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Home My WebLink About04_09_2002, B2 Expansion of CC Zone in Downtown and Parking In lieu AreasCo Un Ci t 9,2002 acenaa uepont N.b. ss i CITY OF SAN LUIS O B I S P O FROM: John Mandeville, Community Development Director 0-Gi 3& Mike McCluskey, Public Works Director Prepared By: Ronald Whisenand,Deputy Director of Community Development Tim Bochum, Deputy Director of Public Works SUBJECT: STUDY SESSION TO DISCUSS STATUS AND DIRECTION ON THE EXPANSION OF THE CITY'S CENTRAL COMMERCIAL ZONING DISTRICT AND DOWNTOWN IN-LIEU PARKING FEE BOUNDARY CAO RECOMMENDATION Provide staff with direction on the scope and processing of the proposed expansion of the City's Central Commercial Zoning District and the creation of a downtown in-lieu parking fee boundary. REPORT IN BRIEF Council has established a work program for staff to study a possible expansion of the City's Central Commercial Zoning District and In-Lieu Parking Fee program. In studying the issues, staff has identified some areas where direction from the Council would be helpful before taking the programs through the public input and advisory body hearing stages. Besides the question of boundaries, staff has identified some potential parking impacts that the programs will undoubtedly create. Some of these impacts could have significant fiscal ramifications. DISCUSSION As part of the goal setting session of the City's 2001-03 budget, the Council asked staff to explore an expansion of the City's Central Commercial (C-C) Zoning District as an "Other Council Objective." The specific narrative on the objective calls for expansion of the C-C zone and its inherent ability to pay parking in-lieu fees, northeast to the railroad tracks and southwest to the Marsh and Higuera Street intersection. This community objective was included in the workscope for the update of the Commercial Zoning Regulations, which the firm of Crawford, Multari, and Clark are drafting. Before staff initiates a community/property owner outreach program and starts the public hearing process, some clarification and direction from the Council is needed. A. Purpose for Expanding the Downtown Expansion of the Central Commercial (C-C) zoning district grew out of a desire by the Planning Commission to explore an expansion of the "downtown" as part of their community workshops I Council Agenda Report -hxpansion of C-C Zone Study Session Page 2 on commercial zoning. The motivation for the change was the desire to expand what many feel is one of our City's best urban design features. The downtown is a destination for citizens and visitors of our community where they can shop and interact with their fellow citizens in a pedestrian oriented setting. A quick walk or drive northeast up Marsh or Higuera Streets from where they intersect, gives the traveler views of a full range of development types. Commercial buildings at the fringes are primarily detached from one another and often set back several feet from the public right of way. The areas are dotted with private driveways and parking lots that serve the needs of the commercial tenants. The uses tend to be more office related with a mixture of retail services that tend to be one-stop destinations rather than drawing pedestrians off the street. As the traveler moves closer to the downtown core, the buildings are developed closer to one another and to the sidewalk. Driveways serving private parking lots are rare. Office uses exist, but are generally located above more active retail, dining, or entertainment space. Although the buildings have a wide variety of architectural styles, they work well together and provide the customer with multiple shopping opportunities as they stroll from store to store in downtown core. It was the Planning Commission's hope that an outward expansion of the City's C-C zoning district would start to revitalize the fringes of our downtown with new commercial and mixed- use opportunities that could take advantage of pedestrian traffic. hi addition, it has been discussed by many advocates of the downtown, that providing a pedestrian link between the tourist commercial areas of upper Monterey and the downtown, would be a wonderful new asset for the traveling public. B. Separating Parking from Zoning The City's current in-lieu parking program offers the ability to pay fees "in-lieu" of providing required parking in the Central Commercial (C-C) zoning district only. The purpose of this parking program is to recognize the historical pattern of development in a neo-traditional downtown setting, where buildings are constructed side by side at.the back of sidewalk and where parking lots are not a dominant part of the landscape. Our downtown however, also contains Office (0), Public Facility (PF), and High Density Residential (R-4) zoning. Uses in these zoning districts, which include various cultural facilities and housing, are integral parts of our pedestrian oriented downtown. Currently, expansion of some of these cultural facilities is being inhibited by their inability to provide adequate on-site parking. If the in-lieu parking program is to address our downtown as a whole, then there will be benefits of decoupling the program from C-C zoning and basing it on the boundary of the downtown rather than an individual.zoning district. In establishing the most appropriate boundary for a revised parking in-lieu fee program, staff toured the entire downtown in order to determine where the "character" of the area would support the establishment of an in-lieu area. The boundary of that area that staff will propose during the upcoming public hearings generally runs from Pacific Street to the southeast, Santa Rosa to the northeast, Palm to the northwest, and Beach to the southwest (see map; Attachment i Council Agenda Report-expansion of C-C Zone Study Session Page 3 1). In addition, staff has identified several possible expansion areas that could be added at a later date, as our downtown needs change. A map showing these alternative areas will be provided at our study session where staff will be prepared to discuss the boundaries in more detail. Like the field survey that was conducted for the in-lieu parking boundary, staff and our planning consultant went into the field to determine the areas where an expansion of the C-C Zoning District would be most appropriate. The work program called for a study of the areas between the Higuera/Marsh Street intersection on the southwest to the railroad tracks to the northeast. Staff and our consultant have identified the area between Santa Rosa and the railroad as the most logical expansion of the C-C zoning district at this time. The main reason for limiting the expansion area to the upper Monterey Street corridor, is that the character of the western end of the downtown may negatively change with more intensified zoning. The area presently consists of a number of historical homes and buildings set back from the street and adjoining property lines. More traditional downtown development with a continuous street fagade may not work as well as we transition and/or intermix these older structures into the streetscape. C. In-Lieu Parking Boundary Expansion Issues As mentioned above, consideration of an expanded C-C zone cannot be done in isolation when other considerations are currently underway to modify the current parking in-lieu fee program area. The Planning Commission and Council have already identified the potential benefit of allowing other zones (besides C-C) within this Downtown area the ability to pay parking in-lieu fees.. Staff continues to refine numbers associated with the proposed parking in-lieu fee modification but some preliminary calculations have been made and are available for Council consideration at this time. In the real world, parking demand and supply numbers are dynamic. While the City has developed parking standard requirements, development factors such as: property value, potential worth, construction cost and potential lease costs all dictate what amount of land will be allocated for parking and/or building usage. To investigate the potential changes that could occur if the current parking in-lieu fee program was directed toward a geographical area rather than a particular zoning district, staff created development scenarios for Office (0) zone properties that would be included in the currently proposed modified boundary. These models are shown in Attachment 2. Because the O zone only allows for a maximum of 60% lot coverage, the three models reveal that the probability of any property in the O zone paying 100% of its parking requirements using in-lieu fees is low. When faced with the ability to satisfy some of their parking requirements within the 40% non-coverage area, most property owners will use those areas for parking (as well as landscaping) instead of paying the current $11,000 per space requirement for in-lieu fees. The draft parking in-lieu fee boundary area includes approximately 281,938 square feet of office zoned area. Applying the 40/60 split for lot coverage, the non-buildable area would allow for approximately 401 parking spaces. Analyzing these models to determine how many potential public parking stalls might be required as a result of the changes to the proposed in-lieu fee program boundary reveals a range of 370-720 spaces that might need to be supplied in the long- Council Agenda Report=r xpansion of C-C Zone Study Session Page 4 term buildout of these areas. As stated before, it is important to note that this range is quite large due to factors that cannot be easily forecast. These factors include property space lease values, property costs, etc. that may effect a property owner's decision to convert open area to building square footage via the parking in-lieu fee system. Council should keep these numbers in mind as deliberation on the potential C-C expansion is discussed. D. C-C Zoning Boundary Expansion Issues There are a number of critical issues regarding the C-C zone expansion. In order to assist Council in their consideration of this issue, staff has attempted to outline the issues as well as questions and alternatives that the Council may wish to consider. 1.In-Lieu Parkin Sggpoly An expanded C-C zone will face similar issues as described above in the discussion of the O zone and its potential for increased public parking space needs. Extension of the C-C zone eastward along the Monterey Street corridor and creating a pedestrian oriented landscape with less dominant parking lots will also involve replacing curb cuts and street facing parking lots with building or pedestrian space. This will obviously create a need to convert private parking spaces into public structured and surface spaces. However, unlike the O zone, the C-C zone allows for 100% lot coverage and the parking ratios are lower. Therefore, the long-term, newly created supply needs for public parking spaces could be quite high. As shown in Attachment 3, staff has developed parking demand numbers for the various alternatives for C-C expansion. Needless to say, they are considerable and should not be undertaken lightly. Table 1 compares the potential commercial square footage and parking demand numbers that would be required for the various zone alternatives. Table 1 Possible Zoning Buildable Square Parking Parking Lociton Scenarios Footage Demand C-R(existing 338,208 1127 Surface Lots situation C-R(build out with 665,055 2217 Structure')within zone on-site structured Arkin C-R(w/in-lieu fee 1,286,833 4290 In-Lieu Fees, structure out of Allowance) zone C-C 1,286,833 2574 In-Lieu Fees, structure out of rezoned zone Note:Expansion area assumes approximately 428,961 square feet of redevelopable surface area,3 story structures. a)Structure means structured parking b)The reason why parking demand is lower in the C-C zone than in the C-R zone is that parking generally calculated at one half of that required for the same use in the C-R zone Council Agenda Report 1— Expansion of C-C Zone Study Session Page 5 These numbers reflect build-out redevelopment parking demand for the area under consideration and do not reflect the immediate need for public parking if a rezoning to C-C is implemented in this area. However, using history as an example, developing parking structures has not been a simple procedure in this City and providing an additional 2,500 or so public spaces in the Downtown area will be a major task. As Council knows, this issue is further complicated by the fact that our current parking in-lieu fees only recover a percentage (40%) of the actual cost of developing structured parking spaces. Questions to be considered: 1. Is the potential need of an additional 2,500 public parking spaces an acceptable commitment by the City to allow the C-C rezoning with in-lieu parking option and benefits that come from it? 2. Are there areas of the expansion area may not be necessary to include at this time? 3. Should we consider rezoning the properties only after benefiting property owners form an assessment district, or some other financing mechanism, that closes the gap between in- lieu fees and actual parking construction costs? 4. Can Transportation Demand Management (TDM) or alternative modes of transportation be utilized to reduce the parking demand generated by uses in an expanded C-C zone? 2. Parking Meter Zone Boundary Some areas of the proposed C-C expansion area are outside of the current Parking Meter Zones. An ordinance amendment would need to be adopted extending the parking meter zones past the C-C expansion area and into the adjacent street systems to effectively address employee, and patron street parking issues. While this process can be done, it could_ be problematic and confrontational with affected property owners. 3. Effects on Public Facilities Costs One effect that an extension of the C-C zone into the proposed area would have is on acquisition costs for public facilities. As shown in the parking model examples included in Table 1, much of the current land in the C-R zone must be dedicated for parking purposes. As such, a property appraisal for this type of zoned property would not be as much as a property of the same size with a C-C zoning. Quite simply, the "highest and best" use appraisal (and resultant City cost) calculation for a C-R property would be less due to the inability to cover the site with revenue generating uses without parking spaces the way C-C zoned land can. The potential increase in land value could affect two current City projects. Both the North Area Regional Facility (NARF) Parking and Transit projects are located within the currently proposed C-C expansion area.Figure 1 shows the location of these two potential projects. Property acquisition costs of these properties would be affected by a rezoning to C-C from the current C-R zoning. Therefore, if Council decides to pursue the C-C expansion area prior to acquisition of these properties, the final costs of the NARF projects will be higher than currently expected. Council Agenda Report—Expansion of C-C Zone Study Session Page 6 Questions to be considered: 1. Are the additional costs associated with C-C rezoning an acceptable byproduct of pursuing the NARF projects and the C-C expansion at the same time? 2. Should the City delay implementation and consideration of the C-C expansion issue until such time as the NARF studies are done and potential project sites are known? 3. Should the C-C expansion area be modified to exclude the NARF properties until such time as the public use issues are determined? wO NARF Existing Parldng Con onse Site A 4 NARF Transit Center 0 Historic New ounty GJ Freach Cover Hospital Center Complex Location NARF Parldng Site B T 1\ P' Faure 1.—NARF Properties&Adjacent Land Uses 4.Other Issues- Creating Competition with the existing C-C Area A byproduct of rezoning the C-R areas will be an immediate competition of this new area with that of the existing C-C Downtown area. In essence, by creating similarly zoned land in close proximity, and the fact that much of the newly C-C zoned land is currently under-improved or has existing parking facilities, there will be a natural tendency to have development occur first in the new C-C areas as opposed to existing C-C zoned areas. There also exists a potential for existing businesses in the current C-C zone to relocate to areas of the new C-C zone areas into newer constructed facilities. While this byproduct can be viewed as both good and bad regarding its effect on existing C-C zoned Downtown redevelopment, staff believes that this condition is short-term in nature and will discontinue at some future time when the costs of development in each of these areas will obtain balance. When this occurs the City should see development proposals in each area at a staggered pace. Obviously, as detailed above, one factor that will meter the flow of development Council Agenda Report-txpansion of C-C Zone Study Session Page 7 of the newly created C-C zone will be the availability of public parking to replace current private parking supply. FISCAL IMPACT The ultimate fiscal impacts associated with rezoning of the proposed C-R areas to C-C will only be known when many of the issues identified in this report are decided. The C-C expansion will create new opportunities to redevelop these properties and as such, should lead to new sales tax revenue for the City. However, impacts to the City for parking revenue and capital expenditures, parking management operational costs and other City service cost increases will result from the C-C expansion. Staff will be better able to define these costs after direction from Council at the study session. ALTERNATIVES Because expanding the City's in-lieu parking boundary and the C-C zoning district are purely discretionary actions, the Council has flexibility in creating alternatives. Some alternatives to the proposed C-C expansion that the Council may wish to consider include: 1. Delay the C-C expansion until issues associated with the NARF Transit and NARF Parking projects are resolved. 2. Postpone the C-C expansion until some other time and incorporate it into another planning process such as an update to the Land Use Element of the General Plan. 3. Revise the planning process of the C-C expansion from a rezoning project to a Specific Plan or Planned Development. This would afford an opportunity to review the zoning issues along with other hot button issues such as public facilities and parking placement, service programs and fiscal impact. 4. Discontinue the C-C expansion issue at this time. 5. Keep the present in-lieu fee program tied to the C-C zoning district(current or future). 6. Allow in-lieu fees in the Office(0) and or Retail Commercial (C-R)zones. ATTACHMENTS Attachment 1 -Location Map Attachment 2—Office Zone Parking/Development Spreadsheet Attachment 3 —C-R and C-C/Development Spreadsheet g:\groups\comdev\cd-plan\rwhisena\CC expansion Council Study Session Report.doc 1- 2 WIN HIM I I j I I I Wil ice j 1 x'411 p@III lI!'o',o' ' I ISI , j II Ipl alpD ` I IQI p I u IQInIpj111111 141Ii jj : ' S O O I r i Oi,dlli j,Vp .glpD olQu,, . I gID ID i lllu gIiODD'ni ti , +II' °II i ~I VIII 0 IIp I I jIIQIIDI, glplill Illj 1, ^fir , Oma,Q!i u,s f vim . Attachment 2 Office Zone ParkingMevelopment Spreadsheet Baseline Model—Area Shared 2 Story Even though zone allows 60%max Office coverage,most of property taken up Surface Parking(653)&Landscaping 195,774) by Parking and Landscaping(65%), Total Land Area Office (35%) Parking Req'd: 653 280,938 Office Sq.Ft. : 195,774(95,s90 x 2) Figure Al Current development potential of Office(0)zoned property that may be included in the upcoming Parking In- Lieu Boundary Change 2 Story Mod. Baseline—Integrated Parking & Office Zone allows 60%max coverage, 371 SPACES)231,600 SQ.FT.) Parking is integrated with structure S.P.(401)&L 60% Coverage) separate garage,and open area Total Land Area Parking Req'd: 772 280,938 Office Sq.Ft.:231,600(115,800 X 2) Figure.A2 Current development potential of Office(0)zoned property(with integrated structured parking)that may be included in the upcoming Parking In-Lieu Boundary Change 2:Story In Lieu Fee—Off Site Parking Office Zone allows 60%max coverage for 337,126 SQ.FT.) Office,Parking is located off-site(out S.P.(401)&L 60%Coverage) of area) Total Land Area Parking Req'd: 1124 280,938 Office Sq.Ft.:337,126 Figure A3 Development potential of Office(0)zoned property with parking in-lieu fee program and public parking provided by City outside of the O zones. Attachment 3 C-R and C-C/Development Potential Spreadsheet Baseline Model—Area Shared 3 Story Even though zone allows 100%max C=R coverage, most of surface property taken up Surface Parking (1127) &Landsc' 338,208) by Parking and Landscaping(74%), Total Land Area C-R(35%)Parking Req'd: 1127 428,961 C-R Sq.Ft.:338,208(112.736 x 3) Figure BI Current development potential(surface parking only)of C-R zoned property that may be included in the C-C expansion area. 3 Story Mod.Baseline—Integrated Parking & C=R Zone allows 100%max coverage, 2217 SPACES) 665,055 SQ.FT.) Parking is integrated within structure 100% Coverage) or separate garage Total Land Area Parking Req'd:2217 428,961 1 1Office Sq.Ft. :665,055(221,6!!XL3) Figure B2 Current development potential(integrated structured parking)of C-R zoned property that may be included in the C-C expansion area. 3 Story In Lieu Fee—Off Site Parking C-R Zone allows 100%max coverage for 1;2861883 SQ:FT.)C-R,Parking is located off-site(out 100%Coverage) of area) Total Land Area Parking Req'd:4290 428,961 1 Office Sq.Ft.: 1,203,236 Figure B3 Development potential current of C-R zoned property if Council implemented a Parking In-Lieu Fee program but did not rezone to C-C. 3 Story In Lieu Fee—Off Site Parking C-C Zone allows 100%max coverage for 1,286,883 SQ.FT.)C-C,Parking is located off-site(out 100%Coverage) of area) Total Land Area Parking Req'd: 2574 428,961 C-C Sq.Ft. : 1,2039236 Figure CI Development potential current of C-R zoned property if Council implemented the proposed C-C expansion and parking in-lieu fee program. 1--/D