Okay, it's 9 a.m.

So good morning.

We are calling to order the planning director hearing of October 1st, 2025.

My name is Martina Davis and I'm the hearing officer for today's agenda on behalf of and by delegated by Director of Planning, Building and Code Enforcement, Christopher Burton.

This meeting is being held via Zoom conference call.

Members of the public may participate by following the instructions listed on page two of the agenda.

If you would like to provide public comment, you have two methods to do so.

For participants who joined electronically and have audio input available on their computer or smartphone, you can use your raised hand feature in Zoom during the agenda you would like to speak on, or if you're on your phone without you know the smartphone kind of stuff, uh click star nine.

Remember to keep your hands raised feature on until planning support staffs identifies your turn to speak.

The other option is during the meeting, you can call 408-535-8517 or email planning support staff at San Jose CA.gov and identify your name, that's listed in the Zoom.

Phone number that you'll be calling into with your audio, and what items or item you would like to comment on.

All members of the public will remain on mute until the individual identifies that they would like to speak and they are unmuted.

Planning support staff will identify you by name when it is your turn to speak.

At that time, you will be unmuted and can provide comment for the allotted time.

If you exceed your allotted time, you may be muted so we can move on to the next speaker.

Please note the following.

The hearing procedure and order of input will be as follows.

I will identify each project on the agenda.

For those items on the consent calendar, I will ask if anyone wishes to speak on the item.

If a separate discussion is warranted, I will move the item to the public hearing portion of the agenda.

If a separate discussion is not needed, the item will remain on the consent calendar for approval.

For those items listed under public hearing, I will ask staff to provide a brief report.

The applicant or their representative who wishes to speak on the item will have five minutes to speak and should identify themselves by stating their name for the record.

After the applicant or their representative has spoken, any members of the public who wish to speak on the item may provide testimony for up to two minutes per speaker, either for or against the project.

All members of the public should identify their name for the record, although this is not required.

Following comments from the public, the applicant may make an additional remark for up to five minutes.

I will then close the public hearing and I may ask staff to answer questions, respond to comments made by the applicant or public, or further discuss the item.

I will then take action on the item.

If you challenge these land use decisions in court, you may be limited to raising only those issues you or someone else raised at this public hearing or in written correspondence delivered to the city at or prior to the public meeting.

The planning director's action on agenda items will be final when the permit is signed and mailed, unless the permit or environmental clearance determination is appealed.

The planning director's actions on permits are appealable in accordance with requirements of Title 20 of the Municipal Code, which is the zoning ordinance.

The planning director's actions on environmental review for the permits under the California Environmental Quality Act are separately appealable in accordance with the requirements of Title 21 of the Municipal Code, which is the environmental clearance ordinance.

Before we begin, I want to remind members of the public to follow our code of conduct at meetings.

This includes commenting on the specific agenda item only.

Public speakers will not engage in a conversation with the hearing officer or staff.

The hearing officer, staff, and the public are expected to refrain from abusive language.

Repeated failure to comply with the code of conduct, which will disturb, disrupt, or impede the orderly conduct of this meeting may result in removal from the meeting.

The meeting of the director's hearing will now come to order.

Okay, so let's move on to our agenda.

So the first item on the agenda is deferrals.

Any items scheduled for hearing this morning for which deferral to a future meeting date is requested will be moved to this portion of the agenda and considered on the matter of deferral.

I will identify any items to be deferred and ask for comments from the audience.

If you wish to uh want to change any of the deferral dates or speak to the questions of deferring any items, please use the raised hand feature to speak.

I'll now open the hearing on this matter that we have no items planned for deferral or proposed for deferral today.

I will give staff one second to unmute and tell me if there's any changes to that.

Okay, seeing no changes.

There are no items to be deferred.

So the matter of deferral is now closed.

Let's move on to the consent calendar.

So, as a reminder, there will be no specific discussion on individual consent items as they are considered routine and will be considered in one action.

And let's move to the public hearing for discussion by the officer, hearing officer.

Public may comment on the entire consent calendar and any items to be removed from the consent calendar by the hearing officer.

So if you want any of to speak on any of these items, now is your time to raise your hand and ask us to move these items from the consent calendar to the public hearing calendar.

So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to read each item and then we'll see if we have any raised hands to move any of these items to the public hearing calendar.

So first item on the consent calendar, H24033 and ER24164.

This is a site development permit to allow construction of a two-story approximately 25,638 square foot medical office building.

The demolition of an approximately 4,875 square foot commercial building, and removal of six trees.

One tree is ordinance size and five are on ordinance sized on approximately 0.56 gross acre site located at the south side of McKee Road, approximately 200 feet northeasterly of the intersection of North Jackson Avenue and McKee Road.

The address here is 2326 McKee Road.

The CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act determination is statutorily exempt pursuant to California Government Code Section 21080.69A2 for federally qualified health centers.

And this is from Senate Bill 131.

Project Manager is Jason Lee, and staff's recommendation is to consider the exemption in accordance with CEQA and approve a site development permit.

The next item on our consent calendar is H24049, T24030, and ER24214.

The site development permit to allow either option A, consisting of construction of a 14-story office building with ground floor retail space and four underground parking levels and exterior modifications to an existing six-story office building.

This was previously approved under file SP 21037, or a new option B, consisting of construction of an 18-story mixed-use tower with 600 multifamily residential units, approximately 13,100 square feet of ground floor retail space and four levels of underground parking and removal of 25 trees.

Eight trees are ordinance sized and 17 are non-ordinate size.

This includes a vesting tentative map to merge five lots into one lot on an approximately 1.8 gross acre site at 255 West Julian Street.

This is uh in Council District 3 and the CEQA determination is an attendum to the downtown strategy 2045 final environmental impact report uh resolution 78942.

Project manager Jacqueline Guerrero and the staff recommendation is to consider an addendum to the downtown strategy 2040 environmental impact report in accordance with CECA and approve a site development permit and vesting tentative map.

I'm gonna go ahead and read all of these and then I'll see if anyone wants to pull one of them or more.

Um, so we'll move on to the next one, which is SP 24 uh 043 and ER24294, special use permit to allow conversion of an existing approximately 5,735 square foot single-story commercial building into a child day care center for up to 70 students with two new outdoor playgrounds and associated site improvements on an approximately 0.49 gross acre site located on the southwest corner of Blossom Hill Road and Blossom Hill Avenue in uh intersection.

This is 554 Blossom Hill Road.

The environmental clearance is statutory exempt pursuant to government code section 21080.69A1 for daycare centers.

This is also Senate Bill 131.

Project manager is Alex Atianza, and the staff recommendation is consider an exemption in accordance with CEQA and approve a special use plan.

So if anyone who is here on this hearing today would like to speak on any of these three items, please raise your hand and identify which item you would like to speak on, and we will remove that item and put it on the public hearing calendar for um a further discussion later.

So now is your opportunity to ask to speak on any of these items.

Dominic, which item would you like to speak on?

H24049.

Okay.

Anyone else would like to speak on any of the items we see any other hands raised?

Okay, so seeing none, um, we are going to move uh item 3b H24049 and T24030 and ER24214 to the public hearing calendar.

So that that item, uh the site development permit for the project at 255 West Julian will not be considered with consent.

We'll hear that later.

So we're just now talking about items 3A and 3C.

Um, I do before I move on the consent calendar, I would uh like to ask the applicant a question on item 3A.

Um I have support staff.

Sorry, I'm maybe being a little confusing this morning.

Can we go back to the 3A on the thing just so we can have it up?

Thank you.

Okay, so um I'm you know, I'm not gonna move this to public hearing for a full discussion.

Um, I don't plan to right now, but I would like the applicant on this item just to speak really quickly.

I I noted that the um building entrance is on the um side of the building, kind of facing a driveway to another office building, and I thought that was kind of an interesting choice.

And I would like to see if the applicant is here this morning and is able to speak to that or staff.

Do you have any um statements on why the primary entrance to the building couldn't be uh fronting onto McKee Avenue?

Uh, good morning, hearing officer.

Um Jason Lee, project manager for this project.

I will defer to Chris Barlow from WRD.

Um, who is the applicant?

Good morning.

This is Chris Barlow from WRD Architects, uh, the architect record for the project.

Uh thanks to everyone for having us on this meeting and Jason in particular for running this project uh for its long history so far.

Uh we do actually have an entrance from McKee Road.

Uh, and the project is front-facing.

Um, however, we also have an additional uh entrance as you've noticed uh from the parking lot, and that's largely due to the medical use of this building.

Uh we'll have a lot of people with accessibility needs, and although the McKee Road entrance is also accessible.

Uh we decided that the main lobby should be in an area that's uh separated from McKee Road, as you know, there's a lot of traffic.

There's a bus stop right in front.

Uh, and for the comfort and safety of our medical users, uh, we we deemed it to be uh more appropriate for uh having a lobby entrance from the parking area where they've there's basically some time to kind of decompress and and get walkers and wheelchairs and that kind of thing staged before uh entering the building.

So is it do you have access?

Because I it feels like that parking area is on the neighboring property.

Do you have access to use that property parking area?

Is that the idea?

Actually, the uh there's a shared driveway for the access.

So essentially we uh we own half of that uh parking area.

So uh we do have uh the ability to, yes, we've got the easement rights to uh enter the building from that area.

So I imagine you'd kind of expect people maybe do drop offs right there and come up that entrance is kind of what I'm I'm hearing.

Exactly.

Yeah, there is uh, you know, there's always the uh delivery vehicles, uh patient drop-offs, um, all the things we wouldn't want happening on McKee Road.

We want to have off the path of traffic in that in that parking area.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Yeah, I just I just was uh hoping to hear a little bit more about that.

Um, it does require an exemption or an exception to the design standards um for that, and you know, there there are major strategies of our general plan being forward to this, particularly since it is a federally based healthcare clinic, you know, it provides health care for folks in our community who very much need it.

So I do think that uh we can justify that exemption exception as stated in the permit.

I just wanted to just hear a little bit more about that before I made my decision.

So thank you very much.

Um with that, I am going to approve the consent calendar.

So that is item 3A and 3C.

3B has been moved to public hearing.

Um, so but the other two items are hereby approved.

So next, we will host a public hearing on item 3B.

Just uh bear with me, I'm gonna read it really quickly again, and then uh our hearing procedures or staff report uh report from applicant and then public comment.

So just as a reminder, we're talking about the site development permit to allow either option A, which is previously approved 14-story office building with ground floor retail space, and four underground parking levels, including exterior modifications to a six-story office building.

Uh, this was approved under file SP 21037, or a new option B consisting of construction of 18-story next use tower with 600 residential units, approximately 13,100 square feet of ground floor resale space, and four levels of underground parking.

Removal of 25 trees and a vesting tenant map to merge five lots into one on an approximately 1.8 gross acre site at 255 West Julian.

So this will give them the option to build either an office building or a residential building, um, I imagine, depending on what the market is calling for.

Uh, so with that, does staff have a report?

Good morning, hearing officer.

Staff does have a report for this project.

Um, but before that, I'd also like to request um a change to one of the conditions.

So condition number three for the project options to read as follows.

Option A, notwithstanding condition number two, when the permittee commences vertical construction for option A, the site development permit file number H2449 shall expire.

Option B, notwithstanding condition number two.

When the permittee commences vertical construction for option B, the option to develop the site for the project approved through special use permit number sp 2137 will no longer be valid.

The applicant has agreed to this change, and this concludes the proposed conditions to change us.

And now for the report.

Um this project consists to allow either option A, consisting of the construction of a 14-story office building with ground floor retail space and four underground parking levels and exterior modifications to an existing six-story office building as approved under file number SB 2137, or option B consisting of construction of an 18-story mixed-use tower with 600 multifamily residential units, approximately 13,100 square feet of ground floor retail space and four levels of underground parking, the removal of 25 trees, eight ornament in size, and 79 non-ordinate size.

The site is bounded by Pellier Park to the east, a high-rise multifamily residential building to the southeast, a commercial building to the south, highway 87 to the west, vacant land to the northwest, and mixed use commercial and multifamily residential building to the north.

The site is currently developed with a six-story office building, the Davidson building, and a surface parking lot.

The site has a general plan land use designation of downtown.

The project is consistent with general plan goals and policies related to mixed use residential commercial uses regarding facilitating those development preservation and rehabilitation of housing to meet San Jose's fair share of counties and regions' housing needs.

The site is located within the DC downtown primary commercial zoning district and is consistent with all setback height requirements, TDM, bicycle parking, motorcycle parking and loading requirements.

A conditional of approval implementing the MMRP as part of this permit, standard and environmental permit conditions to lessen the environmental effects of the project was done.

The project will not result in a substantial increase in the magnitude of any significant environmental impact previously identified in the EIR that evaluated project A.

For these reasons, a supplemental or subsequent EIR is not required in an addendum to the Downtown Strategy 2040.

EIR is appropriate for the environmental clearance for the project.

An on site sign has been posted on the project since September 27, 2024.

A community meeting was held via Zoom on May 22nd, 2025.

During this time, the committee meeting had a question raised regarding the inclusion of affordable houses in the proposed project.

The applicant had indicated that an affordable housing compliance panel will be submitted for review, detailing the chosen compliance method and ensuring alignment with the inclusionary housing ordinance.

Notices for the public hearing were mailed to the property owners and tenants within under a thousand foot radius consistent with the council.

Policy for public outreach.

Staff has been available to answer any public comments, and this concludes staff's presentation.

All right.

Thank you, staff.

Applicant, do you have uh any comments?

You will have five minutes to speak.

Do we see the applicant here today?

Give it one more second before I will move on to public comments, and we will have applicant.

You will have an additional opportunity to speak after public comments.

Um right.

So it's looking like we'll go to public comment.

Dominic, that would be you, support staff.

I don't know if you need to unmute him.

Yeah, thank you.

My name is Dominic Toriano.

I'm with the Sheet Metal Workers LOC 104.

We are part of the Silicon Valley MEPS, a coalition of skill building and construction trades union, which also includes IBW local 332, UA Local 393, and Sprinkler Fitters Local 483.

The coalition values its partnership with West Bank and strongly supports the current project.

Partnerships with West Bank and our union apprenticeship programs provide opportunities for workers from disadvantaged communities in San Jose to earn union benefits and wages while learning trade skills.

This is a win-win as we can revitalize both downtown by building housing in East San Jose through family sustaining wages.

Recent news coverage has not highlighted West Bank's commitment to providing good paying union jobs to local communities.

So I'm on here this morning to get that message out.

We strongly support the project.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you, Dominic.

Would anyone else like to speak on this item since we have it on public hearing?

Okay.

Seeing no hands raised.

Just one check, see if applicant has anything to add to that.

All right.

Seeing no hands raised, I am going to go ahead and take action.

I will consider the addendum to the downtown strategy 2040 final environmental impact report F A I R.

In accordance with CEQA and approve the site development permit and vested intentative mat.

So that item is now hereby approved.

And I thank you all for your time this morning.

This concludes the planning director's hearing for October 1st, 2025.