What was slated to be a “final” review of Arcata’s Gateway Area Code took place at the April 23, 2024, Planning Commission meeting. Based on the Community Development Director’s schedule, the proposed schedule for adoption includes:

1. April 23, 2024: “Final” review of the Gateway Code.
2. May 14, 2024: Public hearing on the General Plan 2045, the Gateway Area Plan, and the Gateway Code. Planning Commission review of the three documents. Form a recommendation to the City Council.
3. May 29, 2024: Public hearing on the General Plan 2045, the Gateway Area Plan, and the Gateway Code at the City Council. City Council review of the three documents. Possibility of the Council voting to approve the General Plan 2045, the Gateway Area Plan, and the Gateway Code. (The Gateway Area Plan and the Gateway Code are discussed and voted on by the 3-person City Council. Councilmembers Stacy Atkins-Salazar and Alex Stillman are required to recuse themselves from all Gateway Area Plan and Gateway Code discussions.)

Is this an achievable schedule? In my view: No, absolutely not. Recommending or approving these documents in their current form is irresponsible. will be approving documents that are deficient.

At the previous Planning Commission meeting, on April 9, Commissioners Dan Tangney and Matt Simmons noted that they each would be absent from the April 23rd meeting.

In earlier discussions on the Gateway Code, Commissioners Tangney and Simmons both had been sharp observers of many facets of the Code, and had offered many useful comments. Throughout the development of the General Plan updates, the Gateway Area Plan, and the Gateway Code, Commissioner Simmons has always been a large contributor of suggestions for improvements, second only to former Planning Commissioner Judith Mayer.

Why then was this “final” review of the Gateway Code scheduled for the time when Commissioners Tangney and Simmons would be gone?

Who thought the entire Gateway Code — with all of its omissions and errors — could possibly be reviewed in a one hour-and-a-half session? The people who set the agenda are the Planning Commission Chair, Scott Davies, and the Community Development Director, David Loya.

The full-steam-ahead pedal-to-the-medal accelerated pace will result in a sub-standard Gateway Code.

To use just one example, the issue of street-facing garages was discussed at the April 23, 2024, meeting. Prior to that discussion, there could be as much as 62 feet of street-facing garages on a city block. The Commissioners discussed but did not thoroughly resolve the street-facing garage issue. The big public hearing is already scheduled for the next Planning Commission on May 14th — to be based on incomplete documents.

When will there be time for an honest review?

Since the April 23rd meeting actually accomplished only a small part of a review of the Gateway Code, when will be the rest of it?

In this pre-written remarks when opening up the Gateway Code discussion, Planning Commission Chair Scott Davies had this to say:

“In the coming weeks, we will be considering a formal recommendation for approval to the City Council on the General Plan and the Gateway Form-Based Code. The Commission has conducted tens if not hundreds of hours of review of the Gateway Code and modified the Code in several areas.”

Let’s give Chair Davies a little leeway here.  There were the form-based code workshops. There was much discussion on building height and upper-floor step-backs. There was lots of discussion on the Community Benefits program.

But in terms of actual review of the Gateway Code, as he is refers to, prior to the April 23, 2024, meeting, it was not “hundreds of hours.” It also was not tens of hours.

Prior to the April 23, 2024,there were two other meetings: June 13, 2023, and July 11, 2023.  This is discussed more fully in this article here.

The first draft of the Gateway Code came out on June 5, 2023. As a result of Planning Commission discussion, a second draft came out on September 22, 2023. An article on the differences between those drafts is on Arcata1.com. A third draft came out on January 31, 2024. There were no changes to the text of the code in the 3rd draft — none. The 3rd draft contained new four 3D images of a potential build-out. 

The total time that the Planning Commission has reviewed the actual Gateway Code, prior to the April 23, 2024, meeting was one hour and 56 minutes.

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The Video

One hour, 34 minutes.
To read the transcription while listening to the video, simply start the video and then scroll down to read along. 

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The transcription

There may be minor errors in this transcription. If you see any, please contact me so that they can be edited. Thanks.

Times shown are based on the City of Arcata video. To adjust to the times of this segment of the full meeting video, subtract about 46 minutes from the time shown.

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2024-04-23 Planning Commission meeting. Gateway Code on the agenda. Commissioners Tangney and Simmons  were absent.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Scott Davies (Chair)  46:36
We are on to our next item this evening under business items. And this is to review and provide direction on the Gateway Code. And I would like to begin as always with a staff report, please.

David Loya – Community Development Director  47:04
Thank you Chair Davies. The Planning Commission will be reviewing a recommendation formal recommendation to the City Council regarding the general plan, including the Gateway, Gateway plan and the Gateway Code at your next meeting. That notice has gone out and we’ll have that prepared for your review. We’ve just spent a lot of time in the last year or so really doing a deep dive on the General Plan. And it’s been a while since we’ve looked at the Gateway Code. And so I just wanted to have the opportunity for the Planning Commission to take a look at this and, you know, refresh your memory about, you know, where you would landed with this document previously, and to be prepared for your work that you’d be doing at your very next meeting. Now, I will point out there, we did receive a few public comments on this Code. And I did want to touch on just a few here.

There are some clear cleanup items that we need to do in the Code, you know, little typos and that sort of thing. And one commenter in particular spent a good bit of time and paid real close attention to those and so we have a long list of those in their comment letter to us.

But I did want to just address a few changes that I think are and these are just minor minor minor changes that I think are probably going to be a good change for you know, prior to adoption.

So just for background, when we look at the Gateway Code, one of the things it’s trying to do is to create a space that’s you know, pedestrian friendly, that’s human-scaled, that kind of goes back to the basic principles. There’s an image out of the Gateway Code and it is describing the Pedestrian Realm that includes you know, an area that has landscaping and you know, street furniture and that sort of thing, a place to park your bike, large sidewalk area, and then depending on the frontage type an area that would feel like part of the public realm but was you know, available for you know, for businesses to put out you know, tables and chairs or benches, places to hang out, places to spill the business activity out onto the sidewalk and make it more of an inviting space. And, Dylan, if you could put the projector onto the screen. Thank you.

So within this pedestrian realm there are some requirements for the size of these, depending on the type of frontage. We have Active frontages, we have frontages that are Non-Active, and those were designated on, you know, certain streets, Eighth, Ninth, L Street. And so the image from the Gateway Code to show the differences between say Active frontage as shown here, and the requirements there — three feet for the Frontage Zone, eight feet for a sidewalk, which adds up to 11 feet. This image shows those areas coming to the property line. The commenter noted that the frontage requirement is 10 feet [NOTE:  Misspoken. The setback requirement is 10 feet. The frontage requirement is 11 or 13 feet.]

So there’s two ways of looking at this. One is that, you know, these areas, the frontage zone and sidewalk area need to be contained wholly within the setback, which would put the property line at this location where it’s shown here. But I think in practice, what we really are going to have happen is a situation where you have, you know, depending on the street, you’re going to have different designs. Similarly, for the Non-Active, these are areas where these will be houses.

[NOTE:  These are areas where there will be apartments – not houses. The image shown at the meeting was taken from page 46 of the Gateway Code, and shows a 5-story apartment building.  There may be dense townhouses in the Gateway area. There will be no “houses.” None.]

So instead of having your house right up on the sidewalk, where people feel like they’re in your front yard, maybe giving those a little bit more space.
[Note:  It is not “your front yard. David Loya is mischaracterizing the situation.]

And so the Non-Active frontage types have a smaller, you know, friendship zone or larger friendship zone requires requiring a larger setback, but that totals 13 feet, whereas the setback is 10 feet.

And so, you know, to resolve this, there’s a couple of different ways of going about this. You know, what we’re looking at in this situation is, you know, what would appear to be a conflict between those setback requirements and these frontage requirements, the pedestrian realm requirement, but really what is going on here is that the property line, depending on the situation, may be anywhere in this zone, if you will. The intent is to have this space feel like a wide open space, the intent isn’t necessarily to extract from the owner, the property owner that full 11 or, you know, 13 feet. And this would really depend on the size of you know, existing infrastructure and planned infrastructure. And the easiest way to consider that as you know, this landscape amenities zone here. Going back to the other table, the landscape amenities zone is established at four feet. So if you think of this zone, right here being four feet, most of our sidewalks are already five or six feet wide up anyway.

And so part of the sidewalk is already built into what we would consider this sidewalk zone. And so that means the property line is actually set back in reality from where it’s shown in this image. So I’m only bringing this up to try and draw your attention to, you know, at least one of the issues where I think, you know, we, you know, have kind of already addressed this, but this image is somewhat misleading. So what I would suggest is having some language added that describes that this property line may fall anywhere within the frontage and sidewalks zone, depending on design. Clear enough.

Okay, the other item that was brought to my attention was, and this was brought to my attention in a separate conversation, that there’s no maximum here for Non-Active frontage types, is a little bit misleading. Because all of the other standards that are used to define development would lead to it being impossible to have really no maximum frontage requirement. You know, setback requirement. And so, you know, I guess what I’m going to suggest here is that, you know, for these properties, where we said you know that you have no maximum, we either refer to the other standards and leave it just as a dash or we add in a, you know, maximum setback of 20 feet, if we’ve decided that inactive zones, that 20 feet is an appropriate setback and Non-Active zones, that seems like a similarly effective setback. So if you have a recommendation, I’d be happy to accept that. But you know, the staff recommendation at this point would be to just put a dash and then a footnote that says that the maximum setback is dependent on complying with all other Code standards.

Scott Davies (Chair)  55:01
Are you wanting us to weigh in on these as we roll through them? That’d be great. If you Yeah, if you want to, so can show of hands people in favor of staff’s recommendation to dash, okay, okay.

David Loya – Community Development Director  55:13
And that really allows someone who’s not in an active zone, if they’re building, you know, a primarily multi-family project or completely multi-family project. And they wanted to have some, you know, nice landscaping and a, you know, a hangout zone in front of the building, because that’s what works best for that site, they could go ahead and do that. And you would still have to comply with all the other standards. There are several small errors that were pointed out. And in a letter we received, here’s an example of one. Clearly when we went through and updated the Code, when the decision was made to make the maximum building height seven stories, we just didn’t catch this. And so there are a number of things like this other examples included, where one of the tables said 10,000 should have said said 1000. Really appreciate the work that public put into reviewing the document and providing those comments. It’s good to catch these things. They’re not going to be critical flaws. If we have a couple of clean-up that we need to do in the first year or so as we’re implementing this, but it’s good to catch as much as we can now. And so this again would just be modified to reflect the you know, the maximum tier for being at seven stories instead of eight stories. Currently, the way that the Gateway Area Plan has structured the tiers, the base tier is four stories, and Tier One is also four stories

Scott Davies (Chair)  56:44
Quick question from Millissa.

Millisa Smith – Planning Commissioner   56:47
And just a point of information for me and for the public. How will you address simple things like typos in this document? A year from now or two years from now? Like if you just find a typo? What’s the process for fixing it?

David Loya – Community Development Director  56:59
Yeah, that’s a process that we would use for any zoning amendment would be applied to those. So it’s great to catch them out. Because it’s easy, we can just go in and change them before it’s adopted. After it’s adopted, that is the ordinance, you know, warts and all. And what we would have to then do is go through a process of amending adopting a new ordinance to make amendments to those, it requires a public hearing at the Planning Commission recommendation. The City Council would then have to approve those and adopt that ordinance. And this is not uncommon. I mean, we had several cleanup items for our Land Use Code and we adopted it, that we didn’t a tranche I think it was in 2008, and one in 2010, or something like that. And what we’ll find, as we implement this Code, because, you know, we’ve designed this Code around, you know, what we think is going to happen based on, you know, a set of parcels that are imaginary, if you will. We’re imagining square parcels that don’t have any other obstacles or, you know, considerations. And we design out the best we can based on those.

[Note:  “We’ve designed this Code around, you know, what we think is going to happen based on, you know, a set of parcels that are imaginary.” And right there is part of the problem with this process. An Area Plan and a form-based code can made on any level of detail that’s desired. It can be street-specific; it can be parcel-specific. It can even be next-to-that-building specific, or this-street-corner-needs-this specific.

What we are seeing with this Gateway Area Plan process and documents is zoning. It is not planning. There are some exceptions that are planning. But by and large the attitude seems to be “we’ll set up some guidelines, and then see what the developers want to do.”]

 

When we get feedback, as people are starting to try and apply this Code and build things that we’ve asked them to build, we may find that we need to modify various aspects of it. And so when we get to that point where we’re making those modifications, we’ll also bring in these minor typos and that kind of thing. The Code — the last thing I’ll say on this — because I think it’s important to understand too, is that we’re not just stuck with an error if one slips through, and we just have to apply that error. The zoning ordinance allows the Zoning Administrator to make Code interpretations. And so if there’s, you know, if there’s a minor error, so for example, if we didn’t catch this particular error before we adopted it, and it takes us 9-10 months to, you know, to get to a Code amendment to correct this, that wouldn’t mean that people could come in and build eight-story buildings. What it would mean is that when this brought was brought to our attention, we would do a zoning interpretation and say, this table was adopted an error, this is what it should be, this is how we’re going to apply it, that was the intent. And so that’s how we would handle it in the interim.

Scott Davies (Chair)  59:30
Basically, there, you can deal with them in the short-term and fix them in the long-term, but we prefer to catch them now.

David Loya – Community Development Director  59:35
Exactly. And if there is something that’s, you know, super-critical that, you know, we can’t fix with a Code interpretation, we would probably at that point, go to the City Council and ask for a development moratorium based on the challenge that we’re seeing, applying the Code and then we would work on fixing it immediately and get it done, you know, within a month or two. So those are the possible outcomes. I dealt with typos.

So the commenter had, you know, the comment letter had many other comments in it. I’ve reviewed and read and can respond to any that you have questions about. My intent in this meeting is not to go through all of those comments, but if you have questions about them, I’m happy to address them. With that, I’ll turn it over to the Commission for any questions that you may have. And then recommend you open it for public comment.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:00:33
Perfect. Commissioners, now’s your opportunity to ask further clarifying questions of staff. Before we go to public comment. Does anyone have any additional questions for staff at this time? Okay, seeing none, we will transition to public comment, I’m going to open public comment. Now if you’re in person, please feel free to line up at the lectern. If you’re on Zoom, please raise your hand by selecting the raise hand icon on the right side of your screen. Or by pressing star nine on your phone. The clerk will unmute you when it is your turn to speak. Feel free to state your name for the record. First speaker, please.

Gregory Daggett  1:01:16
Gregory Daggett. One of the things that I’ve also been pressing for the last two years is SB 1000, which is the environmental justice and local land use planning, which is a requirement for you to do by the state of California. It’s defined as environmental justice is defined in California law as the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures and incomes with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. I got a letter probably like over a week ago from the City of Arcata, that you are will not be implementing this, which is a requirement for the state of California, you seem to be substituting equity Arcata as a substitute for this, which I don’t know whether I would if they’re completely different things. You’ve seemed to think there’s, I guess the reasoning, there wasn’t historically disadvantaged communities. I mean, I’m not so sure about this, I’m not an attorney, but I’m not so sure about how you’re just like avoiding this whole thing. So I think we need to address that. I’d also say for somebody that lives on H Street, and who walks a lot and sees a lot of people coming in and out of apartment buildings, which there’s a lot of apartment buildings from sunset, to about 15 street, there’s like two of them that are riding right across the street from me, what I see is a very diverse group of people, you know, it’s of all colors. And so I’m a little confused about this, how you’re sort of like giving the presentation that there’s not a community. And I see a very diverse community. And maybe you need to get information from the college on how well how diverse the student population is, because I see a lot of students that live in those apartments. And I also see apartments that are on the east side of H Street, that you know, they’re not in the best shape, they’re, you know, they’re a little bit better on the west side. But you know, they look kind of rundown and not not too great. So I would highly advise that you need to really implement SP 1000 In your general plan, which is required from the state of California. I’d also point out jumping to another subject of over a year ago with the fire district coming here and basically saying, we don’t want to we don’t want to see anything over three stories at this point because we don’t have the resources to fight a fire. And they quoted Sorrell place to oven fires that could have got out of control. I would like to say that since then. There has been a lot on oven fires. I’ve kept track of them across the United States, and they’re pretty serious. What happens down in New York, I’ve been fired kid was playing with it and mother didn’t shut the door behind and all the smoke went in the hallway and basically killed a lot of people. When immigrant was trying to save people. He rescued a few. He died in the third attempt. There it’s happening. So this could this could happen and the City would be liable and individuals today.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:04:23
Thank you for your comments. My Very

Fred Weis  1:04:28
Good evening, I am Fred Weis with Arcata1.com. You have received my written comments. I stand behind them. I encourage you to look at them on my website rather than the PDF because it’d be more updated there. There’s over 70 pages of comments. The typos are the smallest issue.

When I looked at the Gateway Code, I had no intention of writing 70 or 80 pages of comments. But the more I looked, the more I saw, the worse it got. I concentrated on things that hadn’t been discussed that I thought were worthy of being discussed. Last night I realized that there are things that you *have* discussed that are not in the Code. Today, I wrote an article that I encourage you to read about the street-facing garages, which I think you probably remember. You talked about this. In my article, I have the videos, and I have the transcript of what you actually said. This has not changed from the first draft, or the second draft or the third draft, it says the same thing. How many instances are there like this? I think dozens. And that’ll be my next task. You can do what you want. Obviously, I’m not here to tell you what to do. But I assure you that if you recommend this current Code, you’re not recommending what the Commission wants. You know that there’s no mention of the L Street corridor linear park, there’s no protection from tall buildings for the linear park. I don’t think that’s what the Commission wants. That’s up to you. I also think that if it is recommended in its current form, the three-person City Council is not going to be able to approve it. And that’s a concern for me, because I want to see this thing done. I can answer any questions. I’ve become much more knowledgeable about the Gateway Code in the last two weeks I ever thought I’d be.

The only difference between the second draft and the third draft is the addition of those 3D images and two lines of text that refers to the images. There happens to be in those two lines a typo. The whole document seems sloppy.

One of the purposes of Form-Based Code is to use the illustrations to show what the intent of the of the Code is. Many of the illustrations are wrong. They show distances that are wrong. They’re holdovers from the first draft or things have changed.

I respectfully disagree with the Community Development Director on many of the things he said. It should just be a better Code. There’s going to be problems. The typos are not the issue. There are larger issues. As you know, I made a guide, because the original [menu] was too big. I hope you’ve seen it. There are about 15 items that I think are the major issues. We can go from there. Thanks.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:07:30
Thanks for your comments. Does anybody else in the audience care to speak this evening? Anybody waiting online to comment, David,

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:07:40
We do have online. Go ahead, Jim.

Jim Becker  1:07:45
Hello to staff and to Commissioners. I first want to thank Fred Weis for his dedication to researching details throughout this process of reviewing the Gateway draft. He’s out-done himself on both edits and suggestions for fine tuning the Form-Based Codes. I appreciate his continued effort to remind both Council and Commissioners that the L Street Rails with Trails corridor should be identified in both the Gateway draft and the General Plan as a linear park. The corridor will be the centerpiece of the future Gateway infill and should be planned for with dedicated easements. When the infill occurs, the Greenways that the north and south end as well as the entire pathway should be preserved and excluded from the General Plan policy CM 5-D-7, eliminating the possibility for the Zoning Administrator and a developer to move a Class One trail. In addition to identifying and planning for the L Street linear park from Alliance Road to Samoa Boulevard, I want to revisit cap policies scaling into existing neighborhoods to respect both active and passive solar, right of ways of existing neighborhoods. Existing residential rooftop solar do contribute to the independence from fossil fuels and eases an increasing burden to the individual residents. In addition, that power goes back into grid and contributes to the RCEA clean power energy portfolio and for Arcata’s goal of going electric.

You know, and with that in mind, it’s pretty simple. Citing, setbacks, and step backs can give attention to existing neighborhoods that you’re granting, you know, basically giving that same  right to existing neighborhoods, that same thing that you’re granting to large scale investors. Otherwise, this plan will drastically change Arcata in its in its look. And a lot of these properties will be shadowed. And I once again, I also I hope that you take care of the typos and the errors that will are throughout the draft, prior to the adoption of the draft. I mean, talking about the idea that it can be taken care of at some point and extraneous routes you have to go it makes a lot of sense just to wrap this stuff up now. For example, like property lines at L Street. I think that’s policy GA 225 Qi Qi see it’s in the, whatever that diagram is, with it being a maximum of two feet instead of 20 feet. As far as for setbacks on the property line on L Street. I just I think it’d be good to take care of those ahead of time. Anyway, thanks. And please consider this in your, in your consideration of what you’re planning to recommend. Thanks.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:10:25
Thanks for your comment. Other commenters waiting?

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:10:38
No, I don’t see any other hands.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:10:42
Okay. Appreciate everyone’s comments and input. I’d like to bring this back to the Commission for discussion. In the coming weeks, we will be considering a formal recommendation for approval to the City Council on the General Plan and the Gateway Form-Based Code. The Commission has conducted tens if not hundreds of hours of review of the Gateway Code and modified the Code in several areas.

[Note:  Tens of hours? Hundreds? Nowhere close. Actual hours on review is less than two.]

Because of the work and time invested by the Commission and the City Council, and because many decisions about the Code have already been made, I do not view this discussion as a re-opener. We are here to make targeted changes and to re-familiarize ourselves with this document before we make the final decision. I understand from the staff report and public comment that there are some errors, minor errors, typos, grammatical mistakes that will certainly be cleaned up for the final document. When we last reviewed the Gateway Code, we recognized that we were going to need some time implementing it to see whether it is accomplishing our goals. I think this is really of the utmost importance. I think there comes a time in our discussions where we get to sort of diminishing returns.

I’m a huge advocate for ‘let’s get this approved and see what happens.’ And for this reason, Commissioner Yodowitz has suggested adding into the Code a time-specific review, which I think is a great idea that has been added.

And I still agree with the Commission’s position that we need to implement the Code and improve it as we go.
[Note: The Commission’s position? When was this declared? Dan Tangney spoke to this]

We will not be able to resolve all of the uncertainties with the [word not clear] review here, no matter how much time we continue to spend on this discussion. But I would very much like to hear from my fellow Commissioners on this, additional questions for staff, comments on the Code. Love to hear what the rest of you are thinking.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:13:05
Scott, how do you want to handle this? I made a list of issues, some large some small. Should I just go through them?

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:13:17
I think if we have maybe questions of staff, we could start there. And then if individual Commissioners have specific kinds of points they want to bring up we can go back to our kind of format. Give us an elevator pitch. If someone has an opposing view, we can hear that. If we want to adopt a change, we’ll take a vote and then move on. So go ahead, Abby.

Abby Strickland – Commissioner  1:13:45
I just had a question. Um, how soon after – like, assuming we may take this action tonight — How soon after this will the City Council review the Code? Because I’m just wondering how much time you’re going to have between us taking this action and then reviewing it to make significant edits, assuming there are some.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:14:05
Yeah, I’m not going to get a lot of sleep in the next couple of weeks. The City Council is going to review —  So you’re going to review for a formal recommendation on the 14th. [May 14th.] On the 15th [May 15th], at this point, it looks like on the 15th the City Council will be likely taking an item to review the changes that you’d recommend it on the General Plan – You recall the table where we tracked all those changes. And then the City Council will be taking up the full item on the 29th of May. And at that point, by the 29th [May 29th], all of these changes will have been incorporated and new documents will be will be out for circulation. So pretty fast turn-around.

Abby Strickland – Commissioner
Alright, thank you.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:14:58
Any other questions? Anybody Then – go ahead, Joel.

 

L Street Corridor Linear Park

David Loya:

 

And so I guess my response to why the L Street linear park is not added into the Gateway Code, currently in the draft that we’re looking at today, is because —

 

I don’t believe we received direction to do so by the Council.

 

And I have confirmed this with Council members and City Manager. So this is not just my interpretation.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:15:02
I have questions, just kind of a general question of staff. And this arises from some of the public comment about a reference, specific reference to the L Street linear park in the Code. It doesn’t seem to be there. And what staff’s view on that is.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:15:29
Yeah, so the L Street corridor was taken up by the City Council at a joint study session of Planning Commission / City Council in September of last year [Note: Actual date was August 22, 2023]. And the City Council made an action that had three components. The first was to remove the couplet — the K and L Street couplet — from the Plan [the Gateway Area Plan]. So that was a pretty explicit direction to do that.

The second was to evaluate safety improvements, on K and 11th Streets in particular. Recall that the rationale for the K and L Street couplet was to improve bike and pedestrian safety for that couplet of area, and retaining all of the traffic on K Street two-ways just could not accomplish the same level of safety improvements. And so that was the rationale. What Council said was, since we’re removing K and L Street [couplet], we want you to figure out what you can do on K Street to make it safer. And 11th Street, where we also have some problem spots.

And then the third thing that they asked was for the City to start the process of evaluating a woonerf – “woonerf” was the term of the night – and put a full-width linear park on L Street. Essentially what has happened over the past two years is we’ve gone through a very in-depth planning process to develop a plan for K and L Street, and how to retain the trail on L Street with that public process, very involved public process. [Note: This was in the two years previous to the August 2023 meeting – not since then.]

What the public said through that process was we don’t like that idea. We’d like to see all of the traffic on K Street. And further we’d like to see L Street developed as a linear park.

We have not gone through the public process that’s necessary to establish what the L Street will look like. And we haven’t gone through even what the improvements on K and 11th are going to look like.

[Note: These are immaterial, superfluous statements. It is not required to know what the L Street corridor linear park will look like. Nor is it necessary to have “gone through” what improvements to K and 11th Streets will look like. This is a typical David Loya “Gish Gallop“-type interjection. The two statements are true, but are immaterial to the subject being discussed.

It is only necessary now to include it in the Gateway Area Plan and to make those changes to the Gateway Code to protect this park (and other parks) from the shadow effects of tall buildings adjacent to the parks, and to provide for (more than “encourage”) the inclusion of smaller ground-floor commercial spaces alongside the Woonerf sections of the linear park. And that has not been done, nor has any discussion or attempt at this been done.]

We’re starting that process right now. In fact, we’re getting on top of that, and there are funds that are budgeted into this upcoming fiscal year to do more work on that.
[Note: On the K Steet safety improvements. Not on the linear park.]  

But we’ve already got a contract that we’re going through to do some preliminary public engagement on what those safety improvements will look like.

And so we’re implementing the direction that we received in September.

[Note: In August. Staff is implementing PARTS of the direction from the Council. The part of Council’s direction that Commissioner Yodowitz asked about is NOT being implemented.]

And I understand, you know, I went back and listened to the tape from September, I understand why it could have been confusing, and why the public would have understood the Council’s action to be: ‘Change the document so that it shows L Street as a linear park.’

We haven’t gone through that planning process yet. And so the Code does allow — the changes that we did make — do allow for additional woonerfs and, and full-width linear parks to be added in the future. There’s a specific Code section that encourages that where it’s, you know, where it’s desired, desirable.

[Note:  False statements – lots of them. There is no mention of the word “Woonerf” in the Code. There is no provision for a woonerf, or an access road within a greenway or linear park. There is no “specific Code section that encourages that where it’s desirable.” I don’t see any “changes that we did make” after August 22, 2023, that have anything to do with a creation of an L Street linear park. There is nothing on this. There are no changes on this, as he directly said. Putting this bluntly:  What Mr. Loya has said here is a whole series of falsehoods.]

And so I guess my response to why the L Street linear park is not added into the Gateway Code, currently in the draft that we’re looking at today, is because I don’t believe we received direction to do so by the Council. And I have confirmed this with Council members and City Manager. So this is not just my interpretation. And I do think that we will be looking forward to going through that process in the future.

---

 

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:19:28
Chair, I’m not sure how you want —  I have another, just like Peter, I have a whole list of things. But I did have a comment, a question of staff of something I just did not really fully understand in the Code when I went back this last time. And that is the Greenways. I mean, when I read that, I’m just not sure what to make of that.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:19:58
You’re not sure what the Greenways are or …?

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:20:02
My question is, are they just intended to be conceptual right now, or I just don’t fully understand what the intent of the Code is and how the Code intends to implement the Greenways. Because some of them go through private property. And I don’t know how to do that. And it said something in there that these are in these general locations. And I just don’t know how somebody can be that vague and be provision in the zoning Code.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:20:39
Yeah, so the Greenways map is intended to — many of these locations are on rail corridors or, you know, are on sort of the margins of properties.
 
[Note: Just a few are. Not “many.” The greenway on N Street from 11th to 16th Streets is on a rail corridor — but that greenway is already designated in the Code as becoming a linear park. It does not need to be called out as a greenway here. The greenway in the Barrel district that curves from 8th & N to Q Street is in a rail corridor. The greenway located at the far western border of the Gateway area, on Q Street between where 6th to 9th Streets would be — that is on a border of a property. That is three that are on rail corridors or on a property “margin” (border). Three out of the thirteen greenways shown – not many. One is on a City right-of-way. The remaining nine are on private property.]

Some of them, we, you know, for instance, on the map shown here. You know, we don’t know, what this is trying to show you is that we want to make a connection between this point here, and this point here, with one of these Greenways. It could be that not all of these are developed. You know, it could be that the, you know, and definitely, you know, they’re not going to be developed exactly in the locations, you know. This one is shown as going through a building.

The idea is that we want to get from this point to this point. And the way that we would implement that is that as a project comes forward, we would say, hey, look, you know, you need to be consistent with the Code. The Code shows that there’s a Greenway going through your property — Show us where on your property, you’re going to, you know, reserve land for that Greenway, where you’re going to install this Greenway. [Note: This is False – Including the Tom Perrett Tomas / Open Door property that has had the test site buildings on.]

And this is one of the ways where those projects that are coming forward that are, you know, getting this principally-permitted pathway for review are able to comply with the Code. Recognizing that we don’t know all the bits and pieces right now, we haven’t gone through a very detailed plan to know exactly where those trails are going to be, how many of them are actually going to be needed? You know, we’ve got two Greenways, this one and this one that are about 300 feet apart? You know, do we need both of those, it may be that as the development comes forward, you know, we don’t and there’s something else that that is equally applicable.

And so these would be, for the most part, these are going to be, you know, public easements, so publicly accessible private open space, that we’re securing through the permitting process. The intent here is not for the City to go and say, okay, property owner, we’re going to put a trail through your property here. The intention is that when this property owner comes forward and says, you know, I’d like to develop, we then look at the Code and say, well, these are the things you need to do to comply to develop.

[Note: “these are the things you need to do to comply to develop” is the same as “we’re going to put a trail through your property here]

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner
Thank you.

[Note: The Code says these locations are required. It uses the word “must.”]

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:23:10
Okay, given that, Peter, do you want to start us off with what you have in the way of a no questions? Are these the proposals, or how are we categorizing?

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:23:23
Sometimes they are questions, sometimes they are proposals. Some are pretty trivial. Some are pretty involved. Can you go to page five on the?

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:23:44
Can we get that on our monitors, please? Thank you doing.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:23:52
There you go to that table. So that table has three categories. But later on in the Code, there’s another table and it eliminates the middle row of this table. And I suggest we do that, that the middle row be subsumed into the bottom row, that is up to 30,000 square feet. This is what’s happening. Above 30,000 square feet. This is what’s happening. I don’t think we need that middle row. So that’s a detailed suggestion. You know, it doesn’t seem like that’s very helpful than the

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:24:49
staff position.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:24:52
I’d be interested in the table that you think eliminates this middle. Let’s see

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:25:00
Where was it? It’s the open space table. But I don’t know which

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:25:09
page that is. Just tell me the table number.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:25:12
I don’t have the table number, it’s the open space table. If maybe if you search for open space

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:25:26
it’s near them, it’s near the bottom.
There you go.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:25:38
Okay, these are really dealing with quite different types of issues. This table is talking about what the open space requirement is. Sure. It has no bearing on what the approval process is. So I understand that. Okay.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:25:56
It’s not a big deal. It’s a suggestion.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:26:01
I just wanted to clarify that piece. So those in terms of the ministerial review, this was what the Commission landed on. And it’s previous discussions, having a Zoning Administrator hearing for, you know, hearing for those middle-sized projects that was noticed. And that it’s a formal hearing. The fact of the matter is, and I advised the Planning Commission on this previously, that having a hearing for a ministerial process is not a very intuitive approach. You’re basically saying, I’m going to sit here in front of the public. And I’m going to look at the project and evaluate it against the list. And then when I confirm that it complies with all those objective standards, I’m going to approve it.

And so I think there was a reluctance to give up on the idea that we were going to have ministerial, or that we were going to have discretionary approvals, there was a reluctance to leave behind the idea of, you know, having these public hearings, I think that if you want to my professional opinion, that the second and the third, should be stricken, and all of these reviews should be done as a ministerial review, as a true Ministerial review.

But I understand the public desire to have eyes on when you’re having these larger projects. And I think it’s really important to, you know, maintain the streamlining that you achieve, through having the lowest body possible, approve a project, while still trying to address the concerns that the public have, you know, the perception that these projects are going to be, you know, big and different. And they want to see them made by, you know, multiple people, and they want an opportunity to say, hey, you missed the, you know, the facade improvement here. So it’s really up to the Commission, what one thing I would suggest is that you approach changes to the decisions that have already been made pretty cautiously instead of trying to up end decisions that have already been made, because they went through a very long and lengthy public process, that you just honor those and figure out, you know, over the course of the next year, how are these working for us? And do we need to change them?

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:28:36
Yeah, I’m, I’m uneasy about changing this, because there was, early on in this process, the issue of the Height of Buildings was really important to the community. And part of the position that we took to address and incorporate these concerns was this, this table and the sort of staggered review authority, so I definitely be uneasy to make that change myself. [Note: This does not sound true. They were 100% independent.]

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:29:08
To give you a sense to for the building size, that middle rung is basically, you know, four story buildings. And currently, if a four-story building comes into the Planning Commission, this Code are known because of the Housing Accountability Act. If it meets all the objective standards, even if we call it a discretionary review, you wouldn’t be able to reduce the size of it. You wouldn’t be able to disapprove it. And so, and that’s because of State law. That’s not a local law. That’s because of State law. And so they’re, you know, some of this, I feel like has, you know, some of the innovative thinking that we were doing seven years ago and we designed all of this has been surpassed by more recently State laws.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:30:00
I’m fine. It was as suggested, this is more substantial solar access and shading has been a big issue in talking especially about the big buildings that were planning for the Gateway area. And I can understand that it’s important, let me point out from a solar energy standpoint, the amount of energy we’re going to lose by shading is very small.[NOTE:  Not from a view of solar energy on people, nature, land, parkland, and other buildings.]

That said, I think personally, that housing is way more important than shading. And the fact that, so on page five, it includes see right there, it includes that the project has to meet the standards in the solar siting and solar access ordinance. And these big buildings aren’t going to, I mean, we’re kidding ourselves, if they’re going to fail on that over and over again. So either we, we admit that that’s going to be true. And we strike the solar siting and solar access from this list. We’re, I don’t know what else we can do, where, by approving large buildings, we’re going to be approving shading. And I think we just need to admit that and live with it.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:31:59
The Chapter 956 of the land use Code is actually reiteration of state law. And it primarily deals with existing rooftop solar. And there are some, you know, some requirements around that. And

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:32:15
there are exceptions. There are in that.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:32:20
Yes, there are. And so, you know, I think that, you know, we’re trying to be explicit in this section about the other sections of the land use Code that apply when you’re doing ministerial review to ensure that, you know, these specific resources are addressed in in the review. But they would apply regardless of our being explicit in this Code. I think it’s good to point people to them, but they still apply. So without going back and making changes to the underlying Code and in the land use Code for solar siting and solar access. And then ensuring that that’s compliant with state law. Just removing it here wouldn’t actually have the effect of changing how we have to review and approve projects just out there.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:33:14
Do we? So you’re saying we should just leave this alone?

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:33:19
I think I would, again, because part of the reason we explicitly state these in here is because people did have concerns about, you know, meeting these other objectives that we have in the Code. And so, you know, it’s having it embedded in the Gateway Code. This other body of, you know, land use ordinance ensures that, you know, as we’re going through the checklist that will be verifying that we’re compliant with those other standards.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:33:48
Any other Go ahead, Melissa,

1:33:50
I just had a thought that we could there be a reference to this state law in these sections to bring maybe some clarity or depth to the document?

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:34:05
Yeah, the the 956 actually does reference the state law. And what this section just to be clear, what this section does not say is that you cannot cast shade onto another property. That’s not what the solar siting and solar access section says. And I can pull it up or if you’re really interested, but it’s, you know, it has some some limitations and some exemptions on existing solar.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:34:31
Any other Commissioners concerned about this language from staff?

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:34:35
No, but that just prompts the question that I have. Under CEQA — are there any circumstances where shading by itself is considered to be a significant environmental impact? I don’t know what the law is on that.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:35:02
There’s no second Appendix G the checklist for CEQA that you use to evaluate environmental impact does not have shading on it. I can’t think of a situation. I mean, I think we’d have to stretch to come up with a situation where shading would be an environmental impact.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:35:19
Perhaps on your next issue, Peter, question, suggestion.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:35:24
Page 30, please. Its rooftop solar.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:35:40
It says that solar energy facilities may project a maximum of up to five feet above the building. That’s pretty small. That’s a small amount. I mean, most solar panels will stick up more than that. So I suggest we make it

Abby Strickland – Commissioner  1:36:02
I think you read it wrong. Maybe Peter, it says it may project above the maximum building height. So isn’t that stating that it can go above

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:36:10
by up to five feet? Yeah, and I suggest maybe eight feet. I know I What’s, what’s big solar panels this weekend?

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:36:29
Yeah, I know, staff opinion, no. Planning Commission in favor of allowing for higher projection of energy facilities? Have eight feet when necessary. Okay, okay. We’re okay with that.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:36:49
Moving right along. Let’s see page 34. The long building design standards?

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:37:19
Yeah, actually show the well, it says that you, you have to break up a building that can be 300 feet long, that’s longer than a City block with one vertical façade that has 64 square feet. So if it has a width of eight feet, that’s eight feet tall. And it’s this huge building. Look at the diagram. I mean, am I missing something here? That doesn’t seem like very much of a breakup of a huge, long façade.

1:38:02
What would your suggestion be tend to make it a percentage of this façade like 30%? articulation?

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:38:13
I didn’t come up with an answer. I just came up with a complaint. The ones that come before this are much more prescriptive and require much more façade breakup than this. Right? They seem incompatible with each other actually.

I mean, if you keep going, you’ll see there, there are many. So anyway, I just point that out. That seems like inconsistent with the other façade regulations. And I don’t have a suggestion.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:39:03
I think my preference for the Commission is that we focus our discussions on areas where there’s specific suggestions like your rooftop solar, because they lead to kind of productive changes that affect our process. Otherwise, it feels like we’re reopening a discussion that we that we’ve had. So just for everyone, if there’s a specific proposal, I’m okay with that. But I don’t want to just sort of drift circularly. [Note: Perhaps Chair Davies did not understand what Commissioner Lehman was saying. This is not a discussion that was had before. The Commission was conducting a review at this time, and Commissioner Lehman is bringing up a valid concern – namely, that this policy in the Gateway Code does not make sense and is incompatible with other policies and diagrams.]

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:39:33
All right. I’d also like to point out that, you know, just this, these are, you know, these requirements stack. So, you know, yes, we can bring back a more detailed response at our next meeting, or I can talk with you offline.

[Note: The next meeting is the Public Hearing. As for discussing this off-line, I feel the entire Commission needs to hear this. And a side point of what Commissioner Lehman said is: This requirement and this image are incompatible with other policies and images.]

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:39:55
All right. Let’s see page 39 building entries. See? This is a detail as well. It shows a canopy or recess of four feet.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:40:09
What page? Are we on?

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:40:10
I’m sorry – page 39.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:40:19
Yeah, there you go. That seems pretty minimal to me. I suggest something like five or six feet.

Abby Strickland – Commissioner  1:40:33
I have a question that kind of goes off of Peter’s topic here, which is in our last meeting, we talked about recessed entries and the kind of thing instances they pose for being a good place to shelter. Obviously, it’s under weather protection. But I also was wondering if, like looking at page 71 in our packet where we talk about garage doors and entries. There’s even a subsection that describes like what kind of metal should be used. And I don’t think it’s very specific about scissor gates. And I don’t know that we’re ready to make it very specific about scissor gates. But I would wonder if there could be a sentence about security fencing in, you know, the entryways. Just looking at this recessed entry brought that question to me, too. So I don’t know how deep the entry should be. But maybe we should consider that. Okay, was there a question? I guess the question was, does staff feel that like that section should be edited in any way shape or form to address scissor gates? Or will it be before it goes back to the Council? Because I know, we might have discussion on it. [Note:  Abbie is asking if there is an opportunity for more revision to the Gateway Code.]

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:41:39
This was one of the things that the commenter brought up about the Gateway Code. It does have an allowance for scissors gates explicitly. And so now would be a time to remove that, you know, given the discussions that you’ve had, or if you want to wait to get Council, you know, direction from that, or at least just flag it for the Council that, you know, hey, this is an issue. But in terms of, you know, editing this to, you know, make it so that it doesn’t provide, you know, safe harbor for someone sheltering overnight. You know, that’s kind of a fraught, you know?

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:42:20
Yeah, I’m, my preference would be, since we’ve already asked the Council to give us direction and to weigh in to wait on that, because we could sort of cover it with one fell swoop. So next item? [Note: Chair Davies is not understanding what this Gateway Code is. It is for the Gateway Area Plan. For the Council to give direction on scissors gates in the Plaza historic district is independent of the Gateway Code. The Planning Commission is tasked with creating a Gateway Code. This policy on scissors gates in the Gateway Code should be addressed by the Council. If the Commission wants to wait until the Council has weighed in – then the Gateway Code cannot be called complete at this time.]

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:42:36
Garage, where am I page 43, shared garages and parking structures. These are allowed to open onto the street. And we do not allow individual garages to open on the street. And we made a big point of that. And I don’t think we should allow any garages or parking structures to open onto the streets. So I think this needs to be changed.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:43:11
If I remember correctly, our discussion was about stranding some buildings, because of the way they don’t have access to an alleyway or a side street. Is that correct?

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:43:25
Yeah, I mean, the only for those middle block properties, the only way to access them if you didn’t allow a garage opening. And not all projects would elect to have a garage opening front-way [word?], especially in some of our smaller with properties. But if you didn’t allow for a garage opening, they would have to have an opening of some sort, you know, you’d have to have some way to egress that site. [Note: Not true. A building does not have to have a garage or vehicle entrance. Many buildings on smaller parcels do not. Commissioner Simmons has pointed this out.]

But I think, you know, this was another area where the commenter did raise an important question, in the way that the standard is written, no more than 25% of the site frontage facing the street may be devoted to garage opening, unless the street frontage is less than 80 feet. [Note:  The Code was poorly written.]  So you can have a 20 foot garage opening in that case. But this doesn’t guard against someone having 25% of 100 foot, a 200 foot, a 300 foot-long building, and that I don’t think was the intent. So it’d be good to put some guardrails that you know you know, I think you could probably even just say I’ll consult with the City engineer but you could probably just say that, you know, garage opening shall be no larger than 25 feet.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:44:36
Yeah, if you can get confirmation from City engineering so that we can set an upper limit. It will be less percentage driven, which seems to be practical.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:44:49
I disagree. I don’t want to have garages, whatever they are, open onto the street. I’m a bike rider. This is really dangerous to have a garage open onto the street. It’s something I fear, and it’s something I’ve almost crashed into. And I don’t think we should allow it. We don’t allow it for single family or individual garages, so we shouldn’t allow it. I think that people can plan around that.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:45:26
Go ahead, Millissa.

Millisa Smith – Planning Commissioner   1:45:28
I think that maybe staff could help us at a future meeting with some verbiage that not only sets a maximum, but maybe also places some of the safeguards on it as in, you know, this would only maybe be allowed when there isn’t a side street or an alternative to this street facing garage. So we would only allow when there’s no alternative to a maximum size. That’s a suggestion.

[Note: No. This disregards what Commissioner Lehman said. It is not that garage doors are allowable when there is not a side street or when there is no alternative to a street-facing garage. He is saying: It is not allowed on non-multi-residence housing, and it should not be allowed on multi-residential housing.]

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:46:02
We can explore that. Yes.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:46:10
In conjunction with the other components of this discussion that you bring to engineering.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:46:18
Okay, thanks. Okay. Under page 52, parking location and design.

There is, well, there is no provision for electric vehicle charging in parking spaces. Do we want to require some? It seems to me that going forward, it’s going to be important to the way we want transportation to evolve in Arcata.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:47:17
The minimum number of electric vehicle chargers is set in Building Code. [Note: No, I don’t believe it is there. The Building Code sets the electrical requirements, not the number.] And if you want to put a, you know, specific incentive, I mean, I think, you know, we talked about, you know, in the Community Benefits program, we had a whole lot of these types of incentives that ultimately got stripped out. But if, you know, as the Planning Commission leads up to its final recommendation on this…

[Note:  When is the Planning Commission leading up to its final recommendation? The next meeting is the Public Hearing and (in theory) the Commission’s recommendation to the City Council. There is no time but right now, that meeting – unless the accelerated recommendation schedule is going to be changed.]

… you want to consider adding something back in like an incentive for, you know, additional EV chargers. You can consider that what the Commission decided previously, though, is all of these onsite amenities that were addressing just the residents needs weren’t really community benefit. And so all of those got stripped out.

[Note  1: Gateway Code requirements and Community Benefits are two entire separate things. It is incorrect for the Community Development Director to conflate them. And as was discussed in conjunction with the Community Benefits program, some of these things should be required, not set as optional amenities. Community benefits are indeed different from amenities that would benefit the occupants of a building. And that is what Commissioner Lehman is suggesting here. On an overall basis, this benefits the entire community. I certainly do hope that the Director can understand this.]

[Note 2: To the extent that I know, there is nothing in the Arcata Building Code that relates to a requirement for apartments to have EV chargers at this time. But even if it were to be there, that is not the point. See next note.]

[Note 3: Anything in the Arcata Building Code would apply city-wide. What the Commission is doing now is creating a new environment in the Gateway Area Plan – with policies that are more advanced, more dense-urban-oriented, more future-oriented. And some policies will then get carried over to be city-wide policies.]

[Note 4:  The Gateway policy can also be constructed as along the lines of: “Each multi-residential building will be required to have EV chargers at a scale of the number in the Arcata Building Code, if any, plus an additional 50% of the figure in the Arcata Building Code, if any with a minimum of two EV charging stations per 50 apartment units, rounded up to the next higher whole number.”]

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:48:24
It still seems to me we should at least mention it as a positive addition to parking.

Millisa Smith – Planning Commissioner 1:48:40
I think the worry would be if we put in something about EV charging requirements into our Code, and it’s already baked into the Building Code, if in the future there was a conflict we would have to amend. [Note: This is a valid concern – but there are many many examples where Gateway policies exceed the Arcata Building Code. That’s the idea of the Gateway Area Plan – to make this better than existing city-wide requirements.]

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:48:52
I’m not saying put in a requirement, I’m saying say that providing for every charging is to be encouraged, something like that. [Note: Why not have it as a requirement?]

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:49:03
I think that’s something that we can definitely do in the Gateway plan. [Note: We “can” do? Time is running out. When is going to be done?]  I feel like there probably already is language to that effect in the plan itself. And the zoning ordinance. We really want these to be objective standards that we’re requiring people to do. And so I would stray from having aspirational language in the zoning ordinance.

[NOTE: Let’s look at this, based on what the Community Development Director has said.

[Note 1: There is no language in the Gateway Area Plan that requires or even encourages electric vehicle chargers. There is talk about the need for these policies, but the policies themselves do not exist. There is nothing in the zoning ordinance that requires electric vehicle chargers.]

[Note 2: Commissioner Lehman was not asking for aspirational language – at least not at first. He was asking for objective standards.]

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:49:24
Okay, last one. Let’s see. Oh, I didn’t write that page. Bicycle parking, 4-a.

It talks about having bike secure bike parking, a 750 or a maximum of 750 fee from its use. That seems way too far to me. Maybe change that to 250? There it is. Yeah, thanks.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:50:11
Yeah, we can, we can change this, I think the intention here was envisioning, like, a seven-story building. And your bicycle parking has to be within 750 feet of your unit. It’s, you know, on on the same site. It’s a strange concept to try and encompass. And so, you know, if you had a large enough project you’d have to have multiple long-term bike parking on site, because you couldn’t be 750 feet. And I think that’s what we were trying to do with this Code, but you, know, the idea is that you have ready access on your site to long-term bicycle Park.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:51:02
Okay, but I’m envisioning getting out on a rainy day and walking 750 feet to my bike. And I don’t think I should have to. I think the bike parking should be in the basement, so I can just walk down and get my bike.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:51:20
Yeah. And I, you know, I could have this wrong, but imagine you’re on the seventh floor of a seven-story building. Okay, and then, within that building, you have to have 750 feet from that location, you have to be able to access your bike. So we’re not saying that every floor is going to have long-term bike storage, we’re not saying that you’re going to be able to bring your bike into your house and have long-term bike storage there.

But we’re saying that there’s going to be a place in that project — the intent is that this is on the same site — that’s within 750 feet maximum, within 750 feet. So you’d be walking inside your building to get to that bike access. We’re not sending you out across the street in the rain, to get to your bike.

[Note: That may be his intent, but that is not what this policy of the Gateway Code form-based code says. The idea is to create objective standards. What this policy does is to remove objectivity, and replace it with “this is our intent.”]
[Note: There are no houses in the Gateway area.]

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:52:02
If you’re on the seventh floor, you’re only 70 feet from the bottom.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:52:06
Yeah, and the bike parking might be diagonal to your unit. And so you might have to walk 750 feet to get to your bike.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:52:14
I don’t think so.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:52:17
I mean, you can make it whatever you want to make it. I’m just I’m trying to, you know, describe why I think that the number was selected.

If you make it a smaller number, that’s going to mean more smaller bike parking areas.

[Note: This is not true. The Community Development Director simply made up this statement.  There is no factual basis to this statement. It is imaginary.]

Again, this is something that I don’t think we’re going to be able to discover by talking about it. I think we’re going to have someone come in and pencil out a project and say there’s no way I can put long-term bike storage every 250 feet, or they’re going to say there’s no way I can put it over 750 feet. [Note: Silly statement. The building won’t be 750 feet in size.] We don’t know that. And I don’t think we’re going to discover it by talking about it. So pick a number, put it in there. Other Commissioners want to weigh on this?

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:52:54
Yeah, just eliminate the distance requirement and say it’s within the perimeter of the use. That is something like some vague language. So we know it’s on site.

Millisa Smith – Planning Commissioner
Or just the words “On site.”

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:53:12
I mean, I would feel better about that. I agree with Peter that 750 feet does seem a long way. And I could imagine a lot of buildings that would not require a 750-foot walk to get to a charger if it was on site. [Note:  Whoops – Chair Davies does not mean “charger.” That was the previous discussion. He means “secured bicycle parking.”]

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:53:26
True. I mean, that’s two blocks. [Note: Two and a half blocks, actually.] It’s a lot. That’s a big building.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:53:34
Yeah. I like the on-site suggestion from Melissa. I think that makes more sense. I think it gets to what the City is trying to say, but does it in a slightly more flexible, elegant way.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:53:45
Okay, so just saying “on site.”

Milliss Smith – Planning Commissioner   1:53:46
My suggestion would be long-term bicycle parking shall be located on site within 750 feet of the use that it’s intended. Or you just take out “within 750 feet of the use that’s intended” and just say shall be located on site. I have a third suggestion, where you say located on site within X number of feet of the building’s primary entrance, something like that. But adding “on site” into 4-a-(i) — somewhere in that sentence.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:54:16
Yeah, let’s not say 750.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:54:19
I agree with Peter, let’s say “on site” and eliminate the distance.

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:54:24
Yeah. I think if we’re going to go with on site, let’s eliminate the distance. Let’s go with “on site.“ Just make that swap, please. Okay, is that the end of what you brought to us this evening?

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner
I am done.

Scott Davies (Chair)
Perfect. Thank you very much for that, Joel, I know you have some items. So fire away.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:54:41
I have a few in the manner of Peter. And I want to thank Fred Weis. Some of these were some that he suggested as well. On the same page that Peter was just looking at, page 54 of the this draft of the Code, packet page 82. There’s a table for bicycle parking spaces. I don’t want to run afoul of you, Chair, in terms of suggesting that we increase that or think about increasing that or ask staffs input on how to relate. Let me ….

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:55:15
What is your — Give us your central concern there.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:55:20
I’d like to maximize the number of bicycle parking spaces. And I’m not sure that this table does it. I don’t want to handicap developers, take over their building bicycle parking. But I also want to accommodate and encourage bicyclists, those using bicycles to use their bike to go to offices, neighborhood-serving commercial uses, etc. And we could do that by increasing the number of spaces.

Millisa Smith – Planning Commissioner 1:55:54
I have a point of clarity, sorry. Is this one, is that square feet, site size, floor area or footprint in that table?

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:56:03
That’s building floor area. Yeah, and this does match pretty closely with what standard parking standards are for vehicles, for cars. So for instance, on multi-family residential, I mean, you’ve got — One per six is not typical for, you know, vehicles. But if you look at the, you know, commercial type uses one space per 500 square feet is pretty typical for car parking standards. And so you’re basically creating a bike parking lot that is approximates what you would typically see for a car parking lot in those uses. So I think those other uses are probably appropriately sized. For multi-family, I mean, you could consider raising it. This is an area where, you know, again, similar to the idea of like, you know, for dedicating space for, you know, for cars, then we’re taking space away from housing. [Note: Oh, no, it is not.]

It’s the same for all the different uses that we’re planning on-site. We want, you know, nice attractive landscaping. That’s, you know, a unit that someone’s not living in. [Note: What is the Community Development Director alluding to here? Buildings with no landscaping that go straight down to the sidewalk?] So, I don’t know that I can give you a specific number that I would recommend at this point. But those are the things that I think you should take into consideration when deciding on a number.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  1:57:32
Yeah, I don’t have a specific number in mind, either. I’d be nice to know what other jurisdictions do.

Millisa Smith – Planning Commissioner 1:57:45
I’ve seen other jurisdictions put a maximum on the number of bicycle parking spaces that are required for the development. So it looks similar to this where it’s one a per X number of square feet of floor area to a maximum of, let’s say 15 or 20 or 25. [Note: At the current rate of 1 bike parking spot for 500 sq.ft. for the first 5,000 sq.ft., and then 1 per 1,000, a requirement for 20 bike parking spots would be a 15,000 square foot office building.] So then it’s not a barrier to development moving forward, because somebody could see this requirements, they will I want to build a 100,000 square foot building, I’m going to have to put in all these all these bicycle parking spaces, and then they say, I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to agree to that.  [Note: Hey! No one is building a 100,000 non-residential building in the Gateway area.] So potentially setting a maximum requirement could help. And my point of clarity on this chart is maybe adding the word square feet of floor area or footnote that says that this is floor area, because I have seen a chart like this confuse people on that exact point. [Note: Thank you, Millissa. This has been brought up the past, with no change made.]

Scott Davies (Chair)  1:58:45
Abby, anything from you on this question about?

Abby Strickland – Commissioner  1:58:48
No, I’m just I mean, I’m thinking about it. And I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one bicycle parking space by itself. Like all of the equipment used to store bikes is usually multiple bikes. So I just have a hard time seeing one bicycle parking space. I think that I mean, if there’s a recommendation by the condition the Commission to increase this then I’d consider it but I haven’t heard a number.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:59:14
I think one per six units for short-term spaces is too small. Should be, and you’re right, Abby, you usually see, you know, five or six bike parking stands that go together.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:59:41
I may have misunderstood where’s the one….

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  1:59:46
On the bottom, middle column.

David Loya – Community Development Director  1:59:50
The one per six units.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner
Yeah, that’s pretty small.

David Loya – Community Development Director
So this is short-term parking spaces for bikes. For every six units, you’d have one space. So if you had 12, you’d have two, etc, etc. And so if somebody rolls up to visit you, they have a place to put their bike short-term. In this other long-term spaces, there’s actually one per bedroom, which is way more bike parking than you would have. I mean, that’s, that’s a very aggressive number. I would be shocked to see [those spaces used] — I mean, I will be enthusiastic. But I will also be shocked to see if we don’t have you know, the first developer out the gate say there’s no way I’m putting in one long-term bike parking space per bedroom. That’s never going to pencil for me. And then we’re going to have to come back and re-decide that. [Note:  Yes, and then the project moves from Zoning Administrator review to Planning Commission review.] At this point, we don’t know. And so I think that’s pretty impressive. So that’s, that’s quite a bit of bicycle parking on multi-family project.

[NOTE:  David has hijacked the conversation and is misleading the Commissioners. The one-per-bedroom secured bike storage for residential apartments is indeed very good. The original comment from Commissioner Yodowiz was about ”those using bicycles to use their bike to go to offices, neighborhood-serving commercial uses.” As I pointed out in my comments, the Code would allow a 2,500 square foot restaurant – the size of the D Street Neighborhood Center, which a can hold 140 diners at a time – that will have just five bike short-term parking spaces. The 15 people who are employed there get one long-term space – a single bike parking space. For a 20,000 square-foot office space, only four long-term (i.e. employees) spaces would be required. This is sending the wrong message about encouraging bicycle use.]

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:00:51
And when we say bicycle parking, do we just what do we mean exactly? Do we mean covered locks secured storage? Or are we talking about just a metal rack that you put your front wheel in?

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:01:05
Short-term spaces. That’s exactly it. It’s a bike rack.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:01:11
Yeah, short-term spaces are typically a bike rack, it says in the next section down. (Aside: Make it so you can read it yourself.) “Short-term bicycle parking shall be located within 100 feet of the primary entrance of the structure or use it is intended serve.” And those would be typically bike racks. And then: “Long-term bike parking may be located in garages or other limited access areas for exclusive use by tenants, residents, or employees. Long-term bike parking may not be located within an area of a dwelling unit primarily intended to serve a different function.” So this has to be dedicated bike parking that is accessible to those residents within the building. Secured space.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:01:57
But we’re talking about a metal rack, right?

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:01:59
Metal rack? Maybe to hold the bike up but you’re talking inside a building with secure so long-term has access for exclusive use by tenants. So it’s going to be a structure that has a lock on it that tenants have a key for to get their bike once you get inside that space. Yeah, there may be racks that the bikes are sitting on, individually locked.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:02:23
But it’s not like a rack on the sidewalk.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:02:26
It’s a locker. It’s a bike locker. [Note:  An individual locker? No, it is not a locker. It could be, but unlikely.]

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:02:28
Yeah, I mean, this can be solved in any number of different ways. But the, you know, and we’ll leave that up to the developers themselves to figure out how to do that. But the key is that the public can’t access it, you can only access it if you’re a user of that building, whatever the building type is, and then it’s basically indoor and secure.

[NOTE: What the Community Developer is saying here is patently untrue. False. Secured bicycle storage is note required to be inside, as he has said four times here. The Code includes that secured bicycle storage can be an “area enclosed by a fence with a locked gate” and that it can be “within one hundred feet of an attendant or security guard” or “In an area that is monitored by a security camera.” This is not inside. And I do not consider an outside area that is monitored by a security camera to be secure. This discussed in my comments and suggestions for the Code.]

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:02:57
Okay, Joel, go ahead.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:03:06
We haven’t made any decision on increasing the number of bike parking spaces.

Scott Davies (Chair)
We can always do that.

Millissa Smith – Planning Commissioner 2:03:16
I personally feel like this is a very aggressive, you know, amount of bicycle parking that we’re already requiring. I would hesitate to want to require more myself. [Note: She may talking about bike parking per bedroom. Commissioner Yodowitz is talking about bike parking for commercial uses.]

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:03:26
Okay. Where are you at, Abby? Comfortable or want to change?

Abby Strickland – Commissioner  2:03:30
I’m comfortable where it stands. Okay.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:03:37
I’ll go along with my fellow Commissioners.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:03:40
Okay, let’s leave this one alone, then and put this in the column of things that we get to see what happens when we start seeing things happen.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:03:49
Okay, let me try to go through the rest of my list. On page 10 of the Code, auto sales. I’d like to clarify the definition of what that means as a prohibited use. Right now it says auto vehicle sales and rental are prohibited. One of the commenters, Mr. Weis, said what about Zipcars [Short-term rentals]. So I don’t know whether we need a Zoning Administrator interpretation and we wouldn’t want to put this in the Code something like rental cars on public streets or something like that are allowed, Zipcars or something like that. So doesn’t prohibit Zipcars within the Gateway area. Also like to clarify that a charging station is not considered an automobile use whether under that category under a new vehicle services And thirdly, I’d like to suggest that we allow a use of new vehicle sales of electric or non-gas-using vehicles, if they’re sold, like in an office setting, and not on a lot or something like that.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:05:33
Other Commissioners?

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:05:37
I’m fine with that kind of the Tesla model aiming. Yeah.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:05:41
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

Millisa Smith – Planning Commissioner 2:05:44
Would that fall under commercial uses, including retail, so it would be like a, or even at an office where they could come in and speak to a salesman.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:05:57
Yeah, what? I don’t know, I never bought a Tesla. I think I’ve walked by where they have them, like in an office-like setting and maybe the car is in in that setting. But it’s not like your traditional auto dealer.

Scott Davies (Chair)
Abby?

Abby Strickland – Commissioner
Nothing, I’m fine.

Scott Davies (Chair) 2:06:25
Staff — Do you want to speak to what this was trying to get at? And whether I think obviously, the concern of the Commission is that we’re going to, in some way limit electrical or vehicles that are going to reduce the kind of GHGs of fossil fuels that we’re after here, if I’m understanding everyone.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:06:43
Yeah, I think if C-8 reads auto in vehicle sales, lots and rental lots, that will probably cover it. And if you want, we can add additional, you know, language to exempt out you know, just to be clear, you can do Zipcar,

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:07:00
So an office is clearly not a lot, therefore, we don’t have to call it out because it’s just specifically calling out lots. Yeah, that’s, Is everyone comfortable with that? Okay. Good, keep going.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:07:15
Okay, page 43 of the Code. Under Windows.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:07:28
Under paragraph Two standards will start on the bottom of page 42 and carries over to page 43. Subsection C, says “Window films, mirrored glass and spandrel glass are prohibited along the ground for building frontage.” I would propose that we prohibit mirrored glass anywhere in the building. Also, I would like to clarify there or add ground floor windows need to be transparent, excepting buildings on the ground floor.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:08:20
What are the concerns that are kind of driving this? Just so I understand.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:08:26
I am not a fan of mirror glass. I think it’s repulsive. So right now just prohibitive along the ground floor only. And I think that’s too so people can look into buildings and see active uses and not feel like there’ll be in walled out of the building. Right. So that’s what I suggest that we have some sort of transparency requirement on the ground floor of anything that’s not a residential building. And prohibit mirrored glass anywhere in the building.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:09:13
Staff have a take on that suggestion?

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:09:18
Well, as I understand, the concern is to make sure that ground floor has transparent windows and in your read is that C does not in fact do that.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:09:33
I think what you’re saying is that it should be expanded to the buildings in general and not limited to exemptions on the ground floor.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:09:40
Well, I understand that with respect to mirrored glass, but are you suggesting that window films should be prohibited throughout the entire building?

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:09:51
No, I’m not.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:09:52
Just the ground floor. Yeah, so I guess I’m not sure how see doesn’t I mean, I guess we could just say you know ground floor, non-residential ground floor, Windows on non-residential buildings on ground floor shall be transparent.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:10:10
That feels like it would cover it.

[Note: The Commissioners missed this one. It is not “Windows on non-residential buildings on ground floor” be transparent. What’s desired is for commercial-use ground floor windows be transparent. It can be a commercial-use section of a residential building. It does not have to be the entire building being commercial-use.]

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:10:15
And then another: Mirrored glass is not allowed. Yes.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:10:24
I’m not sure what the implications of not allowing mirrored glass, I don’t know if there’s like energy savings or I don’t know if there’s if there’s some other kind of, you know, structural infrastructure component to mirrored glass. I don’t want to I don’t want to rule out something that might have some kind of environmental impact on the building. I don’t know.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:10:47
I’ll tell you mirror glass will have an environmental impact because it will cast a sunbeam at weird angles all over the place.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:11:04
Okay, well, go ahead, Peter.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:11:09
While we’re at it, here’s the scissor gate statement. Do we want to change that while we’re here?

Scott Davies (Chair)
No.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner
All right.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:11:20
We want to wait to hear what the City Council said. And wait for them to give us direction so that the scope of our decision, we get to kind of nail it and not have to revisit it. I’m still not sure where we land on window films. I think your suggestion for language that says the non-commercial residential first floor shall be transparent. Did I get that right?

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:11:43
Yeah, what I am is Windows shall be transparent on ground floor of non-residential buildings.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:11:48
That’s what I meant non-residential. I think we’re all Okay, is everyone okay with that I should just check in is how’s everyone feel?

Millisa Smith – Planning Commissioner 2:11:54
I’m totally okay with that. I just feel like it’s already written in on the top of page 70, we have this non-residential transparency standard of 65%.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:12:03
And then I have a second what I’m calling right now see, point five, which is mirrored glass is not allowed.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:12:12
Everyone, everyone feel comfortable with all of that, okay. Bueno. Next.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:12:23
This one, maybe I’ll ask staff, it’s a new proposal, but I didn’t see anything in here on screening of mechanical equipment? A whether we should adopt a provision to the effect of prohibiting the placement of mechanical equipment where it’s visible from street frontages or something like that.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:12:54
I think that would work in most cases, especially, you know, if you’re thinking of, you know, condensers and that sort of thing, I can even see a requirement that you know, condensers, be on, you know, in special structures or, you know, on the on rooftops. Typically that can be done. There are instances where, you know, you know, for instance, backflow preventers are necessarily above ground in the street right of way for safety reasons. And so if we’re considering, you know, all kinds of mechanical equipment, including, you know, other pieces of infrastructure I think we’d have to get a little more subtle. But if we’re talking about actual pieces of machinery that are serving the building, we could probably write something like that

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:13:52
Concerns or questions from the rest of the Commission about shielding actual mechanical equipment. Okay.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:14:02
So I’m going to freeform it a little bit here. This is this is me “rapping.” Okay. So I’m going to I’m going to write something that is to the effect of mechanical equipment shall be either inside the structure, [or] inside structures built to contain them outside of front setbacks, street side setbacks, or on rooftops.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:14:40
Are you saying the same kind of height? What kind of height restrictions are there on the rooftop?

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:14:50
That’s a good question. And they should probably be shielded by a parapet. [NOTE:  Mechanical equipment is specified as being shielded by a fence. A parapet is not necessary. David Loya has made this up. As he acknowledges late, he does not know much about this.] And if you wanted to make solar eight feet, I would guess right and recommend up to eight feet.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:15:06
I think solar is an exception. I would, I would hope mechanical equipment would be lower than eight feet. And typically it is.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:15:18
I mean, I have no idea. I have my own personal experience, but I am not an expert in this field. So I can’t I can’t make any statements to that.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:15:33
Are these covered in the Building Code?

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:15:36
Not design specifications. I mean, the, you know, mechanical equipment can go on rooftops? Oftentimes it is. But I think that, you know, if you’re going to allow for it on a rooftop for visual purposes, you probably want a parapet to shield it. [Note: A parapet is not necessary. On even a three-story flat-roofed building, if the equipment is set back from the edge (as is required by code), the mechanicals are not visible from the street.] You know, on a 50-story building it doesn’t matter if you have an eight foot parapet that’s probably not taking up the entire building. Also, you know, it’s just periodic. So I think that’s a reasonable place to start. And maybe it’s something we can try and see if it, you know, comes out the way we think it’s going to.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:16:15
How’s the Commission feel about that? Sorry? Yeah, my

Millissa Smith – Planning Commissioner 2:16:17
My only thought was that you could almost read it with more flexibility, something like, to the extent feasible mechanical equipment will be shielded from view by something compatible with the adjacent architecture, and then just leave it at that to the extent feasible. I wonder if getting too specific on this could again pigeonhole it. So that’s my thought is maybe staff could draft something that has some flexibility.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:16:41
Yeah, I think with the Housing Accountability Act, we’re going to wind up seeing no parapets, because they’ll say it’s not feasible. And, you know, we’ll have really nothing to come back. To come back with we have to have standards that are explicit. And if they’re not working the way that we think they’re working, then we can change them.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:17:00
But it has to be more specific.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:17:01
Yeah, I would I would recommend an objective standard on that one.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:17:05
Okay, where’s everyone else learning in support of an objective standard? And you’re saying eight, an eight foot parapet?

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:17:12
Yeah, I would suggest six feet is enough. And that it’s different than solar.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:17:22
I mean, mechanical to me does not imply like moving parts. In some way, like solar isn’t really mechanical, right?

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:17:33
I mean, I don’t know, I just I think it would be considered part of the mechanical systems of the building, even though it doesn’t have moving parts, which is why I tried to draw attention to, you know, backflow preventers, because those are required to be in an area that’s accessible. So they can be serviced, or in emergency situations.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:17:55
I don’t know what the right answer is here.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:17:59
Why don’t you run with that language, we’ll limit it to five feet. And then six feet, excuse me, six feet. And we’ll see how it goes. If a developer comes in and says it’s got to be six and a half, or we just can’t build this building, we’ll have another follow up conversation.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:18:16
They’re getting comfortable with that. Okay.

Joel Yodowitz – Planning Commissioner  2:18:21
Okay, I’m getting close to the end. Page 59 active uses. Paragraph aids, C says, active users are permitted to spill out into open space if they provide seating and shading. So if a restaurant or some other active similar act of use puts tables and chairs, they can take over the entire open space. I don’t think that’s fair to non-customers of that building. [NOTE: This is public space – accessible from the street. Not just for the building.] So maybe we like put some sort of percentage in there saying you know, active users are permitted to spell out up to x percent of the open space. If you provide seating and shading. I’m not sure what that percentage is. I would suggest something like 10% or 20%.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:19:21
Other Commissioners concerned about this language or feel comfortable with staff recommendation?

[Note: I know this is phrase that’s used regularly – when staff makes recommendations to the Commission – but in this case it is the draft Gateway Code that we are dealing with. Staff doesn’t necessarily have a position. Commissioner Yodowitz brought up an issue. Staff has not yet been asked for their position, nor did staff weigh in.)

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:19:36
What do we think, gang. Support a change, or comfortable with staff position.

Millissa Smith – Planning Commissioner  2:19:44
Comfortable with staff.

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:19:45
Yeah, comfortable.

Abby Strickland – Commissioner  2:19:51
Yeah, I’m comfortable with staff. I’m also just — Yeah, I mean, if we were to put this into practice and somebody comes up with out with a restaurant and they provide us a site plan, like they’ll and…We say something like 10%, like we’re going to measure or ensure that they like I just… I’m just trying to understand like how that would be enforced this 10%. So I’m happy with the way it is just trying to put it into practical terms. [Note:  She does not understand the issue. I don’t believe any of the Commissioners other than Joel understand the issue here. The issue is for privately-owned publicly-accessible open space. It already states that there will be a maximum of 40% of tables and chairs, and a maximum of 50% awnings. The question is whether a single business – a restaurant – can dominate the space. This is not in their site plan for the restaurant. The restaurant is principally permitted – there is no discretionary approval process.  

There is the possibility that a project will provide privately-owned publicly-accessible open space, as required by Code, and then that space will be “taken over” and will not really be publicly accessible. ]

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:20:13
Okay, let’s leave that one. That’s all. Okay. All right, well, I appreciate everyone’s work and everyone’s put together to come prepared for these discussions, that’s useful. Staff, you got everything you needed out of that portion of that, before we move on. I’d like to transition now to correspondence and communications and check in and see if we have any correspondence from Planning Commission members.

Start:  47
End:  2:20    Total:  93 minutes.  One hour, 33 minutes.

2:20:31

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:20:46
Seeing none, I would like to check in if we have any correspondence from staff.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:20:58
Yeah, there’s, there’s two quick things. One, we have changed the way that we produce minutes. Historically, we put a brief synopsis if the person gave their name, we say who they were a brief synopsis of what they said. And let’s get into the agenda items. There was a time early on in, you know, reviewing all the general plan work, that we shifted that because there was some concern about, you know, how the public comments were being portrayed. I think it’s useful to have that information in the record written in a brief format. So you can go back and see what folks have said. And so I guess, if I can get a nod, that that’s something that’s important to you all, then I’ll bring it back as an agenda item. If you don’t want to see, you know, these brief descriptions of what folks said during public comment on your agendas, and you’re fine with us just saying three members of the public spoke on this item, then, I won’t put it on an agenda. So it’s not a formal decision. But if you’re and I don’t want to get into deliberations if you’re just flash in the pan, like they’re good the way they are, or I need time to think about it, we can move on.

Abby Strickland – Commissioner  2:22:17
I would say staff’s time is probably better spent and we all likely to into the hearings or go back and watch them anyways. So I’d be happy and are okay with removing the comments from the public specifically like that. [Note:  Missing the point of being able to read the minutes and scan – not watch a long video.]

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:22:33
I don’t want to actually take a vote and have deliberations I’m just throwing that out there. If you’re, you know.
Scott Davies (Chair)  2:22:37
I’m fine with how it’s being done right now. And it’s, you know, staff, assessing the comments turned into a whole separate thing. So I think we got here for a reason, my think we should stay here. Okay.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:22:51
The other item is that there’s a Zoning Administrator hearing that we’ll be holding tomorrow at noon. 12:30. I stand corrected. And the Zoning Administrator hearing is on a, you know, small multifamily projects, there is a lot of neighborhood concern about the project, because the Zoning Administrator is one person making a decision.  [Note:  It is likely this is a false statement. Perhaps they are concerned because they don’t like the project.]  And the Planning Commission is, you know, seven. What I’m going to be doing is after taking the action on that, extending the appeal period for that project to 14 days, which allows us to come and report that project to you your next hearing. And what the question will be to you at that time is whether you want to appeal the Zoning Administrator’s decision. Typically a zoning decision has a 10 day appeal period. [Note:  Make a 14 day period for all Gateway Zoning Administrator decisions too ?]  So I’ll be extending that for the Commission to be able to take that into consideration. Zoning Administrator, the Planning Commission by process outlined in the land use Code can appeal a Zoning Administrator decision. But if I don’t extend that, then you won’t have the opportunity to so I just wanted to let you know about that. And

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:24:07
at what point will we have details of the project so we can review and prepare?

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:24:12
Well, if you want to you can look on the Zoning Administrator agenda and review the materials are on there now. And we’ll provide you a very brief staff report with a link to that agenda for your May 14 hearing and the only question will be do you want to take this up as an appeal?

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:24:32
Not the appeal itself but itself? Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the heads up. What

Peter Lehman, Planning Commissioner  2:24:37
would the process be? Would we if we formally appealed what would

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:24:45
happen then staff would bring the appeal hearing to the Planning Commission, and you’d be able to you have three options on appeal, you can affirm the decision of the Zoning Administrator. If you’re Planning to affirm the decision of the Zoning Administrator I would strongly encourage you to reject the opportunity to appeal it you can affirm in part so you can change what we said or you can deny the project you can actually reverse the decision.

2:25:17
So just to be clear, we would be choosing to then elevate it to an appeal to ourselves.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:25:24
Yes, if you wanted to appeal my decision and what that does, sorry,

2:25:29
we’d have the same power that a citizen would in this scenario correct a citizen you

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:25:32
always you always do but because of the timeline here you wouldn’t have the opportunity to to take that appeal up.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:25:39
Understand so before our next meeting, review that and we can all come to a decision as to whether we want to see it further in the appeal Correct. Time for

Joe Mateer  2:25:48
I would further kind of just say anytime there’s a Zoning Administrator hearing you have the opportunity to appeal those decisions and they’re all on this website as well. So it’s just not you know, this particular one it’s any action the Zoning Administrator has taken you have the ability to appeal

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:26:06
and to those hearings also ended up on the City’s YouTube channel.

David Loya – Community Development Director  2:26:11
No, they don’t they’re they’re not broadcast Okay.

Scott Davies (Chair)  2:26:16
Thank you all right. Well, there being no further business this meeting is adjourned.

2:26:23