Thank you Deanna for your interpretation of caps in ConnectMenlo. My Question: Is there a cap for office? What I discovered: Staff takes the square footage of office demolished for new housing and hotel projects and places that number into the unused square footage to be distributed to the next office development application. What’s wrong with this approach: This kind of internal accounting negates the City’s professed concern for the jobs/housing imbalance. It is a Council and community understanding that the housing deficit is not good and needs to be corrected. However, when the City’s good fortune is that an application for housing project has been filed, it makes little sense to transfer the removed office sf into a credit bank for more office. This approach is worse than treading water. Instead of the City minimizing impacts to community, we are instead adding impacts A possible solution: Council needs to create a policy whereby housing is valued more than office and when office is demolished for housing, the amount of that sf is discarded, not added to the office allowed under the cap. While your response did not clearly explain Staff’s accounting methods, this sentence was a hint. “The data is more refined than what was presented in 2018, which did not evaluate the existing square footage that would be credited towards the maximum development potential.” An attachment to the March 26, 2019 Staff report shows three projects that involved the demolition of office for 2 housing projects and 1 hotel for a total of 137,211 sq. of office. * 111 Independence -15,100 sf * Menlo Uptown -108,411 sf * Hotel Moxy - 13,700 sf Am I to understand that this amount extends the office cap by 137,211 sq ft. This accounting method is not mentioned in the March 26, 2019 Staff Report. Is it explained in Connectmenlo and if so, can you please give me the page number? Brielle Johnck On Nov 1, 2019, at 4:09 PM, Chow, Deanna M Hi Brielle, Thank you for your patience. Hopefully, I can provide some clarity. The August 6, 2018 staff report was an information item, and as such, it did not require and the City Council did not take action or provide direction. As indicated in the staff report, the information was preliminary and staff anticipated bringing back a more detailed comprehensive discussion for Council feedback in the future. On March 26, 2019, the City Council initiated the General Plan two-year review and conducted a study session. For reference, the staff report is available at the following link: https://www.menlopark.org/DocumentCenter/View/21086/SS1-20190326-ConnectMenlo-review-CC?bidId = This report includes more detailed and updated information regarding the maximum allowable development potential. The data is more refined than what was presented in 2018, which did not evaluate the existing square footage that would be credited towards the maximum development potential. Table 2 in the March 26, 2019 staff report summarizes the proposed non-residential development square footage (at that time), and shows that it falls within the approximately 3.66 million square feet identified in the General Plan (inclusive of the reaffirmed development potential and the additional 2.3 million square feet of net new development in the Bayfront Area). The table also shows that the proposed non-residential development complies with the more refined land use square footages studied in the program EIR for the General Plan. An updated chart from August 2019 is provided in the following link: https://www.menlopark.org/DocumentCenter/View/23346/ConnectMenlo-Project-Summary-Table City staff continues to carefully monitor development applications to determine whether additional environmental review or a general plan amendment would be necessary to process any of the applications. My apologies for the delay in response. If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out again. Regards, Deanna Deanna M. Chow Interim Community Development Director City Hall - 1st Floor 701 Laurel St. tel 650-330-6733 menlopark.org http://www.menlopark.org/ > Received on Tue Nov 12 2019 - 12:53:05 PST
