How do we give us a h do we give us a hug What we found was that the requirements oftentimes were about maybe even 50% higher than what a private developer actually wished to provide, oftentimes in terms of actual parking.

And the really the impact of this is it negatively impacts viability and affordability of development.

For those of you who are not familiar about how much parking costs, it can start at about roughly about $10,000 for a surface space, roughly about $50,000 per space for a parking structure, and $70,000 and above for an underground space.

So parking quickly becomes a multi-million dollar investment.

And you can see how it drives the affordability of projects.

Not to say that parking isn't desired by developers.

Oftentimes developers will want to provide parking, but they don't want to oversupply parking, which is the issue that we currently face in a lot of empty parking spaces at certain areas.

Last thing is that we do find there's actually opportunities to better share parking, either between new uses or with uses that are existing to really make most use of empty lots where we can.

So what are we proposing here?

The biggest change that we are proposing that Laura just mentioned was changing minimum parking requirements throughout the city.

And we'd essentially be recommending that in two zones.

The first zone is within a half a mile of what we call your major transit stops.

Major transit stops are either your rail system or your the tempo line essentially, the BRT.

And you can see that here in the blue buffered areas.

It takes up, you know, a fair amount of the city.

I will note that in these areas currently, state legislation, AB 2097 has already eliminated most, almost all of your minimum parking requirements in these areas, anyways.

So our sole recommendation really for this part of the city is just to eliminate those remaining minimum parking requirements that exist, primarily for event centers and hotels, I think is really the two things.

Outside of those half mile areas, essentially all in the green area that you see here on the map, we're kind of we're offering two options.

One is either to reduce minimum parking requirements to better align with market demand.

So as I said, a lot of the requirements right now are maybe roughly 50% higher than the actual demand, or to eliminate minimum parking requirements altogether and simply let the market and private development decide how much parking they need to provide.

Oftentimes in circumstances like this, if you were to build you know a development in the more suburban part of the city, a developer will want to provide parking simply because their tenants or their residents will likely bring cars and they know that in order to sell or lease units, they will need to provide parking.

So these are the two options essentially we're providing you today.

We are there, I should note too, there is some zoning designation called the BTOD designation that currently exists within the city that has some maximum parking requirements associated with that.

We are not recommending changing those.

Those are actually set by state law.

So if you see that in your packets, that's that's why those are still in there.

So our recommendation as of right now of these two options is at the very least is to go with reducing minimum parking requirements.

And not only reducing them, but consolidating them from many, many, many different categories down to about half a dozen.

And there's good reason to do this, particularly, and the consolidation really happens on the non-residential side, is because this really helps businesses turn over at the end of the day.

I always like to liken it to saying I own a flower shop, it's successful, I do well, I go out of business.

My colleague Alex wants to come in with a restaurant.

He can't.

The restaurant requires significantly more parking than my flower shop does.

So the shop sits empty.

And this prevents businesses from turning over easily when they don't have similar parking requirements associated with them.

So the consolidation really helps.

Two is that we, as you can see from the middle column to the right column, the existing requirements, the proposed requirements, that they've all been lowered to a pretty significant degree in some cases.

For the multi-family or multi-unit residential, generally speaking, it's about half a space per unit lower.

And again, we use this is not just randomly plucked out thin air that we use industry data actually looking at peak parking demands for these various uses and also compare them to the supply that many developments here in the city currently provide.

Similarly, with office space and commercial uses, going to two spaces per thousand square feet and three spaces per thousand square feet.

Again, this actually aligns very closely with what peak demands are for those areas.

And of course, it ranges again from industrial, which is much lower, to institutional as well.

And when we talk to stakeholders about all of this, there was very strong support for either reducing or eliminating minimum parking requirements altogether, because uh there was a general sentiment among the various stakeholders that we talked with, that yes, while parking is is essential and people do like to have it to get around, that dictating higher requirements that result in empty spaces is not beneficial for the affordability of the community, or for other objectives of the community, like uh the climate action plan.

In addition to vehicles, um, we're also talking about bicycle parking requirements.

Um, and these bicycle parking requirements cover both short and long-term bicycle parking.

So, again, like a bike rack that you might just pull up to if you're you know up to a coffee shop, long-term, if it's like a locker, for example, for a variety of uses.

But we're also starting to include things in here that more up-to-date codes are including these days.

It's not just a bicycle.

Now you have a cargo bike, now you have an adaptive bike, and sometimes these bikes are different sizes.

Traditional bike is about two feet by six feet needed space, cargo spike adaptive bike is about three by ten.

So having standards align with that.

Similarly, having charging for e-bikes, e-bikes are becoming much more ubiquitous these days.

For larger uses like offices and industrial, having showers and lockers available for employees to use.

And these minimums here are, as you can see, kind of similarly set up on the left and the right, and you probably don't want to have to squint hard and read all those numbers.

Um, but the main thing that we're really driving at here is the code currently um calculates a lot of the bicycle parking, as you can see the short-term spaces in the existing requirements column as a percentage of the vehicle requirement.

So if you provide 20 car spaces, you provide one short-term bicycle space, um, regardless of whether or not you know, it's a strange calculation to make, I'll say.

To boot, the code also has no long-term bicycle parking requirements outside of the BTOD areas for most of the non-residential uses, I think any non-residential.

So across the board, I think we're generally recommending increases to both short-term and long-term spaces, as well as the associated requirements for adaptive cargo, etc.

In addition to this, there's two other areas I'll just like to touch on to wrap it up.

One has to do with unbundled parking.

So, unbundled, for those of you who are not familiar with the practice, unbundled parking essentially separates the cost of parking from the leasing or sale price of a unit.

So I go, I get an apartment, I pay two thousand dollars, the parking space might be included in that space in that price, or I might pay eighteen hundred dollars and have the option of paying two hundred dollars for my parking space.

And so this is what we call unbundled parking.

State law AB 1317 already requires communities in Alameda County to unbundle for developments that are 16 units or more.

Um, so this is just a slightly beefed up version of that, I should say.

Um, so that covers everything from five units or more.

But the reason why you do this is because it really increases housing affordability.

So people are not required to essentially lease or purchase parking spaces that they don't need, and that they can purchase spaces that they that they do want and actually want to use.

And lastly, I'll end on the shared parking node that I talked about.

And this is really more about, I mean, both good practice, but also um putting your complying with state law.

Um there's two state laws out there, AB 894, which essentially says that communities must allow shared parking within 2,000 feet of a site.

Right now, shared parking in a very limited sense is allowed within the city, but this would very much broaden it so that if I'm a development and I come in, that if something is within a thousand feet walking distance, not as a crow flies walking distance, that I can agree to jointly use their facilities if there's parking available.

The other piece is AB 2097, which I talked about before, which eliminates minimum parking requirements.

There's also a lesser known clause in there that allows cities to require that any time a development is built in these areas, the city can require that any or all of that parking during some or all the day is publicly accessible.

So if I have a business and my hours are nine to five, the city can require that my parking be publicly accessible outside of business hours so that I can't simply chain off my lot.

The law also allows cities to require price and car share parking as well, but that really wasn't the intent of this.

So that covers all the parking pieces of this, and with this, I will turn it over to Alex Mercury to talk about TDM.

Thank you and good evening, members of the commission.

I'm Alex McCurry with Nelson Nygard and it's a pleasure to talk to you about the TDM components of this project.

I'll give a quick recap about the TDM process.

We started reviewing existing conditions and plans.

We did some best practice research to look at what other cities in California are doing to get some sense of the different shapes and sizes that TDM programs can come in.

We met with stakeholders, received lots of input and feedback about the different ways that TDM can happen and the different potential benefits and concerns.

And then we produced a recommendations memo and draft ordinance.

So that's where we are today.

Some of the key findings that came out of those early phases of work were that there are challenges today for TDM.

Staff time at the city and funding for TDM are limited.

Development is not in a position to absorb major new requirements or costs.

And behavior change, which we heard a lot of positive feedback about from stakeholders, we recognize takes time.

So despite those challenges, we recognize that we have to start somewhere, that taking that first step is really important in building a successful TDM program.

And once you have a program, it can grow, it can adapt, it can expand.

But having a sort of starter approach can provide a lot of benefits that you can build on in the long run.

And there are some immediate benefits to consolidating some of the requirements that exist today at the regional level to make work easier for staff and easier for developers to follow and comply with.

So some of the key principles that led to the development of the ordinance and guidelines were focusing on a starter TDM framework that had simple, clear, easy to follow requirements and guidance, as well as supporting guidelines to help educate and to help developers implement.

It includes both mandatory and optional strategies to make sure that folks are doing things that are important and providing also flexibility in how TDM is implemented and how the requirements are satisfied.

And all of these requirements are really calibrated to the local conditions and constraints.

Again, focusing on not creating new costs for development, not requiring new resources of the city to manage or implement these programs, and aligning those programs with existing requirements at the regional level and growing that program over time.

So where we landed with our recommendations are really anchored in these five core components.

As I mentioned, a set of mandatory TDM measures that are slightly different for residential and for non-residential land uses, a selection of optional TDM measures where projects must pick at least one but have flexibility to pick something that works best for that project or the context, a simple TDM checklist for staff to review to ensure that developers are complying with the requirements, and a mode share survey every two years to see how the strategies are working and to start to provide data to staff to manage the program and adapt over time.

Compliance would be done through a self-certification process, again, focusing on minimizing the need for new responsibilities for staff.

I'll quickly go through some of the details before wrapping up.

So the requirements come in kind of three buckets here.

So this focuses on a brief summary of the thresholds for which projects would be subject to TDM requirements.

So for non-residential projects, these would apply to projects that are 50,000 or more gross square feet.

And for residential projects, new developments that are 25 or more dwelling units.

Again, submittal requirements would consist of a simple TDM checklist rather than an extensive plan.

And monitoring and reporting would be done through self-certification submitted to city staff.

Mandatory TDM measures would include a mode share survey, again, to gather data and to ensure that measures are working as intended, supporting TDM efforts with education and information efforts.

This is a really important part of successful TDM, reaching out to people, teaching them about their options, helping them learn how to navigate modes of travel they may not be familiar with.

So a few different specific recommendations for non-residential and for residential projects.

And then supporting TDM with uh with parking management strategies that align with the same principles of meeting mobility needs without overbuilding parking or over incentivizing parking.

Optional measures, again, the recommendation is that each project must select at least at least one, and there's a slightly different list of options again for non-residential versus residential projects.

Options include flexible work arrangements, providing pre-tax transportation benefits, providing or contributing funding to shuttle service, and providing end-of-trip amenities for people who walk, bike, or roll, providing information on site in the form of real-time transit information displays, installing bicycle repair and maintenance tools and facilities, and providing financial incentives as parking cash out or discounts and incentives to try other modes.

For residential projects, also considering on-site amenities that support delivery services and package services, as well as on-site car share service.

I'll just close with some considerations for growing this kind of starter approach over time.

In the long run, successful TDM programs do require additional resources, things like staff time to make sure that developments are complying with requirements to kind of proactively go out and audit or just work hand in hand with developers to make things successful that will take time and resources, and also financial resources to directly fund TDM offerings and mobility services.

Complementing and supporting TDM with these resources with more informational resources, investing in transportation management organization, a TMO, like the one that operates the Link Shuttle, that can be a great partner for growing these programs with a lot of hands-on experience.

And then lastly, strengthening the program by ratcheting up the requirements, so increasing the number of optional measures that must be selected, phasing out some of the lower cost optional measures that may be working well today, but over time maybe not doing enough for the goals of the city, and then expanding monitoring and enforcement efforts beyond self-certification.

Again, those would be um really beneficial things to consider in the long run, but um would be um directly integrated into this kind of starter approach that we're recommending tonight.

Um with that, I'll turn it back over to Glordis.

So thank you so much for being patient while we present.

Uh I'll just read off the formal recommendation.

So staff does recommend that the planning commission adopt a resolution recommending that city council repeal and replace zoning code chapter 4.08 of street parking and loading regulations, and adopt zoning code chapter 4.10 transportation demand management, and we are available for questions.

Okay, thank you for the report.

Appreciate that.

Does the commission have any questions for staff?

You should be hot now, Commissioner Rich.

Thank you.

Sorry, no worries.

Uh fantastic report.

Thank you very much that you synthesized a lot of complex information in a way that was easily digestible.

That's not an easy thing to do.

I appreciate that.

Um I also had some questions beforehand, and I I thank the Secretary uh Weyland Lee for responding to those or staff responding to those.

And I do want to follow up on two of those.

One is regarding the TDM, the applicability of renovation as a trigger for the TDM.

I heard clearly in the parking presentation that this was for new developments, and we're not adding requirements to existing uses.

Uh, and I think that's clear in the 4.08.

The 4.10 includes some language at the end that uh appears to extend it to renovation that impacts more than 20 square feet or something, even if there is no change in use or no expansion of the gross square footage, and um is that is uh from the from the answers I got my understanding is that's intentional and that we're intending to extend the TDM to projects that do not ex do not increase the gross square footage and do not uh do a change in use, but they involve a renovation above a certain gross square footage or percentage.

Is that accurate?

Um, um, sorry.

Yes.

Okay, all right.

So that's partially correct.

Um so one of the uh TDM would apply to new developments with those thresholds that we see above, but for any significant uh additions or changes of use, um, this would apply to renovations that would trigger the 40,000 square foot addition, which again a renovation does not necessarily include a footprint expansion, right?

But if you are renovating, and uh for example, say you have an apartment building that has 50 units, but you've decided to convert them to uh 70 units, now you're adding 20 residential units.

So really the trigger there is the number of units, right?

A renovation with those number of units, or if it's a non-residential project, it would be a renovation with that square footage, which technically that wouldn't apply, but if you're right, an addition of 40,000 square feet uh gross square feet, then that would trigger uh complying with the TDM ordinance.

So if we're looking at 4.10.103 applicability section 3b.

It says all renovations, additions or changes of use that impact at least 20% of existing project gross square footage, this applies to.

Right.

That's you that's projects that do not have a change in use and project that have not added any square footage.

Okay, so I want to make sure I follow the to the letter of what you're saying.

Can you repeat that?

So the heading under I I found it in there, just maybe the last clause.

Do you have a question for me?

Yes, if you can repeat.

Um question.

I'll start with the heading.

It says significant additions or changes of use.

And then under 3B, it says all renovations.

It adds the words renovations there, which doesn't which we don't see in 4.08 and we don't see in the heading there.

So in addition to additions or changes of use that now we're adding renovations as a trigger for the applicability of the TDM.

And it seems that seems to be throwing the net considerably broader than the heading indicates for that 4.08 indicates.

And my question is first, is that intentional?

And if it is, how are we going to define renovations?

How are we making that determination?

It seems pretty easy to understand if we're changing the use.

Very clear.

If we are adding gross square footage, very clear.

It could be building permit.

I mean, that could certainly be it, or it could be uh is there a planning um some sort of uh planning.

So how are we going to determine renovations?

I would hate for, as much as I support this, I think is a fantastic program we've got here.

Uh, hey, for a roofing project, for example, that requires a building permit, arguably affects more than 20% of the gross square footage for that to be triggering uh TDM.

Not that TDM right now is difficult, but that clearly this is a starter program, as we heard, and we're looking to ideally uh improve it down the road.

And the word is intended to be used more generally speaking, um, and to encompass uh the scenario in which maybe you're not adding square footage to the existing building footprint.

But for example, you might have an industrial building with a certain portion of it um usually 10% right dedicated to office, but if you decide to expand that office and that office and not add to the footprint of the building, that would be a change of use.

And if that gross square footage that becomes office is 40,000 square feet or more, then this would apply.

So there can be renovations where there are no physical additions, usually coupled with changes of use, and so I think that's why we kind of lumped up all that overarching concept of uh renovations, additions, and changes of use together.

Um but we are welcome to any changes where you think that might clarify.

I'll add that if the commission desires to um to amend the heading to make that clear and recommend that we include um some more parameters around what the term renovation means.

I think staff would be happily to support that uh addition.

Thank you.

Uh and my second question is is pretty small really, but um as a bicyclist, I park my bicycle lockers at BART, and I believe the dimensions of the lockers at BART are not compliant with this uh with our parking uh that we've established now because they use these triangular shaped parking that you can access from either side.

So uh it's not a rectangle uh with two feet clear the whole way.

It starts wider at one end, maybe three feet at one end, two and a half, and then it goes down to nothing as as triangles do.

Um and so it's a I think it's a little longer than what is shown in here and a little wider at one end, but it goes to nothing at the other end, and it requires a clear space on either side.

So it may not, this may not be something that comes up, but it is it's something I wouldn't want to prohibit because it they're manufactured and they're widely available and they seem to work if you've got space on both sides, sure.

I think we can bring Brian up.

Uh the expert.

And I think I moved into comments instead of questions there, so I apologize for that.

So I'm done.

Okay to bring Brian up.

You can either answer at the desk or if you'd like to come.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I mean, we're happy to provide more flexibility in the dimensions here.

What we provide was kind of standard, right?

And you see that in many different codes around the around the country, but if we're looking to add more flexibility so that we don't prohibit these sorts of things from coming in, happy to make those additions.

Thank you.

Those are my questions.

Thank you, Commissioner Rich.

Moving on to Commissioner Zuber.

Thank you, Lordis.

That was a great report.

And thank you both.

Lots of details.

Just a few questions here, and and I don't have a page number or anything to reference, so I'll just kind of go the order that I had the questions.

For unbundled parking, when we talk about the management, right?

So there was a response to one of the questions regarding parking management strategies.

You know, how do you ensure that people who decided or chose not to pay for parking aren't parking in every single spot in every single neighborhood?

And the response was that you know, well, it could potentially take several forms, including time-limited parking and carb, you know, curb restrictions.

And I'm wondering if parking requiring requiring parking permits in residential areas where people are already parking in front of their own homes or things like that.

Is this something I'm I'm thinking of Berkeley?

If you've ever been to Berkeley, and you can see that after a certain hour you aren't even allowed to park on those streets because people are coming home from work, and if you're parked there, they can't park in front of their own home.

So I'm I'm just throwing that out there.

If that's something that the city is up for, you know, considering for residents, I I do think that you could get into situations where people are going to become very combative in certain situations.

So we we the city does have a residential parking permit program.

Um it is written such that it would only apply in residential areas.

Right.

Um and uh so the DA and SA zoning districts are not technically residential zoning districts, so there's a bit of a difficulty there.

Um that would be something that public works would have to explore as that's within their purview.

Um but there are uh, you know, sometimes other measures, portions of downtown already have time limitations and some parking meters and enforcement uh staff that follows through on that.

Okay, but in a residential area, residents have some type of outlet to be able to communicate that things are okay.

Yes, I believe it's um roughly uh I believe there's sort of some sort of petition, certain number of people, people, and then it gets brought up to a specific committee, I believe.

I don't know if you wanted to add to that.

Okay.

Um there was a there was a slide for the below, you know, you had this chart of it was this amount of parking spaces required 1.5 and now this is what's being proposed.

If you could bring that up again.

Um, what I noticed is that uh for the below market rate units, um, for the same amount of bedrooms, you're requiring less parking spaces for the below market rate units.

And I I'm sure this is purely developer-driven based off of does it pencil out because below market rate, they're not making the same amount of you know, revenue off of a below market rate development, but has there been any study to show that you know below market rate tenants or users or residents have any less vehicles than market rate?

That is a can you hear me?

Yep, okay.

That is a perfectly legitimate question.

Um, and I will say yes.

So if you look at generally the manual we tend to go to for industry-wide data is called the Institute of Transportation Engineers parking Generation.

When you do look at that, you can see on the whole that parking demand for affordable housing units is lower than what it is for market rate.

I will note that when we talk about affordable housing, we could be talking about many different things, and you're anywhere from moderate income all the way to very lower, extremely low income.

And I will say that within those categories, there are significant differences.

So if you're talking about moderate income housing, no, the the vehicle usage is roughly the same.

If you're talking very low, extremely low, yes, the vehicle usage is significantly lower.

Um, but for the purposes of setting the code, we kind of lumped it together into one affordable category.

Okay.

Um then for residential, there were some requirements for the T for the TDM for you know the different types of uses.

And I'm wondering for residential.

Oh, yeah, there it was like two slides back there.

Had the pictures of the bikes and things, I think on it.

Uh this one or this one.

Yeah.

Um, so for residential buildings, I'm wondering if you couldn't add as a requirement, um, bicycle repair.

Uh oh.

If it's not already, no, actually, let me go to the other slide that's actually on one of the TDM slides.

Um, uh here.

Which one is it?

Bicycle repair.

Do you want to speak to you?

Sure.

Yes, thank you for that that comment.

We can certainly consider that.

Right now it's one of our optional measures, so that would be something a residential project could provide to satisfy TDM requirements.

But um we seems like a low asked to make it a requirement.

Yes, it is definitely the lowest cost, probably um lowest complexity option to satisfy, and we could certainly promote it to the mandatory measures.

Okay.

Um then for the required shared, the city has the option to require um that there is, you know, in some circumstances shared parking.

Right.

So if we could just go back to that slide.

So um, would the required shared parking?

Uh let's say I'm the one who owns the office building, and then people come home in the evening and they are required um the the office building is required to share their parking lot.

Correct.

Is that paid or unpaid?

Um it doesn't actually the law itself, AB 297, doesn't specify that.

But ostensibly it should, I think what they're envisioning was unpaid that it would be public.

What they the law technically doesn't say shared, it says publicly accessible, um and so you can interpret that I suppose in different ways.

Right, yeah.

Because it seems like if they they make you pay for it, then it's not really shared, it's not really accessible.

Exactly.

And that's why I would say if it if it actually came to a court decision, I would think that they the intention was free, right?

Right.

Okay, and that's part of uh AB 2097.

Correct.

Okay, great.

Um last question, thank you for your patience.

Um there was a TDM uh an optional TDM requirement, I believe, that said, um, and I believe this was for office buildings that they could say uh flexible work arrangements, and it it seems it seems like that is a no-brainer.

Everybody's gonna say, yeah, we have flexible work arrangements.

So it seems like you would want to if you're gonna make that an option, it should have some teeth to it.

Like you know, this percentage of hours per week or employees, you know, we offer it to this many man hours a week are flexible, right?

Because it it other otherwise it doesn't really mean anything if there's no numbers or requirements.

Thank you, yes, to offset the parking.

Yeah, that's a great, really appreciate that suggestion.

And we we had you have some additional details, but um could go further to making sure that that was a meaningful requirement.

Yeah.

I I don't know the number, but I'm sure you guys can do the math.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Commissioner Zuber.

Uh Commission or Vice Chair Mendoza.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

I'm gonna make a quick uh quick comment and then I'm gonna get to some questions uh that are relevant.

Um I seemed uh, and this is something that I often uh comment on, I seems like a pattern when it comes to uh developers, whether it's uh commercial or or housing, that um um they're seeking, I mean, they talk about cost um that prohibit you know being penciling out uh certain developers, developments, and uh it seems that they you know they mentioned requirements, you know, sequel requirements, environmental requirements, uh affordable housing requirements, now parking requirements, and uh what something that comes to mind to me is that uh you have a regulatory framework related to developers, but once you start applying all these exemptions in order to make projects pencil out, then uh it seems that the the actual regulatory framework becomes almost meaningless because um uh you know, by the time you add up all the exceptions that they're getting, the regulatory framework is being uh diminished.

And uh I see regulations as uh public like you know protecting the public and the public interest.

So that's just something in general that I that I uh that I see often.

Well, my opinion basically.

Now, regarding the the specific uh issue, and I get to uh an anecdote uh experience that I went through, uh would has there been any analysis uh regarding the reduce of parking requirements might impact uh neighborhoods, like you know, parking availability in neighborhoods, and also how it might impact um seniors, low-income people, disabled people.

And I'm gonna give you one example that you know I should be probably ashamed of, but I still gonna say it anyway.

In the last 13 years, I lived in San Leandro.

I never I never had a parking ticket ever.

In the last six months, I'm getting two.

And let me tell you what happened.

I went to downtown San Leandro and um there was a uh parking meter with the new apps and all that stuff, and I looked at it, and it seems to me that it says like it has 15 minutes left, right?

And uh I've seen that in other places, but it actually is that uh the minimum, what anyway, I read it wrong, and I walked away and got a ticket, right?

And I'm a I'm a technologist.

I work with technology for you know, servers and Unix and all this stuff for for many years.

So um my worry is that if there is the parking is diminished, and um places where people were previously parked with any problem.

Now they had you have all these new uh meters and electronics that you need apps now and you need to go and get your license plate and in enter into this device and it seems to me like you know, maybe some seniors might have a might have an issue with you know downloading the app and and all that stuff.

So I'm concerned about that that aspect.

And I I think I those are all my questions.

Sure.

No, happy to happy to answer here.

So I'm gonna answer it kind of in two parts.

Because well, we go, sorry, I'll scroll back up to the where the appropriate graphic is.

Yep.

Okay.

There we go.

Because uh ultimately we really are talking about two two parts of the city.

So in the blue shaded areas, they're what I'll call the AB297 zones.

Right now, you more or less have no minimum parking requirements right now for most things.

You can't require parking for most things to be built, regardless.

Um, and that's just something that every community in California is learning to grapple with in terms of how you properly manage your on-street parking.

Even developments built in those areas are still providing parking, oftentimes in many cases.

So that's one.

The other side, in terms of whether or not you reduce parking your minimum parking requirements or choose to eliminate them altogether.

Right now, right now your parking requirements are set so high that I can almost guarantee that in many cases you'll build a lot of empty parking spaces at the end of the day.

They won't even be filled.

So when we gave this option to reduce or eliminate, we set the reduction basically to what the peak demand would be.

So we said, you know what?

If you eliminate part minimum parking requirements altogether, you stand a greater chance of having more on-street spillover, right?

And that can happen, which is why we reduced them still, but then eliminate them altogether, right?

So you still have that kind of safety blanket in there.

I will note too that even having minimum parking requirements doesn't prevent spillover parking, right?

So oftentimes you have an apartment building or even just houses in general, and people's most convenient option will be to park on street because it's free and it's available.

And frankly, in the hierarchy of parking, people love to park on street because it's the easiest thing to get your car to.

So even having really high minimum parking requirements won't necessarily always solve your on-street spillover issue.

Now, again, eliminating park minimum parking requirements might altogether, I could understand why that would give you concern that but there may not be enough parking.

Again, some developments would still provide parking, but with the reduced minimum parking requirements that we're talking about, we're still setting those to the peak demand.

Not like midway, not somewhere there.

It seems lower than what you currently have, but I would emphasize that your minimum your current minimum parking requirements, I doubt there was any actual empirical analysis about how those were set to begin with.

Alright, thank you.

Um I share moving up back to Commissioner Zuber.

Commissioner Mendoza's comments just reminded me of uh a study that was done in Chicago, it's not actually a study.

It's a it's a situation in the city of Chicago, which we're nowhere near this the David Chicago in size, but where this the city allowed a public parking garage or facility to or or they handed over all of the meters and the public parking.

Do you know that what I'm talking about to a private organization who then absolutely gouges the residents and and and so I only mention this because I'm wondering, and I and I fully embrace this um this staff report and what we're trying to do here in San Leandro, but I'm I'm trying to figure out if anyone has thought about a circumstance where um a developer comes in and they don't really, you know, they reduce the parking and and and that's fine and well, but then there is an adjacent open parcel or something, and then someone privatizes this parcel, or or they start to use this parcel as um very high, you know, parking, high price parking, or say, oh well, you know, now since we don't have since people don't have parking and they can't park in the neighborhood, now we're gonna build more parking structures.

I'm just trying to, you know, if there's been any kind of studies that show that this is what happens, or if it's it's really more of a positive outcome.

Well, it probably doesn't shock you to think or hear this, but it's more of a positive outcome, at least from from what we've observed.

Now, I will say, and there's reasons for this.

Um, if you do have high demand areas, there will be spontaneous cases of kind of privatized parking, right?

You go to a Dodgers game, sorry, it's down in LA, but whatever any sports game, I'm not from LA.

Um, but it made me think of it because I do know those in those areas, people oftentimes will rent their parking spaces because they know it's a high demand thing and they're willing to make a buck.

Sure, you can park in my driveway.

Those things will always exist, and that will kind of naturally just occur.

In terms of actually providing and building parking, though, that's expensive stuff you're talking about.

Um, and you know, there were some organizations that I should say companies, um, that actually tried this model of coming in and saying, okay, you have a part you have a parking lot, let me run it for you to price it so that people could use it.

They haven't really taken off.

Um, it hasn't really been that successful because oftentimes, frankly, as soon as any price was introduced, and especially in an off-street lot that's less convenient, it basically just killed its usage.

Um, I actually did a project um two years ago down in Santa Clara County where uh independent lot owner tried to do that in the downtown.

Yes, I'm gonna price this lot.

No one came because there was no incentive to.

So again, pricing in itself is not bad, but you really want to be careful in the circumstances in which you use it and actually justify justify it because of the high demand.

Hopefully, that answers your question.

No, that does help.

And and Weyland or Lourdes, I don't know.

Does the city have a map that identifies a does the zoning map, I should say, identify open parcels that could potentially be developed as parking lots or parking structures?

We've maybe at times we've met certain semi-vacing parcels, but we do have use regulations um that speak to whether or not a parking lot can be installed as a land use rate, similar to retail sales or industrial.

Um, and so uh they do vary by the zoning district.

Um, just a quick check right now for DA1, which is the northern area of uh East 14th spanning, you know, once you hit the residential units behind, um, they they would only be allowed to establish a parking lot, right?

A paid parking lot kind of situation within an administrative review, uh, which is a zoning permit staff level, wherein they have to show that this would actually work.

Okay, yeah.

I just I'm just thinking of what a city could look like if we start to like allow every open parcel to then become parking and yeah, so there are some controls.

Uh one of the things that we notice here is uh, for example, the broad uh blue area, the AB 2097 no parking required zones.

Uh a lot of them are actually sort of uh portions of residential that are backing up against East 14th being um more higher density and whatnot.

So generally speaking, we don't we wouldn't imagine that somebody would actually ask for that, nor would the residential zoning districts allow a parking lot to be established.

Okay, thank you.

All right, thank you.

Um I just had a couple of items here.

Um you mentioned that you had talked to stakeholders.

There were a series of discussions that happened.

Imagine some development firms were involved in those discussions as well, too.

Was the general sentiment that the minimum parking standards that are in place right now are prohibiting them from using a term that a lot of commissioners have used penciling out their developments and moving forward?

Was that the general sentiment?

So we did talk with developers, and I I should also note too that we're working with MTC regionally on uh parking policy.

So we have actually had a chance recently to talk with many different developers and lenders as part of this too.

I will say this for an affordable housing developer, yes, the the parking requirements can oftentimes be prohibitive in terms of just making it pencil out, right?

Market rate, you can get away with it a little bit easier because you'll pass the cost on, right?

They're not gonna eat the cost, those empty parking spaces will be paid by someone else.

Um so oftentimes it becomes less of an issue, but ultimately drives up the cost of housing kind of needlessly.

Sometimes it does actually, even a market rate circumstance.

I have seen it not pencil out entirely.

Um, it just depends on the circumstance, particularly when you get into any sort of garage or underground parking, immediately it starts, starts causing problems with penciling out because it's extraordinarily expensive.

Gotcha, understood.

Yeah, I guess my um my thought there is for the market rate developments completely agree.

Um, you know, I think there's a scenario where it makes sense, the cost can be flowed down, new tenants would ultimately incur that.

Um, and if there is a scenario where maybe it doesn't pencil out for the developer, we've seen it here at the commission where those developers come here and and petition for a variance.

Uh, they partition to uh pay for the in loo fees and and move down that path of not adhering to what the minimum parking standards are, but instead um potentially moving down that pathway of variants being uh brought to the table and considered by the city.

Um so maybe that's one thing I'm trying to balance in my mind is market rate, reducing parking, not necessarily holding developers to the minimum standards that are in place right now and the trickle-down effects that could be seen to neighborhoods.

Um I know you're saying that it may not be an issue, but uh I've lived it in my area of San Leandro where I live, where there was a recent three-story development with 40 some odd uh 40 40 some odd um townhomes that was recently constructed, um and that had a two parking spot covered requirement per parcel.

Um but we know San Leandro is a multi-generational city.

I mean, two parking spots usually transitions or translates into four parking spots with the amount of folks that live and cohabitate together.

So it does ultimately become an issue for vehicles that have two dedicated parking spots turning into four, and those other two needing to find somewhere else to park.

And it ultimately becomes an issue for the neighboring streets, and that being a flow down effect.

Um, well, so I'll just rip respond to that real quickly.

Um, you're right.

I mean, depending on the different areas that you work in, you can have that effect.

I I've been doing a lot of work recently in the canal district in East San Rafael, very multi-generational housing, lots uh lives there, and so we have lots of issues such as that.

I will say though, that again simply providing or requiring the provision of parking doesn't mean it's going to get used.

Um, you know, I mean, I can say, yeah, I I did a parking study I remember once down in Southern California some years ago, and you know, talking to the neighbors around there, it was abundantly clear that virtually no one used their garages, but the street was packed with cars, right?

We actually had one of the stakeholders say that here.

I think it was down in the marina area.

That basically we have enough parking, but everyone parks on street anyways.

At the end of the day, whether you require the parking or not, the real issue has to do with how you manage your on-street parking.

So long as your on-street parking is free and unregulated, you will have no most of the time lots of cars on it.

So I just caution you because simply having higher minimum parking requirements doesn't necessarily solve your problem, but it does increase your housing affordability issue.

You can pursue it through inloo fees, that is something that cities have done.

Although your in-loo fees, frankly, they they can't exist in the um in the blue zone here in the AB 297 zones anymore.

That's that's done.

And but you always could choose to exercise that in other parts of the city, but just realize again, those costs get passed down, and part of what we were tasked with as part of this was to try to increase housing affordability.

So again, it's it's a it's a balancing act, I would say.

Sure, understood.

Yeah, I think probably what Commissioner Zuber was mentioning earlier, a permit parking program for some of these neighborhoods that might be impacted by new developments or potentially developments that have grown in size could be something that uh is pursued by those by those neighborhoods.

Um now that we're on on this slide here, and I just wanted to be clear because there's a lot of information contained in this package.

But in terms of what's before us today, the blue area where eliminating uh eliminating minimum parking requirements, the green area we're reducing it to the table um depiction that you had up on a prior slide.

So it's not as though the green area is being eliminated, it's only that blue area that we're considering.

So to clarify, the blue area right now has almost no minimum parking requirements in it because of state law.

The only requirements pertain now to event centers and hotels.

For some reason, they made carve outs for those.

To be honest, I don't think those are things that really cause issues here.

It's much easier to just get rid of those and at least try to promote some sort of development.

Outside of those areas, what we are recommending is to reduce the minimum parking requirements in this way.

If you want to eliminate the parking requirements, you can, that is an option.

But we're recommending this.

Okay.

Got it.

Makes sense.

Alrighty.

And shared parking, you had a graphic where it was showing residential and office.

Is that to preclude potentially a scenario where you have residential against commerce and there's an area of commerce?

Can shared parking be allowed in that scenario?

Oh, absolutely.

This was just illustrative.

You can you can share parking in a whole host of different ways.

You could even share between two residential uses if you wanted, although it might not be as effective.

Okay.

But the state law AB 894 doesn't differentiate in that way.

So it says basically if there is another use and it has adequate availability, you are entitled to be able to share that with them, if obviously you're both in agreement.

And I guess for future developments that maybe fall in that category where there is an underutilized parking lot that could be could be used to a better service.

Um how would that process work?

Is it a is it a scenario where we can build in requirements, conditions of approval for that developer to adhere to that code that you just mentioned and speak to the parcel, the commercial parcel about shared parking, implementing a shared parking program?

So the state law allows basically requires you to allow it to happen, but doesn't necessarily say that you the city can require shared parking.

Is that am I addressing your question correctly?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm just looking for a way that it could flow down to the developer to kind of hold them accountable in terms of starting that dialogue and looking into a shared parking scenario.

So there are, I mean, if if you do want to go down that road, sorry, I'm kind of sighing a second, not because of you, but I'm trying to think.

Um there are ways that you can try to manipulate the code and the requirements such that you provide lower requirements if they take advantage of shared parking, for example, right?

Um, so um, or you make your parking more publicly accessible, either or so I actually created an ordinance like that years ago down in Southern California, and we intentionally had lower standards set or lower, I should say lower parking requirements set for developments that had publicly accessible parking, right?

Now, again, that I would say just caution you that only really works for not for commercial uses.

It's very hard to get residences to open up their parking to be publicly accessible because of safety issues.

Um, but you know, there are ways you can try to work around that.

Okay.

Appreciate that.

Um last two questions that I had is um so for TDM, there was mention of TDM incentives.

Um there's an incentive option here, providing financial incentives for alternative modes.

Um is that to say extending out to EV vehicles um incentives for having an EV vehicle, um, an influx potentially of parking spaces that offer charging options?

Yeah, great question.

Usually with TDM, the goal is not to include EV amenities for for vehicles as um a way to satisfy requirements, partly because the goal is typically to reduce vehicular trips.

Um so but not always.

Sometimes if it's if the goal is or the um metrics used are reducing greenhouse gas.

Some cities might integrate it.

So our recommendation here is to focus on vehicle trips and partly because of our close alignment with parking as well.

So those things are hand in hand.

So as recommended today, we would not um include EV as a way to satisfy that, but some cities do it.

Okay.

Would it be um would it be a major lift to incorporate EV as part of the TDM program in front of us?

It could be a straightforward way to incorporate EV by adding it as an optional measure.

It might be something to um align closely with it has a lot of overlap with general parking requirements with with the um the components that Brian was speaking to, so it might be worth considering whether TDM or the parking code is the best place to require that.

And that's that's again maybe a reason that many cities will focus on um defining vehicular requirements like EV spaces in the parking components, then keeping T uh TDM focused on trip reduction.

Um but um as a uh sort of matter of complexity, it would be straightforward for us to essentially add it to this list of measures that would satisfy the uh the requirement to do one optional measure.

And that would be to 410 1.04 B1 that'd be in that section.

Yes, that would be the recommended place to incorporate it if if that was a uh direction.

Okay, right.

So B1 would be for the must require all of these.

I'm so sorry.

For B one would be for non-residential optional, and B2 would be um residential projects optional.

Got it, okay.

I think uh it sounds like Baya might have some questions about or clarifications about EV charging.

Yeah, I do.

Just to make sure that we're we're not repeating things that are already in state law.

So are you referring to vehicle EV uh sorry electric vehicle charging requirements within residential and non-residential uses as a TDM measure?

Yeah, I think I'm referring to it in the residential section.

Residential.

Yes.

So just as a point of reference, so the California Green Building Code already has a series of electrical vehicle charging requirements built into it.

They actually update that code every three years, they just updated it again uh and increased the amount of charging capacity that new projects need to have.

Now you can always choose to exceed those.

Um, and we can certainly, you know, come back with more information about that, about what those are because they're pretty detailed, but just so you know that there are already requirements out there um that do require EV charging.

Okay, and I apologize if everyone already knows that, but just for for reference for the public.

And if I may, uh the multifamily development standards already do require or allow uh for EV chargers to be installed as an amenity.

And so that's also in there, and if you know, we could also update that if that was uh uh necessity in the in the future, of course.

Okay, all right.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

Um the last one, just because I kind of see it in my neighborhood here, is uh 4.08 one point or 132 restrictions on residential parking.

Um subsection B, which talks about maximum impervious surface in required front yards, and then subpoint one says maximum coverage.

We're not more than 50% of the front yard.

If I'm reading that correct, can be paved.

Um how is that being tracked or how is it what what's the metric that that corresponds back to that?

If I just you know walk through my neighborhood, there's there's lots that have like 80%, if that maybe 100% completely paved.

So our community preservation team will receive complaints and um work with the uh property owners to make them compliant, and this is a reiteration of existing requirements, just uh clarification.

And you said it's the community preservation team.

So we have um, you know, previously code enforcement, we have officers who are part of that team, and they will receive complaints through the C click fix program.

Um, and then they wouldn't go out there and measure, and if they are at out of compliance, there's a you know, they'll start the process of notifying the the owners to clear um correct the issue.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you.

Okay, we've got uh two more comments here.

Um I'll go to commissioner or vice chair Mendoza.

Yes, you'll say a quick bottom line question.

Um, so could we say that by a plan exchanges, it incentivizes development, and that in turn benefits the community.

So I mean, just summarizing everything that I read, that that seems to be the versus, which is my concern, uh, which I've seen in other uh instances, uh, versus this uh benefiting the developers at the expense of the community and externalizing certain costs that are going to be bored by the city and and the community.

So that's basically my.

Yes, with this um, you know, uh the impetus of this being uh, I guess coming from the climate action plan and housing element, the intent there is always to provide, you know, uh better quality of life and also reduce costs for the developer.

So that is the intent that is uh really where we want to go with that.

It sounds like we have other supplemental answers.

Sorry, I just wanted to chime in too because it's an excellent point that you make.

And it's a it's a valid concern, right?

That because one thing that we do caution cities with is simply creating rules where the public right-of-way is used by private development as an offset for their costs, right?

And so what we always say is that in these sort of sorts of circumstances, it really behooves the public sector to be able to manage its resources as it needs to.

Right now, you do have free and abundant parking on street, it just it is, and a lot of people do get used to that.

At the end of the day, though, when you do reduce these requirements for development, it actually does reduce the cost of housing.

The there's a study by UCLA ITS that just came out a few months ago that shows about as a percentage of the cost, every time you build a one-bedroom apartment, for example, about 20 to 30% of the construction cost is just parking, right?

If you have structured parking in it, they found that when minimum parking requirements were first introduced, actually in Oakland of all places, um originally housing prices jumped by about 20 to 30 percent.

There is a direct correlation here.

So it's not just a feel good measure that we hope works, it actually does get passed down.

Now, will everyone pass down the full the full chunk of the cost, maybe or maybe not, but in a marketplace where people are trying to be competitive with their products, it behooves them to price it at a point that makes sense for people to buy.

Um but I I just wanted to re-emphasize with that that you are absolutely right to be concerned about giving away public assets for free.

You don't, you definitely don't want to do that, but there are very effective ways to be able to make sure that doesn't happen.

And I would obviously encourage the city to pursue that in a way that's not costly to existing residents, right?

It doesn't have to be a super costly measure or burdensome one to be able to prioritize streets for resident needs.

I'll just briefly add that from the TDM perspective.

Our goal with these recommendations was to ultimately be uh neutral from a developer perspective to not be an incentive or a cost and trying to strike that balance.

And the comments tonight have been very helpful for continuing to um refine and think about how these optional and mandatory measures strike that balance.

Um, one of the most important benefits that we see for taking this step now is building public capacity to do TDM.

So even if the requirements themselves are modest, TDM takes time and expertise and repetition and iteration, taking you know, going from square zero to square one is much harder than going from square one to square two.

So some of the feedback we've heard um about um looking at these and thinking which which of these are really low costs that are gonna be too easy, do we want to make those mandatory over time or now are really um powerful tools that you all will have by taking this first step of just having a framework that then you can you know twist the the knobs and the dial.

So so again, the starting point we're aiming for is to be neutral from a developer's perspective, and then you can build from there.

Over to uh commissioner Zuber.

Um I think this would be for Lourdes to um will will this resolution apply to already entitled projects that are not yet under construction?

No, okay.

So I'm gonna just give an example of a project that is already entitled, may or may not have its building permit, and was previously required to have a certain amount of parking, but has not yet um put shovels in the ground or obtained a building permit, this resolution would not apply.

They would still be required to have the previous parking.

Oh I'm sorry, that you can give me an exact project.

I I I have a project in my mind.

I don't know which one it's on the corner of Bancroft and Neste Dio with a fence around it.

School project, you know, this would not it's it's it's across from the middle school.

Right.

Yeah.

So your question is, will these requirements apply?

Well, well, I mean, the way I look at it is it's a relaxing of requirements, right?

And so I I'm I'm wondering if someone can go back on what they did and if they were previously required to provide parking, can they say, oh well, now I'm no longer required to provide parking.

I was looking at the city attorney to be careful about talking about a project that maybe that may become that may come before the planning commission at some point, but um uh the we can use it as a hypothetical if if you if you'd if you'd prefer.

I I I if they if if they applied for a new if they applied for a new project at this point, they'd be subject to the rules that are in place that um would be in place at the time of their application is deemed complete.

Right.

There are also some projects that were required to provide certain parking as amenities for like um uh inclusionary housing units uh that like made it so that they were just as good quality as the ones who were not uh that's the units over market rate, this would not affect those.

So it is sort of a it's it's sort of a it depends kind of answer, okay.

But generally speaking, this is for new developments uh uh post the adoption of the code.

Okay.

I think this is yet to be, you know, um again, I support this.

I I think I'm if I'm thinking about you know my constituents and what they might be thinking, right?

You know, once this passes, um I think it's important to ask the question and I don't know if I really got an answer.

Um I I I'll say that let me just say this that I I think that if there are projects in the queue that currently are entitled and were required to have the parking um that if things change, I I would recommend that the city be upfront about those changes with the community.

That that's I guess I've said my piece.

Um I I am taking notes.

Absolutely.

And I guess one just one final thing on my end, what's the frequency that the TDM regulations are reevaluated and then subsequently, you know, any potential changes to the zoning code for parking regulations being either adjusted um as a result of maybe the resurvey that's been done against the TDM.

So what's the frequency that it's evaluated?

Zoning code amendments don't really have a regular frequency, and so we could bring it up next year if there's changes that we want to update the chapter 4.08, for example, but it there it's not on a schedule.

Okay.

Does that answer your question?

So it I was gonna suggest that if Alex can weigh in on if there's any like industry best practices in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of TDM ordinances.

Yeah, it's a great question.

From a TDM perspective, so the TDM recommends um surveying every two years.

So you would start to see trends emerge um in sort of two-year increments.

Um I'm not aware of cities that have um standard time frames for which they look at the code and and revisit the code, but one thing I did want to point out that I think is relevant is that part of the strategy in how we've uh developed this framework is to have um sort of streamlined code components and then administrative guidelines that can be updated more easily.

And there are relevant details in the administrative guidelines that um sort of clarify that you know the extent to which some of these measures must be implemented.

So that so the idea is that those could be revisited perhaps as frequently as every two years as you're getting data that frequent adjustments with TDM is considered something that that is generally helpful um as long as it's not complicated for people to keep up with, but you get a lot of data to um give you feedback and show you what's working and what's not.

Um I can't speak to how that informs necessarily parking minimums, um, but I would say you're thinking on the order of every maybe five years or so um from a TDM perspective, looking at a significant update.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

Yeah, and maybe it's more so kind of a staff um research effort, uh, but I would just be curious if in, you know, two years from now, after we make these parking modifications uh within a two-year time frame, did these changes really materialize into what we're potentially going to be approving tonight by way of additional uh developments coming into the city uh and it being more of a streamlined sort of fashion for developers uh to meet now a reduced minimum parking requirement.

So if there's any sort of like from this point in time tracing back two years, these are the amount of developments that happen, and these developments were impacted by parking from this point in time onward over the next two years, these developments have moved forward uh and parking reductions have helped or kind of you know spawn those to to where they're currently at the zoning code itself has only had well adopted in 61, I believe, uh I believe in 92 we had a major uh zoning code update wherein they created many land use categories and added to the already quite lengthy list of uh land use categories in the parking table.

And then I believe in 2001 again, it was another uh quite a big revamp as well, adding a few more other categories, but we've never had an analysis like this one um from my recollection, my experience.

Um there are many points in time when we can go back and see what the effect of something is that that that we've adopted has made, but at present time this is the zoning code amendments we're proposing I'll I'll add that that staff can commit to um tracking data and see if we can um identify um uh analyze and identify the effective effectiveness of the code or the proposed code changes um I will caution the commission that it may take um uh you know it will depend on the pace of development when we get enough applications in where we can evaluate the true effectiveness of it so we can determine um an appropriate time to report out out on it based on the amount of development activity that's occurring fair enough thank you appreciate it um any final comments last comments go on once twice commissioner rich so we're on comments not questions anymore we I'm sorry we haven't opened the public hearing yet we have not opened no uh we are on questions still any final questions no okay so no questions then we'll move on to public hearing public hearing is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak on this item do we have any speaker cards no speaker cards okay closing the public hearing section and bringing the item back to the commission for discussion any commissioners wish to discuss the item commissioner rich uh thank you I appreciate uh the report I appreciate appreciate the presentation tonight I support this resolution I support its goals like housing affordability and reducing vehicle trips and combating climate change I support the way this is drafted I think it's really unusual to for this kind of streamlining that we're seeing here in I'm not that familiar with government but this is making things simpler um I find it elegant in its efficiency and clarity I think this is good government I support it.

For some reason I have Commissioner Tomjoulu shown on screen did somebody hit his uh box there okay there we go thank you.

Any other comments from commissioners Commissioner Zuber.

I'm just I'm gonna echo what what Rob said I I do think that this is good government and and I also think that the presentation was I loved that you guys had all of the charts and everything um that we could go back and forth with it was very easy to reference so um appreciate that uh very much and I will say I don't know if this is a comment but I did have two additions to the resolution and I am not certain how or where those fit in to the resolution so any other comments from commissioners no I'm just gonna echo the same presentation was very thorough um everything everything was comprehensive so thank you for that information.

Okay well do I hear a motion to adopt a resolution with potential amendments included I I do think I'm gonna need help with this because it was like a many hundreds of page document and I don't know exactly where it fits in so there was um the inclusion of um a bicycle repair on the residential property um and then there was um adding some type of ratio to the flexible remote employees.

So again, I don't I don't know how that fits into the resolution, but um Wayland, can you help me state how that?

I think I'll I can assist in the in the in crafting the motion, but I also want to say that in the course of discussion, Commissioner Rich also recommended uh changes to uh section four point ten point three to include um renovations and also include a definition of renovations for that for that section, and then uh Chairperson Tejada um I believe recommended including you supportive amenities as optional TD TDM strategies and 4.10 point one nine four point B point one in addition to uh your recommendation to include bicycle repair station to list the mandatory strategies and um include um uh more meaningful detail to the flexible work arrangement strategy.

Um if that captures everything that was this discussed, you can fold that into the motion.

Okay.

Okay, um make a motion that we adopt a resolution recommending that the city council adopt an ordinance amending chapter 4.08 off-street parking and loading regulations and adding chapter 4.10 transportation demand management to the San Leandro zoning code ZC A26-001 with said additions.

We have a motion on the floor.

Sorry.

A motion on the floor.

Is there a second?

Commissioner Rich.

I second.

Okay.

It has been moved by Commissioner Zuber and seconded seconded by Commissioner Rich to consider a resolution recommending the city council amend the zoning code to modify parking regulations and establish transportation demand TDM regulations with said additional amendments included.

Please cast your vote.

Okay, votes are in five yeses passes unanimously.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

On to presentations.

The next item on the agenda is presentations.

Mr.

Secretary, are there any presentations this evening?

We do have a presentation this evening.

Um our uh economic development team led by Katie Bowman and uh Des Woodworth and Lars Hall will be making a presentation on some of the fantastic work that they're doing um in the community related to the innovation action plan and the retail action plan.

Um with that I'll um hand it off to uh Katie to do introduction on the item.

I'm not sure why we're good evening, commissioners.

Um, I know many of you, and it's nice to be back here tonight.

I'm Katie Bowman, Economic development manager with the city, and we're here today to talk about two items that we've been working on under the 2024 economic development strategy, which um we went and we talked about with you a couple years ago now.

So it's it's really good to be back.

And so we know that in the past you all have expressed interest in the work in trying to, you know, in continuing and as we start to bring things forward, projects may become come before you.

Also, it's helpful to have context as to what's going on in our local economy as you review.

I heard lots of discussion about development and feasibility and things like that.

Tonight we're going to be talking about work.

Two of the really key initial items under the economic development strategy are what we call the innovation action plan and the retail action plan.

So that's where we're going to focus our discussion tonight.

And just for framing these plans are under two of six sections of our work under the economic development strategy, which you may recall.

And so for the innovation action plan, we um worked to evaluate and put together a strategic plan to work to work and support uh strategic companies that have potential here in San Leandro where we have a competitive advantage that can bring good jobs and potential for growth.

And so we're doing this work, you may or may not have seen we're doing this work under the city council has a work plan, and there's an economic development work plan, and so this work falls underneath that, and you can see several of the tasks that we're working on here under that.

And so, why do we want to attract innovative companies?

This might be where oh, yes.

So, so also I do want to note so we have two key members of our team here, Des Woodworth, Economic Development Specialist, who he is focused on the innovation action plan, and he's gonna share with you some of our analysis.

Lars Hall is with uh work focused on our retail action plan, and he'll share with you some of that analysis.

And we'll go through a good amount of things and then happy to dig in on your questions and comments when we're done.

Thank you, Katie.

Uh good evening, commissioners.

Uh as Katie mentioned, uh, part of what we're doing with the action plan is trying to come up with a good way to drive ourselves in a particular direction.

Um, in the development of the action plan, uh we did that in conjunction with our economic development uh consultant Alex Greenwood, who brings significant experience in part based on his his work in South San Francisco, where he helped create the life science cluster that is uh such a mover and shaker in that area.

The action plan gives the city a specific data-driven uh look at the way uh the types of industrial businesses that San Leandro is likely to benefit most from, uh, where we have an opportunity to attract and grow those businesses and also holds the greatest opportunity to bring high quality jobs to the area in the future.

The plan is designed to provide specific actions that the city can take to pursue these industries, including marketing, industry partnerships, and ways to enhance our infrastructure and other actions.

The industries.

Actually, let me just make sure that we're uh on the correct spot.

I think we're good there.

Um, yeah, okay, there we go.

Uh, the industries that were selected uh are those which uh that allow San Leander to offer a strong growth potential, are financially sustainable, and provide high quality jobs as well as being involved in significant investment equipment and development, all of which contribute to sustainable vitality for the city.

To develop this plan, we performed uh extensive analysis of employment and industrial data, combined with interviews with industrial leaders.

Through the analysis, we identified four target industries, including life sciences or medtech, clean tech, food tech, and advanced manufacturing.

We further narrowed down our targets to identify specific subsectors that provide the best opportunities for San Leandro, for instance, in the life sciences and med technology area, which is an area that includes a lot of different types of businesses.

Sorry, contract dug drug manufacturing and incubators among others.

We did the same kind of analysis for all four of the sectors that we had identified, the broader categories.

After we had identified the specific business types that we wanted to target, we learned more about each industry, what their real estate needs are, what their facility and infrastructure needs were, as well as the business trends that they're experiencing.

We also want to understand what issues the city will have in confront to have to confront in working with these businesses to attract and grow them here.

This allowed us to come up with a specific list of action steps that the city can take as we move forward with our business attraction, including one-on-one business support, focused business attraction and marketing efforts, outreach to industry leaders and property owners to encourage investment and support additional relationships, continued city efforts to streamline and update regulations, and to support those target industries, exploring the feasibility of offering financial incentives to our target industries, and finally a partnership with PGE, which I'll note is one of the areas where we are most likely to have infrastructure challenges to our objectives of encouraging growth.

We think that we may need as much as 200 megawatts of new electrical power over the next five to 10 years in order for us to be able to do all of the work that we're anticipating for attracting innovative businesses.

So it's critical that we work with PGE to plan for that need.

On the plus side, we have been successful in setting up quarterly project coordination meetings with PGE, and we hope that we'll have uh that we hope and what we are hoping to have productive advanced planning discussions with PG and E in June.

With that, I'll hand it back to Katie who will share some of our many things that we've been doing in terms of implementation.

So we we've been working, we completed this innovation action plan over a year ago and uh are able to kind of share some of the steps that we've been taking and the results.

And you know, and one of the core things that we and as in particular focus on is the uh one-on-one business expansion assistance.

So we don't we're not just chasing shiny new objects, looking to support our existing businesses and help them grow and add jobs and invest here in San Leandro.

And so on an ongoing basis, for instance, working with about a dozen companies, and um, you know, a variety of things come from that.

Uh, we have seen um just recently CoreShell or well, uh a company called Crete.

Uh, we work with the mayor to provide letters of support as they do funding applications.

Uh Crete, we've been able to provide a couple letters of support, and with that, they've gotten 10 million dollars in grants.

And the most recent one where we provided a letter, I think we looked and we were 0.4%, was that it point.4% below, they were only 0.4% above the person in second place.

And so, you know, those those little differences in support from the city can can really sometimes make a difference for these businesses.

Another business that um has been doing um a lot of expansion in the city is called CoreShell.

They uh have they're a battery startup.

We have a number of businesses in town who are working on cleaner and more efficient battery technologies and in what we would call the clean tech industry.

CORSHELL came here about five or six years ago.

They started as a smaller business at the Westgate Center at Gate 510.

They expanded there.

They then moved to a larger facility in the complex uh along William Street.

They expanded there.

They expanded there again.

And now they're looking for a manufacturing space in town.

And so we work to connect these businesses and help them know about opportunities and help them find and solve problems that they have.

So and also, as Des mentioned, we do a lot of basically what we would call marketing for the city, a lot of telling the San Leandro story.

We do that through a variety of ways.

One of our biggest venues is the blog San Leandro Next, and on the different social media channels, we've got thousands of followers in that way.

We do speaking events.

We also have created some new marketing materials, which I think you have on your dais, and we use that to share with investors, or if we go to conferences for people to know, you know, what is San Leandro all about from a business perspective and what are opportunities.

We also did uh last summer worked with the San Francisco Business Times and did uh an extensive insert in the San Francisco Business Times, sharing that, getting in front of, I think there was 880,000 impressions on the San Francisco Business Times online portal related to this, so really looking to increase name recognition in you know and show businesses that there are a lot of opportunities here, as well as we do broker events and things like that.

And ways that we see this pay pay play payoff on the property development side, and some of these developments you've seen come before you as planning commissioners, you get you get the sneak preview.

Um we do continue to have investment in the industrial area.

Really, it's our strongest sector from both a real estate business and job perspective, and so this is just a handful of buildings that um are in the works at this point, and one example that we like to share that really shows um by the numbers kind of the value that these properties can bring.

There's an example here at the top right.

There's a property on Fairallon, and um in 2024, we started working with a business called Pacific Fusion.

We do have two companies looking into fusion energy located here, which is really cutting edge.

I think it comes off of technology that was discovered in 2024 or something like that.

It's very new.

Um, and so uh so they, you know, work there's there's really a lot of really cool potential, and they're looking for their RD space here.

And so Pacific Fusion moved into this space on Fairlone, and then in 2025, the property sold for 62 million dollars, which was three times the value that it was previously assessed at, and um, and then so that results resulted in a one-time transfer tax for the city of about half a million dollars, and then um on an ongoing basis, these just bring additional baseline higher property value.

On this one, about 40,000 additional property value dollars a year.

And as we mentioned, just continuing to build the relationships with the property owners with the businesses.

We do find some of the the biggest value relationship and the biggest impact that can be made to help bring businesses, bring investment to San Leandro, increase our our local economy is through the property owners and them making investment and opening the doors to growing businesses.

And one good example of that is called B3 Investors.

Uh, we may have talked about them with you before.

They own the Westgate Center and have about 300,000 square feet at the second floor of that center, which is research and development office space.

They have about 400,000 square feet along Williams Street, and then several years ago they bought Bayfair Mall, and they are making research and development space there and really investing in that facility.

As Des mentioned, we are also working to ensure that our businesses understand the process so that it can be as efficient as possible.

Because everywhere we go now, really big in the in the Bay Area or all of PGE's area, really kind of the biggest thing that now businesses we hear about as they're looking to expand as power.

That's the number one issue.

So we are looking into that.

And so over the next year, things that we're going to be doing related to the plan will be continuing a lot of our work.

Some additional new things you'll see.

We're going to always continue to work to make the website convey well what's going on, what opportunities are available.

So we'll be doing work there.

Also working on tracking data, some operational things, and looking in, also we'll be working with Wayland and the planning team.

Help to review those from a business perspective to look and see to what extent you know how they would help, you know, help or hurt also looking to update zoning definitions to meet you know current trends and current business types.

And with that, I will take a quick breath and we'll go ahead and transition over to our retail action plan.

So the second one that we'll give you an overview.

And so the retail action plan is also a part of the council work plan.

And under that, we're going to be working on several different projects.

And with that, I will hand it over to Lars and he can share with you all about the plan.

Thank you, Katie, and good evening, Commissioners.

Well, so to build on the idea of next, our vision here with the retail action plan is to look at what's next in retail.

Of course, we aim to bring in the types of retail that the community desires and values.

We are working to prioritize experiential retail and strong placemaking in order to create vibrant retail destinations in San Leandro.

And we're of course seeking to modernize and enhance shopping centers and retail districts to strengthen their position here in the Bay Area.

So after an RFP process, the ED team contracted with the team comprised of two local brokerages, TRI Commercial and Metrovation Retail Resources.

And they took a deep dive into San Leandro's current retail market and looked forward to see how we could position ourselves in a more competitive position.

So some of the findings that they uh arrived at were are some of our strengths being our location, of course, no surprise there, right here on the I 880 corridor and close proximity to Silicon Valley.

We have a very pro-business reputation as a city, meaning that businesses enjoy coming here and find us to be a good partner in their success getting up and started.

Some of the challenges that they came across, of course, was the what we all know about the growth of online retail, kind of uh putting a damper on the traditional retail as we uh are all accustomed to.

There's also a slowing and aging population, which uh further creates some uh challenges, and then uh there is uh some low retail turn uh tenant turnover uh largely due to high uh upgrade costs and relatively low rents uh with uh within underutilized and obsolete spaces, so it becomes really difficult and costly when a tenant leaves to upgrade that for a newer use.

Um there was uh some real um deep dives into looking at our different sectors within the retail environment, at what we have, uh a good amount of what we need more of, uh as you can kind of see here.

So the strongest opportunities that we have are within restaurants, auto parts, home furnishings, etc.

You can see the rest, and then of course we uh also see uh an area where we are a bit oversupplied.

Uh this gives us you know a good idea of what where we want to focus our energies uh for some future tenants to come in.

But I should also say that San Leandro does serve a diverse community and changing demographics, and so there is room uh to attract some ethnic businesses, ethnic groceries, new restaurant concepts uh that would reflect that diversity.

Uh, and then I wanted to mention that we there are some strategic priorities attached to this.

We have um we know that commercial development costs are high right now, so some recommendations from the team was for the city to incentivize new development by simplifying the development process, specifically by reducing non-construction related barriers.

Uh, also to increase residential density near the downtown in order to increase foot traffic and demand for higher quality retail, uh, and lastly, but maybe among the more important to prioritize safety and the perception of safety around our shopping districts because people will shop and dine where they feel safe, not where the statistics say they are safe.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about uh what our next steps are and how we're going to address some of these findings.

Um the team, like I said, did a really deep dive.

They focused on creating practical and easy to implement steps for staff, uh, and designed it in a way that we could work most effectively with retailers and the retail professional community.

Um so there the team identified three sections of activity.

This is the first one, market readiness, but also marketing and outreach and support for shopping centers.

As you can see on here, we also have some five major action categories that are basically highlights of where we can uh focus uh some of our efforts.

We want to and are in the process of modernizing and optimizing our ED web pages on the city's website and creating new outreach materials that are more effective for retail recruitment.

We are going to create a database to track retail inquiries and to match uh the the applicants or the interested parties with available spaces.

This is our one of our more time-intensive um efforts.

Um we also want to, or actually, we're nearing completion of a zoning review, which is uh one of the uh highlights here.

The uh you saw on a previous slide that we had an event uh for, and it was a what traditionally is called a broker breakfast, where we invite people from from the commercial real estate community, and we are planning now to do annual events specific to read the retail broker community and uh other retail professionals, and then uh we are revamping our business incentives that has actually also been completed very recently to make some of those uh some of those amenities more readily available to our uh specially small businesses.

So uh the second uh section was uh retail marketing and outreach.

Uh we've done some things already, but this is by no means uh a small feat.

We are continuing to work on how to position ourselves to communicate better with the retail community.

Uh so what we've done so far is uh update, add actually some pages to our website, and uh the it the little thing you see there on the laptop that is a little snapshot from our retail opportunities page, which provides information that is um very attractive to the retail community and critical uh for their site selection and being able to determine whether San Leandro is the place for them.

We are also changing uh um our flyers.

We just uh created this flyer here uh that I think you also have on the day is uh for uh the ICSC Monterey Conference that was in March.

Uh ICSC is the International Council for Shopping Centers, and uh the Monterey Conference sees about a thousand attendees a year, so that's an excellent place to market the city.

And this flyer, with the guidance of the consultants, we were able to put together something that really speaks to the retail community and gets their attention quickly, simply and attractively.

Um our outreach strategy is uh involves a couple of different things.

We're going to begin and maintain regular contact with listings brokers uh in order to see what they're up to.

Uh we want to know what um what opportunities are coming, what listings they have, who their tenants are that are looking for spaces, so keeping that uh dialogue open is crucial.

Uh we want to track their deal progress, and we want to provide any support that we can whenever that is appropriate.

Um the result of this is we're ending up we're ending up with a really strong marketing uh toolkit uh that we can use moving forward.

The third section was shopping center outreach, and this uh is one that is a little bit uh more critical perhaps than some of the other ones.

The key strategy here is to engage with shopping center owners and uh identify challenges that they may have and encourage small but visible upgrades.

We're talking physical upgrades to the shopping centers.

Uh, this is an essential tool for them to be able to refresh, uh look more attractive, and therefore be able to lease up faster and charge higher rents.

Uh as an example, if you've all seen Marina Fair down on Doolittle, uh they started just by renovating one building and with the success of that uh leasing that up and being able to charge higher rents.

They decided to refresh the entire shopping center, and it's it's really uh going gangbusters.

I don't know if you've been down there.

It's it's really nice.

So this is um that kind of thing, uh, but we would basically be boots on the ground, see what needs to happen, speak with the property owners, and find low-hanging fruit that they can take care of in order to be more competitive in the market.

So the takeaway from this is small improvements can drive some significant results.

And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Katie.

So uh just to end, um, we do always love to share stories about uh success on the retail side, um, things for you to check out and enjoy in the community.

So um over the past year we have had some exciting things open.

Um one of the very big news things that I'm sure you've seen in the um Central Cowan development that was supported by the planning commission uh here in downtown is the new Sprouts grocery store, and of course, Phil's coffee at that location as well.

Um we've also had some different service businesses from Pilates to Martial Arts.

Um also um very recently and a new Ace Hardware opened up in uh the greenhouse and uh they're gonna be having a board cutting instead of a ribbon cutting, they're having a board cutting next week, uh, and they're gonna be having um uh specials next weekend.

So if you're interested, uh check that out.

Not an endorsement, sorry.

Um, but uh also down at Greenhouse uh coming in within the next year, hopefully, uh there is a proposed um Sky Zone um indoor recreation facility may actually be coming before you so you may learn more in that way.

Also some new restaurants opening in the former Goodwill space.

Uh one's gonna be called Tang Bao, one uh uh Tang Bars.

So some different Asian concepts that are doing well in other locations.

Um so we're really happy to see uh things coming there.

Um also um on a regular basis, restaurants in San Leandro, we have a really great variety of restaurants that um, you know, really gets the attention and recognition from um reviewers from Smack Burger downtown that had the best breakfast burrito in the bay, I think was what it was quoted.

Um there's some really exciting um pulled noodle, um Dow Artisan Noodle, which is in the manor at the Manor Shopping Center.

Um Vivid Bibin, which is um on floor, uh I'm forgetting, it's right across from uh Living Spaces and uh Pack and Save.

So they got uh they're on the top 20 Korean restaurants in the Bay, and they're a new restaurant.

Um, and so there's lots of fun things going on there, as well as on the um on the formal side, Levante uh is uh took over the former.

Oh my gosh, now I'm gonna forget, but they're at the corner Mousaka, the former Mousaka space uh at um Bancroft and Dutton.

And um, and so certainly um we we've already been doing a lot of retail recruitment, and with this strategy, we're we're continuing to to be uh focused to help to bring even more.

Uh with that I can stop and we um are happy to answer questions.

Thank you for that presentation.

Appreciate it.

Uh opening it up to the commission for questions.

I see our Vice Chair Mendoza in the queue.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

That was that was great.

I'm uh really I'm really glad to see everything that you're doing for the city.

Um I'm familiar with I think we had a with the team I had a meeting about maybe a year and a half ago with some ideas.

So that that speaks to my interest in in this issue uh for for many years.

Um so everything that you presented there is great.

Um but going back to uh my interest, if you Google uh my name and the San Francisco uh Business Times, you're gonna see an article about me there from 2006 regarding these issues.

Uh, one thing that I'll I'd like to encourage you, uh, which um I'm sure you I'm sure you've heard this debate between um you know chain businesses and local businesses.

I already see that you do have an emphasis in in you know promoting uh local businesses.

Um so I like to encourage continue doing that as you probably heard all these numbers, but um there is some uh data from um a guy called Michael Schumann, uh the local uh economy solution, where he determines that uh for for every dollar spent locally, you get four times the benefit from local businesses versus chain stores and large you know uh companies that oftentimes we provide them with uh tax incentives, and they promise to create certain amount of jobs, and sometimes that doesn't pan out entirely, uh, but it's still important, you know, to bring those those big guys in.

Uh but um for local businesses, obviously, you know uh it's also important to you know put attention to them, put in some resources that they need, and uh eventually it seems that that benefits uh the local economy even more.

So just that's the government wanted to.

This is National Small Business Week.

I'll give a plug.

Uh so uh stop by a local shop this weekend.

Uh there's a variety of resources available for them this week and a national call to uh support them.

Thank you.

Over to Commissioner Rich.

Okay.

Uh thank you.

That was a fantastic presentation.

I particularly enjoyed some of the action steps that were listed on there with the industry innovation, the infrastructure, the working with PGE.

Um I've been out of the business for a few years now, but the PGE used to be a challenge on all sorts of projects.

So to the extent that the city can help to facilitate those relationships, I think that's great.

I think there may be opportunities for that to extend beyond the industry and innovation and the housing potentially.

Um but if there's lessons learned that can lead to greater efficiency and development and relationship with PGE, that's fantastic.

Uh similarly on the retail action plan there, I think uh the additional permit guidance, especially for immigrant-owned businesses is fantastic.

Looking at compliance from the user perspective, I think is really helpful and it's good governance again.

So I thank you for that.

Over to Commissioner Zuber.

Yeah, this was a great presentation, and um it makes me really proud of San Leandro.

We I think we've come a long way.

There's it's a it's a lot of work to do this, to bring um businesses um uh to the city.

Um so I I really appreciate this um you breaking it down into the different objectives and goals.

Thank you so much.

Um one of the items was about public safety, whether perceived or real.

And I'm wondering if you've done any outreach or any partnership with the city of San Leandro police department.

Um I don't know, maybe it was six, seven, eight years ago.

Um the city of San Leandro had the police officers on mountain bikes, and they were really just part of the community.

Just I, you know, just writing downtown and and wherever, and um I I think it it really made at least families, I think, feel like there was a presence, right?

Um, and so I'm just wondering if there's anything like that that is forecast too.

Yeah, yeah.

We we talk to police all the time and regularly connect businesses with police and remind businesses and everyone, um, please report everything, call um because they're all about data is really helpful to them.

But uh yes, so on on that security side, we we we also fondly remember uh the the downtown officers.

That program uh was phased out for variety of reasons, but really what came in its place um in a very intentional manner was the downtown safety ambassadors.

So there is um a non-police safety ambassador team uh that's uh managed through the downtown community benefit district.

You may know SLIA, um, and so the city does contribute uh a large amount of funds to help help support that, and they actually are able to offer um some more um time and attention than our very busy police are able to do.

They're on foot uh in teams and in blue polos and downtown, and um they are you know trained in de-escalation, and they have been working.

I don't have their stats in front of me, but actually they have some really impressive stats, thousands of encounters a year, uh, helping from you know, uh walking people to their cars there available.

They um have relationships with all the downtown um uh merchants with all those small businesses, um, and uh they're keeping an eye out for them, but also if they're individuals who are causing problems, there's a lot um that happens these days in that gray area where it may not be a crime or be something that police can respond to immediately, and so they're really able to help in that regard.

So that's one thing.

Um, you know, always open to an interested in additional opportunities as as resources are available because there's a district downtown and there's enough businesses to pay into it that that makes it possible there where we're not able to do that everywhere, but yeah.

And and so the downtown ambassador is that uh um it's it's gonna continue to be funded for is it?

Um yeah, yeah.

Actually, that was just the topic of discussion at the budget hearings.

Um, yes, so they are they uh will uh there it's continuing at flat funding, but they are funded for the next fiscal year and projected uh for the next after that as well.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, uh thank you for that presentation.

That was very thorough.

Um I just had a couple of questions here.

Um one of them was there was a slide on market readiness and it was touching on I think a new database that's either rolling out or had just rolled out.

Um that's encouraging to see.

It's it's somewhat of like a matchmaking sort of scenario where open vacancies are then uh being able to match up to potential tenants or new uses that could fill that space.

Just curious, um, before this process rolled out, how did that process occur?

What was the pattern in place before this new database?

Yeah, so for maybe the whole 10 years, uh certainly for many years, we have had access to the CoStar Commercial Listing Service and we provide as a service, and Lars is our point person currently, um, where uh if we get inquiries about people looking for space, we're able to look at commercial listings and provide them information on it.

So it's been going on um in a little less of a formal way, but we, you know, so on an on an individual basis tracking, you know, who you're communicating with and through internal spreadsheets and things like that.

Um so uh in general, you may have heard, you know, certainly at a citywide level with the council work plans and other things continuing to work to work towards uh tighter performance tracking, performance metrics.

Um our work is very varied, so it's it's it's a hard thing to pin down.

Um but we are working on um, you know, finding efficient ways to to track and be able to share our work and continuing to work to share those data points like we did tonight.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

And is that database such that like if you go to Salyandro's webpage and click on economic development, it'll take you to that database.

If I'm a developer or interested in, you know, a potential property, I can go there and find the information.

Yeah, I wouldn't use the word database.

So what um in I wonder I might be able to show you, but if you go to San Leandro.org backslash retail, uh, we do populate available commercial listings with uh with their uh with their flyers available.

So it's a listing uh uh versus a database.

Okay, that's great.

Um I'm just also reminded here of a uh consultant presentation that happened in a city council meeting back in February, I want to say it was, and um that presentation was hitting on uh commercial use, mixed use, and I think the phrase that that consultant used was potential commercial listings that are at a point where they've reached critical mass of being vacant for a longer tenure of time being considered and reevaluated for the potential of mixed use and and moving into a category of mixed use.

Um how close does the communication happen between economic development and say um I guess planning in in the sense of being able to bridge that gap for those critical mass vacancies, potentially switching over to a mixed use setting on a commercial footprint.

Yeah, yeah, uh we're just right down the hall.

We're all in the same department, so we uh we talk every day every week.

Um on on that topic of commercial sites converting to residential, in general, and Whalen can correct me if I'm wrong.

Our our commercial zoning does permit housing.

Um so it's not zoning that's restricting housing being built on those sites.

So it's um us not having a strong housing market.

So from a like a uh multifamily at this point is not is not penciling.

We have a lot of multifamily approved that isn't being built.

So unfortunately that's that's not the reason.

But um, but certainly, for instance, in the Bay Fair area, we also have a concerted plan showing how there can be higher density housing in a transit-oriented development manner.

So um we do, for instance, um, as there was outreach to the property owners in the Bay Fair area, uh, we and planning, you know, speak to them about you know what their opportunities are for their property, um, which in that case includes kind of more of that mixed use.

But in general, I think right housing is um there's a process, but it is um under state law now permitted in pretty much all of our commercial areas.

Okay.

And then just to kind of localize it to greenhouse, greenhouse market, a couple of things there.

So safety, security, definitely would agree in that sense, where the downtown ambassadors may be one avenue.

Um, but since greenhouse isn't nowhere near downtown, I'm wondering what sort of boots on the ground to you to use your presence there, Lars, what sort of boots on the ground presence to maybe make the safety and security feel that much more prominent?

It's good to hear that.

Um I've lived it.

Yes, ACE Hardware is open and uh the sky zone, that's news to me.

So great to hear.

New businesses coming in on board is a great sign of what's happening there in the greenhouse, but there's always that kind of lingering stigma to um the transient community community, the transient community that's close to the 238 880 corridor, and um, you know, maybe how that spills over into the greenhouse market and doesn't necessarily provide for a safe shopping environment all the time.

Um what measures can be done or can the city help with in that regard?

Um certainly would be interested in your feedback uh as to whether things have gotten better um that uh but I um but certainly we've had a number of conversations with the property owner, the property managers, with connecting directly with police and police um talking to them about some of their legal options with individuals, um, and so them as a property owner following up and working with police, understanding um what are some of the tips and tricks to um to get um directions to stick for individuals who are who are you know doing things not conducive to the shopping environment, things like that.

Um, and so we do have an interdepartmental um task force that or or group that meets to discuss different things.

And so if and when um you know specific problems or complaints come up there, it's a way for uh public works, police, um uh community services, human services, community development, maybe uh police um uh to be able to discuss problems and make sure it's on everyone's radar.

So that centers certainly on on everyone's radar.

Um but if there are some specific new things happening, uh certainly happy to hear about it offline so that we can have the group take a look.

Sure, appreciate that.

Um yeah, and then my last one is there was a slide that was brought up on on screen about kind of like I guess it was the redundancy between um too many businesses of the same kind that are kind of prominent within the city.

Um to what extent does economic development have a voice in like retail or commercial shopping centers where we can avoid that being the case?

Uh and I look again at greenhouse market, um greenhouse market has I would say probably 80% of its business in the restaurant restaurant field of services.

Um, so I'm just wondering if as new businesses are coming in, economic development can weigh in on maybe having a mixed use of what services are brought in versus kind of the next redundant restaurant being brought on board.

Yeah, um we as the city can offer uh recommendations, but under the zoning code, uh the property only has rights to bring in uh businesses, whatever businesses that are permitted in the code.

So we we don't have tools to to um to force or just not the right word, but yeah, so you know, um, and in general right now, as you see here, um uh restaurants are really the strongest retail sector at this point, restaurants are retail.

Um you can uh you know, you can't go eat at a restaurant on Amazon.

So um, and so really uh they are what drive people to these centers, and so I think uh just our reality in these shopping centers is a lot of food.

Um, and so but it brings gathering and it brings you know people to do other things, food and you know, necessary goods, your drug stores, which they're also struggling, but grocery, which is also food, you know, grocery restaurants and um other types of uses are really hard at this point, um, which is why we're very you know, we do want to encourage other gathering places like Sky Zone.

Um that right, you can't um have your kids jump on a trampoline online either.

And so we all need places for our kids to go play and to have birthday parties and things like that.

So we're working hard in that area too.

Okay.

And the new restaurant that's coming into the former Goodwill at Greenhouse, um, notice that it's just like stalled in in construction where there's been little to no progress for six, seven months maybe.

Um is that an issue where there's a holdup with uh permitting, with uh permitting or or anything that's within the city's control, or is that more so the developer?

We yeah, we don't believe so.

I think uh we actually were talking earlier this week about checking in with them to see if uh if there's anything we can help with, see learn what's going on.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

All right.

Any further questions?

Yes, okay.

Uh over to Vice Chair Mendoza.

Yes, uh one one uh soldier that came to mind about uh 10 years ago.

I used to have these meetings at um you probably remember is Puerto Bello restaurant on Washington Street.

Uh used to have a really nice event room there.

So once a month I used to have a um, I was like a local initial that I was doing uh an UN, bringing in people to support local businesses, and I will I will host the event and bring people in and and uh I did that as a community activist type of thing.

So are you aware of anything like that happening in the city?

Uh that you might you know be aware of with somebody who's doing something like that.

Um I'm not totally sure of what your event involved does.

But but in general, right?

As as I'm sure you know, we are uh business chamber of commerce um holds different events.

Um we have a the San Leandro chamber, we have a black chamber.

We also are working more and more closely with the Oakland Chinatown Chamber, which has a lot of members in San Leandro, a lot of businesses moving here, and um as well as there's uh a couple different East Bay Latino chambers.

Um so they they do work uh in so for instance on May 21st, uh the chamber will be doing uh a small business expo uh down at the Bayfair Center, actually, uh May 21st.

And so there'll be businesses able to table and share their resources, business service providers able to share their resources, and I believe as well some um small maker shopping opportunities for for us citizens.

So that's good.

Yeah, on that you saw, because I I just reminded me of something that I will notice even you know, even back then, uh that you so what I was doing was specifically to promote uh this was very specific locally owned small businesses, and sometimes uh what I will hear is that uh, but by the way, back then I used to be a member of uh the um the uh Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in in Auckland.

I was member of the board of directors, and one of the things that uh motivated me to do this extra thing on the side was because the chambers um which they do great great work, but uh and this might be biased on my set, but I noticed that they put uh a lot of resources into bigger companies.

And I felt, I don't know if that's the case, that locally owned small businesses were being a little bit neglected.

So uh hence that's why I was doing this particular event and uh so just to clarify so so what I was it was I was I would invite local businesses and local people with a specific purpose of promoting locally owned small businesses as a you know just focusing on that.

Uh but everything you say is right.

I mean, all these organizations are doing great great work and uh uh they are also helping promote small businesses.

So it's all good.

Yeah, yeah.

So I think that small business expo may be similar.

Uh and then also every first Friday, the chamber does offer First Friday networking that actually is available for non-chamber members as well, I believe.

Um yeah, yeah, that's just generally open to the public, and we see a lot of small businesses at that one as well, sharing their resources.

That's mainly I think the the small businesses that attend that one.

So thank you.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Appreciate you.

Thank you all and for staying late into the evening.

Okay, the uh next item on the agenda is commission reports and announcements.

Does staff have any updates under this item?

Uh I just have a couple updates for the or announcements for the commissions before turning it over to the rest of the commission for for items.

Uh first, as the commission knows that we regularly prepare a development activity mapping table.

Um we try to get one ready for this meeting, but there's a couple like changes, um, recent changes that we're gonna update.

And so as soon as that's available, I'll uh send the commission an email that that's up on the on the website.

Also, uh before the meeting, we dropped off a couple items um in front of your um uh mic one with uh a one table um from the housing element annual progress report, which summarizes um uh housing units permitted since the start of the housing element cycle, which gives you a snapshot of where we are at and relates back to um somewhat to our initial conversation um related to parking about kind of the the work that needs to be done to meet this community's housing housing needs, as there's still a significant amount of um uh production needed to meet the the city's um housing goals during the during the planning period.

Um also um there's a um I printed out a um uh the city's new housing elements uh information dashboard which is um a website that the um the staff created to help communicate progress towards meeting the housing housing element goals in a in a way that's easier to communicate than the then the annual progress report that which which we produce every year which is kind of bound by the um standard forms in the in the um produced by state hcd um so um give that to the commission for information the commission can ask questions or provide um any feedback related to um the um the report but also is going to suggest um for the purpose of time and that um i can bring this back again next time if the commission wishes to absorb information and provide some more comments at that time also but happy to um collect any comments from the commission about that information um at this time and then lastly I just wanted to let the commission know that we are likely to have a June meeting it's not uh certain yet but um I think a um update to the city's ADU ordinance is um probably going to be ready in time for for June so we'll we'll let you know as soon as we we can confirm that it's the um that'll be happening in June so that's the that concludes my um announcements.

Thank you for that update are there any other announcements that members of the commission would like to make commissioner rich.

I'd like to thank uh Secretary Lee for this arena information here.

I think uh reviewing it on another night given the hour is a good idea but I think it relates completely to what we were talking about today on parking and cost and development and and how we're trying to eliminate obstacles to development particularly housing development.

Any other comments from commissioners?

No seeing none the time is now 9 35 this meeting is adjourned.