HomeMy WebLinkAbout02-17-2015 PH1 Lucas 1Subject:
FW: Hotel Monterey application A 143 -13
COUNCIL MEETING:___
ITEM NO.:
FEB
17 2015
From: Bob [mailto:boblucas @aol.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2015 12:38 PM -
To: Marx, Jan; Christianson, Carlyn; Ashbaugh, John; Carpenter, Dan; Rivoire, Dan; Mejia, Anthony
Cc: Carloni, Marcus; Johnson, Derek; slocat @hotmail.com; carsonbritz @gmail.com; dave @davegarth.com;
wcwlucas @aol.com
Subject: Hotel Monterey application A 143 -13
Mayor Marx and Council Members Christianson, Ashbaugh, Carpenter, and Rivoire:
After receiving and reviewing the Staff Agenda Report on Wednesday afternoon, I and others met
with three City Council members on Friday morning to talk about The Monterey hotel. Following those
discussions about parking and how it affects the overall project, I did some further data analysis,
found some discrepancies in my calculations, and was surprised to find a discrepancy in the city's as
well. I have summarized the results here for all of the City Council members. I have also copied
Marcus Carloni because of the implications of what seems to be a significant shortfall in parking
space count.
The applicants have indeed made some progress toward compliance with Ordinance 1130. But in
three previous meetings with the Architectural Review Commission and the Planning Commission, I
pointed out a major shortcoming in the matter of parking and its impact on the overall building.
As you know, Ordinance 1130 calls for the buildings themselves to buffer parking. Planning
Commissioner Michael Multari, who was director of the planning department in 1989 when the
ordinance was promulgated, testified on December 10, 2014, that to the best of his recollection, a
major purpose of the legislation was to drive parking away from the creek and orient it towards
Monterey Street, using the buildings as a buffer. Mr Tedone's letter to you, which gave a carefully
researched history of 1130, transcribes his remarks at the Planning Commission meeting because of
their importance. The following pertinent section is quoted verbatim from Mr. Multari's remarks:
do think that ... the intent was to keep the parking away from the back, away from the creek.
This project heroically tries to block them with walls. Now that they've been reconfigured - -and
certainly the walls are thicker and higher - -and relocated, it still wasn't the point. The point was
to take those out of the back of the lots and move them more towards the street and then to
somehow buffer them, using the buildings if possible.
Mr Tedone's report shows that what Commissioner Multari said is consistent with and represents a
continuing theme throughout the history of the relationship of our community and the
Commercial/Tourist zone on the other side of the creek.
But when the Feb. 11 staff agenda report addresses changes in parking on page 13, item 2.1.3, it
covers only those parking spaces enclosed in the basement. All the other parking spaces, located on
ground level, are left unmentioned, undiscussed, and untouched.
If the Council grants the requested 15% waiver in the required parking spaces because of shared use
with the restaurant, the applicant will still need to provide a total of 131 actual parking spaces. The
enclosed basement houses 56 parking spaces (I originally counted only 52, and apologize to those I
talked with on Friday for inadvertently misleading them on this issue). Those are all well buffered
now.
That leaves 75 parking spaces to be situated on ground level. Some 46 of these are in the courtyard
toward the front or underneath the building. But fully 22 parking spaces lie outside the building, on
the deck between it and the creek, totally unbuffered. What is disconcerting is that a count of
proposed parking places on the plans shows eight (8) parking spaces that do not seem to
appear anywhere on the plans. That discrepancy I discovered only as I was adding spaces up to do
some other calculations. If that is the case, then when one adds up the total of proposed parking
spaces on the current plans, the number comes out to only 123, not to the 131 called out in the
Parking Analysis on sheet T1.0 of the plans.
The result is that we now have 22 parking spaces located between the buildings and the creek, in a
place where they are not supposed to be, and another eight parking spaces that need to go
somewhere but currently don't exist in the plans. This amounts to 30 problem parking spaces.
One solution is to forgive those 30 parking spaces in addition to the 23 already requested to be
waived, forgiving 53 parking spaces, a huge 40% of the total required.
Another solution is to eliminates the source of the problem altogether by getting rid of the guest
rooms that push the need for the parking spaces. If the top floor were removed —as proposed in my
August 28 appeal of the Administrative Hearing Officer's Use Permit (upheld by the Planning
Commission) -34 guest rooms would disappear, and along with them the need for 34 parking
spaces. Thus, all outside parking facing the creek would not be necessary, and the eight guests who
would otherwise have been looking for a parking place would not be there at all. If the East ground
floor parking wall were enclosed like the basement, virtually all of the questionably buffered parking
places beneath the buildings would also disappear. The hotel would come into full compliance with
1130 on this issue.
Since the beginning, our community has sought to bring the project into compliance with applicable
city codes and guidelines, especially 1130, to ensure neighborhood wellness on the opposite side of
the creek. Fully enforcing Ordinance 1130 has the side benefit of controlling size and mass, a major
concern our community has about this present proposal as well as about the precedent it sets for the
future.
Thank you for your careful consideration of our concerns, and for working your way through this
admittedly detailed and somewhat tedious letter.
Sincerely,
Robert A. Lucas, Ph.D.
1831 San Luis Drive
40 year SLO Resident
Emeritus Associate Vice President for Graduate Studies, Research, and Faculty Development
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo