Joining us in person, please note that due to our hybrid environment, audio and video

presentations can no longer be shared from the lectern. Request to show an audio or video

presentation during a meeting should be directed to EPC at mountainview.gov by 4 30 p.m. on the

meeting date. Additionally, due to our hybrid environment, we will no longer have speakers

line up to speak on an item. Anyone wishing to address the EPC in person must complete a yellow

speaker card. Please indicate the name you would like to be called by when it's your turn to speak

and the item number on which you wish to speak.

Please complete one yellow speaker card for each item on which you wish to speak

and turn them in to the EPC clerk as soon as possible,

but no later than the call for public comment on the item you are speaking on.

Instructions for addressing the commission virtually may be found on the post-it agenda.

Before we start today's meeting, I'd like to welcome our new commissioner.

I'm going to try my best to say your last name here, Subramaniam, to the Planning Commission.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Now we'll ask the APC clerk to proceed with roll call.

Okay, we'll do a manual roll call.

Commissioner Zubermanian?

Present.

Commissioner Pham?

Here.

Vice Chair Gutierrez, sorry, Nunes, my mistake.

Here.

Chair Gutierrez?

Here.

Commissioner Donahue?

Here.

Commissioner Dempsey?

Here.

Commissioner Cranston?

Here.

All commissioners are present.

Great.

Thank you, Clerk.

Seeing that we don't have any meeting minutes to approve, we'll skip over section 3 and

we'll go to section 4, oral communications.

This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the EPC in any manner,

not on the agenda.

Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic for up to three minutes during this section.

State law prohibits the commission from acting on non-agenda items.

If anyone in attendance would like to provide comments on non-agenda items, please fill

out a yellow speaker card and provide it to the APC clerk. If anyone on Zoom would like to provide

a comment on non-agenda items please click the raise hand button in Zoom or press star 9 on your

phone. Phone users can mute and unmute themselves with star 6. Do we have anyone? No speakers at

this time. Great okay moving on to new business 5.1 R3 zoning district update development standards

and strategies recommendation.

We will take this item through a special deliberation process

due to commissioning conflicts of interest.

First we will have a staff presentation,

then public comment.

At the closure of public comment,

the commission will have an opportunity

to ask general questions,

then discuss individual topics,

including any questions about those topics.

Let's begin with a staff presentation

from planning manager Eric Anderson.

Okay, looking good.

Thank you so much, Commission, Chair Gutierrez.

This item is regarding the zoning district update, the R3 zoning district update.

My name is Eric Anderson.

I'm the planning manager, and I'm joined by the Assistant Community Development Director,

Amber Blizinski, Community Development Director, Christian Murdoch.

This project started back in 2020.

Since then, it's gone through several rounds of outreach and study sessions.

In addition, the project has been put on hold several times to address other city priorities,

such as the displacement response strategy and the housing element.

Most recently, council provided direction on the project's densities in March and June

of last year.

This slide provides an overview of the topics we're discussing tonight.

General plan designations, draft R3 standards, retail and live work approach, parking, incentives

for lot consolidation, non-conforming ordinance approach, and the inclusion of R4 into the

project.

The first topic is regarding the general plan designations.

The general plan must be updated to accommodate the new densities of the R3 zone.

These changes include updating designation names, removing the previous ranges of maximum

densities, and adding allowances for commercial uses where they would be allowed in the R3D

zoning district.

This slide shows staff's recommended general plan designations.

The next topic is the draft R3 standards, which were generated based on outreach, council

goals, housing element direction, and the need for more clarity and objectivity in standards

and design outcomes. Attachment four to the report, the design handbook, was prepared to

communicate and confirm the general approach to the development standards. This document provides

a clear visual of the outcomes of the standards are intended to achieve. It should be noted that

the handbook illustrates the standards as written and not necessarily the outcome of any project

that may use state density bonus or other statute that supersedes the city's development standards.

This slide shows the staff recommended major development

standards, illustrating how they would change

the existing standards.

These standards are updated to improve the feasibility

of development, especially by providing the ability

to build more habitable floor area on a given area of land.

For example, heights in FARs would be increased

and setbacks in open area would be decreased.

These standards would ensure that development

is able to physically accommodate the number of units

that they are allowed.

Note that R3A is an update to the R2 zoning district,

so may not be more permissive than current R3 zone.

Staff recommends adopting minimum density standards

to help ensure that projects build close

to the number of units that they are allowed

and do not simply build large low density units.

These recommended standards are based

on the intended character of the districts.

The percent for the R3D zone is 50%

instead of the 66% for other zones.

This would still tend to generate stacked units

while allowing for larger units

within the construction type and building envelope

studied in the feasibility analysis.

In addition, various new standards are recommended.

These standards implement various council goals, outreach, and other issues that frequently

arise in the development review process.

The habitable ground floor space standard requires buildings to have units, lobbies,

or other habitable space facing the street.

Parking placement standards limit the location of parking to the rear of the lot.

Building footprint standards set the maximum depth and width of buildings.

New standards create on-site circulation and open area requirements.

and other standards address various aesthetic and other impact issues.

The standards also include an exception section,

which allows developments to reduce standards based on existing conditions,

such as the presence of heritage trees.

In addition to typical development standards that control the building envelope,

the project team has developed design standards that control the shape and variation of building facades.

These standards regulate entry types, bay composition, which is the pattern of windows

on a facade, base, middle, and top design, and massing features like tower elements and

recesses.

The next major topic is regarding the approach to including ground floor commercial and live

work units in the R3 zoning district.

Live work is a type of unit that fills a gap between home occupations and dedicated commercial

tenant spaces.

Typically, they are dwelling units that also contain a flexible area that can be used for various commercial activities, storefront, and the opportunity for signage.

These factors make them more visible than home occupations.

Staff recommends allowing live work throughout the R3, but limiting dedicated commercial spaces to the R3D zone.

This will support more commercial viability in the R3D zone by locating it where the highest densities are allowed.

It also helps to reduce the impact of various incompatibilities with commercial uses,

such as trash and trips and parking to areas where higher density housing is more consistent with those factors.

In addition, the R3 standards address various nuisance issues and consider best practices for the dimensions to accommodate successful commercial uses.

One development standard with a major effect on development feasibility is parking.

Staff recommends updating the multifamily minimum parking standards to address feasibility,

consistency with the state density bonus law, which frequently supersedes the city standards,

and typical developer provision of parking. If directed by city council, these standards would

not be limited to the R3 zoning district. They would be updated for multifamily district in

all standard zoning districts or precise plans that utilize the city code. The standards would

only apply to multifamily and not to row houses, single family, or other uses, or precise plans

with their own parking standards.

The next topic is regarding a Council goal for this project, to create an incentive for

the consolidation of small lots.

The R3D sub-district is where lot consolidation is most critical.

The higher densities in R3D are most feasibly developed on larger sites.

Staff recommends focusing on parcels less than 20,000 square feet in the R3D sub-district

and only allowing them to reach their maximum density if they combine with an adjacent site.

This incentive has not yet been drafted, and if Council agrees with this approach, will

be integrated into the R3 standards.

The housing element requires the City to update its non-conforming standards to allow the

redevelopment of sites with non-conforming density.

In addition, the City's non-conforming ordinance is poorly organized and difficult to understand

and can be updated for consistency with several State laws.

This update will focus on existing residential uses, and staff recommends it to cover the

topics shown on the slide here.

These recommendations increase the permissiveness of our nonconforming code in several ways

beyond the housing element.

The last topic is regarding the inclusion of the R4 zone.

If the R3 zone is adopted with the current draft densities, it will include densities

both below and above the allowed densities in the R4 zone.

Therefore staff recommends integrating the R4 Zone into the R3 project.

An upcoming City Council meeting will review the EPC recommendations on these topics and

provide direction to staff to finalize the project.

In addition, we will continue to develop other code sections for the R3 Zone, state laws,

and R2 amendments for the housing element.

In addition, a draft EIR will be available for public review shortly.

And finally, here's the summary of the staff recommendation.

And this concludes our presentation, and we're happy to answer any questions you might have.

Also joining us tonight are representatives from our consultant team, Opticos and Lisa

Wise Consulting.

We have Cecilia Kim from Opticos and David Bergman from Lisa Wise Consulting.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you for the presentation.

Let's move forward with public comment.

If anyone in attendance would like to provide comments on this item, please fill out a yellow

speaker card and provide it to the EPC clerk.

If anyone on Zoom would like to provide comment on this item, please click the raise hand

button in Zoom or press star 9 on your phone.

Phone users commute and unmute themselves with star 6.

There are a few speakers online.

First speaker, James Kuzma.

You should be able to talk now.

James Kuzma, Good evening.

My name is James Kuzma.

I am speaking partially to the UMB letter partially just for myself.

I want to say do like a lot of aspects of the R3 updates.

Personally, I live in an apartment complex that was built that over 60 years ago is not

earthquake safe and i would love if it were feasible for it to be redeveloped as more dense

uh complex while still providing display spend protections for the tenants um with that said

uh there's a lot of there's been a lot of good updates to standards here there are still some

updates some of the standards that should be adjusted to make more things feasible um and more

housing get built in the city uh i wanted to call it a couple ones first off it seems weird that we

we are only going to allow commercial in the R3D zone.

Yes, it's unlikely to be viable on many of the other sites.

That doesn't mean we need to forbid it.

Along a similar note,

it seems silly to continue requiring

having minimum parking standards.

Just like, yes, most places will still build

off-street parking because they will consider it necessary

for the viability of the project.

That doesn't mean we need to require it.

Also, a lot of the R3D zones are in regions

that have at this point had minimum parking standards

barred by the state anyways.

The mass breakings, the breaking up

of the massing standards in the proposed design standards

seem a bit arbitrary.

They presumably are theorized

to improve the aesthetics of the buildings,

but personally, I haven't seen that produce any good

and just makes the building significantly more expensive.

The proposed setbacks, especially the front setbacks

seem arbitrarily high and needlessly reduce the footprint of the site while making it

less walkable because the retail sites in particular will have to be farther back from

the street. That includes setbacks from any pedestrian or bicycle easements to the building

footprint, which is a separate section of the design standards. It is good that the

proposed standards include provisions to ensure that we improve bicycle and pedestrian circulation

when projects on certain lots are built.

That's just a good thing.

I don't have additional stuff there.

I also like the fact that we have standards

around maximum number of driveways

corresponding to the amount of street frontage

and that the driveways aren't encouraged

to be on off streets.

Those are both good things.

And I think there are a few other things going on,

but those are mostly called out in the letter.

And the other comment I would provide is,

more broadly, I would love if we were seeing

more density in all the R3 zones.

I think it's silly that we assume that there can't be toll buildings next to R1 zones,

but that is not as much in scope for this meeting, so I'll only decide quite as much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Leslie Friedman, followed by Isaac S.

Leslie, you should be able to speak now.

Thank you.

Hello.

My name is Leslie Friedman.

I am a longtime resident of Mountain View, more than 20 years.

Well, I was about five years old, if you would imagine.

I am a member of the Livable Mountain View organization and also Green Spaces Mountain View.

I'm just speaking today to say that I support the staff recommendation for these issues.

I think it is a rational usage and I thank you very much.

So our next speaker is Isaac.

Isak, you'll be able to speak now.

Isak, you'll be able to speak now.

Okay. This should be working out. Hello. Yes. I am for the most part very happy with the

recommendation, the proposal, I want to share just a couple of things. My, I guess, concern is that

some of these standards, there's a lot of them. This is about, by word count, six times as long

as the existing R3. And so my worry is that some of these standards may be accidentally a little

more restrictive and therefore prevent otherwise good projects.

The examples I'm going to give where I live is slated to become R3D.

I like the apartments that I live in, but they would be noncompliant under the R3D standard

because of the space between the buildings on site is less than the 40 foot that is for

R3D in the standard.

But I like how they're set out.

it makes a nice courtyard field, bunch of small buildings around a large courtyard.

So I think, you know, that wouldn't, where I live wouldn't be able to be built under the

new standards, but I think it's a really nice place to live. And across the street is another

parcel that's going to be slated R3B. It is also courtyard apartments, but unlike these ones,

it's a single building with a courtyard in the middle. And under R3B would also be non-compliant

because of the footprint, width and height, depth restrictions, new restrictions.

I guess I love the spirit. I think a lot of rules, you have to be careful and less is usually more.

so i guess be very thoughtful about uh what the new restrictions are and what potential

things might be restricted by these restrictions that we are not necessarily thinking about yeah

thanks okay so our next speaker is robert cox

Robert can you hear us?

Yes can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi there I'm Robert Cox I'm a member of the steering committee of Liverpool Mountain View

and I wanted to say that I largely support the staff recommendation

in particular I can see that there is a lot of work that has gone into this

and a lot of considerations have been

voiced out in the staff report and detailed in a way to try to navigate this part of the

R3 issue well. I want to say in particular the issue on the transitions is an important

one to us and we thank you for recognizing the idea that we need transitional areas in

the R3 up zone areas that are going to be adjacent to single family homes.

I want to underline that I do believe that there still needs to be some parking standards

because no parking standard often leads a developer to just push the need for parking

out onto the streets and make it a less livable place for everybody who is adjacent to new

developments. And I'm hoping in this discussion that somebody on the commission will raise the

issue and talk about, you know, the minimum densities. I understand that it would be useful

if it could encourage the building of, you know, stacked flats as opposed to townhomes.

My concern is whether or not it would just make all redevelopment infeasible. And so I would like

to hear some more from the staff and the commission on what was used to set those minimum standards

where they are. So other than that, I'm hoping for not major deviations from what's being

proposed. So thank you for letting me speak my mind.

Our next speaker is Hala.

Yes, can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Good evening, EPC commissioners and city staff.

My name is Hala Alshawani.

I'm a longtime resident of Mountain View and a member of Livable Mountain View Group.

I wanted to thank and commend the staff for their detailed report on updating R3 zoning code.

The staff has used city council goals that were based on community input that has gone on for the last few years since 2020 in meetings.

And those goals were first is pedestrian and friendly neighborhoods.

And the second was respectable transitions.

And the third was increased in tree canopy and landscaping.

I thank the staff for following these goals and proposing the updates for the standards for R3.

They have observed the minimum setbacks, minimum distance between structures, FAR standards,

allowing commercial with retail was really important input from the community on five-plus-story buildings.

So it's great to see that in there. I also really liked some of the new development standards that were proposed in the staff report. The habitable space in the frontage area of these buildings, parking placement appropriately so that it would reduce parking on the streets, having footprints for each building so that there are opportunities for landscaping and viewing.

requiring large sites to provide publicly accessed spaces.

That's a great one.

I hope it gets implemented.

There are other guidelines for vehicle access,

rooftop decks, utilities, public improvements.

All of these are really essential to have livable

and good quality of life for the residents of Mountain View.

I also like the point where the staff gave exceptions

to the applicants, to the developers,

if their request is reasonable

to reduce some of these requirements.

So it's great to see that flexibility as well.

So I really thank the staff again,

and I hope the EPC members will accept the staff recommendations.

Thank you very much.

the next speaker is daniel and after daniel it's going to be alex brown

daniel you can speak now hi can you hear me yes okay uh so this is a very complicated uh document

so apologies if it if my comment just sounds like a bunch of random thoughts

But there are a lot of, I think, technical things that I want to comment on here.

So here I will go.

I think overall, you know, the vibes of this document are kind of tremendous.

You know, you've got support for more growth, more building in our community, support for pedestrianization and building types that support a more pedestrian-oriented neighborhood and streetscape.

That's all great.

And there's a lot of very specific standards that help realize that in the standards.

So appreciation for all of that from me.

So that's one thing overall.

Another thought I have here is in the memo, it calls out two places where the city should ask for pedestrian cut throughs and right of ways where maybe, you know, we should have pathways for people that go through our three zones.

And I think it's a very good idea.

These two places are a very good idea.

I think we should do this in a more systematic process, though, throughout the city, because I, off the top of my head, can think of many more places that could benefit from pedestrian cut-throughs, such as providing access to Stevens Creek Trail, building on SFPUC right-of-way,

building so that we can extend the Permanente Creek Trail, providing access to some of our schools.

So I think a more rigorous process involving active transportation staff as well as, you know, the cycling community would be really appreciated in terms of figuring out where all of the opportunities for that are.

Okay, so a third thought I have.

I'm not sure really, you know, if you Google break up the massing, there's actually a lot of people who don't really think that breaking up the massing works in terms of making like more aesthetically pleasing buildings, which I think is the goal.

Thank you for sharing your opinion.

You've reached a time limit, unfortunately, so whatever extra comments you may have, please

feel free by all means to send us an email and we will do our best to read that email

to hear these suggested comments that you have as well.

Sorry about that.

Clerk, how many more speakers do we have in total?

We have four.

Okay.

It's good to know ahead of time so that we can try and regulate the time for everyone.

In that case, I would have been able to limit it to two as opposed to three minutes just

for reference sake.

Thank you.

Alex Brown?

Hi friends.

And also welcome Shweta.

I would agree with commenters who are asking for universal ground floor retail.

I would also agree that we should be simplifying the standards and rules instead of applying

overlapping but semi-orthogonal standards like dwelling units per acre, FAR, height limits,

and form-based requirements like massing breaks.

I think that a cleaner code would help everyone involved

in both the creation and evaluation

of development proposals.

Finally, as I've said very much every time

this has come to committees, council, and community groups,

I think we should have D everywhere, all D, all day,

incorporating R4 as R3D.

More D, more better, let's do it.

I look forward to continuing to comment on this project

through the rest of the decade.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Matthew Martin

and then followed by Manuel Salazar.

Matthew, you can speak now.

Hey, can you hear me?

Yes.

Great.

So a couple things.

One, I'm kind of concerned about

the lot consolidation incentive.

So I understand that higher density works better

with a larger lot.

But I think that that fact alone can act as enough

of an incentive.

And if a developer is still not able to consolidate

with a neighboring lot for whatever reason,

it would be better not to limit their density.

Because we could end up with,

And they're basically, the R3D turns into an R3C if they're not able to consolidate that lot.

And so we could end up with trying to incentivize more density, and we actually end up with less density because of that.

And then the other thing, I'm really glad that this has some provisions for pedestrian cut-throughs.

I actually live closer to the San Antonio Cal train station, the Mountain View Cal train station, but it's quite actually it's actually quite difficult for me to walk to the San Antonio Cal train station.

So that's a really good thing.

I'm just kind of concerned with the setbacks.

Having a 15 foot setback seems kind of large.

And I believe that that would also apply to any pedestrian cut throughs.

So it seems more appropriate to have something more like a five-foot setback,

especially if you've got a pedestrian walkway maybe between some of your buildings.

Having to have 15 feet separation from that to your building seems a bit excessive.

But that's all. Thank you.

Manuel Salazar, you're next.

hi uh good evening commissioners my name is manard salasad and i'm going to be speaking

tonight on behalf of sb at home we are a non-profit housing policy organization that works all around

santa clara county so uh first off i really wanted to thank city staff and council and

honestly a lot of the community members who have engaged in this process it's been very long it's

taken multiple years um but you know organizations like you know mountain uembe have really helped

and I think helped to bring forward a really wonderful policy.

We're really happy to see that the current R3 proposal

kind of reflects a lot of what we've been advocating for.

It expands housing capacity in the right places,

near transit and jobs.

It introduces more flexible modern zoning approach

that really supports infill development.

And it moves forward, you know,

clear, more objective standards,

which helps reduce delays

and make things honestly more predictable for everyone.

You know, less issues on staff,

less issues on the developers etc notably what i really like about this is also the fact that

they paired it with some really strong center protections so we're not just you know building

more homes uh we're doing in a way that minimizes displacement and that's a really big deal

that said we do have kind of a couple concerns mount vvnb has raised some wonderful points so

i'd really recommend and highlight some of the things that they've they've discussed uh one

thing we have some concern around and it doesn't have to be addressed here it could be addressed

maybe at council at a later date but um we would like to see some alignment with some of the recent

state um policies like sp79 and sp684 uh just because of the fact that it's better to be

proactive working on these things now rather than having to have staff revise and review things

later on is just gonna you know free up a lot of staff time and we think it's just general best

practice so um thank you again for your time and due diligence on this item and we hope that it

it will continue to move forward.

Thank you.

So David, would you like to speak in person?

Okay.

We have one in-person speaker, David Watson.

Hi, I'm David Watson.

I'm the one who sent the letter from Mountain View Yimby

and I don't know, it's kind of dense.

I was gonna go over some highlights from it here.

We were right off the top,

the one of the goals of the R3 update

is to move towards a more form-based code.

And along those lines,

it seemed like we probably shouldn't have density limits.

The point of a form-based code is to have the code

be based on the shape, the form of the building.

And so we have other precise,

We have precise plans that do not use a unit per acre limit.

And it seems like we should be able to do that

with R3 as well.

We would recommend increasing the FAR in R3-B.

We'd like to recommend replacing

the lot consolidation incentive with something else,

because right now it is actually more of a stick

than a carat and it, for smaller lots

that are going to probably be the hardest to develop

with R3, it applies a really a disincentive.

And it seems that we should at least not do that,

if not help them develop.

We also, I think one of the other commenters mentioned it,

but we recommend reducing the front setbacks.

I think 15 feet is more the kind of thing you expect

for a single family home with a lawn in front of it,

especially with the requests for commercial

and the fact that we're aiming to not have the parking

be in front of the building, it's wasted space.

If you read about, you know, good urban design

for walkability, they do not recommend having a large space

between the sidewalk and the building itself.

And I remind you that the sidewalk

is not part of the setback.

So if we went to a zero setback,

there would still be a sidewalk and that's a separate item.

Okay, we also would suggest replacing the massing breaks

with better design tools

or offering other design tools as an alternative.

Massing breaks are part of the reason

why buildings look a way that people find unattractive

in modern design.

And there are other options that are also less expensive.

So I would suggest looking into,

I'm not sure I gave it here,

but Berkeley has some of its codes offer massing break

alternatives that are based on ornamentation

that I'd suggest you consider.

We recommend allowing retail everywhere.

And we'd also recommend allowing height exceptions

as another thing, as an option for developers who,

for instance, are preserving heritage trees,

so things like that, and exceptions for community benefits.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No more speakers?

Great.

Let's move on to EPC general questions.

Who would like to start?

Thank you for stepping up.

So, a few different things.

The, it wasn't entirely clear to me as I read through the design standards and how shared

passages between buildings would be handled.

It sounded to me, it looked to me like it would be, we had the seven foot setback from

the side of the property but was kind of encouraging those to be with the

property next door but it still allowed a fence to be put up in between the

properties so you end up with two seven-foot things on the side that can't

be connected to make a single passage is that can that be looked at is that am I

misreading that because in the examples of cut-throughs it tended to be more

along the edge of a property rather than through the middle of a property and I

just was 15 feet or 14 feet seven and seven works but two seven foot with a

fence in between doesn't work so was that considered and how would you address

that do you have a draft code section or paragraph that you're referencing there

for the fence. I think the intent is that if a property redevelops and is required to have one of

these ped cut-throughs along its property line, and what we found in our experience is that developers

are much more willing to build these ped cut-throughs on the edges of their properties than right through

the middle of their properties, and that's why they're shown on the edges of properties

in the draft standards.

And we've actually implemented this a number of times with approved projects in the East

Wiseman Precise Plan, although none, obviously, as you know, have been built yet in the East

Wiseman Precise Plan.

But the vision here is whichever property on either side of this property line builds

First, they would need to provide an easement and a path.

The path is along the property line.

The easement goes in a little bit from the path.

That ensures that there is a small setback between the path and the building.

It also allows for some landscaping, including tree canopy and potentially amenities in that space.

One of the provisions of the easement is to allow for access not just from the public,

like the adjacent public right-of-way, but allow for access from the adjacent property.

So there could theoretically be a fence in the short term before that adjacent property redevelops

that would follow along the property line, right along the kind of half-built path.

But once that other property redevelops, they would need to offer access to the adjacent property as well.

So that would essentially remove that fence, and you'd have a double width size path that goes up the property line.

That's good. I guess as I read it, that was not clear to me.

The staff report and the documents mention only two of the cut-throughs.

in all the meetings with the community,

getting more of these cut-throughs through the,

particularly large blocks,

was something that came up over and over?

Are the two that are listed simply examples,

or are they the only two that would be required?

So there are two different standards.

One is a standard that applies broadly across all sites

over, I think, five acres.

So there are properties over five acres all over the city.

and so those would be required to go through a planning process to break up those sites

with new potentially streets but also just public paths through the site and there are standards for

determining where those paths would be objective standards determining maximum block size and

and you know they'd have to design around those standards there are two cases where the

the lots are smaller than five acres, but they are in R3D areas. So there's kind of an opportunity

for redevelopment that's happening there and increased demand for those pedestrian areas

where staff felt there's kind of a higher level value to getting those ped cut throughs.

And that's connecting these large block areas to Ringsdorf Park, where you have these super huge

long blocks, almost a quarter mile long, and you have to go around the block in order to get to

Regsdorf Park from Latham Street or California Street. And then the other is a case where you

have a very large block in order to get access to the San Antonio Caltrain Station from what is

actually very close to the Caltrain Station. You just have to walk a very long way around the block

to get there. There may be other opportunities, and we did receive a public comment highlighting

other opportunities. Staff in this process focused on the R3D areas for reasons that I mentioned,

higher demand, more likelihood of redevelopment. But if there are other areas that council and

EPC want us to study, we can do so. It's not limited to those two.

At this point, in the East Westman Precise Plan, we actually had where we'd like these connections

to go have you looked at or considered that in more broadly in the r3d areas

because what you could end up with is large block that faces say California in

a different large box that faces Latham and they don't align which would be which

would be a missed opportunity so is it gonna just be is there if there's been

any consideration of a broader through plan or is it just gonna be have right

is assumption it's gonna be case by case.

So for the large sites, it's gonna be case by case.

For the two that are identified and potentially more,

if directed by council, it would be,

we will draw the lines in the code

and you will be required to provide those paths in the code.

It is significantly harder

in a citywide standard zoning district

to do the circulation planning that we did

for the North Bayshore precise plan

and the East Wisdom precise plan.

Okay, next question.

One of the letters we received referenced,

it was SB, I don't remember, it was HR 684, SB 684.

It wasn't something that I was familiar with,

but how would that be accommodated

within it seemed like something that would be a good thing, potentially, but it wasn't,

I've never heard of it.

And have you looked at that?

Yeah, we are, we've looked a lot into, it's SB 684, it's been updated by SB 1123.

It's called the Starter Home Revitalization Act or something like that.

And the purpose is to, I think of it as, you may remember SB 9 from a few years ago,

which basically allowed increased densities and a lack of discretion, ministerial approval,

for cities to improve those increased densities across all single-family zones up to four units.

This does very much the same thing in multifamily zones up to 10 units,

and it's specifically for ownership units.

So it sets specific standards that the city cannot enforce more than.

So it sets specific standards for setbacks, densities, minimum densities, and a number of other standards.

It also says that the city really can't enforce standards that could preclude the development at the densities that are allowed in the statute.

So our zoning code has one set of standards for R1 and another set of policies and standards that implement SB9.

Likewise, we can do the same thing in R3, where we have a set of standards that apply across R3.

And then we are also working on a specific section of the code that specifically implements SB 684 and SB 1123 if somebody is interested in developing one of these projects that the statute intends.

So that would come to us at a future date?

Yes, the statute is very prescriptive, so there's not a lot of discretion in what we can include in that statute.

So we really wanted to prioritize with this meeting some of the things that there's discretion and discussion opportunity around,

and we'll bring back with the final adoption hearing those things that the state is just telling us we have to do.

Next question.

The comment, there was a comment, I think it was on page 21 of the staff report about

the, how these rules would be applied for properties in non-compliance.

And specifically talked about townhomes.

And what I, what I was left with was a question.

So the, one of the objectives when we first started talking about R3 was to deal with

the unintended consequence of the rent control ordinance that fortunately SB 3330 started

to take care of. So we didn't just see that going forward. But it was never my expectation

that we would do anything. And the goal here in my mind has always been to expand opportunities,

not to limit opportunities. And I came away wondering if the minimum standards and this

requirement that if they have to hit that would basically mean that townhomes and row

homes would have actually no longer be an option in the city.

Do we effectively cut off townhomes?

I don't think that was ever my expectation, but as I looked at the minimum standards,

I was like, okay, can you actually, if you're a market rate townhome or row home or apartment,

you still develop the way it was before or not and I came away thinking it was

not which means we're actually taking away an option I want to add options I

want the carrots I'm not necessarily looking for something so can you is

that am I interpreting that correctly or yeah and it depends on the the

sub-district that we're talking about.

You know, they're the R3B sub-district

and the R3A sub-district.

So the R3B sub-district,

it's not identified as a change part of the R3 zone.

And so similar standards apply

to what the current R3 zone is today,

especially for row houses.

It's a similar density to row house type development.

The R3A zone is actually, we're increasing densities

to the kind of row house sweet spot in the R3A zone.

So we're providing more opportunities

for row houses in that zone.

But in the C and D zones, those are and have always been,

the C zone has always been the areas

where the city has prioritized multifamily.

So these are areas like, you know,

this general plan designation has historically covered

the areas around Latham and Rengstorf

and other areas that were kind of that medium-high density residential in the city.

And that's the equivalent of the R3C zone today.

In addition, one of the goals of the R3D zone

is to really provide those opportunities for very high densities.

And there is some concern that the balance of profitability

continues to lead towards row houses,

unless you provide that additional stick, if you will,

to say, no, we really do expect more density.

We want to provide this additional opportunity

for housing in the city,

and we expect property owners and developers

to execute and make that density happen.

So that's really the goal of the minimum density standard,

and it, like I said, it really is, it's focused higher than row house densities in a couple

of those sub-districts.

Say that again?

So the R3C and the R3D sub-districts, that minimum density is set higher than row house

densities.

But in the R3A and R3B sub-districts, it's set lower than the row house density.

That or lower, yeah.

I will also add that the statute that we were talking about, the Star Home Revitalization Act,

also provides densities at which row houses work.

And so that would actually expand opportunities for row houses to the R2 zone

and potentially in some cases even the R1 zone.

I just tried to write row homes and townhomes would still be

financially viable options within R3A and R3B.

That's right.

but they would not necessarily be in R3C.

Yep.

So do we need the minimum standards in R3A and B?

What's the purpose of them?

I'm a fan of simpler rather than more complicated,

and so the more we add, the more complicated it gets.

Yeah, if we don't have them,

we run the risk that people will do larger lot single-family developments,

which still has a lot of value in this community.

there is a very strong incentive for that as well and so this would encourage

more development closer to what the density that's envisioned by those zones

as opposed to you know monster homes large lots

the I read the analysis on the retail and R3D said it was most most viable in R3D is it not

viable in R3C and I was I was not expecting the cutoff at R3D myself I was I get putting retail

in the middle of a real home doesn't necessarily make sense,

but I was surprised that R3C at least was included.

And was it, can you comment on that?

Was it really not feasible or was it borderline?

The analysis focused on where are we expecting population change.

So the R3C areas are really consistent

with the existing densities that are there today.

So we're not expecting very much population change.

And part of the goal of the analysis that Lisa Wise Consulting did

was to show that the population change that we're getting out of the R3D areas

can really support vibrant and successful commercial uses.

And they did show that.

So the viability question is a question around

what areas are we going to get new development

that can actually create those opportunities for commercial,

and where can that commercial be most successful

because it's going to be associated with new populations.

And that's really limited to those R3D areas.

If there are other considerations,

that's direction for where to put commercial,

that's direction we can take and update our standards.

Okay.

The last question I had, and this is, everybody probably already knows this, but in some of

the design standards, it showed parks in the middle of a big development.

I don't recall how developers get credit for publicly private but available open space.

If a park is located in the middle of a big cluster,

do they get credit for that as public open space?

Currently the POPA standards,

POPA stands for privately owned,

publicly accessible open area.

And that's our provisions to allow developers

to get credit to our park land requirements

if they provide publicly accessible

but privately owned open areas.

So our POPA standards currently have a provision

that says that the space needs to be visible

and accessible from the public.

Like it needs to be,

like you need to be able to know

that it's there from the street.

I don't know all the details about how that's implemented.

It's not implemented by planning staff,

but there's a distinction here

between the open area requirements in the zoning code,

which are primarily intended to be utilized

by the development itself, right?

It's providing that quality of life, open area,

and breaks between buildings that are utilized

by the development itself versus public open space,

which is regulated by, I think it's chapter 41

of the city code that requires parkland dedication

from new development.

We're not talking at all in this plan

about new public parks

or publicly accessible open spaces in the R3 code.

The reason it came as a question in my mind

was it was on one of those areas where,

I think it was, I don't remember which of the two it was in,

but it showed a pathway and it was going past

one of these little tiny parks inside of a development.

And if it's now a public pathway, a cut through,

does that mean that this tiny little park

buried in the middle of a development

all of a sudden becomes something that they get credit for

when nobody else other than people

happen to be walking on that, get credit for it?

And my reaction was, huh, that doesn't make any sense.

So I was, that's, I don't know if you have

to have an answer right now, but I was worried

that burying a tiny little park in the middle of a pathway

that maybe goes from the street to nothing at this point

would be treated as public open space.

So maybe I'm the only one that cares,

but it was a question that I had on how that worked.

Are you referring to this diagram?

Yeah, it's the little park at the top.

It's like a thing there, it's like an open space.

And I'm like, that's not public, so they don't get.

So that's what I was worried about.

I like the Prometheus project,

the Flower Mart project has a park right on Evelyn.

The Dean has a park right on Fairchild.

Whatever it's called, not Fairchild.

Fayette.

Fayette, that's it.

The open space along the Hecheche right away

at the Merlin-Geyer project, those are accessible.

Those are used by people.

That's a good thing.

I would just want to make sure that however it's set up, it's clear.

So if that could be clarified in the future, if that's part of it or not, that would be good to know.

Absolutely.

And just to, you know, for the benefit of the public, we're looking at images on page 21 of the draft code

where it has diagrams of common usable open areas associated with internal circulation.

In the plan, common usable open areas are intended to be usable by the development, not intended to be publicly accessible open areas.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Christian Murdoch, Community Development Director.

Also for clarity and for the public's benefit, the city's POPA standards do require the size to be at least 0.4 acres.

I believe there's a 100-foot minimum dimension across the POPA.

and it also requires that the POPA be located on a public street, the frontage of a public

street or with a prominent and highly visible entrance.

Commissioner Cranston, I've been able to hear you and I'm sure the city staff has understood

your questions.

And more importantly, I believe City Council, representatives, Lucas Ramirez and Emily Ramos

understand your perspective as well.

Thank you for being here, by the way.

Just wanted to bring that up.

Do you have any further questions, sir?

Okay.

Well, thank you.

Moving on to Commissioner Pham.

The floor is yours.

Thank you.

I believe some of my questions have been answered with Commissioner Cranston asking them, so thank you for that.

So I'll skip over some of my questions.

I was really interested in the retail live work approach section.

It seemed like from the staff report, community outreach indicated broad support, which was

interesting.

My first question is, are there any existing neighborhoods or buildings in Mountain View

that would align with this approach described?

So live work developments are not common, and I'm not actually aware of any in the city.

There are a few in San Jose.

There's one that I always think of near downtown Campbell.

But the idea is that it's a facade that could be either residential or commercial.

So you close the blinds, and it's residential.

You open the blinds, it's commercial.

It's that kind of space.

And so it really is intended to be very flexible to allow a small business

that is also operated by the resident of that tenant space.

so yeah I don't know of any in Mountain View but there are a few others around the South Bay

got it and then the staff report also mentioned Sunnyvale standards I wanted to ask about those

standards and any lessons learned from their implementation yeah and fortunately we have

a few people that have previously worked at Sunnyvale that can help help us with that

One of the positives that we heard about using Sunnyvale standards is that they are specific about the uses that are allowed and about the operations that are allowed.

So it really is specific objective standards that can be clearly implemented.

I think there are going to need to be some tweaks for Mountain View context and consistency with Mountain View code.

But it does provide a good framework to start.

Any idea of what those tweaks may be?

Yeah, we're going to have to modify references to permits.

It's been a while since I looked at it, so I can probably look right now and get you a better answer.

But mostly references to other sections of the code, sections to permits, procedural requirements, things like that.

Got it.

And one question I have is right now the staff report recommends allowing this type of approach

throughout all of R3 zoning.

Has staff thought about whether that could be more targeted or do you really think that

that could be best for the entire R3 zoning districts?

Yeah, I think the live-work units that I've seen actually implemented tend to be residential 90% of the time.

And so it is a fairly innocuous use type that really just provides that additional opportunity for a visible business

that can benefit from pedestrians walking by.

It can add to some kind of neighborhood character and can kind of help support small businesses in the area.

So we don't see a strong downside to allowing it throughout the R3 zone, especially since, like I said, 90 percent of the time it's just going to be occupied as a unit.

Okay.

One of the last bullets of that section talked about targeted operational standards.

Could you talk a little bit more about that and how they could be implemented or enforced?

Yeah, let me get my notes up from that.

If you have another question, I can answer that as I get this up.

Okay.

Another question I had was related to incentives for lock consolidation.

I know that Commissioner Cranston asked some of the questions related to that.

I was just curious what other Bay Area cities do for that.

It seemed like a tough issue to try to work around.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of other cities do offer bonus density.

So as opposed to limiting the density on the sites

that are smaller, they say, well, if you do the consolidation,

you get some extra units.

There's a challenge with that in that it's not clear

how that aligns with state density bonus law.

And it's also not fully consistent with the project

that we've defined in terms of the densities

and the locations in the city.

Small lots are concentrated in some areas

and we'd have to look at that and see whether bonus density

would add significantly to the unit count

if they do decide to consolidate

that we're studying in our SQL process.

I would also add the densities that we're allowing

in these R3D areas really, really do maximize

what you can build in the type three, type five,

or I forget what, type five, thank you, building type,

which is what we are seeing

in most multifamily development.

We are seeing very little type one construction,

which is the high rise type construction.

And to get there, you would need a significant amount

of additional height and possibly density

in order to make that pencil out.

That's the type of thing that you see

in the downtown San Francisco, downtown San Diego

kind of environments.

Very rarely do you see that

in these more suburban transitional environments.

That being said, adding additional density

or additional unit opportunities to these R3D areas

may not provide much of an additional incentive

because we are allowing so much density

in these areas already.

Thanks for the discussion.

I know that that seemed like a challenging goal

to try to work toward.

I have one more question

about the draft non-conforming ordinance approach.

Reading this section, it kind of jogged my memory

that we talked recently

about historical preservation ordinance.

Is there any conflict or is there any sort of intersection

between the two ordinances that we need to be concerned about?

So that's a very good question.

Currently the historic preservation ordinance

does reference the nonconforming code

and allows historic buildings further exemptions

from any limitations prescribed by the non-conforming code.

So you are allowed more flexibility

if you are non-conforming

under the historic preservation ordinance.

I don't foresee inconsistencies in these two projects.

We can still provide that additional flexibility

to historic buildings, which I think is very appropriate,

But the delta between what's allowed

under our nonconforming code and what's allowed

for those historic properties may shrink, right?

Because we are being more permissive

under our standard nonconforming code.

But I don't see the potential for any inconsistencies.

Got it.

Okay, I think that's it for my questions, thank you.

Okay, I wanted to get back to you about your question

around operational standards.

So let me.

Or the retail live work approach?

Yeah, for the, are you, now do you,

you're asking about live work operational standards

specifically, or are you asking about the operational

standards for standalone commercial tenants?

For the live work, as it was part of that section.

Yeah.

So we have, you know, just looking at some

of the materials that Sunnyvale talks about,

intended for the use by fairly specific occupations,

the intended to be occupied by the same tenant as the residents.

That's part of the definition.

kind of access standards, you know, ensuring that there is access for the public, since it is a

intended to be a live work unit, and you don't want customers kind of going through the middle

of the building or anything like that to get through to get to those units. Some signage

standards that would be small but appropriate to a mixed residential commercial environment.

Let's see. Some limitation on the number of customers and deliveries per day. This is often

difficult to enforce at a planning level, but it does allow us to monitor and maybe

put some additional conditions on outlier cases that may come up.

Numbers of employees shall not generate external noise, odor, glare, vibration, electrical

interference no explosive toxic combustible flammable materials things like that no entertainment

drinking things like that no bars no no animal grooming or boarding things like that okay

Thank you. That was helpful.

Thank you. We'll move on to our U.S. member of the team, Commissioner Subramanian.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to my colleagues, Commissioner Cranston and Commissioner Pham, for your questions.

I want to focus a little bit more on some of the density minimums that are being proposed

across the R3 designations that staff is proposing.

And specifically, I would like to understand it from a standpoint of the different R zones,

and transitioning from R1, R2,

and the idea of introducing the R3A

as being the next transition zone.

And this is particularly with reference

to the preferred alternate zoning district update map

that staff provided.

And bear with me here.

I try to catch up on a lot of the R3 history,

which you have yours on me.

but I did understand from some of the past discussions that the strategy was being crafted

to allow for proper transitions from the single family housing designation zones

to creating the proper transitions to more dense housing.

So could you, particularly with respect to that,

talk through your strategy of how you arrived at these four designations

and the densities being proposed?

Yeah, sure. So it was an iterative process. And are you talking specifically about the minimum densities or the maximum densities?

Both.

Okay. So the minimum densities were later in the process. Those were most recently and based on the maximum densities identified through this iterative process that we've been working on.

The current R3 zone really applies to two, kind of three general plan designations or three densities.

25 unit per acre density, a 35 unit per acre density, and occasionally an 80 unit per acre density.

We also have an R2 zone that is typically around 12 units per acre,

and that is the, you know, the, it's intended to continue being an R2 zone.

So the first thing that I'll talk about is the housing element,

which identified a program to take some R2 sites and integrate them into the R3 zone.

Recognizing that R2 sites are already kind of a transition zone

between single-family and multi-family.

They're also a kind of a small multi-family opportunity

that fits into the design and character

of established single-family neighborhoods.

So you'll see in a lot of areas,

we have R2 zones that are completely surrounded

by R1 neighborhoods.

And so continuing with that consideration,

we developed a new density level

in a new set of standards between the previous R2 and R3 zones,

and that's the 20 unit per acre zone for R3A.

It's intended to provide a gradual step up for existing duplex sites

to provide a little bit more density,

things like row houses or other small apartments

that would continue to be not out of place

in a largely single-family neighbor.

Then on the R3 side, we went through a process of identifying areas for growth in the R3 zone.

And so that map shows those R3D areas as those areas that are opportunities for growth.

That was based on a range of criteria as set by the city council.

and ultimately they directed us to assign certain areas for those high growth areas.

There were two different potential densification designations that we teed up to the city council.

One was a designation that could reach feasibility through the assumption that they would ask for state density bonus

and we did this analysis of feasibility,

assuming that they need to replace

all the existing rent-stabilized apartments

with below-market-rate housing,

which is going to be very, very expensive on a developer.

And so we need to get enough density

that that makes sense for the developer.

And so the analysis that we presented said,

well, you need this certain amount of density to do that.

Here's an option that sets the base density

at a point where somebody's going to be asking

for state density bonus and gets to that feasibility level. And here's an option that sets that

density where it's already feasible. And that's the 65 and the 110 that we're adding. The 50

is an existing designation that already applies to just one site in the city. They created

that designation because there was this kind of hole between 35 and 80 that we needed to

fill with another designation. And then the 80 is the current R4 designation. So that's all of

the designations about where they are and where they all came from. Again, planning is a very

iterative process. We're dealing with a lot of stuff that we're receiving from older codes and

older plans and making iterative changes as we go, both through this process of decision-making,

but also from areas that are changing and areas that aren't changing.

Thank you.

As a follow-up to that, can you talk about the potential impacts of the SB79 density boosts

that are coming down the road and how that might impact the R3 designated zones

and what some of the thinking is around incorporating that within the R3 standards.

Yeah, unfortunately I can't speak too much to SB 79.

We're still digesting it.

It's a very complex law.

But what I can say is that many R3 sites are actually exempt from SB 79

because it does exempt properties that are subject to rent stabilization,

and many R3 properties are subject to rent stabilization.

Also, it only affects properties within a half mile

of the major transit stops in the city

so that there are large swaths of R3

that are outside those radii.

For the areas that are within those buffers

and that do not include rent stabilized units,

some areas are consistent with the R3D designation, and there is reasonable alignment between that R3D designation and some of the densities that are stipulated in SB79.

It's not perfect alignment, but there's fairly good alignment between some of those areas, most specifically around the San Antonio station.

There are other areas where SB 79 for projects

that utilize it would supersede these R3 standards

and the densities that we're studying

in this R3 code update.

So just to clarify a point there

for some of the R3 designated sites,

which are across from the downtown

Mountain View Transit Center,

are those going to be exempt from the SB 79

because of rent stabilization prevailing conditions

or is that something that needs further study?

Well, I will say that we are bringing

to the city council in a couple of weeks here

towards the end of the month,

we're gonna be bringing a study session

to discuss how council wants to proceed with SB 79.

So we'll have more data at that time.

Right now, I can't speak to exactly

where rent-stabilized buildings are in the city

and their exact configuration or anything like that.

We probably won't even have that data

for late January exactly, but we'll have a rough idea

of where they are and which properties are likely exempt.

Thank you.

A few more questions to clarify

on some of the building standards being proposed.

Could you speak to the intent

of the habitable ground floor space

and the depths being proposed

across the different R3 zones?

Sure, I can talk to the intent,

but then I'll probably ask one of our representatives

from OptiCoast about some of their analysis

for how those exact numbers were generated.

The intent is to support active ground floor

and pedestrian accessible space.

So we're trying to avoid buildings

that are simply units built on top of parking,

and the only thing that is accessible at the ground floor

is a level of parking.

And so there's this expectation that there be

a certain amount of habitable space in the ground floor,

whether it be a lobby or a unit or a commercial space,

and that needs to be adequate space

for a livable unit or some activity.

So there is a minimum depth there.

So I'll defer to Cecilia Kim from Opticos to talk maybe a little more if she can about how those specific standards were generated.

Good evening, commissioners. Thank you for that question. Cecilia Kim from Opticos Design.

So habitable ground floor depth is based on the potential use that building can accommodate.

And two variables are in the standards for that.

One is that depth for the ground floor or habitable use,

as well as the parking setback,

so that parking is behind that use as well.

Sometimes if you don't have the habitable depth specified,

even with the parking setback,

sometimes the space there can be non-usable space,

like just storage space or something,

so that the front of the building

actually does not have that active component to it.

And so that's where we want to set a depth that is,

as Eric was saying, very usable and habitable and occupiable.

Typically for residential uses that is about 20 feet.

Sometimes it could be a little bit less than that, 10 to 15 if desired, but usually 15

to 20 is a good space to be usable for residential uses.

For commercial or non-residential uses, typically 20 or more, up to 30 is a good depth for that

because they have other components that they need to be able to use that space for a very

usable retail or commercial space.

Thank you.

Another quick clarification on the

point it talks about the depth but

does not talk about the percentage of

the frontage that needs to have that

depth of habitable space.

So is the consideration to have that

standard be different across the

different R3 densities particularly

when you get to larger buildings with

larger frontages because could you clarify that point?

So to kind of ask a clarifying question, are you asking about the width of that space

and not the depth of it for a building?

Right.

So you spoke to the depth of it earlier.

I want to clarify if there is a width standard that also applies along with the depth.

We don't actually specify the width standard to that because the parking, again, another

variable for that is also included in the standards. Typically the width goes along with the building

form, the building width, where a portion of that building width is usually used for the

building entry space and then what remains of that the rest of that building width becomes

part of that space that is occupiable or habitable. Thank you.

Thank you.

One last question about the exceptions to the standards.

Could you talk about why a height variation wasn't included in the exceptions?

Well, we have a height exception for open space and provision of public open space and

for ground floor.

exceptions can be much larger than the actual need created by the exception or whatever. So if

you imagine that you're cutting out a corner of the building for a heritage tree or something like

that, well, if you get an extra story, that's a lot more than the corner of the building that

you've lost. So we wanted to be at least somewhat proportional to what the exceptions are asking for.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't opportunities to add to these exceptions.

So hearing your feedback on that would be great. But also, we do need to recognize that nine times

out of 10, projects are going to be coming in with state density bonus. And the first

waiver that anybody ever asked for in state density bonus is always going to be height.

And that's going to be unrestricted. Waivers are unlimited, right? We cannot set limits

on those waivers. So in many cases, it may be moot for a height standard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioner Dempsey.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

So basic data question up front.

For the total acreage of R3 across the city, what's the relative share A, B, C, and D?

Quarter, quarter, quarter, quarter?

Is it some other share?

I have that data.

I just need to bring it up real quick.

Go ahead and ask your next question.

Sure.

To me, I've been wondering that for kind of a long time,

so a good thing to throw into the memo when you publish it again.

So I have questions about the density bonus law.

So for the last couple of years,

how many of the permitted R3 developments that we've seen

utilize the density bonus law?

I know in the memo you said most.

Can you tell me is that 55%?

Is it 95%?

how often are we seeing density bonus used in R3 last couple years?

Well, I will say that most of the development in R3, at least until the adoption of SB330,

has been row house development.

And those tend not to be density bonus projects

because there's not much benefit that you get to additional units.

You're more constrained by the area of the lot

because you're not stacking any units.

We also updated our BMR requirements for row houses,

I don't know, probably five or six years ago.

And so any row house projects that came in before that

had a much lower BMR requirement,

and so they really had no incentive to do state density bonus.

So that's why we saw a lot of Rojas projects

that did not ask for state density bonus.

Since all of that, I would say I can't think of a project, honestly,

that's come in not using state density bonus.

There have been maybe a couple of very small single-family subdivisions

that maybe would not qualify

just on the basis of number of units.

My principal planner over there

said there may have been one project.

Just one project, which was our three,

straight R3 without density bonus.

So darn near all.

Yeah.

Do we expect that trend to continue?

Yes.

I think that with...

Maybe I'll just add one other piece of that

to the darn near all.

Technical legal term.

Holistically with all of our zoning districts and precise plans, there's, I think, only been one that I've seen of all the projects that have come to you all or to the council or just to the ZA.

So it's very widely used.

And most people are going to take advantage of that because of the unlimited waivers.

And again, we see no reason to think that's going to change.

we should expect that nearly all of the R3 projects going forward, even once this gets

done and gets into code, we expect we'll continue to see almost all of those projects, they're

going to want some sort of density bonus law, exception whether it's height or all the various

things that people ask for.

So if you would remind me, because I forget exactly how it works, if you would remind

me what you're allowed to waive and what you're not allowed to waive that we are talking about

in these R3 changes. Is everything on the table to go out the window? How is that going to work

in practice if nearly all of them are going to play the density bonus card? Right. Yeah,

so dwelling units per acre can't be waived because that's the basis of how density bonus is calculated.

There may be other standards that could have a relationship to safety or anything like that.

Most zoning development standards don't, but we can always make a waiver justification based on safety.

It doesn't happen very often because you can usually design a building to be as safe as you need it to be.

But the reality is that developers work with us, right?

Most of the time, they are trying to meet as many standards as they can.

It is a little bit of an extra paperwork exercise for them to go in and justify all the waivers that they need to do.

The other definition of waiver that I should make really clear is that the intent of waivers is to allow flexibility for standards that physically constrain a project.

So there may be standards that don't physically constrain a project, like the requirement for an access easement.

It may not physically constrain a project if that project is already providing that area open.

There's not already a building there.

Likewise, you can't waive fees,

you can't waive dedication requirements.

So those are some things that are off the table

for state density bonus.

But a great many things remain on the table.

Absolutely.

One of the...

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Chair and Commissioners.

The other thing I'd add is the concessions part of state density bonus law.

And so as planning manager Anderson indicated, the waivers that are unlimited for these projects apply to those things that would somehow physically preclude the construction of the project at the density proposed.

There is a second component to the state density bonus law that's very powerful, but it's more limited and it relates to concessions.

And those are things that may not be covered by a waiver, but they have identifiable and actual cost reductions for the project.

So some of those aspects of the R3 standards that we're talking about that maybe are more design-oriented, that maybe are not going to physically preclude the construction at a given density, could add cost and could be subject to use of a concession.

Those tend to be more limited.

Most projects get one or two.

Occasionally they'll get more than that, typically up to five maybe for a 100% affordable housing project.

So they're very powerful.

They're not always used because the waivers take care of so much and those limitations on use of concessions sometimes aren't needed or can't be applied.

But in this case where we have many, many more standards, some of which, again, are more design oriented, you can imagine that in some circumstances concession could be used as well.

Okay.

And I don't want to rabbit hole too much on the point.

I am, again, perhaps this is because I'm not as familiar with it as I should be, with the level of, I don't want to, I'm tempted to say evidentiary standard, but that's probably a little bit too formal to describe this.

I'm trying to understand where on the spectrum between I just have to claim it and on the other end of the spectrum, I have to prove it.

Does that, where does the line fall where you say, okay, you get it?

Yeah, well, that's changed actually a lot in the last few years.

There's been court cases that have pushed that line very far towards developers,

where essentially all they need to do is say,

this is the project that I want to build,

and this waiver is inconsistent with this project that I want to build.

The standard.

Yeah, the standard is inconsistent with the project that I want to build.

So that is a very powerful precedent, court precedent, that is currently the law of the land that we have to respect.

And developers have continued to use waivers more aggressively.

I know this isn't a comment period.

Maybe I'll save my comments to the end.

I do want to, however, commend staff for the section that you put up front where you discuss state law.

and you call this out that there is things that can come in

and supersede the work that we're doing with R3 here.

So anyway, I admire the fact that you called that out.

I think some of this discussion could even be expanded,

but I'm really glad you did what you did in the staff report

and I commend you for it.

I've taken up lots of time, I guess.

I'll stop there.

I do have those acreages.

Yes, please.

So unfortunately, I don't have it broken out

by percent, but by far the largest is R3B.

That has 564 acres.

C, the lower D, the D1 and the D2 are all very similar.

C is 134, D1 is 138, and D2 is 138.

Interesting.

So coincidence there that they're all very similar.

And A is about half of that, so 61.

Really? Okay. I think that would be really interesting data to include in the memo going

forward because I kind of assumed that it was 25, 25, 25, 25, and I was clearly way off

on that. And I think that does matter if we're having conversations as Commissioner Cranston

raised. Why would you maybe exclude ground floor commercial in a C, right? And we need

to know how many, how big of a chunk of R3 are we talking about when we're talking about

that because I had the same question he just asked it better.

Anyway, I'll stop there.

My thanks to staff, that's all very helpful.

I'll return it back to you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner Dempsey.

I appreciate your candor and the use of evidentiary standards.

I think it's very applicable.

Duly noted.

Okay, we'll move on to Commissioner Nunez or Vice Chair Nunez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So I'll just kind of jump off that last starting point

that Commissioner Dempsey touched on

with regard to that paragraph around state laws.

I guess very general and broad question

with regards to that last, I guess, sentence in particular,

the one on page three of the staff report,

where it says the city should anticipate

that projects may be proposed following adoption

of the R3 zoning update that deviate

from the established standards as allowed by state density bonus law.

I guess like for our purposes, how should we be interpreting that statement as regards to the requirements

that are being put forward in the staff recommendation?

Are we to interpret that statement as saying it's almost likely that developers would go with the state density stuff anyway, and so this is almost in a way like an on-paper thing that's not really in practice going to be used?

or is it just saying that if we're not mindful of how we craft these standards in the recommendation,

that that's a risk that we are running up against?

Can you just help contextualize that for me in terms of how I should be interpreting that statement?

Sure. I think it's a really important question, and I think it's one that has multiple different answers.

I think first and foremost, you know, with the city's zoning, we should be trying to put in place the best standards that we can and ones that reflect the community's vision for how development should be constructed and materialized and the community that it will form right in the urban form and context.

The reality of the law today is that in many cases, developers can use this tool, state density bonus law, to modify or eliminate many of these standards.

And so I think maybe one of the most important things that these standards will do is communicate an intent and a desire on the part of the city.

Many developers really strive to meet as many of the standards that cities adopt as possible.

There are irresponsible developers, but many of them are quite responsible and really do try to work with staff.

And we also try to work with those that maybe are less inclined.

And in any case, trying to meet in the middle with as many of the standards being met as possible is really the goal of our process, recognizing, again, the limitations of state density bonus law.

So I think the counsel I would give you is to do your best to communicate a vision that's appropriate and responsible and recognize that we're not going to get it right in every case.

And even if we try to, there will be instances in which different standards or, I guess, different metrics and dimensions and outcomes will occur.

So I wouldn't torture yourself over getting it perfect for a variety of reasons, not least of which state density bonus law will, I think, call into question the ultimate outcomes of many of these projects.

Yeah, I'm not feeling tortured.

I guess like what I'm really trying to understand is actually the vision of the staff recommendation.

And if the staff recommendation was written with this envisionment of almost like a default kind of view on just kind of like stepping back

and enabling the state statutes to kind of like come to the fore in terms of how these parcels get developed

or more as us really taking the reins on how we want to craft that.

Yeah, I think very much the latter.

The team has worked very hard to be thoughtful, use best practice,

look at examples of good development across the state and beyond

to really pull together examples and standards that we think would meet the needs

and that the Mountain View community should be proud of.

there are a variety of different site sizes, shapes, locations, context, existing development,

et cetera, that make it impossible for any standards to be exactly right in every instance.

And that's just an unrealistic expectation of a process like this across the planning area in

question, right, as broad as the R3 scope is. But what this does is reflect really a thoughtful

effort and one that has had a lot of attention and care and not one that just sort of, you

know, threw down, you know, and gave up over the fact that state density bonus law could

take away our control.

No, we tried to put standards in place wherever we could that were the best that we could

come up with.

Okay, thank you.

And I think in following up on that, right, because a lot of this does have to, it intrinsically

relates to both like what the state has in their own laws and also even some of the requirements

like and commitments we've made through for example like the housing element right and I

think the housing element does get cited several times in the staff report you know around kind of

like I think in particular program 1.3 right around like economic feasibility I think there's a there's

a key phrase there as well that I'm also trying to understand around allowed density I think it's on

page seven so it says um the city will revise multifamily development standards major districts

blah blah to ensure projects at minimum meet their allowed density um is that allowed density

or i guess like can you expound on that allowed density under what allowance

yeah i think planning manager anderson can talk about some of the background where i think our

experience with the existing r3 standards has presented complications with achieving

densities already allowed, some of which would be higher

under this current proposal.

Sure, yeah, I mean, just to speak specifically

about some of those standards,

and we did quite a bit of analysis on this early

in this project, showing that the open area standards,

these setbacks that are dependent on the height

of the building, the overall height standards

really do make it impossible to build the densities

that are allowed in the general plan

for most projects.

And so that was really the intent

behind the housing element language is to say,

look, we gotta rewrite these standards

so that at the very least somebody can build

what they're allowed under these standards.

Great, so when it says allowed density,

that's the city's standards,

not as would be granted under some state density bonus

or anything like that, is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Yeah, and if you'd allow me to just add to that,

I think that's a scenario in which you do throw in the towel

and recognize state density bonus law is gonna come

and design the project the way that the developer wants

rather than having intentionality

and communicating an intent

that's actually feasible to construct.

Sounds good.

So then that allowed density is in reference

to what's currently in the general plan

because the current R3 development standards

wouldn't even allow us to have development

that delivers what's in the general plan currently.

Am I hearing that correctly?

Yes, that's correct.

But at the time, there was still a lot of uncertainty

on staff's part about the potential direction

that the R3 project could take.

So we wrote the housing element to be agnostic

to what that allowed density is.

You know, like ultimately council said,

let's increase densities.

So let's develop standards where those increased densities can be built.

Got it.

So along those lines is in the, I should have looked into this myself earlier.

I'm so sorry I didn't.

But just I guess quick yes or no, is FAR currently a standard for development that's in our R3 standard

or is it only dwelling units per acre?

Yes, R3 currently limits FAR to 1.05.

Okay, so it's a limit.

Okay.

And is that, like, I guess it is just R3.

Okay.

All right, that makes sense.

So then along those lines, I guess, like, one thing I'm also trying to understand, because I think there's somewhere in one of the footnotes, there's this concept of, like, a deemed density.

I better lose it.

It said something like, there was, like, some division equation there.

it said like deemed density is based on 110 divided by three or something like that sorry

I'm coming off of sickness um can you help me understand I know get away from me um can you

help me understand what like deemed density is is that because um you know is that in reference to

uh areas where there is no uh dwelling unit per acreage uh requirement and it's only off of like

floor area ratio and so therefore you have to kind of like create a deemed density that the

state can or developers can use to calculate state density bonus against. So I think you're

referring to the way the R3D zone sets maximum FAR. I think it's footnote five on the bottom of

staff report page nine it's at least one mention of them yeah it says like for example the general

plan allows 110 units per acre the maximum far would be 110 divided by so yeah and then i guess

i'm wondering if that goes in reverse where you can for example say like hey here's the far and

the deemed density in terms of units per acre is x no it only goes in the one direction so the the

The standard is written such that this R3D zone

can accommodate a range of allowed maximum densities.

And so the allowed FAR, if the maximum density is 110,

the allowed FAR would be 3.67,

which is more than adequate for 110 units per acre.

I think if you look at the, you know,

one basis for looking at this is the recently adopted SB79 that also sets rough equivalences

between densities and FARs. And it's in good alignment with that as well.

Okay. Thank you. So then along those lines, and I appreciate that. I was just wanting to make sure

I was understanding the relationship between kind of like state and kind of like current standards, what's proposed, density bonus, all of that.

I am curious, though, about that lot consolidation component.

I'm just kind of curious about it because if I read it correctly, if I remember correctly,

It said something to the effect of those smaller R3D units, or lots, I should say, or parcels, or what have you.

The staff recommendation says that it's typically or generally harder to build to maximum density there.

And so then I guess I'm just kind of curious about that because it seemed like the original for the R3D was 65 dwelling units per acre.

But then I think the staff is proposing that those get cut down in those kind of like smaller R3D lots.

That gets cut down to like 30 or, you know, I think it also said it's not in the table yet.

but staff is strongly considering cutting that down

to about like 33 or 35 or something like that.

So I guess I'm just like curious

because if it's inherently more difficult

to build density on those lots,

then why would it be more economically viable

to cut the allowable density for those lots?

Like how does that make it more economically viable

for development to take place?

It doesn't make it more economically viable.

What it does is it communicates as an incentive

that you will get more economic viability

by consolidating your lots.

Okay.

Like how and why?

Can you help us understand why cutting it

will incentivize consolidation?

It communicates to those property owners

that they would be able to achieve the full benefits of being in the R3D zone

only through the cooperation with their adjacent property owners.

Okay.

But what if, like, someone just wanted, like, because I guess I'm also curious,

it's just that through line right there, it just says it's generally more difficult to build.

higher density on lots of this size,

but it doesn't really say why.

It's just kind of like, it just says it,

and I'm supposed to take it as given.

So like, can we get specific reasons why?

Because as of right now,

it's just hard for me to really process how saying,

and we're going to then therefore cut your allowable density in half

is going to make things better for anyone

if our goals are to actually support the development of the housing.

yeah so there are a number of factors that make it a lot harder to build densely on small lots

one of them is the flexibility and efficiency of development so you know the the most efficient

multi-family development is units along both sides of a of a

what do you call it, a hallway, right?

And that's stacked up.

On small lots, you may not be able to do that

or do that very much across the lot.

And so you get a lot more unleaseable space

compared to the amount of leaseable space

or sellable space on the lot.

So the building is just less efficient

and more expensive to build.

Another big reason why smaller lots don't result in more successful higher density projects is because of parking.

Now, we are lowering minimum parking standards, and in many cases, minimum parking standards don't even apply.

But that does not mean that new market rate developers don't have a strong incentive to offer parking to their market rate paying tenants and new owners.

And so parking is one of those things that only works in these very large increments of land.

And if you are trying to build densely on a very small lot, you simply can't fit those very large increments of land that you need in order to build an efficient parking lot or potentially even multiple levels of parking, which is also often necessary to build higher density projects.

So those are a couple of things that really stack up against building at higher densities on these smaller lots.

And they're somewhat technical in nature.

And it may assist a property owner to understand from the outset, oh, this is something that I can't do or I should be encouraged to work with my neighboring property owners,

rather than going down this path of trying to hire architects and figuring all this stuff out and figuring out that what they want to do doesn't pencil anyway.

Yeah, so it sounds like there's a lot of natural barriers toward building density in these kind of lot sizes that I'm hearing Mr. Anderson kind of like speak to.

So I guess like I'm still then curious if there are these natural barriers that I would assume a rational developer would encounter and be able to, you know, through their own expertise in this field and, you know, the construction of housing, the planning of it all.

within these lots, I'm still trying to, I guess, like grapple and understand with how,

what might be, I'm not saying it was arbitrary, but, you know, to some, you know, still undefined,

just having it, right? And why we would then suggest we're going to cut it in half at the

start rather than just accepting, hey, like if there are constraints and a developer can't get

to the maximum 65, then I guess like,

I'm still trying to understand the rationale

for why then saying, hey, we're just gonna cut their

opportunity to get to 40, to 45, to 50,

whatever that is based on their own understanding

of their property.

I'm still trying to rationalize how just cutting it

in half is gonna support the goals of the R3 work item,

which is one of the key ones is to stimulate

the housing growth.

Sure.

Yep.

Sorry, was that a question?

No, I just wanted to make sure I kind of like contextualized my question.

But then last kind of questions here.

I am also trying to gather similarly along the kind of like implementation of kind of like preclusions almost around the ground floor retail.

And kind of like, I guess I'm just trying to get in a more simple, if that's okay, kind of like verbal understanding of like how it, yeah,

like what's the rationale there in terms of precluding you know from developers

the ability to have ground floor retail instead of just kind of like enabling

them to you know across the district be able to understand that ground floor

retail would or wouldn't work in a certain site right because when you look

at a little market like the one over there on Mariposa Avenue right like I

I mean, it's such a quality of life amenity that to kind of like just carte blanche,

I don't know if that's the right phrase here, but just say, hey, we're going to disallow it here or there.

I think there's a lot of opportunity getting taken away.

And as Commissioner Cranston said earlier, I guess I'm curious, with the view toward maximizing opportunity,

how does that restriction maximize or improve the city's ability to give these opportunities to residents to have these quality of life amenities?

Well, the allowance for ground floor commercial, even in the R3D zone and live work throughout the R3 zone, really does improve the opportunity for accessing these ground floor commercial, these business opportunities and creating that vibrancy that you're talking about.

It's a question of degree.

We're posing a recommended approach that limits it to R3D, and that increases that access opportunity by a certain degree.

There may be opportunities to increase it by additional degrees based on council direction.

but our approach really is focused on this idea of change areas and areas that where change is more limited.

And adding commercial uses is and can be a pretty significant change to areas where we,

our argument to the community was that some of these areas would have more limited change.

And so that's, I think, a trade-off that I would encourage the Commission to consider, as well as the other point that I made, which is really development opportunities are highest in R3D, customer base is highest in R3D, and the overall character is more consistent with a mixed-use.

mixed-use neighborhood for R3D.

Got it. Thank you.

So last question, just if I'm hearing that correctly,

the decision to limit ground floor retail to R3D,

just to confirm my understanding, if I'm hearing right,

is more around managing change

and kind of like character across the city

rather than the maximization of opportunity.

It's the trade-off that you're saying

that the commission should consider,

if I'm hearing that correctly.

Exactly, yes.

All right, thank you.

Okay, quick question.

Sweet, it shows here that you're still interested in, okay.

And Bill Cranston, Commissioner,

are you still interested in asking questions or?

I have some brief follow-up space.

So you have follow-up questions.

Okay, all right, sounds good.

Commissioner Donoghue.

So most of my questions have been asked.

One question that actually has been asked,

but I still don't quite get,

on the lot consolidation,

several people have asked about this,

but if the most efficient construction

is a hallway with units on both sides

and you have a small lot,

so you can only have a hallway with units on one side, say,

wouldn't there naturally be an incentive to consolidate with the neighbor next door and

double the lot size and then be able to build in both directions from the hallway whereas

cutting the the density in half would just allow them to build the existing thing that they

the thing on the one side, and it actually cutting the density in half disincentivizes

the lot consolidation, in my mind. So what are your thoughts?

Yeah, well, first of all, I want to clarify that, you know, the density in the zone is still going

to be up to 65 units per acre, 110 units per acre. We're not cutting the maximum density that

can be achieved on these lots.

We envision that this incentive can be carried out.

And in fact, one of the ways that it may be carried out

is by maybe encouraging some property owners

to maintain their properties in a current state

until surrounding properties are interested in redeveloping,

thereby creating that mutually beneficial lot

consolidation opportunity.

So I think there's still opportunities and the intent, the design intent, and the standards are intended to achieve those higher densities.

And so I want to make that clarification.

Thank you for submitting this question ahead of time.

I'm going to kind of read what I wrote ahead of time here.

if properties have additional value with additional allowed density,

especially if that opportunity comes with consolidation,

we're creating an incentive by allowing more density with consolidation.

We're creating that value through consolidation.

rather than creating a scenario where somebody develops at a lower value point,

trying to develop at that higher density on the smaller lot.

So the decision really is, should I develop at a lower value point,

trying to develop at a higher density on this lot,

or should I try to work with my surrounding property owners

and develop at a higher value point at a higher density?

I mean, I understand that's the goal,

but I don't understand how the staff recommendation achieves that goal,

like cutting density.

so i think it's i just want us to be careful in the words that we're using because we're not

cutting anything okay these properties are are being uh up zoned right um and so you know it's a

it's a tool that you know staff thought could be valuable based on you know creating um kind of

good development um it can definitely be something that you you know you all don't agree with right

and and i think that is it could be a part of the recommendation i think what we're trying to

illustrate is you know these properties are being up zoned um however it's difficult to you know

maybe get that r3d level of density onto a smaller site therefore it could lead to natural

lot consolidation which that happens in a lot of areas of the city but this is a thought that we

had in in a way to incentivize to get that kind of bigger lot that is just a better suited lot

for that highest level of of density allowance or dwelling units an acre okay yeah and by cut I meant

relative to or I mean it's yes it's not a cut but it's it's lower than it's just a different

Zoning district, you know, a different zoning category.

But it would be lower than the other larger lots in the same district.

Yes.

If it's feasible to develop a three-acre parcel at a particular density,

and a half-acre parcel has similar density,

I agree that they can't probably achieve that with setbacks and things that would be uniform across, regardless of the lot size.

But it seems that if you consolidate six of these half-acre things, you get to the three acres, you can do the same thing as the others.

and that would just naturally happen,

whereas allowing them to,

you know, specifying a lower density

means that you're just going to get fewer lot consolidations.

You're only going to get, you know, two of those lots.

And I appreciate that it's harder, you know,

getting six lots together is probably quite difficult.

Is that maybe what the problem is?

I just, I'm not quite getting it, I guess.

I think what we are trying to,

one of the things we're trying to preclude here

is a development that is maybe not as successful

because it is trying to fit 10 pounds of flour in a 5-pound sack.

And it may not be as successful as it could be for any number of reasons.

It may make the property owner less money.

It may result in strange designs that don't fit in with the surrounding neighborhood.

It may force waivers or concessions that we really wouldn't want or force the removal of heritage trees that we really wouldn't want.

So that, I think, is one of the overarching goals of this program is to try to encourage people to develop in ways that are kind of beneficial for the overall planning of the city.

and part of that is encouraging lot consolidation but part of it is also encouraging the right kind

of development in the right kinds of sites right and i think i would imagine right as a profit

driven developer if i know i'm allowed to build you know 65 to 110 units per acre it's hard to

let that go right and i may be incentivized to act irresponsibly to fit the 10 pounds of flour in

the five pound sack and do all those things that the planning manager just described.

Whereas if I realize I'm only allowed to build 35 units per acre and my potential profit

and upside is limited because my site's less than 20,000 square feet, I may design a smaller

project that I can do responsibly within the standards that are there and that's fine.

Or I may say, gosh, if I get that lot next door and I go from 12,000 to 22,000 square

I could triple my potential profit in terms of the development.

I think that can be a powerful incentive, right, if we can craft it effectively.

I think that's the thinking from the staff side.

Will it pan out? Hard to say.

Are there other ways to do it? Possibly.

I think we struggled to find likely functional incentives of this sort.

But these things should still be R3D as opposed to R3C,

which has the lower density?

Yeah, I mean, that's our current intent.

I think we have a little more research that we need to do

about maybe how precisely to craft that

to kind of avoid the default density

being the higher density understate density bonus.

But we think that that language can be crafted.

but we want direction on the overall intent of the program at this point before we go down that path of trying to craft what could be some fairly, you know, a little bit of work to craft the right language in the right way.

And I think the concern is then we would potentially be confronting a number of zoning changes that would either be gatekeeper applications by the developers or city initiated rezonings when we learned of these consolidations.

It's a little clumsier to administer than just having an upfront provision.

Knowing the objective of this process is to get these higher densities, let's rezone it, but then have a performance requirement to maximize the allowable density on the site.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Another question I had was,

one thing that, there was one public comment

that mentioned this, and it's something

that we've talked about in various projects,

was like deliveries and things like that.

So are these parking courts meant to deal with that?

And, I mean, it seems as though that the parking courts are meant to deal with that.

How do you think that that will be utilized widely, the parking courts?

It's hard to know whether developers will choose to build them.

What I will say is that we have this project on the east side of the city.

that was built in the last few years on Evelyn Avenue,

right on the border of Sunnyvale.

And it has no clear visible parking.

Evelyn Avenue is also a major bike thoroughfare.

And so we are dealing with some conflicts there

where people are just pulling into the bike lane for deliveries.

And it's very difficult to enforce that.

And it's also very unsafe for bicyclists.

And so providing this opportunity, I think, is in the code, despite the fact that we're trying to avoid a whole lot of visible parking.

If we can put some limits on it, I think it will provide a lot of good relief to our public rights of way and our public infrastructure on that new trend that we're seeing that everything is deliveries all the time.

Yeah. Okay.

And also, you know, the standards are set to make these parking courts as innocuous as possible.

They can be designed with plenty of screening landscaping.

They can be designed with, you know, buildings that still orient to the street.

And so there are some good examples that we know of that we can, you know, we've modeled the standards off of.

And so we think it's a good design idea.

it's hard to know how many developers will actually choose

to take advantage of it.

Okay, I think that all the rest of my questions were asked.

Thank you.

Great, thank you, Commissioner Donohue.

All right, so I'm gonna go ahead

and ask just a couple questions,

since everyone else who's asking to speak has already asked

and they're going out with follow-ups.

And just a friendly reminder, it's 9, 10 p.m.,

so let's try and deliberate with efficiency.

And I understand that everyone has questions

are intrigued about this process and it's totally understandable as to why.

It's just a friendly reminder so that we can just be a bit more concise if we have to and

go from there.

So when I looked at this, the recommendations of the history of the project, I was like,

okay, well, this stuff sounds familiar.

I remember discussing this or this hadn't been brought up to the commission before or

city council and or if not both.

And then having heard other members of the community who are not members of the commission

or city council folks speak about these topics as well.

And the one thing that always comes into mind

in my hearing of these voices out there

that are concerned about what's going on

with the city and development

is the issue about parking.

It revolves around parking.

Parking, public use space availability,

in other words, parks or lack of within neighborhoods,

and then preserving affordable housing

that's covered by rent control within these areas.

and the commissioner earlier had mentioned,

well, where are these places?

Well, a lot of these places are in the middle

of where these things are, where I live, right?

California and Latham,

there's huge amounts of potential there for rezoning.

So, you know, that's something to consider too, right?

But, so when I looked on page six about parking,

when it came over with the R3 zoning district update,

this document here,

I was surprised to see existing minimum one bedroom and smaller 1.5 stalls per unit, two bedrooms and larger, two stalls per unit.

But the proposed minimum now is one stall per unit for one bedroom and smaller and 1.5 stalls per unit for two bedroom and larger.

And I'm thinking this goes straight to what I was being told by members of the community.

why build build build but yet you have less places to park do they not know that the people

who are renting those places for the most part are going to be non-families members of the

community that are sharing rental units because they're at market rate level since they're luxury

apartments not affordable housing there's some bmr units there but and so each folk or for the

most part all folks will have one car or one vehicle they're not going to be riding their

bike. Why? Because the jobs are not located in Mountain View. The jobs are located outside

of Mountain View. So my question is, why the minimum being lessened from 1.5 to 1 and 2

to 1.5 for parking? Well, I think one of the primary reasons is development feasibility.

You know, we have a good idea now of the number of parking spaces that market rate developers want to build in order to serve their new residents.

You know, we've seen a number of examples of projects, for example, in East Wiseman, where there's very little available street parking in East Wiseman.

You know, Middlefield Road doesn't have street parking.

Ellis doesn't have street parking.

So these developers are going in knowing that they can't push off the parking demand onto public streets.

They have to incorporate their expected parking demand into their projects.

East Wiseman doesn't have a minimum parking standard.

And so we see from these projects that have been approved, that have been proposed,

how many parking spaces in those kinds of environments developers want to build.

I think that's a strong signal of what is a responsible number of parking spaces

as opposed to what is an irresponsible number of parking spaces,

where you have a developer who is saying,

oh, I know there's street parking, I know it's full sometimes,

but I can get away with having my tenants rely on that

as opposed to me shelling out the money to build it myself.

So that's one major factor in setting these parking standards where they are,

and that these parking standards are consistent with what we're seeing developers voluntarily build.

And so it's also a feasibility question because we know that developers are voluntarily providing this,

So it serves into that feasibility question, right?

Because they're voluntarily providing it, it probably has a strong relationship to feasibility.

We also assume these parking numbers in the feasibility analysis that we did last year when we proposed prototypes for setting the densities in these projects.

The other big factor here in setting these parking ratios where they are is that a lot of it is state-driven.

the state density bonus says that you default to these parking standards if you are requesting state density bonus.

So in most cases, you know, us requiring a higher number of parking spaces is not even going to be enforceable.

And this is different than waivers.

This is the state saying this is the default standard.

It's not even a waiver in state density bonus.

It's a completely different section of the state density bonus.

So being completely superseded by the state in these cases, as well as the feasibility analysis that we've done,

that's where this recommendation for the reduced parking comes from.

And I will also add, you know, I have been watching the, you know, census data over time and the kind of number of the expected population in multifamily development, and it has been trending downward.

So we are seeing more and more single-person units in multifamily housing.

We are seeing more and more units that are smaller households.

And so there is less parking demand from that trend as well.

Great. I don't know where they're at, but okay, I hear you.

I know with a lot of the issues that came up with this,

It's also because of the building remedy projects

where sometimes things were allowed for them,

the developers, to be able to build

at a certain density level

and then parking space was a huge issue.

And those are the challenges that you have.

So I understand that you're trying to then do what you can

to provide some sort of guidance

in terms of a minimum requirement for them to meet

so that we can then work with them

to try and establish some sort of partnership

for adherence to standards.

So my other question then would be pretty simple.

When you have these standards being developed now

for R3 zoning and what we're discussing right now,

that's great in the end I understand that whatever law there is that supersedes a

local ordinance will probably null and void whatever it is that we're trying to

seek maybe maybe not it depends we don't know how that relationship is going to

happen or how it's going to look like when there's a conflict with let's say

something that may be related to SB 79 so I'm wondering at this point in time it

sounds like to me that we're going to do what we can now to create the norms for

building here in Mountain View so that we can have as most control as we can over the

project with our input as to what we value.

Fine.

No problem.

So this is going to be a different process altogether for when eventually SB 79 is presented

earlier this month or sometime in January was my understanding that the City Council

was going to get some sort of presentation, a study session on that.

And so then when that happens and there's a discussion of possibly doing what Palo Alto

is doing, which is developing an alternative plan, that's going to be very different from

what we have here.

Or it may be similar.

We don't know yet.

And so then in the end, we're doing what we can to protect R3 right now.

That's it.

The next step for the other issues that come along will have their own process.

And I'm trying to just explain that out loud here so that folks who are paying attention

or the running voice can understand that we're looking at this on a step-by-step basis so

that they know that it's not just that oh on a whim let's just do this now for

these groups of properties no it's a deliberate attack on how you understand

development to be with R3 only and then eventually we'll do the same

hopefully with SB 79 and then eventually you all will guide us and City Council

with if there's conflicts between state laws or mandates versus our local

ordinances we'll be able to then figure out one what are those local ordinances

look like from our vantage point that are in conflict with those other ones

that are at the state level mandated perspective,

and then how we can work around to just build

as what we can get the most out of that site.

But my problem that I have with all this is

sometimes we move a little bit too slow,

and sometimes we move a little bit too fast.

There's no perfect approach,

and that's why I appreciate that you were able

to come up with a design handbook, right?

suggestions for standards for parking walkways shared walkways between

properties so my question then is while you went through this exercise with your

team it looks like you were able to better lay a foundation for what we can

and can't do and what we would want to ask developers to meet do you believe

that this is just the first step and that we'll be able to meet that deadline

that we have with the timeline where City Council will then deliberate and

we'll get something to them by February and then afterwards be approved a little

thereafter do you think the timelines feasible do you mean to complete our

three or to integrate some SB 79 our three yeah our three we are we are

working feverishly to get this done you know this year and you know in the next

six months or so, and so

we are

planned very much to achieve

that goal.

The SB 79

does add

complexity to all of

our in-process

projects in the city,

and so that's the purpose of the

conversation with council, is to

get their direction on priorities

for addressing

SB 79. Great. So are we still having

the SB 79 discussion?

at the council study session this month?

Yes, that's the plan.

January 27th.

Awesome, thank you.

That's it for me.

Let's move on to Commissioner Cranston.

Thanks.

So, follow up on some of the answers

you gave to other commissioners.

What prevails, the general plan or the zoning?

If a developer is requesting state density bonus, it's the higher of the two for density.

If they are not requesting a state density bonus, then it's the zoning.

And your consolidation proposal, you've got within R3D, you've got residential 50, 65,

80, and 110.

Is your intention on a small lot to change its general plan designation to 50 and a larger

lot change it to 100?

Or is they all going to be at the same level?

How will you decide what general plan designation you give to a small lot?

Our current intent is to not change the general plan designations from what the preferred alternative is

that council directed us to study back in June of last year.

But as I said, there's some language that we need to develop,

possibly in both the general plan and the zoning in order to address that issue that you're alluding to.

I guess what I'm, what I thought I heard you saying was small lot gets a lower general plan designation.

So in the way they get to the, if they get the consolidate, then they get, I don't know whether it's what the ZA says,

you can now become residential 65 or residential 80.

No, our current.

or is it I'm this consolidation incentive is getting messier as I hear more about it

and I'm just trying to understand.

Yeah, our current intent is to have them be in the general plan designation

that allows the density for even the larger lots at the higher density.

So, you know, if it's in the 110 unit per acre designation, it could stay in that 110 unit per acre designation, but that there would be clarifying language in both the zoning ordinance and the general plan limiting that density increase or limiting that density provision because the lot is small.

Now, that's language that we have to develop.

We, you know, it will take some work and some research and some legal analysis to develop

that language and to ensure that that approach can withstand the state density bonus, which,

as I said, defaults to the hire of general planner or zoning for density.

But that's something that, like, what we're trying to get from the EPC right now is this

overall concept of using a lower density on smaller sites, unless you consolidate as an

incentive, is that an appropriate approach to take? If it's not, then we don't have to

worry about that language. We won't even develop it. But we would like this direction before

we go down this path.

Have you tested this question with the state?

we are pursuing the legal question now,

and we will further pursue it

upon positive direction from the city council.

Great, so my follow up question,

and this is what I was leading to with,

sometimes we go at a certain pace fast and another slow.

So if this were to be approved legally

because you're getting advice of council, okay, great.

How soon do you expect for the language

to then be changed at the city-wide level

with council approval for the general plan

to reflect that type of edits to the codes

in general for the city?

Is this within the same year

or do you think it will take longer?

No, it would all have to happen with this R3 project.

Great, thank you.

helps me to understand the timeline a little bit better too.

Yes we reached the point of the meeting where we have no more questions.

So we will now move on to EPC deliberation and action.

We will segment the EPC deliberation and action into two parts.

If you have questions about this so do I so don't feel free, don't feel like you're the

only one.

Number one, the first part will include commissioner recusals and we'll focus first on discussion

about the R3A, sub-district and the residential 20 general plan designation.

I'm sure these will then also be presented on the monitors above us and around the council

chambers here so that we're familiarized with what they're referring to.

Then on residential 12 general plan designation.

Point two, after the commissioner's recusal, we will discuss the remaining topics, including

all other general plan designations, draft R3 development standards, and draft approaches

for retail slash live work, parking, non-conforming residential development, and center for lot

consolidation in alignment with the R4 zoning district.

I will now ask the commissioners with confidence of interest to make their recusal statements.

We'll start with Commissioner Donoghue.

I am recusing myself from discussion of the R3A sub-district and the residential 12 and

the residential 20 general plan designations due to the proximity of my personal residence

to properties identified for these designations.

Thank you, sir.

And now we'll be moving on to Commissioner Dempsey.

Mr. Chair, I am recusing myself from discussion of the residential 12 general plan designation

due to the proximity of my personal residence to properties identified for this designation.

Thank you, sir.

Oh, just like my hairline.

Okay.

There's just four of us.

Okay.

Oh, that's right, that's right.

So that's fine.

Okay, great.

EPC questions.

Deliberations and action regarding the Residential 12 General Plan designation.

The EPC should make a motion and vote on any recommendations they provide on these topics.

And I will do my best to jot down whatever suggestions there are that are outside of the norm of what was proposed to us by staff.

And I'm sure our city team staff will also do the same.

And just so you know, Alex, I sound stuffy, but not because I'm sick.

it's just bad allergies. Okay, who would like to start with questions, deliberations, perspectives?

I'll start with one clear comment here, if you all don't mind. I'm still struggling to figure out

what this means in terms of lock consolidation, right? I get the premise, I get the idea,

but I also feel like it's mostly out of our hands, because it's a market-driven

action. And I'll give you a quick example because I don't want to blab here. It's already 930.

Not that I do that intentionally either. So at Santa Clara University, where I went to school,

I'm an alumni from there, as is my friend Lucas Ramirez. Across the street from the campus,

there's like a Safeway shopping center and a Taco Bell and some other little round table pizza.

And at the very edge of that, there's this corner, like a pyramid-shaped property, really small.

It used to have like an oil well back in the day.

And it's been vacant for like over 30 years, right?

And it couldn't get developed, right?

Because you had to do cleanup and this and that.

But there was nothing adjacent to it where they would be able to be incentivized to partner up with someone or another entity.

Safer didn't want to do it.

The owners of the commercial property didn't want to do it.

To expand and grow.

Well, lo and behold, the property went on sale for $1 million.

And that's how it got developed.

Because at that time, the price was so darn cheap a little while ago, alumni from Santa

Clara, this person who has an undergrad in the JD, said, hey, I'm going to buy this.

They bought it and went through the whole motion of submitting proposals to the city

of Santa Clara, and now they're going to build about 34 to 38 apartments there and about

34 to 30 something parking units underground.

And it's a tiny little small space.

So the way I look at it is like, okay, by sheer dumb luck because of the price of that property, that development was able to come to fruition.

And I'm thinking that what Eric and the team is trying to do is exactly that, to have those small units or small lots just be developed.

So if they incentivize it that way, then I'm thinking, okay, the owners of the properties will then speak to each other to try and come up with something bigger.

And who knows?

They may not necessarily sell to one another.

they could be bought out by a larger entity, like a Greystone or a Prodese or someone like that, right?

And then that's where I look at the business opportunity then for those companies to come in

and then try and see if they can buy one lot, two lot, three lot, four, right?

And that's the only way I can make sense of it.

Because other than that, I don't know.

I'm not sold on that idea.

Yeah. In terms of the staff suggestions in general, I like where we're at. I know that

we'll get the first chance to try and come up with just the draft language or whatever

that means too because that's my other question for the team, Diana. When I looked at the

recommendation, it's kind of general in terms of like draft, draft this, draft that.

Chair, I had a question. Are we supposed to be delivering just on residential 12 right

now and then waiting to talk about consolidation when everyone comes back.

Yeah, but I jumped the gun.

So but my question here is for the draft resolution, is it just right now for this, for what you

presented exactly on paper?

Is that the resolution, just draft, draft language for this or draft language for that?

Or did you want us to be more specific with the draft language for whatever issues we

were talking about in general?

MR.

Chair Gutierrez, I think what we're looking for right now is a response to the staff recommendation,

which in some ways is high level, in some cases is more detailed.

But the response should be at a high level, at a policy level, given EPC's role.

So given that we're talking about general plan designations right now, specifically the general plan designation that's equivalent to the R2 zone, the residential 12 general plan designation,

You know, I don't want to put words into the commission's mouth, but, you know, direction to staff could be about some of the content of that designation, the intended density, anything else that we're presenting relating to that particular land use designation.

Okay, understood.

I do want to emphasize that this is an existing land use designation at an existing density, which is not proposed to be changed as part of this project.

some of the language associated with the designation is proposed to be changed,

but not language that would have any real effect on the implementation of the designation.

Understood. That makes sense to me now.

Okay. And I hope the rest of the commission has picked up on that too.

All right. So our first discussion about R3A subdistrict

and the residential 20 general plan designation plus residential 12.

Chair, it's just the residential 12 designation.

Just the residential 12? Okay.

Commissioner Dempsey can return for the R3A discussion.

Great, so then can we have the Resonance O 12

be presented on the screen somewhere?

Sorry, it would be the second row there of this table.

Great.

Vice Chair Nunez.

My understanding is that this is already in place, not really a target of the key changes

if I'm hearing correctly of what we're looking at targeting in terms of the upzoning, the

standard changes, et cetera.

I think this is, from what I'm gathering,

kind of something that we need to formally just

have reviewed so that we can also,

in light of the conflicts of interest,

so that we can then also discuss

the more substantive target changes,

if I'm understanding that correctly.

So I mean, I have no problem with supporting that.

So, yeah.

Great, thank you.

Commissioner Cranston.

Make the change.

Okay, agreed.

Anyone else?

Nope, okay, great.

Yep, no, no, I get it, I get you.

All right, so, and do we have any,

is that the same sentiment for residential 20

and R3A sub-district?

I believe we should ask Commissioner Dempsey

to return for that discussion.

Okay, so then right now we have it

just for residential 12, great.

So we can get Commissioner Dempsey.

So now we will have, if someone can please.

That's why I was asking those questions about the draft language and all this other stuff.

Because up to a point we could really weed into it.

Great, so now we'll be able to deliberate regarding the R3A sub-districts and residential

20 general plan designation.

Who would like to start?

It's just the residential 20 designation.

If I can make a suggestion about how to carry out

this discussion, you can start by discussing

the general plan designation.

That would be the third row in this table,

just the residential 20 designation.

And then you can talk about the development standards

proposed for the R3A zone.

Awesome.

Who would like to start?

Let's go with Commissioner Cranston.

Okay, so we're gonna discuss standards

for every single one of these, one by one?

We will need to discuss the residential 20 zone

and the standards applicable to just the R3A zone

while Commissioner Donahue is out of the room.

I'm okay with 20.

Vice Chair Nunez.

I'm good with that as well.

With the record, so am I.

Moving on to Commissioner Subramanian.

I'm okay with the density with regards to the standards in the R3A.

I want to clarify my suggestion for the habitable ground floor space,

and this is going to be consistent in the other zones as well.

I think particularly with regards to that minimum requirement,

requirement I think that is too deep to mandate within this zone because there could potentially

be footprints that are shallower than the 30 feet and so stating that as a minimum is

prohibitive and also I would request that there be an inclusion of the percentage of

frontage that needs to comply with that rather than that being a blanket request across the

entire frontage.

I would submit that to my fellow commissioners to consider as a modification to the standard

being proposed here.

Maybe staff could you assist us in how that could be modified?

Commissioner Cranston.

Do we have lots that are less than 30 feet?

The standard doesn't apply to lots.

The standard says that in a given building,

the front 30 feet of the building on the ground floor

needs to be habitable space.

And Commissioner Subramanian is saying

that that number should be smaller

to provide more flexibility for smaller units

on the ground floor.

So there aren't really any, if very many, if any lots that are, you know, less than 50 feet deep, for example,

that wouldn't be able to accommodate 100% of the ground floor of the building

with some setbacks in the front and back.

I think in those cases, there are exceptions in the standards

for those very, very small lots,

and most of them probably would be able to develop with a single-family home

or something like that anyway and use the single-family standards.

so those

or get variances or other

exceptions that may be available

so the lot size is not really

I'm not sure

that the lot size is an issue here

the issue is on

any given lot how much

flexibility do you give

for the size of the ground floor

unit that has to face the street

and giving more

flexibility for say parking behind

that unit

or some other configuration of units.

Say you have a shallow unit

and then another row of units behind that,

if that's how you want to design your configuration of units.

I guess I'd be open to something that says,

okay, that's what it is,

but if a lot is constrained,

then the ZA can use their reasonable judgment

to review it and accept the change

rather than it be a blanket change.

The second thing of the entire frontage has to be, we don't require the entire frontage.

I'm not in favor of that.

I want everything facing the street to be residential or the commercial.

I'm not in favor of only having one space be residential myself.

So I'm okay with the depth, given the ZA some flexibility there, but I wouldn't be.

Yeah, I would recommend combining the two,

where in this zoning designation,

if we do have the desire to maintain a residential frontage,

that there be more flexibility to the depth of that frontage

so it's not so onerous.

Master Nunez.

Sorry, just trying to make sure I'm understanding your proposal.

Commissioner, you're saying, am I hearing correctly,

that your view is that the 30 foot,

let me make sure, that minimum building depth

is something that you'd like to see

kind of struck or get rid of

just in terms of making it easier to actually,

just like removing a constraint.

Am I hearing that correctly or can you?

No, to clarify, I'm suggesting reducing the 30

to something more in the tune of 10 to 15,

just to give more allowance

for there to be other uses behind that depth

if this is to be the habitable frontage

across all developments in that.

Yeah, I mean, that sounds good to me.

Okay, so I hear possibly three people in support and three who have not chimed in.

I'm fine with the staff presentation as it is.

I wouldn't want to modify it.

I'll leave that in the hands of City Council to deliberate.

Chair, I'll just offer for the Commission as we're working through all of these issues

tonight. I think it seems sensible to make flexibility or to provide discretion to the

zoning administrator. One of the challenges we have is to make objective standards that are not

subject to such discretion so that we can enforce them in more cases than subjective standards that

say to the discretion of the zoning administrator and so forth. Those are problematic under the

current framework of state housing law.

Okay.

So, looks like we just dealt with

Residential 20 and, I'm sorry, R3A?

So, oh, did you want to speak, sir?

I guess I'm not sure we have, I didn't feel we had consensus.

My recommendation is the standard is the standard, but that if there are physical constraints

with the property that prevent that from occurring, that that is something that the ZA can review

and approve, but only in those cases.

It's not blanket waiver, okay?

It is specific if there's physical limitations that prevent that from occurring, I would

prefer to keep the depth requirement there, but only if there's insufficient space to

allow it, then the applicant can appeal and make an alternative proposal that the ZA can

review and approve.

That's what I'm suggesting.

So I'm not suggesting generic approval by the ZA.

It is specific.

If this occurs, then they can do that.

That's my recommendation.

I see, which is different from what was presented earlier.

I understand what you're saying.

So then in that case, commissioners, how do you feel about the proposal by Commissioner

Cranston?

Are you in favor of that?

Can we do a straw vote for that?

Could I quickly clarify with staff why there was a desire to push for the 30 feet?

Is there a big reason to not be able to reduce that?

Well, let me just say real briefly about the request that the chair had.

There is already an exception in the draft for habitable ground force space in cases

of constrained lot depths.

So that exception already exists in the draft standards.

So it's inherent within that.

Yes, exactly.

So I don't think you need to receive direction on this.

What Commissioner Subramanian is asking is whether we should make the default standard

less.

And there may be support on the commission for that, yet to see.

Your question, what was the rationale for the 30 feet?

The consultant from Opticos said that it was based on a range of livability assumptions

for the types of intended units that are in the R3A zone.

So I can't speak much towards more detail than that.

You have to imagine that the R3A zone

is kind of more compatible

with the R1 and R2 zoning districts.

And so you would expect to see kind of more livable space

on the ground floor rather than maybe in the more denser,

multifamily environments, maybe smaller units

on the ground floor with more ground floor parking.

These districts also, this district would also tend

to have more open area on the lot.

So the building itself is taking up less space,

which actually provides more flexibility for parking

elsewhere on the lot or other needs for the project.

Thank you for that.

I should also note that along with the R3A standards,

there is a front setback, which is pretty deep at 20 feet.

And that is also something where if we are talking about,

and maybe you can clarify about where these standards

are being proposed for an R3A transitional district,

and it fits in with the single family setback requirements.

But again, if we are trying to bridge towards more walkable streets and creating a presence

on the street, then I would recommend that we look at minimizing some of those front

setbacks in the R3 zones.

So could you clarify if within the R3A, if the front setback is more aligned with the

lower density R1 and R2 or what the thinking was in the particular setback noted here?

Yeah, so the R3A zone is a density increase to the current R2 zone. And the R2 zone currently

has a 20-foot front setback. That's also the front setback in the R1 zone. And as I said,

you know, the R2 zone exists in a lot of contexts that are completely surrounded by R1 districts.

And so these, part of the goal of the R3A standards is to more sensitively build more density in these environments with similar kind of frontages, similar character, similar designs as the overall surrounding neighborhood.

And I have a friendly reminder.

We've been told for our live stream,

people are not able to hear everybody.

So request to everybody on the commission and staff

as well, please speak in the microphone

so it can be recorded and people can hear

the discussion clearly.

Thank you.

Thank you for the clarifications, Chair.

I'm fine with leaving the standards

as stated in the R3A.

Great, thank you.

Can we move on to residential 20 general plan designation?

No, well right here I have 20.

Because I think we just agreed on R3A, right?

Oh, okay, so then R3A is next.

So the discussion has been generally about R3A and-

So we're done with that now.

We can have Commissioner Donahue come back.

If there are no more comments

and that the commission supports

the staff recommendation as a whole,

maybe there's a nod from commissioners in a sense

supporting the staff recommendation

for residential 20 and R3A designation.

Okay, great, thank you.

Okay, great, thanks.

Thank you.

Welcome back sir.

Not having you two guys really throws me off.

Okay.

Let's move on to EPC questions,

deliberation and action regarding the remaining materials.

The staff recommendation is as follows.

Any changes from the staff recommendation

must be described with the motion.

And I quote that the Environmental Planning Commission

review and provide a recommendation

to the City Council regarding

draft residential general plan designations

except residential 20,

draft development standards for the R3 zoning district update

except standards that pertain only to R3A,

and draft approaches for retail,

excuse me, live, work, parking,

non-conforming residential developments,

incentive for lock consolidation,

and alignment with the R4 zoning district.

Vice Chair Nunez.

All right, so thank you to Mr. Anderson earlier

Anderson earlier for his response to Commissioner Donahue clarifying a little bit more on the

incentive for the lot consolidation.

I know why it's so confusing and why we're kind of like facts with it now.

So I just want to make sure I'm going to confirm with Mr. Anderson.

what you were touching on was the idea that we would introduce something kind of like unpleasant, for lack of better words,

which is to cut the proposed upzoning from like R3D from that 65 bull down to like the 30-something,

to then incentivize the consolidation of lots.

In short, that's what I heard.

Okay.

And so I think the problem is that in the most technical sense, and I appreciate that no one on staff is in behavioral psychology, but in reality, that's actually not an incentive.

So under reinforcement theory and operant conditioning, you can have positive punishment, negative punishment, positive reward, negative reward.

right and like under that concept like introducing something negative to get

something positive is not a behavioral incentive it's tech it's not actually a

it's it's just not even in that framework it's almost like negative

coercion and so I think just in terms of why we're kind of like struggling with

it I think it's a because it's not an incentive but if I was to say hey how

could that actually become an incentive then you know like actually introducing something positive

like for example hey anyone who wants to consolidate will get expedited review will get

like 10 I don't know percent higher density or height limit or whatever it is then you introduce

a positive reward and that's a that's an actual incentive and so the you know I will put forward

that the fallacy is that in terms of adding something unpleasant, it's not going to automatically

then trigger the desired behavior.

And that's just on a technical level.

And we can ask any psychologist that we know.

I'm sure they'll back that up.

So I'm just putting that forward for the commission in terms of trying to clarify some of that.

But along those lines, you know, in terms of speaking for myself now, I will say under that kind of premise, I would definitely not, you know, be cool with the lot consolidation incentive under that manner.

I'd like to see staff maybe consider

like a positive reward element toward the consolidation

because otherwise we're not really kind of stimulating

interest, positive interest, I'll state,

positive interest in the consolidation behavior

that we want while at the same time precluding

or lessening the potential opportunity

that we're going to put forward from these standards

in terms of what can actually come forward

in terms of development density.

And then along those lines also,

in terms of other general commentary on this,

I would love to see the ground floor retail

be something that is extended,

maybe not across like R3A or, you know,

like I understand the need to limit change.

I'd like to see in a little bit more places in R3D.

and I also appreciate Mr. Anderson kind of clarifying,

hey, like actually the reasoning is,

you know, there's another value that the community holds

and that's why, you know, this kind of limitation was introduced.

I can't say it's the one I'm the most sensitive toward,

but at the same time, I don't, you know,

feel it's fair to just invalidate that out of pocket.

So to the extent there's just a little bit more, you know,

in terms of that ground floor retail element that can come forward,

I definitely appreciate that.

And then just overall, in terms of general comments,

along those lines of kind of like how some of these changes are being put forward,

you know, I'm seeing a lot of the good ones that kind of like stimulate that,

you know, like development and, you know, ease of economic viability, right,

like reduced parking requirements, you know, exceptions for some site constraints.

I think you touched on the one with the 30 feet, you know, just now.

Some reduced setbacks.

live work, right, increased FAR. Those are all good ways that I see the staff recommendation

in material sense or attempting to stimulate development and economic viability.

But overall, I think there are quite a few other recommendations that are hampering that as well.

And I find that overall, I'm concerned that the, and I'll specify in a moment, but I'm concerned that the proposals that would fall under the category of hampering or introducing less economic viability, like the massing breaks, like the, you know, like the minimum density requirements, the lot consolidation also, you know, without going into that again, right?

retail only in R3D as it is right now.

I find that those are, you know, like, yes, we're reducing some of these barriers,

but also we're introducing new barriers.

And so I don't know where the balance on the whole lies.

Is the introduction of the new barriers going to, like, you know,

unnecessarily prevent us from reaching a potential ceiling?

for a reason that I'm still not able to fully grasp,

or would it be better for us to just kind of like

not have these, or so many of these kind of new

or introduced barriers like the massing,

like the minimum building depth, et cetera,

that maybe we can just trust that developers

will be able to understand what's right and best

for the property that they want to build on,

I see developers all the time.

What do they do?

They go around to the community.

They knock on the doors.

They ask people, what would you like to see?

They don't want to piss people off either.

So there is some built-in incentivization,

not to use that word again.

It's kind of going to drive me crazy,

for them to not come in and build a giant black cube as well.

And so I'm just wondering, on the whole,

to remove some of these introduced barriers.

And so I'll just pause there.

I'm not going to fully say do I support it yet, yes or no,

outside of the specific ones that I mentioned

around the lot consolidation and the ground floor retail.

But overall, that's my impression.

Reduced barriers in certain avenues,

but then new introduced barriers in other ways.

So I'd like to just put that forward to my colleagues

and see where you guys land in terms of your thoughts.

Commissioner Cranston.

So in general, I'm supportive of the staff recommendations.

Understand that this is all raising the density.

It's all making it more.

Things like the massing breaks

are part of our existing standards.

This is not new.

This is something that the DRC reviews today.

These are not new barriers that are being introduced.

The requirement for residential to be street facing

is part of what we get reviewed today.

We've seen project after project

where that's where the residential is,

is right at the street.

And so I don't see those as,

they're not introducing barriers,

we're maintaining something that has worked

and has been received well by the community.

And so I'm supportive of those.

With respect to the retail, my first ownership property was a stacked flat in a, essentially

would be like an R3A.

And half a block away was a little grocery store called White Hen Pantry.

It's like a nicer version of a 7-Eleven.

And in a community where you walk, that's where I went to get stuff.

If I need milk, I walk there to get it.

If I needed, it's like, oh, shoot, I'm out of Tide.

I could walk over and get a little tiny thing of Tide.

I could walk to the supermarket, but it was like five blocks away.

Okay.

And I'd have to get in my car and find freaking parking over there.

That little convenience store was really convenient.

So I'm not adverse to the idea of allowing some level of retail in even the R3B.

I think it should at very least be in R3C.

but I think I don't I don't see a reason why we wouldn't allow it to be in our

three air 3b as well because there are those small community serving things and

it was a you know lifesaver for me and more than once you know I'm watching

movie and damn I wish I had some potato chips I could go get some stupid things

but it's there you could walk to it and those things are great so I'm in favor

of adding more retail I will admit the live work thing confused me because my

idea of live work is not what's been described my experience with live work is up in San Francisco

in the Boston area it's a building that has been turned into a live work space and it tends to be

a you know craftsman artists you know in one in the front of the building and upstairs is

the loft is there is where they live okay that's a live work space if what you're talking about is

to something more like a restaurant where they live up above.

Okay, that's fine, but I don't know that it buys us

a whole lot, quite frankly.

Live work spaces, in my experience,

actually create some culture in the area.

Yeah, you can walk into the building,

but the one that's closest to me up in San Francisco,

once a year does a open house,

and you can go from place to place

and see the guy that's making custom paper,

and the guy that's an artist,

and the guy that's making different things,

so it's a different kind of space.

So what you've described as live work is,

the value is lower to me.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's not okay,

but the value as you've described it to me

is less than I would have wanted it to be.

So if there's a consideration of making it something,

allows beyond that.

And a lot of those spaces, the one in Boston,

the one in open San Francisco,

they don't have any street frontage.

There's no sign that says, hey, come here to buy

handmade paper you need to know that they're in there so I believe work my

enthusiasm has waned after what you described you'd be doing there but I

like I like the idea of the retail parking slur parking standards I agree

with what staff has said it makes sense after hearing consolidation go back and

go back to the drawing board try again okay this is this doesn't work for me

And the non-conforming ordinance, once you clarified that, yeah, there's still a lot

to be townhouses, that's okay.

And based on what you described, R3D is R4, so smash them together.

Call them whatever you want.

I don't care whether you call it R4 or whether you call it R3D, it's the same darn thing,

so I have two different things.

Commissioner Fan.

All right, so I agree with a lot of what my fellow commissioners have already said, and

in general I agree with the staff recommendations.

I do have some minor points here and there.

For the on-site circulation, I have the same question as Commissioner Cranston about the

two locations.

My recommendation, and I understand that identifying all the locations across the city is a huge

you should lift, but potentially if you're including R4

within R3, then you may want to at least identify

all the ones in R3 and R4.

And then I had some thoughts about the retail live work

approach, it was very interesting what was described

and I learned a lot from the discussion.

I would ask if you're going to bring this forward

to counsel potentially describe more

of the targeted operational standards

because it is something different and unique.

And so if we're going to allow in all R3,

it may be good to have a better explanation

of what's allowed and what are some controls

in place regarding this type of space.

Next thing I had thoughts on was the incentive

for lot consolidation.

I felt the same as Commissioner Nunes

that the word incentive felt off to me.

I think you had a really good explanation about why

and it's probably more detailed than just my gut feeling.

I'm generally okay with the approach

if we add carrots as well as what I think of more as a stick.

So rather than just scrap it,

potentially expand it to include actual real incentives

may work.

And I think that's it for my comments, thank you.

Sweeto.

Thank you, Chair.

So I wanna start with some of the building standards.

Well, first of all, let me back up,

and I wanna really commend staff

on the point that you've arrived at

after all these years

and developing these form-based code standards,

because I think it is really a huge step

in the right direction and I commend you for trying

to simplify those standards and keep them to a minimum.

So I hope my comments further aid in that direction.

And with that said, I wanna make some suggestions

for these standards, particularly from

a feasibility perspective,

as well as cost reduction measures in mind.

I will start again with the habitable ground floor space,

starting from the R3B through the C to the D.

And I really encourage you to look at that.

First of all, let me step back.

So from a light and air perspective,

the habitable space that is counted within any unit

tends to be the living areas, bedroom areas,

and maybe some open kitchens.

And typically the depth of that is at 20 to 25 max.

So where it, particularly in the R3B,

where it's still a 30-foot minimum depth,

I think that's going to be challenging,

particularly when you get into building frontages

that are 100 feet max, say a lot allows that,

and where you have a building footprint

with the width of 100 feet max being allowable,

it's going to be challenging to have 100% of that frontage

be 30 feet deep habitable across the entire front.

So I would like you to look at two considerations,

which is thinking about particularly as you get into

R3B, C and D and you have wider building frontages

on lots to have some minimum requirement

for what is habitable and to restrict the depth

of that habitable space to 20 feet max.

So that's one recommendation.

The second point I would like to touch on again,

since we've moved on from the transition zone

to the single family homes,

is to reduce the front setback.

In the R3B zone, maybe a 10 foot setback would work well,

but again, I think in the R3C and D,

if we're really looking for walkable developments,

which are abutting sidewalks,

I think the ideal front setback should be no more than five to 10 at the most, ideally

five in the R3.

So you have developments that are really creating walkable streets, there's presence on the

ground, the five foot setback allows for ground for retail to have any spill out outdoor space,

but it feels much more integrated with the street presence than having this huge setback

and the building sitting back from that.

So that would be my suggestion on the setbacks.

Then the third thing I wanna point to is

the Bay development standards

and some of the massing breaks that are being suggested.

In addition, I mean, first of all,

I wanna make a comment that having any setbacks and breaks

rakes makes it much more expensive from a construction standpoint.

It requires additional surfaces that need waterproofing.

That adds to a lot of cost.

It requires additional maintenance over time.

And particularly when you're looking at structures that are four stories tall,

I'm not really quite sure why we need the definition of a base,

a middle, and a top.

If the idea to set in those definitions

is to have a better read from the street level,

that can be accommodated with other tools

which are visual breaks.

And I would encourage staff to include more language

that permits visual breaks rather than actual setbacks

or step backs in massing

at these very strictly permitted requirements.

This is something that comes up even more

when you look at modular construction of housing.

And modular works best when there's a typical floor plate

that extends all the way up.

And if we're trying to incentivize more development

that is cheaper to build,

then I would really recommend that you include

more visual elements and a language

that achieves some of these same results

without requiring actual breaks in massing and setbacks.

And some of the ideas could be around

allowing for material change,

allowing for change in composition

of solid versus transparency percentages.

And so those could be strategies that create these breaks

without actually setting back actual massing.

So I think that covers a bulk of my around design standards.

Outside of that, I agree with some of the comments

being made around inclusion of retail

or ground-front commercial space,

right from the R3B zone,

because I think there are several instances

of those being in current communities.

And I think it would also make it easier

to make them conforming uses if that's included

within the R3B to R3D versus making them non-conforming uses.

And then I will say as a resident of Rex Manor,

where there've been a lot of new townhome developments,

it's an absolute retail desert.

So I think including retail within the R3B zone

allows for opportunities where developers

are able to include some commercial retail in those areas.

Let's see, with lot consolidation,

I will say a lot has been said

and I think there still remains a lot of work to be done.

One thing that strikes me,

I did go back to the notes in the staff reports

and you spoke about just 17% of the lots

which are small lots within the R3D.

that you are concerned about not achieving the full density capacities right

and i think it was also said something around 5 000 square feet of all of our no that's not right

five percent of the r3d area is with small lots which you think may not achieve the full density

potential i just wanted to highlight that to share that with my colleagues so maybe it's not a huge

impact and what would help us further understand this is within all the areas

that have been demarcated for R3D if the small lots are existing only in certain

parcels and not sprinkled throughout all of the R3D zones because then it makes

it easier to understand the lot consolidation approach one of my fears

is particularly when you look at it from a development standpoint that there

might be small lots who are holdouts just to try and achieve maximum value and or even

hold out for like historical for you know wanting to hold on to legacy property or not

wanting to part with that and we've seen many instances of such developments if people may

recall this very famous image of a shoebox I think it was in Seattle surrounded by a

massive development around it.

And so I think we need to really think about strategies

that incentivize lot owners to acquiesce

to some sort of lot consolidation process

that makes it truly an incentive.

I wonder if there are, you know,

there are administrative processes that can be put in place

where there's already ways to dissolve parcel boundaries

that make it easier for lot owners

to submit themselves to a consolidation process,

but I do think some work needs to be done there.

With regards to live work units,

I wondered if when I read this,

this was a standard that was prompted

as a result of the pandemic.

and a desire to have more spaces that had flexibility.

So I wonder if as we're going beyond that

and people are returning to work

and there's a true separation between work and home,

if there's more consideration about where live work

would actually benefit within the city

and thinking about incentives for developers

to actually pursue that.

One comment I make around the operation standards being considered is to encourage staff to

also include operational hours so some of the retail doesn't extend beyond residential

living standards and to include any sort of noise level limitations so there aren't operations

that disturb neighbors.

I think I hit all the points and all for consolidating R4 with R3.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Commissioner Donohue.

So I'm generally on board with the staff recommendation.

I think, I actually agree with a lot of what

Commissioner Cranston said with respect to existing

design standards, things like that.

As for the live work, it's interesting,

but it sounds like 90% of the units are really just live.

So I'm not sure how beneficial it is, but sure.

I think it's an interesting concept.

It kind of reminds me of painting pottery with my kids

over at a house over, I don't know, over here someplace.

There was, I don't know if it's still there,

but well the house is, but I don't know if the business is.

You know, kind of a, you would go into their house

and they had a business there where you could paint pottery.

So that sounds like something to, you know,

interesting to pursue further.

The lot consolidation thing is obviously

something we've talked a lot about this evening

and that is something that concerned me

when I read the staff report and it's something

that I am not really on board with the proposal.

So I think that is something that should be done.

is something that should be done.

We should incentivize lot consolidation, definitely.

I don't think that this is the right approach

to achieve that goal.