Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening. My name is Carlos Rosario and I am the chair of the Planning Commission. Welcome to the Planning Commission meeting. Please remember to turn off your cell phones, the parking validation machine for the garage is for. The garage under City Hall is located near the rear entrance. At this point in time, if you are able, we will do a salute to the flag. To flag of the United States of America. Right now for roll call. Vice chair Bickford. here. Commissioner Barocio. Here. Commissioner. Bhandal. Not here yet. Commissioner Cantrell is absent. Commissioner Cao here. Commissioner Kasey here. Commissioner Escobar. here. Commissioner Nguyen here. Commissioner Oliverio. Will. He is online. All right. Commissioner Young here. And I am here making nine of us. So we have quorum. All right. If you want to address the commission, please fill out a speaker card located at the table near the audiovisual technician and deposit the card in the completed card into the basket. There are also speaker cards in the back of the chambers and at the side entrance. The procedure for this hearing is as follows. After staff's presentation, applicants and or appellant's may make up to a five minute presentation. During the comment period, the chair will call out names on the submitted speaker cards in the order received for those members of the public who attend in person, as your name is

called, line up in front of the microphone at the front of the chamber. Generally, each speaker will be given up to two minutes for public testimony, and speakers using a translator will have up to four minutes. Discretion of the chair. The time allotted for each speaker may be changed depending on the number of items on the agenda, number of speakers, and other factors. Speakers using a translator will have the double double the time allotted. After public testimony. The applicant and or appellant making closing remarks may make closing remarks for up to an additional five minutes. Planning commissioners may ask questions of the speaker's response to the commissioner. Questions will not reduce the speaker's time allowance. The public hearing will then be closed, and the Planning Commission will take action on the item. The Planning Commission may request staff to respond to the public testimony, ask staff questions and discuss the item. If you challenge these land use decisions in court, you may be limited to raising only those issues you or someone else raised at this public hearing or in written correspondence delivered to the city at or prior to the public hearing. The Planning Commission's actions on rezoning, rezoning, General Plan amendments and code amendments is only advisory to the City Council. The City Council will hold public hearings on these items. Section 21 2400 of the Municipal Code provides the procedures for legal protests to the City Council on rezoning and rezoning the Planning Commission's action on conditional use permits is appealable to the city. In accordance with section 2102 20 of the Municipal Code agendas and staff reports for this meeting may be accessed accessed at the city's website. Okay, before we begin, I want to remind the Planning Commission members and members of the public to follow our code of conduct at meetings. This includes commenting on a specific agenda item only and addressing the full body. Public speakers will not engage in conversation with the commissioners or staff. All members of the Planning Commission, staff and public are expected to refrain from abusive language, repeated failure to comply with the code of conduct which

will disturb, disrupt or impede the orderly conduct of this meeting may result in removal from the meeting. This meeting of the Planning Order Planning Commission will now come to order. Under public comment, public comments to the Planning Commission on non Agendized items. If you'd like, please fill out a speaker's card and give it to the technician. Each member of the public may address the commission for up to two minutes. The Commission cannot take any formal action without the item being properly noticed and placed on the agenda. In response to public comment, the Planning Commission is limited to the following options. Responding to statements made or questions posed by members of the public, requesting staff to report back on a matter at a subsequent meeting, or directing staff to place the item on a future agenda. Staff, do we have any speakers for public comment for the Commission? For items that are not on the agenda? No comments on public comment. Okay, we'll move on to deferrals and removals from the calendar. Any items scheduled for this hearing this evening, which deferral is being requested, will be taken out of order to be heard first on the matter, deferral or removal? Yes. Good evening, commissioners Manira Sandhir Deputy Director of Planning. We do have a late request for deferral for public hearing. Item number five B, which is SP 20 4-029 and air 20 4-198. And administrative hearing, which is an appeal for the special use permit to increase an existing recycling transfer facilities permitted maximum daily inflow capacity. And I have staff here. Planner Alex Hughes, to explain the request for the deferral. Thank you. Thank you chair. Thank you, vice Chair, Planning commissioners. My name is Alex Hughes, planner with PBCE. I'm the project manager for the appeal file number SB 24 029. Staff recently received new documents that may affect this use, permit findings and or conditions of approval.

Staff recommends the Commission consider deferring SB 24 029 to March 25th. Planning Commission thank you. Is there any public comment on the item being deferred that may be deferred? And then you need a motion. Do we have K? If you can't make it to the next time, you can make your comment. Now if you'd like. Okay. We need discussion or can we go to vote? You need a motion. Do we have a motion? Motion. Motion. Second then. All right. Go to a roll call. Vote then. Vice Chair Bickford. Yes, Commissioner. Barocio. Yes. Commissioner. Yes. Commissioner Cantrell. Absent. Commissioner Cao. Yes. Commissioner. Kasey. Yes. Commissioner. Escobar. Yes. Commissioner Nguyen. Yes. Commissioner. Oliverio. Yes. Commissioner. Young. Yes. Myself. Is. Yes. Making that ten yeses and one absent. The motion carries. Okay. That's it for deferrals today. All right. We'll move on to the consent calendar for the public. There will be no separate discussion of individual consent calendar items as they are considered to be routine and adopted by one motion. If a member of the commission requests debate separate vote or recusal on a particular item, that item may be removed from the consent calendar by the chair and considered separately.

The public may comment on the entire consent calendar and any items removed from the consent Calendar by the chair. Staff will provide an update on the Consent Calendar. If you wish to speak on one of these items individually, please come to the podium. At this time, are there any speakers on items currently on the Consent calendar? We do not have any speaker cards for items on the consent calendar. All right. Commissioners, are there any items you'd like to remove from the consent calendar. Or do we have a motion to approve the consent calendar? Motion to approve. Motion to approve. Second from Commissioner Kasey. On to a vote. Vice chair Bickford. yes, Commissioner. Barocio. Yes, Commissioner. Bhandal. Yes. Commissioner Cantrell is absent. Commissioner Cao. Yes. Commissioner. Kasey. Yes. Commissioner Escobar. Yes. Commissioner Nguyen. Yes. Commissioner. Olivero. Yes. Commissioner. Young. Yes. Myself is. Yes. And we have nine yeses and one absence. All right. And the consent consent consent calendar is approved. And we go on to the public, the public hearing now. All right. Generally, public hearing items are considered by the Planning Commission in the order in which they appear on the agenda. However, please be advised that the Commission may take items out of order to facilitate the agenda, such as to accommodate significant public testimony or may defer discussions of items to later agendas for public hearing and management purposes. First item

on the calendar tonight is CPE. Is. Item 5AH 20 3-030. An appeal site development permit for a builder's remedy on Willow Street. Do we have a staff presentation? Yes we do. Let me bring up the slides real quick. All right. All right. There we go. Evening, chair. Commissioners, members of the public. My name is Alex Atienza. I'm the planning project manager for the 940 Willow Street project. This is an appeal of the planning director's decision to approve a site development permit on December 3rd of last year. So the application before you is a project site at 940 Willow Street. It's at the corner of Willow Street and Kohlenberg Avenue in City Council District six. So this application is a site development permit for a builder's remedy project. It's the construction of a seven story mixed use building with 126 residential units and approximately 1626ft2 of commercial space. 15% of the units are reserved for very low income households, and 15% of the units are reserved for moderate income households. So there's an existing 5500 square foot commercial building that's there that would be demolished, and the

removal of six trees as well to accommodate the development. With this site. Development permit application is also an application under state density Bonus law, with a request for 97% density bonus, as well as multiple incentives, concessions and waivers. So it's important to provide some context for this application, particularly under builder's remedy. I know this commission has seen one other builder's remedy application before, but it was quite a while ago that was for the Alviso project. So I want to give everybody some context here. So the builder's remedy is defined by section H 11 of the Housing Accountability Act as a project that has to provide a certain amount of affordable housing to very low, low or moderate income households. And there's a sliding scale of options that applicants can choose from. The applicant must also have submitted an application. While a city did not have a substantially compliant housing element. And I'll get into that a little bit later as to how this applies to this project, but that housing element must be certified by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, HCD for short. The project also must be within the parameters for minimum and maximum densities, as defined by the definition of builder's remedy. In that code section that I referenced, and the project can also not abut a heavy industrial, heavy, industrial or title five industrial use. So one projects qualify for builder's remedy. Cities cannot deny a qualifying builder's remedy project based on inconsistency with the city's General Plan, Land use designation or zoning ordinance. The Housing Accountability Act prohibits a city from denying a builder's remedy project, unless the city can show that the project will cause. Excuse me, a specific adverse

impact to the public health and safety. So for this project. So we get some dates in order here to understand how this project qualifies for builder's remedy. So the applicant submitted a Senate bill 330 preliminary application on June 12th of 2023. So what that does is it locks the application in to the date that it was submitted. So when I excuse me, when I say locked in, that means any ordinances, policies or fees that are in effect at the time that application is submitted, that project is locked in on that date. And then the formal application. So the site development permit that you see that was submitted on October 10th of 2023. The city's housing element was certified and found to be in substantial compliance. On January 29th, 2024. So that gap is where projects are eligible for the builder's remedy. So since they submitted before that date, they are eligible under builder's remedy. Sorry, let me take a pause. A lot of content. All right. So Assembly Bill 1893, that is an important component of this as well. So when these builder's remedy applications were first received it's a bit of a wild West, right? We didn't really have any parameters to put on these projects. And so what Assembly Bill 1893 did was that basically clarified the builder's remedy law. In essence, it put a lot of legal arguments that cities were making to rest, as well as set some standards around density and what projects could and could not qualify for builder's remedy. So that was effective July 1st of 2025. And this applicant invoked Assembly Bill 1893 on April 21st of 2025. So what does this mean for staff's project review?

The city must treat the project as if it meets the General Plan, land use designation and requirements of the zoning district. So in this case, this application is for a site development permit for a site that is designated Neighborhood Community Commercial and is in the C n zoning district. We don't allow housing on these sites unless it's 100% affordable, because builder's remedy, we have to treat it as if it's compliant with both of those designations. So this is a key piece here. The product does not require approval of a General Plan amendment rezoning, and shall be deemed consistent with applicable plans, programs, policies, ordinances, standards, requirements, redevelopment plans, implementing instruments, or other similar provisions for all purposes. And again, to that last point that I put on the last slide, the city must evaluate the project for compliance with objective health and safety standards. That's that's the key. That's the highest bar that we have to hit. Basically. Nevertheless, we still went through the review process for this project. And if you read through the the site development permit resolution, we highlight basically any inconsistencies, inconsistencies with our standards and policies, despite the fact that the project may not meet many or most of them. So I just highlighted, you know, what we reviewed here. So particularly state density bonus law, that's something that we see for a lot of housing projects nowadays, as well as the envisioned San José General Plan that includes policies as well as the land use designation itself, the municipal code, things like zoning standards, but also say tree removal controls, the city wide design standards and guidelines. The City Council Policy six dash 30, which is for public outreach. So, you know, we did go through the public outreach policy we had to sign posted on

site. We also held a community meeting that was attended by almost 200 folks on Zoom. And then also we reviewed under CEQA California Environmental Quality Act. So in this case, the project is exempt under a relatively new bill, Assembly Bill 130 I think some of you have been aware of this, but it's fairly new. It just came into effect July 1st of 2025. That's statutorily exempts most projects in the state of California. Excuse me, housing projects in the state of California that meet certain criteria. So this project was heard at the December 3rd, 2025 directors hearing. The project was placed on public hearing. We had 12 members of the public that spoke nine against, three in favor. An appeal of the decision to approve the site development permit was received on December 12th, 2025. So this appeal asserts that the project is not compliant with several sections of the citywide design standards and guidelines, and those are listed in the staff report as well as the the appeal that you have in your packets. So those standards include landscaping requirements, solid waste pickup requirements, bicycle parking, lighting, building setbacks and setbacks, building entries, driveway design, and the provision of flat roofs. It should be noted that the applicant did actually request an exception for that flat roof requirement. So there was also some additional information that the Commission received just in the last few days between a week and the last few days, staff did not analyze against that supplemental information that was provided. But I just want to make sure that everybody understands that that was submitted and sent to you guys, and that can obviously be weighed in your

decision tonight. So staff did include responses in the staff report. Staff's main contention is the project is compliant with the citywide design standards, but also just the fact that that last sentence that I put here, and I'll go back for everybody's benefit, that second to last bullet point, is that the project, because of its nature of being a builder's remedy project, it is consistent with all applicable plans, etc. for all purposes. So with that, staff recommends that the Planning Commission conduct this administrative hearing on this appeal, and staff recommends that the Planning Commission deny the permit appeal and uphold the director's decision. So that concludes staff's presentation. I believe we have both the appellant and applicant here to make their case. Oh yeah. Appellant goes first I believe. Right Daniel. Yeah. All right. At this moment at this time we'll have five minutes for presentation from the appellant. The appellant here. The appellant David Fox is he here. Marin is David here. Is David here. David Fox. I don't see him either. Let me email him real quick or see if I can call him. Austin Appellant be present. No. Appellant doesn't need to be present. Sorry. The appellant doesn't need to be present, but the appellant is giving an

argument as to why the commission should deny the director's hearing. So if the appellant isn't here, we can give the applicant a chance to speak. Yeah. Why don't you give him a call? Jeff, do you want to speak first? Sorry. And just for the record, the appellant did provide some responses about some of the letters that were provided. There was a back and forth. I think the commission has these this communication between the applicant's attorneys and the appellant and the appellant did make some arguments. I think those are submitted to the record, and they'll stand on their own until maybe we can get them on the. Call. Good afternoon, members of the Commission. Evening. Members of the Commission. My name is Dan Golub. I am counsel to the project applicant. I think what I'd say is we'd certainly much prefer to respond to the appellant. If you're going to hear from him this evening, if you're not going to hear from him this evening, I'll give you five minutes or so. But I would prefer not to go first and then not have an opportunity to respond to what the appellant is going to say. Makes complete sense. So what would it be okay if he can use these five minutes and then if he does decide to come, then he can go again. I think what Mr. was saying is that he'd prefer not to go until we have a final answer from the appellant, to make sure that the appellant is not going to be appearing tonight, and then he'll take his five minutes. But I think we can

respect that. Not having to go first and respond to some arguments. Through the chair, If I could make a suggestion, perhaps we could receive public comments and public testimony. And if there are comments from the public that the applicant wishes to address, whether the appellant is able to join or not, perhaps that might be an option here. Certainly. Follow the direction of the chair. I'm sorry. Would that be all right with you? Yes. Just fundamentally, if the appellant gets a five minute presentation, I'd like an opportunity of about five minutes to respond to it. That's absolutely okay. All right. So let's start with public hearing then on this item. So we will please come down. Theodore. John Forsman. And Jeff Tully. Apologies if I mispronounced your name. Doesn't matter. Secretary. This is a formal objection. Okay. Ready? Yes. Please go ahead. Good evening. I got two minutes and it's just about two, so I'm going to just keep going here. I'm formally here to object to the approval of the 940 Willow Street project. Based on what appears to be a calculated suppression of technical data in a flagrant violation of council policy. 630 this policy explicitly states the city must provide opportunities for public participation early in the process.

That's from the the the that's the wording to ensure residents can provide input before decisions are made, before decisions are made. At the December 3rd hearing where this was approved, the city did the exact opposite. It appears a critical sewer capacity study was introduced for the first time. For the first time, effectively Airdropping technical justifications at the 11th hour. Only one can speculate that this was done to neutralize public oversight. This isn't just a clerical error. It appears to be a strategic move to bypass the only legal lever that we have under builder's remedy. We just saw that from Alec. Public health and safety concerns, exceptions, but withholding the study until the moment of approval. The city prevented a vetting of a fatally flawed model. Your engineers claim the system is sufficient, but they model the theoretical, perfectly maintained system. I live in Willow Glen. I've seen major sewer collapses nearly every year for a decade. We're dealing with currently a 100 year old infrastructure. Just today, coming down here on Minnesota and Kattenberg sewer guys were out there fixing the sewer again. How ironic policy 630 exists specifically to prevent this kind of ambush planning. You cannot claim to protect public safety while suppressing the data that proves a safety risk exists. I formerly served the city day. The entire council is on notice. Thank you very much. Two minutes of. An ongoing procedural violation. Halt. Further certifications. Thank you very much. Your two minutes are up. Thank you very much. Your two minutes are up. No. No. The other guy was the. Up here.

You gave him time. That's your time. That's your time, sir. Everything. Okay, we can go to the next speaker now. Right. Theodore. John Forsman or Martin Cederqvist. Good evening. My name is Marin Cederqvist. I live a few houses away from the development and I support affordable housing for the public good, but I also support the city's Envision San José 2040 General Plan, which directs dense housing at transit corridors downtown and designated urban villages. This project exists only because San José failed to submit its housing element on time, triggering builder's remedy. Neighbors should not bear the consequences. This lot is more than half a mile away from freeways or meaningful transit, comparing it to a tall development on Meridian is not valid. That site is on a five lane road next to a freeway. While this site is at the corner of a two lane road and what is functionally a one lane street. I'm also president of Willow Glen Neighborhood Association. Over 1800 neighbors have signed a petition opposing this project, only holding planning zooms where questions are not allowed to be answered shows a lack of respect for your new neighbors. I ask that you take our concerns seriously. State law allows this project to move forward, but it also requires objective standards and public health and safety requirements to be upheld. Shortcuts have been taken for both. It does not fully demonstrate compliance with the objective standards. As Mr. Fox has written, there's also been no traffic study in the public record, with a comprehensive review including vehicle conflicts and pedestrian safety.

In line with San Jose's Walk Safe San José and Vision Zero action plan developers. Just because you don't, just because you can do this doesn't mean you should, at a minimum, at least meet with the neighbors to mitigate impacts. Planning department you're supposed to serve the community. Please do better. Planning Commission because standards have not been fully addressed. I respectfully request a motion to continue this item until full, verifiable compliance with all standards is documented. Thank you for listening. Thank you. After Mr. Forsman, we will have Michael Bantom, Diane Solomon and Alex Shaw. Hello. You guys can hear me. All right. Good evening. My name is Jeff Ewell. I live at 1140 Gothenburg, which is the property right next door to where this is going to happen. The technical document that was printed out. That's all you know with you right now. That is something that I created in investigation. I found there are many blind spots in the sewer study. So the first one is blind spot asset 51585. It's a 19 foot diagonal pipe that connects this project from to to Willow Street. If you look right at the at the website right now, the slope of that is n a. There's no data on that. So I find it very hard to believe that we could do a sewer study when the 19 foot connection point that goes from Coburg to Willow literally has no data. Secondly, Manning's friction there on asset 27169, which is the pipe that goes on Willow. It's an 80 plus year old vitrified clay pipe. The map shows only a slope of 0.0023, which is the bare minimum for a brand new pipe. Applying a smooth pipe, Manning's coefficient of 0.013 to an age rough clay ignores physics. It should be at least 0.017 or greater, which would reduce the pipes capacity by 40%. Basically, if you think about it, it's a 12 foot pipe that's made of clay that's 80 years old. That's probably six. You know, diameter is now six because of all the sediment and residue that's been over there for, you know, 80 plus years. Lastly, the city is currently spending $1.4 million on a project, PW1526 to

replace identical clay pipes because they are documented as failure risks. So you're doing that in other areas, but not here. I find it hard to believe that we're going to load 126 units and basically put it into aging infrastructure. So therefore, I demand continuance for the following physical CCTV inspection for the to verify the actual roughness of the 80 year old pipes, a field survey to fill the data gap on the 19 foot connection and a dynamic hydraulic study to prove with math, not assumptions at the peak flow unit or the peak flow from 126 unit will not result in a sewage backup into my house. That means assumed rain super Bowl Sunday and everyone's flushing the toilet after the first quarter when the 40 Niners are up 14 to 0. Thank you very much. By providing these facility IDs 271695158521526. Into the record, I'm establishing a prior notice of a dangerous condition under city government code. Thank you. Michael Benton, Diane Solomon, Alex Shaw. Yes, I'm. Yes, I'm Michael Bantom. I live on that picture there. You can see me about 100ft away from this monstrosity. I've not talked to a single neighbor who is in favor of this, of this project for I'm an engineer, so I don't buy any of the studies, so-called studies. I don't buy any of the data that's been presented. It doesn't make any sense to me as an engineer. I have a personal animus, of course, because having gone over to Union in Bascom and checked out a similar project, I realized my backyard is going to be completely blotted out from the sun, the evening sun, my garden is going to be destroyed by this project. But aside from that, I want to represent the people of Willow Glen in my little neighborhood here. You know, this is going to be wreaking untold damage on my neighborhood. Our neighborhood. It's going to cause many problems, right?

Here's a picture of my street, Curtis Avenue. This was last week. This is a road blocked for sewer repair, right? This week our road is blocked again. This was two days. This week our road is blocked again. Two days with sewer repair right. Or something that's going on. This is not unusual. My neighbors will all back me up. Right. We don't have the infrastructure for this giant project, right? It's just plain as the nose on my face. All right. Parking is is an obvious problem. Willow to bird is backed up regularly, frequently right in front of this monstrosity. This tower. Right. My street is basically a one way street. As was said before, I second everything my neighbors just said. It's just it's outrageous and it's beyond belief that something so big and inappropriate for this area could, could have been approved. And so I just want to make sure when we had these cards, I fill it out. It said against or for. The original project and I emailed ahead of time on the original one. Thank you sir, your time is up. Thank you sir. Thank you. My name is Diane Solomon. I represent Stefan Way. How can this project comply with objective safety standards? Builders remedies one size fits all. Regardless of our city's safety is a city of San José defined flood zone. Santa Rosa type wildfires could easily destroy this entire neighborhood. We are still at risk for the big one earthquake. It will prevent seven story will prevent emergency vehicles from serving us and nearby areas in the event of likely disasters that will occur over the next decade, she.

Broadway and Avenue are effectively one way streets when there are cars parked on both sides of the street. High density housing here not safe. Our city's infrastructure can't support this project. As others have said, our streets are already narrow and choked, and the nearby arteries that get to the freeways will be impacted. And our budgets going to make things better. It's not going to make things better in the first in the future. Builder's remedy is one size fits all regardless of public endangerment and regardless of our city's democratically elected leadership that approved our city's existing codes and our city's standards that govern the height of buildings, parking, and public safety. I urge you to take a big, bold step and don't appeal this. I think other people are going to be suing the state of California that's going on in San Francisco. This is not a I second everything everybody else said, and I urge you to to do what's hard and not approve of this and grant the appeal. Thank you very much, Alex Shaw and Roland Lebrun. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Alex Shaw. I'm the co-founder and executive director of Catalyze Silicon Valley. Please forgive my late letter that I sent you this afternoon. I do want to introduce myself a little bit to the new planning commissioners. I represent a number of members who had a chance to evaluate this project in June of 2024. Our organization is a yes and organization. Yes. We want to see development in this community, and we want to see it be as sustainable, equitable and vibrant as possible. We scored this project a 3.4 out of five, which is unfortunately just below our threshold for support. Nonetheless, it appears the city does need to approve this project under builder's remedy.

Let's be very clear just survive as a region. We need a lot more housing. So I want to thank the developer for proposing such a bold project that strives hard to build a high number of homes. This could be because this is such a need in our city and region. Our members scored this aspect of the project a five out of five. We love love to see so many homes, especially affordable housing, in the wealthy neighborhood of Willow Glen. That is equity. Our members would also be delighted to see that the developer has increased the affordable housing from 20% when we scored it to 30% that you see here tonight. Areas of improvement for the project would be community engagement. The purpose of community engagement is not just to follow the law or get a project approved. It's to make projects better based on community input and thus build long term support for good development. Our members gave this project a two out of five on community engagement. As you approve this project tonight, please look at our scorecard for areas our members liked and others that could be improved. Thank you so much. I wanted to speak on five C. Okay. And then Brendan just. Justin. For this item, please come down. Just to get started.

It's my first time coming to one of these meetings, so I don't really know what I'm doing, but just want to say, like all the folks have mentioned, needing improvements to infrastructure in the area, like the sewers. And I just want to say investment like this, more people in the area and more money coming there and more housing. As the last speaker said, we desperately need around here. More investment in the area is just the thing that we need. I live, I want to say some 1500 feet from where the the project is proposed. Nine 4940 Willow Street and walked by there all the time. And frankly, for what I've seen from people living around there and talking to neighbors and such a lot of this, the roads, frankly make me feel less safe than they could. But I guess that means there's more capacity there, as far as I can tell. For more development along Willow Street specifically than any other street around there. I live. About 250ft off of Willow Street, and that's my main street to go places in my car or often on my bike, going east west. The place is not too far from downtown San José and pretty close to downtown Willow Glen, so I think these are all good reasons to support the project, even aside from the builder's remedy requiring it. From what I can tell.

Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, Commissioner Escobar. Gail. Seeds. Feel free to come up and. Good evening, commissioners. Staff. I am Gail Seeds. I live on Cotton Avenue, so I have great interest in the proposed development on the corner of cotton Brook and Willow. First, I'd like to say I concur with what you've heard from David Fox in writing, and this evening I had a chance to preview some of it. I ran. And secondly, I'd like to request that when a construction management plan comes forward for the proposed project, that the neighbors have a chance to review it while it's in the review process. And in my career, I've written them and I've administered them

and I've enforced them. And I know generally how they work quite well. So in particular, I'd like to request thoughtful attention to details in the plan that will protect the neighborhood during construction and the larger area in terms of air quality protection measures, as applicable. Per Baaqmd standards, which is our Air Quality Board and more specifically, dust and particulate matter emissions. That would be super helpful. Secondly, there are hours of work standards in San José, usually 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday. We would appreciate adherence with those. Thirdly, anything that can be done to mitigate construction noise would be appreciated. Fourthly, traffic control, good traffic control will make a difference to the neighborhood during the pretty lengthy construction process and. Your time is up. Thank you so much for taking the time to participate. All right. Seeing no more cards is the appellant here. Please come forward. You have five minutes. Commissioners, I am sorry that I was not here earlier. My mother is 95 years old and she had an emergency with her tonight. As important as this is, I am a family first guy. We needed to take care of that. So thank you very, very much for your indulgence on that. I really appreciate. It. Good evening commissioners. I'm David Fox. I have sat where you are sitting tonight.

I was a two term planning commissioner in Campbell, and I know exactly what it feels like to be told that your hands are tied on a particular item. I want to offer a different perspective. This appeal isn't about stopping the building. It's about oversight that our city rules entrust to you. While the state law mandates housing, it specifically leaves objective rules in your hands. This hearing is where we ensure the project actually meets those requirements. We are asking you to use your authority tonight, not to challenge the density, but to make sure this project follows the city's written standards. These rules protect everyone. The developer's rights, the future residents quality of life, and the stability of our neighborhood. We're requesting for practical fixes. The first is a landscape buffer that can be found under section 2.3.8 standard nine. If you use the proxy zone rules to require a five foot buffer where the building abuts houses on the rear south property line, we can plant trees to create a landscape buffer. To do this, there would have to be a modest redesign of the interior of the building. Since the state doesn't mandate parking or bike storage for this project, losing six parking spots and some bicycle storage doesn't make the project infeasible, but does provide a buffer between a high rise building and a low rise neighborhood. The second would be on the podium tree plantings. They proposed some large trees hold the developer to the city's math on the soil per tree. lesser amount shown on the plans. The logic here. This is a quantifiable, objective standard. We just want the trees to have the best chance of survival so

they can perform the duties that they are supposed to. For both the residents and the neighborhood, to provide some interior screening on lighting, swap out the horizontal and the upward facing fixtures for downward directing lighting. That. 2.3.7 standard one calls for. This is really simple to do. They just need to swap out the lights. It keeps the project bright and safe for the people that live there, but it doesn't let the light spill into the neighborhood. In addition, we're asking for compliance with the state title 24 standards that require automatic shutoffs for all of the lighting, roof, massing. The project currently has slanted roofs for most of. It's for most of the roofs on the building. We're just asking that the project. Comply with 3.3.2 standards two and three, which requires flat roofs for buildings at high. It would reduce the overall mass in the neighborhood, but because on the current plans, that area is shown as empty above the units, it doesn't cost the developer any livable housing at all. The Developers Council has argued in several ways that the city must facilitate and accommodate this development, and I agree with that. We're not asking to reduce the density. We are keeping every single one of the 126 units, but facilitating a project doesn't mean the city has to surrender its standards. You can accommodate 126 units while still requiring the wall on the rear property line to move five feet, or to create a landscape buffer. You can facilitate 126 units while ensuring the trees have enough soil to survive. You'll likely to be quoted three code sections. The attorneys have consistently

put forward. The 30 day window is intended to prevent the city from disapproving the project through delay. We're not asking for disapproval on facilitate the development. Holland Knight argues that you must facilitate this project and we agree. But the government code says you also. You have to facilitate density and we're protecting the density here. And on subordinating the muni code, the state remains in the municipal code, but you still have the power to impose objective standards. I'm not here to litigate this tonight. I'm here because this building is going to be a part of our neighborhood for the next 50 or 100 years. What I would like it to do, like you to do, is give us these four objectives, give the developer their units. We can create more housing stock and still keep the character of the neighborhood intact. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We'll now hear from the applicant. Good evening again to the chair and to the commissioners, Dan Golub. I'm a partner with the West Coast Land Use and Environmental Practice Group at Holland and Knight, and we're counsel to the project applicant. We specialize in particular with the Housing Accountability Act and density bonus law issues. Needless to say, you'll not be surprised to hear that we think the director got it right. And we also. Agree with staff's recommendation not to grant the appeal. I'll just take things back a quick step. Even though I think staff laid out builder's remedy quite well, this is a

limited series of projects that got in the door when the Project City did not have a substantially compliant housing element, and as a result, the state law is quite clear that those projects may be proposed and must be approved. Notwithstanding their inconsistency with General Plan and zoning, not every project is going to be able to do that. The door is closed as long as the city has a substantially compliant housing element, but this is one of those projects. The appeal. We're always nice to note where we have agreement with the appellant. The appellant is clear that they do not seek the disapproval of this project. They are only appealing on grounds of design issues. I will note there's no appeal before you on a sewer capacity issue. We do agree, of course, with the appellant that the project cannot be disapproved and that it would violate the law if the city were to do so. The problem we have with the appellant's analysis is, even though the law is clear that you may not disapprove this project for its inconsistency with General Plan and zoning, the appellant says you should approve it on the condition that it be made to comply with the General Plan and zoning. I think it comes down to the same thing. At the end of the day, that's a disapproval of the project on the ground that the state law doesn't permit. I should also note that despite our argument that we really don't think the law could allow the city to make the project comply with General Plan and zoning, we did try to do that as much as possible, and we noted that we had an independent right under the state density bonus law to waive certain standards, even if they applied. And perhaps that's where we got into trouble by noting these two completely independent reasons that the project doesn't have to comply with these standards. So I'll give one the landscape buffer, which staff has said doesn't apply pursuant to density bonus builder's remedy. We independently said. But in any case, we would request a waiver of that standard pursuant to

density bonus law. And the director granted that waiver. That waiver now could only be disapproved if there were a violation of an objective public health and safety standard based on a preponderance of the evidence that isn't before the city. So that standard would have been waived anyway, and only under very narrow public health and safety grounds could it be disapproved. It absolutely would require a very fundamental redesign of the project. We did want to comply with it as much as possible, but a waiver was granted of that pursuant to state density bonus law. I certainly defer to architects and architectural issues. Jeff Current from the applicant's architect team is certainly here and able to get into those issues. And I defer to the appellant, who has expertise in architectural issues on the law. I'll respectfully request that it be noted that I have some experience with that and the contentions in the appellant's appeal about the law are incorrect. The appellant cites to a provision of state law that says nothing in this section prohibits a city from applying objective standards. But as we noted, that has been amended. The law that is currently the law says except for builders remedy projects, the city is allowed to apply its objective standards. So that was expressly carved out, and that's the basis of the appeal. I'll just also mention subdivision J2 of the Ha does impose these timing requirements and says that any standards with which the project was not found inconsistent are now deemed consistent as a matter of law because of the timing, precise in J2, and that the city would even independent of builder's remedy, be very limited only to objective standards and objective means no two people could disagree. You know, absolutely unambiguous. Every single

person would read the language the same way. And quite a few of the standards, maybe all of them, that the appellant contends that the project conflicts with are standards that, as set forth in the staff report, your staff and your planning director think the project does meet. So if the staff thinks it's already been met and the planning director found that they'd been met, the idea that it's an objective standard with which we conflict just doesn't make sense. I will note that I'm sure people don't necessarily agree about this, but some significant effort was made to redesign the project as it went through the process to step back from adjacent uses. Notwithstanding our rights under the law, we don't think we did everything we could have tried to do for this project, but we do think that it's clear that there would be a burden on the city to make public health and safety findings, to do what the appellant asks. We don't. Thank you very much. We have for the appellant, you have five minutes for rebuttal. Thank you. I didn't write this in a vacuum. I didn't write what I presented to you today in a vacuum. I am a practicing landscape architect. I'm part of a development team that does multifamily housing, and I consulted my entire development team. Everybody that we work with across the board. And they disagree with Mr. Golub that in a lot of projects we have been asked and we have acquiesced to objective design standards in different cities. I can give you an example. We did a SB 330 project on the corner near the corner of Meridian and Dry Creek. We got significant pushback from the neighbors. In fact, after the approval we got, which it was approved of course, because SB 330, the neighbors filed an appeal instead of ignoring them, we interacted with the neighbors. We changed the design, we significantly moved fences, we moved lines, we moved houses, we added landscaping. And in the end, the

neighborhood. The neighbors dropped the appeal because we worked with them. There has been no effort by this developer to work with the neighborhood, and I understand the attorney's points. I understand that there is law, but there is also nuance, and I don't believe in my development team, doesn't believe that the city is tied and cannot do anything in this case that the Planning Commission does have the power to look at the directors decision and make changes to that decision. If the standards are objective and definable and written down, which they are, many times Holland and Knight has put forth the argument, how would a reasonable person look at this? Well, I believe that if a reasonable person took a look at moving a wall five feet to create a landscape buffer that would lower the visual impact of a building to the neighborhood, I believe that a reasonable person would find that reasonable. And what I'm asking you tonight is to use the powers that you have to grant five fairly minor conditions. I can tell you truly that if the developer, let's call them a reasonable developer, if a reasonable developer were asked, here's a parcel in downtown Willow Glen where you can build virtually any building that you want, but you have to create a five foot buffer on the property line. Is that reasonable developer going to turn down that project? No. No developer would turn that project. Our group certainly wouldn't turn down that project. So I'm asking you today if you can make the building slightly

more compliant, if you can use your powers tonight to grant those four asks for us to bring it a little more into the fabric of the neighborhood. And I thank you for that. Thank you very much. We will move on to comments from the commissioners. We'll start with Commissioner and then Commissioner Kasey. Thank you, chair. Thank you to the appellant and thank you to the project applicant and everybody who came and spoke out tonight. And thank you for staff for their presentation. I'd like to just quickly bring up sewer capacity. We have a note here from someone that says technical objections, sewer infrastructure deficiency. Will this. My question for staff would be will existing utilities such as sewer storm drainage, water required to be upgraded due to this project, and if so, who would be paying for that? Thank you, chair. And members of the Planning Commission, Michelle Kimble with the Department of Public Works. So hydraulic modeling of the sanitary sewer system was conducted for the project. The results show that both the ten inch sewer main along Willow Street and the six inch sewer main along Cottonwood Avenue do have adequate capacity to accommodate the project, consistent with the criteria established in Council policy. 8-7 if the results of the hydraulic model had indicated that the project flows would exceed available capacity, the project would have been conditioned to construct sanitary sewer improvements such as Upsizing, the sewer main, to mitigate its impacts. That was not identified with that model, and no improvements were conditioned. And then a member of the public mentioned that there's some kind of upgrade that's happening at the moment. Just for clarification, is there

anything in the neighborhood happening for this project or because of this project? I know there was an item in the the handout here. I haven't had a chance to look at it specifically for this particular capital improvement project, but in my coordination with our capital group, you know, previous to this note, there are no capital improvement projects within that area. Thank you. Second, I'd like to bring up parking. There is 127 parking spaces for 126 units, which averages out to one per unit. And you know, we haven't even taken into account future residents and visitor parking and such. What's the what's the minimum that this project would need? I know there isn't one, but just for clarification, if you could just kind of chime in on that. Are you speaking to like under the old parking code when we had minimums, are you asking what the normal would be. To this specific project? What would be the minimum? So there are no parking minimums anymore. The number, the required number is zero. The. Instead, the project has to implement a transportation demand management plan. That's basically the trade off, right? For no minimum parking requirements. Now, all projects that hit a certain threshold have to implement a transportation demand management plan. They can pick from a menu of options to achieve a point total. So we assign points to certain measures that they can implement. Some of them are physical improvements. Some of them are programmatic measures, like if you're handing out bus passes you want, I can give you those measures. But to answer your question, zero parking spaces are required. Thank you for that.

And then I do have a question for the applicant. If you'd like to come down. Feel free to mediate in the hallway if you'd like. Feel free to mediate in the hallway if you'd like. Yeah, I know that's sort. Of happening. Yes, Commissioner. So yeah, thank you for your presentation earlier. Of course. So, you know, a few of the members that of the the neighborhood mentioned that you guys didn't meet with the community. Did you guys meet with the community? And if you didn't, then can you just explain why? Maybe. There were community workshops? I don't think I have the dates in front of me of exactly when they occurred, but I know there were. I'm sure. So Chris. Is with the project applicant team. Go ahead. Thank you commissioners. So. My phone number and my email are on the sign in front of the site. They're also on my website. I'm pretty accessible. The folks that spoke this evening were not part of the early community stakeholders that represented the residents nearby. From my perspective, these are sort of some late voices to the to the to the project. A lot of the massing and articulation and things that were under consideration were spoke about during our community stakeholder meetings. The requirement for parking for a feasible project, the setbacks that we did off of both sides of the project. I'll add this in that, you know, I've personally probably received 40 phone

calls from residents in the neighborhood, always taking the phone calls, always listened politely and talked about issues. And I, you know, I'll kind of address the comment that we're not a reasonable developer. I think we are a reasonable developer. We care about the city of San José. I volunteer on the Pbid board. I have done a lot in the city, care deeply for its residents. I want great outcomes. The end of the day. Willow Glen needs housing. That's where folks want to live. We talked about equitable. So I just think that that's my comment, is that the residents that were the most vocal were immediately adjacent, and the residents that were the in favor of the project were less vocal, but not immediately there if that helps give you some color. No, no, it definitely does. I appreciate you having your number and your email and such on the on there. I just think that if you guys would have just met with the community, such as the Wilmington Neighborhood Association leaders here, the appellant, David Fox and other community leaders, it would have just opened up that dialog that some of that mediation that you guys are having now, you guys could have had that had a chance to have that. I mean, I think the appellant is pretty flexible. He's saying that, you know, we understand the units. But such as the lighting or the setbacks, you guys would have had a chance to kind of meet and discuss those prior to this. And also if, you know, if someone, if community members asking for we want this and you guys aren't able to provide that, that's okay, then you guys can kind of explain why. So the community understands why you guys aren't able to do that. So that's just my my $0.02. I mean, you don't have to follow what I'm saying, but that's just my, my, my verbal opinion. And then I'll also somebody brought up construction. If this was to

go through, when would the, when would the construction need to be happened. Like any time set time zone for that or days and whatever. So. So as you guys realize that we're not through building permit, right? This is a planning approval and we would still need to complete construction drawings to get there. Our estimated construction schedule is about 18 months. So that's a typical type three project of this size and scale. You know we have two levels of concrete podium. But that's that's our estimation for that that timetable. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that's it for my questions for you. Thank you. Sure. And then I do have another question for staff. And I promise I'll be quick. Last question. So if the commission upholds or denies the the appeal today, what are the next steps? Does it go to? Is it go to council? Right. Just for clarification, does. It. So and Daniel, you can correct me here. This is the appeal of the director's decision. So if you deny the appeal, which is staff's recommendation, the project is approved. If you uphold the appeal, you can potentially place conditions on the project or deny it outright, if that makes sense. Thank you. That's it for my questions and I won't make any motions at this time. I'd like to hear what my peers have to say as well. Thank you. Commissioner Kasey, then Commissioner Bickford. Thank you, chair, a couple for I'll start with city staff and then a couple for the developer for this particular location. Is it in the SB 79 area? So if. It if. This didn't go forward then does it actually get encompassed by SB 79? And would we then potentially see other properties of this type in this location? I don't think we know off the top of our head, whether it's eligible for SB 79. Oh, hold on, we have some staff

up there. Do you want to get to your next question as we research that? I can. Come back to that one then. That's fine. And I guess the follow up to that is if it would be covered by SB 79, what height would be allowed by SB 79 for this particular parcel? Because obviously right now this is completely out of character for anything in the area. But if SB 79 is going to open the door to additional ones like this, then maybe that has a different bearing and follow on to that. Since the building is kind of out of character for height for anything in the in the general area from a safety standpoint, do we have fire coverage with ladders capable of reaching the seventh floor, servicing this particular area? Yeah, sure. So we have an approved fire variance for this project. If you want, I can go through the details of that. So there's a variance for this, right. From a safety standpoint. Pretty typical for any mid-rise building, particularly in areas that are, you know, up against single family homes or up against other multi-family buildings, if you want, I can go through the details. Well, I'm interested. I know under builder's remedy, I mean, there's only certain things in which you a builder's remedy can not go forward and one of them is safety. And so if we did give them a waiver, I'd be curious as to why we would give a safety waiver in this instance. Sure. So the reason for the variance is actually kind of what David was pointing out to the back side along Kottenberg is right up against the property line. So fire department needs like six feet around. So for that back portion, they need a fire variance. So they have fire rated walls up against that back portion and increased sprinkler density. And then they have certain requirements for the podium level to have fire access. But if they just put in the 5 foot or 6 foot setback, that would have. You got it? Yeah. If they put in a six foot setback, the fire department looks at it totally

differently. Yeah. Interesting. And then from a commercial standpoint, we're so desperate for commercial space. I know we're cutting it from 5500 to 1626. There's no provisions within builders remedy, etc. for us to maintain this critical resource in our community. We don't have anything in builder's remedy that requires replacement of existing commercial space, even less so on our own city policies for affordable housing to. Okay. And then I guess you can follow up. Or if you don't have the answer, I can take it with the developer. Were there any changes made to this project based upon the feedback from the community or from the Planning Commission that were substantial, or was it just this is builder's remedy. We're moving forward. Thank you for your input. This is the law. I would say in general, no, no, not too many changes at all. Minor changes. But the the form of the building massing pretty much was the same from the start. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And then I think we can answer your SB 79 question. That'd be great. Thank you. Yeah. Commissioner Kasey. Jason.lee, planner. This project does not appear to be in an SB 79 area. It looks like the closest station is Tamien and it's about 3500ft away. And it needs to be within a half mile to qualify for SB 79. Okay, so under no other laws going at this time would a building of this size be allowed in this particular location. So yeah, I will caveat that a little bit. Yeah, it could potentially qualify just as 100% affordable housing, affordable. Yeah. They need some pretty significant density bonus waivers or a density bonus itself to probably get to this height, but not infeasible. Okay. But in this case, we're doing 30%.

Right? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Bickford. Then Commissioner Barocio. Thank you, chair. I actually have some questions for the builder. If we could. The gentleman in the green shirt. I have questions for you, sir. A couple of people here this evening have talked about 4 or 5. What seemed to me to be relatively small changes, except for the five foot setback. I know that's a big one. The other one's putting downward facing lighting, putting flat roof instead of pitched roof. How difficult are those to implement in the plan for the building that you have now? I'll kind of take them one by one because I don't think they all go together. Sure. I agree with you that the five foot setback is a challenging redesign for drive, aisles and parking to work in our. And one of the earliest comments we got from the community is that parking is a massive problem and what we plan to do in our. We have a two levels of self parking stalls, but we're planning to add scissor lifts and. Basically any person who's living in this building will not park on the street. They're going to park in our project and that costs space and time and setbacks. So that's one issue. The lighting is a relatively inconsequential issue. So I think we could talk about that as like a condition of approval for something here. I would just say that this was a new, new concern that came very late to the process. In fact, never voiced to us as the applicant was just voiced an appeal. And so the appeal fee is relatively small versus what the developer has to pay to defend it. And we did hear a lot of things. And so we're happy to kind of make that adjustment, but we're

also trying to move forward with a much needed housing project. The soil. I'm not a landscape architect, so I'm going to kind of defer to my team. We have a very qualified landscape architect, Spielberg O'Hara studio. They go by saw. They've done some of the most beautiful work I've seen in my projects. And so I would like to consult with them before we say, hey, this works or doesn't, but I don't have a firm answer on that. And I think I'm forgetting the fourth issue here, which was. Yeah. So I think that came from, you know, Jeff Kearns here, he's our architect and it came from comments we heard early on to try to sculpt the massing, to not feel so tall. So if you make that structure, like one of the things that we looked at early on, which is maybe we're all forgetting is we could have built a box straight up, you know, it could have been 12 stories, right? And we chose very much. So to sculpt and set back and provide a more expensive project that we think kind of makes it feel less massive to the neighborhood. So those, those, the pitched roofs were intentional. Could and also to kind of go back and adjust them now is, is a fairly robust redesign. We'd like to kind of push forward on CDs. So I kind of agree with you. I mean, pitch roofs are what most of those surrounding area have. So it would be weird to me to cap the seven story building flat, but I also believe in listening to what the people in the community are saying and at least ask those questions. because I kind of disagree with your statement.

I don't think there's any house in San José anymore that has one car, so there will be on street parking and there will be problems unless you've addressed them in the transportation demand management plan, and I haven't heard anything about that. So I don't know if if you have that info or I should address that to staff. Okay, hang on a minute because I have another question for you. Don't go anywhere. Oh, are you going to sorry. I'm going to pull it up real quick. Okay. Thank you. While he's doing that, did I hear you say that you are willing to consider changes to downward facing lights? And I'm not asking to make it a condition of approval, but I am asking that the people that live in this community, I think, deserve to have some of your support in keeping their space livable. And I know that 18 months of construction and on street parking for people is going to be something, but people are going to live in these residences, and we need to make sure that they have a good experience. In addition to the people that are already there. I think I was consistent. We'd be willing to look at that. I don't see a massive issue with the lighting. So. Are you ready for TDM plan? Yeah. Okay, I'll read it off. You can stop me wherever you like. So these are their measures that they're implementing. So they're providing transit network improvements with improvements to the existing bus shelter that's directly in front of the project site on Willow Street. And that's in coordination with VTA. They also have pedestrian network improvements. So monetary contribution for an in lieu or for an in lieu fee for a future class for protected bike lane along

Willow Street. That's $144 per linear foot along Willow. A monetary contribution of $6,000 for high visibility back plates for improved visibility of signal heads at Willow Street and Third Avenue and Willow Street and Lincoln Avenue. And then they are installing rectangular, rapid flashing beacons at the existing pedestrian crosswalk along the Willow Street project frontage. And then lastly, they have unbundled parking costs from property costs. Do you want me to explain? Okay, that means that the. When you rent an apartment, you don't automatically get a spot. So you're going to pay for. So you're going to pay for a parking spot if you decide to get. One. Okay. I have one more question. Sorry. And this is about the construction management plan that we were talking about during the construction process. One of the speakers asked about how much involvement the community would get. It feels like there's friction between the community and the developer currently, and closing that gap and having community involvement in the construction management plan, I think is a reasonable request. Is it something that you're also willing to entertain? Understanding that I can't hold you to that if this gets approved? Yeah, I think we're happy to listen and work through staging plans and schedules and trying to estimate what this is going to be the impact to the neighborhood. You know, in terms of how we think about construction for that site, it really can't be staged anywhere other than Willow. Right.

And a job site like this will have some, some picks and, and some cranes and that will kind of be oriented towards Willow. So away from, you know, fortunately, the type of construction that it is, is not, you know, the worst type of construction out there. We're doing it mostly above grade. We're pouring concrete for the two levels. And then it's framing wood. So it's oh, it's yeah, it's, it's two levels of concrete with wood frame above. So I don't know, it's there's noise, but I, I've been standing on willow and frankly, car noise is there's a lot of actual physical neighborhood noise. It's not as quaint and quiet as we all like to think. I think the other part that I would add to the commissioner, your, Kasey, your comment about commercial space, just to kind of address that. We are struggling to make that commercial space viable and not a nuisance to the neighborhood. So we've been working with the neighbors to mitigate ongoing dumping in our parking lot, ongoing problems with, you know, some of the liquor store issues that come with it. So I think it's there is a, I believe, a net benefit to the I think that 1600 feet is going to be really dramatic and impactful for the neighborhood. And I can picture a lot of people sitting down and having a cup of coffee, which is we're anticipating for that retail space versus kind of what it is today. So yeah. Commissioner, sorry. I just want to close that by making a motion to deny the appeal. Okay. All right. Second. All right. Next up will be Commissioner

Barocio and then Commissioner Young. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your presentation and and for the community members who have come out. A lot of the commissioners have asked the questions that that I've had in my head and and thank you, staff, for for your great responses. The only question that I have is perhaps for staff that works in the public works, the first or second public comment mentioned something about a report or some report that that was submitted late, that it didn't allow for proper oversight or proper vetting. Is this accurate? And can you say more about about how that went? And is that a typical practice of a report that is seen to have substantial weight on the project to be submitted at that time? Thank you. Michelle Kimball Public Works. So the hydraulic model that was prepared for the project and is typical for most development projects is run by our. Sanitary Sewer master plan group, and it takes into account, you know, as built drawings as well as any available data. When that model is run, it's the, the capacity for the sewer main information is provided to, to development services.

But the, the data and all the technical aspects of it that are inputted into the model are not generally released for public viewing. But, you know, if if there is a request for it, I mean, that is something that can be shared. Okay. So. Again, it's not. Typical practice to have all that information. Publicly released. Publicly released. So the information was the report or the information was completed in advance, but it was just submitted. At the time that it was submitted. And then at that time it was available. How would how would a community member. No one about that process because it's a very, you know, industry insider type of information that, I mean, any person probably wouldn't know that, right? Like I don't, I don't know that is that is that information accessible? And then two, how would one know to ask for that? Right. And if it is, again, like how would a community member know how to ask or when to ask? Like, why isn't it part of the process of it being a public document? Or a public document that's available along with everything else? Yeah, I think I can just answer generally for like any technical document. I mean, it's just they need to request to review it. It's not like we post every single technical document for every project. Some we do, we're required to post like, say for CEQA documents, but just in general, we're not posting every single technical technical document that goes into a project. I'll take, for. Example, John Tu division manager. I mean, you're analyzing can police get to a site you're analyzing for water

capacity to a site you're analyzing? Can utilities go to these sites? All that are going to be analyzed by staff before we provide a recommendation. It's just not typical practice that we would dump the base data for all those determination out to the public. Now, if a member of the public asks us for that, I have a question about emergency response or I have a question about that. Where did you draw that conclusion? Can I see that data? That's more than likely to happen, but it's just not something we generally flood to the general public. I don't know how. I mean, we can let public know we have this information, but it's not something I would say every project. Just let you know, we have the base data for all this, if you want to know, it's just part of our normal review. Okay. Thank you. And I think I hope that that brings some light into how that happened. Thank you. What's that? Commissioner young, go first. Commissioner young. Thank you. Chair. I'd like to thank the the appellant. Mr. Fox, I really appreciated your reason to. Com presentation. Can tell you used to be a planning commissioner because that's what we like, right? I also appreciate oh, I also wanted to say I hope your mom's okay. I know how scary that can be. I'm glad. I'm glad you were able to make it. That makes me think she's probably going to be okay. I also appreciate the developer, his reasoned responses. It sounds to me like he's done everything he can to work with you folks. That's not an easy process because we have lots of different neighbors with lots of different concerns and issues, and I get the sense that

he tried to address them the best he can. Mr. Fox, I also appreciate that you walked up and sat next to the developers. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So. You know, I just I just want to address a couple things and then kind of give my feelings about the project. First of all, the legal side of this is clear. There's no question the developer has the legal ability to do the project. There's a reason why the state passed builder's remedy. There's a reason why the state has passed all the building. And planning bills that they have. It's because folks like us and I'm including myself, I live out in district nine in Cambridge. We don't want change. We don't want anything to change. We just want our single family neighborhoods to stay. The same. Problem is that can't happen anymore. And I'll get back to that in a minute. As far as the infrastructure goes, I'm not convinced that there's any problem with that. We had a sewer report. I'm pretty confident Public Works wouldn't have let this go forward. As far as the fire department goes, I'm retired fire chief. We deal with mid-rise buildings all the time. It's not a problem. There's a sprinkler system. There's stairwells, there's smoke detectors. That's not an issue. By the way, this is a mid-rise building. It's not a high rise building. So just for clarification on that, but I think the most important thing about this is we need housing in San José desperately. And this is the exact kind of housing we need. It includes some affordable housing, quite a bit of it, actually. It's in Willow Glen, which is an area that has very little affordable housing. My area down in district nine needs more mid-rise affordable

housing. None of us like change. None of us like a seven story building. I get it, but the future of this city is going to go one way or the other. Either we're going to stay the same and people can't afford to live here, right? So my kids, my grandkids, I'd like to live in San José. They can't they can't afford the rent, let alone buy a house. And it's a supply and demand issue, right? The more housing supply we can create, the rents are going to moderate. That's the only way we can do it. So, you know, I very much like this project. I'm in favor of it. I see a developer that wants to work with you all. I think he will, and that's why I seconded the motion. And and eager to see this project go forward. Thanks. Vice Chair Bickford. Then Commissioner Kasey. Thank you. Following on, Commissioner Barroso's questions, two things came up for me about the sewer thing. First. Mr. Is it UEL Jeff? UEL. Yeah. I want to commend you on this exceptional engineering document. It's probably the best analysis that I've seen of a situation like this. So I don't know how you did it. Please come down. If you're going to respond. Please come down. Because I did direct a. I am directing a question to you, so if you wouldn't mind coming down. This is being televised microphones, all that. Yes. All of the information is publicly available on the San José website. So, you know, I would like to get the the sewer report and,

you know, work with my, my lawyer and the people that helped me kind of craft this thing. Basically what I'm seeing is a couple of different things. One of which, on the sewer piece, the, like I said, the 19 foot critical thing, sorry. I'm not asking you to give your. Point of order here. This this gentleman's already had his two minutes. I understand that. And my only question was, did he get information from the city website or from the city to me? The sewer report and like, you know, I think Alec was saying, you like, can't find it. So basically I saw the information that is publicly available and there's no way you could actually do a real report. Thank you. That was my question for city staff. Michelle, I'm sorry I didn't get your last name, but my question is hypothetically, during construction, they do all sorts of tests, right? I'm assuming there's more than one sewer outlet for this building that's being constructed. It's going to connect in multiple places. If they find during construction that there is an issue, would remediation be required? Yes. I mean, if it's identified that there is some deficiency associated with the specific project, the project would also need to address it at that time. And you know, those are some of the items that would be reviewed during implementation stage. Thank you. Commissioner Kasey. Thank you chair. Following up on something, Commissioner Young mentioned that from a fire standpoint, there's nothing. It's in compliance. There's there's the law says we must proceed for for the legal team for San José. Just a question clarifying we granted a waiver. If I object to us granting the waiver, that's under safety grounds. Does that is that grounds for a

builder's remedy standpoint to not approve it? I mean, at this point, if we're going to say we want to backtrack against providing this variance, I think at this point it's pretty much too late. I mean. So can we clarify? Yeah, we can. grant a waiver. They look at the plan and proposal on how they're meeting the fire code. And in a lot of cases, if you are deviating from the standards, very typically the fire department will grant them a variance, meaning it's okay, we can't get access to the back ladder, then you have to do a fire rated wall on this side. Additional sprinklers on this side. That's typically not a discretionary action. That's an action by the fire department as an administrative action. The fire. Chief think about it like a mitigation measure. Right. Okay. So it's an either or. You either have the five foot setback or if you don't, then you must. We can't say, okay, since this is the condition, then we're just going to use, you know, D2 to deny this whole project and ignore the possibility of of variance. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Barroso. Okay, so my question. is just around the motion. So the motion the staff recommendation is to deny the appeal. Yes. Staff. Yeah. Okay. And then the motion is to deny. The staff recommendation. To uphold the denial. Okay, perfect. Just clarity around that. Thank you. Through the chair, If I can clarify, I think the maker of the motion, Vice Chair Bickford you mentioned to uphold the denial, but do you mean to uphold the director hearing's the

director's decision and to deny the appeal? Correct. Thank you. All right. Before we go to a vote, I just wanted to say or echo Commissioner Young's sentiments regarding how this city is changing. Right. We can the city is going to change. It's going to change in the positive. It could stay the same. But the way it's changing today, at least as I see it, is we're seeing a lot of our school districts, close schools, we're seeing little leagues, evergreen, Branam Hills are all closing because of the reduction in children. And a director on one of the neighborhood leadership councils today told me that the closings are a result of her generation's message to the younger generation that they should not have kids. And I think being a father, that's really just kind. Of just. Kind of breaks my heart. So I truly want to encourage additional building, and I see why our Democratic elected state officials have implemented rules like builder's remedy. We'll move on to Commissioner Pierre. Commissioner Oliverio, this is Andre's. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Great. Yeah. So state law is clear. Cities have no choice to approve these. This development and countless others in the past, the city could have facilitated dialog between applicant and community. But that's no longer the case. The city's General Plan allows for an additional 400,000 person population growth in strategic areas of the city. That was done with massive community input, and that's where the city had intentions to put housing. But in this case, builder's remedy goes over that. I like to point out for those in the community. That, you. Know, are not a fan of not being able to voice neighborhood

feedback and a typical process that both the elected state representatives who represent this area voted for all the laws mentioned tonight. And when it comes to affordable housing in district six, actually. It's one of the top. And not too far away from this development site. Meridian and Willow very near there are 250 units of what we call low income affordable housing that will be open at the end of this year. Thank you. Commissioner Olivero. Commissioner Escobar. Unfortunately, I'm going to take it back to the sewer one more time. I was waiting to see if it would get answered before I asked. So we have numerous people that have come forward and said there's a lot of activity surrounding sewer repair, but yet we're being told that the sewer can hold the new load. It's two different sides of what I want to hear of. So what is going on that there's so much sewer repair, but yet we can accommodate the new load with this building because that doesn't reconcile with me. So I would think that would go back to a health and safety standard. So enlighten me please. Thank you. So some of the concerns that are being raised with regard to. Maintenance activities that are occurring in the area, in a sense, are existing conditions. Those can be addressed through additional maintenance activities, and they're not necessarily due to the project. With regard to, you know, the vicinity of the area, I don't know exactly the

specifics as to where the those maintenance activities are occurring. But again, you know, as we assess the project for the modeling, for the project, we're looking at the area along the project frontage and then downstream of the, of the, of the project. Willow. Glen. Just the, you know, the, the impacted line associated with the project. Okay. If we were to find, let's say that the building is fully occupied and I know this is getting way far ahead, but the building is fully occupied. And now downstream or upstream from the building, it's exasperating. An existing issue that's currently recognized and being worked on. Is that something we're looking forward to pay attention to, and if so, would we then take it back to this developer to say, you need to work on this with us? At that point, you know, again, if there are additional. Issues that arise after the project is built, technically that would be the responsibility of the city to help address. Because we we maintain the the sewer mains within the public right of way. Okay. I mean, if I can phrase it another way, Commissioner, just like how the existing houses on there got an infrastructure built and they are the ones potentially causing any downstream or any issues. We don't go back to them to fix the pipe. It's responsibility of the city. And I think that's why the city would do a due diligence to ensure that the right size and model it, because they

know that we're on the hook in the long term. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments from any commissioners? And we have a motion on the floor. We will go to a roll call vote. Vice Chair Bickford. I'm not exactly sure how to phrase this. I'm voting yes for my my motion. All right. Commissioner Barroso. Just let me clarify what's happening here. So Vice Chair Bickford's motion was for the staff recommendation. So if you agree with the staff recommendation you're voting. Yes. Commissioner Ambrosio. Yes. Commissioner. Bhandal. Yes. Commissioner Cantrell is absent. Commissioner Cao. Yes. Commissioner. Kasey. Yes. Commissioner Escobar. Yes. Commissioner Nguyen. Yes. Commissioner. Oliverio. Yes. Commissioner young. Yes. Myself. Yes. The motion carries with ten yeses and one absent. Through the chair. If I can confirm the Planning Commission's decision is final on this

project, there is no appeal available. Next will be item five C, SB 79. While we are moving on to the next item, if folks can please clear the chamber from the previous item. Thank you. Through the chair. I'm happy to introduce staff for this item. So the item before you is proposed amendments to our zoning codes in order to implement Senate Bill 79. And in the box we have Division Manager Martina Davis, planner, supervising planner Aparna, and our project manager for this item who will be presenting

Irina. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Okay. Yes. Good evening commissioners. My name is Rina Zhang and I am here as the project manager for today's presentation on file number B 20 5-006, title 20. Zoning code update for Senate Bill 79. So Senate Bill 79, also known as abundant and Affordable Homes Near Transit Act, is a state bill that was authored by Senator Scott Wiener and signed by Governor Newsom on October 10th, 2025. The provisions of the law will take effect starting on July 1st this summer. In general, SB 79 supersedes local zoning and allows housing on all sites currently zoned for residential, mixed use or commercial development within a core. Within a half mile of certain transit stops and specifies maximum heights and densities that a local jurisdiction may not restrict. SB 79 applies to counties with more than 15 passenger rail stations and in the Bay area. This includes Santa Clara, Alameda, San Mateo and San Francisco counties. SB 79 standards are based on the distance of the housing development to the transit stop. In other words, the closer you are to a transit station, the more height, density and far you are allowed. SB 79 splits these standards based on a tier system, so tier one includes heavy rail transit and very high frequency commuter rails like Caltrain and Bart, of which the city has a total of ten stations. Tier two includes light rail, high frequency commuter rail and bus rapid transit. With a dedicated lane like our

VTA, light rail and BRT, the city has a total of 46 of these tier two stations, and overall we have 56 Todd stops throughout the city. The proposed ordinance includes the implementation for SB 79. All projects looking to use SB 79 have to meet the eligibility requirements. As I had mentioned earlier, the project must be on a site where the existing zoning allows residential, mixed use or commercial development. For San José, this means nearly all zoning districts except for industrial, open space and agriculture. The table on this slide shows three different distances from a Tod station that dictate development standards, with density decreasing with an increase in distance from the station. The standards also vary between tier one and tier two stations, and SB 79 project is subject to different standards based on the distance of the site to the Tod stop that ranges from half mile, a quarter mile, or within 200ft of a pedestrian access point. As established in state law. The densities vary from 80 to 160 dwelling units per acre. The project must generally be a residential mixed use development, with at least two thirds residential, permanent or supportive housing or farm worker housing. The development cannot contain a hotel or other type of temporary lodging. The project must include five or more housing units with a minimum density of at least 30 dwelling units per acre, or the minimum density required by city. Whichever number is greater. The proposed housing units cannot exceed an average of 17 1750 net habitable square feet per unit. So in general, this is the livable space and excludes garages, unfinished basements, parking and the like. Projects must also meet prevailing wage skilled and trained workforce requirements for buildings that are over 85ft.

Planning staff presented a preliminary analysis on SB 79 to City Council on January of this year. At that time, City Council directed staff to designate qualifying industrial areas identified in the city's General Plan as employment areas as industrial employment hubs, and to exempt nonresidential sites within those areas from the provisions of SB 79. City Council gave staff additional direction as listed here. But for this evening, we are bringing forth item one in the proposed ordinance. Items two through four will be addressed separately. SB 79 allows local agencies with more than 15 Tod stops to exempt employment areas within half a mile of a. Tod and San José has 56 stops, so an industrial employment hub that has a contiguous area of 250 acres designated in the city's General Plan on or before January 1st, 2025 as an employment lands area during the draft and review stage of SB 79, the city helped negotiate this exemption into the bill. The city's General Plan diagram, as shown on the right, has identified existing employment areas highlighted in blue and of those lands staff further identified employment lands that would qualify for the exemption highlighted in a yellow outline. These include North San José Berryessa International Business Park, Milpitas, Bart East, Gish, Maybury and then the south of downtown. We have the Monterey Business Corridor, and further south is the old Edenvale and Old Edenvale Transit Employment Center. These employment lands are planned to accommodate a wide variety of industry types and development forms, including high rise and mid-rise

office or research and development uses. Heavy and light industrial uses and supporting commercial uses to respond to the projected demand for each type of industrial land. Significant job growth is planned through intensification of the city's employment land areas, with a major capacity identified for North San José with approximately 100,000 jobs. When staff conducted the analysis to identify which employment lands could be excluded based on the criterion SB 79, we found that these five parcels had at least 250 acres of contiguous area of primarily industrial designated parcels. The industrial zoning districts we proposed to exclude from SB 79 provisions consist of light and heavy industrial industrial park combined industrial, commercial and transit employment center. A total of 2051 parcels designated as industrial, with a total of 4448 acres, are proposed to be excluded from the SB 79 provisions. Zooming into these industrial employment hubs, hubs one through three include North San José Berryessa International Business Park, Milpitas, Bart East, Gish and Maybury. They are located to the north of the city, just south of highway 237, and have sites that are within Council districts three, four and six. Hub number four. The Monterey Business Corridor is located just south of 280, between highway 87 and 101, and have sites within Council District seven. Hub number five, Old Edenvale and Old Edenvale Transit Employment Center are located further south surrounding Monterey Road and Blossom Hill Road. These sites are within Council Districts two and ten.

The city's overall land dedicated specifically to jobs is small, and with SB 79, this bill would make most of the city's industrial land open for residential development, so the proposed amendment will protect what we can to ensure we retain land specifically for jobs. Parcels zoned for industrial uses provide crucial employment opportunities across education and professional levels, allowing community members and access to a wider variety of jobs. In addition to San Jose's parcels that are dedicated to commercial, office and retail uses. Also, the preservation of employment lands supports growth, job growth at planned and existing regional transit stations. If the city were to allow SB 79 residential development on these identified industrial and employment lands, these actions could significantly diminish revenue to the city or significantly increase its service costs to the city, as there would be no way to significantly make up for it anywhere else. Our industrial lands are primarily privately owned and make a significant contribution to the city's economic development, as well as fiscal sustainability. North San José is the city's largest employment district, home to many important tech companies and a key growth area for the city. The city's General Plan designates a growth capacity of about 100 100,000 new jobs and 32,000 new housing units to further its development as a regional employment center. The industrial designations in this area support uses like tech offices, research and development, and advanced manufacturing. More notably, North San José includes sites with residential General Plan designations as well as residential overlays denoted in the housing element. So applicants with a property that have a residential GP designation or residential overlay can propose a housing project using SB 79. Looking at various International Business Park and Milpitas. Bart. One of the key characteristics of these employment areas is

that they collectively have about 94% designated industrial uses. Some of the key industries in this area include companies that work on digital services, scientific equipment, ceramics, manufacturing and similar industries. East Gish and Maybury is home to a large amount of heavy industrial sites such as automobile parts, manufacturing, contract supplying and services that require heavy mechanical equipment that would not be conducive around communities due to their nuisance or hazardous characteristics. Monterey business corridor surrounding Monterey Road, which was a historic thoroughfare and former gateway to the city's urban core. This led to the growth of the area as an industrial center, which it remains today. This area is categorized by light and heavy industrial, which provide much needed employment opportunities, particularly for middle income blue collar jobs. For Monterey Business Corridor, there are at least 92% industrial GP designations within this employment area, all of which are light or heavy, industrial or combined industrial, commercial, just as we have done for hubs one through three. The handful of these industrial designated parcels that overlap with SB 79 transit buffers will be excluded from SB 79 provisions. One of the unique aspects of Edenvale is that it is home to IBM's first West Coast site, with a campus that was built in 1957. Over time, a lot of major industries were established here, such as Western Digital, who actually retained a significant portion of this site. It is also home to a lot of other unique and important

industries, like companies that make medical and surgical products. And looking back, when the city initially looked at preserving potential employment lands during the creation of the city's current General Plan, the task force argued that selective industrial development within the Edenvale area would generate revenues to support city services and support a reverse commute pattern to make better use of existing transportation infrastructure. By placing job growth in the southeast portion of the city. Retaining employment uses within Old Edenvale and Old Edenvale Tech will contribute to the economic resiliency and future opportunities of industry in San José. For Old Edenvale and old Edenvale Tech, these identified employment lands have at least 91% industrial designated parcels and will be excluded from the SB 79 provisions. As mentioned earlier, the land throughout the city dedicated to jobs is small, and with SB 79, this bill would make most of our industrial land open for residential development. So the city must protect what it can to ensure retention of land specifically for jobs, for now and for the future. The timeline for this update is to proceed to City Council hearing on March 17th, 2026, with a second reading on March 24th. Planning staff will submit the ordinance to HCD for review on March 25th, and once again, SB 79 will be in effect by July 1st, 2026. Staff have received three public comments for this proposed ordinance. Please also feel free to visit our planning webpage on our zoning ordinance updates at the link shown here. And we are proposing to take this with your recommendation to City Council. This concludes staff presentation. Thank you so much for your time.

Staff are now available to take your questions. Commissioner, Bhandal. I'm sorry, do we have public. We have public comment on the item. Roland Lebrun and Robert's work. So can we maximize this? Okay. Not sure what's going on here. So this is okay. There we go. So I'm going to talk to you about the a precedent. Next slide please. Oh, I do that. Okay. This is not going well. Okay.

Basically I wanted to talk about is the ayastar parcel and what happened there. And this commission back in, in, in 2014, actually changed the zoning for that parcel to generate funding for the stadium. And it really had severe impact on us. So this is straight from a. Gemini. Gemini. What happened here? And Gemini said so it's been done before, but they didn't just make 80 million. They bought it for 5.1 and sold it for 102 102.3. And that's not including the Costco. Okay. There we go. So that's what happened to the ADP. That's what the Planning Commission did. They moved the 32 acres of residential from area two to area five. So the the square at the bottom, that's the VTA light rail. And I the parcel and the other side of the freeway. And then they moved 1 million of R&D down to our side. So I got the date of the Planning Commission when this happened and the city council, the videos are gone. Actually watch the video a month ago. He's gone. Now all the materials are gone. And what I'm saying, my last slide is I'm asking staff to comply with SB 79 by restoring the 32 acre housing element in area two back to where it was, which was around the Santa Teresa light rail. The collateral damage of what they did to us. Our neighborhood association's at bottom, is incalculable. This is not industrial land. They've got RV parking, tiny homes, and God knows what else.

There are no jobs there. Thank you, thank you. Roberts. And then Mike Sodergren. Okay. Good evening, members of the commission. My name is Rob Zoework. I'm a principal planner at VTA. Thanks for the opportunity to speak briefly on this item. VTA has been following the SB 79 rollout process very closely and is interested in continued dialog with cities about their SB 79 implementation plans. VTA staff has been meeting with City of San José staff on this topic, as well as related topics including the General Plan for year review. VTA submitted a comment letter which is included in the online packet, but I'd like to highlight a few points here. First, VTA strongly supports land use policies that enable mixed use, mixed income development on these scarce lands, near high capacity transit. We are concerned that the proposed industrial exemption would limit the ability to deliver these kinds of outcomes. At VTA, Santa Teresa and transit oriented development sites by precluding residential uses. The exemption would prevent the type of mixed use development that's necessary to fully realize the benefits of Tod on these sites, VTA encourages the Planning Commission and the City Council next week to direct staff city staff to continue working with VTA to establish a residential overlay or General Plan designation change to allow mixed use development on these

two Tod sites. BT is more than willing to work with the city on a development approach that would balance housing production with providing a considerable employment capacity on these sites. Alternatively, the Planning Commission and council could direct staff to remove these two VTA owned properties from the proposed industrial exemption. Regarding non VTA owned lands within one half mile radius of the Berryessa and Milpitas Bart stations. If the city ultimately adopts the industrial exemption in these areas, VTA strongly encourages the city to adopt policies that intensify industrial and commercial densities within these areas, such as establishing floor area ratio minimums. This would complement the substantial transit investment that is happening that has happened in these areas, and we're happy to meet with city staff to further discuss. Thank you very much. You. Hi. Commissioners and staff. I'm Preservation Action Council of San José. Mike Sodergren speaking. We have been tracking SB 79 for some time now for reasons directly related to our concerns about historic properties. But we specifically never argue against housing. So we are in favor of what staff has put forward as a recommendation. Yet with the PTA stuff withstanding to preserve our employment lands. It wasn't that long ago that we were definitely concerned and envious of our neighbors all around us, that San José was providing the housing. We were the bedroom community for all of the industries. I don't think the issues have gone away in terms of supporting our fire. Our libraries, our parks, our police by

magically SB 79, allowing us a carve out an exception for employment lands. They've done a brilliant job with very little time, you know, to define these overlay areas and to specifically pick out the zones that should be preserved for employment purposes. But it is an opportunity, I think, to make sure that we send a message back to our state that local autonomy, local authority, local decision making is thank you very much. Thank you. We will now move on to commissioner discussion. If there are no more public comments, Commissioner, Bhandal. Thank you chair. Thank you for the presentation as well. I've seen the timeline for HCD and what time we need to get it to them by and how there's a stoppage on the way to City Council before doing that. If HCD was to request any changes or find a non-compliant, then what's the procedure? How does that work out? Thank you. Martina Davis, Division Manager planning. So if they were to deem it non- compliant, they would have to tell us why. And we would have an ability to make additional findings, either change the ordinance or make additional findings saying no, we do believe this is in compliance. And this is why, from there, HCD can decide to agree with our findings or start enforcement actions. So basically, we would almost have our own appeal to ourselves, you know, saying, yeah, no, we uphold our decision or based on your feedback, we're going

to change it. And then HCD can kind of decide what to do with that. And then a team member mentioned that that the VTA lands due to look into that, or what's your take on that? Yes, we've we've been having conversations with VTA about those lands, and we are happy to continue those conversations about those lands. We do understand VTA has a strong desire for housing development in these areas. So we we're happy to continue to talk to them about a path forward for those sites. Cool. My take is. I you know, I believe in protecting and preserving the land for our job opportunities is essential for the growth of any city. The city of San José, our city, especially, you know, we're known as a bedroom community because we've tossed over so much land towards single family homes in the past, and we haven't preserved enough. Yeah, we we are envious of our neighboring cities. So many people go there to work. I can start naming there's they're all around us. But you know, we're we're stuck in that. The city phase where we're supporting the bedroom for them and the housing for them. And you know, SP 79 is a state wide bill. It's not specific for San José, but I appreciate San José City staff for jumping ahead and kind of preserving those. The, the, the employment land that we so much desperately need. So I commend staff for that. This is a necessary step. I thank you for taking it. I'll be supporting the change to the title 20 tonight and agreeing with the staff recommendation. Thank you. But I won't make a motion yet. I want to hear from my peers. Have to say. We'll go to Commissioner Oliverio, then Commissioner Barocio. Thank you chair. I just simply make a motion to approve the staff

recommendation. Have a second. Second. Seconded by Kasey. All right. On to Commissioner Barocio. Thank you. Thank you for your report. Very detailed. Would you be able to talk a little bit about. What was mentioned by the first public comment in terms of a little history of what happened, in terms of the swap of the 32 acres? And is it is it possible for that to happen? Just for clarity and for the benefit of. The commenter thank you. Thank you. Unfortunately, we I don't know, none of us know that specific project well enough to be able to speak to it. I can speak a little bit more broadly on that. I star swap with regards to the earthquake stadium. I do believe that originally did start before 2014. I suspect the 2014 action was just kind of part of something that had already happened. But yeah, under our old General Plan, it was not as strong on preserving employment lands. And so that that kind of I star exchange to let that industrial property turn to housing in exchange for an extraordinary benefit was that was a policy framework that had been developed under our old General Plan, after we saw a lot of industrial conversions. So at that point, we did allow that conversion with exchange for it would help fund the earthquake stadium. And we have an earthquake stadium. Now. I don't I am not aware of any further swaps with regards to other things in that area. I will say, you know, that that bigger picture conversion with regard to that Istar property was under our old General Plan, which really wasn't as strong on

the industrial preservation at the time. Okay. And just a follow up question, is that just a situation that happened that closely relates to SB 79, or is this just something that's not even in the realm of SB 79 in terms of being close to transit? Is it is it is it just some sort of confusion about maybe there closely related, but really we're talking apples and oranges, like that process of flipping back and forth. It's really not an SB 79 thing. It's somewhat related. If I understand the speaker, in that, you know, according to him, that property was designated for residential at some point and it got changed to industrial. And if without this exception, under 79, it could effectively go back to residential and be developed as residential. So I think that's what the resident is. Our resident, the person is asking is don't exempt that property from SB 79. So it effectively goes back to the residential that it may have been in the past. So I think that's how it's related. But you know, it's not something we would have analyzed because it is an industrial property now. And it is important for us to preserve our industrial properties. Thank you. Commissioner Bickford. Vice Chair Bickford. Thank you. I'm in district. Four in North San José, and it feels like this is a huge volume. It's the largest set and it sort of cat. When I look at it, it casts that entire area as zoning for industrial that that wouldn't even allow mixed use residential in the areas that are on transit corridors. Do I have that right? So North San José actually has a

mix of planned for intense job growth because of the transit proximity as well as we are proposing a lot of housing in that area. So if you look at the North San José map, you'll see we're not proposing to exempt a number of sites that have housing overlays or that's what underlying designations, right? So, so yeah, so North San José is very much a mix. And you know, one of the things I'll always say is that if the train just goes from apartments to apartments, what are people taking the train for? Right? So it is important for us to plan for both intense jobs and in your presentation. Do you have that diagram that actually shows? Because all I could really see was an entire block moved to industrial and and holding for, for only industrial use. And that was concerning to me. I'm thinking about specifically some of the corridors and places where it would make sense to put large volumes of housing that would then be able to serve the the businesses, like there's a data center and a second harvest food bank being built there. There's not any housing around it to support the people please. Yeah, yeah. And I'm just speaking to the North San José policy. So it is very much a balance because you're absolutely correct. Right. The whole North San José area development policy that we had was about creating that balance in North San José so that there is residential to support the housing. Now, that said, I do want to remind us that North San José is a very important employment area for the city. And the more housing you introduce to it, the more difficult it actually is for that industry to sustain. You know, industry sometimes does have hazardous materials. It changes the land values as well. So, you know, I would agree housing near transit is very important. But in North San José, it is also a very important employment

area. So on this map, the blue is transit employment center. So that is the planning for intense employment growth. They could build office high rises for example research and development, manufacturing, that kind of thing. The sites with the residential overlays, you'll see them in that hashed pattern. And then you'll see there are a number of sites that have a residential underlined designation, and they're kind of sprinkled through North San José. Those sites have been chosen, again as ones that we think would be suitable for housing and not as likely to impact the industrial ecosystem up in North San José. So when we do plan for housing up there, we're very thoughtful on the sites that we plan it for. Yeah. Actually, this this diagram helps quite a bit. Thank you very much. All right. If we have no other comments from commissioners, go ahead to a roll call. Vote. Vice Chair Bickford. Yes. Commissioner. Barocio. Yes. Commissioner. Yes. Commissioner Cantrell. Absent. Commissioner Cao. Yes. Commissioner. Kasey. Yes. Commissioner. Escobar. Yes. Commissioner. Nguyen. Yes. Commissioner. Oliverio. Yes. Commissioner. Young. Yes. And myself is a. Yes.

So the same vote as all the others tonight? Ten. Yes. And one absent. Seconder was Kasey. Okay. Onto agenda item number six. Referrals from the city council boards, commissions and agencies. No referrals. And agenda item seven. Good and welfare. Yes. I do not have any reports under good and welfare for items not seven, B and D, but I do have a quick report on the city Council items. So next week on March 17th, the Council will be considering these SB 79 ordinance amendments that the Planning Commission recommended approval of. But in addition, the Council will also be looking at historic resource protections and specifically how SB 79 affects historic resources and how those resources may or may not have adequate protections under new Sciquest. Streamlining bills such as the AB 130 state legislation that was effective July 1st. So that's coming up next week. And then March 24th, the City Council will be considering the housing Element Annual Progress report. And if they approve it, staff will be sending that on onto eight CED before April 1st. On item C Commission calendar and study sessions. So our next meeting for the Planning Commission will be on March 25th. We have one big item lining up for you. It's another builder's remedy project, but it is associated with an environmental impact report with. Significant and unavoidable impacts. So the Planning Commission will consider that item and make a recommendation to council, because that project will require an override if it is to move forward. And then on April 8th, we also have a couple of items lining up for that

meeting as well. And also on March 25th, we'll have the deferral item that that is just deferred today. Thank you to the task force for a really good conversation last week on continuing our efforts on the General Plan for year review around missing middle housing. I am excited to share that our next task force meeting will be on April 1st, and that'll be focused on the second conversation around residential capacity. But also we'll be talking about jobs and employed residents ratio at that meeting. Right. Thank you. Anything for the commissioner Bhandal. It's a good question. You said AB1 20. AB1 3130. Thank you. Yes. Anything for the public record? Not. The meeting is adjourned at 849.