Honorable Mayor Wolosin and Council Members,
As you approve zoning changes in support of the revised Housing Element, please also enact the following:
1. Retain the requirement “to apply for an amendment to the Specific Plan and complete the necessary environmental review” in the case of commercial development exceeding the amount permitted by the ECR/Downtown Specific Plan.
This is inappropriately deleted in Section 50, Exhibit A, of Attachment F of the staff report regarding amendments to the ECR/D Specific Plan.
Rationale: The Maximum Allowable Development (page G16 of the Specific Plan) serves as a cap to commercial development unless/until there is appropriate environmental review and approval of an amendment to the Specific Plan itself. Additional commercial development beyond the MAD was NOT part of the SEIR for the revised Housing Element so removal of this requirement from the Specific Plan necessitates a broader (S)EIR evaluation, public review, and mitigation now.
The above extra hoops to surpass the MAD for commercial development might well cause a developer to opt for more housing than commercial development if their project might otherwise exceed the MAD. This is a positive point to be made to HCD because it affects development in the heart of Menlo Park near transit.
2. Add a requirement to retain the amount of existing restaurant/retail space as part of the ECR/SE and ECR/SW zoning districts, at least. This is particularly important for ECR/SE where future approvals would be ministerial because at least one site was on the prior housing inventory list (where the Big Five Shopping Center is). Making this change NOW would become part of a ministerial approval; the ability to preserve important businesses in the future would otherwise be lost.
Rationale: The anticipated large increase of resident population will require more local goods and services. Good planning translates to retaining at least as much restaurant/retail space as existed when the Housing Element was submitted. Otherwise, these important businesses could be displaced by Office spaces (more lucrative to developers), forcing residents to dine and shop in other cities. It is already hard enough to find certain goods and services in our own town.
The City of Menlo Park should not turn a blind eye on the sales tax revenue that would be lost to other cities, either. There are no current zoning protections for our shopping centers that are important to residents throughout our town. So, include such a requirement. Doing so should not trigger an EIR or diminish opportunities for Housing.
Residential communities need dining and shopping sites. Protect them!
3. Alter the allowable amount of Office in Specific Plan projects (and in other zoning districts). This change is critical to make NOW in zoning districts that could be subject to ministerial review (e.g., ECR/SE) because there will be no opportunity to make such changes in the future.
Some potential ways to accomplish this:
a. Exclude additional Office at the Bonus level
b. Stop allowing Office to replace Retail/Restaurant and other non-Office uses in the calculation of what is considered “net new” commercial development. In other words, Office space that displaces existing community serving uses should all be counted as “net new”, not just the incremental square footage.
c. Alter the allowable percentage of Office and Medical Office from 50% total FAR to an amount that creates a desired jobs/housing balance (easy to calculate)
Rationale: Since the time that the Specific Plan was created, business practices have changed so that far more workers are crammed into Office spaces. To attain a healthy balance of jobs and residents, the amount of allowable Office should be far lower than is currently allowed.
While the Specific Plan anticipated net new Retail/Restaurant space along with Housing and Office, the reality is that a large net decline of Retail/Restaurant space has occurred instead at the same time as an unanticipated boom of Office space. Housing creation has not kept pace with Office development either. Until now, no zoning changes have been made to alter that divergence from balanced growth envisioned in the Plan.
An ongoing imbalance of Office to other development will exacerbate traffic as residents seek goods and services elsewhere, and local workers are forced to commute. Limits on potential Office space could encourage housing creation in a way that simply "allowing" more housing density does not.
Do not kick the can down the road on these matters. It is not too late to make important changes such as those described above. None should require an EIR. Developers can and do change their minds, so it is imperative that zoning rules are in place to guide development in the desired direction.
I would be happy to discuss these points with you.
Patti Fry,
Former Menlo Park Planning Commissioner
PS Additional comments sent previously by me are appended below.
Patti Fry
>
Nov 5, 2023, 1:15 PM
to planning.commission, city.council
Honorable Planning Commissioners (with copy to City Council),
Following are comments that further my oral comments made when this topic was addressed previously by the Planning Commission. These focus mostly on the El Camino Real/Downtown Specific Plan area:
I am fearful that we residents will lose more restaurants and resident-serving retail and other personal services businesses with additional development at the same time our community is projected to increase dramatically in population. That will reduce quality of residential life and increase traffic as we have to drive to other cities to get needed goods and services.
Our Downtown and El Camino Real corridor comprise not only the heart of our city, they also contain the "neighborhood" shopping and personal services for my own area of Central Menlo, as well as Districts 3 and 4. Unlike other towns of similar size, our "downtown core" contains only a few blocks on Santa Cruz Avenue, and has had many community-serving businesses along El Camino Real as well. But there is no requirement to retain any such businesses along El Camino Real except at the intersection with Santa Cruz Avenue. We will need them - and more - in this corridor to serve new and existing residents.
There is nothing in the rezoning that will prevent further Office development from occurring, pushing out more restaurants and other small businesses that will be needed by a growing population. We know what happens from experience when FAR is increased, with the examples of the Middle Plaza and Springline developments after the ECR/D Specific Plan was adopted. Each of those projects maximized overall FAR - and Office FAR - at their Base and Bonus levels, respectively, while falling far short of the allowable number of Residential units. By HUNDREDS more of potential units in each project! This can happen again, even with increased potential housing density.
Why? Because there has been no requirement to create housing, or to tie non-residential development to housing development, even in zoning districts labeled as Mixed Use. Further, the ratio of allowable Office to housing or other uses simply exacerbates the existing - and increasing - imbalance of jobs and housing in our city. As shown in the attachment, in the ECR/D Specific Plan area, a jobs/housing ratio of 6.67-20.00 jobs/housing unit, assuming contemporary job densities, is baked into the zoning where Office can be 50% of the FAR. That has to change.
With the new Housing Element, the remainder of ECR-SE where the Big 5/BevMo shopping center exists is now designated as no longer subject to discretionary review. Without restrictions on Office, and without a requirement to retain ANY of the existing businesses, we should expect more of the same: the maxing of Office FAR, underwhelming amount of housing - if any - despite even higher density being allowed, and the loss of essential businesses that serve us residents.
Worse, there is a new FAR incentive to develop more housing with no restriction on the ratio of Office to Housing or requirement that such additional FAR be utilized solely for residential uses.
In order to encourage a robust residential community, I recommend the rezoning:
* Limit Office to the Base level (i.e., not allowed at the Bonus level) in all zoning districts. This can be readdressed when Menlo Park needs more jobs or Office space.
* Require a minimum amount of residential units for all projects in mixed use districts, not just projects that choose to be mixed use.
* Reduce the amount of Office allowed so that each mixed use project with housing provides more units than jobs (see attached easy calculator).
This should incorporate a sliding scale similar to the Base level already in use for R-MU in the Bayfront area. [note that the Bonus level allowances in R-MU allow jobs to exceed housing units]
* Modify the zoning for ECR-SE [location of Big Five shopping center, and more] and ECR-SW [location of Safeway shopping center, and more] so we do not lose valuable revenue-producing and community-serving restaurants and retail, by requiring at least the existing amount of retail SF to remain Retail/Restaurant. There is precedence -- the requirement to provide 10,000 SF of retail on the Middle Plaza project area. Only that amount was constructed. So it is essential to require a minimum amount in our existing shopping areas.
We will need more, not fewer, restaurants and resident-serving businesses to serve a growing population. This rezoning effort must address the inherent imbalance allowed by zoning that allows so much Office to displace non-Office uses. Further, simply allowing more housing density will not result in an improvement in the housing/jobs imbalance unless there are restrictions on allowed Office.
Sincerely,
Patti Fry, former Planning Commissioner
PS ECR-SE is not mentioned in the notes to the exhibit on page A116 of the staff report about maximum height. Why?