Attachment 05LOS GATOS PLANNING COMMISSION 12/13/2017
Item #5, 401-409 Alberto Way
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A P P E A R A N C E S:
Los Gatos Planning
Commissioners:
Tom O’Donnell, Chair
D. Michael Kane, Vice Chair
Mary Badame
Kendra Burch
Melanie Hanssen
Matthew Hudes
Kathryn Janoff
Town Manager:Laurel Prevetti
Community Development
Director:
Joel Paulson
Town Attorney:Robert Schultz
Transcribed by: Vicki L. Blandin
(619) 541-3405
ATTACHMENT 5
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P R O C E E D I N G S:
CHAIR O'DONNELL: If we start promptly and move
promptly we… It’s now almost 9:00. We will adjourn, and
possibly if we’re not finished, continue, around 11:00
o'clock, so we’ve got two hours to try to finish it. But if
we can get all the public input in, and just get to 11:00
o'clock, we’ll probably continue for our decision after
that, but it’s important if we can to get all the public
testimony in.
So we’ll start, but I’ll ask the staff for any
report they may now have, so if you would.
JENNIFER ARMER: Good evening, Jennifer Armer,
Associate Planner. This project you have seen before. Oh,
we’ve got questions.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: I’m going to be recusing
myself from this item, as my residence is located within
300’ of the project site, so I wish everybody happy
holidays and good night.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Can she do that?
CHAIR O'DONNELL: I just moved.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I live nearby too.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: All right, let’s settle down.
Go ahead.
JENNIFER ARMER: All right, we’ll try that again.
Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair, Commissioners.
The project in front of you tonight is the revised proposal
by Shane Arters of LP Acquisitions to build a new office
building at the corner of Alberto Way and Los Gatos-
Saratoga Road.
The project was heard by Town Council on
September 19th and October 3rd and remanded back to you to
consider additional modifications that were offered by the
Applicant. The Town Council’s motion to remand the project
did not actually include specific direction, however, the
Town Council’s discussion did include a number of points.
They discussed the Applicant’s proposal to reduce
the size further than the 83,000 square feet, which is what
was last before you and went in the plans to Town Council.
They discussed recessed second floor windows, view glass,
increased side setbacks, increased public space and
landscaping on the site, increased view of the hills, use
of larger trees, LEED Gold certification rather than the
silver that was previously proposed, additional details on
surface parking and the use of that, and a discussion about
office being an appropriate use for the site.
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The written materials from the neighbors show
that they are still very concerned about the project; about
its size, potential traffic and construction impacts, and
environmental.
In addition to the Planning Department and Public
Works staff, we also have the Town’s traffic consultant and
the Town’s geotechnical consultant, so that’s TGKM and Amec
Foster Wheeler, as well as the environmental consultant for
the Town, EMC.
This concludes Staff’s presentation, but I’d be
happy to answer any questions.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you. I did have the
opportunity to watch the recording of the Council’s
meeting, and it seemed as though where Council ended up was
essentially I would say a de novo consideration, meaning
that they did not give specific direction, except to listen
to their concerns, because I believe there was at least one
motion before that had specific direction that failed, and
so they came back with… I think there were two motions
before, but one of them had specific remand instructions to
the Planning Commission, and so my understanding is that we
consider this as sort of a complete application in itself,
paying attention to the items pointed out by Council, but
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that we really need to look at the whole picture of the
application, is that correct?
JENNIFER ARMER: Precisely.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Other questions? Vice Chair
Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: That was my question.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Before we start I will say
this. I don’t have cards from the Applicant, so I would
appreciate if I could get those cards. If you don’t have
them right away and you want to wait, that’s okay, but it
would make my life easier if I had them. So now,
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I had one question about
the EIR, and then a question about some of the additional
things that are proposed by the Applicant, which I can ask
them as well, but I wanted to ask Staff’s perspective.
When we reviewed this before we did not address
the issue of the EIR, because we were deliberating about
the application since we had recommended denial. We didn’t
go forward with that, but it is on the table for us to
consider the EIR in conjunction with this application.
As it stands right now, the EIR, the way that
they’re structured, they have the ideal proposal and then
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there’s always a proposal of not doing the project, and
then there’s sort of one in the middle, and so right now
the size of the project is the alternative size that they
looked at, and they did find that it was economically
feasible.
My question about the EIR is since the EIR, all
the mitigation measures determined at a larger size that
there were no significant impacts that couldn’t be
mitigated, and those mitigations are in our terms and
conditions. Do we need to revisit the EIR in any way
because the mitigations should apply to a lower size, and I
can’t think of any other issue, so I’m asking the question
do we need to?
JENNIFER ARMER: The EIR does still apply to the
project, and it will need to be part of your consideration
before an approval is considered, or as part of a motion to
approve. As we discussed the last time we had this before
you, if it was a motion to deny you don’t need to consider
the EIR. However, I believe your question is is there some
change or revision that needs to be made to the EIR, and
the answer is no.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Just related to that, if
for some reason the size wasn’t one of the alternatives
mentioned, would there be a need to revisit the EIR?
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JENNIFER ARMER: We have had letters from the
consultants who prepared some of those documents that were
the basis for the EIR who did state that it is still that
the project is now less impactful than what was there
before.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Then one quick question.
It was on the additional open space as well as the offering
to let the surface parking be available to the
neighborhood. During the Council hearing there was some
discussion about making that more than just a term and
condition, but making it sort of ironclad. For example, if
the first tenant knew that they had to make the space
available, what might happen going forward? I didn’t see in
the terms and conditions an easement. Would that be an
appropriate way to make it more ironclad?
JENNIFER ARMER: The Conditional Use Permit will
run with the land, so it will apply to office uses going
forward, however, additional conditions could be
considered.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So essentially what you’re
saying is that isn’t part of the terms and conditions of
the CUP per se?
JENNIFER ARMER: Yes.
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COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: We have this big list of
terms and conditions, and I didn’t know what’s in the CUP
versus what’s in the A&S.
JENNIFER ARMER: All of the conditions are part
of the Conditional Use Permit.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Vice Chair Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: With respect to the EIR, we
have a six-page letter from attorney Rachel Mansfield
Howlett regarding the inadequacies and faults of the EIR.
Is that something that has to be responded to, taken into
consideration? I don’t pretend to understand all of it. I
wondered if it was something that would compel us to
respond.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: We typically do not respond to
that. If you have specific questions about what they’ve
raised in that... Which letter again are you talking about,
the main letter?
VICE CHAIR KANE: May 4, 2017.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Yeah. In general, no, I disagree
with her conclusions in that our EIR is defective or needs
to be amended, so that’s the answer.
VICE CHAIR KANE: That’s exactly what I needed to
know. Thank you.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: Any other questions? If not,
I’ll ask the Applicant to step forward. The Applicant will
have ten minutes. I have a card here, thank you very much,
and I want to make sure I can read your writing. It’s
Daniel Kirby?
DAN KIRBY: That’s correct.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Okay, and you have with you, I
believe, your architects and the owners, LP Acquisitions,
so go right ahead.
DAN KIRBY: Thank you, Commissioners. My name is
Dan Kirby. I’m an architect and partner with Arc Tec
architects in San Jose, and I’m the principle in charge of
the project.
I want to thank Ms. Armer for the summary of what
we heard on October 3rd at the Town Council meeting, and
these are, again, the points that were raised at the
meeting, which she articulated I thought very well in her
presentation. Rather than read them all again, I’m just
going to launch into how we have addressed and agreed to
all of those points with our third redesign, which you have
before you.
The first thing we’ve done is we’ve reduced the
square footage of the building from the former 83,000
square feet down to 74,260 square feet. This is the square
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footage that is consistent with the Environmental Impact
Report’s recommendation, which is referred to as a “reduced
scale alternative.” It’s something that also the Town
Council had recommended, and so if you look at this diagram
here you can see that represented by this blue line is the
former design, and the new design has now been set back
significantly from the north property line. The entry has
also been shifted over to the left to make the building a
little bit more symmetrical since it got pulled in from the
right. The purpose of pulling the building in from the
north property line is twofold.
Number one, it creates the open space that was
also recommended by the Town Council, and we are proposing
a large dog agility park, approximately 5,400 square feet,
and an amenity area for tenants and visitors.
The second advantage to pulling back from the
north property line is to create a larger buffer between
the residential property to the north, which was something
that the neighbors had requested.
And thirdly, it does create a view corridor from
the properties across the street and the sidewalk of the
hills beyond, which was another important consideration to
the neighbors.
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The overall parking has also been reduced based
on the reduction of square footage. We’ve gone from 332
spaces down to 298 spaces, which is a reduction of 30
garage parking stalls and four surface parking stalls. The
third redesign preserves 38 of the 42 at-grade parking
spaces in front of the building. The four-space reduction
and reconfiguration of the parking lot has allowed us to
create a second amenity area, which is here on the south
end of the property, which can be used as well by the
public.
I wanted to point out that we’ve achieved further
reductions in the overall volume of both the building and
the parking garage, so whereas before we had achieved a 25%
reduction with our second redesign in the building volume,
that number has now increased to 33% volume reduction with
this redesign; and the garage had formerly achieved a 22%
volume reduction from the original design, and now that’s
been increased to 27%, and I have specific cubic foot
numbers if anybody is interested in hearing those numbers.
The repositioning of the building entry to the
center has done, we think, a few really nice things to the
design. I’m going to go back to the very first slide.
With the building pulling in on the north side,
the former location of the entry was kind of skewed to the
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right once that was done, so what we decided to do was pull
the entry over a little bit. What that allowed us to do was
to create a little bit more balanced façade, and you’ll
notice that the different architectural elements have now
been kind of evened out. One of the prior concerns was that
there appeared to be some fairly long facades that had a
lot of the same elements occurring across them. What we’ve
done now is created some distinct architectural elements
that are a little bit more balanced, so I think that’s a
successful result in terms of the look and feel of the
building.
We were also requested to increase the size of
the street trees, and that’s been done as well as part of
our revised landscape design. We’ve gone from 36-inch box
trees to 48-inch box trees, and we can answer any specific
questions in that regard as well.
We’ve retained the amenity area right in front of
the building. The drop-off, the driveway locations have not
changed. The street configuration that we had before with
the straightening and widening and adding a bike lane, all
that has been preserved from the prior design.
Here you can see the original massing of the
building represented by the dash line. The second redesign
represented by the thicker dash line. Now the third
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redesign pulling the building back from the north property
line.
And again, these are very realistic Photoshopped
plans showing the existing condition from across the street
and the view towards the building and the hills beyond.
This diagram shows you how the tree growth would
occur over a period of several years from the start to the
finish.
Traffic counts have also been reduced accordingly
based on the reduction of square footage. Our traffic
consultant is here this evening if you want to talk about
some of those specific numbers, but there has been a
corresponding reduction in trips based on the reduction of
the square footage.
Then we’ve got some key features for the Los
Gatos community, some of which people are already aware of,
but economic vitality for the Town and alternative modes of
transportation. We’ve also got a construction management
plan that we can answer questions on as well.
One of the things that I really wanted to stress
is that the current square footage of this third redesign
is really essential to achieving an economically viable and
marketable project for a Class A development. The project
floor plates are about 36,000 to 37,000 square feet, which
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is very common in a Class A office market, and so we think
the square footage at this point is appropriate and
reasonable and also meets the requirements of the EIR and
Town Council.
I’m happy to answer any questions.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Questions? Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Thank you. I wanted to go
back to the discussion about the straightening of the
street. I wonder if you could first just review for me what
the change is that’s been made to the street? I’m going
back to the original proposal on that.
DAN KIRBY: Certainly. A portion of the property
that’s owned by the developer is going to be deeded to the
Town in order to create a straighter and wider portion of
the street from the start of our property all the way to
the intersection of Highway 9, and what that’s going to
allow us to do is create dedicated left- and right-turn
lanes at the intersection, as well as a bike lane in front
of the property.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: And how much is that? How
wide is that, how long is that?
DAN KIRBY: I’m not sure off the top of my head
the actual width that we’re increasing it. I could get you
that information.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: Yeah, it’s important to
understand that.
DAN KIRBY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: The issues about safety with
residents on that street have continued to be a concern,
and the traffic situation on Highway 9 has gotten worse
since the application in terms of cut-through traffic and
gridlock, and there’s not a permanent solution to that. I
think it’s going to be very important for us to understand
how this will work with safety and the ability of emergency
vehicles to get into that area, so any information you have
on that would be helpful, and I think we probably will have
some follow up questions on that once I get that
information.
DAN KIRBY: Sure. And I can tell you that the
northbound direction of Alberto Way has not been decreased
in size; it’s exactly the same as it is now. It’s the
southbound direction where we’ve added the two dedicated
turn lanes and the bike lane, and we do have a civil
engineer, Kiren Wright, that has designed that per Town
standards, so those lanes and the bike lane are per Town
standards.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hanssen.
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COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I hadn’t intended to ask
this question, but when you were talking to Commissioner
Hudes you mentioned about the dedicated… I knew about the
dedicated right-turn lane, but I was under the impression
from the Council hearing that there would be a shared left
and through-lane.
DAN KIRBY: Correct, it’s a shared left and
through lane, and it’s a dedicated left-turn lane.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: In order to make it a
dedicated left-turn lane it was my understanding from our
Staff that more parking spaces on the street would have to
be given out.
DAN KIRBY: I misspoke. It goes left, or you
could continue straight across into the Los Gatos Lodge
parking lot.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Thank you. My actual
question is I know it was brought up with the Council, and
I saw it on one of your slides, but I didn’t see it per se
in our terms and conditions, and maybe I didn’t look close
enough, but about the shuttle. Is that still on the table
to do the shuttle, and how do you see that working to help
with the traffic mitigation?
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DAN KIRBY: It is on the table, and I’m going to
invite Shane Arters to come forward, if you can, and talk
about the shuttle.
SHANE ARTERS: Commissioners, yes, we are
planning on having a community area transit shuttle.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: One second. For the record, if
you would identify yourself, it would be helpful.
SHANE ARTERS: Sure. I’m Shane Arters; I’m the
Applicant. All right, so you just heard what I spoke about
regarding the shuttle. Yes, if the project is approved, the
shuttle will go.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: And how is that going to
work? I mean that basically it will be for the convenience
of the people that work there, but there won’t be any
mandate to use it, right? But it might help in terms of
people leaving the building during the day, because it was
intended to take people to downtown and back, if I
understood correctly, is that right?
SHANE ARTERS: The purpose of the shuttle is to
really reduce the amount of vehicle trips, right? So if
we’re providing the shuttle we’re reducing the amount of
vehicle trips to downtown and back and so forth. So not
only is that reducing that, which is part of the General
Plan, but it’s also helping those tenants and neighbors get
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around town from point A to point B, so it’s multifaceted
in that aspect.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So the shuttle is
available to the people in the neighborhood as well as the
(inaudible)?
SHANE ARTERS: Absolutely, and it’s available for
the whole community, the high school students or anybody
else who wants to use it, which is fantastic.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I had some questions about
the number of employees in the building. Is that something
I’m supposed to ask of you, or should I be talking to the
architect?
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Before you go, let me make
sure. I think Vice Chair Kane had a follow up question. As
long as you’re there, Vice Chair Kane had a question to
you, I believe.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I think Commissioner Hanssen
was getting at it.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: We’ll get there.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I didn’t get it. What is the
shuttle going to do? Is it going to run 24 hours a day, 12
hours a day? Is it going to start from the building and go
up to Main? What’s it going to do?
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SHANE ARTERS: Good question. That’s an operation
question, so I can answer that.
We envision—and part of this is what Jennifer
Armer has outlined for us—we are proposing five days a week
for hours of around 10:30 to about 3:30. That gives it a
good five hours for availability for residents on Alberto
Way to use in the morning if they want to go shopping in
the downtown area. Like, for example, Commissioner Burch
said last year or two years ago that she’d like to see a
shuttle that takes people to Walgreens. Well, Walgreens,
Safeway, they’re all very supportive of it, and it helps
bring people around. So that’s Monday through Friday.
We’ve also proposed to have the shuttle run… We
can talk to the Chamber of Commerce, but I think there are
about ten events per year where we wanted to voluntarily
provide the shuttle for events like festivals, things like
that, that we’ve already ran it for. And there are other
things, like maybe for the Christmas parade, that alleviate
the parking congestion and traffic in the downtown, and get
that out there so people can park elsewhere and go down to
the downtown area and enjoy it, and get around from point A
to point B too.
VICE CHAIR KANE: So it sounds like you’re
working on the route.
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SHANE ARTERS: No, we’ve already had the route;
it should be part of your materials. We’ve already run the
shuttle a number of times voluntarily.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Will there be one running
continuously, or more than one?
SHANE ARTERS: Just one running continuously,
yeah, and be a number of stops too.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Before he sits down, does
anybody have a follow up question with this speaker?
Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I did have a question about
the shuttle, and I didn’t see that information in my
packet, so there are a lot of blanks. How large is the
shuttle? How many persons does it carry?
SHANE ARTERS: The shuttle is approximately I
think it was about 38 seats on there.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: And point A and B is from
Alberto Way to what?
SHANE ARTERS: The number of stops that we
envision, it starts at Alberto Way. It takes a left and it
goes up Los Gatos-Saratoga Road to Los Gatos Boulevard,
takes a right, goes down to the Civic Center, in that area.
Makes a stop there in front basically by the high school.
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Then it makes another stop just past the Civic Center in
the little retail area before Highway 17. It crosses over
Highway 17, and then it goes to Los Gatos Park right there,
and makes a stop there. Then it will propose to go all the
way down Santa Cruz, and it will do a roundabout and make a
stop in parking area 3, which is I think behind the Wells
Fargo bank. Then it will circle back to Santa Cruz and it
will go down all the way to Walgreens, make a stop right
there in front of the Starbucks across from there. Then it
will make another stop at Safeway, and then it will take a
right and go to University and then continue on around,
make the loop that way.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Okay, thank you. So it’s
not just point A to point B, it’s got a lot of points in
between.
SHANE ARTERS: Yeah, that’s a good way to
describe it.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: And a clarifying question.
You indicated that it would stop in front of the high
school, so it could be transportation for students,
however, if it starts at 10:30 you’re going to have a lot
of kids with tardy slips, so any consideration to
lengthening those hours so it would in fact accommodate the
kids; they need to get to school on time.
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SHANE ARTERS: We’ve talked about this, and I’ve
talked to parents, and I’ve talked to the high school, and
I’ve talked to Principal Grasty and a lot of people. First
of all, they’re very excited about this, because we tried
to figure out what’s the best way to alleviate this, to
help the students and so forth, so it came to our attention
that the afternoons were the best; that’s when you get a
lot of the majority of the congestion over there, and we
had lots and lots of students, and they all loved it.
So our target is we’re open to trying to expand
those hours, but targeting different groups and high school
students is going to be a challenge, and so we want to make
it available for everyone, so the afternoon seems like it’s
more applicable for the high school students, because they
can get home faster. Mommy and Daddy don’t have to pick
them up in front of the high school and fight the traffic
there; it really helps in that sense.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: So it sounds like you’re
doing due diligence and talking to the users of your
shuttle to make sure you’re homing in on the most
advantageous hours and routes.
SHANE ARTERS: We’re talking with everyone we
can.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Great, thank you.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: Other questions of this
speaker? Vice Chair Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Ms. Armer, or Staff, the
shuttle is one piece of a multifaceted question, but I’m
interested in it. It’s probably not going to be cheap. What
do we have to cause this shuttle to keep on running? Do we
have an easement? Do we have a condition of the CUP? What
guarantees that this service will be available in the
future?
JENNIFER ARMER: There currently is no condition
included about the shuttle. That is something that could be
added.
JOEL PAULSON: And so that condition, as with the
former response, would run with the Conditional Use Permit,
and so if they ever wanted to cease operation of that
shuttle then they would have to come back and ask for
modification of the CUP.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Other questions for the
speaker? Thank you very much.
SHANE ARTERS: You’re welcome.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: All right, so we’re going back
to more general questions. Commissioner Burch.
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COMMISSIONER BURCH: It’s noted in here a few
times that you’re going to get the equivalent of LEED Gold.
Are you not going for certification?
DAN KIRBY: No, I think we’re planning on going
for certification, if I’m not mistaken. Yes, we’ll certify
it through USGPC, no problem.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: That question I had wanted
to ask before, I know we talked about this in previous
hearings, but the number of employees that we can expect,
and I wanted to add onto that that we had some concerns
from the neighbors about some changes in recent office
seatings in Silicon Valley, packing more people in, so
could you comment on that? Of course it’s going to be less
employees than it would be if there were 83,000 square
feet, but like how many people per square foot?
DAN KIRBY: I’m happy to talk to that. There has
been a lot of numbers being bandied around about these
buildings being packed full of people. It is a fact that
work stations are becoming smaller, the cubicles are
becoming smaller, and primarily the reason for that is that
people who work in high-tech buildings are much more mobile
now. They work on laptops; they like to move around.
Sometimes they go outside, sometimes they go to an amenity
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area, and the large office and cubicle size just isn’t
really necessary anymore from a work culture standpoint, so
the cube size is coming down. However, in exchange for that
we’re providing many more amenity areas in buildings, open
common spaces, collaboration spaces, conference spaces
where people can interact and exchange ideas.
So the overall square footage per person in a
building hasn’t really changed, it’s just how the space is
being used, and that number truthfully and conservatively
is no less than 200 square feet per person. Now, somebody
will say wait a second, you’re giving somebody a 6x6 cube,
that’s only 36 square feet, but what you’re failing to
account for is all of the circulation space that’s required
around those cubicles, general circulation space and all
the amenity spaces: lobby, restroom cores, lunchroom, break
rooms, coffee areas, all the conferencing spaces, things
like electrical rooms, storage rooms. All those other
functions really drive that number down to something closer
to 200-250 square feet per person.
I can further state that the parking requirement
of four per thousand, if you take four parking spaces and
take a thousand and divide by four, that’s 250; that’s kind
of where that number comes from, because the 250 square
foot per person number is about the max that we see in the
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buildings that we’re designing these days. We do a lot of
tenant improvement work, so I can really stand by these
numbers.
Some cities are actually driving the parking
count even lower, below four per thousand. Some are getting
down to three-and a half and three, and the reason for that
is they’re trying to encourage alternate transportation to
work: biking, public transportation, and those kind of
things.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So basically what you’re
saying is mathematically since the number of employees per
square foot isn’t changing, we can expect a percentage
reduction that’s akin to whatever 74,000 is over 83,000
reduction in terms of numbers of a place.
DAN KIRBY: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: But you’re also reducing
the parking, so you kind of started going after my related
question, which is if the standard of a use is changing,
then the way that we map out parking might be an issue, but
it sounds like still what those square footages are per
person is changing; it’s more amenity areas.
DAN KIRBY: Correct.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So we shouldn’t expect, in
your opinion, for the parking to change?
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DAN KIRBY: No, and actually the four per
thousand requirement, the reason we’re doing that is
because that’s what the Town requires. We actually think
that’s probably more parking than we’re going to have
people, but we’re meeting the Town’s requirement.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Just one last question.
There’s been a lot of conversation about Class A, and not
knowing exactly how this is defined, is there like a
minimum standard for Class A? Is it how much square footage
it is, or what makes an office building Class A?
DAN KIRBY: The floor plate size of 35,000 is
really kind of a good target. Even on some of the mid-rise
buildings we’re doing where they’re five and six stories,
the 35,000 square foot floor plate is kind of considered to
be the minimum floor plate that really works in that
marketplace. Once you get smaller than that, you’re forcing
people to use stairways and elevators to interact with
their fellow employees, et cetera, so that’s really a good
target number. Once it goes below that, it starts to become
a little bit more difficult from a marketing standpoint.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So that’s kind of the
dividing line, 35,000 square feet…
DAN KIRBY: Exactly.
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COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: …would be the minimum size
that it could possibly be for Class A building?
DAN KIRBY: Mmm-hmm.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Coming back to parking, the
building size has reduced a couple of times and parking is
down 27%. Instead of reducing both proportionately, have
you looked at maybe doing more surface parking and less
underground, and is it even possible to work toward only
one level of underground parking and eliminating all of
that, the offhaul and all the other things associated with
that, and the water table issues and things like that?
DAN KIRBY: We did study that, but at the current
square footage we can’t do it with one level of parking; we
really need the two levels of parking. I will say that this
most recent redesign has pulled the excavation of the
parking garage back from the north property line similar to
the way we pulled the building back, so that excavation is
now the same distance from the north property line as the
building, so we have reduced the size of the garage. We
can’t get down to one level without substantial… There’s
not enough room for the volume of surface parking that
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would replace that lower level of the garage and also
provide the amenity areas that we’re currently proposing.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I understand it would be a
tradeoff with open space if you were to increase surface
parking. I just wondered if you had been through those
exercises, because if this ends up hinging on some of the
engineering issues with two-level parking, I just wondered
if you’d already done that exercise.
DAN KIRBY: We have done that exercise.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Vice Chair Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I want to echo the concern with
that one-level garage. If this project goes forward and
there’s any way in hell to do it, I think that would be a
very smart thing to do, reduce the two to just one
subterranean garage.
In the Staff Report and in your notes, in
expressing concern and sensitivity on traffic and people
you made the comment that the operation on the building
would be 7:00 to 6:00, Monday to Friday, and I was thinking
is that a fair promise to make? How could you control that
in the future?
DAN KIRBY: Well, again, it’s going to be tenant
driven, but most of companies that would lease a building
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like this are going to have normal business hours. They’re
going to be probably more like 8:00 to 5:00 would be what
we’d expect, and some come in a little early, some people
work a little bit past that, but I just can’t anticipate.
It’s not going to be an operation that’s going to be having
people working in it in the evening; I just can’t see that.
VICE CHAIR KANE: So are you making a promise or
a hope that they don’t work past 6:00?
DAN KIRBY: I think it’s a reasonable expectation
that they won’t work past 6:00.
VICE CHAIR KANE: And it’s a reasonable
expectation that they won’t work on weekends either?
DAN KIRBY: I think that’s a reasonable
expectation too.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Remember, you were talking
about Millennials running around with laptops a moment ago.
They work 24/7.
DAN KIRBY: Yeah, but typically they take their
laptop somewhere else on the weekend or in the evening.
They’re not going stick around their office space.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Okay. I appreciate the creation
of two open spaces, and in addressing those you talked
about employees and visitors. Does that include neighbors?
DAN KIRBY: Yes.
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VICE CHAIR KANE: So not just visitors?
DAN KIRBY: Absolutely.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: I think Commissioner Burch was
next.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: I actually had a question
for you. Knowing that we have a lot of speakers, I know I
personally have quite a few questions for the Applicant.
Would you prefer that this be a more general type
questioning, so that we can get to that, and I just list
and ask at the end?
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Yes.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Okay.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Following up on that point.
You’re not going to give up any of these questions, because
they’re going to close, but I would certainly like to hear
from everybody here. That would help our schedule. So if
somebody feels the need to ask a question right now, please
do, but otherwise let’s follow Commissioner Burch’s
suggestion. Okay, so thank you very much.
DAN KIRBY: Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: What I’m going to do is I’m
going to take the cards I’ve got here, and I’m going to run
through them, and you can bring up other cards.
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I will say this: Many of you will necessarily
have to talk about the same issues that other people are
talking about, and that’s fine, but I would ask that to the
extent you think my gosh, this is a repetition, you might
say I agree with Charlie or somebody and not do the same
exact time, because that will not only save us time, it
will save you time, and as you note, it’s going to get
later. It’s up to you though; I can’t tell you what to do.
So I’m just going to go through these cards as they kind of
came in, and the first one I have is Sergey Melnik.
SERGEY MELNIK: Good evening, my name is Sergey
Melnik and I live at 420 Alberto Way, and I would like to
ask the Planning Commission to request to drill a new
boring between January 1st and March 31st 2018…
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Excuse me, I’m having a little
trouble understanding you. If you could speak a little
slower and a little louder.
SERGEY MELNIK: Okay. So what I’m ask the
Commission is to request to drill a new boring between
March…basically the winter/spring timeframe in 2018, on the
north end of the property to discover the actual depths of
the water, because that’s related to the garage and
basically how deep can you go with that? The reason is
because the Applicant did the boring before that, but it
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was basically the peak of the drought, and they estimated
the level to be around 12’, but again, in the recent years—
I can show—so first there are two things.
I believe you have the picture already on file,
but this is basically saying that based on the Santa Clara
Valley Water District that half of the property, according
to them, is zero to 10’ water level, and especially the
north part where the Applicant didn’t report the level of
the water.
Then another thing is that based on the graph
provided in the past two years the water level went up
significantly, so if that would be measured now that would
reveal the much higher levels of the water, I believe.
The other thing is basically we asked them to
first do the drilling, and then second most likely, as I
said, underground went up, so even within one level of
underground water, most likely they will hit the water.
It makes sense then to restrict parking to the
surface only and one level underground to prevent… It also
helps to prevent differential settling beneath the 250’
radius from the foundation that the hydrologist Dr.
Geissler specified. In this zone, which is the water, and
during construction, likely to cause ground subsidence
followed by foundation settling in the creek at Las Casitas
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and Pueblo De Los Gatos, so there might be pipe breaks and
there might be also other misalignments happening in there.
And just to mention that one question the Town
Council made around the ground movement, the Applicants
replied only on ground movement during construction, and
did not answer it fully.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you very much. Are there
any questions? There are none, so again, thank you. Next
card I have is Thomas Dunn.
THOMAS DUNN: Hello, my name is Thomas Dunn and
I’ve lived in Los Gatos for 40 years, and during these past
four decades the town population has increased 6,000
people. We’ve been able to keep this small town feeling, a
quiet neighborhood, friendly people, the picturesque views,
the mountains, redwoods, the sunsets, and we’ve done that
all because this is the Los Gatos identity that we want to
keep. As yourself, how was this able to happen?
Our past leaders in the past community in the
past years, what they were doing was reinforcing the Town
character, and when they were faced with pressures of
aggressive residential or commercial development they made
sure that it didn’t have a negative impact on the
neighborhood or on the town.
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Now today it’s our town and it’s our
responsibility to preserve the small town character and
integrity of our neighborhood. Now, it doesn’t mean that we
shut down the doors to development. What it means is that
we remain vigilant about monitoring the proposed
developments that threaten the safety and the quality of
life as we know it. There are more significant issues
involved than modernization and the economic enhancement. I
believe that the Los Gatos identity is a greater value to
our community for us today and for our future.
I’m not opposed to development of this project,
but it is too large. It doesn’t fit into the neighborhood;
it’s not compatible with the neighborhood. We’re going to
lose the view of the mountains; not all of it but we’re
losing a percentage of the view of the mountains. It’s
bringing 300 cars into the neighborhood that are down
Highway 9 now and they’ll be turning down Alberto Way.
We’ve got traffic hazards of trying to back out of your
driveway or pull out of our complex to get onto Alberto
Way. We’ve got safety issues and hazards for the
pedestrians that are going to be walking up and down the
street with more driveways and more cars going up and down
and making it a little bit more risky. Street parking
spaces, they’ve been taken away, which we use in front.
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There are two or three people that live in certain units
that we have, so there’s more than one car, so we use that
parking place in front.
The last thing is the construction time. Now,
they have given us different numbers, but you’re looking at
one-and-a-half to two years you’re going to have dump
trucks, heavy-duty equipment digging, tearing up streets,
and so on.
What I’d like to do in this last 10 or 20 seconds
is just read a quote, something out of the Los Gatos
magazine, the holiday issue if you’ve got a chance to see
it and read it, there’s an article in there called “Small
Town Cheer,” and it’s written by Joe Pirsynski, who we all
know has served over three years as mayor of this town over
ten years, and he says, “As we celebrate another holiday
season, we should spend some quality time in our downtown.
We, who are fortunate to have found ourselves members of
this special place should remember that it’s our
responsibility to preserve and to protect what we inherited
when we made Los Gatos our home. It should never be taken
for granted, and we might consider it our duty to help our
community, or neighbors, our retail, restaurant and service
businesses continue to be successful. It certainly couldn’t
hurt.” Happy holiday.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you. Are there questions?
Vice Chair Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Mr. Dunn, thank you for a
comprehensive presentation. You hit a lot of my points and
concerns, and as I’ve gone over the project, something is
going to go there.
THOMAS DUNN: Yeah.
VICE CHAIR KANE: And when you say you’re not
opposed to development, you’re saying something is going to
go there. I’ve been on the street a number of times and
people speed, it’s congested, it seems to be impossible to
make a left-hand turn up at Highway 9. The queue runs from
Los Gatos Boulevard past the intersection of Alberto, and I
was thinking something is going to go there, and that
traffic is the way it is now, so it’s just going to get
larger. Do you know in your community that the Town has a
traffic-calming program?
THOMAS DUNN: No, I do not know.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Be advised that when something
does go there, or now, you could apply to the Town for
consideration of a traffic-calming program. We’ve done that
in my neighborhood, for example. Speed bumps, signs,
lights. Also, you could apply to the Town…
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: Remember now, we’re going to
ask questions.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I’m going to state all of this
just once.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: That’s not the question though.
You can ask a question, but you can’t give a speech.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Consider applying for permit
parking.
THOMAS DUNN: Got it.
VICE CHAIR KANE: All right.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Because your speeches are very
good, but they take a little time.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Sorry.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Wait, there’s another question.
Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I believe I’m going back to
some of the earlier hearings on this that the Applicant
acknowledged that the street parking was going to be
reduced and offered surface parking inside the development
to residents. Are you aware of that and is that a
satisfactory solution to the (inaudible)?
THOMAS DUNN: Yes, we’re aware of that, but it
depends on who the tenant is that moves in, unless it’s one
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of the terms and conditions that they have to allow us to
be able to park on their spot.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: If it were a condition that
residents were allowed to park there, would that take away
some of the concerns about losing the street parking?
THOMAS DUNN: Absolutely. Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Any other questions? Thank you
very much, Mr. Dunn. The next card I have is Angelia
Doerner. Well, okay, you’ve got four down there. There is
no four, I guess. Thank you. The next one is John
Mittelstet.
JOHN MITTELSTET: Good evening, Commissioners. I
am John Mittelstet, a resident of Los Gatos Commons, and
what I have to say tonight are solely my thoughts; I’m not
representing anyone else at Los Gatos Commons.
I would like to propose tonight a compromise for
the developer, and that is to build above ground what you
can in the style proposed, but only what can be supported
by a single-level underground parking garage.
A two-level underground garage subjects the
neighbors to great risk of damage to their properties. Let
me quote from the report by hydrologist Dr. Peter Geissler.
“Geissler Engineering holds the opinion that construction
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of a two-story underground parking structure shall cause
soil subsidence, differential foundation settlement, and
cracked slabs at nearby houses in Los Gatos Commons, Bella
Vista Village, Pueblo De Los Gatos, and Las Casitas
developments.
Cracked slabs also mean broken plumbing and sewer
lines. It’s difficult to quantify with any certainty the
cost to neighbors, but recent tree root problems at a few
of our units have caused in excess of $30,000 per
occurrence for sewer line replacements. We have 60 ground-
level units at the Commons, and 60 times $30,000 is $1.8
million, and that’s just for broken sewage lines, with
broken plumbing and cracked foundations on top of that, and
Los Gatos Commons represents only less than half of the
ground units in the neighborhood, so it’s easy to see that
if it happens sooner than later when the inflation would
drive it even higher, a total cost of $6 million is well
within the realm of possibility.
In discussions with Dr. Geissler, his comment to
me was that a single-level garage would not present any
danger for that, nor would it present the other dangers
that he outlined in his report.
A single-level underground garage would be
acceptable to me with two provisos: One, footprint of the
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garage to be such that all vehicles and construction
equipment can be staged onsite as now planned by the
developer, and two, the portion of the building now
planned, which is north of the entrance of the building,
would be constrained to one-story to preserve and maintain
views now enjoyed by neighbors across the street and by
those enjoying just an evening stroll.
So do a single-level underground garage, and
build a Class A office above that. There are no two-level
underground garages in Los Gatos today. Let’s keep it that
way. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Yes, Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Thank you for your
testimony. I know we had Dr. Geissler come to one of the
hearings about this project. The information that you were
reading off to us, is this in written materials that were
provided to the Planning Commission previously?
JOHN MITTELSTET: It’s on page three of his
report that you have a copy of.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: The report that we got
previously?
JOHN MITTELSTET: Yes, you got it prior to the
May meeting.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay, thank you.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Just for clarification. I
missed your second point on the one-story garage.
JOHN MITTELSTET: Can we have that first or
second slide up, and I’ll point to it? This is the north
part of the building to the north of the entrance. If this
were one-story, this view that’s now about 70% gone would
be reinstated.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I see. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Just quickly, if I
understand you correctly, you’re willing to trade open
space access for a larger footprint of building if a
portion of it is single-story, and/or a single-story
subterranean parking. So the two-story subterranean parking
issue is of such a strong concern that you’d be willing to
give up other amenities that the developer is proposing
that are available to the public?
JOHN MITTELSTET: I’m not speaking for a lot of
the other residents, but yes, I believe a single-story
garage would prevent excess expenses to the neighbors in
the future from a subsidence problem, and it would also
solve the number of cars that are coming.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: No other questions? Thank you
very much. I have three cards coming up, and they asked to
be called in sequence, so that’s what I’m going to do. The
first one is Marilyn Basham.
MARILYN BASHAM: No, I’m actually last. Sorry.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Boy, you guys are really
particular. I’ve got three cards, and you can come up
whenever you want. I’ve got Loretta Fowler and Marietta
Riney, so take your pick, but just let us know who you are.
LORETTA FOWLER: Good evening, my name is Loretta
Fowler. I’m speaking for the Los Gatos Commons, and I will
comment on the third redesign of 405 Alberto Way.
First, I have to point out that the Town Council
made no motion to direct the developer to reduce the
building to 74,260 square feet.
Second, we object to settling on the reduced size
alternative of 74,260 square feet in the Draft EIR. I spoke
to the author, Richard James, who said that the number was,
“Just a number,” not derived from any objective or
quantitative analysis, and we would like a better treatment
than “just a number.”
Third, the redesign does not address our most
important concerns. The building is still incompatible with
the structures on Alberto Way. Compare the size of it with
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the commercial development across the street. At 31,000
square feet it is less than half the size of the proposed
building. Las Casitas is 26,000 square feet, one-third the
size of the proposed building. Pueblo De Los Gatos is just
over 55,000 square feet. The two Commons buildings that
face the street are only about 10,000. At the end of the
street the two office buildings at 56,000 are screened off
from the street by a 9.5’ wall and tall evergreens.
The proposed building is 315’ long. It’s a
straight, monotonous building that does not look like it
belongs on Alberto Way. Look at Las Casitas; one pop-out
after another, and a very dynamic design. And this is
Pueblo De Los Gatos, actually two main wings placed
vertically on the lot with sections projecting out at
different angels; again, a very dynamic design. The Commons
consists of ten buildings spread out, and the two facing
the street are placed at different angels. Here’s the same
sense of movement and dynamism. This is 485 Alberto Way,
identical to 475.
Now, the proposed building blocks our treasured
view corridor on the north part of the site. We have lost
already the view of the mountains on the south side. This
is our most prized view; calming, restorative. From the
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west sidewalk you see the hillsides, ridgelines, and a
peak. We walk on the street and look at the view regularly.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Let me stop you. Your time is
up.
LORETTA FOWLER: Okay. I lost a couple of seconds
there with the microphone. This is my last photograph.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Go ahead.
LORETTA FOWLER: It shows what happens when the
story poles are filled in by the building. Look at what we
have left. It’s really soul crushing. If you walk farther
south you don’t see much of that ridge at all. If you walk
back towards the north property line, you see a little
more. But this photo was taken from the center there of
that view corridor, and we want to keep it. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you. All right, who’s
going to come up second? Okay, so you’re Marietta Riney?
MARIETTA RINEY: My name is Marietta Riney and
I’m speaking on behalf of the Los Gatos Commons. We oppose
a two-level underground garage at 405 Alberto Way.
ENGEO ignored the General Plan policy that called
for assessment of the effects of excavation on neighboring
properties. That concerned the residents of Alberto Way, so
we hired our own expert, Dr. Peter Geissler from San
Francisco. He has two PhDs, he taught at University of
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California, and has headed Geissler Engineering for 30
years. His expertise is in hydrology and liquefaction, and
soil subsidence in differential foundation buildings. I’m
not going to go any further than that in talking about the
soil composition, since that’s something that Mr.
Mittelstet already covered and I hope to save some time.
He’s also highly regarded in his field. If you want, Google
his name, and you would be amazed.
He reviewed ENGEO’s report, Appendix C. As you
know, he advised against a two-level garage built below the
water table on this site, that it would put the neighboring
properties at risk. Dr. Geissler found that a one-level
garage would pose significantly less problem for neighbors,
so please give Dr. Geissler’s very dynamic and thoughtful
presentation a second look.
On the defense now, ENGEO would only admit to a
low risk to neighbors where a two-level garage was
concerned. Dr. Geissler had no chance to debate the issue.
We were shocked and disappointed that Amec Foster Wheeler
did not attempt to objectively assess the two points of
view, Geissler’s and ENGEO’s, in their letter.
We draw your attention to the recent developments
in Palo Alto where the possible negative impact of
dewatering our neighboring properties is taken very
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seriously. Three of our developments on Alberto Way are
closer than 40’ to the proposed project. We also point out
that there is no precedent for a two-level underground
garage on the flood plane in Los Gatos. We do not think
there is a one-level underground garage there either on the
flood plane. At the Commons most people are on fixed
incomes, and any repairs to pipes or slabs would be the
resident’s responsibility, and think of the disruption of
our lives.
So we oppose a two-level underground garage at
405 Alberto Way. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Do we have any questions? Thank
you very much. So I guess I’ll have Ms. Basham now?
MARILYN BASHAM: Good evening, my name is Marilyn
Basham and I live at the Los Gatos Commons.
Redesign three did have some positive features,
but these affected only a small amount of people. I’m going
to speak to the major changes that need to happen in order
for there to be a win-win both for the developer and for
the residents.
The history for these changes goes back to August
24, 2016 when Commissioner Erekson suggested a redesign for
the project between 55,000 to 63,000 square feet. The
design of 74,270 square feet was not seriously considered.
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At that time the residents had asked for a project size of
45,000 square feet, but we did not get support. So we
residents, using the petition process, have decided three
main principles that follow the Commissioner’s directions
and meet the residents’ concerns.
One, reduce the square footage between 55,000 to
63,000 square feet. Two, bring in a one-level underground
garage. Three, protect the existing public views of the
Santa Cruz Mountains with an 80’ setback on the north
property line.
So what would that look like? Here’s an idea. You
can see two buildings, 28,000 square feet each. At the
narrow end is 90’ wide, and those narrow ends would be on
the street side, so as you walk by it would break up the
façade. There’s a pedestrian walkway between the two
buildings. Also, you can see that there would be plenty of
parking space on the south side as well as in front, and so
they’d only really need, now with a reduced size, a one-
level garage.
The plan echoes the Pueblo De Los Gatos, two
wings totaling 55,000 square feet; and the 475-485 two
buildings totaling 56,000 square feet. The pattern blends
with the neighborhood. Most important, the 80’ setback on
the north property line would protect the existing views of
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the Santa Cruz Mountains. Here is a drone picture of the
existing property, and you can see that the existing
buildings have a protected view corridor. That is provided
by that 80’ setback on the north property line.
So the best scenario: reduce the size to 56,000
square feet, bring in a one-level underground garage, and
protect the existing public views of the Santa Cruz
Mountains. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you. Any questions? There
aren’t, so thank you very much. I think what we’re going to
do is take another five-minute break. I will say this.
There are good reasons for taking a break, but also one of
the commissioners has a very bad back, and so I like to
take a five-minute break every hour-and-a-half, so that’s
what we’ll do. We’ll try to keep it to five minutes.
(INTERMISSION)
CHAIR O'DONNELL: We’ll start now again. I’m
going through a number of cards we have. So Jean Jones is
next.
JEAN JONES: Good evening, I’m Jean Jones and I
live at 443 Alberto Way. I’m the current president of the
Los Gatos Commons HOA. We residents of Los Gatos Commons
are proud of our homes. We are taxpayers who vote, shop in
local stores, enjoy the many restaurants in the area, the
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library, and the senior center. We attend many events in
town, and volunteer for many causes. We are active senior
citizens.
We have submitted a petition to the Planning
Commission pertaining to the proposed development at 401-
409 Alberto Way with the following three principles, which
you have already heard: A building less than 62,000 square
feet, the underground garage be only one-level or all above
ground if possible, and protect our existing view of the
mountains from the west sidewalk. The petition was signed
by an overwhelming majority of the residents. The petition
was supported by the boards of directors of the Los Gatos
Commons, Pueblo De Los Gatos, and Las Casitas, and is
signed by the majority of residents at Bella Vista Village.
The residents of Alberto Way don’t receive any
benefit from the proposed development, only loss. Loss of
view, loss of quality of life, and loss of the ability to
come and go on Alberto Way when we need to or want to.
There has not been an objective study of how this
proposed building would actually affect businesses in Los
Gatos. Much of the recent decline in business is due to
online shopping, heavy downtown and Highway 17 traffic, and
competition from restaurants in Campbell. The proposed
building would not solve any of these problems. This is a
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commercial building and Commercial Design Guidelines apply,
and many General Plan policies also apply. The commercial
design building is required to be compatible with the
residential neighborhood policies, and that applies to
commercial buildings.
Support for the project is not coming from
Alberto Way residents; it’s coming from people outside the
area who do not live on Alberto Way. We ask you, the
Planning Commission, to direct the developer to reduce the
building size to less than 62,000 square feet, and we would
like 56,000; build a one-level underground garage at the
most; and a new setback of 80’ on the north property line
to protect our view. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you. All right, the next
card I have is for Carol Rosenberg.
CAROL ROSENBERG: Good evening, my name is Carol
Rosenberg. I own a condo in the Los Gatos Commons and I’m
on the board of directors.
The senior community on Alberto Way is worried
about the affects the new design could have on us. Seniors
constitute half of the adult population on Alberto Way, and
at the Commons 75% of us are over 70. We hope the General
Plan policies regarding seniors will be followed. The
presence of seniors on Alberto Way shapes the character and
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sense of place. The Commons offers below market condos for
seniors, and is the only senior residence in Los Gatos
where seniors can own their own units.
Others have spoken about the view. We lost our
view, and most of us have no mountain view from our units.
We look forward to walking up the sidewalk for an
inspirational look at the hillsides, ridgelines, and
maintain peaks.
Traffic delays could potentially cost lives. As
an example, one of our residents, Mrs. Kathy Figueroa,
became short of breath one day and passed out. Her neighbor
witnessed this and called 911. The EMR arrived in five
minutes and saved her life. The emergency room doctor told
Mrs. Figueroa that had the EMR arrived even two minutes
later she would be dead. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Any questions? Thank you very
much. The card I have is for Kalane McDonald.
KALANE McDONALD: Good evening, my name is Kalane
McDonald. I live at the Commons and I’m also a member of
the board of directors. I’m going to address traffic
issues.
The introduction of 298 vehicles on Alberto Way
during the morning and the evening rush will have a
negative impact on our neighborhood. This diagram will show
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you the driveways of the proposed project. Those are in
blue coming down, and then the ones in red represent other
driveways: the one directly across at the commercial
center, the ones at Pueblo De Los Gatos, and Las Casitas.
Residents will have a more difficult time getting
out in the morning with 300 cars going into 405, plus 100
cars going down the street to the Alberto Oaks at 475 and
485. In the evening there will be a queue at the
intersection as cars from the project and Alberto Oaks
attempt to get out. Residents will experience significant
delays.
We think that this narrow dead-end street is not
the right spot for a huge office building, and we do not
think that the Hexagon study correctly characterized the
problems here. For one thing, after the Hexagon study was
completed the Alberto Oaks was renovated. The cars went
from 36 to over 100. If you counted the cars here, there
would be 103 in this photo. There are nine businesses at
475, and four more at 485, thus 100 more cars.
As Gary Black admitted to the Planning Commission
in an earlier hearing, the statistical average used to
compute the LOS, level of service, does not reflect the
lived experience. The ITE manual used by Hexagon to
determine trips used data, much of which was very old. The
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authors admitted that due to the changes in the way people
do business now, there could be significant differences pre
and post.
Currently the largest two-story office building
in Los Gatos is 750 University Avenue. It’s a busy street
dominated by commercial structures. This is a very
different situation than the single-access Alberto Way with
a narrow, primarily residential street. Does this make
sense to put a 74,000 square foot building, with the
associated 300 cars, there? We don’t think so. Please
consider further the traffic implications.
Thank you for your attention.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you very much. The next
card I have is Harold Vitale.
HAROLD VITALE: Good evening, Commissioners. My
name is Harold Vitale; I’m a resident at Los Gatos Commons
and on the board of directors. I’ve lived in Los Gatos for
40 years, something like that.
I’ll express my opinion that the proposed
building development plan for 405 Alberto Way be rejected,
and I’ll focus mainly on what I call three flaws. Other
descriptions you’ve heard today, and I’ll try not to get
onto those. The three items that I will address will be
briefly the two-level underground parking garage; congested
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traffic, and I’ll spend most of my time on that; and
credibility of a planning which is not stable. I don’t
believe this is the last iteration on the plan.
First of all, a two-level underground parking
garage, I’ll just make one point here. In the event of an
automobile fire in that garage there are a lot of noxious
fumes that are emitted as plastic burns, and even if there
is a sprinkler system in there, that doesn’t protect an
under the hood or in the cabin fire. A car by design is
made that way to keep water out of it, and I’m concerned
about that. And then there will be fumes that would escape
from under the hood down and out, and a ventilation system
would be good for that, but if it’s a disaster and power is
out, that’s off.
Congested traffic. Let me tell you, I was very
concerned about congested traffic, so I decided to do an
analysis on my own, and my concern was primarily about at
the end of the day when the office workers are leaving;
that poses a real threat for a large traffic jam, in my
opinion, so I tried to do an analysis of that, and the
schematic that I want to use is this one. This one down
here, I’m not going to talk about this one. When I heard
about the new information on a right-hand turn lane I said
that’s a good idea, let me look into that too. I wasn’t
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sure that was going to really stick, and I don’t think it’s
been approved by Caltrans yet.
Okay, so here’s what you’ve seen in picture form,
and my analysis is based on a couple simple things. If you
observe traffic, when it’s dense cars tend to follow each
other, so we can model this with just cars that are
traveling at no greater than the posted speed limits, and a
constant delay. That means if one car slows down, the
preceding ones slow down, so I think it’s a pretty
reasonable model.
Here’s the biggest problem that I see besides a
lot of cars. At this intersection, that’s a real congestion
point. That’s leaving the proposed parking garage and
trying to merge with the other traffic coming down, so that
generates a delay, and it’s not much, but when you get
hundreds of cars, they all add up. I guess I’m out of time.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: When the red light comes on,
then you’re out of time.
HAROLD VITALE: Okay.
(Beep.)
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Now you’re out of time.
HAROLD VITALE: Well, thanks for listening to me,
and I hope that you have…
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: We have a question of you.
Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you. The information
that you presented in that charted and graph, has that been
provided to the Commission? I haven’t had a chance to go
through that. Is that a current version that’s been
provided to the Commission?
HAROLD VITALE: No, it isn’t. I can do that.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I would appreciate that; we
can still accept that information, so if you could provide
that, that would be helpful.
HAROLD VITALE: Okay. I had a ho-hum crasher on
the wait times at these various points, and they get up
into minutes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: That would be helpful if you
could provide that information to us. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: So you’ll give a copy of that
to Jennifer, then we can make a copy and give it back to
you.
HAROLD VITALE: Oh, you can have it, except my
computer broke just before I started over, and so it’s
pretty scratchy.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: She’ll make copies for us.
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HAROLD VITALE: Well, let me give you these two
sheets, because that tells you what the delays are.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: All right, thank you very much.
Next card I have is Beverly Bryant.
BEVERLY BRYANT: Good evening, members of the
Planning Commission; my name is Beverly Bryant. I live at
16940 Placer Oaks Road; I’ve been in the community for 31
years.
I speak tonight in support of the application for
401-409 Alberto Way, and request that you grant approval to
demolish the existing office buildings and permit the
construction of a two-story office building with
underground parking on the site.
This afternoon I took the time to walk the site
actually, as much as I could anyhow, and to look at the
story poles and consider the condition of the existing one-
story office building that’s located there right now. I
also watched the review of the project that was conducted
by the City Council in early October, actually live, and
have read the documents in the Staff Report that was
proposed in preparation for tonight. All of this
information reinforces my opinion that this is a good
project for the Town of Los Gatos, and my request is that
you approve its construction.
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Los Gatos has a very limited amount of office
space and permission for an office space to build. This is
one of the few sites in town that’s still available for
that. The fact that it’s a 74,000 square foot building is
important. Class A office is important, and to get the
tenants that need to come into the building, they have to
be a certain size. The current building, as you know, is
well beyond its useful life. Constructed in the mid-fifties
50 years ago, poor repair. As was pointed out by Mr. Hult,
who may be currently president of the Chamber of Commerce,
Los Gatos is really in need of commercial development of
some sort.
We have a tax base that’s somehow eroding in the
downtown area. And further, I really believe that people
who work in this building will contribute to the sales tax
and revenue of the Town. Think about the gas that they
might buy on Los Gatos Boulevard, or that they might take
lunches anyplace downtown or along the boulevard.
The site is certainly suitable for office use,
and it’s a high-quality project. I was very impressed with
the builders saying that they’d go to LEED Gold, which is a
high standard to meet. They’ve increased these setbacks,
they’ve got open space, and they’ve got parking for others
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onsite. View glass is a real big addition, and the
underground parking, of course.
I understand the concerns of the neighbors very
much in terms of the construction period and the
difficulties. Placer Oaks Road was impacted about 18 months
ago or a couple of years ago. We had one development,
Placer Oaks Court on one end, and the Philz
Coffee/veterinarian site on the other end, and for about a
year-and-a-half it was pretty busy there. I live in the
middle of the street, so I understand that when it goes
away the conditions that your organization and you,
yourself, as planners, put on the developer when they build
are really restrictive and important, and I can guarantee
you that you’ll be pleased with the results. Thank you very
much.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you. The next one I have
is Craig Steen.
CRAIG STEEN: Hello, my name is Craig Steen and I
don’t live in the Commons; I live about two blocks away
from the corner of Los Gatos Boulevard and Highway 9.
Commuted down through there for about 30 years
now I’ve been a resident, and I guess I have to say that
most of us by now have experienced the epiphany of traffic
nightmares as we realize the development explosion in the
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Bay Area, which is up to 7 million now, and in our own
town, is creating a little bit of havoc. In fact, if you
look at Highway 9 and Los Gatos Boulevard, and then Alberto
Way, it oftentimes backs up in the afternoons, and actually
in the mornings too, so remembering that the ingress and
egress for Highway 17, there are really only two main
areas, Lark and Highway 9 East Los Gatos, where this is
going to come out, and to add that traffic in there right
now just does not make sense.
I really feel sorry too for the pedestrians. My
wife and I don’t even try to walk across on the sidewalk
anymore, because of the fact that the on-ramp and the off-
ramp from 17 come right through there. Those of you that
have driven through there probably have noticed that. It’s
really dangerous; because it’s off of the curb, so again,
by adding traffic in there we’re just totally making the
problem worse.
To me, also compounding all of this right now—and
you may say well how does this deal with this—is our state
leglislators. Evan Low, our assemblyperson, and Mr. Beall,
our state senator, have all championed high-density growth
and limiting public input, and when I called their offices
concerning this kind of development they said, “What do you
mean, you don’t want to see more development in your town?”
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and I said, “No.” They were incredulous; they couldn’t
believe it. They don’t live here, they don’t deal with the
traffic, and they don’t know that Los Gatos Boulevard
cannot be widened anymore. We’ve got what we’ve got, and
now of course with the North 40, or North 20 plus 20, it’s
going to get even worse.
I’d also like to direct your attention to the—I
thought it was really good myself—Los Gatos magazine,
September 17th, where the author chronicles what is said to
be “necessary commercial development,” and in that, if
you’ll recall, they were going to demolish a square block
bounded by Bean, Massol, Tate, and Nicholson so they could
build two 50’ apartment buildings, and this was going to
contribute to the tax base, etc., of Los Gatos. I’m just
going to read this very quickly. “Fortunately the misguided
vision was never realized and the corner of Bachman and
Massol looks much different today than it might have under
the urban renewal,” and we can thank Sandy Decker, and of
course our own Barbara Spector, for stopping this sort of
thing. Thank you very much.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you. The next card I have
is for Sherry Burke.
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SHERRY BURKE: Hi, my name is Sherry Burke and I
am a resident at 420 Alberto Way, directly across from the
proposed development.
While the size of the development has decreased,
I still feel it’s too large and massive for this site and
will overwhelm the neighborhood. It replaces a commercial
space that’s only 31,000 square feet, and space that
generates way less traffic than projected for this
development. The proposed size is still more than two times
the existing structure.
The developer says the Town Council directed them
to reduce the size to 74,000 square feet, but as I recall
the Council members were not willing to approve a
resolution that stipulated this size, and those members
that thought this size was sufficient were not able to get
a majority ruling. I hope you see it that way as well.
I feel this proposal creates a traffic nightmare,
not only for residents of Alberto Way, but all who travel
on Highway 17, Highway 9, and Los Gatos Boulevard. Trip
generation counts show the existing buildings would
generate 331 daily trips, with the newest redesign
generating 820, about two-and-a-half times the amount of
traffic. Alberto Way is a fairly short street with only one
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way in and one way out. To bring that much traffic onto the
street is just too much.
The developer will dedicate a portion of the site
for the purpose of widening Alberto Way, allowing for any
extended right-turn lane onto Highway 9. That’s great and
will help get cars out of their building and on their way.
Wonderful for their tenant and their employees, but what
about the residents who may be stuck behind their cars
trying to enter on Alberto Way while they turn left into
the property, or stuck waiting while they exit out of the
garage? Perhaps they also need to dedicate a portion of
their site for the purposes of widening Alberto Way to
provide a left-turn land into all entrances to their
property to further alleviate traffic bottlenecks and
backups in front of their development on Alberto Way, as
well as preserve existing residential on-street parking.
On-street parking is shrinking in many
residential areas of Los Gatos and needs to be preserved.
It’s been argued that the location being close to the
freeway is reason to allow something to be built there that
would generate more traffic. However, this part of the
freeway is and has been a bottleneck for many years, and
the surface streets from the freeway to the development are
also bottlenecked many times of the day. There is not a
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plan in place to alleviate the traffic pressure to Highway
17 or Highway 9 and Los Gatos Boulevard any time soon, and
this just increases the traffic even more. The development
is supposed to house less than 400 employees, but we’ve
heard there are numerous office buildings that cram twice
that number in the same space. Is this project going to
have a stipulation that the maximum number of employees
can’t exceed the number of parking spaces? Thank you for
your consideration.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you very much, and I have
another Burke, Bob Burke.
BOB BURKE: I’m Bob Burke, I live at 420 Alberto
Way; that’s Pueblo De Los Gatos.
When I first met with Lamb Partners about the
development I told them that of course we’d love to see a
brand new building across the street. I’m here to ask that
you approve only a design that doesn’t hugely deteriorate
our quality of life on Alberto when it is occupied.
The current design does fail to conform to the
2020 General Plan and Commercial Design Guidelines. The
environmental impacts we identified have not been
addressed, and we ask that you deny it in favor of a
revised design that doesn’t harm the Alberto Way residents.
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Having said that, I’ve got a couple of slides
that I’d like to show you. This one shows what the impact
would be on view improvement if the one-story north
building design that was mentioned by John Mittelstet were
to be put in place. From the area where the center entrance
is, if it were one-story on the right-hand building, the
north building, the view improvement of the mountains would
be substantial, especially if these trees in the Highway 17
right-of-way were trimmed or removed so that the mountains
in the distance could be seen as a result.
I’d like to just ask a rhetorical question at
this point. What view shall be preserved when developments
are placed going forward? Should it be the view that is in
place today, that was in place when the General Plan was
written, that was in place in the fifties? We think that
view preservation can include view expansion.
Now I’d like to make one last presentation. This
would deal with the traffic by changing the entrance to the
property to have employees who arrive from 17 make a U-turn
and take an extra lane or two that would be put in place in
the Highway 9 right-of-way into an entrance to the
underground garage on this side of the property.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Your time is up.
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BOB BURKE: Thank you. And then the exits could
be over here.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Okay, thank you. All right, the
next card I have is Randi Chen.
RANDI CHEN: Hi, I’m Randi Chen; I live at 118
Edelen Avenue and I represent the Los Gatos Chamber of
Commerce tonight. I would like to present a number of
arguments in favor of adding Class A office space at 405
Alberto Way in Los Gatos.
The Alberto Way property is zoned CH, which is
intended for vehicular oriented uses and sales along
highway frontages. Office space is one of the permitted
uses for this lot. This project would add badly needed
Class A office place to Los Gatos, and according the
Collier’s for most of 2017 there was zero available Class A
office space in Los Gatos. Currently we have only about
10,000 square feet available for rent, which is probably
about the size of this building.
As we presented to Council in September, the
Chamber of Commerce sent a survey to the downtown
businesses and our members asking if Class A office space
half a mile from downtown would bring increased revenue to
their business; 67 responded it would benefit there
businesses. We also asked their opinion regarding the
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shuttle service that the developer is offering; 58% agreed
it would be a boon to their business, and 90% of the survey
respondents were in favor of the project.
In light of the Council meeting last night where
community vitality was one of the priorities for the coming
year, the Chamber believes that this project is a good
beginning in revitalizing the surrounding areas. Each
Councilmember mentioned a community shuttle. This project
is offering us a shuttle.
In addition, the 298 employees who will work in
this building will utilize services, merchants, and
restaurants downtown and along the boulevard. Sure,
employees bring their lunches, but there are times when we
forget our lunch or meet a friend for lunch, thus bringing
business to our food establishments. In addition, these
employees will need to run errands, get a birthday gift, or
pickup dinner on the way home, and will frequent our Los
Gatos businesses. The project now meets the CEQA
recommendation in the EIR for square footage and complies
with the zoning requirements. Chamber believes that this
additional Class A office space will be a great economic
benefit for our town and the businesses we represent. Thank
you.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you. We have one question
here.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Ms. Chen, when you say that you
represent the Chamber of Commerce, are you representing the
board of directors?
RANDI CHEN: Yeah.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Per their request you’re here?
RANDI CHEN: Yes, I sent my speech to our
president and she approved it.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Ms. Rice? Thank you very much.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: All right, thanks again. The
next card I have looks like Dickson Fang.
DICKSON FANG: Hi, I’m Dickson Fang. I’m a
resident of Los Gatos Commons. My neighbors have said a lot
of things, but one thing confused me and bothered me a lot:
that is in the third iteration the developer put a dog park
in the whole thing. I don't know what kind of idea that is.
I know the commercial building has to accommodate the
neighbors, peaceful coexistence, but is that a way to do
it, put a dog park in front of us? And it’s a Class A type
of building, supposed to have prestige, but that’s not
considered IBM or anything. Even Netflix, do they want a
dog park in front? It will just drag more dog owners to
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that place where the traffic is already so bad, so I don't
know; it really bothered me.
And considering I’ve been here several times, and
it’s one iteration after the other, and the developer keeps
putting new things out—this time it’s a dog park—I don't
know what’s the real motive and intention. Don’t tell me
two years from today, after the building is built, that
nobody going to use the dog park. They’ll sneak it in as a
parking lot or some other outdoor activity and make the
place even worse. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Melanie Kemp.
MELANIE KEMP: Hi there, I’m Melanie Kemp. I live
at 174 Cuesta De Los Gatos Way; I’m part of the Bella Vista
townhomes at the very end of Alberto Way, directly across
the street from the Los Gatos Commons. I was elected last
year to be the spokesperson for those 47 townhouses, and I
want to just piggy back on what the other comments have
been here this evening, and also to respond to Commissioner
Hudes and Commissioner Kane, who had suggested that they’d
like to investigate a one-level parking garage a little
more thoroughly.
As you can see by a lot of the speakers who have
spoken here tonight, there is a lot of reinforcement from
our neighbors here to want to reduce the size, scale, and
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mass of this building, and most specifically to reduce some
of the traffic of this street that would be coming from
this building.
At the Bella Vista Village we definitely feel
that 298 cars coming and going in the morning and the
evening is going to be a problem. I also suggest to you
that a community bus holding a maximum of 37 people that is
going to loop through the Town every 45 minutes or so
between the hours of 10:30 and 5:30 is going to do nothing
to mitigate to any considerable degree the traffic
certainly that the students would use. They’re going to be
coming to school before 10:30 in the morning, and believe
me, by 3:30 in the afternoon they’ve blown way off that Los
Gatos High School campus, so it’s going to do nothing for
student traffic.
If you’ve only got 37 seats on that bus, I mean
if you’ve got over 300 people in the building for sure,
we’ve got 300 parking spaces, you know there’s going to be
more than 300 people. What person is going to be able to
count on that to get away for a lunch break? That bus is
going to get loaded up quickly. I can walk to downtown Los
Gatos in 15-16 minutes, so it doesn’t behoove any of the
neighbors there to try to take the community bus.
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So I’m asking you to please not pay too much
attention to these cookies that the developer is throwing
to this Planning Commission meeting after meeting. First it
was the community bus; then it was picnic tables that were
offered to the public that we’re never going to use, and
we’ve told them so; and now it’s a dog park. Thank you, but
no thank you.
We do look forward to Class A office building. We
do want the tax base increased in Los Gatos; we appreciate
that, we just don’t want it all to be concentrated on that
one project on Alberto Way. Let’s spread this a little bit
here. We want a really good Class A office building, we
want it reasonable, we want a good looking building, we
support that very much, we just want to support the ideas
already here put out by Commissioner Hudes and Commissioner
Kane that we really should investigate the one-level
parking garage.
Secondly, we would really like to ask the
attorney here why they won’t address specifically the
questions raised by Rachel Mansfield Howlett in her letter?
And also, I please ask you to go back and
reexamine that Peter Geissler soils report that the
Commission before was so very, very impressed with. Thank
you.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: We have one question here. Vice
Chair Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: When you walk to town, how do
you get there?
MELANIE KEMP: I come up Alberto Way, and I can
do a loop that goes up to Los Gatos Boulevard, down Main
Street, come up University, and be back to my house in 35
minutes; that’s the long way.
VICE CHAIR KANE: You take Los Gatos Boulevard?
You don’t cross Highway 17?
MELANIE KEMP: If I want to go just to downtown,
the fastest way is for me to come up Alberto, up Highway 9,
and down University, and I can be at Old Town in 16
minutes.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thanks again, and I believe
that concludes all of the cards. Did you submit a card?
Would you come up, please? I don’t see your card, but you
can just tell us who you are, and maybe I’ll look again and
find it.
LEWIS DARROW: My name is Lewis Darrow, and I’m a
resident, I’m a homeowner on Alberto Way.
We’ve gone through three iterations of this where
I’ve been here, and I didn’t know any of my neighbors, and
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now a diverse group of older people, younger people, men,
women, everybody has come here, and everybody has a similar
comment and complaint. Nobody is complaining about the fact
we want development, we want it smart, and here the
complaints range from adding to the traffic problems, which
are horrendous, and adding a huge mass on a one-way-in
street with a lot of people who have a lot of special
services. And this is consistent. Three times you’ve got
40, 50 people commenting on the same comments.
Now, as a planning board you’re representing
people. We have a building with mass. It doesn’t represent
the neighborhood. You took out a bunch of buildings that
had building fabric, social fabric. There were architect
firms, copy centers, law firms; people in the neighborhood
could interact with these buildings. Yeah, they were aged,
but there was interaction. You create a big, massive 72,000
square foot building and it has no relationship to any
neighbors. It was pointed out there is nothing positive to
be gained by any of the neighbors; everything has been
negative. The view is blocked, the traffic is bad, and
underground parking is added to it.
The scale of the building is ridiculous; it’s out
of scale. I think the architect did a very good job scaling
this down, but you know what? I’m going to leave you with
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one image. Forget LEED Gold, because that’s a sales pitch
from a developer. LEED Gold gives these people in the room
absolutely nothing.
You know, you’ve got service vehicles. They
haven’t talked about all the service vehicles that are
going to come in to service this building: janitorial,
supplies, loading, food. I’ve worked for a high-tech
company and people don’t bring their lunch in bags, nor do
they go out, it’s all catered in. It doesn’t go out to
downtown; they don’t have enough time to do that.
I’m going to leave you with one comment. We
looked at Loretta’s print and you saw… We talked about
story poles. They put story poles up on the site, and they
take them down. If you can all just shut your eyes for a
second and visualize what Loretta put up there. You saw the
mass. Story poles don’t tell a story. She showed the mass
of the building. It doesn’t work, it blocks out everything,
and you can all visualize that mass when she colored in
black, and that’s the way it’s supposed to look, and that’s
what it’s going to look like to us when we go down to the
site at night.
So I hope you can all do your jobs and really
take into effect what all the community is saying here. The
community that lives here, not the community who is here to
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talk about the downtown development and how much money it’s
going to bring into downtown. That’s great, and we want to
support everything that’s going to support Los Gatos. This
is going to destroy it. It’s going to destroy the community
fabric, and I hope you guys can appreciate that. Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Now, unless there’s somebody
else I missed I think we’re finished with the input of the
public, and now we can go back to the Applicant, and you
have five minutes.
DAN KIRBY: Thank you. I appreciate the fact that
so many of the residents want to see Class A development. I
just have to say there are many people in the room that
don’t seem to understand what that entails.
The alternative suggested by the neighbors, two
buildings, 56,000 square feet, is not a feasible Class A
development. The floor plates would be too small, it would
be 14,000 square feet, it won’t lease. There is no
developer that’s going to develop that type of project on
this site, because it simply isn’t feasible from an
economic standpoint. What I think we’re hearing is that the
neighbors kind of want what’s there now to remain, because
they just keep driving back to kind of what’s there.
I want to talk about the single-level garage
issue. A single-level garage is not feasible to support the
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square footage of the project. Even if we were to push the
single-level garage all the way out to the perimeter of the
site it wouldn’t support enough parking to be able to park
for this square footage.
I did want to make one other point. Our firm has
designed numerous underground garages that go into the
water table; it’s done on a very common basis. We have a
project right now in downtown Mountain View that’s being
developed by Sobrato Development; they’re actually going to
move in as their headquarters. That garage is going three
levels down into the water table. There is a 100-year-old
St. Joseph church that’s right adjacent to the property. We
put GPS sensors on the church and it hasn’t moved even a
fraction of an inch, so it is completely possible to
engineer a garage that goes into the water table and not
cause any disruption to adjacent sites, no differential
settlement. If I’d been designing garages that did that, I
would have been sued and lost my license a long time ago.
We do have engineers here from ENGEO who can
refute the report generated by Dr. Geissler. With all due
respect to him, he’s not a licensed geotechnical engineer.
Let’s talk about views real quick. Here you can
see the revised design, and you can clearly see the views
of the mountains are preserved over the top of the
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building, as well as we’ve created a much more generous
view corridor on the north side of the property.
I want to go back to this diagram. The footprint
of the existing building that is onsite right now is all
the way out here on Alberto Way, so we’re actually
improving views by demolishing that building and pushing
the building farther back, because you can’t see the
mountains through that building right now on Alberto Way.
So there are some tradeoffs with respect to the views, but
we think in general the views are being preserved across
the board when you look at what we’re taking away versus
what we’re adding.
I want to talk a little bit about the comment
about the cars. People keep talking about how we’re adding
300 cars to the development. We’re not adding 300 cars; the
cars that are there now offset that, so it’s actually a
much smaller number that’s being added.
Last comment on the dog park. The dog park was
something that was suggested during the Council meeting. We
don’t have to build the dog park; we can create whatever
amenity space the neighbors think would be appropriate. It
could just be a place to come and sit and relax. The dog
park was something that we thought the Town favored, so
that’s why we offered it up.
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That’s it. I’m happy to answer any questions, and
we have more experts here that can answer questions as
well.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Let me take an opportunity to
ask you some questions.
I’m looking at Exhibit A-01. Just so I can get a
frame of reference, tell me how many buildings are in the
plan as proposed. How many discrete buildings?
DAN KIRBY: You mean the current design that’s
proposed now?
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Right.
DAN KIRBY: One.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Okay, so when you look at it,
which is the way you designed it, it looks like there are
multiple buildings, but there is one connected building, is
that it?
DAN KIRBY: Correct.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: And the total square footage of
both floors and the total building is?
DAN KIRBY: 74,260.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: And you’re saying that anything
less than 74,260 will not work, is that right?
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DAN KIRBY: It’s going to be much more difficult
to lease a building that’s smaller than 35,000 square feet
per floor, correct.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: 35,000 square feet, give or
take, it’s 70,000 square feet.
DAN KIRBY: Right, well…
CHAIR O'DONNELL: You’re saying close enough, but
yeah.
DAN KIRBY: 37,000, excuse me.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: That works out the math. Okay,
I just wanted to get that down in my head. Are there
questions? Vice Chair Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: We’re talking about Class A and
I don’t…
SHANE ARTERS: We have like a minute and 24
seconds.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Sure, make use of your time.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: That’s fine.
URI ELIAHU: Good evening, Commissioners, my name
is Uri Eliahu; I’m with ENGEO Incorporated, and we’re the
geotechnical engineer for the project. I just wanted to
address a couple of items that had been brought up.
First of all, ENGEO is a 46-year-old firm,
founded here in the Bay Area and always had its
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headquarters here. Over the years we’ve done thousands of
projects in the Bay Area, many of them with basements, many
of them with high groundwater, with, thankfully, flawless
results on that count.
There was concern brought up about offsite
impacts due to dewatering. First of all, the soils here are
not susceptible to consolidation due to drawdown of
groundwater; these are just not compressible soil types
that are susceptible to that. Second, the ground undergoes
fluctuations in groundwater elevation routinely, and the
extent to which the groundwater would be depressed during
the construction and only during the construction, is less
than the natural fluctuations.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: That light went red, but we
took some of your time by asking questions, so take another
minute, all right?
URI ELIAHU: Right, so essentially we’ve
considered all of these things. As has been mentioned and
as we’ve all observed, building basements in proximity to
adjacent structures is routine. We have active projects
now. We have a project in Oakland with six levels of
basement immediately adjacent to not only other buildings,
but indeed historic buildings that really need to be
protected and are themselves substandard. There’s a proven
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science in doing this, as you can imagine. We see this all
the time in urban areas, and so we know how to safeguard
against those things.
I’ll be happy to answer questions as well. I know
time is limited.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hudes has a
question.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I know this question is
going to make me popular with my fellow commissioners.
Could you explain the Palo Alto dewatering guidelines?
There appear to be new guidelines? Why wouldn’t they apply?
Why wouldn’t they be appropriate for this project?
URI ELIAHU: We don’t know all of the
considerations that went into the Palo Alto guidelines.
Some of it seems to be motivated by water quantity concerns
during times of drought and availability for watering.
Fundamentally the reason they wouldn’t apply is
because soil types are different everywhere, and the soil
types here, these clayey gravels are not susceptible;
they’re not compressible within a range that would be
represented by the dewatering.
Specifically, when groundwater is depressed, when
it’s pulled down, it increases the effect of stresses over
the zone where it’s pulled down, and if you have
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compressible soils that have never experienced those
stresses in their history, they would be susceptible to
consolidation under those increased effective stresses. I
don’t want to get too technical here.
That’s not the case here; on two counts that’s
not the case here. Number one, these aren’t those types of
soils. Number two, these soils that are here routinely
experience increased stress levels that are as a result of
depression of groundwater. It’s a natural phenomenon, and
as has been pointed out, at the time we conducted our
borings the groundwater was indeed much deeper, and so
those soils have routinely experienced those stress levels
and have already done what they’re going to do as a result
of those increased stress levels.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: There’s a follow up to that,
if I may. Have you read the Palo Alto guidelines?
URI ELIAHU: I have.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: And they seem to relate to
the report provided by a professional engineer, and then
trigger certain actions based on that. That seems to be a
little different than what you’ve said. In other words,
you’ve said that the soils are different than what’s
referenced in their report, but when I read their report it
says, “Conducted geotechnical study to determine the radius
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of influence,” and based on that, then there’s certain
dewatering that should apply based on that report. And you
don’t agree with that?
URI ELIAHU: No, we don’t disagree with that for
Palo Alto. Again, the objective has to be defined. If the
objective is to prevent offsite impact, or to prevent
impact in proximity to the dewatering location, what we’re
saying is that the dewatering contemplated here to achieve
the excavation that is necessary for the garage is such
that it will neither increase the stress state of the soils
off property to a greater extent than Mother Nature already
has, nor will it cause consolidation because of the soil
type.
Part of the objective with the Palo Alto policy
is to reduce the amount of groundwater withdrawn for other
reasons; not because of offsite impact so much, but because
of water quantity reasons, and that’s stated in the early
part of that policy.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: And those don’t apply in Los
Gatos?
URI ELIAHU: Well, I think those apply anywhere,
but the volumes that we’re talking about here are probably
minimal compared to the groundwater regime as a whole.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: You’ve come across these
Palo Alto guidelines before? Are other municipalities
adopting similar guidelines to this, or is Palo Alto the
only place that does this at all?
URI ELIAHU: I’m not aware of any other town that
has that policy, and I have only seen that in the last few
days.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: One of the residents
brought up the idea of doing another drilling to assess the
level of the water table. My question is supposing that
their hypothesis was correct—and they actually had some
charts from Santa Clara—but that the water table, given
more recent rain, was much, much higher? How would that
change the engineering for this project?
URI ELIAHU: It wouldn’t. It would change the
amount of dewatering needed at the time of excavation, and
if we were to do another boring and take a snapshot of the
groundwater elevation tomorrow, all we know for sure is it
will necessarily be different from that at the time of
construction. It’s not a static thing, and so the
dewatering that occurs for construction will be based on
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the groundwater elevations that are present at the time of
the construction.
Then following construction the waterproofing for
the basement will extend up above the highest anticipated
groundwater elevation, and the groundwater will then
fluctuate as it normally does. None of the engineering
changes; the only thing that changes is literally volume of
water that is pumped in order to accommodate the
construction.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: So you’re basically saying
your engineering applies to any level of water table, but
the actual amount of dewatering in the process will change.
URI ELIAHU: Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: A related question to that
is I think the architect brought up a property where there
was an underground garage and that it was next to a church,
so it made me think about the residents nearby. Assuming
that this goes through with the two-level garage, is there
something we can do in terms of monitoring the condition of
the nearby neighbors as the process is happening to be
aware… Because you don’t want them to find out like down
the road that there were cracks in the foundation. Is there
a way of kind of monitoring as the process is going on?
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URI ELIAHU: Yes, there are multiple techniques.
That would be up to the Applicant, but yes, there are
techniques that are surface techniques for monitoring
movements. Strain gauges and other such things are
available.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: And is that a typical
practice in situations like this where the surrounding
neighbors or businesses or whatever has a concern?
URI ELIAHU: Yeah, that’s a good question.
Typically the monitoring that occurs is right at the top of
the supportive excavation wall. There is an allowed
deflection in the wall, and there’s usually some monitoring
that occurs both vertical and horizontal on that bracing,
that temporarily wall that holds up the excavation, and
typically that’s not extended for a great distance away
from the excavation. Sometimes it is, sometimes maybe half,
maybe a distance corresponding to half of the depth of the
excavation horizontally, but monitoring points can be
placed anywhere practically.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: That’s very good to know.
Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Yes, Vice Chair Kane first.
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VICE CHAIR KANE: Mr. Kirby, you said that a
50,000 square foot facility couldn’t handle the Class A
requirements. What is the minimum?
DAN KIRBY: If it’s broken into two buildings, as
was suggested, the floor plates would be 14,000 and that’s
just not a feasible square footage.
VICE CHAIR KANE: What is the minimum for a Class
A facility?
DAN KIRBY: 35,000 to 37,500 square feet per
floor is preferred from a leasing standpoint, so just what
we designed today.
VICE CHAIR KANE: 37,000 per floor?
DAN KIRBY: Correct.
VICE CHAIR KANE: 74,000 as it turns out.
DAN KIRBY: Mmm-hmm.
VICE CHAIR KANE: That’s the minimum? The number
we have before us is the minimum for Class A?
DAN KIRBY: Correct.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Okay.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Burch.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: I think this is going to be
a tag team question, but for the benefit of all the people
sitting here, I’m going to extend this conversation
concerning the boring and the testing, okay?
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I received a copy of the original report, which
unfortunately I didn’t have a minute ago, but the field
exploration for this, you did the boring on June 27, 2015.
I think we all know we were in the middle of a very long
drought, so I doubt there was a great deal of groundwater.
If we were to go back and do the same boring, we would find
more groundwater probably at a higher level, because of the
simple saturation of the creek nearby and saturation of
soils. You guys are in this every day. We aren’t, so what I
want to understand are a couple of things.
What measure that you would suggest that would
allow people to feel more comfortable with that level of
excavation and that type of a subterranean structure being
placed, because no matter what, we do know that the water
is going to be displaced? If it was in this box, and this
box doesn’t exist, it has to go somewhere. How does that
work, particularly knowing we do have a clay level within
our soils, which does not compact as easily?
And second, when we do construction, when you do
the dewatering, especially if part of this construction
takes place during winter when it’s raining, where are you
going to displace that water to during the construction for
the pumping?
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So those are the two questions, and I want you to
use layman terms for everyone else in here.
URI ELIAHU: Excellent, thank you.
The first question is what sort of comfort can we
provide. I guess I would say first of all that all of the
design work that we’re doing is reviewed by the Town’s
engineer, a very, very highly regarded firm, and
incidentally ENGEO does a lot of that work for many public
agencies. We’ve been involved not only in projects that
have been successful, but we’ve done forensic work as well.
So the comfort maybe goes back to the monitoring
question. We can place instruments near the excavation that
can record not only displacements, movements, but also
groundwater elevation. I think the former is much more
relevant than the latter, because the groundwater
elevations don’t matter if they don’t result in some
movement at the surface, and so that can be accomplished.
With regard to where does the water go? The water
generally is discharged into the storm drain system. That’s
typically the contractor practice.
DAN KIRBY: Can I comment?
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Can I ask a follow up
question to that then? Hold on, Mr. Kirby, because I think
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where I’m going to go might jump into where you’re going to
go.
So during this last rain season, and when it’s
raining, you’ve got a big hole open and you’re trying to
dewater this, for example, the storm drain on my street
flooded. And I know you’ve got a construction management
plan, but what goes into Plan B as a comfort for the
people? Because if you’ve been in that area when it rains,
it does flood. So there’s got to be a Plan B on where that
water goes then if, God forbid, we have a situation like we
came upon last year.
URI ELIAHU: Well, I guess I would say first of
all that it would be unwise to plan the basement excavation
at a time when flooding is a possibility; it would just be
unwise for many reasons that go way beyond what we’re
talking about here.
In the event of some unexpected flood at the time
of the basement dewatering, the work couldn’t be going on
within the basement anyway; the pumps would be shut off
anyway. The basement won’t become a big hole that would
collect water until the work could recover. But again, it
wouldn’t be smart to be doing this in the middle of winter.
This is the kind of thing that you do when the weather is
favorable.
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COMMISSIONER BURCH: Can I ask one last question
on this topic, and then I’ll stop? Obviously we know that
we could put monitors in during construction, because you
are overseeing this process, but I think also some of the
comfort level would come with what about two years later?
What kind of reassurances could we get from the Applicant
that longer-term monitoring could go on to a time certain
that would allow for that type of monitoring for the
residents if this is a concern?
URI ELIAHU: I think the Applicant can answer
that, but I would just suggest that we consider first of
all that after the basement walls are completed the
dewatering is shut off and groundwater elevations are
allowed to return to their natural state, which is a
fluctuating state. There would be no reason; there would be
no force that would create any other impacts.
It’s also true with these clay soils that these
soils expand and contract with seasonal moisture cycles,
and so if we were to precisely measure elevations of
foundations, particularly foundations that have been around
longer than current building codes have, we would see
seasonal variations in the heights of those foundations.
They move, they breathe. That’s what the soils do. They
expand in the winter and they contract in the summer, and
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so it would be extremely difficult, it would be impossible,
to relate those movements to anything that’s occurring on
an adjacent site. Essentially, once those basement walls
are built the effect is gone; the influence is gone.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Let me just ask a question on
that, because earlier you were talking about a Sobrato
building and you were talking about St. Joseph. As I
understood it, St. Joseph was monitored, or some kind of
electronic device, which I took from whoever said it, and I
can’t remember who, was a continuing process, and so
everybody was comfortable that St. Joseph was not being
affected by the I forget whether it was a three-story
basement.
So I guess the question that I’ve just heard, I’m
getting an answer of we don’t have to do that, but when it
came to wherever this was, Mountain View or someplace, you
did, and I guess I’m confused about by doing it on one job
and not on the other.
DAN KIRBY: On that particular project it’s a
downtown environment, and it’s a zero lot line parking
structure, meaning it’s built right out to the edge of the
property line on all sides of the building, right out to
the edge of Castro Street and Church Street.
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The adjacent church, St. Joseph Church, is a
historical structure, it’s over 100 years old, it’s a
massive structure, it’s very heavy, and the garage
excavation in one location is about 15-20’ away from the
church, so the City of Mountain View insisted in that
particular instance that we put GPS monitors on the church
to monitor it perpetually while we were doing the
underground excavation to make sure there would be no
differential settlement. The shoring was designed properly,
the foundation of the church wasn’t affected in any way,
and once the garage was constructed, and all the walls were
built, and all the floors went in, the monitoring was
terminated, because as Robert pointed out, once the garage
is constructed and the dewatering is turned off, everything
kind of restores itself to the way it was before you
started. The garage itself just acts like the soil that was
there originally.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Thank you. That helped. Other
questions? Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I have some questions about
the parking and the one-level versus the two-level; I
wanted to follow up on that a little bit more. I don't know
if you will have all this in front of you or whether it’s
something that you would need to provide later, but while I
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understand that you’ve done some modeling, we haven’t seen
the benefits of that, and it does seem to be a somewhat
elegant solution to some of the issues with groundwater and
other things, and it’s certainly one of the ideas that’s
come forth from the community, so maybe I could just ask a
few questions about the numbers. How many spaces are on the
second level?
DAN KIRBY: The garage is pretty much split 50/50
between the first level and the second level: 123 on the
second, 137 on the first, and 38 on the surface.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: And how many additional
spaces could be put onto surface parking?
DAN KIRBY: If you take a look at the drawings on
the wall here you can see that the parking garage footprint
right now is still larger than the building footprint, and
we’ve actually got a dash line that shows the extent of the
building footprint over the top of the garage. So the
garage, if it was to go one level would literally need to
be doubled in size, and there’s just simply not enough
room, even if we built all the way out to the property line
to create the equal amount of parking on one level.
And I wanted to remind the Commission there were
some other considerations in earlier meetings. One was we
didn’t want to have any construction staging onsite, so
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part of the reason to create the more compact garage that
went down two levels is so we have a zone on the front of
the property to stage construction; we don’t have to dig a
hole all the way to the edges of the property line. That
was something neighbors were very concerned about.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: It’s good information.
You’ve gotten ahead of me a little bit.
DAN KIRBY: Sorry.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I was asking how many
additional spaces could be on the surface if there were
tradeoffs with other uses of space on the surface?
DAN KIRBY: You mean on the surface of the…
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Surface parking.
DAN KIRBY: Surface parking.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: How many additional surface
parking spaces?
DAN KIRBY: Well, if we were to park along the
north side, I don't know if we could get a double right-of-
way of parking in that setback zone, because we’re limited
in setback even with parking from property line.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: So you don’t have that
information. Maybe you could provide that to us?
DAN KIRBY: Yeah. Yeah, we could do that. Sure.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: And then the other question
would be—what you were getting at a little bit—was once you
figured out what other surface parking you could do, what
is the square footage of a parking area to accommodate one-
level parking with the remainder? That would be important
to understand, and then to understand how that would fit
with the buildable area on the lot; that would be something
else that I would be interested in finding out about.
DAN KIRBY: Okay.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I know Commissioner Burch
had some rough ideas on this. Were there other questions
maybe on this topic that we could explore to understand the
feasibility of one-level parking?
COMMISSIONER BURCH: I was pretending I was an
architect? I was also just taking a look at if we did one
large footprint, underground parking plus a little bit more
ground level parking, and definitely it’s fewer parking
stalls, based on what we had just been told it also sounds
like as far as the groundwater situation goes, whether it’s
a smaller second level parking garage, significantly
smaller or not, in your opinion the displacement of
groundwater issue during construction is not going to be
different based on the size of the parking garage?
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DAN KIRBY: That’s correct. We have to dewater
still.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Okay.
DAN KIRBY: And I should point out, the garage
will be waterproofed on the outside from the moment you get
to the soil on down. We do waterproofing all the way down,
so no matter how the water table fluctuates, the water is
kept out of the garage.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Right. And as the site
layout is then—kind of tag teaming on what Matthew was
thinking about—we are currently… Because again, depending
on how late this goes, I have a thousand construction
management questions.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: We’re going to 11:30, that’s
where we’re going.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: So no thousand; that will go
longer. But the way you have this laid out and the way this
is proposed, I mean if we’re going to wind up having more
parking underground I want to feel very confident there’s
not going to be a truck in the street. I’m going to say out
loud for the record that he’s nodding yes.
DAN KIRBY: Yeah, that was the purpose of
creating smaller plates and going down two levels, and the
reduction of square footage allows us to create the staging
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area on the front of the site for all the trucks to come in
and park and load and come out. There will be no trucks in
the street, there will be no construction trailer in the
street, none of that; it will all be onsite.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: All right.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: On another topic, I wanted
to come back to the question I had earlier about the space
added to Alberto Way and the straightening of that. Of
particular interest to me was by widening that street is it
possible to get an emergency vehicle down it, even if it
means going into the other lane of traffic and that type of
thing? How much space has been added to that? Do you have
that information now, or do you want to provide that to us?
DAN KIRBY: I can provide it for you. I don’t
know the exact amount of footage that we are deeding to the
Town in widening the street, but as I mentioned, it does
accommodate two lanes and a bike lane.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: And the original concern on
that was not only the ability to turn, but the ability to
get an emergency vehicle down that street, particularly if
we were in somewhat of a gridlock situation due to beach
traffic blocking Highway 9, and also backing up over there.
So any additional information you could provide on that
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space and how an emergency vehicle could navigate that
street.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Let me interrupt you. I’m going
to direct this to the attorney, because if we close public
input, which is what I intend to do at 11:30, if we were to
come back at another date and discuss and reach a decision,
I don't know exactly how we receive essentially what is
further testimony.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: You can close public comment,
except for you’re leaving this open still to ask questions
of the Applicant, so that’s where we are right now. Public
comment is closed, except for questions for the Applicant,
and you can do that.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Are those the questions we
identify tonight?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: No.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Assuming we do what I’m
suggesting—and I don’t make that decision, it will be up to
you, but there’s no other thing we can do—we’ll get a date
certain for our finishing of this, and whatever questions
we have I assume would be run through Staff, right? We’ve
already identified some questions, but if somebody had a
different question, or fleshed out a question, I guess you
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could direct that to Staff and they can direct that to the
Applicant?
ROBERT SCHULTZ: Or they would be available to
ask any questions at your next one in the follow up
meeting.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: It would be very helpful
however…
ROBERT SCHULTZ: If they were ahead of time that
would be…
CHAIR O'DONNELL: …if we could ask the questions
ahead of time, get the answers ahead of time, so when we
meet we might be in a position actually to make a decision
rather than go to further testimony. That would be my hope,
but we’re not stuck with that.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: And I would say although the
oral public comment period is closed for the rest of the
public, it would still be open for written comments; they
could still submit any written comments after today.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: So everybody then would have an
opportunity.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: For written comments.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Because I want to make sure
it’s fair.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: And that’s actually what I’m
asking for is some written comments or answers to questions
they haven’t been able to provide during the hearing.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: And let’s be sure—we only have
a few minutes left—I think you’ve asked specific questions,
and I think Mr. Kirby has, I’m sure, taken them down, so if
anyone has any other questions they would like a written
response to, if they can fit it in within the next eight
minutes, I encourage you to do so. Okay, Commissioner Hudes
wasn’t through, I think.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I had one other topic, and
that is whether we could see written operating parameters
for the shuttle.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: The shuttle, okay. And
Commissioner Burch, you had something?
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Obviously I’m going to ask
for a copy of the construction plan.
DAN KIRBY: It’s actually… (Aside) Is that part
of our submittal?
FEMALE: It’s part of the conditions of approval
(inaudible).
DAN KIRBY: Yeah. But we have a slide we could
send you; it’s part of our PowerPoint.
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COMMISSIONER BURCH: It’s just one slide? Are we
going to be able to ask questions in the next one?
CHAIR O'DONNELL: I did not understand your
question, so if you would repeat it?
COMMISSIONER BURCH: There’s usually a
construction plan. Not just hours and standard things,
there’s usually something that indicates traffic
management, times for specific types of trucks, et cetera,
that we’re usually provided; I want to get a copy of that.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: And the answer as I understood
it was there is already something, and you’re questioning
whether that would be adequate.
JOEL PAULSON: And I would just say that it’s a
standard condition of approval. We generally do not see
those at this stage; that is worked out with Staff. So if
you’re asking for that upfront, then that’s definitely
(inaudible).
DAN KIRBY: We do have a rudimentary diagram, but
it would need to become a much more detailed plan as part
of the conditions of approval and the Building Department
submittal.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Then would it be acceptable
to you when I get that, having heard some comments and I’ve
taken some notes before about what the residents were
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concerned about, I could just make some questions and send
them to you about that?
JOEL PAULSON: Yeah, or if there are specific
things you want to make sure are addressed in that plan,
then we can definitely add those to the condition as well.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Thank you.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Just adding onto that, I
do recall when the Council heard this there was some
discussion of that, and although the construction
management plan isn’t typically done until after the
approval, especially with some of the issues with the Los
Gatos Commons and senior citizens and emergency access and
stuff, one of the suggestions that came up and wasn’t
formalized into a terms and conditions was, for instance,
not allowing hauling during like morning rush hour or
evening rush hour, and having it at other times of the day.
I don't know how much that would help, but if you
kind of just say that there’s a construction management
plan and you don’t dig into the details, then how do you
know that you’re concerns are going to be addressed? So I
had the same idea; it would be nice to see some of that.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Well, we can certainly look at
whatever this is, and if we make a decision we can also say
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we would like to see that tweaked to this extent, whatever
it is, but we won’t know that until we look at what
generally speaking the proposed management plan is.
DAN KIRBY: Typical construction management plans
do limit hours of work, and that can all be negotiated with
the Town and the neighbors, so that’s pretty common.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Okay, we only have five more
minutes. Vice Chair Kane had something.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Mr. Kirby, Denzel Washington
often says, “Explain it to me like I’m a six year old.” My
question is what I would like in writing is the definition
of Class A, and I’d like to know why it just happens to be
74,260 square feet as the minimum Class A building, which
was an arbitrary number in the Draft EIR, which I painfully
reread today, and if it is a fair comparison, know that
when the Draft EIR talks about 74,200 square feet instead
of 92,800 as proposed by the project, “This alternative
assumes construction of underground parking, likely one-
level, would remain feasible for the design site.”
So if we have time and we can get things back in
writing, I’m reading on page S-8 of the Draft EIR. Let’s
address the implication that one level would likely be
feasible, and tell me why 74,260 just happens to equal the
minimum Class A building.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: That’s the Final EIR, I
believe.
VICE CHAIR KANE: It’s the Draft, sir. This is
the Final. The little guy is the Final.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Okay.
VICE CHAIR KANE: The Draft is the big guy.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: You’re right. Okay, so we
should wrap up, I think, otherwise I’m going to leave.
Okay, so thank you very much, everyone. We’ll continue the
matter, and give us a date certain.
JOEL PAULSON: January 10th is probably the
soonest, and if we’re not able to get all the information
from the Applicant, then we’ll simply continue it to a
further date.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Okay, so at the moment it’s
January 10th.
JOEL PAULSON: We still need a motion.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Yeah, we need a motion to
continue the matter to January 10th.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Yes, correct. So moved.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Oral public comment…
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Except by the Applicant.
Oral public comment is closed. Questions of the Applicant
are still open.
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CHAIR O'DONNELL: Right, and we’re told…
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Hey guys, we’re still having
a meeting.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: So what I’ve been told is not
only can they respond to our questions in writing, which
we’ve asked them to do, but if anyone in the public wishes
to submit something in writing, they can do that too, so
that part is still open, I just want to make that clear.
And the motion will take us to February…no January…
COMMISSIONER BURCH: No, January 10th unless
documentation (inaudible).
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Okay, if we could get a motion
on that.
VICE CHAIR KANE: She just made it.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: That was my motion.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: Okay, go ahead.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Second.
CHAIR O'DONNELL: All right, moved and seconded.
All those in favor say aye. It passes unanimously. Thank
you, all.