Santa Clara Stadium Authority - Regular Meeting

K. So we're on. It is 06:04. Now it's called to order the stationary task force special meeting of 05/21/2026 at 06:04, and we'll start with roll call.

Member Garg. Member Garg. Member Collins?

Present.

Member Evans?

Present.

Member Scher?

Here.

Member Huff? Here. Member Wynn? Member Mayor?

Here.

Member Andre Sec?

Here. Can you hear me?

Yes. I do.

Okay. Thank you.

Member Plain? Here. Member Stockwell?

Here.

Cherilyn, and we have a quorum. Do we we have everybody tonight. Right? And member on your side will be participating and meeting remotely under a B2449 in government code 54953F due to emergency circumstances. So we did get his roll call here. Thank you. Let's move on. Declaration of the s a two.

Chair, member Huynh is not here.

Oh, that is true. Do we have a motion to excuse the, member Huynh?

Motion.

Thank you. Wait. Who motioned first? Then, second?

Second.

Thank you. I have a second.

Do we have the roll call vote? Member Garg, Member

Collins?

Aye.

Member Evans?

Aye.

Member Scher?

Yes.

Member Huff? Aye. Member Mayor?

Yes.

Member Andresek?

Aye.

Member Plain?

Yes.

Member Stockwell?

Aye. Okay. Me. EMS one absence. Member Hoenn is excused. We'll go to declaration SATF procedures. Please read SAT meeting procedures in the record.

Meetings are conducted by the chair in accordance with the following procedures. One, the chair of the SATF directs all activity during the meeting. Two, any item on this agenda may be continued to a subsequent meeting. Three, special procedures or time limits may be applied to any items as prescribed by the chair. Copies of the agenda and any staff reports are available online on the specific plan website as well as on the city clerk's website.

Thank you. Next item is the consent calendar. We'll now move to consent calendar.

The procedure for the consent calendar is as follows. Consent calendar items may be enacted or approved by one motion unless requested to be removed by anyone for discussion or explanation. There is one item on the consent calendar, and that is the stationary task force meeting minutes of 03/19/2026.

Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

Motion.

Thank you. Do I have a second? Thank you. Roll call vote, please.

And just a reminder, if you were not present at that meeting, please abstain from the vote. Member Gark? Member Collins?

Present. Or aye. Sorry.

Member Evans?

Aye.

Member Scher?

Yes.

Member Huff? Aye. Member Nguyen is absent. Member Mayer?

Yes.

Member Andre Sec?

Yes.

I believe you are absent.

Oh, then no.

Obstain. Abstain, Dan. You abstain.

Oh, abstain. Sorry.

Member Plain?

Yes.

Member Stockwell?

Aye. Thank you. An aye for me. Motion passes. Thank you.

What is that? Sorry. You're not on my roster. So I just

I know. I was like, hey. Me. Everything. You're good. So the next section we have is public presentation. Is there anyone that would like to address the task force and items that are not on the meeting agenda? This is just for items that are not on the on the agenda. Could be anybody. And

Yes. We have one request in the chambers. And if you're online, if you could raise your hand.

You. Let's go with card.

Sure. Eli Robles.

Let's come out. Thank you.

Sorry. Good evening, board. So I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Eli Robles with the North Coast States Carpenters Union, local four zero five here in San Jose. So I just wanted to, know, introduce myself and just continue the conversation with you guys. I didn't have a prepared speech, but just with this project being the size that it is, you guys would consider area standard wages, a responsible contractor. We represent many general contractors and subcontractors in the area and also credit apprenticeship standards. So look forward to maybe meeting you guys after the meeting and being part of the conversation. Thank you, though.

Thank you for your comments. Do we have any hands? I don't think I see any. That's it for public comments and presentations. Let's move on to general business. Move this to staff.

Thank you, chair. So on general business tonight, we have a discussion and review of some of the design guidelines and is that right? We're gonna be talking about some of the policies that we've drafted since we last met, including maintaining a work and housing balance in the plan area and then what amenities we feel would make this a complete place. I think we started that discussion at our last meeting about having a complete neighborhood and kind of wanna discuss more of the factors that would play into that. So for that, we will have WRT provide the presentation.

They are attending virtually today. So we have Deeksha and Jim.

Hi, guys. Hello.

Good evening, everyone.

Hi, Jim and Dijkha.

Hi, Dan.

So

I think we're gonna pull up the presentation here. I'm just gonna kick us off. And we've been working hard on the different elements of the plan, coordinating with our various team members, and trying to move towards a, you know, rough draft of the plan. And as certain things come up that need some further discussion, we get them on the agenda with Leslie and and Rebecca so that we can get some of your input. So let's just go right to the agenda.

Rebecca already mentioned two of the items. So the, yeah, the first one's land use and development. It's about really finding the the tools and mechanisms to maintain the right balance of of work, workplace, and housing. We want this to be a community that is, you know, twenty four hour community and have the right balance of office workers and and residents and and not be overly dominated by by one or the other. So what are the tools that we can that we can consider for the plan to achieve that proper balance?

And then on the complete communities, as Rebecca said, this came up in the last meeting. You all asked for a little bit more clarification on how we establish the criteria for which kinds of services and how many of different kinds of services for the protect population of the district. So we've got some more information on that. And then on mobility, we've done a little bit of more work on the TDM aspect, the the basic framework of of the mobility plan and and how we're handling different modes of circulation. We've gone over, I think, pretty thoroughly with with all of you.

So all of that is still in play, but we've done a little bit of more work on the TDM measures. So we'll have some information to share on that and and get your feedback and then on to q and a and next steps. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Diksha to talk about the first item.

Thanks, Jim. So jumping in here, this is our preferred plan. Nothing new there. And then we have our land use that we already discussed. So because there is a lot of flexibility in most of our districts are mixed use districts where we allow residential as well as office to develop, and we are allowing for a lot of height as well in our heights diagram.

One of the things that our economists had shared early on is that the market is very ripe for residential and less so for office in this plan area. And so we wanted to think about what might be the ways given a lot of the state state's regulations, which restrict ways that generally might work to create a ratio or cap of some sort, so that there is no way to cap residential, in the current, state regulation scenario. So we are thinking about in what ways could we still have, office come in. And one of the mechanisms was jobs housing balance and creating a framework to monitor that that the city could look at. So the idea here or the intent was to maintain a long term job housing balance and to support a mixed use district.

And so the idea is to create two thresh build out thresholds, 5075% of the project capacity that we've been projecting to and then use those as assessment points where the job housing balance trend would be checked, market conditions would be checked, and just overall progress towards specific plan objectives would be checked and could be used as a benchmark to make any corrections or chain amendments to the plan that might be required if it's not going in the direction that we really wanted it to go. So that was for if the residential market completely takes off and there is no office that comes in at all. But the other could also hold true. There are a number of cities that have a very hot office market and have office gaps in their plans. So we because we obviously already have the Highline and we are in Silicon Valley, we wanted to make sure that, yes, today, the market is not right.

But if in, like, five years, something, like, drastically changes and things start going up, we don't want office to also take over our entire plan area. So in that way, we have office threshold triggers, which would then create office gaps. So when we reach 60% 50% of the plan's residential office planned capacity, if if more than 15% of that development is office only, then we would cap office at that point to allow residential to catch up. And, again, the second check would be at the 75% of planned capacity. And in that case, if office the ratio is eight less residential is less than 80%, or office exceeds 20%, that would again be a place where we allow residential to catch up before more office is built.

So our entire plan area current projections are 2 point something million for office square feet. So already, this gap sort of shows that we would be close to the limit that we've imagined for the plan area, and hence, we're capping to allow for more residential to happen. So that is some of our thinking. But our additional thinking on that was maybe it caps stand alone office development, but still allows for mixed use development where which also might have an office component because it allows for residential to still be growing simultaneously. So we're strictly restricting that to office only stand alone.

Jumping to the second topics that we had, which was complete communities.

Is it okay to ask a question, or should we wait until, the conclusion of the presentation?

No. We can take a pause. It's not a very long presentation, so happy to break it up a little.

Thank you. The the framework looks interesting, and there's there's a quite a bit of content in there. I guess I'm wondering if there was a specific analytical framework that was used to come up with this broad framework that we're seeing on on the chart. And I guess my other question would be related maybe is, do we really feel confident that the size of the station area is sufficiently large to be drilling down on a jobs housing balance within the station area per se as opposed to, and where that comment is coming from, that question rather, is is that there are probably jobs housing imbalances across the city, and, I'm not familiar with how those may be assessed or what sorts of frameworks are in place to look at those things. But it seems to me that the station area, while it's large in a certain sense, it's it's it's not large compared to the city.

So so just maybe wanting to flesh this out a little bit.

Yeah. Absolutely. So in terms of framework, where it is coming from is looking at, like, the total capacity of office. For SQL, we have to do, like, build out capacity analysis. So we got those numbers and looked at them.

We looked at the ratio of residential to housing sorry, residential to office in our max capacity scenario that we've looked at, and that is roughly 16 to 84% ratio of office to residential. That was there. So the idea was, okay. Let's try to maintain that ratio as we grow. The second point was we don't want to lose office entirely purely because a lot of transit travel happens more when there is office involved at the end destination rather than when only residential is involved at the end destination.

And that's something that we studied earlier on in the project, and was also shared, was also information shared by our economic consultant. So the idea of this station being a regional destination with BART, and it has a total of four lines that are going to be coming at that point. So it feels much different from a lot of other stations that would be around in the area, and hence, the importance of going towards a housing job balance, which is not a very, like, fifty fifty ratio that we're looking at here. It's very much focused on the residential market as well, but providing enough office that there would be people who are using the area and taking the train to come to there as well.

Yeah. I think maybe if I could just add a clarification. Your question about the term jobs housing balance is a good question. It may be a misnomer in this application. Jobs housing balance is a concept that applies more to a regional goal, that there is access to jobs and housing through transit, and that we maintain a balance as different transit nodes around the region develop.

I think what we're referring to here is more about having the right mix in this district to keep the district activated, as a, you know, a twenty four hour district. And so we had a similar issue in the in the precise plan that we wanted that to be both a place for workers in the in the downtown precise plan, both a place for workers and a place for residents and that that neither use would would dominate the district. You know, it wants to feel balanced. You know, there's the right amount of daytime users that are, you know, using the office space. They activate the the businesses and and the cafes during the day, and there's a there's the right amount of residents so that the district is activated in the evenings, on the weekends.

So this is really about achieving that balance between office and and residential. It has less to do with the the the broader goal of of jobs housing balance that was addressed, as Diksha said, earlier on in in the project when we established the program. It's like how much office would this district support? So what we're trying to get at here is, you know, given that we have a certain proportion of residential and office in the plan, how do we make sure that they keep pace with each other as the district grows so that we always achieve the, you know, the the right mix?

Hey, Jim. This is Dan. Can I add add to this? And I I know that we we all discussed the office percentage. What I've noticed on Coleman, you know, it there's there's kind of a misdemeanor miss I think a mistake that that, you know, offices are really on the North Side Of Santa Clara. But if you look at Coleman's office space right now, I don't see an empty empty office. I think they're all they're all filled.

The Coleman Highline.

Yeah. Correct. But is that an incorrect statement? Or

It it's accurate.

It's accurate.

So if that's that's the case, I think going back to the question of you know, and this could be a reminder, how did we get to that 20%, 15% number?

In terms of the thresholds, Dan, or in terms of the the amount of office in the total program versus the amount of residential?

The the the latter. So in other words, the

How did how did we establish the the the the build out capacity of office and residential in in the plan as a whole. Right? Is that your question?

Correct. Sorry, guys.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, this this was the product of a lot of analysis by our economics team and conversations with the task force, with the city, you know, what is the right amount of office? What will this support? And what is enough office to make an activated center for the district.

And I think the the amount of office we're showing actually exceeds what was recommended by the The Economist as sort of the minimum needed to to create an an active district around the station. I think that was more like, what was it, two two to 300,000, Diksha, or two to 400,000 square feet.

Yes. Yes.

So we're we're exceeding that by quite a bit. But it's, you know, it's it's a large district. There is a lot of capacity. It is a regional center because of all the transit lines that are serving it. So I would say that it is a robust office program.

Do we Right. Would we could we exceed it, I think is, you know, a question. And and maybe what's implied in your comment, Dan, is if Coleman Highline is all leased up and it's full, that that would indicate that there is a demand for office here, and you could see that, you know, continuing. And would we want to suppress that in any way, you know, in order to encourage the right balance of housing? Because it's

Well and then if you did yeah. Absolutely. I think it's forethought, you know, that we're you know, we've got this tran great transit, you know, the the four lines. We don't have a last mile. You know, we haven't we I I don't think we've gone into great detail on on last mile. I think I'm gonna talk about that as we get into other other parts of the meeting. But, you know, like a glide way or something like that that would connect those offices to to a train, you know, is gonna remove a lot of car trips in a day. So, anyway, yeah, that that's I think it looks good, and thank you for answering.

I'd also add, I think it's really important that we have these caps or some thought through not overloading one or the other. Since we started meeting monthly couple of years ago now, the the market for office has completely shifted back in the other direction. And it's especially for stuff like Coleman Highline, which is new class a. The the old office product is struggling still, but if you just look at the highest quality offices, they're all leased just like Coleman. And so I think there is a market for that here, and it's not something we should steer away from.

True. Yeah. We're we're definitely seeing that, in terms of class a office space, within the Bay Area, still doing pretty well as opposed to, like, the other older office stock that we had.

It should do you remember the figure for our total office build out here? It was at 2 and a half

million or something.

And a half. I think it's closer to 2,100,000, I think.

2,100,000. Okay. And that's Roughly. That's roughly Yeah. Represented by the by the blue here.

For context, the I think Coleman Highline is 1,700,000. That's fairly comparable.

And the the other part of that, Dan, was in that balance was obviously also hearing that we want enough residential also. Like, we want this place to be able to produce Got residential units and add enough of those. And in the last, like, I think, planning commission or council, one of them, like, we were we were even asked, like, oh, can can we do even more than these? Like, this feels like a little less than we would have expected.

Yep.

And I think that was just because I think in our plan visualization, we have not shown as many taller towers, but there is an allowance for them if people build them. We just didn't feel like the current market was supporting that in terms of the construction industry right now. So we were projecting to the numbers that we thought would would actually, like, happen on ground, but we haven't restricted the capacity for that to happen in the future if markets change.

Understood. And and don't get me wrong. I don't want all, you know, blew up there. You gotta have that balance. But okay. Very good. Thank you.

Okay. Any

help? Are there any is there any consideration of thresholds for for retail? I remember a few meetings ago, there was some discussion that there we wanted to somehow limit retail to avoid competition with kinda like the Downtown Franklin Mall area.

We don't have limits on retail. What we had, as we've shown in the past, is priority areas priority frontages where retail is required and frontages which are required to be built in a similar manner as retail frontages but could be occupied by other kinds of uses, like day care or, like, smaller office spaces and other incubator spaces. But the rest of the plan area can choose whether to have retail or not. So they are more free to develop their own program, but we don't have any cap or restriction on how much retail.

I also have been wanting to ask another question, and this could be naive. And forgive me if it is, but I'm feeling confident enough now on my tenure here to be able to answer ask a possibly naive question. Should we assume that all the residential is rental housing as opposed to owner occupied?

No. Not particularly. I don't I don't think one way or the other assumptions might be needed. This project that you're seeing here drawn up is based on one of the projects that has already come to this city. Those are townhomes, and those are for ownership, I think, Rebecca and Leslie.

And I guess the follow-up question is who decides that? Because I just have observed that there seems to be a strong bias for rental versus owner occupied in this area.

I think it's more of a market driven question. You know, the the developer community is is going to make a determination about, you know, what there's demand for, and and sometimes that may favor, for sale residential, and some that may may favor rental. So I think it's it's it's sort of determined by the market.

That being said, I have heard from a lot of, like, card developer conversations that in California, they're like the regulations for, like, condominium kind of housing is not favorable where people then don't want to do those projects for sale, and hence, a lot of this construction that you see is obviously all for rental unless it becomes, like, single family homes or townhomes for sale.

And I'm just gonna add to that really quick. The city can't dictate whether it's rental or for sale. So like Jim said, it is up to the developer to decide.

Right now, the market the developer market's reference of all the various types is to build townhomes for sale, but that is fluid and changes regularly. And there's a pushback between because you can't build those very dense and want dense housings. That's battle.

The economics right now is what it's creating.

Correct. Again, it is fluid. It's just like a couple months ago, we were talking about offices and now look at it. So

So I had I had a couple questions and a comment on this and a comment on this slide. First question, you mentioned job housing balance monitoring framework. Does that only just cap the amount of office given residential, or is it trying to do the opposite as well and and prevent residential if we don't have enough office?

We, by state regulation, cannot do that anymore.

Can't cap residential?

Can't cap residential.

That's why I thought. Yes. Okay.

Which is why we have a softer language for review to see if we require any, like, policy changes in the plan as we start reaching certain thresholds so that there is an opportunity to review and see if any incentivization, etcetera, needs to be done if we see that the market is not providing what the plan was looking for.

Is there an option to cap residential should not that I expect stay log. I gotta to relax that ever. But given that this plan's gonna last, I don't know, fifty years, hundred years, whatever, can we decide?

Twenty five

year horizon right now. Twenty five. Right? I don't know. Is there language that could but said in event of that being allowed, like, kinda weaker language that says, yeah. We understand it's not today. But should the law change, have something that can kick in?

Let me let me we'll follow-up with Rebecca and Leslie and the Citi's legal team to see if that

is something that because I'm I'm trying to plan for, like you know, things will change whatever we do today. You know, these these housing laws keep changing, and I I I keep seeing us targeting, like, the current trend or something that's there. But, you know, we're putting the twenty five year plan, and I don't wanna commit to something because that's on the books today when I don't know what, you know, the state legislature is gonna have. You know, maybe there'll be a lawsuit, and a lot of that stuff gets thrown out. Like, one of the s b nine has some lawsuit that threw it out for some cities temporarily. I don't I haven't seen it conclude yet. So just things to keep in mind. These things may not stand up. Yeah. The other question yeah.

Good point.

Sorry. Go ahead.

Yeah. And one other question I had real quick you you go go ahead, Colin. The last question actually was on the last picture, and and this gets into my we're planning ahead. There you're showing a couple developments that are nowhere in progress, like, the where this is that townhomes that we really kinda don't want, but you've put that as the preferred plan visualization. I recognize that those are maybe what's happening, but I personally think that that is not our preferred plan.

It just happens to be what a developer has submitted. Right? So I would still recommend that we show those as denser developments, realizing that they're probably not gonna redevelop realistically anytime soon because that developer is fully within their rights to go through and apply under, you know, whatever process they're already in. But should they change their mind or, you know, some somebody changes something in the future, I kinda wanna more strongly encourage that this is what the city's looking for as opposed to just being like, oh, somebody put something you know, submitted a project, and that's that's what's there. So, you know, I'm not saying that they're gonna be prevented from building what they're doing, right, because they they have that right.

But let's let's take every little chance we can to encourage something better. Because sometimes people entitle and then sit on it, and they don't actually start the development. And, hey. Somebody could come by ten years from now because maybe they they entitled it and didn't do it, and, you know, something else pencils out. They wanna do it. And I wouldn't have wanted us to be like, oh, yeah. Those weren't intended to be housing because the next person looks at this city staff, you know, ten years from now, I don't know if they're all gonna remember all the context behind this and be like, oh, well, yeah, we really wanted housing there or townhomes because that's that's what they put in the plan. And I think that's not realistic. Right? This is just we're just reflecting a current moment in development as as Dylan pointed out. Not that I you know, if they're really going quickly, they'll they will develop. But, know, let's let's try to encourage that. I

totally second that. I think that that's you know, America is a chalkboard. Those things could be sitting there for, you know, ten years and get erased. So

Yeah. Keep in mind that the height allowances are exceed this. You know, we're we're allowing the Yeah.

Yeah. I I I fully recognize that that the allowances allow more, but the problem is it's preferred plan visualization. People are gonna look at that and say, even though the allowance is higher, people are gonna fixate on, oh, this is what people preferred, I think, and get her that message. And and, like, let's let's go ahead and, like, reflect what we want as opposed to what happens to either. You know? Otherwise, we should just draw all these things as existing white buildings. Right? I mean, the goal here is to

Well, I think it I I'm I'm not disagreeing with you, and I and I think, you know, we can we can look at at how we might change this. What we're trying to show and and maybe we're getting hung up on the term preferred.

Yeah. Maybe we

should change it. Because I think what this what this is, it is a it's an example of how the project may build out. And and the fact is we don't know how it will build out, but we're trying to be realistic. We're trying to put projects in there that are likely, you know, as sort of a, you know, quasi realistic depiction of how the plan could build out. But I think, you know, what you're saying is let's let's address psychology.

Right? Let's set strong intentions and and, you know, take make a statement with a visualization like this that, you know, that that sets a a tone of expectation.

I would double tap on that. Because fifteen years from now, the new council, at that point, is not gonna remember what we said today. Like, we we need to set our intentions and visualization properly to, like, what our intents are instead of what was pushed to us to digest over here. So I I would prefer to have this drawn to what we actually prefer. And, also, like, you know, as you're saying, we are hang we are hung up on the word preferred, and that is not our preference.

Right? And, like, again, fifteen, twenty years from now, they're gonna take this ad as this is what this group preferred, and it that's doesn't actually reflect our sentiment. So I think, we'll strongly I would strongly encourage go ahead and, like, update in that drawing. Thank you.

Mhmm. Jim, I had a question, just not something I'd ever thought about. When evaluating if we are measuring job, housing balance, the definition of job, is it we are we looking at is it measured by brick and mortar stores? Someone's going to a physical place to work, or do we get the credit if someone's working full time from a home office? In a home office environment, we're checking off three boxes.

There were I mean, it's a space for them to work. It's a home, and they're not traveling likely. So we've also dealt with that issue in terms of transportation. So I don't know. I had never thought about this before.

Interesting point. I think, usually, we look at it as, like, anything that will generate employment, uses that generate employment. But let us check with our economic consultant to see if this how does home office play into this conversation? Very very interesting thought there.

Can I ask one other thing and and, you know, shut me down on this? Are are we just talking about, with this plan, the buildings themselves or the, you know, the mix of the buildings, or are we talking about the streetscapes, etcetera?

Of course, we're talking about the streetscapes and everything. Everything.

So we you know, I've read the the document that Leslie Leslie and and I think Rebecca sent out earlier, and I was gonna address it during that period of the meeting. But I think to Patricia's point, you know, again, I'm gonna use your word forethought that what exists today, you know, and what exists in twenty years or, you know, the progress that we've seen. And, again, I sound like a broken record, but last mile transit, how we configure Benton Broca. Right now, I just just got an update from staff from Michael Michael Lu, I understand. Has the state grant from the MTA for the feasibility study, the underpass for Benton Broca.

And I really think that we need to look at widening that. You know, you know, obviously, ped and bike is extremely important. But, you know, again, I I'm I'm not pitching Glideway. I don't know much about them, but, you know, as as far as that concept of, you know, kind of the ski lift where you can get into the the car and there's only for two people and you don't have to wait, that that would be an incredible last mile connection from the for the office people to get to and from the area and to the downtown and to the airport. So I I think that, you know, that's something that the airport is not part of the plan.

I'm not advocating for that, but I think this we have to consider that, you know, in the future, you know, we're seeing it right now at $6 a gallon. Is it it could be, you know, 12 to 18 in in the future, and people are looking around for trains in this area. So, you know, perfect for that because of the the transit that that, you know, we've been gifted with. So in order to make that efficient, I think the streetscapes are very important to get that you know, everybody who's living in the yellow to those train stations or to that train station.

Stan, I to circle back to a point that Sean was making about the jobs. Per your definitions, like, know, a full time job and stuff like that, we may wanna make sure we distinguish between office and retail, on those numbers.

Yeah. We do have those as separate separate numbers.

Oh, thank you. Should we keep going? Because, like, we got a couple of

I I'm sorry. I wanted to just follow-up on one one sort of comment that I I don't remember if it was Diksha or Jim, from a few minutes ago, and I think it's important to to just maybe drill down on on what I heard. Someone mentioned that the that this area was that that some analysis had been done that indicated that transit stations I I'm paraphrasing because it it was a really quick comment that transit stations are more likely to be used as as a sort of on the destination side to get to work. And, it's an incredibly important topic and piece of information moving forward, and I would be very much obliged if you could possibly make available analysis or anecdotal evidence or even if it's a folder of something, studies, if you will, whatever, that that we could take a look at, that I could take a look at in order to feel a little bit better informed about what's behind that statement. And one of the reasons that I'm asking this is because this type of information that we are describing is highly contextual.

So so I don't wanna get into too many details and throw around too many acronyms. But, you know, in the in the world of transportation demand management, there is an entity called CAPCOA, which is responsible for a tremendous amount of anecdotal or I'm sorry, empirical information about what contributes to reducing single occupant vehicles. And it's all very, very good information, but I just want everyone to be aware that it's highly contextual. And even even the entity itself puts many, many disclaimers about that. So so I would I would like to see what sort of information went into us coming up with that statement.

I just think it would be very illuminating. Thank you.

So, specifically, the question of the placement of a certain amount of office program adjacent to the station. That's that's kinda what we're zeroing in on here. Correct?

I think it was Diksha that stated that it tends to be more successful when the last line is office versus residential. Do you recall sit saying that, Diksha?

Yeah. I I was saying that that is what we was shared with us that when when there is office at the end, people are more likely to take the train to get to an office versus if they just live next to a train station without an actual destination to take it to. Many times, we see less travel using the train by residents.

I will say there is very clear data on office rental rates being higher along Caltrain lines than same type of class a products. So employers are willing to pay more for their employees to have convenient transit.

Right. But I think, you know, I mean, I'm not saying anything new here, but there's a difference between what an employer is willing to pay and what employees actually do. And at the end of the day, I am much more interested as as a transportation expert. I'm much more interested in coming up with solutions that maximize the probability that transit will be used. And so, like I said, this this this gets to be highly contextual when we start to talk about whether people are much more likely to use transit when they can do so for for a a job related trip.

I it's even I'm just having a hard time wrapping my brain around this, and that's why I can't even repeat what Diksha has said and what Rebecca has already said because because it it there's something about it that just feels like I need to re really see what the data is behind that in order to truly feel like I understand what that is. And I want I want us to feel like it's well understood about why we're saying that and that it applies to this situation.

We get some data from Coleman Highline, for example, because that that's something that is built right next to the train station route or depot, I should say. So that could be in context. That's as close to context as we're gonna get, pretty close to this. So maybe we can see what those numbers are, how many of their employees are actually taking transit on a regular basis. Just to just you know? So

Yeah. I'm well, I'm reading the question more as what are the industry guidelines and and the data to support that. Is it do I understand that correctly?

I'm I'm hesitant to to say that there really are industry guidelines for for for this particular phenomenon. Because in my work as a transportation consultant of over three decades, almost four, the the propensities for riding transit were all about modeling such things into the future in forty year into the future time horizons and using, basically, econometric modeling that respects the built environment, the planned environment, and all the sorts of behavioral decisions that go into choosing one mode versus another mode. So to me, unfortunately, it's not as simple as an industry standard, but I would like to see I I feel that somebody on the team must have been looking at some data in order to make the statement that it's more that office is more likely to be an attractor for transit trips. That's all.

Yes. We can provide that.

Yeah. We'll look back. It's been a while since that information was shared with us. I think that was, like, towards the start of the project, so let me go trace back who might have shared that with us. Okay. Should we Let's keep going. Next one. Okay.

Yep. Thank you.

K. Complete community. So the last time we were here, we started talking about trying to build into the plan if we feel like certain amenities, etcetera, need to have a space in the plan area and what might be some mechanisms to regulate and make sure that they do come in or not come in, but, like, space is provided within the plan area to have things like these from market forces come in. So these were just some of the things that we talked about, and then we were asked how can we benchmark this? How can we understand how much of these kind of spaces might be needed?

And so we wanted to then go look at that. Social infrastructure in general is not something that is that has very easy, ready to use industry, like, numbers to benchmark against. So take these take everything that we present now with a grain of salt. It's not some, like, given written thing that would be like, this is it. It's a lot of extrapolation to get to these numbers.

So here, we're just, like, looking at how much is our, like, total service area population. And the number shown at the end, total max population, which is accounting for both the residential as well as office workers, is a max population because, obviously, there might be significant overlap between this population. People

who

are living in those houses might be working right there. So this is we're just thinking of, okay. If there was no overlap at all, like, how much would be the total? So this is just, like, the highest need that we were trying to figure out. So let's go with, like, a 21,000 people that we're trying to service.

And then we looked at things that we within the private development, and we benchmarked only some of, like, the biggest things that we could look at. So preschools looking at the percentage of the population and San Francisco had a very good San Francisco had, like, a detailed metric of how they had calculated this. So we sort of, like, used their, like, methodology to, like, come down to the number of how many we would need in the plan area. And one point to note with preschools is that the San Francisco study said that a lot more workers like to have preschool near where they work, than residents. So in their estimations, there was a lot more to do with the workers coming in.

So looking at, like, the average school preschool size, population served, it was around 78 children per preschool based on the Santa Clara Santa Clara County data that was available. And so we used that, and we've landed at around somewhere, like, five to six preschools might be needed in the area. But that is might be needed to service the population in the area. That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be in the self, but would be beneficial to have a certain portion of it within the plan area because that makes access and the idea of com complete community easier.

And this is at build out. So this is looking

at full build out.

Yeah.

Like, maximum build out. Like, this is imagining if even, like, Costco got build out because that is the maximum plan capacity that we had to calculate for CEQUA. Senior, this is adult day care where they need, like, actual services, not a senior center. And so with that and looking at, like, an app like, looking at the Santa Clara population and, like, what is the percentage of population that is senior and then extrapolating that to our service area population, that is how we've landed on 3.6 grocery stores. Looking at full formats grocery stores, 15,000 is, like, a number.

It can go up also. Like, the same grocery store can service up to, like, 20,000 people also. It's like a range. And we already have Costco on-site. So thinking of maybe rather than, like, another full service full service grocery store, which would be around 40,000 square feet. We could do something like a Trader Joe's, which would be a which is a small format grocery store, which usually fits in around, like, a 15,000 square feet footprint or even, like, more urban, Whole Foods, which 20,000 square feet is what they use. So I think the 1.4 like, the point four could be covered by something like that in the plan area.

Health

care clinics, this was, calculated using how many, primary care physicians are there in California and then dividing that by, like, the number of people they service. It was, from, like, the state of California's metrics and how many physicians how many patient visits are per day, so how many people are they servicing overall in the plan area. And so we came up with 4.6, but there are then I looked up, like, how many things are there around the plan area. So there's a Kaiser, and there's a new facility, which I'm forgetting the name of, but which is a very large 300 square foot facility.

Sutter Health.

Yes. Sutter. Yes. Which would actually take care of a lot of the demand for this plan area.

But, Diksha, we were also trying to not duplicate primary care like you would have at, you know, hospitals or the existing medical complexes where people's primary caregivers are, but that this would be supplemental. This would be more like urgent care and, you know, things that that needs that arise that are that are outside of your your sort of regular medical visits.

But this number is for primary care.

Yeah. So so probably this number is high, right, for what would be needed in the in the district.

This is based on the high level calculations, how how much like, if we had three, five prime like, three to five primary care providers in a clinic, how many clinics would we need? So, like, smaller scale, spaces, but this is not taking into account all the surrounding amenities which already exist around the plan area, which would already absorb that need that would come up. So the Sutter one, which is there, as well as Kaiser, as well as the third one, like, that would already absorb some of the need that would come up. So we wouldn't need this number. This is just projecting maximum need if nothing if this plan area was in isolation.

Yeah. So maybe two or three small clinics, something like that that doesn't duplicate the Maybe, like,

one clinic, one urgent care would fulfill the need Right. The plan area.

Right.

So this was all looking at, like, private development and what we need to, like, bake into the plan to sort of, like, create space for. Then as we're working with the city, a lot of it would be covered in the EIR process. But what city amenities would we need? Because all of this would be privately provided, the ones that we discussed right now. So talk we're talking to the city about, like, the need for senior recreation center.

That's one near downtown, so it's pretty close. And we look at the cities, like, distribution over all of those kind of amenities. The library master plan was completed recently, and it has recommended a satellite library in the plan area. And the looking at a recreation center, we've talked about this in the past. The parks master plan had talked about having a recreation center somewhere would be nice for what the city's needs are currently.

And then as we go through the EIR process, we look at schools, fire, and police stations, and what their need would be based on these projections. Okay. So we talked about need. Then the next thing that we wanted to touch upon is and we're in we're discussing these with the city as well, so we wanted to get your input also in terms of what directions should the plan take. So option one is we require ground floor certain ground floors with active community uses to help fulfill this need.

So things like we things we could do, potential options would be designating either certain priority streets or priority frontages where we want some of these additional uses to go in, which are, like, uses. And then buildings that come along there, we have regulations. Like, 25% or 50% of the ground floor needs to be, like, some sort of use like this, or residential can only be restricted to 25% of the ground floor, and the other percent needs to be, like, used for x amount of things. And we could make a list. Like, this is just a preliminary thing.

This is us sharing, like, the I the way to think about regulating it. The second option is looking at space debt dedication based on project sites. So we don't want to go about burdening smaller projects with a lot of these amenity provisions because that might make the project not pencil out. So then do we create thresholds of, okay, the project needs to be large enough. So if we go to, say, like, one fifty residential units, then after that, you would need to provide space for one or more of these uses within the building.

Or if it's an office space, then you need to be more than 300 square feet, 3,000 square 300,000 square feet. Sorry. Completely messed that up. And then you would be required to provide something like this because the impact that you would be having is a lot more. And the third option could be that we think a few of these a few of these amenities are the most critical that we want to be regulating, and so we want to have detailed ways to do those.

So this is just an example of taking child care. And so then we are regulating it both in residential mixed use and office mixed use. And we, again, have, like, these project size thresholds, and we talk about what kind of space or, like, minimum facility requirement comes with that size of a project. And I'm pause here. That is the those are the three different ways that we could go about it, and we'd love to have a small discussion on which ones are you gravitating towards.

And we'll all we're still in discussion with the city as well in terms of what directions feel feasible from, like, a regulatory standpoint, but also just what is the market supporting.

So a couple of slides back, I guess the question coming to mind was, Okay, so we know how many child care centers are needed. The question I was coming to mind was, okay. So how does the city make that happen, or do they have the power to make that happen? And I guess this is the answer. There would be certain thresholds and requirements imposed based upon kind of the parameters you've outlined in the next two slides. And, hopefully, that makes enough preschools happen?

Yes. Because those are privately provided. Right? So our intent in a specific plan or a long range plan is to preempt for those and provide mechanisms so that we're encouraging space for that to be provided. We can't go in and be like a child care center with this provider needs to come in or something. Like, the free market will have to do that, but our intent here with the plan is to make sure that space is left within the plan development that these kind of amenities could come in and be able to knit the social fabric of the community.

So the city has

the power to impose certain parameters that make these things occur. But how is that different than the owner occupied versus rental? Why is that outside of what the city has the power to influence?

Well, I would say that the city cannot dictate a use in a space, you know, in terms of these amenities. So if you flip ahead, Tisha, to the next slide, you know and and this is exactly what we're what we're trying to determine is what is the best way to regulate this within the powers that that the city has given that they can't they can't dictate any specific use. But, for example, for option two, saying that if you're a project over a 150 units or 300,000 square feet of office, that you must provide one or more from this list. You know? So the developer still has some flexibility, still has some leeway, but they need to they need to provide something, and they would need to find an operator to, you know, to run one or more of these service types.

So it's that it's that sort of thing. We're just trying to find the right, you know, the right degree of of regulation.

Thank you. I

think I don't know. I'm kind of on both of these options, but I think if I had to lean one way, it would be towards option one because it gives you a little more control of where things are going within the plan. And there could be smaller projects in better locations. And if if you go with option two, you they get out scot free kind of in between, but that's my thoughts.

Yeah. I agree with Dylan. I think, option one does target in the higher traffic areas probably or the higher visibility areas. Option two, I could see that you're depending where I mean, this is a big, big area, that the plan covers, geographically. And there may be residential units and parts of the plan where none of those things pencil out. It just feels like we're forcing it too much.

I'm also looking at, like, option two. It would it's kinda like giving a negative incentive and give people a cap of saying, like, hey. If I, like, build up to that number, like, render a number, you don't have to do this. Right? Mhmm. That's how I read it. That's how I would

Yeah. I was actually had the same thought when I when I saw this come up, which was here's here's my technical thing that I can get out of if I built that three hundredth dwelling unit and I or or was it a hundred and fifty first dwelling unit I get out of something? And I've seen some of those I think I've seen some of those incentives happen on on stuff where somebody's like, oh, we we left a dead space or took an apartment out because that somehow qualifies differently. You know? People do this same thing to avoid, like, having to put sprinklers in or whatever.

Like, anything that adds a little bit more cost, that that'll immediately people will do their best to avoid, especially if it's on that threshold. So I I think that one's a little harder, I think, because I think a lot of folks would just look at that and say, okay. I'll I'll just craft my project to do you know, follow right within the the right guidelines. The one the one concern I had about this, and I I know we have some requirements, and I there is a four base code or whatever coming later, is that some of these uses can only be done if someone builds the building in a correct way. You know, that's one of the things I really hate about a lot of the buildings we get.

You know, you get posts in random spots, and you look at the way they built it out. Like, you can't really put anything in there. Right? They that you build these buildings without thinking about some of the ground floor retail uses. So what I worry about the active community uses is that they're gonna design the building, write community use on it, but then design it in a way that it's gonna be hard for those community uses to to be built. So I don't know if that's something that we take care of now or if that's something about some of the future, planning we have to do because, yeah, I I would hate to get weird shells

in the workspace. Yeah. That's a really good point, and I think we can certainly make us a statement of intent here. I think some of the specifics probably wants to get kicked to the form based code, But stating our intent that these would be, you know, usable spaces without, you know, without the the kinds of obstructions that you're talking about, I think, would would be good to have.

It sounds like it's almost like the retail ready concept. Right? They're they'd be ready for these types of things. But where I struggle is that it's similar to my concern even with the downtown that apartment complexes like to put their their leasing offices, you know, like Sunnyvale, they put them right on the not the main drag, but right off of it, and it's just dead all the time. And I just I'm concerned that it you say priority streets, I worry that, well, is this going to enliven the main priority streets?

Or would it be better on just off the priority street? Like, that I'm thinking more like the dynamic of En Enliven. Because if you have a childcare space and that's open till 07:00 or, I don't know, 08:00 I don't know. Seven. How does that affect the streetscape? And is it is it the best thing to say it has to be on the priority, street? What is a priority street?

I think a childcare slash brewery would

be great.

Well, again yeah. I mean, again but see, you get you're kinda locked in. And so why why did you say priority streets, I guess?

We were trying to see if we want it like, it was shared earlier, like, do we want to concentrate, like, which corridors do we feel are better suited for these things.

Yeah. You almost have to go back to the to our activation diagram. You know, I think Rob is bringing up a good point, which is, you know, sometimes we put the retail ready frontage, for example, just off the main street, and some of these uses might be better suited to those frontages rather than taking up, you know, prime retail that could be, you know, better activating you. So I think I think that's a a really good point.

Yeah. I think there's a distinction between the priority streets for these type of uses and the priority for

For

for Activation. Activating.

Absolutely. No. And which is why we we don't have a diagram, but which is why I don't didn't use the word, like, activate like, required active frontage because that we would keep for more retail types of uses. So we will have to map out where we would want these versus where we would want required retail instead.

Yeah. I like that you're trying to bake in some community benefit because, you know, when we're dealing with the downtown and, you know, it's obviously, it's a cost to the developer, and it's hard to monetize that or equate that. You know? What value are you getting if they get more housing or more height or whatever? But here, you're kind of just saying, okay. It's a different way of looking at it, so I appreciate that.

Yeah. We we didn't want to go the whole route. The city shared, like, the process that's going on, and we didn't we, by right, wanted to just allow people to build as much. We are comfortable everyone seemed to be comfortable with allowing for taller buildings, etcetera, so we didn't want to, like, restrict those. So that also gives, like, developer certainty of, like, what can be built in this area up front, but we don't want to lose sight entirely of having things that the community would need.

So if everything is just, like, set up straight in front of them, I think that also helps them think about their project a lot easier. That's what we've heard from developers a lot. Like, certainty is the most useful thing for them in a process.

I have a quick question. What qualifies as workforce development on your list?

Good question. Jim, do you have an idea of what that could be?

I think it's just, like, training training programs, that sort of thing.

But,

again, if that's something that's gonna be more of a daytime use, you might want not wanna use, you know, prime retail frontage. So I think, you know, going through and classifying these because, like, the small format grocery, that could be fine on the active retail frontage, but some of these other ones, you know, might wanna be, you know, more just in the just off the the main corridor, like, on the side streets, but close by. You know? It's it's I think matching these to the frontage types that we're showing on the on the activated frontage diagram will be a a useful exercise.

Yeah. Because, like, the all the ones that you listed on here, like, they're really destinations. Like, people are going to go there regardless of where they're situated within the the area. So

Yeah. And and, also, look you know, thinking about their likely hours and because I think we want the the the primary frontages to be activated, you know, well into the evening. Right? So you get some some street life, that sort of thing. So, you know, the other thing that we we can think about too is on this option one, and we should look at option three. We shouldn't forget about that. But on option one, the 25% of ground floor frontage, that could be read two ways. Right? That could be on the total block frontage, or it could be on a

Project frontage.

Project by project basis. So we should and and those would both be regulated in in different ways. It would be a lot more difficult to regulate it on a, you know, the

The block frontage.

On the block frontage. Yeah. So we should give that a little bit more thought. Is there should we look at option three just to make sure that we're not neglecting it?

From what I'm hearing, that feels excessive.

It would have been nice to have this present I don't know. Maybe in the future, the presentation in advance. I mean, my brain gets a little foggy at this time, and I see this whole thing, and I'm like, okay. It's a lot to look at. Just that was just food for thought. Let's go over it.

Yes. Yeah. Let's go over it. This is just one of the uses, and this is just an example of you know? And then this would this similar kind of thing would be provided for each of the different use types. So this was meant to just demonstrated it in in one use example.

Yeah. Maybe just focus on the project threshold, community facility requirement, and recommended sites. Like, we can ignore the other ones because those are just talking about the rationale. So if but this again goes to, like this is again tied to, like, the project size. So if it's, like because we're saying the rationale is, like, smaller projects wouldn't generate, like, sufficient demand to support operational viability of some of these things or too much, like, burden would be placed on them in order for them not to be feasible in terms of development itself.

So if you're less than one fifty dwelling units, for example, you might not need to provide anything. If you're one fifty to 300, then you need to provide, like, a community facility ready shelf space of, like, x amount of size. And then if you're, like, 300 plus dwelling unit units, which is, like, gateway crossings, then you would need to have, like, an expanded version of that facility size. If you have office and, again, it's like a certain size, you don't have to do anything. If you're, like, over a certain size, then you need to provide, like, x amount of facility.

And you would see, like, the office facility is, like, slightly bigger in size because based on, like, the reasonings that we were reading, it seemed like office workers would like closer childcare. So the impact would be higher.

I think if I was a developer I mean, I I do this in the residential world. I have thresholds for when I have to put fire sprinklers in and various things. So oftentimes, either well, it's the client because there's some cost components when it's $50,000 to upgrade a water line water main. We just phase it. And so we you know? There so I'm just saying if you're gonna put this in here, just know that Yes. At a cat and mouse, like, so you know, some cities have done as well. If you do projects over the course of three years or five years, then they all count as one project. And then you have to hit with the fire sprinklers or whatever. So it's just just that's just the first thing that came to my mind.

Yeah. I I also recently read there was a homeowner, and I think it was, like, Menlo Park or whatever, who who was building a turning their block into a compound, and they found out that they they had to go to review if they did the whole thing at once, so they split it into, like, 20 projects, and then had construction for ten years.

I also noticed, oh, there's a lot of industrial buildings that are 19,900 and square feet because you didn't need sprinklers. Oh, I think you could run into the same problem here.

Yeah. I mean, while I I appreciate, like, having, like, the granularity that shows over here. Like, I think we're gonna still running a problem that we're highlighting an option too.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think we what I'm hearing is, like, we don't want necessarily tie it to the project size, but we want to just have sort just want to identify corridors and spaces where we think these things would make the most impact on our plan area and then plan for them there. And then maybe we could have some sort of provision for, like, very small projects or, like, affordable housing projects, 100% affordable housing projects that we don't place the onus on them for something like this.

Like, I think you're gonna look at, like, the feasibility of, like, the size of the project and, like, if you're looking at 25% of the Ground Floor, like, what what does that minimal look like? And is that a feasible space for doing any of those things? Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe that's the that's the part that we need to look at. Like, if it at least 25% of ground floor, but it has to be minimal of, like,

the square footage. Yeah.

Or or is it ground floor area versus frontage? Like, how important is the frontage in this scenario? Mhmm. Right? It's more of a use. We need these uses to service, but how important is it to have the frontage? Right? We would wanna maximize the frontage for the businesses that have that kind of indoor, outdoor connectivity. It's gonna be food services and entertainment and all that. So it it's interesting. I mean, this is a work in progress.

Mhmm.

Like the discussion. Yeah.

Okay. Are we ready to move to our last topic? We're doing well in time in terms of rhythm of our topics here.

Yeah. Let's keep going. We come up with something else, will you circle back?

Okay. Last topic, mobility. Over to you, Jim.

Great. Yeah. So I'm just going to highlight just this piece of our mobility. You know, we've we've got the framework set. I think you guys are pretty familiar with that in terms of where the, you know, the bike routes are and where sidewalk widening and where we're creating more boulevard features on Coleman, etcetera.

And, you know, to Dan's point earlier, that public space design and how we do the, you know, the the bikes and how the bike lanes get around the bus stops and where we provide bike share and bike parking, you know, all of that is gonna make this more usable as a district. And so I think that's all been been pretty well set and and some good feedback from all of you. The TDM piece is new, and so we haven't talked about this much yet. So I'll just kinda quickly go through this. And and I believe we did distribute all of the TDM policies ahead of time.

Right?

We distributed all the policies. So the two TDM policies were also included in that, but we don't we didn't talk about the TDM framework, etcetera. We just

Okay. We we distributed the the mobility policies.

Policies. Yes.

Right. Of the

There's, like, 12 of those. Okay. So you have those to to kinda take your time, review those in detail. But for the TDM, the TDM obligation shall scale with parking supply with enhanced measures required for higher parking provision. Strategies include, but are not limited to, transit fare incentives, parking management strategies, including unbundled parking, parking pricing, and limitations on long term commute parking, high quality bicycle and micromobility facilities and programs, including secure bicycle parking, end of trip facilities, and access to shared micromobility services, transportation information, marketing, and wayfinding programs that promote nonautomobile travel options, car share, ride share, and van pool programs, including on-site or nearby shared vehicle access where feasible and flexible work arrangements, telecommuting options, and a parking cash out program where applicable.

So this was just sort of the range of measures that we're proposing, and then you can see two policies written around, you know, around those arrangements over on the right. And those are part of the those are included in in the package that you received. So let that sink in a little bit. So this yep. Should we go to the next slide?

I had one, Tim, before you go.

Yeah.

I I know you're familiar with the Redwood City IoT parking meters, you know, where they you know, for for peak peak parking times, There's a set parking rate, and I think they have pressure pads underneath. And if there's you know, if it's light parking, the cost goes down. Do you know about all

that? Yes.

Yeah. I think that's more applicable to downtown, but I don't you know, it depends on their you know, the scale of retail we we put in here.

Yeah. I mean, I think our attitude about the on street parking is that it is one of the competing uses for curb lanes. Right? And and so we're trying to balance that with other competing uses, like pickup and drop off, TNC, loading, bike share, etcetera. Right?

So there's all these different things that are gonna be allowed and regulated within the curb lane. One of those things is likely to be some portion of, you know, public parking. And then how do you manage those spaces, right, is what's what you're getting at, Dan, to sort of regulate their use and, you know, price them. And I think that, you know, that's part of a whole parking management strategy that, you know, that would be a higher level of detail than than our plan would get into.

Got it. Yep. Got it.

Let's just go on to the next slide, and then we can always come back if we need to. So this is setting parking maximums. Right? So this is a transit district. We wanna take advantage of that and not have the cost burden on development projects by establishing parking minimums and sort of set these parking ratios low enough that they recognize the, you know, the the proximity to transit.

So for multifamily, point eight spaces per dwelling unit. For office and employment, one space per thousand square feet. Ground floor retail, no parking with you know, this is within the development parcel. Right? So there may be some on street parking, but no no parking for the retail project itself.

And then for mixed use development, use specific maximums above managed as shared parking. So really encouraging the shared parking. So just going back to that for a moment, you know, these could be debated, certainly. You know, a normal office parking with you know, typically without transit might be three per thousand. This is one per thousand, so it's just considerably lower.

And, again, the intent here is to, first, not burden the the development with extra cost of parking, but also, you know, and maybe first and foremost is to encourage transit use, so setting that pretty low. And then for multifamily point eight, we're seeing places where this is lower. So we're just, you know, trying to trying to zero into the to the sweet spot here on these.

Yeah. So so I I had a couple of questions as as I run through this. So, like, totally totally understand why you you wouldn't wanna have minimums because, you know, that that does add an ex extra amount of cost and all that.

Oh, to clarify, we can't have minimums, especially for residential.

Especially for residential. Yeah. Fully aware. Like, the the you can't even do it because you're by transit. It's totally, you know, disallowed today. Yes. I I I would even I know I would say, well, it could change in the future, but you know what? Minimum the goal here is not to set minimums because, like, let the market decide that. Right? There there's no point.

What I'm little worried about is is some of the maximums just because, like, ground floor retail, I I really hope everybody can, like, take trains over there or whatever. But if you live a little more than walking distance, then you basically said these retail places must rely a 100% on, and you're not gonna get restaurants in a lot of those things, I think. Like, they're you know, I it's gonna be hard. Like, I know we want to encourage as much as possible, but, honestly, this is probably something I think with VTA, probably their policy is kinda stupid. Right? They if they wanna kill retail, that's that's a good way to do it. Good job, VTA, like everything else you do.

You might get a Trader Joe's, though.

You could get a Trader Joe's because parking is something that they they don't seem to like. So that's that is a good use. I agree. And office, you know, I will make a comment that, like, where I work, parking and lack of parking has been a completely very painful problem for us. Now we are not right by a train, so I can't take the train to work.

In fact, I would have to go further to get to transit than to just go to my office. So, you know, driving is or, you know, sometimes biking is the way to go. So that one, I I'm a little more loose on like, because, I know TDM, you do wanna encourage, and one way to do that is make it a little painful. And we are right here by transit, so, you know, people coming in from a distance is an option. But I really I'm just concerned that these might be too low as far as, like, maximums go, especially for I'm I'm actually more worried about the retail than any of the other uses because I what I wanna see is restaurants and stuff, and I don't want them to get crushed by the fact that no one can you know, that one, I think, is the most like, people maybe aren't just in the area trying to go there. But

And and just thinking about a restaurant and how that would play out in a in a mixed use building, you know, in this plan. So we would be talking about a, you know, a podium parking kind of situation where a portion of that would be publicly accessible, designated for the retail, and then a portion of it would be maybe gated, you know, with a with a with a gate arm that would be for residents, you know, of that building or office workers for that building, something like that. So is that is that kinda what you're picturing?

Yeah. It'd make more sense if it was, like, gated, you know, partial, you can go, or there's some time use thing where you you could pay to go to the retailer. There's some way to get in there. Because I think Santa Clara Square has the they're the ones they have they have that parking by the office space that flips to retail parking, I believe, for free after five or six. So it's those, like, shared use type things. And, like, how do we encourage that? Because that's why we're about saying no no ground floor retail at all. How do you make sure there's at least enough? And I don't know what the how that goes into the rules here.

So I

we have to be careful of writing it. Like, how do how do we make it so, okay. The office parking becomes retail parking at night or something like that, or you can split with the the residential. Yeah. And and no parking just has any words of saying, like, don't even take retail demand into account. You just can't add it extra, and that that that's that's how I read it. And I was like, oh, that seems scary. Like, that would forbid Costco. Yeah. Well, like, even we had talked about a lot about redeveloping Costco. Right? And it was like, well, guess what? You're gonna have to have parking for our Costco. You're not gonna ever Costco's not gonna if they want to even put apartments on top, you're still gonna have parking. The whole point of that is, you know, you get residential and, you know, that big retail place.

So that that rule seems just, I don't know, stupid to me, and I don't know. Yeah. I don't know why VTA has that rule. I think they're they've made a huge mistake, but they do a lot of mistakes. So Mhmm. Hey.

I struggle with, well, I look at the multifamily residential, and then I start to think if you and I know that a lot of places have a little bit over one. Some recent ones, the Benton, I think, is 1.2 per unit, I think it is. The the thing that I struggle with is is this gonna just encourage a certain type of housing? Because if I bought a housing a condo, I don't know. I mean, I would struggle. And I and, again, maybe this is just me in this time period and this time frame and that in the future. You know? Because if I lived in New York City, I wouldn't own a car. If I lived in San Francisco, I and I did. I hated owning a car.

So I just I struggle with it because I'm afraid it's gonna it might push a certain single singular type of housing, maybe just rental, and that's well, I mean, Gateway Crossings is a 100% rental housing, and I struggle with that. It's it's all apartments. It doesn't have a nice balance mixture. So I don't know. It just from first glance, yeah, and I think that's a natural recoil. Just seeing it, but I'm interested to see what other people have to say.

I just have one other comment. I do would love to see, like, market demand. So that's a question that I would ask for people is, like, what is the market? Like, do you have to have a minimum for residential? Like, just think or are we gonna, like because anytime we artificially squish it down, that that will encourage more transit, but also may just make the things less viable. Or I'll build smaller units or, you know, some I don't know if there's a trade out there because of the the point eight. Just stuff stuff to keep in mind. Yeah. Good.

You you brought up Gateway Crossing, and I was just looking

at some things here.

I've been looking at the do we know what the current ratio is between the office and residential in Gateway Crossing and what the occupancy rate is the of the residential is right now?

Gateway Crossing, I think, is a 100%. Residential was a couple of retail. Yeah. There's no office.

Residential.

Yeah. Oh, well, retail

In the

in that area. Yeah.

We have retail of, I think, was was it $4,049,000 or 45,000 potential retail?

I'm talking about in that area right now, actually. I'm talking about

Oh, we're the Highline.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I can't answer that.

Because if you look I was just looking at the, at the Gateway Crossing website, and, you know, they talk about how they're a prime location close to things just minutes away from Santana Row. And and so, I mean, it's it's first of all, it's promoting using your vehicle.

Right.

And and and a location not in Santa Clara.

Well, they used to have on their website. If you looked at their development on their website, it said San Jose, and we got them to change it to Santa Clara.

So, I mean, how do you prevent more of this? How do you prevent more of this? Because if they're promoting not even downtown Santa Clara, which I know is in process, what what is gonna keep people in the area? Stuff

for Yeah.

I mean A connector.

Well, I Yeah. The connector, but still, there's nothing It's

it's also has to do with you know, they're the first they're the first in here. They're sitting in the middle of a, you know, a desert of any kind of amenities or retail. Bart's not in yet. So, I mean, if I was them, I might advertise that way too. You know, you gotta get this first project inhabited, but I think our plan is trying to look ahead at give reasons why you don't have to advertise your project that way.

Right? So now we're gonna have an active Brokaw Street, and we're you know, there's gonna be a BART station. And, you know, it's gonna be a completely different picture here in, you know, whatever, five, ten years where, you know, a a new developer wouldn't need to advertise that way. You could say, you know, close to Brokaw retail or walkable to the station, you know, things like that.

The other thing is that that that development wasn't there was no specific or precise plan for that. They did the there's the stadium, then the commercial separate, and then they came with the housing, and then we kept pushing for more, at least a spine like Santana Row, and they were still kicking screaming.

Well and that's the thing. Is is Broca going to be a spine like Santana Row, or are we just encouraging just general retail? Are we are we encouraging high high,

you know,

nice restaurants, you know, and things like that?

Yeah. I mean, similarly, I mean, now Santana Row shut down the street. Right? Or is I don't know if it's here every day, but that's something, you know, that could and should happen when you have critical mass at some point. Right? It takes a while for people to know there's a there there. So, again, thinking a little broader, and that's maybe more form based code. Right? Jim and Diksha Yeah. Is about the streetscape and and, you know, whether there's a a center median, you know, which is what's very successful at Santana Row with with retail on both sides. It's yeah.

Yeah. So going back to the to the for the first comment, yes. I think that is the intent. And and I would say not exactly Santana Row, I think, but is it is it a similar degree of quality in terms of restaurants, cafes? I think, yes.

That is the intent. And, you know, now we are in a bit of disadvantage because the whole Gateway Crossings frontage is not an activated frontage. So we've got to we've gotta do all the work on the other side of the street. But the idea is that that, yeah, that wants to be a really activated, high quality destination, you know, all the way from the BART station up to up to Coleman.

Yeah. Forgive me. Is that frontage able to be activated? Is in other words, is retail facing out to the street? All

the retail gateway faces the park.

Yeah. Oh god.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a

little no. The main there most a lot of it. But there's a main spine, which has a Paseo, which we fought for. So there's a area where you could you could have like, Santanaro has has built out that area near Maggiano's, and it's sort of evolved over time. It's kind of their little plaza. So we fought for a spine there that leads to the bar. And then it is just on the corner. Yeah. And we're going yeah. Go ahead.

We're going down a rabbit hole.

Yeah. We are.

It's the the the thing is it's like I think Jim said it in previous meetings or somebody did that if you could if you can have little islands of activity that lead you know, make that that face broke off, the walk to the downtown or to wherever is not that you don't think about it. You don't think about it in San Francisco, right, because there's so much there. But if it's just a a wall facing Broca, you know, you're you're it's it's so Americana. Alright. I'm gonna shut up. Yeah. We'll go back to it again.

So I I I had one more comment about the parking. Had read pre previously about requirements to try to develop your parking, assuming that it's gonna have to convert to some other use in the future by setting certain requirements on, like, being flat or or ways to develop. Now I also assume that that adds cost to the creation of that parking. So I guess my first question is, like, if we set guidelines like that, is that allowed because it might make housing cost more? But maybe more so, is there a way to do it where, you know, you do these maximums, set them low that you could follow more conventional parking, and then say, you want more, you can do it, but you have to do it in such a way that should parking demand go away, you have to follow some very strict rules so that it can get converted into housing or real tail or something else in the future, right, kind of you know?

And that would be a it would if you think you need it, you could pay extra to get it. And but then if it turns out it's not needed because of transfer, it actually works. It's it's kind of a carrot stick approach. I I don't think I've ever seen that done, but I don't I don't know if that's a way to set the maximums really low, but also, okay. You have an option to make it bigger.

Yeah. And and unbundling parking is critical. You know, you want it to sort of be its own thing that can go by by by demand. So, yeah, I think those those kinds of regulations can be built in.

I'm just gonna add real quick. I looked up Gateway Crossings, their parking ratios. One building has 1.25 spaces per unit, and another building has one point o seven spaces per unit. Yeah. Okay. Retail is one to 200.

Interesting. Yeah. Good. Thanks, Leslie. One space per 200 square feet of retail. Is that what you said?

Yeah.

Okay. We're almost at time, and I think we discussed everything that we had to. Any other final thoughts on anything that we've talked about?

Appreciate the feedback. Some really good points that we will take into consideration as we move forward.

So I did have one question. In the future, is there any way to get some of these presentations ahead of time? Because it would be helpful to go through it before so we can, like, formulate questions. Like, because it's always coming as we go, and we might it might also be more efficient because then we can go through the presentation faster and, you know, have the questions queued up.

Absolutely.

Yes. Yes. And, also, we can well, first of all, feel the the answer is yes, first of all. Second of all, on the policies that we distributed, you know, feel free to take your time and get comments back to to Leslie or Rebecca on those. But we'll also be issuing the, you know, the full set of policies for the for the plan itself, and that is definitely something that can be distributed ahead of time and and, you know, so that you have sufficient time to review.

So Policy is in an email? I thought I only have, like, one policy on mine.

Did you all get it?

Maybe I got

Yeah. Like, a well, it's, a patient, half a mobility one, the mobility policy. Yeah. That's what we got.

That's what I

got. That's what I got.

That's That's what just, yeah, just the mobility Yeah. For for this meeting. Yeah.

So for the mobility policy, you wanted us to, like, really kinda digest it and then give, feedback on each one of the items on there.

No. Yeah. If you have comments and you wanna get those back to to us through through Leslie and Rebecca, that would be that would be great.

And I think also to think about, like, if you're missing anything that you all think is, like, critical to the plan that we're not addressing right now.

Maybe this is a question that was already answered, but with respect to the mobility policies that you provided us, what what would you describe as the role of those policies? What is the role of these policies within this specific plan? I mean, because it they all sound rather, like, yeah. Great great idea. Yes.

Do that. But what, I guess, just what role do they serve? How do they get implemented? Who respects them? What what are the regulatory frameworks for their implementation?

So all of that would come with the implementation chapter to how do they get implemented. So that will be a chapter in the plan itself. The policy is intent setting, And then there are specific standards that come with some of those policies that are not provided. So, actually, the policies are provided right now in terms of understanding whether we're covering the breadth of the mobility intent for the plan. So if there is an intent that we should be setting that is missing, like Dan was mentioning about the first mile, last mile before this, if there's, like, a gap that we're seeing, that's what we should be highlighting because you're obviously not seeing the complete picture with just the policies because there is a lot more in the chapter.

Got it.

We'll come with the implementation.

Yeah. And then also.

Okay. Got it.

There would also be, like, in the in the in the development section, the land use, there's there's also gonna be a whole separate form based code. So what we wanna make sure is that the policies are setting all of our intentions strongly. And then many of those policies would be followed by standards within this document. So that goes into a higher level of detail of how those policies would be regulated.

Like, which street needs to have what kind of right of way, how much is the sidewalk that needs to be there, where should

there

be, like, parking on street versus where should there be a bike lane on street. Like, all of that would be in the standards and

Yeah.

The street hierarchy, etcetera.

Yeah. So as you read the policies, you know, the these are just associated with mobility, but there will be policies for each element of the plan that you'll, you know, that you'll receive when those are ready. But as you read through these, are they covering all of our intentions in a clear and strong way? And then, you know, do we need to add any? And then from there, once we've got the correct set of policies, those, you know, those will be in the plan. So those are part of the plan, but then there will be another level of detail in the in the plan standards.

Okay. I wanted to touch upon project schedule a little. We know that we've been obviously scheduled for a certain number of SATF meetings, and we're towards the tail end of our meetings. So we have we are currently working on the administrative draft of the of the specific plan. So we'll have we're putting together most of the chapters right now, and we'll be sharing that with the city in June.

City will be reviewing that for the month of June, early July. We'll get us feedback. We'll make changes. After that, once we've made those changes, the public review draft would be ready, which is when you all would also be receiving the whole plan to look at as a cohesive thing. We'll come back and meet with you after you've had some time to digest the plan.

And everything that's missing, we might need to do one session. We might need to do, like, an added session to cover all of the topics that might be there, that might come up. So that's when we would spend a lot more time with you in the September section of when the public draft is ready. That is also when we would be having an open house to share that with the rest of the public as well and getting more feedback on the plan. Then we'll take all of that information, distill it down, make changes, again, come to you with the changes, and that's when the plan would be ready to then take to, planning commission, vet it further, from there.

So that is the timeline of the plan for now. Anything that you needed to add, Leslie and Rebecca?

So you mentioned September would be the next meeting with the task force to actually go over the draft plan once it's publicly available?

Yes.

Okay.

Based on this timeline that I have. Yes. Based on how the project is progressing right now.

Quickly. There's no updates in the middle, so this like, we we went we'd get the draft in September, and that's when we'd be able to make comments on it, and then that those comments would be addressed in future meetings.

Yeah.

That's correct, Disha. So you said we will have one or two sessions to go over the draft plan. We would incorporate changes based on task force feedback as well as feedback from the open house and then develop a second draft, I guess we could call it, and come back and share that with the group.

And just to, like, keep you informed on what else is happening, there is transportation impact and parking analysis is going on right now. Around 20 intersections have been identified in collaboration with the city team, after, our traffic consultants did their analysis initially. So they're going to be doing counts before, school is out. And so that'll be happening parallelly, feeding into the EIR. Additionally, we have started conversations with the city on the infrastructure financing piece also that would be a separate piece.

And seek the process is also moving along simultaneously. So all of that is also happening on the plan right now. Okay. That was all from us today.

Thank you. I need a public. Right? Right. Any are there any public comments if anybody here on the public, would like to speak and come up to the podium? We do have one hand, it looks like. So why don't we go there? You have muted the wrong person. James, I see you.

Yep. How's it going, guys?

How's it going? Yeah.

James Viso here. Hey. Regarding the timeline, I understand that the draft, specific plan is gonna be released to the public, and then it looked like within thirty days, there's gonna be a open a presentation or open house. Do you think we should have a little more time between the release to the public and try to implement the revisions before it goes to the community meeting. I can't see the timeline.

So but I'm just going from memory here. And then regarding the different dedicated community spaces such as the educational, the health care, on the bottom floors. Right now, with multifamily development, you know, the average projects are, you know, a 100, you know, a 102 a 130 to 300 units. So in the description, it sounded like there was no retail for under a 150 units, which is great. But 300 units, that would be, like, approximately, you know, two acres or even less.

And when you start taking into the consideration the impact fees, the parking, requirements, the retail, possible assemblage that we we need to start having to, dedicate, and and put that into the code, a lot of the times it makes it not economically feasible for development. Like, we're at the break you know, right at the breaking point. Development's been stagnant for over, you know, four years. Cities do not have a density projects, applications on the books. You know, even if it's on the books today, it's not getting built till 2030.

And so that is a concern of mine. And, yeah, that's about it. That that's all I got.

Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else have public comments? Because I don't see any other hands. Seeing none, we can move on. I think that's it. Right? Thank you. Do have

any chance for your report about Yeah. We're gonna do staff report. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. No. Let's move on to staff report.

Just a quick update on the RFP that was issued for the form based code zoning district that is to go along with this specific plan. So the RFP closed last month. We got quite a few respondents, and we are in the process of reviewing those. We do have member Evans on the review board since he served originally when we hired WRT. He was on that review board, so he's taken that role again.

And we also have a representative from VTA alongside three members of staff. So we're going through those, the review. Our reviews are due tomorrow. No. So, hopefully, we will be able to meet soon and go through our reviews and get interviews set up. So that's where we are with that.

Thank you. Good. Is there a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting to next regularly scheduled meeting?

Motion.

Thank you. Do I have a second?

Second.

Thank you. I think we actually had the roll call. Thanks, Dan.

Hope you

Member Garg, member Collins.

Adjourn.

Adjourn. I approve.

Evans. Member Evans. I. Member Scher.

Yes.

Member Huff. Member Winn is absent. Member Mayer.

Yes.

Member Andrzek?

Yes.

Member Plain?

Yes.

Member Stockwell?

Yes.

Member Lum?

Yes. Thank you. And we're adjourned at 08:05. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, everyone. Great to be back tonight.

Thank you,

guys. Good night.

Thank you.

At all.