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Home My WebLink About09/20/1999, Agenda council agenda CITY OF SAN LUIS OBISPO C I T Y HALL, 990 PALM STREET Monday, September 20, 1999 ACTION UPDATE 7:00 P.M. STUDY SESSION Council Chamber 990 Palm Street CALL TO ORDER: Mayor Allen K. Settle PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE ROLL CALL: Council Members John Ewan, Jan Howell Marx, Ken Schwartz, Vice Mayor Dave Romero, Mayor Allen K. Settle All Council Members Present PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD (not to exceed 15 minutes total) The Council welcomes your input. (FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA) You may address the Council by completing a speaker slip and giving it to the City Clerk prior to the meeting. At this time, you may address the Council on items that are not on the agenda or items on the Consent Agenda. Time limit is three minutes. State law does not allow the Council to discuss or take action on issues not on the agenda, except that members of the Council or staff may briefly respond to statements made or questions posed by persons exercising their public testimony rights (Gov. Code Sec. 54954.2). Staff may be asked to follow up on such items. Staff reports and other written documentation relating to each item referred to on this agenda are on file in the City Clerk's Office in Room 1 of City Hall. STUDY SESSION 1. CONCEPT FOR THE COURT STREET-PALM/MORRO AREA. (2 Hours). The Council will receive a presentation by Tom Copeland of San Luis Obispo regarding a concept for developing the Court Street-Palm/Morro Area. Council questions will follow. RECOMMENDATION: If the Council is interested in pursuing the concept, the matter should be referred to staff for further analysis. ACTION: 1) Staff directed to return to Council on October 19th with recommendations regarding "exclusive negotiations"and introduction of other policy issues. 2) Staff directed to return to Council after 10/19/99 with recommendations on how to approach discussions and proceed with the review of the proposal(5,0). A. ADJOURN. counc11 AQcn6A CITY OF SAN LUIS OBISPO CITY HALL, 990 PALM STREET Monday, September 20, 1999 7:00 P.M. STUDY SESSION Council Chamber 990 Palm Street CALL TO ORDER: Mayor Allen K. Settle PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE ROLL CALL: Council Members John Ewan, Jan Howell Marx, Ken Schwartz, Vice Mayor Dave Romero, Mayor Allen K. Settle PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD (not to exceed 15 minutes total) The Council welcomes your input. (FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA) You may address the Council by completing a speaker slip and giving it to the City Clerk prior to the meeting. At this time, you may address the Council on items that are not on the agenda or items on the Consent Agenda. Time limit is three minutes. State law does not allow the Council to discuss or take action on issues not on the agenda, except that members of the Council or staff may briefly respond to statements made or questions posed by persons exercising their public testimony rights (Gov. Code Sec. 54954.2). Staff may be asked to follow up on such items. Staff reports and other written documentation relating to each item referred to on this agenda are on file in the City Clerk's Office in Room 1 of City Hall. STUDY SESSION 1. CONCEPT FOR THE COURT STREET-PALM/MORRO AREA. (2 Hours). The Council will receive a presentation by Tom Copeland of San Luis Obispo regarding a concept for developing the Court Street-Palm/Morro Area. Council questions will follow. RECOMMENDATION: If the Council is interested in pursuing the concept, the matter should be referred to staff for further analysis. A. ADJOURN. ® Regular City Council meetings are broadcast on KCPR,91.3 FM. The City of San Luis Obispo is committed to include the disabled in all of its services,programs,and activities. Telecommunications Device for the Deaf(805)781-7410. Please speak to the City Clerk prior to the meeting if you require a hearing amplification device. For more agenda information,call 781-7103. MEETI AGENDA DATE ., 9 ITEM # CHINATOWN COURT STREET A Vision for the Future 0 Downtown San Luis Obispo, California Inspired by Its Past Presented by. Tom Copeland Jim Copeland Chinatown/Court Street Partners September 20, 1999 APS Architects, Inc. Pierre Rademaker Design Mark Rawson Pierre Rademaker RECEIVED SEP 1 7 1999 SLO CITY CLERK MEE It AGENDA DA E IL I� ITEM # J San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce • 1039 Chorro Street • San Luis Obispo, California 93401-3278 (805) 781-2777 • FAX (805) 543-1255 • TDD (805) 541-8416 David E. Garth, President/CEO HCOUNCIL 153101)^1F ETCAO ISA 0 ❑FIRE CE.., E ATTORNEY ❑PW DIR September 20, 1999 QOLERKIORIG ❑POLICE CHF rGEL TE ❑REC DIR d ❑UTILD APER R f 3 Mayor Allen Settle VIA HAND DEL City of San Luis Obispo 990 Palm Street San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 RE: CHINATOWN/PALM/MORRO PUBLIC WORKSHOP Dear Mayor Settle: The San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce takes pride in its role as the public policy advocate for the local business community. • In connection with the San Luis Obispo City Council's Public Workshop this evening, regarding the proposed Chinatown/Palm/Morro Development by the Copelands, several of the Chamber's most important and strongly held policies outlined in our Economic Vision document directly relate to this project- Since the 1980s the Chamber has been one of our community's leading advocates for "compact urban form". Whenever possible we advocate for the intensification of uses within the urban reserve line established in the City's General Plan, prevention of urban sprawl, and preservation of open space. '• We encourage the City to recognize that most major developments will require some degree of City participation or collaboration. • We believe that to keep San Luis Obispo the retail and services hub of the County, a role which has been diminished in recent years, the following must be done to protect jobs and city services: 1) We must protect and enhance the downtown area as a multi-use restaurant, entertainment, shopping area and civic and professional center. RECEIVED 2) We must work to implement the Downtown Concept Plan. t;FP 2 i] 1999 SLO CITY COUNCIL e-mail: slochamber@slochamber.org • websites: www.slochamber.org www.visitslo.com September.20, 1999 Chamber Letter page 2 of 2 3) We should work.to enable existing surface parking the downtown area to be 'put to better and higher uses, e.g. plazas, retail centers, etc., and replace the surface parking lost with consolidated�parking.structures. 4) We should maintain a proactive parking program which develops new parking facilities in the�downtown area. 5) We.should strive to keep_ the major county offices and courts in downtown San Luis Obispo. 6) We should allow for enough room for office and professional spaceexpansion in and around downtown. 7) We should encourage innovative, synergistic uses for non-ground floor spaces downtown. We look forward to the workshop this evening. Thankyou for considering the Business Community's concerns. Sincerely, Deborah S. Nicklas Chairman of the Board CHINATOWN COURT STREET _ A Vision for Our Downtown in Keeping with Our Past DOWNTOWN San Luis Obispo today is the cultural, social, economic andggovernmental hub of San Luis Obispo County.While there are beaches, the wine country and myriad other attractions throughout our county that make this region so desirable, the Downtown of San Luis Obispo is the heart and soul of our greater community. The Mission, the Courthouse, the movie theaters, the shops, the stores, the restaurants, the coffee houses, the sidewalks, the trees, the people and their interaction —these are the ingredients which bring life to the city and reason for residents, workers and visitors to be here. Downtown is where we spend our workday, where we shop for theholidays, where - we take our family and friends for an evening out. It's where we want to be. In sum, Downtown San Luis Obispo is to this county what the heart is to human life. It is our core..From here life pulsates, it invigorates, it emanates outward. If the life of Downtown as we know it is to carry on — if the heart of our community is to continue to beat with the rhythm of health and vitality— it needs nourishment and care. There must be a vision borne from the wisdom, knowledge and perspective of the people here today if the future of the Downtown is to be as rich as its past. There always will be differing opinions as to what this vision should be. But on this there can be no dispute: There must be a vision of the downtown. Without one, we most certainly will fall prey to the rot and decay that has enveloped so many once-promising city centers. Decline of urban cores historically is caused by unchecked rivalry from the once- rural fringe, a fringe that's vanishing in our county as rapidly as tropical rain forests along the equator. We can do something about it. Our Vision of the Downtown in the 21 St Century is Tittle different from the vision of our city's founders. They saw commerce, government and social interaction as the basis of a thriving community. We view the future of this city through the prism of its past. This vision includes nurturing and enhancing the Downtown's delicate balance of commercial andgovernment tenants that provide human traffic for independent retailers . This mix has been and— if done correctly—will continue to be the recipe for making the Downtown a regional and tourist destination for customers seeking special retail opportunities, evening and weekend entertainment, and daily social activity. By remaining true to the founders' vision of Downtown San Luis Obispo as the natural hub of commerce, government and social interaction, we can strengthen our urban core's ability to compete for its rightful place as the heart and soul of our greater community. CHINATOWN COURT STREET A Summary of Current Conditions _ There is genuine fear among most Downtown businesses of competition from strip malls on the city's urban fringe —and from the boom-bust cities to the north and south— for our valued quality retail tenants. If stripmall developers succeed in luring away our Downtown's quality retailrs , the migration of these businesses to the rural fringe will devastate our Downtown and exacerbate the problem of urban sprawl that's beginning to plague the entire county. • Quality retailers want to locate in Downtown San Luis Obispo., but there is no space to accommodate them. Our plan provides compact urban form byproviding in-fill development of areas that, up until now, have not been used to their highest potential. • There will be major disruption of Downtown commerce with the repair of the Higuera Street Bridge. This plan helps alleviate this disturbance quickly and inexpensively. • The Downtown is chronically plagued by parking and traffic migration problems wrought by the perception of a lack of parking spaces and the historical ingress and egress issues inherent to the Downtown's circulation patterns. • Chinatown is a significant historical ingredient of the Downtown, yet it has long been neglected in terms of long-range planning and urban center design. • Keeping local government services and employees housed in the Downtown is essential to the health of the city center, yet this hasn't always been the priority of local government office space planners. • Providing and maintaining economically sustainable open space, and pedestriari-oriented buildings and streetscapes, is vital to an aesthetically pleasant urban experience, yet not all Downtown developments have accommodated this design necessity. • The city has a vested interest in capturing as much sales tax revenue as possible in order toprovide fundamental services such as police and fire protection, parks and recreational opportunities, and senior services.More often than not, cities have converted their rural fringes to strip malls as a way to secure this valuable sales tax. Our plan captures this tax without transforming precious agricultural land and open space into concrete. e i' CHINATOWN COURT STREET _ A Modest Proposal for the Future THE CHINATOWN-COURT STREET PROJECT has studied this city's history, peered into its future, and visualized solutions to many perplexing issues that seem to carry over from decade to decade. With a vision for Downtown shared by the community, we can: e Provide mixed uses on existing surface parking areas (Court Street, Monterey Street and Palm Street lots), thereby enhancing the purpose of these prized Downtown locations to their best use. Let's un-pave Paradise and take out several parking lots. • Rebuild a Chinatown-inspired community that celebrates our ethnic heritage while providing a residential component on Palm Street that creates livable space where asphalt now reigns. • Build a new, consolidated office space for city government staff—or a public space for other uses—under a financial arrangement which affords tax payers cost efficiencies and savings while providing the city with a valuable lease/purchase option on a beautiful, centrally located public place that will last for generations. • Provide public parking to replace the existing surface lots, which will create more livable space and compact urban form. On top of this invisible, underground Chinatown parking facility would go the new Civic Square and Chinatown buildings, which would be accessed primarily from Palm Street withpedestrian access from Monterey Street via a series of human-scale, public open spaces.. The Chinatown parking facility would not affect the Palm Street streetscape and would help alleviate automobile traffic now interfering With the pedestrian ambiance of Monterey Street as motorists vie for convenient parking. We envision a lease/sale option with the city, allowing the city to collect parking revenues while keeping the city's parking facilities in public hands. CHINATOWN COURT STRE ET What's in it for the City and its Residents? _ ISTORICALLY, joint ventures between government agencies and private interests haven't panned out in San Luis Obispo. The decade-old proposal to develop the Court Street parking lot by the city _ and a private concern is a case in point. We propose financing and building this visionary project with our own resources under the full regulatory authority of city government, but without the financial _ entanglements and Legal complexities that often accompany public/private partnerships. We propose to: • Purchase at appraised market value the city property needed to fulfill the vision. • Contribute to the city the private properties owned by the Copelands that are necessary to carry out the design. • Enter into a contract with the city to "build to suit" a consolidated office space for city government staff—or a public space for other uses —and the underground Chinatown public parking facilities. • Enter into and navigate the city's permitting and building approval process at arms length from the city in order to provide the city with .public facilities without the city having to furnish the up-front financial resources. This would allow the city to finance its long-planned City Hall capital improvement program at a very low cost. An additional benefit to this approach is that it requires the project's private sponsors to follow the same permittingprocess as any other private project. No special favors are being asked. • 'Allow the city, upon completion of construction, to acquire a cost- effective, well-built City Hall annex. This project would. quickly accomplish the long-held goal of consolidating a city staff now housed in separate buildings. It would remedy the current city office arrangement which inhibits communication and coordination. • Assure the Downtown's place as the physical, spiritual and hilosophical center of our community, as intended by the city's ounders. 1 _ CHI !NATOWN COURT STRE ET' How We Can Do it - • Buildthe underground parking along:.Palm Street-.first; thereby making up for the loss of parking.at the Court Street surface lot during the Higuera Street Bridge repair. Open the new Chinatown parking.facility to the public.. We are committed to parking.demand reduction.and,the protection of our environment. As:such, we would suggest an alternative pricing program for the Chinatown parking-facility that includes a modest surcharge added to the current parking fees. Money collected by the city from this parking surcharge would enter an enterprise:account separate from the ParkingEnterprise Fund..and dedicated exclusively to pay-for trarisit ,.bike lanes, vanpool and carpool programs, other parking demand reduction (PDR) programs, and a zero-emission vehicle program aimed:at reducing auto exhaust in the urban core. The parking surcharge would have the added.value of placing,a premium on parkingin the centrally located Chinatown facility vs.. ^ lower-cost parking options in less impacted areas of'the Downtown. Thus, people who choose to be Downtown will have a wide variety of transportation choices ands parking locations and prices. We plan to install'public electric vehicle chargers (conductive and = inductive) in a specified number of dedicated arkingg stalls within_ the Chinatown parking structure.We.will develop a pilot project with our tenants.in the use of electric vehicles by employees of thhe new commercial and civic center who use alternative transportation to commute to their jobs.. _ • Close the surface.lots. Simultaneously start construction of: ]) the:Hiera Street Bridge repair 2) Court.gtreet pedestrian mal and shops .3) Chinatown housingand stores ' 4)new city office complex or other public facility. CH I NATOWN COURT STREET 11 What we are asking the Council to Do OUR GOAL is to complete the majority of the project by the start of the Holiday Season in 2000. This is realistic, as we've retained commitments from well-regarded local and national businesses and _ retailers who want to locate Downtown. These include such notable retailers as Banana Republic, Abercrombie and Fitch, and others. These business are committed to locating in Downtown San Luis Obispo, and have expressed to us their strong desire to enter this market in time to take advantage of the 2000 holiday shopping season. These are real commitments, not speculative posturing. In order for us to fulfill the vision of the Downtown with the right tenant mix—which is the formula for success—we need a unified and prompt commitment from the City Council to: • Grant us an exclusive 120-day period to finalize the details of this project. This will give us rime to conduct the appropriate environmental review, finalize our design team, iron out specifics between the city and our private partners, and resolve any real property issues that may arise. • While this expeditious work is takinglace, we will conduct a series of well-publicized public workshops during which we plan to share our vision of the Downtown with the residents of the city and listen to their collective vision. It's our intent to incorporate the community's vision into our overall design strategy. • The Downtown is the domain of our entire community. We are committed to shaping its future in partnership with the people. s CHINATOWN COURT STREET Why the Copelands Are the Right Partner • We have the resources and the experience necessary to successfully fulfill the vision of a greater Downtown in a timely fashion. • We own much of the property necessary to allow that vision to be fulfilled. • We have the support of nearly every adjacent property owner. • No one else can do this as well, as quickly, and as cost-effectively as we can. • We have a proven track record with the Downtown Centre. • We're San Luis Obispo County natives. This is our home. We're here to stay. We have no plans to take our profits and run. We invest in our community. We're proud to employ our community's best and brightest. • We want to fulfill the vision of a greater Downtown because we can, because we must if we are to remain true to the heritage of this community. i • If we don't fight urban sprawl on our fringes —if we don't struggle to keep our Downtown healthy in an economically sustainable, environmentally livable, compact urban setting—who will? • If we don't do it now, then when? • If we don't do it together, how will we do it apart? r r r r r r r r r r r r r r ® O �• ��r G •...� M. maw E. r ,mue��.■►v cy�s'A�r■1i! oaa■.:■•■n��ea+■I � �� u�s�w�. �� ■ vtg�.�rs�M1W.a�w�u _ w�s��s om..qy��■ar� ��■ nomgmos,� d��a��lc�`i■ m�aa all o 111 I■ Y�.� I I . I ��► Unpdvu{q Pa�d7iec I - AF PC rte.� ,B.•. ! ll.,✓_ -Mb 1,711 t i f✓ �t* �s Nl X19 �• �� 1✓��• �\ � f� [� �^�.�?��II` ;t fj r-�:. . �\ J`, ' ��►° (�/ e" - ��l bpi _ C` � „" l` ` .. ' WIS JAW bi a' i 0 I� i•,r til it .. ..rn^iF 1 r. 17 lzi T! 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