Attachment 21
Los Gatos Planning
Commissioners:
APPEARANCE S:
Kendra Burch, Chair
Mary Badame, Vice Chair
Charles Erekson
Melanie Hanssen
Matthew Hudes
D. Michael Kane
Tom O'Donnell
Town Manager: Laurel Prevetti
Community Development
Director:
Town Attorney:
Transcribed by:
Joel Paulson
Robert Schultz
Vicki L. Blandin
(510) 337-1558
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PROCEEDING S:
CHAIR BURCH: We are now considering Item 5, Town
Code Amendment Application A-15-005, considering amendments
to Section 29.10.150 of Chapter 29, Zoning Regulations, to
revise the parking requirements for restaurants. We are
again being asked to forward a recommendation to the Town
Council.
Ms. Renn, I understand that you'll again be
giving us the Staff Report this evening
MONICA RENN: I will be, thank you. We did
receive some communication after the deadline today. Joel
has that available; he's going to pass that out to you.
Actually, I believe it addresses a little bit about the
last conversation, and mostly about the conversation that
we're going to have right now. There are also additional
copies of that letter that are on the bench over there, if
anybody in the audience would like to read it.
So good evening, I'm Monica Renn again, Economic
Vitality Manager.
The discussion that you have before you, Item 5,
is looking at the parking requirements for restaurants.
Currently we use parking requirements as a way to allocate
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seating maximums within restaurants, and this discussion is
about decoupling the relationship between parking spaces
and restaurant seating capacity. Again, the Council did
discuss this on December 15, 2015. It came up for the first
time at the October 6, 2015 meeting, and then was fully
discussed on December 15th.
The Council came to the conclusion that they did
feel that it would be a good idea to decouple, but wasn't
sure what the best mechanism was then to allocate seats
within a restaurant. That could be square footage, it could
be fire occupancy, or it could be another metric of
parking, a different ratio.
We did quite a bit of benchmarking all over the
State of California, and found that it's pretty mixed what
different jurisdictions do. Those that are more progressive
tend to do just fire occupancy, so it would be like a
building code. Some will also do a specific square footage.
The fire occupancy code is roughly one per 15 square feet,
and we've had people do anything from one to 40, to one to
about 75 square feet for seats.
We do have a slide that we're working on. I'm
sorry for the technical difficulties, but it does present
to you some options, and some hypotheticals for different
sized restaurants, and what the seating capacities would
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look like based on various square footages for the parking,
as well as fire.
Can I answer any questions while we work on
getting that laptop to work?
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Hanssen, and
Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: If I understood, the slide
you're going to have is going to give us an idea of what it
would look like before and after? Because probably the
biggest question is we don't have a way of knowing, other
than... And if you look at these jurisdictions, they're all
over the map. There's an equal number that have the seats
per parking, and the other ones that have square footage,
and there wasn't any clear trend. Then the ones that use
the fire safety code were not even in Santa Clara County,
which I think Council pointed out, so it would help to have
some more clarity.
CHAIR BURCH: Do you want to look at the slide,
Commissioner Erekson, or do you want to go ahead and ask
your question?
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I have a really quick,
simple question that Ms. Renn will know the answer to.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay.
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COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Can you remind me; in the
building fire codes is it one per 15 in the seating area,
or the entire square footage of the building?
MONICA RENN: It's dining area.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: That's what my
recollection was, but that wasn't clear.
MONICA RENN: So here's the chart I made. The top
three slots show you what we currently allow. We allow four
seats for every parking space in the C-2, which is
downtown, and that's if the restaurant does not have a
separate bar. If it does have a separate bar, then it goes
to three to one. Then outside of downtown we also used the
three to one space.
The bottom, then, gives you an idea of what the
parking space credits are, because originally they're based
on square footage, and from that calculation we then take
the parking space credits and calculate out the number of
seats that somebody could have, so that's why there's that
bottom portion that lets you know what the square footage
to parking is.
The following lines, the first one would be fire
occupancy, so obviously that would be the most lenient,
because it's about how many people can be in that building,
and it's approximately one to 15 square feet.
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Then we've done for three different size
restaurants, what that would look like at one for 25, one
for 40, and so on, just to give you an idea of order of
magnitude based on square footage.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I apologize. I know you
just explained it, but the numbers under the 1,000, 1,800,
and 2,300 are the number of people out, or number of
parking spaces that you would need to have?
MONICA RENN: In the green, it's number of seats.
So if I had a 1,000 square foot restaurant and we did it by
fire occupancy, I could have 67 seats. Would the restaurant
have 67 seats? We don't know. They still have to be ADA
compliant, they still have to be able to have the flow in
and out, but that's what the fire code would say.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: About how many seats they
could have?
MONICA RENN: Right.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: One of the items we
received attached to tonight, or subsequent to the time was
a question of things like how crowded is downtown right
now? How would this impact that? I mean we all live there,
and go out to dinner and all that, and some nights it's
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very, very tough to get a parking spot. What impact would
this have?
You can see, the point of this all is to
liberalize the number of seats available, which of course
means the traffic increases, I think. And then the question
becomes what's the impact of that? I mean I think the fire
code is crazy, as far parking is concerned, but if you went
to one seat per 75 square foot, you'd get 13, and one seat
per 100, you go back to where you were when it was three
seats per one space.
There I think you've just got to figure out what
does that mean as far a net increase in traffic, because
we've had a lot of parking problems in town and we've had
people come in and say we need a special ordinance, which
they got, allowing valet parking.
Now we need another change, all of which I think
will increase traffic, and the bottom line is will that
function? And so I think the one letter we received tonight
was could we have some breakdowns on those things? And
while we have this breakdown, I don't think we have the
breakdowns that were requested in Lee Quintana's letter to
us. Have you seen that letter?
MONICA RENN: I have seen that letter.
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Maybe I'm missing
something, but does this purport to respond to all those
issues?
MONICA RENN: No. That request came in on Monday.
First, we don't typically go out and count seats in
restaurants; that's something that would be like code
compliance. If we received a complaint that there was
someone over their seats, we would go out and do that, but
we wouldn't do that type of proactive enforcement.
We also don't have the bandwidth of the Staff to
pull together that type of information in two days, to go
out and count seats in 20 restaurants and figure out how
many they were issued. A lot of CUPs, and you know, run
with the land, so maybe the CUP had been issued 30 years
ago, but the restaurant is a year old.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Everybody made the
point, and I think it's a correct point, that very few
people pay attention to what their limitations are, and the
answer to that is well, we just don't enforce it,
basically. So I guess if we don't enforce what we've got,
what leads us to believe we will enforce things when we
change it? My observation is that people who have a use
permit for a bar have more seats than they're allowed. If
you looked at the number of seats versus what their permits
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have, they're somewhere in that chart, but they aren't
where we think they would be, and we don't know that.
So now we're saying everybody increase it. I'm
troubled by that, because the Town has consistently refused
to enforce the use permits that we have granted, and now
they're saying, or somebody is saying, change it all, and I
guess unless and until somebody enforces what we've done in
the past, I don't know the impacts.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Badame.
VICE CHAIR BADAME: My questions is there's a
concession that many restaurants are operating out of
compliance, in fact it's noted in Exhibit 3, Attachment 3.
If they are out of compliance, my question to you is is it
impacting the retailers, and if so, are they making
complaints to the Town? Are you getting any complaints? So
is it a matter of we're not acting on the complaints, or
are we just not getting any complaints to refer to code
enforcement?
MONICA RENN: We have not received any complaints
on seating. In fact, we have people who actually will
adjust their hours based on the restaurant that's closest
to them and their busy time, because they want to capture
those people while they're waiting for their tables to be
ready. Actually the only feedback I've heard from stores
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is, "I actually stay later on Friday night, because I know
that they're going to have a wait and I can get those
shoppers here." Again, dining is one thing, that
experience. You can't get it online, you can't have it
delivered, so that's what we see people coming downtown
for, and then they stay to shop.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you, Ms. Renn. Commissioner
Hudes, and then I'm going to open this up to public
comment.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I had a question about the
benchmarking and how we moved from the numbers in the
benchmarking to the 300 or 235 square feet? When I look at
the benchmarks, for the ones that do it on the basis of
square footage, I get an average of 109 square feet, one
space per 109 square feet on average of the nine of so that
do it that way. How did we jump to 300 from that if we did
the benchmarking?
MONICA RENN: That's the square footage that's
currently in our code for all commercial spaces, so if you
have a shop or a restaurant, you have to provide one space
for every 300 square feet of your commercial space.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Follow up, please. The
benchmarking was done on restaurants, is that correct?
MONICA RENN: That's correct.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: So that's I think the
apples -to -apples comparison.
MONICA RENN: It's actually a backwards
calculation. If we have Space A that is 1,000 square feet,
it would require 3.33 parking spaces. If Space A then comes
in for a Conditional Use Permit to open a restaurant, we
would say you have 3.33 parking spaces, and you want a
separate bar, so now you can only have ten seats. It's a
backwards calculation basically, and that's why it's there.
The square footage per parking space is not
something that is in front of you tonight for
consideration. Does that make a little more sense?
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Yes, thank you.
CHAIR BURCH: Yeah, it does. I'm going to open
this up for public comments now, and then we can come back
and have some more questions of Staff and discussion.
The first card I have is Jason Farwell. You'll
have three minutes, and please make sure you pull the
microphone up and state your name for the record.
JASON FARWELL: Thank you, Madam Chair. Jason
Farwell, 18 Park Avenue.
This is a really, really important subject, and I
think from my perspective Fire, the occupancy, is the best
measure mark for determining the number of seats.
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I think as you look at the existing restaurants
in town, they already are utilizing their available space.
It's really a safety issue in my mind, and what each
premises can handle.
I think also these restaurants here in town are a
big component to and help support our retailers. I think to
continue to restrict our restaurants with these parking
requirements doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The
downtown is struggling. Restaurants in downtown are down
20-30% year over year, so if you go in and talk to the
owners, they're struggling. Talk to the retailers, they're
struggling. People are not coming to Los Gatos anymore. I
go downtown in the evenings, and let me tell you, it's not
difficult to find a parking space most evenings.
Again, I think enforcement through Fire. Fire
typically makes an inspection of each premise on a yearly
basis. What better opportunity for Fire to determine
whether or not somebody is in compliance with their seating
requirements? I think it's a perfect opportunity. The Town
certainly is not doing that. They don't have the Staff to
do it, and I don't think they should be harassing the
business community in order to determine what is best for
their premises. Each individual business owner should be
able to establish what is the best use for their space, and
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allocate the seating in a safe and responsible manner, and
let the patrons come and support their business.
A lot of empty seats in our restaurants downtown,
so to the extent you've got empty seats in one restaurant,
let the other people fill the restaurants that they want to
go to. We have good restaurants and bad restaurants. Let's
let the ones that are successful, be successful. Thank you.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you. Any questions for the
speaker? No? Thank you. Alex Hult.
ALEX HULT: Good evening, Commission. I'm Alex
Hult; I'm the owner of Hult's Restaurant in Los Gatos. I'm
also the president for the Chamber of Commerce.
I just wanted to talk briefly about this little
thing that we're talking about right now. I think that
we're talking about something that we're going to make some
changes to potentially, and we're voting maybe today or
making a recommendation, to enforce new rules. But the
problem is we already have rules, and no one follows them.
I own a restaurant, and I have not once had
anyone question how many seats I have, how many bar stools.
The only thing that's important is that you're following
ADA compliance; that get's checked of course when they do
the building permit.
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Every restaurateur that I know, which is a lot,
they're already using the space that they have. Manresa is
going to have a lot of room between the tables. So is me.
So are other restaurants that are a certain type of
restaurant. Andale and other places where it's a little bit
more fast food, burritos, tacos, it's going to be a little
bit faster turnover, it's a different type of restaurant,
they can squeeze in the tables a little bit closer, because
it doesn't really matter, because people are having a
different expectation when they're paying $9 versus $30 for
entree.
So we're kind of talking about two things that
are a little bit not making sense to me. You made a great
point, Commissioner O'Donnell, that we are talking about
making a change to new rules when we currently have rules
that no one follows, and that doesn't make any sense. Isn't
it better to just find something that makes perfect sense,
like Mr. Farwell said, the fire inspector comes out once a
year? You have to pay the $50, you have to have him walk
through everything and make sure you're doing everything
right, they quickly count the seats and tell you yeah,
you're doing good, this is safety, ADA compliance, fire,
everything is perfect, and the restaurant will figure out
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their ways for how many seats, how many tables, they will
fit in each restaurant.
It's not going to increase traffic at all,
because restaurants are currently already maximizing their
space, because it's the only way to survive, it's the only
way to pay your bills. We're literally running with 8-120
margins on the bottom line, and if we don't utilize the
space that we have, there' no way to make money; it's
impossible. I've worked 10-15 hour days every single day
for the last two years, and I've still yet to make money,
so it's a very hard business that we choose. We do it
because we love it, and to limit us, I don't think it's the
right move.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you. Any questions?
Commissioner O'Donnell, then Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I love your restaurant.
But what I want to understand here, because we agree on a
lot, but it appears to me that you're saying you could fill
your restaurant now under our present rules. You say nobody
checks, but nobody has ever told you stop filling your
restaurant, so apparently filling your restaurant is
unrelated to the present parking regulations, is that
correct?
ALEX HULT: Correct.
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: So changing the parking
regulations in essence shouldn't affect you, but yet you're
asking us to change the parking regulations. Why is that?
ALEX HULT: No, to me it just doesn't make sense
to have rules that no one follows, that's the only thing. I
think we should make sure that the business community gets
as many opportunities as we can to run a business, and
that's what I think we're currently doing, and making it
tighter or making it loser is not really anything that
matters. I think the point is that people are going to do
what they have to do to survive, and I think we should let
them. And I think out of these options, the only common
sense option is to do it by fire code.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: You understand the fire
code has nothing to do with parking; it has to do with
buildings burning down and people getting out of the
building?
ALEX HULT: Yes.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: So you want us to impose
a restriction that has nothing to do with parking on a
parking issue, is that right?
ALEX HULT: I don't think parking has anything to
do with how many customers I should be able to seat in my
restaurant, because there are going to be the same amount
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of parking spots today as tomorrow, and however good food I
serve is going to dictate how busy my restaurant is and how
much space each guest is going to have, and I'm not going
to add a single seat if this gets approved, not one. I
don't need to, because I am already putting the seats that
I need to run my business, and if I were to count the
seats, I might be like five or ten over right now, and I
know other restaurants that are a lot more over already,
but they would not add any more seats, because there is
nowhere to put them.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I agree with you, so
that's why I keep wondering why do people want to change if
you're telling me they've got as many seats as they need
and their job is to fill them, and yet two of you
representing really the local community, and I have a lot
of respect for that, say nevertheless, we should change
something, and I'm just trying to find the reason why we
should change something.
ALEX HULT: The reason why I think we should
change it is right now there are a lot of restaurants that
are out of compliance, and there is no point of having
rules if you're not going to follow them, and I don't think
we should make it harder to do business in Los Gatos,
because we're already losing businesses left and right. We
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want to make it flourish and make it come back and become
the new Campbell, and the only way to do that is to make
the rules easier to understand, easier to follow, and I
think the fire code is the one that makes sense.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I too like your
restaurant, and as long as you don't add lutefisk to the
menu, I'll still keep coming.
Do you have a sense, Mr. Hult, of how many square
feet per seat you have in your restaurant? So how close are
you to 15? That's an unfair question to ask you off the top
of your head, but do you have a sense?
ALEX HULT: I can only make an estimate. My space
is 4,300. I think about 2,000 of that is dining area, and I
have 114 seats approved, so if you do the math quickly...
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: One to 20, maybe.
ALEX HULT: Something like that.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Okay, thanks. That's
great.
CHAIR BURCH: Any other questions? No? Thank you.
Next speaker is Jak Van Nada.
JAK VAN NADA: Good evening, my name is Jak Van
Nada.
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I became more interested in local politics about
four years ago. Though there are always problems and
challenges to resolve, three of the biggest issues that I
hear repeatedly have been traffic, school crowding, and
lack of parking downtown.
It would seem to me that all proposed changes to
the way things are must be measured by the increased
benefits those changes would make to the residents of Los
Gatos. The way I read the Staff Report, the main
consideration is to give business greater flexibility to
adjust to a changing environment, and thus, Los Gatos
becomes more business friendly.
It would seem to me that there are two
fundamentals to consider, each with it's own subcategories.
One: What is the advantage of this change to the citizens
of Los Gatos? Two: What are the disadvantages to the
citizens of Los Gatos? Ultimately there should be a
community benefit that exceeds the existing benefits of the
project.
The advantages that I do see would be One: The
potential of increased sales tax revenues to the Town. Two:
the ambiance of sitting outside versus inside, which may be
subjective, but it might increase business and it might
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increase tax revenues. Three: It may make Los Gatos seem
more alive.
The disadvantages that I see would be One: An
increased need for parking. Lyft nor Uber have not resolved
current parking issues. Two: More traffic, a problem that
is currently unresolvable with our restricted
infrastructure. Three: The net increased sales tax revenue
has to be weighed against the increased cost of police and
emergency services that are a product of increased
restaurant and bar activity.
We need to know that there is a significant
benefit in terms of dollars for the costs that we'll incur
as residents. I don't have an issue at all with the change
in seating if it does not impact the residents of Los
Gatos. Currently, we don't have any idea about the physical
impacts, and few measures, if any, of subjective gains.
Potential solutions to our parking problems are,
One: The Town has taken steps to help the parking situation
by receiving bids for proposals on a parking, housing, and
a retail facility. Two: We are currently studying the use
of new technology for guiding drivers to empty parking
spaces.
However, the benefit of these fixes are years
off. Why would you want to create more problems before we
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solve the current problems we already have? How are we, the
long-term citizens of Los Gatos, going to benefit from
adding more seating? The net seems to be to bring on the
pain first and then hope that the attempts to relieve
parking issues will solve the problems later.
If you're going to create changes for us, please
create the solutions coincidentally with the changes you
make. That way the merchants and Los Gatos residents can
both benefit from these proposed changes. Thank you.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you. Any questions for the
speaker? No? Thank you. Lee Quintana is the next speaker.
LEE QUINTANA: Lee Quintana. I'm going to request
that the Planning Commission consider continuing this item.
As I stated in my email to Staff, I think the
code revisions involved both economic vitality and planning
issues. I would add to that it also involves the potential
for increasing existing parking deficits, increasing
traffic, and increasing parking spillover farther into the
neighborhood surrounding downtown and possibly other
business centers.
I'm sorry to be negative, but it is my opinion
that the Staff Report does not present a balance of these
three interests, but is weighted on the side of economic
vitality and the business community. Additional information
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is necessary for the public to provide informed responses
to the proposed revisions, whether they be positive or
negative responses, and it is also necessary for the
Planning Commission and Town Council to make informed
decisions and balanced recommendations that will benefit
not only the business community, but the residents that
support our local businesses.
At this point I want to mention that was the
response that I got from my email to the Town, which is not
included in your packet. It therefore blows my mind that
rather than providing the requested information, Staff's
report was to turn the responsibility for doing the
research and generating the requested information back to
me, much like when a doctor plays blame the patient.
Although I do not think it's the public's
responsibility to provide this information, I'm willing to
participate in the research, however, given the time of the
Staff's response to me, and my own time constraints, I was
not able to provide that information tonight.
In addition, the information that the Staff's
email to me suggested was available on the Town's website
is not all available on the Town's website.
I therefore request a continuance to allow time
to gather the information, as well as time to better reach
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out to Town residents who are also stakeholders in this.
Businesses were reached out to, but not with the same
degree as Town residents.
In addition, I would like to support what Jak Van
Nada said, and both letters from Larry Arzie and from Paul
G.
I think more information is necessary for an
informed decision. We all live in this town, and we need to
balance the needs of the residents and the businesses. We
don't have more parking. If restaurants aren't meeting the
codes, perhaps we need to enforce them.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Kane.
COMMISSIONER KANE: Ms. Quintana, if you're
asking for a continuance, give me a reason. The question is
what specific information do you want that you didn't get,
and how would it help us?
LEE QUINTANA: Read my email to the Town.
COMMISSIONER KANE: I did.
LEE QUINTANA: I don't think we have sufficient
information, specifically of the downtown, to understand
the differences between what the CUPs that all these
restaurants agreed to when they were issued, and the actual
seating that they have, and what that does to the
difference between the parking spaces that they have credit
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for and the parking spaces they would need, i.e. what is
the impact of the noncompliance of restaurants on the
parking problems that the Town has? And the more parking
deficits that there are, the more there's pressure in
surrounding neighborhoods to have special permits that
prohibit parking except for residents, which then pushes
the problem farther out to other places.
COMMISSIONER KANE: My question was what specific
information do you want? And what you said was I want to
have a survey of seats that were permitted and seats that
actually exist. Is that correct?
LEE QUINTANA: Actually, you know what? I don't
have a copy right here with my email.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Kane, are you just
looking for a yes or no answer?
COMMISSIONER KANE: Yes.
LEE QUINTANA: What was the question? It wasn't a
yes or no question.
COMMISSIONER KANE: The second one was. The first
one was what information do you want? Your answer was you
want more information about the amount of seats that are
being used versus the amount of seats that were approved,
and then you want to discuss the support of that.
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LEE QUINTANA: In my email I requested maximum
seating allowed under current CUPs, the number of seats
currently provided by the restaurant, the number of parking
spaces required per current code, the number of credits in
the Parking District or onsite parking, the maximum seating
allowed under the proposed Fire Code, the maximum seating
allowed using a square footage formula, and this is
specific to restaurants in the downtown. I think I made the
request that it be for the 20 most recent restaurants that
have been approved by a CUP, and to provide a table of
downtown sites that have the potential to intensify based
on their existing parking credits, or that have the
potential to add square footage, which would therefore
require additional parking spaces.
I think all that information is important in
making an informed decision, and also, I believe that as
with the last item that came before you, that's one piece
of the puzzle with the downtown, this is another piece of
the puzzle, or problem, with the downtown. Maybe we need to
look at it all together, not piecemeal. Thank you.
COMMISSIONER KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR BURCH: Any other questions? No. Thank you.
Michael Strahs. Mr. Strahs, you'll have three minutes.
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Make sure you pull that microphone up and introduce
yourself.
MICHAEL STRAHS: Thank you very much.
Commissioners and Staff, my name is Michael Strahs. I am a
Town resident, but I'm actually here tonight in my
professional capacity as Director of Development for
Federal Realty Investment Trust, best known in the south
bay for owning and developing Santana Row, which has
obviously come up a number of times this evening. We also
own Old Town Center here in the town through one of our
affiliate entities, and also manage King's Court with
Lundardi's.
I wanted to comment on the concept of divorcing
restaurant seating from parking stall counts, and I'm here
with great deference to Staff and to all the great work
that the Staff here does. It's atypical for us as an
institutional owner to comment publicly on an issue like
this, but this was important and it just came to our
attention, so we wanted to put our thoughts out there, and
my personal thoughts as well.
It's not something that we can support at this
time. The way we look at this is this is not a seating
issue; this is a parking issue. Maybe I'm misunderstanding
exactly what's happening here, but I don't see how it
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wouldn't lead to increased congestion and parking demand.
That's the first point.
Number two; we are a property owner that has
parking facilities adjacent to our retail centers. At Old
Town Center we have two lots, and we also have significant
phantom inventory. We did participate in the Parking
Assessment District back in the day and have about 150
phantom stalls that we've purchased and have available for
out tenants to use.
I think it's also a practical matter that parking
should correlate with the number of seats. If there are
more seats, there are more people who can be in a
particular establishment at a certain time, and more times
than not in the world in which we live, and here in the
Town, those people drive, and they have to have somewhere
to park, so it feels like increasing the density in the
restaurants here in the Town would absolutely lead to
increased congestion.
The last quick point is that the idea of an
equivalency of parking requirements for retail and for
restaurant seems misguided to us. In my experience it's
atypical, except for a shopping center rate. In a lot of
jurisdictions there is a shopping center rate, but smaller,
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single establishments would typically need to park to a
higher ratio. Thank you very much.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you. Are there any questions?
No? Thank you. Our next speaker is Angelina Doerner.
ANGELINA DOERNER: Hello, I'm Angelina Doerner,
proud resident of the Almond Grove.
I wasn't going to speak tonight, but I thought
I'd start off with since I started coming to these Planning
Commissions I've learned an awful lot, and I'm still
confused about an awful lot. I started coming about 18
months ago, and the craziness that some of the seating
versus parking discussions that has gone on has just been
literally crazy, especially with the new establishment on
Los Gatos Boulevard and Blossom Hill.
But we're talking about downtown. I know that
something needs to be done with the current calculations or
whatever, but what bothers me is that the common thread
here from the businesses or the restaurants and bars is
that we're breaking the rules, so get rid of the rules. We
just have not been enforcing things, and I feel that it's a
real issue, and not having a control point.
Are we having more parking problems because
people are breaking the rules, and therefore maybe the
conditions in the CUP and what we currently have in place
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do make sense? Or are they somewhat following the rules,
and we still have parking problems? We need to know that.
We need to have a better understanding of what is really
causing some of the issues in our downtown area.
The other thing is that valet parking was just
reviewed and just passed at the end of this last year, and
the whole reason for the valet parking consideration was
because there is no parking, and so the increasing of
turnover of the restaurant and the use of existing space
was for valet parking, and it made sense, and it could be
quantified if someone tried it. I haven't heard any results
from any people other than Mr. Hult, who actually brought
that forward. What other restaurants and bars have tried
some of these other things that have come up and have
already been approved and vetted by you and by the Town
Council?
The other thing is that they want to serve, but
parking be darned. So we need valet parking, because
parking is an issue, but we want to serve more, but we
don't want to hear about parking. They are intermingled.
They have to be handled collectively.
The other thing that I just waned to bring up is
that there have been a lot of complaints, in the last six
to nine months especially, from retail owners at Town
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Council meeting's verbal communications, talking about the
flow -over from bars and restaurants, people smoking outside
the back doors, people peeing on the front windows. You
name it, there have been a lot, a lot, of complaints, more
than I was aware of, and I live downtown. So I just really
think the impact on the surrounding retail organizations
have got to be considered. The better restaurants don't
have televisions. Those with televisions, you're talking
about all of the football games, basketball games, and
everything else. The increased business will be affecting
those retail operations. Thank you.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you. Any questions? No. Don
Capobres. Oh, no? Okay, sorry. Larry Arzie.
LARRY ARZIE: Commissioner Erekson thinks I'm
old.
Planning Commission, our current version of tying
seating to parking started 30 years ago through the Parking
District ordinances. It was meant to fairly provide parking
for downtown shoppers and the business community. These
regulations, codified by bonds to build more parking
infrastructure, was agreed upon by the Town, restaurants,
small business, and commercial property owners.
In my mind, this is a contract. For the Town to
change the rules without providing more parking is just not
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acceptable. Just because we don't follow the regulations
doesn't mean we have to change them. These regulations work
when we want them to work, so save them.
So why are we reconsidering them without adding
more parking? Decoupling seating from parking is a current
conversation by Staff and restaurants only, because there
is no way they can increase seating without providing more
parking, or without consent of Town Council.
Decoupling parking from seating would be the
ultimate betrayal to the community, making it easier to add
seats without planning new parking and infrastructure, and
serves to only benefit the most intense users of parking,
and that is restaurants, certainly not small retailers.
Decoupling may work for areas outside the Central Business
District, but to intensify the CBD without any more parking
is just not good planning.
I didn't cover money. Of course decoupling the
parking from seating will increase restaurants' bottom line
and provide more tax revenue, but most of all, how will it
benefit the non -restaurant uses? Non -restaurant businesses
and property owners will be affected the most, not just
because there will be less parking for their clients or
customers, but they are at a disadvantage in that an
inadequate change means they paid an obvious percentage
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more for parking than restaurants. Changing the Parking
District regulation shortchanges the majority of property
owners.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you. Any questions?
Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Just for the record, I
have great respect for my elders.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you for that. I do not have
any other speaker cards. I don't see anyone else coming up,
so I'm going to close the public portion of this.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Madam Chair?
CHAIR BURCH: Yes.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: May I ask a question of
you and whether this is permissible? I actually have a
question of the gentleman from Federal Realty Trust that I
would like to ask. Is it possible to have him return to the
podium for me to ask him the question?
CHAIR BURCH: Yeah, I am fine with that. I am
going to ask when you come up though to restate your name
for the record.
MICHAEL STRAHS: Sure. My name is Michael Strahs.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Given the breadth of your
experience and the breadth of your company, are there
industry standards that would help inform us of this
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question? What's the average length of time that someone
stays in a retail store versus the average length of time
that one would stay in a restaurant? That is implication
for parking, obviously.
And are there industry standards that help us
understand when I'm in a location like a downtown area; do
I tend to go to the restaurant and only stay at the
restaurant? If I go to a retail establishment, do I tend to
on the average visit four of them, two of them, six of
them?
Are there industry standards that you would have
to be aware of in order to plan when you're planning where
you have... Because a lot of your locations, like they are
here, have their own parking, so you not only need to meet
the standards of whatever the Town has, but from a
practical standpoint you need to provide enough parking, no
matter what those standards are, to make the businesses
work, which may dictate to you even more than what the Town
would require.
You understand the question I'm asking? How do we
think about, and are there industry standards that would
help inform us thinking about, those issues?
MICHAEL STRAHS: Commissioner, that's a tough
question to answer. I would address it this way. Number
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one, I'd be interested in Staff's response to the same
question, but I would say...
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I intend to ask them too.
MICHAEL STRAHS: Okay. I would say that it really
depends on the sort of restaurant and the sort of business
as to how long the average customer stays. I mean it's a
classic business school through -put versus... It's a tough
question.
I would say that typically, at least in my
experience, the way it's addressed is through the parking
requirements where typically a retail use would have a
lower requirement than a restaurant. For example, when we
start looking at a piece of property we would start with an
assumption of four spaces per 1,000 square feet for retail,
and call it ten per restaurant.
Now, implicit in that is a mix of restaurants and
a mix of retail, and it would be tough to drill down to
such a specific set of uses in order to really consider how
long somebody is staying in a particular category of
business, so it's a tough question to answer, but it's
exactly the right way to be thinking about the complexity
of this issue. I'm not sure if I addressed your question.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: You addressed it the best
you could, so yes. The examples you talked about in terms
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of number of parking for 1,000 square feet and different
kinds of ones presumably are ground in some assumptions
about how long people stay in average things, one of the
things that you would take into effect if you were doing
that, I assume. So that's the kind of industry standard
that I was actually interested in.
MICHAEL STRAHS: Right, and I would say it's
across the board, but that's the most standard kind of
metric that I can think of. The trend is that the rates are
going down, which causes property owners and developers to
want to over -park their centers relative to code, but
that's the best standard that I can volunteer.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Thank you very much, and
thank you, Chair Burch.
CHAIR BURCH: Don't leave. I think we may have
another question for you. Commissioner O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I just wanted to make
sure I understood one part of your answer. I think you said
sort of as a rule of thumb four on retail, four parking
spaces per I don't know if it was 1,000 square foot.
MICHAEL STRAHS: A thousand square feet of
retail.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: But then I thought you
said ten for restaurant. Did you say that?
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MICHAEL STRAHS: That's the metric that we see
most often. Generally the idea is that you need to park
restaurants at a higher rate than retail, whether it be
because people stay longer, or you can pack in more people.
You don't typically go into a retail store —at least if it's
not the Apple store —and you're shoulder to shoulder with
someone, so there's a lot baked into that.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: So that's tougher than
anything we have up there on the board then, the ten,
right? Ten per 1,000?
MICHAEL STRAHS: It's hard to go in between
schemes, I guess, but I would expect that certainly it
would be. I don't think anybody could actually pack enough
seats in to really meet the fire occupancy.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: That's fine. Thank you
very much.
CHAIR BURCH: All right, thank you. Now I'm
really closing the public portion of this item, and I am
going to suggest to my fellow commissioners, because I have
a hunch this is going to be a bit of a conversation, that
we go ahead and take a quick five-minute break, and then
we'll come back and continue our discussion.
(INTERMISSION)
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CHAIR BURCH: I'm bringing the meeting back to
order. Thank you, everyone. My fellow Commissioners, if you
have any questions of Staff, comments. Commissioner
O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I've been trying to find
what it is we're trying to solve. I find out that
apparently some people believe the restaurants aren't full.
It's not clear to me how adding more parking will fill the
restaurants. I also find out that last month we needed
valet parking because there wasn't adequate parking, but
this month we should increase the number of people going to
restaurants, and it isn't quite clear to me why.
Normally when something comes before us, there's
a problem that needs to be solved. I have not identified
the problem. The two people who spoke said they have as
many seats as they want. Nobody who has appeared before us
said they need more seats. So this is a solution in search
of a problem.
I guess I'm mystified what we're supposed to do.
The choices are to take a fire code that is totally
unrelated to parking, has nothing to do with it, and say
we're going to apply that here, which makes zero sense. So
if somebody could identify what the problem is, maybe we
could find out...
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You know, if we went back to ground zero and said
what are your present permissions and we'll start with
there, we'd cut back a lot of seats in this town. Let's
assume that the Town has permitted 2,000 seats, and let's
further assume that there are 3,000 seats in this town, and
we said let's go back to what you're supposed to have,
2,000. Now we're going to increase that by 100, so now
you're going to have 2,200. That's a net decrease of 800. I
don't think that's going to solve their problem. But I
think everybody admits that nobody is paying a lot of
attention to the existing use permits.
I think what Lee Quintana asked for was just a
heck of a lot of work there. I'm not sure it's worth the
work, but if you did what she asked for I think you'd find
out that we're way over the permitted seats. You know, you
have to be really careful what you ask for, because if we
were to carefully analyze this problem the first thing I'd
like to know is what's permitted and what's in use? Because
you can't solve this until you find out what's going on,
and we don't know what's going on. We could take the use
permits that exist and add up the seats, but it would not
tell us what in fact is out there. We have been talking
about this for some years, and the Town says we don't have
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any enforcement Staff, and I believe that, but it doesn't
change it.
So I don't see what the problem is, and I don't
see how it is benefited by jamming more people into a
restaurant. So that's my thought.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay, I actually think that's a
very good place to jump off for our discussion. I'm going
to ask Ms. Renn, I don't think this came to us because
there was a problem in front of us, so if you could please
give us a little bit of background on the Council, the
reasoning behind their discussion, and then give us a quick
summary of what the current guidelines are, I think that
will help our discussion moving forward.
MONICA RENN: Thank you, that's exactly what I
was thinking, kind of the evolution of this.
There was not a specific problem identified. As
the conversations started, I believe they started around
formula and outdoor seating, and as the Outdoor Seating
Policy was considered by first the Policy Committee and
then by the Council, a couple of questions came up for
them.
One is if we allow someone to put a couple of
chairs outside, can we allow them to go over what their CUP
says? So then there was a discussion around that whole
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thing, if it's a beautiful day and we put three chairs
outside, does that now impact anything for them?
The next question that came up was in the face of
how retail restaurant experiences are changing. We're
seeing a lot of people shift to this model of one large
table like this one in front of us that may seat two or
three parties. Or maybe there is a couch with a fireplace.
Now what's a seat? Is the rim around the fireplace a seat?
Is that three -cushioned couch a seat for three people, a
seat for two people, or a seat for one?
Then you get into the conversation of if these
businesses start to change how they look and how they feel.
For example, we get a lot of requests for I want to have
this quick place to grab a bite to eat or a cup of coffee,
I don't want seats, I want a standup counter. Then we get
into are so many inches a seat, how many people are there,
is that a seat, is that not a seat?
How the conversation started to snowball, or
started to evolve, is how do we look at this globally? How
do we look at creating the most opportunity for someone to
come in and have a viable business that then creates the
synergy for people to stay and shop?
One thing I will point out is specifically in
downtown, and we saw this for our benchmarking too, is a
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lot of time people will have different regulations for
downtown versus outside of downtown. There's the idea
around that when you come into a downtown such as ours,
it's very rare that somebody comes for one thing. You may
come and have a drink somewhere, have dinner somewhere, you
may shop while you're waiting, and you may do a couple
things at one time.
Sure, people do come and park and go to a place
and leave, but the idea is that by creating this downtown,
there's more of a walkability, there's more of the idea
that people stay. So that was something else that the
Council talked about is people are kind of staying, what
does that look like? Do that one seat really equate to that
parking space?
So it wasn't necessarily one problem, it was the
evolution of all of these conversations that I believe
caused the Council to say let's look at it. How can we
create opportunity? I'm summarizing what I understand they
said. Instead of creating more complicated rules that fit
what our economy looks like right now, how do we create a
different kind of blanket opportunity for people to shape
what a business looks like as it changes?
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CHAIR BURCH: I don't think though you're done,
right? Are you going to give us a synopsis of what the
current regulations are then at the end of that?
MONICA RENN: Yes.
CHAIR BURCH: Thank you.
MONICA RENN: Currently the regulations are what
you see on those top three lines for seats in a restaurant.
Online there is the Conditional Use Permit chart that lists
the Conditional Use Permit for every food and dining
establishment, drinking establishment, in town, and from
there you can see what they're allowed.
For the downtown, for people who have purchased
more parking credits, they may be outside of that square
footage backwards calculation, because that property has
extra phantom parking spaces in the Assessment District.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Hanssen, Badame, and
then O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I was going back to the
benchmarking, because this is great work that you did,
because it's kind of helpful, and I was doing my own
comparison of what town are we most like. Maybe that's not
the right way to look at it, because maybe we don't want to
be like other towns, but the thing that was troubling me is
why we're even going down the path of uncoupling parking
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from seating at all, because I'm looking on here and
there's not a single jurisdiction in here that has done
that, other than these ones that are... Well, Sacramento,
Simi Valley, Lompoc, Redding... No, not even Redding. It
would trouble me to go that far absent compelling reason to
do so, especially given all the other discussion that we
heard.
I did have one question on the analysis. It said
downtown restaurants in San Jose do not require parking. Do
you know why that is?
MONICA RENN: Correct me if I'm wrong, it's just
that they can have the amount of seats... They don't have a
parking requirement, so it's not one spot for four seats;
they would be fire occupancy.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So they are the one part
of San Jose and also within Santa Clara County where they
haven't coupled parking to seating in the restaurant,
because all these other bullet points here do put
restrictions for parking tied to seating except for their
downtown restaurants, and they have a lot of street
parking, paid street parking, and parking garages there.
I was just curious. I watched part of the Council
discussion, but not all, but did that not come up as an
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issue? Because the benchmarking says that we would be going
to a place that very few have gone before.
MONICA RENN: That did come up, and if I remember
correctly the comment was, `Well, we don't necessarily need
to fit ourselves into a peg that already exists," and that
the desire was to decouple the seats, but the Council
really didn't clearly think about each path. We got the
sense that they wanted to go least restrictive, but they
wanted to give that to the Planning Commission to consider
and to really think through each of the options.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: A follow up question. One
of the side points related to this was does it make more
sense to tie parking to the square footage or the seats? I
thought there were some good points in the Staff Report,
given that the different formats of restaurants there isn't
necessarily the concept of seats as much in some of them.
That might argue in favor of switching from seats to square
footage, but I wasn't hearing the argument for abandoning a
tie to parking altogether.
MONICA RENN: It's interesting, if I may comment
on that. I have had at least one restaurant person come to
me and ask, 'So, if I were to remove all of the seats in my
restaurant and somehow change my service to a standup, like
a social party, at that point it wouldn't matter. I could
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have as many people as the fire code would let me." And
it's not that I had a good answer for them, but that is an
interesting thing to think: Once we provide the seat, does
that really change how long they stay? Maybe. The
difference between someone who's gone in for a cup of
coffee or a meal, it's all of those different things that I
think Commissioner Erekson was speaking about with the
gentleman from Federal; it just really depends on the type
of product in the place.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Kind of a follow up on
that. Supposing that the ultimate direction was to go in
the area of the square footage, given the other testimony
we heard tonight, if you have a higher end restaurant
they're actually going to have not as much in the square
footage as a fast food restaurant, so you kind of have to
have different standards for different kinds of
restaurants, I would think, if you were going to go down
that path. But then the seat thing is complicated too,
because some of those places won't have seats. That was all
my questions.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Badame.
VICE CHAIR BADAME: What I got out of your
summary was somewhat covered by Commissioner Hanssen, and
that is the reason this basically has come before us is
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because we have an evolution in dining and what actually
constitutes a seat, is that correct?
MONICA RENN: Yes, that's partially correct. Yes,
and that's part of the equation.
VICE CHAIR BADAME: So we almost have to look at
the types of restaurants and bars that we have in town and
the opportunity they might have, for example, lounge
furniture, or maybe just standing up around a table.
MONICA RENN: And I think part of this, that I
failed to mention in my synopsis of the Council, is the
other things that they really were driving to look for in
all of this conversation is simplifying things for
businesses. Simplifying permit processes, simplifying how
one person could understand. Oftentimes it takes us as
staff here a long time to really pick apart what the rules
are, and how can we expect an Applicant to pick that apart
and understand it when they have so much more going into
it? I think that's where the basis of a lot of this
conversation started for the Council, just that simplicity
piece.
VICE CHAIR BADAME: Thank you.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I still don't understand
the real problem, because I go out to dinner in town all
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the time, and if you posit your situation where there are
no seats, I'm not quite sure what you serve in that kind of
restaurant, but if it's a bar you have to have a
Conditional Use Permit, and if you have a Conditional Use
Permit you can limit the Conditional Use Permit so that it
is reasonable, so I don't think that's a problem.
Secondly, there's nobody in town that has a
restaurant that has no seats, because there are a lot of
old people like me that need a seat.
I'm still trying to find the problem. Last month
the problem was there was not adequate parking. Today the
restaurants aren't full, so I guess there's adequate
parking, because they're not full. But the rules are too
complex, and oh by the way, they're not following them
anyway, and we should change the rules. I guess I'd like to
know how far away from the rules are we presently?
How do we solve a problem that we don't
understand? To what extent are we beyond what we've
permitted? We have bars in this town that were never
permitted. We have seats in this town that were never
permitted. How many seats are permitted in this town, and
how many seats are there? Because if you want to solve a
problem, I guess you have to understand what you're
solving.
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This Commission didn't agree with the parking
issue last time. The Council said we know what we're doing,
and I'm sure they do, because that's their job. But last
month it was a different problem than it is this month, and
I don't think things change that fast.
Coupling and uncoupling, number one, as I said
before, the fire marshal's rules have nothing to do with a
restaurant, they have to do with life, survival, and
building survival in different uses. That's true, but it
has nothing to do with parking. The fire department doesn't
care how many parking spots you've got. They want to know
if they can get in the building and get out of the
building. So I don't see that that's relevant at all.
And then we say let's use square footage. We
could use square footage. You could use, for example, one
seat per 75 square feet; that's 13, which gets you down to
a seating allowance of three seats per one space. You can
call it X or you can call it Y. If it's the same thing it's
probably okay, but the problem doesn't seem to be with the
rules, the problem seems to be with the enforcement of the
rules. The Council has not talked about how we're going to
enforce the rules, nor have they talked about what the
baseline is today.
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I looked for the problem tonight. I haven't found
the problem, and to the extent they want to change that I
couldn't possibly go with the fire code, because it's
totally unrelated; it just doesn't make any sense.
So then you can get into one seat per 25 square
feet, which is 40 per 1,000? Or one seat per 40? That's 25
or whatever, all the way down to ten. I'd like to go down
to ten. That's kind of what it is today. That will make it
easier for people, because they know how many square feet
they've got.
So it isn't the problem of square footage, it's
the problem of how many customers per square footage. If
all we want to do is talk about square footage, we have no
testimony today on the relationship between that square
footage and parking, nor do we have any testimony today as
to the adequacy of the parking, except what the business
community told us last month, which was there's inadequate
parking.
I've also heard tonight that we're not filling
the seats, so how will it help us if we have more empty
seats? I'm just totally confused by what is before us
tonight, and I would certainly look to my fellow
commissioners to explain the problem to me and explain the
solution.
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CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Kane, and then I'm
going to ask a question.
COMMISSIONER KANE: I don't think there is a
problem in these documents. We have a 25-page verbatim
report of Town Council's meeting, and nowhere in there can
I find anybody stating a problem, with one exception.
They're not looking to us to solve a problem, they're
looking to us to give them a vetted consideration for what
standard shall we have, and what that does is when you
begin that process you get into two other problems.
One is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. To say it
another way, if it is broke and nobody cares, don't fix it.
Because that's what we've got when people are violating the
CUP and nobody is able to do anything about that. The
violations are obviously not heinous and Town -destructive,
or we would.
They simply want a clearer standard, a simple
standard, for determining the seating. The problems are, as
Councilperson Leonardis said, "We need a bigger bucket."
And so all the things we're talking about are going to come
back to the same spot. We need a parking structure on Main
Street, and that's what he said, and that's the one thing I
got out of these 25 pages. They talked a lot about the
process; Vice Mayor Sayoc did, on how to get it done. The
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Town Attorney was there; we'll ask him some questions
later.
I think they're only looking for a better
mousetrap, a simple, better mousetrap. At the end of that
is where do we put these cars anyway? And what, if
anything, shall we do about folks violating the CUP? I
think we can make this into a tempest in a teapot, or we
could just give them a recommendation, something
reasonable, whatever square footage is recommended, and
then give them the rest of the stuff about I think we need
a parking structure, and that would really help with
vitality, which is what both of these things are supposed
to be about: improving and increasing vitality. We need a
parking structure.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay, I'm going to ask a quick
question for conversation. In listening to Commissioner
O'Donnell and Commissioner Kane and some of the discussion,
I think there seems to be a feeling, although I haven't
heard everyone talk, that parking is already kind of an
issue downtown. I'm limiting my comments right now to
downtown; I'm not venturing out from that space right now.
But Council is saying this way we calculate it based on
seats to number of parking spaces is kind of difficult. So
you go to the extreme, fire code, which is never going to
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happen, or, if we're looking at the chart that has been
provided by Staff, do we want to say we're going to
uncouple it from seats, which is what Council seems to be
asking us to take a look at?
We're going to look at, for example, that top
line and say seating allowance of four seats per one space
without a separate bar. Okay, from now on if a restaurant
falls under that category, that category is now calculated
at one seat per 75 square feet. We really haven't changed
the seating; we just make it an easier calculation. Can we
look at that? And then if we say the next line, three seats
with a separate bar, now if it falls under that category
it's one seat per 100 square feet, and we basically are
just taking the seating out of that category and changing
it to square foot.
JOEL PAULSON: I think that was a question. That
was a question, correct?
CHAIR BURCH: It was a question for them, like
what's the read? So yeah, all the hands went up, it was
great. Hanssen, Erekson, Kane.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: The problem with that is
that it's uncoupling parking completely from the seating.
So what is the problem? Are you trying to determine how
many seats to have, or are we just going to disregard the
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parking thing entirely? Because as I was saying, all the
benchmarking, there's no one else doing that.
CHAIR BURCH: No, that's true. Again, I'm trying
to just get to a discussion with everybody. If we were
trying to look at this, and we didn't want to make a
change, how would be want to word it? What would your
suggestions be?
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Well, I mean if you were
going to switch what you tie parking to, you could switch
it from seats to square footage, just like the gentleman
from Federal Realty Trust said, ten spaces for 1,000 square
feet, or whatever the metric is that he used.
CHAIR BURCH: Maybe I totally just said all that
wrong. I think that's what I was trying to say.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: In looking at the slides
that Staff had, they were more oriented around not taking
parking off the table entirely versus changing the metric
by which you calculate parking as it ties to seating.
CHAIR BURCH: I think we all understand what's
broke. I was trying to come up with ideas and a discussion
on what would we start recommending. Commission Erekson,
then Commissioner Kane.
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COMMISSIONER EREKSON: With the indulgence of the
Chair, I have a couple of questions for Ms. Renn to be sure
that I understand what's being proposed.
So if I understand what's being proposed, and I'm
not commenting on whether I think it's a good idea or a bad
idea, but what I understand is being proposed is not doing
any relationship between the building code and parking. The
fire and building code relationship would have to do with
occupancy in the space under these proposed parking
requirements for an establishment. So I could have how many
receipts I wanted in a restaurant as long as it didn't
exceed the building fire code. Totally unrelated to what
parking requirement I have. The parking requirement would
become a simple mathematical calculation of taking whatever
the square footage is and dividing it by 300 square feet,
or whichever the appropriate thing is. So there's no
relationship between the building code and the parking
requirement, is that correct?
MONICA RENN: That's correct.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Okay. I wanted to be sure
I understood what the proposal is. I'm not saying it's
right or wrong, or I'm not putting a value on it. I wanted
to be sure that I understood what the proposal was.
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This may not be a question for you, it may be a
question for Joel, and so I'm happy for you to pass it to
him if you want to. Or he may want to pass it to Les White,
who knows?
It would seem to me we have the information for
all the square footage in the downtown area, for all the
buildings, in our records, is that correct? I would assume
that's generally correct?
JOEL PAULSON: We do have an idea using the
Parking Assessment District data, but it's not 100%
accurate. I guess we could go through every building
permit. We have done some benchmarking with square footage,
and Monica headed that up.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Here's why I was asking.
Let's assume for the moment that we had the best records we
would have, and we know or had an approximation of what the
square footage is, we could relatively easily then
calculate —forgetting for the moment about present CUP
requirements and present vested...the Parking District's —if
we were going to say we were going to start over from
ground zero, we could figure out, if we were going to
implement this, how many park spots we would need to have
downtown. It's a mathematical calculation that I assume
wouldn't be terribly complicated to do, assuming that we
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had the right square footages. Then we know how many
parking spaces we have in the downtown area, is that
correct? Or we know close?
JOEL PAULSON: Yes.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: So then we would know, we
would have some understanding, of what is the delta between
if this were adopted by the Town and we were to wipe out
everything and apply this, then we would need X number of
parking spots, and we have Y number, so that if this were
the standard the Town was going to use, then we would have
a quantifiable measure of whether we had adequate parking,
excessive parking, not very much parking, not enough
parking in the Town, which would at least give us some
sense of wow, if we applied this we might find that we
would be 25% short of the parking spots that we would need
if we applied this, which would then help us understand.
Or we have excess parking, which would be one
measure of helping us understand whether we have enough
parking in town by some standard, because I think while we
all have our own stories about whether there's adequate
parking or not in the downtown area, my sense is it's all
anecdotal and we don't really truly understand as a town,
either as business owners or users, whether we have enough
parking, or whether we have too much parking, whether we
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have adequate parking, or how short we are. Are we 500 low?
I'm not sure, so we need to figure out some way to do it.
A first starting point to evaluate this would be
to take a run at what if we applied this? Would we have
enough parking in downtown, or would we be 50% short of the
spaces we need? Which would be a good way to understand
whether or not this would even be a viable option, because
it's all hypothetical now, it seems to me.
CHAIR BURCH: Was that a question for Staff to
clarify, or more of a statement of what you think we need?
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: It was a comment after the
first question to Ms. Renn.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I normally very rarely correct
Commissioners, but I think it's important that the
statement is made correctly that with the benchmarking that
you've been provided, and if we did further benchmarking,
you would find that most towns and cities do not put
parking and seating together. You mentioned that we would
be the only ones that would be decoupling parking and
seating, and there are quite a few on there. The only two
that actually have parking and seating that are coupled
together are Los Altos and Campbell; all the other ones do
parking by square footage. The intent of this was not to
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decouple parking from square footage; it was to do the no
seating. There's only two on that benchmarking that I found
when I went through them, and so I wanted to make certain
that was clear, because I thought you were saying that we
would be the only ones besides San Jose that doesn't have
seating and parking put together.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Thank you for making that
clarification, Robert. One of the other slides that Monica
had said that there would be no parking in the equation. It
would be a means to calculate seats. It actually said the
Council is looking for ways to calculate seats versus... So
if I misunderstood what was on the slide, then fine.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Seating goes away with regard to
parking, but you have another formula that parking is tied
to square footage, which is what most jurisdictions do.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Right, and that's what I
was saying in the benchmarking. I didn't see any scenario,
whether it was tied to seating or to square footage, where
parking wasn't part of the equation in the ordinance. Yes,
that was what I was saying.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: But that's not what the draft is.
The draft is restaurants will be tied to square footage
just like retail and all the others ones are tied together,
on a square footage basis, not on a seating basis.
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CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Kane, then
Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER KANE: I'm about the make a motion,
then we beat it to death, because again, we're simply
forwarding a recommendation, and the recommendation is in
fact everything we've been saying, but we have all these
other things to say.
If we in fact adopted the language in Staff's
recommendation, would we be putting anybody out of
business? Would it take out five tables? Do we know that?
Do we know what we're doing? If we adopt this instead of
what we have, do we do harm to anybody in their existing
setup? Who said no?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Anybody that has a current CUP
will still stay in effect. If you already have in your CUP
how many seats you're allowed under that CUP, you vested
that amount, and so you couldn't go down from that if
somehow the calculation from a square footage standpoint
now, and the example is it's 300 square feet per parking
space, we're not going to recalculate that.
COMMISSIONER KANE: So they'd be grandfathered?
They'd be red circled?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Yes.
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COMMISSIONER KANE: Now we know that it doesn't
hurt anybody. Do we know if we adopt these new numbers,
would that restrict vitality or more businesses in town?
MONICA RENN: I don't know which new numbers
you're speaking of adopting.
COMMISSIONER KANE: Your proposal.
COMMISSIONER KANE: The proposal is the fire
occupancy in the amendment.
COMMISSIONER KANE: What? That's not the one I'm
looking at.
MONICA RENN: Right. The proposal is to decouple
seats from parking and to remain silent on the seating
capacity as we would with any retailer in town.
COMMISSIONER KANE: What you have are square foot
relations to seats.
MONICA RENN: Those are options for you to
discuss.
COMMISSIONER KANE: But it's your recommendation.
MONICA RENN: The recommendation attached is the
amendment to the Town Code.
COMMISSIONER KANE: Right.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: And what that does is a new
restaurant, they only have to provide parking by the square
footage, and how many seats they put in there are now
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regulated by the fire code, seating would not be a
requirement under the CUP, as opposed to when Yogurt & Love
came in, they had three parking spaces or whatever, I can't
remember the number, and so they were not...
Yogurt & Love is a good example, I think, to
bring up, because there's no seating in Yogurt & Love. They
have one little table, even though they probably could put
two more in and handle that fine, so people can't sit in
there, because they have coupled seating with parking.
COMMISSIONER KANE: With the understanding that
we are red circling, grandfathering, any existing
businesses and that it's your recommendation/interpretation
that these new words will not restrict vitality; it will
either maintain it or improve it, and if in fact that's a
fact, then I would make a motion that we send to Town
Council a recommendation for adoption of the amendments to
Section 29...
CHAIR BURCH: Hold on, Rob is over here waving.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I want to make certain though
that they're less restrictive. Obviously all the comments
that the public made about the traffic issues or impacts
are very important, and those are still the unknowns that
you've all talked about on this and whether there's more
information known, but certainly as to whether this affects
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current established businesses, no, it will have no effect
on them. It might allow them to have more seats, but it's
not going to allow them to come in and not have less. And
with new businesses that became restaurants, it certainly
is less restrictive on the amount of seats that they can
have under the current seating requirements.
COMMISSIONER KANE: And that's Council's intent,
to clarify and to improve the Business District and its
vitality. So for that reason...
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: (Inaudible) point of
information. (Inaudible) fire code occupancy (inaudible)
one seat per 15 square feet.
COMMISSIONER KANE: That's the second time I've
heard that. I don't understand. This is Staff's proposal.
It doesn't have fire occupancy on it.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: (Inaudible). I read this
too, and I don't read it that way. If I understand Staff,
you said the fire code, is that right?
JOEL PAULSON: That's correct.
CHAIR BURCH: So to clarify, is fire code one
parking space per 300 square feet, because he's reading...
JOEL PAULSON: Fire code is not one parking space
per 300 square feet.
CHAIR BURCH: So he's reading this.
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JOEL PAULSON: That's for the parking. We're
talking about seats. Seats would be determined based on
fire occupancy.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And that's what you've
got (inaudible) one seat per...
JOEL PAULSON: Fifteen square feet.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Well, it says one seat
per 15 square feet.
JOEL PAULSON: Correct.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: So that's 67 seats per
1,000 square feet.
JOEL PAULSON: That is possible.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: That's what your motion
is? You want to do that?
COMMISSIONER KANE: No, I want to adopt this
language that doesn't say fire code.
CHAIR BURCH: How about, Commissioner O'Donnell,
we let him finish his motion?
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: (Inaudible).
CHAIR BURCH: I know, but let's do that. Let's
follow procedure. I'd like you to please finish our motion,
and then we're going to open up for questions and
discussion.
COMMISSIONER KANE: Follow procedure? Radical.
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I recommend we send to Council recommendation for
adoption of the revisions as provided by Staff to Section
29.10.150, number of off-street spaces required. I find
there's no possibility that this project will have a
significant impact on the environment, therefore the
project is not subjected to CEQA. I make the required
finding that the Town Code zoning regulation amendments are
consistent with the General Plan and recommend forwarding a
recommendation to Town Council for adoption of the
amendments as provided in the Staff Report. Do I have a
second?
CHAIR BURCH: Do we have a second, or any
questions or comments concerning the motion? Commissioner
Hanssen, then Commissioner O'Donnell, and then Commissioner
Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I just had a question.
Getting to the actual text that was proposed on page three,
there's the aspect of changing from seating to square feet,
but it also says in this proposal that the same standard
would be applied to retail and restaurants, bars and
taverns. Now, that's a pretty different approach than what
we were seeing in some of the benchmarking that was done to
align the same square footage standard, and then even in
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the testimony that we had, that retail wouldn't normally
have as much need for parking as a restaurant would.
In going forward I just wanted to make sure that
we're all looking at the same thing, because there are two
changes in direction in here. One is the change from seats
to square feet, and the other one is to align the standard
relative to all retail, and I'm not sure if that's the
right thing to do or not, but I just wanted to make sure
that was clear.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Two things are being
done. One isn't readily apparent, but the decoupling means
we no longer worry about the seats, because the fire code
operates whether we do anything or not. The fire code is
the fire code, and the fire code says one seat per 15
square feet, so that's a vast change from what we presently
have. Vast change. The motion says let's do that.
The other thing it does is it imposes square
footage for a different purpose. I think what I had trouble
trying to find here was there's no mention of the
decoupling in the motion, I don't think, but the motion
implicitly is that we decouple, and then Section 29.10.150
talks about the number of off-street spaces required, not
the number of seats.
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So you could have a 1,000 square foot restaurant
with room for, I guess, 67 people in there, is that right?
JOEL PAULSON: That's correct.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: That's an order of
magnitude greater than we presently have, so I just want to
make sure the maker of the motion is aware of that.
CHAIR BURCH: I'm going to let Commissioner Kane
respond to that comment, but then we are going to
Commissioner Hudes, okay?
COMMISSIONER KANE: Yeah. Commissioner O'Donnell,
I don't immediately see the downside insofar as water will
seek its own level. We've had two or three restaurateurs
tell us I'm not going to crowd my people sitting shoulder
to shoulder, so the kind of place you go to will determine
the seating, and that will allow people with lower margins
and lower prices to do as well as people with higher
prices. You get a steak in one place and it's not like the
steak in another. You get a table in one place and it's not
going to be like a table in another. No self-respecting
restaurateur is going to put in 1,000 tables and nobody is
going to go. Yogi Berra said if they don't want to come
out, you can't make them.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Hudes.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: I had a question about
what's on page three, Section 29.10.150, paragraph sub 1
and 9.
CHAIR BURCH: Can I ask a question? This is
related to the motion?
COMMISSIONER HUDES: It is.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: The question is is that
changing the parking spaces that are required for
restaurants, bars, taverns and nightclubs over the existing
code?
JOEL PAULSON: Yes. Currently those are regulated
based on seats.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: So my question would be how
do we know that there is no traffic impact or other
economic impact since that change is included in there?
JOEL PAULSON: We don't have the economic impact,
and so obviously the economic impact would be the benefit
of potentially additional revenue if there were additional
seats added.
Traffic for downtown, generally those are multi -
stop. They're looked at from a traffic perspective, and
similar to shopping centers they accommodate a traffic
number that has a wide range of uses from retail to
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restaurant and personal service, so those are assumed to be
included. If that's some additional clarification as this
moves forward to Council that you want provided to Council,
that could be part of the direction.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Given that response that it
will have an impact, then I'm very concerned about choosing
that number tonight without understanding the impact that
it's going to have, and with the quick analysis that I did
earlier that it looked like the benchmarks were 109 square
feet per parking space, and this is 300 per parking space,
I'm concerned about choosing that number and I would have
difficulty in supporting the motion for that reason.
JOEL PAULSON: So depending on if we get a second
to the motion, I think definitely if the number is
something that is of concern for the Commissioners, another
number could be used. What would happen in that case is we
would pull restaurants, bars, taverns and nightclubs out of
the existing retail component and create a new retail
component that had some other number from a square footage
standpoint, and that part of the reasoning for the number
is provided up on the chart. If we showed you one per 15,
one per 25, one per 40, one per 75, and one per 100, once
you get up to one per 75 and one per 100 you're basically
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in the same range of what we require currently; that's just
for the Commission's information.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: And this is where I thought the
conversation would be going. So for example, I think we
said earlier if it was one parking space per 100 square
feet as opposed to 300 square feet, you're almost getting
the exact same parking spaces for the amount of seats that
are there.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay, so we've discussed the
motion, but do we have a second? If we do not have a
second, my understanding is the motion dies.
Can I ask my fellow commissioners a question?
This is a very multi -faceted topic that while I understand
that we're only being asked to send a recommendation to
Council, I'm hearing a lot of lack of comfort in that. Is
that an item that we would want to discuss having a study
session where potentially we could ask then for some of the
information that Commissioner Erekson brought up,
Commissioner O'Donnell —hold on, Commissioner O'Donnell —and
Ms. Quintana asked for. Perhaps we could request a bit more
information for the study session to utilize for our
recommendation.
Commissioner O'Donnell, Commissioner Hudes, and
then Commissioner Hanssen.
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I do feel reasonably
confused by what we're doing, but I will tell you this, if
one were to make a motion I'd make sure it's one seat per
100 square feet, which is essentially the same thing we do
today. Now, if that has a different implication, I don't
know it, and therefore I think the study session is in
order anyway, so yes on the study session. Failing a study
session, I would think we could entertain a motion for the
one seat per 100 square feet, which seems to satisfy Staff
somehow.
CHAIR BURCH: Just one quick question. Vice
Chair, do you agree with a study session?
VICE CHAIR BADAME: I support the study session.
Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I support the study session,
but for me it would be more valuable to do that if we
understood how it would be coupled with a plan to enforce
and implement whatever we come up with, so I would be much
more comfortable if that were also presented to us.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay. Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I was going to say
conceptually I think moving from the seats to the square
footage approach is something that makes sense, but I think
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more analysis needs to be done to come up with the right
numbers.
I agree with Commissioner Hudes' point as well
that at least the consideration of enforcement has to be in
it if we're going to go down this path.
CHAIR BURCH: So with that said, Mr. Paulson, we
would then really not be forwarding any sort of
recommendation at this time, or will it be a continuance to
a study session?
JOEL PAULSON: We'll continue to a study session,
if that's the desire of the Commission.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay. I'm going to make a motion.
Oh, sorry, Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Here's my reaction to the
study session. Regardless of whether we have a study
session or another Commission meeting, I'm not sure we need
a study session if we could continue it to a future
meeting; we could probably accomplish the same thing
without going to a study session and then coming back to
another meeting. We'd end up having two meetings. But
regardless of that issue, I could go either way.
I think I would ask Ms. Renn and Mr. Paulson, if
you've heard what the concerns are both from the Commission
tonight, whether we come back to a study session or whether
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we just continue it to another meeting, could you focus us
on the —I don't know what the number is —half a dozen
questions that we really need to focus on?
As an example, Mr. Schultz suggested he was
surprised we weren't talking about the 300 number versus
200 number. Can you focus us on what the key issues are,
concerns you've heard from people, so that we aren't
wandering in the wilderness a bit, but that we can sharpen
our deliberations and that you can sharpen the information
that you provide to us so that we could help expedite this?
Then also do that in a timeframe at which it's
available to the public earlier than Friday prior to a
Wednesday meeting, so what they know what those key issues
or key questions are and they have enough time to also
think them through and comment on them so that it would
help us have greater intelligence, or at least help me.
I need a lot of help as a planning commissioner,
so to the greatest extent that I can get you to sharpen it
for me, and on the key issues that we need to think about,
and the more time that the interested stakeholders have to
be able to comment on it, that would be idea for me, and I
think it actually would be helpful for the Council too. To
the extent that we can get those issues identified, and
that we can provide reasonable comments on them, I think it
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would help expedite for the Council too. So that's my
observation.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Badame.
VICE CHAIR BADAME: So to confirm, Commissioner
Erekson, you're looking for more community outreach as well
so that we can have public comment, rather than just the
Business District? That's what I would like to see. It
affects the whole community; it goes to the downtown area.
Is that something that could be taken into consideration?
JOEL PAULSON: It definitely can be taken into
consideration. We potentially could put a half -page ad in
the paper rather than just the normal public hearing notice
in the legal ads. The challenge gets to be we're definitely
not going to be able to notice everybody in town. We can
put it on What's New before the next Planning Commission
meeting and do as much outreach as we can.
VICE CHAIR BADAME: I think that would be
helpful.
JOEL PAULSON: I think the other comment is
really focusing on the numbers. If 300 is the wrong number,
what's the right number? I think if the right number in the
majority of the Commission's eyes is a number that is close
to what we have currently, which I've heard from at least
one of two Commissioners, then I think that's a simpler
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conversation, because if we're generally just going to
change it to decouple the seats but we're going to use a
square footage that is similar to what we currently require
based on the seats, then I think that's a recommendation
that could be made to the Council simply. But we're more
than willing to try to pull together additional information
for the Commission and try to get some further
clarification on those issues.
CHAIR BURCH: All right. Commissioner Kane.
COMMISSIONER KANE: One more comment. The reason
I made the motion was to bust a balloon, to get something
done. I know what you don't want. I haven't the faintest
idea what you do want, and the one way to get there is to
actually make a proposal and see what happens to it.
As far as my sacred seat of government is
concerned, Commissioner O'Donnell, Sacramento uses the fire
code. Simi Valley uses the fire code. Lompoc uses the fire
code, and beautiful downtown Grover Beach uses the fire
code, so it must be working some way for somebody. But I do
agree with the comments, and I do agree with the square
footage closer to what we currently use.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay, then I'm going to make a
motion to continue this item to a study session, and I am
recommending a study session because this is a topic which
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I think is going to take a lot of conversation, as it
already has, and we have applicants still sitting out here
at 7:00, so do we need to do this at a date certain?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: And I'll correct another time,
which I normally don't do, is we won't call it a study
session; we'll call it a special meeting. If you're not
going to do it at your regular one, and you want to call a
special meeting because you don't want to have it with all
the other business going on, we can call a special meeting
and take action on it, so it could be done at one time.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay, I like that. I'm going to
call it a special meeting then, because then we can take
action and not see this twice, but we're also able to spend
the time. So we are on January 13th. I can't see that
calendar very well, but if your eyes are better than mine,
what days, Joel, would you recommend?
JOEL PAULSON: If you want to do it on an off -
Commission night, which I think is a wise choice, it's
probably —and I will look to Ms. Renn as well —maybe March
2nd That's approximately six weeks. Because we have our
previous one in February on the 24th. Pulling it together by
the 17th in a month, trying to get out the information early
I think would be challenging, but unless Ms. Renn has other
ideas...
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MONICA RENN: I think the 2nd is...
CHAIR BURCH: To me, that's fine. I'd rather have
all the information than rush this. Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Not that this probably
matters to any of the six Commissioners, but I know I'm not
going to be in the country on March 2nd.
CHAIR BURCH: Then it has to be March 2nd.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: That's what I assumed I
was going to give that opportunity to the Chair to say.
CHAIR BURCH: Commissioner Erekson, would you
like us to move that then to two weeks after, so that you
can join us?
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I will let that be a
secret vote of my fellow commissioners.
CHAIR BURCH: Is that acceptable, the 16th? Oh no,
that's a day after a Council meeting.
JOEL PAULSON: So is the 2nd.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay.
JOEL PAULSON: It's up to the Commission. I mean
we still need a second, so either the 2nd or the 16th are the
two off -days in March.
CHAIR BURCH: I would then recommend the 16th
That way we can all be here. Otherwise, we're all going to
speak for you.
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A11 right, so I'm going to make a motion to have
a special Planning Commission meeting to discuss this item.
It will be held on March 16th at our standard time, 7:OOpm?
JOEL PAULSON: Correct.
CHAIR BURCH: Okay. Can I have a second?
Commissioner Hanssen seconds. Any questions or discussion?
All in favor? Passes unanimously.
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