Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Yeah. So I called to order the planning commission meeting on 10/08/2025. And if everybody would stand pledge of allegiance.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Statement of values as we gather we humbly seek blessings upon this meeting may we act with strength courage and will to perform our obligations and duties to our people with justice to all. Let us seek wisdom so that we may act in the best interest of our people, our neighbors and our country. All this we ask so we may serve our community with fairness and respect putting their needs before all.

You. Elizabeth, you call the roll.

Commissioner Bottega? Present. Commissioner Bijini? Present. Commissioner Chair Kuru? Here. Commissioner Wang?

Here.

Commissioner Buza?

Here.

Chair Salim? I mean, Commissioner Salim, I'm so sorry.

Thank you. Thank you for the promotion.

Commissioner Crenshlow.

Here.

Thank you.

Okay. So, everybody's here at the declaration of commission procedures.

Public hearings are conducted by the chair in accordance with the following procedures. The chair of the commission directs all activity during the hearings. All comments shall be addressed to the commission. Any item on this agenda may be continued to a subsequent hearing. Applicants will be allotted up to ten minutes to present and justify proposals following staff presentation of the item.

Other speakers will be given up to two minutes. The applicant is allotted up to five minutes for rebuttal of comments. No additional comments will be accepted upon the close of public hearing although the commission reserves the right to questions to any speaker on any matter. Special procedures time limits may be applied to any items as prescribed by the chair. Appeal of commission actions must be filed in writing within seven calendar days. Thank you.

You.

Copies of the current agenda and staff reports for each of the items on the agenda are available from the planning division office on the Friday afternoon preceding the meeting and available online. Continuances and exceptions. This part of the meeting allows for the applicants, members of the public, or other interested parties to request an item b one, continued without hearing. Two, withdrawn. Or three, taken out of order. Are there any requests from applicants, the public, or the commission for continuance or exception for any of the items on tonight's agenda?

No, we don't have any requests.

Thank you. On the consent calendar, there are two items in the consent calendar today. Cherkuru, will you please read the procedure for the consent calendar?

Procedure for the consent calendar is as consent calendar items may be enacted approved or adopted by one motion unless requested to be removed by anyone for discussion or explanation. If any member of the Planning Commission staff the applicant or a member of the public wishes to comment on a consent calendar item or would like the item to be heard on the regular agenda, please make your request now.

Items listed on tonight consent calendar with its associated file numbers constitute public hearing. 1A planning commission meeting minutes of 09/10/2025 and 1B planning Commission twenty twenty six calendar of meetings.

Elizabeth, are there any members of the public that would like to briefly address the commission on any item not on the agenda?

That would be public presentations which is after the consent calendar. We'll take a vote on the consent calendar.

On the consent calendar. We need a motion on the consent calendar.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar. Seconded.

So call for vote. I got a question though about it because I wasn't here for

the live and you have to be excused.

I'll say I did try watching the meeting afterwards. And unfortunately there was a lot of muted statements so I wasn't able to really follow. So I wanna abstain on that.

You're gonna abstain? Okay. The motion is by Commissioner Bousa, seconded by Commissioner Bottinigard to approve the consent calendar. Go ahead and cast your vote, please.

Don't see it.

Seeing it.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you and the motion passed.

Okay.

So, are there any members of the public that would like to briefly address the commission on any item not on the agenda? Anybody online?

No, we have no hands raised online and no one in the council chambers.

Okay. Then, let's move on to the public hearing items. Item two, public hearing action on the initial study mitigated negative declaration, mitigation, monitoring, and reporting program, and to amend the approved planning development PD zoning for 22 all electric detached single family residences. PLN 20 2Dash00505 to allow for the installation of natural gas stove appliances PLN 20 5Dash00073 for the property located at 1957 Prune Ridge Avenue. And then item number three, public hearing vesting tentative map PLN 20 four-forty four for common interest development for the proposed development of a six single family housing units to a company architectural review application PLN 24 dash zero zero zero three four subject to streamlining under SB three thirty from 2019 located at 4503 Cheney Street.

Is that

how it's pronounced?

Cheney.

Cheney. Okay. Item four, study session on the Santa Clara Station area specific plan. So each of the hearings are gonna be conducted in the following manner. After the secretary or chair reads the title of each public hearing item, we'll go with that. Okay. Staff, do you wanna proceed with your presentation?

Right. Two. On two?

Need to read that. That's the that's the

So back to this. Item two, public hearing. The action on the initial study mitigated and give a declaration, mitigated monitoring, and reporting program, and to amend the approved planning development PD zoning for 22 all electric detached single family residences. PLN 22Dash00505 to allow for the installation of the natural gas stove appliances. PLN25Dash00073 for the property located at 1957 Green Ridge.

Staff presentation.

We are having a technical issue. We'll get it resolved quickly.

Chair, can I make a comment on the technical issue?

She just announced

I know. Just want to comment on something on that? Okay.

There is technical issues.

Yes. It's also worth mentioning that

Recording in progress.

That the audio levels for the YouTube feed from, like, last night and other sessions have been extraordinarily low. As in, I had to crank the audio up to 90% to even hear what's going on.

Okay. I can mention And that to let's just make sure we all speak into our microphones. That's gonna help

a That's lot the number one item.

Good evening chair, good evening commission. I'm Nimisha Agrawal, senior planner. So the request before you tonight is to provide a recommendation to the city council for the initial study mitigation mitigated negative declaration and mitigation monitoring and reporting program and also for the amendment of the approved plan development zoning for '22 all electric detached single family residences to allow for the installation of natural gas stove appliances for the property located at 1957 Prune Ridge Avenue. It's a 2.47 acre site highlighted on the right in the image here in orange. And the zoning is planned development and the general plan is very low density residential.

To the North are single family homes. To the East and the West are commercial use. On the South is Prune Rich Avenue and beyond that, a mix of single family residences, multifamily residential users and commercial users. This project the project is currently an active construction site. On 03/19/2024, the city council approved a rezone of the property from quasi public and public park or recreation to plan development to allow the construction of residential development with 22 single family detached two story residences and the planning commission reviewed this in February before the council approval.

The council also certified the environmental impact report prepared for the project and also the vesting tentative subdivision map to subdivide the property into individual for sale lots and four common lots for the use as a utility corridor, vehicle access, open space and buyer retention areas. Since then the developer obtained the building permits to demolish the existing structures on the site and has started construction of project. The request the proposed project before you is to replace the 22 electric stove tops and the approved project with 22 natural gas stove tops. Excuse me. I'll just have a sip of water.

And, specifically to modify the conditions B8 as shown here and eliminate condition P23 which does not allow the installation of natural gas infrastructure in the future. General plan conformance, the proposed the approved project to construct for the 22 units had a density of 8.9 units per acre and it was consistent with the general plan designation for the project of very low density residential. The addition of natural gas infrastructure is not consistent with the current climate action plan, which establishes a policy of reducing emissions to net zero by 2045. However, the net zero assumed that all new construction within the city would be all electric and also that eventually all energy used within the city would be from renewable sources. The cap also directs the city to implement reach codes, the local ordinance and as you may be aware, the city is in the process of updating its reach code to replace the all electric requirement within energy performance approach approach that would provide more flexibility to the developers.

Without the mitigation, the modified project conflicts with the general plan goal listed here that aims to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and the general plan policy which encourages implementation of technological advances to minimize the public health hazards and reduce generation of air pollutants. While the project proposed modification would increase emissions, greenhouse gas emissions as compared to the approved project, the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions impact of the 22 natural gas stokes would be minimal and I have the numbers here. Approved project would have resulted in 129 tons of carbon dioxide per year, and with this change, it will be 135 tons per year. So, net of like 6.6 additional carbon dioxide equivalents. To mitigate this, a mitigation measure has been adopted that would include a TDM plan as part of mitigation measure that I will actually have on the slide later in the presentation.

Zoning code conformance, the project would continue to be in compliance with the approved development standards that were approved last year. The proposal to add or replace the 22 electric stove tops in the project with 22 natural gas stove tops does not alter the site plan, access or parking of the approved project, the project construction would slightly have to be adjusted to connect the gas utilities to the site. As mentioned earlier in the presentation, the council certified environmental impact report for the approved project last year in March. For this proposed change and initial study and a mitigated negative declaration was prepared to analyze the proposal to allow the use of natural gas and replacing the electric stove tops. The impacts on air quality, energy, greenhouse gas emissions, land use and planning and found the impacts to be the same as the approved projects except for the greenhouse gas emissions.

And therefore an additional mitigation measure was added that would reduce the new greenhouse gas impact to less than significant. And on the next slide is that mitigation measure. And so what it says is that project will be required to offset the emissions calculated for the cooktops by preparing a trip demand management, TDM plan, with measures reducing the number of trips by a minimum of 5.5% which is equivalent to nine daily trips approximately and with this implementation of the mitigation measure, the modified project would not result in a net increase of increase in the greenhouse gas emissions compared to the approved project. With that, the staff recommends the commission to adopt a resolution recommending the city council adopt the MND and MMRP and also adopt a resolution recommending to the city council to amend the approved plan development zoning for the 22 single family detached two story all electric residences to allow for installation of natural gas stove appliances for the property located at 1957 Prune Ridge Avenue subject to conditions of approval. That concludes the staff presentation.

The applicant is here as well and we're here to answer any questions the commission may have.

No questions. The only thing I can say when can we make a motion to approve this?

Not my time. Thank you. But does anybody have questions for staff?

I do have a question. So I appreciate the bullet to go back to what is the energy what is staff working on right now to make it more energy efficient versus all electric? What is that reference to? Go back. The second bullet. The city is in the process of updating its reach code to replace the all electric requirement with an energy What does that entail?

So last year in council because we had that last year in January 2020 council suspended the all electric and with the energy performance approach, I think it just provides overall flexibility to the developer in how they will achieve the overall energy efficiency. So it could be through like in this instance through a TDM plan or other kind of appliances or solar.

So is the reach code itself getting updated and what is the ET of its adoption?

Yes, the reach code is going to be updated and I do not know the ETA.

So if the reach code was updated already let's assume would this application have come through?

So this was a PD zoning so it was very specific to this because it was a PD zoning so the condition was specific. If it was a standard zoning or an architectural review project then they would be able to use the new reach code should it be adopt.

Okay. The reach code will no longer require all electric? Correct. Already for residents comes in? Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Anyone else have questions?

Just a quick one, Chair. Thanks. Condition P23, is that a normal condition or that was specifically added to this project upon the council's or the planning commissioner's request?

It was added at the time when previous project was approved understanding that if they wanted to come back with an option for the natural gas then they will have to come through this process. And therefore now we are proposing since they are proposing the natural gas it does not make sense for that condition to stay there.

Right. And one other thing maybe it will go to the applicant some understanding of why they want to do this now. Maybe that will be for the applicant. I'm okay.

Right. The applicant can definitely elaborate on that.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you chair. I was just going to request.

Okay. Any

other questions for staff?

He asked it for me.

I'd like to make a motion.

Have an applicant with a presentation.

Believe the applicant does not have a presentation but they can speak to the commissioner's question.

This is the applicant, right? Yes. Thank you. Thank

you, Nimesha, for the presentation. Good evening, members of the planning commission, city staff and residents in the audience. My name is Matthew Schott representing SCS Development. I'm here with Steve Schott, my father, vice president of SCS Development, my colleague, Corey Cusich, and along with Shannon and Patrick with David J. Powers, our environmental consultant.

We're here to seek your approval of the environmental document allowing us to install 22 gas stovetops in the newly constructed single family homes. The market has shown that having gas stovetops instead of electric stovetops is popular amongst homebuyers because of the superior cooking performance. Our goal is to provide the best home we can for the future residents of Santa Clara. So SCS and David J. Powers will be here for the remainder of the public hearing if you have any other questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Chair, I'd to make a statement.

Are there any public speakers? So Elizabeth, do have you any cards? Speaker cards?

No, we do not. We don't have any hands raised online, and there's no one in the council chambers requesting to speak.

I do have a question to the applicant.

Oh I'm sorry yes. Okay.

Matthew, I just wanted to bring something in. Remember the first time when you got your approval in March, I brought up the gas and I Berkeley at the time had just won the lawsuit and one of the things that it was requiring, it was for the case the consumer wanted to have their own choice of gas or electric at the same time having a gas fireplace or barbecue in the back. I think that what you propose makes a lot of sense having a gas in there and I've been keeping an eye on the project and I'm really happy to see the progress that you're making. I wish you guys go a little bit faster. I see that you just pour the cement on the back lots.

But my question is too, just curious, have you sold any of the homes yet? I know you got almost three almost completed.

Yeah, those are the models and those are January.

So you have have you had any lot of interest in the homes yet?

We have a lot of interest in the homes but we haven't sold any homes yet.

Okay. When is your completion date? When you think your completion date is?

Sometime in 2026.

Thank you.

At the end of the

year.

Thank you.

You.

Just a quick trend indicator. You indicated the market is asking for gas stoves now?

Yes, we are. The market is we hired Rynes and they say that a lot of homebuyers when they see gas appliance especially stove tops, gas stove tops, they get really excited about that. So it's a nice amenity to have especially in California with all of the blackouts that we're seeing it's just nice that you can still have a hot meal for dinner when you don't have.

I wanted to hear that I saw it in the report but yes I appreciate but you know in trend indicator the pendulum is swinging But we have the lowest electric rates. So it's always nice to have the option. Yes. Sorry

to cut you off. We are putting electric outlets right there. So it's dual purpose. So if the homeowner does want to go electric, they have that option.

That's all I wanted. Thank you so much. I appreciate the clarification. Like you should give the market the choice as to what they want to install and not just wipe it clean.

Yes. We will.

Thanks.

Any other questions? Quickly, just making a point here. The idea that the consumer market in the space that you operate for residences prefers stovetops, gas stovetops. This idea was not clear when you started the project and presented to the to the planning commission and council?

I'm sorry. Can you rephrase?

I'm asking why this idea has this clarity now. This request has put the whole system through through this loop when when this could have been in the original project and move on with it. Right?

Hi. Hi. I'm Steve Schott, Steve Schott, from SCS development company. I would have loved to have brought this earlier when we were getting the project approved but we couldn't. It wasn't allowed by law to do that.

The the Berkeley Berk Restaurant Association of Berkeley sued the city of Berkeley for cooking on gas cooktops and they won that lawsuit and they also won on appeal. So now it's it's a law that it's allowed to have it in homes as well as commercial buildings. So that's why we came back to you for approval for this.

Alright thank you.

If if I could just add on to that discussion, that is correct there is that Berkeley case. In this instance this is a legislative decision, so it's not impacted by that recent case law.

Yes,

for the developer. So have you actually updated the plans and specs to include the difference in ventilation and other things that go along with adding gas? Also have you updated the site plans to incorporate bringing in gas for every unit? And finally how is the since you're making this an option are you planning to pass that cost of those new changes along to the purchaser?

Yeah so we we worked with PG and E and PG and E is brought gas into the subdivision that was allowed. We've worked with the building department the City of Santa Clara building department and they allowed us to go ahead with the the ventilation and everything that needs to happen with gas. So that is all been all part of the whole process. The costs are the costs. We know the costs. We're not this added cost to us. We're not adding it on to the cost of the home it's just part

of the

marketing of the home that we think is a Okay.

Yeah. We're just so sensitive now for affordable housing that bringing raising the price would probably be counter to that effort where the city is pursuing.

Yeah, we do have three affordable homes in the project. Yeah. That's good. Okay,

well that's enough for now. Thank you.

Questions?

Any one last time, any public speakers? Nobody? Okay. So, public hearing be closed Somebody want to make a motion?

Motion to close public hearing. Second.

We go for motion to approve.

We

should do it in two motions, right?

Motion was made by Commissioner Biagini, seconded by Commissioner Bousa to close public hearing. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Very good. The motion passed. Thank you.

Should we go for motion to approve?

Sure. Let's make a motion.

Accept any Who wants to make a motion?

I will. I'll

let Pira make a motion now.

Okay.

Thank you Assistant Chair.

I will move and I'm pulling up the resolution here sorry. Give me just a split second. Okay. Move that we adopt a resolution recommending the City Council adopt the mitigated neg deck and the monitoring and reporting program for the nineteen fifty seven Prune Ridge Avenue residential project.

Second.

Discussion?

Good? Good. Good. The

motion was made by Commissioner Charikuro, seconded by Commissioner Biagini to approve staff recommendation one. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Very good. The motion passed. Thank you.

Adopt a resolution recommending the City Council to amend the approved plan development zoning for PLN 20 Two- 505 for the 22 single family detached two story all electric residences to allow for the installation of natural gas stove appliances for the property located at 1957 Prune Ridge Avenue subject to conditions of approval.

Second. Can

I put a friendly amendment on that? I would suggest removing the term all electric because it is no longer all electric.

Yeah. I think the original was all electric and the change is to allow for the installation of natural gas.

Okay. Good. As long as that's

Yeah. It's the previous.

Yeah. So the amendment is not needed?

No. I don't think so. I just wanted to make sure language is correct.

Who

seconded the motion?

Doesn't matter. Either one.

Take your pick.

Should be in

the team. Through the chair if I may real quick. The recommendation does refer to detached two story electric residences. Yeah. To allow for, oh, I think I turned the page. That's what I said.

Yeah. Okay. You're welcome, Jennifer. Thank you.

Okay. The motion was made by commissioner Charcoure, seconded by commissioner Biaghini to approve staff recommendation two. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Thank you, and the motion passed unanimously. Thank you.

Alright, let's go on item three. Public hearing vesting tentative map PLN 20 four-forty four for a common interest development for the proposed development of a six single family housing unit to accompany architectural review application PLN 24 dash zero zero zero thirty four subject to streamlining under SB three thirty from 2019 located at 4503 Cheney Street. Cheney? Cheney.

Thank you very much, Chair. Just one second while we load up the presentation. Annual subject, City of Santa Clara Associate Planner. Alright, much appreciated. The application in front of us today is for a recommendation to city council on a testing tentative map for a property located at 4503 Genie Street in order to create six single family housing units in common interest.

The applicant held a meeting, sorry, regarding the project on elevententwenty twenty four, three fifty four. The map proposal is paired with a prior architectural project that was reviewed at architectural review on 12/11/2024, and that item was approved. There are no public speakers at that meeting. So the project site is 18,651 square feet and has a general plan of low of low intensity and a zoning of R two and is currently a single family home. There are similar types of uses that surround the property to the east and the west.

On the map, everything in gray is a very similar type of use. The proposed map is a single parcel at the center easement for utilities, ingress, egress, etcetera. And the tenant map project meets all of the zoning code standards and has been processed per the subdivision map act and Santa Clara code title 17 subdivisions. And the subdivision map meets the parcel area and parcel frontage requirements. The tenant map also adheres to the general plan by allowing the creation of additional housing units and affordable housing units as well and is compatible in the character and size with the surrounding area.

For the public outreach, the notices were sent within a 500 foot area and 354 of them were mailed out. The city has not received a public comment for this particular project. The tentative map is categorically exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act per section one five three three two class three two infill. And there have been some updates to the conditions of approval. H three, f four, f five, and f eight were removed as they did not apply to the project.

And there are text updates on g eight, h one, and view three to explain the stipulations a bit clearer. We have the g eight update here and then the h one update, which which was updated to help to clarify the amounts to be paid and the affordable housing on the project site. And the city water w three was updated to clarify as well. There are no substantive changes to these. They were all just smaller housekeeping changes only, and a full packet is in the should be on your desks as well.

So to summarize, staff staff recommendation is to recommend to the city council to determine the project to be categorically exempt from CEQUA pursuant to section one five three three two class 32 infill and to adapt a resolution recommending approval for the vesting tentative map for a common interest development for the proposed development of six single family housing six single family housing one second. I'll get it. Six single family homes located at 4503 Cheney Street subject to the findings and the updated conditions of approval. The applicant is here as well. And if there's any other questions, staff can fill those as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation. Any questions to staff? No?

Has the architectural review needed a second pass now for this? No. That is officially done.

Right. So that is done and no updates will be required.

Quickly, to understand. So the reason the project is here in the planning commission is because we are expected to approve the CEQA exempt portion of the requirements here. Is that right?

Right. It is. Well, it's strictly for the map itself to be able to to create a condominium map for the

Okay. All right. Thanks.

Through the chair if I might just add to that. It's the law based on what is drafted in our code. So our code requires Planning Commission recommendation to council and council approval of subdivisions of greater than five units.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

I got a passing question. Are the resulting lots more or less square footage than the other residences in the neighborhood? Are they significantly smaller?

No, they should be of similar size. I don't have the exact but No, no, the the aerials areas it

Within rough? Okay.

Right. Right. So they should look

So this was a huge property to begin with that got Right.

The history of the property, this was the owner of the entire prune orchard. So he had the yes. Okay. Substantial land there.

Thank you. Any

further questions? Good? Okay. The applicants, there a presentation?

Good evening, Chair and Planning Commission. My name is Jeff Aguilar. I'm with Valley Oak Partners the applicant. We do not have a presentation. We I do have my architect and civil engineer available, Eric Muzzi with Dahlen Architecture and Jesus Robles with Civil Engineering Associates and happy to answer any questions.

Any questions from

I'm just full of questions tonight. So what is the parking that's gonna be provided per unit?

Yeah. So each home will have a standard two car side by side garage. When we had our our neighborhood outreach, that was an item that came up during our architectural review hearing. We inserted and agreed to a condition that the garages must be used for parking and they cannot be used purely for storage. That was an item that came up and so something we agreed to during that process.

Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Anyone from the public have a comment? Anybody online?

We do not have anyone online requesting to speak and no one in the council chambers.

I'm ready for you.

Motion to close public debate discussion. Seconded.

The motion was made by commissioner seconded by commissioner Botnikar to close public comment. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Thank you.

Alright. The chair will entertain any discussion or if somebody would like to make a motion.

Let

me get to it here. Okay, motion to recommend that the city council determine the project to be categorically exempt from the California Environmental Act pursuant to CEQA guidelines section fifteen thousand three and thirty two class 32 infill development projects. That'll be the first motion. Seconded.

The motion was made by Commissioner Biajini, seconded by Commissioner Chirikuru to approve staff recommendation one. Go ahead and cast your vote. Thank you the motion passed.

Okay second motion to adopt a resolution recommending the City Council approve the vesting tentative map PLN 20 4Dash00044 for a common interest development for the proposed development of six single family housing units located at 4503 Cheney Street to accompany the architectural review application PLN 20 four-thirty 4 subject to findings and conditions of approval.

I'll second it.

Chair if I may. Would that also include recommendations from staff to modify the specific conditions that were presented?

Yes.

Which are revisions to G8, H1, W3 and then the removal of H3, F four, F five, and F eight.

You have that Elizabeth? Give her a moment. Thank

you, chair.

Sorry, I should have included that.

Seconded by Oza. Oza.

I gotta second something so I show up in the minutes.

Alright, I will allow this. You can second me adjournment.

Okay. Motion was made by Commissioner Biagini, seconded by Commissioner Salame to approve staff recommendation two and to approve the updated conditions of approval. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Very good, the motion passed. Thank you.

That is it.

Great. All right, so now to the best part of the night. Item number four, a study session on the Santa Clara Station area specific plan.

Okay, give us

one second to get our slides up. And I will ask our community development director, Asha Amid, to come up and give you an introduction, and then we'll have the consultant give you a presentation as well. Well.

Thank you. Good evening, Chair and Planning Commission members. It's a pleasure to be here before you. So this is a study session, and we are requesting your early input and feedback as we take it through the process. And then after tonight, it will also go to City Council session for input and feedback.

So before I begin, a number of staff have been working on this, Leslie Savior, Rebecca Bostos. And then we also have partnerships with VTA. The consultant team is WRT, and they are here as well tonight. And they've been very involved in the process with city's general plan was adopted in 2010 and it included the Santa Clara station

we're

progress business.

Of And

uses. Because of their location, And changes the in these areas offer an opportunity to implement the general plan's major strategies. This area is also important because it's a priority development area. And it aligns with the overall regional goals with MTC ABAC as well. So the goals, policies and illustrations for these areas provide guidance for development.

And because of their location, changes in these areas offer an opportunity to implement the general plan, major strategies and to enhance the city's quality of life and foster economic vitality. The station the Santa Clara Station area focus area consists of quarter And we pleased

with

Real to the Southwest. At the center of this is a transit rich area and it consists of the existing Santa Clara Transit Station, which is served by Caltrain and Alta Commuter Express Rail Lines, Valley Transportation Authority, VTA, bus service. The station area will also become the terminus for VTA's planned extension of the BART system known as BART Silicon Valley Phase two, BART Phase two. And then tonight, I didn't mention this in my intro, but we also have a representative from MTC ABAC in the audience. Manuel is here.

Because this is such a regional project, multiple outside agencies are involved in this partnership as well. And I will turn it over now to WRT.

Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Chair and members of the Planning Commission, we're pleased to be here Directors

of of

and with VTA, as mentioned previously.

Of

She's working on chairing. Sorry.

Maybe another ten years or so, we'll get the ideas.

So, yeah, we get just a little technical difficulty. We'll be there.

So here's what we hope to cover tonight. We're gonna talk about the vision and guiding framework of the plan that we've been developing, the community outreach process, who we've engaged with, some of the main feedback from that engagement. We're going to be talking about the preferred development concept as it stands, which includes a mobility element, a district development and economic vitality element, and a place making and public realm element. So those are sort of three layers of the plan that we will describe individually. And after we've been through that, then we'll go through whatever questions you have.

We have some suggestions on some areas that we'd like some input on, and so we'll mention those as well. So this presentation will be a combination of of me and my colleague, Diksha Rawat, and also representatives from from VTA VTA who will interject as well. So starting with the vision and guiding framework. Next slide. So why are we doing specific plans?

So the planning director already mentioned several of the reasons. But just to recap, evolving to address the evolving needs of this community to align with VTA, MTC, TOC goals, to build a community vision for a vibrant transit hub. This is a transit rich station, especially with the introduction of the northern terminus of BART. So regionally it's important and therefore very appropriate place for growth. And then guiding future investment.

So there's already interest in a lot of the areas within the study area. In fact, the Gateway Crossings project is already well underway as you know. And then North of Coleman, there's multiple inquiries and interest from developers. So guiding that development in a way that's consistent with the community's vision is one of the main reasons why this this planning effort is important. And then as the planning director also mentioned, advancing the Santa Clara general plan 2035 goals and to promote multimodal transportation transportation and connectivity.

Good evening. My name is Robert Swark, and I'm a Principal Planner at VTA. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of commission and staff for the opportunity to speak for a few minutes. And I'll be joined here this evening by Melissa Sarezzo from our Transit Oriented Communities program, and she'll speak a little later in the We wanted to just orient you a little bit as to VTA's role in this project.

So you probably know us most of all from our transit agency role, also the lead agency for bringing director mentioned. But we're also what's called a Conjunction Management Agency and County Transportation Agency, CMA, CTA in Santa Clara County, which gives us through state law a role in working with local jurisdictions on land use and transportation. And the slide here mentions some of the ways in which we do that. We also have an active transit oriented development, transit oriented communities program, TOD, TOC. You can see we really like our acronyms.

We, through these programs, work to create mixed use, mixed income, equitable TOD on VTA land, but also look to create active vibrant hubs in the surrounding lands, VTA owned lands. And the ridership and revenue goals that are listed on the slide are two of the primary goals. Next slide. On this slide, we just included some snapshots of some of the underpinning policies and past work that are helping guide VTA's involvement in this project. So things relating to that congestion management agency, county agency role, as well as our TOD program.

And then you're probably familiar with back just before the pandemic, we worked with the city and stakeholders to develop the TOD playbook for basically kind of vision of development around the Santa Clara station. As you might know, it actually provides a little bit of kind of, you could say, some of the inspiration for what you'll see tonight in the the station area plan concepts. Next slide. So as was noted too, this is a project that has regional interest. One of the grants that is helping fund this work was provided by MTC, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, as was noted.

Manuel is here from MTC this evening. And we also, VTA, secured a grant from the Federal Transit Administration, FTA, providing some of the other money. So we are actually helping provide the funding. And on the next slide, you can see in in that role, we're partnering with the city on kind of the overall process. The city is the lead.

Ultimately, this will be a specific plan that is adopted by would be adopted by the city council. But we are in addition to bringing some of the the funding to the table, we are a strategy partner working with the city. We will also bring the draft plan to our own board of directors and committee structure just basically for advice and review before it goes to the City Council. We also just wanted to say we very much appreciate the partnership working with the city. Your staff has been great and we look forward to continuing through this process. I'll hand it back to WRT.

Great. Thank you. I'm Jim Stickley, by the way. I don't think I mentioned that before, Principal with WRT. So this shows the project schedule and where we are.

So the red dash the vertical red dash line is where we are. So as you look across this chart, you can see that we've been through an analysis stage, identification of opportunities, constraints and economic analysis, number four number five, the vision plan and number six, which is the stage we're in now, is the alternative development stage. And that culminates in a preferred alternative, which is the topic of our presentation tonight. So we're really zeroing in on a preferred direction, but not yet drafting the plan, which is shown here as activity number seven. And then you can see all of the interaction points along the way near the top.

The red dots are our task force meetings. So we've been quite engaged with the task force. They've been very helpful, very involved, very hands on. You can also see technical advisory meetings, community workshops, team charrettes and so forth. And then the first Planning Commission meeting is tonight, which you can see at the bottom.

And as the Community Development Director mentioned, we'll be going to city council soon after for a study session with them as well. So it's an exciting time. It's also a good time for input before we start into the drafting of the plan. So there's still some flexibility and plenty of room for input in your perspective. So this is the vision that we've developed with the community, with the task force.

Station Area will be a vibrant transit oriented district that leverages regional transit to build a thriving, walkable, accessible community unique to Santa Clara. Grounded in equity, the stationary will prioritize diverse housing, inclusive mobility and economic opportunity, fostering a strong sense of place through thoughtful design that builds upon cultural and ecological heritage. Sustainable climate conscious infrastructure will enhance resilience, positioning the district as a future ready flourishing neighborhood. Next slide, please. Comments so far?

So if you give us the opportunity then, first of all, the vision nicely stated. It's good to be able to identify with something like that. So congratulations to everybody that put that together. The question I have is so maybe just simply asked, is it through the task force or through other some agency? How does the average citizen get a voice in what is being planned and envisioned for the city? I'm not questioning the vision. I'm just asking how do they contribute to what forum, what system do they contribute to this process?

Sure. Great question. Leslie or Rebecca may have something to add, but there have been community workshops, so we've had two of those. And then all of the task force meetings are open to the public. And there's a time during the task force meeting when public is encouraged to give comment. But then there's also been some of the sessions which are quite interactive and members of the public have actually been able to get on some of the breakout working groups. So there have been many opportunities for for the public to weigh in. I don't know, Leslie or Rebecca?

Yep. All correct.

Let's hold on for a moment. It's a great question. Let's go ahead and finish. Well, it's still working.

Yep. So this is the development framework. And as I mentioned before in the introduction, the plan is made of these three layers. The first being about mobility and connectivity. And I'm not going to go into too much detail on each one of these because Dietsha is going to explain them in more detail as we get into it.

But you can see the main connective threads. And this is not only about completing a connective street network within the project and especially in the northern portion of the project, north of the railroad tracks, but also bridging the north south gap over the tracks, which is quite a barrier to the flows back and forth between the two sides. So you can see some of that coming out in this diagram. Second one is about place making and public realm opportunities. So this is about not only connecting, but making sure that those connections, those public streets, public parks, and green spaces have a certain character that is unique to Santa Clara and unique to this district.

And then thirdly, it's about land use, but more so about the districts that those land uses are organized into and that each of these districts are distinct in their character, in their makeup, and in their experience or the experience that the users have within each of those districts. So we've tried to be very deliberate deliberate about defining what those different districts are in and around the station. Next slide. So I'm going to turn it over to Diksha now who describe a little bit more about our engagement process.

Yeah, I'm just asking. Are we asking questions on the previous section before we go to community or do you want to hold section by section comments or do you want to do it all?

I would

recommend going through it because I think some of the questions may get answered

as we

get into the detail. But certainly if there's something that is unclear and we can clarify, should feel free to speak up.

I'll wait.

Yes, that's we can take notes

and

come back to it.

Are you okay with that,

Priya? Yes.

Evening, Commissioners. I'm Diksha Ravid, the project manager on this project. Sorry for all the technical difficulties we are facing today. But to walk you through some of the community engagement that we've done on the project, we had multiple stakeholder interviews. So we initially identified stakeholders on the project, including mobility partners, Santa Clara University and also affordable housing developers, and we spoke to them about the potential in the station area task force, which is very heavily invested in the area with active participants.

We've held 11 meetings with them until now. We had our first community workshop, which was centered around the station area visioning. So that's where the vision for the project sort of came from, working with hearing from the vision in the community. As you can see, the top right image that we have, we had little cards for the community members to write down their vision for the station area. And so we sort of collated all of that and created the vision for the plan.

The city also did a pop up event at the Art and Wine Festival last year to get more feedback. We had a Visioning shred which was a collaboration between the task force members, VTA and different city departments who are involved in the technical advisory committee of the project. So that everyone gets a realistic expectation also of what they can plan for. And then we also concluded a community workshop too, which was looking where we shared the different alternatives of the community members to sort of come towards which is their preferred direction. We almost had up to 70 participants in that one.

And so these are some of the key community priorities that we heard through all of this process. Around mobility and connectivity, they were around safer pedestrian crossings, especially around El Camino and nearer to the train station. Some of the concerns were even brought up by Santa Clara University students. And then we also heard the need for for separated bike lanes potentially buffered by trees and having safer routes for the students to get to the university. We heard about getting better last mile connections, whether that's like shuttles, buses, other micro mobility, taking taking people to the downtown to other destinations like people park or whether it's all the way to the airport as well.

I think the airport was another driver that could bring a lot of people as BART comes in eventually. And then there was also maintaining parking for the historic depot, which is at the Caltrain Station and making sure visitors are able to access that. So while we design, making sure that we still leave room for that. In terms of place making in public ground, people wanted wider sidewalks, green streets, well lit areas, shaded and activated plazas, gathering spaces. They wanted senior friendly areas with restrooms and seating in terms of public spaces.

And they wanted to connect create a connected network of public parks and plazas, So to be able to walk maybe to Reed And Grant Park, to be able to walk to Mission Library, things like that. And to just add identity to the public spaces that we create. And then in terms of district development and economic vitality, people wanted a mix of mid to high rise housing, near transit, to really leverage the idea of having transit and hence putting a lot of housing in the area itself. And having retail that complements but doesn't compete with downtown, I think that was one of the critical points that we do want retail, we do want activation, but downtown as a develop should be the primary place for that activation. And then what kind of complementary users can we have around the station and on the other side of the trucks.

And then continuing housing opportunities along Coleman all the way up to Reed Street. So using that frontage, which is currently light industrial, maybe allowing for housing within that area because it's within half a mile from the train station, so that's not considered very far in terms of walkability. And then the industrial property owners did want flexibility to still be able to operate without feeling redevelopment potential pressures and then retaining Costco, but also thinking of a way of maybe a mixed use future development in that Costco side, which still retains Costco there. So they were really fascinated with the LA model of Costco where that's coming in on the Ground Floor of a building. So in terms of preferred development concepts, we had three different concepts and then they had different levels of density and intensity as well.

And the one that won out was the strategic growth mix on the far right. It has a mix of larger park spaces, so creating more neighborhood park centers on the other side of the tracks while also keeping the regional retail node at Costco and then allowing for the Benton Brokaw Corridor connection to happen to get better East West connectivity across the tracks. And also for a secondary potential connection, takes Franklin Street, which is supposed from the downtown plan supposed to be the spine of downtown all the way up to the Station Plaza and potentially on the other side connecting into the Gateway Crossing Spark. This is a visualization of what the preferred concept looks like in three d in terms of intensity of development. The colors that you're seeing blue, yellow, those are more those are not exact.

All of these parcels would be considered mixed use development and anyone could be building housing or office on any of these. They're interchangeable. The idea with this is to prioritize where we might want to have office which is closer to the train station so that a lot of people who take that have a destination to take the train to are more likely to take the train. Hence the idea of providing commercial spaces near the train station. And we're looking at we're thinking of looking at policies that could incentivize having more commercial right around the train station and then beyond that having mixed use residential.

And then we'll get further into Heights in a minute. So this plan is roughly allowing for 5,000 plus 5,500 residential new residential units in the plan area and over 2,000,000 square feet of commercial space. A lot of the height restrictions that you're seeing here, is it's currently the residential goes up to 13 stories based on what we've modeled. That is based on the FAA height restrictions from the airport. And so we can't go taller even though the task force felt like we didn't want to put even that restriction.

Let me dive into a little more detail about mobility and connectivity. So one of our primary things looking on the other side of the tracks was to create more of a complete grid network since there is much lesser of that. So we have these priority streets which is El Camino, Coleman Avenue, and Dela Cruz. And then we have community connectors which would be Benton Street going all the way to Brokov on the other side. There's a this study, this specific plan looked at the Benton Brokov Underpass connection and our consultants looked at a preliminary version of whether that would be possible or not.

It felt like there is a possibility and hence the city is now looking at a separate study altogether to study the feasibility of either non to pass connection or an overpass connection. And so the specific plan will sort of stop at this stage of suggesting the idea and will say that whatever is the outcome of the study will be what the specific plans recommendation will be, since that will go further than the timeline of this project. And then internally we're looking at adding more internal streets, major and minor and then creating pedestrian only streets within some of the bigger blocks to provide for a more community oriented space for the housing there. One of the key things was to reimagine Coleman Avenue which is a very traffic oriented street right now. It connects highways to each other and hence is more of a thoroughfare which works for today's environment because it's mostly industrial on light industrial around it.

But as we envision this new neighborhood altogether which is mixed use lot of residential that might not be the right fit anymore for the right character for Coleman Avenue. So this is a reinterpretation of Coleman Avenue which looks at two lanes in either direction. It has a turn lane as well, the center turn lane, so the larger green medians will actually turn into turn lanes as well as we go around and then it has a buffered bike lane and wider sidewalks with activated uses as well. And then the other street that we focused on was Brokov since that would be a major street that leads up to the BART station from the other side of the tracks. And with Brokaw Street, it's one lane in each direction and then you would see this idea of the flex zone on either side.

The intent with that is to make sure that we're doing the highest and best use for our curb curbside. And so the use in that flex zone would keep changing. In some parts it might be a drop off zone, in some parts it might have a shared bike use, in some parts it might be a bus stop. So to allow for that flexibility within the right of way and not have a very rigid design that was the idea with Brokaw Street. And again wider sidewalks because that would be the one place at least on the other side of gateway crossing.

Gateway crossing is already developed, so we can't really change the type of frontage that we have there. But on the other side of gateway crossings as that area develops, we would want much more activated frontages so that we have some sort of pedestrian activation as well as we move towards the BART Station. Another key thing that we wanted to look at was East West connectivity across the tracks. Right now it's very limited. We have to go through that overpass from Delacruz and go all the way around or there is the existing pedestrian bike underpass at the Galtrain Station.

So those are the two ways to connect right now. Hence, the idea of the Benton Brokaw Underpass and its study and another idea of potentially having an overhead bedbike connection on the other side of the historic train depot connecting all the way into the green of the gateway crossings. This is in alignment with the coming in of Franklin Street as we look at connecting that into downtown in the future. These are some examples of the exist, this is the existing bed and bike underpass that we have already on-site. This is an example of what we might envision the Benton Brokaw Underpass to be like.

There is a lot of conversation around whether we want that to be transit only, whether we want that to be for cars as well. And so that would all depend on the feasibility of the underpass first and what kind of a cross section would be afforded through that study. And then on the bottom you can see different examples of what an overhead bike and ped bridge could look like. We've looked at examples from around the world because we didn't want to like limit what our possibilities of a bridge look like. We wanted it to be an iconic thing for Santa Clara.

It's right next to our historic train station, so we didn't want it to also take away from the character of the train station. So it should also be it has a more the idea is to have a more green way that connects through so it doesn't compete architecturally and there are certain restrictions that would come in. We're working with VTA and BART to understand since it goes over the BART right of way, it would have to have a certain level of protection which would go with like taller walls on either side but transparent, things like that. So, we're working further on those details. District development and economic vitality.

This brings us to one of the important points of consideration which was regulating building heights in this plan area. So,

all of

the guidance that we've got from the community and the task force until now was on the other side with the tracks. We want to maximize development as much as possible. We don't really want to limit the market in what it can produce. So this is one of the ideas. So you'll see the dark red color which is 148 feet based on the FAA restrictions on predominantly most of that area.

There's a slight buffer on the top that is for our Light Industrial Innovation District and the reason we have that buffer and didn't have residential go all the way to the end is because of the sound contours from the airport as well. So, we sort of kept it in the limits based off of where we didn't want residential to go in because of the sound contours. And the idea is that we would have additional regulations which apply to the massing of the building which goes higher than 85 feet which would be your regular seven to eight story building. So once you have a portion of the building massing which is going taller than this 85 feet, then we would want to ensure that too many towers are not very close to each other, so we would want to have a minimum spacing distance between them. Then we're regulating the massing as well, so a diagonal maximum of 200 feet so that it's not a very bulky portion of the building.

And then we want to limit the square feet of the floor plate as well. So this is 12,000 square feet to promote slender towers as they go higher. And then we don't want more than 80% of the block frontage to be the taller 13 feet so that we also have some sort of articulation. Further articulate, another thing I wanted to note is that we haven't gone into great detail in objective standards. The reason for that is a form based code will happen for this project at a later date.

And so we wanted to keep enough flexibility for the form based code once that project starts. But we wanted to set certain parameters in place right now based on what is important to the community.

The three d view. So that was a lot to absorb on the heights. And I wanted to just say a little bit more about the basis of that whole series of regulations for the heights. So in this diagram you can see we concentrated the tower elements along Brochall. The feeling in all of our interactions with the city and the task force was that that's the appropriate place for pushing the density up, get it near Brokaw, get it near the station, and that that scale of having those sort of spot towers placed carefully throughout that first block or two along Brokaw was appropriate.

It felt right. This area can absorb that scale, but putting those towers everywhere within this northern district did not feel right. That felt excessive. So and yet there is a maximum height cut off from airport regulation as Diksha mentioned. So we're trying to ride this fine line between allowing that full height where the towers are, but limiting the number and amount of towers so that it doesn't overwhelm the district.

But that's not to say that, for example, a tower could occur outside of this zone along Brokaw. There might be a developer proposal that says that puts a tower in the residential area further north. That could be okay, but then you're going to reach a point where it starts being too much and too many. And so we're trying to define what that threshold is, you know, in terms of the number of square feet or the additional FAR. So I just wanted to add that as a little bit of context.

Thank you, Jim. Okay. The other thing that we were looking at carefully was where do we want to concentrate retail. We don't want to blanket try to put retail in all parts of the plan area since that would get difficult and won't get concentrated and create an activated zone. So we came up with these three nodes.

Mean one is the downtown node, that stays on its own end from the downtown plan. Then there's the station node and the broke off node. And we've tried to make sure that all the retail is around those nodes it self and creating active public spaces. So there are two categories of frontage types that you're seeing here. One is the retail frontage and one is the retail ready frontage.

The idea with the retail frontage is to have those areas with retail as they are built. The idea with the retail ready frontage is to have a pedestrian friendly frontage, which looks like a retail frontage but doesn't necessarily have to operate like a retail frontage. So that gives a good pedestrian experience as they're walking down. It could be occupied by other types of uses like nonprofits, office spaces, etcetera. If in the future the market was to turn and this became an area where a lot of retail was trying to come in, those spaces are already ready to convert into retail uses.

And even with that, we've tried to keep only a select corridor of the plan area where these are required by the plan. The rest of the plan area is flexible, whether they want to allow retail development or not is up to the developers there. But we found the areas right around the station where we want to create active users, we want to create more everyday life type of commercial spaces where people are getting off the train, they're able to like go into a pharmacy, they can trip chain, it can become like a more active part of everyday life for them. That's one of the reasons we chose activation around the station node itself. And then the Brokov node is where we would have the larger neighborhood park.

It has Costco on one side, do we augment that with some sort of retail along the park strip so that there's more of a hub in that area as well. And coming to place making and public realm, one of our factors was making sure that we add public spaces for all of these new number of residents that are going to come into this plan area. So we have a few different areas that we've identified. One is this new broker of neighborhood park. Another is this linear parkway up north, which sort of buffers from the industrial area.

So making sure we buffer the two uses, the residential and the industrial, and then smaller pockets sprinkled around the area. One of the key things that we did, so you can see that we've put dimensions on all of those spaces because we looked at little precedent studies of what our existing parks and plazas within Santa Clara and other parts of the Bay Area and made sure that the parks that we're proposing have usable dimensions. And for example, this linear parkway on the North might look like just a trail to you but the size of it is adequate to be able to put active uses like basketball courts. So we made sure that we were sizing things appropriately. So this would add almost 12 acres of Parkland within the station area itself.

We were also coordinating with the team looking at the Parks Master Plan which is going on right now for the city and from the needs assessment that came out the need for an indoor rec center, which could be a good activating use for this plan area. We don't have a location for it right now specifically, but we would want to see how that could be brought in. One of the ideas was maybe the Station Plaza itself. It could be a mixed use building, which on the Ground Floor has some sort of a rec center as an activating use and then upper levels could be commercial, incubator, residential, anything could happen. But that would be a city and VTA collaboration.

So that was one idea that was floated while we were having these conversations with the task force. They did feel like the other side of the tracks near the Brokaw Neighborhood Park would be a good location except all of that is private land and creating this use might be a little tricky and difficult in that context. And they didn't want to lose the park land itself. They didn't want to put a building on it, so

that was the other factor.

And then the last thing that we wanted to touch upon was the Station Plaza itself. So we had numerous conversations with the task force, the city, and VTA around the character of the Station Plaza, and part of it is to do with the idea that there is the historic Train Depot which is a lot of is a point of pride for a lot of community members and so we want to celebrate that really and we want to make sure that however we develop that, there is enough aspects there that celebrate the historic Train Depot. So one of the key factors was to allow for clear lines of sight to the historic train depot. It is setback a block, so it's a little tricky on how much we can accomplish. And this is we'll talk a little more about the options of development, but the idea is to maintain clear lines of sight to the historic train depot.

What we worked out with VTA, Citi, and the task force was the set of design objectives that we all agreed on which was connecting people in modes since this is a train station allowing for that kind of a development to happen on the plaza when it is getting designed in the future. It's not getting designed through this station area plan process. We want to create a strong sense of arrival for all those transit users who are getting off and coming to Santa Clara. Since this is very close to downtown, we would want this to be a point of arrival and for clear wayfinding to be to get to downtown and know that we're in Santa Clara. Then we wanted to activate and humanize the plaza, so we worked a lot on the sizing of the plaza itself and what felt like the right scale, what felt too large.

And then another factor was to be able to leverage this public land for transit oriented development to be able to monetize on that and with the idea of having some sort of a building on it which could fund part of the development of the plaza and potentially like underground parking depending on how the program of that building could be built. Fostering community life by having activating retail and also events on the plaza and then advancing sustainability goals by making sure that the plaza is developed in a sustainable manner in terms of planting, in terms of energy usage, even the building that would get built on-site. So those are the key design objectives that everyone sort of agreed on.

And Chair, if I may interrupt for one second, the commission has two slides in front of them that all the things Diksha just said in detail, they're on those slides for you to refer to later. We highlights put here on the slide but you have the more detailed verbiage in front of you. Thank you.

Go ahead Diksha. I'll invite VT. An

in context question that's very pertinent to this part of it. Have you investigated the idea of traveler kiosks like water station snacks other things that could be in the plaza to assist the travelers when they arrive?

Yes absolutely and that was the idea was to have those sort of activated uses and that would come under the point four which is activate and humanize the plaza as well as yes. The answer is But just the fact that we're not designing the plaza right now so we can't really like put exact locations and things fit it in the plan document but what we're putting in the plan document is the intent that we would like for the future design of the plaza to be. And I'll invite our members from VTA to talk a little more about it.

Thank you, Diksha. Good evening, Planning Commissioners, Chair. It's a real pleasure for me to be here. My name is Melissa Cerezo. I am the Transit Oriented Communities Program Manager at VTA.

I've been very pleased about the collaboration with the city, WRT, the integration of our consultants, SightLab, our work with the task force. So it's been really exciting to just wrap our hands and hearts around this process. I want to just clarify that we're focusing on a parcel that is the Caltrain parking lot right now. And just to clarify that, and that's something that's co owned by VTA in the city. And for us at VTA, TOD is mixed use, mixed income development on our transit land right next to transit.

And we take this very seriously. It's a core priority for us. So we want to be incredible stewards of land and transit. And so we've listened and learned, and we've come across these shared design objectives together. And I just want to again reiterate that we are coming together around creating a comfortable environment, a world class destination that really honors and celebrates the heritage of Santa Clara and also the historic station.

So with that said, we have three sort of flexible approaches that we've curated as just some early conceptual ideas. And these are named really to focus on the stationary, but we could also talk about the buildings. The compositions of these ideas we believe harmonize those objectives, Again, we just recently stated. So the first one here or first, second, and third we believe really regard that El Cumin Real to the historic Depot Station, that view corridor as very significant as a curated experience as you walk 400 feet from El Camino Real to that element. So I just want to highlight for the Franklin Corridor, this retains Franklin Street.

So you could see that loop around. And so you're introduced to that historic Depot Station from that El Camino view, and you step across 400 feet into an activated, you know, edge plaza with active building frontages on the

new

TOD, you must cross the street in order to reach the Historic Depot site. In the second scheme we have what's called the connected plaza and you'll you'll see here too there's there's a bit more connectivity now towards that pedestrian bike concept bridge and also just a relocated street that brings actually the plaza closer to the historic building site. So you're adding the attention, you're creating more attention or media attention between the plaza and that Historic Depot site. And then in the third scheme, this is more of a straight shot linear park, a straight corridor, again a different kind of street, a rectilinear approach, straight street towards that historic building. And so that we believe are these three articulated approaches that could honor again the intentions of preserving that very special view corridor from El Camino towards the historic site and also balances the other objectives that we stated.

And then lastly, wanted to really bring us to that pedestrian level view so that we can get a feel of what that, the building form plus the plaza feels like with activated uses such as cafes, green spaces, and just a generous open area for community vitality. And I'll turn it over to WRT once again.

Thank you. Great, thanks Melissa. So yes, I think well maybe just to back up to that last view. I have the controls. So I think this really is illustrating the open view to the depot, but also the step nature of the the building. And the building goes much taller. We don't mean to mask that in this view. It's a big building. It's 350,000 to 400,000 square foot building.

Where's the train depot on that sketch?

That's the one clear in the back.

Straight dead box. Okay.

So we're on El Camino Real and we're looking straight across the

Kind of what I thought but I wanted to

make Yeah, to the historic depot. And the building is large but through the sculpting of that building, the step backs, this idea of a roof terrace on the on top of the second level that overlooks the plaza, you know, those are all devices to sort of step this mass down so that it's more compatible with the with scale of the depot. And that is not all being determined in detail as a part of this plan. So we're trying to define the parameters, define the the step back requirements, the the clear view lines to the depots as Melissa explained as parts of the framework of the plan, but the details of the design of the building, the design of the plaza, all that would come obviously at later stages. And that ends our presentation.

And we're here to answer your questions. Whatever they may be, we would be very interested in hearing your feedback on the preferred direction of the plan, on this approach to building heights that both Diksha and I explained and talked about. And then any comments you have on this latter piece, the Station Plaza, the objectives that we defined and sort of how we're approaching that specific area. Thank you for your attention and we look forward to questions.

Thank you very much. Excellent presentation. Procedural questions since we have two ex chairs who you can help me as well as staff and legal. When we do this study session, this is for our edification. To what extent does any of questions or comments that we have, let's say, we would like to be related to or given to city council since they're the next ones, to get that.

How do we communicate communicate that in maybe some of these questions like, hey, we want to make sure that city council understands what we're saying here. Chair or staff, please, Leslie?

Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Good question. So yes, you're right. It is a study session, and we will be capturing all your comments this evening. There will be a report to counsel when we do the study session for them and that report will disseminate all of your comments and in summary form, but if there is something very specific you want to make sure that they read, please shout that out, let me know, we'll get it word for word. Yeah. We're we'll be taking your comments as well as the city council's comments, and our consultant's really good at putting those all together and turning them into the plan action.

Leslie was exactly right, and just to add to that is this is a study session, so no action is being taken, so you wouldn't ask for any motion or anything like that to be taken to council. It's just a discussion and staff will take all the feedback and present it in their staff report.

Yeah, understood. I appreciate that. I just want to make sure that the communication you're sure to going able do that. You're planned?

November 18, I believe. Next

month.

It's in your timeline but isn't it come back as a formal action and recommendation back to BC first?

Oh, yes. For for formal adoption, that'll be next end of next year adoption hearings will come to Planning Commission for recommendation first before it goes to City Council for no adoption. Want to

make sure

that City Council is getting the accurate comments that we have. So as the report goes to them is this something that let's say if I make a particular comment that I would like to make sure that it was

Mhmm.

Reflecting what I I felt I said?

Just yeah. Yeah. Just say staff, please dictate my comment, and we'll put that in the the report to counsel.

That's what she said.

Yeah.

An old man. Let me just ask questions. Thank you without the side comment.

Please just let us know and we'll make

sure it gets in

there. All right. So all that aside for the moment. Now that I've got that aside, thank

you very

much. Does anybody have a question?

We have.

Commissioner Biaghini?

By the way thank you chair I will second that non motion of yours. First off I'm impressed with the amount of work especially considering the collaboration that's gone into this. A couple things I wanted to point out. One, absolutely thankful this idea of sight lines with the train station to El Camino because I think that's so important. Thank you.

Second one was this idea that protected bike path. If you don't have that, I'm just going to be blunt, you're probably not going to get a whole lot of bike riders there including me. Here's where my concern lies. I saw on the staff presentation a proposed street in one of the diagrams. I've seen versions of that.

On yours my concern is access, access and access. There's a lot of activity going on on Coleman. There's a lot of proposed activity coming in the downtown area. How you connect Coleman to the downtown for traffic is my concern. I I like the idea of the pedestrian and bike path, but when I think in terms of somebody living in Gateway Crossings, taking the train to work, or BART coming home, if there's not an easy way, and that doesn't mean walking three miles, to get from what I call the Coleman Corridor to the downtown downtown area I think we're going to have a problem.

So are any of these like the proposed street I don't know if that was for bikes and pedestrians or cars same with your plans because I also recognize that with the BART station going in doing anything underground is going to be tricky to say the least. It almost seems to me you'd have to do an overpass. So how are you planning on connecting or what's the thought process Coleman to the downtown area that makes it convenient for people riding the train or BART? And that includes cars because I don't want one side or the other to be on a disconnect and right now there isn't a convenient access.

Definitely I think that was one of our key concerns going into the project as well which is where the idea of the Benton broke off underpass is coming from. So Benton currently dead ends at the railway tracks near the Caltrain Station and so does broke off on the other side. So the idea is to be able to have from this intersection of El Camino and Benton an underpass that starts descending after this intersection and then goes under the train tracks and comes out on the other side near the BART Station. Maybe just a block north of the BART Station because the BART stations like the entrance of the BART Station.

So this would make the entrance of

the bus.

The other side I'm interested in the connection. Yes, yes. And where would people park?

So all of the area near this yellow which is the BART Station so this is all going to be a surface parking lot.

Okay.

Yes. So that is why the impetus for this study that the city is now doing a more technical study of whether this connection is possible because that would be the best way to merge the two sides together.

And Benton is the one that has the dot on it. Okay.

Yes. So this one is Benton, where the Benton project is. And then

it goes on I'm trying to bridge over my head. Benton hits. Where's the police department on that diagram?

This one. The single story building? Which one?

Right there.

Ah, Okay. All right, I got it now.

Thank you.

I'll save any other questions. Have a feeling some of my colleagues are going ask the same thing.

No, maybe not. Who else I has the got a question here. A couple questions really quick here. Thank you for the presentation. See that you really have vision of what you want to see but I don't know if it's really the vision in reality if realistic at all.

Were you mentioning 5500 additional residential units on top of the what we already have in that area? You're talking a lot of traffic and you want to cut down Coleman. Have you ever been to Coleman later lately and getting out of Costco going into Costco? It's it's it's a mess. Not only that, why would you want to build that many units right next to an airport that is gonna be expanding especially the back part of that airport that is all for the charter flights and that's increasing tremendously almost at the same capacity as the regular airlines.

That is insanity. Know, that's you're asking for trouble. That's and also the height of the buildings. You mentioned in 18 up to 18 stories high, you're in the left pattern of the San Jose Airport which the airport at that now is 800 feet, the traffic pattern for the entering the left wrong ways. So this is not well conceived and where are we gonna get the money?

That's what I like to know. Where are we gonna get the money for this? Because he mentioned $500 grand another $400 that's only less than a million dollars that is nothing. Know that's that's nothing and then on top of that the city of Santa Clara going partnership, we don't have any money we just try to pass the bond for 400 to fix our city, $400 $400,000,000 bond. The state of California doesn't have any money either.

And good luck trying to get the federal government to come into this project. That's what I want to see. I like the ideas that you have but we have to get do a reality check on this and all of these things here. And this I think that's the first thing before we decide how we're going to build this year, we're to put this year, we're going to put bikes and so on. But yeah this is this is where I've been looking at. I'm looking at realistically how I'm going to pay for this and what is going to take and you know in case traffic jazz what is if it's going to be any anything that is going to really make our community better without putting strain in everything else that we have. But it's beautiful presentation, I really appreciate it. Very well done. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner. So just to answer a few of your questions. So the maximum height that we're looking at for the buildings is around 13 feet, which would be residential based. And that is in line with what the airport patterns 13 stories, yes, sorry, not 13 feet, no, 13 stories. 13 feet would

be nothing.

We would not go anywhere with that one. So 13 stories, so that is in line with what is allowed based on the current traffic patterns that the airport has. And then the idea of who's going to build it, so this would be a specific plan. We're just allowing for what private developers could do on that side. Whether they build 5,500 residential units or not that is completely their We're just trying to eliminate obstacles to mixed use development in this plan area.

And so when if and when the market becomes feasible again for development which currently it's going through a hard time as it is, that there are no restrictions that because this is a high priority area because of the vast transit that it has, It has Caltrain, it has ACE, it has the coming of BART in the future. So it'll become a regional transit hub and TOD us to build as much housing around those areas as possible. So to capitalize on that kind of development in the future, we want to just eliminate barriers. And so no one is building this, might not get built in general, but the idea is to allow for that level of development. So individual property owners in different parts might want, once we allow them the capacity they might want to redevelop that parcels or they might want to still build townhomes and that's their choice.

And it's important to note too that this is a specific plan, so the build out of it is twenty, thirty, forty years in the future, so it's not today or tomorrow.

And then through the chair, I just wanted to also kind of expand this discussion. What the specific plan allows us to do is set our own vision. And if we have that vision and if we have the development standards, we have kind of objective standards, then when future development does come in, it comes in and it fits in with the vision that the city has already put in place. And then importantly, this is a priority development area.

One of the things that Leslie said that is that I agree with her is, know, we're talking thirty, forty years or fifty years in the future, everything may change completely. So it's like starting all over again. So this discussion you know it's just like with the plan. But you know, if you look ahead, we cannot look, we don't have a crystal ball to see what the future Thank

Chair. You're welcome.

Through the Chair, if I may, just a friendly reminder, this is the clarifying questions portion of the evening, and we still have to open up to public comment and then go to all the wonderful discussion you will have about this project.

Thank you.

Mr. Wang?

Thank you, chair. Actually, my question is, this area is so close to the airport. But the terminal of the airport, it's on the other side of the runway. So any idea how to connect them? I mean, it's a plan, right? Yeah, I just try to see anything, I mean, we can plan ahead. Yeah, thank you.

Good question. And there was a lot of discussion around this all the way from having shuttles that connect us from the train station to the airport, even very visionary ideas of having like an underground connection that goes straight to the airport. And the city along with some task force members were looking at submitting for grants to further some of the studies. I'm not sure did we win that grant? No.

Yeah. But that's specifically outside

of the scope of this work. But yeah. But yes. But what we will do in this plan is to make sure that we emphasize the need for last mile connectivity, including from the train station to the airport, and then work with the transportation authorities like PTA to further that principle.

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, actually, yeah, you see the bar, call train, right, and the local traffic and the airport. Yeah, it looks like it's a hub. So, yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions? Questions?

Lance? Okay.

So I'll start with a couple simple smaller ones. Hopefully for the train arrival area, you'll have some consideration for bike lockers and train lockers. This is a pretty traditional thing, but I didn't see anything even mentioned in here and it needs to be secure. So hopefully that will be included in the layout so you can have some security when you drive when you bike down to take your train. That's just a feedback.

The other thing that since Ashant is here, maybe she could comment on how did the boundaries of this development evolve because the beaver tail of the stadium itself seems extremely unusual to have that included as part of this.

Know, Leslie, you can expand on this, but this was through the general plan, the 2010 general plan that was adopted, and it came up through council.

And prior to that, chair, I will add, there was a planning effort to do a specific plan for the station area. One was actually done. It won an award, but the city council never adopted it. But what the city council did do is with our general plan update, they took elements of that specific plan and they adopted into our specific plan as the focus area. So I don't know how they decided that those were the boundaries at the time, but that's sort of where it started was with an initial specific plan and then being incorporated into our general plan.

Thank you. Well

I was just curious because I know we're butting up against San Jose and I I assume some negotiation was made with San Jose over, how that plan would would flush out because, literally, you can't be across the street from a completely different vision of, that area. It would be a coordination effort. And I I was just wondering if we have an ongoing coordination with San Jose to make sure this space doesn't evolve into a Frankenstein.

Not specifically. Specifically, but if you look at what is right adjacent to the border, it's the Coleman Highline project, which is almost built out. I think they have one vacant parcel left that's left on construction for office, and that would be on the east side of the tracks, on the west side of the tracks where we abut San Jose they have townhomes already developed and those aren't likely to go anywhere.

So

what is the Brokaw right of way with and what is Delacruz's with? I think I know El Camino, but go ahead for benefit of doubt. I just want to understand the connectivity.

So Brokaw, the proposed one that we're looking at is around 92 feet.

What is the entire right of way today?

It's much smaller. 92?

No, it's slightly lesser than I

think it's closer to around 60.

So you're expanding Broca?

Yes. We're creating a setback on the undeveloped side effect so that we expand the public right of way.

So it's going from 60 to 92?

Yes. I'm not exactly sure on the 60 number, but it's lesser than 90, and we're adding definitely like around a 15 foot setback for sure on one side.

Okay. That's very helpful because I was like, oh my god, Broca is very constrained. What about Coleman?

Coleman, so the total one that we're looking at right now is 142 overall. And Coleman is 100 feet curb to curb right now with a little it's more

142?

No. 100 is curb to curb. So it'll be around 120 right now.

You may want to get down to specifics, and I'll say why. And then De La Cruz as well. So at some point in our study session, make sure I have the because I do have feedback on the design itself. So I know this was just questions.

Thank you.

Yes. Thanks, Jir. Actually, I'd like the presentation. I wanted to actually give a word of thanks and congratulations. The city staff, VTA and WRT, wanted to mention specifically, Afsan, you made a preamble and it looks like the rest of the presentation lived up to it, which is really that seeking feedback. Right? So let me just state, many times the presentations are, well, we've had all these, you know, community meetings and we've considered these 15 different plans. Here's the one that we are proposing. Like it or not, that's your that's your choice. But the the choice that that was not how it was presented.

Right? We are looking for feedback, and the whole presentation was looking for feedback. Well done. Thank you. I think the point that commissioner Huang raised in my mind is kind of important outside the scope of this project, but we should connect this part station to the airport. I mean, if anybody has been to any of these European cities, you name it, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, that connectivity provides you the intensity of the usage of these facilities. If they remain separate, then guess what? They remain separate. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. So, last but not least, I'll try and keep this brief. Since you have Coleman up there, have a question. Right now, Coleman goes to three lanes at one point going towards 880. Correct? At what point does it it doesn't really change three lanes until after Costco. And then you have to go under the bridge, I believe. Because there's like one lane becomes a left turn lane like you have to go up and over and the other are just two lanes and then they widen again. Okay. So I think it's very important to recognize that right now the traffic patterns that we see today are awful.

And Costco has a major desire. People want to go there. I understand that. But the left turn lane, the number of times I've gone there where people are already almost trying to nail each other behind, you know, and you have all these unfortunately, when it's very busy, I think people aren't watching what they're doing, and I I would feel bad if we don't do something about it. So, in these plans that you're talking about, is that being taken into account?

Yes. So, as we move forward with the preferred plan that we have, we have a transportation consultant on board and they will run models to analyze the traffic patterns that are going to come both from the regional perspective as well as the increased residential capacity within the neighborhood. So they will model where the stresses are and how we can mitigate them as well. So the next time we come to you, we will have all of that in place.

Definitely need to mitigate it. Now the other thing that I have is, are you familiar with San Carlos Airport? It's a small residential not residential, it's a small commuter airport, a lot of private planes and stuff like that. I used to work at one of the buildings up there. They're four stories and there was three sets of buildings.

And two buildings were not too far apart. But one of my favorite things to to see was when they were doing training of new pilots and even old pilots. What happens is the wind will go right through a four story building, not through the building, but through the the opening of the sides. And as the pilots flying, what you're supposed to do is tilt towards that so that it doesn't throw you over. The number of times I've seen people literally go over, well to me in one sense it was funny, but in the other sense I felt bad because it's a serious thing.

So in doing this, is there going to be a study if you're gonna build buildings that are 13 stories high to look at the winds because obviously in the afternoons in Santa Clara, we have some major winds. And if they start whistling through those buildings and being fortified to hit the airport, I would be concerned about that. So is that something that has been thought of?

We haven't considered that, but we can look into it in further detail.

I would please recommend that the other side of the coin is when you talk to different members, you have these open houses and such. What outreach has been to pilots who are actually using the airport for commuter or private pilots and then involving the pilots not to the FDA but pilots that actually use that airport all the time. Has there been any outreach to them and getting their side of how this might affect their safety?

No, I don't think that is something that we've considered as of now.

Okay.

We already got your opinion in. So I would suggest that that be done as well because I think it'd be 13 stories is huge. And I think it would be very helpful to make sure you get their input before you start building there or that we say this is what we're going to allow to be built there. They may have some good input beyond what we're thinking of today. I'm going to hold off on my other questions about this for later. So right now, is there any members of the public? Should we go to public comment?

We do not have any hands raised online and there is nobody in the council chambers asking to speak.

I just make wanna make sure anybody wants to speak in addition to what you've already said? Okay. Then I'm gonna go on with some of my questions if I may. One of the things that I'm I learned at APA at a conference we just had in Monterey was Culver City was saying hey listen when we do mixed use with retail that in a lot of cases they felt they just didn't have enough retail. And if you were there Leslie I'd love to have your input as well.

So they said, look, what we're going to do is if it doesn't make sense to have all that retail, one of the things that we will do is we do need more residential. So has any of that been considered? And by the way staff, is it possible to even do that when you say I have mixed use that I could use that 1st Floor and say, all right, I'm really going to mix up. It isn't just all dedicated to retail. We can do it. Okay, great. Yes. So is that something that's been thought up as well?

So let me come back to this map that we had. Other than these frontages that we have defined in red here, everywhere else they would be able to do what you just mentioned, where they would be able to build residential on the ground floor and there would be no restrictions around it. It's only we have certain select corridors where we want to encourage activation, where we want to encourage retail to come about and we want to have certain experience for the community members. Those are the only ones that we have categorized as retail required frontages. And we did have an we have economist also on our team who has looked through that and helped us understand which are the key corridors that we should focus on so that we don't have a blanket requirement that forces a lot of buildings to have retail where it's not really feasible for the market.

Excellent. That hits most of my questions. Since MTC ABAG is represented here, I want to make sure that when we look at high density, like we are looking at over there towards the the airport side, servicing that many people on the few roads that are around there are a major concern. Would hope that a bag would be very good about saying you don't necessarily have to have that high density over there. That's all. I would appreciate that. I do. So

All right. Thing Ready for a white paper off from Okay. So by the way, congratulations. This I'm an urban planner. This is my passion. This is your dream. What you just did is probably your dream and your passion that you put out there. So I appreciate the partnership, the collaboration, the vision building absolutely phenomenal. That said as an urban planner and a designer who's traveled around the world and he just mentioned Paris and Europe, I didn't find the design inspirational yet. Still a block.

As an architect, as an urban designer you want if you really think Santa Clara has got to be someday a world destination that then cut it. So try to even so much as Dublin and San Ramon has elements of this is our space you know we've built new you have archways or you have roadways that indicate a central point or a commute like a gathering space. This doesn't lead us to this transit station yet. So one, you've tried a grid pattern of street here but it doesn't inspire like Barcelona does. And I just came off from Barcelona so I have it hot on my blood yet.

I don't see it inspiring people coming together. The plaza in front of transit station is too wide. When people gather they tend to gather in cozier, smaller coves. When it's too wide and it's too traffic y, all you're doing is only encouraging more cars. It doesn't bring that same level of coziness where people feel comfortable to hang out, eat pizzas, croissants, coffees.

I didn't see that come through yet. Yet. So try a little more inspirational level of street ways. You can try angles and still get architectural elements. Put your signature. You're a well renowned firm. This is Santa Clara City. We don't want this to be another suburbia. We have not yet imbibed the true principles of what becomes a world class destination. If that's your words, it didn't say that through your design.

You just use words. If you see that envisioned and three d built, they are just mass buildings that don't have a statement at all. So think a little more visionary, bring more architectural urban design principles even in front of the transit piazza, do little architectural steps that bring people together. Don't just make it flat. Think different.

People tend to convene around steps. People tend to convene around water. People tend to convene about around a certain vibe. That's what Europe is all about whether you have it as squares or piazzas or water elements none of it is here in this year's jewel. So I'm just stating it out as an urban design principle planner.

And retail. Retail is a very different concept when it comes to Europe. It's not that Amazon doesn't exist there, but they've just put food as the draw. You walk in there's just cafes and pizza and people sitting and chatting away and know he can relate. That's what brings communities together.

So you don't have to envision a Gucci or even a Tesla showroom like Santana Row. You just need to have enough to draw people in into those space. Also when you do retail try to give them those coves that give them away from traffic such that the kids can hang out there. So when you that's why I was asking your street how wide is Coleman going to be, how wide is Broker going to be, how wide is and draw your people in through those plazas. So you have green parts know that we are drought prone.

I know but I'm just saying you want to have that natural mix of even if it turns brown someday it can still bring people. It doesn't have to be necessarily a park it can still function as a plaza.

Well even if you had it as a park I mean one of the things I'll give you Austin Texas and something that we see all over here now is are these just empty spaces and at night or whatever all the food trucks come by. Yeah. Everybody loves to go there, right? So things that would allow for something like that because retail to me is kind of a it's in flux. And you know we don't need the same sandwich shops over and over but if we can get local people who want to know. Accuisines. Yes.

So the other is tree lined avenues. We love our trees. We would love to have more tree lined avenues. If you have that many residences by the way I agree 13 stories it looks like a full on tunnel. And then take your weather patterns into consideration when you orient your streets.

You have a you have a moment in your career to make a history with the city someday. By the way if you look at the aerial Santa Clara University is a much more like absorbing architectural view from a bird's eye view. You want to generate that with this. You're showing me an aerial not of all of us are at the aerial scale but if you do that's your moment. Why is Stanford University so inviting because of Olmsted's Palm Drive.

None of that I see as a true architect as a true urban designer come through here. You didn't talk about those principles. What are those principles? What is the great concept? What is you should be able to influence moment here. VTA and MT do partner ideally yes we would love to have those pedestrian pathways and simple connections through public transit. Come on, we are in the hub of Silicon Valley. We can compete with Europe easily guys. So generate the connection through your VTA, MTC funding is going to be a challenge. But let's at least envision it, money can come later.

It doesn't take money to dream big. So do come up with more aesthetically viable principles and create a signature of your own you want to be known in history. Okay, thank you.

Have a wait a minute, how about the data centers? Want to

second what Commissioner Tericuru said. I've been to Barcelona as well. One thing, check out Bilbao Spain for how you merge modern, historic, and beautiful walkways.

Anybody else?

Yes, go.

Okay, I'm going

to drop it down a notch on its scope. One of the things that I have noticed about the designs and the street profiles is the emphasis on bikes, is great, but since we are talking about designing out for the future, it's really important that we don't take a snapshot of today as what it's going to be in ten years and twenty years. You've got to extrapolate on the trends. And one of the things I saw completely omitted was support for things like driverless taxis, driverless Waymo's, basically, Lyfts, Ubers. This is gonna be a big part of the destination transportation link that is built to use the bike to the train to the or to the terminal, but where do they go from there?

They're not gonna rent a bike. They they need to go some other destination. Make sure that the the road architecture supports the idea of knockouts, cutouts, safe pickup spaces so that they can move from a a train environment to, auto without, creating traffic issues. I see right away on Coleman, you've dropped from three lanes to two. There there would be no safe place to pick someone up on a two lane road. You need to have that knockout. And I didn't see it anywhere in the the descriptions or the profiles.

Lance? Yes. You know, fifty years from now, we're gonna have the flying taxis that already have them.

So

they would just fly I'm looking 50.

I'm just Just wait. Just wait.

Just wanted to respond to your comments though, So very we did consider that specific use case and Brokov, which is our primary street just outside the BART Station and on the other side in the Station Plaza itself. On the Station Plaza, we've designated a zone, which is TNC. But that's very flexible because that will based on like how the Station Plaza itself develops in the future, that will have that might move. But on Brokov, that's where the idea of the flex zones has come up, to be able to have those pull off areas in the future near the train station for when people need to get on and off.

Right. Not crossing over bike lanes because that is probably the single most dangerous thing.

Yes. The bike lanes buffered on the other side. And

also just to clarify, if you turn back to Coleman that the one thing we didn't mention is that the 13 foot buffer zones on either side have right turn lane carve outs and they can also have carve outs for other kinds of things. So even though we're reducing from three lanes to two, there are additional turn lanes that are built into this design. But where the turn lane doesn't exist, it can be part of this greenway with plenty of planting area and stormwater management and those kind of things. So it's really aiming to be an integrated green boulevard rather than you know, a traffic conveyor.

Well, let me ask you that then. When you look at that area today and even in future, if I live somewhere on one of the properties that we're talking about, where am I working?

Well, it's a good question. You may be working near a transit station in another city, right? So you might walk to this station, have a short ride to Diridon or Berryessa and then have a short walk to your office.

What's your estimate for how many people living there would be in that situation? Because I I'm gonna be very honest, I see it as partially, but a smaller percentage than a larger percentage. I think that area right there because it's so just residential. I mean, you work at Roku right there, you can walk to work. Fantastic.

But I think a lot of people are gonna literally have to commute in some way, shape, or form. And if the bus takes them to where they need, fantastic. If I have to go to Oakland, man, I am so happy because now I have BART. Right? But my concern is that the majority of people will wind up saying, okay, I still have to go to Scott Boulevard and Montague, and I'm gonna have drive.

So when we talk about turning it down to only two lanes, today we couldn't sustain that in my opinion. We would have a major problem. So I don't see it as such a that bicycle paths and such there are the the answer to it. Most people on average go thirty minutes to drive to to work. And so I think we have to be careful that this is kind of a carve out.

It's kind

of like, okay, if you have your Barcelona or your big town, this is not in the main area of it downtown. This kind of a carve out that to me was industrial. It's next to the airport and such. And it's big transit. Right? Because it's Coleman goes all the way to Downtown San Jose. People are getting up from eight eighty and stuff like that. Cutting it down to two lanes, I think, is gonna be a major problem. And I I don't see that bike lanes and such are gonna really help the people that live in that area per se because they're having to go quite a distance

Yeah. To get anywhere. So it's a great perspective. And I think one of the one of the challenges of a study like this where you're looking twenty, thirty years out in the future is trying to imagine what is this neighborhood going to be in thirty years because I think we all have a tendency to define it as it is today. Well, today it's a great way to cut from one zero one over to three eighty, and that's what a lot of people are doing.

And that's that's how this this road system was designed. It was designed expressly for that purpose because of the land uses that were planned at that time. It's an industrial zone, and it, you know, it has functioned that way for the last several decades. Now we're fast forwarding to the future, and we're actually trying to transform this neighborhood into the place. Like when you were saying this isn't like Barcelona because this isn't the place, this is sort of an industrial area near the airport.

Well, what we're suggesting is it's not the industrial zone next to the airport anymore. It's actually the neighborhood where you live and where your cultural draws are and where your parks are, where your kids are playing, and where you walk to the station to go to work or you bike to the station. Now your point about, yes, you're gonna peel off some of those other modes, but there's still gonna be a lot of people driving. And that is the million dollar question right there, is how much mode shift can we achieve? And if you ask some folks that are all about transit ridership and encouraging mode shift, the degree to which you can shift modes is quite high.

You ask others, it's like, no, we're Americans. We love our cars. We're always gonna wanna drive from point a to point b, then the mode shift is less. And there's a there's a real debate going on right now in planning in America, and that's happening right here in in Silicon Valley in terms of how much do we push that agenda for mode shift, but also how realistic are we being. Right?

Because we do wanna be realistic. We wanna be grounded in things that are not just pie in the skies. Like everybody's gonna ride their bike. Everyone's gonna ride transit. No. Not everybody is, but a significant shift can can happen. And I think that's part of creating a vision for this neighborhood. So I think when you go back to the basic principles of what, you know, that vision statement that I read in the very beginning, It's walkable. It's vibrant. It's got green space.

It's got destinations. It's your neighborhood. Okay? It's it's where you're gonna live and play and your kids are gonna go to school and you may not work in that neighborhood, but you might. But you should at least have the ability to take transit, you know, to work. And then some people are gonna drive, and that is definitely true. So there's a real tension in terms of how far do we push it in terms of creating this vision versus how much do we retain some of the patterns that

I think reach for the sky but have have your feet on the ground. And I agree with what you're saying. In principle, I think the key is going to be the practicality of it. We don't know where we're going to be in forty years per se, but I can pretty much guess we're still gonna have cars. They're not gonna be flying cars. Sorry. But Coleman cuts that off. You're you're putting in an area that you're saying is almost like its own little town. And that's that's the the you know, here we go. That's the bridge and the and the and the thing that when we're talking about what we think could be helped helped in there, like what you were talking about, that's where I think you have an opportunity to do this.

I think if you if we go over you know I'm gonna volunteer you since she's fantastic

to

work with you since you're getting paid so well here. That it can be done, but the vision that you're showing us, I think, is a good preliminary one. You did a great presentation. There's more we want out of it because we're seeing that there's some some really hard issues there. Coleman being one of them. I know that's why you're asking us for our opinion.

This is excellent feedback. So I really appreciate it.

Let me make a quick

that we're

in

of

And And airports are like really rundown low income because nobody wants to move there and you have this panaceum of building houses next to a jet center airport and having a community in there. What are you thinking of? I mean, that doesn't make any sense. That really doesn't make any sense. That's why there was industrial there.

This is a general plan vision through our city council.

Know it is, so you have to actually take everything into consideration. I appreciate you making that point, you have to take everything in consideration. If you're going to look at it and put all this effort into it, you've got to see all the reality is going to be in there. And if you look at building a community next to an airport right now, doesn't make any sense. That used to be industrial, used to have an FMC and that's one of the reasons because nobody wants to live next to an airport.

Let me because it's come up a couple of times, let me address this one quickly. Commissioner Bosa, it's a very legitimate concern. Disha sort of touched on this quickly, but I wanted to just reiterate where we drew the line as to where it's okay to have housing versus where it's not okay to have housing. So we looked very carefully at the noise contours from the airport, and those are mapped out. And they're the number of decibels that are audible at different distances back from the airport.