Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-18-2016 Item 20, SchmitzCOUNCIL MEETING: r % IF -7-0 L b C1 ITEM NO.: Z -Z October 12, 2016 Re: 22 Chorro I OCT 12 2016 Dear City Council Members,��O Cf7Y CLERI{ Please uphold the Planning Commission's denial of this project. It was a well - considered action responding to an inappropriate and hostile development proposal by a Southern California developer whose interests differ from those of the community you are elected to represent. This is the wrong project in the wrong place. Building it will not only harm the surrounding area and the people forced to live in it, it will preclude proper use of this much-needed commercial land for the next century. Good planning involves looking into the future beyond our local and temporary momentary concerns, and doing that I can see no future in which this project will be a desirable addition to this location.' These additional comments are intended to fill a part of the analysis that's unfortunately missing from staff's report to you. • This project is abusive, in its uses, three-dimensional configuration, and impacts to the adjacent single family neighborhood. Others have commented on the inappropriateness of having a four-story building abut a single family residence — something long-standing city policies and planning practices would find improper — so I'll mention that in passing and move on to other issues. Some related issues of this abuse of neighbors are discussed below as well. • This project as configured and proposed violates the Conservation and Open Space Element of the General Plan. In specific, it blocks protected views from a designated scenic roadway. The operant section of the COSE that would be violated is Policy 9.2.1: ' Parenthetically, 1 would point out to you that both of the criteria on which the Planning Commission based its denial — insufficient parking and excessive height — would, until recent recodification of our zoning regulations into a Swiss cheese construction of interlocking loopholes, have required decision -makers to grant exceptions, complete with findings to justify said exceptions. That these sorts of abuses of the public interest no longer require deliberative thought about public consequences by decision -makers is testimony to what is wrong with our current approach to zoning. Zoning is intended to establish certainty for both neighbors and applicants; a zoning code riddled with loopholes an applicant can manipulate his way through fails to perform the basic premise for why we have zoning. Far from creating certainty, it creates perpetual uncertainty as to what can happen on a particular property. 9.2.1. Views to and from public places, including scenic roadways. The City will preserve and improve views of important scenic resources from public places, and encourage other agencies with jurisdiction to do so. Public places include parks, plazas, the grounds of civic buildings, streets and roads, and publicly accessible open space. In particular, the route segments shown in Figure 11 are designated as scenic roadways. A. Development projects shall not wall off scenic roadways and block views. First, in Figure 11 cited above, Foothill is a designated scenic roadway. It is shown in Figure 11 with a solid yellow line. That is because the entire length of this major arterial offers a continuously shifting panorama of major iconic views, and it was the intent of the Planning Commission and City Council in adopting this designation to protect these views in perpetuity. Second, protected views at this location that would be blocked include • The iconic view of San Luis Mountain to pedestrians and vehicles westbound on Foothill from Santa Rosa to Chorro. • The same view from the College Square Shopping Center on the north side of Foothill. • The iconic views of the Santa Lucias for eastbound Foothill pedestrians and vehicles from west of Broad to east of Chorro. • Views of the Santa Lucias and Edna Valley hills for North Chorro southbound pedestrians and vehicles. Third, these views are highly valued by residents — protecting them rated high among items on the LUCE resident survey — and make San Luis Obispo the place it is. We are not EI Segundo, home of the applicant. We are San Luis Obispo, and part of being San Luis Obispo is our cherished views. Fourth, the save -the -views directive in the COSE isn't one that can be "interpreted" away by applicants, staff, commissioners, or council members. It is not a discretionary directive, but is mandatory, the operant words in Policy 9.2.1 being "shall not:" "Development projects shall not wall off scenic roadways and block views." (The only way I can see staff argue this mandatory prohibition doesn't apply, especially now that view blockage has been pointed out by several commentators, is to put up story poles to prove the views this project will clearly obstruct will not be obstructed. Why aren't story poles routine practice in the first place? Story poles would make our development review process a lot more transparent.) Fifth, this project as proposed does both of the prohibited acts: it "walls off" the scenic roadway by having zero setback along both its street frontages, and it blocks views (plural). Sixth, it is hard to imagine a proposed building for this site that would do more damage to protected views. View protection simply hasn't been something designers bothered to consider. They could, however, do much better with a less bulky building. If this project is to proceed in any form, the size and bulk of this building must be reduced to a level where it does not violate Policy 9.2.1.. • The uses in this project are inappropriate for the zoning and this prime commercial location. 2 The SF overlay zoning designation for this block of Foothill was never intended to change the nature of the underlying commercial zoning, but to add some focus to potentially encourage housing as a secondary, not primary, use, where appropriate. This project is nothing more than an apartment house. So an apartment house at this location, a primary residential use, on this commercially -zoned land in a circumscribed commercial district where commercial zoning is limited, is inappropriate. It squanders optimal use of the scarce quantity of commercial zoning along Foothill. I call this an apartment house because that is what it is. There's a single small token commercial space thrown in as a sop to the zoning, but otherwise it's about nothing but student dorm -style apartments. The intent of the SF overlay was never to turn commercial property along Foothill into residential property. If that were the city's intent, the land would have been rezoned residential. This property is commercial, and should be required to be used as such.2 This project's resulting land use problem is evident looking at the Foothill frontage, which the site's zoning would envision as being all commercial. Along the Foothill frontage, however, only one quarter is commercial, the other three-quarters is apartment house. 75% of ground floor main frontage uses not consistent with the intent of the underlying zoning is inappropriate, and if permitted constitutes poor planning implementation. If it proceeds. the project needs to be completely redesigned to meet the intent of the zoning and SF overlay, by making it a ground floor commercial project along the entire Foothill frontage, with possibly a smaller secondary housing component upstairs. • The project as proposed ignores the need for strong urban design along Foothill. It is the city's fiduciary responsibility to require good urban design. Per our LUCE, Foothill is desired to be a vibrant pedestrian corridor. On the north side at present a large parking lot separates the street sidewalk from shops, meaning pedestrians are sandwiched between fast heavy traffic and parked cars, creating the sort of let's -get -out - of -here no -man's land Jan Gehl once described to me as "a place where only derelicts would choose to linger." The south side sidewalk along Foothill is, and needs to remain, more pedestrian oriented. In order for it to be a vibrant pedestrian place, this street's substantially widened and reconfigured sidewalk must be lined with pedestrian attractions, both visual and use - attractant. The proposed building actually shuts itself off from the potential vibrancy of Foothill As the primary author of the city's pioneering mixed use zoning ordinance, I am hardly hostile to the concept of dwellings above commercial space, for that was the ordinance's intent. But I am most unhappy to see that ordinance used to justify a project like this one, which is phony mixed use at best. It stands the mixed use ordinance on its head by positing that an apartment house can be made "mixed use" by adding a small token commercial space. This isn't how this ordinance is supposed to be applied. The "use" in this zone is supposed to be commercial, the "mix" secondary to that. 3 pedestrianism. Devoting three-quarters of the project's frontage to private apartment functions creates public/pedestrian dead space, which destroys any chance for vibrancy along these sidewalks. This is another reason why 100% of the Foothill frontage needs to be commercial space that contributes to sidewalk vibrancy. But the proposed sidewalk configuration, with speeding traffic on one side and a tall building rising abruptly on the other, destroys potential pedestrian appeal in this area. The pedestrian is caught in a narrow space between two unpleasant force lines: speeding traffic and hard building facade. There are two issues here: amenity and safety. Both are hamstrung by the proposed zero - setback design. Anyone who thinks even superficially about urban design realizes that for pedestrians to want to populate an area requires both pleasant surroundings and a sense of safety. The applicant's design provides neither. 1. Traffic on Foothill is high speed, and the sidewalk is right at the roadway curb. This is both unpleasant and unsafe. Traffic at this point is often 30+ mph, and it's inches -to -feet from pedestrians. (At this location, the safety issue is magnified by the inflection in traffic lanes at Chorro, so vehicles are pulling towards the sidewalk as they pass 22 Chorro's Foothill frontage. A slight misapplication of steering could easily produce fatal outcomes.) 2. The fatality rate for pedestrians encountering vehicles going 30+ mph is a multiple of that for pedestrians encountering vehicles going 20+ mph. meed on Foothill must be a design consideration for pedestrian vibrancy. What is being proposed is unsafe. 3. Zero -setback design locks in pedestrian danger — perceived and actual -- as there's "no escape" even if a pedestrian observes an oncoming danger. 4. So how can such an ill -designed pedestrian environment be vibrant? There is no precedent on Foothill for zero -setback design. Why is one being established with this project? This well-established area has the openness of a semi -urban business zone — broad setbacks that provide, variously, for attractive landscaping, laces to sit well back from the street, andap rkinq. What would be the purpose of introducing a zero -setback precedent in an area that has a functional, established, pleasing ambience with an existing wide setback building pattern? What's wrong with what's already the area's customary urban design esthetic? Staff has failed to make a case that zero -setback is a desirable shift from what's well- established along Foothill. Beyond that is the matter that zero setbacks outside a dense core like downtown are both undesirable and create numerous future planning problems. Dream as the city might about modal shifts lessening traffic, on Foothill traffic will only increase. Foothill is an arterial, and In traffic increase must be accommodated. What happens, with a zero setback, when the inevitable road widening must take place? Or when bike ridership rises to the point a dedicated roadside bike path is needed to keep both bikes and vehicles moving? At that point, the city has only one choice: condemn the building and destroy it to fix the traffic. Far- fetched, you ask? Not at all. We've seen this happen repeatedly. Just two of the more stunning examples: The old multi -story Hysen-Johnson Ford Dealership on Santa Rosa from Monterey to Higuera, a sturdy brick building covering most of the block till recently occupied by the Shell station, was torn down so Santa Rosa could be widened. The old brick Pacific Coast Railroad hotel on Higuera between South and Madonna, a place known as the Ark because it was inhabited in its later days by free -spirited architecture students and about as historic as a building can be, was demolished so Higuera could be widened to make a smooth turn onto Madonna. Both buildings came down because their zero setbacks were in the way of progress. Zero setback at Chorro/Foothill is just dumb planning. It should not even be considered. By contrast, when one has a healthy setback, one doesn't have to condemn and demolish. One can argue about loss of amenity and its mitigation, but at least there's space to accommodate the future's needs without a major rearrangement of the builtscape. There are better streetscape alternatives than zero setback should this project proceed: 1. Looking at downtown instructs us about two key differences that permit downtown sidewalks to be vibrant. First, traffic is slower, but even more important, a row of parked cars offers pedestrian protection. 2. So, if a "row of parked cars equivalent" like a well -landscaped strip (perhaps a rain garden?) at least five or six feet wide between sidewalk and traffic lane were to be built, that would provide greater pedestrian safety and amenity. 3. If #2 were combined with further setback on the building side of the sidewalk, to follow the existing setback pattern along Foothill, with trees and shrubs providing a softening of noise reflections from the building, offering greenspace, and offering a potential place to sit and hang out, perhaps in conjunction with a ground floor business. Isn't this a better urban design alternative than the build -and -cram -and -shoehorn approach that's proposed? With this sort of setback design, one can intelligently start discussing "vibrancy." Without it, "vibrant" is simply a word tossed in the wind. The proposed design will create a pedestrian dead zone, not the Foothill sidewalk vibrancy envisioned by our LUCE. • Adverse traffic impacts aren't discussed in the staff report. They will be severe and widespread. The entry to the parking, on Chorro, will snarl traffic on both Chorro and Foothill, and will make it next to impossible for vehicles to access and exit the Starbucks/Jamba Juice parking lot across Chorro. 5 Picture how this will work. Cars from Foothill heading to the site's parking will turn south on Chorro, then will have to wait to turn left into the parking. Chorro's a busy street. There will almost always be a wait. Northbound traffic on Chorro stopped for the ridiculously -timed Foothill traffic signal — meaning it's a long, long wait — frequently back up past the point of entry for the project's parking. That means cars waiting to turn left into the parking will wait, and wait, and wait, while traffic backs up behind them, into the Chorro/Foothill intersection and onto Foothill, causing that intersection to malfunction, meaning the wait will get even longer as the traffic snarl eventually gets cleared through several successive traffic signal sequences. What a mess! Collateral damage from_this traffic mess on Foothill is more and more cars trying to avoid the intersection by cutting across Murray and Meinecke. to Broad (soon to be a bike boulevard — so why would you want to divert more traffic onto it?), then out Ramona (a bike route also). And we can expect the same traffic pattern in reverse as cars eastbound on Foothill seek to avoid the frequently -snarled Chorro intersection. This project's malfunctioning parking arrangement will impact far -removed neighborhoods with increased traffic, and impinge on bike planning efforts as well. Is that really the sort of city you seek to create? Entry to the project's_ap rking on Chorro is unworkable. If the project is to proceed, the entry should be from Foothill. • Parking reductions proposed are absurd, and highly irresponsible on the part of the city. It behooves us to understand why there are parking requirements for apartments in the first place. It is so parking impacts of developments like this one are contained on site, and not shoved off onto others who bear no responsibility for them. So, the idea is to provide sufficient parking to take care of actual parking needs. In this instance, staff has piled one theory -based parking reduction rationalization atop another atop still another to a point where the "required" parking becomes absurdly unrealistic. These various reductions were never intended ,to be compounded in this manner. Each was intended to respond to something quite specific and justifiable. Adding them together is "new math" that makes no sense. Doing this has staff talking out of both sides of its mouth simultaneously, ultimately looking pretty silly. For example, we're told the kids who live here will ride their bikes or take the bus to school, so somehow, though it's not clear how, that means less parking is needed (i.e., the cars they leave parked all day seem to be carried away on bike panniers so they don't occupy daytime parking spaces). But we can also allow a "mixed-use" parking reduction since during "business hours" residents will have driven their cars to school and there will be extra spaces! (This ignores the fact business hours could be till 11 p.m.) Folks, you can't have it both ways. A The argument on its face is absurd, since if they're biking or bussing to school, their cars will stay home all day, which means the mixed-use reduction's rationalization is totally invalid. Since there's no other place for project residents to park than on site or in surrounding single family neighborhoods, you need to provide adequate parking on site. How many spaces is that? I can tell you from years of arranging student field trips and asking "Who doesn't have a car," upwards of 90% of Cal Poly students DO have cars, even if they don't use them every day. That means you need to provide parking on site for 90% of occupants. How many occupants will there be? 95 is a reasonable number. Note the layout of the "2 - bedroom" apartments with their oddly -shaped "bedrooms" with double doors. These will be subdivided each into two bedrooms, so these are actually intended as four-bedroom apartments. 23 of these means 92 student occupants. (If you don't understand this bedroom subdivision business, visit iconslo.com, a project by the same architect, where the webpage shows similar "bedrooms" with double doors subdivided with movable partitions, so each bed can rent for $1000 per month, or $4000 per two-bedroom apartment !3 This is NOT affordable housing! At Icon, the developer improperly put in stud -wall partitions within the "bedrooms" without a permit, and after being reported by an observer, it is rumored the city red -tagged the project. Folks, this is the sort of "citizenship" you're dealing with here! A whole lot more bedrooms than the applicant admits.) (Note also the economically exploitative fact of the developer's providing too little parking — he can charge extra for the "privilege" of on-site parking.) So, if there are 96 occupants (counting the studios), minimally "adequate" parking would be at least 86 spaces instead of the woefully inadequate 33 proposed. • Health impacts aren't discussed in the staff report. Actual progressive cities increasingly use "health impact assessment analysis" for projects such as this. Had one been done for this project, it would have revealed problems and raised issues. First, having the study/sleeping quarters of 68 young people facing Foothill with zero setback presents numerous health issues. It is well known in healthy -design quarters and documented in the medical literature that constant exposure to traffic noise has adverse and potentially permanent adverse cardio -vascular effects. The human body never adjusts to such noise. Stress factors from continual exposure undermine the body's entire well-being. A zero setback magnifies the noise exposure to the 34 bedrooms facing a noisy arterial like 3 I submit to you, based on actual evidence, that approving these apartments is not doing students' pocketbooks any sort of favor. These apartments are designed to exploit student pocketbooks by charging premium rents well above going rates. They are not affordable housing! Last month I interviewed several students who gave me the same story. Off campus housing is typically in the $500-800 per month per student range, with $900 being the outlier. When I told these students about the $1,000 per bed/$4,000 per two bedroom apartment rates at Icon, they were shocked and said that was out of line with their own experience. 7 Foothill. Why would a good city approve a design with factors known to have harmful cardio- vascular, neurological, psychological, and immune system impacts? Having rooms most used facing a major noisy artery like this is not well-designed housing. It should never be built. Furthermore, this location has intensely polluted air from all the traffic — not just car exhaust, but diesel from the fact Foothill is a major truck and bus route. Such air pollution harms the respiratory and cardio -vascular systems, often irreparably, and breathing diesel emissions can cause sudden fatal reactions even in the young. One assumes "mitigation" for the obvious fact window ventilation will not work for these bedrooms will be an air conditioned building. This, in turn, means the building, which if designed intelligently and located in a better location would need no air conditioning, becomes an unnecessary energy guzzler, a veritable energy dinosaur built just before California residential buildings go to net zero energy in 2020. This building thus becomes an energy albatross around the city's neck as we attempt to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions to save what's left of our planet's health. It undercuts the goals of the city's Climate Action Plan. Second health impact, the parking garage is unsafe. It will become a crime magnet — muggings, rapes, hopefully nothing worse. It is completely isolated, out of view, and will be a constant security problem. Complicating things will be the "elevators" that dump into a concealed subterranean space where who knows what may lurk, be hidden, or be dumped. Third, like the building, the parking garage will need mechanical ventilation. More energy guzzling unnecessary with a better design. More planet -destroying emissions. Fourth, there is also the question where the stinky auto emissions vented from the garage will be released. It would be very simple, and very unethical, to do so at ground level near the adjacent single family residence, thus poisoning its occupants. The city must see this is not done. There are additional health issues, but this gives a hint about what's not being talked about that should be talked about as negatives for this proposal. • New housing must be humane. It is ethically wrong for a city to launch a "build anything anywhere" approach to housing. Humane standards must prevail for appropriate placement and design of all new housing. In the case of this project, the site itself is probably unsuitable for housing. It is right atop a noisy, busy, polluted thoroughfare. The proposed apartments face this busy street. Why is this desirable? This will always be third-class housing just based on its location. When the notion of adding housing to the Foothill SF area came up, there was zero indication this meant lining the street itself with zero -setback housing. Instead, the idea was that perhaps behind the University Square shopping area, adjacent to Boysen Avenue, there might be potential for additional housing — well away from the noisy street, in other words. This site must not be developed as proposed as a primary residential use because to do so would be inhumane to its occupants. • Affordable inclusionary housing must be actually inclusionary. The rationale for inclusionary housing is to be non-discriminatory towards the poor, to provide them with essentially the same good housing as market rate renters/buyers are provided so that they are not stigmatized by housing type or location, nor ghettoized into "projects." That means, if all the units in a project are 2 -bedroom units, inclusionary units must be 2 -bedroom units. I hope you would agree this is a noble goal to reduce some of the disadvantages of income inequality. This applicant, in both his current projects, has adopted a discriminatory, stigmatized approach to inclusionary housing, providing tiny studio units unlike other units in the projects, segregated by type and location within the projects. If one were a cynic, one might conclude this is a selfish act to gain the development benefits of providing "low income housing" on site without fulfilling the intent behind making such housing inclusionary or inconveniencing his market -rate tenants by having them brush shoulders with the less fortunate. This approach to inclusionary housing isn't right, and should not be permitted by the Council. • Noise. The staff report is silent about noise, especially as it impacts adjacent single family areas. First, noise reflection off the hard tall zero -setback walls along Chorro will be significant. These will concentrate and reflect traffic noise, which now spreads in all directions, directly back into the single family neighborhoods along Chorro, Rougeot, and the back yards along Broad. This is completely unnecessary. A lower building would reflect less, but even a relatively tall building could mitigate its noise reflecton. For example, requiring the same 20 -foot setback along Chorro as for the adjacent R-1 properties, and requiring the dense planting of relatively tall sound -absorbent trees in that setback, would help dampen the reflection of noise. If the project proceeds, this should be a required mitigation. Second, noise from the building's mechanical systems (air conditioning, garage ventilation, car elevators, etc.) can be extremely annoying to surrounding residents, who should not have to put up with it. This noise can travel long distances — the rooftop refrigeration equipment at the former Albertson's, for example, can be heard two blocks away. Somehow, all such noise must be contained on site and not spewed into the commons. Third, roof party decks are inappropriate adjoining a single family neighborhood. The deck on Chorro could hardly be more inappropriately sited. Can you imagine kids whooping it up out there, their friends driving by tooting their horns, the yelling back and forth from deck to car, etc.? This is reality in student housing, folks. Either the deck needs to be relocated to the D1 other end of the building, or it should just go away altogether. Don't throw this one onto the neighbors backs. Fourth, the clanging and chugging of the noisy car elevators in the garage, all the other activity in the garage with sound reverberating off its hard surfaces, the garage opening pointing directly at the house next door! This isn't OK. • Car elevators. This is so daft it's hardly worth commenting on. Self -serve noisy, clangy machines subject to breakdown for raising and lowering cars in order to claim the place has adequate parking when it doesn't? If it proceeds, the project needs to be scaled down to where a user-friendly parking lot can be built to accommodate all of its needs. Conclusion. Please reject this project. A proper project for this site should be commercial, possibly with a secondary residential component. It would require an urban design component that promotes street vibrancy. Any housing should be designed to be healthy and humane for its occupants. The number of parking spaces on site must be realistic to accommodate the level of need for all uses without any fudging. Any project must adhere to COSE Policy 9.2.1 to maintain protected views across the site. Thank you. Richard Schmidt 10