Attachment 061
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A P P E AR AN C E S:
Los Gatos Planning
Commissioners:
Town Manager:
Community Development
Director :
Town Attorney:
Transcribed by:
Mary Badame, Chair
D. Michael Kane, Vice Chair
Kendra Burch
Melanie Hanssen
Matthew Hudes
Tom O 'Donnell
Laurel Prevetti
Joel Paulson
Robert Schultz
Vicki L. Blandin
(510) 337-1558
ATTACHMENT 6
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Item #6, 16212 Los Gatos Boulevard
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P R 0 C E E D I NG S:
CHAIR BADAME: We will be moving to our new
public hearing, Item 6 . Based on content in the Commission
packets and the number of speaker cards, or the number of
cards that will be forthcoming, it appears that the item
will be lengthy and controversial, so keep in mind that the
Planning Commission is a recommending body and our decision
is not final. Our recommendation will be forwarded to
Council for additional vetting and final policy decision.
Item 6, 16212 Los Gatos Boulevard, Planned
Development Application PD-14-001, Mitigated Negative
Declaration ND-14-002, requesting approval of a Planned
Development to rezone the property from CH to CH:PD,
demolish an existing commercial building, and construct 11
single-family residences on property zoned CH. APN numbers
523-06-010 and 523-06-011.
May I have a show of hands from Commissioners who
have visited the site? Are there any disclosures from
Commissioners? Seeing none, Ms . Moseley, I understand
you're ready to provide us with a Staff Report.
MARNI MOSELEY : I am, thank you.
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The proposed application, just as you had
mentioned, is for a zone change from CH, which is our
Commercial Highway zone, to CH:PD . The PD stands for
Planned Development, which would permit exceptions to the
underlying CH zone allowances . The specific request for
this application includes 11 single-family residential
homes on individual lots, and the application includes
reduced setbacks and some specific exceptions, which are
specifically spelled out on page 5 of your Staff Report .
One of those units would be a BMP unit, which is
a below market price unit, and would contribute to the
Town 's affordable housing stoc k and be regulated by the
Town 's BMP Ordinance and Poli cy .
The application has been reviewed for techni c al
completeness. Staff does have concerns that are addressed
in the Staff Re port . Those specifically relate to
neighborhood compatibility, massing and intensity o f the
use of the site, as well as whether or not the use is
overall consistent with the Los Gatos Boulevard Plan. It is
on a uni que corner and the language within the Boulevard
Plan , as I 'm sure you 've looked into , in fairly gray in
regard to this subject site, so it does leave it open for
interpretation by the deciding bodies.
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The Applicant at this time is looking for
feedba ck on the development as a whole, and those elements
can include the overall land use, the setbacks proposed,
the number of units, the architecture, the height, the
discussed offsite improvement, as well as the Initial
Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration before you this
evening.
The Applicant is requesting a recommendation,
whether that be a recommendation of approval, whether that
be a recommendation of denial, or whether that be a
recommendation with changes, but ultimately the Appl icant
is seeking additional feedback from the Town Council before
they incorporate direction into the proposed project. It is
at the purview of the Planning Commission to decide what
that action that you want them to pursue is, whether that
is proceeding to Town Council, whether that is looking f or
additional changes before you forward it to the Town
Council, that is solely at your discretion this evening.
The story poles were installed on February 12th .
The Town Council granted the Applicant a story pole
exception on December 1st . The Applicant requested reducing
the story pole installation to only several units. The Town
Council did not support that; they did however understand
that it is a busy corner, and based on that, and
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particularly with the school traffic and use of the site by
Artisan Wine Depot and YogaSource, the Council supported a
reduced timeframe for that story pole installation to ten
days. They did specifically stipulate that that they wanted
that to occur during the February school break to reduce
the impact on the school traffic and the use of that site
by the residents in the area. I have gotten a lot of
feedback from neighbors concerned with that timeframe; that
was specifically directed by the Council in that exception
request. The story poles do remain up tonight. The
Applicant can speak to when they intend to take them down.
They have met the ten-day direction by Town Council.
As I discussed, Staff does recommend denial of
the application to the Town Council , but the Planning
Commission s hould include any potential direction that t hey
would l ike the Town Counc il t o incorporate if the Council
were to support the project as p r oposed t o make sure that
that mo ves forward with any motion that you make.
Staff is here if you have any questions . Our
Engineering Staff is here to answer any questions on
offsite improvements or traffic related questions as wel l.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Ms. Moseley .
Commission e r O'Donnell .
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I discussed this earlier
today , so I 'm not really asking a q uestion , but I just want
to point out that one of t h e things we 're being asked to
consider this evening is Exhibit 10, which is the proposed
ordinance . If that ordinance were not adopted-and of course
it has not been adopted, we can only recommend anyway-were
one to approve this project, you also have to decide
whether a Conditional Use Permit would be granted. The
ordinance, which is Exhibit 10, would do away with that
requirement, because of the language of the ordinance, but
that is a separate and distinct issue.
So we have the option of either recommending
approval of that or not recommending approval of that, and
it 's not really very clear from the report, but I just
wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that so we can
focus on that too.
CHAIR BADAME: Ms. Moseley, did you want to
respond to that?
MARNI MOSELEY : I 'd li ke to clarify . The
underlying CH zone does allow residential use through a
CUP. The Applicant is not requesting a CUP and Staff is not
recommending a Conditional Use Permit, nor is it a
development standard within the PD Ordinance. There is no
requirement for a Conditional Use Permit if the ordinance
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were to move forward as proposed, but the underly ing CH
zone does allow residential use conforming to the required
setbacks of the CH zone through a Conditional Use Permit
process.
CHAIR BADAME: Comm i ssione r O'Donnell .
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I want t o make it fairly
clear that if you didn 't adopt this ordinance you would
have to consider a Conditional Use Permit, and if y ou had
to consider a Conditional Use Permit you would have a
different standard bef o re you c ould approve the project, so
I consider that significant. I see no reason why we would
adopt ... Well , I won 't speak to that. I just think we should
be careful that we separate those two i ssues. That 's all .
JOEL PAULSON : Could I just offer that
Corrunissioner O'Donnell 's statement is correct. If the
ordinance is not adopted, someone could come forward with a
different project that had different standards and
different site layout through a Conditional Use Permit
pro cess.
CHAIR BADAME : Thank you for the clarification,
and thank y ou for pointing that out, Commissioner
O'Donnell . Corrunissioner Hanssen had her hand up next .
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN : I just had two
procedural questi o ns .
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In our packet there were minutes f rorn two
previous Conceptual Development Advisory Committee
meetings, one in 2011 and one in 2013, and the 2013 was
from the same Applicant. My question is was there a reason
that the re wasn't another review by the Conceptual
Development Advisory Committee before this corning here?
MARNI MOSELEY: The CDAC is an informational
body. There's n o requirement that once they got that
feedback that the revised project would have to come before
them again. The intent of the CDAC is to give that initial
feedback for the Applicant to do what they can to address
in what they ultimately propose.
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: Okay, I understand. My
second question is about the actual PD. As mentioned in
their packet, there has been work on looking at the Planned
Development structure by a study committee and it 's not yet
approved by Planning Commission of Counc il, so that being
said, for a decision making tonight, the standards for the
deciding body and recommending body on the PD I think were
on page 4 of the report, because what the criteria were for
approving
required
included
the Planned Development wasn 't in the findings .
MARNI MOSELEY: The findings that you are
to make o n a Planned Development application
on page 2 . There aren 't specific findings
LOS GATOS PLANNING COMMISSION 2/24/20 16
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are
the
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Planned Development , just that it 's consistent with the
General Plan and the Los Gatos Boulevard Plan and the
Residential Design Guidelines as noted.
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: On page 4 it says,
"The Town Code states the purpose of a PD is to provide f o r
alternative uses in developments that are more consistent
with site characteristics to create an optimum quantity and
use of open space and to encourage good design ." So that 's
not criteria for deciding the PD?
MARNI MOSELEY: Those are not specific findings
or documented consideration.
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN : They're goals?
MARNI MOSELEY: Yes.
JOEL PAULSON: The language on page 4 comes from
the intent of the Planned Development, so that certainly
can be part of the consideration . If you don 't believe that
the proposed application meets the intent of a PD
Ordinance, then that can be part of your consideration, but
it is not a specific finding.
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: Okay, thank you .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Mr. Paulson .
Commissioner Burch.
CHAIR BADAME : One of the things that you
mentioned that we would be discussing potentially today is
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the arch i tect ure , howeve r , it 's my understand ing
(inaudible) that all we would be recommending towards
Council is about the Planned Development and the Negative
Declaration, because obviously the architecture is very
tied to what we decide to do with the site. So if by any
chance this moves forward, we would be seeing an additional
Architecture and Site application, correct?
MARNI MOSELEY: The PD Ordinance, as drafted, has
the Development Review Committee as the deciding body on
both the Tentative Map as well as the Architecture and
Site. That is fully under your purview to change. That was
stated that way based on previous approvals of other
projects , so that 's whe r e we start from , but it is fully
under your purview to change that.
The architecture is shown fairly clearly on the
development plans, which are referenced as an exhibit to
the PD Ordinance, so you want to be careful and make sure
you reference any changes to that that you specifically
want incorporated, if any.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Any further questions?
Commissioner Kane.
COMMISSIONER KANE: As part of the packet that we
were provided-and it is substantial, thank y ou-it included
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the minutes of the two CDAC meetings that you mentioned
earlier, one in 2011 and one in 2013. The minutes indicate
not a lot of favor for the project at either meeting. I 'm
wondering, can you tell us where the item went after those
meetings and after the unfavorable feedback was given?
MARNI MOSELEY : I would have to have you ask that
question of the Applicant . What you see before yourself is
fairly similar to what the Applicant presented to Staff
when they applied in 2014.
COMMISSIONER KANE: Mr. Paulson, do you know did
the matter go any further from either of those two
meetings?
JOEL PAULSON: It did not . The CDAC makes
recommendations and when the Applicant decides to submit a
formal application, we would request that they explain how
they have met the requirements or the recommendations of
the CDAC , but there is not a back and fort h . That 's a piece
of information; a Letter of Justification typically will
say we addressed this by doing this .
I believe in 2013 it was a 12-unit development,
so they reduce the number of units by one; whether or not
that meets the recommenda t ions of the CDAC , that 's up to
the Planning Commission to decide .
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COMMISSIONER KANE: I guess my question, and if
in fact my point, is that after these meetings and after
that feedback nothing more was done with the projects?
MARNI MOSELEY: No, they submit the application,
so those are just conceptual . They submit a full packet to
the Planning Department and we do a Staff review. That
involves Planning, Engineering, Fire and Building . We
worked over the last two years to get it technically
complete. While we haven 't been able to support the project
and find it inconsistent with some of our standards and
guidelines, it is technically complete based on that
review.
COMMISSIONER KANE: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Any further questions? Thank you,
Ms. Moseley .
We will now open the public testimony of the
hearing and allow the Applicant and their team ten minutes
to address the Commission. I 'm not sure I have a speaker
card for you , so I 'd like to make sure that you state your
name and address for the record.
SCOTT PLAUTZ: Good evening, my name is Scott
Plautz; I am a partner in 16212 Los Gatos Blvd ., LLC, and
I'm a president of Stem Sustainable Development
headquartered out of Los Gatos, California .
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1 First , I 'd like to thank Madam Chair and the
2 Planning Commissioners' for providing feedback on this
3 project tonigh t . I 'm sure we 'll be getting into a lot of
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the details. Some of the questions that Commissioner Kane
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just asked right there, we can get a little bit further
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into that beyond our ten minutes ; I 'm sure those will come
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back our way.
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I would just like t o say that we are really
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looking for feedbac k so that we can move this through the
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process, and get more clarity within that CDAC process. We
12 weren 't able to get as much back in feedback and direction
13 as we would have liked to have received , so that 's why
14 we 've moved it through the process to get the Plann i ng
15 Commission, where we could get community feedback and the
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feedback of the commissioners to help us understand what
the best land use would be for this, and the right use of
the property in general.
We have been building commercial developments in
the area for about ten years. I've been living in Los Gatos
and in the area for the last 20 years. ·My wife and I also
owned a business in downtown Los Gatos by the name of The
Learning Game. I personally sat on the Los Gatos Chamber of
Commerce board for five years, and know many people in the
audience as well. Have some great friends and famili es and
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currently reside in Los Gatos and spend most of our time
here.
With that, in the interest for us in moving this
project through this process, we decided that we want to
look at the impact that this would have on the community in
general. We do both commercial and residential development,
so understanding that this was a commercial site but had
the ability to go to residential, we decided to do a
traffic study and look at what was really happening in this
part of the community, and what would be the least impact
to help reduce some of the traffic issues and other
elements on schools and things that we all know are
challenges within that part of the community . Through that
process, and through the feedback that we received through
CDAC and all the other variables that we took into
consideration with environmental impact reports and
everything else, we basically decided that this was the
least amount of impact from a traffic and parking
s ituation, and a flow of info rma tion that 's happening
within that part of the community.
What we would like to do here, we have our entire
team here to b o th help provide some expert infor ma tion on
this and how we got to this point in the project . My
architect Eugene Sakai is here, as well as Gary Black with
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Hexagon Transportation, and our c ivil engineer wi th BKF, as
well .
I 'm going to get into the architectu re first and
let Eugene take the mic for a little bit and we 'll start
down that path, and then we 'll get back to questions .
EUGENE SAKA I : Thank you, Scott. Thank y ou,
Commissioners .
CHAIR BADAME: I 'm sorry ; please state your name .
EUGENE SAKAI: Eugene Sakai, Studio S Squared
Architecture.
I'm going to try to qu i ckly run through some
slides here in my remaining time, seven minutes, and give
y ou a little bit of history on how we arriv ed at this
c o n c ept. As Scott said , we are here to solicit feedback and
y our c o llect i v e wisdom, so with that in mind .
The first few slides represent some o f wha t has
already been discussed, which is some of the CDAC
presentations that were made by both our team, as well as
prev i o us teams who looked at this site.
I think I hav e a misprint there . The first few
slides are from t he 2 011 CDAC presentation where t he
Applicant at that t i me , which was not us, was l ooking at an
all-residential development . They looked at several
different c o nfigurati o ns . This one was a 20-unit p r o ject
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with one point of access off of Shannon Road and parking
access off of Los Gatos Boulevard.
The second scheme with a winding driveway with
one entrance on Shannon, an exit point on Los Gatos
Boulevard, and 16 units.
Another option with 12 units. Again, the two curb
cuts.
Finally, an 11-unit project with one curb cut
with the entrance very close to the intersection, which is
problematic for a few reasons.
This is our initial application from 2013 where
we proposed 12 units, one curb cut, and a fire truck
hammerhead turnaround. Subsequent to that, we reduced the
unit count by one, creating an open space and some
additional parking for guests.
What you see here is our current proposal, which
is again 11 units, the open space, and no hammerhead, as we
were told by Fire that that was really not some t hing they
really needed, and that enabled us to move the single
egress point away from the intersection, which helped with
some traffic concerns.
This is a quick study I did after reading some of
the feedback received from the Committee about setbacks of
our units facing Los Gatos Boulevard, in whi c h I studi ed an
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increased setback of basically doubling the proposed
setback from 7 .5 ' to 15 '. What the implications of that
might be on our site are essentially we would lose a large
portion of our community open space, have to go to parallel
parking, and lose one guest parking stall .
As I mentioned earlier, and as Scott has touched
on, we are here to really solicit feedback primarily on the
land use of the project. We've looked at several different
architectural concepts ranging from fairly contemporary , to
a Mission Revival style concept, to what is presented here
tonight, which is a little bit more contemporary with some
rustic elements . I think we 're really not here to discuss
so much the detailing of these buildings, but rather the
land use and how we 're proposing the use of the site .
The site , as I 'm sure you all know , is basically
a very auto-oriented use. In fact, it was a former
dealership. The dealership building you can see here in the
center of a sea of parking .
One of the inspirations for our concept was
thinking about the idea of Los Gatos Boulevard as
p o tentially a "great street," and Allan Jacobs is really
the forefather of that movement. Still aliv e today, but has
been around preaching the idea of what makes great streets
for 20 + years. He was at Cal while I was there, and I had
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the opportunity to hear him lecture a few times. One of his
key points of emphasis is the idea that streets are
designed both in plan as well as section , and that you have
to consider the urban form of buildings as they front off
the streets as well as the pedestrian and auto interface,
and so that was something we considered quite seriously as
we proposed our design. His thoughts have subsequently
become quite popular in urban design arenas to the point
where a lot of his ideas are cited over and over: the
concept of street trees, pedestrian-oriented details, wide
sidewal ks, plazas , all things that we 've attempted to
incorporate into our design.
Kind of racing for breath here and a little bit
out of time, but I wanted to touch on the existing General
Plan and what it calls for, which is essentially mixed-use
commercial, and the description of this here : "Up to 50
percent land coverage with a 35 foot height limit .u
Essentially we are at below 40% land coverage, and I think
we 're at 30 ' exactly for our tallest buildings .
Some more excerpts from the 2020 General Plan .
The General Plan has specific sections that relate to Los
Gatos Boulevard, and in particular we looked at those
sections that applied to our site. It talks about sites
that are underutilized or vacant, and then that
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redevelopment and assemblage of parcels and potential
rezoning should be encouraged on those parcels. It also
talks about encouraging pedestrian amenities, increasing
residential and commercial zones, and multi -family
residential. Th i s is all available for everyone 's reading.
I d on 't want to belabor these points , but these are the
things that we looked at carefully as we designed our
proposal.
You can see one of the points that we looked at
was what is the project that we can pro pose that would
minimize adverse impacts on adjacent residential areas? We
felt that a residential project woul d be less impactful on
the nearby residential neighbors in that regard.
We also looked very carefully at Los Gatos 's ow n
guidelines, part of which talk about the idea of what a row
house should look like, so we looked very carefully at some
of these images, some of these speci fic written guidelines
and development standards. This particular section, this
could very well be a section from our own project: A half
level below grade, two levels above , pedestrian-oriented
stoop facing, in our case Los Gatos Boulevard.
I 've got about ten seconds , so I 'll just run
through some of our slides , which you also have access t o ,
and just say that we took all these thing s into account.
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1 CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, sir. Your time is up.
2 Don 't go a way , we h ave quest ion s , and I will st a rt with
3 one.
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We have numerous letters of opposition to y our
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project, over 200. Per your Letter of Justification dated
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January 20, 2016 you indicate that the large majority of
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neighbors preferred the proposed residential use over
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commercial use. Can y ou elaborate on the discrepancy? And
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please feel free to step up to the podium as you answer our
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questions.
12 SCOTT PLAUTZ: Yes, I can. Depending on what you
1 3 consider neighbors, obviously the entire neighborhood is a
1 4 community and everybody has a justified, v alid opinion, and
1 5 we respect that ; that 's why we 're here to ge t that feedback
16 tonight, and we look forward to hearing more of t hat.
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However, if you look at the adjacent neighbors,
if you look at the property to the right, it would be the
Yung residence, and they are both families in support of
the project and they support residential use on it . The
neighbors behind us directly are the Rouse family ; they 're
also in support of residential and support the current use
of it. One of the other neighbors there we hav e not been
able to h a ve a con v ersation with , but we 've at tempted
multiple times. Then the other mixed-use commercial on the
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end , we 've stopped by there multiple t i mes but did not get
to speak to the owner, but did to several of the tenants
and they were fine with it.
So looking at direct people that are backing to
the property through the property residential to
commercial, those were people that are obviously going to
be impacted the greatest by that property.
I personally also went out and handed out 70
flyers, and walked the community once the story poles went
up. I stopped by every home in Laurel Mews, had great
conversation with some of the neighbors, many in support
and some not in support. Some of them are here today as
well, and they obviously will have their moment to speak.
There are other people all up and down Magneson Loop, as
well, who are in support of the project and not in support.
I think you 'll hear a lot of comments today. I
think there is a large group of people though that will not
be speaking, but they do support the residential use on
this site .
CHAIR BADAME : Thank you for your explanation and
thank you for reaching out to the neighborhood.
Commissioner Hudes.
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1 COMMISSIONER HUDES: Just as a follow up to that,
2 do you have any testimony or any documents to support your
3 assertion of having this majority of neighbors in support?
4 SCOTT PLAUTZ : Yes, there are actually, and some
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of those comments have been forwarded to Marni through
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Planning. Some of them did not make it in time for the
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meeting through emails and other facts like that .
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: Could you be sure to forward
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any that you have? It would be very helpful to us.
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SCOTT PLAUTZ: Oh, definitely. Yes, yes.
12 COMMISSIONER HUDES: Because I only saw one.
13 SCOTT PLAUTZ: Do you know which one that was, by
14 any chance?
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CHAIR BADAME: I saw one from Mr . Rouse .
SCOTT PLAUTZ: Oh , Mr . Rouse? Okay, yeah. I know
there was another one sent by the other neighbor; we asked
them to respond earlier. Part of the personal outreach to
the community was to ask them to respond either pro or con .
If they didn 't support it , that 's f ine . What we're rea lly
trying to get through here is a process to understand what
is best utilized on this lot for the community. Through the
CDAC process, and every other element to this process, we
were unable to get enough feedback to provide a solution
that was viable for both us and the Town, for us to get
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support through a PD process through the Staff, and for
what we were trying to understand what would give us some
better feedback. The intent of being here is to actually
understand better what the Planning Commission would like
to see at this site, and hear from the neighbors.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you . Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN : I wanted to refer to
two Conceptual Development Advisory Committee meetings that
were held ; one was when you weren 't the Applicant, but the
other one was similar in terms of what the intent of land
use was.
SCOTT PLAUTZ: Yes.
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: And these are advisory
type s of meetings , they 're not deciding meet i ngs , but in
both of those meetings the minutes were v ery clear that the
Committee was not in fav or of residential as a land use,
and the General Plan designation for this property is
mixed-use commercial and the zoning is CH, so that 's where
it stands right now . I t 's commercial , so the r e has to be a
compelling reason to change it to something else to be able
to be granted a PD.
I 'd like to understand what kind of process you
went through after you got that feedback just a couple of
years ago that the pro perty that many of the Co mmittee
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members thought should remain commercial, how it got to be
residential.
SCOTT PLAUTZ : Sure. If you look back at some of
the CDAC comments, one of the people who were on that group
was Charlie Erekson at the time. When he saw our proposed
concept, he said that that was the best utilization of the
lot he had seen through any of the other people who had
been through a proposal. You know some of the other groups
who have come through there too, so if you can look back at
the notes. Then there were other people within the CDAC
process who said that they wouldn 't support anything o t her
than commercial .
So you have two opposite ends of the spectrum
there, and what we were asking for was feedback to get to
one element of what would be the best use . By getting
somebody to say this is the best use they 've seen , and
somebody saying this is kind of a no from the get go, that
doesn 't give us a lot of guidance to get through a process
and make a good decision.
When we went through the process, and then we
continued to look back at historical information, and then
the second run at the CDAC, which is when my team went
through the process, we were trying to figure out a way to
get to a point where we could get valid feedback from both
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1 the Planning Commission and the community to help make the
2 right decision.
3 Once we did that, we decided to look at doing a
4 traffic study, and when we did the traffic study what we
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realized is that the least amount of impact on the traffic
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situation and the parking from that lot would be the best
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impact from a land use perspective, so through land use
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analysis and looking at that.
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This would still be the best land use. If you
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look at it f or a residential use , it 's still 33 trips per
1 2 day . If you look at what 's on there right now , and it 's not
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on there, plus we have 44 spots leased to YogaSource that
rotate out every hour , so they 're not full , but you have a
lot of ingress and egress and trips per day that are
happening o nsite t hat still have a greater impact to the
commu n ity , and that 's outside of the auto dealership .
So when you look back at 2006, the Town of Los
Gatos Town Council decided any old historic auto
deale rships would go through a PD process , and we 're
following that since the beginning of the process, to move
through that process and try to understand how we get to
the best so l uti o n for the community.
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1 COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: Thank you for the
2 response . I don't know that I got an answer to my question .
3 First o f all , Commis s ion er Erek s on 's comments were no t in
4 the CDAC minutes.
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Now, there were a couple references to it might
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be appropriate to do residential if it were different than
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what was proposed, just generally both of those committee
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meetings from 2011 and 2013, which were both for over ten
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units, were generally in disfavor of those proposals.
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Back to your comment about the traffic study,
12 aside from doing a traffic study there are a lot of
13 criteria that the Planning Commission and the Town Council
14 use to look at what the best land use is, and a traffic
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study is just one of them. What other uses did you consider
for the dev elopment, and what other factors did y ou look at
besides just the traffic study to determine that you
thought that the residential was the best use?
SCOTT PLAUTZ : I guess the first thing I would
say to that about traffic is when you looked at any
feedback that came from the site, how we had looked at the
three largest points of impact for the site were going to
be traffic, parking, and then schools, and in that order
based upon the feedback that we 'd received .
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In looking at that I would also probably say that
the first person who stepped up to the mic tonight and made
a comment about traffic challenges in our town, and
everybody clapped and were warned that t h at 's
inappropriate, I think that would reiterate that traffic is
a major concern on this intersection, and we all know this.
Outside of that, in moving through the process we
also looked at mixed -use . This site is just not large
enough ; it 's .94 , just u nder an acre . It 's not large enough
to both do residential and have enough parking onsite for a
commercial use at the same time.
We could do commercial on this, and if you so
choose that you want us t o do commercial, we 'll flip it
back and we can do commercial. We just know through the
analy sis and looking at the data points, and if you look at
the Environmenta l Impact Report that was done and you 'll
see no impact, or minimal impact, or l ess than substantial
impact pretty much across the board, this has been the
least impactful elements in ways that you c an utilize a
site through residential. If it were commercial, there
would be the same traffic issues that it woul d currently
have if it was an auto dealership, or if it was in its
current site right now of how we 're utilizing the property.
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And that 's fine , we can do that , but we still be l ieve this
would be the least amount of impact.
The reason why is we 'd asked to have you look at
the site usage and land usage on this and t hen provide
feedback outside of just the architectural elements , but if
this is something that can be utilized in this matter,
that 's great. If we get feedback today and you decide t h at
you don 't think we should pursue residential on this, then
that plan gets scrapped and we go back to comme rcial and
find the best commercial usage. But we do believe this is
the best solution with the least amount of impact to the
community and the neighbors .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank y ou. Commissioner O'Donnell .
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL : On August 26th the Town
Architect sent you a letter making sugges tions on the
project, and to the best of my knowledge you 've never
responded to those comments. Did I miss something?
SCOTT PLAUTZ: What year was that?
COMMISSIONER O 'DONNELL : 2014 . I 'm looking at the
letter from Mr. Cannon right here. As I understand it,
you 're fl oating this thing by us , you say you h aven 't
gotten any feedback , but I'm loo ki ng at his letter of
August 26, 2014, which I, unfortunately, believe that you
are deferring , and I don 't quite understand your process .
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Can anyone respond to why you haven 't said anything to our
architect?
EUGENE SAKAI : It 's not due to disrespect for the
process, by any means . I 've worked with Mr . Cannon on any
number of projects in many different cities. I find his
comments to be cogent, spot on. He was very experienced . I
have infinite resp~ct for his opinions and I think his
points were well taken in his commentary.
However, they were specific to the buildings
themselves . The r e 's a l ot of talk about materials , the roof
lines, the detailing, things that were sort of more small
picture than big picture, and as my client has stated,
we 're grappling with larger issues. Not to intentionally
disrespect those comments, but we felt as if we could
address them at a later point during and Architecture and
Site review once we knew what the use was. We made a
conscious decision to try to get to this body, to this
meeting, as quickly as possible so we could have, as I
stated at the outset here, the collective wisdom of all
citizens gathered here .
I 'm an architect and I can design this project in
any style that the good citizens of Los Gatos see fit . I
don 't think that 's really our issue here , and that 's really
n o t the question we 're asking for you to answer tonight .
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I don't know i f you hav e
a copy of that letter , but his conclusion is , "I believe
that the issues with the proposed proj ect concept and
design are of great concern, and the Applicant should be
asked to reconsider their approach and work with the S t aff
to craft a project that is more in keeping with the
constraints of the site and the expectations set forth in
the Town 's residential guidelines ." Is that what you
characterize as minor comments?
EUGENE SAKAI: No , but I respectful l y disagree
with those comments . I feel, for the reasons as I stated
and for the reasons that my client has stated, t hat we have
a good land use proposal here . We're not proposing to
exceed the prescribed dens ity fo r the site . We 're trying to
minimize the traffic impacts from our project by the use
that we 're proposing. We are trying to create a more
pedestrian-oriented development than maybe has perhaps been
seen in this town .
But as I said, we drew from influences that are
published by this town: the General Plan guidelines, the
guidelines on row house development, all of which we felt
were material to our thinking . I 'm not saying I know more
than Mr. Cannon, but as a licensed arc hitect for 20+ years,
we just had a different of opinion on whether or not this
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particular configuration of the site is appropriate . As my
client mentioned , I 'm not sure why Commissioner 's Erekson 's
very favorable comments t o wards our proposal from two years
ago are no longer in the public record, but if I can find
them, I 'll try to resend them to this group.
COMMISSIONER O 'DONNELL : I 'm not going to bea t a
dead horse, but I guess what I was curious about is that
this letter is anything but minor, yet I see no response .
You told me today that you don 't agree with him. It might
have been very helpful to us if you could say why you
didn 't agree with him and take h is points. This is a
multiple page letter. This is the Town 's comments . We 've
nev er received anything from you . I guess the problem I 'm
having tonight is it 's like you haven 't done your homework ,
but you want us to do your homework , and that doesn 't seem
right to me . So at some point are you going to respond to
Mr . Cannon 's comments , other than saying you don 't agree
with them?
EUG ENE SAKAI : As I said , you 're asking me to
agree to something that I felt was really beyond the
purv iew of a land use discussion. When we first approached
CDAC, we specifically asked the questi o n o f land use and we
g o t div ergent opinions .
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1 I understand that Mr. Cannon, as I would be if I
2 were in his position, has to respond only to the
3 applications put forth before him. We did not propose in
4 parallel a commercial site, nor did we propose a mixed-use
5
site. I understand that by the nature of his assignment and
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what he's getting paid for as the Tow n consulting architect
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he has to review the building that we put in front of him.
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I understand that, but for the reasons I stated earlier, we
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wanted to focus the discussion on the larger picture of the
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site plan itself, the configuration, essentially the land
12 use map that this PD zoning process is supposed to discuss,
13 as opposed to the Architecture and Site .
14 CHAIR BADAME: Thank you for answering the
15 question . Commissioner Kane, do you have a question?
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COMMISSIONER KANE: A question, or maybe a
statement of confusion. If there was, perhaps as you say, a
divided opinion at the CDAC meetings in 20 11 and 20 1 3, had
a lot of feedback on residential not a good design or not a
good idea, why was the focus put on residential as opposed
to giving us some commercial considerations? You said if we
don 't decide to make the request to rezone the property,
y ou 'd be happy to submit a commercial design . Now , a great
deal of time and mo ney was put into this , and a great deal
of time was put into reading this, and if commercial was an
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option, we might have a lot less people here tonight. Why
didn 't you give us something comme rci al to work with?
SCOTT PLAUTZ: We considered actually giving a
proposal for each, but we decided to go with what we
thought would be the best proposal f or the project, so we
had to pick a path to go down.
CO MMISSI ONER KANE : It's risky business ...
SCOTT PLAUTZ : Yes, it is.
COMMISSIONER KANE : ... because you can 't get the
residential without a zoning change. So maybe if you didn 't
get the zoning change, you 'd have a Plan B fallback to
commercial.
SCOTT PLAUTZ : Well, obviously as we had said, we
know we can go back to commercial on that, but we still
don 't believe that 's the best use for the location .
Let me also get down to why that i s . Let 's look
at other properties that have been zoned just like ours.
There are three properties locally that are historic auto
dealerships that have gone through this process in recent
history . That would be the Swanson Ford site, and that
would be the new Honda site, which is directly across the
street, which is now Laurel Mews. The Swanson Ford site,
obviously Sandhill Properties went through and sold the
other half off to (inaudible), so that went through the
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1 exact same zoning change. They also did a residentia l
2 element on that.
3 When we looked at what we had historically within
4 a couple of blocks of our property, what had been approved,
5
residential had been approved, so it made us look at it.
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It 's obviously looking like most projects are moving into a
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residential manner in that area and in the immediate
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vicinity, including across the street with Laurel Mews, and
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that was how we used the guidance of what we had through
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the process.
12 CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Kane.
13 COMMISSIONER KANE: With respect to those other
14 three sites, they nowhere near have the constraints you do.
15 This is a very difficult property.
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SCOTT PLAUTZ: You are correct.
COMMISSIONER KANE: So the comparisons may not
have much value , because we 're putting so much int o a small
space , and that's not what the other three p r operties d i d .
SCOTT PLAUTZ : You 're correct , Commissioner Kane .
You 're right, especially in the difficu l t properties , and
that 's one of the reasons why if you l ook back in, you use
a PD on difficult properties. The primary reason there are
so many difficulties on this is because you look to the
CDAC , they 've asked us to basically remov e 50 % of our
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ingress /egress off of Los Gatos Boulevard, bring it all and
stack everything on Shannon, and then from that how we get
ingress and egress and enough access to the site? So many
difficult cha llenges , just outside. Tha t 's one of the many ,
so you 're correct.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Mr . Plautz, for
answering his question.
We have a number of speakers that would like to
speak tonight , so I am now going to invite comments from
the members of the public. When you 're ca l led to speak ,
please remember to speak your name and address for the
record . I 'll be calling Malcolm Gordon .
I 'd like to point out that due to the number of
speakers tonight, if you hear a speaker represent a point
of view or a topic that you are in agreement with , and it 's
your turn to come up to the podium, you can simply state
that you agree with speaker such-and-such, and that would
reduce some of the time that we might be here tonight .
So we will start with Malcolm.
MALCOLM GORDON: Malcolm Gordon, 106 Robin Way,
Los Gatos . I 'm opposed to the project , and I hav e three
maj or areas of opposition.
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1 First of all, the density of t h e property s eems
2 to be excessive for that very small and difficult to
3 develop area, as was just pointed out.
4 The view from Los Gatos Boulevard appears to be
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v ery massiv e with very little space between the sidewal k
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and the back of those buildings, which are going to be v ery
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tal l and kind of monolithic, kind of ugly and not fitting
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with the rest of the Los Gatos Boulevard appearance .
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real problem . That 's a very difficul t
12 intersectio n as it is . Having cars coming out of there,
13 backing up, people coming down Shannon taking kids to
1 4 school, that intersection there with Roberts and Shannon is
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more to that I think wi l l really create big traffic
problems.
Those are my main points of opposition t o this
proposal .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Mr . Go rdon. Are there
ques t ions of Mr . Gordon? Seeing none , I 'm going to call the
following three speakers so that they can line up and get
ready and come possibility closer to the p o dium . I 'm going
to start with Maria Gerst, followed by Momoye Sasaki,
followed by Robert Rice.
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MARIA GERST : Hi , I 'm Maria Gerst ; I 'm at 16639
Shannon Road. I am just down the street from the proposed
site, and I want to say that I agree with the gentleman who
just spoke and I 'd l ike to go on record to say t h at I have
the exact same feeling as he does.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Maria. Any questions?
Thank you. Momoye Sasaki.
MOMOYE SASAKI : Hi , I 'm Momoye Sasaki , 1 79 89
Saratoga/Los Gatos Road.
When I saw that orange netting up there so high,
I couldn 't believe it . I love those mountains , I think we
all love those mountains , and you 're just going to obscure
the whole mountains . Tha t 's my one .
Also, too, I noticed when I was out there
surveying the property, so to speak, there were about 60-70
students from the school at that intersection, and I think
that should be taken into consideration.
That 's what I have to say . Thank you .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you. Robert Rice .
ROBERT RICE: Robert Rice; I live at 150 Wooded
View Drive, which is just off Shannon Road up a mile or so.
I use that intersection very frequentl y , but some
other people have addressed some of those traffic
q ue s t i o ns , so I 'll jus t sa y t h at I who lly agree wi t h what
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1 the Planning Staff Report says, that this should be denied,
2 completely denied.
3 The extreme density. A 30 ' high wall right up
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against Los Gatos Boulevard.
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The Applicant asked for exceptions to the
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setback . They want to set back the building only 7 '4"; the
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requirement is 15', less than half. The porch is only 2 '
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they request to reduce from 25 ' to 10 ', and t he setbacks on
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the adjacent properties from 30 ' to 10'. I mean , this is
12 kind of ridiculous. Setback from the other one from 24 ' to
13 4'5". They want to have a f loo r area ratio ; the y wan t to
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raise it from 2,182 to 3,299.
I would hope that the Commission would recommend
to the Applicant that they meet the requirements of the PD
application that they 're trying to use. Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Mr. Rice. The next
three speakers will be Lily Change, Kathleen Romero, and
Wayne Scott .
LILY CHANGE: I am Lily Change; address 16788
Shannon Road. I am directly across the driveway facing the
project.
Robert said the designation, but I want to
address what the Applicant said. He is looking for
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1 residential use , not commercia l use , and it 's PD zoning . I
2 think in the neighborhood, my personal feeling, yes, I like
3 a residential use over a commercial use, but the point is
4 not 11 houses, and not this type of arrangement.
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The traffic at the intersection is incredible,
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and living there you see there are two schools, Van Meter
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School and the Fisher School; two school s ' kids at the
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intersection going back and forth . It just looks so
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dangerous . Every time I come out of my driveway I have to
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look very, very carefully . I try to drive out instead of
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1 3 And there, in addition to the school kids walking
1 4 around, the Orangetheory Fitness now in the corner, all the
15 people go to that fitness center, park the car outside,
16 because they don 't have enough parking space . So they park
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the car in front of our property. It 's a red zone, so p ark
at my neighbor 's property , and it has a sign that says ... She
will explain , but they park there regardless of the sign
and the hours, and there is no one there to give tickets .
So the road is already narrow by the parking right there.
And all the people at YogaSource, they used to
park o n this lot. Now they cannot park on that lot, s o they
also park o n Shannon Ro ad , so Shannon Road is already
narrow b y o ne-s ide park ing.
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1 Then the amount of traffic coming out to Shannon,
2 they are from all the feeder streets and also from the
3 mountain. I know for a fact a lot of San Jose people, my
4 friends included, they come from Hicks Road so that they
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don't have traffic light like Blossom Hill, so they come
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through Shannon Road. Shannon Road at that point, so many
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people drive through that intersection.
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incredible. Now, if we are talking about more houses right
12 there at the intersection to come out, they say 33 trips. I
13 don't know how that happened, but 11 houses is a lot more
14 than 33 trips.
15 CHAIR BADAME: Thank you. Next speaker is
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KATHLEEN ROMERO: Hi, good evening, my name is
Kathleen Romero; I am the exactly next-door neighbor to
Lily at 16754 Shannon .
I spent a good deal of this afternoon reading
through all the online comments, and I agree, about 200
negative comments and one positive.
My brother, James Lyon, used to be a member of
the Planning Commission before he was assigned overseas. He
actually sent in a comment and I was happy to submit it; it
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was included. He spent his time waiting for his flight to
return to Shanghai reviewing this project and having
negative impact.
Back in 2011, when the Morley brothers were going
to do this development, they invited the immediate
neighbors to a little meet and greet and they give us
refreshments and all, and we saw it. And again 11 houses.
We all were kind of shocked. How many houses squashed into
such a small space, and also the traffic, and the concern
especially for the school kids . I learned later that that
project never went through, and what I was told, and I
can 't t ell you if it was by one of them or someone else,
but it was basically the economics di d n 't work ; they
couldn 't make enough money .
I recently saw a statement about San Francisco,
whe r e there is not enough housi n g ; called "De n s ity f o r
Dollars ,n and my pe r son opinion , my gut tells me we 're
going dense here because it will make money . Do we really
have a housing shortage in Los Gatos, as they do in other
communitie s ? I 'm not sure .
But we do have traffic issues, we have
o v ercrowded schools, and we have qualit y of life. It 's
funny, because I think yes, this may be pedestrian-
friendly , because the only way you 're going to be able t o
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1 move around t here and get over to Lun ardi 's is by walking ,
2 because the traffic is going to be so heavy.
3 I also, as Lily does, have problems coming out of
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my driveway onto Shannon Road . People will park along there
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where it is marked clearly weekdays, Monday through Friday,
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from 7:00am to 6:00pm. Yesterday morning I went out at
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9 :00am and took a picture of four different cars and their
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that were parked in a no-parking zone . So there you go.
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CHAIR BADAME: You have 30 seconds .
12 KATHLEEN ROMERO : I don 't support it. I think
13 maybe four or five houses of a small scale, like a
14 neighborhood, would be lovely, but not 11 high -rise houses.
15 Thank you very much.
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CHAIR BADAME : Don 't go away ; we have questions
for you. Commissioner Burch .
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Just a quick one. Your
neighbor had said that she definitely would prefer
residential over commercial on that site . Do you share
those feelings, or do you have an opinion either way?
KATHLEEN ROMERO: I think it would depend on the
nature of the commercial. I was really leery when the
Artisan Wine Depot was proposed, and have come to
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appreciate them as a neighbor. They drive v ery little
traffic, and t hey 're sharing that parking space .
On the other hand, right behind me is a mostly
empty Calvary Baptist Church parking lot, where if we have
parking issues there are maybe some cooperative things that
could be done in the neighborhood.
It would depend on the nature of that, but
resident ial of this density is not something I 'd l i ke to
see.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you. Commissioner Kane has a
question for you.
COUNCIL MEMBER JENSEN: Just an aside . We
received many letters talking about the people park in no
parking on Shannon and on Pine, all of those streets. We
heard earlier that the streets were being paved in concrete
on on l y two and there are many othe r st r eets to go ; it 's a
very expensive process .
KATHLEEN ROMERO: Oh no, that was the Almond
Grove.
COMMISSIONER KANE: My point being we need to
raise money, so if you would turn those pictures over.
KATHLEEN ROMERO: Oh, okay.
COMMISSIONER KANE: I have contributed to the
general coffer; I don't see why they shouldn 't .
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1 KATHLEEN ROMERO: Okay. I think I have the time
2 and date, I hope.
3 COMMISSIONER KANE: But seriously, Mr . Paulson,
4 I've re ceive d a lot o f letters a b o u t sign s being ign o r ed
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and neighbors being inconvenienced, and maybe we can talk
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to the chief about looking into that?
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JOEL PAULSON: We will reach out to the police
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department.
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KATHLEEN ROMERO: Yeah, thanks. You know , I can
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work around it, but they are bre aki ng the l aw . And y ou 'r e
12 right; you need the revenue. There you go.
13 CHAIR BADAME: Any other questions? Seeing none,
14 thank you for your comments, Ms. Romero .
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KATHLEEN ROM ERO : That 's it? Thank yo u .
CHAIR BADAME: Yes. All right , we have Wayne
Scott.
WAYNE SCOTT : Hello, my name i s Wayne Sc o tt ; I
live at 108 Magneson Terrace, just around t he corner from
this proposal.
I am definitely opposed to this . I think building
11 residences at this l ocation is a bad idea for both the
existing residents, and also for the residents that are
going to move in there.
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I was looking t hrough these reports. I 'm kind of
new to all this stuff, so it was interesting to see this
comment that said the project would generate 171 fewer
daily trips.
Oh, by the way, I printed all this stuff out. I
didn 't g e t it in time to give to all you folks , but I have
ten copies I can pass on.
So this was misleading actually, because if you
look into the report you find out that this was based on a
Hexagon Transportation report that used model trip data
from a fully operational dealership in San Diego. It was
not based on the actual previous use. This previous use was
a used car dealership at one time. The main dealership was
across the street , that 's where the t raffic was , not on
this little plot of land right here. So this
characterization about 171 fewer trips is misleading. The
calculations are correct I guess from a mathematical point
of view, but the conclusion is wrong, because the data that
it was based on is wrong.
A second thing I want to bring up is the effect
on Magneson Loop. What happens in the morning when Shannon
backs up is folks will make an illegal right turn onto the
loop. It says illegal , not supposed to ... They make an
illegal right turn on the loop because they don 't want to
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wait in line to go up Los Gatos Boulevard, and they cut
through the Magneson Loop. Magneson Loop is not a two-lane
road , it 's a one -lane road, and residents park along the
street. What we do as residents is when a car comes down,
we see a neighbor coming, we move over and let that guy go
by , and that 's how we navigate up a nd down that street.
Two days ago, Shannon was backed up down to the
first station, so that is not consistent with this report
this was made, this (inaudible) report. It's not based on
observations ; it 's based on some models .
In the evening things are going to get worse.
When people commute in the evening they go to that
intersection and they try to make a left-hand turn . Some
people have figured out well gee , I don 't have to wait for
the light; I 'll just make a l eft tur n onto Magneson . So now
we get the evening traffic coming down Magneson, and then
they go down and turn on the loop and they make the illegal
left turn onto Shannon, which none of these things are
enforced , because the pol ice , they 've got a lot of things
to do . I like the police department of Los Gatos; great
guys. But that 's what we 're going to see in the eveni ng .
And these people, when they go down there , I 've
even had people flash their lights at me , because I 'm going
too s l ow when I 'm going home. This is incredible .
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1 So there 's going to be a large impact on
2 Magneson, which is a parallel street. You would think
3 what 's t h e effect o f this place , bu t that 's the effect that
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we're going to see .
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CHAIR BADAME: Thank you for your comments, Mr.
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Scott. Your time is up, and we have no questions for you.
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COMMISSIONER KANE: (Inaudible).
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COMM I SS I ONER O 'DO NNELL : She 's a s k i ng
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(inaudible).
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WAYN E SCOTT : I 'm sorry th i s is written up bad ;
12 it 's k in d of a j umbl e of stuff , b ut everything I said is
1 3 contained in here , but it 's mayb e not i n the same sequence.
14 CHAIR BADAME: Thank you for the documentation.
15 The next three speakers will be Heinz Schu, Audrey
16 Christianson, and Jeffrey Aristide.
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AUDREY CHRISTIANSON: My name is Audrey
Christianson; I live at 16751 Magneson Loop.
I do hope the Council will deny this obscene
mons trosity that they 're putting u p on t h e corner of
Shannon Road. Too much traffic, too many people, and too
much going on in our lovely town. Thank you .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you .
JEFFREY ARISTIDE: My name is Jeffrey Aristide;
I 'm at 102 Noble Court.
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1 I won 't belabor, but I agree with the speakers.
2 I 'm totally against it.
3 I also agree with Commissioner Kane. I 'm kind of
4 miffed that based on all this history they 're going forward
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with residential and not having any b ackup plan. I mean I 'm
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just totally miffed that they would do that.
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But anyway, the bottom line is the density is
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just way over the top. Thank you.
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CHA IR BADAME: Thank you.
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HEINZ SCHU: My name is Heinz Schu .
12 I pretty much agree with everybody else with the
13 density and the traffic. Thank you very much.
14 CHAIR BADAME: Thank you. The next three speakers
15 will be Woody Nedom, Ken Arendt, and Melis Curtis .
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WOODY NEDOM: Good evening. My name is Woody
Nedom and I live on Azalea Way in Los Gatos .
It appears there are three hurdles a developer
has to overcome .
Number one is a zone change, and I think that
should be denied . This is an ideal commercial spot, not a
residential spot at all. And if it is changed to
residential , it 's going to have the unintended but certain
impact on our already overcrowded schools.
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The second thing is they want a PD, which by its
very definition is an excuse for exceptions to the rules .
So not only do they want a zone change, but now they want
exceptions to the rules, and they should not get that .
The third thing is that the design of this thing
is horrible, and I submit and request that you deny this .
Thanks.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you .
KEN ARENDT: Good evening, my name is Ken Arendt;
I've lived at 108 Ann Arbor Court since 1974 .
I 'm ver y familiar with the area , and I 'd like to
put some hard data in front of you. I also agree with just
about all the opinions that were expressed earlier.
About one year ago we presented for different
issues vetted data about the real traffic on Shannon Road
and the intersections. The Planning Commission and the Town
Council were both grateful that they got this . One year ago
there were over 6,000 cars a day on Shannon Road . Not 130,
whatever, over 6,000 . Today i t 's worse .
That intersection of Roberts Road, Blossom Hill
Road, and Los Gatos Boulevard is a disaster, and we all
know that . If you go out there during rush hours and
t hings , it 's so bad that t h e t r a f fic going sou thward
towards town is stopped all the way to Blossom Hill Road.
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I t's also stop ped g oing ba c k to the firehouse on
Shannon and Cherry Blossom. Now just think about that a
minute. How are they going to get out? Most of the time
when I see them leaving, they can 't g e t out on Shannon Roa d
they have to go to Cherry Blossom and out some other way.
As far as safety. and new families would even go
into that proposal, I see no place for kids that is really
acceptable.
I see no traffic areas for parking for anybody
t h at wou ld be a visitor . They 'd be u p and down Shannon Ro a d
again.
I just don 't see t hi s a s b e i ng any ki n d of a
viable proposal. I don't know why our great neighbors at
Artisan Wine Depot, who are sharing their parking lots and
things woul d n 't remain , o r someth ing l i ke that . It would be
a much better use of the land for the communi ty than what
is being proposed . Thanks .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, sir .
MELIS CURTISS : Hello, good evening, my name is
Melis Curtiss and I live on Azalea Way and Blossom Manor.
I 'm a parent at Blossom Hill School .
I'm opposed to the project . My main concern is
the overcrowding of our schools , basically. I think
previously and with all the developments that have been
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going on in Los Gatos, the one on the corner of Roberts
Road and Los Gatos Boulevard, the applicants, the builders,
have not been accurate in how many families are going to
come into the Town. They always give a lower estimate, and
when you look at all these houses, every one of them is a
family with kids that are coming to our schools .
Every homeowner in Los Gatos is at risk of losing
the value of their house, because our schools are going to
get crowded . We 're not bu ilding another elementary school ,
we're not going to bu i ld another middle school , and it 's
not in the plans . The reason why I paid the money for my
house, and all the other parents that are here, is because
of our school system, and it seems like nobody has
mentioned this before. I don't know, are you residents of
the Town, any of you here? Do you have children that go to
the public school system, any of you? No .
CHAIR BADAME: We actually don 't answer your
questions . Sorry.
COMMISSIONER KANE: My kids are working. They
don 't go to school.
MILIS CURTISS: Anyway, I am opposed to the
project, and the main concern is basically for our public
school system. Thank you.
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CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Ms. Curtiss . The next
three speakers will be Roy Moses, Amy Despars, and Jim Fox.
ROY MOSES: Good e vening, Roy Moses. I live at
1652 9 La Croix Court; lived there since 1 979 when I move d
to the Town of Los Gatos, because it was beautiful .
I 'm into beauty , and this town was a beautiful
place when I moved here 50 years ago . I t 's still beautiful ,
but we 're all trying to make it ugly , and it 's time to
stop. You 've got to be thinking about what we 're doing.
We don 't need 25 more houses on a corner of
Shannon Road that I travel every day and see all these
going on that street. Come up and drive on that street on a
school day and see these kids . These kids don 't pay
attention to the white lines , they 're supposed to stay to
the left of the parkway, et cetera .
It 's too crowded . You 're making ugly bui ldings
intensity his town and you 're putting them i n the wrong
places . It 's time to stop and think what you 're doing. Keep
this town beautiful . It 's doesn 't have to be that big. We
don 't have that much space to do that.
So , I 'm into beauty. Think about it when you make
these plans and talk to these people that want t o come and
make these developments in our town. Thank you very mu c h.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Mr . Moses.
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AMY DESPARS: Hi, my name is Amy Despars, 267
Long Ridge Road. I am a lifetime resident; my mom grew up
here , I'm raising my children here , and I 'm also a teacher
in the community. I agree about the schools .
What I had written up was prior to everything you
had said , but I 'm go ing to sti ll read it , because I th i nk
it holds true not just for this development, but also for
all the developments that are coming into our town. We have
a lot of growth going on and a lot of things for you to
consider.
First of all, I thought it was very convenient
that the story poles were up during Ski Week. That seems to
be a pattern that I see with a lot of development here.
It 's in July when everyone is traveling , it 's d uring Ski
Week, and it 's during Ch ristmas break . It 's when people are
busy and don 't have t h e time to think about it .
When those story poles we nt up , my p hone ... I was
out of the country. I was getting texts, I was getting
phone calls, and I was getting emails wondering what is
going on in this town? What happened to the General Plan
for Los Gatos Boulevard? Along with many other residents,
they were asking why are we not looking ahead to the other
developments that are coming up , and all the future
possible plans?
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1 Something for you to consider is the traffic that
2 will be coming not just from this development, but also
3 from the North 40. That is going to be outrageous . I like
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to call uptown where we live. Where the North 40 is, we
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call it uptown. The traffic from the North 40. What about
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the traffic from the 100 homes in the Guadalupe development
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no one has addressed yet that is going to be coming over
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Hicks Road? What about the homes that are going to be built
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where the Los Gatos Lodge is? Rumor has it is has been sold
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and they want to put 400 homes there. What about the
12 traffic from all these single-family homes that are getting
13 torn down and two or three homes are getting built on the
14 same piece of property? I 'm asking that you consider that .
15 Consider our schools are at max capacity right
16 now. Families have to drive their children up to Lexington.
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Los Gatos High School freshman class has 100 more students,
the freshman class alone, 100 more students this year than
last year.
Consider the safety of our children, the c yclis ts
in our active community with all of this traffic.
We voted for you to keep us safe . We voted f or
you to keep our community a community . Your job is to
listen to us , whether it is emails ...
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1 And people are not hiding behind their emails.
2 People a r e writing emails because t hey don 't want to be
3 here, but if you want me to have them all come here, all my
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friends who graduated, I can have them all here . All the
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parents in my community, I can have them here . But many
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choose to write emails . Not hide behind them, but write
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them, because they care about this community.
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developments that are coming up. Thank you.
12 CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Ms. Despars. We are
13 reading, and we are listening. Thank you . Commissioner Kane
14 does have a comment for you.
15 COMMISSIONER KANE : It 's a q uestion that starts
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to do that. Did y ou know that school break was around
February 15-19? Because I heard what you heard, and other
people wrote letters to that effect, so I asked them and
the Staff Report says school break was 15 -19, and the poles
were installed the week before, during February 8-12 .
AMY DESPARS : They were actually installed the
Thursday before , and that 's when eve r yone is packing up
their ski clothes and trying to get their kids organized
and their life ready for a vacation.
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COMMISSION ER KANE: I 'm just sayi n g , as far as
the intent of putting the poles up when everybody is
skiing ... I didn 't ski , but ...
AMY DESPARS : Well , it 's beca u se i t 's called Ski
Week, so I just referred to it as that.
COMMISSIONER KANE: They did go up early, and
they 're still up there now . There was no intent to do it
while folks were out of town, that's al l I 'm suggesting .
That would bother me if that was the intent, so I asked
questions and that 's what they told me .
AMY DESPARS: Okay, and the reason I said
anything is because it has been brought up over many times ,
because most of the times when the story poles tend to go
up , it is kind of ironic that it's usua l ly when peop l e are
on vacation.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you for your observation .
Jim Fox.
JIM FOX: Hello, my name is Jim Fox; I live at
16344 Shady View Lane in Los Gatos; 95032 is our zip code.
Most of what I was going to say has been said , so
I 'll just read a little blurb from my email , which first
thing I want to apologize to Ms. Moseley, because I
addressed her as "Mr." Moseley , so I ap o l o gize .
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But basically one of my concerns is before y ou
consider increasing the res i dential popula t ion in this
area, I would suggest that we first fix the water problems.
Ev identially we are in a drought, and most of us hav e to
cut bac k on our water usage so much so that we 're killing
almost all the plants in our yard , and you 're adding more
residents to this area , which means less water to go
around . I think we 've got to start first by fi xing our
problems. One of them is the water problem. Where are we
going to get our water?
Number two is the energy problem. PG&E i s now
making our prices go up and up and up , so we 're adding more
residents, so increase our energy needs.
Finally , fixing our congestion problem . People
hav e already gone through what the problem is there on that
intersection .
I think those all sho uld be addressed before we
start adding more people to our community. I 've been a
resident here for over 33 years, and the changes, high-
density housing , is not Los Gatos . I 've seen several
developments come up in the last few years that I didn 't
think I'd ever see in this community. It 's starting to look
l i ke San Franc i sco.
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That's pretty much my statement . I speak for
myself and my wife.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, sir . Next three
speakers, Barnaby James, Ken Hoffman, and Susan Flach .
BARNABY JAMES : Good evening , I 'm Barnaby James ;
I live at 16500 Grant Bishop Lane. I live in the h ouse
directly opposite the development under question with my
wife and my son Benji. My son Benji's bedroom window looks
out onto the development . His opinion on it is he can 't see
the mountains anymore because of the story poles, and he
would like them to build a toyshop.
Laurel Mews, I understand, was a controversial
development , and the developer has a point of saying it 's
comparable to that . I'd like to really try to address that .
It 's a little bit hard to see .
The setback at Laurel Mews is on the right . It 's
20 ' of bushes , vegetation and trees . The setback on the
left is the story poles . They are ad vertised as being 7 .5 '
to the building . It 's actually 2 .5 ' to the patio . Because
the building is raised up above the sidewalk, it 's actually
more like
building,
basement,
a 2 • 5 I setback to the actua l structure of
because the patio is actually the roof of
which is raised abov e grade.
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This is a comparison of the height. The buildings
are 30 ' high and they tower above everything else in the
area, including residential buildings and commercial
buildings. That 's my house there ; it 's 10 ' higher than it .
The environmental report seemed to say it was 5 '
less than the absolute maximum could be , but it's worth
considering that it towers above literally every other
building in the area, including all the commercial
buildings.
The separation between the buildings is less
than 1 '. Th e developer didn 't really advertise this in the
schematic drawings, but if you look at the people you can
get some idea of how wide they're going to be . No person
could fit down that gap , so all that 's going to go down
there are garbage, rats, and probably some small children.
The design is kind of a mess . I don 't really
understand where the architect is coming from. They built a
30 ' high wall to t ry to separate , and they mention this i n
making Los Gatos Boulevard into a corridor for homes like
these.
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The other point I wanted to make is the developer
keeps mentioning that they have been developing commercial
real estate for ten years. I had a lot of trouble finding
anything they 've built. There's one development in
Campbell. This is their website . It's just a placeholder . I
thought well, perhaps I can go down and talk to somebody at
their offices. Their office is a PO box at Los Gatos post
office.
If I think about Laurel Mews, Robson built it. If
I think about Montecito, D.R. Horton built it. At least
there 's somebody that I can seek redress from if they don't
do a good job on it . I don 't really understand what this
developer 's reputation is and what buildings they've built.
He never actually explains what it is he 's built ; he sort
of talks in vague generalities. Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME : Thank you, Mr. James . Commissioner
Hanssen.
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: First of all, thank
you for your comments. I read it in the Desk Item, and what
you and your wife did is very thorough and we really
appreciate it .
My question for you is this : You gave a lot of
information about comparing Laurel Mews to the proposed ·
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development . Are you generally in favor of it being a
residential development and just not the architecture?
BARNABY JAMES: I actually would prefer it to
stay commercial . I felt like in the Planning Commission
project overview the developer made a bunch of arguments
for why he felt like the development had to be residential,
and he doesn 't seem to be making those points tonight, but
it was to do with he could feel like he could run a
successful commercial enterprise on that. I feel like he's
changed his position on that, because there are so many
successful businesses that have come up in the area, such
as YogaSource and Orangetheory, but there are a bunch new
commercial developments that have proven that you actually
can run a successful business at the site.
I also feel like the design and the way that it
has to be crammed into that site is perhaps the best
argument that it should not be zoned as residential,
because clearly that 's their understanding of what a
successful residential use of the property would be, and to
me that says it can 't be used for residential, because
there is no way they can get the right number of houses
they need in to make it a successful residential thing, so
thereby it should just remain commercial .
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1 COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN : Okay. Thank you ver y
2 much.
3 KEN HOFFMAN: Hi, my name is Ken Hoffman; I live
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Shannon moving in the eastward direction .
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we 're applying for residents only par k ing permit . So I
think that 's going to be an unintended consequence if those
parking spaces disappear and residential housing takes its
place .
I 'm in favor of corrunercial development. I 'd like
to put out there maybe a more creative solution, maybe
building an underground parking structure to help replace
the lost parking structures for whatever is built there . I
think it 's crucial that wha t ever is developed corrunercially ,
that we know what that is. If it were an In-N-Out Burger
franchise , obviously that 's not going to work , but
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something like an office structure where it 's limited
ingress and egress would be great . I think the traffic
would be relatively reasonable, particularly if it comes in
off of Los Gatos Boulevard.
In and out of Shannon is a nonstarter; it just
can 't be done. You 're unable to turn left from Shannon into
the development as it is during rush hour , and you 're going
to back up traffic onto Los Gatos Boulevard and points
further north and south. That 's all I have to say .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you.
SUSAN FLACH: Good evening, I 'm Susan F lach and I
live at 102 Leotar Court here in Los Gatos.
Basically I agree with most of the people who
have spoken against this project. I am against it; mainly
because of the impact it will have on our schools, the
traffic, and parking.
As Roy Moses pointed out, Los Gatos used to be a
beautiful town. When we bought our property 33 years ago, I
feel today it 's a very , very different town and it 's almost
lost its "town n feel . We purchased our property in Los
Gatos because we wanted to live in a unique town type of a
situation, and without casting any negative feelings
towards some of the neighboring communities , we didn 't
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purchase a home in some of the neighboring communities,
because they were so highly densely built upon.
I 'm just ve r y much agains t this project, and I
would like to see it stay as commercial.
CHAIR BADAME: Any questions? Thank you for your
comments. Next three speakers, Eileen Werner, Shawn
Carroll, and Joe Carroll .
EILEEN WERNER: Good evening, my name is Eileen
Werner ; I 'm at 164 00 Bonnie Lane, Los Gatos .
I think this is a beautiful project if it was
down by the Dehradum train station, rapid transit, but we
don 't have that here. We have a traffic situation and a
road situation that is functionally obsolescent right now,
and I thi nk I 've heard quite a bit of that tonight .
I recommend that the Planning Commissi o n deny
this pro ject . I think that we should keep this property
zoned commercial. It will continue to provide community
benefits. I do not see community benefits being provided by
an 11-home housing development . However, as a commercial
property, the community, the neighborhood, can benefit,
like i t 's benefiting right now , which is with shops ,
eateries , and the various businesses that people hav e
referenced here tonight, so we will lose that v iability.
Two comments I want to make.
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One, two short articles, one that I read recently
about San Leandro that refused to give up their industrial
base, and they benefited greatly from it. And so I would
like to emphasize to the Planning Commission that we not
take away something viable for the Town.
Second of all, when I stopped at the intersection
of Los Gatos Boulevard and Roberts Road going eastbound I
was struck by the height, and it took away our view of the
mountains. I think that we need to continue to recognize
that the Santa Cruz Mountains are our crown jewel, and
whether we are flying, whether we are driving, whether we
are cycling, or we are pedestrians, we are connected to the
beauty of these mountains, and that is completely taken
away. I certainly side with the boy that wants a toyshop
instead.
I encourage the Planning Commission to deny this
project.
Last but not least is the parking lot of Shannon
Road, and I don't know if any of you have been there early
in the morning, but it is a parking lot, and I think that 's
what the Town needs to address. Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you.
SHAWN CARROLL : Hi , I 'm Shawn Carroll; I live at
16404 Shady View Lane .
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I 've been fortunat e enough to live in the Town of
Los Gatos since 1987. I bought my home on the east side of
Los Gatos in 1994, raised my children, they benefited from
the amazing school system that we have here, and also being
able to ride bikes and run around and go in creeks and live
a life that probably a lot of kids don't l i v e anymore.
Everybody has talked about the traffic situation.
Shannon Road is unbearable now . The intersection of Shannon
and Los Gatos Boulevard i s crazy . I t 's a matter of time
before something bad happens.
You all sit on this board, and we trust you to
make the right decisions . We are one of only two towns left
in this state. Everybody that lives here takes pride in the
fact that this is a town and not a city.
The east side has been the red headed stepchild
of Los Gatos for a long time. That started when the
Hollywood Video building got put in. Completely blocked the
views of the mountain s. Tha t's con tinu i ng . I would just say
take this moment, turn around and look at the seal . If it
goes along this way, you better block out those mountains
on the seal , becau s e it 's go i ng to be build i ng s instead.
Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you .
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JOE CARROLL : Hi , Joe Carroll ; I 'm over on Cherry
Blossom Lane in the Manor. I definitely do not want this
project to happen.
I think your job has be come more difficult as we
become a very mature town; 95% of the pieces of the puzzle
are done, and when you put in the wrong piece at the end it
really screws things up. I 've been seeing th at an awful lot
the last ten years , I 'd say.
I feel for people that own property. You buy
property, you want to profit off of it . There 's one re as on
why they 're talking about residential in my mind , and that
is profit , and that 's what I probably would want to do too .
But it 's a commercially zoned property , and I
think your message tonight to potential developers is that
there are no PDs . We 're deal i ng with a mature town and we
really are not looking to put any more residential in this
town unti l we have the ability to service it , and we don 't .
You look around at other town that are enviable,
like a Saratoga and a Monte Sereno and areas like this, and
they don 't allow more res i dential , because we can 't service
it. I think this is a good opportunity to let people know
that no , it doesn 't happen here .
things.
A lot of things hav e been said, but a couple
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The schools are overrun . You 'll have people
buying these places and putting two families in them for
these schools. That 's what happens. You wouldn 't believe
the shenanigans that happen in our school system in Los
Gatos. There are multiple people that are renting
apartments and doing all kinds of things, and that 's why
we're overrun . Building more of this kind of thing will
just encourage more of that, I believe.
If you want to see what this thing looks like, go
stack cargo containers three high all across that property.
I own cargo container yards, and they are so ugly. You put
cargo containers up there ; you 'll know exactly wha t you 're
dealing with. If we have another project that comes in
that 's at 30 ', make them put up cargo containers for two
weeks and see if you 'll get a few calls .
Row housing , not h ere . It's a good-looking
project; it 's just not for here . Bu t he talked about "great
streets ." Oh , this guy , and great streets . We have to l oo k
at a great town before we start worrying about a great
street .
I guess t hat 's really it . You got my gist.
Thanks.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you. Next three speakers,
Melissa Rohde, Bulent Kurdi, and Kay Mauer.
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MELISSA ROHDE: My name is Melissa Rohde; I liv e
at 16204 George Street in Los Gatos, whic h is t h e Laurel
Mews division.
First of all , I agree with pretty mu ch every thing
that everybody else has already said, and one thing I want
you to take into consideration in addition to the
aesthetics, the traffic, the schools and the other impacts
is just the lev el of frustration th a t you 're hearing from
all of the citi z ens of Los Ga tos . Th ey 're really trying to
convey a message to you to listen and to think about the
approval for the different processes , not just this
project, but those that will be coming in .the f u ture.
That 's it .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you.
BULENT KURDI : Good e v ening, my name is Bulent
Kurdi. I live on 14890 Diduca Way; and it 's bordering on
Shannon, and I travel Shannon and that intersection at
least four times a day .
We have two boys, nine and eleven. They attend
elementary school, Blossom Hill, and one of them hopefully
will be walking down Shannon to Fisher through the
beautiful walking experience our kids hav e, ridi ng their
bike, talking to their friends .
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1 But even right now, when I look at the traffic
2 there I 'm really quite concerned what they breath coming
3 out of the emission of those cars. During the construction
4 they will do whatever they can to mi tigate some of the
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effects. I share your point , but you 've indicat ed th at t he
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proposal they have put together is "techni cally complete ."
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Tec hnically complete, yes. They will wash the streets twice
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a day when we don 't have water to even clean our lawns . And
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there will be diesel e ngines running on that construction
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site while our kids
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and our pregnant friends ...
12 CHAIR BADAME: Sir, if you could address the
13 Commission, please? Thank you .
14 BULENT KURDI: My issue is the following . Because
15 I right now feel proud to be a member of Los Gatos, reason
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being at 6 :30 when I showed up there were only two of us,
and we started sending mail to folks to come , and we hav e a
full town here .
I had walking points and talking points lined up
to share with you , and I know why I 'm proud now , because
every point I had made has been shared with o ur colleagues,
our friends, our neighbors , and presented already . I was
going to inv ite y ou to look at that Town of Los Gatos sign
there too , and it 's mountain lion. We don 't have many lions
anymore , but we still have mountains . Let 's keep them .
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If you look at that picture, which is represented
beautifully, I share with Commissioner Kane, a l ot of
money, a lot of time has been put into this proposal, but
even that beautiful picture cannot hide the fact that there
are no mountains visible anymore, just like in your town.
Every day when I walk through there I think of
that canyon through which our kids are going to be going.
They 're going to be breathing the noxio us fumes coming out
of the engines, and during the construction, diesel
engines . They 're going t o be exposed to PM2.5 , which th e
Environmental Agency even restricts, and they are going to
have unhealthy futures.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Mr. Kurdi.
KAY MAUER : Good evening , I 'm Kay Mauer at 112
Stacia Street in Los Gatos.
I bought my house and moved into Los Gatos about
30 years ago, and like so many people who have spoken here,
I love the town . I fell in love wi t h the town the first
time I visited it fro m the east coast 30 some years ago.
Couldn't wait to move here .
What I 've seen in the last two years have been
some things that have drawn a lot of concern, but I never
wanted to get invo l ved, because I trusted t he people o n the
Planning Commission and the Co uncil to t ake care of o u r
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town. I 'm not fee l ing that way anymore. I've seen the
things that have happened on Los Gatos Boulevard, the dense
housing that 's gone in . I'm like many people who never
thought we would see that in Los Gatos.
I 'm am definitely against changing this from a
commercial property to a residential property, and any
other properties that come up that are commercial. I don 't
understand why we 're letting those properties turn into
residential high-density housing . We have enough people. We
haven't improved the quality of life for the people who are
in this town for probably the last five years. Nothing.
The North 40? That would have been a fabulous
little country club like Saratoga has. Instead, what do we
get? We 're going to need a new school to support those
people. Is that going to improve quality of life for any of
you? I know it 's not for me .
My child has made it through school; he .
graduated . Thank God he went through when there was a
minimal class size in elementary school of only 22 kids . He
would have been lost, as many kids will be as we continue
to increase the size of these classrooms.
Is anybody thinking of the unintended
consequences of what's going on? Just because we made a
mistake with some of the developments we 've made decisions
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1 on in the past as a town, fo r one , I 'm sorry , Laurel Mews ;
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i t 's too dense. The place where the Ford dealership used to
be; i t 's too dense , and ugly to boot . I don 't even want to
go in there . I haven 't tried either one of the
establishments in there for coffee or pizza, because I
don 't even like the way the place looks. Viva , that
development, Whole Foods, fabulous. Set back from the road,
it's welcoming; it's a family eate ry, a neighbor hood
gathering place. That 's what we need more of, not high-
density housing, people, pollution, traffic, crowded
schools, and the disintegration of the life as we know it.
Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME : Thank you . We have fi v e speaker
cards remaining, but I am going to sugges t t hat we take a
ten-minute break, and return at 9:05.
(INTERMISSION )
CHAIR BADAME : Ev eryone please take a seat . All
right, I need to make a clarification that we now have
eight cards instead of five . I will call t he next three
speakers, and that will be Maria Ristow, Paul Dueweke , and
Tricia Capri.
MARIA RISTOW: Hi, Maria Ristow , Los Gatos
Community Alliance .
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Chair Badame and esteemed Planning Commissioners,
I 'm not here tonight to list the reasons this project is
not a good fit for the northeast corner of Shannon and Los
Gatos Boulevard. The Planning Staff, the consulting Town
Architect, the 2013 CDAC hearing, the impact to residents,
and most of the people in these chambers, have already done
that. I don 't need to point out this PD should be denied .
You 're hearing that loud and clear .
I do urge you not to bump this application to the
Town Council at this point . While the Applicant is
requesting this to go to the Town Council for feedback, I
believe it 's imperative that as the Planning CollUT\ission you
provide the feedback and guidance for this project. You are
the designated body, you seven residents of the Town of Los
Gatos . The Town Council has appointed you each for your
demonstrated knowledge of the Town Code and its land use
and planning policies . From the Town website, "The Planning
Commission exercises power and authority with regard to
planning, subdivisions, zoning, zoning administration, and
other land use regulatory controls as prescribed by
ordinance and state law.u You have the ability , the
experience, and the authority to decide on this
application.
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Tonight don 't get caught up in the roof height ,
or space between the row houses, or moving a garage access.
Go back to the essentials, as you have been wi t h y our
questions.
What is the appropriate land use for this site?
Should the Town retain the site for commercial uses? If so,
is it more appropriate as a mixed-use commercial
designation or neighborhood commercial , or should the
General Plan designation be changed to a residential use,
either low-density residential or medium -density
residential?
Your insight and judgment, along with the Genera l
Plan, the Boulevard Specific Plan, the desires of the
neighbors in this part of town, and the overall needs of
the Town of Los Gatos must be considered. Weigh wh at you
he ar tonight , what you 're re a d thi s week , and take in all
the experience that you 've got with previous decisions .
Then determine what this space might best be and provide
the Applicant strong guidelines so he can come back to you
with something that strikes a better ba l ance for this site.
Two of the five Town Council members hav e no l and
use experience. Our elected officials should be l ooking to
you to make the strong, informed decisions that they can
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suppo r t. Ple ase don 't allow this Applicant to bypass you ,
the deciding body that is focused on land use . Thank you .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Ms. Ristow. Any
questions? Commissioner Kane does have a question for you .
MARIA RISTOW : Yes, s i r?
COMMISSIONER KANE: It 's n o t a questi o n . Do you
know, and Mr. Paulson, maybe you could help me; we 're not
the final deciding body on this? We 're not going to kick it
upstairs. We hav e to give them a recommendation up or down,
but it has to go t o Town Council at this point, so this is
not an end point to the di scuss i o n . Th ey 're looking to us
for a recommendati o n. Do you want to enlarge upon that , Mr.
Paulson?
JOEL PAULSON: I don't know if I need to expand
on it, but Commissioner Kane is correct. This is a Planned
De ve lopment zone change, s o they 're not the deciding body ;
they would be making a recommendation . Part of that
recommendation could be many of the things you discussed.
We think that it should remain commercial, or we think it
s hould be a residential designation if a residential
project is coming forward, those would part of the
direction from the Commission to the Council. Then the
Applicant is obviously requesting that it move forward
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there . Ultimately the Town Council is the deciding body;
the Planning Commission is the recommending body.
MARIA RISTOW: Understood. I have a question. But
could the Planning Commission come up with the guidelines
and define what the use should be and send the Applicant
back, and then it goes through CDAC, it goes back to the
Planning Commission? I realize ultimately it has to go to
t he Town Coun ci l, but it doesn 't s e em to make sense t o go
to the Town Council at this point .
JOEL PAULSON: It would not go back to the CDAC;
t he y 're a r ecommending body. The Commission, as Ms . Moseley
offered before, they could continue it. The Applicant could
come back with the same project, not make any changes, and
the y 'd make a re comme nda tio n j ust a li ttle bi t fart her down
the road. The Applicant has requested that they take
acti on , but it 's up to t h e Comm i s sion to decide whe t her
they continue it with direction, or they make a
recommendation to the Council with direction.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Ms . Ristow.
TRI CIA CAPRI : Good evening , I 'm Tr i cia Capr i . I
live on Lo s Gatos Boulevard , and I 'm one of the newer
people to town; I moved here 27 years ago .
I love this town. I grew up in Ohio; I moved out
here, and this whole atmosphere that we love, we are
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losing . Basically I could say everything everyone already
said, everything has been taken, so I agree with most
everything.
I am opposed to it. I'm sorry , but I als o don't
blame t h is guy. If I h ad that lot I 'd want to do it too ,
right? I mean you're going to make a l o t of money selling a
house here, but even someone without k i ds, one of the
reasons I bought a h o use here is l ike ... My sister said,
"What, are you nut? You 're buying Los Gatos ." I said , "Bu t
it 's not g o ing to g o down. It on ly goes up."
Los Gatos has got great schools, but if you cram
schools full of kids not only are they not going to get a
good education , the r atings go down. Sorry , that 's tied t o
my house value , a nd everybody else 's , so we really have to
think about the bigger picture here, let alone how quaint
the Town is and all those things. I 'd love to see a great
place. I don't know why it has to change from commercial.
The one thing I will disagree with, I feel for
the property owner . I don 't think it 's that guy 's
responsibi lity because Orangetheory or YogaSource or all
these other people don 't have parking. Shame on whomever
approved those people going in there with the density they
need t o have parki ng ; th at shouldn't have happened . But I
don 't th i nk it 's th is guy 's civic duty to provi de parking
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1 for eve rybody in town . I do think it 's for wh atev er he
2 builds there.
3 I will sort go off on a t a ngent. I 'm re al ly
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disappointed when I see things like the cute little yogurt
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place downtown and a number of othe r businesses, the poor
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pizza place that was only open two months before it closed .
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We need to make it easier for businesses that are doing
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business to do business. What I see is people get put
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through the ringer to want to go from retail to turning it
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into a food establishment, but we woul d let somebody build
12 a huge amount of housing, a dense project.
13 La ure l Mews is a cute little thing , it 's just way
14 over spaced. I live on Los Gatos Boulevard ; I can hardly
15 get out of my driveway. I leave at 5:3 0 in the morning
16 usually, but if I leave a li tt l e later at school time , I 'm
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trapped ; I can't get out. At night , I can 't get out . Beach
traffic , you can 't get o u t . It 's c razy . We have to really
take a step back and think about why we all moved to this
little town . I just think it 's a little out of control.
I am pro-business; I am for businesses being
able ... Ha ving done a remodel on my basement, I went through
the ringer. I went through the ringer. I had t o put a
parking spot in my front yard at my house. When I hear
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about YogaSource and Orangetheory, how are they allowed to
not have parking already? So what 's going on?
But you know what? Shame on me, because I was
asleep at the wheel. I 've lived here a long time , I 've
assumed everybody was paying attention , and it 's my fault I
wasn 't paying attention. I look at that Nor th 40 project
and I want to vomit . That 's ridiculous . It's insanity. But
you know what? I should have paid attention. I'm paying
attention from here on out . This can 't happen. Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you for paying attention.
PAUL DUEWEKE : I 'm Paul Dueweke from 16297 Robie
Lane.
All the other speakers have done such an eloquent
job of stealing my thunder, I shouldn 't have much more to
say, but I do.
What I 've heard a lot about is the traffic
situation at that intersection and the safety of the school
children crossing there every day. The problem is that that
is a difficult intersection , and the reason it's a
difficult intersection is because of the offset between
Shannon Road and Roberts Road.
Right now the Town of Los Gatos has an
opportunity to solve that problem. Looking to the future,
this is going to be a bigger problem as time goes on and as
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1 the Town develops . What we could do is take less than half
2 of that property that we 're discussing tonight , then take
3 Shannon Road and angle it off towards Los Gatos Boulevard
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and have it intersect Los Gatos Boulevard directly across
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from Roberts Road . Now we have a normal intersection with a
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normal two-way traffic signal instead of the three-way
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traffic signal, normal cross walks, a normal right lane and
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left lane. This can be done, and it would solve their
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problem of what to do with the property, and it would solve
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Los Gatos 's problem of what to do with a difficult
12 intersection.
1 3 Now, that would take less than half of that
14 property . What do we do with the other half? Well, I would
15 suggest a small chocolate factory.
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CHAIR BADAME: We all like chocolate . Thank you.
I will be calling the next three speakers, which is Jak Van
Nada, Jeff Eisenbaum, and Jeff Loughridge.
JAK VAN NADA : Good evening . I 've not seen so
many neighborhood letters totally rejecting a development
as I have on this one. I only wish that we had found this
kind of support when we objected to the over height
buildings of Netf lix, the bland design of Swanson, or the
high -density houses at Laurel Mews. It 's too late to do
anything about those developments . The difference now may
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be that things have gotten so bad that we have a shot at
stopping another poorly conceived development.
Tho ugh there are many very good letters by the
citizens of Los Gatos, there is one that strongly reflects
my thoughts on this development, so I will not repeat what
Barbara Dodson has said. You have her letter in your
packet .
This development should not qualify for high-
density development under any stretch of the imagination.
This is a piece of property that is zoned commercial and
sits between two commercial pieces of property. Commercial
property brings in revenue . Housing adds costs to the Town.
Why add to our costs when we can 't finance our current road
repairs?
The developer asked for so many exceptions that
you wonder why anyone would ever put time into creating
zoning and architectural design in the first place.
Though you are not supposed to consider the
schools, please take into account the rules of a
has taken our schoo l revenues away, and then
back at the lowest possible level allowable,
leaving our schools short of money to pay teachers, nurses,
and counse l ors. It 's highly likely t hat they have missed
these school projections by 100%. We double-checke d the
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Town 's school enrollment projections for Laurel Mews and
Bluebird Lane sites and found the actual counts to be twice
the reported projections.
Additionally, the Town accepts the traffic
projected, but never checks to see if the counts were on
target or not. Sitting in traffic on Los Gatos Boulevard,
my gut tells me that they are off by 100% also.
This development, plus Laurel Mews, has been
placed at a v ery poorly designed intersection . Not only is
the intersection design impossible to nav igate, but also
the street narrows for southbound traffic just before an
elementary school. It 's an unsafe intersection loaded with
kids corning and going f rorn school in a town that is now
trying to become more bike and pedestrian friendly . With
the possible exception of one letter , I haven 't seen any
support from the neighborhood. From those of us not liv ing
in that hood , you probably won 't find support either. We
have to traverse the traffic and wait at the lights.
The Staff, the architect, and the citizens are
rejecting this project as unfeasible. I hope that the
Commission will also . Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME : Thank you.
JEFF EISENBAUM: Jeff Eisenbaurn, 17121 Crescent
Drive, Los Gatos.
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I will keep this short just by again echoing a
l ot of the sentiment already here, all of it negative ; I 'd
echo that part of it. Learned some new things about the
project I didn 't know that I also feel are negative .
I grew up here, and was very lucky for the past
40 years to have ridden my bike to school when it was safe .
See, before every house was 4,000-5,000 square feet and our
houses grew, there was a lot more dirt on the ground, and
it seems troubling to me that we see less dirt now. We see
bigger homes; we see bigger density.
I think that the reference to some of the
paperwork that was online about how t h is project is u sing
Laurel Mews as a precedent in terms of setbacks and
distance between homes, even though this is much smaller,
if anything near this project were to be okayed , if
anything near the proposed project would be okayed, in the
future this would be used as a precedent.
Again, we come back to the same probl em where we
all feel like we 've been asleep at the wheel , that litt l e
things have happened, and each time the next project is
based off the last one and the distances get smaller, t he
dirt gets less , and now we have concrete that's being
turned into homes and higher -density homes.
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I would like to also go back to the parking
thing. Not wanting to get beat up out in the parking lot
here, but I use the YogaSource and there are not a lot of
places where we can go. You go into the Keller Williams
b u ilding, you can 't p a rk th e r e . There's limi t ed pa r ki n g o n
the street. The people who live in Laurel Mews (inaudible)
p arking out in front of their p l ace , I 'm sure the y don 't
appreciate it. But without that lot, there are not a lot of
places to go. So in defense of those people, the parking is
already limited.
And then again, with traffic. I think we learned
this year with the new application, I think it was called
"Waves ,u where all of a sudden we 've got gridlock for beach
traffic on Los Gatos Boulevard. If we to be having this
discussion in the middle of summertime, I think it may be
even more heated. So again, I 'd li ke to voice that concern .
My girlfriend would have liked to be here
tonight. She 's a teach er at Los Gatos High a n d she 's home
grading papers with the overcrowded classes. Thank you .
CHAIR BADAME: Thank y ou for your input, Mr.
Eisenbaum.
JEFF LOUGHRIDGE: Hi, my name is Jeff Loughridge,
109 Paseo Laura.
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It seems that many times a development lately
will plan a project that does not match the underlying
zoning, and r ather than going through the process of
changing that underlying zoning, they will use a Planned
Development to· provide the exceptions necessary to build.
Using this method usually results in a compromise between
the two zoning 's uses rather than t h e pr o per guidelines f o r
the intended use.
A residential project on a lot zoned for
commercial, for example, gets away with reduced setbacks
for single-family homes, eliminates setback standards for
side yards, and actually reduces the amount of usable open
space required for residential uses.
The PD Overlay zone is intended to ensure orderly
planning and quality design that will be in harmony with
the existing or potential development of the surrounding
neighborhood. So I would ask, is this proposed project
consistent with the purpose and intent of a PD Overlay?
Ultimately, the most important question to
consider is what is the appropriate use of the site? Should
the site be non-residential? If yes, should it retain its
c urrent Genera l Plan and zoning designations, or would it,
based on the existing uses, General P l an designations,
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1 zoning on adjacent properties, as well as General Plan
2 goals and policies, be retained for a commercial use?
3 I also think that it is important to understand
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that just because a Negative Declaration concludes that a
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project does not have any significant impacts as defined by
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CEQA, it does not mean that the project is consistent with
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the Town 's General Plan, goals and policies.
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I urge the Planning Commission not just to send
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this on to the Town Council. My hope is that a decision on
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the property land use for this site can be started tonight.
12 Thank you.
13 CHAIR BADAME: Thank you . We have two speaker
14 cards left. Joe Prang and Ham id Khazael.
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HAMID KHAZAEL : Hello, Hamid Khazael ; I 'm at
15605 Shannon Road.
Actually, most of the points that other
Commission members noted, I do agree with them . This plan
should be stopped. I mean I totally disagree with that.
Another point I 'd like to make here is that over
the last few years that I 've lived here in Los Gatos , I can
see that the standards are getting lower and lower. You are
allowing building higher density communities, and the next
plan becomes higher density.
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1 It 's so outrageous , this plan , that y ou might as
2 well say okay , why don 't we have a refinery i n this town?
3 It 's so out of line, doesn 't fit.
4 I 'm even surprised , how did it even get to this
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point? The first reviewer that looked at this should have
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said okay, forget it, g o back to the drawing board . I 'm not
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sur e why we're even here discussing this . It 's like , as I
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said, somebody comes here and says we want to build a
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refinery in this town . Would you even bring it to this
Commission and discuss it?
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12 That's all I was trying to make . I t 's s o
13 outrageous, this plan . Thanks a lot .
14 CHAIR BADAME: Thank you.
15 JOE PRANG: Good evening, my name i s Joe Prang.
16 My residence is 100 Sund Avenue , just up that way ; I 've
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lived there 13 years .
I 'm actually also a business owner in town, and
my business is called Artisan Wine Depot. In fact, I a m at
16212 Los Gatos Boulevard, and so Scott is my landlord. You
all I think know who I am , or at least if you don 't know
me, you know what the business is there.
I 'm con fli cted. There's no way I 'm g oing to add
to al l these comments about the site or whatever that
people have said, but I wanted to make a couple of points .
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1 One i s that I've h ea rd an awfu l lot about the
2 park ing situation at t hat a r ea , and I 'm not onl y t h e r e as
3 much as you folks are, but even more, as well as my
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employees and my customers.
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I want to hopefully help you to understand that I
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think Scott and I have done a good job at trying to support
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the community, at least the intensity of the current
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configuration, by offering parking. Everybody keeps talking
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about YogaSource and Orangetheory . I don't know if you
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realize, but twice a day hundreds of parents-and I can 't
12 believe none of you have brought this up-use our lot for
13 drop off and pick up, and we have worked to support those
1 4 f amilies during that time period . I f we weren 't doing that ,
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see, it would be really congested, so we have been I think
actively supporting the community. So whether you like the
proposal, don 't like the proposal , want commercial , want
residential, I think as the landlord and leasee, we
act ually have been trying, and we 've been doing t h at ever
since day one . We 've never stopped .
Second point. There were a lot about the ten days
and are we trying to sneak one under the wire and all that
stuff about the story poles. Actually, if you read the City
Council minutes I think it 's very c lear in there , because
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1 Scott and I were the ones talking to t he City Council a t
2 that time. It was originally supposed to be in December,
3 and it was going to be 40 days . But you all know what the
4 traffic was like in the holidays, and y ou know what a 40 -
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day story pole exercise would have been like . S o actually ,
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recommended going for the spring break time period, because
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the traffic would be lighter; it would be February instead
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of December .
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11 Now, I have to admit I was v ery happy, because in
12 retai l who the hell wants to be shut d o wn in De c ember? So
13 I 'm not going to deny that it was to my benefit also and I
14 appre c iated that the Council thought of that. I think they
15 were being cognitive of the impact on t he community, the
16 retailer, and so on , so I think they actually d i d a g ood
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job.
I just wanted you to know that underneath this
there are actually people thinking about at least those
aspects to it, and so we try in our o wn lit t le way , and I
want to thank you for your time.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Mr. Prang. All right,
we will now giv e the Applicant and their team u p t o five
minutes to add any further comments about the application.
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SCOTT PLAUTZ: Thanks, Joe. Nice comment; saved
me a couple of minutes there . Thank you very much, first
off , for the feedback from the community . Tha t's very much
appreciated.
I 'd l i ke to t ake a few minutes to let my traffic
guy, who we brought h e re specifically because he 's an
expert in that area, just spend a minute or two talking
about the site and proximity and some of the locations, and
then we 'l l wrap it u p f r om there .
So Gary Black, if you could come up here.
GARY BLACK: Gary Black with Hexagon
Transportation Consultants. We did prepare a study for the
project , even though it 's below the threshold that the Town
requires, but Scott wanted to prepare one and look a t the
issues, so we did. Just a couple of real quick points about
traffic.
There has been a lot of talk about alternative
uses of the site, maybe commercial use. I did just want to
put on the record that a residential use is a fairly low
traffic generator. Most commercial uses wo uld generate more
traffic than a residen t ia l use . Also , as I 'm sure we 're
aware , it 's not a vacant site , so there 's already t raffic
being gene r ated out there . So you 're kind of trading one
kind of traffic for another kind o f traffic . You wouldn 't
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really see any change with a residential project, because
the e xisting cormnercial uses would go away . So that 's po i nt
number one.
Then point number two, there has been a lot of
talk about Shannon Road, the queuing on Shannon Road, and
pedestrian safety. Your traffic engineer, Jessy Pu, who is
here tonight, is aware of these problems. We worked
collaboratively to come up with ideas for improvements out
there. What the Applicant has offered to do in conjunction
with the project is to do some striping changes on Shannon
Road to reduce the queuing, and also to make some
improvements to the crosswalk there to enhance the
pedestrian safety.
I just wanted to get that on the re cord, as well.
There are plans that we could discuss further, if you want
to address some of the issues out there .
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hanssen has a
question for you . Please don 't go away .
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: I was just wondering
if you could comment on one of the members of the public
brought up the point about there are 171 fewer trips per
days v ersus the previous use? It hasn 't been an auto dea l er
for quite some time, and even when it was an auto dealer it
was sort of the used car lot for them. My recollection is
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it never was a big traffic generator, so could you just
comment on that? I understand maybe that there isn't that
big of a difference, and maybe residential typically is
lower, but that number caught my attention and I thought
that it didn 't make sense to me.
GARY BLACK: Didn 't make sense to you. That
number came out of our study and that was a comparison to
an auto dealership. We didn 't actua lly count the auto
dealership, because when we did the study the auto
dealership was no longer there, so it was just a
theoretical comparison. We did our best to come up with an
estimate of what the auto dealership would have generated
at the time. That 's 171 trips over an ent i re day. We 're n o t
talking about big numbers here, but we do stand behind that
number, and it came from our standard sources where we look
up a trip estimate.
CHAIR BADAME : I 'm going to inte rrupt very
quickly. The Applicant actually has five minutes, and I 'm
going to ask that we hold our questions until after he 's
done with his five minutes of allocated time . Then we can
take questions.
COM MISSIONER KANE: I think his time i s up .
CHAIR BADAME: He gets t wo more minutes.
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SCOTT PLAUTZ: This process is very challenging
when you 're t he applicant. Obviously we want t o get
feedback from the community and everything else. Our team
has had approximately 1 2 minutes to present something
that 's been worked on f or nearly four years. There is so
much data, and environmental impact reports, and elements
around traffic, and each one of these we could go into
detail on for hours . I don 't want to get too f a r into the
weeds on this and talk about any of those details right
now . I 'd love to be able to talk further about each one of
those things .
But I can tell you we are here today and wanted
to move this process to a point where we could get the
community feedback so that we could really understand what
the Planning Commission and community wants to see on this
site , because no ma tter what that 's going to be , we st ill
think this is the best proposal and the least amount of
impact.
Obviously there is a lot of community feedback ,
but thi s is happening by our choos i ng so that it wasn 't an
afterthought, like some of these other projects that were
mentioned today. However, our site, e v ery thing around us
that had the same zoning had gone residential, so we have
to go off precedence, as Mr. Eisenbaum I believe it was,
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just mentioned. We use the sites that have been previously
approved to have the same zoning as what we know can go
through a process . Looki n g at t hat , t h at 's how we continued
to move down this pathway, and receiving feedback from
neighbors that they wanted to see residential, and when I
talked to Council members outside of Council chambers, it
was split between residential and commercial.
So personal opinion, feedback, I need something
that can go on the record that can help provide guidance,
so that when we come back here next time, if we get some
direction, and you want to use this land use as a
residential for this form or a similar form, or if you
don 't like t h is and you give us g uidance and some direction
so that we can actually bring you a solution that meets the
needs of our community, so this has been very helpful. We
pushed the process to this level so that we could actually
get this feedback.
Other than that, we look forward to your
r esponse . We 'd li k e to hear some debate and understand that
there will be traffic issues not due to this site, there
will be traffic issues at this intersection because of all
the other challenges and people trying to get to this part
of town at the hours based upon all the schools . But other
than that, we still want to provide whatever the best
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1 solution is for the community, and we l o ok forward to your
2 feedback. Thank you very much .
3 CHAIR BADAME : Thank you. We hav e questions for
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you. Commissioner Hudes .
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COMMISS I ONER HUDES: Thank y ou . Mr. Plautz, you
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mentioned that there is an Env ironmental Impac t Report. Is
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that something you 'r e prepared to prov ide t o us?
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MARNI MOSELE Y: The Initial Study and Mitigated
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Negative Declaration were circulated to the Comm ission; the
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1 2 COMMISS IONER HUDES: Yeah , I 'm awar e o f that. He
13 said an Environmental Impact Report, whi c h was why I was
14 asking to see that , not this . I 'm aware of what this is.
15 MARNI MOSELEY : The environment a l document is the
16 Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES : Okay . Is t hat something that
you would be willing or interested in doing? I know it may
not be requi red. Is that something you would be interested
in doing? An EIR.
SCOTT PLAUTZ : Not at this time. What we 'd really
like to understand more is some directio n on what the
way to mov e f o r ward is with the land use. We could g o
t hrough an E IR , but then once aga i n , that 's even more
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1 Obviously we decided to do a traffic study, not
2 because it was needed, but we thought it would help make
3 decisions, and healthy decisions for the community, and
4 understand traffic and parking and other issues better.
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We've actually found ways to restri pe the intersection to
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address some of those issues to help offset stacking, which
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we intend to do when this project is done.
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studies you do , if it doesn 't fall into what people 's
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perception is, then they say the data is unjust.
12 COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you . You 've answered
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SCOTT PLAUTZ: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hanssen, did you have
your questions answered? Okay, thank you. Commissioner
Kane .
COMMISSIONE R KANE : I 'd like to ask a question
that may help us a great deal. You were seeking feedback.
What have you learned tonight? What do you think they want?
SCOTT PLAUTZ: I feel that the community wants
commercial. I did hear some obviously neighbors that were
right against, or backing, or close across the street from
this site, that they wanted re s idential, but maybe not in
the same form.
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But if commercial is what they want, I can do
commercial. Like I said, I do more commercial than I do
residential. I have multiple commercial projects going
right now.
With that i n mind , i t 's one t h ing for the
community to ask for something, and that 's been the part
that 's been challenging for us to mo ve through this
process . I t 's another thing for the Planning Commission to
give us direction and say t his is what we 'd like to see .
That's something that 's documented on the books , part of a
formal open process with community feedback, and that
really helps.
COMMISSIONER KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: All right, thank you .
SCOTT PLAUTZ: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAM E : We will now close public
test i mony . Commissioner O'Donnell ha s a question , so I will
let him ask his question before I continue .
CO MMISSIONER O 'DONNELL : No, go ahead.
CHAIR BADAME: Okay. The Commissioners will now
focus their di scussion on whether the proposed type of
development is appropriate, what may or may not be
appropriate for that site, whether the Mitigated Negative
Declaration is acceptable . We will be providing the
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Applicant with direction, as requested, and we will be
rendering a recommendation to forward to Town Council.
So I will look to the Commissioners for their
discussion and debate, and I will start with Commissioner
O'Donnell .
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I find a basic
misunderstanding of what we are about to do, I think. We
are not recommending anything for you to do; we're
considering whether the project before us is one that we
would approve. If not, you have a piece of property that
will have the same zoning it presently has . We don 't know
what you 're going to do with it , and we don 't know that we
would approv e it .
You 've heard a lot of comments that would apply
to comme rcial and/or residen tia l. I don't want to l eave you
with the thought that if we say this residential is too
dense or residential is not a good use; we are giving you a
recommendation. There 's no recommendation . We are to decide
whether this project before us is one up or down . You then
have the same piece of property you 've got today .
And t hat's a very difficult piece of property .
You 're going to have p r ob l ems with t hat property no matter
wha t you do with it. I 'm not saying you can 't develop it ,
I 'm just saying we're not going to remove those problems ,
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nor are we going to suggest what to d o with t he proper ty .
We 're simply going to , at the end of the day, and the
Council will, decide what your zoning is going t o remain or
not remain.
We 'll a lso make some c omments I think o n the
Mitigated Negative De c laration, and the proposed o rdinance,
which I will comment on that. So you 'll get a l ot of
comments , but I think basically they will go to what 's
before us, not guidance to what is not before us .
I just wanted to throw that o ut and see if
any b o d y disagrees with that, but a basic misunderstanding
that we were going to give you a recommendation . We 're not
qualified to give you a recommendation . That 's your
business to decide what to do with that propert y.
CHAIR BADAME : Commissioner Hanssen .
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: I wanted to make a
comment . Although it 's not officially the policy of the
Town, but that it is information that was dis c ussed in
publi c meetings , about this who le P l anned Develo pment
process .
The Applicant in their written l etter, as well as
in his comments , referred to a l igning with prev ious Planned
Developments , and it 's not clear that the p roposals of the
Planned Dev elopment Study Committee wi ll ultimately be
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adopted, but I can say for sure in that in the discussion
the Committee was very, very, ve ry clear that Planned
Developments should never be used as a replacement for
writing the under~ying zoning and General Plan designation.
In this particular case, if the new planned ordinance were
in place, that Applicant would hav e to get a change of the
General Plan designation in order to get a PD.
That being said, as far as this particular
project is concerned, it stands as commercial right now,
and even in our current ordinance guidelines it seems
pretty c lear that there has to be a compelling reason to
change it , an d I don 't know that we 've h ea rd a l ot of
testimony that would indicate that we s hould . In fact,
after hearing all the testimony tonight, I know I
personally heard that we need to fix our infrastructure
first, before we add more re sidential.
But back to the use of t he PD . I don 't know that
it would be a valid statement to say just because Laurel
Mew s h ad a PD for the same thing that this property should,
as well. In fact , I think the exact opposite .
CHAIR BADAME : Thank you for your input .
Commissioner Burch .
COMMISSI ONE R BURCH: I want to say I appreciate
Commissioner O'Donnell 's comments , because as I 've been
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listening to th i s and I 've heard the Applicant say a number
of times that they wanted direction and they wanted
recommendations , I al so want to say that that 's not what we
do . We are very focused on precisely what 's in front of us .
However, I would very much hope that the Applicant has
heard the resounding community comments.
And I will say that while I was up here I was
taking a little tally of c omments based on commercial
versus residential. I think I only asked one person, and
then I stopped. But the majority of the people seemed to be
leaning towa rds commercial. Now, obviously we can 't
recommend what that would be. That in itself is going to
bring in a number of other discussions .
But based on what is in front of us, I personally
have a very hard time forwarding a re commendation of
approval for either item, either the PD or the Negative
Declaration, because I feel that the Negative Declaration
is tied to the application for thi s PD, so I would have a
very difficult time l ooking at either o f these with any
level of appro val.
I almost feel hesitant about sending it up t o
Council. I thi nk I would ask Staff , if we 're going to send
something up for denial, are they going to go through this
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entire process again with the community outreach? What
would that process look like, Joel?
JOEL PAULSON: Yes, as any other PD, the Planning
Commission can forward a recommendation on the Planned
Development and the environmental document; that can be
denial or that can be forwarded up .
Town Council will deliberate. Folks will have
another opportunity at a public hearing to provide their
comments, and then the Council will take one of a number of
actions. They can agree with the Planning Commission 's
recommendation and deny the project. They could send it
back to the Planning Commission with direction to the
Applicant. Or they could approve the application either as
it is, or with changes . So there are a number of options
for them in that case.
CHAIR BADAM E: I share Commi ssioner Burch's
thoughts on that . I 'd a l so like to add the comment that
removing these commercial zones for residential; we 're
concerned about traffic. You do that and now you 've reduced
the neighborhood -servicing businesses, so people have to
travel farther to get their goods and services and that 's
going to make the traffic even worse.
I would not be able to approve a Planned
Development or resident i al at this location. It 's a
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vibrant, thriving location. There is no compelling reason
to change it.
Commissioner Kane.
COMMISSIONER KANE: On the subject of providing
feedback or direction, sometimes an Applicant wil l say well
gee, how high can it be? And someone well intended will say
well gee , 59 ', because it was proposed at 90 '. So the
Applicant will come back at 61 ' and say look at the
improvement. That 's the problem with suggested specific
direction, and I 'm always apprehensive about doing that.
But I can offer some pointers that may have given
us less than a warm, fuzzy feeling on what we read in our
packets tonight: That there seemed t o be not a lot of
regard for what the Town consulting architect had to say,
and there seemed to be an absence of trying to get the
Staff Report provided to you in a more favorable light by
acknowledging their concerns.
My general direction is, and has been, comply
with the applicable provisions . If it says 15 ' for a
setback , that 's probably a good place to start.
I was thinking about that setback business.
You 've got a 30 ' house , and you 've got a 15 ' setback , so
that provides an angle like that , but if you move that 30 '
2 ' feet from the sidewalk , that angle will go straight up ,
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and that 's what they 're talking about with intensity and
density of the project. You 've just loomed it right over
the guy 's head using the 30 ' ' and using the 2 ' instead of
the 1 5 ' . I th ink if you follow that ang le down o n what
need s to be a 15 ' setback, y ou make it a 7 ' ' t hen you
probabl y should have a 15 ' building , because that way the
angle would b e the same , and that 's the issue with
intensity.
The directions and suggestions: Comply with the
applicable prov isions, like setbacks, as applicable to this
project, the General Plan, and the Los Gatos Boulevard
Plan, and if it does go residential, adhere to the
Residential Design Guidelines . That 's where the feedback
and direction is. Comply to the extent you wish on your
probability of success. Comply with the Town consulting
architect. Comply with the Staff recommendations; because
we 're going to read it , and if they say they 're not
listening, we recommend denial, I would have a hard time
overturning that. I 'd think you 'd want to get them on your
side by doing what they suggest .
And my fourth concern, my advice, lis ten to your
neighbors , because if i t 's way out of wha ck , 200 of them
are going to send us l etters , and that 's hard to overturn .
That 's my direction and my guidelines .
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CHA IR BADAME: Commissioner O'Donnell .
COMMISSIONER O'DONNE LL : If you 're entertaining a
motion , I'm prepared to make a motion.
CHAIR BADAME: I was entertaining one, but why
environment; and I would not recommend that we approve the
Mitigated Negative Declaration; that the zone change is not
consistent with the General Plan and should not be made;
that the project is not consistent with the Los Gatos
Boulevard Plan, and therefore it should be denied, and that
the project is not consistent with the residential
guidelines.
In addition to that, that the ordinance being
proposed which would obviate the need for a Conditional Use
Permit not be approved, and therefore a Conditional Use
Permit would be required, which is a different standard,
one we have not discussed, and one that our report does not
discuss; that i t is too dense; that as I said before, the
Mitigated Negative Declaration is not adequate and should
not be a Mitigated Negative Declaration.
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In summary then, not to approve the change from
CH to CH:PD; not to allow the construction of 11 single-
family residences, not to approv e the Mitigated Negative
Declaration; and not to approve the ordinance, and
therefore to require a conditional use were this to be
approved .
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Kane.
COMMISS ION ER KANE: I 'll second it.
CHAIR BADAME: All right, is there further
discussion? Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I just wanted to add a
little bit of explanation in terms of my role and how I
take it seriously on appointment to this Commission.
I n that role I 'm asked to mak e a re corrunendati on
of denial or approval in land use, and I have to rely on
the General Plan and the Los Gatos Boulevard Plan. In
looking at those documents, the guidelines and goals, I
found that the project does not meet ten of the thirteen
General Plan requirements that are applicable, and d oes not
meet 1 3 of the 16 Los Gatos Boulev ard requirements.
I wanted to add that, because I want to make sure
if this motion carries and it does go to Council, that
Council understands there are some speci fics behind the way
I 'm exercisi n g my ro le as a Planning Corrunissioner .
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CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hanssen .
COMMITTEE MEMBER HANSSEN: I wanted to echo
Commissioner Hudes ' comments . I did the same exercise. I
went through all the goals and policies relative to the Los
Gatos Boulevard Plan and as well the General Plan , and I
too f ound that the majority of them did not app ly in the
case of this project .
I wanted to make a further comment about the
Mitigated Negative Declaration, because this concerned me
about future . It was with regard to the aesthetics. It
says , "Prior to the approval of the Planned Developme nt the
Applicant shall review the design review comments prepared
by Cannon Design and revise the project plans to compl y
with the Town 's Residential Design Guidelines and the
General Plan goals and policies . Revised project plans will
be subject to the Town 's design rev i ew process.n
S o that 's basically saying that this project
isn 't va lid and y ou 'd have to start all over from the
beginning , and I don 't know why that would be listed as a
way to mitigate the aesthetics.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you . Further discussion?
I will call the question. All in favor? Passes
unanimously .
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Mr . Paulson, can you confirm that there are no
appeal rights on a Planning Commission recommendation, and
that the full transcripts of the hearing will be forwarded
to Town Council?
JOEL PAULSON: That 's co r rect.
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