The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About7/8/2020 Item 2, Cooper -- Received after the meeting Wilbanks, Megan From:Allan Cooper < To:Bell, Kyle; E-mail Council Website; Advisory Bodies Subject:1144 Chorro Attachments:807_09_20...lettertopc&cc.pdf Dear Kyle - I have written an open letter to both the Planning Commission and to the City Council. I have also carbon copied this letter to you, Derek Johnson, Michael Codron and Christine Dietrick hoping that I might get a response. I'm eager to hear that I am in error on any of the points contained within this letter. This letter pertains to yesterday's Planning Commission review and approval of 1144 Chorro. I'm not clear on how you can ensure that the Planning Commission will see this letter as it does not pertain to a specific upcoming meeting or to a specific upcoming agenda item. But would you kindly do your best to make certain that the PC gets this letter anyway? Thanks! - Allan 1 Save Our Downtown ______________________________________________________________________________ Seeking to protect and promote the historical character, design, livability and economic success of downtown San Luis Obispo. To: San Luis Obispo City Council and the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission Re: July 8, 2020 Meeting Item Number 2: 1144 Chorro Street  From: Allan Cooper, Secretary Save Our Downtown Date: July 9, 2020 Though the Planning Commission last night approved the 75-foot-tall, six-story, mixed-use project proposed to be located at 1144 Chorro Street, the Commissioners raised a number of questions which were not satisfactorily answered by either legal counsel, the architect or staff. The SLO Land Use Element states that “a maximum ﬂoor area ratio of 4.0 is awarded to approved buildings in nonresidential zones over 50 feet in height with the transfer of development credits for open space protection.” However, the open space in question, i.e., the paseo running through the Downtown Centre, clearly does not need such protections. Per Commissioner Mike Wulkin’s comments, this paseo is perpetually protected through prescriptive easements. In other words, after ﬁve years (a period prescribed by the Code of Civil Procedure) of such use, the occupant, or user (in this case the City) holds a permanent "easement by prescription.” Though Commissioner Wulkin brought this irrefutable common law protection up for discussion, neither legal counsel nor staff chose to either address it or refute it. Staff speciﬁcally cites Land Use Element Policies 4.2.1 to justify the transfer of development credits. The staff report states the following: “LUE encourages residential dwellings within all new commercial developments and indicates that commercial core properties may serve as receiver sites for transfer of development credits, thereby having higher residential densities than otherwise allowed (LUE Policy 4.2.1).” But if you actually read this policy, it only applies to open space located outside the urban reserve line or development limit line. LUE Policy 4.2.1 reads as follows: “Commercial core properties may serve as receiver sites for transfer of development credits, thereby having higher residential densities than otherwise allowed (see Policies 6.4.5 and 6.4.6).” When we read LUE Policy 6.4.5 it states the following: “Development Credit Transfer: Any residential development credit obtained from Open Space designations outside the urban reserve line or development limit line should be transferred to land in the Downtown Core or Speciﬁc Plan area.” LUE Policy 6.4.6 is irrelevant to the issue at hand as it only applies to “homesites outside the limit lines”. The question you should therefore ask staff is as follows: Please cite the precise paragraph within the LUE where it states that “… commercial core properties may serve as receiver sites for transfer of development credits obtained from preservation of open space within the Downtown Core”. This issue never came up for discussion at last night’s meeting though it had been discussed at length in both my letter to the Planning Commission and in my live oral testimony. The Land Use Element further states that “a maximum ﬂoor area ratio of 4.0 is awarded to approved buildings in nonresidential zones over 50 feet in height with the transfer of development credits for historic preservation.” In this case, the preservation of the Master Listed Muzio’s Grocery building. However, several Planning Commissioners questioned whether this building, by virtue of it being on the City’s Master List of Historic Resources (and also eligible for the National Register), already has sufficient protections from demolition. Staff answered by stating that listed historic resources can be demolished. What staff did not mention were all of the obstacles in place to prevent such demolitions. For example, listed historic resources shall not be demolished unless the City Council makes all of the ﬁndings speciﬁed below: 1. The historic resource is a hazard to public health or safety, and repair or stabilization is not structurally feasible. Deterioration resulting from the property owner’s neglect or failure to maintain the property should not be a justiﬁcation for demolition. The applicant may be required to provide structural reports, to the approval of the community development director or city council, to document that repairs or stabilization are not feasible; or 2. Denial of the application will constitute an economic hardship. Moreover, demolition of a master listed historic property additionally requires review and approval by the Cultural Heritage Committee and it requires the preparation of an Environmental Impact Report to assess the feasibility of alternatives to demolition. And let’s be frank. This transfer of development credits for historic preservation does not entirely redound to the beneﬁt of the City. Should the developer opt to give Muzio’s Grocery an historic preservation easement and the City agrees to this, best practices in this ﬁeld require the easement holder (i.e., the City of San Luis Obispo) to commit considerable resources to stewarding the property. This is compounded by the fact that the only meaningful way, outside of museum curatorship, to provide “whole” protection to a historic resource is to protect both interior and exterior elements. Finally, the architect Mark Rawson and the Planning Commission Chair Hemalata Dandekar, both stated that this project fulﬁlls the City’s goal of approving higher density housing and increased building heights to minimize urban sprawl. In our opinion, the Planning Commission and the City Council should seriously reassess this goal in light of the circumstances we currently ﬁnd ourselves. Given the compelling scientiﬁc evidence that the adverse effects of population growth, combined with irreversible climate change, contribute to the increase in zoonotic diseases, we should plan for the probability that there may never be a “post pandemic world”. Did you know that a recent Harris Poll found that nearly a third of Americans are considering relocating to less crowded places? Did you know that Harvard researchers and urban planners are now urging us to consider how a more dispersed city can thrive? The questions you should therefore ask yourselves are as follows: 1) Is it not irresponsible to approve housing where future tenants must live in cramped, close quarters?; and 2) Is it not irresponsible to approve housing that can only be accessed via elevators, narrow corridors and stairs where social distancing is nearly impossible? Thank you!