HomeMy WebLinkAbout02-07-2017 Item 6, Schmidt (2)G1
COUNCIL MEETING,: 2 FEB 0 8 2017
ITEM NO.:
RK
From: Richard Schmidt
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 1:56 PM
To: E-mail Council Website <emallcounc_ii slocity.or >
Subject: Agenda: 22 Chorro appeal
Please see my attached comments in support of this appeal.
Thank you.
Richard Schmidt
Feb. 6, 2017
Re: 22 Chorro
Dear Mayor and Council Members,
Forethoughts:
"Sitting in traffic triples a person's short-term heart-attack risk. Living in a city with heavy
air pollution such as Los Angeles is as risky for the heart as being a former smoker. And
having a house near a highway ups the risk of hardened arteries by some 60 percent. In
each case, tiny `ultrafine' particles in the air may be a key culprit... Such findings are bad
news for people with heavy exposure to traffic." (U.S. News)
With growing recognition of such traffic -pollution -related health issues, which
disproportionately affect the young and elderly, the question arises what response should
come from a Good City? Placing bicyclists aside traffic is health -killing for the bicyclists.
Likewise, as the quote above points out, placing housing next to a congested heavily -
trafficked route like Foothill at Chorro is bad for the housing's residents. In my comments
below, I briefly address this health and safety concern.
Should the health and well-being of its residents not be the Good City's first and foremost
concern? Or should planning ideologies and the desires of developers get top play as we
shape our physical city? We seem in San Luis Obispo to rapidly be shifting from concern for
the common good to making deals with an elite whose only interest is profit — often at the
common good's cost.
In the case before you, what is more important: the health and safety of your constituents, or
the profits of a developer, his contractors, and worker ants of the development industry who
will testify how wonderful the project is all the while hiding from public view their own
economic interests in its proceeding?
Please consider this project in this context.
Below are a few more detailed thoughts about reasons this project is not a good one for its
location.
I urge you to uphold the appeal and 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 the customary setback of similar properties along Foothill,
and other measures to make it compatible with its 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
Manhattan Beach, 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 instantly 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 building 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.
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 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 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 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 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 must 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 that provide, 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 established urban design
pattern?
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
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_q 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 zone.
• 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
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.'
' A closer look at actual parking patterns nearby might be educational. On Luneta across
from Valencia there are 3 student houses served by a single driveway. Last week, at 2 p.m.
on a school day, there were 14 cars parked in the driveway, and who knows how many
others from those houses parked on the street. These kids almost all have cars — even if they
take the bus to school. You MUST provide for their cars since there's no way you can prevent
them having cars.
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 $1100 per month, or $4400 per two-bedroom apartment! This is NOT
affordable housing! At Icon on Taft Street ("starting at" $1,099 per person per month), the
developer put in stud -wall partitions within similar "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.
Mr. Ashbaugh urges you to condition this project by forcing a parking district on the
surrounding neighborhood. You cannot do that. Under city procedures, the neighborhood
must initiate and vote to approve a parking district. The city cannot impose one. Furthermore,
by what right does the city approve a project knowing it has too little parking and then
expect nearby residents endure a parking district, which means they give up the right to
have street parking for friends when they come to visit? The proper solution is to require
all projects to have adequate parking.
Recommendation: Substantially increase the number of on-site parking spaces for the
apartments to cover what we know to be student vehicle ownership rates, or reduce density
to accomplish the same thina.
• 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 perpetual 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, 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 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: Thenproiect needs substantial redesign at the conceptual plan level to
provide a healthy living environment for its occupants, and healthy air for its neighbors.
Please note: endangering public health and safety alone are ample grounds for
rejecting this prolect.
• 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 reflection 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 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. 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 remain) so 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: The proiect needs to be scaled down to where a user-friendly parking 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 proposed as a primary residential use
because to do so would be inhumane to 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 $1,100 per student per month, or $4,400 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 $1,100 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 that will act to further escalate already
ridiculously high SLO rents.
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 appears the city ma et zero affordable housing benefit from this project, and far from
providing downward pressure on market housing costs may actually escalate the market b
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