Good morning.

We're calling to order the planning director's hearing on March 11th, 2026.

My name is John 2, and I'm the hearing officer for today's agenda on behalf of and delegated by the 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'd like to provide public comment, you have two methods to identify yourself to provide public comment.

For participants who join electronically and have auto input available on your computer or smartphone, you can use the raise hand feature in Zoom or click star nine on your phone if you dialed in.

To request a speak when your items being heard on the agenda, keep your raise hand feature on until staff identifies your turn to speak.

During the meeting, you can also call 408-535-3505 or email planning support staff at San Jose CA.gov and identify your name that's listed on Zoom and the phone or phone number that you have that's also listed on Zoom and what item you would like to comment on.

All members of the public will remain on mute until staff identifies your turn to speak and you are unmuted.

At that time, you'll be unmuted and provide comments during the allotted time.

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

Please note the following.

The hearing procedure and order input will be as followed.

I will identify each project as described on the agenda.

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

If you a separate discussion is warranted, I'll move the item to 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 on the public hearing, I'll ask staff to provide a brief report.

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

After the applicant or representative spoken, any man in the public who wishes to speak on the item may provide testimony up to two minutes per speaker, either for or against the project.

All members of the public should identify their name for the record.

Following comments on the public, the applicant may be additional marks up to five minutes.

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

I will then take action on the item.

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

Plan direction action items actions on the agenda items will be final when a permit is signed and mailed, unless the permit or environmental clearance determination is appealed.

The planning director's action on the permits are appealable in accordance with requirements of title 20 and the municipality code.

The plan director's actions on in the environmental review for the permit under California Environmental Quality Act are separately appealable in accordance with requirements of Title 21 of the municipality code.

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

This includes commenting on specific agenda items only.

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

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

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

The meeting of the record hearing will now come to order.

First on the matter of deferral.

Any items scheduled for this more here morning, which for deferral is each of a future meeting is being requested.

We move to this portion of the agenda.

And ask for comments from the audience.

If you wish if you want to change any of the items or speak to the action deferral based on the answer, please use the raise hand function in Zoom or click star nine to raise your hand.

Staff or any member of the public want to speak onto the item of deferral.

Once again, uh use the raise hand feature or star nine.

Seeing that there are no hands raised on the matter deferral, the matter of deferral is now closed.

Moving on to consent calendar.

There'll be no separate discussion of individual consent count items as they're considered to be routine to be considered one action unless an items move to the public hearing calendar for separate discussion by the hearing officer.

The public may comment on the entire consent calendar.

Any items removed from the consenter calendar by the hearing officer.

If you wish to speak on one of the items below, please use the raise hand function or click star nine.

There are currently no items listed on the consent calendar.

So therefore, this item is now close.

Moving on to public hearing.

There's one item listed on public hearing for A.

PD 25-023 and ER25-210, which is a plan development permit to allow off-sell alcohol, type 20 ABC licensed beer and wine, which within an approximately 3,140 square foot tenant space on approximately 3.51 gross acre site located at 5801 Silver Creek Valley Place.

Do we have a uh staff presentation, please?

Yes, we do.

All right.

All right.

Good morning, hearing officer.

Uh my name is Jason Lee, project manager for the planning division for this file.

Uh this project is a plan development permit for the office of beer and wine at an existing loop convenience store at uh loop neighborhood market, a convenience store at 5801 Silver Creek Valley Place.

Um in this orange square here on the parcel.

Um and the project was evaluated with respect to the general plan, the zoning code, including the plan development district for the development, required findings for a plan development permit, off-sale of alcohol city policies and CQO.

There will be more on the off-sale findings in a bit.

Um project is here because the development standards of the project site state that the uses in the district are subject to the CG commercial general zoning district as amended, as the off-sale of alcohol requires a conditional use permit in a CG zone.

A planned development permit is therefore required in this PD zoning district.

Um, so jumping to the off-sale of alcohol findings.

Uh, in short, um, all findings can be made as seen in the draft permit.

Uh, specifically, there are no other off-sale sites within 1,000 feet of the proposed use.

That's the red radius.

The off-sales are the uh little red pentagons here.

Um, additionally, the site meets location requirements for proximity proximity to a child care center, social service agency, residential care or service facility, elementary, secondary, or post-secondary school, and residential zone property.

Uh, noting that the nearby VA VA clinic is considered a medical office.

Um basically for all except for residential zone property, the proximity is 500 feet.

Uh residentially zone property, the closest one, which is here is 150 feet, and and the green is a hundred-foot radius.

Um, however, the location is approximately 40 feet lot line to lot line, basically across Silver Creek Valley Place from the parcel containing the Coyote Creek Trail.

However, the closest path of travel from the trail to the store entrance is approximately 400 feet, and the convenience store is not oriented toward the street and does not face the trail.

Um, therefore, a finding can be made that the use is not situated and oriented in a manner that would adversely affect any such use.

Um staff does note that the project does not require a determination of public convenience or necessity or PCN because the project does not create an undue concentration, um, which is why this project can be heard at this director's hearing.

Uh specifically, the project is in police beat Y5, which is not an area that has 20% greater number of reported crimes than the average for the city as a whole.

And it is in census tracked 5120.01, where there is one existing off-sale license, where three are allowed by ABC.

Um, given this, the police department is neutral to this application.

Um, the police department is either neutral or against all applications.

Um for some operational characteristics here.

It's um the proposed permit does limit the hours of alcohol sales from 6 a.m.

to 11 p.m.

And it limits alcohol sales to 221 square feet, which is 7% of the approximately 3,140 square foot gross floor area.

Um this is shown in red here.

Um, the red overlay is where alcohol sales are proposed.

Um, with this is a walk-in, basically, and then there's some wine and beer placed outside of that uh walk-in area.

Um the project uh the permit would also the proposed permit also condition or the draft permit, I guess, also conditions that no alcohol product displays or advertisements be outside of the retail tenant space.

It includes provisions for having a store operator point of contact up at all times, video surveillance of the store, and dealing with loitering and panhandling on the property.

Um this project is exempt pursuant to Section 15301A of the State Guidelines for Implementation of the California Environmental Quality Act for existing facilities, as the project does not include any modifications or expansion to the footfront of the building.

Um and given all that, uh staff recommends that the director consider the exemption and approve the plan development permit.

Thank you.

Uh Steve Rawlings is the uh applicant's representative.

Does the applicant want to speak?

Okay.

Steve uh Steve Rawlings, you are unmuted.

Yeah, hi, good morning.

Uh, my name is Steve Rollins.

I am uh uh representing the uh the folks that own this uh loop market, um, AU Energy.

Um I wanted to first say that uh we do concur with your staff's recommendation and do um uh agree to all of the draft conditions of approval that are presented to you.

I wanted to point out just a couple of things about um a loop market in general and some of the specifics about um our alcohol service and uh some of the measures that we take to prevent any type of nuisance behavior.

Um first of all, uh Loop Market is owned by AU Energy.

AU Energy uh owns and operates approximately 150 uh gas convenience stores throughout the state of California.

They're based in Union City, California, they're a family-owned operation.

Most of their stores do sell um alcohol uh there, so this is not, you know, um uh this is something that they're very used to um carrying in most of their stores.

I'd like to point out that uh because it's a relatively large organization, that there's multiple level layers of management, um, kind of overseeing operations of each individual store.

You know, first you'd have a general manager and obviously an assistant manager on the local level, but there's also a district manager as well as a regional manager, um, all of which are responsible for each individual store.

Um in the case of AU Energy, um, they they spend a lot of time making sure that their employees are trained.

They they uh employ five full-time trainers uh in their corporate offices whose sole responsibility is to train employees on lots of things, uh including you know, hey, proper procedures for handling like propane fill-ups.

Um, you know, they also spend a lot of time educating their employees and training their employees on responsible beverage services, um, making sure that we are um uh doing the right things in terms of making sure we're doing proper identification checks.

Um addition to that, also uh making sure that we're observing our customers inside the store, making sure that we're not selling to anybody who might uh be showing signs of intoxication.

Um in addition to that, we also have uh five full-time loss prevention specialists corporately that uh spend a great deal of time trying to uh again train people on uh watching out for loss prevention and and also making sure that we've got state-of-the-art security cameras and other policies and procedures in place that um help prevent loitering and prevent uh other issues that may occur on the uh at the business.

And finally, there's another layer of uh of you know, say management uh on it, which is that they employ the services of a mystery shopper.

Uh this company goes through and uh comes into each store on a monthly basis and they uh observe, they make purchases, they make sure when they're purchasing alcohol, uh, that the proper identification checks are going on and so on and so forth.

So that's a that's a third-party company that does that for us.

Um I believe maybe joining me on the call uh today is uh Jaden Abanis.

Uh Jaden is the regional manager uh for this particular store.

I I don't know exactly how many stores she has she covers, but I know that she covers all of the um San Jose stores, and I believe that there's eight or nine of those, including this particular store.

Uh and she may have some some additional uh things that she would like to add.

Uh we did uh have a very nice meeting with a uh a member of the community, uh Mike Ospring.

Uh I think it was uh last Friday.

Um we had a nice conversation with him.

We had an opportunity to review a lot of these things that I I mentioned to you today.

Uh, and then um uh Jaden uh went uh further to a uh community meeting uh just last week as well and had an opportunity to meet uh folks in the community.

Uh we believe that we'll be uh responsible operators here, and uh we appreciate the opportunity to be able to sell a little bit of beer and wine from this particular store.

With that said, I'm uh available for any uh questions that you might have.

Thank you, Steve.

I think we're going to move to the public comments.

Um Mike, unmute yourself.

My uh Mike Oswick, will you please unmute yourself?

There you go.

Can you hear me now?

Yep.

Okay, very good.

My name is Michael Ospring, speaking on behalf of Coyote Creek Neighborhood Association.

870 homes immediately adjacent to Silver Oak Plaza.

We're urging the director to um deny the proposed type 20 alcohol license.

We did have a great meeting with Steve and with Jaden.

We can talk about that separately.

This location is uniquely unsuitable for alcohol sales.

It shares a parking lot with the San Jose VA Medical Center, serving veterans who are getting treatment for PTSD substance uh use disorders.

Placing alcohol sales at the very site they're going for treatment creates avoidable unnecessary uh triggers for some of the community's most vulnerable residents.

The planning department analysis is using the letter of the law to reach the conclusion that this is not within 500 feet of a social service agency because the VA clinic is considered a medical office.

Visit the VA medical center, see who's going there.

I think you might change your mind.

It sits across the street from the Shady Oaks Park, literally from the Coyote Creek Trail.

Public spaces heavily used by families, children, senior cyclists.

The analysis showed that it's 400 feet from the trail.

It's literally 178 feet from the trail with a dedicated crosswalk and a fence opening to the trail from the store.

The trail walkers are enticed to cross the street at a dedicated crosswalk to get to the store, which is a good thing.

We like the store.

Traffic and public safety risks are a major concern.

There's a major interchange nearby.

Alcohol sales always exacerbate problems.

Um it's in a bedroom community.

We believe the census tract analysis is heavily skewed by the residential nature of this census track.

2,000 homes, less than 25 retail outlets in the census tract.

1800 feet away in Monterey Plaza, there's all kinds of blight caused by alcohol.

Um quality of life concerns and so on.

We respectfully ask the director to recommend an hour of the application.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

Uh Victor, please unmute yourself.

Hey, good morning.

Thank you for letting me an opportunity to speak today.

My name is Victor Velasquez, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Coyote Creek Neighborhood Association.

I've lived here for over 30 years.

My life, my children have grown up here, and I've seen this part of the area grow.

And unfortunately, this growth that I've seen now is not really welcomed here.

Our community strongly opposes allowing alcohol sales at the market.

Um because this decision would have a direct negative impacts on the safety and well-being of our neighborhood.

You know, decades of public health resource show alcohol availability is directly related to levels of alcohol harp.

And many other neighborhoods' experiences, and I have many, many reports to show if needed.

Um, you know, when alcohol outlets are added to residential areas.

We consistently see increase in violence, property crime, and nuisance activity.

Um we are especially concerned about the impact of our youth in our neighborhood.

Study shows greater exposure to alcohol in neighborhoods lead to higher levels of alcohol consumption among adolescents.

That early access increases the likelihood of long-term harm.

And this is close to our park where our children play.

Um like we mentioned the veterans that are there to get treatment.

Increased alcohol availability also associated with higher rates of assault, homicide, child ablu abuse, neglect, self-inflected injury, traffic related injuries.

These are not abstract risks.

These are well documented outcomes tied to alcohol outlet density.

Placing alcohol sales at our location so close to our homes, family VA facility introduces race to the neighborhood that should not we should not be asked to absorb.

It adds no value to this community for these reasons.

We urge the city to oppose this application and protect the health and safety of our community.

Is there anybody else member of the public who wishes to speak on that item?

So anybody who has not spoken yet, please raise hands feature.

And or plus star nine.

Jaden, are you going to speak on behalf of the applicant?

Are you speaking as a member of the public currently?

Applicant, please.

Okay.

So typically after the public comments, we give time to the applicant back to speak.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Once again, anybody who has not yet speak in, spoken yet, please use a raise hand feature.

I do see I do see still see your hand up, but you've already spoken.

So once again, uh raise hand features, star nine.

We'll continue discussing if there's any other public comments.

Okay.

Seeing none, I'm gonna give the applicant uh a lot of time to provide any updates and or responses.

Steve or Jaden.

Please unmute yourself.

Okay.

Thank you.

There I am.

Um I'll go first, and then Jaden might uh chime in here a little bit too.

Um, in terms of uh some of the comments that were made um by uh Mr.

Ospring and Mr.

Velasquez, um I've done this a lot.

I I have um um worked in many different communities, and you know, a couple of things that I'd like to point out.

One, um, our our story is uh ceasing sales at 11 p.m.

So it's not a late night uh um uh sales outlet.

Um number two, in terms of you know, densities of outlets and and issues with the community.

Um there's a couple things to that.

A lot of the studies that have been done that I have seen have really focused hard on um some very urbanized areas.

There's one um study that was done by Johns Hopkins University that focused in on Baltimore and some of the areas that were surrounding that, which are far more densely populated than this particular area of San Jose, and um in this case, there certainly is not a lot of outlets in the generalized area.

Well, I understand that there may be some issues um, you know, at other locations that are kind of across the freeway.

I'd ask that uh you know, maybe our standalone operation be considered.

Um we have been operating there for a number of years.

The community certainly has embraced us.

Uh, we're in a very clean operation.

Um, in terms of some of the other larger societal issues, you know, adolescence exposure and so on and so forth, you know.

It's been a great deal of studies that um uh you know that I I have seen just anecdotally there that you know, in terms of adolescence exposure, you know, there's there's issues that um arise that adolescents um most exposure to adolescents are is just from within the home.

Um, you know, uh adolescents of years have been going to supermarkets with their moms and dads, and uh alcohol is available in a lot of those, and those don't seem to be uh uh an issue.

Uh your issues uh oftentimes are created by you know exposure in within their own homes there.

But um, you know, bigger and broader than that, we think that we have put together an operations plan that is going to be um uh prevent a lot of the nuisance and and safety uh issues uh within the community.

And um uh, you know, we certainly hope that uh we get the opportunity to demonstrate that we'll be a responsible um purveyor of this.

And you know, also in uh, you know, any time that there becomes a an exacerbated problem, the city always has an opportunity to revisit the um uh the use permit if there's uh ongoing problems and um and and again, I don't think in this situation we would uh see that.

So with that, um Jaden, please um add anything else that you'd like to add.

Yes, so my name is Jaden Ivanis, one of the regional managers for neighborhood work markets, right?

Um I've had been given the opportunity to meet with Mike and the community.

And um in this meeting, I'd like everybody to know that you know, as the operator, we're not seeking to introduce this order to the community, and we are seeking to operate responsibly under the strict regulatory compliance, uh, as we have done successfully over 150 plus locations.

And we enforce um a week everyone policy without exception, and we take pride in that.

So, what that means is is even if a customer appears to be well over the age of 60, we still require ID.

So we lose some customers along the way enforcing that, but that's a policy that we take pride in everybody um is is responsible in enforcing, and we have zero tolerance policy with that, and on top of that, all of our point of sale equipment is equipped with the mandatory age verification technology that cannot be bypassed.

So um we we we want to make sure that everybody understands that we take pride in the robust uh training and systems we put in place to make sure that we are responsible retailer.

And um we also um Steve did not mention we also have off-site company, uh, offs offshore a company um that we that we have that helps us monitor all the uh transactions that are happening.

16 employees um offshore who helps us um real-time um view and even you know uh past 10 days review of the camera.

So I think that helps us uh with in line to see uh to determine what's the issue at this door.

Thank you.

All right.

Staff, is there anything else you would like to add?

Um not at this time hearing officer.

I I think um I do you know what actually uh regarding the point that uh Mike made about the um path of travel.

Uh I mean I measure sidewalk to sidewalk.

I I think I do concede that people can cut across landscaping, but um the nearest clock path of travel um the measurement is taken from uh on sidewalks on proper and and and on proper sidewalks, not assuming people will you know trample the landscaping of the shopping center.

Thank you, Steph.

So just to let everybody know, I did read the permit as well as all the comment letters that were submitted to Jason for my review.

Um I I will say that I have heard your comments and I understand that any time any alcohol uses and all the negativity that people have is generally associated with also alcohol, there could be a little bit of interpretation about that.

I will say that the city adopted a council policy for also alcohol, given those concerns because traditionally a lot of bad also alcohols typically happen what we call in liquor stores that did not require to get a conditional use permit in the past, hence why there's a lot more vetted process for any additional off-sell of alcohol.

Um more or less, most of the more recent also alcohol, typically being a high crime area or typically an overconcentration.

And even then, there are findings that we could still allow the decision makers to override those specific findings.

In this specific case, this is a existing commercial uh convenience store that are operating up to 7% of the spaces uh with percentual off-sell of just beer and wine, not full spirits.

Uh in addition to that, agreeing to several conditions that they can off-sells as uh at 11 p.m., even though some are allowed to operate until 2 a.m.

Um so I would say given all those factors and consideration, I understand that there's a lot of studies that talk about exposure to alcohol, but that typically means that it they have to be able to obtain this, given the robustness of the conditions associated with who can get it.

Um I would say that most of those are in necessarily correlated.

The idea is a city's encouraging convenience of commercial and other uses closer to residential uses.

So we'll all reduce having general leave a general community to get that.

So most of the people coming here will typically, if they've not gotten here, will go to the grocery stores or other areas further away and still take it back.

Um so but I I acknowledge all those concerns, but given the more robustness of the conditions, the ability to code enforce as well as the ability to potentially revoke the permits, it warns that we can make all the associated findings of these.

I understand that you know though there's a VA um clinical office nearby, that doesn't necessarily mean the findings for denial of the permit, given that it's typically a medical use and all the conditions put in place.

I think they're sufficient to make the findings to approve the PD permit for the off-sell alcohol.

So, therefore, based on all those, I'm going to approve the plan development permit.

However, I do encourage the member of the communities as well as the applicant uh who has offered to continue communicating to see if there's any future issues that need to be resolved.

They may uh still need to be discussed or continuing monitoring of the program.

Um, so based on that, we're approving the permit, but I'd encourage the applicant to reach out to any members of the community.

Uh, given that was the last item on public hearing, um, I will now uh dismiss and discern the end of the director's hearing meeting at 9 30.

Fair else, have a good day.