Posted by Peter Carpenter a resident of Atherton: Lindenwood 0 hours ago Peter Carpenter is a registered user. Your comment is now live. Because you are a registered user you are be able to edit your comment for the next five minutes to correct any errors or typos. Almanac -"Commissioners Michele Tate, Camille Kennedy and Katherine Strehl voted against approving the project at all. As a result, the matter will have to be brought back to the commission because city staff wasn't prepared for that decision and must now draft new "findings" for why the project shouldn't be approved." Draft minutes: ""ACTION: Motion and second (Strehl/Kennedy) to continue the item to the July 22, 2019 Planning Commission meeting with direction to staff to bring back findings for denial with public hearing and public comment; passes 3-1 with Commissioners Kennedy, Strehl and Tate supporting, Commissioner Barnes opposed, Commissioner Riggs abstaining, and Commissioners DeCardy and Doran absent.” And yet the staff report for the 22 July meeting does NOT include "findings for denial with public hearing and public comment. Why has the PC's direction been ignored? Who is in charge - the Planning Commission or the staff? Here is what I sent to the PC weeks ago: ""The size of the Hampton Inn 1704 ECR project, with an 46% increase in size with FAR of 1.1, greatly exceeds the 0.75 Base Level FAR for ECR-NE Low Density zoning. While the added size provides substantial economic gain to the developer, we find that prospective revenues from the Transient Occupancy Tax--proposed to offset the developer's economic gain--are an inappropriate and insufficient public benefit to justify the neighborhood impact of the project's size. The project is rejected on this basis." Note - if the hotel has 70 rooms under a 1.1 FAR vs 50 rooms with the Base Level .75 FAR then the increased TOT contribution to the city coffers from granting a Public Benefit Bonus is in fact only $156,000 a year. Received on Thu Jul 18 2019 - 12:48:55 PDT
