Yeah, I'll go back here.

And put the code in again.

Oh, okay.

So clerk and put it.

Okay, you did that part.

There's the passcode.

All three PC, same password.

Tab, microphone tab.

Yeah.

Test presentation tab.

This is for that's for the presentation.

I know how to do that.

I think this is why we weren't giving it audio though.

We had to do that one.

Oh my god.

I'm sorry, please.

Okay.

So if you're a camera, you can't do this.

All right, we are back from our closed session.

This is the City of Belmont City Council regular meeting.

It's October 14th, 2025.

We are currently in our city council chambers.

It's a little after 7 o'clock, 7 06 p.m.

We did have a closed session with uh two items, and uh we are now at items starting at 7 p.m.

on our published agenda.

Um, item three.

Before we go into that, I just want to um have uh folks understand that um we are streaming this live via the city's website at www.belmont.gov.

We also uh have Zoom participation as an option, and how to access that is uh on our published website, and then of course you can also come and attend the meeting in council chambers.

Uh and we have instructions for public comment as well in the published agenda.

If you're in chambers and you wish to make a public comment, our comment cards are over there uh in the corner, and uh you can just put them in that little um basket on our clerk's desk.

Uh so we'll begin uh with item three, which is the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please rise if you're able.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic.

For which it stands one nation under that, individual liberty and justice for all.

All right, thank you.

Uh item four is closed session.

Uh report from closed session.

I should say we uh recessed from closed session and we will be returning after the regular meeting to finish up from closed session.

But um, Mr.

City Attorney, we do have one report out from closed session so far.

Um that is direction to initiate or intervene in an action was given the action, the defendants and the other particulars will, once formally commenced, be disclosed to any person upon inquiry, unless to do so uh would jeopardize the city's ability to effectuate service or process on one or more of the unserved parties, or that to do so would jeopardize its ability to conduct existing settlement negotiations to its advantage.

Alright, great.

Thank you.

Um next is special presentations item five.

We do not have any tonight.

Uh item six is public comments on items not on the agenda.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the body on any city matter not on the agenda.

The period for public comment at this point is limited to 15 minutes with a maximum of three minutes per speaker, and uh the body may also go ahead and um continue the public comments on items on the agenda at the end of the meeting if uh it goes long.

Just a reminder the mayor has the authority to rule any speaker out of order, including speakers during the public comment period if the subject raised is not within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city council during a public hearing or a general business item if the speaker is not presenting testimony or evidence relevant to the matter, or if the speaker becomes disruptive to the proceedings and conduct of the meeting.

Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers for item six?

I have a couple of raised hands and um a slip.

Okay, let's go ahead and take the commenter in the chamber first, please.

Yes.

Uh that would be David Clark.

I'm here to talk about banners.

So I thought I'd bring your one.

I'll get my remarks.

Coverage running.

Thank you for all the hard work you do.

I know it's very difficult running city, and Belmont's, I think, doing a great job.

I'm with the bannering team of individual cemetery.

We're respectful nonviolent citizens seeking to reach out to our neighbors about the current political movement.

Since June, we have been supporting bannering at eight to twelve locations on the peninsula.

We reached out over three million motor voters.

That's 120 cars a minute at Belmont.

We've had a half a dozen amical visits by the police and highway patrol.

But recently, and this is only at Belmont, we've been told that we cannot hang these banners on the fence.

I would like to know where the policy changed and how we can resolve this and continue to express our first amendment rights, which are threatened by the federal government.

Our group takes care to ensure that each bannering event is safe, does not place added for uh burden on the law enforcement.

And in fact, um we have not reported the harassments we have had to the local police because they have more important matters to deal with.

We designate a safety monitor, we use orange cones for to alert the bike pedestrian traffic, and we leave the overpass cleaner than we found it.

So we'd just like to be able to continue to do this.

We planned a banner on overpass for No Kings today this coming Saturday, the 18th.

Yeah, we received an eight-page memo from Belmont Police Department about sign ordinances.

So that we don't hook to the fence.

The second point concerns safety.

Trump and others in power of recently labeled demonstrators like ourselves as terrorists and are encouraging violence and revenge.

Contrast that to the indivisible, which is based on nonviolence.

Our group is also one of 300 visibility group brigade chapters nationwide.

We track incidents against demonstrators on overpasses.

The reasons that I'm here is that if we don't open up a channel for cooperation with the Belmont Police Department, it gets worse, at least in red regions.

Once MAGA appears, they don't go away and detention.

If not the physical violence always increases.

How do we accommodate a group which may decide to have Nazi flags, biblical quotes, etc.?

And I urge Belmont Police Department to develop a contention plan for the events on October 18th in Belmont, including the overpass.

Should right wing protesters attend.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Our next speaker is Annie Chung.

Annie, you've been unmuted.

Hi, Annie.

There we go.

Technical difficulties.

Oh, okay.

Excuse me, just for a moment.

Hang on.

Give us just a moment to see what.

Sure.

So just uh bear with us, folks.

We don't have our usual uh audiovisual person with us.

So we're just we have some folks pinch hitting, which is great.

We just uh trying to get organized here.

We can't.

So we're saying all I did was this.

Annie, are you hearing anything?

Yes.

Oh, no, there we go.

Okay, go ahead.

Your three minutes are starting now.

Thank you for that.

Annie, go ahead.

Oh, I sorry, I was I was raising my hand because I couldn't hear anything.

I think there is a Zoom audio issue, but it's been corrected, so now I can hear.

I think others were having the experience as well.

Thank you so much for bringing that to attention.

So you do you don't have a comment for item six?

No.

Okay, thank you so much.

Um in that same main, um, the other hand also went down.

So if there's anyone else that would like to speak, please do raise your hand now.

None.

All right, great.

Sounds like we got that taken care of, and thank you so much for bringing it to our attention.

Item seven is council member announcements.

Uh, council members can go ahead and make any announcements at this time if they'd like to.

Okay, go ahead.

So I got to spend some time with our IT department last week, and I learned that October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and that highlights the importance of protecting our digital lives at home and at work.

Um the team at Belmont is getting some IT training, which is awesome.

Um, but I wanted to spread the word on some practices that they said are good for everybody.

Uh practices like using strong passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication, reporting phishing, and keeping software updated can make a big difference for everyone.

Um, and Susa.gov, C Isa.gov has more information.

All right.

Any other announcements this evening?

I just have a few.

There's the high school and college fair that the Belmont Youth Advisory Committee is holding on Thursday, October 16th from 5 to 7 at the Twin Pines Senior and Community Center.

And then the Diwali celebration, which is the Festival of Lights celebration from October on October 19th from 2 to 5 p.m.

Also at the Twin Pines Senior and Community Center.

And then finally the Belmont Boo Bash, which will be in Twin Pines Park on October 29th from 5:30 to 7:30.

And it also includes our trunk retreat where families can stroll through vehicles that are decorated and collect fan candy in a safe and fun setting in our previous two years.

It's been well attended, especially for uh our little community members who are young, maybe too young to go out trick-or-treating in the evening.

Uh, but anyone can come.

Uh it's uh costumes are highly encouraged, and we hope to see you there.

I also wanted to uh give a shout out to our comms folks and and those who are um assisting them.

Uh I noticed that we actually had mentioned when we got an update on our uh communication strategic plan that we had wanted some short form content that is so popular and is um uh a lot of other municipalities have used that, and I've noticed that we've had a lot of short form content and videos um regarding our creeks and um sandbag fillings and all kinds of other things, and um people are noticing and people are commenting.

So um I think for better or worse, it is the way of the world that people like the short uh videos, so wanted to give a shout out to our staff who are working on those.

And if you see them around town now, then then now you know these are the people making our city run.

Can I add something?

Please.

Um, since it looks like there's some new faces here, I recommend to everybody to sign up for the weekly e-news.

It's an email that you can sign up for and you get information weekly so that you know everything that's happening, you don't miss anything.

Great.

Thank you.

Item eight is consent business.

These are items are considered to be routine in nature and will be enacted by one motion with no separate discussion on these items unless a member or staff requests specific items be removed for separate action.

Uh we have seven, looks like items on our consent calendar.

And so uh if uh council members or staff members would like to um request that any be removed um for separate uh discussion or comment, we can go ahead and do that or any quick questions looking around.

No, um, okay.

Uh, if you do have public comment on the consent items on the uh agenda item eight, please go ahead and raise your hand or fill out a comment card here in the chambers.

Madam Clerk, do we have any uh comments?

There are no requests to speak.

Okay.

Uh then we can go ahead and entertain a motion.

Move approval.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Councilmember Jordan.

Yes.

Latimerlo?

Aye.

McCune.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Mates.

I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Pang Maganaris.

Aye.

Mayor Mates.

Aye.

Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Moving right along.

Item nine and nine is public hearings.

We have none this evening.

10 is general business.

These items are considered separately in the order listed, and the chair will call for public comment on each item when the body considers the item.

First is 10A Belmont Community Center Master Plan Update, and we have our director of parks and recreation and culture, uh, Bridget Shearer.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

We're here tonight to present to you the culmination of group force engagement to refresh the community center and central design originally crafted in 2019.

This is engagement over the past several months, including technical meetings with staff.

Community outreaching most significantly on the Imagine Together festival that was called us and added on the foundation and the before we get to the presentation, I'd like to share a video made by our parts of our staff.

I just mentioned they have a video.

And to remind us of the activities, classes, and friendships that are currently happening at the area.

And I hope to hire us all to create a sense of community and a place for all ages.

And more welcoming, flexible, accessible, sustainable, and safer.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

What's that?

Was that not on?

Do you mind turning the mic to turn it on or off?

I think it just needs to be tilted.

There's a big sign that says don't touch the mic.

I didn't touch the mic.

Okay.

Do we need things?

Do you don't need me?

Do you need me to repeat anything?

Give me just one second so I can make this into one screen.

Okay, later.

Stay tuned, everyone.

Trying to make it one screen.

What if we don't?

Just gonna go.

Nice.

Okay, great.

All right, here we go.

You probably heard of Baron Community Center.

Now it's time to really get to know it.

Take a look at all the things we have going on here.

There we go.

Great, thank you.

Okay, and now we're ready for you guys to come over.

So let me introduce Jonathan Hartman, who's gonna be doing the presentation from Group 4.

Do you want me to advance the slides here for you?

Okay.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Mayor Mays, Council members.

Uh I am Jonathan Hartman with Group 4 Architecture.

I'm here with my colleague Don Mercus tonight.

Uh for those of you that uh I haven't had a chance to meet yet.

Uh group here is uh for the last 50 years has been doing civic architecture uh all around the Bay Area and the nation and lots of community centers, libraries, and other facilities, and uh we're just so pleased to be able to participate with you and the city of Belmont here, and it's a special privilege for me as a Belmont resident to get to merge my uh professional day today with my now evening uh day today uh talking with all of you.

So uh we'll go ahead and jump in.

Uh, this is really a recap of as Bridget said of the.

We're gonna jump slowly.

Uh this is really a recap of the things that we've been working on with staff and the community for the last several months, and as Bridges said, uh uh a refresh of the work that we started with you all in 2019.

And so a lot of the things that we're going to look at tonight um have been shown to the community on August 9th.

They've been through Parks and Rec Commission a couple of times now, and so we're we're looking forward to sharing those with you this evening as we wrap up this part of the process.

And so here you can see the the list for tonight.

There's several slides with lots of words.

I promise I will not read them all.

Uh I'm trusting that, trusting that you'll uh read them along with us uh together.

And uh we'll just jump right in.

And so for context, again, uh, this is sort of the culmination of uh several months' worth of work, and you can see that the task before us this year was updating the program or the project brief.

In other words, the list of spaces and places and activities that uh want to be in a refreshed uh Barrett community center, uh, looking at some of those design updates to begin to look at that a little bit at this level, very high level, and update the cost estimate, and that's all happening in parallel with some of the work that the city was undertaking separately through uh survey work and uh kind of getting a sense of what the community uh was interested in as part of your annual or biannual survey work.

And so that concluded your presentation in August, and we're kind of following up with our a little piece of that here.

And where we are in the process, uh really, we are still at the master plan stage.

So you can see there's lots of stages.

I kind of look at these as sort of the evolutionary stages of design.

Um, and so we're really just at the the very initial planning stage now.

Uh kind of that that does it all fit and what uh where what shape does that want to be is where we are now, and you can see that as it evolves through the subsequent stages, it gets greater and greater detail until of course we're actually uh looking forward to being under construction and and being able to occupy and enjoy the space together as a community.

And I think this is self-evident from the video.

It's a tough act to follow, a bunch of happy waving kids.

Um, but uh I don't think it's any surprise to anyone in the room how how heavily the center is used.

And I think the statistic of having 1700 uh folks attending every week, just in the kids, not even counting the uh adults is amazing.

And uh really the goal here is to provide that uh cost-effective way to do uh lots of safe, wonderful things and provide that space and amenity for the community at large, the whole community across all generations.

And again, no secret here is to the state of this uh former school building that's been so well loved and so well used, and um loved to the point of needing to talk about doing something different, and so I think that these pictures are evidence uh of that, and uh the community I think feels the same in the conversations that I've had the privilege of uh uh conducting this summer.

And so, really, you know, one of the things that we wanted to try to provide some perspective tonight and and um this year was where is Belmont relative to our neighbors, and so you can see here a list of cities that have recently in the last several years undergone some kind of building campaign for city facilities.

You can see the stars next to those names for the first five of ones that have built community centers in the last five years, and then you can see where Belmont is, and so the green represents your recreation indoor recreation square footage per resident, and then the orange that sort of cascading orange uh bars going out shows what would happen if we were to refresh and upgrade the Barrett site uh with a new facility, and obviously there's a variety of different things that could happen here at different scales, and so that's why you see kind of the gradation there, showing the range of things that could happen and where that would rank.

And so, if you look at the scale on the bottom, uh zero being on the far left and 2.5 being on the far right of square feet per resident, you can see that a refresh and a rebuild at Barrett would put us somewhere in the 1.5 to 2 plus range square foot per capita.

And this is really looking at the there was such extensive community outreach that was done in 2019, and so this is just reminding us all of the things that were popular in 2019 and remain popular today from the conversations that we had this summer.

Uh, and so you can see for the indoor spaces.

I know the the font is very small, but uh water play and aquatics is right up there at the top, fitness and wellness is uh comes in next, gymnasium is the third one, and then when we look at the outdoor spaces, again, water play and aquatics, uh playgrounds, preschool, uh park with grass, fields, all of those things are sort of right up there at the top.

And so, really looking at um how we can continue to prioritize those desires and find the balance of the cost benefit there as we look at that.

And Bridget has done a trend, and her staff have done a tremendous amount of subsequent outreach uh over the last several years, uh, trying to keep the the fire uh fully fully lit, if you will.

And so this 2019 outreach touched over 2,000 people.

Uh 2,000 residents in Belmont, and uh Bridget and her team have touched hundreds more since then, and just the effort this year on August 9th, there was over 200 people in an unair conditioned uh multi-purpose room, getting to enjoy the same content and hundreds and hundreds more outside that day, getting to experience the center.

It was an amazing event.

And so again, here you can see some of the uh summary of things that have happened since uh 2020.

Uh you can see multi-generational kind of being a big topic, the sports courts and fields continues to be something that's uh really uh strong, and and really the the urge to modernize things and be able to expand and to expand the opportunities for things that can be done within the facility.

So, so much is done, so much can be done to to go.

And so, really, as we look nationally at some trends, there's a couple of different slides here on trends tonight, and I don't think any of these are surprised to you all, but we just wanted to highlight them.

That really having this community-driven process to really represent what what Belmont wants, not just what San Carlos wants or San Mateo has or something else, right?

We're really trying to solve what what Belmont wants and needs, and having the community-driven process is key to that.

I think that part's been very successful to date, and we look forward to continuing it.

Holistic wellness has really been a theme, especially as uh we've emerged out of COVID, and there's been a lot of focus on personal holistic wellness and what that means, and trying to find the spaces and places and facilities to help facilitate that at a community level is key, making sure we're accessible, of course, having adaptable spaces that we can turn over from uh morning to afternoon to evening to have all different events and age groups being able to interact in the same space and get that kind of return on investment, get that revenue generation, sustainable design and efficient operations and a picture of me.

Oh heavens.

Okay, let's uh just ignore it, picture in picture.

All right, let's focus on the slides.

Quick check, yeah.

All right, keep going.

There we go.

And so, uh, what we've seen coming again coming out of COVID and looking ahead, um, these are some national trends, and what we kind of did is list out these national trends that we've uh been seeing uh and benchmarking those against things that we already have included in the master plan in 2019 and opportunities to include as we move forward in 2025, and so all these check marks here that you see are things that are already uh part of the master plan that we're planning for Barrett, and so we are uh while this is uh a Belmont focused exercise, it's nice to do a little quick check over the shoulder and see that uh we are we are checking some boxes for national trends as well.

Uh, and there's always the opportunity to do more.

Um, so this is just kind of the first the first pass.

And again, that framework for this year has evolved a little bit from those first six um themes, those continue to be themes, and again, looking uh based on some of the survey um outreach results, looking at multi-generational spaces.

There were a lot of kids in those videos because there's a lot of kids at Barrett right now.

But really, this is an opportunity for the entire city across all generations to be able to use Barrett, and so really looking for how we can continue to have those really strong um uh early childhood and childhood uh programs, uh, but be able to have additional space for additional types of programs for other age groups and have them feel like that's their place too.

Sustainable design continues to be just a really really important uh feature across all projects that the city undertakes, health and wellness again, and then resiliency has been a little bit of a uh one that's risen up in the ranks, and it's risen for a number of different reasons.

I know at other events uh and discussions I've talked about, you know, who had their power go out in the last six months at their house, you know.

You know, these things happen in Belmont for all for all different reasons, and it's nice to be able to have a place that maybe has an emergency generator where you can come and uh get on Wi-Fi and check your email and charge your phone and be able to do these little things.

It's not about rolling out the cots and waiting for the Red Cross necessarily.

We have the high schools and other places that are part of the county plan for that, but having that kind of intermediate step check-in and a place to direct people where they can go for additional services in these times of need is a really powerful thing.

And there are also some funding opportunities for this as well.

So there's some potential nice synergies there.

And so again, talked over one slide instead of three here.

So you can see all the different things that can happen here in a resiliency center.

It is centrally located, and we'll see that on another slide, but really can serve as a place to do a lot of different things that we're showing here.

And again, if it's going to be a long-term thing, you know, that's what the schools are set up for and part of the county's emergency plan.

And you can see here on the map that sort of the hazard map that's part of the county plan.

So not only do we all know that Barrett is sort of central within the broader scope of Belmont's geography, but it does happen to be outside of all the hazard areas as well.

So it's a it's a really great place to think about for a center like that.

And then again, this effort has been mostly about kind of checking and refreshing the design.

So we're we're gonna show things that have been around for a little bit tonight.

And so the 2019 conceptual design plan, this was the final result of a lot of outreach and a lot of different design ideas.

And the big pieces here again is moving the community center from the north side of the side, the Bellburn side of the site, to the Ralston side of the site, putting a continuous parking lot and drive along the western edge, sort of starting from the Chase Bank area and working our way back towards Belvern, so we aren't doing that hunting and pecking where you come in off Ralston, you can't find parking, and then you start driving around to the neighborhood and may not be so great there, and all of a sudden you're back on Ralston, trying the front parking lot again.

Uh having all in one place, that drop-off area, having uh updated sports fields, keeping the community garden, uh there's the park maintenance building that would get uh redone and have lots of opportunity along Bellbourn for screening.

Um, we've talked about doing little berms and other things there to kind of create some kind of a buffer zone there.

Uh, just a lot of really um fun opportunities here on the site that you can see.

And then again, looking inside at the sort of the ground floor floor plan, a lot of different opportunities here, and really this is really about again kind of making sure everything fits more than it is about a final design.

Um, and so we had this list of spaces and places and activities and really seeing how those work together here, and so you can see the yellow multi-purpose room, you know, maybe that's the place where the resiliency center would be in those times, uh, facing Ralston with a little patio, the lobby, a centralized staff space where they can kind of see everything that the people come and go through that center lobby entry, and then having a dedicated and secure uh early childhood wing with its own dedicated play yard.

That play yard could be opened up after hours so that it can be shared by the community, so you can kind of have that zero to five play yard with its scaled play equipment inside a fenced area open to the public on the weekends and after hours, and then have a five to twelve play yard outside.

And of course, the opportunity for a gym and a pool.

Um upstairs, uh again, more program and classroom spaces, uh potentially a dedicated fitness studio with that sort of sprungwood gymnasium floor for those kind of activities, a little bit of a messy room for arts and crafts that has all the clay traps and the different things to keep all the mess in one room and not share that with the whole facility all the time.

Uh a little bit more staff space, a conference room, and then if there was a gymnasium here, uh there'd be the opportunity to have like a walking track kind of up on the balcony level of the gymnasium that you could access from the second floor.

And I don't know if how many of you have been to like San Bruno's recreation center that has that, you know, that that kind of idea.

And so obviously, there's a lot of options here, and so this is a little bit of a menu, if you will, the red on the far left being sort of what we would call the base, the base option, the community center.

Um, and then there's the opportunity depending on funding, other inputs, to add a gymnasium, to add an aquatics uh area, and that's an outdoor pool, and then also uh if you add it all together on the far on the far right.

And so part of the program refresh for this this round of work was really trying to uh double check some of the numbers here.

Uh there's been some some evolution in a few different places here, uh thinking a little bit more about the teen lounge.

We saw the hideout on the video and what a popular amenity that is for a core group in our community, and so thinking about that a little bit more uh focused as uh mandatory transitional kindergarten has come into play.

Um having the three preschool classrooms that have traditionally been at Barrett, the staff feels like that might be able to go down to two, and so that's the potential classroom space that can get repurposed for something else.

And so having those discussions with staff has been really useful.

As uh Bridget said, we also met with some of the primary tenants.

There's three sort of tenants there that take that use a significant amount of square footage, and so having dedicated meetings with them as well to hear their needs and their long term vision as well.

And so you can see in the bottom right total square footage range of 31,000 to 45,000 square feet.

Again, that depends on the base building of the community center, plus you know what options might get chosen.

And so what we've done also here is we've taken the cost estimates for this from 2019, we've applied all the market escalations to 2025 to look at the different again, those different options and buckets the base building, the outdoor pool, the gym, and then looking at them all together.

Um you'll notice here that this is trying to look holistically at the whole project.

So the top uh set of data is the sort of you call it the construction budget, if you will, uh that uh site development, site construction, building construction, parking, and of course the contingencies for that, as the design evolves.

There's always the furnishings and technology that need to go in, and then there's the um soft costs for city consultants and and other things.

And then what isn't shown here is escalation, because we don't know exactly when uh the starting time is.

And so escalation really wants so these are all up to um Q2 2025, as it says on the slide.

Um, but then the escalation is yet to be determined, and obviously, with the economic climate and uh policies that are in place right now, escalation's been a little bit trickier to put a hard finger on uh historically.

Uh escalation, if we were to take the average, has been a little over three percent, um, as sort of a the most generic construction plug number.

Um, but obviously we we aren't living exactly in that time right now.

So our our proposal would be to work on a range here, uh a range of escalation percentages uh along with the dates for what we would be escalating to.

And so again, just referencing this is from the August 9th presentation, which was um uh one a wonderful turnout, and a lot of really wonderful conversations came out of that, both personally and uh I know that Bridget and her staff had a lot of conversations come out of this as well, uh so uh really excited to be able to be a part of that.

And then we we did do some seems like only half the pictures are showing.

Oh, bummer.

Um so this was sort of uh gonna be a comparative analysis, but uh I guess the good news is the part that you get to see is the the fun new part.

So um the just imagine your mind's eye a top picture that shows um something that's kind of a current picture of Barrett.

We should also note, sorry to interrupt, we should also note that the um presentation is in the agenda package, so folks will follow.

Can you go up just one slide, Bridget?

There was no, okay.

Okay, yeah.

No, but it shows up here, so okay.

So um obviously, there's a lot of uh really wonderful things happening.

So, this is a uh potential um image of kind of just uh the most the most basic vision of what this would be, really looking at the fact that this building is a two-store proposes, a two-story building.

It can have varying roof heights and varying materials.

We don't know what those are yet.

We haven't made it that far in the in the design, but wanted to show that there's the opportunity for those things, but also that there's this real synergy of a centralized drop-off place that's special, uh, that has you know safe places for bicycles, safe places for pedestrians, uh vehicles.

There was a conversation with staff about whether this is big enough to support you know the uh yellow school buses for uh their uh for camp soar and the off-site camp sour activities, and you know, have we designed enough geometry into this to make sure that all of the campsor, which um includes has included my kids in years past, uh uh I was able to safely get to where they need to go.

And so I think really having that wonderful welcoming place that can bring everybody together and is a central place for staff to be able to um see what's going on is is a super exciting opportunity.

Uh this is looking sort of frankly from um the south side of the existing building towards Ralston.

Again, as we move uh the buildings closer to Rawlson in this design, you can see uh the parking lot would be on the far right, uh sort of a shady area of uh picnic area and a place for people to hang out underneath this uh tree line that uh borders the parking lot and then the sports fields uh to the left here with the playground kind of and uh splash pad in this design in the mid in the middle foreground there.

And looking inside the building again, looking at kind of those multi-purpose community rooms.

Um these rooms can be divisible, they can be used for all sorts of things from lectures to community fairs as are shown here.

Um just a really great opportunity to um have a very flexible space that can do a lot of different things for all different generations.

And again, having that messy area, so you know, we're showing a room that's got polished concrete floors, uh, lots of extra amenities.

There's um some pull-down power that I think got cropped out of this that comes down from the ceiling, just opportunities to have that wonderful messy space to be able to facilitate crafts for all generations.

And again, uh not forgetting the really amazing early childhood uh development program that Barrett already hosts.

Uh there was a comment uh specifically from a couple of community members or um that they really love the existing facility, how they have the low windows that uh from the indoor-outdoor connection to that private play yard.

And so we're like, yes, we do uh this is the input that we want, right?

And so being able to show something like that here where we have those low windows and be able to have those little ones have that indoor outdoor connection is fantastic.

And of course, having some of those dedicated spaces as well.

Again, that holistic wellness approach, uh the dance room here uh that can have the ballet bars, the mirrors, uh, be able to do all sorts of different activities, certainly not limited to dance, but has that little extra ability in A-B system and all the technology to be able to support lots of different um uh classes and activities.

And again, that sort of centralized community hub of a lobby, a two-story space, not intending to be grand necessarily, but intending to be able to connect.

Lots of different people for lots of different places, uh great place for uh people to hang out and wait.

Uh, wait for each other, uh parents to uh sit down with their laptop and check email for a little bit while their their uh child is in some kind of a class or activity, a place to connect and uh a place to engage with staff to and be directed to where they can be served.

That's it.

So um thank you very much.

All right, thank you very much.

That's a great presentation.

Appreciate it.

Um, this is an informational item.

We are just getting up to date on uh some of the refreshments of the um update at the master plan.

Uh do we have any questions right now from council members?

Looking to my right, uh, vice mayor.

I cannot remember what the dream building things are going to be included.

Are they going to be included like solar panels and EV charging stations and water filtration and maybe parking lot solar things as well?

So yes, Vice Mayor, many of those things are opportunities that are um that are possible.

Um many of those things are are mandated uh in the building code now.

So um the building will be um will have solar panels on it, at least to a certain extent.

Um there's always the opportunity to do more uh there uh and have the building go all the way to be you know uh net zero energy.

Um there's all those sorts of it'll be an all-electric building.

Um at least that's how it's designed right now.

Um there is opportunity to do solar panels in the parking lot.

That's that's always on the table.

Um there will be uh electric vehicle charging um that'll be that'll be part of it as well.

Um yeah, there's you know bottle filling stations, there's all sorts of things.

Um the sustainability parameters that the building code looks at now have gotten quite quite broad.

Um so there's there's conversations about um calculations for carbon sequestration for the building structure uh which begins to talk about what the materiality could be for that, whether that's uh wood or concrete or steel, and how that uh there's a there's a wide range of things there and opportunities um to explore.

Any other questions?

Yes, well, um, just along the sustainability lines, uh, I'm sure you're aware our new county office buildings are the greenest buildings in the country.

So I had a tour of that, and those were pretty neat.

I had a question on the budget page.

Um I might have missed this, but um the projected budget, the low and high numbers are all the same.

Is it because you didn't have any escalators in there?

Correct.

Is that what you were saying?

Correct.

So we're we're saying that basically the building, yes.

The other costs are relatively fixed or known at this point or projected, and that we are recommending that there be a range of escalation, and that's where the budget range would spread itself out.

Okay, but this like doesn't have it, so I'm not missing anything.

This slide is budgeted to uh the second quarter of 2025 costs with no escalation assigned to it.

So the escalation part has two two parts as you as you well know, right?

We would want to project to a start date of construction or a midpoint of construction whenever um that would be appropriate, and then we also would want to project the actual percentage of inflation or escalation in this case that we would want to assign for that period of time between now and then.

So we need we need those two data points.

Okay, thank you.

Yes.

I thought the benchmarking slide was really interesting about how many so many cities around us have already built a new community center.

I guess it makes sense, right?

We have the same historic growth curve as in many of our neighbors.

Um so the recycling would happen at the same time.

Um, since we are getting bigger and having been visited, having visited in the heart of summer and having way back in the day taught some classes through the community center.

Is is what we have enough?

Like are the classrooms that we have enough to cover what we actually are offering now and plan to offer in the future.

Do you mean the future classrooms?

Yeah.

Are they enough?

Um we can't necessarily map exactly what's happening now into those spaces during those time slots, but overall we'll be able to have more hours of programming than we do now because we'll be able to kind of flip rooms, you know, and have an afternoon activity or an evening activity in a room that right now is dedicated to a single use.

Okay, so and is that because of the what looks like movable walls in the multi-purpose room.

And storage, lots and lots of storage.

So you can kind of push things to the side and and clear the room for new activity.

Okay, thanks.

Uh thank you again uh for the uh presentation, and also I think it's been very helpful to have this process uh be done with group four.

I think uh even having you at the Belmont Community Foundation event um at the Barrett Community Center on the 9th, I think was helpful, as you said, to hear what people had to say and um even do those small refreshers like uh windows, you know, at the bottom of the wall and things like that.

Um I think to the extent, and I was gonna mention something as well about even things have changed to uh from 2019 where now we have um pre-K so we have fewer kids uh going into preschool and for for not as long.

So I do think it's um we just need to keep in mind when we're doing the design to keep as flexible as possible.

We can't predict the future, but um maybe one day, you know, um there will be a need for other needs that we can't predict right now.

So I think the flexibility is really key.

And having seen some of your um designs that are currently already built, like I think in Burley Game, there's some really good examples of rooms that are used for lots of different things, but depending on the time of day and the users.

So just keeping all of that in mind, and um, and thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Do we have any?

Yes, please.

Just real quick, what's if it's fully built out, what's the gross square footage of the building?

If if all parts were built, I believe it's around 45,000 square feet.

Okay, thanks.

Any other questions?

Uh Madam Clerk, do we have any public comment on this item?

I have one slip, and I will note that we received an email correspondence on this as well.

Great, and that'll be in the public record as well.

Yes.

Um forgive me if I mispronounced this.

Govind Narayan.

Govinder.

Govender.

Hey, my name is uh Govind Narain.

Uh I live with my wife and two kids on Bellburn Drive.

We moved into Belmont about a year ago.

Um, and I wanted to make three comments on the on the community center and the design.

Um the first is I would I would actually like to take the opportunity to commend the team working on this for their tenacity.

Um I know it's been going on for a number of years through the pandemic and after, so um I love that the team has stuck with it.

Um, and secondly, I can kind of also like to call out uh Bridget's openness in connecting with residents like myself, and I think it's it's this kind of collaboration that builds both trust in you know the city and the project uh and kind of gives visibility to everyone on what's happening, and so I've kind of loved the process and loved you know participating in it.

Uh the second thing uh that I wanted to talk about was um just a comment on how from at least my perspective and the perspective of a number of other young families I know who've moved into Belmont over the last five years or so, and I I don't know why, but I know a disproportionate number of those families.

Um and the amount of strategic and financial sense this new community center makes is just it is just amazing.

Um and I think the from everything I've studied and the survey results, it's it's super positive.

I think it shows us all a very clear path that this has to happen.

Um, and I understand the next stage is funding.

Um, and so what I'm hoping happens over the next few months is that uh the city and uh along with that all the teams working on it, go into kind of full execution mode on campaigning and getting creative about it.

Uh whether it is um you know, neighborhood outreach, neighborhood level, you know, have office Rs, or it is like flyers, or it is targeted communication to the different groups who have an interest or don't want the community center either way.

Um, just kind of explaining to them in simple terms that hey, you know what maybe it's probably going to cost you maybe you know 500 bucks more per year.

This is what you're going to get, this is what you may want to you may be giving up and so forth.

Um, and so I'm kind of enlisting people like myself to uh you know spread the word and help out with it because obviously, I mean this team has been able to reach out to what 3,000 odd people we have 24 more thousand to reach um in Belmont, uh and so I'm kind of looking forward to that.

Um and then lastly, uh I just wanted to bring up a a specific concern that I had on uh on the conceptual design and its current form, and that is the location of the maintenance garage, which is directly opposite several homes on uh 26.

Yeah, directly opposite the commun uh uh several homes uh on Bellburn Drive affecting its frontage, and while this could be a safe both a safety concern and a potential property value concern, um I believe there are several options that one can look into uh to find a better place potentially for this maintenance garage.

And I'm kind of looking forward to collaborating with uh group four and Bridget's team um on you know finding a solution.

So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Any other comments on this that is our final speaker.

All right, great, thank you.

Uh so this is an informational item, but if we have any comments or anything that we want to share with the staff or group for going forward, sure.

I think I would just say that the emergency center, the resiliency center is the most important thing to me.

I think we've managed it as well as we can in the past few years but you know some people are going to the county some people are going to this location this other just really making this the place where this is where we all go this is where we all meet is really important.

And I did not see a stage in that multipurpose room and I would like to see a stage in that multipurpose room for the dance classes and the theater classes.

Comments I just have a few um uh thank you for that great presentation and I actually just wanted to um really thank Bridget and her Park and rec staff for uh as our speaker said for really just staying tenacious and sticking with it and you and your staff you live this every day so having your history having your input and combining that with all of the feedback that the community has given and what the conceptual design I think you know is the has I look at it as pretty good and since she's gonna go on about the stage I'm gonna say I'm sure the softball field also has a baseball field.

Just I'm just gonna put that out there.

But I just wanted to thank you because I know it's been a lot of work and you know for the community that's watching I know lots of us have been here for many many years and when I was campaigning last year I had several residents saying this has been a start and stop for a long time so I'm really glad we're looking at moving forward with getting this community center and it's it it's not just a community center it's a hub for the entire city and you know as the presentation shown it's multi-generational it's for people that have young kids it's for people who have teens it's for people who don't have children at home anymore it's for people who don't have kids and have dogs I've gotten a lot of feedback for uh for more dog space and I was really really happy to see the dog run there.

So I think it's really well thought out and I look forward to our next steps but I did want to thank you Bridget and your staff for all of the hard work that you've put into it thank you.

Any other comments at this time all right uh yes I think we need to uh continue to move forward this refresher I think was great um I definitely appreciate all of the community um attention and input that we are getting uh I think maybe one of the the things although we never when we first started this in 2019 I think it was on the working group um back then uh with another council member never sort of expected it to be sort of in these stages for this long but I do think uh we're gonna wind up getting uh the right the right type of community center so um great job and of course keep uh keep us posted on how things are going thank you so much thank you all right we then are moving on to um item 10 B.

And I have to refuse myself.

Yes this is the harbor industrial area.

What yeah I I was just gonna say this is the Belmont Harbor Industrial Area specific plan update.

We do have one council member that needs to accuse themselves because I live within 500 feet.

Owns a residence within 500 feet and it sounds like maybe we need to take a how about let's do a five minute break a recess and we will come back.

If you do have comments on this item please feel free to fill out a comment card and put it in a little box next to our clerk and uh raise your virtual hand and we will be back at 805 quick recess.

Thank you.

Okay.

So we're now having issues with the PowerPoints actually showing up on Zoom.

Okay.

So I'm gonna see if it's gonna help that I share it's showing now because I'm sharing it.

I'm sharing it.

I'm not doing it on this Doug.

Okay.

Then it showed up and then you can take off and then if you read the presentation because it's here I don't know what this all means.

So I'm gonna do it off of here.

You're good.

So I mean can you see if you're able to where do I see it?

I can't see it off of here you can't see it so you can we can pull you right in man there's a lot going on.

So here we're showing this.

We are back.

Thank you.

That was a quick recess.

We are back for item number 10B, which is item 9B.

No, for this one it is 10B.

For Belmont Harbor Industrial Area Specific Plan Update, we're going to receive an update and provide feedback and direction on the proposed development standards at Harvard Harbor Boulevard Streetscape concept.

And we have with us our Deputy Direct Community Development Director.

Good to see you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm Laura Russell, Deputy Community Development Director.

I'm joined on this project this evening by our staff team, Kathy Kleinbaum, Carlos Stamello, and Rob Gill, as well as our consultant team from Good City Company, Erin Acknan and Kevin Gardner.

So I know that most people in this conversation this evening are familiar with the Harbor Industrial Area Specific Plan, but in case anybody is new to this conversation, I find this map that we see to be very helpful.

It shows us the relationship between the Harbor Industrial Area, HIA, to the Belmont Village Specific Plan Area around the Caltrain, El Camino Real, Old County Road, Industrial Road going into San Carlos, the Highway 101 over on the side, and the relationship to Ralston.

So it's always nice to keep that in mind as we think about the HIA specific plan.

So we're gonna be patient with technology tonight.

So if I fumble a bit, appreciate everyone's grace.

We are not able to advance the slides, even though we practice during the break.

Oh, there we go.

Okay, we're just gonna adjust a little bit to the delay.

So here's what we're gonna talk about.

It's quite a robust presentation.

And so uh through the mayor, there may be a point after I talk about the development standards.

If you want to pause there, if there's any questions at that point in the presentation, you may wish to do that if it's starting to be a lot, or if it feels like you want me to just continue through, we can do that too.

Um, whatever the council would prefer.

So, we're gonna talk a little bit about kind of the foundation of the specific plan and its goals.

We're gonna talk about the planning process so far.

The city council adopted guiding principles and the land use plan.

Then we're gonna talk about the staff and consultant approach to creating the development standards.

Uh, talk about some of the community input we've received so far, and then we're gonna review the original and the revised development standard proposals to share with you how we've revised the proposals in response to community feedback.

This might be a point to pause for questions if you'd like.

Then we're gonna talk about the Harbor Streetscape proposal, the next steps, and then we're gonna ask for city council feedback on the development standards and the Harbor Boulevard streetscape.

So, as a foundational concept for the HIA, the HIA is an employment center.

Um, it's a long-standing industrial and commercial hub.

And this specific plan is really intended to modernize that industrial and commercial area and not fundamentally change the purpose of it so it retains its employment focus for our community in the greater area.

It's an opportunity to bring investment and fiscal benefits to the city.

And the idea is that high quality development, if it's at a significant enough intensity, could bring increased property taxes, sales taxes, and business license tax.

So we are seeking to modernize the employment uses and bring them up to today's standards and also to try to look ahead and create flexibility as the market changes.

And we're also trying to retain existing businesses that serve the community and in the future attract new businesses that will help serve our community.

We're also trying to balance against other areas of the city that already have significant housing development.

So these are the specific plan goals that we've been carrying forward.

Excuse me.

Importantly to collaborate with San Mateo County to annex this area into the Belmont City boundary.

As the council is well aware, but in case anybody is new to this conversation, this area is not currently within the city limits.

It's within the county of San Mateo, not within any particular city, just in the county.

We want to encourage employment uses as I mentioned.

We want to support a thriving economy, fiscal sustainability for the city.

We want to address the environmental needs that we can, including analysis of the flooding risk that we have in the area, and we want to accommodate some residential uses nearer to the Belmont Village specific plan.

So these are just some highlights of the HIA process to date.

You'll recall that the project was initiated in early 2023, and then there was a big series of community engagement May through November of 2023, included numerous meetings, stakeholder meetings, virtual workshops, pop-ups, presentations of the planning commission and council, and introduction of the project to neighborhood associations, the chamber, and the HIA business group that meets for lunch.

In January of 2024, the council endorsed the guiding principles and the land use framework that I'm just going to briefly go over in just a moment.

And then recently this year, we held a community workshop in May and a meeting with the mobile home park residents in August.

And also worth noting, there's infrastructure analysis by all of our subconsultants, our experts in these fields that's been ongoing for some time.

So this is a reminder of the guiding principles that were approved in 2024.

The ones that I want to highlight for our discussion this evening are local serving, complete neighborhood, ensure safety for all modes, and context-sensitive standards.

So those are some of the things that I think are related to the topics for tonight.

And this is the land use plan that the council seen before.

After considering some different options, the team really thought it was best to go with a relatively simple land use plan where mixed-use residential is focused kind of in the corner of the site closest to the BVSP.

The mobile home park at the other far end would have no change to its land use, and the rest would be in a general kind of industrial and commercial land use category.

The idea again here is to build in flexibility to respond to the market over the coming years and decades.

And this is just kind of background information that as planners think about, and we always need for our environmental analysis.

We have to project forward what we think could be the build-out that could be happening under a specific plan such as this.

So this table just includes the existing potential build-out and net new of industrial commercial uses, multifamily residential, and the mobile home park.

As the council is aware, there were some units entitled but not yet built in the multifamily residential area.

And in the industrial and commercial area, imagining a build out as much as 3.9 million square feet.

Also thinking about the different land use considerations.

We heard strong feedback from the council and from the community that it was important to have land uses that continue to serve the community.

And so we've been thinking about community serving commercial.

And this might be a little bit distinct from what we talk about active ground floor uses when we're talking about the BVSP.

This is a little bit different, it's a little bit nuanced, but imagine in the BVSP, it's all about those active storefronts and people walking around and engaging in a downtown type setting.

In this setting, we still want it to have vibrant pedestrian and bicycle life and facility, but it's really these uses are more about what are the uses that serve the community in this area now that we want to retain.

What are the things that we don't want people to have to drive too far away to get to?

They might be able to walk or bike to these uses.

So we're thinking about things like restaurants, gyms, daycare, retail, and commercial recreation as some of the types of things we would want to target on these ground floor of the buildings that are located along harbor.

So those are the kind of development standards we're looking for there.

And again, thinking about how do we want to allow our existing businesses to continue to operate and our existing property owners to continue to reinvest into their buildings, into their businesses.

But then also look at what are the uses that are not going to be as good of a fit anymore as the area kind of grows over the decades.

So that's the analysis that we've been working on and wanted to update you.

So in talking to the community, a lot of people have asked us what kind of analysis did you do to lead to these development standards.

What did you consider to bring you to these recommendations?

So we wanted to walk you through our logic a little bit around this.

So we looked at a different series of things.

This is our staff team, our lead consultants at Good City, as well as our subconsultants that work through them.

We looked at example projects on the peninsula at things like the floor plates, like how big to the spaces have to be to be usable for different types of uses.

What kind of building heights are competitive actually getting built on the peninsula in this last market cycle, looking at floor to ceiling heights, how tall do the ceilings have to be for different types of uses.

So for these things, we're looking out to the market into best practices.

We also did neighborhood site visits.

We spent a lot of time walking around as we all do, right, when we're thinking about these kinds of plans and trying to think about how do we visualize what this may look like in this neighborhood.

So that's why I included this picture on the upper right-hand side.

This is the public storage that you're probably familiar with that fronts onto O'Neill.

And we stood out here a long time and thought about both the height of that front building and the setback of that front building, the height and the setback of the building to the rear.

So for perspective, as we talk about these other distances, not a perfect measurement on Google Earth.

That taller building is set back about 175 feet.

And our assessment when we were in the field is that's probably a little bit more than is actually necessary.

And you know, that that's one of the things that led to the measurements that we ultimately recommended.

We also conducted a number of shadow studies.

This is an example, and there's more in the attachment to your staff report and many more in the presentation that we're going through now.

But one of the concepts that we wanted to use is that we didn't want the shadows, and we're doing shadow studies on the equinox.

We didn't want them to cross over into people's front yards that are across the street on O'Neill and those measurements of the equinox.

So some of the modeling that we did, the shadowing went deep into people's front yards, and so we changed and adjusted those different heights to try to reach that as a way to analyze.

We also reviewed the draft standards with an architect that does a number of these types of projects, property owners, and applicants.

And then we are also governed by the height limit with the proximity to the San Carlos Airport.

So these are just some types of examples that we looked at.

These are not all directly comparable, like the one in the top middle is Foster City, that's the tallest building on the peninsula.

So we're just trying to put some, you know, context.

Like there's nothing taller than this on the peninsula.

Two of these projects are here.

One is 1301 Shoreway, that's a project that's moving through its entitlement on the lower right-hand corner.

And then the beam reach project, we call it is in the middle on the bottom, that's proposed in the HIA area that would follow the specific plan if and when it's adopted, and then some other projects on the peninsula to help give us some context of what types of heights are being approved.

And then as I mentioned, we're always limited by the San Carlos Airport.

So the good news is you don't really have to think too much about this diagram on the right, except notice that there are these ovals that kind of go around the airport.

That's really the thing to notice here.

And there's different requirements the farther you get away from the airport, and there's different height limits.

And the the CCAG, the county has a comprehensive airport land use compatibility plan that we have to be in compliance with, and that limits the height of buildings.

So think about that ring that we were just looking at, and now if we zoom all the way in to the harbor industrial area, you can see that that circle kind of cuts right across through the middle of the HIA.

So in the lower, darker portion, the height limit is 155 feet.

We measure in a special way for the airport above mean sea level, so it's not necessarily from the ground to the top of the building, like we measure height in the zoning world.

Um, and then the other part, the northern part of the HOA, HIA could be as tall as 205 feet under the airport.

So those are kind of the ultimate maximum maximums that we were starting with, and this is to the tippy top of all equipment, so it's a little different than how we usually measure in zoning.

If it's not from the ground up, what's the what where do you start?

Um from the mean sea level, like from above the ocean, right?

So there's like a zero set point that is the sea level, and then the engineers measure from there.

So it's not where the ground is, it's like the sea level.

Of course.

I know I'm making that face all the time too, but don't worry, we will solve for it when we actually write the development standards.

Okay.

Can I ask one quick clarification?

Yeah, please go ahead.

I just wanted to have you clarify, in terms of the building heights, it also is the height of all the equipment that is used to build the building.

So we can't go beyond that, the equipment can't go beyond that height, so that impacts it as well.

That's correct.

When we're looking at the airport restrictions, it's the ultimate height of the building that is constructed to the top of all equipment.

It is also all equipment used to construct the building.

So there's a separate process that applicants go through with the FAA for their construction equipment, such as cranes and things like that.

So both things are regulated, the construction process as well as the final building.

Thank you.

Okay, so then we were talking about context and design is one of our guiding principles, and so this idea that's carried through the planning so far has been for residential transition areas.

And this is an idea that's a common practice in planning, and that is to when you're transitioning from a commercial or industrial use, create some kind of transition area that's appropriate to address any kinds of issues that may come up.

So in some places that may be use-related, in this context, it is more development standard related.

So overall, the proposal is to create buildings that step down or get shorter when you get closer to the residential neighborhood.

So in this case, staff is recommending that the majority of the massing on these larger lots, the tallest portion be on Harbor Boulevard, and then as you're moving towards O'Neill, the buildings would get shorter.

And that's the underlying principle in the diagrams that we're going to go through.

So first talking about the O'Neill Avenue residential transition, important to note that no significant changes are proposed to the street itself.

I think that helps us to kind of picture the context.

So the street and the layout, the lanes and the parking would remain as they are.

And new development would be required to include, you know, the latest standard in terms of sidewalk landscaping, street trees, so you can imagine what that might look like.

And then the Cairn Road residential transition area between the mobile home park and the existing businesses there.

If and when they develop, there would be no changes to the mobile home park itself.

And again, new development would be required to include sidewalk landscaping and street trees on their side of the street.

Okay, so turning now to the community meetings that we've recently held on May 12th of this year.

We had a community meeting here in this building in the emergency operations center.

We had approximately 40 attendees.

There was a presentation by staff, and that was followed by feedback stations around the room.

So we had big poster boards up and people could move between the stations and talk to staff and consultant team, give their feedback, fill out forms, write their comments on the post-it notes, and we did have Spanish translation available for that.

We compiled all of those comments together, which are included in the staff report.

And then on August 2nd of this year, we had a meeting specifically with the residents of the mobile home park.

We had about 15 attendees at that meeting, which was held at a business in the HIA area, the Alpha Acid Brewery.

In that format, we had basically the same presentation with just a few little modifications, followed by a questions and answers, and Spanish translation also available there.

And so the full summaries of those two meetings are included as attachment A and B to the staff report.

So there were some important common themes.

I'm not gonna go through all of the feedback that was received.

I'm sure the council has had to take a chance to take a look at it, but we really wanted to focus on the things that are related to the topics we wanted to get your feedback on tonight, and that's with the development standards in particular.

And so the really common themes that came across on these topics was concern about the transition to the residential areas, including the setbacks, and that kind of the way that the building stepped down, and also a concern about the overall height that was proposed for the buildings, and that was linked to the community benefits.

So this is a slide from that community meeting.

Let me just explain it to you.

Remember, there's that curve from the airport, so that kind of comes across the middle, separating the two different colors of blue in the upper section.

What we originally proposed is a base height of 65 feet and a maximum height of 185 feet, and then 155 feet, where that's limited by the airport.

And the existing height that's allowed there now is the 65 feet.

So you can kind of connect that to what that's connected to, the county, and then also our pre-zoning for the site.

Also noting that no change to the mobile home park, but we have to assign some kind of height.

So we've assigned 28 feet, which is a standard height in like single family neighborhoods, for example.

Okay, so now we're gonna go through a series of diagrams to just show you what we originally proposed and then how we have amended those in response to the community feedback.

And I think the council's all aware of this, but any members of the public, these diagrams are attached to the staff report as well.

It may be easier to view them that way.

So I've added some different notes in the PowerPoint, but the basic diagrams are the same between the staff report and the PowerPoint.

So as we go through these, you'll see some of these are the base height and some of them are the bonus height.

And I wanted to point out that these are all architectural models.

We did get some questions from members of the public.

These are not development applications.

So this is not something that's proposed today.

This is us modeling what the maximum build out may be with the development standards.

Laura.

Yeah.

Yes, go ahead.

So I walked this property with the owners, and I'm happy that you say that it this isn't in the planning stages.

Currently.

This is just what's being proposed because when I walked it with them, they have no plans in the near future to build any of this.

Is that your understanding as well?

Yes.

Let me try to say it a different way, make sure we all understand it the same.

These diagrams represent what the specific plan would allow.

It is not any particular property owners' application or proposal.

So this is the city's plan with the what would be considered the maximum build-out of these sites.

Because when I was walking it with them, I was trying to tease out like, do you have any plans in the five year?

And they're like, no, 10 years, no.

So it was really like this this, what's offered here currently doesn't align with what the current owners have intentions for.

Just to be clear, it's like any other part of the city.

This is a zoning exercise.

It's not a development application review.

It's not looking at any active projects.

When you do zoning and land use, we establish what the standards are under which we can then develop the area.

It's no different than BVSB, nor different than other parts of the city commercial mix use.

We establish what the standards are, and developers can come in and then based on project needs and portfolio at the time of any proposed development, they can propose all different heights and architecture and all that.

These are really meant to just really show in block way what the standards would establish.

Okay.

I just want to hone it in there because they have no plans.

So thinking again about this basic idea that buildings get smaller when they get closer to O'Neal.

Okay.

So think about I think about like a series of building blocks.

And the building blocks get bigger when you get farther away from O'Neal.

So in this scenario, um, imagine we're on O'Neill, single-family homes are on the right side of this diagram, the building is on the left side.

Um, in a base height scenario, that first box that's closest to O'Neill.

The proposal was for a 15-foot setback from the property line and a 35 foot maximum height.

So this is actually more restrictive than what's in place today, okay, stepping down to residential, and then the next box, the second box moving back from O'Neill, the setback to that sort of box, that massing would be 60 feet from the property line with a 65-foot maximum height.

That's the height that's in effect today.

So this scenario is actually more restrictive than what the county has or what the pre-zoning is for the site.

Okay, so thinking about how do we plan for the future.

This is an example of the shadow studies, and I'm gonna show these throughout the presentation.

I'm gonna go through them fairly quickly.

Um, but we just wanted to show you kind of how what kind of analysis we were doing, and so in the far left, the equinox at 10 o'clock in the morning has the greatest shadow impact, and you can see that the shadow is going across the street, but not going into the yard across the street.

So, this is one of the points that we were using for analysis.

And doing these studies at the equinox basically gives us a way to compare, it's a common practice, it gives us apples to apples.

Okay, so we received feedback about these buildings feeling like they were gonna be too close.

Um, so we propose to increase the setback.

So here we want to um the setback is increased from 15 feet to 25 feet.

So what that means is there would be presumably a bigger landscape buffer or maybe some sort of sidewalk, plaza, landscape, green space.

Those kind of details, you know, are not known at this time, right?

But we would be writing standards and guidelines to help guide them.

So this is the change in the base height scenario.

And then the shadowing um is not it's not is not a big change, it basically just um moves the shadow back a little bit, and if you're new to reviewing these, what might be confusing is there's a row of trees, so the trees also create a shadow.

So that's why the shadow gets lumpy, because it's actually the trees that are making more of a shadow, not the building.

So you can kind of keep that in mind as we review more of these.

And then this is the bonus height proposal that we originally presented.

Those first two boxes stay the same, but then that third box moving further back, set back 120 feet from the property line, it would be 145 feet maximum height.

And then the tallest box set back 160 feet from the property line would be either 155 or 185 feet, depending on the airport height limit.

Okay, so this is what we originally proposed to the community on May 12th and August 2nd.

Here's the shadow studies where the shadow goes right up to the edge of the street, but not into the neighbor's yard on O'Neill.

It does go kind of over into the right at two o'clock in the afternoon.

So here's the modified proposal based on community feedback.

So earlier, remember I mentioned that the setback is already increased from 15 to 25, so that's why we circled that in blue.

Same thing here, we're carrying that forward, and then the height limit, which was previously 185 feet, is reduced to 155 feet.

So we used to have four building blocks, and now we just have three building blocks because we're not getting as tall, okay?

So it's a little bit simpler, also.

This is also a good time to point out just because these would be the it's kind of think about to the maximum building envelope, it doesn't mean any applicant would actually build it this way, right?

So that first block that's only 35 feet tall, they might not build that at all.

There might be no building there.

They might use it for circulation for a driveway, they might use it for surface parking.

They may start with the second block, right?

Or maybe they would build a parking structure in the back that complied with this.

Um, all the all the cars would still go out on harbor, but the parking structure might be in the rear.

That might make sense.

And so think about this as the maximum, um, not necessarily what would be built.

Shadow study for this very similar, um, not a big change.

Okay, now we are going to the Karen Road.

Um, original proposal for the base height.

Okay, so in this case, um the first box would be set back 10 feet from the property line, 35 feet max height.

Again, a little bit more strict, more strict than what's in place today.

The second box would be set back 30 feet with 65 feet maximum height.

I guess a quick question.

Yes.

Uh do we know how tall the existing buildings on Cairn are right now?

We don't know for sure.

They're like a that's like a very tall one-story, not to do what I mean, not quite two-story height.

So we didn't take a do you know, we didn't take a measurement, but it's in that.

If I had to guess, it's like in the 20s, like in the low 20s, probably.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, and the shadow studies here, most of the shadow is coming from the trees, not so much from the building.

Um, the biggest shadow on the mobile home park side is at three o'clock in the afternoon.

So late afternoon, you start to get the shadow from the building, starts to go into the mobile home park.

And then still on the base height, uh, the proposal is to increase that the second box, move it back from 30 feet back to 45 feet.

So it kind of pushes that massing farther away from the mobile home park, and this improves the shadow impact in a way that's noticeable, I think, um, by making that shift.

And then here is the bonus height scenario on Karen Road.

And so the first box um stays in the same place.

Now remember, this is the original proposal because we're switching back and forth, original modified.

Um, and so we had in this case, we kind of had three boxes going back, and we did consider the corners.

So I'm not getting into all that because it gets super detailed, okay?

But the consultant team considered what happens when you're on a corner, etc., of O'Neal and Karen.

And so here the maximum height was up at 145 feet because of that proximity to the mobile home park and the kind of the shadows that it was creating.

So it was a little lower on this side because of that proximity.

And you can see the shadows here, you're setting, you know, medium-sized shadow there at three o'clock in the afternoon, greatest shadow impact.

And then here's the modified proposal for Karen Road.

So there's the two changes, the one we already looked at of increasing up to 45 feet, moving that second massing backwards, and then also moving the larger mass further away, also.

So from 120 feet to 125 feet.

So we kind of took those two medium-sized and tall building blocks and moved them back away from the mobile home park.

So we think that that change it has a modest impact in the shadow impact, but we do think it will make a difference in terms of that kind of the feeling of proximity of those buildings on the mobile home park side.

Next, I wanted to introduce a new concept that the staff consultant team has developed in response to community comments, and this is the potential for a residential buffer on the south side of O'Neill.

So throughout this conversation, you'll remember back in the land use plan, this was all programmed for industrial and commercial space.

In response to that feedback, we wanted to bring this forward for the council and communities consideration.

So the idea is to have a 90-foot residential buffer, and that would be an option.

So looking for council feedback on that, the idea is the applicant would have the option to be able to build residential there in that first 90 feet.

And we've come up with that because we think that townhouses would be a good transitional use.

So attached houses in a row, townhouse or row house kind of use synonymously.

There's some little distinctions to us planners, but just think about you know row of houses, parking might be in the front, fronting onto O'Neill, or there might be a driveway in the back, and there might be parking underneath that you would access from the back.

But the basic idea is kind of what we've seen next to the firehouse, right, which is garage level, a little bit of living area, and two stories of living above it, and presumably most likely an ownership unit.

And so the maximum height would be 35 feet, that's kind of like the wall height, or 40 feet if there was a pitched roof to be able to fit a three-story if we wanted a traditional roof form a pitched roof on top of that.

So this is a diagram of that.

So imagine the building blocks we had before, and you're just gonna take out the first two building blocks, okay, and you're gonna set down a row of townhouses in the front.

So that larger block behind it is in the same place and the same height that it was in the previous diagrams.

So this helps to um imagine a little bit what that buffer would be like, and some people might respond, oh, but those townhouses are now very close to that big commercial development.

Yes, they would be.

So we would expect that there would be interest in demand for townhouses here.

Of course, there are um trade-offs, right?

When we think about residential development versus commercial development fronting onto O'Neill across from residential uses.

So just to think through some of those trade-offs, right?

Um, new commercial buildings, if they have frontage on harbor, will have to have their driveways and all their vehicle access off of Harbor.

There are a few properties that only have access from O'Neal, so they would be allowed to take access.

But these big new projects would all have harbor frontage and harbor driveways.

So in this case, there would be new neighbors, right?

So there would be more activity, a little bit more traffic on O'Neill.

If the whole stretch was built out in townhouses, we estimate 55 townhouses, so not a lot really, right?

And it's very unlikely that the whole stretch would develop.

It's under lots of different ownerships.

So just as a way to think about like what's the volume of units we're thinking about here is not a very large volume, but that would be a change for people that are living on O'Neill.

We also have to think about the complexity of state housing laws.

So as the council is aware, once you introduce any residential component, then all the state housing laws kick in.

And so we've thought about this and designed this in townhouses, and that's one of the reasons we would try to use the 90-foot lot depth because it works for townhouses, but could be limiting for multifamily in terms of what the floor plates you need.

It kind of gets not to say it's impossible because I can't make promises, but it's certainly more difficult.

So that's one of the things that we would design in.

But we always want the council and community to be aware that the state laws are complex, and so we don't have the same kind of certainty for residential uses that we have for commercial uses.

And then we thought it's important to just take a second to think about what San Carlos is doing in their specific plan on the other side of the creek.

So as the council's aware, they're also working on a specific plan that's similar timing to ours.

They got ahead, we caught up a little bit, they got ahead again.

So we're we're pretty close.

They have a draft plan of most of the chapters was released a few quite a few months ago now.

And as typical, like I wish I could just make you a chart that compared directly, but it's really hard to do that because the context and the way we're approaching it is a little bit different.

So things to note, they also have a base height and a max and a like a density bonus height.

I mean, I'm sorry, a community benefits height.

So they also have that two tiers, like we're thinking about.

They're not applying it in the exact same way as us, and they also have a district that is residential mixed use.

So they have an area that's intended specifically for residential, and that's what's adjacent to their single family neighborhood.

So they're taking a similar approach in terms of stepping down the land uses, but they're doing it in a slightly different way.

So that's why I can't give you that sort of direct comparison.

But the way that I've been thinking about it is they set a height limit for that residential that's adjacent to their existing single family of 75 feet.

And we think they did that because then there'll be density bonus that will apply on top of it, and it could easily get to that.

There's like kind of a natural breakoff around 85 feet because of the limits of the construction methods these days.

And so we're guessing that that's what they estimate these projects will ultimately be.

So they didn't make the height taller because then density bonus would go on top of it.

So they kind of lowered the height, and then density bonus will go above.

So we assume that that's the logic that they use because that's the same logic we would use if we were working on that type of thing.

And so some key points here, starting at the top of the table, their base heights are between 75 and 100 feet, depending on location.

Ours is 65 feet lower in the mobile home park, and then their community benefits, their bonus structure is 100 to 155 feet, depending on location.

Our proposal right now is 155-foot max.

And then these bullet points are kind of talking about what I was just describing.

So when it's adjacent to residential, they have the lower maximum, but they're proposing residential next to residential.

So we can't make an apples to apples comparison, but just wanted you to be aware of that concept.

So you know what kind of logic they're applying to their plan.

And of course, the state laws are gonna change and the construction methods are gonna evolve, right?

So we're writing a long-term plan here, but we're writing it using the best information that we have available today.

Okay, so that gets us through all the development standards.

And next we're gonna talk, and this part is much shorter.

Let's go ahead and go.

I do like it.

You've given us a lot of information as usual.

Your presentations are always very straightforward and full of information, but easy to follow, and I appreciate that.

But maybe this would be a good time to take a natural break and ask if the council has questions just on what we've seen so far, and just limited to questions if possible.

Let's let's look at our architect first.

Any questions on what we've heard so far?

No, no questions.

I think it's very clear.

We can debate the merits of it, but I think the logic of it is is very clear.

The presentation is very clear.

I have no questions.

Okay, great.

Vice Mayor, questions?

Okay, we probably ask them as we went to, but um okay, thanks.

Continue.

Okay.

Um, so now talking about the harbor streetscape concept.

Okay, so this is where we're spending some time because this represents a pretty big change, okay, compared to like O'Neill, where we don't anticipate a big change.

Um, industrial, we have that little piece.

Well, you know, that those pieces are gonna be pretty straightforward.

Harbor is a little bit more complicated because this is something that's gonna evolve over years, over decades, and we had to think about with our technical team how do we come up with a plan that can be phased, either when development occurs or as funding becomes available.

So you might maybe we got a grant and we would do one side of the street.

Maybe a development came and they just did the portion in front of their project.

May you know there's all these different scenarios that we were trying to think through.

So after looking at a lot of different things, we came up with this plan that we think gives us the most flexibility.

Um, this is also an attachment to the staff report.

If the, you know, hopefully the council had a chance to zoom in a little bit to the PDF.

I know this is hard to read.

The next slides um I think a little bit easier, but what we're showing here is um it's like the length of harbor, and on the top is imagine that there's a striping plan.

There's an existing phase, a striping phase, and a full redevelopment phase, and we'll see more of this on the next slide.

So we had to think about how are all the lanes gonna line up over time?

Like where are the existing curbs?

How are we gonna make everything fit that we want to fit in this area?

Where we imagine a future where there's still gonna be semi-trucks in this area, there's still gonna be industrial uses, biotech RD needs semi-trucks, if we have advanced manufacturing, right?

So we're trying to balance this all together.

We want a safe bicycle and pedestrian environment so that people can easily get from the train station, El Camino Real, other parts of the city, San Carlos, everybody can come into this area safely on multiple modes.

How do we do all of that over time?

So the lower diagram envisions imagine the full build-out with like every tree, right?

Like no obstacles, just like that's the dream scenario in the full, you see all the trees along the way.

Um, we imagine being able to have wider sidewalks that are full size, you know, pedestrian sidewalks for people for strollers for all those things.

Um, if people are coming around, folks with limited mobility, protected bike lanes, so the ones that are not immediately adjacent to the lanes, um travel lanes for vehicles, the driveways and where they're gonna be located become really important because as I mentioned, there's not gonna be access from O'Neill, people are gonna need to come and go on Harbor.

So we had to think through how our trucks are gonna get in and out.

So we're showing the median with planters and trees, and that's really as feasible because we need trucks to be able to make those turning movements.

So there may be times when we don't have full medians, but that is kind of the aspiration that we have full media someday at the build out, and then we see street trees, and we can imagine um kind of plazas and landscape areas at the front of these new development projects.

I think we have a question, quick question.

What about all of the electrical wires?

Um, we would have a standard requirement for undergrounding, undergrounding piecemeal is always a little bit tricky, but individual projects would underground.

If there was ever an opportunity to underground a little bit more, we would look for it.

But that's kind of a standard approach.

Okay, so this is kind of dropping into the cross section.

Okay, so if this is new for anybody, the last view was like you're looking at the Google map, and then this one is you dropped yourself down into street view, and now you're standing in the middle of Harbor.

Okay.

This is also an attachment to your staff report, so you can see it helps me to see them all lined up vertically so that I can see how the street is going to change over time.

So let me explain the diagrams on your right first, and then I'll walk you through a couple of the key points.

So the first one is the existing conditions.

Okay, so what's happening here is you've got two travel lanes in each direction.

Okay, that does not change with this plan.

So sometimes you have a plan that has something called a road diet where you're taking out travel lanes.

We looked at some of that, it did not seem feasible, safe, practical.

So there's no reduction in travel lanes.

Then on each side, there's kind of like the dotted lines that go up into the air, and then it says ROW right of way, okay.

So that like those little dotted lines that go up into the air, that's the extent of the right-of-way, like of the street.

Okay, and then there's parking on either side.

So on the south side, there's angled parking, as you know, and then on the north side, there's parallel parking, so it's different on the different sides.

So all of that is shown in the existing plan.

Then move to the middle into the striping plan.

The right-of-way stays in the same place, right?

So we can imagine it, and then the existing curb line.

Um, now there's a new line for that.

So, what we imagine happening here is hopefully funding availability.

What you would do is go through and kind of re-stripe this section.

So just with paint on the ground, you would move the lanes and reconfigure things.

So this would be an intermediate phase.

So the lanes would move, the bicycle lanes would be created, and that striping plan, that phase could last as long as it needs to because it works, it's not counting on anything.

Then maybe with grant funding, or most likely as development occurs, then development would take us to the lowest one here, which is a full development plan.

So in this case, the right-of-way stays the same, but the sidewalk, the whole width of the road gets wider because we would ask those applicants to use part of their private property to extend that sidewalk and make it wider.

So we would have the small part of the sidewalk would be in the right-of-way, and then it would get bigger with development.

So there probably would be a time when you're walking down the sidewalk and it gets big and then it gets small and it gets big again, right?

Something like that's likely to occur in these kind of conditions, but at least we would have that continuous sidewalk and bike lane through that time period, and then the development would put in the public improvements that go with it, right?

Would put in the nice new curb, gutter, sidewalk, street trees, would put in the street trees in the or put the trees in the center median if feasible.

So you can kind of imagine the street feels and it gets wider when the development occurs.

So some key things to know about this, are like I said, this is phased, so the it might, you know, it might be a little growing pains on these kind of plans.

We're looking to the future.

Um, the north side of harbor, the on-street parking would be removed.

Okay, so that's always important for people to be aware when we talk about removing street parking, right?

Important consideration on the south side of harbor, the angled parking would be changed to parallel parking.

Okay, this plan does include protected bike lanes, like I mentioned, so not immediately adjacent to the driving lanes.

And again, the new projects would be required to use some of their private property for the wider sidewalks.

Okay, so these are kind of the key elements that we want people to be aware of.

When we were in the community meetings, we did not get a lot of feedback on this, and understandable is kind of hard for people to understand how it would work.

And important when it comes to the parking, new projects would have parking on site that meets their market demand.

And so the street parking becomes in some ways less important for big new development.

So just kind of things to keep in mind in balance as we move forward.

Would you say that the most of the community meetings you had were residents from the neighborhood, right?

Not developers and things like that.

Mostly residents.

We've had a few developers, kind of key property holders and stakeholders that have been involved throughout the process.

So there were they did see this as well.

So there were there's property owner, there's a developer, there was an architect at May 12th.

Great, thank you.

And we did not get any concerns from any of them on this proposal for the street.

So any of this like technical experts that do this for their living did not give us any um concerns about this.

Oh yes.

So when you presented to uh the HIA, the you know the monthly lunches that they have, did you get feedback from property owners there?

Um, this one we only went over this at a high level at the HIA lunch.

So it could be something we could bring back to them for discussion if the council would like us to.

Sure.

Yeah, we didn't get into this level of detail with them.

Okay, that's all the technical stuff.

Okay, so kind of the wrap-up stuff.

Um, community outreach, obviously critically important to this effort for tonight's meeting.

Um, announcement was on the project specific web page, which is Belmont HIAPlan.com, and on the city website.

Um, our interest list is getting pretty big, it's around 150 people at this point.

We keep adding to it as people get involved, our weekly newsletter that goes out on Fridays, email to HomeView and Sterling Downs HOA leadership, and we've um started to develop um contacts at the mobile home park, so we emailed them as well.

And then in terms of the next steps on outreach, what we're proposing to do is to do a summary of this meeting, any council feedback, kind of bring everybody up to speed on where we are right now for all the community outreach we've done this year, and send that out, post it, send it to the email distribution list.

Um, we also want to translate that into Spanish for any of our um Spanish speaking residents, and then what we're proposing to do is a staff-driven, like an ask me anything, like uh office hours, depending on what generation you're from, where staff would literally have like a drop-in format once on Zoom and once in person, someplace in the HIA area, and just let people come and ask questions.

So people could have an opportunity to talk to staff that's not in a formal meeting or limited by time of three minutes, you know, to just have another chance to ask questions and make sure they understand what's happening.

So that's what we're proposing as a next step.

Um, certainly open to your feedback on that if you have additional suggestions.

And then next steps, we are continuing to work on infrastructure analysis, and we're getting to the point of wrapping that up soon, and then we're hoping to get feedback from you tonight on those topics we've talked about, then we go back with the consultant team with Good City and our subs and kind of continue finish drafting the actual specific plan itself, and then there'll be a big round of public review and comment public meetings on the draft specific plan as well as the draft environmental impact report EIR that goes along with it, and then of course, um, there'll be approval meetings down the road, but we didn't want to get too far down the road, we're kind of focused on the next couple of steps, um, and all of the information continue to be on the project website and emails distributed to the notification list.

For the next steps uh that you have here that are bulleted, what is the timeline for those?

I'm not sure because the infrastructure analysis is complex.

So a lot of these concepts have been well developed by our team at this point, but we're really finalizing some of the options that we have related to infrastructure that we're spending the time right now.

We feel like it's time well spent.

So these bullets are within months.

It's do you know what I mean?

It's a few months out, would be my best estimate.

And we need to kind of regroup around the timing and then we can update people more specifically.

Okay.

All right.

Is that the end of the?

Yeah, so this is just a reminder of what we're looking for.

So feedback on the development standards and feedback on the Harbor Boulevard streetscape concept.

So I'm very happy to try to answer all of your questions and looking forward to the feedback you have for us.

Great.

Thank you.

I think we did pepper you with some questions as we went along, but any other questions on any of the presentation, including the streetscape concept.

Just questions at this time.

I have a comment about the streetscape.

Maybe save comments till after public.

Yeah.

No questions?

No.

Okay.

Then we can move to public comment.

So if you have public comment on this item, and you filled out a comment card, our clerk, I will ask the clerk to first take the comments that are in chambers in person.

And then we will move to comments on Zoom.

So if you do have comments on item 10B on the Harbor Industrial Area Specific Plan update, you can raise your virtual hand.

And when it's your turn, our clerk will call on you.

A reminder that there is three minutes.

When you hear the first beep for all the commenters, that's the 30-second warning.

So that means you have 30 seconds to wrap it up.

And just to keep it fair, we will have to stop you at three minutes.

And that said, Madam Clark, can we have the first speaker, please?

Of course.

So we'll begin in the chamber.

And I've got a couple of slips here in front of me, and we can begin with Carolyn Pears.

Alright, good evening.

My name is Caroline Purrz, and I'm a 10-year resident of Homeview.

First, I want to just briefly comment feedback on the revised development standards.

So, with respect to the setback, I appreciate the increase to 25 feet.

That's more appropriate for commercial development located next to our residential neighborhood.

With respect to the residential buffer zone, I cannot support this.

I don't believe it's in the best interest of Homeview, and that's because I don't believe we should be opening up the O'Neill Avenue to increase traffic and parking.

We already have other residential uses across the city.

I also think it creates uncertainty as to the scope of any future residential development projects based on our current state housing laws and any future ones.

With respect to height, this is probably the most important issue for me.

I appreciate the city's reduction from 185 to 155 feet.

However, further reductions are warranted.

One of the guiding principles that was mentioned here tonight is a context sensitive standard.

So let me give you some context.

I have many neighbors here tonight.

We are mostly a single family neighborhood of single story.

You also have a mobile home park that is probably the most affordable housing in Belmont.

You also have home view, which is probably the most affordable single family uh development or neighborhood here.

And so what you're proposing is a 155-foot building that will be a massive, daunting structure right in our backyard.

It's taller than any other current building in Belmont and perhaps San Carlos for now.

The southern side of the HIA, which is south of Harbor Boulevard, has the same maximum height of 155.

That makes sense.

It's surrounded completely by industrial and commercial uses.

That's fine.

What I think would be more appropriate, and by contrast is lowering the max height on the northern side of the HOI or HIA, which is above harbor and right next to Home View.

And the reason for that is because, again, you're sitting next to all these residential uses, and that's not reasonable or rational to let the height go up to 155.

It's not sensitive to the existing residential neighborhood fabric.

Instead, something like 75 feet would be much more appropriate.

In terms of community benefits, I think it's ironic that the item that preceded this today was the community center, which sounds lovely and could be wonderful.

But you know, my feeling is that uh the community benefits for the HIA are being leveraged here at the expense of HomeView.

And what I'd like to see is a provision in the HIA to require that at the very least a portion of those community benefits benefit Home View and the mobile home park because we're the ones who are going to be directly impacted by the buildings during and after construction.

So, in summary, please uh significantly decrease the maximum building height of 155, retain the 25-foot setback, reject the proposed residential buffer, and retain the gates that are in the cul-de-sacks that keep our neighborhood safe.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Our next speaker is Ward Mace, followed by Jen McBride.

Good evening, Mayor Mates and fellow uh council members.

Nice to see some of you again and uh great to meet others for the first time.

Uh I am with uh Goodman.

We are a property owner uh on the north side of Harbor, and uh little rough being up here, having listened to that.

But uh first off, I want to I want to thank staff for for trying to work through this.

It's a challenging issue.

We invested a lot of money in the property that we acquired, and uh, you know, and it's a challenging market right now.

There's there's not a lot of demand for anything.

And so what we are long-term owners, we don't we don't come in and buy and trade properties, we own them for the long term, and uh we're looking to figure out the highest and best use for the property and a plan that that is surviving and long-lasting.

So I think it's important to take our time and figure out the development standards and figure out the uses, and what we're looking for, and I I think I've shared this, is flexible uses.

You know, I'd like to reconsider more multifamily mixed use in addition to the advanced manufacturing and the and the and the town homes that that were mentioned.

So I think uh just need to think long and hard.

I mean, it's I I understand the vision and the goals, but uh right now the market is is not sure all you understand how how difficult the market is right now.

I mean, one of our largest customers, the county, is turning over essentially all of their space that they're in at the property, you know.

So I think maintaining the the warehouse uses that are there uh that have previously been zoned.

I mean, I think it's important to maintain that uh and look for other opportunities to to enhance or redevelop the property over the long term.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jen McBride, followed by Joe Ellington.

Good evening.

Thanks for the opportunity to share tonight.

Uh, my name is Jen McBride and I'm a home view resident for several years, 12 years.

Um, I have a few comments regarding the revised development standards presented tonight.

The first is based on the revised bonus case maximum building height of 155 feet.

While I of course appreciate the reduction in maximum building height, um, 155 feet is still significantly taller than any other structures in this area, including much of the newer commercial and biotech structures along 101 in San Carlos.

Additionally, I have not seen any new development of this building height situated so close to a residential neighborhood, literally across a residential street.

So to me, that indicates that this is an inappropriate height for this area.

And I think slide two of the presentation showed that pretty well.

Um also, the taller the building, the larger the reach of light pollution, which is another huge concern for home view residents.

Commercial tenants tend to leave their lights on overnight every night 365 days a year.

So shadow studies are great and helpful and nice to see, but nighttime light pollution is a very real problem that significantly changes a residential neighborhood's feel.

Additionally, taller buildings mean more tenants, which require more traffic and parking needs.

I'm also concerned that due to the lack of northbound access to harbor from 101, that many tenants will use the already congested Ralston exit and then attempt to cut through and park in our home view neighborhood in attempts to save time and cut traffic.

Home view is a residential neighborhood, and it should not be turned into a de facto parking lot for future HIA development.

My next comments pertain to the revised proposed optional residential buffer zone along O'Neill.

At first, this seems like a thoughtful option, but several concerns emerge when considering this more carefully.

Namely, the strong possibility of the floodgates being open to developers looking to capitalize on ever expanding state laws surrounding housing.

We've seen firsthand the experiences of other Belmont neighborhoods where residents were originally envisioning that residential development would look one way and the final product ends up looking very different.

Most recently I've heard complaints about the Masonic development being taller than expected and eliminating the ground floor retail that was so attractive to so many in the neighborhood.

And because the developers are ticking the appropriate boxes to take advantage of these state housing laws, the city's hands will be largely tied.

Belmont's doing really well in terms of providing additional housing and more affordable housing.

There are lots of projects in the pipeline for this.

We don't really need more housing in the HIA, especially since there are so many other developments going up literally all around us.

Additionally, ever since the Harbor Industrial Area specific plan project was initiated, it's been mentioned in every meeting and Zoom call that I've attended that it's of the utmost importance to all their home view residents to maintain the road closures at the end of our streets to O'Neill.

These closures are absolutely imperative for maintaining the safety and walkability of this neighborhood, especially with so many neighborhood children who play outside and walk to school daily.

So I would strongly request these closures remain in place.

Thank you to the mayor and city council for the opportunity to share this feedback and for your thoughtful consideration.

Thank you.

Joe Ellington, followed by Brian Shamash.

Okay.

And so I think that when we I appreciate the new designs that have come out and the revised proposals, but to be honest, I don't think that they've gone far enough.

I appreciate the additional setback and the lowered height.

But as an O'Neill resident, there's a lot of things that I think need to be considered in this.

One is privacy.

You have all these people in these corporate buildings that are gonna be like looking down on our backyards, watching our children play.

Like I feel like that's creepy and weird, and I don't like it.

The second one is the residential option.

I appreciate that being put out.

That was very thoughtful and you know, another thing to discuss.

I think again, with some of my neighbors, we are concerned about the ever-change changing housing laws and the additional traffic that that's going to be putting on like Elmer and O'Neill.

Um, I think as far as uh redeveloping the area, it's not something that I'm opposed to.

Like, right, there's all this like kind of random stuff going on right now, like an overall redevelopment of one unified concept or building is not something that I'm opposed to, but something that is 155 feet looking down on my backyard, I am opposed to.

Um, I think a lot of things need to be going to this as far as like the parking traffic, light pollution, and privacy to make sure that our home view neighborhood stays to have a lot of the attributes that we enjoy living there today.

Thank you.

Ryan Shira Shidi, followed by Terry Yee.

Hello, my name is Terry Ye.

I've been in the Home View neighborhood for about over 12 years.

And you know, thank you very much for your consideration for helping the city of Belmont and uh all of the integrated planning that you've done.

However, I cannot um cannot support the 155-foot uh building height.

You know, I can see the Oracle buildings um from where I live, and they're quite large and bright, and that's fine that I'm almost two miles away.

Imagine it being nearly just 500 feet away, right?

So just please um with the empathy, right?

And with respect to what we were talking about before, the Bear Community Center, that's a beautiful community center.

I imagine you're moving the community center towards Ralston because people on the backside don't want a two-story building there, let alone a hundred and fifty-five-foot building.

So please, we consider it is it is larger than anything around in the Belmont area, and um it's it's quite shocking.

Uh as well, I also reject the residential buffer area for the same reasons that my neighbors have stated and um do not please do not support at all opening uh those streets.

The kids put on the streets all the time, generate like many generations of kids.

I've been in Home View for over for about 13 years.

I've seen kids go from elementary, high school, they graduated college, and they're moving back at home.

And I imagine, given the state of the economy and the housing prices in the area, their children will also live there and be on the streets, and probably my kids too.

So please keep the streets closed.

It actually does not help if you think about it from a flow of traffic at all.

I have lived and you know gone back and forth on these streets for over a decade, and the real issue is just we have one Roalston, right, and nothing else that really cuts through, and uh, you know, the traffic lights and all that kind of things are are the issue.

So please keep those streets closed.

And and lastly, please, yes, if there are going to be community community benefits, please set aside some for the community that will be affected.

Um, once again, thank you for all of your time and consideration.

And um, yep, thanks.

Thank you.

Joseph Lecoco, followed by Noreen Leek.

Good evening.

I'm Joseph Lococo.

Um I've lived in a Homeview area since 1987.

Uh I was actually born and raised in Belmont, and uh the house I'm in right now is uh house at my grandparents bought in 1961.

So I'm very familiar with the area.

I second some of the concerns as far as the heights of the buildings, and um the concern being that um essentially we're talking about Oracle scale buildings right across the street from a residential community.

Um the light um that would impact the the neighborhood, uh the entire feel uh already what you have on O'Neill is that street's already entirely parked out much of the time.

Um so there's there's a real concern I have also with traffic circulation, um, in part because it's fine to say that the folks are only going to be able to access off a harbor, but there is no northbound on ramp onto the freeway from Harbor.

So if those people are coming from the north, all that traffic is gonna funnel onto Elmer and to Ralston.

I live on Furlong, and if we try to make a right off of Furlong, um, it's really difficult at times.

Why?

Because whenever you get a gap with the traffic light, what happens?

The cars that are waiting to turn right off of Elmer, they're just peeling off one after another after another.

So you think you have a break, you don't, because they're the cars are backed up at uh you know, especially around rush hour, um, pretty significantly.

So it's hard.

It's hard.

I want you to think about the traffic.

I want you to think about the parking.

Uh when the development at O'Neill, um, no, Ole County and Elmer went up.

Uh, what happened was the construction workers they parked everywhere in Homeview.

So many people on Homeview, you you got home, you had no place to park.

And that was a small development compared to what we're talking about here.

So I want to make sure that we're really thinking about for me.

If you're in construction, what you ought to do is you ought to have a designated parking area for the construction crews, and you and I have a shuttle system to bring them over there.

Um, I do want to second the motion or the sentiment on the gates, those are absolutely critical to the community.

And uh I think if you looked at the entire community, we'd all object very loudly to any changes to the gates.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Noreen Leake.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Uh Noreen Leek, 17-year resident of Homeview.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to attend tonight, so I sent my comments ahead of time.

I understand you received them.

I won't read through my letter for the sake of time.

I just want to echo the sentiments and the comments from my fellow Home View neighbors.

I want to reiterate the ask to reduce the max height, making it less egregious for those of us living less than a block away.

I do not support the housing buffer if it means the potential for another affordable housing complex in addition to the ones already proposed on the opposite side of Homeview.

Please don't open the ends of our blocks to allow through traffic.

These closures are vital to preserving our neighborhood character and ensuring public safety.

I don't want cars racing down my block like they do on Elmer to escape Ralston at the expense of my children riding their bikes.

Responsible housing should enhance the existing community, not decimate it.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Is Brian not coming forward?

Name's Brian.

I'm a Home View resident for about 12 years.

The reason why we love the Home View neighborhood and the reason why we chose this neighborhood was because of the community, small knit community.

I lived in South San Francisco, wanted to escape the fog, the clouds, and I've seen what biotech and large buildings have done for that city.

They've they've redone the downtown schools are remodeled.

I've seen the success of that, but I just don't believe that a hundred and fifty-five-foot building for whatever you guys are going to use that building for is necessary next to our neighborhood.

I mean, the sentiment with our neighbors here, I agree with everything that they're saying.

Uh the traffic right now is the one thing that I'm really concerned about, especially living on Hiller.

Um I'm at the end of the gates, and the number of people that speed through our neighborhood is just it's it's it's ridiculous.

Um I have spoken to Gina about it, and we do have loud yellow signs at the end that says not a through streets.

People still try to cut through Ralston to find a shortcut to where they need to go on El Camino, but you know, at the expense of my my kids too, I I just can't accept this this plan to open up the gates and even have a structure and a business, you know, uh building, you know, of that size.

Uh it's gonna affect the traffic tremendously.

Um, for me, to be totally frank with you, I have a lack of trust with the city.

Um you guys had fiber cables coming through our neighborhood to basically build out infrastructure for whatever you needed to do in the human services area.

Um they broke our sewer.

We only had the sewer line for two months, maybe, and we had a 30-year warranty on that.

And so uh when we spoke to the the city, I think it was the city uh engineer, Tracy Scamilia.

She had indicated that I had to speak to the company that was contracted for that work.

And I had to go through so many conversations with their lawyers uh to talk about like a if the something goes wrong with my my sewer line, that that is that is you know basically stuck on me.

I talked to the Wizard Plumbing and they indicated that you know we they could not cover the warranty potentially because it's not their work because the city had to fix the repair to the contract company had to come and repair it.

It wasn't their work.

So I was a little concerned about that.

For now, you're building a uh a building um and have to build all this infrastructure for something that we don't want and potentially on the backs of the residents there.

I just can't accept that.

And so that's that's just uh my general concern on the general construction of of uh of what's being proposed here.

But thank you for the time.

Thank you.

Moving to our Zoom participants, Kelly O'Day.

Kelly, you've been unmuted.

Hello, thank you.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you.

I have been a Home View resident for 34 years.

I live um on Hiller Street right at O'Neill.

And I echo what everyone is saying in my neighborhood, and I really appreciate that the communities coming together to speak up for our charming neighborhood that we have here.

It is a close-knit neighborhood, it's quiet, it's safe for the children, and I really appreciated living here.

A few years ago, I woke up to the sound of chainsaws, tearing down all of the trees that were lining O'Neill Street inside of the industrial park.

There were over 150 trees that were cut down in a matter of seven days, and it was pretty heartbreaking.

Within a couple months, large hundred-foot tall halogen stadium bright lights were installed in the parking lots of the harbor industrial area.

And these lights have had a huge impact on my personal wellness.

And I understand what light pollution is now with these large halogen lights, and I can only imagine the light pollution that this neighborhood would suffer from with a hundred and fifty-five-foot-tall corporate buildings with a 25-foot setback to our charming little quiet neighborhood.

So I would like to ask the city to make some plans to replant those trees.

A lot of these plans that you've been showing us show many trees.

I'm not quite sure when those are going to be planted.

Eight trees were planted after the 150 pine trees were cut down, and those trees only cover uh about one block of the entire street of O'Neill.

Um, and there's uh only eight trees, and there should be at least 50.

So I would like for you to consider replanting our trees, and I would like to have you consider please shortening the bright halogen stadium brightness lights that are in the Harbor Industrial Area.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alan Drosas.

Alan, you've been unmuted.

Hey, good evening, everyone.

Thank you for our time here.

Um my wife and I have been residents in.

I'm sorry, that was my fault.

Alan, please continue.

We've given you uh another three minutes.

I'm I mean, full three minutes.

Go ahead.

Can you stop the timer judgment?

Okay.

Can you guys hear me now?

Yes, thank you.

Sorry about that.

So I don't know how much you heard.

My wife and I are residents, we've been here 20 years now.

I actually am also a um uh business owner that resides in Belmont as well, so we've um pretty invested in the neighborhood specifically around Homeview and and the HIA.

Um we strongly agree with a lot of the sentiment that's been presented here.

The height of the building, I mean, I think it's a it's it was always a silly uh example that they've they've had shown only silly examples from day one for the heights here.

Uh as everyone else has noted, heights of a building like Oracle across the way are almost laughable in a neighborhood like this, and in relation to in the in distance wise to these residentials.

So we've uh along with our other neighbors, we recommend uh maximizing the height around 100 feet, maybe seventy-five feet.

We also strongly agree with the sentiment to keep these streets closed.

The closures are a huge part of the community here, and the the sentiment that it limits the traffic through these neighborhoods.

The safety of all of our kids is highly important to all of us.

And we think it's important to incorporate these items, if not these specific uh comments, but these items in writing, a lot of these comments of our neighbors have have addressed, we want to make sure they're not just I don't know.

We just want to make sure things are and captured in writing more often.

Um I think that's all we wanted to express with limiting the height of the building, the gates staying closed.

These are the key items we want to focus on.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Reed McBride.

Hi there.

Uh I'm Reed McBride.

I have been a home view resident for 13 years.

And um just want to reiterate a few a few points we've heard tonight.

Uh one, I think the the light pollution comment that was made uh is prescient.

The the trees that used to be along that corridor were you know very tall, maybe 50 to 100 foot pine trees, maybe redwoods, I don't know exactly what species, but they were much much taller than you know the eight trees that were planted there since that will never be nearly what that profile was.

And they provided a lot of privacy and a big buffer.

And so um I think that sort of change should be taken into account in the planning, and and ideally, any kind of foliage plan that goes in takes into account what was what was taken away with kind of no notice and essentially in a matter of hours.

Um I you know, Gina had to step away for this uh session and I understand why, but I would also point out, you know, as you go through this review process, please look at this as if it was your neighborhood, and if as if you were gonna have 155 foot building planted next to your house, it would definitely affect how you look at this process, and uh, and that's how all of us are looking at it.

So just have that empathy for would you want it there?

We're moving the community center potentially closer to Ralston, away from the neighborhood, and that's not nearly the profile of this.

And one view I found interesting for myself in the last couple of months was you know, if you ride Caltrain from San Carlos to Belmont in this area, you get kind of a purview of the whole area, and you can see there's nothing remotely that big anywhere in the area.

Uh particularly not on this side of 101, and it would look honestly ridiculous and be kind of an eye tour for this entire area.

Um, the other thing I'd say is we should stop saying, like, hey, there's no plans to build anything.

It's just an envelope.

I think that's a red herring, and people are gonna of course there's no plans for an envelope that doesn't exist.

Uh once the envelope exists, people will fill it.

So I I want us to stop saying, like, hey, there's no plans.

There's no plans because people will build into the envelope that's allowed on some timeline.

And if you're buying a home you're gonna own for 25, 30 years, potentially or longer.

Uh what the envelope is and who has plans to develop it today or tomorrow, doesn't really matter.

It will get developed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Annie Chung.

Annie, you've been unmuted.

Hi.

Um I just wanted to make a comment about how um in the in the diagrams that you showed us, um, how small.

I just want you to please look at how small those that the home that are on the uh in your diagram are compared to the potential massive height that is being proposed.

Um if you were to like step out of and out of the front door of that home and then look at the view of what you have.

I just would like you to please ask yourself if that's the view that you would want for yourself.

Um as like a uh 12 you know year home view resident.

Um we moved here because we appreciated and we followed that Belmont had a commitment to like natural views and to um you know preserving trees, etc.

That that was really important to us, um, value-wise, and so it's really disheartening to see that the city wouldn't even consider creating um or having a building that high next to um residents.

Um I try to look for like any other example along the peninsula um for of a high-rise commercial building that adjoined a residential neighborhood, and I couldn't find anything.

Um, and I think there's a reason for that.

Even all the six buildings that you have in your plan, the the sample buildings, um, the commercial buildings, none of those about a residential neighborhood.

And I think there's a reason for that because people don't want it.

If you were to proposed anywhere else on the peninsula, there would be feedback saying that they don't want this in their backyard.

So we're we're just a small neighborhood, but I it just really feels like a small, you know, battle, right?

It feels like a big battle with of a small neighborhood against you know a massive monolithic building that is being proposed.

And so I'm not saying that like you shouldn't consider it at all, but I really hope that if you are going to consider a building that is as close to harbor as possible, and I would only be in support of a building that's maybe the same height as the other buildings that are already in the area.

And I also am opposed to um the residential um units because I don't want to see O'Neill Avenue opened up.

Um the traffic here is already bad.

I every day we're flagging down people racing down our streets, and I don't want that to be um a bigger issue once you have you know more cars going through and trying to use our residential streets as shortcuts to the freeway or to Ralston.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jan Hong Jan, you've been on muted.

Or is it yawn?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

I just want to reiterate the the previous speaker.

What uh what Annie just said, and I witnessed this as recent as like this past weekend.

You know, car just speeding down our street because they can't see that the street is not a true street, right?

And our streets have cars on both sides.

So really just you can't have two cars driving at the same time, right?

And there was a kid on the street playing, and I I just happened to be on my lawn and screamed, you know, so-and-so, you know, this car.

The car couldn't hear me because of the window, but the kids heard me and the kids went away.

So this is in bright daylight.

I just want to, you know, keep in mind that at night it's much darker.

Had that kid been alone by himself and the car speed down that way, it would it would someone will get hurt.

So if the street is open up, I don't feel safe to have my kids by themselves out on the street ever again.

So I think the safety is really uh important, and it's not just in the morning, but also like at night, it's getting worse.

That's all I was a lot of people already mentioned, you know, the a lot of points about the residential area and the setback and the height.

And I think I agree with everything um the neighbors are saying.

That's all.

Thank you.

Madam Mayor, that is our final hand and slip.

All right.

Um, thank you to everyone who's commented.

If you would like to make a comment, um, and you are hearing this.

If you um are in the chambers, just come up to the podium.

And if you're online, just last chance to raise your hand, please.

Seeing none, no hands raised.

Uh, okay.

We've got one more in chambers.

Oh, I'm sorry, yeah, if you can come at just for the for folks who can't hear and for our um zoom.

It's great.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Lorena Ventura.

I'm from the um Belmo Mobile Home Park.

Thank you so much for supporting um my community.

Right now, it's like the what the neighbor said has been a lot of traffic.

There's no parking and a lot of safety.

And um, yes, there is a lot of cars speeding.

And plus, the height of the building is completely uh not thoughtful in like this being like it's too much.

So we always um we also my neighbors like my neighborhood is thinking about like how um all those buildings are gonna affect our side.

Well, our place has not been known since uh since well, they will know until 2023 that we have the flood.

And since then, many neighbors they didn't know that we exist in that area.

So, so um, but thank you so much for speaking up for us.

Um, there's no more neighbors from our mobile home park, but we really um disagree with all the changes that are happening, and we really just want like more protection and more like safety um streets and like safety um for our kids.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Yes, uh, go ahead, come on up.

And if you do, it's it's actually a little easier if you fill out a comment slip, but I want to make sure everyone's heard.

So if you Marin still want to speak, go ahead and fill out a slip.

That would be great too.

Hi.

Hi, my name's Alison Lecoco.

I live on Furlong Street for 24 years, and there are so many things I appreciate about the Home View neighborhood, including this sense of community, which you've clearly been able to hear here tonight because we so much feel the same way.

We have Halloween parades, we have Christmas celebrations, the neighborhood comes together in so much.

I noticed when I looked at the plans that were presented tonight.

Um, one of the curious things was uh the freeway entrance and exit from Harbor looked exactly the same in all of those plans as it ever has.

So, regardless of what kind of development goes up, even when you put up the six-story development that fits the neighborhood instead of the forever story development that doesn't, um that improvement on harbor needs to change.

There needs to be a way for the people of Belmont to be able to access 101 without everybody in Belmont relying on Ralston Avenue.

This isn't just a home view issue, this is a Belmont issue.

The development you put in on Harbor, the development on Masonic, the developments that are all along um industrial, all of those affect all of Belmont, not just Home View.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Right.

If there are no other comments, I will go ahead and I'm sorry, Madam Mayor.

I do have a hand.

Oh, okay.

Taylor E.

You've been unmuted.

Hey there.

Um, I'm a resident of Granada Street, um, and we live on the corner of O'Neill and Granada.

Um I just I think I'd I'd like to just kind of share my thoughts a little bit about the the plans.

I think if you look at all the community drawings and all the proposed projects, heights, heights, the setbacks.

Those little houses right there.

I mean, that's literally my house, and I mean you have a uh a small community here uh of people that are just really passionate about our neighborhood, but it's comical when you talk about a 15-foot setback for a hundred and eighty-five foot project, even if it is a stepped um a stepped weird uh system and having or it's just it's just an unreasonable size to put next to a neighborhood this size, you know.

We have families, we have that would look right down into our backyard.

It's just it's just not a feasible um project, and it's just causing tons of anxiety among my neighbors and my friends and family.

So I just wanted to share that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is anyone else for public comment on this item?

Okay.

Uh then we will go ahead.

Right, Madam Clerk, nothing on the line.

Okay, sorry, just wanted to quick confirm.

Then we'll go ahead and uh close the public comment um period and bring it back to the council for deliberation.

Um, so staff is looking for our uh feedback on these two issues.

Uh I know we went through and had questions already.

Um, before we go into uh remarks and um deliberation, I did have a couple of questions that came up that I was wondering if staff could help us address.

Um can you uh remind us um with regard to community benefits?

I know it's community benefits is a term um that is different for every city and and our jurisdiction.

So uh earlier this year I think we approved what we sort of call the menu of community benefits that we give to all developers.

Is that right?

Or can you explain a little bit?

So there's not one necessarily thing that is the community benefit the developers contribute to.

There's a menu of items that they can uh look at, right?

Um yes, and I'll ask our assistant city manager Kathy Kleinbaum to come um to the see, magic.

Good evening.

So we did approve a menu of community benefits that were um prioritized by the city council.

They're very broad buckets.

So even the bucket that includes the community center is broader to say improvements to public parks and recreation facilities.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that the money would be directed only towards the community center within that bucket.

And there's other buckets as well, including infrastructure improvements, traffic calming, child care.

I'm forgetting all the buckets.

No, but it's important to note.

So that and that was some time.

I think uh if you want to look at the bucket and menu of community development uh community benefits, I think uh it all goes to say that it goes developers can choose and and which of these buckets they want to contribute to.

That then, you know, so for example, traffic calming.

A lot of the things we've been hearing that have come up today are part of that benefit package.

Well, no, I mean, typically, and it's a valid concern by the community obviously to kind of uh be assured as to how these things happen.

So city has some overall goals or uh overarching goals for the benefit of the community at large, but as developments happen, we typically have a lot of project impact analysis and a lot of things that that Kathy kind of mentioned child care, retail opportunities, traffic improvements, a lot of things that uh Laura mentioned about the street improvements.

We typically negotiate those as part of the community benefit.

There's actually part of this visioning, which wasn't part of the conversation tonight, is the vision of a uh completed trail system along Belmont Creek, and those kind of things are all kind of adding to a number number of different things that we're looking specifically within the HIA area, and those things will be articulated in a way of the visioning and the goals of the plan and and opportunity for developers as they develop their project proposal.

And again, you gotta look at this as a construction schedule, all this stuff is gonna happen tomorrow.

This is a long-term 40-45-year plan, and develop happens gradually as as the market conditions, as changes that that will come along.

So, this is really a visioning tool, and you're correct that this vision sets what those standards are, and ultimately I think from a community benefits standpoint, we can certainly make statements within the plan as to how we envision those things being done from a citywide perspective as well as the community benefit within the HIA.

Right.

I think my point was more when we talk about community benefits based on heights, or you know, that what we're talking about is not necessarily anything, despite the fact that we had an agenda item earlier that was about the community center, that there is a list of things that we have approved that that are um, but I I understand the and ultimately a lot of those things get negotiated for the community specific based on the project specifics as well.

That's right.

Okay, thank you.

And then the other question I had very quickly is um we are talking about when we're talking about heights, we're talking about I know that we were there was a comment on flexibility.

There's nothing to say that the current warehouse heights that somebody couldn't come in and want to build something that's the current height.

Um we're not I know that all the the pictures that you showed were these modern office buildings, but someone could still come in and want to build a modest uh, you know, one or two-story building, warehouse, you know, type of building that we that we see today in that HIA area.

Is that correct?

Um, they certainly could build a smaller building, not as tall, one or two stories if that met their market need, um, and they thought it was a good use of the property.

I want to be a little bit cautious because we anticipate specifically warehouse uses that are just standalone warehouse not being encouraged.

Okay, that was the wrong.

Right.

But if we thought about other like light industrial uses or advanced manufacturing or something else where two stories made sense, certainly they could build that.

Right.

I just I was thinking of the comment about flexibility in the area, and I think that's what we're talking about.

Here is the gamut of anything from we're talking about the maximums, but there still could be folks who developer comes in and sees a vision for something that is not quite as maybe grand as what you showed.

These are about maximums.

Yes, thank you.

Okay.

Great.

Uh those are the only did anyone else have any questions that came up during the presentation that you want to ask now?

I had one.

Okay.

Um I didn't hear any mention of the opening of the gates.

Is that something?

Because I know we've heard a lot of residents saying that they, you know how along O'Neill it's blocked off.

Is I didn't see I didn't hear anything about that, so I just wanted clarification on it.

So there has not been a proposal to open the gates.

Um we have an obligation to study things as technical professionals.

And so, do you know what I mean?

It's something we talk about as technical professionals, but we have not proposed to open the gates.

But there was also nothing in the staff staff report.

Correct.

So I think that's really important.

Yeah, I mean, you may have tossed that around verbally somewhere else, but there's nothing in the staff report that talks about that.

Right.

So these are the types of things that we like have to talk about as professionals, and we've been thinking about the best way to describe that.

So that's not something that we kind of put on the agenda for your feedback this evening.

That's part of our comprehensive transportation plan that's coming forward in the future.

We're just trying to be mindful of looking ahead and just taking a very broad look of it, and we're very aware um of the citizens' concerns about those gates.

Okay, great, thank you.

So uh for deliberation, I think why don't we do this?

Uh council members, go ahead and uh give staff your feedback on I guess both um uh the streetscape for uh harbor as well as the um uh how did we phrase it?

The uh the the design components um and just we'll just go ahead and do those at the same time.

Who would like to start?

How about council member McKew?

Sure.

Um the one thing I'd like to take a closer look at are the parking protected bike lanes.

Um, I've seen some really good examples of those in some places, and I've seen some really bad examples.

If you want to see a great example of that, go to California Drive in Birmingham, where it parallels the railroad tracks.

It's fairly close to the railroad tracks.

That works great, and I think that's what people visualize when they think about this.

It works really well because there are very few times when vehicles have to turn across the parking lane and the bike lanes.

So if you're in that bike line, you can ride, you know, a long distance without having to stop or do anything.

So that's great.

If you want to see a bad example of that, go to Howard Street in San Francisco, just west of Moscone Convention Center.

I have to go there a lot because I do consulting work there in that and try this sometime.

If you have to drive in San Francisco, which I I hate driving in San Francisco, I dig BART whenever I can, but once in a while I have to drive.

Start at Muscone Convention Center and go west on Howard Street.

It's the big street that separates North and South Convention Center.

On the right, one of the first things you get to is the truck entrance for deliveries to the convention center.

And fairly close to that is the main entrance to the Intercontinental Hotel.

And to get into the Intercontinental Hotel or the truck entrance, you have to turn right across these lane of parked cars and across the bike lane and across the sidewalk.

I do it often enough.

I know I have to be super careful at that point.

I have to basically stop in the middle of that turn because the parked cars block your view of bicycles in the bike lane.

This cannot possibly be safer for bicyclists or motorists or pedestrians or anybody.

So, you know, I think it's great to have bike lanes.

That particular design in this location seems more similar to me to Howard Street than it is to California Drive.

So wherever you have vehicles turning across those lanes to get into building entrances, I just think it in trying to save in trying to um prevent one kind of safety problem, I think it creates a different kind of safety problem.

So I would that's really my only comment on the streetscape, but I really I don't like those things in this kind of location.

And I think we ought to take a second look at it.

Thank you.

Uh any comment uh on development standards or guidance for staff on that.

No, no, I think the diagrams um made a lot of sense.

They were very easy to understand.

The only comment I I would say on the shading diagrams, those are done at the equinox.

If you do those at the solstice, the winter solstice, you get longer shadows.

So that's casting those shadow diagrams at the um the way they're done, that's an average for the year, basically.

Uh, and it's not the most shadowed condition.

That's it.

Okay, thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Sure.

Um development standards.

I love that staff listened to community feedback and brought down height limits and increased setbacks.

I'd like to I'd like to see height limits come down more.

I'm what I'm most concerned in all of it is the light pollution that's gonna happen at night.

I think it will be extensive and the impact a lot on the neighborhood.

I don't know what the right height limit is, but I'd like to see it come down more.

Um with the setbacks, I also appreciate that you increase the setbacks.

And given the trees that are on harbor and the power lines, I get that it can't.

If you make it any larger than 25, then you impact flexibility of what can be built on the site.

So I'm comfortable with that.

I really appreciated the residential option.

I think that's creative.

J I just think it's super super creative.

However, and I'd like to see how we can address the parking the traffic concerns that the that everyone brought up here today.

Um, in terms of the streetscape design, the streetscape, I love the design, I think it's wonderful.

I'm having a hard time envisioning it actually happening because of the multiple owners who own the land.

So I I don't I don't get how it's gonna work out.

But thank you.

Clearly, you've done a lot to listen to the community and to make um some impressive changes, and I'd like to see them keep going.

Uh well, thank you to the community for coming out and for participating with staff over uh the last several months giving your input and um the residential the 90 foot residential, I I'm struggling with that only because there's multiple owners, and let's just say we said yes and gave the developers the option.

What if some chose to build and some chose not to build?

I think it would look odd, but it could just be me.

I you know, I if it's not a continuous stretch of properties and you have a couple townhouses here, and then nothing, and so I'm I I don't know that that's gonna aesthetically look good.

That's those are just my perspectives and my thoughts on that.

So something I think for uh for you to think about.

Um I do like that we have the parking entrance and exit for all the commercial property just to come off of Harbor.

So thank you for thinking of that.

And I know we're not talking about it tonight, but I I really I think we heard loud and clear, and I think we should keep those gates up for the residents of the home being home view neighborhood.

In terms of the setback, I do appreciate that you did listen to the community and brought the brought the setback further and the building heights lower.

I'm not sure what the appropriate height amount is.

I mean, I I definitely have sympathy for the residents.

Um I was just on vacation and I was at the I was I stayed kind of at the top floor and at this place I was at.

It does, it looks down into a neighborhood, and I I it made me take a pause because I thought, you know, how do we how do we balance the need for economic development and really kind of reimagine what this industrial area of Belmont will look like and balance the needs of our community?

So I'm I'm not sure what the appropriate height limit is.

I know we're just looking at what the maximum could be, and it doesn't mean that somebody won't build, but it also could mean that somebody will build.

So I think that you know, I I know you want some direction tonight, and I don't know that I have those answers for you, but I don't know that we've hit the right the magic number yet.

I don't know if that's enough feedback.

I'm sorry I haven't been very definitive in my comments, but it it just, you know, I just have been pausing on you know some of the heights and and I don't know if we set it back further, does that make a difference?

Right?

I'm not sure.

Anything else?

That's it.

Okay.

To the chair.

Yes.

One one thing real quick.

I think the comments about light pollution are really good comments, and um there are there are good ways and they're terrible ways to do like nighttime lighting of parking lots and and buildings.

Um, you know, if anything happens here, one thing that needs to be written into our standards is how to do that, so that it's not, you know, the somebody mentioned the the concept of stadium type lighting, and we nobody wants that.

The residents don't want it, I don't want it.

There are other ways to do that lighting.

For example, if you've got a parking lot and you use short poles, you have to use more of them, and you use a type of fixture called a cutoff fixture, it puts the light down on the pavement, and you don't see the light source.

And you, you know, we can also have regulations about illumination of the building.

So that's you know, that's something that's farther down the road.

That's not really in, you know, the level of what we're doing today, but there are there are ways to do that that are uh there are ways to do it that are horrible, and there are ways to do it that are pretty good, and that definitely needs to, you know, find its way into whatever we wind up doing here.

That's it.

Okay, thank you.

Um, all right.

So my comments are as follows.

I I also want to thank the community for coming out, um, the uh residents as well as the landowners who own uh what's now commercial areas.

Um I appreciate uh everyone who's come out that the dedication and passion that you have for your community is why Belmont's such a great community, and um I know as we've had we have also a former um planning commissioner who's in the room as well, and I know that um most everyone in Belmont, um most neighborhood neighbors are very passionate.

So when they come out to speak, um it's very important that we hear their voice.

And that's why that we asked staff uh as the council gave them direction to make sure that uh when we do things like this and we're planning for the future, even though it's hard sometimes to see way down the road because none of this is probably going to be built immediately.

It's important to get uh community feedback, and I do appreciate staff has taken our direction and run with it, and I appreciate all of the uh outreach you've done as well as summarizing in in detail some of the comments as well.

So it's really important that we hear from the community, and I appreciate that, and I appreciate the next steps that you'll be doing more casual as you can see.

Some folks are a little bit um it can be uh overwhelming to stand in front and do a public comment.

So I appreciate a staff and uh fully support the individual office hours, so to speak, that you're gonna plan to do.

Um I I think it's important that we look at lowering the heights uh as it adjacent to the the residences.

I know that as it was said, what we're trying to do right now in these long-range plans is figure out in the future when it may be a different council, a different city, everything's different, you know, we're in flying cars, right?

Whatever it happens to be, we're trying to figure out what is the good balance between setting our study up for success, right?

We don't want a council in the in the 10 or 15 years ago, what were they thinking?

Now we're hamstrung and we we don't have the resources we need to provide the services to our city at the same time.

We have neighborhoods.

These are all our neighborhoods in Belmont, and then we care about all of them.

So if we can look at lowering the height, I don't know.

You know, is 75 the sweet spot, is a hundred the sweet spot.

What you know, the setbacks, everything else, I think those are all um things that we can still consider, but at least adjacent to the residences.

I think um requiring lower, I think at this point is the right thing to do, and hoping that again, just in our in our role as is trying to set the city straight for the future, too.

Hoping that where we can go higher will allow for you know some of the uses that require higher.

So if staff could take lowering that, and I know you already did, and I appreciate it.

Sounds like the community does too.

They appreciate that that you heard them, but maybe even lowering it more.

Um I too was a little concerned about the comments of the gates, so I'm glad that it's not anywhere in our that I I didn't uh, or not the the gates, but the the barriers.

I think we uh I think that's part of the community at this point.

I don't see any reason to uh change that.

And um I think you know, I think that was it.

I the I guess this is also a question.

It is a good point about um lights in office buildings being on.

Is that something that uh I guess when we do uh is that something we can put into, okay.

So it sounds like we're getting a nonverbal.

Yeah, I think these are all good feedback.

So we're gonna take that back and look at the parameters around lighting standards.

I mean, there's definitely to uh council member McCune's point too.

I think we want to have a presence on the harbor, which is more of the commercial kind of lively active piece of it.

There are things that we can do on the backside of these properties and how they can be managed.

So that those are some of the feedback we'll take as far as standards and developing guidelines as to some of the parameters on how they they would operate.

Great.

Okay, perfect.

I appreciate that.

That's going to be something we'll continue to look into.

Uh with regard to the streetscape on Harbor, I I really appreciate you explaining it all and doing the cross section and everything else.

Um I think it needs a it I agree that it's a little, I'm not sure about the the driveway and the exits on harbor, and and I I don't know that we'll have um I don't have any other options.

It just to me that seems like it might be uh it might cause some potential issues.

So maybe just looking into that, but again, I you know, I I don't know, I don't have any solutions.

Um I do think what will help is the parking that will be off street that will have to be for if it's going to be a larger office building or laboratory building or something will have to be provided.

Um otherwise I think I think it's great, and I do think um the median and the you know trees and things just for aesthetics, I think it makes it nicer and um kind of a more neighborhood feel.

It's very commercial light industrial now, and we're used to that, but I think if we're looking at this for long-range plan, it would be nicer to have that um, you know, as it's as it's portrayed right now.

I would I support that.

So um anything else that I missed that we need to fill in.

I think I might have the only thing that I feel like we got some mixed feedback on, maybe if people want to say a little bit more, is about the residential um buffer transition.

Oh yes, thank you.

Do you want us to continue to study that or do you have more thoughts?

I I thought I heard uh that we don't.

I think for the first of all, I do think it was a great out-of-the-box um idea.

Um, and I do think the townhouses along Firehouse Square and they're on that block are lovely and and perfect.

I think the comments, and I appreciate you just putting in the staff report for full transparency, that we don't know what the state will do and that might potentially cause issues.

And so um from what we've heard at least from the neighbors who spoke today, didn't sound like that was a solution that um it was a little too risky, and I agree with that.

But I like those type of out of the box solutions, so I don't want that to discourage staff from from continuing to think about that.

I just think that if we lowered the height dramatically, the height maximum for buildings in that area, that probably will uh solve that issue, and then we don't we don't need to have that 90 foot buffer, which could be a pitfall.

Uh and then can we just get head nods or did I think everyone sort of touched on that they didn't want the 90-foot buffer for the town homes, right?

I did not, yeah.

I thought it was a noble effort, but um based on the comments, I'd say yeah, take it out.

Yeah, and yeah, go ahead, please.

I I actually like the idea until you said, how is this gonna happen with multiple owners?

The chances of it going the whole way are gonna be small, I think, and then it's gonna look weird, right?

Yeah.

But I love the creativity of it.

Yeah, yeah.

Very good.

Okay.

So I think I think that's it.

Just uh please, you know, let us know.

I know uh it's actually sometimes easier if uh council doesn't attend some of the uh, you know, we'll have staff meet with the one-on-ones.

Our doors are always open.

If folks want to talk to us directly uh and staff, hopefully you've got the feedback that you and our great subconsultant consultants and subconsultants need uh to further things.

So yes, sounds good.

Thank you very much.

All right, thank you.

All right.

That's leads us to item 11.

Brief verbal reports from members and staff.

Verbal report from council members on IGR and subcommittee assignments is 11A.

Sta uh council, any any uh questions?

Just briefly, I attended the SFO round table and summer travel was up of like 97% to pre-COVID level.

So there you go.

All right.

Nothing.

I did have a night uh library JPA meeting um where we uh uh recognize some of our great staff.

Um, but I don't think I think otherwise was pretty much business as usual.

So uh nothing on that end.

Uh so we'll move to 11B, which is uh verbal reports from our verbal report, my city manager.

Business as usual, Madam Mayor.

I think uh you can I indicate this these are the festive minds, so we're gonna have a number of great events coming uh to the city and city hall and city facilities.

So if you're interested in a lot of the things that you mentioned as far as the activities that are plan check or calendar and uh welcome back.

Uh we're definitely gonna have a lot of good events going on over the next uh couple of months.

Great, thank you.

Oh, um, oh, by the way.

A couple of things.

We're still taking application in for the centennial art celebr uh celebration uh part, as well as the poet laureate is gonna open up here shortly.

So we'll let we're kind of look for that later in the week.

Uh we're gonna be putting up a call for uh the uh poet laureate.

And we appreciate kind of Monica's term, but her term's coming to an end, so we're looking at uh the opportunity for other folks in the community that might be interested there to apply.

Great.

Uh and then going back to 11a, uh we have council member um Ladamerlow back with us.

Did you have anything any up IGR updates?

Oh yeah, we had um commute.org and um we finalized our employee compensation, we improved our benefits.

Um we gave reports on our progress uh for the strategic planning process that's happening this year, um, and we're helping manage the program of bike education from the Silicon Valley Bike Coalition.

So they're looking for some locations to hold their courses in Belmont.

So if anybody has an idea, tell me.

All right, thank you.

Uh nothing for item twelve, matters of interest of clarification.

Uh we are going to go back into closed session and um mr.

City attorney, remind me, do we have to uh what can you just do the report out from closed session next time?

Okay.

So we will adjourn this meeting to closed session.

Uh, that's correct.

Well, we can adjourn to closed session.

Uh we'll do a report out when we get done, and then we can do it again at the next meeting, just so that everybody uh who wants to hear it will have an opportunity.

But we are we coming back to chambers to do it, is what I'm saying tonight.

I don't think it's necessary.

Okay, great.

Then we'll go to closed session.

Thank you.