HomeMy WebLinkAbout05-07-2018 - Item 2 - Schmidt1
Tonikian, Victoria
From:Richard Schmidt <
Sent:Monday, May 07, 2018 11:46 AM
To:Advisory Bodies
Subject:ARC communication -- agenda item 2
Dear ARC,
Please reject the height and lot coverage exceptions for this Foothill project. There is no excuse for either.
Good planning requires the city to maintain certain spelled-out standards, and not surrender to every excessive demand
of every greedy developer.
You must also mandate that sufficient parking is provided on site for residents of this project, arguably almost all of whom
will have cars to park while living there.
A few thoughts:
1. The Future of Foothill. The vision of one of our more colorful council members is of Foothill becoming a canyon of tall
apartment buildings. This project is part of that vision.
The people of SLO, however, don't share that vision of our future. We're tired of losing our views, losing our neighborhood
residential parking to under-parked new apartments, and turning our neighborhood's main street into a circus-version of
an actual city.
There is no reason to allow the vision of one extremist council member to over rule the common preferences, which are
backed more or less by good planning principles ignored by the rah-rah development team ensconced at city hall.
Request: Dial down the height and dial down the lot coverage so the prevailing Foothill streetscape proportions (including
setback with green space out front proportional to building height) are continued.
2. Appropriate Land Use. I view with alarm staff's rationalizations for allowing apartment buildings by this developer in a
commercial zone along Foothill. There's only so much commercial land along Foothill. When it's gone, it's gone. Why fill it
with stuff like this and 22 Chorro? At 22 Chorro, a large commercial lot has next to zero public use space along the street
frontage, meaning it contributes next to zero to creating the "vibrant" street life our plans say we aim for. Ditto for this new
project -- token commercial space, and a lot of publicly dead space. This is the sort of sidewalk area noted urban planner
Jan Gehl says is only populated by derelicts.
Request: Require that any project at this site include 100% commercial frontage extending at least 50 feet back from the
building front.
3. This Project-Type Raises Housing Prices For All. While the "we-need-housing" claque rhapsodizes about the need
for and desirability of this sort of student housing project, it actually raises housing costs and precludes housing
opportunities for ordinary residents.
This has been demonstrated in the last few years by the arrival of such "luxury" student housing, first Ikon on Taft, and
now 22 Chorro. Ikon began at $999 per person per month, an amount scoffed at by my students who said it was out of
line. But, Cal Poly having the richest parents in the CSU, proved otherwise. Soon it became routine for landlords to charge
nearly that much per student for houses. What family can compete with that sort of rent paid by rich kids' parents?
22 Chorro is renting from $1300 per person per month. This has further inflated house costs. Recently a crappy little
house at Chorro/Lincoln -- a terrible location at a busy intersection backing to 101 with no yard -- sold for just under $1
million (having sold not long before for less than 2/3 that, which also seemed a rich price for such a place). Neighbors
were asking why a family would pay such a price for such a crappy house. My response: it's going to be a student rental.
With the new rent level set by 22 Chorro, such a house can produce $7,000 in rent, while the mortgage might be around
$4,500 per month -- a wide margin. Sure enough, the million-dollar crappy little house has students in it.
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Request: Don't be persuaded this project must have so much height and lot coverage and so many units to pencil out.
The developer's not going to pass along any "savings" from higher-level entitlements, he's just going to continue to make
life miserable for the residents of our city trying to find housing by charging the maximum the traffic will bear.
4. Don't screw our neighborhood again! At some point, isn't it unfair to keep piling what Ken Schwartz appropriately
called "urban rape" onto a singe neighborhood?
We moved to our homes knowing we'd have neighborhood-focused commercial development along Foothill, and we're
fine with that. We didn't sign up for excessively-dense under-parked student slums along Foothill. These buildings will be
there for 100 years, and our neighborhood will be stuck with them and the problems they create.
Most egregious is staff's advocacy for the projects being under-parked. No matter what fiction the developer and his staff
planner may spin, nearly every student at Cal Poly has a truck, suv or auto. There are few exceptions. Providing bike
racks in lieu of parking is a sick joke: they cost pennies by comparison, but few will be used. They are part of the greed
scheme.
At 22 Chorro, this developer has been enabled to under-park his project so much that it will impact neighborhood streets
for blocks around.
At 71 Palomar, he was allowed to pull the same stunt. This is the west side of the same neighborhood as 22 Chorro.
Now on Foothill, smack between Chorro and Palomar projects, more of the same under-parked baloney.
THIS IS NOT RIGHT. THE CITY HAS A RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT ITS NEIGHBORHOODS.
As if this developer's greedy indifference to our welfare isn't enough, the Valencia project on Ramona has long been
under-parked, and its residents line Ramona with their cars. But the city, in it's infinite wisdom, is now removing much of
that Ramona parking for a dangerous cycle track -- apparently to provide the city manager a bike route to and from work.
WHERE WILL ALL THE CARS WITHOUT OFF-STREET PARKING PARK? IN FRONT OF OUR HOMES. IF THIS
WERE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, WOULD YOU BE OK WITH THIS?
Rather than take responsibility for making apartment developers provide adequate parking, the city's "solution" is to force
our neighborhood into a parking district neighbors don't want. A district solves no problems for us -- it just makes our lives
less livable than they already are.
Request: THE ARC NEEDS TO REQUIRE THIS PROJECT TO HAVE ADEQUATE ON-SITE PARKING FOR ALL ITS
RESIDENTS, no matter what contrary arguments staff may spin.
Thank you.
Richard Schmidt