories? Can can an eight-story mixeduse versus residential over office, can those provide the same results? I mean, it seemed like we were, you know, we're looking at eightstory office buildings, eighttory residential. Is is there some kind of blended sweet spot um in a mixeduse uh product? So, I was curious about that. And again, it ties to this uh possible concept that I mentioned for San Antonio and El Camino uh sorry, yeah, San Antonio and Middlefield where you might have a mixeduse with a shopping center and parking at the base. Um, that's it. That was the last question.

So, and and I'm all done. Oh, just finished. Five minutes. Was that the question expecting an answer or was it

um if if you have one, that's great. If if it's worth um reflecting in the next iteration of this plan, that's fine, too. But yeah, I don't need an answer tonight. It's just I couldn't tell from the plan because it wasn't addressed. And if there's and and I presume that's because it doesn't work. Uh it was looked at but doesn't work. But if it's something that is a variant that you know the council should know about, then maybe make a reference to it. uh through the chair, if I may, I I just want to clarify some things about the San Antonio Road alternatives. Um for both MS 1 and MSA3, there's the potential to do them without acquiring additional right of way. Um we show in MSA3 additional acquisition to widen the sidewalk to make it more comfortable, but we could do it without widening the sidewalk potentially. Um but MSA3 obviously has moving the curb. So there there's that expense and also replanting of trees. There's a lot that goes into it, you know, replacing uh infrastructure, uh you know, a lot to consider, but both can be done without expanding the right of way. MSA 2 would require additional right of way um as it's currently designed. Um so I just wanted to clarify on that. And we've also floated the idea of potential for the practicality uh that you mentioned doing MSA one as a short-term project uh with the hopes of building out to two or three at some point in the future.

Okay, that uh that's useful. Just a followup on packet page 117. It it does list MS A3 as requiring an additional five feet of rightway. Is that But is that is that a perhaps it's a typo? I mean, it says 105.5, but maybe it's it really should that one maybe should be 100.5

because it looks like it it as propos and again that was part of what I was reacting to. Yeah, I I would say, you know, at at this level of detail, these are conceptual, right? They're they're fine-tuning them. And I think what you were saying is like instead of an 8ft sidewalk and the the two-way, right, you go with a 5ft sidewalk. There there are different ways to do it. I think the direction that we're we're kind of I think looking for on the mobility is like should we go with trying to have separated and two-way bike facilities on both sides of the street or should we go with alternative two which is you know focusing two-way on one or you know the minimal like just having separated bikeways as in alternative one But there there's a lot of design detail to figure out in later stages of of this project and and beyond.

And I do want to jump in with a reminder that this is still a truck route. So as we're talking about the design of this, that needs to be in the back of our minds as well. Okay. So I guess then my overall point on these alternatives is the the one I like is the the one that does not require the acquisition of additional right of way and then whatever however we can fit things in to have a safe bicycle and pedestrian access within that. Um I think that is the most implementable plan and so that's the one I I'm suggesting we pursue. Vice Chair Shank,

just wanted to jump in um now that I'm understanding these options a little bit more. I don't think MSA2 is my preferred alternative necessarily because I noticed that there's parking there. But I think what I wanted to emphasize is that when I look at MSA3 where you have separated bikeway on both sides that's birectional on both sides. I'm not sure that that is necessary all the way along because the bikes can go either direction assuming that there is a way to cross the street. And I think that was the main takeaway. I'm not sure that parking is necessary here. just I haven't fully thought it through, but where I see people parked is in the like frontage road that there is there. And so I would need I think that needs to be considered. Um cuz it's pretty heavily used in right next to Charleston and San Antonio right at that intersection. But as you go further down uh towards if you go further west, I think there's less parking that's like used heavily. Um, so and I I love the idea of starting out with MSA1 and then aspiring for something else. Um, I was concerned that MSA3 would be most expensive because of the utilities issue and so I was also concerned about managing that. Thanks.

Thank you all. Do we have any further comments? Yes, we do. Uh, Commissioner G, then Commissioner Peterson. All right. Um, to let Commissioner Peterson have some time, I want to jump into the spike discussion. I was wondering, you said Sylvia's on the line. I was wondering if Sylvia could comment more on the utility boxes during our walk. Yeah.

Yeah, we do um have both her and our transportation consultant. Um, what was the question you were particularly interested in? Um, Sylvia, when we did the walk down San Antonio, you talked about the many utility boxes that are along the south side of San Antonio. Can you talk about how the intersection of those utility boxes are with some of the different alternatives that are provided on this page on packet page 116?

Good evening, Commissioner. Sylvia Starlac, transportation planning manager. Um, yeah, we did see them. They do exist. they would need to be there are various kinds of utilities that would be in the path depending on what choice is made. Um but I believe actually Robert might have more information I is your is your concern about what it would cost to move them like are they movable or what exactly is your question?

So I have a couple different questions. So one is approximately how far away from the curb are they because you can see in the different alternatives that are here the the different options are different direction like kind of widths away from the street right so that's kind of my first question my second question is if we were to move them what is the co potential cost prohibition there right so I think Robert actually might have that information I think he had conversation with um staff about that. Um

I I don't have an exact figure. We're not at that phase yet. Um we can identify that that is the most expensive uh of the three alternatives because partially because of of relocating utilities. I believe there are some that are in that strip, the planning strip between the curb and the sidewalk and then there are other uh utilities that are on the far side of the sidewalk. Um so any number of those might have to be relocated. Uh the curb itself would be rebuilt in option three. Um it would not be a short-term um project that the city could do. It would be a long-term project that would be expensive. Um but uh our transportation staff believes that it is the best option in terms of meeting the stated goals of the city and the bike ped plan as well as for uh safety and comfort of all users. So to summarize, the utility boxes are the most expensive component for this potential project and they were at varying distances away from the street which may make different levels of cost prohibition for different options.

So I wouldn't say the utilities themselves are the most expensive part. I don't think we've drilled down. I would say the option itself is the most expensive of the three options. partially because of utilities, partially because of tree replanting, partially because reconstructing the curb. There's a just a lot of pieces that go into that. Um I don't have a breakdown of which of those pieces is the most expensive of those. I can just tell you that yes, it would be more expensive than the other two options.

Okay. Thank you. I'll keep my comments then more high level just so that we can uh then we can move on. So in general, I like the idea of the left half of MSA3 where we have the bike and ped separation. If we expect many bicycles to be using this route, I do think that having a separation of bike and ped would be helpful. Going to commissioner Hecman's earlier comment about the potential feasibility here on the what is now the left side of the diagram. The entire mo most the entire stretch I believe here is almost completely covered by the green houses and is mostly just the uh just grass. I believe there is a picture of this on one of the packet pages. I think it is packet page 120. So you'll see here that creating the extension onto the area that is now the green houses is relatively easy to extend because it is primarily one parcel and also because there's not very much there right now. So just in terms of feasibility that's one potential consideration there. Echoing what the vice chair had said regarding the double bike lanes on both sides. I'm not in support of that. I think that if we did something where similar to El Camino where we have the flashing crossings, I don't know what the there's like some term for them, but if we have more of those um I think that that would be good. And I also want to draw my attention the attention to the usage of the bike lane on the south side of San Antonio. and that is about the number of new developments that we have that will have curb cutouts with driveways. So, one of the things that I've noticed as someone who lives pretty

close to both Park Boulevard and El Camino is what do I prefer to use to bike around? And for me on Park, there are just fewer cars coming out of driveways. If we expect that most of the south side of San Antonio, where we see all of these pipeline products, will have hundreds of cars potentially coming out of each of these curbs, I'm pretty nervous about biking on that side of the street and would prefer to bike on the north side as much as possible until getting to a place where I can cross over. So, and and I I felt that also when I was a kid biking to school. So that's something that I just want to call out that I as a biker would prefer to bike much more on what is the north side of San Antonio as much as I can and then cut over. So some kind of hybrid between the options. Although for practicality's sake, I also support MSA1 just in the short term. Though I am curious about what the chair has mentioned regarding the parking overflow. We could right now remove the parking because there's not that much housing. My understanding of the parking right now is that there's a lot of school drop off and school usage for a lot of the parking that is there on San Antonio right now. But the moment that we start adding more of the housing and specifically most of the projects that we're seeing, for example, 800 808 San Antonio and 788, which is coming to us next meeting, are pretty underparked. will suddenly see that the parking o overflow is going to going to impact this area. So I think potentially having some kind of pilot study could be interesting. Although the parking overflow analysis that we would do by removing the parking for MSA1 would be hard to really see what that would actually look like because none of the buildings where all of the people that are going to be underparked are

have yet to arrive. Um, so if they don't exist, it's kind of hard to to be able to plan for that. So I'm going to let Commissioner Peterson go for a little bit. Um, Commissioner Peterson,

thank you. Appreciate it. Uh, can we go to page uh what is it here? 92 and we can put page 92 up on the screen. There we go. So, what I'm going to do is I want to dive down into that intersection with the Cal Train station and just try and walk through what does that look like. So, if we look at um the bicycle segment um map there, that's where it shows there we go in green crossing um under the the tracks through the uh the walkway. I don't know if anyone's familiar with the station there, but it's uh you walk under the under the tracks, you cross the street crossing Alma, and then it's showing the the green bike lane. You continue straight across the street, and you can wrap around. I don't know the name of the street. Is it okay if we open uh Google Maps

or is that need to stay with on what's on the slide? Well, if I may, just kind of stepping in noting the hour, noting that we have another item. Um, it could be that just I mean, we've heard clearly a concern that there isn't good access to the train station and that that is something that needs careful attention as we develop these. Um, Got it. And so it could be that that is sufficient at this point. Um if there are particular areas that you want to make sure that staff is paying particular attention to um you know

you can you can mention those. Um you can also share those with us via email. Let's go page 91 then and we'll wrap that up. I see what you're saying where the level of detail we're there. I think we in we talked about level detail 100 200 300 maybe we just hit 450. were. So, let's see. 91. Here we go. And if we if we look at the the the left graphic and the right graphic, and then we'll be done with this. On the left one, it shows where there's a sidewalk and where there's not. Uh purple is no sidewalk. Blue is a sidewalk.

Yes. And you can see it turns purple across from the Cal Train station. I just wanted to point that out. And that's why it gets a little bit awkward trying to figure out where are you supposed to walk. And then on the right side there where it shows the blueish aqua I guess dotted line, it shows you essentially walking through that same section where there's no sidewalks. And then um the dark blue line, this is the one I just discovered that maybe this is where I should have been walking where it goes across from Alma and it makes that uh goes up through Mountain View and then makes that hard left turn and it goes in the neighborhood. Maybe that's the walkway. But when I looked on Google Maps, it's not even clear that that's actually a walkway through that industrial area. But, uh, the next time I'm down at San Antonio, I'm definitely going to take that walk and see maybe that's the easy walkway. Um, but that's what I wanted to point out is the even on this one here, it's it's really showing two different ways of walking through there. And I think there's probably actually one that makes sense.

Yeah. I'll just add that that site across from the Calran station is a Google X site where they do a lot of the Whimo development. Um it is private property. It's private property. Okay. You know it is it is not people are not barred from walking through and along the sidewalks through that property currently. Yeah. Um but the city of Mountain View which it is located within does not show it as an accessible route because it's private property. Okay. um and could that access to it could change based on the owner's desires at any point. Um I do think it's important for us to talk with our our partners in the city of Mountain View because so much of this routing is through their jurisdiction

um and potentially with u the property owners to see what we can do there. Um and so that that is a good note, but it's not something that we can as city staff advise people to to do right at this point. Thank you. I'm glad I asked the question because this is also this is the one station my kids will go on their own when they were you know little kids 10 12 years old they'll take the cow train because that's where the movie theater is at San Antonio and um so I know this is a major throughfair from where people are going to be living on San Antonio here to get over to the San Antonio shopping center. So it is a it is an important walkway to make it connect all the way through. Thank you.

Thank you Commissioner Peterson. Commissioner G, did you have any uh final comments?

Sure. Um, I have some questions about the retail in uh the CTI area. So, in the Mountain View project as is, how much retail is there already planned? Uh, I believe they have planned about um I would have to get the slide up, but I believe it's somewhere around 40 or 50,000 of commercial. Now, I should note that's not necessarily capital R retail. It's like a daycare. It's a gym. It's some some other some other things. And one of the things I think, you know, we're we're looking at is between the Mountain View project and what happens in the CTI that they really need to be one neighborhood. And, you know, it's not like both of those nodes can serve a lot of retail, right? there's like going to be one place between those two.

Yeah, most likely.

I I want to echo that and that I think probably the CTI area is not a good area for retail for that specific reason. There's also a Costco across the street that not just has the Costco and also has a bunch of supporting businesses that exist in that same plaza. So, for that reason, I do not think that the CTI area would be a good area for for retail. I had a comment about packet page 75 with the school map. And so I want to draw the commission's attention to the fact that in the CTI area half of it's drawn into the Paulo Alto school district and half of it's drawn into the Wisman Los Alto school district. So, I think that's something to note as one of the options for the transportation that we've thought about for that area in in Charleston is that I think that it's it potentially is more important to consider what transportation Mountain View is doing there because I noticed that I think it was whichever page had Commissioner Peterson safe routes to school, but had the safe routes to school on the Mountain View side going via um independence on the other side. Uh oh, I think it's actually listed on this page. That's my bad. Um, so I think that coordinating with Mountain View is the most important for the Charleston leg from San Antonio to 101, especially also because of the changes to the traffic uh due to the 101 improvements. So, I wanted to ask a question about the the mobility volumes on packet page 136, which show the traffic volumes for East Charleston and Fabian at this intersection. So, I was wondering if staff could tell me, is this number of cars per hour? How do I interpret the numbers on this page?

I think that would be a question for Amanda. That looks like a count in during the peak hour. So is it like a single hour? Is it average across multiple? We have our transportation consultant I believe still online. Yes. Hello. This is Amanda and I can confirm that. Sounds like the volume is very low. Oh, here we go. How's this? Still a little light. Okay, it might be on our side. Um, this is Amanda Ley with KDson. That's great. Thank you.

Great. Uh, yes, these are peak hour volumes. So, you can see the AM peak hour on the left and there is um written text above the graphic that shows AM peak hour and PM peak hour. The AM peak typically occurs between 7 and 9:00 a.m. and the PM peak between 4 and 6. Thank you. And what's the big number that's like 215 256 that exists kind of at the bottom here?

That is a node number. So that is particular to the synchro network that this was created in and that's like a node ID. It's not a volume.

Okay. So I should ignore that. So the reason why I want to bring this up is that if we look at the values at the San Antonio and Charleston intersection, the largest values are just I'm using reference to this page on Charleston going to the right and that's 737 cars during the AM peak hour and 592 cars in the PM peak hour. Interestingly enough, it's the the same direction is actually the most uh the most volume regardless of whether it's the AM hour or the PM hour. But I suspect that this will change quite significantly once the 101 improvements occur because my guess is that a significant portion of these people are going to take the southbound 101 which exists at the end of this intersection. turn on to San Antonio is my best guess once they move the ramp. I think that that leaves a lot more uh flexibility to the segment of Charleston that is between San Antonio and the end there to make it more neighborhood feeling. Although it probably isn't going to be the most neighborhood feeling, but we will probably see significant fewer car volumes once the 101 improvements have occurred. So, I just want to to comment on that. And so with that specifically, uh I think having potenti like normally one thing that concerns me about having the the bikes on San Antonio that we've described, for example, MSA 1 is that we we're going to it's because it's a truck route. We expect these large trucks to be driving right next to a lot of the bikers. And so hopefully with the reduction in

traffic on Charleston past San Antonio, we will see fewer cars going that direction. So I think that that's an like an exciting place that we could be having more some kind of traffic calming or some kind of uh easier routes that we expect more more people to be going on. So that's my comments there. And then I had a question on packet page 95 about special setbacks. So I feel like the commission has seen many projects on San Antonio where we've talked about this 24 foot setback, but I noticed that in the CTI area there's a bunch of special setbacks there as well. So I was wondering if staff can talk a little bit about that and whether like kind of what's the history behind why there are special setbacks there. The roads there feel pretty narrow as is and whether or not we plan on having any changes there. Yeah, we are looking at changes there. There is um there is a page where there are very small sections in the CTI. Um I believe it's let's see 48 + 15. Um it's late. My head's not doing the math. Um

63 63. Uh on 63 we are showing some some potential um internal streets. Um, it's not something we we need direction on, I think, at this time. I think we'll be going into more more detail about what is the right street section as these these narrow streets um potentially are in the middle of a a mixeduse community with, you know, potentially office and definitely the high higher density residential.

Okay. So, I think that this is I just want to call this out as something interesting that to continue exploring because the streets there are pretty narrow. I wonder if partially the reason why I feel that is because there's lots of RVs parked there right now. So, feels extra narrow. I don't suspect that will be the long-term vision for that area, but I think that's something that could be pretty interesting there. Um, and then I had a question. Oh, I had a comment about the portion of Char of Charleston. I think that given the traffic study, removing the left turn lane that's going onto the small U-shaped part of Fabian from Charleston, I think that's an area of improvement that we could potentially remove due to low extremely low traffic volumes and potentially reduce some of the usage there as well to reduce some traffic there as well. Um, and then I wanted to echo Vice Chair Chang's comment about bike lane on Alma. I'm pretty against that to have the bike structure on Alma. I work at a self-driving company and our usage of highway before we got allowed to drive on the highway was Elma and Central. So, we treat that as the same kind of driving patterns that we would see on a highway. And so I think that whatever kind of bike infrastructure you end up like would not make is not in my mind compatible with Alma. I would rather this the city decide to invest in ginormous 10 feet by 10 feet street signs in the circles to be like go this way instead of investing in what is significantly more expensive and poss probably probably more dangerous for bike infrastructure on um on Alma itself. And I also noticed that

kind of jumping off of what Commissioner Peterson said about connections to the San Antonio Cal Train. So I was wondering on packet page 122, there's a diagram that shows that the underpass is at Mayfield Avenue uh across the San Antonio. So I was wondering is are you saying that Mayfield Avenue is the private street that goes through Google X? Yes, Mayfield is the private. Okay. So, it's I see. So, it's even though it's listed as like a street, it's it's a private street. Is that correct? I believe so. Yes.

Okay. Um then then I have no further comments there because I thought like personally for me I think that if we have this McKay need connection I think that could be awesome but of course we have no control over that. And then uh yeah, so those are my comments for that. And then I had a question about in the feasibility study for uh packet page 151. We I feel like the chair and I and commissioner Hecman have been referencing this, but I'm trying to understand from what we're seeing on the commission, we see that more buildings want to build more office. But what I'm reading here is that these five to eight story offices would lose residual land value. So I'm trying to understand, am I interpreting that correctly? what's how do I man understand reconcile this?

Sure. So there's a lot of assumptions that went into this report. Um we've also did a different report um that went to policy and services uh was it this month like I've had been to so many public meetings in March like it's hard to keep them straight. Um but we're looking through the housing element to find ways to incentivize residential uh development in places where the office market is very strong. And we found that the office market in Palo Alto is very specific to certain sub areas within the city. So it's not the same throughout. So you might see some parts of the city where developers are really eager to build office and other ones where they're really eager to build town homes. Um it's not the same across the city. Uh, and one of the concerns that our consultant had when developing this analysis was because there's currently no class A office in the CTI area, there's more of a risk to putting being the first person in to put in class A office here. Um, so that's part of it. Uh, Chris, I don't know if you have more to add.

Yeah, I think what I'd have to add is, you know, development is al is often personal. It's personal to the land owner, the developer. And I think you you you you saw this probably in the projects that came across on San Antonio, the residential ones. You have different developers with different like objectives, right? Some are willing to come in with no parking, some want the parking. It's similar with the with the office. The one thing that we do know is that one of the landowners in CTI is interested in developing office. they have proposed a 480,000 foot office development in their Mountain View holdings across the the parcel. So while you know the report might say something, development is also you know very subjective to um the land owner and developer.

All right, thank you. Um so I think that wraps up my comments here. All right, this may be a good point at which to wrap up this item. Any last questions or comments? Do you need anything more from us tonight? So, I think we've heard from most of the commissioners on most of the topics, but I'm not sure if we got Commissioner G, Commissioner James, or Commissioner Peterson's thought on office limitations uh fully in the CTI area. Um, if we did, I apologize for not catching it. If you if you have them, if you don't have direction, that's fine as well.

I wouldn't say no office is my preference. Uh, my my preference is the same as uh Commissioner uh Hetchins.

Um, I just felt like my guiding principle was like, uh, don't don't get the the jobs and housing out of balance, right? I don't want to hidden cost here in terms of like uh more more arena allocation. So, um, the chair was sort of drilling down on that a little bit and I'm not sure I know exactly um you you know to put a fine point on it, but I think that would be my guiding guiding principle is is not getting our ratio of housing and office having it put us in a deeper hole on re allocations. Um,

thank you. All right, I take it uh we uh have a wrap. Thank you all for a long but deep and insightful conversation. Thank you again for all the work that has gone into this plan and we look forward to seeing the reality.

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Agenda item number three tonight. Um I would like to at least get started on this without a break. If there are no objections, uh agenda item number three is an action item to recommend updates to title 16 and title 18 for retail revitalization. This begins on uh packet page 162. Uh may we have the staff presentation? Thank you and uh thank you for sticking with us through I know a very long agenda this evening. Uh for this item we do have um Jean Iceberg with Lexington Planning joining us online to make the presentation and then we will also have um Alex Andrade the manager of economic development for the city who's available um as well as part of this evening's discussion. Okay, thank you. Good evening, Chair Aken and members of the commission. I'll try to keep this pretty succinct. I know it's a late hour and we did have a study session. So, I'm going to talk about some highlights about things that have changed since then and what we um have presented going forward in terms of a draft ordinance. So, tonight we're looking for you to make a recommendation on the draft retail ordinance and then we will move on to the city council. We, as you recall, we had a study session in October. Since then, we met with the retail subcommittee in January and um just as a reminder, the interim ordinance will sunset at the end of the year. Uh which is why we're working on this permanent ordinance now. So, some feedback from the council retail subcommittee is in your packet. Um they supported many of the

recommendations that the PTC had discussed in October. also raised the concept of allowing bars. Those are standalone bars that do not have food service. Uh that's something a use that's not currently allowed in Palo Alto. It talked a lot about design standards particularly for the retail like uses and other commercial uses like office and medical office. Um just ensuring that those types of uses look like retail but they have transparency. Um, but that that's a way to provide more uh expanded uses on the ground floor beyond uh traditional retail. To summarize the contents of the ordinance, um it aims to expand the types of re retail permitted to retail like to other office and medical office uses. Uh, as we talked about last time, there are a number of places in the ordinance that have conflicting standards for um certain areas of the city, particularly Midtown Charleston areas. And so, we've aimed to reduce that confusion and streamline use regulations. Additionally, we've added some more uh standard conditions for specific uses like animal care and alcohol services. uh removed subjective overly subjective findings and aim to link findings to the purposes of a zoning district. So the purposes of the CN district for example, I'm going to just going to go through six key topic areas. First is eating and drinking services. Right now there's one eating and drinking use classification. So, it's a catch-all for um basically restaurants, restaurants that might have more full service, table service um seating. Other uses like a deli or a cafe are not actually they're classified as intensive retail services,

which is a term that unless you're really in the know and you have notes in the margin of your ordinance as a retailer or restaurant, you're not going to know that that's the use that you need to look at. So instead we've created this new use classification eating and drinking limit of service which has that ready to eat food service um like picking up a coffee or going to a deli and that is important here because it has a distinct parking regulation. It's not somewhere where you're sitting for a long time. There's much higher turnover. And then um based on that feedback from the retail subcommittee we have recommended a new use classification bars. And so that's something we didn't really talk much about um in October. And so that would be um a bar that doesn't have to meet that threshold of 50% of its revenue coming from food service. And so we've recommended it in some of the uh more active commercial districts downtown California Avenue, but not in the neighborhood commercial district that has more retail adjacencies. So second key topic and this um given the hour this is probably the more critical topic that may be uh worth discussing tonight is the issue of offices and medical offices. So, um you'll see that the draft ordinance allows neighborhood serving offices, which is a term already defined, uh in the code, uh allowing them downtown and on California Avenue, not fronting university or California Avenue, but in the rear of tenant spaces or fronting side streets. Second, allowing medical offices with on-site retail. So, that's a key component there on University and California avenues. So, those uses could front the avenues um if they have on-site retail, but they would still require a conditional use permit. And

so, that allows uh staff to apply conditions or if a if a use is elevated to the commission, uh the commission to apply additional conditions to the use. All of these uses already require and would continue to require um compliance with certain design standards. So that ensures uh currently in the code ensures that there's transparency at the window level. There's landscaping uh that it looks like retail. Window coverings in particular are not allowed uh for these uses. We did discuss uh during the October study session this um the issues right now in the Midtown and Charleston shopping centers in particular. Currently, there are three different use tables that uh potentially apply to these areas which creates a lot of confusion. So, what we've proposed in the draft ordinance is that the CN, the neighborhood commercial use table, uh would regulate uses in these areas. And then there are a series of footnotes that call out specific um permitted or conditional use permissions uh for these areas. So where they're distinct from other CN locations in the city and I should mention that means removing the GF or ground floor designation from the zoning map. And so that's what's proposed there. Uh next we have a number of changes that get at streamlining permitting. The first is really a a change or excuse me so sometimes you'll see in the use table um whereas today it's a requires a cup for a particular use the recommendation if it's not a controversial use is to instead allow it by right and so you'll see some of those locations where cup is changed to P. Um, another area that's

more of a really a name change and not a process change is throughout the code, a global change would be to change the the term conditional use permit to administrative use permit. And that really acknowledges that that permit today um is a staff level permit. So unless the unless it's elevated to the commission because it's potentially a controversial issue um for example um use permits for schools are often elevated to the commission. Um otherwise it's approved by staff and it's really just a name change so that um the community and tenants can understand that the process does not necessarily require a public hearing. So uh the fifth item is about parking. There's a few really surgical changes to the parking regulations. First, to add a blended rate to the California Avenue parking district, similarly as what you have today in the code for downtown. Um, some changes to the transportation demand management program. Uh, development center staff have indicated that sometimes the TDM program is triggered for very small uses. So a retail addition uh that just is triggering one or two spaces suddenly needs to provide a TDM plan which for a small retailer uh can be very ownorous. And then you see modifications to parking ratios and the shared parking allowances uh to provide more flexibility and to streamline those those parking ratios across different districts. for example, right now um office uses have different parking standards in different districts. And then lastly, the retail preservation ordinance. Uh we've recommended exempting certain retail, excuse me, certain zoning districts from um the

applicability of the retail preservation ordinance. This includes multif family residential zones um which have a few sites that have commercial retail uses that would be subject to this ordinance. in the case of redevelopment and then uh in office manufacturing zones including the GM zones. I will say most of those sites as you can see from this map um they're shown in pink hatching. These are sites that have retail businesses that would be subject to the retail preservation ordinance if they turned over. But most of these sites are along San Antonio Road or nearby within the plan area that you were just talking about. And so, um, alternatively, if the commission recommends waiting for that process to unfold, uh, before making changes to that area, uh, that's something we could, um, look at removing from the ordinance. So, that is, uh, the summary. The staff recommendation is to, um, recommend approval to the city council um, to implement these retail vitality measures. And that concludes my presentation. Um I am joined by my colleague Christine Fenberg who you may remember last time is a retail broker. And um as assistant director uh Armor said, I want to pass the mic now to economic development manager Alex Andrade who's on the Zoom. Thank you.

Thank you Janie. I hope you can hear me. Okay. Yes, we can.

Excellent. Good evening, chair and commissioners. My name is Alex Andrade. I serve as both the assistant to the city manager and economic development manager. I tonight I'm here as your economic development manager. I've been with the city for about four and a half years and I'm really excited about this conversation because we're talking about flexibility and land use and zoning in commercial districts. In January, two important meetings took place. The first one being the city council retreat which uh took place on January 24th where they discussed values and priorities for the calendar year. They developed a new priority entitled the enhanced business vibrancy. And I took that to mean uh that the city council was acknowledging the importance of economic development and the connection between the between a healthy local economy rather and the city's long-term fiscal sustainability. And secondly, as Jeannie was just indicating, the retail committee, which took place on January 22nd, I believe, uh, which is now known as the economic development committee, and they discussed the retail vibrancy ordinance that we're, uh, talking about today. At that meeting, the retail committee supported many of the staff's recommendations, but one particular one that I want to hone in on is exactly as Jeannie mentioned in her presentation where the retail committee was wanted to make sure that ground floor uses were activated of course and that medical, health, and personal uses be considered. So from the economic development perspective, I'm here in support of the consideration of flexible land use and zoning on the ground floor as it relates to retail and commercial spaces that would include personal services and health. Of course, I think it's important to kind of give you a sense of what's been happening from a vacancy perspective on Calav and University

Avenue. Uh so just a little data the vacancy rate on Calav as of quarter 4 2025 roughly 5 and a half%. And that's down from about 10% from a year ago. So from the CAL perspective things are moving definitely in the right direction from an economic vitality perspective. In terms of University Avenue, however, the retail vacancy rate was somewhere around 13 and a.5%, you know, late to mid 2025. Over the last 10 years, the highest vacancy rate that we've seen in downtown was almost 18%. Going back to quarter 1 of 2024. Thankfully though, at University Avenue, we've seen openings of businesses like Molly T and 5775 Mission. Uh, and there are new businesses that will likely be opening soon like Anti Lacornetta and Shanglang Malatang. However, with University Avenue, there are some spaces on the ground floor that tend to be a little bit difficult to occupy um because they're a little larger and so coupled with the respective tenant specific space needs, it makes it a little a little different. So uh recently I proposed what I'm calling the Bria strategy which stands for the business retention expansion and attraction strategy which is really focused on various things but specifically to ensure that in Palo Alto there's a competitive advantage and to provide a favorable business environment that can lead to overall economic prosperity. So uh just to conclude my comments here, flexible zoning and land use such as health and personal services will help myself and uh my colleague at economic development attract uses to the ground floor along University Avenue, Calab and other commercial districts. So uh what we know is the retail industry has been evolving for some time and since the

pandemic things have been exacerbated. So flexibility is definitely the key moving forward. Thank you. I really appreciate the time. Thank you, Mr. Andrad. Thank you. Any further presentation? No, we are available to answer questions or if you'd like to jump to public comment because I know we do have some public commenters here in the chambers. Yes. Um, commissioners, any objection to moving directly to public comment? Very well. Mr. Diver, how many uh request comment do we have?

Uh to the chair, we have three at the moment. Uh our first public commenter is Peter G. I'll invite Peter G to the podium. Sorry, just trying to move that given the time. If I turn into a pumpkin halfway through, just please forgive me. Um, good evening commissioners and thank you for providing me an opportunity to speak. My name is Peter Givvento and my family are the owners of 451 University Avenue in downtown which is under discussion tonight. Your packet contains a letter we wrote that goes into more detail in what I'll be touching on tonight, but I thought it might be helpful to speak through a few of the items. First off, I'd like to thank the commission and the staff for taking on the much appreciated task of modernizing and adding flexibility to permitted uses on University Avenue. As a longtime Palaza residents and local business owners, my family shares your goal in creating a more vibrant and attractive University Avenue by helping fill long vacant spaces like the one that we happen to own at 451 University Avenue. Our building at 451 University Avenue has been a tough one to lease and has been vacant for several years. Now, part of the reason for that is that it has a tricky layout. It's a little bit larger and deeper than most other spaces in the area, and it has a second floor that does not have its own access. However, another major reason for its sustained vacancy, is that it's located at the far end of University Avenue, which is often referred to as University A's dead zone due to its lack of foot traffic. It's a one-two punch when you're trying to fill a space with something other than short-term seasonal tenants. Fortunately, we've have a great prospective tenant that we believe would be an asset to University Avenue, Neco Health. Uh we have a representative here who's flew in to speak about the company, so I won't dwell too much on what they do, but um within their modern spa-like spaces, they do use advanced

scanning technology paired with computer modeling and AI to make preventative health screening easy, fast, and accessible to give customers a better picture of their overall health. A key thing to note is that Neco Health offers a diagnostic screening but does not treat customers. Let me repeat, they provide diagnostic screenings, not treatment. However, given the blanket prohibition on any staff having medical training on University Avenue, Neco Health would be forced off Powalta's premier street. That seems a shame to me as this business perfectly aligns with Powalta's reputation for showcasing technological innovation and championing health. Now, the new GF uh combining district does address this, but could be clearer in allowing preventative health screening, not treatment, as a use. Our letter proposed a few modest refinements to the draft language and these would allow NECO's diagnostic use to fit within the zoning without simultaneously opening the door to more intensive medical or health uses in the GF combining district. We're proud to share this opportunity to increase the vitality in downtown Palo Alto with an exciting company that showcases innovation and will improve health outcomes for our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chief. Our next speaker is Trevor C. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Trevor and I'm here on behalf of Neco Health in support of the proposed updates to Palo Alto's retail use code, specifically the expanded definition around medical, spa, and personal services on University Avenue. Neco Health was founded by Daniel Ek, the founder and ex-CEO of Spotify, as a means to bring prevention to the forefront of healthcare. Let me first start with what Neco is not. NECO is not a traditional medical office. We do not diagnose. We do not prescribe. We do not treat. There are no physicians performing clinical procedures on site. What we do is use non-invasive visual and thermal scanning technology combined with AI to give clients meaningful health data points about their own bodies. The data behind our model speaks for itself. Out of their first scans, nearly 80% of members receive a clean bill of health. 13% were found to need medical treatment or monitoring for conditions they had. 6% had significant conditions. and mainly 1% received life-saving interventions for things like aortic aneurysms, severe cardiovascular disease, and malignant melanoma. None of the serious cases knew anything was wrong before they walked in. That last number is why we exist. This brings me to why retail quarters like University Avenue are exactly where we belong. We deliberately chose to operate in vibrant, walkable retail environments because we believe personal health services should feel accessible and welcoming. We have worked hard to create an experience that feels nothing like a trip to the doctor's office. And that approach is reflected in the demand of our service and in our unique custom interior designs, often exceeding several times the national national average for a buildout retail costs. We currently have a wait list of over

300,000 people. That is consistent, reliable traffic every hour for whatever block we call home. Our operating hours reflect our clients lives, not traditional medical schedules. We are open on weekends and into the evenings on weekdays because our weight list demands it. What makes NECO truly unique is that we do not just operate health screenings. We design and manufacture the technology behind them. So locations are constantly at the forefront of health prevention technology. Frankly, there is no better place to plant this flag than Palo Alto. The city has quietly been the epicenter of nearly every technology that has reshaped modern life. The people who live and work here understand better than anyone what it means to be early on something important. We are looking for a home that reflects our ambition for what preventive health can become. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Jim B. Jim, you may now speak. Hello. Am I coming through? Okay. Yes. Yes. All right. Hello. My name is Jim Bridger and uh I'm sure that a lot of y'all are aware uh that we have a constitution in the United States of America and free speech is protected. So, I wanted to tell y'all that uh the problem that we have with our government proposing to send $200 billion dollars more so that they can go and bomb Iran just like they did killing young children.

Mr. Bridger, this is not relevant to the item at hand. Well, I think it is very relevant because it's a public comment. All right. This is not We know that this has happened throughout history and these Jews have been expelled from every country they've ever been in. All right. Um, as you know, Miss Arbor, were you about to step in? I was going to just step in to provide clarification uh to the speaker that there will be an opportunity to speak on items that are not on the agenda. Um but please chair feel free to share additional thoughts.

Yes, Mr. Bridger, we do have a time reserved for items not on the agenda and tonight that is at the end of the deliberations for this item. So if you care to contact us again, then that would be the appropriate time. Mr. Divera, do we have any further comments? Uh there is one more request to speak. Uh if you would like to allow it, although normal policy is that we would um we would have concluded as of the first speaker. Yes, we'll stick to the normal policy tonight.

Okay. Thank you. Then that concludes public comment for this portion. Thank you, Mr. Tetra. Um, so uh, Mrs. Eisberg, would you like to follow up on, uh, any of the public comments before we begin discussion?

No. Unless there's anything specific you'd like me to address. No. and we'll have an opportunity during the uh clarifying questions around or during during the questions around I suppose. So, um let's begin with that then. I have Commissioner Peterson and Vice Chair Chang and then Vice Chair Chang. Thank you, Chair. So, a clarifying question I have is the um removal of the requirement for 50% of its uh receipts to be in food for uh an establishment that serves alcohol. Is that correct?

That's the distinction between a restaurant and a bar that if they are making more than 50% from the alcohol, then it would be moved into the category that would require a conditional use permit. So, um, do you have information on how many, uh, establishments on California Avenue don't meet the definition of a restaurant and they're defined as a bar? Well, we don't have the bar definition currently.

This is a definition that is new. Um, and so it would allow potential for more flexibility on the types of uses. um and to make sure that we've got categories to accommodate the different uses that the community is looking for. So that would mean that every establishment on California Avenue is currently a restaurant and that they're more than 50% of their revenue is based on the information we had when they came in to request uh that use in that location. They provided information uh to describe the business and it uh was evaluated to be conforming with that. So yes, that 50% is what's currently in the code. Okay. Thank you,

Vice Ch.

Hi. Uh, two areas of clarifying questions. The first is regarding our current conditional use permit process soon to just be renamed the um administrative use permit. assuming that we agree with that tonight, which I do. Um, uh, is it So, I was trying to do research on the process, and there's two ways that it could be elevated to, um, the planning commission and city council. Correct. The first way is that the director of planning could just choose to elevate it because uh, the director deems that this is going to be something that's a high-profile item of community interest. The second one is it correct that um there's notifications of everybody within 600 ft um of a conditional use permit that is going to be approved and then at that point somebody can anybody who received that notification could ask for a hearing.

Yes. Okay. Great. I just wanted to make sure I understood it. Um, and then the second question I had is whether um, Miss Eisberg has any concerns about the suggested language changes that were sent in by the public commenter. Uh, Mr. Jivanto,

I think, um, I read two two different suggestions. one uh right now the draft ordinance on Cal AB and University A um indicated that medical office would have to have a retail component to be permitted on university or Calav. Uh the addition I believe was to add personal service to that. So um that would just be a more expansive opportunity for medical office. The idea being there are um you know you're not maybe just walking in to make an appointment but there's something for sale or there's some kind of service that's not medical uh that doesn't fall under with fall under the medical office which requires some kind of licensing with the state of California. Um so it's just a more expansive more flexible type of medical office. The other suggestion was to expand um what constitutes a personal service there. I think again it's a way to expand what we is under the umbrella of personal service. Uh the only issue is that we would want to define what that language really is. Um we don't have a definition for you know preventative health or that level of specificity or definitions for wellness in the code. So, we're trying to reduce the amount of interpretation that needs to happen. Um, and for new uses that can be challenging.

Thank you. Following up on that question, um without the definition, is there uh a concern that it could be interpreted to um to mean a much broader variety of services than uh we currently have in mind?

Um well, for example, the now I'm looking at the letter, health diagnostic spas was the suggestion under personal service. um that is just not a common phrase um in my lexicon. So what does health diagnostic spas really mean? What does that constitute? Um we've talked about this particular provider as a new use and so okay I think I I understand the context a little better now. Thank you commissioner Hecman.

So more followup uh for Miss Eisberg. Is this I if we if we don't make any change to the code to address this public commenter is this an area where the director has discretion to determine that uh a proposed use is you know falls within the category even though it's not specifically named or is is this kind of use um from the description we've received pretty clearly not falling in um you know the the types of uses that we're envisioning for these locations.

From what I understand about this use, it does not require licensing from the state. When we look at the medical office definition, the bright line is that it requires licensing. And so it is a new use, but I think the interpretation could mean that this use is is not medical office. It's a personal service, more like the day-pa within that med p personal service definition. Um I would also defer to assistant director Armor who may have a different perspective or more to add here. Yes, thank you. Um, the bright line that we've used is a doctor or licensed professional, right? And so, um, I think it really does depend somewhat on, um, the description that we get of the use. If they're talking about licensed medical professionals, then that's the kind of thing that tips it over into a a medical office for staff. That's the threshold that we've been using and that's been uh strongly supported in the past. And so what we're looking at here is uh I mean I guess it's a bit of a question about what kinds of medical professionals they have involved in these uses because the ones that we had seen up until this point um did involve you know they talked about having a doctor or other licensed professional involved and on site um and so therefore it was not something that under the current regulations was being allowed. Oh okay. So if we keep our bright line that medical offices requires some presence of uh someone with medical licensing then when we look at this use the issue is does it fall into personal service or not. Right? And so that's the

the the second possibility of a change they've made is to add a specific reference to this thing health diagnostic spas which as Miss Eisenberg said is not currently um um part of our typical language lexicon but you know cat hotel wasn't until fairly recently either so it may be the coming wave but So, but my question is, is is our current definition of personal service limited to the four items that are listed in our in the code there? Beauty shop, nail salon, day spas, barber shops. Is that is that the extent or does the director have discretion to find something similar in nature to those? So the director does have some discretion here um where it's not something that's explicit. The list of uses are examples. It's not an exhaustive list because we know that new uses come up that don't quite fit into the category. Um and so yes, there is some flexibility. Okay.

Um and I think we just, you know, need to make sure that we've got clarity with each of these. I my concern is that there might be something very similar to this, but then does have a medical licensed professional and it might be the same character, the same activity level, the same appearance on the street. Um and then we wouldn't be able to allow it. Um, so making sure we've got clear indication in your recommendation tonight will be helpful. Okay. And so, uh, those are the questions. I'll maybe talk about my thoughts about it, uh, a little bit later. Commissioner G.

Yeah. I just want to bandwagon on this. So, I I just want a kind of a simple yes or no. So, in if we make no changes, would this use be or not be allowed? I got a little bit confused by Commissioner Hecman's comment about the director does have some leeway, but is this or is this not? So, I just want to know either from staff's perspective or maybe Mr. Yank and Opine on whether or not this use right now would be allowed with the version that we have drafted without any modifications. So I think I am going to defer to uh to our consultant um because I have not read the most recent description of this use and so I'm cautious um since the previous uh descriptions you know of of similar uses often had those medical professionals. My interpretation is that um because the draft ordinance says that a medical office with retail sales with retail services is permitted with a cup, this use would not be allowed. My understanding this use does not have retail sales. The change made by the um public commenter would make that change by adding and personal services to medical office that has retail sales or personal services with a cup would be allowed on university and if we interpreted this use which I think is possible as a personal service then that would uh be the change required to allow it.

Okay. Thank you on that. And then I have a question for Mr. Andrade uh you had provided some vacancy rates for Calivan University. I was also wondering if you happen to know the average rent per square foot because that's something that Miss Fenberg had brought to our attention last time where there there's a strong correlation between the vacancies and the rent and that the rent on university they they could potentially be charging a square footage rent that is similar to VC office which many of the ground floor retail really can't afford. So, I was wondering if you had any information on that.

Thank you, Commissioner. Uh, great question. And I'll say apologies. I thought I had my camera on when I was speaking earlier. U, at the moment, I don't have the cost per square foot. And of course, it it ranges. The particular space that we're talking about is is challenging in that it's two levels. It's around 7,000 square feet. So, if the property owner is seeking one tenant versus two tenants, then uh things get a little bit more difficult. But what I will do in just a little bit is I'll go off camera and I have documentation on I think what is square footage perhaps going to quarter 4 of 2025. So I'll raise my hand and when I find that information I'm happy to to share the cost per square foot on University Avenue if that's okay.

Thank you. Yeah, I wasn't talking about the specific property. I was hoping to get some averages across the the general areas for Calvin and University and also specifically if possible it'd be nice to slice between what is overall the average rent versus the properties that are vacant, right? So it's possible that the average is $50 per square foot, but the ones that are vacant are all $100 per square foot and that could be a reason why. So um that would be awesome data whenever you get a chance. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. And it would be uh not 451 University Avenue specific. It would be, you know, across kind of an average. And I believe that we in economic development have that information in our economic activity report. So I'll be back with you in just a bit.

Thank you. Thank you. And just to remind everyone, uh we have seen that data uh in the reports from Michael Baker International. So we actually have u pretty substantial uh vacancy and rent correlation data in detail not only for university and calav but for other areas in PaloAlto and Santa Monica and um a number of other areas. So um I probably have it on my laptop. I can send it to you if uh that's of interest. Any further clarifying questions?

Just because it really is a clarifying question. What? I I'm I didn't bring my computer and so I can't look up the definition of personal services. Since we were just talking about the subject, I think it'd be really helpful if somebody could help me find it. I I've got it. I'm looking at it right now. And it's very long. Oh. So otherwise, I'd read it, but it's very code section. Yeah. You're looking for the definition of personal service. We have it online. All right. Because it's a broad definition. Okay. Um, so we're on to comments, but if you don't mind just leaving this up for a second, I'd appreciate it.

Commissioner Peterson, followed by Vice Chair.

Thank you, Chair. So, one concern I have is we don't have any public comment, no letters, nothing from any of the institutions on uh establishments on California Avenue. Um those are the ones I'm most familiar with. So, that's where I'm going to limit my my comment. Um and the the establishments that are there now, all of them, as best I can tell, serve food and alcohol. So, I assume that's why they're all about 50/50 splits. And so if we change this definition, we're we're changing the mix of business on California Avenue where a bar could open up next door to a current establishment. Um, which I think is not necessarily fair to the current establishments that are already there. They're established. They can't necessarily change themselves overnight uh from a mixed food service to a pure bar. and unless that's what they are wanting to do. But I don't see any indication whatsoever that any of the businesses or establishments on California have have requested this and that they would possibly be blindsided because I would think they would have submitted some comment uh seeing this this coming coming at them. I think there's about six maybe seven on California that all fit this this classification. We have not received any comments from them.

Hold on. Vice Ch.

Um, but all these recommendations were done and just to piggyback on Commissioner Peterson's concern, these conversations were had with the Chamber of Commerce, correct? The most recent conversations were actually with the retail committee um the council members who are on that. We did have um participants in that meeting as well from the public who were coming and sharing their thoughts primarily on this question of the personal service medical spa um type use. Um I'm not sure I don't know that we've received outreach or had engagement with others. It does look like Mr. Andrade uh does have his hand up now. I don't know if it's up for this or the previous question.

Mr. Andre, thank you. Thank you. Yes, this is in regards to the cost per square foot question. If I may, I can give you uh some averages. Is that okay? Okay. Yes. Go ahead.

Thank you. So, I will start with the University Avenue business district. And so the average annual asking retail rent for vacant properties within the University Avenue business district is $83.52 per square foot as of quarter 4 of 2025. That would equal somewhere around $6.96 per month. And in regards to the Palav business district, the average annual asking retail rent for vacant properties within the California Avenue business district is $56.28 cents per square foot as of quarter 4, 2025. And that would be uh a little less than $4.70 per month.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. So I think it's back to me. So, I'm just going to start by I I have a long list of comments. Um, some of them quite detailed about the ordinance that I think are actually material. I have a draft email ready to to I'm getting ready to send to Miss Eisberg with some typos that I won't talk about. So, first off, I'd say that I am supportive of the bars because I because uh the conditional use or the I'm going to keep saying conditional use permit until we say that we're changing the name. That's why we left all references to that and just had a statement at the end.

So because of the cup process, everybody will be notified and then I think if there's a big problem in a particular location, then I think there's the opportunity to object to that. Um, I know that the having studied this the retail uh revitalization effort for gosh I don't know how long cuz I was on the ad hoc and then it came to the PTC maybe six times. We know that there's a the the reason why we want to consider this is twofold. One, there's a desire to increase the vibrancy and to make things less sleepy. two, um, anything that we can do to, uh, decrease vacancies, um, while kind of keeping the vibrancy is is something that we should consider. So, I think that we've seen in other cities like Mountain View has a bar on Castro um, that this can work and historically the reason why Palo Alto hasn't done it is because we're worried about disruption. So, uh, on the topic of bars though, I think that staff made the right decision. It's in a packet. It's a packet question, um, about should bars be allowed in Charleston and, uh, Midtown. And I think no, because of the character of those areas is different. And uh so I I think they're just this the neighborhood commercial and downtown areas are defined differently in in our comp plan and sort of the the the the uses are a little bit different. Um and since we're on the topic of bars going deep into the code now, I had a question because I think it's un unintentional. I think it's unintentional in the code. It's on pack of page 198. uh on the preceding page, you know,

talks about the findings that must be made in order for a bar to be allowed and it says at least one of the following and one of the So C says the applicant has operated a license establishment that has not been the subject of violations. I think what we're trying to say I think is that we don't want any bar to be permitted if the app if the applicant has had violations and that should be the case for all bars I believe um with the caveat in C that says that the decision-m body may consider the number and frequency. In other words, if you've had a recent problem, you shouldn't be permitted, you you know, the finding cannot be made, but if it's a long time ago, then we'll we'll let this this uh then we we'll consider that application. So my I think the intent is that we want to flip the language around to say that the applicant um has not operated a licensed establishment that has been the subject of violations and one of A or B. So I think I just want to give that comment to staff and to let you take a look at it because to me as written my understanding would be that um you could meet the you could meet the requirement for A or B and then have had a lot of recent violations and you would still be allowed to to to exist. And that's not I'm pretty sure that's not the intent. So, um I don't know if we're trying to like rotate, but I have so many more. I can let somebody else speak and then we can

Well, it's counting up. It's counting up now. Yeah. So, I think somebody else can go. I have many other things to talk about. All right. Well, just as a matter of u etiquette, then we'll uh rotate around. Commissioner Hecman, you're next.

All right. Um, so let's see. A couple preliminary thoughts. Um, I guess I'm I'm not ent I get what we're doing adding the definition of bars, but on Calav I mean the the nutouse I cannot imagine that they ever made. I mean, the peanuts were free and I I can't even remember food there. I I'm pretty sure there was, but they had to make more than half the revenue. So whether we were calling them a bar back then or not, under this new definition, they would now be a bar. And and I think currently on Calab, we got a couple of things that we refer to as wine bars where again, I'm positive that they make more than 50% of their revenue. So um from from alcohol sales. So, I I I think this um I I don't think we're necessarily going to get a change of ch a mix change on Calav. Um I I just think we're going to be cate be calling things some different things than historically, right? Those wine bars are not going to be food and beverage service places anymore. They're going to be bars maybe. Um so I don't really have an issue with that. Um, and then on this preventative healthc care screening that that we've heard tonight, you know, I I read through uh the ordinance language and and if you want to pull it back up, I first of all, it's I I think it's pretty clear that that use does not fall within any of the subcategories that give descriptions. Um um and so and then that sort of takes me to the the first. So this is uh I think it's 180430

subp part 114. That's where we want to go rather than packet page 198 where we are. Can you pull back the ordinance? Can Can you repeat the uh that number again? The um 18.04.030.

Uh it's not in the packet. It's you have to go to the municipal code which is you had it up here before. Um I I'll share it. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, that was on one of the slides that we've got so Miss Ein can share. Um, yeah. So, so you know, I've read through A through I and it doesn't really fit. And so then I look at, you know, just the the general, right? Those are all examples C kind of categories, but the general definition is a use providing services of a personal convenience nature, cleaning and repair sales incidental, there too, including these. So I I don't really feel I I I think if they walked this issue into the director and said we we think we're a personal service, I I think the director would not likely agree. And so I think the question we have tonight is do we do we think it's appropriate for retail storefrontage? Um because if we do then I think well I think all we really need to do in that situation is tell staff and they will figure out the right language to add whether it's an add-on to A through L or it's a new or A through I or it's a new J whatever. So um um so so I'm teeing that up even though I don't I need to now that I've sort of worked that part through. I got to think about whether I think it should be somehow included on this list. So, um I've got a bunch of specific comments on the ordinance. Um but I'm going to end this round here and come back to those. I also have a bunch of specific comments, but I think I will postpone mine as well. So, Commissioner Peterson.

So, um, am I starting off the next round then? Yes. You, then Vice Chair Chang, then Commissioner G.

So, just to make sure that none of the businesses that are on California Avenue are at some kind of a a disadvantage. I would certainly want to see this include that the the current establishments that are restaurants, full service restaurants would be allowed to automatically convert to a bar if that's what they want to do. I'll jump in and say that they already received a conditional use permit for their use if they serve alcohol because all alcohol service including restaurants currently requires a conditional use permit. So this would not increase um what they are required to do. Um they they are a permitted use and would be allowed to continue. Is there uh what would they have to do? Like let's say I won't name any of the the bars on the street that if they're a restaurant right now and their revenue from uh food sales is low, you know, like the uh the wine bar. I don't know what they're probably a retail outlet and it's they're giving samples um and they want to convert to being a bar. What's the process for that? And they would they're just going to stop serving food. So, they'd stop using the commercial kitchen that they currently have.

Yeah. They just shut down the kitchen and just become a bar because I'm sure at least two of them will. I guess it could be a modification to the existing conditional use permit. We do have a reduced fee for modification to existing conditional use permits, I believe. Would we be able to add a motion that just, you know, a one-time conversion that there's no fee? they can just come in and convert. So that way they're not at a disadvantage to another institution coming in next door. It would be a a lesser fee than those other uses are required for a new conditional use permit at this point. What's a fee? How much is I don't even know. I do not know the numbers off the top of my head. No, I'm guessing it's not $20.

No, it's it's usually uh several thousand, right? And that's what I'm thinking. That's pretty substantial for some of the businesses there on the street. Is that it for uh the moment? Yes. All right, Vice Chair Ch.

Um I wanted to jump in here because I wanted to give my thoughts about the medical off the the business that we're considering and where I struggle with it. Um, I'm trying because I I don't think that the definitions suggested by the public commenter are what we would want. Assuming that we allow that, assuming that we think that this business is something that we want, I'm not sure that that's the right way to add the flexibility because I think it would have some consequences and we would be allowing some things that we maybe don't want. But I'm not again I don't know what we want and what we don't want. But you know the the speaker emphasized that it was diagnostic spa health diagnostic spa which again is not a term that we know um and that there's no treatment there. But how does that then differ from anything like lab core or quest labs where everything is diagnostic? Nothing is treated like you do a blood draw it's diagnostic. there is licensed professionals at Quest Labs. Um, and I think like if you're getting an ultrasound, you need a licensed ultrasound tech. So, that is a distinguishing factor. Would we be okay hypothetically with having Quest Labs right on the university? It would have a lot of foot traffic potentially and if we have the um window there, right? I don't know. You have a waiting room with a lot of people behind it. not not unlike a optometrist for example there just wouldn't be glasses there there's a lot of foot traffic from blood draws from lab services I mean th those so that's a question to the commission but what but with the language that's suggested I mean what's a personal service is a blood draw a personal service is um and

then you kind of go into um you know if I go into the dermatologist and he like removes lose a skin tag, is that a personal service? If is the difference because insurance is covering it versus it's out of pocket because all the cosmetic stuff is um not covered by insurance. So, this goes down a whole bunch of stuff that I'm just not sure I understand. I'm not sure I can make that decision tonight unless somebody can come up with um you know unless we're unless on the one hand we're comfortable with just saying well medical office is fine as long as there's this window there um or somebody can come up with a more um uh restrictive definition in general with respect to medical office I worry a lot because the economics of medical office are dramatically different and we want we want the shopping street. I believe that is we want the shopping and then the restaurant and you know that type of street. Um if we allowed medical office the economics are such that I worry that we would have a medical office street and I don't think that's what we want. So we just need to be careful about what we're doing here. I'm not saying one way or another whether this particular service is right or wrong. Um, but I don't think that the suggested definitions would work and and I gave you a whole bunch of examples as to why they may not. So, that's just my thought on that one.

Commissioner G,

thank you. Do you mind pulling up the personal service definition again, Miss Iceberg? It's I feel like we might be referencing it a couple more times. So when I look at this definition, something I think about is can I just wander along the street or along this commercial area? Can I just walk into one of these things and do one of these activities? So, when I think about what I like to do on University of Calav, it's, "Oh, this shop is open. Let me wander in. Let me walk. Let me kind of browse at some of the items. This is a food establishment. Let me walk in. Let me grab some food. This is a fitness class that maybe I can just walk into. This is a dry cleaner that I can drop off some clothes at." And part of me thinks that potentially some of the uses that we are looking at tonight may or may not be supportive of that. And for me, I want a vibrant street such that each of the places I go to can be somewhere that I can partake in and it feels very alive and there's kind of significant movement. To contrast this, I have been pretty a couple times to a Stamford lab area that's right off of Kalav. Um, not on the Cambridge side, on the other side where it's a building that mostly does some kind of scanning like CT scan or ultrasound. And that's a little bit different because it's not in a P designated overlay. So, it's mostly just brick and you walk in the door and you walk into a lobby. With the P overlay that we have in some of the areas that we're looking

at tonight, you would probably be forced, as Vice Chang mentioned, to have some kind of big window and you would look into a room of people probably sitting there waiting for their appointment if we decide to go this route. So, those are some of the things that are kind of top of mind. I again also am trying to figure out how some of the newer services fit into this. As Commissioner Hecman mentioned, I not thought anything at all about the definition of a cat cafe until we were forced to. And thus, you will see later in our packet that we do have a section on animal management, which I think commissioners may have a comment on separately. But I think that some of these new uses we do want to get ahead of and we don't want to be followers. We want to help provide and be ahead of the trends so that we don't get caught off guard with this. But I'm trying to think through some of the different options there. Um in addition, I want to jump into the bar discussion. So it seems so since we are still talking about that. Um I I did have a question. So the city is not doing any kind of maintenance for this 50% threshold, right? It's an arbitrary threshold that we just hope that people are meeting. Miss Armor,

sorry, can you state the question again? Okay, so at what point Okay, so the city does not go and audit the 50% revenue, right? We we're doing none of that unless we had a complaint. Unless we had a complaint. Yes. So I just want to understand here clearly that uh if a an existing use wants to convert to a bar they would go through this this somewhat fasttracked somewhat cheaper process. Correct. And that is

um that is the main way to do this and as uh vice chair had mentioned it's the the business would be notified appropriately. I just want to make sure that is clear. Okay that's my comment there. I'm supportive of the bar language as is then um and I will move on to the next round. And if I may jump in through um the chair just for some language that might assist with what Commissioner G was just speaking about the difference between drop-in service versus appointment only maybe a distinction that's helpful language. Is there a code pointer for this? No, but if we were trying to define, you were describing a characteristic of something that you could drop in on

and that that felt different from something where people were just waiting for their appointments. That's pretty interesting as a commentary. Would love to hear commissioner's thoughts on that as well as a potential definition.

Could you repeat it? the difference um characterizing something as appointment only versus um drop in available maybe um a way of describing the difference that Commissioner G was getting at with a a business that he could just kind of pop in and and do something rather than a medical office where you're coming in for appointment only. Um, I also did get um some additional information from um our economic u manager about the a reminder that the character of the med spa that was described. It isn't just normal business hours um but it actually is 7 days a week and it is um you know until 8:00 p.m. is is kind of their model. So it's um a little more active than um some you know medical offices might be where you then have it closed in the evenings and weekends

I'll just play devil's advocate really quickly regarding the medical issue and trying to solve that with um Again, I don't know what the right answer is, but trying to solve that with operating hours because I was able to go get um an MRI at pimp at 8:30 p.m. So, you know, they because again, the economics for these types of scanning things, the they're trying to advertise the cost of that really expensive piece of equipment. So, oftentimes you can go in from 6:00 a.m. all the way. And so, you know, I think that they if we wanted to specify operating hours, it could work. Now, the question is, is this what we want there? And so, that's that's the bigger question.

Yes, I think that is the essential question and I don't understand how to come to grips with it yet. So, we'll see if someone uh comes up with an idea. Um, I have a half dozen things. I think I'll just touch on the bar related um, questions on this round and then perhaps switch to Commissioner Hecman and we can begin covering other issues. Um, regarding the uh, definition of bars that's on packet page 174. Uh, since we'll soon have open container sales on Calav, do we need to generalize this by eliminating the restriction to on-site consumption? And I suggest just eliminating that uh phrase. Um, and u, regarding bars and CN, my inclination is uh largely the same as the vice chairs. Um, by analogy, uh, liquor stores require a cup in CN, but not in CC and CS. So, there clearly is a distinction being drawn about, uh, liquor availability in CN. So, I would be inclined to um, uh, disallow bars in CN for that reason. All right, that's enough uh, for me. I will switch over to Commissioner Hegman now.

Thank you. and can staff pull up packet page 176. So, I'm going to start with this um preventative screening, not treatment issue, and then move into some changes. But on 176, we have a definition of retail like and maybe you can expand it. So, we're just looking at that part in the middle, the 125.1, if you can do that, just so it's more easily legible. Um, so, so again, I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out, do we, if we want it in, do we, do we have to find language for it or not? And, and actually, when I read this, um, once we can see all of it, I I think that this falls within the director's discretion. Um, and he might well find that this particular use fits because it doesn't. Sorry, we're

Yeah. Uh, apologies for that. Um, it won't let me.

Okay, just go to normal size 176 then. Just scroll down two pages. Okay. So, so retail like use, right? Um, open to the public during typical business hours. We heard that this kind of use is um engaged in providing services related to but distinct from um retail services which this isn't right. What they want to do isn't doesn't fall within retail. And then here's a list of examples, right? One of those is personal service. Well, I don't think this fits into personal service for the reasons I previously explained, but it doesn't have to because and I don't think it fits within any of A through J either. But then we get to K. And K is this kind of threat to the director, but there's guidance there. All right. Um accessible to the general public. My understanding is this is walk um generate walk-in pedestrian clientele. Now, it sounds like you could do that. Um, they have a wait list, right? So, I know they work by appointment, but I actually haven't heard from them if I mean, you know, um, place I get my haircut works by appointment, too. But sometimes you can walk in and you might have an opening. You might have to wait for an opening. You could do it. So, I don't know that that's an excludder. um generate walk uh let's see contribute substantially to a high level of pedestrian activity from what we hear from the the speakers this generates more street traffic and I can imagine that for the reasons that the vice chair said about other you know like the blood draws right and so what I'm and then oh and then it has to meet the intent of the pedestrian shopping design standards that's more of an

architectural issue that can't be worked out at the staff level. And so I guess in on balance I don't have an objection to the issues, but I don't think we need to carve out something special for them here. And I'm hesitant to do that because there are 25 other similar situations that I'm not thinking of like cat hotel that that I'm not sure that it fits into one of these A through J and and so maybe that's a director call on K. And so um but you know my impression is I think it fits in K. I think the d the director would be within his discretion to find that it's retail like um so I I guess where I fall fall on this now is is I don't think we need to make a change. I'm comfortable with the director um applying the code um as we're considering revising it which now includes these design standards um for the uh pedestrian shopping. Now I do have a question in this last sentence. Not all retail like uses permitted in zoning districts um are permitted in zoning districts that allow them. So I guess the question is on that sentence is university a place that does not allow retail like

and that thank you for that question. And that is why I was going to um step in. This definition is not something that's used in our use tables. Retail like um we have specific uses listed in the use tables. Retail like um is a term that has is used in some areas of the code but it's in um retail um you know retaining the retail ordinance and other sections. Um, Miss Iceberg may be able to speak more specifically to what areas it is, but it is not something that is, you know, there's concern that some of these uses might not be appropriate, for example, on University Avenue. And so, um, part of the modifications we were doing was taking some of these uses and adding them to those use tables because retail like was never added as a listed allowed use in those tables. Okay.

So, it's not quite the solution I think you were okay hoping for. Check. All that said, even if it were included in the use tables, I'm not sure. Again, I don't know what we want. I want flexibility though. But if without so if we here's what the the letter said that the bright line is whether there's a technically licensed professional by the state right but I think that can you please confirm

that the the line that we've been using is a a statelicicensed medical professional. So with that line, I think it makes me feel more comfortable because there's something else kind of so because if I look at Quest Diagnostics again and maybe we want Quest Diagnostics in which case it's fine but Quest Diagnostics you can walk in there are appointments there are not appointments you can walk in you can just decide that day and pay out of pocket on your own for a cholesterol test or many other tests and you can just say I want one as long as state law doesn't say you need a physician's prescription in order to get this. Um, you don't need an appointment necessarily and it generates a lot of traffic like a lot more than 100 people which is what the letter is that we got. So it would fit all a lot of this but again I'm still not sure that we want it because of we don't definitely don't want university to be filled with Quest Diagnostics kind of the way that little neighborhood by El Camino Hospital is whereas just like X-ray place after C MRI place after lab after that's not what we want. So um so that's that's on that. I have a whole bunch of different areas and I'll just kind of highlight them. I'm not sure that we want to address them tonight, but I think that they are kind of pretty large concerns. For example, like you know, I had that bar issue where I said, I'm not sure this is exactly what we wanted to say in the code. Um, so I'm just going to list them and I won't discuss them in detail. So, we talk about giving um director flexibility to change uses in commercial PCs. are commercial PCs defined in our code and what does that mean? Um my concern is around um what happens for example if there's a grocery store and the

community benefit for the PC was this grocery store based on the way the code is written we didn't say that it still needs that the the substantially similar use needs to meet the community benefit. Um, so and another example is we have a movie theater. Presumably the movie theater is um a entertainment benefit. I could see that like putting in like a laser like let's say like in the future like interactive gaming becomes this thing that's kind of like going to the movies and that's what it is but it still meets that entertainment function. So, but as our code is written, um you could also just substitute something that has the same uh traffic noise and employee hours. And so, it's not quite right necessarily. So, I have a concern there. I I support the idea in theory. I just think that the ordinance isn't doing the right thing necessarily. Maybe I'm not understanding the ordinance correctly. Um I'm I think that retail should um in the Rome RP and GM zones should probably be bundled with the San Antonio plan. Um I am concerned broadly about the way that we've collapsed under per collapsed parking on page 2011. Um I'm not going to go into it more in more depth. Uh, I think that there's some language that's not as clear as it should be regarding residential use in Charleston Center in Midtown. And on the tables on page 178 where we tried to collapse Charleston and Midtown, Charleston Center and Midtown into a larger table. I am

concerned that we haven't used the footnotes everywhere as we should. So, for example, we've added the new use of onmobile showroom. And then if you look at footnote number eight where it says in Midtown Shopping District and Charleston Shopping Center, a conditional use permit is required for retail uses above 20,000 square ft. Um if a conditional use permit is allowed is required for retail like you know retail retail not just automobile showroom above 20,000 square feet wouldn't it also then be necessary for an automobile showroom. So I think that in the effort like the admirable effort that staff made to collapse all of this, I think there are some a number of things that I caught where I said, "Hm, is this really what we meant?" Um, again, I support the intent for all of it, but I think the execution of it may need some work and I was not able to spend the time with the ordinance to know if I caught it all. So that's that's where I'll end for now. Thank you, Commissioner G. So, I will jump on what Vice Chair Chang has mentioned on packet page 196. Many of you know that I spent a lot of time with the PC code. Um, and so I also am curious about this. Actually, uh, Vice Chang had a specific question here that in the staff report, it lists that commercial PCs should have this indication, but based on what I'm reading on section 1838030, I don't see anything that's spec special about these that are commercial PCs. Is that a technical definition? I think the indication was or the intent was that if it was residential only then there

wouldn't be um any purpose for this because it's all going to stay residential that there wouldn't be any substitution and the goal here is about commercial uses also to address uh one of the comments brought up by Vice Chair Chang um the concern about something that's specifically the public benefit of the PC that that's something that clearly we wouldn't be changing if that's specifically named. I know we have one of the commercial PCs that has that specifically part of it. So one of my concerns here is that the Palto Commons for example is considered would that be considered a commercial PC?

Yes. Right. That is a good question. Yes.

So it would be yes. and their listed public benefit in the last version of the ordinance that was passed was I believe some compost bins and some bike parking of which I don't presume this would impact but looking at subsection one the neighborhood generates traffic deliveries noise and lighting uses right you could see a pretty significant usage change from the assisted living home that requires the same amount of traffic generation yeah you could convert this to an office potentially there. I think that the the number of uses that is sub like potentially allowed given the requirements that are here I feel like is a little bit too loose for my preference. Miss Armor, I feel like you were going to step in there.

No. No. I I just wouldn't characterize office as a similar use to uh assisted living. There's no requirement that it is a similar use, right? Where am I looking? Oh,

at the beginning, determine an unlisted use is mater materially similar to the listed use and then it gives some specifics about the characteristics. But that first phrase um would be uh critical in terms of the initial determination that we'd be looking for a use not just the characteristics of it but the use itself that is materially sim similar to an allowed use.

Yeah. Um just for my personal preference I think that language is a little bit vague and I and I am uncertain about that. Um I also want to echo that for the purposes of office manufacturing zones ROM, RRP, GM, etc. I would defer I would prefer deference to this the San Antonio road area plan because we are spending a lot of time going through that and I think that having a general zoning there would be more helpful. I had a question for staff on packet page 198 section H subsection B. What does it mean sight lines to public areas near estab near near the establishment? Like can Ms. Iceberg or can you comment on what the what the reference here is?

Yes. So this is about operational conditions for um alcohol service. So the idea is sight lines. So, places you can see from the establishment, making sure they're free of trash. Um, they are well lit. Uh, just trying to avoid potential impacts due to noise, refues, um, particularly after hours. So, just to clarify, it's things that you can see from a public area you want to maintain. Is that the purpose of what you're saying here?

Yes. Because it's typically on the sidewalk, in front of a business, in front of a right of way. Okay, that's helpful. And I'm I'm about over time, so I'll pass it on to the next commissioner.

I don't know that we're observing the time limit so closely this time around. Um I'll jump in here with uh my relatively minor comments and then try to u make a more general observation. Um I also am inclined to um leave RPO in Rome alone and defer to the San Antonio road area plan. So let's let's go that way. Um I mentioned this in premeating but I'll bring it up uh again just for the public record. uh regarding exempting small retail additions from TDMs and uh TDM plans and transportation fees. Uh I support the intent here, but I'm a little worried about the loophole that you could add 1500 square ft multiple times year after year after year. Um, so I would suggest that maybe it's worthwhile to specify an effective date uh in the ordinance and base the exemptions on the total additions after that date um for uh parking requirements. This is on packet page 201. Um, so I appreciate the uh the goal here as well, although I found it a little odd that we're relaxing parking requirements in places where it's not obvious that we have the need and perhaps have relaxed parking requirements in places where we have quite a lot of space. Uh, for example, RP. So, um, and since the ROLM requirements will almost certainly change as part of the San Antonio plan, I'm not sure it

makes sense to try and regularize those two. So, my inclination would be to leave the existing standard of one space per 250 ft unchanged everywhere else as it is now and apply that to RP as well. if you want to maximize consistency across districts and ROM will be taken care of by the San Antonio road area plan. So we can still achieve the goal of consistency without making a change that may be u detrimental in a wide range of areas throughout the city. Um those are the the last of my specifics. Um tried to figure out generally what are we going to do with this tonight? Um it's clear to me that we are going to make improvements of this kind in the future. So it's not as if we have to solve all of the problems tonight. Uh we do have to get far enough to uh achieve a recommendation one way or another. Um I do think what we have here is a major improvement uh not only in relaxing constraints but also making all the remaining ones a lot more intelligible. U so that has value and I'd like to make sure we don't lose that value. On the other hand, I've heard a lot of specifics brought up tonight that I think um create questions about whether we're ready to go. And at the very least, we are still struggling with the u the new medical um and medical medical like we

the new medical like uses. Um, and I have I have no confidence that we could solve that tonight. And I'm not sure we should try because as Commissioner Hecman has mentioned um the potential variations are uh beyond our ability to analyze tonight. So, I see Commissioner Hecman has a comment and then I think we need to try and think about what kind of message we can pass along uh either to uh staff or to council. Commissioner Hegman. All right. Thank you. So, so here's where I end up on preventive healthc care screenings. Um I I don't think that the proposed change to medical office to kind of expand that. Uh I think there are uh potential for all kinds of unintended consequences with that. So I don't like that. Um I don't think whether you call it health diagnostic spa or even just preventative healthcare screening with no treatment, I don't really think that fits in personal service. It's a different concept. Um and I I I don't much earlier I mean we have talked about retail for years and you know we wrestled with bigger picture do we want to keep the RPO in place and the the council has made clear they do and they want to iterate and here it and so they they want to protect retail on university and to me this use isn't classic retail And so while I might while it might be a good idea, it it doesn't fit right now the parameters of what council has told us. So my idea is to kick it to council that that that

I'm not I'm not wanting to recommend that they allow it. Um but I would like them to consider it and decide if they want to fold it in. If they do, staff will. All right. So that's that's that issue. Now I would just like to go through some some language issues in the draft ordinance to again bring some clarity to a few things. Um and so I'm and I'll just take you to the specific pages. So the first one is on packet page 174. um bottom half of the page in the existing definition of eating and drinking service which we're now making the full service definition. Uh fifth line down I think you can get rid of from an eating and drinking service because you're operating inside of the definition of the thing. So so that is what you're talking about. You don't have to say this is what we're talking about. um in new uh uh part B. Uh so this is the new definition of limited service. Um and you know this kind of raises a uh something scholars have debated for centuries and that is how long does it take to make a pizza? Um and I think the the the weight of authority is that it takes more than 10 minutes. And so, like, if you hadn't listed pizza shops here, I would have thought they weren't included because it's a little too soon. So, I would just suggest make this uh 10 to 15 minutes. I mean, that's, you know, like like even a burrito burrito place I go to, if they're busy, they tell me come in 15 minutes when I when I call it in. And so, I think 10 to 15 minutes will be closer to what we mean. uh down in part C same page second line consumption and which uh just take a look at that I think you mean either at which or where

the sentence doesn't flow and then the last sentence this definition of bars such establishment is also licensed by ABC well I I isn't it true for the other two um if they serve alcoholic beverages don't they need at least a beer and wine license. And so I don't know that that adds anything to bars, but it makes it seem like you don't need it for, uh, eating and drinking establishions, even if they, uh, serve alcohol. So, uh, take a look at that. Uh, going to, uh, page 177, this is the first place where CUP is mentioned. And so, I'm going to take it on faith that this will, this entire ordinance, because there are about a hundred places more. That's an underestimate. Um I take it on faith that you'll cleanse that. Um next is 179. Um uh bottom half of the page under the table you've added a sentence. Um but the uh we're talking about uh residential uses may be located fronting, rear, and interior side yards on the ground floor or on upper upper levels. So what that means to me is you can't have retail on the street on the second floor. But I'm not I don't think that's what you meant. So I think you have to look at turning that around. It's I think you mean you can have it retail on the upper floor. That's like Santana Row, right? You got your retail above the the residential above the retail looking at the street. Um or first floor behind the the retail use. Um so take a look at that. Uh let's see that's uh next is 183. Um top half of the page the new definition

in A3. Um we have a standard here not well suited to other uses. Um there's you know in the staff report we talk about uh we're trying to get rid of the subjective stuff. A lot of these changes are to make things more objective. That one is pretty subjective, I think. And so, um, I just encourage staff to look at that and see if there's a way to, you know, how will staff decide if it's not well suited. Um, so they may need some guidance on that. Uh, let's see, page 190 is next. Uh the definition of specific purposes toward the bottom of the page. Um uh second line where applied in combination with such district to allow only retail, eating and serviceoriented blah blah blah. When we say eating here but not drinking because we have this other eating and drinking definition, does that mean bars are excluded? Um so u you know you you may have to be that 80. You might have to look at that. Uh let's see that is 190. Next is 192. Um middle of the page subp part B2. Um the retail use has to occupy 30ft depth of the ground floor as measured from the street frontage. So is that the curb? Because like if the sidewalk is 15 feet, then you only have 15 feet inside the building. Um or does it mean the ground floor building frontage?

Yes, I think the addition of the word building frontage.

Okay. All right. So, um All right. And I And that does appear a couple other places. I think uh 195 actually um kind of the middle of the uh page as well. street frontage maybe should be building frontage. And then on 195 at the top uh in the at the end of the table, all other uses permitted in the underlying commercial district provided they are not located on a ground floor. And so does this prohibit behind retail on a ground floor? Um that's something for staff to look at. Uh let's see that's 195. Then on um 196 alcoholic beverages um there's a first of a number of term times where we talk about alcoholic beverage sales or service. So So what's the difference? I mean alcoholic beverage service I think is that that's when you serve me a drink like a bar. But is is sale like package? Is that like is that going to a liquor store? Um because I'm trying to understand is that what this whole section is about is liquor stores and bars or or actually liquor stores would be the sales. Bars and eating drinking establishment would be the service. Is is that the difference? Um, so and again that appears once on 196 and uh twice on 197. So that might need to be something that's clarified on page 198 as the vice chair brought up. Um, top of the page subp part C. Actually, the way I read it is

you couldn't have a bar unless you already had a bar, right? the applicant has operated a license establishment and so you not you had to be experienced, right? No first timers and and but it doesn't sound like maybe that was staff's intent and so I I think you have to look at this um and I just think it needs some refining because the other way it's written is it seems like it's one strike and you're out forever. But but that's inconsistent with the second sentence that that you can determine how long it's been and whatnot. So anyway, I think that just uh needs some more work. And then finally on 200 in the uh table uh vehicle parking requirements. Um here we have three places where we refer to 150 or 250 gross floor area. But I think you need like the rest of the table square feet of. All right, that's it. Thanks. Now, that was worth waiting for. Definitely necessary. All right. So, the my intuition about this is that we have too many loose ends here to make a recommendation tonight. So, we may have to continue this item. Um, so commissioners, what's your reaction to that idea if we did that continued it? I think we need to find out if staff feels they have like clear clear direction on what we need to see whenever it comes back so that we can make a recommendation. So, I'd want to know from staff if they have

that now or not. I'll invite Miss Eisberg to share her thoughts. I think where we're missing clarity is on this medical office issue. As several of the commissioners said, um it's really about what do you want? And I don't have a good sense of which types of medical offices or health and wellness personal services are desirable and which are not and then we can devise uh definitions or use classifications appropriately.

Well, I I think what I heard from Commissioner Hecman is that this is a case where the appropriate answer is guidance from council. So, I'm not sure we would try to resolve that as part of this process, right? That's not something that we would need staff to come back to us on.

Okay, great. So, we're back to the back to the question of do you have sufficient guidance um that we could make a recommendation or do we need to continue in order to make sure all the other issues that have been raised have been resolved and I believe Vice Chair Chang has a few more to add. Oh,

I mean I think there's some where we've heard say uh commissioner or vice chair Aken say for example about parking on page 2011 like I concur with his but I don't his idea but I don't know if the rest of the commission agrees on that and there's a number there that might maybe the rest of the commission says sure that's good then we're all done and you go we could even forward that portion on to council. But I think there's some other things where as I started to go down the path on packet page 178, we're talking about, you know, it's actually packet pages 177 through 170 through 180 where we've removed the overlay, the ground floor overlay, but I don't and I think we were trying to do it in a way that would maintain it would be equivalent that would keep um Charleston Center and Midtown the same, right? That essentially nothing's changing um there. And yet, like suddenly um small adult daycare homes are permitted in CN. So then they would be permitted I believe in Charleston Center. And I'm looking at the page top of page 179. And I think it's like the all these large family daycare homes, small adult daycare homes, large adult daycare homes, those would all well, sorry, one as a thumb is a conditional use permit. But if you go back to page 178, small family daycare homes would be allowed at Charleston Center and in Midtown. That feels strange to me. And I don't and when I looked at the original uh ordinance that was crossed out, I think daycare services were allowed, which I actually question. Is that

right? Also, while we're while we're trying to clean this all up. Um so, I'm having a hard time envisioning a daycare center at Charleston, but maybe it's okay. Um, so I think that some of this could be potentially corrected with footnotes. Um, but like there's several lines where like home occupations in the middle of page 178. I'm not even sure I know what that is, but that would be allowed in Midtown and Charleston. Maybe it's okay.

Yeah. A home occupation is when you, for example, have a an office in your house and you have your nonprofit organization or whatever business and that's your mailing address for that business um that you don't have. Okay, I suppose that one's okay because if you have residential,

if you have residential, we can allow it. That makes sense. But then residential care homes, um maybe I don't know. But these are not things that were allowed before necessarily. And is it at ground floor or not? Um, so I think that this whole section kind of needs to I only got through comparing it partially. Um, but it's hard to smash together our our messy code. Um, so that's one area. I had another question about the 30 feet of depth of retail on California versus University. And I understand that that's probably driven by lot size, but if I think about what we're trying to do in terms of keeping retail vacancies to a minimum, are we thinking that there's going to be different types of retail at University versus California Avenue and that 30 ft is better for one place versus the other and it will be fine? like what is that? I understand that we're basing it based on lot size, but what about the goal of making sure that we're not um that we're trying to minimize retail vacancies and is that space of 30 ft deep good for retail on Cal a cuz we're trying to optimize for the retail, not necessarily optimize for the office behind it. So, um, and I probably have a few more. I think Commissioner Hecman caught a bunch of them. Uh, I definitely still have some concerns about just tightening up the language on the PC, uh, the the PC piece.

Can I make a couple clarifications? Um on the Charleston and Midtown shopping centers, our intention was not to keep them the same as they are today in the code. The intention was to expand uses as we did in each of the districts. So it's not necessarily a onetoone. If there are places where we want to have footnotes, we can do that. Um, but things like residential care facilities, any residential uses of the proposals that they're only allowed above the ground floor or in the rear, for example,

that helps. Um, but then there's also stuff like the automobile, like should the automobile showroom have the same square foot limitation as other retail? Um, so yeah. Some um and then are what about daycare centers? Should they have a limitation um for the daycare? I guess the daycare homes would only be on um in the residential which would not be on the front. It's a street ground floor street frontage. Is that the intent?

Um I'm not sure that daycare centers I mean I guess it depends. If it's a homebased daycare, then it would not be No, it would not be on the retail frontage. If it's a commercial type of daycare, then it could be it could be on the frontage, but that's consistent with how um yeah, the code did. Yeah, daycarees are currently allowed. And then for the family daycare homes, because that's in a home, it would either be on upper floor or in the back. Is that correct? I believe so. Yes.

But again, currently residential uses are not permitted in Charleston and Midtown. So, no, I understood that. But I I imagine that, you know, if we added a retail like use that we would want the same restrictions on that retail like use as we already have on our existing retail retail uses, that kind of a thing. Um, so I now I have a little bit more clarity on understanding like, oh, that's why you're allowing the homes. So maybe it's okay. Um, if you think staff, if staff thinks you have direction, then we could maybe forward it on to council. But I'm not sure where the rest of the commission stands on this. Comments from Commissioner G.

I'm going to channel my inner commissioner Hecman and go through a bunch of wording and other miscellaneous comments. So on packet page 176 in section 121.1, I noticed that in subsection I you added the word and and that the word and is also in subsection H, but it's not in all of them. So does that have any implication?

No, I think it probably should be deleted from both of those places and be added after subsection J.

Okay. Just wanted to clarify that I'm not missing anything there. Um, and then next I wanted to ask about um I'm not as organized as Commissioner Hecman, so bear with me while I flip through. Um, on packet page 183, Commissioner Hecman had mentioned at the top here about quote not well suited to other uses. I was actually more curious about the first part of the section where it says in Midtown Shopping District for properties ABC whatever. Do we know what what is special about these properties? Because if we're thinking about cleaning up the code, I feel like citing four specific parcels may not be of interest. So I was wondering if Miss Eisberg, you had any commentary about this.

Sure. This is verbatim from the page before and it struck out in a different section. So this is really a reorganization and basically those buildings are located within the shopping center, the Midtown Shopping Center, but they're clearly office uses. They look like office uses. There's currently, I think, an architecture office and a couple other office uses. So, my my thinking is that they were carved out uh previously and we basically kept that carve out. I understand that the language is a little odd and I think we can clean that up, but it's not a it's not a change. It just kind of appears as a red line strikeout because we moved it.

Yeah. So, I did see that on packet page 182 towards the middle section three. It looks like it's a copy and paste job, but I I I was more curious if you just knew the the background and so having it telling me that it's about office was helpful there. Um I think that there could be some potential cleanup there. I don't know what the will of the commission is, but those are just my thoughts on that section. On packet page 185 in the middle towards create commercial recreation, you've removed uh item uh footnote three. So, I was wondering if that like you could explain that a little bit.

Okay. Um, let me catch up. So, are you talking the end of the table?

No, the 185 in the middle where it says recreate commercial recreation. So, I feel like in general, maybe I'm wrong, but we have conditional use permits for over 5,000 ft in general, but looks like you're removing that. So it a conditional use permit is already required for commercial recreation um regardless of size. Oh, I see. Okay. So that's just the cleanup.

So yes, it just didn't need the extra footnote. We moved some of the subf footnotes about medical office and elsewhere. Um, but in particular, this table, the footnote three on pocket page 186 that's crossed out says commercial recreation uses fronting on University Avenue, but University Avenue um is generally rel regulated by the GF overlaying district and so we've just moved that um to the GF.

Okay, that's helpful. And then I was curious about packet page 187 where we have the table for the MVCAP area. And I'm wondering in general why we are including the usages of MVR1 R2 because in my mind those are mostly similar to the real R1 and R2 and I don't know what retail uses we generally support on those and why these are considered different here. I don't believe we've made any changes to the R1 R2 districts. It's just the way that the NV uh zoning district is written. It's one use table. So

I see. So let me ask a question differently. Would our normal code support the uses for NVR1 and NVR2 in real R1 and R2? Like not MV? Do you mean the the residential uses or? Yeah. So, for example, right, like I don't know, uh a large adult large adult daycare or a small adult daycare home. Is that currently allowed in a normal R1? That's not an NVR1. Oh, I would have to look that up. So, it is allowed in in NV. Um it's not underlined, but um I was just happened to be curious. That's okay.

I don't know off the top of my head. And then on packet page 192, I also was curious about if so, vice chair Chang had asked about the 30 foot depth calav versus university. I wasn't sure if I caught the answer if there actually is a different use for university and calav or that's just yeah like what's the explanation for the difference here? I don't know if I missed that.

Yeah, the different depth. Um, and I do we do still have Christine Fenberg on and so she can talk a little bit more about retail depths in general. But when we look at the the parcel sizes and the depths on University versus California Avenue, um, University tends to be about 100 foot depths. And the buildings, many of the buildings extend that deep. Um, California Avenue is more varied. There's some longer building depths, some shorter ones, some narrower lots. uh the buildings tend not to extend so deep into the lot. Um if I'm channeling Christine Shuay, retail depths tend to be want to be more like 40 40 foot minimum. 30 foot minimum is is certainly um is on the smaller side. Um but these depths of 60 80 100 ft are quite deep. We heard the public commenter saying that. And so the idea as we know is is to allow offices beyond that um beyond that depth. Um but that's really the difference. It's a combination of um wanting to ensure we have enough retail depth but also uh acknowledge the differences in the parcel sizes. Christine, anything to add on the retail depth issue?

No, thank you so much. Good evening uh commissioners. Thank you, Jeanie. Um, typically the the reason the the difference in standard here was because the buildings are deeper on University Avenue. And I think that's how we came to uh set this up. In California Avenue, the the retail sections of the building seemed to be more standard at 60 ft deep. And so it just made a little more sense. Whereas on University Avenue, almost all of the buildings seem to have a depth of about 100 ft deep. So that was pretty simple.

So this is less about the use that we want here and more about the current status size of the building. Is that a different way to reframe this?

I would say it's both. It's it's about trying to um improve vacancies, reduce vacancies, so allowing different uses that aren't sitting on the frontage. Um and these are still small offices. We're not talking about large office spaces, but it's about adding the flexibility, but also recognizing the physical um conditions out there. And and if I can step in and add as well, part of the reason that the recommended depth is in relationship to the existing buildings and the existing lots is part of this is working to try and allow reuse of the existing buildings to keep, you know, being a little bit of create bit creative for some of these that are clearly too deep. um and giving enough flexibility um with a recognition of those existing facilities so that they could be reused whether they're historic structures or um just existing structures uh wanting to allow that reuse.

Thank you. Do you want to jump in?

Yeah. So, what is a good retail depth? So you said 30 to 40 or 40 to 50 because I'm trying to figure out why you know what we what the issue I think we wanted to address are these giant lots either too way too deep for a retail use or like you know it's just over 4,000 square ft like uh Miss Freshenberg said before. So what I want to make sure like what what's the ideal retail depth or what's an average retail depth for a a a retail thoroughfare like Calav or university. So how we the industry the shopping center industry is is what we go by and we go by some general retailer criteria and it's really was built up based on how shopping centers got built. So you have a traditional depth in a shopping center and again I know it's not a street retail but typically building shopping centers in the 60s when the growth all happened 60s and 70s they built them with 60 ft depths and so national brands of retailers set their criteria to what was most prevalent in the United States at that time are these 50 and 60 ft depths for buildings on street retail. It it really is so varied that the national retailers do have a hard time in merchandising something that is different and unique. Now again um there's there's not as many independent non-national retailers as we used to have. So we have less to choose from when we're trying to lease

buildings out of those independents that don't have the criteria that they have to adhere to. Nationals do have to adhere to more of a criteria. So again, that's to answer that question. What we were trying to do here was just really give more flexibility to the tenants that are already there and new tenants that come in to um figure out how to utilize some of the space on the University Avenue buildings that really are are too deep for most retailers to to function in. And if they have to pay that additional square footage that they can't use, they oftent times can't use the space at all because it doesn't make economic sense. So, if they if there's an ability for the owner to lease out the remainder of that space, then again, the retailer can occupy the front and the um the building owner can have an entire floor leased out and not have to one or the other, the tenant or the landlord have to make special arrangements that are economically difficult for them because a building's too deep. So that makes perfect sense for the 50 ft, right? Because that makes sense. We're aiming for like a 50 60 thing. What I want to what I'm wondering very specifically is does if something gets converted to only 30 ft in the front, does that make it hard to rent later on? Right. Like on cow on the cow app, is that the right number? Are you comfortable with that number?

Um on the retail we want to we know that the front has to be retail. So

we you could move it 10 ft. But again, I think what we did is we looked at Cal Avenue and and there's such a wonderful conglomeration of of food and food oriented tenants. They can use um in some cases the the you know smaller uh frontages. So we could push it to 40 ft. um that could be a maybe a little bit less of a problem in the future if there was a demising wall that separated them. But again, if there's a demising wall that's separating one use, that demising wall is normally easily um able to be brought down at some future leasing uh situation.

Okay. So just to summarize your recommend your commentary is that 50 to 60 ft seems to be the standard based on what you were describing but we want to allow some flexibility in calav. So you are you still sticking with 30 ft as your recommendation for calav with this discussion? Um, I think it I would like I can um talk to Jeie about it, but we we agreed that 30 ft might be a good way to define it, but it could go to 40 also.

Yeah, I think it's it, you know, as you as you're hearing it's 30 may be too conservative. It is a minimum, but you know, you put a minimum out there and some, you know, you take advantage of that. So I think pushing it to 40 ft is still reasonable and still allows for it may be less than half of the space in some cases on calav but um maybe that space is less conducive to being split. Anyway,

thank you. I think yeah that that's great. I also had a question about the language in this section that's not about the actual distance. It says here that's 30 ft as measured from the ground floor street frontage. If you are on a corner lot for example, how would that work? like are we is the goal here is I presume to be against Kellav but I don't know if that's explicitly as written for section 1830A section B section subsection one

yeah I think right now it would apply to the corner so um if we want to just apply it to I need to flip to it. But if we just want to apply it to Calav, then we want to be more explicit about that. That it's just the California Avenue frontage. Okay. So, right now, hypothetically, as written, I could use the 30 ft from either the corn. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

I'm sorry. I'm going to take it back. I I I think based on how subsection B starts on California Avenue, it's the California Avenue building frontage. But point taken, we can make that more clear if that's the interpretation the commission wants to go with and it wouldn't apply it on side streets. Yeah, I don't know what the rest of the commission says. I just think the cleaning up the language I think could be helpful and I presume there's an equivalent for University Avenue as well. Um so uh and then my next question is about uh uh packet page 196 184809 alcoholic beverages. You've listed a bunch of information here. I was wondering if there's any are there any conditions that are in the conditional use permit that are not captured here. Like what's the discrepancy between the existing situation and what we have here? Um, off the top of my head, one of the key ones is hours of operation. So, in particular for bars, that's probably going to be one of the the items in the cup for a bar.

And we do gen we do require a cup for businesses that go past 10 p.m. So, that would also trigger even if it was a restaurant. Okay, that was just helpful to know and I think just helpful to point out for the code. And then on packet page 200 where we have this table with minimum off- streetet parking requirements. I was just wondering if you could provide me an explanation for the changing in some of the numbers here. So for example in section B the eating and drinking full service the change from 60 to 150 and also the list the listing for 250 and 150 there. I was just wondering if you could provide an explanation for how you came up with these numbers.

Sure. And I may invite Christine Fenberg to come back. Um, so one thing we did was actually take some of these existing ratios through scenarios. So looking at a a a larger restaurant size, a 4,000 square foot um restaurant size, which I understand is typical for some fast food in particular, and generating what that parking requirement would be. And in the case of the uh with drive-throughs, it was coming out to 120 spaces, which is um really unrealistic for um sites even on El Camino. So, some of it was just that it didn't make sense based on um potential use classifications. Um and uh Christine can talk a little bit more about what she sees in terms of what tenants um actually are looking for. One other point I want to make is that there right now there's one parking standard as you can see for eating and drinking. Um, I mentioned earlier that things like coffee shops and delies are interpreted as intensive retail service. And part of that happened because they have a lower parking standard. And so those smaller tenants um could never have met these uh the sort of quick service tenant could never have met the existing eating and drinking parking standard and instead had a that internal excuse me intensive retail service parking standard. So the new cast classification eating and drinking service limited service is based on that existing intensive retail service standard. Um Christine, anything else on

um the the limited service that we're mentioning here is what we see in today's world is so active and the four per thousand is the one for one stall for every 250 uh square ft. Um we use verbiage a little different but that's very very normal and that's about what the retailers would like to see. Um we are seeing some cities even reduce it from there. Um reduce parking requirements and then for the full sitdown restaurants again having a few more stalls required here is is not abnormal because you have people staying for longer. Although we don't see a lot of sit-down restaurants active right now. Um economically in the Bay Area it seems to be at the moment. um a time that's hard. We we are not seeing a lot of full sitdown restaurants active at the moment. We hope that they will return soon, but there are some economics that make it rather difficult at the moment.

Thank you. All right, last question or comment really. On packet page 204, section 14, there's a reference to this se uh section being deleted. Can we just pull up the original code for this section? This is 187615. Um, yes, I'm going to have to pull up the actual code. Bear with me. Okay. So, this section of code uh yes applies to the R combining district which is the California Avenue designation.

Yeah. So my understanding is that this section of code was created because in our combining district aka calav there were too many beauty shop, nail salon, barbership or financial services usage. Yeah. So code cleanup potentially necessary if we want to preserve the section. And one thing that's what I like about this section is some of the benefits that we get from this section. So for example, subsection two, the type of retail or personal service will enhance the balance and diversity of businesses in the district in the city as a whole. And subsection three about enhancing economic vitality. I feel like these are generally comments that I've heard from my fellow commissioners that are good to have in a commercial district, which is a variety of different businesses, a balance and diversity of businesses that will enhance economic vitality. I think that there's not necessarily a reason to get rid of this just because I like some of the benefits. It's not that these types of businesses are prevented, but that they're allowed to be there if they do bring balance and economic vitality, and that's up to the conditional use permit. So, I feel like there's not necessarily a reason to remove the section. So, with that, I will end my I think what is 22 minutes of commentary. So, I apologize for that.

And maybe I can just clarify for this section. So, um I think previously the personal services like barber shops, nail salons required a conditional use permit. They no longer do. And so, um this section is findings for conditional use permit. So, the only place this still applies is formula retail businesses, which still do require a conditional use permit. And so these findings tend to be very subjective um that they're meeting underserved needs, enhancing the balance of district. So it's really about formula retail. So if you wanted to keep this section, we would uh obviously delete the typo, but also just delete a beauty shop, nail salon, barber shop, financial services uh completely.

Okay, that was actually really helpful context, and I actually don't know if I support my original statement anymore. Okay.

All right. How do we drive to a conclusion here? Um, we could u choose to recommend the council uh if we feel that enough of our uh feedback has been captured. So, how do we determine that? I can say from my end I've been scribbling in the document and taking lots of notes. I will point out one and I so I I believe I can integrate um if there's sort of general consensus that what you heard from others makes sense correcting typos but also clarifying language um where we can be more clear I will do that. There's one issue I have about the office parking. I believe the recommendation was to um make the parking uh more restrictive for the RP zone. And if that's correct, that's the only item that gives me pause. When we make parking more restrictive, we're potentially creating non-conforming district uh non-conforming conditions uh in that RP zone. And so I would just suggest maybe we leave it alone. um if there's not interest in touching that office parking, we just leave it alone and just stick to uh the parking ratios for the new use classifications, eating and drinking.

I believe I believe I was the first to propose that. So u from my point of view, I am perfectly okay with leaving it alone. The only reason to change it was to improve consistency across districts. But if that's if that doesn't make sense functionally, then let's not do it. Okay. I think we can just not touch the office parking and maybe just leave it and just stick with addressing the new use classifications. Fellow commissioners, is that an acceptable compromise? Yes. All right. I think we can agree to that.

And I had also suggested the um starting date for the 1500 square ft of of addition. Um so I guess uh I should poll the uh remainder of the commission to see whether u there is sufficient support for that.

And I think the through the chair the direction could be that you want to address the concern that that exception could be used multiple times to um to not be subject to that fee. And so we could put language in to address that concern. That would be sufficient direction. At this point, I would accept that approach. Um it seems like there's general agreement. Agreed. So thank you. That's a good good suggestion. And um let's see, you uh resolved the open container sales on Calav issue by revisiting some of that language. Correct.

Okay. and and I would invite those uh commissioners who have their lists that they've brought up today, please feel free to to email those in to us so that we can do a little double-checking. I think we've done a good job of of making note. We can go back to the recording. Um but please feel free to to send those in via email as well. All right, with that with that I think perhaps we're ready for a motion.

Can we do a group motion? like can I'll start and then please help if I've forgotten things. So, I would like to move that we forward this ordinance on to council for approval um with uh clarifications

clarifications that have been outlined by all the commissioners tonight. C. Yeah. Clarifications outlined in the discussion of the commission tonight. That yes, that's good. Do I hear a second or any need for a modification? A second. All right, Mr. Diver, could we call a vote, please? Um, yes. Uh, Commissioner G. Yes. Uh, Commissioner James. Yes. Uh, Commissioner Peterson. Yes.

Commissioner Hecman. Yes. Vice Chair Chang. Yes. Chair Aken. Yes. Motion carry 6. Thank you all. That turned out to be more challenging than I expected. Uh, the next item is approval of the minutes for February 11th, 2026. Mr. Dveta, do we have any public comments on this? Uh, do the chair have not received any public comment card for agenda item? Um, very good. May I have a motion? U, I move the the Oh, go ahead.

And just clarifying point, I want to make a note that um, per my record, uh, I have Commissioner James was absent for that meeting. So when I make a um, yeah, I just need you to abstain. Yeah. Thank you. I move the recommendation of minutes as revised. Second. Um, Commissioner Peterson. Yes. Uh, Commissioner James. Uh, abstain. Is that what I say? Yep. Uh, Commissioner G. Yes. Uh, Commissioner Hecman, yes. Uh, Vice Chair Chang, yes. Chair Aken, yes.

Motion carries. 501. Now, a point of order. Uh, should we do our public comments for items that are not on the agenda next or after commissioner comments? I think we could. We could also limit the amount of time for each of them given the late hour. Do it now.

Certainly recommend a one minute limit. And Mr. Dvetto, do we have any public comments for items that are not on the agenda? Um, at the moment I have not received any public comment cards for general public comment. If there's any members on Zoom that would like to speak for general public comment, um, I do see two raise hands on Zoom. One moment. All right. Um, our first speaker is uh, Jim B. Uh, Jim B, you may now speak.

You guys got me? Yep. All right. So, um, you guys talk about economic vitality. Why, uh, you guys make us sit through a bunch of bureaucratic stuff here. I think it would be a lot more beneficial to understand the fact that if Le Ericson did not discover this country 500 years before Columbus and we wouldn't have to deal with this type of stuff. We have people coming in here like these Jews that have occupied our government as a 2% minority yet they own 96% of the media and they literally molest children in their synagogues. They have the protocols of the learned owners of Zion.

We need to cut this. Hitler was right. You guys want to silence free speech and cut off there's no such thing as hate speech. The Supreme Court has ruled time and time again there is no such thing and we have the Brown Act in California. So you cannot do that. Hitler was right. White power and you need to we have we have a um a statement that I've been asked to read in events of this type. The city of Palo Alto is committed to a culture of belonging where all members of our diverse community feel included, safe, and respected. We strongly denounce the speaker's message of discrimination and hate. We have allowed the speech such as it was only because the first amendment of the constitution requires us to give everyone an equal chance to express their views. If there are additional speakers who use hate speech, city staff may leave the meeting until regular business resumes. Members of the public may wish to do so as well. If board members uh if commissioners want to make brief comments, please do that following the uh public comment period. Next speaker, if there is one.

Yeah, the chair. Um, our next speaker is um, Satyang Sanari. Um, you may now speak.

Sir, you just destroyed my name and that's very racist. Merci. Ladies and gentlemen, white people are being genocided and you're talking about stuff that benefits no one. You spoke for two hours of regulation of bars which is completely repetitive. Children are being raped and you fund them with your tax dollar. You're paying taxes to pedophiles like Jeffrey Epstein friend and your government. You're paying taxes to pedophiles while that fat whale sits there this computer whole regulation about bars. Congratulations, Chairman Ching Ching Ching. You're paying taxes to pedophiles. Well, with luck, that is the last of public comment for non-aggenda items for tonight.

Yeah. And the chair, I have no other requests to speak. Thank you, Mr. Diver. Moving on to um more rewarding uh item commissioner questions, comments, and announcements.

All right. Have Commissioner Hecman followed by Commissioner G.

Thank you. So, so as the commission knows, um the chair and I often um review and revise the minutes. Um and I have um notice that there are times when um commissioners speak over each other. And what's one of the most interesting things to me is uh it's almost never our newer commissioners. It's almost always the the four of us who have been on the commission longer and maybe we've gotten too comfortable. Um, but it makes it very challenging. I I the uh our our transcriber does a great job, I guess, because they have a tape and they can go through, but when you try to read it, it's like you say a word and I say a word, you say a word and I say a word, right? And so it's it's of no use to the council should they want to read the verbatim minutes. So, I um I just want to remind those of us who are guilty um try to wait uh try to follow the lead of our newer members and and let's you know wait until somebody finishes what they have to say and then we say what we have to say. Um and I'm at least as guilty as anyone else on the commission. So, um but I I think would do the council a service by cleaning that up.

Thank you. and we would do ourselves a service as well. Commissioner G. Wait, so I had actually a question. How do the minutes does there literally a person who types out every single word that we say?

Um I can jump in on that. Um we have a um contract with the transcription service called Transcription Plus. So shout out to them. And so they have a staff that does transcribe um our summary minutes and our um verbatim minutes. Um I want to give them the credit and say that maybe they do everything for but maybe they use some sort of software as well. Um but yeah. Okay. Because anyway that's crazy. That's not my original comment, but I just want to say shout out to the transcription team. So, my original comment was more about the fact that Commissioner James and I went to the planning commissioners academy this past meeting uh two weeks ago. So, we're sorry we missed the giant PTC ARB joint meeting and we will be sending uh a list of the information that we learned at some point in the near future once we have a time chance to coalesce it. But I want to share with the commission two main things that I think are pretty interesting that are actionable in the short term. So one is that we learned that many of the other cities actually most other cities planning commissions have a city email regardless of whether or not they are paid. So for the sake of public records requests this is primarily a useful uh feature and that's something that I think we should potentially look into. And I've talked to Miss Armor about this. And the other item is having questions that we send the staff ahead of time be CCC back to us for all answers. That way it's not Brown Act violating, but we also get more information that is shared across ahead of time. So those are just some of the recommendations that we learned from other commissions, but Commissioner James and I will be file compiling some kind of additional information that we will send shortly. And I would highly recommend if you get a chance to go to the plannering commissioners academy, it is very very

very helpful. I'm glad your experience was the same as mine. I thought it was well worthwhile. Thank you. Any other commissioner comments? Then we are adjourned.