Welcome to the Walnut Creek Design Review Commission for Wednesday, September 2nd.

If there is anyone in the audience that wishes to address the commission as a member of the public, please fill out a speaker's card and when invited by the by the secret commission secretary, please state your name clearly and where you live and whom you represent, and make sure you're speaking into the microphone.

Here.

The three-story building is occupied by various restaurants and surrounded by other commercial and retail uses within the downtown area.

Just some context on the site.

I've included some photos of the building on this screen showing the building facade along North Main and the building facade along Mount Diablo Boulevard.

Some additional photos showing the facade along commercial lane and the interior side of the building.

Getting into the master sign program amendment before you, uh the property has an existing master sign program that was approved in 2015.

The proposed master sign program amendment packet before you tonight does preserve portions of that existing plan and incorporates new plan sheets to accommodate new signage.

As proposed, the amendment package does require a sign exception and a sign height allowance request.

So the overall goals for the master sign program amendment package is to remove an unused uh previously approved 60 square foot mural sign, allow for additional uh sign um size for four ground floor signs, uh redistribute the allowed sign area again after the removal of the mural sign, um, add three new signs for a newly created ground floor tenant space where the old uh vineyard vines location was, and to add a secondary sign for the existing third floor uh rooftop restaurant business.

And so the amended MSP does remove the previously approved uh mural sign as mentioned.

Um and so while the amendment does include the updated allocation of sign area for the building, um the proposed total sign area does exceed the allowance by 40 square feet, and so a sign exception is required.

Um just getting into the new proposed signs.

So the four new signs are shown on the building elevations circled in green, a green circle.

Um these are the elevations for North Main Street in Mount Diablo.

Um as you can see, one wall sign is for the existing rooftop third floor tenant space, and the other uh signs are for the first floor tenant space.

And so, since the rooftop um proposed wall sign is above 25 feet, it does require a sign height request.

So here's the sign layout for the existing master sign program just to get an understanding of how many signs.

Um the existing sign program allows for 19 signs, including wall signs, banner signs, blade signs, and again the one mural sign.

Here is the proposed amendment sign layout.

Again, the three um or the four proposed signs are circled in green.

And so, in order to approve the requested uh sign exception to allow the additional sign area, the DRC must make the findings shown on the screen.

As noted in the report, staff believes those findings can be made as the request only represents an additional 40 square feet.

And the signs generally match the size and scale of the already approved master sign program.

And then lastly, regarding the height uh increase requests, the required findings are also shown on the screen.

And so again, staff believes these findings can be made as the rooftop sign is well designed and is directly adjacent to the tenant space.

And so with that, staff does recommend that the DRC move to determine that the project is exempt from CEQA and to adopt the draft resolution granting the master sign program amendment, sign exceptions, and height increase request.

I'm available for any questions.

The applicant, Siddharthy is also available with the presentation, and the property owner Brian Harhara is also available for questions.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions of staff at the moment?

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks.

Good evening, Brian Hirahara, BH development, um, owner and developer of this project.

Um at a high level, um, when we this was uh city owned property, if you remember, um over uh it's been there 10 years, so um this was probably 12 or 13 years ago.

Uh it was an RFP process request for proposals that we competed with.

And we told the city at the time that this is truly a gateway site, and our intent was number one to create a building that was in keeping with the traditional downtown, the older area of downtown.

Uh we had recently completed the SASA building, which was an old uh hundred-year-old brick building.

So we utilized uh hundred-year-old reclaimed brick um from an industrial building in Stockton for all the brick, and frankly, kind of went a little crazy with um uh I'm a wannabe designer architect.

So had fun with a living wall, a living roof, uh Corten steel, there's no stucco on the building, um, and uh a lot of landscaping, which you can see, and I'll and I'll bring up why that's important.

The other ish uh goal that we told the city was that if we were smart, we would just put a two-story retail building here.

Um, but we really wanted to create a building that would draw traffic across Mount Diablo Boulevard and um create an a buzz of activity um in that again important north uh the downtown uh traditional downtown corner.

So uh we put a retail uh retailer on the corner being Union Vines and then three restaurants on three floors.

Um and um I think we've been very fortunate that the restaurants have been very successful and the way retail has changed, uh Vineyard Vine ended up close Vineyard Vines end up closing the building, and uh we ended up with the the retail being the weakest piece of the project.

And I uh I think what in looking at the building, we did so much design-wise that their signage almost I'll say disappeared, but it kind of does.

Um I feel a little bit bad because originally I didn't want their pink uh whale on the building, um, and so they did not, and uh I think it was uh I as we relook at the building um signage for the retail is really important.

Um the second component is that we are demising the space into two spaces, and so uh as Jessica described, we're trying to uh provide uh signage for both of those tenants.

Um and the vertical blade sign at the corner was just to do something unique uh to give them more visibility.

So um a lot of it though is just just that there's so much going on visually with the building, which was our intent, but I never thought that that would take away from the retail presence of the building.

Um so we're trying to um counteract that and um provide them more visibility.

Thank you.

Any questions for me?

So the vineyard vine space is being separated into two tenant spaces.

Correct.

Putting in a uh gelato operator from uh Brazil and a milk tea operator from China, like the Starbucks of China on the corner.

Nice.