Many thanks to the City Council and City Staff for your tireless,
thoughtful work on our housing element and housing development plans. As
the city continues plans for housing on the downtown parking lots, I hope
you will also consider housing on one or more civic center parking lots.
Clearly the state wants more housing near public transit as evidenced by SB
79. Housing near transit will also be closest to other amenities for new
residents: shopping, jobs, city services, recreational facilities, etc.
"Under the proposed legislation, apartment buildings would be the tallest
directly adjacent to a transit stop, stepping down with a quarter-mile and
again within a half-mile. The transit systems would be further separated
into “tiers” based on the type of system, frequency of service and where
the transit agencies are located. Heavy rail and high-frequency commuter
trains — such as BART, Caltrain and LA Metro’s B and D lines — would have
the most intensive housing development near stations and ferry stops or
commuter rail, such as the SMART Rail, having the least."
Given the current opposition by downtown business and property owners for
development on the 3 downtown parking lots, could the city instead consider
splitting the housing development between fewer downtown parking lots and
one or more civic center parking lots? It appears that one key point of
resistance to development on the downtown parking lots is the cost of
building a high-rise parking structure to maintain and possibly increase
the parking capacity adjacent to downtown businesses. One key advantage of
moving some of the new housing to civic center parking lots is that there
is a large portion of land that can be converted to parking quickly and
much less expensively than a high rise parking structure. At one of the
city council meetings a developer suggested creating street level parking
along the space between Alma St. and the railroad tracks adjacent to the
Civic Center and Burgess Park. Since this just requires paving level land
already adjacent to existing facilities, there would be no need to build an
expensive high rise parking structure to replace the parking that would be
displaced due to development on one of the 6 parking lots within the Civic
Center/Burgess Park complex. This has been done successfully in San Carlos
and Burlingame (see below)
Note that building on an existing parking lot on the Civic Center/Burgess
complex doesnt require any loss of critical parkland or recreational
facilities. I have heard comments to the effect that the Civic Center
complex was removed from consideration for housing due to the communitys
unified strong opposition to putting housing on existing parkland. This
proposal continues to protect parkland, as it should.
Perhaps this approach would alleviate the concerns of downtown business and
property owners and remove the threats of lawsuits and ballot initiatives.
Is this an option worth exploring? If so, is it being considered? If not,
why not? I recognize that a lot of outreach, research, and assessment has
gone into the current housing element and plans for development on the 3
downtown parking lots, so am only respectfully submitting another option
that may meet the needs of state mandates, the city, business & property
owners, and residents of this wonderful city.
[image: image.png]
[image: image.png]
An example of similar parking near the railroad in San Carlos which has
been quite successful
[image: image.png]
Another example in Burlingame
[image: image.png]
Regards, Brian
======================
Brian Kissel
brian.kissel@gmail.com
Mobile: 650.397.1414
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