Attachment 8 - June 22, 2022 Planning Commission Verbatim MinutesLOS GATOS PLANNING COMMISSION 6/22/2022
Item #3, Draft Objective Standards
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A P P E A R A N C E S:
Los Gatos Planning
Commissioners:
Melanie Hanssen, Chair
Jeffrey Barnett, Vice Chair
Kylie Clark
Kathryn Janoff
Steve Raspe
Town Manager: Laurel Prevetti
Community Development
Director:
Joel Paulson
Town Attorney: Gabrielle Whelan
Transcribed by: Vicki L. Blandin
(619) 541-3405
ATTACHMENT 8
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P R O C E E D I N G S:
CHAIR HANSSEN: We will move on to the second
public hearing, which is to review and make a
recommendation on the Draft Objective Standards to the Town
Council. We did receive a draft of the Draft Objective
Standards as well as a Desk Item from Vice Chair Barnett
with some comments that came along with the forwarding of
the actual document that Palo Alto has published for
itself.
I will turn it over to Staff and have you take it
from there.
SEAN MULLIN: Thank you, Chair. Before you
tonight is a review of the Draft Objective Standards for
recommendation to the Town Council. The Town of Los Gatos
has developed Objective Standards for the review of Multi-
Family and Mixed-Use development applications in order to
comply with recent State housing legislation, implement
streamlined and ministerial review processes for qualifying
housing projects, ensure that these qualifying projects
align with the Town’s expectations and visions to maintain
and support the character of the Town, provide a set of
clear criteria to guide development, and establish an
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objective framework for which qualifying projects may be
evaluated.
In collaboration with our consultant, M-Group,
the Draft Objective Standards were developed following a
review of State legislation and existing Town documents,
consideration of recommendations received during five
Planning Commission Subcommittee meetings, and
consideration of feedback received during two community
engagement meetings.
An Addendum and Desk Item have been distributed,
including input from Planning Commissioners and a summary
of the issues considered by the Subcommittee.
Tom Ford, a principal at M-Group, will now
provide more detail on the development of the Draft
Objective Standards, as well as present the structure and
the content of the draft document.
Staff, along with Tom and his team, is available
to answer any questions and aid in tonight’s discussion.
TOM FORD: Thank you, Sean. It’s great to be here
tonight to talk about this great document that I’m sure
you’ll have lots of comments on.
Sean already went over a little bit of this, but
I have a very, very brief presentation to cover these four
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items and then allow you folks to discuss what you see and
give us some feedback.
First, I want to make sure everybody is on the
same page about why we’re doing this, and a lot of it is
reacting to recent State legislation, particularly
regarding housing and affordable housing. I want to go over
a little bit of the process that we used to develop the
document that you’ve had now for a few days to review.
We’ll discuss the development topics, how we organized the
document, and then allow you to have time for discussion.
As the Staff Report noted, we started a while
ago. We first started gathering background information and
started having that series of meetings with the
Subcommittee at the Planning Commission—three people, two
of which I think are here with us tonight—and went through
a lot of discussion really examining a lot of the
subjective design guidelines and existing and present Town
documents, and I’ll get into that in just a moment.
Following those Subcommittee meetings we
basically had sort of a to-do list, and so what we did was
we boiled into different kinds of groups of development or
design typologies, if you will, and took that to a
community meeting. We didn’t even have a draft document
yet, we had “preliminary ideas,” I think it was called, and
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it was just ideas that we had heard from the Subcommittee
and how we might develop them for projects that were
applicable.
Following that meeting we started to develop a
draft, and right before your Spring into Green event we
released it to the public, and at that event, at a booth
that the Planning Staff had, people could start to see it.
About ten days after that event we had the second
community meeting and continued to take comments, but now
people were reacting to an actual draft document as opposed
to the development concepts that we thought we would tinker
with.
Then we get into the second day of summer
tonight, and here we are. As we predicted, in summer 2022
we’re before the Planning Commission, so we’re going to
start to let you guys give us some ideas, some reactions,
and eventually we’ll end up in front of the Town Council
where we hope they will consider it for adoption.
Sean went through some of these five bullet
points. A lot of this is coming from State housing
legislation that I’m sure you’ve discussed in various
contexts over the last couple or three years.
Our way of doing it at M-Group is we really try
to dig down into the existing planning documents that a
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community has already adopted and developed for itself,
because those speak to really how the community thinks
about itself and it’s the documents that you folks in your
review process rely on to give ideas to Applicants, such as
the one earlier tonight to push that second floor back.
Then we need to provide object criteria to match
some of that State legislation, and one of the most known
is SB 35. There’s a lot of legislation. There is new
legislation right now pending that they’re still
discussing, anything from raising the maximum height of an
ADU from the current limit, where is parking allowed, and
parking around transit. There are a lot of new laws that
are going to continue to come down, we think, and they’re
going to have a stipulation that the only thing that a
community can use to regulate the development proposal will
be Objective Standards.
However, on the other side of that, it provides a
lot of certainty to the developers, because they then
really know what are the rules, how do I achieve them, and
here’s my application. Then, of course, all of this is
about the State’s goal to increase multiple-family housing.
So what are Objective Standards? This is taken
directly from SB 35. It’s the definition the State uses,
it’s the definition we’ve seen in communities who are doing
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this, they rely on this, because what the Objective
Standard has to remove any kind of personal judgment so
that when the development proposal is in front of the Staff
member at the counter and there’s an Objective Standard,
it’s clear to tell if they meet the standard or not,
because those two people with potentially different
viewpoints have to agree on something, so everything has to
be an objective judgment rather than a subjective response.
What that sets up is the ability for Town Staff
to do ministerial review of projects that come in and meet
the requirements of an affordable project, or some other
kind of project, that State law has said these are only
subject to Objective Standards, so that ministerial review
on the right column is going to be happening. What we’re
trying to do with the document is find ways to get all of
the other stuff in the left column, discretionary review.
For instance, my impression of what happened on
your first item tonight is at some previous meeting you
folks as a body asked the Applicant to go away and push the
second floor back. Well, what we’ve been trying to do is to
see if there is a way to write an Objective Standard that
does that. The difference is you had the benefit of looking
at one design on one property. We have to write the
standard that would apply across the entire R-2 or R-4
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zone, or what have you, so we can’t be as specific as a
discretionary review would be, but we can still try to find
ways with the appropriate metrics to put those kinds of
rules in place.
So again, just discretionary on the left,
ministerial on the right, and this is what happens. Design
guidelines tend to be very subjective. I think the
Subcommittee went through probably 400 different subjective
design guidelines from various town documents; many of them
were duplicated, but they tended to be subjective, and
sometimes a subjective guideline is impossible to
objectify, such as “eyes on the street.” How would you do
that? But maybe there’s a way to measure how much windows
there should be, and you have one of those before you
tonight in one of the standards towards the end of the
document.
Design guidelines tend to have recommendations,
they’re just not necessarily enforceable, and they don’t
necessarily have a measurable aspect to them. The Objective
Standards, as I spoke about earlier, have a metric. There
needs to be a way that it’s clearly objective.
These are some of the Town documents that we
reviewed, and it’s really important that you know that
these documents are still your Town documents, because
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you’re going to need them for discretionary review, so
these documents aren’t going anywhere; they were just the
starting point for us to take subjective information,
subjective guidelines in all of these various documents,
not so much in the Town Code, but all of these documents,
and start to bring it together. We sorted it into the
likeminded groups: setbacks, building mass, roofs, things
like that, and then started to have those discussions.
There’s one thing that’s not really a document,
and that’s GPAC referrals. We started our project probably
about six months after the GPAC finished going through
looking at some drafts of the General Plan, and so what had
happened is the Community Character Element had a lot of
information in it that the GPAC decided to pull out, but
then the GPAC chair and vice chair referred that
information to us, and so even that got put into that big
list of 400-odd things that we looked at for possibilities
for how to objectify.
I have three sides here that will talk about the
process we went through, because it kind of breaks into
three different areas. There’s the preliminary stage where
we took those Town documents and we, the consultant team,
got our hands around them and tried to understand what they
were, worked with Staff to get that material ready to have
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those Subcommittee discussions that stretched across a
couple of months, and then that’s what delivered the
preliminary topics that we took to that first community
meeting. The preliminary topics were made available on the
Town website page specifically dedicated to this project.
Then we had the community meeting on Zoom, took some
comments, answered questions, and then went away and
started drafting that document.
The first draft, that very preliminary draft, was
a combination of information we received from the
Subcommittee and then supplemented by questions and
comments that we heard from the community. Once we had that
draft, it had started out as an admin draft, Staff picked
through it and looked at it and had a lot of comments, and
we cleaned it up and we got comfortable with publishing a
public review draft, and that’s the one that came out right
around Spring into Green and in advance of community
meeting #2.
Following community meeting #2 we took some
comments and then revised that draft document together with
Staff; we revised some of the graphics and got the draft
together that’s before you tonight, so that’s here for your
review. We’ll hopefully have a great discussion with you
about it tonight, or suggestions or ideas you have,
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questions, and at some point get in it front of the Town
Council for them to consider it for the option.
The way the document that you have before you
tonight is lined up, there’s a lot in the first section,
Site Design, but then there’s quite a bit in the second
section too, Building Design, particularly in the fourth
part, Façade Design and Articulation.
All of these different pieces, they’ve changed a
little bit in the process of how we broke it out, how we’ve
divided the document. Parking Structure Design in the
Building Design part used to be just a subset of parking
structure access, and when we talked about it all with
Staff we started talking about let’s talk about the access
part in the Site Design and let’s talk about the building,
and the Subcommittee actually talked a lot about the
facades of parking structures and such, and let’s put the
building part in the Building Design part, so that’s one of
the ways this changed as the process rolled along.
It’s obviously your decision, but what I suggest
is I can minimize this PowerPoint and I can pull up the
document and scroll through it if you’d like to go to a
specific place that you folks might want to have a
conversation about, or you can do whatever you want to do.
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Then I wanted to let you know, you’re probably
aware that the document has a lot of images in it like
this. We specifically tried to draw them very plain,
because we really just wanted to illustrate the text that’s
in the standard, so we’re not trying to provide
architectural design with these, we’re just trying to say
what it means when you say that you can’t have more than a
3o-foot interval before you have this intervention of the
façade plane moving two feet.
We realized some of you, or some of us, or a
member of the public, all of us might have difficulty
understanding what that really looks like, so for almost
every time you see an image like this in the document we’ve
gone forward and tried to find a totally atmospheric image.
We’re not saying this is what Los Gatos needs, we’re just
trying to illustrate that concept, and like any photograph,
there’s always going to be something that’s wrong. For
instance, I think in your town it’s not legal to build a
fence this high out in the front setback, but what we were
trying to illustrate was that modulating of the front
façade and how that happens here and how it happens in the
real world; here’s a two-story townhouse version and here’s
a four-story stacked flat version.
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So again, just trying to show that real
architects, particularly talented ones, can take an idea
like this and move with it and create something with the
help of these Objective Standards hopefully that the Town
can be proud of when the building is done and up and
occupied.
I have these for any issue that has a diagram in
with the little yellow pieces, and we’ve credited all the
architects where we found these photographs, and we’ve
generally relied on pretty good Multi-Family designers and
architects such as Pya Tok and David Baker. So again, I’m
not saying this is an image you want to see in Los Gatos,
I’m just saying how do you actually illustrate and how
would an architect build that concept?
With that, I’ll hand it back to the Chair and
I’ll let you see if you like my idea of me pulling up the
standards to spin through. I’m available to do whatever
you’d like.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for that, Mr. Ford. I
think that there might be some big picture questions from
the Commission.
Before I take questions, suggestions, or comments
from the Commission I did want to let the Commission know
that the three people that were on the Objective Standards
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Subcommittee were myself, Vice Chair Barnett, and former
Commissioner Burch, and we did, as noted, make the five
meetings where we went through all of the standards that
basically had been pulled out by the consultants for us to
look at, and what we tried to do is determine if it was
possible to make them more objective; there were obviously
some things that weren’t possible and we pulled those out.
Before I ask Commissioners for other questions
though, I did not know what the ultimate format of the
document would be, so what I wanted to ask was from a
developer’s perspective. We obviously already had some
Objective Standards and still do have Objective Standards
that are in the resident documents that you mentioned, and
then we have this standalone document for Objective
Standards, and so how is that going to be clear to
developers? I know our Staff will always work with the
developers, but you’re going to use these documents side-
by-side because we already have the Objective Standards in
the General Plan, the zoning code, and so on. How does that
process get rolling?
SEAN MULLIN: Thank you for that question. It’s
alluded to in the Introduction Statement on the front page,
and this is a draft document, so we expect that
introduction could change as we move through it, but
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ultimately a qualifying project would need to meet these
Objective Standards and other existing Objective Standards.
If there were a case where one standard in this document,
for instance, is stricter than a standard in the Town Code,
then the standard in the draft document would rule.
CHAIR HANSSEN: That partly answers my question.
I did read the introduction, but basically this is going to
be something that’s going to give us more tools but that’s
not going to change the process that we already have, which
is we’re going to be pulling out our Zoning Code, our
General Plan, and other things in addition to this
document, and this might make it easier for them to get a
ministerial review because we have more parts of the
Architecture and Site that would be objectified, is that
correct?
SEAN MULLIN: Correct.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Are there any other larger
picture questions versus comments of specific standards in
the document? Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I just wanted to clarify
that this is a set of Objective Standard that really is for
qualifying Multi-Family and Mixed-Use projects? In other
words, we wouldn’t be applying these Objective Standards,
for example, to the application that we heard in Item #2? I
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just wanted to clarify that this is for a different nature
of building altogether, is that correct?
SEAN MULLIN: That’s correct. It’s applicable to
very specific product types.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you. Then I just
wanted to comment back to what Mr. Ford described as the
process gleaning from the Town documents and why using the
Town documents to pull forward to Objective Standards. It
makes really good sense to me when you describe it as
leaning on the information that the Town already uses, so
it’s familiar information and we’re not going too far
afield in terms of what might be used in the past, and it
just really tightens up what the Town has already used. I
appreciated that as a clarifying point. Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Very good. Commissioner Raspe,
and then Vice Chair Barnett.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thank you, Chair. For Staff,
I just want to confirm, so we have the Objective Standards,
which leads to a ministerial administration of
applications. It’s my understanding that there also will
still exist discretionary review if an Applicant so elects
to go that route if they want to come outside of the
Objective Standards, is that correct?
SEAN MULLIN: That’s correct.
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COMMISSIONER RASPE: And it may or may not be a
related question, but you’ve used the language “qualifying
Multi-Family and Mixed-Use projects” in the introduction
and I think it appears throughout the Objective Standards.
What does qualifying mean in that sense?
SEAN MULLIN: Thank you. Tom, you may be able to
add more to this, but it has to do with the number of
Residential units involved in a Multi-Family or Mixed-Use
development. I believe the minimum is three, but it’s been
a day of looking at a lot of different things, so I think a
minimum of three.
TOM FORD: Right, and it’s also like the levels
of affordability that are offered in the project that’s
being put forth, and that will differ from town to town
depending on where you are in your annual report to HCD
about how you’re doing with providing affordable housing,
so different towns and cities will meet different
standards, so when I see that language it just means
anybody who is eligible with an affordable project to come
forward and only be judged in a ministerial process by
Objective Standards. These would be the Objective
Standards.
And Sean, just to put a fine point on what you
said, I believe because of the Housing Crisis Act, or SB
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330, it’s actually any project that’s two units and above.
It can still go through a discretionary process, but it
can’t be denied if it meets all of the Objective Standards,
so it would need to meet all of the Objective Standards
also, but it doesn’t have to go through a 60-day
ministerial process.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thanks, that’s very helpful.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Also for Staff, I believe in
Subcommittee meetings there was some discussion about
amending the Town Code, the Residential Design Guidelines,
and Commercial Design Guidelines following adoption of the
Objective Standards. Am I right in that regard?
SEAN MULLIN: Thank you for that question. You’re
right, that was discussed. The intent at this point is that
this would be a standalone policy document, and the intent
at this point is not to amend any other documents unless
it’s just a reference that this document does exist.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Clark, and then
Commissioner Janoff again.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: I’m not exactly sure how to
ask this, but I’m wondering what happens with something
that is not mentioned in the Objective Standards if a
project meets all of them. For example, one of the things
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that made me think of this was Vice Chair Barnett’s
document talked about loading docs, which our Objective
Standards hadn’t talked about, and so how would that have
been handled, say, if we don’t incorporate it?
SEAN MULLIN: Thank you. To take that specific
example, if a loading doc came up there is some guidance in
the Town Code about, I think, locations of those types of
things. I would mention that this is a living document and
over time as these projects roll through the Town, if items
that had not been identified in this document at this point
come up, Staff will continue to make note of those, and as
we do every so often with the Hillside Design Standards and
Guidelines or Residential Design Guidelines, we could
return to amend the document and correct anything that was
unintended or omitted.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: So one of our goals is also
to try to think of everything that we can to have it in
there ahead of time on those?
SEAN MULLIN: That’s part of the goal tonight,
and also to use your example again, if the majority of the
Commission wants loading docs addressed, that can be part
of the recommendation to the Town Council and Staff can
work on that as we forward the document to the Town
Council.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: A couple of comments.
One I wanted to loop back to Mr. Ford’s
illustrations of the different plain forms and actual
lifestyle photographs. I think it’s a really good idea to
include that. We had some comments in our Addendum, I
think, that indicated that these forms look pretty bleak,
they don’t have any imagination to them, and are we forcing
developers to design all the beautiful features out of
building space? I think part of that comment is driven by
the simplicity of the diagrams, and so having
illustrations, even if they aren’t perfectly fitting Los
Gatos’ standards, is a really good idea. People need to see
that visual, because it’s sometimes challenging without
that, so I would like to see that included.
Back to the question of what isn’t in this
document, and something that the Planning Commission hears
a lot—I won’t say every project, but many, many projects—is
with respect of the protection of views. I know this is an
extremely difficult topic to create an Objective Standard
around, because the views are so subjective. My question is
was that considered, and are there any jurisdictions that
you know of, like Tahoe, Woodside, some of the more bucolic
settings, in addition to Los Gatos, that do have an
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Objective Standard regarding views or view protection,
whether it’s building height, which is something we
probably wouldn’t want in this document, because we don’t
want to further limit what the developers can do,
especially from Mixed-Use and affordable housing, so we
don’t want to add government regulations there, but can you
just comment on views and how possible or not possible it
is to create a standard objective around that?
SEAN MULLIN: I can briefly respond to that and
then pass it on to Tom. I’m not aware of other cities
or jurisdictions that have pursued views in the Objective
Standards, but I surely haven’t read as many of these
documents as Tom has, so I would default to him.
One other thing to note, the intent of the images
that Tom has provided today to run parallel with the
diagrammatic illustrations was not to be put into the
document necessarily, but to illustrate the purpose and how
those sort of plain images can be realized in real life.
That could be part of your recommendation moving forward,
that images be sourced moving forward for inclusion in the
document, but we would have to source royalty-free or hire
someone to create those images.
With that, Tom, I’m not sure if you have any
response about the view piece.
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TOM FORD: We did discuss it during at least two
meetings of the Subcommittee. I think, first of all, you
have to separate are you talking about a view from the
property out, or are you talking about a view from
different parts of Town onto the hillside and the slope?
Generally, one of the reasons we stayed away from
it with the Subcommittee was because since you don’t have a
viewshed protection ordinance, or any kind of a view
ordinance, it would be hard for us to start making
regulations against a moving target, if you will.
Because our office is doing a number of these
Objective Standards throughout the Bay Area, I’ve also been
tracking other communities. I know in Sausalito, as they
were trying to develop their Objective Standards they
wanted to have some sort of view protection ordinance, and
it became just a really hard nightmare for them because the
view changes from property to property, and as I said in my
presentation, we’re trying to make a standard that applies
to all our four properties, or all Downtown Commercial
properties, or whatever, so it’s kind of hard. They did a
lot of studying of different moving parts, and it’s really
difficult because it is so subjective, and so trying to
establish an objective rule gets very, very difficult.
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COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you. I appreciate
those responses.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Following up on Commissioner
Janoff’s question, you did mention one jurisdiction that
was going in this direction. Are there other jurisdictions
in California that are also very scenic that have been
successful in doing this? You didn’t refer to a view
ordinance, so do we know of other communities that have a
view ordinance and have been successful with it?
TOM FORD: First let me correct myself. Sausalito
started down the road, but they didn’t finish. They
finished their Objective Standards document without
tackling that issue, but they tried. I can’t name
communities offhand but I know there are communities—I want
to say Chico—where view protection ordinances exist. Again,
I can’t think of a jurisdiction right offhand, but starting
with that ordinance, that’s where I would start before
trying to write Objective Standards for something that’s
moveable.
CHAIR HANSSEN: For the rest of the Commission,
we did discuss this during the Subcommittee and I do recall
the guidance we were given of a view ordinance, so if we do
want to go there in terms of our recommendation to Council,
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probably the thing to do is recommend that the Council look
into trying to put together a view ordinance.
On the devil’s advocate side of that, since I’m
chairing the Housing Element Advisory Board, and the Town
Council is getting ready to finalize the General Plan, we
are relying very heavily on Mixed-Use in both the Housing
Element and the General Plan for success in terms of
meeting our RHNA allocation, and the only way that Mixed-
Use can be successful is through additional height and
sometimes additional FAR, and sometimes some other things
on top of that, and those might directly impact views, so I
would say if we’re going to recommend that to Town Council
we have to understand that it might be complicated by the
fact that when we’re building four stories, and maybe even
five, that it would be hard to protect those views.
Let me see if there are other questions. Since
Vice Chair Barnett had submitted his comments I did want to
at least bring up that we were forwarded a copy of Palo
Alto’s Objective Standards, and also the Vice Chair had
submitted some comments on top of that that he thought were
important after reviewing that.
Since Palo Alto’s standards are so much longer
than ours, how should we think about that? I’m going to ask
Staff that.
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SEAN MULLIN: Thank you. I would attribute part
of the length of Palo Alto’s ordinance that they created
around Objective Standards to it tries to capture two
things, and you might recognize some of the language in
there.
The first is they have their Objective Standards
for these same types of qualifying projects. The second
piece is they’ll have an Objective Standard in what’s
called a context-based design criteria, which they’re
usually similar concepts. The Objective Standard is just
that, it’s objective and it can be applied to those
projects that qualify.
The context-based design criteria are for
projects that don’t meet the Objective Standards or choose
not to utilize that process, and they did a much more
robust overhaul and drafting of a document and an overhaul
of their city ordinance and incorporated it into a new
chapter, and I think that having the two running parallel
creates a much longer document.
A through line to what they’ve set up to the Town
of Los Gatos is that we are developing an Objective
Standards process as a standalone policy document that
would not live within the Town Ordinance, and to
Commissioner Raspe’s question, to those projects that
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wouldn’t meet those Objective Standards or choose not to,
they would pursue the typical Architecture and Site process
similar Palo Alto’s context-based design criteria.
And to your question, Chair, if there are items,
concepts, particular Objective Standards, or even the
design criteria, if there are particular items in that
document or in their ordinance that you would like to
pursue, you can include those as recommendations, even if
they’re not objective at this point. We can attempt to make
something objective, we can look at whether it would create
a conflict within the document, and we can redraft
language; it could be additive or it could revise existing
language.
I think some of the examples that Vice Chair
Barnett provided tonight, we have a draft in our document,
but maybe not the same way. We have gone about it a
different way, but we have addressing something like
pedestrian access, for instance. But you could certainly
pull from Palo Alto or any other document, or any other
concept in general, and include that in your recommendation
as we move forward.
CHAIR HANSSEN: So with that in mind, Vice Chair
Barnett, you did submit your recommendations and it sounds
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like Staff has gone through those. How would you like us to
consider those in tonight’s hearing?
Ms. Armer has her hand up.
JENNIFER ARMER: Sorry, Chair, but just wanted to
remind you that we do have some members of the public, so
once you are done with overarching questions, we might see
if they’ve got comments to share.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I was planning to do that. That’s
one of the reasons I wanted to go over the overarching
comments. The other reason is that if it’s not in the
document now, then this would be a time to bring those up
versus going through the document and saying I wish it said
this instead of this. If you think something is missing,
it’s probably good to bring those up now. That was the
reason for my questioning, but after that I will go to
public comments. My question was for Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: The document from Palo Alto
is rather daunting, and there’s some sentiment that we
shouldn’t continue tonight’s hearing for the purpose of
further examination of that document. Community Development
Director Paulson had an excellent suggestion, which is that
we forward that as a recommendation for review by the Town
Council and not try to make any decisions tonight in the
short amount of time that’s available.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: That might be a way to do that.
Relative to the finding of the Palo Alto document, I do
imaging a scenario where any number of jurisdictions will
come out with their document and we might wish ours looked
like that, and so I do have that concern about trying to
spend too much time tracking other documents, but since
this one is in front of us I think it would be helpful if
any Commissioners have specific things that they want our
Staff to consider as we move forward, that we should try to
get those on the table as soon as possible.
Let’s go to public comments. This would be a time
for any members of the public to speak about the Draft
Objective Standards that is on the agenda and that we are
discussing currently.
JENNIFER ARMER: If anyone is interested in
speaking on this item, please raise your hand. Lee
Quintana. You should be able to unmute. You have three
minutes.
LEE QUINTANA: Number one that I would like to
speak to is the fact that at previous meetings on this it
was stated that there would be one unified document that
included all the objectives that applied to qualifying
projects, and that seems to have gone by the wayside. I do
think that if you don’t do that it is going to be totally
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confusing to the public; they’re not going to understand
what exactly is included for these standards.
I do believe, as has been suggested, that you
need to define in the document what a qualifying project
is.
As for photos, I think for the public to
understand the concepts—and this document should not be
just for the developers—that you need to include either a
photograph or probably even better, a graphic figure of
what you’re trying to present.
I think from what’s being said it sounds like
this is going to go the Town Council fairly rapidly, and
that doesn’t seem like giving either the public or the
Commission adequate opportunity to really digest what is
being proposed and what could be proposed.
Myself, I have not had a chance to look at the
Palo Alto example, but the one thing I really believe is
that it has to be an integrated document that all the
objectives that apply are listed. You many not have to
actually quote them, but you would at least have to give
the direction as to where they could be found specifically
by section, document page, or whatever. Otherwise, the
document is not user-friendly and it is not transparent to
the public.
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I guess that is basically going to be my
statement right now. I think we need to pay more attention
to how the documents are understood and perceived by the
public so that they can understand the process and what is
actually being proposed.
My other comment is that this document, my
understanding anyway, can cover Multi-Family projects that
contain duplexes on up to large Multi-Family structures, so
there are a whole bunch of different types of buildings
that are being covered, and yet the objectives don’t break
that down as to what applies to what building type, so
again, I think that it needs better clarification for that,
both for understanding by the public and even by developers
themselves. Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for your comments.
They’re always very helpful and we really appreciate you
talking to us. Any questions for Ms. Quintana? Seeing none,
I’d like to ask if there is anyone else that would like to
speak on the Draft Objective Standards?
JENNIFER ARMER: If you’d like to speak on this
item, please raise your hand. I don’t see any other hands
raised, Chair.
CHAIR HANSSEN: All right, then I will close
public comment and go back to the Commission.
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Ms. Quintana brought up a more specific version
of what was on my mind when I asked the question earlier
about how does this process work, and so I would like to
say that I appreciated her comment. I don’t know where the
rest of the Commission is on this, but I do think there
would be some merit to having a more comprehensive thing
even if we’re pulling things out of code or whatever, so
that people would know what all the Objective Standards
were. I think that’s not a bad thing to consider, so I’ll
just put that out there from my point of view.
Are there other things that the Commission would
want to bring up in terms of the things that are missing,
or structural issues, or other things? We could also go
through the document itself, but I wanted to see if anyone
had any specific concerns about the overall structure and
the direction that this is going.
I think there were a couple of comments about
having pictures, and I don't know what Staff wants us to
do. Should we vote on if there are specific
recommendations, or just if it seems like we have consensus
from the Commission we can forward that on as a
recommendation? How does Staff want us to do that?
JENNIFER ARMER: Thank you, Chair. I can jump in.
I would say that there are a couple of different ways that
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you could proceed. If, as you’re talking through, there are
certain recommendations that you want to make individual
motions about to see if there is consensus and support, you
could do it that way; or you could keep track as the
discussion goes on and have a list of additional changes,
modifications, or additional material that you think should
be provided to Town Council, and consolidate that in a
single motion at the end of the discussion.
CHAIR HANSSEN: All right. Commissioner Janoff,
you had your hand up and you don’t anymore, so your
question is answered?
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I was just going to say if
we’re going to walk through the document, then there are
opportunities for recommendation, but I think Ms.
Quintana’s point about having a… It could be a drawing, it
doesn’t need to be a photograph, but something that better
illustrates different types of design standards would be
helpful.
CHAIR HANSSEN: All right, then I’m okay with
going ahead and looking at the document if you want to put
that on the screen.
TOM FORD: Do you literally want to scroll through
the entire document, or does somebody want to raise a
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specific standard that they’d like to discuss and I can
flip to it?
CHAIR HANSSEN: I’m presuming that everyone on
the Commission has read the draft document, so I don't know
that we need to go over things, but what we did with the
General Plan, and what we’ve done with the Housing Element
so far, is go by section and see if there are things; and
we did this is the Subcommittee as well. I think we didn’t
talk about every last thing, but we went through sections
and said are there things that caught our attention that we
want to talk about? So I will ask Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you. Mine are
comments throughout that I’ll just offer.
On 1.2 on this page we talk about a height, but
we don’t mention depth, and I’m wondering whether there
might be an addition so it’s a height of 6”, and a depth of
I don't know if it’s 2’, or what it might be?
TOM FORD: Okay.
CHAIR HANSSEN: It seems like a good suggestion.
I don’t have my whole document open in front of me, but is
this everything under Pedestrian Access, or is that just
the first page?
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TOM FORD: Yes, that’s it for Pedestrian Access.
The next page will start into the second section, Vehicular
Access.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Janoff, did you have
another comment?
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I don’t.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Vice Chair Barnett, did you have
a question about the Pedestrian Access or Vehicular Access?
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Pedestrian Access. I wanted
to point out in my suggestions of possible modifications
based on the Palo Alto Objective Standards, Item 2, there’s
a hierarchy of access issues for prioritizing pedestrians,
bikes, and vehicles in that order, and I wonder if we could
consider that as a possible modification?
CHAIR HANSSEN: Just to make sure that it’s clear
what you’re asking, the Palo Alto document, they were
saying that you would prioritize certain modes of
transportation over like, say, cars for example?
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Yes, it talks specifically
about pedestrians and bikes before it gets to vehicles.
CHAIR HANSSEN: What do other Commissioners think
about that? Commissioner Clark.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: The hierarchy was one of the
things I liked the most from the Palo Alto Objective
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Standards. I think that is something I would want to exist
in any project anyway, so if it’s feasible I would support
incorporating it, but I’d definitely be curious to hear
Staff opinions and if that seems to restrictive or anything
like that.
CHAIR HANSSEN: What is Staff’s reaction to the
suggestion?
SEAN MULLIN: Thank you. My initial reaction is
this is one of those examples that come out of Palo Alto’s
contextual design criteria, and it may be difficult to
objectify the hierarchy of priority between different modes
of travel. We certainly will take your suggestion and look
into it. This is one of the examples where it may be a
little difficult, but we’ll see if there’s a way to do it
that is objective.
In the end, going back to the definition of these
Objective Standards, it can’t allow anyone to really think
about it, if you will, or make a decision on whether
they’ve adequately addressed the hierarchy. It needs to be
something like—this is out of left field—all Mixed-Use
projects shall include a Class 1 bike lane on the street-
facing façade. It would need to be at that level versus all
Mixed-Use projects shall prioritize pedestrian to bike to
cars in that order, because there’s no way to quantify that
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as did the developer meet that standard or not? But it’s
something we can look into.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think that’s fine, and I think
there are a couple of Commissioners that think that it
would be good to go in that direction if we could, but we
understand there might be some concerns about whether or
not you can make it objective.
Any other comments on the Pedestrian Access
section? Then I think we can go on.
TOM FORD: Vehicular Access.
CHAIR HANSSEN: So we just have the one standard
for Vehicular Access?
TOM FORD: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: This is going to bring up like
what’s left out. If I recall, we didn’t have anything for
bicycles in here, we only have pedestrian and vehicle, and
then we’re going right into parking, is that correct?
TOM FORD: Correct, we don’t have any bicycle-
specific standards.
CHAIR HANSSEN: So question for Staff. I’ve seen
for LEED standards, for example, if you want to get LEED
certification you have to have like bike lockers or things
like that, bike parking in parking lots and parking garages
and so on, or is there another place that we would have
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standards for how projects are supposed to accommodate
bicyclists?
JOEL PAULSON: Thank you, Chair. Joel Paulson,
Community Development Director. A couple of things.
For the bike, we have a Bicycle and Pedestrian
Master Plan that Parks and Public Works deals with, which
has different right-of-way improvements depending on the
street and what kind of improvements they’re looking for
moving forward. Those bicycle storage components are
required in other documents by other agencies as well as
far as whether it’s LEED or things that you need to do to
show that you’re providing X number of bike parking spaces
per either square foot or per vehicular parking spot, and
so there are actual specifics, and I can’t recall off the
top of my head, but there may actually be some of those in
the Building Code as well, so those are the types of things
that, again, from an objective versus aspirational
criteria, those are kind of two different topics.
We definitely can, as Sean mentioned on the
previous item, look into options for creating those. I
think the challenge is once you start—which is what we
tried not to do—to capture every Objective Standard from
the Zoning Code, every Objective Standard from every other
document, and pull it into one document, then every time we
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make a change in one we have to make a change in all of
them. So that’s definitely something that we can look at,
but I think the important component is it sounds like
there’s an interest to make sure that we’re either
capturing here or it’s captured somewhere else, kind of two
topics on this relating to bikes; I think it’s the bicycle
infrastructure from a public right-of-way standpoint as
well bike storage mechanisms.
CHAIR HANSSEN: From my perspective, and then I’m
happy to hear from other Commissioners as well, if it’s of
interest to the Commission and it’s in the Palo Alto
standard to prioritize the bikes and pedestrians over other
forms of vehicles, one of the ways that you’re not doing
that is by not calling out things that are in our Objective
Standards that pertain to bicyclists. That being said, I
understand that there is stuff in other documents, but I
feel like that might be a miss that we should try to put
something in here, even if it’s about bike parking,
something like that, especially when we’re talking about
parking cars. Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: A couple of comments.
I think that the introduction could more clearly
describe that this is a standalone document, but there are
other complementary documents that should be referred to
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that also contain Objective Standards, and you could name
the various documents that exist. I would list them; there
are a dozen of so, or a half a dozen. That way, to anyone’s
concern that we’re silent on it and that we don’t address
it because it’s not in this document, we’ve said go look
for it in the appropriate document elsewhere, and I would
feel comfortable doing that rather than duplicating the
items that are already Objective Standards in other
documents for the reason just mentioned.
Having said that, I haven’t thoroughly read the
Palo Alto guidelines. I was confused about the contextual
guidelines and the Objective Standards, so I kind of got
mixed up in that a little bit. I’m not clear what
prioritizing pedestrian and bicycle over vehicles, or
pedestrian over bike, etc., I’m not sure what that means,
but I would say in this instance that something about
accommodating bicycles, just putting some objective
language in here just so we cover all the modes of
transportation, so that at least it’s complete. I don’t see
that that’s going to be needed going through this document,
but I think it makes sense here; it’s sort of an obvious
omission, even though, as you say, we’ve got it covered in
other documents.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: I kind of have a feeling our Vice
Mayor, who is an avid bicyclist, will be bringing up
something similar when the Town Council sees it.
As far as Vehicular Access, I think what we have
is fine. It’s intended to keep circulating in the parking
garage from going out into the street, so that makes sense.
Any other thoughts about Vehicular Access? Is there more
Parking Location and Design on the next page?
TOM FORD: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: It looks to me like most of the
things as far as parking vehicles were there. Then I
thought about bikes, so I already brought that point up.
TOM FORD: So move on?
CHAIR HANSSEN: Does anyone have any comments so
far on the Parking Location and Design standards? Then
there’s Parking Structure Access. Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: When we get there, just a
comment on Utilities.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Any other Commissioners that have
comments on Parking Location and Design standards or
Parking Structure Access?
Okay, Utilities. And then it goes on to the next
page. So Commissioner Janoff.
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COMMISSIONER JANOFF: When I read 5.1 I thought
those are really huge light fixtures, so I think you’re
missing a word. “Light fixtures shall be located at a
minimum of 3’ and a maximum of 15’.” I think that’s what
was intended, but correct me if I’m wrong.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Could Staff answer that question?
SEAN MULLIN: I’m sorry, I was just rereading it
very carefully. Yes, I think the intent here is actually
for pedestrian lighting along pedestrian paths, that the 3’
is a minimum height and then a maximum height of 15’. This
wasn’t speaking to the distance between or the placement of
the actual fixtures, so you could imagine path lighting
that’s incorporated into a bollard versus like the light
fixture shown in the figure on the next page.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I understand what you’re
saying; I’m just reading this literally. It says, “The
lighting fixture shall be a minimum of 3’ and a maximum of
15’ in height.” That describes the light fixture, not its
location.
SEAN MULLIN: I understand the recommendation.
I’m going to make sure to note that. Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I actually think there’s some
merit to thinking about adding or tweaking one of the
standards, especially with all the dark skies advocates
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that we’ve had during the General Plan hearings, because
there’s nothing in here that would prohibit someone from
putting like, say, path lighting every foot, so the height
is only one aspect of it.
We just landscaped our own yard and put some path
lighting in, and we put it like 15’ apart from each other,
so I would recommend maybe adding onto 5.1 something like
that just to make sure that they’re not doing access
lighting in height or in volume. I don't know if it’s
possible to make that objective.
He had some other ones in there about when the
parking lot is so long you do a landscape strip or
something. It seems to me you could make that objective.
SEAN MULLIN: We’ve noted that and we certainly
could look into that.
JENNIFER ARMER: Yes, we can look into it. Of
course the spacing will depend somewhat on the style and
height of the lighting itself and the brightness of it, so
we can look to see if there’s something to be included.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Any other comments? So that’s
everything on Utilities through 5.3. I remember talking
about the screening, so then the next thing is Landscape
and Screening. Any comments on Landscape and Screening?
Commissioner Raspe.
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COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thank you, Chair, just a
couple of comments. Under A.6 and I think again at A.9 we
talked about plantings, and I know we spent a lot of time
in our General Plan discussion talking about using native
plantings and all that, and I just wanted to confirm, we
don’t have to reinsert that language into this document, is
that correct? Because the General Plan is a more
restrictive document in that sense, and then those
standards were carried into this document, is that right?
SEAN MULLIN: It would depend on how it’s written
in the General Plan. If the General Plan—and I’m sorry, but
I don’t have the language in front of me—says something
similar to native planting is highly preferred by the Town
versus native species shall be incorporated in all
landscape plans, the first is a subjective criteria and
couldn’t be applied, and wouldn’t be applied, under a
project like this. The second statement would be objective
and you’d have to meet that in addition to the Landscape
and Screening requirements here.
So if there were a wish to be more restrictive or
to create something objective that doesn’t exist, or only
exists in the subjective form in another document, that’s
the type of recommendation we would certainly entertain.
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COMMISSIONER RASPE: Perfect. Then my thought—and
I would welcome the thoughts of my fellow commissioners—
would be wherever landscaping is discussed—and again, my
notes indicates at least Sections A.6 and A.9—that there
would be either a requirement or a preference for native
and drought tolerant plantings where possible.
Then as long as we’re in the same section,
Section 6.2a, when we’re talking about screening it calls
for a solid masonry wall, and we’re talking about in the
buffer between a Multi-Family and a Single-Family
Residential building, and I’m just curious why a masonry
wall is called for. It seems to me maybe regular fencing in
certain circumstances might work and might fit in better
aesthetically in some neighborhoods than a solid masonry
wall. I suspect a masonry wall probably has some sound
attenuation benefit to it, but aside from that is there a
reason to use masonry as opposed to allowing some other
forms and materials?
SEAN MULLIN: Thank you. This is an example of an
Objective Standard that was created from language that
already existed, and I can’t remember the exact language—
I’d have to look up the source, and we can certainly do
that—but there is a current requirement for a masonry wall
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when you are interfacing between, I think it might be,
Commercial and Residential.
JENNIFER ARMER: Correct.
SEAN MULLIN: So this is where that was born
from, and the caveat here would be if we created an
Objective Standard that was less restrictive than an
existing Objective Standard, because that could be
problematic and in conflict between the two documents.
We’re looking a little bit farther forward as we consider
this. So we’ve tried to maintain it at at least the level
that existed somewhere else, if not more restrictive,
within this document.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: That’s a fair comment and
thank you for explaining it. I’ll withdraw my
recommendation then with respect to the masonry wall and
just preserve my comments with respect to the plantings.
TOM FORD: I want to go back to what Commissioner
Raspe was saying about landscaping. We actually can’t write
sentences that say things like “where feasible,” because
that just opens up to opinions; that’s not objective. But I
think we can still investigate the whole idea of native and
drought tolerant, and I think one of the ways into it might
be the C.3 guidelines, which are already in effect Town-
wide on certain kinds of projects. I think there are a lot
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of ways to look at it, but I just wanted to make sure
everybody knows that we can’t use sentences that say things
like, “if feasible” or, “as necessary” and things like
that.
CHAIR HANSSEN: The Town Council was just going
over the General Plan on Monday, and I don’t have the
General Plan in front of me, but I want to say that we
actually had that the plantings have to be in a category or
this, or this, or this, and if it is, then I would say that
Commissioner Raspe’s suggestion we ought to make this a bit
more robust.
Then as far as the comment about the masonry
wall, if that came from an existing document where it’s
between Residential and Commercial, is there a way to make
sure that it’s clear, or is this going to apply if there
are two Residential buildings that are next to each other
that they’re going to have to put a masonry wall?
JENNIFER ARMER: Because this is a sub-point
underneath the previous policy that does specify that it’s
between Multi-Family or Mixed-Use development abutting a
Residential property, any of these higher-intensity
projects that abut a Residential property would have this
requirement.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: So it is clear that we know what
the context would be, because I had the same reaction,
because especially in the Planning Commission we are always
hearing about fences, or screening trees, but if we already
have that in another standard, then we don’t want to be
inconsistent.
Commissioner Clark has her hand up.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: I have two comments under
Landscaping and Screening. First, to jump off of what Ms.
Armer was just saying, so in that case if it’s between a
Multi-Family Residential and then a like Single-Family,
does that mean that theoretically a duplex next to a
Single-Family home would need a masonry wall, or where does
the line exist for that?
JENNIFER ARMER: Based on the earlier discussion
I think one of the things that we would work on developing
is a more specific definition of qualifying projects so
that we could make sure that it is clear maybe that there
will be some references to State regulations, but make it
clear as to which projects are considered Multi-Family for
this type of policy.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Thank you. Yes, I’d like to
make sure that we flag to not have a wall between a duplex
or a four-plex in the Single-Family home, because our goal
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this whole time with missing middle has been to have it
kind of blend in with the neighborhood, so that might be
for a different conversation, but just to raise that. And
then, Chair, may I ask another question?
CHAIR HANSSEN: Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: My other question is on 6.1.
It says that the area shall be landscaped and I was
wondering if there is a definition of landscaped sitting
anywhere? I felt like that could be up to interpretation.
TOM FORD: It could be left up to interpretation,
however, I don't know if it’s defined in the code, if it’s
one of the definitions that’s already given.
SEAN MULLIN: I was going to say that it’s
something that we did discuss and this is where we landed.
We could certainly look at it a little bit more carefully
and see if it needs to be a defined term.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Yes, great.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I actually had the same reaction.
I was like it could be a pile of gravel, a bunch of mulch,
or it could be all hardscape. Maybe those are all in the
desirable category, but to me I think that would be worth
looking into if it’s clear enough what it would be.
Commissioner Raspe.
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COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thank you, Chair. One more
comment with respect to landscaping, and that’s in Section
6.3. The language provides for a minimum height of 3’ with
landscaping between parking lots and street to serve as
kind of an official buffer. I’m wondering if we wanted to
create or insert a maximum height as well? There could be
aesthetic and safety reasons to create maximum heights, but
it occurs to me there also are security reasons. Creating
hiding places or little dark corners in parking lots is
certainly something we want to avoid, I think, so for
security reasons, if no other, so you may want to insert a
height limitation on the buffers around parking lots.
SEAN MULLIN: Thank you. I would just quickly
respond that part of what you’ll see is duplicated this
document and the Town Code is some of the regulations for
fencing, because those were just updated back in 2019. That
included a maximum height in basically the setback areas
that are adjacent to streets, so that’s the street side or
up front setback area and areas as you get closer to
corners or driveways.
So now it’s codified with a maximum height of 3’
and that’s where we started here, but that is something
that we could clarify and duplicate so that we’re calling
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out that you’ve got to be at least 3’, but if you’re in the
setbacks abutting a street, then no higher than 3’.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: I think that would be
helpful. Thanks so much.
CHAIR HANSSEN: That’s a very good suggestion. I
did want to make one more comment about the wall thing. I
think that Commissioner Clark’s comments were right on and
I know we can do something about it, but the other thing
that I thought of is since we’re trying to promote
affordable housing it might be onerous, especially if
you’re looking at a two-unit next to another two-unit, to
have to build a wall, because it would be more expensive
than planking and things like that, so I just want to make
sure that we’re really careful about under what
circumstances a wall is required.
Anyone else have questions or comments on the
Landscaping and Screening? So then we can go to Fencing.
Staff, you did mention that most of this is taken directly
out of our Fence Ordinance?
JENNIFER ARMER: Correct.
SEAN MULLIN: Correct. Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: So there won’t be any conflict
between this and our Fence Ordinance?
JENNIFER ARMER: Correct.
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TOM FORD: Should I move on?
CHAIR HANSSEN: I don’t think anyone has any
comments on Fencing. Retaining Walls?
JENNIFER ARMER: Chair, I would add also that
this does come almost directly from the Hillside Design
Standards and Guidelines for retaining walls.
SEAN MULLIN: That’s correct.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Going back to Ms. Quintana’s
questions, I know we’ve already made this as a
recommendation, but since we’re taking this stuff out of
other documents and putting it in here, it does beg the
question of why we’re not taking other things out of other
documents and putting them in here that are clearly
Objective Standards? I know you guys are going to look into
that.
Do any Commissioners have any questions about the
Retaining Walls? Okay, then Open Space? Commissioner Clark.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Thank you. I have a question
about the relationship between 9.1 and 9.2. If a Mixed-Use
development has to have at least 20% of the site area be
landscaped open space, and then also has to have a minimum
of 100 square feet per Residential unit of public gathering
spaces, do you think that this becomes burdensome on them,
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or Staff? From your experiences, do you not see this as a
problem?
JENNIFER ARMER: I can start, and I would say
that as we look at this wording it might be that in some
cases these two policies would actually overlap in terms of
space that’s required. For common open space, it could be
some landscaped open space, and so it may not be additive,
but it would overlap. Mr. Ford I don't know if you have any
additional thoughts on those two.
TOM FORD: No. I think the primary thing we were
trying to do was cover two different development
typologies, one being a 100% Residential project and
another that would have that Mixed-Use component, probably
on the ground floor. We were trying to separate them so
that it got handled first in 9.1 as just an overall
standard, but then 9.2 augments it in terms of talking
about when you have these two uses occupying the same site.
And then we were also trying not to conflict with anything
that the code already specifies in terms of open space
requirements.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Staff, do we have anything in our
code on minimum open space?
JENNIFER ARMER: We do. The code does have
specifics for Multi-Family developments in terms of the
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amount of space for each unit, private open space as well
as common open space, and so those would apply. This is
looking more at the project as a whole, rather than
individual spaces.
CHAIR HANSSEN: 9.1 is?
JENNIFER ARMER: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I want to tell you, I was really
happy to see this, because one of the really nice things in
the North Forty Specific Plan is the requirement for 30%
open space, of which 20% has to be green open space, and
I’m glad to see that we have something in here.
Before I go onto any other questions, I wanted to
ask the question though about 9.1. It says, “Landscaped
open space may be…” Is that objective, or does it have to
be one of those, or what could it be if it’s one of those?
JENNIFER ARMER: The 20% of the site area is the
objective part. Landscaping may be in these other forms,
and gives examples of what it might be, but does, you’re
right, leave it open. We were talking earlier about the
possibility of defining what landscaped means, and so it
may be that that would actually increase objectivity of the
second part of this, but it is still an Objective Standard
because it is saying 20% of the site must be landscaped
open space.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: And now that we’re in this
drought crisis, having grass in here is not a good thing,
so I think that if you’re going there that we should work
on this one a little bit. Commissioner Clark, did you have
more comments than what you already asked about? I want to
just make sure we covered everything.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Yes, I want to quickly
respond to Staff’s response. I think something that I’d
recommend is just making the potential for overlap between
those two a little clearer, because when I saw them it felt
like they had to exist separate, so that’s something I’d
recommend just exploring.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Good comment. Commissioner
Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you. Yes, I want to
echo your concern about grass. Whatever is appropriate in
this drought-tolerant foreseeable future, I think we need
to be respectful of.
Also, 9.2, 9.3, and 9.4, I noted in the Palo Alto
document some areas where they speak to the common area
being open to sky, and in some areas it’s 60% open to sky,
so I would recommend looking for those objective criteria
and speak to the open sky. Thank you.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: So are you suggesting adding
something? It talks about a minimum of shading. You’re
talking about some percentage of open sky?
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: If I just refer you back to
the Palo Alto Objective Standards on open space, they do
speak to an open sky concept in addition to coverings.
CHAIR HANSSEN: And you’re recommending that
Staff look into adding that here?
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: All right. Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: In the recommendations I
made concerning the Palo Alto Objective Standards,
Objective Standard #8 addresses private open space, and it
appears that the draft that we have only refers to public
or common open space, and I noted that Ms. Armer said that
there is code language that addresses private open space. I
haven’t had a chance to look at that, but I thought that
there were some good suggestions in there in terms of size
and location.
SEAN MULLIN: And I would offer and remind that
the code requirements for private open space would still
apply in those circumstances. You’re correct; this is
speaking more towards public or common open space. The open
space requirements for second-story units usually exist in
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the form of a balcony or a private balcony, which is not
defined here, but we can look into including it or making
sure that we have enough here. We still want to be a little
bit careful with duplicating items that are in the Town
Code per Director Paulson’s caveat earlier.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think just to make sure that
anything that Palo Alto had might not be in our current
code since we’re not looking at it right now. I think it
would be a useful thing to check on that.
SEAN MULLIN: Chair, you’re speaking specifically
to Objective Standard #8 in Vice Chair Barnett’s
attachment?
CHAIR HANSSEN: Yes. Then actually when you
talked about the balconies it made me think of something.
When we had the Draft 2040 General Plan and
Community Design Element, we did have—and I know Vice Chair
Janoff and I had recommended taking it out—a requirement
for when it was multi-story to have a balcony, and that
could be included in the common open space, and you needed
to offer it because they were stories above the ground.
That was an Objective Standard that we had in the General
Plan that we kind of referred out, and I don’t remember
what we decided about that or what happened to that.
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JENNIFER ARMER: I believe that was part of the
list of topics that were considered by the Subcommittee,
because all of the things that we removed from the General
Plan as too specific at that point, or inconsistent with
code, were at least considered initially as part of this
process.
SEAN MULLIN: That would have been part of the
GPAC referrals.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I don’t remember what we decided,
but I’m asking the question why am I not seeing it here?
TOM FORD: I don’t recall why it’s not here. I
would say though that if somebody has a balcony on an upper
floor, that’s only private. You would not be able to count
that as common open space, because the unit is the only
person that has access to it.
CHAIR HANSSEN: No, I totally understand that,
but I think the issue was that if you’re going to create a
Multi-family building that you want to give the residents
an opportunity to have some private open space.
JOEL PAULSON: Thank you, Chair. I’ll just offer
that right now we’re looking at the site standards. That
definitely is something we should probably consider, if
it’s not in there, for the building standards, which is
Section B.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: Yes, maybe I missed that and
maybe it’s in the building section.
All right, any other comments on Open Space?
Okay, Building Placement? Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you. Just keeping it
short here. I was curious why 10.1 only referred to
development in a Community Place District when we look at
the site inventory that the Housing Element Advisory Board
has prepared? There are a number of developments that are
outside of the Community Place District, so just curious
whether this really is intended for only that, or whether
it’s for more than just Community Place Districts?
TOM FORD: I don’t recall why exactly we did
that, other than it could be that the Community Place
Districts were the only places where we were envisioning
ground floor Commercial in a Mixed-Use context. That’s the
only thing I could think of offhand.
JOEL PAULSON: And to Commissioner Janoff’s
point, I think maybe that’s too limiting, so we should
probably just strike that so that it would apply to any
Multi-Family or Mixed-Use. I think that’s a good comment
and I think you’ll probably see that in a couple places, so
we’ll strike that wherever that occurs in this document.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: I think that’s a good suggestion.
Commissioner Clark, and then Commissioner Raspe.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Thank you. Just to give
another perspective, I have only liked this one knowing
that it was in Community Place Districts, but I think
normally I don’t want to see everything, especially not 75%
of everything, coming right up to the setback. This one is
hard, because if that is mostly what another neighborhood
is like, then I think that makes sense to do there, but if
that doesn’t exist in some places and you start doing it, I
think that could make them look out of place, and so I
don’t personally think that’s one that makes sense as an
Objective Standard for everywhere.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I’m going to ask a question on
top of Commissioner Clark’s question and comment. Could we
make this like just specific to Mixed-Use? Because I know
where this came from. It was when we were talking during
the General Plan about creating communities, and we also
talked about this during the redesign of our Planned
Development Ordinance.
We have a Mixed-Use development on the northwest
corner of Blossom Hill Road and Los Gatos Boulevard and
that is kind of a non-vertical Mixed-Use, and the first
thing you see in a lot of parts of it is parking lot, and
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so when we were talking about re-envisioning what might
happen, having Community Place Districts be Mixed-Use where
it’s close to the sidewalk and it’s accessible and
everything made sense. Would it make sense to just change
this to a standard for Mixed-Use? Because any place there
would be Mixed-Use would have ground floor Commercial.
JENNIFER ARMER: I was going to say that yes, we
could. As with some of the previous standards where it
referenced Mixed-Use projects in particular, one caveat I
would say in our recent discussions about the Housing
Element and housing developments and whether there is a
possibility that for certain affordability levels, say it’s
100% affordable housing, that could then be allowed without
a Mixed-Use component in one of these Commercial zones. So
if it didn’t have this requirement, then it could be
(inaudible) on the street if we’re trying to create this
continuous streetscape, so those are some of the things to
consider. We can’t think of all possible situations when
we’re doing Objective Standards, but something to consider.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Raspe, do you want
to comment on this, or did you have something else?
COMMISSIONER RASPE: No, this one. Thank you,
Chair.
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I join in Commissioner Clark’s comment. The
notion of a requirement of 75% for the frontage seems to me
maybe not ideal in all situations, and so we may want to
consider our limitation on that.
It also seems to me that it perhaps creates a
conflict of some of the designs that are possible. I’m
skipping ahead, unfortunately, a little bit to the Building
Design section, but the building design in B.1d where it
has the sheltered walkway within the building, I think that
wouldn’t be permitted if we have a requirement of 75%
ground floor use on the setback, so I just want to make
sure internally we’re not precluding certain building
design with this requirement.
TOM FORD: If I might interject, it’s just saying
a minimum of 75%, so in the case of the arcade, what we’ve
drawn there is 100%, which is more than 75%.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: On the arcade you have zero,
don’t you, because there’s no ground floor in the setback?
It’s all removed from the street.
TOM FORD: Well, I consider the build to the front
of the arcade, the one that establishes sort of the street
frontage.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: In my mind’s eye I see the
posts as not part of it.
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TOM FORD: Oh, okay, that’s a good point.
SEAN MULLIN: I would jump in and say that
typically those posts would be considered part of the
structure and would have to meet setback, so in the case of
the arcade, if that were built to the setback line that
would qualify or comply with A.10.1. It’s a little bit of a
nuance. If you look at a Single-Family Residential, when
they have a porch projecting off the front and you have
those posts, those posts are the edge of the building and
would be required to meet the setback, and that would be
similarly applied here. We could look at another way to
revise A.10.1 if there’s still the concern about the 75%,
but I just wanted to add that.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: I appreciate the
clarification.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I’ll go back to Commissioner
Janoff in just a second.
I do think that some clarification is needed to
address the concerns of Commissioner Clark and Commissioner
Raspe and to make sure there’s no conflict. Maybe we take
out Community Place District, but we should be specific
about what kinds of sites we’re thinking of. Commissioner
Janoff.
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COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I just wanted to add that
when thinking about modifying 10.1 a big focus in the
General Plan was street activation, and so these concepts
of bringing the building to the street, creating a
pedestrian access, was a highlight. So as you think about
ways to modify it, just keep that in mind that that was an
objective throughout the portions of the General Plan that
spoke to these sorts of developments.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think that’s a good comment,
and that is exactly what the intent is. I was actually
really glad to see this in here, but we just have to make
sure we don’t have unintended consequences. Commissioner
Clark.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Thank you. Just to kind of
hop off of that, I think that there’s a chance it could
make sense to just say Mixed-Use for this, because, for
example, if there were an affordable housing non-Mixed-Use
development, maybe it should have a front yard or things
like that, so I don't know if that’s taken into
consideration already for this, but I think that kind of is
an example of what concerns me about it.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Well, if it was 100% affordable
and it was on Los Gatos Boulevard, for example, and it was
next to a Mixed-Use development, then… But that’s the
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concern. Let’s just leave it with Staff to try to figure
out a way to either limit it to Mixed-Use, or whatever the
context we could have, to make sure that we’re not creating
unintended consequences, but I definitely think we should
keep this. It’s just a question of making sure that it
isn’t creating anything that we don’t want. Ms. Armer.
JENNIFER ARMER: Thank you, Chair. I was going to
say that at this point, because of the number of comments,
suggestions, and requests for additional information, it
may be that it makes sense for us to continue this
discussion, and once we get through the document then to
continue to a date certain and have Staff come back with
some of this so that you don’t feel that you need to be
working out the specifics tonight, as much as giving
direction to Staff so that we can come back with some
specifics for you to consider.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think that’s a good suggestion.
Do you want us to go through the rest of the document and
just take comments and then not try to bring it to closure
because we know we’re going to continue it?
JENNIFER ARMER: Yes, that would be my
recommendation.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Okay, I think that’s a good way
to handle it. We’re on page 8, so let’s keep going. There
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is Site Amenities for Mixed-Use, and then that’s the last
thing on Site Design, right? So this is taking us to
Building Design. Any comments? Commissioner Clark, and then
Commissioner Raspe.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: I have a question for this
one. In terms of it having to implement a minimum of three
of these solutions, I know that these are objective
standards and that this might not be possible to work in,
but I still wanted to voice my concern that I think that
there’s a chance that some of them could look a lot worse
with three of them than with two of them, and I’m not sure
how to reconcile that, but I felt like looking at each of
these three could be a lot, and that might also be
something where we could request some pictures of examples
of things that incorporate all three, or something like
that.
SEAN MULLIN: Tom, you may be able to pull up a
couple of the parallel pictures if that’s helpful to look
at these concepts in particular. Admittedly, the first few
times scrolling through this document it’s hard to tie to
what Tom has brought up here, Standard B.1.1a, but when you
see it actualized, done in good architecture, it’s a little
bit easier. It may even be something to look at a concept
image like this to see if of these six items, are three of
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them present on just this image? Maybe there are two, maybe
there are three, but some examples may be helpful.
TOM FORD: Right. For instance, on this example
they’ve got two different materials, one of which is at
least 30%, which I think is one of our standards. They have
a setback on the upper level of part of the building. They
have ground floor awnings, which is another piece. So there
are a number of different things that get implemented here,
but we were trying to talk about just this one specific
thing. Here’s another version. The front massing steps back
quite a bit and they’ve used that step back to have an
upper level deck.
I think Commissioner Clark brings up a good point
about maybe three is not the right number, but maybe two,
but as you can see, really good architects are able to do
multiple standards in one building.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Then a couple of other
Commissioners have their hands up, and they may want to
comment on this or something else. I’ll go to Commissioner
Raspe, and then Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thank you, Chair. I’ve
actually got the same comment as Commissioner Clark. It
seems to me that mandating a minimum of three different
setbacks or massing requirements didn’t necessarily work in
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all situations. For instance, you had 50’ of frontage, and
three different articulation methods could be distracting,
so I would encourage Staff to look at that. The thought off
the top of my head is perhaps anchor it to how much street-
facing there is. For instance, for 50’ you would have two
different requirements, and if you went to 100’, maybe
three different requirements, something so it wouldn’t be
so disjointed in a crammed area that it becomes more
problematic, it doesn’t solve the problem that we’re
looking to solve that is deemphasizing the building. So
just a thought, but again, same general concern as
Commissioner Clark voiced.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for that. Commissioner
Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I actually didn’t have a
concern at all, and I’m thinking of Mr. Ford’s comment that
good architects know how to incorporate these. I’m just
glancing at the Palo Alto document. They’re requiring three
or more, so this may be something standard with developers,
and I would defer to Staff if this were sort of common to
have a set of objectives like that.
Having said that, if it becomes overly burdensome
to a developer because they’ve got to have all these more
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expensive design features and that deters them from the
project, then I would say that that’s an issue.
Personally, before changing it I would want to
hear from Eden Housing. I would want to hear from the
people who are trying to do the hard work of the affordable
housing and see whether these are unreasonable
expectations, because that could fall into the category of
government being too onerous in their standards.
CHAIR HANSSEN: That is a good point, and I think
from what I can remember of the affordable housing complex
at the North Forty, they would have at least three of
those. But let me go back to Commissioner Clark.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: I completely agree with what
Commissioner Janoff was saying, and so I first wonder if
you had talked to any developers in the creation of these
Objective Standards?
Than also I wanted to say that I think
regardless, something I’d like to see as we move forward
with these is actually hearing from the developers if these
are too stringent. Would this deter you from developing in
Los Gatos and maybe make you go somewhere else? Does this
make sense? That sort of thing.
SEAN MULL IN: Thank you, and I would say in
response that we reached out. Staff maintains a list of
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architects that do a lot of work in the Town, and we
included them in our outreach efforts for our community
meetings. We didn’t get much participation from them. And
then we also included them in the notice for this meeting
tonight, and I only heard from one of them that they
planned to attend. We will continue to reach out to the
design community and look for opportunities to increase
their involvement.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Thank you. Yes, maybe going
to them with a few specific questions like this that they
can just send a reply to or something could be a good way
to increase engagement. I know that’s very difficult.
CHAIR HANSSEN: That’s a good suggestion, and
since we’re continuing this to a future meeting, I don't
know how much time there will be for doing that.
Director Paulson has his hand up, and then I’ll
go to Commissioner Raspe.
JOEL PAULSON: Thank you. I just want to remind
folks too that we’ve got the Objective Standards for the
streamlined process for the qualifying projects, but if you
have an architect or a site, for instance, that maybe one
or more of these ultimately become insurmountable from a
design perspective, they also have the opportunity to go
through our standard process.
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Now, the whole point of some of these Objective
Standards, especially when we’re talking about affordable
housing projects, what we want to do is to help streamline
those. But for standard Mixed-Use projects, if it’s on a
constrained site, to Commissioner Raspe’s point before, if
you’ve only got 50’ of frontage on this building because
the lot is so small, then if they’re not able to come up
with solutions to these, then there is always an option.
So I want to make sure to just remind everyone
that if they can’t meet this it doesn’t mean that they
can’t do a project in town, it just precludes them from
going through the streamlined process, just as kind of a
high-level comment.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Would it be too much to ask to
use the example of the North Forty, the affordable housing
project that is being built over the Market Hall, and see
if they’ve already done that, or how hard it would be,
because that would be an example in our town?
JOEL PAULSON: Yes, we can definitely take a look
at that. We’ll work with Tom and with Staff and see how
many of these A through F, or whatever it is, how many of
those characteristics were they able to incorporate.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Without having the standard in
place, but chances are they probably already did stuff like
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that to make it not look like a big box. Commissioner
Raspe.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thanks, Chair. Harking back
to one of our earlier discussions, this would be a good
section of the document where we could have examples of
maybe finished renderings of buildings that incorporate two
or three, or even four, of these different elements
together. I think it would be helpful to have a good
visualization of combined elements in single structures as
we go through the process.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Good suggestion. Why don’t we go
on, because we are going to see this again?
TOM FORD: Just go on to B.2?
CHAIR HANSSEN: Yes, because those are just
individual examples of those six things, but I think the
point about seeing them in single structure examples would
be helpful. Then we’re on B.2, Parking Structure Design.
Any comments on Parking Structure Design, B.2? Commissioner
Clark.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: I wanted to ask about 2.3b
talking about the entire articulation change of 25%. I just
felt like that’s a very specific number and I wasn’t sure
if that is intentional or if that’s something that is
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pretty normal or anything, but I wanted to flag that and
ask about it.
TOM FORD: If you look at the body of 2.3 we
stipulate the 25%, and the way we originally wrote 2.3b, we
didn’t say it down there and Staff brought to my attention
somebody could read this in a way and not cover the entire
articulation, so what we’re trying to say is that 25% of a
façade, if it’s greater than 40’ in length, needs to have
one of those two things, and it’s not enough just to
introduce a second material, but you have to do it over
that entire 25% articulation.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Okay. And does it make more
sense to say 25% than to say like 25-50%, for example, or
anything like that?
TOM FORD: The way the 2.3 body is written, it
says, “at least 25%,” so it wouldn’t prohibit you from
doing it for 50%. We could either introduce that same
language here, or we could just make it known that so long
as you make the 25%, you’re there.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Yes, I think adding “at
least” would be perfect.
TOM FORD: Okay.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Other Commissioners have comments
on B.2, Parking Structure Design? Then we can go on to B.3,
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Roof Design. Any comments on Roof Design? It looks like
everyone is okay with that.
TOM FORD: Still in Roof Design, but a different
page.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Any comments on this second part
of Roof Design? It looks like that’s okay.
TOM FORD: So this is the last section, but it’s
a pretty long section and there’s a lot of illustrations,
but B.4, Façade Design and Articulation, comes out of a lot
of discussion by the Subcommittee.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Yes, we spent a lot of time on
this.
TOM FORD: Here’s another one where 4.1 sets the
general rule and then there’s four options, at least two of
which you need to accomplish. Actually, there are five
options, but only four of them are illustrated; the fifth
one is pretty obvious.
CHAIR HANSSEN: But they actually use at least
two out of five?
TOM FORD: Correct.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I’m going to guess that since no
one brought it up that it would probably be helpful,
because of the discussion we just had, to have an example
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picture where at least two of these are combined on an
actual building that we can see.
TOM FORD: Okay, let me just take a moment to see
if we’ve done that. This one is doing it in that it’s got
that modulation both lower and upper, and it also has a
balcony, so in a sense maybe they don’t have enough
balconies, but they’ve done three.
Here they’ve got a varying roofline, they’ve got
modulating the mass out, they’ve made more of a top to the
building, they’ve articulated the base, and they’ve
accentuated a corner.
Here they’ve not only put balconies, but they’ve
also modulated the upper level massing, and they’ve also
introduced a second material at I can’t say what the
percentage is, but it’s a pretty significant percentage of
the entire façade. This is a pretty long façade, and so
they’ve broken it up, and it’s done by a very, very good
architect, but again, it’s a number of things: taller
ground floor and glass.
Anyway, we do have some images and I think we can
find a way to bring those forward into a document.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Sounds good. Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you. My question has
to do with varied plate heights. I think in some of the
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examples you showed and commented on they were different
heights. I’m curious why varied plate heights aren’t one of
the criteria?
TOM FORD: I don't know, it could be. I don't
know if that’s what I meant when I said that. I think I was
trying to say that they didn’t just have a 12’ ground
floor, they had a 20’; it looks more like probably at least
18-20’ ground floor height. That’s what I meant, I’m sorry.
And I don't think there’s any place in our
document where we specify a minimum ground floor height. We
might have left that to the Zoning Ordinance, particularly
in a Mixed-Use context.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: The reason I mentioned it
is because several of these examples illustrate different
plate heights. Even the Palo Alto example is showing a
slightly higher plate height from the first floor and then
shorter going up, which is the reverse of one of the
examples you provided where you’ve got the taller plate
height, or the illusion of a taller plate height, on the
third story of that first illustration you showed.
Personally think that the variation of the plate
heights is really interesting and it makes for dynamic
architecture, so I’d be in favor of including that if that
made sense to Staff.
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TOM FORD: The only thing I would say, if you
don’t mind my interjecting, Chair, is a developer needs to
make the building as inexpensively as possible, and I think
if there’s a lot of different… You know, you’re on the
third floor and then suddenly it goes up 5’ and then it
changes, it could just make the floor plan a little bit
more expensive to execute, but we can look into it.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I would just say if this is
one of several options that they have, then you’re not
forcing them to go that route. As an example, the senior
community that my mom lives in, the top floor, the third
floor apartments have interior 11’ ceilings, and you can
see that from the exterior of the building as well; it
looks interesting and elegant.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Raspe.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thank you, Chair. I had a
question going to Section 4.2; again we’re in the Building
Design and Articulation. The language says, “Buildings
shall incorporate the same materials on all facades,” and
then if you look at, for instance, the language directly
above it in 4.1e, one of the articulation and design
methods is use of at least two different façade materials,
so it seemed to me there’s some inconsistency internally in
the document. I’m not sure exactly what 4.2 is trying to
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say. Is it trying to say that the building will use the
same façade materials all the way around its face on all
corners, or on all (inaudible)?
TOM FORD: Correct. It could be that we’ve not
written this clearly enough, because really what 4.2 is
trying to achieve is what they call 360-degree
architecture, so you don’t treat your front façade with all
the good stuff and then the other three you don’t care
about. It’s probably not written well enough to do this,
but I would read that if you had two materials on your
front façade, then you need to have those same two
materials show up on the other three facades as well;
that’s the goal here. It’s not to conflict with each other,
to have 4.1e specifying two materials and then 4.2 just
saying one material.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: I actually agree with your
point that you don’t want the stick-on brick, for instance,
on the front façade and then plaster on the other three
faces, but I’m not sure we want to also limit our builders
to say you have to use the exact same materials on all four
exterior walls. There may be some design reasons why you
want one side looking slightly different than the other
sides. That’s just my thought; maybe we should give a
little bit more thought to 4.2.
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TOM FORD: Okay.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I will say that we have the idea
of 360-degree architecture in the Community Design Element
of the General Plan Draft that’s being reviewed, so I think
that there’s merit to that, but maybe there’s a better way
to say this so that it isn’t in conflict with other things.
Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I was just going to echo
the same thought. In many of the projects that come before
us one of the issues is they haven’t carried that design
element 360 degrees on all surfaces of the house, and so
that is part of our standard. This hung me up a little bit
too, and then I realized that’s not what they mean, they
mean whatever you do on face 1 you do on faces 2, 3, and 4,
or however many, so I didn’t have a problem with it, but it
probably could be clarified. Maybe it makes sense to have
some duplication of the materials, but not all of the
materials, I don't know. I think it’s an interesting
question and I put that back to Staff.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I had the same thought, that
maybe that if you had to use the same material on all four
sides it didn’t have to be 100% in the same way on all four
sides or something like that, but I’m sure Staff and our
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consultants can figure this out since we’re going to see
this again. Any other questions on this section?
We have a community comment on the point system.
This is the first time we’ve seen the point system.
Everything else was choosing from a menu. This one is
choose from a menu, but certain things have more points
than others. And I assume that this kind of thing has been
used other places successfully?
TOM FORD: Yes. It’s also sort of the way some of
the LEED standards work. The goal for us was to leave as
much flexibility as possible to an architect, so instead of
coming in here saying your façade has to have an arcade,
your façade has to have a belly band, or bay windows, we
tried to establish there are two parts of building the
standard.
One is what is the right minimum point threshold
that they need to meet? And so we chose 12 points, and then
you generally sort of weight the improvements, or the
articulation pieces, as to how difficult they are to
achieve or how much affect they have. So what we tried to
do is certainly weight it in such a way that you couldn’t
just do one and get to 12 points, you had to do at least
two, and if you only did two, they were probably at the
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top, because those are the most points, so that’s kind of
how we went about constructing this.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I actually like this, assuming
that it would be reasonable to architects, which has been
brought up before, but I like the idea of this and it looks
like it gives you a lot of options about how to go about
creating variations in the facades, which is something we
would all worry about, especially with bigger and Multi-
Family and Mixed-Use developments.
TOM FORD: Right. If you think back to that first
photo I showed of the Mark Steele building in San Diego, he
probably has about 40 points, because he had balconies, he
had a change of color, he had a change of upper level
floor, he probably had a belly band, and he had awnings and
canopies. He had a lot of different things going on. He
would have had no problem with 4.3 on that building.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Any Commissioners have any
concerns about 4.3? Then on this page there’s also 4.4 and
4.5. I don’t see anyone with their hands raised, so we can
go ahead. We’re getting close to the end.
Can you stop at 4.6? I thought this one was kind
of confusing. It was the columns part that messed me up. In
the picture it has the example of the materials changing at
the inside corner, but how would you do that with a column?
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TOM FORD: That’s just saying, for instance, if
you want to call these columns that you could change your
material here, but not like here, but you could use the
column to make a change, because the column would be a
significant enough piece on the façade that it’s a logical
place to break.
CHAIR HANSSEN: And it’s talking about a corner.
Yes, I was confused where the column would be.
TOM FORD: Inside corners or at architectural
features that break up the façade plane.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Okay, so it’s either/or.
TOM FORD: But maybe we’ve overwritten this and
made it more confusing than it needs to be.
CHAIR HANSSEN: It might have just been me.
Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: An illustration would help.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Yes, an illustration of the “or”
of the columns, because I totally got the inside corner
material change, but I was trying to visualize the column
and it just wasn’t happening for me. Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Going back to 4.3 if I
might, it addresses only the street-facing façade planes,
and it occurred to me that if you had two large buildings
adjacent that you would be looking at sort of a bare façade
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except for the fenestration, and I wonder if consideration
should be given to the other sides of the building?
CHAIR HANSSEN: Does Staff want to comment on
that? Would we be covered by 4.2 as rewritten?
TOM FORD: That was our thinking, because we did
discuss this quite a bit in the context of the 360 concept,
and what we didn’t want to do was start requiring all of
this sort of architectural embellishment on every façade,
so this was just supposed to be street-facing façade with
this point system one, but we were hoping that 4.2 would
carry enough of the idea around to the other sides of the
buildings, but you certainly wouldn’t have a chimney on all
four sides of your building, you wouldn’t necessarily want
bay windows on all four sides, so it could be that we need
to do more thinking about 4.2 rather than trying to
establish 4.3 as something that happens on multiple
facades.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: That would be appreciated.
Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think that would be fine to
think about 4.2, because that already came up. Any other
comments going through 4.6? Then we’ve got 4.7. I didn’t
have any issues with this one.
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TOM FORD: 4.7 has two parts. It also has a
minimum amount of glazing, and I think I looked really
quickly at that long Palo Alto document last night. I think
they were using a 60% minimum as well for glass.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I thought this was all fine. Do
any Commissioners have any concerns about what is written
so far? We’re on the second to last page. And then there’s
4.12, 4.13, and 4.14. Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Going back to page 19, I
just noted that the Palo Alto Objective Standards spent
quite a bit of time talking about entry dimensions, and I
wonder if that would be worth considering?
TOM FORD: Sure. This dimension right here, how
deep and how wide? I think I saw that.
SEAN MULLIN: It’s tied to, I think, the number
of units and the use, like the intensity of the use
essentially. The more units the wider the entry.
TOM FORD: The only problem with that, just to
play devil’s advocate, I don’t have a problem looking at
it, but the door is either going to be 3’ or 6’. It’s not
like you have a 3’ door, but then if you have 12 units more
you’re going to have a 4.5’ wide door, unless we’re talking
about the vestibule.
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SEAN MULLIN: I think it’s talking about the
vestibule, so the door and the side lights and things like
that. It’s more about the defined entry and the importance
of a more defined entry on a building that serves more
folks.
TOM FORD: Okay, I see.
CHAIR HANSSEN: It sounds like there might be
some stuff from the Palo Alto standards that you’ve already
looked at that could be helpful to make it more robust.
TOM FORD: Right. We actually were tracking their
progress, and so we actually used some of their earlier
draft of their Objective Standards as some of the case
study materials, so what you saw of those massing
articulation standards that we had, we were keying into
some of the things they were doing.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Vice Chair, did you have more on
the earlier pages? I didn’t want to go through it quicker
than you guys were ready for.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: I’m good now, thanks.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Anything on 4.12, 4.13, or 4.14?
I’m not seeing any hands raised.
I think this has been a very good discussion.
Staff, do we need to make a motion for a continuance?
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JENNIFER ARMER: Yes, and we would recommend a
date certain of July 27th. If we need more time we could
continue it again at that point.
CHAIR HANSSEN: All right, that sounds like a
good plan. Would one of the Commissioners make a motion to
continue this to a date certain of July 27th? Commissioner
Raspe.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thanks, Chair. I move that
we continue the discussion regarding the Town of Los Gatos
Draft Objective Standards to our meeting of July 27th.
CHAIR HANSSEN: That sounds good, and is there a
second? Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Second the motion.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Okay. Then we’ll just go ahead
and call the question, since we’ve already had lots of
comments. Commissioner Raspe.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Clark.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: And I vote yes as well.
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I’d like to thank Staff and all the Commissioners
for their excellent comments. I will look forward to the
next meeting when we get to follow up on some of these
items that we’ve discussed and come up with an even better
result. Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: I was wondering if we could
be presented with a redline for the changes before the
meeting? That would be appreciated.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Is that feasible, Staff?
SEAN MULLIN: I believe so, yes. We’ll take a
look at the changes that we end up making and try to
provide a redline and a clean copy.
CHAIR HANSSEN: All right, very good.
(END)