Item 02 - N40 SP Amendments - Staff Report Exh.4
LOS GATOS SPECIAL GENERAL PLAN COMMITTEE 10/27/2016
Item #3, North 40 Specific Plan Amendments
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A P P E A R A N C E S:
Los Gatos Planning
Commissioners:
Matthew Hudes, Chair
Marico Sayoc, Vice Chair
Barbara Spector, Mayor
Jeffrey Barnett, Public Rep.
Charles Erekson, Planning
Commissioner
Melanie Hanssen, Planning
Commissioner
Town Manager: Laurel Prevetti
Community Development
Director:
Joel Paulson
Town Attorney: Robert Schultz
Transcribed by: Vicki L. Blandin
(510) 337-1558
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P R O C E E D I N G S:
LAUREL PREVETTI: Good evening, everyone. Thank
you so much for joining us for a special meeting of our
General Plan Committee. I’m Laurel Prevetti, your Town
Manager. You have the agenda before you. It’s been a little
while since we’ve pulled together the General Plan
Committee, so we really appreciate everyone joining us
tonight.
Our first order of business is Verbal
Communications, and we do have speaker cards if anyone is
interested in commenting on something not on the agenda. If
you’re interested in speaking on something on the agenda,
please fill out a speaker card, note which agenda item it
is, and we will recognize you at the appropriate time later
on this evening.
Seeing no Verbal Communications, our first item
of business is the election of Chair and Vice Chair, and
the floor is open for nominations.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: If I may, I’d like to nominate
Matthew Hudes for Chair.
LAUREL PREVETTI: Okay. Is there a second?
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MAYOR SPECTOR: Second.
LAUREL PREVETTI: Any other nominations for
Chair? Okay, all in favor of Mr. Hudes being our Chair?
Congratulations. Any opposed? Seeing none, Mr. Hudes you
are the Chair, and I hereby turn the meeting over to you
for the election of Vice Chair and our remaining items.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you, Ms. Prevetti. I’d like
to hear the next item, which is nomination and election of
a Vice Chair. Are there nominations? Yes?
MAYOR SPECTOR: I don’t have any.
CHAIR HUDES: Oh, I’m sorry. I saw…
MAYOR SPECTOR: I thought you were looking at me.
CHAIR HUDES: I saw a light turn on, that’s why I
was. Perhaps I could make a nomination of Council Member
Sayoc as the Vice Chair.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Second.
CHAIR HUDES: Let’s call the item. All in favor?
Opposed? It looks like it was unanimous. Thank you.
The second item on the agenda today is the
Approval of Minutes from October 28, 2015. Has everyone had
a chance to review the minutes? I actually was not at that
meeting.
Commissioner Hanssen.
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COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I would like to propose to
approve the minutes from October 28, 2015, and I was at the
meeting.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Vice Mayor Sayoc.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Actually, I caught a couple of
errors. The first was that under Item 3 it says that I had
recused myself. Well, two errors. First it says “Chair
Marico Sayoc.” I wasn’t the chair, and I didn’t recuse
myself. Then when it comes to the end where it says,
“Motion passes,” again, I did not recuse myself, and I was
part of the motion that passed it.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So I could amend my motion
to approve the minutes with the changes that you suggested.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Okay, and I’ll second the
motion.
CHAIR HUDES: With that amendment and second,
I’ll call the question. Those in favor? Opposed? Passes
unanimously. Thank you.
MAYOR SPECTOR: And I’m going to abstain, and I
think you have two abstentions.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay, let the record show that.
LAUREL PREVETTI: For our records, who was the
second abstention?
CHAIR HUDES: I am.
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LAUREL PREVETTI: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay, so Item 3, which is the North
40 Specific Plan Amendments. Do we have a Staff Report on
this, or do we go to public comment?
JOEL PAULSON: Staff doesn’t have anything to
add. As noted in the memorandum, tonight we’re here to
discuss the suggestions that the Town Council proposed, and
so we’ll walk through those. We don’t have a set process,
so you’re free to come up with a process, or we can walk
through that, or your other Commissioners may have
suggestions.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Yes, comment, Mayor?
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. Question of Staff.
From what I hear you say—we have pages of issues here—
you’re going to walk through each issue one-by-one, and are
you looking for this Committee to make motions on each one,
or are you going to have the community testify first? What
is your concept here?
LAUREL PREVETTI: We are making copies of this
Staff Report now for the members of the community, so we do
want to make sure that everybody has something to follow
along, because there are a lot of suggestions and we also
have cross-referenced the document. So Staff is making
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those copies and as soon as they’re available, they’ll be
in the chambers.
We do have one public comment card on this item,
so you may want to take public testimony now, and then I
would suggest that we work through them by category. For
example, Attachment 1 identifies 13 items in the
Residential category; I would suggest we work through
those. We tried to group them close together.
Really what we’re looking for is do you agree
with these suggestions moving forward as formal amendments
to the Specific Plan? If you answer is yes, then Staff will
do the additional work in preparation for formal hearings
before the Planning Commission and Town Council in terms of
converting the suggestions into actual redline language, so
really what we’re looking for is your expertise as our
General Plan Committee of do you agree that these items
should move forward?
A lot of them work well together, but you’ll see
some of them may create a little bit of tradeoff, so you
might have some choices to make if one idea seems stronger
than another.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I reviewed a couple of
times the Town Council meeting from September 27th when all
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these ideas were presented by the public. What I wondered
is, especially given Vice Chair Sayoc’s comments at that
meeting about making sure that we continue to take public
input, I’m assuming we’re not limited to the suggestions
here, that there could be others that may not have come up
in the pick up comments or in that meeting that could be
added, as long as they don’t force an EIR change or a major
rewrite of the plan?
LAUREL PREVETTI: Yeah, and we want to make sure
that we can have a package of ideas that ultimately go
through a public hearing process, and clearly the policy
document has a lot of interactive pieces to it, so it’s
very possible that even as a General Plan Committee you
will see ideas that then lends itself to a companion idea
or a companion change.
I think we would just caution, we did a fair
amount of outreach before the September 27th Council
meeting, we received a lot of input from the community. The
Council considered it carefully and I think did a good job
of going through it, and so you have a fairly comprehensive
list of idea, so we aren’t expecting a lot more new
suggestions and I think we need to respect the process that
the Council started by bringing forward these specific
suggestions.
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So I’d say our first order to business is really
working through what we have, and then if there’s something
that in the course of the conversation comes up that’s
really urgent or ties a couple of these pieces together,
then I would say that would make sense, but I would caution
about not reopening as if this were a brand new process,
because we already have a good list to start with.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. I think that makes a lot
of sense, and having read the Staff Report and the
organization, to me, it puts a number of issues into
categories that will allow us to go through them.
The one thing that I might suggest though is that
since the General Plan Committee hasn’t met in quite some
time maybe allowing a little bit of time before we dive
into those specific areas to see whether any of the members
of the Committee have any overall comments or suggestions
about direction as well. Does that make sense?
Yes, Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: As I’ve thought about and
read the Staff Report and watched the video of the Council
meeting I was trying to wrap my head around at how I should
think about what we’re about, and it caused me to have
three broad questions that it would be helpful if I had
some better understanding of.
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The first question is I read the suggestions that
are here and listened to the tape and it seems to me they
are answers, and what I was trying to understand is what
was the question, or what was the problem trying to be
solved? I thought to myself that in the past when I’ve
taught university classes I always gave an admonition to
the students who were at an exam moment to take adequate
time to understand the question that they were attempting
to answer before they tried to answer it. It seems to me we
have answers, and I’m not clear what the question or the
problem being solved is. That was the first one.
The second—and I’m not referring to the Vision
Statement or the Guiding Principles—but in the current
Specific Plan there are some underlying assumptions or
concepts that helped inform and direct the specifics of the
Specific Plan.
The biggest example of that is that the Specific
Plan includes three districts. At least my understanding of
the concept, that was very intentional, because the concept
underlying those districts, and as reflected in the name of
the middle one, is that the Lark District was conceptually
intended to be primarily residential, and the Northern
District was intended to be primarily commercial, and the
middle district was named the Transition District because
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it was to be the transition between primarily residential
and primarily commercial.
That’s an underlying assumption concept—not
saying whether it’s right or wrong—and there are other
examples of those kind of underlying assumptions, so if we
understand what the question or the problem trying to be
solved is, it would help us understand, I believe, whether
we would need to reexamine what some of those
assumptions/underlying concepts are, which then would help
us, help inform at least me, what the appropriate answer
might be. That’s the second thing.
The third thing is there is pending litigation
with the Town, and what I was also trying to understand is
depending upon what the outcome of that litigation is, and
let’s just make it simple for the moment, either the Town
prevails or the Town doesn’t prevail.
If the Town doesn’t prevail, then the most likely
outcome of that is that the court will direct the Town to
allow the developers to develop as their application was,
so then that means that the Town is limited—I believe; Mr.
Schultz can correct me on this—in how it can modify the
Specific Plan and how we would think about it, because 40%
or so of the whole Specific Plan area is not up for
revision. Then if I were going to think about that
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conceptually I would say what do I want to accomplish in
the large part, but I’ve got a subset of it that I don’t
have any say over.
If the Town prevails in it, then the whole thing
can be rethought.
So if we understand what the question is that
we’re trying to answer, then do we need to reexamine any of
the underlying assumptions, and once we do that, then are
we going to prepare two different ways to go about it? A
Plan A, assuming that the Town prevails, a Plan B, assuming
the Town doesn’t prevail? Because I would proceed
differently in my thought process depending upon whether
the Town prevailed or the Town didn’t prevail.
So those are my kind of broad questions that I
was trying to image how to go about the process that were
conundrums for me.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Erekson, I find that
very helpful. I would suggest maybe we take the public
input first, because I think there are going to be follow
up questions to Staff on this, and maybe other members of
the community have other similar kinds of concerns as well
that are broader, and then proceed from there if that’s
okay with you.
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At this point I’d like to open the hearing to
public comment. I have two cards here at this point, and
certainly would like to hear from the public. I believe we
have three minutes, is that correct? Yeah, three minutes.
The first member of the public is Mr. Morimoto. And just
please state your name and address.
EDWARD MORIMOTO: Good evening, my name is Ed
Morimoto and I live at 460 Monterey Avenue.
I’m here to ask you to take great care in
addressing this daunting task entrusted to you by our Town
Council, one that is made even more difficult as the
outcome of the pending lawsuit could dramatically impact
the scope and context of the problem. Many, if not all of
you, were heavily involved in the creation of the Specific
Plan as well as the Housing Element, which has a critical
dependency, so I am probably preaching to the choir when I
talk about how incredibly complex it is.
The complexity I speak of is more than its sheer
scope and volume, but of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of
decisions it took that were not simply black or white, but
balance across various shades of gray. I would posit any
responsible amendment to the Specific Plan calls for full
consideration of all the facts and inputs that went into
these gray decisions, a burden that you bear that does not
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encumber the critics of the plan. Building, or even fixing,
something has always been more challenging than tearing it
apart.
It is easy for critics to attack the size,
location, and density of the North 40 housing when they
don’t have to provide an alternative for the 270 housing
units for our RHNA requirements. Their objections are not
tempered with the responsibility borne by the School
District to decide between the certainty of an
unprecedented subsidy for a modest amount of student
generation versus the risk of having those students come
without any funding whatsoever, and it is a luxury that
those who assume that further prescription on the North 40
housing will pass muster with California HCD, as they are
unlikely to be held responsible if it doesn’t.
The housing shortage in the Bay Area has reached
crisis levels, and I believe that the housing component of
the North 40 Specific Plan is a balanced and responsible
way to shoulder our fair share of the solution.
It is also not difficult to generate concern that
the North 40 commercial allowances will kill the downtown
when most haven’t read the three independent studies to the
contrary. Why not call for reductions when you have the
luxury of not being responsible for addressing the 7.8%
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decrease in Q1 sales tax receipts while the Town faces over
$30 million in unfunded pension liabilities? Who is
challenging them on how limiting Town revenue from the
North 40 will help solve the parking and traffic issues
plaguing the downtown?
Like my neighbors, I too cherish our downtown. I
appreciate how we all want to protect it, but I also
acknowledge that there are those who have vested interests
in avoiding competition of any kind. But I have to ask, as
there is not yet a wall around our town, is it smart to
level the playing field by making the North 40 and our
downtown equally ill equipped to compete, or should we be
focusing our efforts on helping our downtown be more
vibrant?
The North 40 Specific Plan is a compromise, and a
compromise never feels great. Nobody really gets what they
want, and everyone thinks that somebody else did. Outrage
by those whose understanding of the end result is through
the lens of a narrow sliver of all the work is
understandable, and addressing those concerns is a
political necessity. However, just because a group of
citizens have objections doesn’t mean that we all do, nor
does it mean those objections are correct.
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I hope and trust this Committee will consider the
full measure of the facts if changes to the Specific Plan
are made, and not just vocal opinion. Having a good North
40 plan is important, but gilding the lily or chasing after
public approval is folly our Town can hardly afford.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you very much. Are there
questions? Okay, thank you. The next and the only other
card I have is for Maria Ristow.
MARIA RISTOW: Hi, Maria Ristow, 85 Broadway.
I think Commissioner Erekson and Mr. Morimoto
essentially captured what was going on in my head. I did
give some input for amendments potentially to the Specific
Plan, but I really do not understand how you can look at
amendments to one specific plan at this point, because with
the lawsuit looming over our heads the only amendments I
could possibly suggest that would make sense regardless of
the outcome would be to increase the amount of housing, or
to increase something.
For example, you decide there was some concern
about spreading the housing out, if you decide that you’re
going to take the 270 and do 90 units Lark District, 90
units Transition District, 90 Northern District, that
doesn’t hold and you can’t even accept any applications or
do anything with applications for the Northern District
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until the lawsuit is settled, because if the lawsuit goes
in the direction of the developer, then you don’t have 90
units in the Northern District, so if you want to encourage
housing there, the only thing that makes sense at this
point would be to increase the amount of housing total.
If you don’t want to do that, you almost have to
come up with two sets of amendments—like Commissioner
Erekson said—if the Phase 1 application goes through as it
is, or if it doesn’t.
Anyway, I don’t envy your task. Thank you.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Any questions? Okay, the
next speaker is Jan Olsen.
JAN OLSEN: Hi, I’m Jan Olsen. I live on Lester
Lane, directly behind the Office Depot, which is directly
across the street from the North 40. I’m directly impacted.
I’m sorry I missed the beginning. I thought the
meeting was at 7:00, not 6:00. I will go back and look at
it online.
Some of the things I would like to see mentioned
and brought up in the Specific Plan; I think this project
should be a green project. There should be LEED
certifications, alternative energy uses, things like
pervious pavement, low water use, using trees and plants
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for shade, and the sprinkler system should be moisture
regulated.
If we’re going to build this from scratch, we
should make Los Gatos a showcase for environmentally sound
development. I haven’t been hearing that. You know, we have
a drought and everything else. I really would think here’s
our opportunity. Solar. I mean there are so many things we
could be doing.
On a personal level, I’d like to make sure this
mitigation for dirt gets thrown up into the air. I’m kind
of concerned about this going on for four years. I think
that there should be a park or playground for the
residents. Trying to have the kids cross Los Gatos
Boulevard to get to Live Oak Park is really dangerous. They
should have a place to play, and green space should not
include back yards and parts of parking lots.
I’m very concerned about what the new Samaritan
Drive project will do to the area’s traffic. I don’t think
it was considered when the traffic study was conducted; I
think that was 2013. I want to make sure that that whole
new development is addressed as part of the traffic in the
EIR.
It would be great if there was housing for
developmentally disabled adults. There are needs out there,
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unaddressed needs, for our citizens. Developmentally
disabled adults, there are a lot of kids on the spectrum
that just can’t live anywhere. Or housing for the active
over 55; a move-down place, one level, that should include
universal aging in place design, showers and doorways wide
enough for walkers and wheelchairs, because stuff happens
like knees and hips and things we don’t really plan on
happening.
I appreciate this. I appreciate your time. I
appreciate your consideration. Thank you.
CHAIR HUDES: Next speaker is Sandy Decker,
followed by Rod Teague and Tom Spilsbury.
SANDY DECKER: Sandy Decker, Glen Ridge, Los
Gatos.
I don’t think we’re here to decide whether this
decision should have been made. It was made by three
Council members who had the vision and courage to listen to
the community and give this community the chance to make
this huge site what we hoped it would be.
I’m confused right off the top. If you look at
1.5.3 of the Specific Plan, on page 1-9, it states two or
three times, “The Specific Plan standards and guidelines
supersede the existing Los Gatos Commercial Design
Guidelines and development of the Specific Plan area.” It
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also states over and over that the Specific Plan for this
particular site supersedes the General Plan.
What we’re being asked to do tonight is a little…
I really don’t quite understand. Unless you are ready as a
General Plan Committee to tell us where the Specific Plan
does not meet General Plan requirements, I can’t see,
frankly, why we’re here. And if in fact the Specific Plan
does supersede General Plan requirements, it seems to me
the first meeting should have been Planning Commission, the
second one should have been Planning Commission, and then
if there were any leftover problems, possibly that could
have come from General Plan ideas that didn’t fit what had
come out of Planning Commission, but this effort I just
find very difficult.
For instance, if you start talking about—and
we’re all for it, of course—spreading the housing
population over the whole 40 acres, which I think everyone
expected and wants, we have already committed a great deal
of time and effort into laying out in the proposal of the
Specific Plan the various ways on the 40 acres that these
things were being laid out. Now, that’s not a General Plan
problem as far as I can see, that’s a problem within the
Specific Plan where we just state the two or three places
that it says housing has to be over commercial in such-and-
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such an area, and on and on and on. If we’ve made the
decision that in fact we’re going to spread it out, we
spread it out. If you’re asking us today to tell you how
you want that spread out, that’s one thing, but that feels
like a Planning Commission conversation.
So I guess you need to help me help you, because
I don't know what to do.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Any questions? Okay,
thank you. The next speaker is Rod Teague.
ROD TEAGUE: Thank you. I didn’t realize there
were going to be public comments, so I threw together some
quick comments.
I had hoped that Grosvenor would have hung in
there and saw that there were some compromises to be made,
and I hope moving forward, whatever those changes are, that
we simply defer to the Vision Statement of the Specific
Plan and the Guiding Principles for whatever changes are
made. That’s the foundation, that’s our goal. It was
created to prevent discord in the community, and any change
that does occur, you have to ask that simple question: Does
this comply with our vision and where we’re going?
It was almost as if we were writing a screenplay
about the Vietnam War, and somehow in the process it turned
into World War Two, because the outcome, reading the
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Specific Plan Vision Statement and Guiding Principles
paints a picture that conforms to the community, and in the
end what we got was a lot of row housing and things that
obviously were in contrast to what the community is about.
I think that’s why so many community members were up in
arms; I think their vision was that their town would only
allow something with things conforming, like open space and
housing that conforms to the community.
I guess that’s it. Just please ask that question:
Does this comply with our vision and where we’re going and
how we’re going to get there? Thank you.
CHAIR HUDES: The next speaker is Tom Spilsbury
followed by Woody Nedom.
TOM SPILSBURY: Good evening, Commission. This
project started out as the North 40. It’s not the North 40;
it’s the North 20. The grand vision started out as the
North 40; the pared down vision is the North 20. We don’t
have what we started out with. We started with a big piece
of property that went from Lark Avenue to 87, from Bascom
to Highway 17, and what we really have is a lot of more
undeveloped land that is on Oka Road. All around there,
there are 60 to 70 acres of undeveloped land in East Los
Gatos that’s going to come to the fruition of development
sooner or later.
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Grosvenor started out with the North 40 but they
ended up with the North 20, and it’s not what the Specific
Plan stated. Jamming all the houses into 20 acres is not
what anybody ever talked. I was on the committee originally
seven or eight years ago when Grosvenor showed up for the
first time with their Berkeley architect and told us how
neat he was. He’s not that neat. We’re sitting here today
because there are issues.
The biggest issue is traffic. We haven’t solved
the traffic issue. We have properties on the east side of
Los Gatos Boulevard that still go out 30’ to 40’ into the
right-of-way; we haven’t even figured out how to deal with
that. We have an intersection at Burton, where the
Starbucks is, that’s the biggest nightmare of an
intersection that we have in the Town. Traffic is our
issue.
Streets are our issue; nobody has dealt with
that. Ten million to deal with that is a nice number, but
it’s clearly not enough to deal with that.
We really need to probably form an Assessment
District for those properties that are around Los Gatos
Boulevard between Lark and 87, whether it’s a popular
decision or not. Somehow the traffic issues have to be
solved before you start putting buildings on there with
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people, because once you put buildings with people, you
can’t go back and change what you’re doing. I urge you all
to look at the traffic issues and think about how we can
deal with them in a productive way versus how we’ve dealt
with them, because that’s what the issue is: traffic.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you, Mr. Spilsbury. I’m
sorry; we have a question, if you don’t mind coming back.
TOM SPILSBURY: I don't know. Yeah, I’ve got
enough time.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Just a simple question.
I’m sure you meant 85, but you said 87.
TOM SPILSBURY: You know, it could go all the way
to 87. No, no, you’re right. I get them confused all the
time. I’ve only lived here since 1962 and I still can’t say
that right.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: That’s fine. I just wanted
to make sure I heard you right.
TOM SPILSBURY: And I still call it Bascom
instead of Los Gatos Boulevard. I don't know; I’m screwed
up.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: It’s fine.
CHAIR HUDES: Great, thank you. Woody Nedom, and
I think we have another card as well.
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WOODY NEDOM: Good evening, everyone. My name is
Woody Nedom; I live on Azalea Way in Los Gatos.
I wasn’t intending to say anything, but I’m glad
you guys are a little puzzled about how to proceed tonight,
because I certainly share that puzzlement. I don’t really
know if we’re just wandering in the desert or what’s
happening, but in regard to that I think the best way to
proceed is to determine how the development does not comply
with the Specific Plan.
I recall at a meeting where everyone was up in
arms, the place was packed with people, they were
complaining about traffic, this and that, and the Town
Attorney said, “It’s too late for that. The Environmental
Impact Report has been approved. The only issue is does it
comply with the Specific Plan?” Now, if I’m wrong in that,
I stand corrected, but isn’t that the issue? How does this
development not comply with the Specific Plan?
I think there are lots of ways. I don’t think the
Town is going to lose this lawsuit. I mean if you look at
all the meetings that led up to the Specific Plan you’ll
see how this development does not comply with the Specific
Plan. It doesn’t spread housing over the full development.
The units are way too large; they violate the appendix of
our own Specific Plan, which talked about smaller units.
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We’re here to meet the unmet needs of Los Gatos,
not the needs of families. We’re here to mitigate the
impact on schools. These units don’t do that. They have
three-bedroom units; they have two-bedroom units with a den
that could be turned into three bedrooms. Those are magnets
for families. They don’t comply with the hours and hours
and months and months of talk that went into developing the
Specific Plan, and Mr. Capobres gets up here and says it
complies with it.
It does not comply with the Specific Plan. The
housing is not spread out, the units are too large, the
whole thing doesn’t reflect the Town of Los Gatos, and
that’s what I think people are saying.
Tonight, I think the people who have spoken here,
it’s sort of like the thing is upside down. How can the
public comment on something when they don’t know what it is
they’re commenting on? It seems to me that there has to be
some sort of an idea as to how to proceed, and then maybe
some input from you folks, and then the public should be
able to talk about it, because the public, after all, they
are Los Gatos.
Thanks so much; I appreciate your time and all
the effort that’s going into this thing.
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CHAIR HUDES: Thank you, Mr. Nedom. The next
speaker I have is Diane Dreher, and that is the last card,
so if there’s anyone else who would like to speak.
DIANE DREHER: Thank you, and good evening. I
came here actually just to show support, but like my
colleague Mr. Erekson, I also am a college professor, and
an idealist. I grew up watching a young president with the
vision and courage to say that we could put a man on the
moon and bring him back safely to earth. I believe that we
need to really affirm our ideals, or they will not happen,
and when we do, they do happen.
I’ve been to a number of meetings in which a lot
of Town neighbors said in many, many ways that the
Grosvenor plan did not coincide with the Specific Plan, and
I was here when the members of the Town Council voted to
that effect. I would like to see us affirm our vision of
what is possible for our community here in Los Gatos, and
have the courage and the ideals to really put those visions
forward. Therefore, I support the Town Council suggestions
for potential amendments to the Specific Plan, specifically
that housing should be spread across all three districts,
and require smaller, more affordable units.
One of the things I heard was that the one-
bedroom condominiums would start at something like $900,000
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to $1.5 million, which would involve a house payment of
$4,500 or $6,500 a month. That is not affordable. There are
a lot of professionals in the area who could not afford to
live here. I would like us to have smaller, more affordable
units to welcome more people into our community.
Also, to provide senior housing at the ground
level, for obvious reasons, and many more really well
thought out suggestions.
I therefore suggest that we not surrender to
lawsuits or to what could possibly be a very crowded North
40, but really look to what is best for our community and
work together to make it happen. Thank you.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. That’s the last comment
card that I have, so at this point I think it would be
valuable to hear from the Committee Members if they have
additional comments in terms of the general direction that
we’re going, and then when that’s done we’ll proceed to go
through the structured sections as provided by the Town
Council and Staff. Would anyone like to make any general
comments about the process that we’re following?
COMMITTEE MEMBER BARNETT: I have one question,
directed to Mr. Schultz, and that is this being an open
meeting I have concerns about what can be said and what
cannot be said, and do not want to prejudice the Town’s
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position? So I’d be interested in comment from you about
what might be wise to say or not say.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: You can say anything you want.
The lawsuit that was filed deals with a writ of mandate,
and so nothing that is said in this meeting can be
introduced into the record. A writ of mandate has to do
just with the administrative record, which is now closed;
it closed on September 6th. Anything that is said or done,
or changes made in any way, shape, or form won’t have any
effect on that litigation whatsoever.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. I had those exact same
questions. Yes, Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I had a question and a
comment.
My question is about the litigation that was
brought up. Since there is litigation on the table as we’re
going through this process, I understand that the
litigation is relative to the existing version of the
Specific Plan and that’s what standard the lawsuit will be
held to. So supposing we go through this process and we do
amend the Specific Plan, it would only apply to future
projects, but if we lose the lawsuit, where does that leave
our Specific Plan?
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ROBERT SCHULTZ: If we were to lose the lawsuit
and the court would say that it did comply with the
Specific Plan and order the Town to implement the
application by the Specific Plan, it was be the old
Specific Plan that was approved that that application would
be able to be approved under.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So we would proceed
forward with the old plan even though we’d revised the
current plan?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Correct.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: And that would only apply to the
application that’s in. The plan could be revised or
amended, and then any future applications would have to
comply with the plan as ordered.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: The revised plan.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Correct.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Then my comment is I was
looking through this, and we spent a lot of time on this
obviously this summer on the Planning Commission, and this
goes to some of the suggestions that came up that we have
in pipeline, I think it makes a lot of sense to look at the
Guiding Principles. I wondered if there wasn’t a disconnect
in the existing plan between the Guiding Principles of the
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look and feel of Los Gatos and the table that’s in 6-14.
Also, in the Residential Guidelines it talks about only
multi-family housing and then the sizes of the houses are
1,000 to 2,000 square feet, and we saw a lot of that in the
proposal that we got, so I think it makes sense to look at
this in the context of does it fit with the Guiding Vision,
because I wondered if that table… It was a reference table,
it wasn’t a mandated table, but when we heard a lot of
comments from the public it didn’t seem like it met their
vision of what the Town was like, but this was the table
and the housing types that we had permitted in the Specific
Plan.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Mayor Spector.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. One question, and then
possibly a comment.
The question is I should know, but remind me as
to why this is coming before the General Plan Committee.
LAUREL PREVETTI: A specific plan is essentially
a more detailed document that helps up implement our
General Plan, so typically a specific plan amendment could
affect the General Plan, so it’s really important that it
has to be consistent with the General Plan.
You are the General Plan Committee, and you are
kind of the keepers of that long-range vision, so because
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the Specific Plan is part of our General Plan, that’s why
it’s before you first, for your comments regarding the
suggestions before us. Depending on your deliberations the
public will certainly have more opportunities to comment
after the fact, because we will then go to Planning
Commission for formal public hearings. That will be noticed
and televised, et cetera, and then based on that
recommendation we would then go to the Council for final
decision. Again, another opportunity for the public.
The great thing about the General Plan Committee
is that it is a mix of Planning Commissioners, Town Council
members, and members of the public, so kind of the keepers
of our vision. You have the ability to go through these
ideas, understanding our land use framework, and can really
sort through the suggestions to determine which ones should
move forward and which ones shouldn’t.
It’s very possible for communities to consider
this process in parallel with a lawsuit, because specific
plans can be changed, and then they can be changed again,
et cetera, so the fact that there is a lawsuit, it will
proceed on its own path, and really, I think based on the
motion that Council made to deny the applications, that was
really to Commissioner Erekson’s point. Clearly the
application didn’t meet the expectation of what the
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Specific Plan would deliver, so what do we need to do to
clarify the rules, particularly the objective criteria, to
make sure that the next application does in fact meet the
community’s expectations?
CHAIR HUDES: Yes.
MAYOR SPECTOR: And follow up then with a couple
of comments.
First of all, I agree with Commissioner Hanssen,
various comments she made. With regard to what is the issue
that we’re dealing with today, the issue that we’re dealing
with today in view is should we amend the Specific Plan,
and if so, how?
With regard to how can you have one Specific Plan
with an application pending in litigation, that
application, as has been said by a couple of our Committee
Members here, is going to be evaluated under this current
Specific Plan and any amendments to the Specific Plan. Any
future applications would be considered under whatever
Specific Plan is in existence at that time.
So for me, I see the issues at least on a very
broad level, very clear cut. Let me get into these four or
five pages here, maybe not so much.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Other Committee Members?
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I had a question of Staff related to that, and
that has to do with the timing of this. Is there any
deadline or timeframe either that’s been suggested by
Council or by the possibility of an application coming in
where there may be work ongoing for someone to actually
submit an application? And maybe also clarify what the date
is when they submit the application, as when it’s complete,
what is the trigger event for which Specific Plan would
apply?
JOEL PAULSON: I don't know if there’s a hard and
fast deadline of when this work needs to proceed. We
proposed to the Council a fairly aggressive schedule to try
to get this moved through the process prior to any further
applications being filed.
From a timeline perspective, it can go rapidly,
or there may be instances where we may not get through the
General Plan Committee’s discussion in one meeting, or the
Planning Commission, or the Council, but those are some of
the lofty goals that we put forward.
In relation to an application if one is filed,
typically it’s going to be the deemed-complete-by that’s
going to be the arbiter of which Specific Plan it’s under.
There are some other specifics there, but generally that’s
what we would use for the tool. Obviously we’d also let any
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potential applicant know that we’re considering potential
Specific Plan amendments, and that’s something that we
would bring forward to whatever bodies are reviewing the
potential amendments at that time.
CHAIR HUDES: Then I would also ask if you do
know of an application coming, would you also inform the
Committee so that we understand what kind of timeframe
we’re working under?
JOEL PAULSON: We’re not aware of any pending
applications, but if one is filed, then we will definitely
let both the public, as well as decision makers, know that.
CHAIR HUDES: Good. Yes, question, Commissioner
Erekson?
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I think the Mayor in her
comments a moment ago asked the first right question, which
is should we amend the Specific Plan? The Council voted to
deny an application, and without getting into all the
detail of why they did, what underlay that decision was
that an application didn’t meet the Specific Plan. That
doesn’t necessarily mean the Specific Plan is wrong. That
wasn’t part of their conclusion. Their conclusion, as I
understand it, was that a particular application didn’t
meet the Specific Plan.
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So the question seems to me still to be open:
Should the Specific Plan be amended? Because presumably if
a different application had come forward, the Council would
have approved that application and presumably we wouldn’t
be here. So the fact that a particular application was not
approved doesn’t seem to me to bear necessarily in any
relationship to whether the Specific Plan needs to be
amended, so the first question is should we amend the
Specific Plan, and the only reason why one would is if
there—maybe this isn’t the right noun—were deficiencies in
the Specific Plan, or if we wanted to rethink what the
Specific Plan was, because there was no decision made that
the Specific Plan itself was not correct.
LAUREL PREVETTI: Mr. Chair, if I may? I think
that’s a very fair point, and I would say that you don’t
only need to look for deficiencies, because we’re not
passing judgment one way or the other, it’s really are
there places that need to be clarified? Is there language
that maybe reads more subjectively and you’d like to make
it more objective? It’s really more are there ways that we
can clarify the intention so that way anyone looking at the
table of housing types, if that table doesn’t reflect the
vision, are there some specific changes that can really
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make sure, again, that if a development application comes
in we all know what that possible result might be?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I’ll just follow up. I think
clarification is the issue, because certainly the Applicant
believed, and still believes by the lawsuit, that their
application met the objective standards of the Specific
Plan, and even Staff’s recommendation was that it met those
objective standards, and Council disagreed with that and
said it did not. So that’s what I think the main purpose
would be is where can we provide clarifications, because we
don’t want to rewrite the whole plan and have an EIR and go
through the Housing Element again. But where are there
clarifications so that if another application come in it
would be much more, I don't know if the word is easier, but
it would be able to be addressed by a Specific Plan that’s
easier to understand through clarifications.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Just to give a specific
example relative to Commissioner Erekson’s comments, I
think one thing that I’ve noticed in having gone through
the process is that—and I was on the Housing Element
Advisory Board as well—when we went through the process of
determining what types would be applicable for RHNA, and we
decided on placing some of that at the North 40, it made
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sense from every perspective, but I think that from a
timing perspective, even though the Specific Plan got
approved after the Housing Element, a lot of the thought
process that went into it was not with the idea that every
housing unit had to be zoned at 20 dwelling units per acre,
because as you back into the numbers, that’s the only way
that you could do the housing.
And I understand why to keep it to that number,
so that we didn’t have a lot more housing than we wanted or
needed or could handle, but now we found out like, for
example, during the summer, if a decision was made to do
housing in the Northern District, because you have to zone
it 20 dwelling units per acre we had testimony from the
Applicant, and I think it was pretty valid, that with the
requirement to do a residential over commercial in the
Northern District, the only way you could get 20 dwelling
units per acre is to have units that are 500 square feet or
smaller, or they might have said 600, but that’s an example
of how when one thing kind of came before the other it
didn’t flow all the way through with the numbers, and so I
think there are other examples of things that we could
clarify and make in line with the Guiding Principles better
now that we know what we know.
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CHAIR HUDES: If I might add my comments as well.
At the end of the work that the Planning Commission did on
the application I observed that this was really the first
test of the Specific Plan, and having been involved in the
creation of the Specific Plan and some of the other areas
along the way, I think there is some learning from going
through that test, the areas for clarification and,
frankly, also areas that working on the plan we were not
informed about, for instance, the impact of the buy right
law and the need to translate things such as the Vision
Statement into objective standards throughout the plan, and
so when faced with an application after learning that, it
became more challenging.
I actually went back to the hearings of the
Planning Commission as well as the Council’s discussion
about why to look at the plan, and so just for my own sort
of direction from what the public cares about I tabulated
those comments, and I’ll pass them to the rest of the
committee and can submit for the record. I wasn’t going to
do this, but I think maybe it should be part of the record
for going forward.
During the Planning Commission hearings there
were several hearings where we took public input and we
also accumulated a great deal of correspondence on the
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application, and I think that that is informative about
where some of the issues or challenges may be. There were a
total of 500 unique comments between the emails and the
public testimony at those hearings. Four hundred and
eighty-five were against the application and 15 were for
the application, not including the Applicants themselves.
Then the Town Council, there were fewer, and I
only recorded the comments from the public hearing on
August 9th and I didn’t go through the correspondence there,
but there were a similar number of comments or issues that
were raised, and I tabulated the issues into different
categories, and many of these map to the suggestions from
the Town Council in terms of areas in which the Specific
Plan can be improved. But I think notably there were some
that maybe didn’t map, and so I would just add that for
information to the Committee Members. Commissioner Hanssen
raised the first one that I saw, which was the look and
feel as inconsistent with Los Gatos where we had 18% of the
comments falling into that category.
The other one was traffic, which was actually the
largest number of issues, that the traffic impacts were too
great.
I would just offer this as potential other input
to the Committee as areas in which we might look at the
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Specific Plan and say is it objective? Does it need to be
clarified? Will it result in an improved type of a project
should another project come forward?
Given that backdrop, I think we should probably
move on to the areas that were suggested, because I think
that organization makes a lot of sense, and maybe walk
through those.
The first category is Residential, and the way
this has been organized I think is a good way to think
about it, but there aren’t really a lot of answers here.
There is sort of this is where you could do something if
you wanted to do it, but there are not a lot of
suggestions, so I’m not sure how far we’ll get just doing
this on the fly tonight, but I thought we’d give it a try
and walk through it and see whether we have some
suggestions relative to these particular points.
LAUREL PREVETTI: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would
just say that I think really what we want to know is are
these suggestions useful to continuing the process? I
wouldn’t worry about finding a specific solution to how we
would address it, but do you agree with the Council’s
suggestion that this should be addressed in amendments? And
then again the full Planning Commission and Council and the
public will have opportunity to weigh in on those
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specifics, because we may find that there are different
options for addressing them, so I think we just really need
your feedback of do you agree with the Council that this is
a suggestion that should in fact move forward?
CHAIR HUDES: Okay, thank you. Question? Yes,
Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. Following up on what
Staff just said, I’m just going to use this as an example
so that I have a better understanding.
Just looking at Residential, there’s number one
and number two that is on Staff’s report. And let’s say
that I think that the housing units should be spread across
all three districts, but that I don’t think there should be
a maximum density of eight units per acre, is that what
you’re looking for? Are you looking for all of us to weigh
in on it with that kind of discreteness, or are you looking
for something more global?
LAUREL PREVETTI: What you just said would be
very helpful for us, so if there are ideas, and even if
it’s priorities where of these 13 items the top three, for
example, are what the speaker raised, the units should be
spread across, smaller units, more affordable, and put the
senior at the ground level, if that’s the consensus of the
group, these are the top three and the others are if we can
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do it, that’s great. Or this idea you don’t agree with,
that would be helpful as well.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. Well, with that
direction, I’ll kick it off and we’ll see where we go.
I think the units should be spread throughout the
40 acres. I would like them to be smaller, and I would
prefer that the senior housing not be on the second or
third floor, and I can’t remember what else you said, Ms.
Prevetti. Is that the three? Okay. I get three, that’s it.
CHAIR HUDES: Well, why don’t we look at the top
three points here, because there are a lot? There are 13
items in this section and the top three seem to go together
and I think your comments apply to that. Other comments on
those?
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I was just going to take
each one quickly.
In the Lark perimeter area setting the maximum
density of eight units per acre, what I understood from
watching the hearing was the intent to a) enable lower
intensity, which was the intent of the plan, and b) as it
stood during the process it didn’t appear that even though
cottage clusters were a permitted type, since they required
a CUP and also because you couldn’t make cottage clusters
achieve a twenty dwelling units per acre, it wasn’t
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possible to use them at all in any plan that was submitted.
So I don't know if eight units per acre is the right number
to make cottage clusters feasible, but it seemed like there
was a lot of interest in making that a feasible type, and
we had it in our plan as a desire with a limit of a certain
number of units, or a suggested number of units up to I
think 40 or 50.
On the housing units spread across all the
districts, I know we talked about this in the Planning
Commission hearings. It seemed to make a lot of sense in
terms of balancing out and coming up with the best plan we
can, knowing that it’s going to be phased in over time, to
not try to digest everything, the housing, where all the
commercial or anything in one fell swoop, so to me it made
a lot of sense to spread the housing across the three
districts because of that.
And I did agree with the third point though,
especially if we’re going to consider that realistically
there would be more housing in the Northern District, that
we need to decide if the neighborhood is what we want it to
be.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Other Committee Members
on the first three? Vice Mayor.
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VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Similar question of Staff with
regard to number one. Given our 20 units per acre Housing
Element requirement, number one couldn’t even… I guess I
should ask you to clarify. Could number one even be a
possibility?
JOEL PAULSON: It could be a possibility, because
the perimeter zone, which is what is called for, is fairly
small, and so you still have plenty of acres left
throughout the rest of the plan area to accommodate that,
so that is possible.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: We need 270, and it has to be
at 20 units per acre. That leaves us at 13.5, right? Which
is exactly…
JOEL PAULSON: Correct. You wouldn’t be
accommodating any of the 20 units per acre requirements.
You have to accommodate those on 13.5 acres elsewhere in
the plan area.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: But if we put a cap on
residential only at 270, how can you have an additional…
Let’s say you did eight homes in the Lark perimeter area,
wouldn’t you then go over your maximum ceiling of 270,
because you’re still going to have to somehow build those
13.5?
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LAUREL PREVETTI: I think that was one thought
that did come up in the Council discussion, and I think we
had testimony this evening, perhaps the total capacity of
the plan needs to be increased by some amount, and if the
goal is we do want a lower density perimeter and you just
give that as a goal, then we would say okay, therefore we
need to add ten more units to the plan, so now it’s 280,
ten of which could be done at a lower density and the
remainder at the 20 units per acre.
The other answer is we could assume a density
bonus, but I don’t think that would hold up in Housing
Element. I think they would want us to make sure that we’re
planning deliberately for the 13.5 acres, so we shouldn’t
rely on an expectation of density bonus.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I had meant to ask
earlier, what is the amount of acreage in the perimeter
zone? I couldn’t remember from our hearings, or find it.
JOEL PAULSON: We don’t have that. It’s the 50’
along Lark, that’s all it is, so that’s not going to be…
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: It’s not going to be
allowed?
JOEL PAULSON: No.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay.
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CHAIR HUDES: Other Committee Members on points
1, 2 and 3? Yes, Mr. Barnett.
COMMITTEE MEMBER BARNETT: I just wanted to voice
my support for the Mayor’s position on the first three
items. There has been a lot of public comment about the
look and feel issue, and I think that distributing the
housing across the entire site would go a long way towards
achieving that, because Los Gatos isn’t a cookie cutter
operation. If you look at any of the large shopping
centers, Whole Foods or Nob Hill, it’s kind of nestled in
with the residential.
CHAIR HUDES: Maybe I could just add my comments
to that, that I am in support of doing something along
those three.
With regard to the second point, I’m not
advocating for this, but I’m suggesting maybe we think
about modifying Table 2-2 or 2-1 to include some
percentages to accomplish this. As an example, maybe 40%
residential in the Lark District, 30% in the Transition
District, and 30% in the Northern District. For hotel,
maybe 0% in the Lark District, 60% in the Transition
District, and 40% in the Northern District. For commercial,
maybe 15% in the Lark District, 35% in the Transition
District, and 50% in the Northern District.
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And I use the word “maybe.” I’m just not sure
we’ve done any analysis on this or whether those are the
right ones, but those are the ones that came off the top of
my head when I started trying to integrate the information
that we had.
Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: I was flipping pages while you
were talking. I now have Table 2-1 and Table 2-2 in front
of me. Could you just tell me again what you said, so I can
follow you?
CHAIR HUDES: I suggested adding a column either
to Table 2-2 or 2-1, and I’m not sure which one would be…
Maybe 2-2 is the easier one to do it on, but that would be
to add a column that says Residential, and then says, 40%
Lark District, 30% Transition District, and 30% Northern
District, and those are the examples I gave.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you.
CHAIR HUDES: I don’t think we’re going to be
taking votes on these, so I just want to offer all the
Committee Members the opportunity to either agree or
disagree with the comments that have been made on the first
three points.
Okay, so let’s move to the next one, and I think,
again, points 4, 5 and 6 are related to each other, so why
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don’t you look at those three together? Require smaller,
more affordable units, only allow units from 900 to 1,500
square feet, and reduce maximum size of some units to 1,700
square feet. What are the Committee Members’ thoughts on
those suggestions; first of all as to whether they should
be included, and whether those are viable suggestions?
Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Yes, I agree with those three,
and in my mind they were part of what I originally
mentioned with regard to smaller units throughout the
property. The only caveat there is, we have point 5 goes
from 900 to 1,500 square feet, and point 6 goes to 1,700
square feet. I’m inclined to the 1,500 square feet, but not
wedded to it, and would be looking for other Committee
Members to weigh in on that somewhat discrete issue.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Thank you, Mayor, that was
really helpful.
In looking at the hearing, I wanted to just make
a comment on point 4. I remembered in the Town Council
hearing that this came up when we discussed the Housing
Element as well, that we can’t require units to be at
certain levels of affordability, because the state
perceives that as a barrier to affordable housing, but
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another way to accomplish it might be to reduce the sizes
of the units. I remember Ms. Prevetti also said as well
that it doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to be
economically affordable, given the examples like in San
Francisco.
One thing that came to mind, and we asked this
during the Planning Commission hearings, was why there
weren’t any units that were smaller than 900 square feet?
Because Gen Y, all the research that has been done about
it, especially the younger parts of Gen Y, is that a 500
square foot unit might be just fine, a studio, so why
didn’t we have any of those? And if you had some 500 square
foot units it might actually be affordable, especially if
they were a rental.
I know that SummerHill Homes had said we can’t
sell units at 500 square feet, but I don’t think our
objective is to make money for the developer. If there is a
market for Gen Y housing with 500 square foot units, I
could see easily, for example, in the Northern District
with all the shopping there young people might like to live
in a studio, and that they’re not going to spend a lot of
time in their unit.
If I were going to modify this I would recommend
going with 500 to 1,500 square feet as in (inaudible) and
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modify it. We’re not telling them they have to build that,
I’m just saying that that might be our target range.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Other Committee Members
want to weigh in on points 4, 5 and 6?
I might add a comment that we had through public
input some requests for significant senior housing beyond
the housing that was proposed with some other types of
housing, and I know that Kirsten Duggins, Dr. Weissman, and
Rob Walker had suggestions about that.
It seems to me that if we are trying to
accommodate smaller, more affordable units and senior
housing, we might want to give some thought to what
suggestions a developer who works on senior communities
might suggest. I think there were some things that were
suggested on the fly: changing some of the corner units to
be accessible and that type of thing, that were suggestions
made by Council Members, but it seems as though if we are
trying to accommodate that we might want to actually
discuss this and say what would be attractive in terms of
affordable and senior affordable that isn’t necessarily the
very, very low 400-500 square foot unit that was proposed
in the application?
So in terms of that range that’s been suggested,
it sounds like some members feel that the 1,500 square feet
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should be the top, and other members think that we should
also potentially allow units smaller than 900 square feet.
Any other comments on that?
Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. I used the 900 square
feet, because it’s one of these line items here, but
dropping that back to 500 to 1,500 square feet, given what
our stated objectives are in the Specific Plan, that would
be fine with me.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay, thank you. Let’s move on to
point 7. This seems to be an administrative issue. What’s
Staff’s position on point 7?
JOEL PAULSON: On point 7 it’s actually already
required in the Specific Plan. I think where the challenge
came up was given the density bonus they could ask for
relief from that type of exception, and so that’s where it
came up, and it is actually currently in the Specific Plan.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: So if I hear correctly then,
any change in the Specific Plan to clarify this may even be
another area to be waived if someone chooses to use a
density bonus?
JOEL PAULSON: Correct.
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VICE CHAIR SAYOC: If that’s the case, then I
don’t… It’s there, and I don’t think there’s anything else
we could have done to tighten that language, and it was
just a provision that was waived and out of our control.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you, and I would agree. I
don't know, I like our BMP provisions; I’ve liked them ever
since we’ve had them. I think they’re great. But what I
hear you say in response to the Vice Mayor’s questions is
we the Town can’t do anything about it if a developer
chooses to eliminate them. However, I would just say if
there is anything the Town can do, and I don't know if
there is, then I would like our BMP provisions to be
protected.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay, thank you. Yes, Mr. Schultz.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: It was not only a request of
waiver, but our BMP unit also had, and this might be the
issue you also talk about when you get down to senior on
the ground level, is if you remember, their project… We
require our BMP to be spread out, as long as it’s feasible.
So the Applicant said well, it’s not feasible in senior
housing; if you’re going to do senior housing we have to
put them all together, we can’t spread them out.
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Council had two ways to go about it. They could
agree that it’s not feasible, or he could have requested
the wavier because of the density bonus. Either way he had
the ability to do it, but I think when we talk about senior
housing in relation to our BMP, to address that issue of
whether you are okay with that idea of it being all
together or whether it should be spread out.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. Well, then I’m going
to swing back to Staff. Let’s assume that this one
committee member likes the BMPs. What I hear you say is
that if we put into effect our BMP Ordinance, then we would
have to eliminate, or not allow, or say we don’t want all
of the below market price units together? I mean what is
Staff looking for on this? If we make the assumption that I
want BMP units, what needs to be done?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I think it’s more addressing the
senior housing. I think the only thing here is senior
housing on the ground senior level, but also discuss the
fact that it will be all together. It needs to kind of be
put in the plan if you’re okay with that, which is contrary
to your BMP Ordinance, because when you have affordable
senior housing, I think—at least that’s what Eden said—it
all has to be together; we can’t have a housing project
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separate. So the minute you do that, then you are in
contradiction with your BMP Ordinance that says they will
be spread out. I think the issue is if you want to have
senior housing, is it acceptable to place it all together,
because that’s the only way it can be done? And then you
can talk about whether it can be on one floor or on three
floors.
CHAIR HUDES: Vice Mayor Sayoc.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: I think what I’ve also learned
from this experience and just talking with other colleagues
is there are various definitions of senior housing. What
was proposed with Eden was this collective…it wasn’t
assisted living, but it was collective senior living that
had a facilitator, a coordinator, group activities, whereas
through our discussions through the Specific Plan Committee
we were also looking at move-down, active living. So what
I’m learning is there are various forms of senior living
that we all have various interpretations on, yet we did not
specify in our Specific Plan what kind of senior housing we
were targeting. And maybe that was intentional, but I think
what I’ve learned throughout this process is there are
various forms, and perhaps that’s an area we should
discuss, what type of senior housing are we really truly
trying to target?
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CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I thought that was a great
comment. I actually had spoken to Eden Housing when we were
on the Housing Element as a matter of interest, and we
actually asked them this question during the Planning
Commission hearings, and we’re talking about it doesn’t
necessarily have to be senior affordable housing, but an
affordable housing project, as you probably know, the
economics of that don’t work here in Silicon Valley, so the
way that this works is Eden Housing, a nonprofit, takes
these tax credits and grants and all these things and they
kind of piece together the delta between what the market
would command and what the people are able to pay.
They came out and basically said they have a
system for how they do this stuff and they need to keep
everything all together, senior or affordable or not. If
it’s an affordable housing development, they have to keep
it all together for funding and all these administrative
purposes and everything like that.
We did actually ask them the question that I
thought too: Why would you put senior housing above
commercial? But the president of Eden Housing got up and
said that’s the way we like it.
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So then the second question is what if there’s a
new application? I don't know if it would be different, it
might be a different affordable housing company, but
certainly if the affordable housing isn’t going to happen
without one of these nonprofit affordable housing
developers.
And then you also have, as you said, the senior
step-down housing, which is a different thing, and
certainly we’ve had plenty of testimony from seniors that
they want to not have to climb stairs, so then their
options were you could put it on the ground level.
Grosvenor had testified during the hearings that one
version of the Phase 1 plan had step-down housing, but they
would have had elevators, and then there was a height issue
with the 35’.
So we do have to think that through if we want to
come up with the kind of housing our seniors that are
currently in town would want to step down into, because I
don’t think we had much of that in the proposal we got for
Phase 1.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I think that perfectly frames
the issue and to go just a little bit earlier, really the
question is do you want the senior affordable housing that
she described, which takes advantage of the tax credits and
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has all these requirements? Because if you really want
that, it really has to be the Eden model, it has to be
floors going up. Based on land value you’re not going to
get anybody that’s going to be able to come in and spread
it out on a ground floor where it’s going to economically
make money. It won’t happen. You could say that’s what we
want, we want our senior affordable housing on a ground
floor, but it’s not going to happen.
The other one is then you could still have the
senior buy-down spread out BMPs amongst there, but they’re
not the senior housing project that’s going to be
affordable the other way.
And that was a rental too, and that goes back to
we really didn’t address in Residential—Commissioner
Hanssen kind of brought it—the fact that we got all
homeowner, no resident, no rental, and so should there be a
mixture or percentage of rental that we thought we were
going to get?
CHAIR HUDES: I’m going to add that one to the
list. I think we’re really talking about point 9 right now,
so I’d like to maybe just open further comments on senior
housing, and senior housing at the ground level.
I think there were other considerations that were
made during the Council hearings. I remember a suggestion
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by Committee Member Rennie to incorporate some senior units
on I think the corners and bottom floor of the multi-family
units. I think there was also discussion about not just
ground level, but the fact that senior housing would have
to be in buildings that had elevator access.
Are there other comments? Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I think the Vice Mayor was
right in suggesting we need to clarify what we want to
accomplish for senior housing, because there’s everything
from memory units, to what Eden proposed, to lie down
units, to something like The Villages in East San Jose.
It would seem like to me if the intent is to
suggest that the Town would like to use this part of this
development opportunity as a way to respond significantly
to senior housing needs, what does that mean? What
particular senior housing needs do we want to respond to?
Then someone can figure out ground level, multi-level,
whatever it is. So what senior needs are we trying to
accommodate, and to what extent do we want to accommodate
them? Then someone can figure out ground level, height
limitations, how does it pencil out, all those kind of
things, but it’s hard for me to comment whether I think
senior housing should be on ground level when I don’t know
what seniors I’m trying to accommodate.
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LAUREL PREVETTI: Right, and if I may, Mr. Chair?
I think we could certainly look at amendments that would be
clearer around a variety of senior living choices, the
move-down or step-down, active living, et cetera. I think
the one type that is not currently allowed, but it could be
for your consideration, is there is no allowance for the
continuum of care. So if someone wanted the independent
living to the nursing to the assisted and memory care, that
is not a housing type or an allowed use in this current
Specific Plan, but if that’s part of the vision for the
plan then you would need to make that very explicit.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: A question for our Town
Manager. Is that because we disallowed medical and so
there’s that medical hybrid to it, or we didn’t specify
that?
LAUREL PREVETTI: Right. When you look at the
Specific Plan and the housing types it really conveys
independent living, so that active senior, and maybe we
need to do a little bit more to articulate that more
clearly, but when you look at all of the design guidelines
and the multi-family housing types and other housing types,
it really kind of assumes that everyone is ambulatory or
has an accessible ability to meet their basic needs.
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State law is pretty strict on ADA and access for
disabled persons, so we would have to still comply with
state law, but if there’s an interest in introducing
something else, and depending on the zoning, some
communities consider those continuums of care to be more of
a commercial type of use, because while people are living
there it’s really a business. It’s 24/7, there are workers,
and it’s kind of a different type of operation, unlike a
residential neighborhood in its more typical form.
CHAIR HUDES: It seems like item 9 is a little
bit of the tip of the iceberg and it’s opened up a number
of questions about different types of senior housing. Would
the Committee Members feel that we might want to come back
to this after maybe Staff providing us with a little bit of
what are the types and the options and ways that the plan
might be modified to accommodate?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: And to weigh in on some of the
legal issues, because the framework that you were
discussing, where some of maybe the row house or the
clusters had to be senior affordable or senior housing at
the corners, is not capable from its law standpoint. You
can’t force that on a developer, to make certain ones
senior housing in that situation, so I think it would help
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to come back with some of the legal restrictions that we
have.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I realize we have to come
back to it, but I did want to throw one more thing out on
this. I think we clearly need to define what the senior
housing means, and I know this came up in the hearings that
you can’t restrict housing to seniors. Well, the affordable
housing they can, because it’s income restricted, not
because they’re seniors. Well, actually they could, because
they’re seniors as well. But in a market economy you can’t
do that, because it’s discrimination.
But in terms of addressing unmet needs, I
remember working on the Housing Element and it really
struck me, we have fully a third of our population during
the Housing Element timeline that is going to be over 65
years old, and to think that we had in the Phase 1 proposal
maybe 10 or 15 units out of 270 that were suitable for
seniors other than the affordable housing, which isn’t
targeted at our own move-down seniors, just didn’t make any
sense to me.
I did want to put that out there that whatever we
do I hope that we have some goal, a range of what we’re
looking for in terms of housing that’s suitable for
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seniors, even if it’s not restricted in terms of the plan.
I hope we can put that in there.
CHAIR HUDES: Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. I totally agree.
Looking back on the North 40 Advisory Committee, my sense,
my memory, was that we did want to address Los Gatos’ unmet
needs of future seniors, which as the Commissioner said, is
a significant portion of our community. But we were
addressing it with the size of the units, or at least that
was my mindset. If you have the size of the units small
enough, then you can have a move-down senior move into
those units.
The issue of ground floor, actually I don't
remember if it came up with the Advisory Committee, but it
certainly came up during our hearings on this specific
application, so I think that is an important issue that it
is one level. Maybe the elevators to the one-level unit are
okay, I don't know. I do remember the specific testimony
with regard to Eden, which is that having these units on
the second and third floor reduces the price for that
organization, since air rights are less expensive than
ground-level rights. So taking it back in, I think that we
can address our unmet needs by the size of the units.
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With regard to continuum of care, I think that is
something like the Hyatt. That was discussed by the North
40 Advisory Committee, and we did get individuals from the
community who actually suggested that, but we never moved
forward with it, and I believe it was because we didn’t see
a lot of that property being used with one use, but that is
just what I think I remember.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Committee Member Barnett.
COMMITTEE MEMBER BARNETT: Very briefly, as part
of the legal analysis on this issue I’d be interested to
know whether the intention is 55+ or 62+ housing. The
former, I understand, allows a little more flexibility, for
example, a disabled child or grandchild, versus 62+, which
is exclusive.
CHAIR HUDES: It sounds like we have a request
for more information and more discussion on senior housing
and the options, the types, and the legal parameters that
we have to operate with.
Let’s move to items 8 and 10, which have to do
with location. So 8 is don’t allow residential on Los Gatos
Boulevard, and 10 is consider the possibility of moving the
houses away from Highway 17 and putting commercial in that
area. Committee Members have ideas about those?
Vice Mayor.
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VICE CHAIR SAYOC: I’m going to weigh in, and in
weighing in I’m going to actually include number 8 and
number 3 together.
I think when we were looking at the actual
application what struck me was just the layout of the
application did not make sense, and so if I’m taking points
3 and 8 together, and I’m going to point to I think it was
units 24 and 25 that were actually on Los Gatos Boulevard
yet surrounded by commercial, that to me is an example of
how the vision and making it fit wasn’t necessarily
working. So I’m going to even broaden that step back beyond
that and see if there’s a way within the Specific Plan to
somehow change the process so that there’s a discussion up
front of layouts before the vesting so that we have an
ability to have a discussion on layouts, so that we don’t
have to come to the final minute on two units that happen
to be sticking out like a sore thumb, in my opinion.
When I look at residential on Los Gatos
Boulevard, in that particular application, yes, those two
units should not be there. Should that be extended all the
way to Highway 85? In my opinion, it should, because that
just continues the Los Gatos Boulevard Plan that we had
developed many, many years ago, and it just continues the
scale of the commercial aspects on Los Gatos Boulevard.
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CHAIR HUDES: Other members? Commissioner
Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: When I looked at this I
said yes. I didn’t even think about it, it just seemed to
make sense because of the Los Gatos Boulevard Plan and all
the discussions we had.
On number 10, I thought I remember are Community
Development Director saying something about if you move the
entire width of the property in the Lark District, is that
880’, or did I mishear that? I heard that there might a
width issue if you were really going to try to put a
buffer, particularly in the Lark District relative to 17,
but maybe I misheard.
JOEL PAULSON: I think that was in reference to a
suggestion from a member of the public to increase the
buffer to 300’, I think, so it was a third of the entire
depth of the whole site, and that becomes challenging.
This is a little bit different comment, I think.
It’s maybe looking at the potential restriction of
residential within a certain distance, so that wouldn’t
preclude commercial necessarily, it wouldn’t be taking the
full use of that entire area, so I think that was in
reference to a different comment.
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COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay, but I thought about
the part about the commercial as well. Well, there are
permitted commercial uses in the Lark District in the
current plan, so that might be a good place to put them.
There wasn’t a lot in the Phase 1 proposal that we saw. I
don’t think there was any in the Lark District; it was in
the Transition District. But that might be a change to
consider putting in there, and it would address two
concerns. One is having a little bit of neighborhood-
serving commercial in the Lark District, and two,
addressing the issue that was brought up about how health.
I’d be supportive of thinking about that.
CHAIR HUDES: Other Committee Members on items 8
or 10?
I might just add my comment that, again, reading
8, I thought it was a great idea, particularly since it
looked like we were getting sort of an isolated set of
residential buildings there that didn’t have continuity.
Looking forward into the Northern District, it seems as
though it would probably be a good idea there as well, from
my perspective.
Item 10, I am not particularly swayed by the
argument to move all houses away from there. Considering
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the need to achieve density, I think it could be difficult,
but that’s just my perspective on that one.
I’m going to move on to item 11, which really has
to do with the cottage clusters, and I think we found that
the cottage clusters didn’t move forward, they required a
Conditional Use Permit, so there’s a suggestion to remove
the Conditional Use Permit for cottage clusters.
Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. I think that one is a
very good idea, to get rid of that. Now, I understand that
there were reasons within a specific development not to
include the cottage clusters, but during the history of
developing the Specific Plan the cottage cluster in
discussions was a very popular use, whether or not any one
specific developer could or could not use it within its
plan, I don't know, but I like getting rid of the CUP.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. I would agree. Any other
comments?
I want to just maybe ask Staff what was the
history of putting the CUP on the cottage clusters?
JOEL PAULSON: I think Vice Mayor Sayoc can
answer that.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: I was going to comment on
that. The history of that, this is an example of one area
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that did not get cleaned up when we did the Housing Element
and the Specific Plan.
During the Specific Plan residential use
discussion we were very clear that we did not want detached
single-family homes, because that was not an unmet need,
and we were afraid that cottage clusters could in essence
be detached single-family homes, and thus the CUP
requirements, so that we had the opportunity to look at it
and say hey, don’t try to fool us, basically. But now that
we have the density requirement there really is no way, in
my mind, that someone could do a single-family home and
call it a cottage cluster, so I think that’s just an
obsolete requirement that we should all be able to agree
on.
JOEL PAULSON: I think it also brings back one of
your first comments on item 1, which is if you have
development of a number of units, the cottage cluster
clearly will not be at 20 units per acre, so you end up
moving to 12, where there was the comment made before that
you may have to increase the number of units to accomplish
that.
CHAIR HUDES: I agree. I think there was public
testimony about missing out on the cottage cluster housing
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type, and so I think that it makes sense to remove that,
from my perspective.
Number 12 is a big issue. Increase the total
number of residential units on the North 40, and I was a
little surprised to see it on the list, because it seemed
to me that this one would move into the redo the EIR
category. Maybe you could explain how that works.
JOEL PAULSON: It wouldn’t require any change to
the EIR, because the EIR actually looked at 364 units, so
that wouldn’t be a problem from that standpoint. I can’t
remember the exact genesis of that, but in looking at maybe
not having… With item 1 and item 11 potentially, not being
built at 20 units per acre, you eat those units up but you
won’t be able to achieve the 20 units on the back end,
unless someone, as the Town Attorney said before, requested
a density bonus, then you may be able to get back there,
but we’re probably not going to be able to rely on that
assumption.
CHAIR HUDES: So there is a cap though at 364. I
know there was some public comment that the entire North 40
could be residential, but that would go beyond the EIR?
JOEL PAULSON: Correct.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay. So Committee Members opinions
about increasing the number of units?
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Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: It seemed like to me one
would have to be clear about, if I was going to do that,
what I’m doing with item 5 under the Commercial. Does that
imply if I’m increasing the number of residential… Again,
with a fixed amount of land with limitations on height and
expectations for open space, if we’re suggesting increasing
the number of residential units, are we also suggesting to
reduce the amount of allowable commercial space? Are we
changing the mix? I mean the mix wasn’t prescribed at a
specific, but there were boundaries put around it that were
potentially achievable, so if we were to significantly
increase the number of residential units we wouldn’t be
able to stay within the same range of commercial square
footage.
LAUREL PREVETTI: Mr. Chair, if I may? As we’ve
been talking with some of the other items, the idea of
being able to do smaller units means that you can put more
units in a same area of land, so it doesn’t have to affect
the mix of the land uses, so we should be okay there.
I would just suggest that for number 12, given
the spirit of the conversation this evening, that any
increase in the total number of units would only be to
facilitate the cottage cluster or the low-density along
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Lark, so it could be constrained. As this reads now,
“Increase the total number of units,” it sounds like the
sky is the limit, let’s go to that EIR max of 364, but I
don’t think that was really the spirit of the suggestion
that came forward from the Council, so I think if the
Committee is agreeable, I think we would be looking for how
do we tighten that up and make it very clear that we’re
looking for some boundaries around how much of an increase.
CHAIR HUDES: Right. Other Committee Members on
the increase, the amount, or whether we should?
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I actually did some back
of the envelope math. The way the current Specific Plan is,
with the 270 units and the zoning requirement for 13.5 at
20 units per acre, and the potential for a 35% density
bonus, which we don’t know if it would happen, but we have
to assume that it could, and that was certainly the way the
Phase 1 proposal went with the first round. That being the
case, if you want to facilitate cottage clusters, which I
think we do, you have to add number of units to the plan,
because we can’t count on using the density bonus for it.
I would suggest, and what I was doing in my mind
was keeping a cap on it, which we kind of already have a
suggested range of a top at 40 to 50 units, so if it turned
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out that cottage clusters could only be eight units per
acre, I don't know if that’s right or not, you could
basically set it up where there was a limit of a certain
number of units that can be at that low of a density, but
you’d have to add those to the total of 364.
LAUREL PREVETTI: To the total 270.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Two-seventy, but knowing
that there is going to be potentially a bonus that will
take you up to 364.
LAUREL PREVETTI: No, you wouldn’t have to…
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: No? No, don’t worry about
that? Okay.
LAUREL PREVETTI: Don’t worry about the density
bonus. If it comes, we’ll have to deal with it at that
time.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So it’s 270 plus whatever
number it takes to accomplish the number of cottage cluster
units that you want to have.
CHAIR HUDES: Other comments on that? My comment
on that is that given that we do get these bonuses on top
of numbers that are prescribed that we should stay toward
the 270 number, my opinion, but I guess we’d be waiting to
see what number would come about if we included cottage
cluster then.
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I had one more question in the Residential
section, and then I think we’ll take a break and figure out
how late we’re going to go.
Number 13 doesn’t have a Staff response, but it
says is it possible for the Town to allow a developer to
have a density bonus if the developer requests it, but not
necessarily have those 13.5 acres in a certain location
that is spread throughout the property? This has been a
question for me as well, how do you define that 13.5 acres,
and how does that relate to a particular application?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I’m not sure I quite understand
the question the way its phrased, but I’ll try to interpret
the way I think it is.
If a developer comes in and wants a density
bonus, he can put it within that application’s property.
For example, in this case let’s suppose the application
came in and wanted the density bonus, but wanted to carry
it over to the other Transition District and say that’s
going to be part of the next phase coming in. We told them
no, you can’t do that. So it would have to be part of your
application within the property that you currently develop,
if that’s the question you were asking.
If it’s regarding where the 13.5 acres is,
another way to do it besides this percentage and spreading
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it out is you can actually take the map and rezone the 13.5
acres on this map and say these are the acres where there
will be 20 units per acre, instead of doing a
percentagewise, if you want to be that specific. That’s
really what our Housing Element says. It says you will
rezone 13.5 acres, so that’s a possibility to look exactly
at the map and determine exactly where those 13.5 are. So
if it was part of the application, it could be done, and if
that was done, 13.5 were, and they’re all situated
wherever, so long as they had control of the property and
that was part of their application, to build those dense a
units right there at that time as part of their
application, yes, they could do that. They can’t say okay,
I’ve got a density bonus of 20 units and I’m just going to
carry those over and build them later; that we would not
allow. I hope that answered the question.
CHAIR HUDES: This was a question that was one
for inclusion, so other Committee Members want to comment
on item 13?
Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Follow up with Mr. Schultz. Just
hypothetically, could the Town say, following up on what
you said, we want—I’m going to use round numbers—four of
those acres in the Lark District and four of those acres in
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the Transition District and four of those acres in the
Northern District?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Yes.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Okay, thank you.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: And then I guess the question
was, and Joel just mentioned that, when they take that
density bonus could we tell them where to put the units?
No, that’s part of their application. They can determine if
they want to make their density at 20 acres and want to
make that one at 24 or 25, that’s where they get that
choice to do that, unless you can make that health and
safety finding.
CHAIR HUDES: It sounds like with regard to item
13 and the area of the 13.5 acres for the density bonus
that there are several approaches for it. One would be to
just specify how housing is distributed across all three
districts and let those 13.5 come about. The second
alternative would be to actually rezone the map and say
this is where the 13.5 acres are located. It sounds like a
third alternative is to say that of the 13.5 this many
acres would be in this district, this many in the second,
and this many in the third.
Do Committee Members have an opinion about those
three alternatives for addressing where to put the 13.5
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acres? Okay. I think it’s a lot to take in. Maybe we ought
to think about that one and revisit it the next time. Maybe
Staff will have some suggestions about those options.
LAUREL PREVETTI: The other option is that just
having the question on the table allows us to bring back
those options for Planning Commission consideration. I
think we have some ideas of what the Planning Commission
and Council might want to see in terms of next steps, so it
doesn’t necessarily have to come back to this Committee,
but certainly for most of you on the other bodies, you’ll
have a chance to look through those options.
CHAIR HUDES: Well, we’ll leave that open then,
and we won’t necessarily come back to it, but if Committee
Members think about it and want to weigh in on those three
options or other ones, we’ll certainly not close that off.
Are there other comments on Residential before we
take a break? These were the ones that came to us from
Council, but are there other considerations that are not
related to height, which also I think impacts residential,
which we’ll come to in a few minutes?
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I don't know if it belongs
in this Residential discussion, but the comment I brought
up at the beginning about the current Specific Plan, you
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can only put residential over commercial in the Northern
District, and I’m not saying we need to revisit that, but
it’s tied into this density discussion.
We learned during the hearings that it might not
be feasible to do twenty dwelling units per acre,
especially since we’re talking about potentially putting
numbers in, or percentage ranges of what needs to be in
each district. I wondered if we shouldn’t make sure we
discuss that and see if we need to change it, because it
seemed like it was sort of a nonstarter for trying to
accomplish the housing over commercial with the density.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay, sounds like there’s agreement
on that one.
Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: There’s an agreement on that one.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. I had a couple other
points on housing that really related to the comment about
translating the vision into specifics in the plan that seem
to be lacking a little bit, and so I would want to maybe
consider one of them, which is it doesn’t only affect
housing, but it comes about strongly, and that’s the look
and feel of Los Gatos, and the potential of including in
the Specific Plan some examples, architectural styles, and
much as we do with the housing, define what is good and
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what is not good. In terms of look and feel, trying to make
look and feel a little bit more objective than it is. I
know it’s an area that’s difficult, but I wonder if other
Committee Members think that we should try to make that a
little bit less subjective and a little bit more objective?
Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: I’m seeing yeses along here, and
maybe you are too. I think the answer to that is yes. I
personally think that the look and feel is objective, or
can be seen as objective in our current plan. However,
since not everybody does, it would be a good idea to
tighten it up.
CHAIR HUDES: The other one that came up again in
public comment, because he had sort of legal definitions of
density, but there was the term “intensity” that was used,
and I think there were some descriptions about how you can
achieve density with less intensity, and I’m wondering if
that’s something that we might want to at least define, try
to define intensity, and try to assert that we are looking
to limit the intensity. Maybe it’s just me, but I had
trouble with those two terms, and I didn’t really find
anything in the Specific Plan that helped me to achieve the
density with less intensity. A lot of nodding heads on that
one, so maybe we could look at that.
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Okay, I would suggest that we take a ten-minute
break, since I wasn’t quite prepared for the hearing, and
we’ll figure out how far we’re going to get tonight, so if
we could take ten minutes, please.
(INTERMISSION)
CHAIR HUDES: I’d like to get started again if we
could. I’d like to move on to the next section, which is
Commercial. There are a number of suggestions in Commercial
and I wonder if there is any sort of broad discussion,
anything anyone would like to say about the Commercial
area, before we get into the specific suggestions?
I do have some comments about this section in
general. I think we had a very small test of the commercial
with the application, but I think it’s also given the
opportunity to raise other questions, and there were quite
a few comments about the Specific Plan during the study
session on the Specific Plan that preceded the Council’s
deliberations on the application as well, and so I did want
to make a few comments from my perspective.
This is an area that I’ve been very passionate
about for some time, and it’s really not about eliminating
competition to the downtown. To me it’s about creating a
level playing field so that the entire town can thrive, and
leveling the playing field I think involves two steps, or
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two parts. Only part of it is applicable to the North 40,
and part of it is contained in the North 40 Specific Plan,
but I think we have to think about these two things in
tandem and not have the North 40 progress be the cart that
comes before the horse.
The first step to me is in enhancing the business
environment of the downtown so it can be competitive and
thrive and create synergies with the North 40, and so there
are some suggestions that came about as a result of this
process. I think Council Member Rennie’s suggestion, Mr.
Millen (phonetic) to provide zoning to accommodate a market
hall elsewhere in town, perhaps in downtown. Other ways of
achieving synergy and enhancing the downtown would be to
have transit connections between the North 40 and downtown,
to revise or relax the CUPs in downtown for businesses that
could compete with North 40 retail. Also, funding town-wide
parking improvements, and also requiring the development of
the North 40 to include a specific cross-marketing plan and
funding of cross-marketing activities. Another idea that
was considered is forming a standing economic vitality
advisory group to monitor the impacts of commercial
development in the North 40 and recommend actions, should
they be appropriate.
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Then there are other areas that would go in
tandem with this and may or may not be as necessary, but
those fall more into the control side of it on the North 40
and so very little controls actually exist in the plan, but
there are some things that could be considered.
One is a distribution matrix with ranges not just
of the space and sizes, but also the business types. This
was originally proposed by the consultant and considered by
the North 40 Committee. It was also referred to in I think
the first economic report. Other ideas would be to limit
Phase 1 retail, and that’s one of the specific points
below. Limit Phase 2 retail to a certain number of units
per square footage, and then to include the requirement to
objectively analyze the economic impacts of the specific
application, not just the plan, and I think some of that is
incorporated now in the Specific Plan, but I think we’ve
learned something from doing that economic analysis about
improving that a bit. Then potentially including CUP
requirements for a development application that has a
potential of introducing retail that’s substantially
competitive to downtown and other areas.
So that gets us really to our first point, but to
me those are sort of the broad ways of looking at in order
to have a thriving town we need to think about leveling the
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field, and that comes from creating some synergies with
downtown, and it comes from potentially putting some
controls in the Specific Plan on commercial development and
getting the balance right between those so that we end up
with a level playing field.
Those are just my thoughts broadly on that. Any
reaction to that? And then happy to go through the specific
points.
Yes, Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I just had a question.
There’s obviously a lot of history with our CUP process
downtown. If you weren’t involved in the process it would
seem like the easiest thing to do would be to just take
away CUPs from downtown, but I’m sure that’s been discussed
already. There was a little bit of discussion about it
during the Town Council hearing on the 27th. I was just
curious what the thoughts were, because it seems to be
adding an undue burden to add that to the North 40, but
certainly it makes sense to have them on a level playing
field with downtown, but would it be easier to modify what
we have downtown?
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. This is an area that
when we did the North 40 Advisory Committee this was an
issue, the commercial, that Mr. Hudes and I probably, I
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think, focused on maybe more then other members of our
committee, and it is an important area. It’s important to
the success of the North 40, and it’s important to the
continuing success of the downtown. There was an attempt to
include in our Specific Plan either certain square footages
of different commercial uses, or total square footages, and
that component never made it into the final Specific Plan.
There were also considerations of having more CUPs in the
Specific Plan; that never made it into the Specific Plan.
Quite frankly, it was the reason I voted against the
Commercial component and the entire Specific Plan, for
those reasons.
Some of the things that Mr. Hudes was talking
about, the transit, shuttles, whatever, between the two
parts of town, I think that is a great idea. Making the
CUPs in the North 40 consistent with the downtown, I think
that is very important.
Going to Commissioner Hanssen’s questions, if you
want to take the big Conditional Use Permit parameters in
the downtown, they deal with CUPs for formula stores, or
chain stores, and not for our local small businesses. They
are for service, spa kinds of uses. They are for
restaurants and bars. The whole history—getting back to
what you were saying—of those Conditional Use Permits was
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in order to increase the existence of success of our local
businesses. We know that it is far easier for a bar or a
restaurant or a spa or a formula store, chain store, to
come in to Los Gatos, but we were trying to keep a blend,
and to the extent of that, we’ve done that, we do have a
blend in our town far greater, for example, than Palo Alto
that was just in the newspaper today, and Campbell that was
in the newspaper within the past six months.
If you start changing those balances between the
locally owned store and the chain store, between the spa
and non-spa, you’re going to disrupt the equilibrium that
we tried so hard to create. So if that’s where people want
to go with regard to the downtown, I think it needs to be
done very cautiously, and if our reason for doing it is so
that we protect the downtown from the North 40, it might be
premature.
I share Mr. Hudes’ passion about this issue, and
I think it’s one that this committee, the Planning
Commission, and the Council needs to examine cautiously.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: I’m think I’m going to echo
the comments… Let me step back. I’m going to echo the words
“act cautiously” on this. This morning I spent some time
with I believe it’s the West Valley Brokerage community,
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and just having now had an opportunity at a Council level
to really sit at the discussions that are happening region-
wise on economics, vitality, and the changing world of
retail and learning that it’s quickly changing, it’s very
dynamic, it’s evolving. Even the discussions that we’ve had
previously on formula retail. Formula retail, just learned
today, that’s at a decline. With online sales, things that
we are thinking of that are traditionally in brick and
mortar are slowing changing, and what other communities are
doing is they’re loosening their regulations to better
adapt to new policies and to new changing environments.
So when I say I agree with working cautiously, I
think, yes, we have to look at what is best so that we
don’t have one neighborhood at an advantage over another,
but we also have to look at not harming all of our downtown
business corridors inadvertently by putting unnecessary
regulations when we’re in a dynamic environment that is at
least is making me think loosening regulations might be the
better way to move forward.
CHAIR HUDES: Just to add a comment to that, I
think that we have to be realistic about what’s the purview
of this General Plan Committee and our task to revise the
Specific Plan if it does need that. In my mind, you have to
couple these things. There are some things that have been
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discussed at the Council level about revising or relaxing
CUPs or providing parking, but I think that we can’t assume
that those are going to happen necessarily, so to me it’s
about getting that balance and so potentially including
some controls in the Specific Plan until such time as that
loosening, or freeing up of the ability of the downtown to
compete, actually occurs. That’s what I meant about the
cart before the horse.
I’m concerned about allowing just anything goes
in the North 40 while we’re still very constrained
downtown, maybe with the hope of loosening things up but
we’re not there yet, and so that was my thinking about why
we might consider some controls in the North 40 regarding
commercial, with the possibility of relaxing those when the
playing field does even out, if that makes sense.
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So much discussion went
into this during the North 40 Specific Plan, it’s kind of
hard to come back after the fact and say wow. But given
what the Mayor just said, I wondered if a way to start with
it might be to take some of the permitted land uses, and
maybe the ones that we think would be most threatening to
downtown, maybe they’d need to have a CUP. There are a
number of businesses that have that already in the
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permitted land uses, and I don’t honestly know which ones
they would be, but maybe that would be the start, not
having everything have to have a CUP, but maybe the ones
that we thing that would be the most threatening to
downtown, and that way it would be somewhat of a control,
but it wouldn’t be overly burdensome.
CHAIR HUDES: Let’s try to draw it back to the
list that we have in front of us. I think that that comment
may relate to item 4 and some other items, but let’s just
take the first item on its merits and get some comments,
and that is that CUP requirements should be the same as
downtown. Is there a sense of the Committee on that?
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: I have a question of Staff.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, go ahead.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Just a quick question of
Staff. In our CUP requirements we have various requirements
not only for downtown, but various parts of our other
commercial centers, right? I should have thought of it
earlier, but is it possible to look at what it is for each
district? Is there an opportunity if we’re looking at it to
make it the same town-wide, versus just downtown? I’d be
interested to hear with this committee if we’re looking at
just putting downtown and North 40 on the same.
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JOEL PAULSON: I’ll just speak generally. There
are some differences. The two big differences are that
formula retail outside of downtown only requires a
Conditional Use Permit if it’s over 6,000 square feet.
Where the downtown requires a Conditional Use Permit for
personal service, that’s not required outside of the
downtown. I think those are the two big differences.
Restaurants already require CUPs in both areas, so those
are really the two differences between downtown and outside
of downtown.
CHAIR HUDES: Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Following up on that, it would be
helpful to me if this is going to come back to us, the CUP
issue, or I guess any control issue, to see where the
differences are; I mean a red line or whatever you want to
call it. This is the North 40 current Specific Plan, and
this is the Boulevard or whatever, and this is the
downtown.
JOEL PAULSON: We can do that.
CHAIR HUDES: Yeah.
MAYOR SPECTOR: And so then we can like zero in
on… It may be that we want it to be all the same, or it may
be that that’s not realistic, but there are defined areas
where we think it should be.
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CHAIR HUDES: I see a lot of nodding of heads on
that one. Any other comments with regard to number 1. I
think we’ve had a request for some more information on
that, but any other comments on it? Okay.
The next one is to allow commercial or mixed-use
on Los Gatos Boulevard. First of all, let me get some
clarification on that. Is it not allowed in the Specific
Plan currently? What’s the current status?
JOEL PAULSON: I think this is related to the one
in Residential where we said we don’t want residential
along Los Gatos Boulevard. The one modification here is
this potentially would allow mixed-use, so you’d still have
commercial, but it wouldn’t be standalone commercial, it
would be generally residential above commercial, and so
whether one or both of those should be added to the
Specific Plan.
CHAIR HUDES: The way I read it then, it would be
to allow only commercial or mixed-use on Los Gatos
Boulevard; that’s the intention.
JOEL PAULSON: Correct.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay. Yes, Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Actually, that’s a wrinkle
that I hadn’t thought about when looking at Residential
number 8. I’d be interested to know what people think of
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mixed-use. I don’t believe just absolute residential on Los
Gatos Boulevard makes sense, but perhaps mixed-use might
open up some options. I’m just curious what other Committee
members think.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: When we were doing our
walk through of the North 40 I thought we had this
discussion, and I don't know if I remember correctly, but I
thought that because of the perimeter rule you can only go
up to 25’. I think it applies to Los Gatos Boulevard too,
if I’m not mistaken, so then that makes mixed-use not
possible. I think we talked about why there was only
housing and why couldn’t it be retail over commercial,
because that would make more sense given the flow of what’s
going on on the Boulevard. I don't know if we want to open
up a can of worms to make the height bigger, but that would
be a way to do it. I don’t think we’d be missing that much.
I mean there are plenty of opportunities for mixed-use
elsewhere in the North 40 besides on Los Gatos Boulevard. I
don’t think we’d be missing anything by not allowing that.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Other comments? Okay,
then I’m going to move on to number 3, which is to explore
commercial uses in the Lark District, and currently I
believe that’s not permitted at all in the Lark District.
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JOEL PAULSON: There are some uses that are
permitted in the Lark District that are commercial.
CHAIR HUDES: So would we need to actually modify
anything or change the Specific Plan to accommodate that
idea?
JOEL PAULSON: I think the question is probably
twofold.
One, should more of the commercial uses that
currently are not permitted or permitted using a
Conditional Use Permit be permitted or require a
Conditional Use Permit in the Lark District? That’s
probably the first one.
The other potentially is changing the general
overview of the Lark District. The language in here
regarding the Lark District and commercial uses and maybe
freeing that up a little bit more on the commercial side
are two areas where I see that as being potentially
beneficial to that comment specifically.
CHAIR HUDES: And we do already have a fair
amount of commercial in the Lark District through the
grandfathered businesses, correct?
JOEL PAULSON: Currently there is the gas
station, and then I can’t remember where the Transition
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straddles and whether or not the three office buildings as
you go north are all in that, or only two of them are.
CHAIR HUDES: All right. Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. It would seem to me
that if we do indeed reduce the new Specific Plan, reduce…
Well, we already have it in the old Specific Plan, but if
you have a reduced number of housing in the Lark area, then
you have the opportunity to have more commercial, and if
your goal is to have commercial that serves the northern
part of Los Gatos and the North 40, I don't know if the
answer is to create more commercial than we already have,
or not, but I think we should provide commercial for the
north part of Los Gatos and for the North 40 and to have it
included on the Lark area.
CHAIR HUDES: Other comments? I’m getting some
head nodding. Yes, Mr. Barnett.
COMMITTEE MEMBER BARNETT: The concern that comes
to my mind would be adverse consequences: traffic,
nuisance, and whatnot. I assume that there would be some
planning tools that could be used to mitigate this, but I’m
open for comment.
CHAIR HUDES: I would maybe also add my comment
to that, that this goes to me hand-in-hand with eliminating
the residential that’s currently in that pocket in the Lark
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District on the Boulevard. It does make sense to me to look
at potentially more commercial in the Lark District and to
change the general overview of that, so I’m sort of in
favor of what’s in number 3 myself.
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I know we’re going to talk
about this later, but I wondered if the thing to do might
be to put a limit on the total amount of square footage for
commercial in the Lark District? There is also the CUP
process and the what’s permitted uses. I’m looking at Table
2-1, the Permitted Land Uses. Right now there are typical
things that would be personal service: restaurant, personal
service office, financial institution, the bank. There
isn’t a whole lot else that isn’t without a CUP that’s a
business per se, but even like a small family day care,
would that be in somebody’s home? A botanical nursery is
allowed. So there are already some permitted uses, but if
we were worried about it being too much, we could always
put a limit on how much square footage, or maybe not.
CHAIR HUDES: I think we’re on to number 4 now,
which is considering maximum square footages for commercial
use instead of CUPs, and we haven’t resolved the CUP part
of that statement, but maybe take it without the CUP
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portion of that statement, but to consider maximum square
footages.
The other idea and the other thing that came in
and out of the Specific Plan a number of times was square
footage ranges as well, and a table of ranges of square
footage, not just maximums. Do other Committee Members find
merit in those ideas?
Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. Yes, I do. Having been
someone who tried to create those tables, it’s difficult,
and having the square footage is never accepted into the
Specific Plan as a further indication of how many
individuals will consider it difficult, but I like the
idea.
CHAIR HUDES: My recollection is we were close on
that one, and I think maybe we did have maybe a straw man
to go in to that from the previous work that the Committee
did, and that in conjunction with considering CUPs, this
could be a useful way of working on the level playing
field.
I’m going to move on to number 5, which is to
consider a reduction in the amount of commercial square
footage; Table 2-2 in Section 2.5.1, address that. Maybe
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Staff could remind us what the current square footage is
that we would consider reducing.
JOEL PAULSON: The current maximum new square
footage is 435,000 square feet.
CHAIR HUDES: And is that strictly… What’s
included in commercial?
JOEL PAULSON: There are two categories. That’s
Total New. There is approximately 66,000 square feet of
existing, and the cap is 501,000 square feet. The
commercial, which is everything excluding office or hotel,
the cap is 400,000 square feet. Then the cap for office or
hotel is 250,000 square feet. So clearly, and this came up
a lot with the Advisory Committee, you’ll never be able to
accomplish the maximum of both of those, but just throw
that in there. I’m sure people remember those conversations
as well.
CHAIR HUDES: And commercial includes
restaurants, retail, specialty market, health club,
personal service, and entertainment?
JOEL PAULSON: It’s generally everything except
for office and hotel.
CHAIR HUDES: Right. So Committee Members, what
are your thoughts about reducing the 435,000 number
overall, without delving into the specifics?
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Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I don't know if I heard
this right, but in the Town Council hearing there was some
testimony that the 435,000 square feet is more than double
what we have downtown. Is that correct?
JOEL PAULSON: Not from a commercial square
footage.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: All right, so that was
incorrect, but I know that was a concern that was
expressed. Something that came to my mind, there are a lot
of balls in play here, for example, if we decided—which we
haven’t yet—that we had to increase the number of the
amount of open space and we reduced the density requirement
and had a push back from Highway 17, I wondered if
everything could fit, all the commercial.
Then you already mentioned you can’t have all the
commercial and office and hotel, so at some point we have
to do that analysis and say what is the most important
thing that we have to accomplish out of this in addition to
addressing the competitiveness issue? So I wondered if
we’re able even to say what it needs to be until we kind of
decide what the other pieces look like, if that makes
sense?
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LAUREL PREVETTI: And that’s certainly a
possibility as the amendments themselves move through to
Planning Commission and Town Council. I think the other
piece to remember is Table 2-2 really sets out the
maximums, so if there’s a specific reason why you would
want to reduce them, that would be helpful to know, but
otherwise this really is just an envelope; it doesn’t mean
that you have to achieve all of the square footage either;
this is just the capacity.
CHAIR HUDES: Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: In looking at all the various
commercial uses allowable. One of the items that the
Advisory Committee continually expressed a desire for was a
hotel, and so I’m thinking now how do we provide incentives
to get what we want? Loosening regulations is one way, but
what other ways besides saying we would like a hotel can we
actually see that take place in the next iteration?
LAUREL PREVETTI: There are a couple of ways to
accomplish that, and it looks like the Town Attorney is
ready to go, so why don’t you get started?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Well, it’s just near and dear,
because I dealt with this issue quite a bit in some other
jurisdictions, and you do have to relax the regulations for
that to occur. One of the issues that we did when we put
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the height restriction, you have limited the ability to
obtain hotels, because they don’t want to spread their
units out; they want to go up. Once you tell them about the
restriction, they pretty much will just walk. They don’t
even want to listen to what else you could give them as far
as incentive, so that’s what you have to deal with really.
The height would probably be the number one, but there are
other incentives you can do, that we could do, if that was
the goal. Then we could come back with language that would
provide those incentives.
JOEL PAULSON: And I think the existing Specific
Plan, for the hotel, it’s actually a permitted use, so we
don’t even require a Conditional Use Permit, so that’s one
incentive. It’s kind of coupling all of the issues together
is really great, it’s permitted use, you have the height
challenge, which may be challenged, but then when you park
it you provide the 30% open space and all of the other
requirements, it becomes challenging. It doesn’t mean it’s
impossible, but probably becomes challenging, because
typically that market for hotels is very tight as far as
what they can make work economically.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: And just from a corporate
standpoint, the big names, they have their set protocols of
what they’re looking for and what their standard building
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is, and so they look to see if it’s going to fit in the
box, and if it doesn’t…
CHAIR HUDES: I think we’ve gotten a little into
the discussion on number 6, which are the actual commercial
needs. I wanted to try to draw number 5 to a conclusion, if
I could. Are there other comments from Committee Members on
reducing the amount of commercial square footage?
Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. It’s actually going to
go back, because I do think that we’ve had a lot of input
over the years that people want a hotel, and I understand
that there are development parameters, but one way to do
that and to also get to wherever you were going on number
5, I think, is to take that Table 2-2 and increase the
square footage for the office hotel, and then that would,
if you wanted to keep the total, decrease the square
footage for the other commercial. So that’s another metric
that could play into these two potential objectives, which
is less commercial and a hotel.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I think if one wants to
aggressively pursue a hotel as an option, one probably
should… Well, I guess I wonder, should one decouple office
and hotel but then also put an upper limit on the square
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footage of hotel that’s reasonable? That would attract some
hotels, but without suggesting that one was going to build
a 1,000-room hotel in town, so one could find some ground.
Attached to the hotel also, it wasn’t always
clear to me in the earlier conversations whether the
interest was in a hotel or an interest was in the meeting
room, conference space, that was associated with the hotel;
whether it was our hotel itself, or whether it was to
achieve the other? But it seems like to me if one steps
back and thinks about community needs, all of the major
service clubs in the town now utilize the same space, which
we all know will be developed for something other than Los
Gatos Lodge in the reasonably near future. There’s no
alternative in this town for those service clubs to meet,
and for other organizations, because places like the
History Club are limited in size, they’re limited in
parking, and the opera house is limited in parking.
So if we have an opportunity to tweak this so
that we respond to what is a real need in the community, so
that one doesn’t have to go to Villa Ragusa in Campbell or
other kinds of places that that would be good, from my
perspective it might be another reason for isolating the
hotel conference use away from office.
CHAIR HUDES: Mayor.
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MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. I agree with Mr.
Erekson. What happened during the discussions leading up to
the Specific Plan is that it was consistent that we got
input that the community wanted a hotel, and they wanted a
hotel with meeting rooms. I mean that was consistent, and
so therefore it made the cut on Table 2-2. But then the
Specific Plan allows the developer to come forward with
components of the Specific Plan, and my sense is that a
hotel use, besides having the limitations that Mr. Schultz
pointed out, may not be as economically feasible as
building homes with commercial.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. I did want to weigh in
on that one, if I may, as well. There’s been a fair amount
of time that’s passed since we first were working on this
issue, and there have been developments, particularly
looking at Sand Hill Road, where you have venture capital,
you have incubators, and you have a very fine hotel located
in that space. We talked about retail leakage; I’m thinking
about brain drain leakage where we have our best innovators
leaving town to go work in a venture capital firm outside
of town when there is the opportunity to combine really
excellent office space, potentially incubator space, that
goes nicely with a modest sized hotel.
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I think that’s an important component and I
personally believe, coming back to the numbers, that
250,000 is a bit small to accomplish something of that
magnitude and potential real benefit for the Town.
The other side of that where I wanted to weigh in
was on number 5, on the amount of commercial. The amount
that we have is not equal to, but it’s in the same league
as, a Santana Row, and it’s certainly quite large compared
to our downtown. So without some of the limitations or
controls, I had proposed some smaller numbers of 300,000
square feet, particularly in the way it was phased,
combined with 67,000 square feet of real neighborhood-
serving that was integrated with the community.
I would put those numbers out there for
consideration of options, since it seems like we are going
to consider a reduction of the number of commercial square
footage, so I just wanted to put that out there.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: What would be helpful when
this comes back is to have our economic vitality manager
weigh in. During the time that the Specific Plan has been
in creation were there any inquiries about a hotel, and
what parameters were they looking at? That might be helpful
to us, because clearly, as I mentioned, that was a
identified need that I can’t say all of us, but the
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majority of us, clearly wanted and desired in this plan,
and so it would be helpful for me to know if there was any
interest that was ever expressed and what those parameters
were.
It might even be a nice exercise to know what
those parameters were, and if that is something that we as
a committee can look at to see if that could fit within the
various criteria that exist now in the plan and whether we
would need to tweak it, and whether those tweaks would be
something we would support.
JOEL PAULSON: I just offer that we definitely
can talk to the vitality manager. We have had inquiries
about hotels. They generally don’t give us their
parameters; they ask what our regulations are, and then
they go back and see if they can make it work. But we
definitely can try to get some general information on what
a hotel needs maybe from a square footage perspective
versus keys or number of rooms.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Kind of a general rule of thumb
is 50,000 square feet for a 100-room, but that’s kind of
changed. That’s based on a 325,000 square foot room, and
now sometimes they’re doing bigger and they’re doing
boutique size, but that used to be the general rule of
thumb. I was just trying to look it up to see how much it’s
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changed, but that was kind of where you went when you were
looking at square footage of what it would take, and that’s
just the rooms, and it depends on how much you want for the
conference facilities and other things, or if it includes a
restaurant.
CHAIR HUDES: I think we’re addressing number 5
and number 7. I wanted to maybe focus a little bit more on
number 6 and the unmet commercial needs that have
previously been identified: general merchandise, building
materials, resident-serving businesses defined as serving
the north part of Los Gatos and the North 40. Do Committee
Members want to weigh in on those particular commercial
needs? Is that a good list? Should there be additional
items that should be considered in terms of commercial
needs?
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: What we have in the
Specific Plan is fairly general right now. I don’t think
that it makes sense to put names of businesses in there,
but it might be like we have in the Hillside Guidelines and
the Residential Design Guidelines, maybe some more examples
of what is desirable versus not in the districts. We have
some architecture things and pictures of row houses and
stuff, but not a lot of description about what we what.
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That might help in terms of clarifying the goals, because
we have the CUPs and the permitted uses, but not a lot of
direction besides that.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I guess I would caution us
that while I think in general the Specific Plan needs to be
more specific than it was, so it needs to be a more
specific Specific Plan in general; I think that’s where
everyone got into trouble a little bit. But if we begin to
name types of commercial enterprises building, and I’ll
just use the examples that are here, building materials and
general merchandize, the retail area is really dynamic, and
to the extent that we become too specific with those kinds
of uses and we approach it by being restrictive—and I’m not
saying remove the rule or guidelines that would prevent us
from having a huge big box store or something, although the
marketplace may be taking care of that for us—but I think
we have to figure out how to nuance the language so that it
will achieve what we want to achieve while not precluding
the fact that we may not know five years from now what
would be desirable to develop in that area because of the
changing retail nature. I don't know how to nuance the
language in that manner, but I think we have to be very
careful with the language so that we don’t restrict or we
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don’t make our own language outdated by the time that the
property is actually developed.
CHAIR HUDES: Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you, and Mr. Erekson is
correct. I remember speaking with Mr. Capobres when this
whole process first started and he was talking about
general merchandise, and he was talking about a Target
store, and then by the time we got to 2015 it was a little
Target or a baby Target, so yes, it does evolve.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I would say something
like, saying or thinking about so great, you pose the
problem and you don’t offer any help with the answer. Fire
that guy. But some phraseology like “resident-serving
businesses,” if we take the other one, if we intend for it
to be resident-serving, that can change over time, but
that’s a nature of a use, not a specific commercial or
retail kind of thing.
So if we can figure out language, if you and
Monica can figure out language, or in the chamber,
whomever, can help us figure out language like that, that
is serving needs, that’s more descriptive than simply
saying, “Serving unmet needs.” Serving unmet needs is so
general and unspecific that I don’t think it’s really
helpful to the Town decision makers, nor is it helpful for
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people who would want to apply and develop, because it’s
just so innocuous, I think.
CHAIR HUDES: I’m going to take all of these
comments. I think they all address questions 5, 6, and 7,
and I wanted to move on to 8 and 9, maybe take those two
together.
Eight, the intent of the Specific Plan was to
protect downtown while providing neighborhood-serving
commercial and reducing retail sales tax leakage, and 9,
how do we make commercial that’s near residential be truly
neighborhood-serving and not shoe stores and handbag stores
that draw people away from downtown, and then how do we get
the other portion of it to be general merchandising, again,
without creating a food court and a bunch of small stores
with dress shops and so forth?
That’s pretty complex language for us to tackle,
but I think it boils down to how do we get the balance
right with the downtown, and how do we serve the
neighborhood needs without making this necessarily
regional? Do Committee Members want to weigh in on 8 and 9,
ways that we might accomplish that?
Yes, Committee Member Barnett.
COMMITTEE MEMBER BARNETT: I have a couple of
thoughts I’ll throw out.
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The first one is in terms of protecting the
downtown, but also making the North 40 economically viable,
I need that question and answer to whether the Town has
received consulting information from knowledgeable parties
about the proper mix and square footage that’s
appropriate,, and potentially even the pad sizes that we’ve
been talking about.
Then a related concern I have is that I’m not a
barebones free market person, but the North 40 is not the
only competition for the downtown. There’s Campbell,
there’s San Jose, and there are limits to what we can do. I
really embrace the idea of having transit and other
practical ideas that would encourage shopping between the
two centers, but I’m wary about the ability of the Town of
Los Gatos to effectively protect the downtown. There’s a
free market out there, ultimately.
CHAIR HUDES: Maybe I can weigh in a little bit.
I don’t agree that the intent of the plan is to protect the
downtown. I think, in my opinion, the specific plan should,
and the intent is to, have the entire town thrive and to do
that by encouraging synergies between the downtown and the
North 40, not to go into a huge protectionist mode, but to
look at controls where they’re appropriate, but that
shouldn’t, in my mind, be the intent.
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I do think though that there was a lot of
discussion that goes a long way back about neighborhood-
serving, or I like Commissioner Erekson’s term, “resident-
serving,” and in order to distinguish this from a Santana
Row or a Westfield or something like that I would suggest
some language for consideration regarding retail and
restaurants, that it be primarily or principally resident-
serving, and that then gives I think the deciding bodies
the ability to look at something and say okay, it’s not
just serving a few neighborhoods or a few residents, but
that’s the primary goal of this application, and I would
suggest that language to be considered for LU-6 and LU-7,
the land use statements.
Reactions to that? Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I think that makes a lot
of sense. I think it was brought up earlier, we’ve seen
some pretty dramatic changes in the kind of retail
applications that have been coming in for downtown, the
traditional shopping clothing stores and stuff going down
and we’re getting spinning classes and cooking classes and
all this kind of stuff, so I wondered if we shouldn’t have
some more eyes on this. I know the Town’s plate is very
full, but it seems like this is really important to make
our town thrive, and I’m not sure that the info that we had
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when we made the Specific Plan in the first place and did
all the market studies, if it’s still valid. I don’t mean
starting all over again, but it might be worth getting some
additional opinions on this. I just throw that out.
CHAIR HUDES: Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: A couple of points to that.
I’m going to touch on comments that you both have made, and
I’ll ask our Town Manager to weigh in on some ideas we’ve
been talking about.
But this notion not to protect downtown, but to
have all our commercial business districts thrive, I think
is very important. Today at this meeting that I went to
when I was listening to our economic vitality manager, she
was pointing out how just with the addition of Lester
Square, which is the corner of Blossom Hill and Los Gatos
Boulevard, that’s created some energy there where now you
see more people walking to have a hamburger, and after
school at 2:35pm you see the mass of Fisher kids that are
heading there. That’s neighborhood-serving. You see Downing
Square where just with a couple of additions all of a
sudden there’s synergy there. That’s neighborhood-serving.
So it’s hard to predict unless you’re actually looking at
those parameters what one addition will be the critical key
to make that a vital element to make that neighborhood-
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serving, and that’s difficult for me at this level to
prescribe in the Specific Plan.
I like the general terms that we talk about,
neighborhood-serving, but it’s always been difficult for me
to say, whether it’s a CUP or a maximum square footage,
what it is that that particular neighborhood will be
needing at that particular time. But what’s exciting is
we’re seeing it happen town-wide now, and I do think that
further helps us in our infrastructure needs, because any
time we can get people walking to a neighborhood-serving
center, that just helps alleviate the traffic that we all
have been experiencing.
There are so many ways to look at this, and to
look at this challenge, and I agree, we need more eyes
looking at this, and I know the Town Manager and Joel
Paulson have some ideas on perhaps how we may be able to
look at town-wide commercial interests in the future; that
may be helpful as we look down and drill down on what the
North 40 actually should be looking at.
LAUREL PREVETTI: Thank you, and I think there
are a lot of opportunities and we’re very fortunate to see
so much great investment happening in different parts of
our town, so we are getting some really good input on that.
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I would just also remind the Committee that Table
2-1, the Permitted Land Use table, actually already
includes a vast number of these neighborhood- or resident-
serving uses, so we might be able to fine tune it, but
whether it’s an exercise class, which some have seen does
add more people on the street and activity as well, or a
coffee shop, or a small restaurant, there are a lot of
different ways to make this happen.
We’re certainly happy to engage our economic
vitality manager on this. I do want to just caution though
that we are absorbing all of the costs associated with
amendments to the Specific Plan, so we really don’t have
the budget to hire an economist to do any new studies for
us, but I’m sure just given our public and as we go through
the public hearing process, I’m confident that we will be
getting input from brokers or others who might have some
professional expertise to lend to this. We’ll do our best
with the resources that we have, but I just can’t afford at
this point to have another consultant study.
CHAIR HUDES: I’ll just make one quick comment on
that. I believe there is a requirement for an application
to do an economic analysis. One way to address this would
be to be a little bit more specific about what goes into
that analysis. I personally found there were some very big
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flaws in the report that came in earlier, and I think we
could solve that by putting in more of a table of contents,
if you will, for the economic analysis.
Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. Following up on
several things that have been stated.
First of all, I agree. We are getting in Los
Gatos more shopping areas that are neighborhood-serving,
and that’s a really good thing, and we didn’t use to have
it, it was basically just downtown. One of the things that
I was doing when we were working on the Specific Plan is
actually was looking at—and maybe Mr. Spilsbury did this
too—the shopping areas, like Vasona Station or Trader
Joe’s, looking to see how big are those square footage-wise
and what do they have in them? I characterize those in my
own mind as neighborhood-serving, so that’s how I was
helping myself identify the uses and the square footage.
With regard to more studies, we have I think
three studies associated with the Specific Plan.
Personally, I thought only the first one had any valid
substance. Other people disagree with me, but I did not
think the other two necessarily did; I thought they needed
a lot of help.
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With regard to having the applicant go to the
CDAC, that wasn’t very helpful either. If we want to use
these mechanisms, we’re going to have to define them better
so that they are truly a benefit to the decision makers.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: Without being redundant to
what other people say, I’ve always been troubled with the
discussion about protecting the downtown, and if you’ll let
me use a sports metaphor, that was for me playing not to
lose, as opposed to playing to win if we could make it
create energy. I guess for me while we don’t want it to be
regional, and I don't know what the right language is, the
Staff will know better than I, but in and of itself having
people who don’t live here come into town and spend their
money is not bad, but we don’t want to create a huge
regional center either, so I don't know what the right
language to describe it is. Limited regional. I mean I
don't know what the right language is, but limited regional
is the best I could come up with.
The other thing that I would wonder with the
Staff is we have a tendency to regulate in a specific plan,
and I wonder—and I don’t have the experience that you would
have with other kinds of plans—are there ways to put
incentives in a Specific Plan? I have no idea if that’s
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even possible or what those might be, but if we could
regulate where it would be appropriate to regulate, but
incentivize in some way in the plan that would help us, I
think, but I don't know what that looks like, feels like,
smells like, or tastes like, because I don’t have the
experience base to know.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I don't know if we need to
change anything, but when I was listening to the Vice Mayor
talk about the successes we were having it made me think
maybe just as a sanity check we ought to look at what are
the places that are having the most success right now, and
another one I thought of is that Office Depot shopping
area, because they have the Panera and they have the
exercise place and that place is doing pretty well as well.
Like I said earlier, we’ve definitely seen at
Planning Commission and also at Town Council some different
kinds of retail, and so I was just doing a sanity check,
just for example like a spin class; there’s one at Downing
Center, then there is the one proposed for downtown, and
then there’s the cooking class coming in. Would any of
those be prohibited, not in the Northern District, because
that isn’t an option right now, but in the Transition
District? Are some of those businesses that we’ve been
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having so much success with? I know restaurants are fine,
but like the exercise class, because it says in here there
is health club, and then there’s commercial, recreation,
and amusement establishment, so just as a sanity check I
would want to look at where we’re having the most success
and make sure we’re not standing in their way of coming to
the North 40.
CHAIR HUDES: Other comments on this? Maybe I’d
just add one comment. I personally don’t think that we
should be discussing a regional center, whether it’s
limited or otherwise. I think that’s what opens the door to
something that doesn’t create synergies but creates a real
potential negative impact on the downtown.
I don’t believe that the downtown is thriving
relative to other downtowns in other areas. I think it’s a
delicate balance. I think there has been some loss of
business. Some of the economic analysis that was submitted
actually showed to me that we’re not quite as healthy as we
should be or could be, and so I would personally support
more language that talks about the synergies and talks
about being primarily or principally neighborhood-serving,
rather than just using the words neighborhood-serving. I’m
uncomfortable with just neighborhood-serving without some
kind of direction that it should be principally or
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primarily neighborhood-serving. Again, that’s my personal
position on this one.
That gets us through items 8 and 9, and that
takes us through Commercial. Now, we are at 9:15pm, and I
know we don’t have a limit on this, but it seems like we
probably shouldn’t go beyond 10:00pm. I guess are other
Committee Members willing to move on to the Open Space
discussion? Getting nods, so let’s talk about that.
First of all, are there any general comments on
Open Space? If not, we can proceed to the particular items
that are in here.
Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: The general comment I would have
is based upon the input that we’ve received from the
community, and the general input that we’ve received from
the community is they want more real open space, i.e. green
versus cement.
CHAIR HUDES: Great. Well, I think that gets
right to point 3. Why don’t we start with that one, which
is have real open space. There are some ways we could
modify Section 2.5.4. to address that. Other Committee
Members on that particular issue?
Commissioner Erekson.
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COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I think, and it’s not
clear to us about point 3 solely, but also it seems like to
me while we required a high percentage of open space we
didn’t require that it be contiguous, so that seems to me
to be, if I heard what the public was saying also, that we
need to have larger single—I don't know how to say it
exactly right now—open spaces that approximate small parks,
and those kinds of things, as opposed to just meeting the
30% or whatever the right percentage is, was another kind
of input from the public, I think.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: If I recall, they were
able to count like if you had a little patch of grass in
your back yard, private, that was counting towards open
space. Because they had to have 30% total open space and
then 20% that wasn’t hardscape, I think that’s correct. Off
the top of my head I wondered why it couldn’t just be 30%
real open space that had public access, but maybe that’s
too much to ask given all the other things that we need to
get out of the North 40, but it definitely seemed like we
could do better.
I know this came up, and it wasn’t that they
weren’t willing to do it, but in the Phase 1 application
there wasn’t a single place for kids to play, and
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considering that we know there is going to be children
there we don’t want them walking across the street to the
park, and this whole idea of neighborhood-serving. I don't
know how you can force them to have a park, but you can
certainly encourage them, and I don't know that it’s not
permitted to have a park, but we didn’t necessarily
strongly encourage it, so I think some language could be in
there to make sure that we have that kind of stuff and
maybe make the open space requirement stronger and more
public.
CHAIR HUDES: Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: That was an interesting
discussion that we had during Advisory Committee, because
at the time we were designing for millennials and move-down
seniors, and so one of the areas that we could do it
legally was by architecture and amenities, so there was a
discussion on not having playgrounds, because you wanted to
cater to millennials who wanted open pit barbeque places
versus… So those are the types of things that we are
discussing, and I guess we could have a more realistic
discussion given what we know about our community, but the
more you change it to be family-friendly, then you are
going to slowly cater to a different demographic, and those
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are the types of discussions I think the Committee was
grappling with: Who are you designing it for?
CHAIR HUDES: I wanted to add a comment to it,
because I was struck by the confusion of what is open
space, and there is a definition in the current Specific
Plan that looks to me like it’s sort of a developer’s
designation of open space, so I went and looked for other
definitions of open space and the first hit on Google
actually was the US EPA’s language, which I thought could
enhance what we have in there. I’ll provide it.
I won’t go through the details, but it starts by
saying that open space is, “Any open piece of land that is
undeveloped, has no buildings or other built structures,
and is accessible to the public. Open space can include
green space,” and it goes into a description of what that
is, “including gardens, shrubs,” and things like that,
“schoolyards, playgrounds, public seating areas, public
plazas, vacant lots.” It doesn’t specify the strips between
parking in a parking lot there. It also talks about, “Open
space provides recreational areas for residents and helps
to enhance the beauty and environmental quality of
neighborhoods,” and it goes on from there. I’ll provide
that language, but I think that type of language would
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enhance the pretty narrow description that we have in
Section 2.5.4.
JOEL PAULSON: Not to interrupt, but also we have
the open space definition, and then there is also a green
open space definition, and then the hardscape definition,
so those could also be modified to get more to what the
community was looking for.
CHAIR HUDES: Any other comments on number 3,
have real open space?
So let’s go back to number 1, which is the
perimeter district should be larger, and this refers to
Section 2.5.7 on page 215. Any comments on that particular
perimeter district?
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Is this the 50’?
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, this is buildings or portions
of buildings located within 50’ of Lark restricting their
height.
Yes, Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: When I think about the
perimeter it kind of goes around the outside of the
property, and I wonder if that’s the place that you really
want open space? I don’t see people going out to the fence.
I would think you’d want it more inside, so I’m not sure if
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increasing the perimeter space would accomplish what we
want.
CHAIR HUDES: Any other reaction to that?
JOEL PAULSON: I think the question is what is
the author of the question trying to achieve? Is it going
to be more of a buffer from noise or pollution, and would
any available measurement increase actually make a
practical difference? I personally would doubt it.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: My question when I read
this is I wasn’t exactly sure why this was put under Open
Space. I assume what it is talking about is the Perimeter
Overlay Zone; there’s no perimeter district, and Perimeter
Overlay Zone specifies limitations on what can happen in
there, but it doesn’t specify that open space… There’s no,
that I can see, real relationship between open space and
the Perimeter Overlay Zone, so I wasn’t exactly sure why it
was there.
JOEL PAULSON: I just offer that if you get to
the table on 2-5 there’s discussion relating to landscaped
areas, planting with orchard trees, and multi-model paths,
so increasing that probably gets a larger greenscape buffer
in conjunction with it, so I would assume that’s what they
were looking for in that sense.
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CHAIR HUDES: Any other comments on number 1? It
doesn’t sound like there’s a resounding recommendation of
this Committee to make that perimeter district larger.
Number 2 I think is very important, and that’s
the amount of open space. More open space should be
required. I think there were conversations or arguments
made that there is quite a bit of open space in the plan.
What are Committee Members’ thoughts about whether a total
of more open space should be required? And maybe Staff
could remind us on how much is required?
JOEL PAULSON: The total is 30%, 20% of which
must be green open space, and we’ve already obviously
talked about potentially more green open space, so that’s
one avenue, or just limiting what we count as open space
and not including the hardscape areas, so those are just a
couple options.
CHAIR HUDES: Any other comments about those
numbers, the 30% or the distribution between green and
other open space?
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I said this a few minutes
earlier, and I don't know if other people feel the same
way, but it seemed to me that in listening to some of the
concerns of the residents one thing we could do that would
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help is eliminate private residential green space in the
count of open space. It doesn’t benefit the community, it
only benefits the person that’s living there, and that
would automatically force them to have some more green
space.
Another thing we could do is eliminate hardscape
as an option for achieving green space and leave the number
at 30%.
Those would be two easy things to do, whether or
not that’s economically feasible and won’t take away from
some of the other goals, I don't know that, but those are
two thoughts I had.
CHAIR HUDES: Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: I agree.
CHAIR HUDES: I’ll just add my comment to that. I
agree, and I think it’s consistent with the EPA definition,
which says that open space is accessible to the public. So
that might mean changing the numbers or the percentages to
be realistic, but also sharpening our definition of what
open space is to not include the back yards.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: (Inaudible) number 4?
CHAIR HUDES: Yup, number 4, which I wasn’t sure
if this was more of a legal issue or more of policy issue,
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so maybe Staff could explain, “Public access easements
shall be required for the open space.”
ROBERT SCHULTZ: It’s more of a legal issue. I
think even not in the Specific Plan when it came forward
with Conditions of Approval and everything else we would
have that in there, but we certainly could add it also.
It’s a question of making certain that the public space
remained open to the public; so something we could
certainly do since we’re making changes, just add it.
JOEL PAULSON: The other is that the requirement
in the Specific Plan was 20% of the 30% had to be publicly
accessible, so that number could also be increased.
CHAIR HUDES: Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: I believe when we brought this
up we also talked about fencing and how there should be no
fencing so that it just continues to leave that open to the
public feel. I mean obviously private residents will have…
I meant like the parks should not be fenced.
CHAIR HUDES: So coming back, does that require
public access easements, or can that just be addressed in
the language of the Specific Plan that the public shall
have access?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: We can just put some language in
there that they would be recorded easements for the public
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space, so we know it’s a requirement. Like I said, if the
application would have been approved, there would have been
requirements for those easements to be recorded to begin
with, so we’d catch it on the application anyway, but it’s
good to have in the Specific Plan just as a reminder.
CHAIR HUDES: Yes, go ahead.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: So using that example, let’s
say a park was placed, could that park, even though it’s
privately owned, be put on our inventory of parks that
residents could go to?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Yes.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Okay.
CHAIR HUDES: So we are about to close out Open
Space. Are there any other issues on open space that I’ve
missed?
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: (Inaudible) open space.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: We’re getting punchy.
CHAIR HUDES: Yeah, I think we are. I think we
ought to adjourn at this point, if that’s okay with the
other Committee Members, before I close anything else out
that I shouldn’t. So we’ll take up the next matters,
Parking, and Height, for which I think we’ll have some
discussion.
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Yes, Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Before you gavel us closed, the
next three areas, Parking, Height, and General/Other, I’m
thinking we can get through them, but you are now the
Chair, so you make the call.
CHAIR HUDES: Well, I’m happy to go longer
personally. I do think that General/Other is a fairly large
topic as we bring in some of the other considerations, so
maybe we’ll do Parking and Height then, is that okay,
Committee Members? Okay.
So let’s move forward. Parking has only one item,
and it is underground parking should be explored. What do
Committee Members think about underground parking and
whether it should be explored?
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I think I remember from
being on the Transportation and Parking Commission years
ago, and also it came up in some of the recent discussions,
that underground parking adds significantly to the expense,
and so I don't know if that’s the right… Certainly not to
make it required. To me, I would put it in that it’s
encouraged as a way to create more open space and to reduce
bulk and mass. We could certainly put language in there
that it’s encouraged, but I would be worried if the costs
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were going to go way up when we’re trying to get more
affordable housing; that would be my main concern.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I would look at it more like if
it’s a real goal like you talk about hotels or other things
you’re trying to accomplish, the way to do that then is
you’ve got to provide other incentives, so there is a
tradeoff. If you’re going to encourage or just put language
in there, it’s not going to happen, because it’s cost
prohibitive. But if you provide other incentives, and I
don't know what those would be right now, maybe there is a
reduction in open space if you do that, maybe there are
other things, so it’s kind of how important that
underground is to you. Do you get a height variance because
of it? I don't know what issues, but that would be kind of
the thing you would look for if that were what you’re
trying to do. The same with some of the other components of
the project that you’re trying to do is how do you get the
developer to do it is usually because you give him some
other carrot.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I guess consistent with
Mr. Schultz’s comments, it would be helpful at least to me
for the Staff to kind of identify what some of those
incentives or tradeoffs might be. If all we were going to
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do in the Specific Plan was add language, “Underground
parking should be explored,” okay, check that one and move
on to the next. It’s kind of a no harm, no foul, but it’s
probably okay, so if I’m an applicant, I thought about it
for five minutes when I was at Starbucks waiting for my
latte, so I explored it, check that box, move on to the
next thing. So unless we want to do something like what Mr.
Schultz was talking about and understand what the advantage
might be for us and what the advantage might be for someone
who would develop it, it’s kind of okay, put the language
in there, move on.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Because we’re restricting square
footage, maybe that’s one of the incentives, but we can
look into that. But right now the Specific Plan doesn’t
restrict and not allow underground parking, so it’s already
allowed, so they can explore it. Like I said, I don’t think
you’re going to get it unless you provide them something
else.
LAUREL PREVETTI: Mr. Chair, if I may? I would
just be careful about this one, because in the public
testimony some members of our public thought that if we
required the underground parking that that would actually
create more room for open space, but as was mentioned, you
really can’t be asking… That would be a huge ask of a
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developer, so I think we would just need to be careful
about how much time we want to really invest in underground
parking. It’s not precluded, as the Town Attorney said, and
it’s always an option for a developer, especially here
where we don’t have some water table problems or other
issues, but I think given the talk that we were just having
on open space, and the need for banquet space and some
things, as we look at the priorities this one seems a
little bit on the lower side in terms of really investing a
lot more time on policy language for this.
CHAIR HUDES: I appreciate that input. Maybe we
could just explore… There have been some developments
recently that have included underground parking. Could
maybe you tell us a little bit about why those developments
did that and why we didn’t see that on the application on
the North 40?
JOEL PAULSON: I can give you some potential
observations. One is there’s not a 30% requirement for open
space in any other zone in the Town. There’s also not this
type of cap on square footage; it’s capped on other things
such as they’re allowed to cover 50% of the lot. Here, you
can’t get anywhere near that. So some of those are probably
generally how those work. Additionally, some of them are
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medical uses, and so they probably are able to foot that
cost for that type of use.
But there have been a number of them that have
done it, and it’s not that it hasn’t been done, I think
it’s just when you couple the other requirements it becomes
challenging from that perspective. I think in the example a
hotel, a hotel would also have to do some underground
parking to meet all the other requirements of the Specific
Plan, and so they would have to find a way to manage that
cost.
CHAIR HUDES: Any other comments on parking
beyond underground parking?
Let’s move on to Height. I’m surprised there are
only two items considering the amount of public input on
this. Are there any general comments on height, or any
comments actually? Let’s just jump to the ones that are
here. Increasing the height to 45’ as long as there is more
open space. Is that an idea that has merit or are there
some general comments?
Commissioner Erekson.
COMMISSIONER EREKSON: I would not be in favor
linking height to open space. I think, for me, we need to
decide what kind of open space we want and how much public
open space there is; that’s just my opinion.
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Height should be linked to the type of uses and
what we want to accomplish in the space. That being said,
once we clarify what it is, my sense is then we need to be
realistic about what the height limitations are on it, but
I think trading height simply for open space is not where I
would land.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Going back to what we
talked about with residential, in the Northern District if
we wanted there to be 20 units per acre one way to
accomplish it would be to let the height go up to 45’ and
then they could have three or four floors, and that way
they could accomplish that 20 units per acre, and in the
Northern District it might not matter as much.
Then I think we heard about the hotel issue; they
might need to do that. I think we at least ought to
seriously consider it.
The other place this came up, and I don't know if
it would feel good to do that in the Lark District, but the
idea of the stacked flats for the seniors. For move-down
with elevator they would need to go over 35’, from what we
heard in testimony. So that’s one I think we should
seriously consider.
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I agree with Commissioner Erekson about not
coupling it to open space. As long as we have the
requirement for open space, I don’t know that it has to be
a tradeoff.
CHAIR HUDES: Vice Mayor.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: I know we used height as an
incentive. Right now there are two areas that allow 45’;
one is the hotel and one is affordable housing. When I was
listening to the testimony about the Northern District and
how residential has to be above commercial, immediately I
thought if you added an affordable housing component to it
you’ll go to 45’, but then I went back to my Specific Plan
and saw that we didn’t actually define what percentage of
that unit needed to be affordable housing. But again, I
look at that as an incentive that we can provide, so using
the Northern District example, housing, and maybe we want
to define it, use our BMP, so if 20% of that residential
unit has affordable housing, they get that incentive of
going up to 45’. Those are the things that I was
considering when I was looking at the height exception.
CHAIR HUDES: Mayor.
MAYOR SPECTOR: Thank you. Basically agree.
Forty-five feet I think can be an option. I just would add,
for me, 45’ all-inclusive, because I’ve gone through
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developments that you say 45’ and it’s really 55’ or 60’,
because they have things like elevators. I don’t think it
should be tied to more open space. That’s it.
CHAIR HUDES: I had another point I wanted to add
to this one. I agree with the 45’ and the comments and the
not tying it to open space.
But there’s another concept that I think we had
in the plan and I think maybe needs a little bit more
clarification, and that has to do with the placement of
buildings that are above 35’. The argument that we heard
was that the property naturally slopes away from Los Gatos
Boulevard and Lark. Remember, the backdrop for this was the
public outcry about height of buildings, and so there was
sort of a compromise or a discussion that said if the
property slopes away, and the taller buildings, the ones
that are larger than the district maximums, which is I
think 25’ in the Lark District and 35’ in the Transition
District and Northern District, if they are set back into
areas and we measure the height from existing grade rather
than finished grade, that would work if we do that
measurement from existing rather than finished.
And then also consider that they are placed in
areas that have an equivalent amount of slope reduction
from Los Gatos Boulevard and Lark, so that we don’t end up
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with the tallest buildings right at the front, and so where
we do have these exceptions that get up to 45’? I
personally would feel more comfortable with working off of
finished grade, and I know Committee Member Jarvis isn’t
here tonight, but I know that was one of his strong points
in our previous deliberations, and that turned into an
exception; I think that was requested.
But I think that we should think about how to use
the natural slope of the property to prevent tall buildings
from occurring in the most visible areas, so I would
suggest adding some language about that.
The other point we have is to reduce the height
of residential to 25’. Could Staff explain what is the
current height for residential?
JOEL PAULSON: The current height for an
affordable housing building is 45’, which was mentioned
before. The other maximum is 35’, with the exception of the
Lark District, which also has a requirement for 25’
buildings for I can’t remember how many percent it is was;
I want to say 15%. So those are generally the residential
requirements. There are also the Perimeter Overlay Zones,
which also have a 25’ height limit for any use.
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CHAIR HUDES: So Committee Members’ comments
about reducing the height of residential, or limiting I
guess throughout to 25’? Does that seem feasible?
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: If we do that throughout, I
just don’t think we would meet our density bonus.
CHAIR HUDES: (Inaudible).
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Yeah.
CHAIR HUDES: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I had the same concern. I
wondered about maybe just in the Lark District, especially
with smaller units. I don’t know the math relative to the
acreage, if it’s possible, but if it was possible to have a
certain amount of cottage cluster units plus achieve the
density of 20 units per acre using those smaller units. I
think that was the thing that really alarmed people was
seeing that wall of 35’ building, and maybe if it wasn’t in
the Lark District. That would be the one place I wouldn’t
think about the 25’ height limit if we could make it work
with our numbers.
CHAIR HUDES: Any other comments about height
that we want to include?
So it seems as though we’ve got those comments
incorporated, and I think we’re going to stop at this
point. There’s quite a bit of discussion on some of the
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general items, including a whole series of things that I
would suggest we include to make the Specific Plan more
objective, particularly in translating the vision into
objective statements in the plan I think is something that
we were missing, that guidance, when we did it the first
time. I’d like to maybe stop on this at this point and
maybe then just review a couple of things with Staff on
where we go from here.
JOEL PAULSON: I think from here what we’ll do is
we will try to find some available dates when the chambers
are available, and then we’ll poll the General Plan
Committee and get a date set to continue the discussion of
the other items as well as any of that information we can
pull together for the questions that were raised tonight
about additional information. We’ll pull together as much
of that as we can as well, and then we’ll move forward and
try to get through the rest of the list and any other
comments.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay, and since I kind of jumped
into this role I wasn’t quite aware of some of the ways
that this works, so maybe you could refresh me and any
other members of the Committee.
This is a public meeting. It is being recorded,
is that correct?
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JOEL PAULSON: Correct.
CHAIR HUDES: And there will be minutes?
JOEL PAULSON: There will be minutes as well,
yes.
CHAIR HUDES: We are short a few people, but I
think we’re okay relative to a quorum?
JOEL PAULSON: Correct.
CHAIR HUDES: Okay. And anything you’d like to
say about Brown Act or public discussion guidelines. We
were just reviewing some of that at the Planning Commission
level, but it would be good for maybe the Committee to
understand.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I could go into a couple of
hours on the Brown Act.
CHAIR HUDES: I think maybe just…
ROBERT SCHULTZ: I’ve getting nodding that you
know.
CHAIR HUDES: …whether it applies to this
committee.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Yes, it is a Brown Act committee
meeting, so the Brown Act does apply. We do our agenda
posting 72 hours in advance for the public and for you, and
then amongst yourselves you’re not allowed to talk with the
majority about the issues that come in front of you.
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CHAIR HUDES: And ex parte discussions with
regard to Commissioners, Council Members, and other
representatives on this committee?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: The two Planning Commissioners
are constrained because of their Planning Commission rules
and regulations, but the others are allowed to speak ex
parte with members of the public.
CHAIR HUDES: Thank you. Any other questions from
Committee members?
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: Would you like to announce
that we have vacancies?
CHAIR HUDES: I believe we do, and so how many
vacancies do we have on this committee?
LAUREL PREVETTI: We have one currently, and I
would just encourage members of the public to go to our
Clerk Department website to see all of the board and
commission and committee opportunities.
CHAIR HUDES: Great. That would be terrific.
Well, thank you all for a tremendous amount of work in
getting us here. Thank you to the Committee Members for
bearing with me as I kind of found my way through this.
VICE CHAIR SAYOC: You’re a very good Chair.
CHAIR HUDES: Well, my pleasure. So thanks again.
We’ll conclude this meeting.