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HomeMy WebLinkAbout6/4/2024 Item 5m, Tway and Schwartz - Staff Agenda CorrespondenceCity of San Luis Obispo, Council Memorandum City of San Luis Obispo Council Agenda Correspondence DATE: June 4, 2024 TO: Mayor and Council FROM: Timmi Tway, Community Development Director Prepared By: Luke Schwartz, Transportation Manager VIA: Whitney McDonald, Interim City Manager SUBJECT: ITEM 5M – INITIATION OF DETACHMENT APPLICATION TO MODIFY CITY LIMIT BOUNDARY ON SLACK STREET The following memorandum provides City staff responses, shown in italics, to questions received from a Council member regarding the initiation of an application to modify the City limit boundary on Slack Street. Staff determined it would be helpful to provide this memo to all Council Members and the public, as the responses offer clarification regarding the future street improvements proposed on Slack Street. 1) What are the anticipated impacts to Grand Avenue/Slack Street that would result from the requested detachment? The requested detachment itself is not anticipated to result in any substantive impacts to the buildout of Slack Street or the Grand Avenue/Slack Street intersection. The detachment will adjust the City Limit to the back of sidewalk to define a clear delineation between the public street and Cal Poly’s private property, once Cal Poly receives approval from the City Council at a future meeting to abandon a portion of the Slack Street right-of-way. The housing project will include frontage improvements that will widen Slack Street to City Engineering Standards, including the addition of sidewalks and ADA-compliant curb ramp upgrades at the northeast corner of the Grand/Slack intersection. The 25 feet of right-of-way proposed for abandonment and detachment is not needed for buildout of Slack Street or the future intersection to current engineering standards. The City’s General Plan Circulation Element identifies future plans to reconstruct the Grand/Slack intersection as a single-lane roundabout; however, this improvement is not proposed as part of Cal Poly’s 33-unit housing development, nor is there a clear City policy impact that would trigger the need to advance the roundabout at this time. The intersection currently operates well within the City’s traffic operations policy thresholds, there are no reported collisions at this intersection in the past five-year period, and this intersection has not been identified as a high-collision location in the City’s past Traffic Safety Reports. The Cal Poly housing development site plan has been designed to ensure that adequate setbacks are provided as to not preclude future construction of a roundabout. Item 5m. Initiation of Detachment Application to modify City limit boundary on Slack Street Page 2 While not part of the housing development or related frontage improvements, it should be noted that the City has plans to advance complete street improvements on Grand Avenue as part of the 2024 Roadway Sealing project, if favorable bids are received within budget. Planned improvements include striping revisions, protected bike lanes, pedestrian median refuges, and corner radius tightening at the Grand/Slack intersection, designed with the intent to reduce exposure and improve comfort for pedestrians and cyclists crossing the Grand/Slack intersection. While Cal Poly is not constructing these improvements, the university has issued an encroachment permit to allow the City to install the portions of these intersection improvements that overlap with current Cal Poly right-of-way. 2) The west side of Slack Street (across Grand) appears to be similar to what is being proposed on the east side (similar sidewalk width, drive-lane width, parking on south side but not the north Cal Poly side). Is this correct? Improvements to the east side of Slack Street in front of the Vista Meadows faculty housing project would include two 10-foot travel lanes, a 5-foot sidewalk with 4- foot landscaped parkway, along with curb and gutter. Existing on-street parking would remain on the south side of Slack Street. Overhead utilities on the northerly frontage would be undergrounded within the public improvements. The resulting street width is 28 feet curb-to-curb. In comparison, the existing segment of Slack Street west of Grand Avenue ranges from approximately 40 to 47 feet curb-to-curb, and includes two 10-foot travel lanes, a center turn lane (near Teach Elementary & Pacheco Way), on-street parking on the south side of the street, and bike lanes in both directions. Item 5m. Initiation of Detachment Application to modify City limit boundary on Slack Street Page 3 3) Will Cal Poly be providing traffic calming on the east side of Slack to contain the speeds of vehicular traffic, similar to what was needed on the west side across Grand? Traffic calming (speed humps) was installed on Slack Street west of Grand Avenue several years ago in conjunction with a City-led Neighborhood Traffic Management (NTM) project, in response to an application filed by local residents requesting measures to reduce illegal speeding near Teach Elementary School. The City has not received any NTM applications for Slack Street east of Grand Avenue and Cal Poly’s current frontage improvement plans do not include any proposed traffic calming measures. The Slack Street width east of Grand Avenue will be 28 feet curb-to-curb, 15-20 feet narrower than Slack Street west of Grand Avenue, which generally invites less potential for illegal speeding. If the Council wishes to preemptively address potential illegal speeding concerns, it would be within their discretion to recommend a condition of approval requiring traffic calming features, such as speed humps or other elements as approved by the City Public Works and Fire Departments, to be included with Cal Poly’s public improvement plans on Slack Street as a condition of detachment and right-of-way abandonment. 4) The initiation report identifies “next steps” in the process, including a Planning Commission hearing and then an additional hearing at City Council. Can Council request that this goes before the Active Transportation Committee (ATC) as well? It is certainly within the Council’s discretion to direct staff to take this item to the City’s Active Transportation Committee for consideration. This was not originally planned, as the proposed action (revision of City Limit and future right-of-way abandonment) does not appear to include any Active Transportation project or policy implications that would typically fall under the purview of the ATC. The City’s adopted Active Transportation Plan identifies the existing bike lanes on Slack Street west of Grand Avenue to remain and calls for protected bike lanes on Grand Avenue as a future Tier 2 (moderate priority) project, which are being partially implemented as part of the 2024 Roadway Sealing project referenced above. The Active Transportation Plan does not identify any specific pedestrian or bicycle improvements projects on Slack Street east of Grand or at the Grand/Slack intersection itself. As currently proposed, Cal Poly’s housing development and related frontage improvements would not appear to conflict with any adopted City plans or policies related to active transportation. As a point of clarification, the City’s involvement with the 33-unit Vista Meadows faculty housing development is only related to the right-of-way and City limit line. Cal Poly must obtain an encroachment permit through the City to install improvements in the right-of-way. The requests for modification of the City limit line and abandonment of 25-feet of unused right-of-way are discretionary applications that can include conditions of approval; however, the City’s purview is limited to only the right-of-way itself. California State University is the lead agency Item 5m. Initiation of Detachment Application to modify City limit boundary on Slack Street Page 4 for the environmental review, entitlements, and permits for the 33 housing units and onsite improvements. Based on the environmental review completed by Cal Poly (https://afd.calpoly.edu/facilities/planning-capital-projects/ceqa/), the project will be adding 18 peak hour trips to the Slack/Grand intersection. The 33 units at Vista Meadows do not trigger installation of the Slack/Grand roundabout at this time based on CEQA; however, future build out on the Cal Poly campus could trigger roundabout construction in the future. While the Slack/Grand roundabout is identified in the City’s General Plan Circulation Element, there is no current funding for construction of the roundabout. As a superior agency constructing housing outside of the City’s jurisdiction, Cal Poly will not be contributing to the City’s TIF program and is not required to pay impact fees towards funding the Slack/Grand roundabout.