Carlos, I think we're going to get going.

Great.

All right.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Hi.

Good evening.

Today's Tuesday, August 19th.

And I'll start with our attendance options.

Firstly, attending in chambers.

Secondly, this is being broadcast on Comcast Cable Channel 27.

It is also being streamed live via the city's website at Belmont.gov.

And finally, it is available via Zoom.

And the access credentials are in the agenda.

And then of course the public can participate via Zoom by uh utilizing the raised hand function.

And I will note that all public comments, whether uh in person or via Zoom, are subject to uh a three minute time limit, unless otherwise determined by me, the chair.

Good evening, uh, Commissioner Adam Kavich.

Here, Framer.

Here.

Chair Coolidge.

Present.

Majeski?

Present.

Twig, present.

And Jadala?

Thank you, all present.

Great, all present, and we have a quorum plus.

Um we'll move on to uh item two of our agenda, which is the Pledge of Allegiance.

So please rise and I'll leave the pledge.

So we'll see if firstly, if there's any speaker slips for um item three.

Um we do have one in-house speaker slip here regarding open space.

Uh Victor Garza.

Great.

You'll have three minutes.

You have three minutes.

Good evening, Commissioner.

Good evening.

Evening, morning.

All the same.

It's today.

Thank you.

Uh thank you for the opportunity to speak uh tonight regarding the 150 unit development on Masonic Way and how the City of Belmont can meaningfully fulfill its open space obligations.

As you know, under Belmont's zoning code and the Quimby Act, projects like this must either dedicate parkland or pay substantial in LU fees for multifamily developments that equates to approximately 27,000 per unit in Quimby fees plus 8745 per unit in park impact fees.

A combined total of about 5.4 million for 150 units.

Often these funds end up in general accounts without translating into real local open space.

I own about one acre of undeveloped land on Alhambra Avenue, zoned in the HRO2 hillside.

Residential open space district.

This district specifically protects ridgelines, steep slopes, and environmentally sensitive terrain, land that's truly meant to remain undeveloped.

In contrast, the Masonic Way is prime for higher density and benefits from state's density bonus laws.

Belmont's zoning framework aims to strike a balance preserving hillside character through HRO2 while focusing urban growth and planned corridors.

Rather than collecting 5.4 million in in loo fees, which may or may not fund actual parkland, I propose directing our portion of those funds towards acquiring my HRO2 parcels.

My land is currently priced under 1 million per acre while below typical Bay Area open space acquisitions.

By spending less than 20% of the developer's obligation, Belmont could secure a permanent acre of true open space.

Zoning goals are honored, preserving hillsides where intended, concentrate density where appropriate, developer stay compliant with park dedication requirements.

Residents and the broader community gain visible accessible open space, not just abstract account balances.

Additionally, this acquisition sets the stage for density transfers, a proven method for resolving unpermitted square footage issues in HRO2 while bringing long-term benefits to tax revenue and code compliance.

To underscore your leverage, recent regional open space acquisitions so show much higher per acre costs.

For example, the Mint Peninsula Regional Open Space District paid 1.3 million per acre in Miriamontas Ridge additions, over 30% more than my asking price.

Belmont can achieve significantly more value by investing wisely in your own backyard.

Belmont's municipal code allows for land dedication of inLU fees and the Quimby Act favors real-world open space over cash whenever possible.

This proposal sits squarely within both legal frameworks.

Tonight I ask you to direct INLU open space funds from the Masonic Way Development toward acquiring my HRO2 parcels with 5.4 million on the table.

Belmont can secure meaningful open space for under one million, protecting the hillsides and reinforcing your zoning vision.

That's smart strategic stewardship.

Thank you for your time and listening.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Any additional in-chambers comments?

Um no additional in uh in-house speakers or raised hands on Zoom at this time.

Great.

And Director DeVell, anything on the C dev website pertinent to this item?

We have no additional uh public comments on this portion of the agenda for this item.

Great.

Um before we do move on to the next item, I need to introduce our legal counsel here from Gold Farblement.

This is Gabrielle Jansen's.

I need to get to the microphone.

So she is providing outside legal counsel to the city, and she'll be with us tonight in that regard.

So welcome Gabrielle and welcome to the commission and welcome to the public.

So great.

Was it Jansen or Jansen's?

It's Jansen's.

Great.

I turned away from the mic.

No, great.

Just like I did again.

So Jen Sims.

You're consistent.

I love it.

All right.

Well, thank you for that.

Thank you for the introduction and thank you for being here.

Um great.

So that uh concludes item three, the community forum portion of the agenda.

Uh next is item four, which are uh commissioner announcements and agenda amendments.

I'll see if my uh colleagues have any announcements first.

First, seeing none, um, I'll see if staff has any agenda amendments.

Staff has no amendments for tonight's agenda.

Okay.

Uh moving on to item five, which is our consent uh calendar.

We have one item, item five A, which is the approval of the meeting minutes for the July 1, 2025 uh meeting.

Are there any questions?

Corrections, concerns with regard to the minutes as presented?

No.

Is there a motion to approve?

Yeah, I'll offer a motion to approve the mouse written.

I'll second that.

Great.

Okay, roll call.

Uh Commissioner Adam Kavich.

Aye.

Kramer?

Aye.

Chair Coolidge.

Uh I just want to note before I vote.

I um I was not president, but I have reviewed the materials and so exact vote.

So I am voting aye.

Perfect.

Commissioner Majeski.

Doodle on that, and uh.

Twig?

Aye.

And Jadala, aye.

Okay, um, motion passes six zero for the approval of meeting minutes for July 1st, 2025.

Great.

Thank you.

Uh item six is agendized as a study session.

I do not believe we have any items uh for that portion.

Is that correct, Dr.

DeMello?

That is correct.

Great.

This takes us now to our public hearings, uh, starting with um item 7A, which is a conditional use permit and single family design review for 2876 Wakefield Drive.

Let's see if they're.

I imagine there's a staff presentation.

Yes.

Great.

Can we do X party communications?

We can and should do X-Party Communications.

Or site visits.

Yes.

And I'll start on this side, please.

Nothing to report, nothing to report.

Nothing to report.

I made a slight visit, nothing else.

Slight visit only.

Site visit only.

Great.

Thank you all, and thank you for reminding me.

Sure.

Planet Ruiz.

Take it away.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Uh this is for 2876 Wakefield Drive.

Um, for the proposal for this project, it will be an upper floor addition of 22 square feet, and that is in order to expand the existing second floor bedroom.

Um, particularly, it is going to be expanding a closet space.

On the lower floor, 30 square feet of addition is going to expand an existing lower level kitchen.

Um for the lot summary, this area is zoned in the planned development region, specifically Hallmark West.

The lot size is 11,657 square feet with a slope of 29%.

Unlike our normal single family residential zone areas.

Uh the Hallmark West area has a floor area ratio of 0.35 as their maximum standard.

This would give the maximum gross floor area of 4,080 square feet.

The existing home on this site is 2,929.

The proposed total will be 2,981, with a maximum of 4,080, well within that limitation.

For the findings, uh some of you all may be questioning as to why this is going to the planning commission.

Um this is due to the fact that per the plan development uh zoning amendments, uh, any squ uh any second story addition requires to go to the planning commission for hearing in order to give approval.

As such, that is the reason why, despite the fact that it's less than 399 square feet per our normal uh procedures.

That's stated for the design review, as usual, will require it to be well designed, articulated, consistent with the existing homes, that public views will not be impacted, as well as being it being compliant with residential design guidelines and criteria.

For the site plan, the proposed setbacks is that it will maintain the existing front setback of 18 feet, the right setback of 15 feet 7 inches, left setback of 6 feet 6 inches, and the rear setback, which is approximately 60 feet.

The required setbacks for this planned development area is being 15 feet for the front, sides maintaining the five feet in a rear of 20.

As such, the home is not expanding past these required limitations and are able to meet the required zoning regulations for the setbacks.

For the existing front elevation, nothing is being changed in order to expand it.

However, they are removing uh the existing Juliet balconies and demoing portions of the roof in order to add skylight imagery.

And you can see that here where they removed those um Juliet balconies and added the skylights on top of the roofs.

Further rear, there are updating the window plan sets and Oswald's doors to be more applicable to their needs.

They expanded their sliding doors, added more windows.

In the orange shaded area, you can see that is where the addition is being maintained.

Um it's just going to push out and bump it uh a little bit in order to actually have that again expanded closet space.

And the window there is just for lighting.

The left side existing, um it's relatively just a blank wall, and you will see again just that bump out once more.

Similar for the right, they're removing some of the windows or removing portions of the wall in order to implement window spaces.

And again, in that highlighted orange, is that second story addition being noted for the color and materials board?

Um, overall, it's going to maintain the existing home uh which is painted in gray stucco, um, as well as a multi-side door frame being stone white with white window frame trims.

In conclusion, staff recommends for approval.

Can I provide just 30 seconds more of con uh context about this project?

Again, you're probably wondering why are we looking at a 22 square foot second story edition?

Again, this is a plan development.

It was established in 1971, and it set fairly rigorous standards for second story additions to them.

Um the plan development has not been amended, and this practice continues today.

That when these projects and these sites have additions that include a second story, it does require that we bring a design review and a and a conditional use permit that serves as as the vehicle to that design review to get to the review before the commission.

But again, your your typical review has been for projects of 399 square feet being the cap and then anything over that requires commission review.

So this is much smaller in scale than you normally see, but it is customary for this particular 1971 approved plan development.

So just want to make sure you have that background and context.

Thank you for that context.

That's helpful.

And thank you, uh planner Ruiz, for your presentation.

I'll start first with uh commissioner questions.

Who wants to start?

Anyway, any questions?

Okay.

No questions.

I have one question.

Is it possible to modify the 1979 plan development?

So it's treated more like the rest of the city.

Uh certainly a possibility.

We haven't broached that uh recently, but uh these kinds of efforts um require change.

I mean, it would affect not only this property but every single home within that adopted plan development.

So uh it's a little more work than just one because you're looking at one at a time, so it's the entire PD.

So you're saying you'd have to change the plan development for each property in that neighborhood?

The entire plan development has these standards related to second story addition.

So we have to change the underlying standards as it relates to the entire plan development.

So every single one of them within this Hallmark West Unit 2 would have its standards changed.

Yeah, I'm just wondering if it'd be worth doing it's a lot of extra work for 22.

And that's extra time for the developer.

Absolutely.

It's pretty antiquated.

I mean, 50 years ago.

Um, I would imagine that residents within the plan development who would be considering similar additions.

Would think, boy, it'd be better to have a streamlined process.

So we would start with that kind of outreach.

Um of course, doing this kind of a project requires work on the city's end.

We'd have to put it into our action plan for other items that we look for a long range change, but absolutely you would think that this is something that fits in the category of future streamlining.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Good question.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Okay.

Um, okay.

Let's go ahead.

Just to clarify, we're where the bump out happens.

Are the eaves being extended like to match the rest of the house?

Yes.

It didn't look like they were in the rendering item.

I just wanted to make sure that we're keeping that character if that's our only job here.

Yes, they will.

The roof line and the pitches will match the existing in order.

Not the pitches.

Like it looked like it was being built under the existing Eve.

Are they going to extend the eaves to match so they have the same eaves as the rest of the house?

Yes.

Yes.

So that's the intent.

Oh, okay.

Just want to clarify that.

Okay.

I guess before opening the public hearing, if the applicant is here and wishes to present, I'll give them that opportunity.

I believe they're on Zoom.

Um, not sure if they want to connect and make a presentation, but um definitely not required.

Exactly, not required.

Um I don't see any raised hands on Zoom at this time.

Okay, I'll take that as a as a declination.

Um I think we'll open the public hearing um and we'll first start to see if there's any um speaker slips of this item in chambers.

Currently, no speaker slips in-house for this item.

Great.

Anyone on Zoom wishing to comment on this item again?

This is item uh 7A.

Um no raised hands on Zoom.

And we've received no emails on the Comdev email page related to this particular agenda item.

Great.

Then I will close the public hearing and uh turn to uh commissioner deliberation.

Anyone want to start?

I'll start.

I can make the findings.

Great.

Yeah, same.

Not not much to deliberate here.

Great.

Can make the findings.

Well then I think we can um without giving short shrift to the remaining members here.

If if anyone is inclined to make a motion, I think it's probably appropriate at this point.

Uh all right, let me pull it up here.

Um I make a motion to approve the resolution of the planning commission of the city of Belmont, approving a single family design review, a conditional use permit at 2876 Wakefield Drive, application number 2025-0032.

I'll second that.

Thank you.

Okay, roll call.

Uh Commissioner Adam Kevich?

Aye.

Kramer?

Aye.

Chair Coolidge?

Aye.

Majeski?

Aye.

Twig?

Aye.

And Jadala?

Aye.

Motion passes 60 for 2876 Wakefield Drive conditional use permit and single family design review.

Great.

Thank you very much.

And if the applicants are listening on Zoom, congratulations.

And for everyone, uh this item is appealable within 10 calendar days.

That concludes item 7A.

Uh and now we'll turn to item 7B, which involves uh 500 to 580 Masonic Way.

And before turning to the staff presentation, I will ask for any uh ex-party communications site visits or recusals.

Uh just a site visit.

Uh nothing to report.

I just had a site visit.

I made a site visit as well.

Slight visit, and we had an email through to all of us a couple of hours ago, but it's been I think it's been captured.

Uh yes, we'll talk about.

Yes, you have received two emails as of the writing uh as of this moment related to this project, but but we will get to that when we're at the public comment section of the meeting.

Great.

Wonderful.

Okay.

Great.

We're gonna turn it over to Laura Russell, our deputy community development director.

She's gonna run you through a presentation for this item.

And Rob Gill will be here as well to provide uh backup and support related to the project.

So thank you for your time on this tonight.

Thank you, Laura.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Trying to get right in front of the mic per the instructions.

Um I'm Laura Russell.

I'm a deputy community development director.

As Carlos mentioned, um Rob is here as well to provide any support that we may need.

So this project, as you mentioned, is um we call it 580 Masonic.

Um the project site you were probably familiar with.

It's the entire block bounded by Masonic Way, Granada Street, Wessex Way, and Hiller Street.

It's an existing commercial shopping center.

Um it's currently separated into different parcels.

It would be combined as part of this project through a lot line adjustment or lot merger.

We consider that to be basically like a cleanup item since the existing building goes over those um legal lot lines.

Um and the commercial building would be demolished and a new residential building would be built in its place.

So the project summary includes construction of a residential apartment building with 140 total dwelling units that includes 25 affordable units proposed to be five stories and 60 feet in height.

It's approximately a hundred and forty-seven thousand square feet, one building with kind of a U shape in the upper floors.

There's parking for 138 vehicles and 142 bicycles.

And the unit mix includes 39 studios, 68 one-bedrooms, and 33 two-bedrooms.

So the legal context is important to this particular project.

It certainly is to all of the housing projects that we review, but this one in particular, we are paying attention to what's called the Housing Crisis Act, which was passed as Senate Bill 330, and it was designed to remove obstacles to housing development.

We're also looking at the California state density bonus law, and the density bonus law provides tools for developers to encourage affordable housing.

The items that are in play at this in this application under density bonus law include the actual density, the number of units, and allowing more units than would normally be allowed under our base zoning, as well as waivers to the development standards.

Density bonus also includes what are called incentives or concessions, but none of those are being used in this particular project.

I would also note that the project is subject to what we call by-right processing under housing element law, and this is specifically defined in the law about what buy right processing means, and this project meets the eligibility for that portion of the law for a number of different reasons.

Most importantly, it's identified in our current certified housing element as eligible for this type of processing.

If the project includes 20%, the units that are affordable to lower income households.

In this case, when we're talking about lower income, that includes low income and below, so very low income and the lower income categories, the deeper affordability.

So they have proposed 20% lower income units in this project.

So it's subject to this portion of the law.

And the intent of this law is really when projects, project sites are carried forward from one housing element to a future housing element to make it easier, more streamlined to develop those projects in the future.

So that's how we understand the intent of the state law.

Under by right processing, there are no discretionary permits allowed, so we can't do a conditional use permit or any other discretionary type of actions.

And the way that we want to think about that is that when we're looking at the entitlements that are before you today, you want to think about only reviewing the objective portions of those entitlements.

So we need to limit the planning commission's review to only objective standards for all of the entitlements, and then specifically under state law, if you have buy right processing, then you are not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA.

So we wanted to provide a little bit of context related to state density bonus law and how we interpret this, and this is because we received some questions that we thought it would be good to just answer those and make sure that everybody understands how this works.

And so what the applicant does is they propose and they give to us staff what we call the base project.

And so basically they have to design a project that complies with all of the relevant objective development standards.

So they have to show what a project would look like without the application of density bonus.

And then this set of diagrams demonstrate how they have shown that to us.

Basically, and the math that goes with it, this is a portion of the base project.

This establishes the unit sizes and the amenities that are associated with the project.

So in this case, on the ground story on the left-hand side, the units wrap around the parking at the lower level.

The second story, the units continue to wrap around, and then on the third story up above, the units wrap around, and then in the center is like the amenity area with some floor area and then some open space behind it.

So once they've established those unit sizes and amenities, those carry forward and they can use those in the proposed project.

One more diagram to show you related to the base project that the applicant has supplied, lays out how the building is sort of oriented in that U shape, and then that podium courtyard is in the middle of that, and that open space amenity is located there, as well as kind of the open space amenity on the right hand side.

That's kind of the garden area.

So the way that we think about this is once they've established that, that is sort of like the base of the project and establishes kind of the building envelope that they're working with.

So then we want to think about how the affordable housing requirements and the density bonus law come together to result in the proposal that's before you.

So our zoning ordinance requires residential rental projects of 25 units or more to include 15% low income units, and we define that as you can also meet that requirement by providing lower income units.

It has to be at least low income or lower.

The applicant proposal includes 15% very low income units, and under state law, that results in a 50% density bonus.

The applicant is also proposing 15% moderate income units, and that also results in a 50% density bonus.

So there's 70 units in the base project, and then we multiply that, right?

We get they get a hundred percent increase with 50%, 50%, we literally add them.

So they're allowed 140 units.

So 70 base plus 70 bonus units for a total of 140 that includes the affordable units.

So once we have that base project established, then the applicant is entitled to use the same unit size, the same project details into the proposed project that they are proposing that includes the amenities.

We received a question and we wanted to point out that there is the law supports this, and there is case law that supports this as well, because we've received some questions about how the density bonus is applied.

Sorry, the supports what?

I'm sorry, case law that supports what?

That supports that once you have that base project, they're allowed to keep that unit size and those amenities that are associated with the base project and apply them to the proposed project.

And we can certainly talk about it more, and Gabrielle can help us understand it if we need to.

Okay, thank you.

So the way that I think about it from a practical point of view is the base project establishes a building envelope.

Kind of I think of it as the box in the shape that the project is going to be, and that box has to comply with our objective standards.

Then they get a certain number of bonus units on top of that.

So they're allowed to make that box bigger, that building envelope to accommodate the additional units.

And the city is required to grant waivers to accommodate that total number of units.

So we have to allow them to make that box bigger to fit those additional units.

The most common way that that's done in projects that we see is very typically through height, you have to add additional stories in order to accommodate additional units, but there might be other development standards that don't work in order to fit those units that they're entitled to have.

So I kind of find it helpful to think about that to visualize the original box that the base project fits in, and then the bigger box that they need to fit the bonus units.

So now I'm gonna go through the entitlements of the project so that we can you just can see the scope of what their proposals are and what they're applying for.

And so they, again, this is by right processing, objective standards only.

So we're gonna look at design review, grading plan, tree removal permit, affordable housing plan, transportation demand management, and state density bonus.

And as the planning commission is likely aware, some of our entitlements have subjective findings that are associated with those approvals.

So sometimes we ask you to make subjective findings and to be using your judgment in doing so.

In this particular case, because it's by right processing, we are required to look only at the objective findings.

And so what we've done is prepared the resolution, and so if there are subjective findings, we have presented that literally with strikeout.

So for members of the public or anyone watching, that's in the first attachment in the resolution in the findings for approval.

So for design review, I would point out that attachment number two includes a full analysis of the development standards and how the project complies.

So the maximum floor area in this in this district at the time of the application is 1.5 floor area ratio.

They're allowed to double that with density bonus so they can go up to 3.0 with density bonus.

They are proposing 2.73 floor area ratio.

The maximum height in this district is 45 feet.

I just want to point out there is a typo in one place in the staff report attachments in case anybody caught that.

We accidentally wrote 50, but 45 is the correct height, and they are proposing 60 feet.

As is customary for these kinds of projects, our code allows small encroachments above that 60 feet, up to eight stories in height, up to 20% of the area.

So that takes care of all the mechanical and all those types of things that might be on the roof.

But the main building form, the roof, can go to 60 feet.

Then the next standard that I wanted to point out is the building bulk standard.

And this is a percentage of the first floor floor plate.

So sometimes we talk about this, like people call it like the wedding cake, or you have to, you know, make the upper floors smaller than the lower floors.

So we wanted to make sure that people are aware of how this standard applies to this project.

So if the first floor is 100%, and then the second story above that can be 100%, and then the third story can be 85% of the first floor.

The fourth story can be 70%, and the fifth story.

So fourth and above can be 70% of the first floor.

The applicant is allowed to move that massing around in the way that they want.

We realize some people may have thought that that absolutely requires like a step back where the top floor is set back from the plane of the first, and it may, that would be a common way to achieve this requirement, but that also means they could move the massing around in different ways.

And in this particular project, the way that they've moved the massing around is by creating the U-shape building.

So it's not just a solid building all floor, all four sides going straight up.

There's that opening in the center of the U shape.

So what they are proposing, there's some blue text here on the fourth and fifth story where the code would normally allow 70%.

They are proposing 77%.

So that is not strictly compliant with the development standards, and so that's why they are requesting the density bonus waiver to exceed that particular standard.

So you can see here in this slide how they are using the density bonus waivers to sort of make that box bigger or a little differently shaped to be able to fit the bonus units that they're entitled to under density bonus law.

The applicant is gonna talk quite a bit more about the design of the building, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that, but just wanted to point out a couple of key things as they relate to our objective standards.

On the Masonic Way elevation on the first floor, there's more glass, transparency, and more of kind of a storefront feel.

Those are those areas are associated with their lobby and their active uses on the ground floor.

On the Granada side, you can kind of see it if you've seen the rest of the plans and you know what you're looking for.

We're looking at the side of the U where it's partially open.

So in the center of the building, there's like a lower building on the third floor.

That's actually the amenity space on the third floor that's above the structured parking.

This also has the access to the parking, so you can see that the parking is completely enclosed within the building, which is definitely one of our standards.

And you can see also how the building is broken up both vertically and horizontally, and that has a relationship to our objective standards as well.

And then here are the Wessex Way and Hiller Street elevations.

The Wessex Way is the more kind of residential side, so these are units on the first floor that front out onto Wessex Way.

On Hiller Street, you can kind of just see a little bit of the corner of the more kind of active use that fronts onto Masonic, and then this is the side of the odd-shaped lot that has that little park, kind of their community space, a garden space that's there, and these residential units also front out onto the first floor.

Next, turning to the grading plan, as the planning commission is aware, projects that exceed 500 cubic yards of grading require planning commission approval.

This project, in line for what you might expect to see of a project of the scale, about 30, I'm sorry, 3,000 cubic yards of cut, less than a thousand cubic yards of fill, and 2200 cubic yards of export off-haul from the site.

As we normally do, the grading plan and geotechnical investigation have been reviewed by our public works team as well as the city's consultants and found to be in compliance with the city's objective standards and professional standards for grading and geotechnical review, and then we've applied our standard conditions of approval related to grading, things like grading not during the wet season, safety considerations, those types of things.

Turning now to the tree removal permit.

There's three protected trees that are proposed to be removed with the project.

They are literally within the development area.

You'll notice in the resolution, a number of our tree removal criteria, our findings are subjective in nature.

So we have removed most of those.

It includes the project includes 24 street trees.

So you can see in the diagram on the left that there's street trees all the way around the perimeter of the site, and then there's also ornamental trees and plantings that are in that amenity space on the third floor above the parking.

That's 24 new street trees.

Yes.

And then in regards to the affordable housing plan, the key elements of affordable housing plan are related to like the number of affordable units, the bedroom count, the level of affordability, how they're distributed, where they're located in the building.

We have to get assurances that those units are going to have equal access to the project amenities, assurance that they're going to be of equal quality in terms of their materials.

So all of those things really go into the affordable housing plan, and our role is to look at it to make sure that they've submitted those requirements.

And so we have an Excel spreadsheet, and we made sure that the units are distributed across the different income levels so that they're proportional for the different bedroom types.

And so this is how this works out.

You can see, for example, that very low-income units are distributed across studios, one bedrooms, and two bedrooms in a proportion that's the same as the market rate units or the project as a whole.

So this is how we make sure that it's fair.

And then they provide a diagram of where those units would be located in the complex, and that's included in your packet as attachment three.

And then, in terms of how this gets implemented, once the affordable housing plan is approved with the project, then we actually implement that through an affordable housing agreement.

So a legal agreement that runs with the land that puts the restrictions on things and makes sure that they comply into the future, and all of that is included in the conditions of approval.

Next is the Transportation Demand Management Plan, TDM.

We love our acronyms.

The city policy requires that new development implement transportation demand management, and we have a menu of items that they can choose, and then we have a point system.

And so a project of this size, a multifamily residential project with this number of units is required to get 12 points from our menu, and the measures that they're proposing include transit passes, really high levels of bicycle parking, as well as rideshare matching services.

So within the staff report, there's an attachment that includes their transportation analysis as well as their TDM plan.

TDM plans do require a lot of monitoring to make sure that folks are staying in a compliance, and sometimes those measures have to change over time.

So that is addressed both in their TDM plan as well as in the conditions of approval.

So the TDM plan would be monitored by our public works department over the years according to industry standards that are reflected in the conditions.

So that wraps up the entitlements themselves, turning to a couple other considerations that the planning commission would probably also be interested in, specifically related to parking.

We are governed by SB 2097, which was approved by the state in 2022.

And this creates a half mile radius around major transit stops, which are defined in the law, and our Cal train station definitely qualifies.

So in a half mile radius around the major transit stop, we are not allowed to have a minimum parking requirement vehicle parking in that area.

So this project technically does not require to have any parking under state law.

However, the project includes 138 spaces, which does meet the city's parking standard.

So they have voluntarily provided 138 spaces.

In terms of environmental review, as I mentioned, the California Environmental Quality Act does not apply to buy right projects as defined under state law.

So there is not a CEQA analysis that accompanies this project.

But we did want to point out that the city has policies already in place that come flow from our general plan and the general plan EIR that are considered to be protective of the environment, and the project does have to comply with those, and so there are a number of conditions of approval on the project that do provide some assurance related to environmental considerations that came from the general plan and the BVSP.

In terms of public comments, staff sent the normal public notice to all the property owners within 300 feet of the project site, you know, 10 days as we typically do in advance of the meeting.

At the time that we prepared this material for you this evening, we had received two comments via email that the planning commission had both received, emailed to you directly.

We received one from a resident that was concerned about pedestrian safety during the construction, given the location of the site near the school, and then we received an email from a housing advocacy group supporting the project.

So in conclusion, staff recommends that the planning commission adopt the resolution approving the request by the applicant for the by right entitlements that we've been discussing.

The analysis is included in the staff report as well as the attachment with the resolution.

We would be happy to do our best to answer any questions.

The applicant in their presentation will talk quite a bit more about the design, so we didn't want to bore you with doing that twice.

So design related questions, the applicant will be able to answer as well.

So that concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for that presentation.

Covered a lot of ground and did it well.

Um I guess I'll ask staff if they have a or by maybe others if we have a preference to focus our questions on this portion of the presentation first or let the applicant give theirs and have kind of just one kind of omnibus question session.

Yeah, it's typically been more streamlined to have the applicant presentation and then assemble your questions that would then be for staff or the applicant once that is concluded.

So that we're not going back and forth back and forth.

Some may require applicant answering some staff.

So I agree with that.

Okay, great.

Let's do that then.

So thank you for that, and we'll cede the floor to the applicant.

Uh good evening.

Good evening.

Uh, Chair Whoach, Planning Commissioners.

So we'm Don Peterson.

I represent the Prometheus Real Estate Group.

I'm joined here this evening with John and Stone, so also Prometheus.

We're very pleased to be with you here tonight.

We'll be leading the project team this evening.

The project team is well represented.

We're joined by Alan Jones of Jones Architecture.

Alan will be walking you through the project design collectors.

Also here from the project team is BKF, our civil engineer represented by Scott Short.

And then I've got several of the project team members that are accessing this hearing by Zoom.

We're all very appreciative of the opportunity to discuss the project proposal located at 580 Masonic Way.

Staff covered quite a bit in its staff report, and Laura through her presentation provided a good overview of the project and its by ride status.

I did actually want to take the opportunity to thank staff for their efforts in getting us here this evening.

It's been a long road over several years.

We certainly appreciate staff's hard work and efforts and certainly their support for the project.

Before turning the presentation over to Alan Jones, I wanted to give you a bit of background on Prometheus.

As you may know, Prometheus is an active real estate owner, investor, and developer.

Our primary focus as a company has been and continues to be housing.

As we've been a longtime housing provider and owner-operator of rental housing, we're a family-owned private company.

We've been around for over 50 years, and we're long-term holders of our properties.

We keep what we build and develop for the long term, meaning we remain vested stakeholders within the communities within which we develop.

We're locally based with our headquarters nearby in downtown San Mateo.

The firm owns and manages much of its portfolio of over 10,000 apartment homes here in the Bay Area, but more specifically in the peninsula in the South Bay.

On the screen, we've it just included several development projects that are built and currently operating, all within close proximity to Belmont.

We've highlighted our brickline headquarters, which was recently built in downtown San Mateo, across from the train station.

Again, we're very pleased to be with you here tonight.

And with that, I'll turn the presentation over to Alan Jones of Jones Architects, who will discuss the project design in greater detail.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Alan Jones with Jones Architecture.

I'm sorry, who's driving?

Do I ask you to look forward?

Um, can ask you to speak into the mic so folks on Zoom can hear you?

Yeah, thank you.

Alan Jones, Jones Architecture.

Um, we're a Portland, Oregon based design firm.

Um, we're doing a lot of work in the Bay Area.

Um, this project type is the type that we specialize in.

And what I mean by that is um urban infill projects and sensitive locations and downtown settings are projects that we excel at and take pride in being able to work on.

So go ahead.

Um, this project um is shown here with the blue area with a heavy dash or the dark line around it.

It sits.

I'm sorry, could you please use the microphone?

It sits, it sits within the Belmont Village plan area.

Um it contributes, the project will contribute to the vision that is outlined in the village plan area plan.

Um it adds much needed housing in close proximity to transit.

The project creates density, which is vital to the sustaining a vibrant town center.

Um, it's designed to be vibrant, provide a sense of place, be attractive, and um provide well designed um defined identity.

Um it's thoughtfully designed and enhances the public realm, and it addresses a dynamic need in an urban condition that is a bridge between the mixed-use active center and the residential neighborhood, and the design response to both.

Go ahead.

Um here is a rendering of the project from Granada and Masonic Way.

Um, I was asked to speak briefly about the design, the underlying idea for the project.

Um, when we started the project, we felt that it needed to have a residential character, which led to the gable forms on the project.

And what I'll show you is that the gables are are grouped in a cluster.

So instead of being a you know a large boxy building, we've the top of the building is active, broken down, and provides residential character.

We started early on studying craftsman architecture, which led to looking at the roots of craftsman architecture, which is Japanese architecture.

What we took from that was that kind of guiding principles for the project, and that it is simply designed, it has restraint, it's quiet, nuanced, and unassuming.

Again, it's finely detailed and will be carefully executed.

It uses natural materials, and then we've carefully arranged the building so that it's well modulated and a composition that changes at each side of the building, so it responds to its character carefully as you move around the building on each street.

The design also changes as it rises.

The ground story of the building is open, inviting and distinct, while the upper stories are broken up with deep recessed openings that provide scale and depth.

The top of the building is unified with the gable forms that I've mentioned, and it's all organized around a very simple and clear plan.

So go to the next slide, please.

This is the ground story of the building.

I'll move around the building counterclockwise.

The area that's shown in orange is that large lobby space that was mentioned.

The lobbies are designed to be an active space, they're curated.

There's a lot of activity on them.

So that is designed to open up onto Masonic, which is the most public kind of the front of the building, and then moving counterclockwise.

There's ground story residential that wraps around Hiller and Wessex, and then the building services, meaning the crotch door entrances, utilities are located off of Granada, along with access to the parking, which is all concealed at the heart of the building.

Next slide, please.

So this is a view from Masonic and Hiller.

This is the most public portion of the building that opens on to that lobby.

It showcases large active like storefront openings that are surrounded by wood siding.

There's large canopies that provide protection for pedestrians along the street.

Landscaping and street trees are shown along Masonic and will be all the way around the project that was mentioned.

And then the base of the building is distinct and different from the upper levels of the building.

Another view along Masonic that gives you a sense of the character.

Again, rich natural materials with fine-grained detailing, generous storefront openings that kind of march in a nice rhythm down the sidewalk, and then the canopies shown here that provide protection for the pedestrians.

An aerial view from Hiller and Wessex.

Again, the base of the building is warm and textured.

The upper stories are articulated with gables and then the recessed balconies that provide the modulation that we talked about.

There's an alternating rhythm between the balconies, bays, and projections.

Overall, the composition is nuanced interplay of the vertical and horizontal modulation.

Zooming in on that view, this is a view of the open space and the garden that's provided.

You can see that there are garden boxes that are provided here with a small pavilion that anchors the garden.

It's for both the community and residents of the building.

We think it's an attractive addition to the community.

Go ahead.

As you move around to Wessex, there's a couple of vignettes that show the character of the ground story residential units.

They're layered and buffered from the street with landscaping and stoops.

You know, think great ground story units that open up to the sidewalk.

Again, alternating in recessed niches and projections that provide a lot of relief and depth to the facade.

And then it's finely detailed with nice guardrails.

The siding is textured, just a lot of richness with the landscaping and the layering along the street.

An upper level plan.

This is an example plan, but this is the third level.

You can see the C shaped plan that opens up to the west.

There's a variety of unit types that range from studios to one bedrooms to two bedrooms, all have lots of natural light.

The courtyard on the third level is lushly landscaped, and there's a free standing amenity building that's shown in purple.

Then here's a rendering that shows that side of the building with a third story amenity space in the center with the gable forms on each side.

The bottom right hand corner of the gable shows the lobby in the active space that opens up to Masonic.

Again, strong gable forms that respond to the character of the neighborhood.

Modulation, it's well broken up, both horizontally and vertically.

We've been working on this project for four years.

We've been through lots of rounds of coordination with the city.

The project is significantly better for that.

That led to increased modulation.

There's accentuation of the set balconies, clarification of the colors and materials, and more refined detailing and specificity.

So in summary, um, think of the project that supports the goals of the Belmont village specific plan area.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Does that conclude your team's presentation?

Okay.

Great, thank you.

Much appreciated.

Um let's start with commissioner questions.

I'm sure we have a few.

Um anyone want to start with you wanna start?

Do you want to start with it?

Sure, you want me to start?

I have a long list.

I have a shortcut.

Yeah, you go.

A couple of details.

Um, two or three thousand cubic yards and the grading.

Is that um mostly to accommodate the building structure or foundation, or are you adding a basement?

Uh, is the is the site being significantly regraded.

Thank you.

Yes.

Uh, the most of the grading that will occur is from the portion of the garage at the ground plane that will be excavated for some of the automated parking that will go uh subterranean.

Okay, thank you.

And uh we had a specific question from a concerned citizen about um uh pedestrian safety.

You're very, very close to uh one of our K through eight schools.

Well, our only K three school, but our uh one of our middle school, and uh it's available to everybody in town and in Redwood Shores.

So from Ralston down Hiller is how lots of kids get there, and on weekends it's very busy with soccer and baseball, etc.

Is that can you tell us what you're gonna do for pedestrian safety, particularly on that front?

You bet we received that uh email today, and it's certainly not just the email, but in general, a very significant part of any project.

Uh specifically with proximity to a school.

So we have several conditions of approval for this project.

21 and 22, if anyone has them right now, are very specific to this topic.

But in general, a construction management plan is put together that has ex great uh granular detail on all these topics.

Path of travel, safety protections, hauling routes, all that's worked on with the city.

Communication is built into that, so all of this will be taken into consideration.

It's not complete yet, but it will be.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

That's it.

Okay.

I guess I can go next and we'll maybe loop back.

Okay.

But do you want to you want to go next?

Um, I guess just sorry, you're referring to the conditions of approval.

Twenty-one is like cultural and twenty-two is human remains.

Maybe I misunderstood what you're referring to.

I think that's in the public works conditions number 21 and 22.

Correct.

Oh, not exhibit B conditions of approval.

Ah, okay, thank you.

Do you want to end it?

You want to be the anchor on this?

Ask questions last?

Or do you want to go next?

Totally up to you.

Again, I have a lot of questions.

Okay, I'll go next.

I um on the affordability analysis.

You talked in the beginning about um low and very low income qualifying, but this project includes moderate as a component for the uh 25 units to get the density bonus.

Can you walk through um why the moderate is included and not just low or very low?

So there's two different things that we're looking at in terms of the by right processing, only the low and the very low count.

So they've met they've met the requirements for the low and very low in order to qualify for the by right processing.

That's 20%.

Yes.

So that's one thing we're looking at.

Then the other thing we're looking at is what density bonus, like percentages they're entitled to.

So the applicant has elected to include the moderate income units in order to um receive the density bonus that comes from the moderate income units.

So that's their choice to do that.

If I jump in here, because I had a very related question.

Can you walk through those calculations again?

Because 20% of 140 is 28.

I just couldn't follow all where all those numbers were coming from.

Are they calculated off the base project or the final project?

Okay, I might have to double check this because this gets a little bit tricky.

Okay.

Um so we can we can look up the code, but it's I believe it's calculated off the base project.

But let us do a double check.

Okay, we can we can circle code to it.

They only have to provide 20% of 70 units, and then they double the size to 140, so only required to have 10% of 140 be affordable.

That doesn't seem right either.

No, I'm sorry, we're gonna have to double check.

Okay.

Yeah, I couldn't follow the math there.

Thank you.

I was just gonna add one small nuanced point to the density bonus question.

Um I believe it was last year or the year before the legislature amended the density bonus law to add a stacking provision where you could provide a very low income project and add moderate income to get additional density bonus.

Great.

Thank you.

And then um it's kind of a process question.

I mean, we there's as you've I think clearly walked through and is the resolution um.

Wait till that's done.

Alright, good.

Uh as the resolution, I think clearly indicates with the s with the strike-throughs.

You've taken, you know, I think um looks like a good amount of effort to strike the subjective findings.

And just wanted to know to the extent that it can be explained kind of what the process was for that.

I mean, we're just looking for language that appeared to be subjective, or was there um kind of more of a kind of firmer guideposts that you were looking to to strike those, or is there a precedent we were kind of relying on?

Just want to kind of get a better understanding of kind of what that analysis was to identify the clearly objective versus subjective uh components of the findings.

So I can tell you where we started from a staff point of view before legal review, and that was to look for two key elements.

So the main thing when we're looking at objective standards, um are they numeric, measurable?

Could reasonable people reach the same conclusion, right, by verifying something?

So those things are clearly um objective.

And then there's some areas in some of our findings that rely on kind of professional expertise.

So that's like a geotechnical review.

Right.

So, like, is a qualified engineer looking at a study to see if it meets a standard that is a known standard that you can compare against.

So that's kind of the other category of things that we were looking for.

So then we were um going through and trying to find the ones that are, you know, obviously reply require a lot of judgment.

So the example that we've been using since we've been using objective standards is the old standards we used to have around consistency with the neighborhood.

Like we can't make those findings, or some of the things related to feasibility, like who is the judge of what is feasible, as opposed to some of the geotechnical standards that still require a professional to evaluate a standard.

Like I couldn't sit there and measure something and get a result, but a qualified professional could.

So those are within um the standards that we provided to you.

Great.

So you use it you were using that definition of what an objective uh finding is, and then kind of reverse-engineered that to eliminate the ones that were not that.

Sorry if I could like oversimplify that's a great way to say it.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's super helpful to understand that process.

And I think this is in the staff report.

I don't know that you covered it in your presentation, but the carryover sites analysis, it's not just that they were listed in the previous housing element.

There are other components requirements to that as well.

Could you maybe explain what those are as to why this site is like unique.

Yeah it's it's fairly nuanced so kind of bear with me.

It's a tricky part tricky part of the law.

Okay, so what the law says is each time we do a housing element we have to identify housing opportunity sites or site inventory.

We use those words kind of interchangeably and then sometimes we have to create a program to zone those properties to increase the zoning to be able to accommodate the housing that we have planned for that site for our arena our regional housing needs allocation.

So sometimes we have to rezone a property because we need to meet our arena.

Other times a city may rezone its property because it it wishes to it's a voluntary upzoning.

So we have a number of sites in the city that were carried over from one housing element to the next but the city undertook a voluntary upzoning and that kind of hits the reset button on those sites and they are no longer considered a carry forward site.

So we have a number of sites that were upzoned with the general plan and the BVSP.

This particular site just because of timing and the density and the zoning that was in place it's technically not a voluntary upzoning that the city did it was required to meet the RENA in the previous housing element and then we carried it forward into this housing element.

So this is the only site in the city right now identified in the housing element as subject to this provision of the law.

Thank you.

You're welcome that was that was well well explained.

I think I have other questions but I will uh pass the mic.

I don't think I have any questions at this time.

Great.

I had a couple of questions.

Just clarifications really for Alan for Alan thank you for your presentation.

That was really that really added a lot of um it was very illuminating and it added a lot of background to the design.

I wondered if you could um so you so you mentioned the village plan and you mentioned how this connection into Masonic weight could you just give a bit more information about how that lobby and that you you referred to storefront and active facade how the kind of use of that links back into our aspirations for this could what would be a commercial corridor.

How does it sort of fit in fit in with how you see the village plan and how does it sort of nod towards that it would be helpful to have an image but I I can I can just try to describe that the in terms of the design of the building the the the ground story of the building on Masonic has been designed to have generous large storefront openings and pilasters that have a continuous canopy that will provide protection for pedestrians on the street.

So I think the design of the building has been designed to be you know engaging and open to the sidewalk in terms of the use I think maybe Jonathan could speak to that more but the the lobbies in general in these buildings are are very active kind of curated um vibrant spaces that that we think will activate the sidewalk.

So I don't know if you want to add to that Jonathan.

Sure I would have to do so along the frontage that you're referring to we have uh our gym will be located there um as we do in many of our projects.

So that engagement, people use the gym and many of our properties um quite a bit of the time.

So mornings, evenings, so that provides a street level activity.

People go in and out from that point.

There's also um many of the bike storage areas are there.

So people coming from Caltrain with their bikes, pull in, go to the bike storage area.

So that's another way of activating the main lobby is there.

We heavily amenitize our lobby space so that people sit, use that space that are residents of the building.

So there's it's not just a door that opens and a coffee table and an elevator.

There's a lot of place that's sort of a front door living room to the space, so that helps to activate the entire front edge.

So the lobby is just for residents and the fitness center is just for residents.

That's correct.

Okay.

Right.

And then just a quick question, just understanding the design, and we talked about relationship to context and the stoops and the texture of the way that the building meets the street.

And on the north side on Wessex Way, how do you just a bit more information about how the relationship with the homes across the street, the whole ranch level homes?

So just a bit more of the background of your thinking of how the building meets the that sort of junction on the other side of the street.

Absolutely.

Um the the ground story units, the ground story of the building is residential on that level.

I I mean, think of it like a I won't call them townhouses because they're they're one story, not two stories.

But generally, you know, they're they're they're flats that have stoops that open up to the sidewalk.

And so each of those units will have a little terrace or a patio, and then steps that go down to the sidewalk, and there's landscaping that buffer it from the sidewalk.

Um, and when you say two-story, it's two-story within the five-story height on that street.

Correct, but it one story.

There's single-story units on it in the garden.

So, they're not town home.

That's what I said.

I don't want to call them townhouses because they're they're single, they're single level.

But in terms of the way that they engage with the sidewalk, they're they're very similar to a brownstone or a townhouse where there's stoops and steps that go out, so residents can come out and sit on their stoops and be social and engage with the sidewalk.

Okay.

And uh you do you have an idea of how you imagine the management of that corner garden, that community garden, and who is responsible for it?

Uh Jonathan, do you want to speak to that?

The triangle space, the garden park in the, if we have an image, the within the fence of the triangle is a square, and within the square are garden plots if you happen to have that image in front of you.

So that would be the um the garden area, and access to that will be for the residents of the building, but the entire setback uh space, that garden park area is open to the public to walk around.

So there's planting, there's trees, there's seats, so it creates sort of a pocket park in the area.

Those that want to do actually vegetable gardening, will we will help and oversee and manage that as part of the operations of the project, but um members of the neighborhood and community can walk through the entire area, sit on the um any of the benches and seating that's in there.

So there's a separation of space in the triangle between the building and that garden portion.

Could we call that image up again, please?

Do you do you have it there?

Um, because that's a very uh prominent corner.

We talked about this route, this walk to the school, and a lot of kids going around this corner, just how that's managed.

And if it becomes something that's becoming a sort of ISO or with the residents allowed to manage it, or yeah, mostly private.

Yeah.

Right.

So we'll we will manage and and make sure it does not fall into disrepair.

It will be the front door, if you will, for this entire driving area into the city.

We certainly don't want to make it in any way look poorly.

Sure.

But yeah, that's the image there.

So you can walk, anyone will be able to walk publicly accessible on the back side between the building.

There's another um call it sidewalk, if you will, if that makes sense.

Thank you.

Yep.

That concludes my question.

Have you done these urban agriculture things at any of your other projects?

So we do um urban or on-site agriculture in many of our projects, and we oversee and manage it, and the plots are installed.

We have a third-party company that we work with, and we install these in different parts of our various communities.

Uh, the headquarters that we showed, the residential portion of that building, it's a mixed-use building in that one, and we have garden plots on it.

We have them in several of our other projects.

Um, and so we use a third-party vendor to determine what goes into the plots, but in communication with the folks living there.

So help to get things started, if you will.

And they're well utilized.

Very thanks.

Kind of more of a clarification question on your attachment to development standard evaluation.

The street frontage standards.

I understand there's like some NA's because it's not retail, so you don't want transparency because it's where people live, transparent windows.

But some aspects have it like that it would be an oddly shaped building if street frontage standards were adopted.

And I understand you don't want four sides of openings, but just the way it's it's um written.

I don't quite understand how a few of the criteria are NA under the proposed for street scrape and street frontage development standards, like the minimum percent of front facade and the front setback.

I think that's probably more of a SAF question.

So let me start and the applicant may want to chime in as well.

Okay.

So it starts with the concept that you um mentioned, Commissioner, that it's a residential use, not a commercial use, so certain standards don't logically make sense to apply.

So all of the standards are sort of as they apply, those don't apply to this case since they're permitted to have residential on the ground floor.

So that's kind of the starting point.

And then our standards are really written primarily for lots that are gonna have one street frontage, or maybe two is really how they were envisioned.

So I can give you an example, like we have a um we have build two lines where you're supposed to push the building out towards the street to create that sort of urban um fabric that we desire.

Um so that's one standard, but then you have a competing standard for lot coverage of how much the building bird's eye view looking down, how much the building can take up of the lot.

So imagine in this particular case, if you push the building out and kind of against all of the streets, it would the building would be awkwardly shaped, and then it would far exceed the lot coverage.

You'd have to cut a hole out of the middle, okay, right?

So it logically doesn't apply in that case.

And so that's what we were trying to describe in that particular footnote when we were describing the lot and the conflict between the two different um categories.

And so when we were looking for um one um standard has to kind of trump the other, so we thought it was more important to impose the lot coverage standard because that has to do with how much of the lot can be built to preserve landscape and open space, and so we didn't strictly enforce the build two lines that would have required them to make the building larger.

Is that helpful?

Yes, thank you.

Okay, and that's all I have.

Great.

Yeah, I guess starting from there to follow up, there's also one uh footnote to that same document you're talking about that says the project qualifies for buy rate processing, allowing ground floor residential uses.

Can you please clarify, Laura?

Like I understand like we had to wave density bonus and things like that.

Like we can't uh, but it's ground floor active use, the active use overlay is an objective standard.

I'm not clear why we're waving objective standard here.

Specifically along Masonic Way in the BBSP, there's uh active use overlay that's required.

Um I understand, I got it, I've got notes.

Okay.

Okay, so um a couple of different things to think about here, and that is um the what our code literally says, and then I can tell you a little bit about why our code says what it says.

Okay, so there's a footnote in the development standards table that the city made um is a housing element implementation measure.

So we are required to do a code amendment that says that these sites that are designated as buy right in the housing element, we had to take that concept and codify it.

So the manner in which we codified it was by adding this footnote to the development standards table.

So what the standards um, what that table literally reads is that it's subject, these sites are subject to site white.

Not literal.

I'm gonna paraphrase.

Um, what that footnote is footnote number two to table 20% being affordable to lower income households, provides a code reference for that, and it has to be wholly on a parcel identified in the 2023 to 31 housing element.

And then we say in such projects, multiple unit dwellings are permitted on the ground floor.

So that's really the operative language there that kind of speaks to your question.

So we we made that code amendment to specifically say that residentials permitted on the ground floor.

Okay, so then my question is so multiple residences are allowed, for example, along Wessex Way, but that doesn't preclude having an active use overlay specifically on Masonic.

So I guess I'm not seeing how your footnote applies there.

You could have active use on Masonic and still have ground floor residential on Wessex, so I'm not following why there's not an active use overlay on Masonic.

Requiring the commercial use on Masonic.

Well, requiring active use accessible to the public.

Um I appreciate that it kept being described as active, but really we're talking about only the residents being able to go in and out of that lobby.

So I don't consider that active use.

And even the outdoor active space.

Half private.

Yeah.

We're talking about along Masonic.

That's that's long Hiller.

So the the BVSP specifically has an active use overlay on Masonic Avenue.

Right.

Okay.

Let me I can answer your other question, but I might have to think about that one a little bit more.

Um the planning commission is aware that we did have some changing in staff as we were working on this, so we have been trying to piece back together some of the records.

So that's why it's taken us a little bit longer to answer these questions than it might on a different night.

Um so we may need to think about that one a little bit.

Do you want me to go back to your density bonus question or try to take your other questions in the meantime?

Um, sure.

Yeah, let's go back to density bonus.

That's kind of the heart of all of it, right?

That uh 20% of these units should be affordable.

That's the community benefit that we're getting, and I do believe that's a benefit, by the way, to have affordable units, but I'm just not seeing 20%.

I'm not understanding where the calculations come from.

Okay.

So starting with so that everybody knows, you may not be familiar, there's um uh a table, like there's a relationship between the affordable units that you provide that comes from the law and then the the percentage bonus that you get.

So in my earlier slide when I was talking about they have if they do 15% very low income, right?

Then they get a certain bonus that comes from that.

So that's that's where that's our source material for this, okay.

So if we take 15% of 70, that's the base units, right?

We get 10.5 rounds up to 11 very low income units, okay.

Then 15% of 70, 10.5 rounds up to 11 moderate income units.

So those are the ones that are easy that come from the table.

But I think you're asking about the 20% that satisfies the by right processing.

Right.

Okay.

So for that one, it's 20% of 70 is the base units, 14 units, and that comes from the 11 very low income units that they're providing, and the three low-income units, total of 14.

Okay, so just to clarify, so state law says that the base project has to be 20% affordable, and then even after all the density bonuses are applied and the project doubles in size, they don't have to meet, doesn't have to be 20% of the final project.

My understanding, Gabrielle might be able to speak to this is that some cities may vary in how this is interpreted, but I believe we have the comrade interpretation, which is off the base units, and I believe that's also in our code.

Yeah, that's right.

That's typically how it's looked at is at the base units.

But I thought the concept that they were operating under was that if we had, I'm sorry, no, go ahead.

If we were gonna double the size of the building, they have to double the size of everything.

They could double the size of the amenities if they chose to, but they and they were gonna double the size of total amount of units in the exact same size.

Shouldn't they have to double the type of units as well?

It seems like a very logical conclusion, and it seems like a cheat.

I'm sorry, I didn't quite I didn't quite follow up.

If the base units were 11 of each type at 70, if you're gonna double the size of the building with a bonus, then you're doubling the si amount of your uh you know low-income units as well.

So you're definitely up to 44.

Oh, I see what you mean.

That does sound logical.

Um, the density bonus law doesn't necessarily work in a logical way in this regard.

The way that um I usually understand it is that.

Well, it's all about usually understand it.

What what are we going to hold them to, and what can we legally hold them to?

We can legally hold them to the numbers that are in the staff report the 25 affordable units.

Did you want me to try to explain your other question?

Or you you I want to just leave that.

I think uh the community is gonna want explanation for all this, so I think the more explaining we can get on record, the better.

Okay.

So this is just my presentation style, but I appreciate I try to explain it to people the way I understand it.

I always use my mom as the test case.

She's smart, but she doesn't know anything about planning.

So I don't want it to sound like I'm talking down to anybody.

I do very much appreciate the hard work staff has put into this, and it's not a small amount, and you guys are working on our community's behalf, and you're up against a ridiculous amount of state um headwind to get to a reasonable project.

So thank you for all your work and your explanations.

Yeah, if I'm understanding this correctly, it sounds like a very um unfortunate way that the state law was written that does not actually get communities the affordable housing that they might hope to get from projects of this size and density.

So I find that highly unfortunate, but if that's what legal counsel says, then that's what we're stuck with.

Okay, so going on to um other questions, um, some of these are um more about the plan and some are um uh I guess about about implementation.

So let's see where to start.

Um looking at the Granada Street elevation, I know that's where the parking garage entrance is located, but looking at it, I feel like I see four roll-up doors.

I'm trying to understand what all the roll-up doors are for and where they where they go into.

I think you mentioned utilities are along Granada.

Correct.

The there's park access to parking is one of the doors.

I think the other door that's shown there, like there may be two other doors there.

We could pull an elevation up and look at it, but the transformers for the building are located inside the building, and so you have to have roll-up doors to access the transformers to get a truck with a boom that can go in there and pick them up.

So I think we've tried to minimize them and group them together on that portion of the facade.

We think it's the most appropriate place for them to be located, and it also works with the utility locations in the street.

Okay, and then can you clarify where is uh trash storage?

I assume there's dumpsters for building of this size.

Where are those located?

They're located on the opposite side of the building adjacent to the open space, and it's it is shown on the plan.

We could pull that up and I could show you.

Yeah, okay, so that's yes.

I went over this with Lara.

So trash pickup, the dumpsters will be picked up from Hiller Street, so a garbage truck will be stopping on Hiller and and loading dumpsters from there.

Correct, and this this has been discussed with public works and the Recology, and that location has been has been vetted.

Um so is there any thought given to like traffic on Hiller when garbage trucks are parked there and loading?

Um, it seems like a very odd choice to pick the most active street in our neighborhood for garbage pickup.

Understood.

There were uh significant um amounts of conversation and meetings that went on along this with public works and Recology.

This was the location that was determined uh by both those parties uh in part because this is the path of travel for Recology.

So they wanted to continue that path of travel for their pickup, and we've have been informed the entire time that the pickup will be before commute hours.

And so that is that's part of the agreement that's in place.

There's an uh a document from Recology that explains uh the pickup.

So this is all part of the application process.

Okay, is that document available to the public?

I believe the ATM document and Recology letter is yes.

Okay.

But again, these are uh in the field as things actually work.

This we have concerns that any project of trash pickup and location and our on-site operations folks who are there all the time, coordinate and make sure the most efficient process of that pickup is actually implemented in the field.

There's a bit of choreography that always takes place between the on-site staff that manage bringing out those um bins and then the folks driving the trucks to make sure it's as seamless as possible.

So this is an ongoing kind of relationship between two parties, and we believe me, we want this to be as uh efficient as possible.

Yeah, so is Recology aware that directly across the street from that location are some homes?

Yes.

So at 6 a.m.

in the morning, they're gonna be dragging garbage bins out and loading them right in front of people's homes.

Correct, and there's existing trash collection that takes place out there as well.

So we've believe me, we're not reporting.

Okay.

Hold your comments if you were to make a public statement, you can have your three minutes and just ask you to refrain from making statements while others are talking.

Thank you.

Um I guess a related question about sort of space in the building.

Can you clarify where the bicycle parking is?

I think um uh you mentioned people wheeling their bikes in through the front lobby.

Is that the the plan?

There's different entry points for pedestrian and bicycle access throughout the site plan.

So on most of the frontages, there will be some of those that so people can come in, they can go into a bike storage room that's either internal to the garage but accessed from several of the points off of the perimeter of the building.

You can take it up to an upper floor, put it in your unit.

So there's even though we provide I believe 142 enclosed biking parking spaces, you can also uh bring them into your unit depending upon your level of security needs for your bike.

Okay.

Um I guess moving on to the construction plan.

So I appreciate that you address the question about safety that um what our residents have that I think that many residents have, but I think the answer that I understood was that a construction plan addressing safety would be submitted to the city.

So can you clarify whether that construction plan, including safety for pedestrians, would be available to the school district and to local residents, or you're just gonna submit it to the city?

So it will become a public document that's part of the project and adheres to all the conditions of approval which tie to the city codes on this matter.

So that is that in and of itself will be a public document.

We wish for as much input as possible from the city, the public works department, um, with regards to adhering to those codes, but also the specifics of um the the locality and the area.

So, what is the best walking path and how do we protect it?

Having that identified in one of the exhibits uh within that larger document.

Okay, and uh Director Mell, just to clarify public, meaning probably on the Belmont development website, they'd have to find this project and click into it, or what does public mean for a safety document like this?

Okay, can you just repeat?

So you're talking about how the public can access information about this project?

The construction.

The construction management plan specifically, I'm told it's a public document asking how does the public access it?

Sure.

So we have a major development project page.

We have information related to this project.

Um certainly when we have the building permit plan submitted to the city.

There's components that get submitted what with that.

Certainly, this is of interest to the community.

Um I don't see any reason why this kind of a document couldn't be placed on that major development project page as well.

Okay.

Is there any opportunity for that perhaps to be mailed?

So I noticed that there's the usual um notification within you know 300 feet, et cetera, and the school luckily is included in that.

So one of our our public commenters asked, can the school be included in notifications?

So I just want to clarify it looks like they already are, I believe.

Okay, so um can documents like that be actually sent to the notification list as opposed to somebody has to click onto Belmont.gov, find development, find this project, find construction plans, et cetera.

Can they just be sent, especially to the school district?

We can absolutely do that.

That would be great.

I think it'd be greatly appreciated.

And just to clarify, it's not just about construction.

I think we also need a safety management plan for once the building is open to residents because of uh the driveway.

I understand that the TDM says that there'll be less car trips than with the existing use, but I think the distribution throughout the day is gonna be greatly shifted.

Obviously, residents going to work, that's generally right when school is trying to get in between 8 30 and 9, as opposed to the current shopping center when that's like residents uh sorry, uh diners in the evening.

So anyway, I I still have major concerns about safety once the building is open and would like to see a safety management plan for that as well.

It just without a doubt.

If I could ask or just add one note for the record here.

So the construction management plan, one of our most recent projects was over 200 pages.

So in terms of mailing that out, um, we're happy to mail things out, but there's gonna be a subsection within that-a uh one report of many, and perhaps that's the one to be mailed out just so people don't get a phone book.

Yeah, no, thanks, I appreciate that.

Yeah, specifically referring to how school children are gonna get to and from their school.

Certainly.

Yeah, okay, again, both during construction, and also I understand this is not part of the plan, but afterwards, I think this would fall on public works probably of the city, is you know, how do children get to and from Nesbitt once we have an active driveway that's gonna be active in the mornings?

So again, what you'd be looking for is this um summary, if you will, of the construction management plan, not the 200 page version, but provided to the school district as well as folks within 300 feet.

Is that what we're looking for?

Are we looking for something along that line?

And Laura may want to chime in as well.

Or I'm sorry, you would.

No, I'm sorry, I just wanted to make sure we were staying like within the questions and not the discussion.

Do you know what I mean?

Part of it.

That's all.

Sure.

Yep.

Okay, so next question is about uh impact fees.

Um, so looking through it looked like the park impact fee is going to be around uh $9,800 per unit, it's about 1.38 million.

I see a uh traffic impact fee of only six thousand per unit, so about eight hundred and sixty-eight thousand.

Anyhow, uh one of our public commenters earlier said something about five million dollars, and I don't get that from this at all.

So I'm wondering if if you could go over what are the impact fees of all various types, parks, traffic, et cetera, that will be paid by this project.

Because that it doesn't look like five million to me.

I'm sorry, I don't know the reference to five million.

Where did that come from?

Uh public comment at the start of this meeting, claim that five million would be given to the city, one of our members of the public.

I don't know where that information came from.

Yeah, I don't either.

So I'm asking.

So it's a question to staff, how much what fees we expect the this project to pay to the city?

Okay, so um condition of approval number seven, planning um community development condition number seven is on page two.

And so you definitely were referencing the correct area.

Okay, so those are the different impact fees.

So the transportation impact fee.

Um the number that you said was correct.

The way that it's um implemented is here in the text.

Um it does escalate according to a set escalator in our fee schedule, according to the time that they issued the building permit.

So you you the math that you did sounds correct, and it escalates a little bit according to an escalator like CPI park improvement fee, same concept that escalates slightly.

Um building plan check fees are just the normal fees that people pay in order to have their plan checked in and all of their inspections and all the paperwork that goes with that.

That's the next portion of this.

Um general plan maintenance fee is a percentage of their building valuation.

That's how we pay for all of our advanced planning work is out of that is how we implement our general plan and maintain our general plan.

And then from the public works department, this you are connection fee, which is a set fee, like the the literal connection.

Right.

So that does encompass the fees.

Um there's a separate condition of approval related to public art because they may install public art on the um site, or they may pay into the fee or some combination of the two.

So that has a separate condition.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

So it sounds like it's about 868k for traffic and 1.3 million for parks plus whatever the art fee is, not including things like sewers, as you said, the general plan fee and so forth.

Okay.

Um, and I think uh we've talked about this maybe previous meetings, um, but maybe can you remind us?

Um, does this money go into the city's general fund, or would for example the 868,000 for traffic be spent just around this particular project if uh traffic mitigation was needed for this project.

So the um impact fees have to go into a dedicated account and only used for the thing that they are um trying to address.

So park impact fees go into dedicated account only to impact the things that are outlined in the um city's program for parks, same thing with transportation improvements.

Um sorry, that wasn't quite my question.

So parks, great, but um parks in eastern Belmont, parks near where this building is going up, or like the Barrett Community Center, for example.

I'm not an expert on the park fee.

I can speak in more detail on the transportation fee in general.

Cities of our size normally use their fees on a citywide basis.

In my experience, only the very largest fees have dedicated like maybe district or other methods to allocate their impact fees.

Um I can speak more in detail to the transportation fees.

Would you like me to do that?

Yeah, I think the question comes up, given that most of our transportation fees or most of our public works spending goes to things like pavement rehabilitation, which is very important, but is mostly happening up in the hills versus these projects that are increasing traffic down in the flats.

Um it'd be great if residents could know that these fees are actually gonna mitigate traffic in the area where this building is going.

So but it sounds like you're saying that's not the case.

It goes into it just goes into the city's priority list of transportation management, and you just go down the list no matter what's loc where it's located in the city.

Well, it wouldn't include things like regular pavement management up in the hills.

That's definitely a different pot of money.

The transportation improvement um money can only be used on transportation improvements that are associated with new development.

So the impact fee is intended to mitigate the impact of development.

So that's why it's held separate from other money that has to do with maintenance of existing facilities.

So that's the concept of um applicants for new development sort of paying their way, which is a policy in our general plan.

And so the the TIFF, the transportation um impact fee implements that policy of the general plan.

So those could be citywide, but as everyone knows, the majority of the development um in the city, the new development is clustered in the transit areas, and so we would expect over time those fees to be spent on priority projects that are in the areas that are impacted by new development.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

That's helpful.

It's good to know it's separate from maintenance.

Um yeah, that's all my questions.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Unless there's any follow-on questions.

I had one more question.

Okay.

So the bins are currently picked up on Wessex, right?

No, on Hiller.

On Hiller, yeah.

But the bin stores for the current building are all on Wessex.

So they pull the bins all from Wessex to put out on Hillow.

Sorry, is that correct?

Correct.

So the larger, which is what we were informed from Recology by, the larger path of travel, the Recology pickup trucks comes down Hiller.

And that's where they wanted to pick up from.

So that was the direction.

The bins are on the corner of Hiller.

Sorry, he you indicated that earlier.

It it's in that little white square in between the opposite on Hillers.

The proposal.

Oh, I'm talking about the existing.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

I was saying of the existing, the bins all collected on Wessex, right?

I believe majority of them are.

I can't confirm if all are or not, but the results of all of the communication with Recology, is that the greater part.

So the truck.

So you want to change it to being on Hillo.

Okay.

Right.

I'm just relaying what the end of the communication with public works was, but it seems to be.

Of course we'd have to check, but it seems that they're changing it from the quieter street to the busiest street where there's a lot more traffic.

If it says this is in your discussion with ecology.

There were numerous conversations with them, but where you see it currently is the result of that.

Right.

Okay.

Thank you.

Great.

I think we'll now open the public hearing.

Yeah.

We we definitely see folks in the public that we anticipate are going to have comments on this item.

Um, we may also have folks on Zoom that are um wanting to comment as well.

Yep.

So I'm thinking uh if it's well, folks are here, um, we'd like to give them the opportunity to speak on this item.

First, thank you very much.

Yep.

So I think exactly.

We'll start with uh public comment and chambers.

Um if folks have submitted submitted a speaker slip, if Madam Clerk just kind of start from the top of the pile and we'll go through them.

Yep.

Okay.

Um we do have some speaker slips here.

Uh first up we have Michael Craig.

Feel free to come up to the lectern and you'll have three minutes.

Thank you for allowing me to speak.

My name is Michael Craig.

I ran for city council a few years ago.

This was a hot button issue.

If you drove through Stirling Downs during that time, you saw about 200 of my neighbors with signs saying, please spread out the development of some of these uh multifamily apartments throughout Belmont because about 95% of it's all in East Belmont, and there were other sites that were identified that could potentially be developed.

As somebody who lives in this neighborhood and actually knocked on every single door in Sterling Downs, I couldn't name one of my neighbors that was in support of 500 to 580 being developed because they deal with the traffic on a daily basis.

And to shockingly hear that they're gonna put traffic, more traffic with trash bin collection on that street.

I call Recology every other week to tell them to pick up my trash barrels and they come in the afternoon.

There's never any set time that they come.

So this isn't something that's a shocking to me.

But um I'm just I do think we should relook at some of this.

I do understand we want to b build this, but Belmont Village Specific Plan has things to make it beautiful.

Active use.

What does that mean?

Well, right now we have coriander Indian restaurant that's there.

There's a there's a mandarin school that's there that serves the community.

There used to be a chiropractor that served the community.

There used to be a nails salon that can serve the community.

So we're losing all these community things that we could walk to living in that community, and now it's only for residents.

The other issue is the par is just the parking and affordability of these units.

It's also a shock to hear that they're not gonna be uh uh you know 20%.

So what uh I know people who moved out of the Hayden.

They're paying 4,000 a month for a one-bedroom and 5,500 a month for a two-bedroom.

And and everybody I I helped somebody move out, and there's a lot of cars coming and going.

It's a revolving door of people moving in and out.

So it's great for the 10% of people that are gonna get those affordable units.

But the rest of them, who is affording these four to five thousand dollar a month apartments, and they're gonna be moving and moving, and we'll constantly be seeing more moving vans, moving trucks continually going in and out because they can't continue to afford these really high rent.

They're not market rents.

They are above market rents.

I get it, developers need to make money, but I I think we should relook at this and really support the community, bring back the active use of portion of it.

Thank you.

Great, thank you, sir.

Uh up next we have Sven Edland.

Good evening.

Good evening, everyone.

Um I live on my name is Sven.

Sven Edland.

Um I live on 810 Hiller Street, so I'm less than a block away from the uh proposed construction.

And really, I I mean there's a lot of comments I could make, but I also I'm well aware of Sacramento's uh neutering us essentially from being able to make any intelligent uh process out of this.

So really I'm left with uh one of my comments tonight is about the construction parking.

So during a construction project of this size, we anticipate a lot of contractors to be parking their trucks, you know, in the neighborhood.

They've got a lot of conditions in the can you know the conditions of approval about fugitive emissions and fugitive dusts and and all that kind of stuff.

But there's nothing about why don't we just get rid of the the vehicles, the extra vehicles that this is gonna descend upon this community while the construction is going on.

I assume the construction is gonna be more than a year.

And uh right now parking within the when this on Hiller Street or in the Wessex Way is is from you know driveway to driveway is full.

So we don't have any room for additional cars, especially not a lot of you know construction trucks and so if you want to keep the fugitive emissions and fugitive dusts uh down why don't you make the uh developer use an offsite uh car parking lot where the contractors can go and they can bust them in so that they have a way of protecting our neighborhood from this this on army of cars and um and also from all these emissions so anyway I'd like to yeah thank you very much for your time hope you take it from I hope you do it.

Thank you very much.

Gary Aidan Thank you very much for your time my name is Gary Aiden.

My handicapped daughter lives on Wessex Way and my wife and I also own a separate place on Wessex Way.

I can say I'm gonna speak to four things traffic parking the look doesn't fit you can go there and look this building does not fit that area and then disruption during build out so let's talk about disruption every street around there is two lane except for a few turn lanes those are all going to be closed off while they're doing this.

There is no room so all that parking which is full now those cars that live there people live there they already have to move and then you're gonna have the construction parking they have to come too so that's one that's a big problem.

The look if you look at all those beautiful homes that are there and they are duplex but they actually have lawns or something on front this is not like that at all traffic is going to be just a nightmare because it's already a nightmare just coming here tonight you try to come up and down any of those roads you already can't move so a massive project like this is gonna have huge disruption while it's being built and then once it's built it's gonna have a huge disruption now my handicapped daughter has to walk by that to get to the train and by the way yes you can call that train station a major hub which this state does but Millbrae is a major hub this is a place where trains barely come a few times an hour and I know because I had the travel train my handicapped daughter so she could use that and this kind of thing is going to just make a mess and young kids my kids all went to Nesbit those kids have to pass all this the whole time so having a mitigation plan while you're building out is a huge thing.

It's a big deal not to mention power, water, sewer I have no idea how you guys deal with all that but any event thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Uh uh Christine Mansdell hi everybody I'm gonna be emotional about this um I'm living in my childhood home son is my husband he works in public works in San Mateo okay so I am looking at you and I want you to tell me if the quality of my life won't go down if my property value won't go down if my floor won't sink or I won't get cracks in my foundation when you guys put up this building on marshland can you can you promise me that Mr Harvard I went also into Cal this reminds me of working at the VA in UCSF where I work where overnight in January we could not use the term diversity or transgender everything got taken away you are taking away my basic rights and my quality of life the uh general plan said four percent of individuals use caltrain in Belmont this is a piece of whatever I don't want garbage cans I don't want kids going down Hiller Street um there is Arco there's a fire station and there's Nesbitt and we have all these kids kids go up the street to catch the uh bus to go to Carmont and Ralston and you're putting in this monolithic building for what?

To line your pockets.

Think about it.

Would you do this to your mother, to your sister, to your family?

I am looking at you.

Can you guarantee me that you will not have a negative impact on the quality of my life in my single family home?

When you put up this horrible thing.

And I really appreciate everyone asking questions.

Yes, Recology's on Westway.

Wessex why are you moving it to Hillard?

Where is the open aspect of Masonic?

Right now, you come off the freeway, you get off on Hiller.

All these people are turning off Masonic to go down Oak County.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

And please listen to the people in East Belmont.

Because you guys are all just living with Julia Mates up in eastern uh western Belmont.

And that is not fair to those of us that have paid our taxes and are working hard to live in this city.

Yeah, go ahead.

Be happy.

But really, think of the people down in Belmont who have worked hard.

And Carlos, you too.

You just go line your pockets with these developers over the years.

I have been here.

Yes, you are.

I you know what?

I just I'm very emotional about this.

This is my childhood home.

And I feel like I have no rights.

What is with this country?

Scott Weeder went up to Sacramento and did all this shit so that you guys can all like line your pockets.

I lost members of the public this to refrain from using profanity when speaking in a public meeting.

Okay.

This is a publicly broadcast meeting, so I'll ask you to stop using profanity.

And uh please refrain from attacking staff members.

Thank you.

Next comment, please.

Thank you.

Uh next up we have Lara Aiden.

I have about uh three minutes of questions that won't be answered, because you know, I'm there's a lot of questions I have, but that have been brought up by wonderful.

I thank you for all your presentations.

I thank you for all your work too.

Um, you know, we um we own a property on uh Wessex, and um, you know, I'm looking at this albatrosk of a building.

They put out a car and said, Isn't this beautiful?

It's gonna match the neighborhood.

That is a lie.

This does not match the neighborhood.

The cars are back up into Redwood shores for the traffic coming over the El Camino along Hiller along Old County.

And if you're gonna mitigate it, are you gonna have room to have maybe three lanes?

You know, all the way down Hiller.

They, you know, I just I I was just driving south on El Camino, and they're doing a I guess on Belmont Way or something on El Camino, they've got this big monolith of a structure, and I think it's five stories.

I'm going, that's gonna be right across from our place, and you know, it just it's it's really hard.

And I know the construction may take I don't know how long, three years, then I don't see any is there going to be uh businesses there, like um restaurants and things, there's not gonna be any business, no business, so it's all instead of what it was planned for for the community and businesses, now it's gonna go to 100% apartments.

Is that right?

Yeah, you know, I I want affordable parking too, but the other question is what is affordable?

Three thousand dollars a month for a studio?

I mean, you know, they don't answer these questions, they just say it'll be affordable, you know, but it really isn't affordable.

Um, okay, there are just uh so many questions I have.

I have about 10 questions, you know, but I know I won't have time to ask those.

Uh, you know, I didn't see parking, you know.

Well, I guess you don't have any storefronts, so there's no stores.

But um, you know, and and there was a lot of things about safety issues too.

Thank you.

You have 30 more seconds.

Oh, 30 more seconds.

Okay, well, um, besides the traffic, I guess there's a traffic report.

You know, I opened up the actual thing.

I did open it.

I'm not an architect.

I can't understand everything that they're saying.

That's a lot of gibberish, but I know they they did try to bribe us at the beginning, 2,500 for anyone who would sign off on it.

Uh very few people did because we don't want it in our thing.

Okay.

We don't want it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Dennis Myers.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Dennis Myers.

I was listening to this meeting on Zoom, and when I started hearing the report about being objective, I was about having a heart attack.

And so I inched my way up here to uh address some things because there's so much being said about objective.

All the state says this and this and this, and they go, we can't argue against objective.

It's a beautiful building.

I have no doubt it's a beautiful building, and it's wonderful.

Uh Prometheus should be very proud of that.

It would be nicer if it was habitat for humanity, so we know that it's not a you know, trying to make a profit margin, but that's okay because that's just part of our life.

I was concerned about the part where where was it gonna be subjective?

Because I know nobody here lives in uh Stirling Downs.

I don't know if any of you reside in Stirling Downs.

Uh I've been there since 1994, and I understand that change has got to occur.

Changes happen.

I wouldn't object to a uh apartment building in that current location if it wasn't a five-story monstrosity, but I understand they gotta make their money uh to to do that.

I think the part about subjectivity, which uh has to come into play.

I don't think it's subjective, I think it's objective.

People talked about the the traffic issue.

Uh there was a big fight some years ago about traffic on on Hiller.

Uh it was a crush of cars, and people using Hiller as a commute shortcut.

They didn't want to go in Old County, they didn't want to go in El Camino.

Thank God there was Hiller there, and then we're told we can't do anything about slowing up traffic on Hiller by putting in speed bumps or anything like that.

So we got some mitigation there, and so I'm really happy about it.

And then when I heard about this project, it says, okay, there's gonna be 137 parking spaces, which sounds great.

But every household has at least two cars usually.

And so we go, where's the other cars going?

So I can talk to the other neighbors here, and I go, I see all those cars packing the street now.

Um I don't know where it's gonna go.

Uh I have uh I know where people are just gonna find parking wherever they can.

But traffic is a big issue.

I haven't heard anything about a traffic study.

Apparently we can't do anything about it because it it conflicts with objectivity.

Um, but the people it affects our neighbors.

We're citizens, we're taxpayers too, like it's been pointed out.

We don't deserve to be uh uh impaired with our life.

We can't think things being comfortable.

We have a lot of problems in the neighborhood, but we deserve to be respected.

I it I'm so cynical nowadays.

I always think everything's a done deal, especially when I listen to the objective report.

Oh, it meets all the state requirements.

And I go, what about the people in Australia and downs?

I never received a notice that this hearing was gonna happen because they said what is it, 170 feet uh within the project.

I live on Oxford Way.

That I never heard about it until somebody pointed it out to me.

So, anyways, please.

If you're gonna be objective, be objective about the citizens too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, um, we'll move on to Zoom, uh raised hands on Zoom at this time.

Uh Michael Kardini, you'll have three minutes when you're ready.

Uh, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Oh, terrific, hi.

Uh I I uh also live in Sterling Downs.

Uh I just want to thank everybody for giving a presentation about something everybody hates, and we all kind of knew how this was gonna go.

Um, apologies to anybody who took personal attacks, but um uh, you know, I will say that I do hate this a little less, having seen more about the actual building.

Um, and I know that essentially the legal door is open, so the knife's being stuck in and there's nothing we can do about it.

So I'm not really worried as much about what we can make the development do.

I'm more worried about specifically what the city can do and what the direct plan is for that.

And I'm wondering, is there some sort of forum where the city planning uh has you know illustrated how they're changing local signaling, increasing roads, widening stuff, because you know, although this is specific to the one project here.

Also, we're developing just a block away with a whole bunch more units, so traffic's just gonna be worse everywhere.

And I'm wondering where, you know, where is the specific action plan that the city has developed to fight back against the penalties that the citizens are facing based on these state laws we can't avoid.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, next up we have Doug Rickett.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can uh thank you for the planning commission and staff uh for your time and consideration.

As a Belmont resident who supports the Belmont Village specific plan for building a beautiful downtown, I am concerned about the 580 Masonic away design and how it would violate the BBSP standards with excessive height and bulk beyond what the BBSP allows, and so it's asking for waivers.

You know, the architect's renderings look very pleasant, but then I notice on Hiller Street, you know, in the fine print, it says there's only three feet setback, and that seems very small for children walking to elementary school.

And while the BBSP calls for ground floor retail, this plan has none, and so it doesn't seem consistent with the spirit of the BVSP.

Now the staff report and the developer state that the only way to build 140 units is to get three waivers to the BBSP, and so they must be given the waivers, but that is not accurate.

The city is not required to grant waivers to grant all waivers requested by the developer.

The city is only required to grant the waivers necessary to reach the 140 units, and in this case, the developer has other options that they could use to construct 140 units without breaking the BBSP.

So no waiver is necessary.

For example, the developer could replace some two bedroom units with one-bedroom units, and then they would not need to violate the height and bulk restrictions of the BBSP.

In conclusion, please ask the developer to try again with a plan that meets the BBSP and doesn't unnecess and please do not unnecessarily waive the Belmont Village specific plan that is designed to create a beautiful downtown.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Next up we have Kathy Gilbreth.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Are we ready?

We're ready.

Okay.

Um I as well live in Sterling Downs.

Um, and I believe putting up this new five-story development off of Masonic, um, will cause a lot more just um congestion.

Um, and many people do use Masonic to get onto 101.

And you're adding another 140 to 240 people, which will just clog up that area.

Now, right now I live off Old County near the Hayden apartments, and I can tell you it is an eyesore.

Um, my backyard used to be blue uh skies, and now it's just a wall of five-story building.

Um, and it just sticks up amongst um two-story houses, condos, and apartments around.

Um, when it was built, it they did take away five parking spaces along Old County Road.

So we lost those parking spots.

And I'm sure this is gonna happen again.

So this proposal speaks of a housing crisis.

Well, the Hayden right now has nine, not two or three, nine available apartments.

So this need for more housing isn't really a good argument in my opinion.

Also, we have Nesbitt School directly behind us, which is also a huge impact on parents taking their children to school.

When I took my daughter there, there was I met a lot of parents who brought their kids from different areas in Belmont and complained about the traffic then.

I can't even imagine how that is going to.

Parents will want to continue bringing their kids to Nesbitt.

My concern also is the 138 parking spots with 140 apartments.

I understand they they do have a bunch of cycling spots, but I do not see a lot of people cycling to work.

And on average, people have one to two cars per apartment.

There's also a mention as they were talking about storefront openings.

They kept mentioning other storefront openings, but where are the stores?

I heard a lot of other people talking about this.

It seems like Belmont's were taking away independent businesses and adding nothing except for more congestion.

So I urge you not to approve this and maybe develop something different, smaller with more businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next, we have Shauna Maith.

Hi, it's it's actually Matthew, but thank you.

As a longtime resident of Belmont who has lived here for over 40 years, and in Sterling Down for over 15, I am so disappointed in this project, and I'm so disappointed in the commission that you are even considering this.

You are ruining our neighborhood.

There are many, many mornings where we are trapped in our neighborhood and cannot get out because the traffic is so bad.

We cycle through so many red lights to green lights to red lights to even get out of our neighborhood.

And this would be detrimental to families trying to commute in the morning due to the construction that you are going to bring to this neighborhood.

We do not want this project.

It is too big, and it will cause too much distress and hardship to the people living here.

When you approve the Hayden on Old County Road, all of those construction workers, yes, they were supposed to park off site.

None of them did.

I would call the city and complain.

They'd send somebody out, and then the very next day, the parking, the construction workers would be parking on Old County Road again.

We lost so many parking spots on Old County Road during that entire cycle of the Hayden being built.

We are asking you, please, just because we live down in the east side of Belmont, that we live in Sterling Down, we are just as important as any other member of the Belmont community living here.

And this project is too big of a project to have in our community and to disrupt our community during the entire construction cycle.

Please, please take into consideration that we do not want this.

And the only people that do want it is the developer that is lining his pockets with more money.

Great, thank you.

Adam Cook has one question, which is how many more raised hands we have in the queue.

And two, I'll ask you to be sure to start the clock with each uh speaker.

I know.

We do have let's see.

We currently have uh five more raised hands.

I'm gonna go ahead and make a last call for for folks to raise their hand to uh submit comment for this.

Okay, great.

Um, next up we have Dulce.

Hi, my name is uh Susan actually, and I moved into strolling downs in 1986.

Um I'm not gonna repeat what uh Shauna, Doug, and Kathy said, but I agree with all of it.

Um, besides this project, the proposed project, from what I understand, you have eight stories going up on a lot that borders on the front side on Ralston and the back side on Masonic.

So you have all those cars adding to what these people already talked about.

And I can tell you, I do not, I work remotely from home.

I do not make any appointments during certain hours of the day because I am landlocked where I am on Oxford Way.

I cannot get out.

And there's not a stop sign, there's no stop signs on Hiller to allow me to get out from Oxford Way, and nobody ever lets me out.

Um, but aside from that problem, I'd like to know my question is I have a concern.

What's the water table at the site?

And the reason I ask this is because Sterling Downs is not on bedrock, as probably everybody there should know.

We are landfill on top of a salt marsh.

This is salt marsh land with landfill on it.

Now, I don't want to see the subsidence happen here, like it did over with the Concar project, where they had subsidence across the street at right aid, and they only went down, I think their water table was five feet.

We're about the same distance from the bay they are.

We don't have a right aid across the street from this project.

We have a gas station with big gas tanks, and we have a fire station along with residents.

We don't want to see people's floors subsiding.

How far are they digging down?

How much water are they taking out?

How is this going to affect the roadways, the homes, the fire department, and the gas station?

And if there's documents that show what the marshland is, you can look up the lawsuit is still going on with Rite Aid because their business is just sunk.

Um there's a whole lot of problems with that, and along with that, I'm wondering, I know that the the planning commission has an agreement with the developer owner to meet their commitments in the future.

What happens if, and I'm not saying the developer owner will do this, but I've seen it happen down at Pete's Harbor, what used to be Pete's Harbor in Redwood City, and a project in Mill Gray.

The owner-developer sells the project to another corporation, and they go bye-bye, and they go wherever.

Now, I'm not saying this developer's gonna do that, but what guarantees does the city have if the project is sold to someone else, that that someone else, that other corporation is liable for any defects, anything going on in the future.

It's hard to sue a company or a corporation that doesn't exist anymore.

And again, I'm not casting aspersions on this developer.

I'm just saying, what does the city do to make sure that the city and the people around this project would be okay?

And again, I don't know.

If you had something that was three stories, I think it would get passed a lot easier.

Um, I know we need affordable housing.

Maybe I'm gonna ask you to wrap up, please.

You're about a minute past your time.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Sorry.

It's okay.

Okay, thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Um next up we have Kristen Sterlingview.

Hi, Kristen Hawley.

I live down on Sterling View, the opposite end of where this project is going in.

Um, I've been a resident for almost 50 years.

Um I have a concern we are getting flanked or will be getting flanked by apartments.

Uh the gas station down on uh Lori Meadows is kaput, and it uh is gonna be an apartment complex.

580 Masonic is gonna be a apartment complex.

Um I'm concerned about both areas, one for parking because the um people on Laurie Meadows apartment complex uh use Sterling View for parking.

So I am in sympathy with the people on Wessex, Home View, and uh and on Hiller.

I've also concerned, of course, about the traffic.

Is the city going to do something about uh making a right-hand turn or a left-hand turn or putting a signal in there, widening the streets so that there's more traffic they can go through as other people have stated?

The traffic is tremendous and the traffic is tremendous down on Sterling View as well.

Um at five o'clock.

Uh they're lined up on Sterling View to get on Old County.

Um recently San Mateo has put in a little bike lane there now.

So the people that want to go to the Sterling um Lori Meadows uh have to wait to make their right-hand turn to get into Laurie Meadows.

Um the concern I have is the six stories.

As the I look at the plan, it looks like it's more than six stories, and I heard, you know, that's for the air conditioning or whatever they put up on the roof.

I agree with the person that just spoke.

If it was a shorter uh building, it would probably be better off for Sterling Downs.

Not necessarily the developer.

Uh so that's my two cents.

Thank you for hearing me.

Thank you for your comments.

Next up is Deborah C.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

My family and I have lived in Stirling Downs for 60 years.

Actually, more than 60 years.

My siblings and I went to Nesbitt, Ralston, Carlmont.

We're all tax-paying citizens, and this is just atrocious what's happening to Belmont.

First of all, the name change.

We're like this.

This if you live in Stirling Downs, you're like the stepchildren of the city of Belmont.

First, you change the name to East Belmont, then you start cramming in as much housing as you could possibly fit.

Belmont's a pretty good size city.

You've got a lot of other places that you could have considered to put this unit.

And you continue to say, oh, it needs to be near transit, but like we all know, nobody's taking the train.

They're not using the transit.

So that's a lie.

I want to thank all my neighbors who spoke up today.

There's not one person that got on this Zoom tonight in support of this project that's going on.

It's too big.

Why would you want to come down Ralston Avenue, turn into Hiller and see that monstrosity that's bigger than anything in the area?

The traffic is already horrendous.

You've heard about it from everybody tonight.

The city isn't fixing it now before this project.

Do you think we're gonna you're gonna spend any money to improve traffic, mitigate traffic?

What would you even do to mitigate the traffic?

We can't even get the lights controlled properly.

I think this whole project should be scrapped and you should look elsewhere.

I'm all for housing.

I know that we need housing.

This isn't it.

This small teeny area.

I mean, we lived here when there was a grocery store.

So you've now eliminated all of the services to the community that people use, like they mentioned the nail salon.

There was a used to be a market, the restaurant, there was a sushi restaurant there, there used to be a dry cleaners.

You got anything, you got rid of everything that's convenient for the neighbors to use instead.

Line everybody else's pockets.

I hope you reconsider.

Move it elsewhere.

Why don't you go up Ralston Avenue?

There's a lot of space right before Ralston, uh middle school that you can use up there.

Old Oracle space.

There's plenty of space available instead of trying to cram everything down the poor residents of Sterling Downs.

It's terrible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next up is uh it's S L E F C.

Go ahead whenever you're ready.

Hello, can you hear me?

We can now, yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Sorry about that.

Uh never done a zoom before.

I'm one of those old uh boomer type guys that uh doesn't know the stuff that millennials know.

Uh number one, I just got to say it's amazing how you justified 70 units to begin with, noting that it was going to grow to double that amount.

Uh I'll leave it at that.

Uh shame on you for the city of Belmont thinking that was wise to begin with on such a small plot where you got zero lot line on one side and basically just sidewalks on two other sides, and then a fenced off park on the third side, where yes, students need to walk to the bus stop on Ralston Avenue.

I'm not going to go through what the traffic nightmare already is, extending all the way from El Camino out to the freeway at this point at certain hours, and extending all the way from the Alameda down to 101 in the other direction in the mornings.

So that's already been said, and yes, a lot of people have started circumventing Ralston Avenue by going up Masonic just to get around the traffic.

So I'll leave it at that.

Uh I do agree that yes, on Westex Avenue.

By the way, I own five duplexes on Wessex Way.

So I do have a vested interest in this.

And uh yes, the traffic, excuse me, the dumpsters are on the Wessex side right now.

They are not on Hiller.

And uh as a bit of history, I've tried to work with your parking traffic safety committee about uh accidents that are going to happen on the corner of Hiller and Wessex.

You have a lot of children, and they're my tenants who live on Wessex, and these uh people walk their children to school every morning hoping they'll be safe.

But the traffic coming around onto Hiller is very dangerous because it's not just a straight road, it takes a hook and goes around and it's a blind corner.

And the best that your traffic parking safety committee could come up with was a 20-foot red foot painted curb on one of the four corners, of which the uh people who live on the corner of Hiller and Wessex, who by the way, for four bedrooms, they have nine cars.

Uh they still park there when traffic is outside of hours, in other words, after five o'clock when your people go home.

They just ignore it and park all the way up to the curb anyway.

And that brings the last point.

Is it's observed if you think that a hundred and forty units are gonna need less than a hundred and forty plus parking spots.

How you ever bless that, I have no idea.

I can cite a development that just went up in Oakland.

43 stories, they thought they could get away with just two stories of parking underneath, justified by the right next to BART.

Uh they just recently had to buy a six-story parking structure to accommodate all of their uh tenants in their units.

So uh get real about parking structures and how much parking is necessary.

And yes, uh, if you go down Wessex any time of night, cars are already double parked, and in the cul-de-sac, they triple park.

It's uh it's it's not a viable uh answer that you have right now with the formula of less than one parking spot per unit.

That's all I've got to say.

I could say more, but I think you know that as this thing has been planned and uh proposed, it's inadequate and inappropriate, and I won't even go into yeah, five stories is not five stories.

We all know that.

Your plan even shows that.

Your five stories were like six and a half.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate your comments.

Okay, next up is uh Lisa's iPhone.

Hi there.

Uh I too am a resident in Sterling Downs.

I'm on Oxford Way.

And as it is, there are certain mornings where I know if I have to leave, I need to move my car out closer to uh Ralston on Hiller, uh, because of the school traffic.

So uh I think it's a safety issue for folks to not be able to leave their homes when needed.

But uh the main point is if I understand what was said at the beginning, this is happening.

We have no way to stop it.

And so looking at what other things can be done uh is really important, but this is just a slap in the face to the residents here.

Countless building codes have been overlooked.

The ability that something can be built this large is just obnoxious.

We know people who have gone to the building department with their plans for a two story home, and they have been denied.

So how dare how dare the city let this happen when we who live here are not even allowed to expand our homes?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, okay, I believe that is the last of the public commenters at this time.

No one raised hands on Zoom or uh speaker slips in house.

Great, thank you.

Well, last call for spokes in in house for comment.

Okay, so none.

Dr.

Damella, do you have something to add?

I'd say close the public hearing.

Let's double check and make sure there's nothing on the CDEB website.

Um, so on the C dev website, um we received one additional email, and that person actually spoke tonight.

It was Doug Doug Rickett, so he paraphrased his comments that he gave to you tonight.

Okay.

We received no other comments.

Great, thank you.

I will we'll in fact close the public hearing.

And we're going to send it customary for these kinds of hearings where the process is long.

Um we've offered an opportunity, should it be desired to have a a uh bio break.

I'm not sure if folks want to do that, or we want to just power on through.

May I be inclined to power on, but I'm fine.

Power on.

Okay.

We recognize staff though.

Staff has a need for a break.

I'd love a break.

Let's take a break then.

There we go.

Thank you very much.

That's why we asked, yeah.

So let's let's come back and in yeah, four minutes.

Is that sufficient?

Yeah.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay.

We are back on after a short recess.

And we've closed the public hearing, and we are now at the point where we will deliberate as a body.

So I will let folks who want to start start.

Through the chair.

Um, if I can make a suggestion, if staff could provide some additional information related to the active use or the commercial use of the ground floor.

I imagine that was going to come up again, but thank you for preempting.

Okay.

So two parts that we think are related to this.

Um, when we were working on housing element adoption, we were working with HCD related to different housing policies, and they tell us we have to identify constraints and we have to review a bunch of policies with them.

This is an active review that we go through.

They didn't really want us to keep our requirement for ground floor commercial.

Um we pushed back really hard.

I pushed back really hard in those meetings.

Um eventually they said that was fine, we could keep it the way that it was.

Um, but that's the first part that went into what the staff was thinking and what the context was when those code amendments were being being prepared.

Then the other thing I wanted to share is that in these kind of situations where there is a specific plan or code policy that's in place, developers do have the option of using an incentive or concession under density bonus in order to not have to apply some of those.

So waivers are related to physical standards, and incentives or concessions are related to a financial aspects of planning for a project.

And so waivers are unlimited, but incentives incentives and concessions are numbered.

There's a certain number that you're allowed for these types of projects.

You might recall in my presentation, the applicant did not ask for any incentives for this project, but they could have requested an incentive to not have a ground floor commercial component.

That is a common incentive that applicants apply for.

So if there was an interpretation that the ground floor commercial was required, the applicant would have had the right to apply for an incentive to waive that requirement and not build the ground floor commercial.

And what's the standard for deciding whether or not to waive that?

Um the there's findings for denial of an incentive, and the burden is on the city to make those findings.

So it's kind of like the reverse of what normally happens.

And maybe I can hand it over to Gabrielle to illuminate that a little bit more.

Certainly.

So under density bonus law, the city's ability to deny requests for waivers and incentives or concessions.

Incentives and concessions are the same thing.

They're used interchangeably.

Your ability to deny those are very limited, both based on the statute on HCD interpretation, and on case law.

In order to deny an incentive, I'm trying to pull up the statute here, but you would need to make findings that there would not be, that the project could be built with complying with all the codes as they are, that there wouldn't, and that and it's more the financial component, as Laura mentioned.

And so typically there when we look at at um incentives and concessions, we're saying that it is financially not feasible to comply with this particular development code standard and still build at the allowed density.

When we look at waivers, we're looking at it's not physically, you're not physically able to comply with the standards at the density and with the concessions that have been granted.

So I don't know if that fully answers your question.

Yeah.

And my understanding too, because we try to keep up with the law and the practice, is that this is a section of the law that has been amended.

Um so we used to be able to provide, we used to be able to require more backup, like some of the old codes say that we use to like require pro forma or other mathematical explanation of what money is saved by an incentive.

Um, and a lot of those rules have been removed to make it more simple, like more streamlined for applicants to be able to apply for an incentive and not provide that same level of of proof for the financial savings that they have through that incentive.

Okay.

But that specific issue is not before us tonight.

They haven't we have not imposed that requirement, nor have they made the request for an incentive.

They have not made a request.

Um staff was trying to provide context or color around this question about the ground floor um retail versus residential and the standards.

Okay.

Any further clarifications?

For the none from staff.

If there's anything else you would like us to answer, we're we'll do our best.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay.

You did.

Could we speak a little more about traffic reports that we've not really touched on?

I think it was it was in the pocket, right?

Yeah, there's a um transportation analysis in the packet performed by hexagon consultants on behalf of the applicant that was peer reviewed by the city and the city's consultant.

Um, the representative from Hexagon is on the line.

Um, if the planning commission, do you know what I mean?

Depending on how you want to conduct the business, wish to ask ask any questions.

But did you have any specific things that I may be able to?

It would be helpful to do an overview on the impact on that corner in particular because a lot of people have put it up.

I feel like it's something that they could address for us.

Should a bit more light on?

Um I can address it generally, and then I can leave it um to the chair to the commission if you'd like to ask questions of the applicant's traffic consultant.

Do you want me to try to answer generally first?

Yes, please.

Okay.

Um so the traffic impacts are analyzed according to city standards that are set in advance and provided to the applicant, and then their consultant analyzes it using the city standards as well as professional best practices.

And so we rely on a couple of different things.

We rely on when we're doing traffic studies, physical counts that they may do, like in this case, there was driveway counts of the actual cars going in and out.

They could speak to more detail related to that.

And then we also rely on assumptions that come from ITE, the Institute of Traffic Engineers, about the number of trips that are going to be generated by different uses.

So first we make assumptions, they do math about how many trips are going to be generated.

That's people going from point A to point B, and then there's professional standards about how those trips are distributed out into the streets amongst the network.

And so in this case, their analysis analyzes that the existing commercial shopping center actually has more traffic during the AM and PM peak expected than this residential project does.

So there is, according to the traffic study, not an increase in the number of trips that are generated.

A question.

Yes, indirectly it's included.

So I mentioned the ITE Institute of Traffic Engineers has different standards for different types of projects in different locations.

So this particular project, they applied a standard that's used for multifamily development that is in proximity to transit.

So the number of trips in vehicles is lower at this site than the number of trips and vehicles would be at a different site that was not adjacent to transit.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Was that responsive?

Great.

Uh can I ask a follow-up question?

Sure.

Uh a couple of the public speakers uh expressed concerns about groundwater and subsidence.

Could you tell us if you're expecting what the groundwater is going to be if you have to draw it down for any reason what you think the impact will be on the adjacent what?

Perfect.

Scott Short, we give civil and here.

Um the groundwater's shallow, but it's um the excavation within the groundwater um is limited in the Jonathan, the developer was explaining how they're doing stackers.

So there's a limited excavation where we're going deep below the building.

So it'd be easy to manage.

And it it's not gonna have an impact spreading out, you know, past the building footprint.

I mean, it's it's quite small and um in comparison to the to the Hayden, for example.

That was a larger basement.

Okay.

If I could just add one thing, the structural foundation of the building itself engineer is engineered in a way where it does not allow for any subsidence to occur.

That's part of the engineering that goes into the building, the superstructure and the foundation, both with the pits of the parking stackers, but just the map foundation as a whole for the building.

So that there's a significant amount of engineering that goes into place.

The initial reports, uh, drawings uh that have gone into the plans thus far, take into all of that as we move into the next phase of any project.

You move into working drawings, technical details, and there's a far greater level of engineering that goes in to what's considered the working drawings, the construction set that's reviewed by the city, the building department, and adheres to all building codes, specifically the California building code, which addresses all of this.

But aside from BKF doing the civil engineering, you also have a geotechnical engineer who's already done the report.

We do, and the initial report is part of the package that's here.

Uh, and that's going to be peer-reviewed by another engineer that works for the city, correct?

It has been.

Okay.

Right.

So there's just a follow-up on that.

There, there is another level of technical report that's created that's part of the building permit process.

Yes.

We're just not there yet, but it will further support what's been done thus far.

So we're it's a very important part of the process.

And maybe one more follow-up question while you're there.

There was a public comment about the parking and construction vehicles.

Um is there uh anything in the conditions that address that issue.

Sure.

So the um construction management plan that's been referenced tonight in numerous occasions.

So one of the subsections of it has to do with construction employee parking, and that's worked on with the city, the public works department, building department, depending upon the numbers of people, excuse me, on site that are building a project ebbs and flows depending upon what's being constructed just constructed.

So the peak amount of construction workers or people on the site is taken into consideration, and locations are found in and around the environment of any site, and then paths of travel, someone mentioned a shuttle, that is can be considered.

So all of that is taken into consideration.

The plan's identified, it's blessed by the city, and it becomes a subsection of the construction management plan.

So we haven't determined that yet, but that's part of the process.

It's part of the analysis.

And it's and it's in the conditions of approval.

Great.

So just to tag on with that line of questioning, um, this is something that gets brought up every single time we develop a large building, uh, both before by the community and then during by the community because it's almost never taken care of well.

And I'm a general contractor, I know how hard it is to get a sub to tell park where you tell them to it's not easy.

Do you guys have any incentivization plan to keep subs off of our uh community streets and keep them on the main project?

So we will hire a general contractor, that general contractor will then, with this entire construction management plan and the parking plans subset of that.

Will be part of the communication to all the sub-infrastructure.

And the policing of that will be done by ourselves as well as the general contractor.

We'll all be adhering to it as well as the city.

We there will be all of the various inspectors that come out.

We'll be making sure that's being met, and if it's not, we will make sure that it is.

And so that's just part of the process.

We're certainly aware of it on all of our projects and and we'll follow it.

Yeah.

We do have a very good track record of that.

We can't, no project is exactly perfect.

Someone's gonna show up who didn't read the memo, but they are um informed of that memo uh very quickly, and uh we try and work as best we can to make sure that's not spilling out into the neighborhood.

So, should the commission want to reread that condition?

It's public works condition 22A through F, that focuses on all aspects of the CMP.

Great.

Thank you.

Could I ask another follow-up question, please?

Why not?

Um, there was another public comment concerned with perhaps if Prometheus sells the property.

Could you uh I believe you said it earlier, but there's certain agreements with the city, you're monitoring that the affordable housing is affordable, etc.

etc.

etc.

Is that with Prometheus, or is it run with the title to the land?

All of those agreements and the conditions of approval run with the land.

Okay, so forever that affordable housing will be affordable, and the city of Belmont will ensure that it goes to the proper people.

It's then the rest of the conditions of development.

Okay, thank you.

And just to clarify, runs with the land means there's like an affordability covenant that is recorded with the parcel and applies to any future owners of that property.

Yes, thank you.

Great.

Thanks.

Sorry, lost follow-up.

Just to clarify, you said this is correct.

You said the existing commercial shopping center generates more traffic at Wush Hour than the proposal.

Is that right?

Yes that's what the traffic analysis shows.

Does it right so the restaurant that is mainly evening use and the after school club that is midday generates more than all these units at Rush Hour calls.

And transportation analysis is analyzed typically in an AM peak and PM peak and that's standard like professional practice.

So we've got if there's more specific questions we might want to ask the traffic um I mean engineer.

I don't want to get it wrong.

So as a general uh observation that seems unlikely, right?

That all of these people living in this apartment building with the calls and the call fault would be moving at peak times that compared to the restaurant and um the two units in the middle of unoccupied and the end unit is enough to school club.

Right?

Yeah I guess I would have a follow-up question there.

139 parking spaces there are 139 parking spaces in that shopping center now so by definition there will be more cars there after so I I'm just I find that traffic study completely puzzling.

I wasn't bothering to go into it because state law doesn't really allow us to consider effects on traffic but I I find it ludicrous especially in the morning that shopping center is not used in the morning.

So through the chair if I may respond to that so the traffic studies are based on a commercial shopping center of that size.

It does not take into account the current occupancies or vacant storefronts it's a commercial shopping center of that size if fully occupied would potentially generate more trips than the shopping center than the um epothetical analysis it's not an actual analysis of the actual conditions that exist today but there's no guarantee that the current restaurant or the current daycare center would be there for all time or that the vacant spaces in the shopping center wouldn't ultimately get tenanted.

That's fair.

Is it best practices to be working with hypothetical situations?

I mean through the chair should we direct these to the person who did the study he's on the zoom.

I mean if it's if it's helpful to address these questions then then sure if he's available to answer them it may be pretty Gary Black is on the on the Zoom.

Uh uh good evening Gary Black with Hexagon transportation consultants um to determine the existing um traffic being generated by the um stores and various buildings that are on the site we simply counted the driveways so it it was very simplistic just um count the number of cars going in and out of the driveways and we typically do that for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon the busiest times which are generally 7 to 9 a.m and 4 to 6 p.m.

And then we compare those numbers to estimates of the traffic that would be generated by uh the development project and we simply concluded when you make this comparison that the existing development on the site right now today as counted uh generates a lot more traffic than the estimate for the um for the apartments it's just as simple as that can you provide some context into the estimates for the apartment um yeah traffic um we use a um we use a publication that's called the uh that's the inst it's published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers it's called trip generation and what that is is a is a compilation of various studies that have been done um in California and quite frankly across the country of similar types of developments that have been built and occupied um and engineers go out and count how many cars are going in and out of the driveway of those developments that research is compiled in the trip generation manual so when we want to make an estimate of how much traffic would be generated by a new development the best thing that we can do uh this is the industry standard is look and see well, all the other developments that have been studied that are like this one, how much traffic do they generate?

And that's the basis of the estimate for this for this project.

So it's based on counting similar developments.

And are they Californian development in California?

Some are in California and some are not.

They're spread out um various places.

Okay.

And how does that capture school traffic?

So if you counting the driveway trips at the peak times, how does that incorporate the school's um flow of traffic?

The well, I think if I can answer your question, if if we were studying a residential development, and um residents of that development were driving their children to school, then that would be captured in the count.

I don't know if that answers your question.

We did not count the existing school to find out how much traffic is being generated by that school.

If that's the question, we we didn't make it.

What I'm getting at is that that junction is very busy, and a lot of that traffic is generated by the school.

And I would like to be assured that the transfer plan captures how busy that junction is and the impact on how it actually is now, and to make sure that it's been.

The study was limited to a comparison of the estimated traffic to be generated by the new development compared to the traffic that is counted at the existing shopping center.

And when we find that the traffic that would be generated by the new development is actually less than what is out there now, then that's where we stop.

Um can I ask?

I guess maybe this wouldn't be in your survey, but um none of those businesses are open between seven and nine in the morning.

So do you have any guesses like what people were doing going in and out of the driveways between seven and nine in the morning in the shopping center?

I can't tell you details about which of the businesses were generating the traffic.

Um I can only tell you that the traffic was going in and out of the uh driveways.

So potentially it was residents cutting through or people parking there to walk their kid to the school.

It wasn't actually generated by those businesses, potentially.

Again, not being open between seven and nine in the morning.

I just don't understand why any car would be going in and out there between seven and nine in the morning.

But I understand the study doesn't doesn't know what people were doing.

Right.

Great.

Unless there's any further questions for the traffic engineer.

I have one more, yeah.

I guess to maybe parse that out a bit.

Do you have any data for morning versus night?

Was all the were all the trips at night, and it's an average of the two?

Uh no, the traffic study actually shows the trip trips in the morning and the trips uh in the evening.

Um if you want the actual numbers, I can look them up.

You give me a second.

Um sorry, I'm flipping through the report to get those numbers for you.

We appreciate it.

It's pretty we're kind of deep in the weeds at this moment.

Um, wait, right now.

Sorry, just takes a second.

Apologize for the delays.

Okay.

So the trips that were counted at the driveways were 95 in the morning in the busiest hour, and 56 in the evening in the busiest hour.

So they were quite a bit more in the morning.

So I think to your point, we can assume that.

Oh, sorry.

That traffic had nothing to do with the commercial activity.

Hold on.

Check that.

Sorry, I was looking at the wrong line.

No, they were about the same.

There were about 100 in the morning and the afternoon.

I was looking at the wrong line.

I apologize.

Okay.

Yeah, so I think you can understand our skepticism.

So a hundred people go into a shopping center when the businesses are not open, and a hundred people go into the shopping center when the restaurants are actively being used.

It just doesn't make any sense.

So I understand that that's the data you collected, but it's not helpful to this group and understanding the usage because it doesn't make any sense.

If I could just could make it one comment there, we do have a list of the businesses that were open, or that were there, I should say, at the time of the count, which was um in 2024.

And at that time, there was a preschool that was open and operating on the center, and from our experience, preschools generate a lot of traffic.

So the morning traffic could be attributed to that.

And I believe, Gary, the counts were in January of 2024.

So some time back.

January of 2024.

That's correct.

You mentioned what time AM during the during PM.

Maybe I missed it.

What time were you?

Were you counting in the PM afternoon or evening?

We count from four till six.

Okay, thank you.

Great.

Can we release the traffic engineer for the time being?

All right, great.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate your input on this and responding to our questions and getting into the weeds with us.

Great.

So any further questions, I'll ask one last time.

And then we'll turn to uh deliberation.

Yeah.

Great.

Okay.

Who wants to start?

Anyone.

Sure, I'll start.

Yeah, so first um I wanted to thank uh the city staff for all the work on this project.

I know it's been multiple years now, maybe in fits and starts, um, with a big sprint maybe here towards the end.

Um, and thank you for a very clear and careful presentation tonight.

Um, that was really really helpful.

I appreciate your efforts to try to answer all our questions, which do get far into the weeds sometimes.

Um so I appreciate the thought.

I also want to um uh thank the developer for being here tonight and having tomatoes thrown at you by um a lot of people in my neighborhood, and that is my neighborhood.

For those of you wondering, I do live in Sterling Downs.

Um, and I want to thank my um fellow residents um for really being involved this whole past five, eight years uh and tonight and making their views known because that's what um city government is all about.

Um more housing is very welcome in the Bay Area.

Um urban infill is always preferable to bulldozing open space.

So in that sense, um I fully support the Belmont Village Pacific Plan and I support housing in general.

I even support housing on this site.

Um I just think unfortunately that this this project is a lot more than what we were hoping to see.

So, first the things that I think are great about the plan.

Um, I appreciate uh the design, I think it it looks really nice.

I appreciate the street trees, I appreciate the garden that's being put in.

Um I think the layout is very thoughtful on how those four different streets are are used and and the building is is oriented.

Um I appreciate that the parking garage is is totally hidden.

That's um really helpful.

Um, and I think it's really neat that we'll have ground floor units, um, basically residents stepping in and out of their front doors on on Wessex and Hiller to really make it have that that residential feel for those those houses right across the streets.

They'll see neighbors going in and out.

They can you know, very tight.

There's no setbacks, they can wave hi to their their new neighbors across the street.

Um the height of 60 feet, I know that's um much higher than um many Belmont residents in the area would like to see.

On the other hand, I think it's fairly standard nowadays, these sort of five-story apartment buildings, um, and frankly, heights are going higher.

I think San Carlos is going towards eight and nine stories.

And we are unfortunately going to see some over 80 80 foot monstrosities um over on Old County Road ourselves.

So this looks nice in comparison at only 60 feet.

Um, I think uh, you know, the minimum requirement for affordability is being met.

I I wish it could be more than than the minimum, but uh I understand that um that's pretty standard for for-profit development.

Um, and as an aside, I do appreciate that the city has really worked hard with our nonprofit developers to try to pin some hundred percent affordable um projects, which we're not talking about today.

Um, and close to one parking space per unit, um, as Laura noted, is actually much more generous than required by law, and so I think we can all um appreciate that.

So, I mean, overall, there are definitely some things to uh appreciate about the building.

I think it's um better than it could have been.

So given the buyright status, which I appreciate, um Laura was really careful to explain and um Gabrielle, thank you for your clarifications.

Um I think we're all aware that current state law and where we find ourselves pretty much removes almost all decision-making power from this body and from the city.

Um I can make the findings as stated in the resolution.

Um, and I cannot make the negative findings that would be required to deny the project.

However, that said, um I have some really major concerns about how development is going here in Belmont on the east side.

Um the Belmont Village Pacific Plan, which was a great vision, is about mixed use and walkable neighborhoods and people getting out and having coffee at their neighbors and picking up their dry cleaning and going out to dinner.

I got to dinner with my family at that restaurant, Peacock's Coriander, at least monthly.

My family will no longer be able to do that.

These developments that are going up are all in mixed use zones, and none of them are mixed use.

None of them.

The staff report quotes the BVSP right on page two about uh the vibrant uh mixed use we're supposed to have.

Um, general plan policy 2.3-2.

Encourage higher density residential uses located in proximity to commercial services.

General Plan Goal 2.5, enhance the Belmont village priority development area and develop a distinct identity for the area as Belmont's vibrant town center for residents and vendors with commercial, residential, dining, civic, cultural, and other entertainment activities.

Well, I hate to say it, but that's not what we're getting.

So we lost the ice rink.

We are losing a dry cleaning business at 678 Ralston.

We are losing six businesses at 951 Old County Road, including a highly trafficked UPS store.

We are losing multiple restaurants, nail salon, a very uh cherished school at this place.

So I think what we're seeing here is a tragedy of the commons for any one development project.

Of course, it makes sense to be 100% residential.

It makes your financials look a lot better.

But we do it over and over and over, and what we're gonna be left with is a bedroom community that has no commercial, residential, recreational, or any other amenities, and pretty soon it won't be a good place to live, and you won't want to be developing here because nobody will want to live here.

So this is nothing to do with Prometheus today.

You're doing what you need to do.

You've picked a good site, we're near transit, it's appropriate for housing, but ultimately we have to figure out with the state, with the city, with the city council with staff, how to change our zoning and our incentives so that we actually end up with a mixed-use community that we said we wanted.

I was fortunate enough to travel in Europe this year.

I was in Amsterdam earlier, ground floor commercial, upstairs residences.

It makes for a beautiful city.

That's not what we're getting.

And we're headed in the wrong direction, and we need to do something about it.

So again, I can make the findings.

I appreciate the aesthetics of this project.

I appreciate that you earned all your density bonuses, but ground floor active use is something the city really needs.

Um last thing, I would say that thank you so much, Laura, for clarifying about how the uh traffic uh impact fees and the park impact fees will go in.

Specifically, again, I would like to see those spent in Eastern Belmont with the input from the residents on how to spend them because um while I don't think traffic is end all be all, uh you heard a lot heard a lot about traffic and parking tonight.

That's not my main concern.

My main concerns about mixed use.

Um, but I do recognize that my neighbors are really concerned.

And I think there are things we can do to mitigate traffic, and I would really appreciate if public works and city staff would solicit resident input um and uh spend those funds in eastern Belmont.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

I'll go next.

Because nobody's gonna want to follow that.

Uh I uh that was that was impressive.

Um I agree with everything my fellow commissioner said about the intent and that we should try to figure out a way to work on incenting more mixed use.

Um but that said uh our hands are kind of tied here.

Uh most of the objections we've heard from the public are not within our purview.

So I can make the findings.

Um we're really here to check staff's work to make sure they did the math correctly and that all the proper boxes were checked, and I hope we've done that.

Uh it's uh staff did an excellent job on the presentation, and a lot of work went in here, obviously by everybody, including consultants.

So I I can make the findings.

I'd rather not.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's fine.

Yep.

Well, thank you very much for everybody who came this evening.

It's been a long one, and we've um been very interesting to hear these points of view, and thank you for the presentation.

Um, it was interesting to hear more about and to see some of the other buildings that you've developed because that actually really adds more color to what you're trying to achieve here.

Um I reflect the views of Commissioner Adam Kovic.

I think you said it a lot better than I probably would, that there's a lot at play here, and what there's certain things that are very limited that are allowed to comment on at this point.

Um I think it's designed well, it looks good.

Um you've a lot of effort has been put into making it a high quality looking building.

Um that said, I'm my main concern with the project is the safety on the traffic on that corner of Hitler Street and where and the positioning of the bin store.

And I and I understand that you've worked with ecology, but whether or not that was in isolation of broader traffic analysis, I don't feel confident that the two have tied together quite so well because anyone who's driven there will say that corner is so congested it's almost impassable in the mornings.

And the idea of putting a bin store there when it wasn't there before seems um a very strange choice, design wise um to exacerbate what's already a very difficult corner in the city.

That's but um having said that within the meme that we're allowed to comment with, I can make the findings.

I within the limited context of the buyright processing, I can also make the findings.

The one additional comment I'll make is for you know that the the TDM, the the transport pan management and the traffic study, there are you know some questions as noted before.

Um there was also a chart about how traffic was during um key intersections across the city of Belmont in around the area, and we're not looking that good as a whole, so I think this is uh you know it's not just a uh intersection uh problem at Hiller and Ralston.

There we've got we really have a lot of uh traffic congestion that we need to work on.

Great.

I guess I'll have to say something.

I mean you don't have to.

Um I've been on this commission for nine years now.

This is my ninth year.

Um, and I was part of passing the uh legislation you guys were supposed to review to design your building, and I think our city did a really great job future planning for the housing California needed, and a conversation we had before the state ever had that conversation, and I think we did some great work.

We had ADUs here years before the state allowed ADUs, and I think the state overlay is very appropriate in most places, but I don't think it's appropriate in Belmont in the way it is in other places, like I don't know, like a woodside where they truly have stopped development.

Um I think that said, when you look at our objective standards at least, you would hope that a group like you would follow them.

And I see a lot of places where I don't feel like they're followed.

Um I was in architecture school, we studied your work, your early work, and it it's good, and you've gone a long way from there.

It's pretty disappointing, as one of those things like don't meet your heroes sort of thing.

It's pretty bad where you've gone.

It's like a crappy David Baker building.

Um it's brutalist, it steps out, not in, it isn't sensitive to the community around it.

You guys are doing what you think you can do with your lawyers and the state laws and a small community, and as you can hear from everyone who came here, what you're doing is ugly.

And you know it.

You most of you can't look people in the eyes as they're talking, and it's kind of pathetic.

I hope it's worth the money.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Um, yeah, I mean, uh I agree with most of what um my colleagues have said here.

I mean, as staff has explained, um, in some, in one way, this is a one-of-one site.

I mean, this is literally the only site that we have in the city that has the requirements this site has because as it was explained by staff with the um the uh carryover site from the last um housing element.

Um there are certain rules that the state has imposed upon us that we have to follow because of that.

Um because of that and because of the density um bonuses that that apply again pursuant to state law.

Um I can make the findings.

In fact, I feel like I have to make the findings.

Um, and so I think that's um just kind of the way we kind of see ourselves given um what the state has imposed upon us.

Um but in other ways I agree that this is um a lot of the problems that we see with this development are problems that we're gonna see with other developments in this area in particular, and I respect the fact that that most of the development here uh is in Sterling Downs, and that's because it is so close to transit.

Um that's what the state has again incentivized for us.

Um and so I I see that that in other ways it's not a one-of-one site because there are uh these issues that that carry over to other sites and um the concerns about traffic and safety of the students and all of those things I are well taken, and we've made a very robust record of those issues and and um so but um getting off the soapbox.

Uh again, I I I feel given our findings that we are compelled to make um based on the unique circumstances of this site, um those are findings I can I can make.

So thank you everyone for uh the thoughtful analysis and and questions and presentation and and comments from members of the public.

Um it's it is um just super interesting and fascinating to see kind of the passion that that my fellow Belmontians bring to this issue, and it's and it's pretty cool.

So thank you for that.

Um, and uh so with that I think we probably are in a position to take a vote.

Subject to someone making a motion that would uh, we had the resolution in front of you for you to read into the record and then I can give it to you.

Yeah.

Uh I'll make a motion.

Uh move we passed a resolution of the planning commission of the city of Belmont approving a by right application pursuant to California government code sections 6558 3.2C and 65583.2i for design review grading plan, tree removal permit, affordable housing plan, transportation demand management plan, and state density bonus to allow for construction of a 140 unit apartment development at 5580 Masonic Way, assessors partial number 040315010 application number PA 2023-032.

Well done.

Is there a second?

I'll second it.

No one else is gonna say it.

Um, moved and seconded.

Uh roll call.

Commissioner Adam Kavich.

Aye.

Kramer?

Aye.

Chair Coolidge?

Aye.

Majeski?

Uh.

Twig.

Aye.

And Jadala?

Aye.

Um, motion passes 5-1 for 500 to 500 ED Masonic Way, by right processing of design review, uh, grading plan, tree removal permit, affordable housing plan, transportation demand management plan, and state density bonus.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you to the applicant for your time and thank you to members of the public for staying so late.

Um, this matter is appealable within uh 10 calendar days.

And thus concludes our public hearing section.

That was uh 7B.

And we're turning now to item 8, which is other business and updates.

And I'll look to staff for any uh quick uh information regarding that item.

We generally should be done.

Um, but in terms of updates, you have a meeting coming up.

Uh your September 2nd meeting.

I appreciate the commission getting back to staff on your availability for that meeting.

Um it will be lighter than tonight's meeting.

Uh, but we will have a single-family design review as well as a climate action plan update.

Uh we may have another single family design review, but again, thank you for getting back to us that you're all available for that meeting.

Just to give you an idea, um, the balance of your commission meetings as you get into the second part of September, October, November, will likely be used for multiple projects.

So summer's over and uh it's time to get to work for the um for the balance of the year.

We appreciate all of your good work tonight and running a great meeting um for this for all the items tonight.

And uh thank you for your time.

No other updates on my end.

Great.

Uh I think with that we can adjourn.

It is what 10 13.

Yes.

Great.

We are adjourned.