Special land use and housing committee meeting.

Councilmember Ward Campbell and Sherman are present.

We have one discussion item on our agenda today.

Item number one, a report from the planning department regarding a mixed use zoning municipal code amendment and local coastal program amendment.

Please begin when your report your report when you're ready.

Great, thank you.

Thank you so much for having us this morning.

My name is Renee Mezzo.

I'm with the planning department here to discuss the mixed use zoning project.

The goals of these new zones are to support high density housing your jobs in transit priority areas, which support the climate action plan and the city of villages.

We want to streamline the process to meet our housing goals and bring new units to market.

During a few of the community plan updates, we noticed the existing zones didn't anticipate the trends of development that we were seeing.

This is especially evident in Mission Valley, where some building types had not been contemplated in the existing plan and the plan district ordinance.

So staff looked at a new set of zones to provide more flexibility during the design process, provide walkable blocks and strong connections back to transit.

We looked at what was working, and we looked to the Grantville Plan District Ordinance, which was adopted in 2015, and currently there are 2,000 units in the planning process or under construction, with 25% of those being affordable.

We kind of use these regulations as a starting point and pulled a lot of the principles from Grantville into the new mixed use zones.

Since we're seeing more and more infilled development, we wanted to take advantage of underutilized land.

So we started looking at what we could allow for better use of land to increase development with a focus on a pedestrian environment that promotes transit access.

We began by having multiple subcommittee meetings, site testing, and received valuable feedback from various stakeholders throughout the process.

So these six new zones would permit rather than mandate a vertical or horizontal mixed of uses.

So the uses can be in multiple buildings across the site, not just in one building.

So there's three residential mixed use zones, and the focus is primarily on residential with increasing density and heights.

These zones would activate the street for a more walkable neighborhood and to avoid vacant ground floor retail.

Three employment mixed use zones are also proposed, which focus for on employment as the primary use.

These zones would support the innovation economy by allowing research and development, incubator, and co-work spaces.

We wanted to allow for more of a flexible mix of uses than currently what's what a lot of projects use, which is the CC39 zone for mixed use development.

So with these new mixed-use zones, we have about 20 to 30 percent more allowable uh uses such as um research and development and business services, which are currently not permitted in the CC39.

Another component of the mixed-use zones is we this will be the first time that we are calculating density based on floor area ratio or FAR.

Um currently the existing base zones calculate density by dwelling units per acre and using floor area ratio to calculate density increases the floor area that can be used for units and encourages smaller and therefore less expensive units.

So these zones activate the street through design and not through use.

This is an important distinction as we didn't want to mandate the uses at the street level, but still wanted to promote ground floor pedestrian activation in a logical interconnected network across the development as well as back to transit.

These zones include a menu of options for some of the regulations.

This choice-based approach provides more flexibility in the design process.

For example, um, to activate the building frontage, you can choose a minimum of the two of two elements from this table.

So it provides a little more flexibility in the design process.

So these zones are another tool in the toolbox for use citywide.

And our recommendation is to move the item to city council for approval.

And we're here to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm sorry, were you?

No, thank you.

Yeah.

Okay, wonderful.

Uh, before we go to our public speakers, the city attorney has comments for the committee.

Thank you, Chair.

Our office has been working with city staff on this matter.

However, the draft municipal code ordinance is still being reviewed in our office.

Therefore, if the committee moves this item forward to council, the wording may change from the order from the ordinance and the backup materials.

We will notify staff and council of any legal concerns at the earliest available opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we will go on to public speakers.

In opposition, we have Terrianne Skelly, followed by Becky Johnson.

You'll have one minute.

Good morning, land use and housing committee members.

My name is Terry Ann Skelly.

I'm a parent of three sons here in San Diego.

I wanted to share an experience I had last night at a high school parent forum in San Diego, uh, where the growing teen use of marijuana was discussed.

I found this ironic since just down the hill from this high school and other schools nearby, two middle schools and uh two private schools, two permanent pot shops, about 500 feet apart between separate water channels.