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HomeMy WebLinkAbout12-05-2016 ARC Correspondence - Public Hearing 1 (Barasch) Meeting'_ N/ 1y O'LIlp From: Stephen Barasch [ Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2016 12:23 PM To: Richard Schmidt < Item:, i _ RECEIVED CITY OF SAN LUIS OBISPO DEC 0 5 2016 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Cc: Greg Wynn < ; Susan Ehdaie < ; Amy Nemcik Allen Root < ; Angela Soll Brian Rolph < ; Advisory Bodies <advisorybodies@slocity.org>; E-mail Council Website <emailcouncil@slocity.org> Subject: Re: ARC 22 Chorro Well researched letter for well informed, open minded ARC Members to digest! Steve Barasch, AIA, NCARB, Ph.D Public Member of the SLO City Investment Oversight Committee Sent from my iPhone On Dec 4, 2016, at 11:58 AM, Richard Schmidt < wrote: Dear ARC, Please find attached my comments on 22 Chorro, urging you to deny the project for numerous important reasons. But first, I'd like to point out what I was taught about evaluating projects when I began my 8 years on the Planning Commission: One must never judge a project by its developer, the developer's promises or persuasions, or any representations of any particular tenant or style or type of tenancy. None of those have any validity or enforceability or expectation of long tenure, even if sincere. The ONLY issue is the physical project itself, whether it is a good addition to our city, whether it has problems that outweigh any goodness, whether it meets our community's standards as laid out in things like the zoning code, design standards, and general plan policies. am confident that if you filter out the emotional static of project proponents' pleadings (about bike culture and the like), and evaluate the physical object itself, you will come to see its shortcomings. Sincerely, Richard Schmidt Attachment: Letter pdf file Dec. 3, 2016 Re: 22 Chorro Dear ARC Members, I urge you to reject this project as it stands, and direct that it come back smaller, shorter, with parking sufficient to meet all its needs, with a first floor devoted to retail in conformance with the site's zoning, with R-1 compatible setback along Chorro and customary adjacent setback along Foothill, and other measures to make it compatible with its R-1 neighbors. The following comments are intended to support that request. • This project is abusive, in its uses, 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 find improper — so I'll mention that issue in passing and move on to other issues less mentioned by other commentators. • 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: 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 COSE Figure 11, 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, 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 University 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 from North Chorro for 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 unique place it is. We are not EI Segundo, home of the applicant, where there are likely no views worth protecting. Fourth, the save -the -views directive in the COSE isn't one that can be "interpreted" away by staff or commissioners. It is not a discretionary directive, but is mandatory, the operant words being "shall not:" "Development projects shall not wall off scenic roadways and block views." (Why aren't story poles routinely put up to show what a new building on a sensitive site will and will not block? Many jurisdictions require that as part of their planning process. If that were done here, the debate about view blocking would be over.) Fifth, this project as proposed does both of the prohibited acts: it "walls off" the scenic roadway by having zero setback, 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 deal with. They could, however, do much better with a less bulky building. Recommendation: The bulk of this buildina needs to 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. The SF overlay zoning designation was never intended to change the nature of the underlying commercial zoning, but to add some focus to encourage housing as a secondary, not primary, use. So an apartment house at this location, a primary residential use, on this commercially -zoned land in a dense district where commercial zoning is limited within constricted boundaries, is inappropriate. I call it 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 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 simply have been rezoned residential. This property is commercial, and should be required to be used as such. 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 and poor design. Recommendation: The r ct needs to be completely redesigned to meet the intent of the zo-n-ing and SF overlay, by makin it a ground floor commercial pro`ect al n the entire .Foothill frontage, with a 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 from new projects. Per our LUCE, Foothill is desired to be a vibrant pedestrian corridor. On the north side at present a parking lot separates the street sidewalk from the shops, meaning pedestrians are sandwiched between 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 vibrancy of Foothill pedestrianism. Devoting three-quarters of the project's frontage to private apartment functions (largely bike parking) creates public/pedestrian dead space, which destroys any chance of vibrancy along these sidewalks. Recommendation: This is another reason why essentially 100% of the Foothill frontage needs to be --comma I space th t 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 and safety 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 on Foothill 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. Speed on Foothill mist be a design consideration for pedestrian vibrancy and safety. 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 th t rovide variously, for attractive landscaping places to sit well back from the street and parking. 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 futureIp anning problems Dream as the city might about modal shifts lessening traffic, on Foothill traffic will only increase. Foothill is an arterial, and 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 Class 1 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 non -sustainable 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 should roads need widening, 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 and safety from moving vehicles. 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 sidewalk design will create a pedestrian dead zone alon Foothill, not the Foothill sidewalk vibrancy envisioned by our LUCE. Recommendation: The Foothill setback must be substantially increased to permit a safe and reasonably pleasant pedestrian way protected from speeding traffic by a well -planted raised or depressed buffer z ne. • 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 at times will make it next to impossible for vehicles to access and exit from the Starbucks/Jamba Juice parking lot across Chorro. 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 one -lane street in each direction. 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, onto Foothill and into the Chorro/Foothill intersection, causing that intersection to malfunction, meaning the wait will get even longer on both Chorro and Foothill as the traffic snarl eventually gets cleared through several successive traffic signal sequences. What a mess! Collateral damage from this 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? Recommendation: Entry to the project's parking on Chorro is unworkable 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 makes no sense. And doing so has staff talking out of both sides of its mouth simultaneously and 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. 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 for the business to use! (This also ignores the fact business hours could be till 11 p.m.) Folks, you can't have it both ways. 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 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 91 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! This is NOT affordable housing! At Icon, the developer 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 what 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 then charge extra for the "privilege" of on-site parking.) So, if there are 95 occupants, minimally "adequate" parking would be about 86 spaces instead of the woefully inadequate 33 proposed. And that's just for the housing component, not the business side. Recommendation: Substantially increase the number of on-site parking spaces for the apartments to--co—ver what we know to be student vehicle ownership rates or reduce densit to accomplish the same thing. • But don't bikes will mean students don't have cars? This is total nonsense. From decades of working with Cal Poly students, I've found that most of my students rode bikes daily, but almost all — about 90% -- also had cars. In fact, for a lot of people this is what "bike riding" actually looks like: • Health impacts aren't discussed in the staff report. Actual progressive places increasingly use health impact assessment analysis for evaluating projects such as this. Had one been done for this project, it would have revealed problems. First, having the study/sleeping quarters of 68 young people facing Foothill with zero setback presents 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. A zero setback magnifies the noise exposure to the 34 bedrooms facing Foothill. Why would a good city approve designs known to have harmful cardio -vascular impacts on its residents? Having rooms most used facing a major noisy artery like this is not well-planned housing. 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 work goes 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. Second, 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. Third, like the building, theap -rking 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 clarage will be released. It would be very simple, and very unethical, to do so at ground level near the adjacent single family house, thus poisoning its occupants. The commission 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. Recommendation- The project needs substantial redesign at the conceptual plan level to provide a healthy living environment for its occupants, and healthy air for its neighbors. • Neighborhood Noise. The staff report is silent about noise, especially as it impacts adjacent single family areas. First, noise reflection from the hard tall 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, Meinecke, 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 with proper surface treatments, setbacks and plantings. 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 deaden the reflection of noise. Recommendation: This should be a required mitigation. Second, mechanical noise from the building's mechanical systems (air conditioning, garage ventilation, car elevators, etc.) can be very annoying to surrounding residents, who should not have to put up with it. This noise can travel long distances — the refrigeration at the former Albertson's, for example, can be heard two blocks away. Recommendation: Somehow, all such noise must be contained on site and not s ewed 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. Don't throw this. one onto the neighbors. Recommendation: The deck needs to be eliminated. Fourth, the clanging 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. Recommendation. Eliminate the car elevators and redesign the garage exit (if the garage is to remin o as not to impact R-1 neighbors with garage noise. - 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? Furthermore, the elevators apparently cannot accommodate the sorts of vehicles people actually use (SUVs, pickups) but only small "urban" cars. Recommendation: Thep ro`ect needs to be scaled down to where a user-friendI y parkinn lot can be built to accommodate all of its parking needs. • 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. Complicating the frontage on Foothill, the site is at an intersection configured so there will be traffic noise to both the front and rear of the building 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 where there are already apartments, there might be potential for additional housing — well away from the noisy street and adjacent to an established apartment district, in other words. Recommendation: This site must not be developed as ar000sed as arp imary residential use because to do so would be inhumane -LQ its occupants. • Affordable inclusionary housing must be actually inclusionary and affordable. The rationale for inclusionary housing is to be non-discriminatory towards the poor, to provide them with good housing essentially the same 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 should 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 of 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. But are the units offered actually "affordable" units? The market -rate component is pushing student housing costs beyond current levels, at $1,000 per student per month, or $4,000 per 2 -bedroom apartment. (The small 2 -bedroom house next door to me rents for the ridiculously high rate of $2,200 per month, to 4 students, which comes out to $550 per person — for a house with kitchen/dining/living rooms plus bedrooms, not dorm accommodations with Pullman kitchens. Last summer I asked some of my students if $1,000 per month was reasonable, and got a resounding "no." They reported per person rents in the $500 to $800 range, and thought $1,000 over the limit.) So the market rate component is not affordable housing — it's aggressively -priced housing. The studio units are to rent for about $675 per month, which isn't a great discount from market -rate studios. They come with a requirement of no more than about $27,000 per year income, a level most students could meet. It a e r the city may et zero affordable housing benefit from this project, and far from providing downward pressure on market housing costs may actually escalate the, market by permitting this project to proceed. Conclusion. Please send this back to the drawing board. A proper project for this site should be commercial, possibly with a better -designed secondary residential component. 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. R-1 neighbors must be protected from noise and parking spillover. The Foothill frontage must be designed for sidewalk vibrancy and safety. Thank you. Richard Schmidt