Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening to all of you. Thank you very much for spending a little bit of time with us as we talk about our church and the potential of being able to lease this building here. My name is Chris and I am the pastor of City Light Bible Church. We first began this church back in September of 2022, so it's been about four years, and it's been nothing but a joy. It's been exciting. It's been just more than we could have ever imagined when we started this church. We've seen people's lives absolutely transformed. We've seen people grow spiritually. spiritually in many different ways, and we've seen a real loving community form. So just by way of introduction, I wanted to give a little bit into the purpose as to why we exist as a church and what we've been doing for the past Four years or so. So we kind of think of inward outward kind of thing. So inwardly, we are a community of Christians who love each other deeply. We have one of our core values is purposeful community. So we want this community, we want this fellowship, we want to be together, but we want it to be purposeful. We want there to be a deeper reason as to why we gather, both as a church on Sunday as well as in smaller groups. And so we're trying to move past the small talk. try to move past the, how's the weather, how's the 49ers doing, that kind of thing, and have these real heart-to-heart conversations, these real how's your soul doing kind of conversations where we really seek to care for each other, to know when people are going through the lows and the valleys in life, and to be able to give them strength and and breathe life into their souls. So it's been an amazing time forming this community. We have just absolutely loved living out these loving, caring, compassionate relationships. And then secondly, we have an outward purpose. We do hope to breathe life into this community as well, into the neighborhood that we're in. We hope to make a positive impact to extend that care and compassion that we have for each other to the people in the community, in the city of Santa Clara, and even beyond that, if we're able to. It's something that we have been passionate about from the very beginning and have sought to do this in small ways. We have served multiple times in a year at the Santa Clara Post Acute Center to help people who are going through rehabilitation. We've been a sponsor for the Santa Clara Art and Wine Festival for the past four years and been able just to try to spread joy and love that way. And we have an Easter egg hunt that's open to the community and really any Sunday is open to the community. So that's just a few examples there. And really, we hope that we're just getting started. in terms of how we're going to make a positive, loving impact on the people around us, the neighbors that we end up having. So that's just a little brief introduction into our church. And I guess I'll turn it over to Alex to go into the details.

So here we go. Thank you. So I'm Alex Ross. I'm with Pillars Architecture. And I'm getting feedback because I've got this on. So I will be the architect on the project. Why is this on still? Sorry, guys. I just want to turn my mic off. It should be off. Oh, there we go.

No. It's going to keep talking to me, guys.

All right, so I'm going to put up on the screen here. I'm going to share my screen so we can do a little slideshow about what we want to do here. So if you will bear with me, I will start sharing my screen here. I can't share my screen. There we go. Sorry for the bit of silence here. So City Light Bible Church is the project. And what we are proposing is an existing building, which you could see before. We're sitting here at the proposed location for this project. And it's going to go in this building. There's a few modifications we have to make to the interior of the building in order to get the sanctuary in here, the Sunday school classrooms, all the other rooms that are needed for the church, and some very minor exterior improvements where we're going to put in some doors on the outside of the building for emergency egress. and more ease of access to the building. And then to satisfy some city requirements, we're adding a new trash enclosure to the building, which doesn't have one right now. You could see if I can move this piece. There you go. The church obviously has Sunday school or Sunday services. On Sundays, they are pretty much open all day, but the primary Sunday services from 8 a.m. ends around 1 o'clock, and then they have some afternoon Bible study classes on a Sunday. And then during the week, Monday through Friday, mostly during the day, there's not so much happening except for administrative activities, some small group meetings that will be occurring. And then there's some evening small things that happen during the week. And Saturdays, they have a community outreach and occasional fellowship events. They also have some weekday community outreaches, the food pantry, community fellowship events like a potluck or gatherings on a Saturday afternoon. They may occur here and some small administrative meetings during the week during daytime hours. And then these are just some fun pictures of the church community having fun doing what they do for worship, along with throwing pies in people's faces. This is an overview of the building site. And on the left hand of the building is the side the church will be on. On the right hand side is existing office use, which will remain an office use. We're proposing basically now you can see the highlighted in yellow section is the tenant area that will be going into and changing some of the interiors. So what I've done is I've got an existing plan here with the building is unfortunately some reason it left some of the new stuff on here, but really you'll see very little work is being done as we are adding a bathroom. in the middle of the building and then sanctuary down towards the bottom and adding some other spaces into the building. Very minor, very small outside. In fact, I've got some pictures here of the front of the building and you can see the highlighted sections in yellow of the pictures that show where we're putting some new doors. But that's really the most prominent exterior work we're doing on the front of the building. No work is happening on the east elevation. And on the west elevation, we're putting a trash enclosure in an existing truck dock area. And then on the rear of the building, which doesn't face any streets, we're again adding a couple of double doors and we're filling in a little bit of storefront on the backside of the building. Beyond that, I think we've got is we've got the main contacts. I'll leave that up on here. so that you can look at it for a little bit in the recording. But we have Rick Maples, who's the main contact at City Light Bible Church, to call on this. And at the City of Santa Clara, we have Tracy Tam, the associate planner. And again, their information is on the screen for you. And I think, unless there's any questions, or if I missed anything, we can wrap this meeting up.

Yeah, hi. How are you doing? I'm Sud Shane, council member. Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Oh, okay. Now, did you purchase the building or are you leasing it?

We are leasing the space.

Okay. And then are you going to have like a school there too or what are you going to do?

There's no school beyond the Sunday school.

Okay. And you have, I think, 250 odd parking spots for 900 people. Is that right?

That's right. But if you think about on Sundays, the way the city's figured out the parking regs is that typically you've got a family of four coming or sometimes more. And a lot of people carpool the church. So they give an allowance for that, but we're not doing anything special for the parking, but we think we have more than enough parking.

Now, I mean, if you're Sundays, have you negotiated with the neighbors to see if some of the tech campuses might give you some privileges?

We've talked to the neighbors, but we haven't been required to do any negotiations with the neighbors that aren't on our property. We do have an agreement with the tenant that's sharing the site with us to use their parking on a Sunday.

Okay. And then my last question is, there's a whole plan to redevelop the Patrick Henry area.

Yes.

How does this fit into that redevelopment?

Well, this will be purely my opinion, but maybe I could hand it off if you want more of a factual response for planning. But my opinion, churches work great with multifamily. So they would rather be in a neighborhood, but these days it's harder to find churches. property like this to put a church into a neighborhood so if all of a sudden multifamily started popping up around a church it would be ideal that that's who they want to serve yeah those are all my questions I mean I went to your website it looks like a good group of people everyone seems to have fun there it's a good community yeah I appreciate it we have we have a live question Okay. Hey, Richard, you have a question for Hello. Hello.

Oh, yeah, I do have a question. Again, I have 900 people. And you have 200 In 30 parking spaces, how many cars do you anticipate are going to come? I mean, do you think there'll be three people in a car?

I think there'll be more than three people in a car. Most of these churches either come as a family group or they're carpooling.

Oh, well, now, where do you meet? Is it meet at your present location?

Mission College is where they meet right now.

Well, how many cars are usually out of service on Sunday?

I'm staring at the pastor right now for an answer.

How many?

I'm saying I'm waiting for the pastor to... He doesn't go out and count cars, but I'm going to say... is the parking lot full at Mission College do you think you have I don't think that right now the church doesn't have 900 people this is their kind of outward plan right now they've got close to like 400 right now and so they probably have like 400 would be ample parking with the 200 spaces I would think Yes. And they only have 400 right now. 900 is kind of like, hey, we get lucky or we're praying that this is going to grow.

Well, it may. And then what would you do? How would they, where would they park? I'm just curious.

So for right now, we have two things. We have an agreement with the neighbors here. It was an office who's not here during the weekend and we can park there on Sundays. So that gains us, I forget off the top of my head, I'm going to say another 70 parking spaces. And we've also talked to the neighbors, but we don't have anything official. With that in mind, Planning also has a ratio that they require us to provide parking per square footage of a building for a church, and we've complied with that.

Okay, but then if you do lease space or use space, is that, you know... Does that doesn't put an easement on the property or does it? I mean, what if they changed their mind, didn't want you to use their space because they sold the property or something? Then I guess you'd have to find space someplace else. Is that right?

At the end of our lease, if the owner decides to sell, the church no longer has a space, but they have a lease. to use the building in the meantime.

Okay.

Anything else, Richard?

No, you know that, I guess that's just a, see, how long have you been, I missed the first couple of minutes. How long have you been, the church been like about 400 people?

They just reached 400 and the church is beating at mission college for the last four years.

Four years. Okay. All right. Well, no, that's all my question. I just want to be curious how you'd handle the growth and stuff.

We're excited to figure that out.

Yeah. A good problem to have.

All right. Well, thank you, Richard.

All right, thank you.

We have one question here.

So I would like to know a more technical staff answer to how this fits in with the development that's here. I also know that there were several churches in this area a little bit further south. I think there was a Chinese church. There was a Korean church. I don't know where the Chinese church is. And this is, I think, light industrial. And there's a zone for light industrial. And there was no housing development. previously contemplated, as executive staff likes to use that word. But everything was enabled through a conditional use permit. And the conditional use permit, I know that in 2011, one was actually denied because of the light industrial use. They said that was incompatible with families, there was a danger because of industrial uses. I want to know what the updated answers are for those. And I'd like to know what staff says about compatibility with the development that's happening here and going to happen.

So the very loud, sorry.

So the project site is located in the Patrick Henry specific plan, which was a long range planning effort that received and in which the plan was adopted by the city council. And so there is a vision for this area to be redeveloped to high density housing, along with mixed use. And I believe there's like open space requirements and parkland and things like that. As far as this church use, it is allowed by way of a conditional use permit because the property has been rezoned to urban village or UV for short, which does allow churches to move in with a conditional use permit. Did you have further questions?

Do we have more questions? Is this on still? Is this still on? Okay, it is. So we have no more questions? He says hopefully. So do we just want to pause this for 10 minutes and wait and see if anyone logs on late or... Do the online attendees have any further questions? You can raise your hand online.

Like if I look at the specific plan, it says it's flex for office retail and there's retail as well. But are you saying that this would be converted to community use? I think the staff member, you said that it was a different type of urban village, but that's the entire area? Because I don't know if the specific plan is updated to show that.

So I believe the zoning for this particular site is urban village. Our Patrick Henry specific plan does have a variety of zoning districts. And so the urban village zoning district does allow for a variety of uses, places of assembly included by way of a conditional use permit.

Let me look at the urban design framework. But when we talk about the urban design framework, you're saying, I mean, the urban design framework shows very specific uses for very specific parcels. But you're saying that we're going to use urban village kind of as an overlay for everything. That's the underlying zoning. I mean, the zoning is different from this design framework, which is not really zoning. They're not really zoning. terms, but you're saying everything here would be urban village and therefore the entire the urban urban zoning the urban framework that we see in the document is I Mean we can pretty much ignore that so when i take a look i look at the patrick henry drive specific plan we'll see that this area looks like it's it's for flex office retail and then retail and i would think that this use would be more community civic and um that this is not what where community and civic would be so i'm just trying to resolve what you're telling me about urban village with what i see on this plan I just want to know what that means because .

The figure that you're looking at is that, what is the figure number? I just want to make sure I'm looking at the same. Oh, I see. OK. So the urban design framework here I'm going to go ahead, for those online on Zoom, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Okay, so we are looking at the Patrick Henry specific plan, specifically figure 4.2 urban design network. The urban design network is a little bit different than the land use plan for the specific Henry specific plan. And so the Urban Design Network is to give a general understanding of how the area is going to be developed as far as the open spaces, circulation, and retail component, but it is a little bit different than the land use plan itself. Now the land use plan which dictates what kind of uses or businesses in other words is allowed or not allowed is contained on a subsequent diagram which is figure 4.3a under the land use plan and so this parcel does have a designation of urban village which does allow for a variety of uses, places of assembly as the conditional use permit. I'm not sure if that answers your question, council member. Did you have further questions?

Are there any more questions from your people here or people online? Raise your hand online or here if you have more questions. Going once. Going twice. Okay, I think we can wrap up this Zoom meeting. And thank you very much, everyone who attended both online and in person. Again, if you have any questions, the contacts were in the middle of this video at the end of my slideshow, which will also be made available online. Oh, someone else had their hand up. Is that you, Tracy? I can give it a try.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Oh, okay. Got a little confused on the drawing. Is half office and half assembly?

Half of the... I guess I'd say more like... Um, one third of the building is the existing overall building is office and two thirds will become this, this church use.

And then, uh, how many square feet is that about for the church?

There is 50,000 square feet of church, roughly, and 30,000 square feet of office. There's a total of, it's an 80,000 square foot building. And then in that 80,000 square feet, there's 30,000 square feet of office and 50,000 square feet, there'll be church. Did that help you, Richard?

Yeah, I know. I just can't get the idea, but that sounds like a pretty big assembly area.

Is the present location... Richard, the assembly area is only about 10,000 to 12,000 square feet.

Oh, I see. Okay. All right. I get a better picture now. All right. Yeah, that's no more questions.

Thank you, Richard.

Thank you.

Again, we are all available for questions moving through this process. So if people have questions, they can email Rick or Tracy and they can get to the bottom of whatever your question is. So I think we can end the Zoom call now. I'm looking at planning for they want to hit the end button. Okay. Again, thank you everybody for... Yeah, we are at the site here for a few more minutes, but are we going to turn the Zoom call off or Tracy going to monitor it?

Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much.