 If you can give us just one moment, we're having a slight technical difficulty. Thank you. Can you hear me now? Thank you. Yeah. Can you hear me? Oh, there we go. All right, it sounds like we're in business. Okay, so all that I was doing was in the ether of nothingness. So let's try this again. We had a little bit of technical difficulty. We apologize. So you'll notice that I am sitting in the council chambers with some staff members. So this is kind of a test drive for our hybrid board meeting approach. And so at this time, I'd like to call to order the regularly scheduled meeting of the city of Santa Rosa Design Review Board. Due to the provisions of the governor's executive orders, N2520 and N2920, which has spent certain requirements of the Brown Act, the Design Review Board will be participating via Zoom webinar, or in my case, sitting in council chambers. Members of the public can participate in the meeting virtually by going to zoom.us slash join and entering the meeting ID 812-5014-4897 or by calling toll free 1877-853-5257 and enter the meeting ID I just read. You can access public comment through the Zoom link or by calling in. Additional information is available at the city's website, srcity.org slash designer review board. In addition, the meeting is streamed on the city's website and also the city's YouTube channel and can also be viewed on Comcast channel 28. So recording secretary, can we have a roll call please? Yes, let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of board member Wicks and vice chair Hedgepath. Excellent, thanks so much. I have a feeling item two is incorrect on the agenda. So we're just gonna skip it. And then we'll go to item three, approval of minutes. So board, did you guys get a chance to look at the minutes from our last meeting? Any comments, changes? Okay, seeing none, let's get those minutes approved and in the record. At this time, if there are any members of the public wishing to speak on items, not on tonight's agenda, but within the purview of the design review board, you can raise your hand in Zoom and the recording secretary will recognize you and give the ability to speak. I'll see you in any hands at this time. Seeing no hands, we will close public comments. Item five, board business. At this time, we read the statement of purpose. Design review board statement of purpose, zoning code chapter 2052.030F, project review. The review authority shall consider the location, design, site plan configuration and the overall effect of the proposed project upon surrounding properties and the city in general. Review shall be conducted by comparing the proposed project to the general plan, any applicable specific plan, applicable zoning code standards and requirements, consistency of the project within the city's design guidelines, architectural criteria for special areas and other applicable city requirements, e.g. city policy statements and development plans. Are there any board reports, board member reports at this time? Seeing none, we'll move to department reports. Amy. Thank you, Chair Weigel. First off, I'd like to introduce Michelle Montoya. She's one of Planning's administrative secretaries and she will be the new board recording secretary. So we're very excited to have Michelle serving in this role. Also, I'm Amy Nicholson and I will be serving as the new board staff liaison. I've presented to several of you over the years and I'm certainly thrilled to be serving in this role. Just a few other items of interest, as the Chair previously mentioned, we will be moving to hybrid meeting options to this board and also the Cultural Heritage Board and the Planning Commission starting in September. So this would be an option for board members and staff to participate in the chamber. Public participation in the chamber is pending at this time. We've also aligned the Planning Commission and Cultural Heritage Board meeting start times with the design review board. So all three will be starting at 4.30. In addition, the Planning staff are working on a short-term rental ordinance. This is going to the City Council on October 12th as an urgency ordinance. We also released a Climate Action Plan vulnerability assessment this week and this is part of the City's general plan update process which includes an update to our general plan. And this document incorporates climate adaptation measures which then can be included in the general plan. We also released a Youth Engagement Contest for the general plan update recently and just kicked off the housing element. So a lot's going on in planning and that concludes my update. Thanks. Thanks, Amy. At this time, I know, I think Adam and Michael probably know you, but John may not. So Amy is a senior city planner and we've had Amy a number of times present to our board and I'm super excited about getting to work with Amy as our new staff liaison. And if you guys wanted to say anything in addition to that, you are welcome to. I'll jump in and just to both Amy and Michelle, something you always love to hear, big shoes to feel for both of you. Amy, haven't worked with you. I absolutely know that this is something that you are ready to do and jump in. So welcome. And Michelle, this last couple of weeks of correspondence and such. Love hearing from you and look forward to working with you and welcome on board. And I'd just like to echo Michael and Drew's welcome. And Amy and Michelle both, it's great to have you guys be fully on board with the Derby. It's been great to work with you. Michelle and the Waterways Advisory Committee and Amy on a couple of the other initiatives in planning and seeing you present before us. And so it's great to have you as our liaison. And yeah, that'd be great to have you sort of grab the reins and the chorales a bit too. So thank you both. And I'm looking forward to this. Excellent. We have any statements of abstention on the concept items listed for tonight? I didn't think so. Cool. And then Michelle, just for future reference, we don't do a number eight consent items that's listed. Oh, that we're adding? Okay, cool, cool, cool. All right, so we can talk about that later. So this time we're moving to our scheduled items and what I'd like to do at the request of staff is I'd like to reorder the items just a little bit. So I'd like to move item 9.2 up to the front of our items this evening. And then we'll proceed to 9.1 and 9.3. So without further ado, let's start item 9.2 which is a concept design review of Ridley Avenue family apartments. Not requiring a CEQA action 1801 Ridley Avenue DR-21044 and I'll turn it over to I think Susie or Amy at this time. Thank you very much. And staff is actually forwarding a request from the applicant to continue the item due to some scheduling conflicts. During the time they'd also like to prepare a landscape plan and enhance the architectural drawings. They will, new sets of plans will be uploaded for the next meeting and thank you for your consideration. Excellent, thanks Susie. So what this means for us guys is we would need to take a vote to continue the item to a date certain which I believe the date requested is September 2nd. So I would need somebody to make a motion to continue the item to a date certain and then we would vote on it. But before we do that, out of respect for the public who may have attended this meeting wanting to speak on this item, I just like to open public comment to members of the public if they want to share with us any of their thoughts and they'll have three minutes to speak and that'll be controlled by our recordings actually. So please, if you have a desire to speak on this project specifically Ridley Avenue please raise your hand in the Zoom. You'll be recognized and then you'll be able to speak. Thanks. Okay, Sandra S, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute yourself. If you could please start by stating your name for the record and then you'll have three minutes to speak. Thank you. Is Sandra out? Yes, I'm here. Thank you. Okay, can you please do it again? My name is Sandra Stone and this project is located to the east of my property. My question about this project is I see development all around me. Revello Drive is completed and has two stories. The subdivision rather large across Marlowe is in process and it's two stories. There's one planned and they've leveled the ground further down Gernville before Ridley and it's two stories. So with this three-story project, I'm wondering if the city is gonna move into this kind of development. If we shouldn't get some kind of orange tape construction or something previous so people in the area can see the visual impact, there's people far beyond right here that are gonna see this apartment building if it's three stories. It's new, it's different, it's in a rural community. People at the school and the church and across Gernville Road don't even know this project is being contemplated as a three-story apartment building. And thank you for listening. Thank you so much for your comments. Staff will record those and they'll put them into the record and pass them on to the applicant and then when we review the project, hopefully at the next meeting, that will be in our packet to review and address. Thank you so much. Any other public comment? Yes, I have Zoom user DR Reed. You should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. If you could please start by stating your name for the record. Okay, my name is Diane Reed and I live at the end of Larry Drive, which would be kind of catty corner to that property. So according to the NHA, in the regional housing needs, that they're the allocation that they're currently studying with the state. When I review that, and I know that you get an extra, the builders are gonna get extra money if they go low income. But according to this article that I have, low income isn't the only need that's needed in Northern California. Northwest Santa Rosa, and I've lived here since 1969, has always been a community serving single family or small single family homes for young couples and people to purchase. It does seem like because of what they're offering that people are impacted, the builders wanna get as many units in as possible. But according to this study by the state, we are really short and even Burbank Housing wrote an article that we are short. We are still really short on smaller units and units for first time home buyers and retired or older people or people of low income to purchase. So it does seem that we have a fair amount of apartments. And I do suggest that we do a little more research into how many apartments do we wanna have in Northwest Santa Rosa? Is it gonna be, especially here on Marlowe, is it become an imbalance? Because it's statistically, if you build too many low income apartments, you end up with a very low income area, which can also cause problems. Having come from projects in Southern California and all around the state where when you concentrate that many apartments and low income, it starts becoming a concern. So it would be really, my suggestion would be to, if they're gonna do this to maybe have a little more incentive for first time home buyers and maybe make this project more geared to even seniors that have less cars, such as Zinfandel and Vintage Park. My sister lives there and she doesn't have a car. My dad lived in Zinfandel and many of the residents don't have vehicles. The big problem with this site is the street is just really not adequate. And the parking that they're suggesting for 50 units with some three bedroom units, 74 cars is just not adequate. You got visitors, so that's my comment. Thank you. Thanks so much. We'll enter that, your comments into the record. Any other hands raised? I'm not seeing any other hands at this time. Cool, and then did we have any other email correspondence or phone calls? No, we did not. Excellent, so not seeing any other hands. And I think all the emails have been entered into the record at this time as either late correspondence or they're on iLegislate. I'm going to close. Chair Weigel, it looks like we did just get another hand that popped up. Sure, no problem. Well, let's turn it over to them then. Trevor, you should now have a prompt allowing yourself to unmute. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. If you could please start by stating your name for the record. My name is Trevor Ham. I live at 1790 Larry Drive. Thank you so much. That would be the property to the West of that in the Northwest. All I have to say is impacting my life, impacting my view, my quiet space, light, my air quality. I just wish they'd add more visual screening like more trees, water quality. I'm on a water well. So I need this area to fill up my well. I don't plan on hooking up to the city anytime soon. I like my water. It's just fine. I was also wondering if you will ask to provide story polls so we can actually see the shape in design just like Sandy said. And that's kind of all I have to say pretty much. I'm kind of disappointed it's three stories. I think that's a bit much for the area. You could just look right down into my backyard and it's just, it ruins everything about me living on my favorite street in Santa Rosa. That's all. Thank you so much for your comments. And then, so do we have any more hands raised or was that it? We'll check one last time and then we'll close public comment. There are no more hands at this time. Excellent. So we'll close public comment and bring it back to the board. And like we talked about, I'd like to entertain a motion to continue this project to a date certain. So if a board member would be so inclined to make that motion, that would be fantastic. I'll make a motion to continue the Ridley Avenue Family Apartments Project DR-1-044 to the date certain September 2nd, correct, true. To September 2nd, and I'll waive for the reading of the text. Thanks, Adam. Do I hear a second? I'll second the motion. We'll go with John this time. We'll give John the second. He beat Michael to it by a hair, just like an Olympic swimmer at the end of the pool there. That's right. So hearing a motion and a second to continue the project to a date certain. Let's have a vote, a roll call vote please, according to Secretary. Board member Birch. Aye. Board member McHugh. Aye. Board member Sharon. Aye. Board member, it looks like we have lost Board member Wolski. Give me just one moment. Did we forget to admit Sheila today? No, she had a technical difficulty. Oh, okay. So actually, can we, do you know if we can pause the, let's pause the vote until Sheila can be here, I guess. Yes. And then we can take the vote. Can we do that, Michael? I can't remember. I think you can. I would say that there's, we have a quorum without her. So let's just finish the vote then and then we'll figure out our technical, let's do that, yeah, just to keep it moving. So I'm the last one. Great, and then Chair Weigel. Aye. Okay, let the record reflect that this motion has passed with four votes yes, with Board members Wolski, Wix and Vice Chair Hedgepath are absent. Okay, so then to get Sheila's technical issue resolved, I'm gonna, let's say let's take a five minute, five minute recess. So let's take a five minute recess. We'll see you back in, let's just say, we'll see everybody back at five o'clock. Not good. Chair Weigel, can you slay me? Yes. One technical issue, just make certain that your mask isn't touching the microphone. Now that you're on a microphone, it's different. Yeah. That's not a technical issue. That's a wardrobe malfunction. Well, they told me to get as close to the mic as possible because other boards have had issues with this. That's fine. Board member Wolski, I see that you've rejoined. Can you check your microphone and camera, and can you hear me? Yes, I'm here, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear and see you. Great, thanks. Great, thank you. Let's have everybody turn their videos back on, and then when the clock strikes five, we'll start back up. Okay, so we'll call the meeting back to order, five o'clock. So at this time, we'd like to move to item 9.1, which is a concept designer review for Colgan Creek, which is not a project, according to CEQA, at 3011 Dutton Meadow, because I think there was a member of the public who was curious. So that's the next project, 3011 Dutton Meadow, which is DR-21-040, and it's a 65 attached single family units with ADUs. And so at this time, I'd like to turn it over to staff for the staff report. And I believe the project planner is a city planner, Monet Shikali. I hope I got that right. Did I? Awesome. So we'll do a staff, anyway, so just to review for the board again, we'll do a staff report, and then we'll do an applicant report, I'm sorry, staff report, applicant presentation, and then questions of both staff and applicant, and then we'll do some comments, and then hopefully be done and move on to the next item. Well, we'll have public comment in there too. So without further ado, Monet, you're up. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Chair. Thank you for the introduction and good afternoon, board members. I'm going to share my screen right now, and I will turn my camera off. So you said this is a concept design review of Colvin Creek, located at 3011 Dutton Meadow. The proposed concept design review is for the future development of 65 two-story, attached single family units with also attached ADUs on an approximately 4.5 acre parcel within the Roseland priority development area. Here is an aerial view of the project site as it is today. The site is pretty flat with no trees and the Colvin Creek is located along the staff turn project boundary. Here is the neighborhood context map that shows out there are large bits, like there are some large vacant lots in this area. Properties on the south side of the Bellevue Avenue are outside of the city limits. And residential development was approved on the north side of the project in 2018. And the L.C. Allen High School is located within a walking distance from the, from northwest side of the site. And there are mix of single and multifamily residential users located on the east and northeast side of the project. Here is a broader neighborhood context map that shows the project site with surrounding uses and streets. There are several residential projects nearby that are either under construction or currently under the review, under review. And the project site is on R318 which is consistent with the general plan land use designation that is medium density residential and multifamily or attached single family dwellings are allowed in this zoning district. Here are some pictures of the existing lot. As you can see the lot is pretty flat and there are no trees on the site. Also you can see the new constructed residential units on the north side of the project. And here is the site plan that shows proposed 65 lots with the proposed streets. Each single family unit would be about 1029 square feet and each accessory dwelling unit would be 706 square feet. Traffic would enter the project site from Delta Meadow. The project will also include improvements to the trail along the creek. Here is the front elevation for the proposed houses that shows the color palette and some of the proposed materials. I will defer the applicants for more details about the materials and colors. And here is the general elevation for all sites. Again, I would defer to the applicant for more detail on this project. Here is the conceptual landscaping landscape plans for the entire site. And again, the applicant can go over the landscape plan with more details. And here is the sample of the concept landscape plan for the private open spaces for the backyards. I have received several emails regarding the project. Main comments and concerns were about potential traffic impacts in the area, lack of parking spaces within the neighborhood and infrastructure concerns were regarding water issues and police availability within the area. Also concerns about overpopulation of the area while there is a limited number of parks and open spaces. Staff will consider these comments during project review when the formal application is submitted by the applicant. And as you mentioned at the beginning, the project is exempt from CQA because this is just a concept design review and no actions being made today. With that and the applicant and the planning and economic development department are requesting that the design review board provide comments and direction for the Colgan Creek project. That was my presentation. The applicant will only have a verbal presentation today. There won't be any PowerPoints and here is my contact information for anyone who wants to contact me. And that was the presentation, thank you. Thanks Monday. So this time we'll move to the applicant presentation even if it's verbal. And so if the applicant could raise their hand I guess in Zoom and I think what also might be helpful, Monet, if you could put up maybe attachment. Maybe the elevations. Yeah, just attachment three, which is the project plan set. I think that'll be helpful for the board if the applicant wants to reference specific things that'll probably help everybody. So if you could put up attachment three, the project plan set. Is that cool? Does that sound good? Thumbs up? Okay, so do we have the applicant? David, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. All right, this is David Columbus and you, yours. Yes, we can. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present for the concept review for our Colgan Creek project. Monet has taken our drawings and prepared the actual package that she presented to you. There are a couple of things I would like to just augment about this project. The R318 would allow a three-story development, which there have been concepts on this property previously that will allow that. This is a two-story development that is single family lots that have been attached to the single family as well as the project is designed using the city center as a roadhouse policy. So we have clusters of these homes that are four, three, four, five, and six unit combinations throughout. The issue with parking, I'd like to just write to the comments that were raised that the parking area, we actually exceed the required parking, which in this particular density requires 2.5 spaces per unit. And we've actually exceeded that by 14 spaces as to what's required by the zoning. The aspect of the open space, when we look at the project, since we have a bus stop immediately adjacent to the entrance to development, we have the Colgan Creek walking path, which is part of our improvement. Colgan Creek path, which contains a lot of algae out there. And of course, we have three schools that are within walking distance of the actual property. So the need for more open space isn't required, even though we do have a minimum of at least 200 square feet per single family has backyard private space. The project itself is a witch-rider development, composition of rough combination of board and bath siding and the horizontal siding. The color palette in the presentation is a little wonky. At least it looks that way. I like their spring, but we certainly could provide better color palette that we're showing you what the colors look like. They kind of look like they're pinks to me, but they're actually kind of a great, great tan cube combination. Hey, David, can I interrupt real quick? Hey, Monay, can you go to page 10 of his presentation for the board? Yeah, perfect, thanks. Sorry, David, go ahead. All right, and so the color palette is a multi-color. We would also be developing that through each of the unique combinations and mix those colors up throughout the entire project. I have with me for the board's pleasure. We have Charlie Trevolse, the civil engineer on the project. We also have Parker Schmidt, who is a landscape architect. He's here as well, and certainly the three of us are available to answer any questions that you and the public may have in the works of the project. All right, thanks so much. So I'd like to take it back to the board at this time. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna do some questions of the board of both staff and applicant, and then we're gonna go to public comment. Actually, you know what? We should do public comment first. I always mix this up. So let's go to public comment. And so we're gonna, how many folks are in the meeting? Over there, just out of curiosity. We have 23 attendees. Okay, cool. So we're gonna do three minutes for public comment. So if you do have a public comment on this project, please raise your hand and the recording secretary will recognize you. Okay, Jennifer, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you now. Yeah, I mean, at first I thought this was just a concept and there was nothing submitted, but now I'm finding out that something has been submitted. So that was confusing. You know, this is too much development in Southwest Santa Rosa. Has anybody added up the number of units that are either under construction or have been constructed in the Southwest Quadrant of Santa Rosa in the last year? I mean, it looks like it's in the thousands and you have to understand that in a fire evacuation situation, this is going to be a disaster, total disaster. Bellevue Avenue is Tulane Road. Dutton Meadows, Tulane Road. Even Stony Point, South of Hearn is Tulane Road. And to the north we have Hearn, to the west of Dutton is a Tulane Road, Tulane Road. And you're adding thousands of units in aggregate. You have to look at this in aggregate. So this is really, really problematic. And wasn't the Dutton Meadows project plan nearly 20 years ago? Since then, there have been many changes to the city. Rosalind has been annexed, the population of Southwest Santa Rosa has grown substantially. And it makes me wonder if the city should continue to work to achieve the development goals of an old and outdated plan. The increased demands on our roads diminishes the quality of the public services that we receive and makes the city less resilient. Our neighborhood will feel less livable. This development will add to problems with pollution from cars, making it more difficult to achieve carbon neutrality. And as a bicycle rider, I shudder to think of how my valued form of recreation will be. Riding bikes and walking along the streets will be more dangerous to our health and safety due to increased exhaust fumes and traffic. Now, this is the last buffer between Colgan Creek and all this new development, this space right here, this parcel. And as a bird washer, I can attest to seeing far fewer hawks, kites, egrets and foxes in this area by the creek. This, their habitat has been made into housing. As a creek steward who personally cleans up two miles of Colgan Creek in and along the creek bed itself annually, I can attest to the increasing amounts of garbage in and along the creek. It will only get worse with more people who cannot seem to put the garbage into garbage cans. And then you're eliminating the hunting grounds for these birds of prey. They were eating animals from that field and the field to the north of it. And poisoning it with roundup like the owner did in February, 2020 is not in the public interest. This stuff leaches into the creek. I have photographic evidence of the use of roundup on this parcel when a simple lawn mower could have done the job. Now this development is not in the public interest. Southwest Santa Rosa has done more than a chair of taking the burden of more housing developments. I know that my family will likely have to move out of the area if it goes in. I hate to interrupt you, but your three minutes is up. Thank you so much. And Jennifer, could you please state your name for the record? Jennifer, if you could please state your name for the record. Oh, I had to unmute, sorry. Jennifer LaPorta, and I live in the immediate area. Perfect, thank you very much. Thanks so much, Jennifer. Before we go to the next person, I did want to address one thing, just so folks can help understand the process. So a concept design review means that the project has been designed to a conceptual level by the applicant. And so then what that means then is it's been submitted to the city for review. Staff has done kind of a quick review, a cursory review, and then it comes to our board for a concept design review and we provide commentary and suggestions based on what's presented. And then it goes back to staff and they do the full on review. And they look at land use and planning and zoning codes and things like that. And they work with the applicant to get the project to a certain point. And depending on where the project's located and if it has certain exemptions or accelerations in its entitlement process, it may or may not come back to the board as a preliminary design review item. If it is exempt, it would go directly to the zoning administrator, but that then takes our commentary from the design review board into play for the zoning administrator's review, which is a ministerial staff level review. So hopefully that clears up the differentiation between concept and actual public hearing with preliminary design review. Do you have anything else, Amy? Did I miss something? Thank you, Chair. I think that that was helpful to explain that concept design review. There's no action being taken, so it's an opportunity to hear comments from the board that can be incorporated into a project. Then the applicant can submit the formal design review application, which is then reviewed by staff. And that doesn't just include planning, but also the fire department, traffic engineering. There are a number of different staff that are looking at a specific set of standards and ensuring that the project complies with those. And then one additional point as it relates to the not-a-project CEQA language, concept design review is not considered a project under the California Environmental Quality Act because no discretionary action is being taken. But when a project goes through the actual design review process, that is subject to CEQA. And so environmental review would commence during that time. Thanks, Amy. Drew, I have, Drew, I know the public hearing is open, but I have a couple of questions really quickly. Oh, go ahead, Mike. So I wanna ask the staff, I've already heard tonight and read in correspondence several comments around noticing not being effective right from the regional director of real estate for Safeway on the Cowell Lane piece. The speaker that we just had who wasn't aware of the documents that were available and I think in the previous 9.2 that we just talked about, the idea that there was not adequate noticing. I'm curious, who is noticed? I mean, if you've got, who is noticed and why, I'm just curious, not being critical, but why would there not be access to this information? Why would people think that they weren't getting notice of a meeting or understanding documents are available? We do have slightly different noticing procedures depending on if an item is a concept design review or if it's design review. But in both cases, we send mailed notices to both property owners and property occupants or tenants within a 600 foot radius of the project site. And there is also a requirement for an onsite sign to be posted. And both of these notices must be distributed at least 10 days prior to the design review board meeting. We also have multiple email listservs that send out specific project notification as well and have them available on our website. So that's our process that is required by the zoning code and that occurs for each project. And can I just confirm that all of those things happened for all three of tonight's items? Yes, yes, it did. Thank you. Thank you. And I think also one more thing. So typically also, so Amy did mention that you can get the project plans and stuff on the city's website. I think the design review specific page actually links over to the Legislar link with the agenda that then you can download stuff. If you have access to computer, if you don't have access to computer, I mean, COVID and pandemic not withstanding, typically the hard copies are available at the Planning and Economic Development Department, correct, is that right? At this time, all of our plans are electronic. However, we do have the planners contact information listed on these mailed notices. So there's a phone number and also an email address. So someone is able to contact the planner to find out how they can receive copies of the plans. Right, yeah. And I think if you reach out to the planner, you can get a hard copy if you want a hard copy, you know, that sort of thing. Even though, you know, we're kind of shut down for COVID and whatnot. I guess I was trying to just point out that the city will accommodate a request for a hard copy if that is needed by a member of the public. Absolutely. Okay, cool. Yeah. And through my last comment was, I know we've slipped it into the start of every meeting. I wonder if it's not worthwhile at the start of, just before we continue on with this to explain the purview of the concept design review versus any land use issues related to the project. Sure, Michael. So yeah, I think this is a confusing subject for a lot of people. So the city of Santa Rosa's design review board is a seven member board made up of subject matter experts in specifically building design and construction. So for example, our current board contains three architects. I'm one of them. The other two architects are sadly absent. A landscape architect, which is Adam. Michael Birch is a architectural sign designer. So he has a lot of experience with buildings, facades and signs and running through entitlement processes. And he's a former chair of this board as well. Sheila is a land, is a planner in Windsor. And then our friend, John is just a member of the public, but John previously also sat on the cultural heritage board. So in my opinion, our board is very robust in our experience of this subject matter. So the wrinkle here is we are the design review board. We are not the planning commission. So we only have certain tools available to us on a project regarding how the project appears, looks and otherwise performs. We do not have purview over the land use of a project. So we can't say move a building 10 feet if it's already been presented to the planning commission and the plot map has been set in stone for instance. So there is a fundamental difference between the design review board which is looking at the aesthetics and design of the building to make sure that it fits within the context that it's being proposed and the land use which is the purview of the planning commission. So typically projects, if they're entitled by right, meaning that the project definition is contained within the zoning code for whatever the parcel is zoned, that would generally not go to the planning commission and it would just come to us directly for its design. The planning commission would weigh in if there was a variance or a zoning code change or something like that typically. So the general process, if something like that is happening is a concept designer review would happen, then it would go to the planning commission to set the plot map and kind of all those parts and pieces and then the project may come back to us for final design review sort of kind of. So that's kind of the difference between planning commission and the land use component and what design review board is specifically looking at. So we're in control of the trees, the parking layout potentially, how the building looks and feels. So the size, the massing materiality and that's all based on the city of Santa Rosa's design guidelines. So is that you think thorough enough, Michael? Yeah, no I do. I just wanted to make sure that there was a good understanding of the noticing that the availability of the documents and what this board's purview is. So that's great. And I want the public to be heard for sure. But I also think it's important that we all know what we're talking about here. So thank you. Excellent, yeah. And I think I will mention one last thing. So very often, if a project does have to go to the planning commission for whatever reason, and it does come to us first, the planning commission does take into account any commentary we have made. So it is helpful to make comments in a public forum on a project at concept level because that can then trickle its way down to its eventual discretionary entitlement approvals. And then I think finally the last thing, again, that Amy mentioned, concept design review is there's no action taken on it. It's kind of an information session about what the applicant wants to build, where, so they're not only getting the board's feedback and opinion about the project, but also the publics at this time, which is kind of the purpose of why we open public comment for this. So it's not a public hearing, we're just opening public comment to make sure that the public is heard. And very often, frankly, there's great comments from the public that then spurs additional thoughts and comments from our own board, which is great. So that's why we love doing this. We've always extended public comment in our boards, even when we were located in room seven over there, the little tiny room seven. So anyway, so anything else, Michael? You think we're covered? Okay, because I can't see you. Yeah, you're a little tiny spec for me right now. We're good to go absolutely, thank you. Thanks. So Michelle, do we have any other public comment? And please remember as a reminder, three minutes, please state your name very clearly. So the recording secretary can record your name and then proceed with your comments. Thanks. Tom, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. Okay. Okay, go ahead. My name's Tom LaPorta. And so I'd like to say the color scheme and especially the black roof is about is inviting his castle Frankenstein. I would hate to be looking at that every day. And I would be looking at that every day. Really the main thing I want to say is Santa Rosa, I think really owes Rosalind a park there and not more housing. Housing is getting crazy around here. The number of units built. And I don't know, I just wanted to say a park would be the way to go. Thank you. Thanks so much. Well, do we have any other comment? Okay, so we'll move on to the next person with the recording secretary. Judy and Greg, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. And if you could please state your name for the record. My name's Judy Irvis. And I'm here to speak on 9.3, but I'd like to say something about the public notification if I could. Will I use up my three minutes if I do that? Absolutely, no, you can speak on two separate items. So you're more than welcome to comment. Thank you. So we all, we live on Manhattan Way around the corner from the development coming up next 9.3. Everybody got a postcard and we wrote up, several of us typed up a letter and walked literally door to door up and down our street to encourage people to come to this meeting. And what we discovered is, and we haven't lived here a real long time, so we don't know all of our neighbors. Many of them speak English as a second language, at least half or three quarters of the people said they had no clue how to do Zoom or the phone call in. It was completely intimidating. And I don't feel like the people who are going to be impacted at least on our project have been properly informed. That's all. Talk to you in a little while. Thanks. Thank you so much for your comments. We'll move on to the next person. And it looks like we have no other raised hands. Okay, excellent. So at this time, we'll bring it back to the board and we'll do, just kind of go around the horn, I think, and we'll do questions of staff and the applicant from the board. And I think I'm gonna start with, we're gonna go regular alphabetical order today, just to mix it up. So board member Birch, you get the hot seat today. That's great. So to staff real quickly, can you just give me a nickel tour of the entitlement process for the project just to make, just for everybody who's on the meeting and where are we going from here with this project? If this board and planning commission other approvals, what do we have? So I can go. This project will require a design review. So because the project is between Roseland priority area, so it would only require a concept design review by design review board. And then the applicant will require when the site should submit the original application for minor design review, it will go to zoning administrator for review. So your comments and providing comment for the applicant will help him to design the project before submitting it to planning for review. But it's gonna be, the next step will be a minor design review that will be reviewed by the zoning administrator. Got it. And there's no further zoning action here. There's no planning commission project fits within the current general plan and, okay. So the only thing is like probably the applicant has to confirm that because I know the project was approved in 2008 by the planning commission to subdivide the 65 parcels. And we need all the applicant can say if that project has been recorded for the final map or no, so where they are with that final map. And so our comments tonight, our comments tonight, we are locked into a site plan, correct? Site plan and the elevations, that's a question. Well, the site plan for one, the elevations, I hope not, but the site plan, that was what was approved in 2008 with those roads, but the applicant again, Charlie or David Colombo can make sure that that's the final map. And if that final map is being recorded and it's not going to change. Can David, David has raised his hand. Yeah, while we're working out David here, I think something is important to note and Monet brought this up and we kind of were talking about this and I think this answers Michael's question a little bit. It sounds like the parcel map was approved in 2008, meaning that so the roads, the layout of the roads, the small lot subdivisions, so the lots and all that were laid out. So essentially we as the design review board have no purview over moving roads, adjusting lot lines, things like that. So we could make commentary and suggestions for the form and shape of the buildings within those parcels to perhaps alleviate or change or adjust how they relate to one another, but we cannot really, it's not within our purview to shift stuff around from a lot line standpoint. Is that helpful, Michael? It's kind of what you were trying to get at. Yeah, and I was asking for us too, because I'm always, we suffer through this that site maps being locked in is not always helpful to some of the questions that we have about the project itself. It does tie our hands a little bit too. So I just wanted to make sure that I understood where we sat with this, and this is one of those kind of time clock 2008. Site map, so I hope if the applicant could just make sure that we understand where they are, that would be super. Yeah, I can do that for you, Michael. The improvement plans have been signed. The final map should be fully reported in 60 days. Okay, cool. As far as my comments on the project, I actually- Questions, questions, no comments yet. Sorry, we're not there yet. Questions, yeah, I don't think I have any questions at this time. Cool, thanks, Michael. We'll go to board member McHugh now, John. Thank you, Chairman, where I don't have any questions at this time. Thank you. Thanks, John. Board member Sharon, do you have any questions? I think that Michael brought up or answered the question for me. My main one was about kind of the layout and the roads to kind of follow up with that. I know we're locked into the site plan and if this has been approved, is the zoning administrator, the planning commission, are they locked in the site plan as well? They can anything change? Everything's locked in at this point. For that site plan, the site plan and those roads were approved in 2008. And I believe also the project was gone through Waterways Advisory Committee those years to realign the creek plan and the creek master plan had to go to city cancel for some modification because of this portion of the Colgan Creek. Okay, that is correct. In fact, the creek actually was part of this rectangular parcel and was dedicated out and given to the city under their direction during that process. Great. Thank you, Monay and thank you, David, for clarifying that. Yeah, because yeah, I think you saw where I was going with that of just wondering it's Colgan Creek drive is budding right up against the pathway and there. And I wondered, you know, any advisory capacity upon that and any buffer? But so I was like, we're locked in. Okay, thank you. That's a no question. Thanks, Adam. And then we'll go to Board Member Wolskie for any questions of staff and applicant. Just a couple. My first question is, and I think this was Mr. Columbo who had mentioned the open space that each lot will provide. I thought I saw in the landscape plan that each lot will have a 10 by 12 patio space in the rear of a lot. So I'm guessing the other, I guess, maybe 80 square feet is in the front yard. That's my first question. And then my second was in the elevation drawings. It looked like there were white shingles or something like that over the garages. I was unclear if that was an awning or a cover over the garage spaces or maybe even a balcony because there weren't too many angles. So just a couple of questions. Thank you. Great, so I'll address the first question. Last, but yeah, the roof color white actually it should have been the same as the composition. I realized looking at it's not rendered but it is actually a actual slope roof on the front, stepping the second story back from the face of the garage on that. Actually, did you hear that response? I'm sorry. Yes. You did, okay. I didn't know if I'd raise my hand again. And then the landscaping concept, the majority of the units have the backyard size that I described earlier. There is of course a fairly shallow front yard space in front of the units between that and that sidewalk. And we have any tree also in the landscape concept per unit in front. The Cornelots of course have a lot larger landscaping on their side yard area. It buffers it back from the streets. So we don't have any 80 foot square, any 80 foot square for rear yards on any of the units. Sheila, any other questions? Okay. I had two questions that I questioned the staff and I have a question for the applicant. I'm looking at the plans. I just wanna make sure I'm understanding this right. So it appears to me that the ADU is an attached ADU. So it's kind of sort of a junior ADU-ish. And then there's either three or five other units as part of the building complexes. Am I seeing that right, David? So if you look at the general project, any grouping that we have, what we have is we have the ADU and the single family on its own individual parcel. There's a four inch lot line separation between buildings, premises, row housing policy, and those clusters, we have one triplex, a number of four flexes, number five flexes, number six flexes. I'm referring to it that way. They're not attached because they can't be on the row housing design. But so the groupings are four, five, and six, generally. But they are all separate. Okay, so then you have the ADU on the ground floor and then a unit above it or next to it, pretty much. Okay, yeah, I was trying to decipher that because the ADU plan was kind of separated out from the other plans and it was just kind of, like I said, I was just trying to scratch my head on that one to figure out how that, because then the garage that's adjacent to the ADU actually serves the single family unit located above the ADU, so on and so forth. That's correct. Okay, perfect, yeah. So I'm thinking of following it now, awesome. And then the question I had of staff, and I think this is appropriate given the public comment, is I am curious what the regional housing needs assessment is in the County of Sonoma and perhaps in the city of Santa Rosa. And the reason I ask is because folks are kind of talking about, well, it seems like there's thousands of units of housing developed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think this may help you understand why it is important to develop housing based on what the renown numbers are. So, and I understand that they're preliminary at this time because it's still in process going through an appeal process or something. Sure, thank you, Chair Weigel. I can speak to that a bit. So the regional housing allocation numbers are that will be established for the next housing cycle, which starts after 2023 are in process right now because it's subject to appeal. So it actually might be more helpful if I speak to our current housing cycle and to talk about what kind of progress the city has made toward achieving those numbers. So as of the end of or as of January 1st of 2021, we had issued building permits for 2,516 units and that includes all of the income categories and that was over a five-year period. So our remaining need for this housing cycle is basically the same number, 2,567 units. And these numbers come from the state. It's really important that we're making progress toward achieving those numbers and there's a variety of incentives and other types of opportunities that cities and jurisdictions get from complying with these numbers. We know that Sonoma County is having a housing crisis as is the rest of the state. And so certainly these residential projects help us to get closer to that goal and to kind of follow up on the conversation about land use and the design review board. A lot of these sites around the city, the site in particular have already been planned for a certain type of residential density. So in this case, any project that goes on this site needs to fall within the density that was already approved by the planning commission and the city council when the general plan was adopted. And so I just thought that might be helpful to add in as well. Thanks Amy, I appreciate that. So I think it's important for the public to understand that so our RENA number, people obviously talk a lot about the RENA number, what's the RENA number? For us it was in the 5,000 range for the city of Santa Rosa over that housing cycle. We got halfway there, which is good, but it's not obviously where we need to be. And so obviously moving into the next cycle, that number is, you know, the new number is gonna obviously reflect perhaps the shortfall from the previous cycle and perhaps additional units maybe, yes, no? Or is it just a separate kind of calculation? It is a separate calculation. So every seven year or a housing cycle covers a seven year period. And so based on a lot of research, jurisdictions get various allocations. So it's looking like our numbers will be close to what they were in the previous cycle, but those haven't been formally approved yet. Awesome, thanks Amy. So I think what's critical to understand here is that there's a lot of undeveloped land in Santa Rosa. There's a lot of developed land in Santa Rosa. And so it's a goal of the city. And I think the city council has made it abundantly clear through some of the actions that they have taken in terms of streamlining some processes for housing projects that housing is a priority. And so I just think it's important to note that that's a goal of our city council. And so that is a goal of this board as appointees of the city council and representatives of the city. So just wanna point that out to everybody. And then the other thing that I think is really important regarding Rina and I may be wrong here, but I believe that if certain things are not met, the state can do some fairly draconian things in terms of funding and other items regarding money to cities. So it is in our best interests, I understand it to try to hit these numbers as best as we can as a city and a community. Is that correct? Pretty much got that covered. Yes, there are a number of different bills that can come down from the state that impact cities that aren't making progress or changing their processes so that they can better meet the Rina numbers. Excellent, so that all being said, I'd like to then bring it back to the board here and just at this time we'll do our comments on the project as it has been submitted since as we noted that this project is eligible for streamlining, which means it will go immediately to the zoning administrator should it become an actual project. Get that right? That is true, but there's also a provision in the code that allows the director to elevate a project to the design review board. It would still be considered minor design review but it could come back before this board. Right, so odds are it'll go to the zoning administrator but you never know based on, there could be a lot more public comment. There could be an issue that comes up with maybe the fire department or traffic engineering or something like that so it may come back to us. So comments, we'll go backwards this time. So Sheila, you're first. I do have a few comments trying to organize my notes here. You know for the design and the architecture, I guess when I saw these plans, I was looking for more articulation, more visual interest in the design. So I was thinking it was coming back to us so I'm glad we had a little more history. That was a note I took. I was hoping for something more interesting. Let's see. In terms of arena number, I know they're looking to add these ADUs, parking does not have to be provided for those. My preference would be get rid of one of those bedroom units and create more outdoor space. It seems very chimsy to add this little bit of private outdoor space. When you have, I think it's five bedrooms in for this one small lot and there's really nowhere to go. There's one garage space and everyone knows what people do with garages. I, my preference would be to do away with one room and I think that would still count as a unit towards the arena housing numbers. So one bedroom, one bath, ADU and create more yard space. I'm concerned about, I think the roof color concerns me and the one color the Kettleman concerns me. This strikes me as a very, very hot property in terms of sun exposure. And I seriously doubt with the lack of yard space that people will want to use that in order to install an AC unit. I don't even know. You know, you'd have to comply with setbacks for an AC unit, which may be three feet. Many splits are expensive and these are two-story units. So it would be awfully difficult to cool down these units with such a small backyard and maybe not even being able to put in an AC unit. So I was trying to think about that. And we see units installed. Oh, are they installed? Yes. Oh, great. Fantastic. It's installed. And then the other thing, and I don't know if the zoning administrator or someone could speak to this. It was described as walking distance to several schools. I was doing a street view out there and there are no improvements in this area to Bellevue if you were trying to go to LC Allen. I don't know when these infrastructure improvements are going to take place. It looks like common way will potentially go through to the north. I don't know what's happening to the west. It looks like the property due west of this subject property needs to develop in order for more things to happen. But I'm not sure walking distance really reflects the walkability for this project. So those are my comments. Thank you. Thanks, Sheila. We'll go to Adam now. Great, thank you. And thank you, Sheila, for hitting a lot of my comments actually already. So I was just kind of reiterate rather than expound anymore. Yeah, I won the urban heat island effect. Certainly got me right away looking at this, the lot of structure, a lot of dark roofs. And it's right next to the waterways or to the waterway, the Colben Creek there. And so groundwater infiltration, the open space. I think Sheila had a really great suggestion with rejiggering the rooms and the layouts, creating more open space, more outdoor space for these units. It feels a bit claustrophobic with the layout that we have, you know, we're locked into a lot. But urban heat island effect, that can be mitigated in a number of different ways, I think with the design scheme that you have with the grays, the blues and the black in particular, does not work in your favor for that heat island effect and the sunniness of this. And also with creating more open space, you create more space for trees and actually vegetating these parcels and these homes, increasing trees as much as possible. I know that there's limited space and Parker's laid out, you know, has worked with Woody Cannon in the layout, but creating more shade as much as possible on both the streets and on the buildings themselves. I know also that we do have to consider the solar of course too, so I know that that is a concern, but there you can work with tree species choice, but just creating more basically, creating a friendlier, more livable space here really. The layout as it is and with how many units around here is pretty highly developed. So I'd like to create some more breathing space, if at all possible, and also looking at the materials as well. Some of this might be different if, you know, we were all in the chambers and we could see a materials board. We could actually see the materials and colors that you have. The grays that as they look on the computers are pretty dark. So lots of absorption of Albedo to work with here. And then also just to reiterate, she has mentioned about articulation and visual interest and designing for all four sides of the buildings, specifically the rear elevations are blank, pretty blank. So that will do it for me. Thanks very much. Thanks, Adam. We'll go to John. Comments on the project? Well, I tend to like the project. I tend to like the design. I like the color pallet. I agree with board member Sharon in terms of the pallet with respect to plants and trees and that sort of thing. But on the whole, I think it is a good project and it is something that we absolutely need here in Santa Rosa. And so I'm very supportive. And I think, like I say, I like the design. I like the pallet. I like the way it's been laid out. And so I'm supportive. Thanks, John. Appreciate your comments. And we'll go to Michael now. Great. Yeah, so first off, I absolutely agree with the notion from each of my board members, fellow board members here, that we do need to meet the city's housing requirement. This project needs to be developed at this number of units, I think. I do agree with board member Wolskie that there is just simply too much packed into each unit here without enough open space around the units. It's sort of like the project has challenged the footprint to create a hyper density, while only achieving a certain number of units. I understand if you pull a unit out of each, if you pull a bedroom out of each unit, you limit the number of bedrooms. But I think it's to the improvement of the project for the long-term enjoyment of the residents. And I think probably also just for the general health of the community. So I know that's a crazy ask. I am not crazy about the dark elements of the color pallet. I think that there could be some dark elements that were used, but more as accents. I think that minimizing, especially in this density, broad swaths of dark colors will reduce the heat issues. This is about the bare minimum of a submittal package that we would ever expect to get. I know it's just a concept review, but it does make it hard to assess the appearance of the project. The biggest issue that I have besides wanting to see the density relaxed just a little bit is that I don't like where the front door is. And I'm not suggesting that it has to be out on the street in every case. But I can't see the front door from the street. I see garage doors. And I don't know if some rejiggering of the unit of the bedrooms can improve the position of the front door even through the addition of some architectural device like a canopy that extends in terms of corner or a landscaping gesture that does indicate a front door. But right now, the front door is completely hidden next to a garage door. It really looks like the mudroom door and it kind of holds to use an old term. So I have a very, very difficult time with the project that I can't see the front door from the primary elevations. I recognize this is these elevations. They're driving down the street. Perhaps your eye is gonna catch the front door back in the corner, but even that lower roof that covers the garage doors and I guess ostensibly is over the front door feels much more like protection for the garage doors. I don't know that it says here's the front door. It's so, you know, not to get too out there. It's bad feng shui, bad qi, it just, it's not to me a great design gesture for residential. I think it's a symptom of the fact that there is so much density within each unit. We need the density for the development. I don't know that we need the units themselves to be so dense. So those are my comments. I hope that that is something that the zoning administrator can work with. I don't know how much work the developer can do to make some significant changes. I'm disappointed we're not gonna see it again. It is a very, very land architecture, even relatives to some other buildings that are right there. I noticed that even in the site photos for this project with the backs of the project at the fence line across the field, the architecture is much more interesting than the backside of these buildings. And I think that those building, each project needs to respect and talk to the next project because there are rear bedroom windows and there are backyards and lots of other things. So I do think that there's also the project that sort of fall down on the four-sided architecture. In fact, like I said, even the front side of these buildings doesn't have a welcome, warm gesture of an entry point. So I love the number of units on the space. I would really love to see some significant changes to the building architecture and the layout of the units. And those are my comments. Thanks, Michael. It's my turn. So I have a couple of questions for the applicant that as I was listening to everybody's comments, I started thinking about this. Is there street parking? I think the answer is no, but I wanted to confirm. So if the applicant could speak to that potentially. There is street parking, the numbers on that. We have a total of 177 parking spaces for the units. 47, 65 in the garage, 65 in the tandem driveway. For a total of 177. Cool, thanks so much. Maybe I just skipped over it and missed it. So thank you. So there is, it's a combo of street parking and then the tandem, either garage and then the driveway. So then tied to that, I'm kind of curious about something. As I was looking at this, so just so everybody knows, this is what it's typically referred to as a small lot subdivision. So the lots are small. And in this case, they are very small. And I think that's presenting the main design challenge that I think Michael was alluding to and the rest of the board. So I wonder, were alleyways kind of looked at for maybe some rear parking, getting some of the street parking off the street, back entrances, actually pulling the buildings forward, bringing that sort of kind of more street, town home kind of flair to it. I wonder if that might solve some of this, some of the things that Michael brought up, no sense of entry, the doors hidden, all we are seeing is garage doors, that type of thing. So I mean, you can answer me if you considered alleys or not, or not, that's up to you. But I think that may be a way to alleviate some of this. Some of these issues that are happening in terms of kind of that density. From an architectural standpoint, I mean, this is very much what we would call modern farmhouse. But I think I would push the applicant to do something that is a little less reserved in that kind of genre. Michael alluded to that with the adjacent project. There are also quote unquote modern farmhouse style architecture, I would say, but they've got a little bit more articulation in terms of multiple materials, banding, color, that sort of thing to kind of address kind of the changes in form. With the board and baton kind of happening just kind of all over, and then just having kind of the waste belt as it were at the level change. I don't think it does the project any service. I think it'd be really interesting to maybe do board of baton on the bottom and do fiber cement shake or something on the top, or just fiber cement siding just to change the materiality to give it some depth and some different shadow lines that might help it out. So I mean, and I agree with board member Birch, this is an absolute kind of bare minimum submittal. So it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of how to comment and provide some feedback. I would perhaps encourage staff to maybe bring this back to us. Would be my comment. I'd really like to see this one again. And I'll leave it at that. So without anything else, Amy or any other board members have comments. So let's go with Amy first. Just to clarify so that staff understands what additional plans or information would be most helpful for the board to provide a more meaningful review or comments just so we can convey that to the applicant team as well. Wait. So Michael, let me just go and then you can go. I think for me, being an architect, it's easy for me to read elevations and it's easy for me to read plans. Although sometimes I do get confused when things are kind of hard to find. I think, you know, providing clearer documentation, not, you know, kind of, I mean, these are almost construction drawings in a way. You know, schematic design level layouts of how the plans work are much easier for us to read and kind of comment on, you know, full on landscape plan, showing all the parking spaces and everything would be really clear and helpful. And, you know, I can't say enough about the ability for us to create three dimensional foot, foot, photometry, photometry, whatever within the toolbox that we possess now. Most architects can do that fairly easily. And that is, that to me is one of the biggest and most helpful things. And it's not required, but it does, it really helps give a sense of scale and breadth and scope of how a project appears. And I think that may answer some of Michael's questions in terms of how the garage and the front door interact and how that interacts with the street and then how the street parking interacts in turn back to the building. So those would be my thoughts. Michael, do you have any additional ones? Yeah, and there's not a lighting plan, which is that I can't find it unless it's buried in something else I looked for it earlier. The single elevation of a fourplex doesn't tell us a lot about, you know, I would like to be able to hear some thoughtful explanation of, you know, some variations between fourplexes and fiveplexes driving down the street. You know, the plans like, Drew, I think you said it really well. The plans are very thin. And so then it makes it hard to comment. And then when the plans are very thin, it makes you nervous that we don't know enough about anything here. And then there's some problematic, the comment has come from all of us. There's some problematic issues with, I'm being careful to say the density of the units themselves, the lack of imagination with the materials and the blocking of the colors. And I just, I think that it's not just what can you bring back? I think we just need a more, we need to understand the intention of the design and a little more thoughtful presentation of the design to be able to send really good comments to the zoning administrator. Because right now, I mean, I don't even know how to give the zoning administrator a list of comments of anything, of meaning that I would expect. I recognize that the staff member who is the zoning administrator is a de facto design board, design review board member in a way. But I don't even know what to send to them given the set of drawings and some of the problematic nature of the design. So I think we should see it again. And I would hope that at a minimum, what we've put forward here this afternoon sort of opens the applicant's eyes to what we would like to see. I do think that a more robust landscape plan. And I heard a couple of good points about Colgan Creek and the trail being, the work that's being done in front. But I'm not hearing much in the way. I just, I feel like it all needs to be put together, presented, and then we can give some meaningful comment that then the zoning administrator can put to work. The great, you know, the economic relief measures and all the different things that we've gone through in order to get to this point where design review is here to give good feedback in a concept design review, cutting a step out of a public hearing with the design review board and sending that with some robust comments to the zoning administrator. I think that is the developer's are enjoying that shortened process, but something has to come here that we can send to the zoning administrator with some meaning. So I just think that's my comment and that's what I'd like to see. And I think to tack on to that, you know, I mean, just so the public knows, and I think also just to reiterate to the board here too, when this all goes to the zoning administrator, it is my understanding that everything that would normally be at a preliminary design review level is required for that level as well. So that includes site plan, landscape plan, erosion control plan, color boards, et cetera, et cetera, as required by the design review board form that the city has on the website. So I think that's why I would wanna see it again is because we are missing many of those pieces of the puzzle. And I think to tack on what Michael said, when projects come before us that our concept, I think what has been great is many developers and just applicants in general with their design team have really put together some incredible packages which make it so easy to just look at the project and go, wow, that's gonna look great. And here's the meaningful commentary to elevate it to the next level. And I think because we're missing so much information here, it's very difficult for us to do that. So, and it pains me to say that because I do wanna see projects move forward and not get hung in the process. Because we do, I think what our board does very well is we try to push our projects through if we can because we wanna see them all built. So we try to condition them and move them on their merry way, as they say. That's a goal of our board. So any other comments from the board before we leave this item? I do have one. I think for me, what I'm getting from both your comments Drew and from Michael's comments also and what I would find helpful to have something come back is a sign of those great project packages that Drew just mentioned are that the, for me, getting a really good concept package is not even necessarily about the specific design schematics and actual design elements. It's getting to know that the developers and architects priorities and design intention. And then we can take from that with, if that's clearly communicated, we can then trust that the, a lot of the details are going to be worked out to a very high level. And so, if it does come back to us to really, and to really getting to know, to convey those priorities, potentially a lot of these things that we're bringing up are things that you have thought of, I'm speaking to the developer now. And I'm certain you've gone through your design process and you've got your designers there with you. And so I know that you guys have thought about this but with this package, we just don't have the context. We don't have the, something to really grasp onto. So I think getting to know those priorities and the design intent is really important for us. Thank you. Just to add to this conversation. So the board is able to continue this review, this concept review, because this concept design review is required by the zoning code. So we can continue it. The applicant can get together additional information, add to the plan set, and then can come back before this board so that more specific comments can be provided. So we will work to do that. I'm thinking that we should probably try and continue this to a date certain because just in terms of noticing, but I wanted to suggest perhaps not next meeting but September 16th. I don't know if the applicant wants to respond to that or if maybe October might be a better time. But I think it can be helpful for us to continue to a date certain. So Amy, so what I'm hearing then is, so really we have two options here. Option one is kind of what I think we've already said and I'm not seeing any board members really refuse this in so much as that we wanna see the project again. I think that's, so we could express our opinion that we would very much like the director to elevate this back for preliminary design review, which they may not do. So that's kind of one option. The other option would be, as you stated, we can actually just continue this to a date certain for that and then hopefully the applicant is agreeable to that and then we can continue the concept review at that time, hopefully with a more robust package at which time we can then provide the meaningful comments that we've kind of all mentioned. So does everybody understand that board? Okay, cool. So I think at this time we'd ask the applicant, David Colombo and perhaps his development partner, if continuing to a date certain is agreeable to you and if either September, what'd you say, 19th? Would I get that right, 17th? 16th. Sorry, September 16th is a doable date for you. That's two weeks or if the first or third Thursday in October was more online with your project schedules. Yeah, and that would be October 7th, would be the next meeting. David, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. Thank you very much. I'm discussing it here with Charlie and looking at our calendars and I appreciate each of the board's comments on your concerns and issues with the project. But I'm gonna let Charlie speak a little bit about it because he has a little bit better on the history of where this project's been and the amount of review process that this thing has been through by all agencies up to this point. And then David, I'll give some leeway on how much time it's gonna take as their reward to design or incorporate. I just wanted to point out I was asking Parker about the landscaping and going from a site that has zero trees to over 170 trees on it because it seemed to me a huge element toward creating shade on the project but maybe that doesn't read well on the landscape plans but I'll let Charlie speak to what his concerns are and then we can talk about what would work best for us. I just wanted to clarify a couple of points. There was a question about circulation in common way and how to get to the school, how to walk to the high school. I think board member Wolski mentioned that I wanted to clarify Southwest Estates which is the project that's west of us is under construction. All the roads have been paved and they've opened up their model homes. So people haven't moved in west of us and therefore the roads aren't open right now but they're going to be opening the roads in the next 60 to 90 days as people move in. So the infrastructure allowing people to walk to the high school is already in. It's not open to the public but the model homes are open. By the time this project gets built next summer I'm sure it's going to be open even before then probably in about two to three months. As far as the parking, we're exceeding the parking requirement. We could have even applied for a parking reduction because a bus stop is currently built already in the northeast border of the project. So it's not even a walkable distance. It's along the frontage of this project. A couple of feet to the north. It was built by the Lantana subdivision north of us. As far as the space we're providing in the backyards it's approximately 180 square feet. The current zoning is R3-18 which doesn't even have an open space requirement as far as private open space for each unit. So if you judge it as a single family subdivision yes, you're correct. The open space area is small. If you judge it based on the R3-18 which is not a small subdivision concept we exceed what's required when exceeded. The proximity to the linear park which is right along our frontage also makes a difference as well as the walkability to the schools and the parks in the neighborhood. However, be that as it may you'd like us to come back provide more detailed information on the colors architecture, the back of the units, the lighting scheme. We hear you and I'll defer today as far as what we can do on the timeline in order to come back to you as soon as possible. I think quite honestly if we're gonna try and prepare the package that I think I'm hearing that we talk about with the availability of three dimensional renderings and perspective views and things like that. So you can articulate the concepts. October 7th is a better date for me. Just two weeks is not enough time to go back and then generate the required 3D renderings and colors and things like that present another package to the board. So that would be my preference if the board chooses to continue to date certain. Okay, October 7th. And I think I wasn't saying you had to do a 3D model. I think it's so informative and it just really conveys what's going on than flat elevations, which sometimes can be difficult to read. So just in our own practice, we've had a lot of success, obviously communicating with clients and also authorities having jurisdiction with three dimensional renderings. They tend to really clean it up. Michael, did you have a comment? I just wanted to make sure too. I didn't hear it in the comments from the applicant. There were comments made about the layouts of the units, which may be slippery slope for us, but it does impact overall design. You know, we're locked into a footprint. There was discussion about color. There was discussion about variation of materials. There was discussion about movement throughout the project, potential variation. It's not just a matter of throwing what you have into a 3D rendering. I think it's a matter of, and it's not about making wholesale changes, I think. So I just want to make sure that it's clear that across the board, there were some concerns about the simplicity of the design, which can be beautiful. But in this case, I think we meant the banality of the design I meant. So I just want to make sure that you have heard that it's not just a matter of snapping this into some snappy 3D that you get overnight from China or India. And we do need, I think that there's some improvement overall to the design, the position of the front door or a nod to where the front door is for my comments. So let's just, I just want to make clear. It's not just about snazzing up the presentation that there are some, for me, to see this come back. I'm looking for some improvements to the design as well. I heard what each of you have said and I've written everything down as well as been reported. So while I didn't address it in the last minute and a half about those issues, I have listened to those words. That's why we need the extra time. I mean, they go back and start redeveloping concepts and circulation and livability. It's not going to happen in a 10 day period. So that's why we're ready to move on. Perfect. Thank you. Because we will make comments often and we'll get something back that's similar. So I just want to be fair. I just wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page and I hear that you hear us and I appreciate it and I appreciate your willingness to do that. So great. Yeah, thank you so much. John, you have something? Yeah, I'm a little bit concerned. I worry about the fact that we are the design review board, not the design board. And I get a little concerned about maybe some of the unconscious biases that we have with respect to how something ought to look or what the colors are. Maybe we don't like this particular combination or that particular combination. But if the design is structurally appropriate, it meets all the standards. It is attractive, but maybe not as attractive as maybe one or two of us might like. I think we need to be sensitive to the process. And I'm worried about us being too nitpicky about how things are designed or what is going on with the particular project. So I'm concerned about that. And so if he's coming back in October, I would hope that we would not pick this project to death. One of the things that concerns me is what we did with the cannabis hackingship. That just was disturbing to me in the sense that we got too much down into the weeds. And I believe that we put a whole lot of work on staff that we shouldn't have really done and that we should have backed off on that and not gone that deep. And I'm concerned that we watch those unconscious biases that we have and not get too far into the weeds on these types of projects. Thanks, John. I appreciate that. I think I would like to read something from the city's design review guidelines. I think this is really important for not only the public, but to perhaps remind our board. So in the introduction, under purpose, item C, it says the following. These design guidelines are intended to supplement and enhance design concepts that promote, quote unquote, superior design by exhibiting thoughtful relationships in the following area. Site, natural and built environment, architecture, landscaping, place making, livability and sustainability. The reason I read that is because it is our purview to comment on everything that I think perhaps rubbed you the wrong way, John. And I think the main problem that most of the design board had with that project in particular is that most of our comments fell on deaf ears. And I think that at the end of the day, the design review board wants to create, wants to help create superior looking buildings that have foresighted architecture that enhance the architecture and surrounding of our beautiful city. And I think that's the envelope that Michael pushed when he was chair of the board. That's the envelope that Scott Kincaid pushed when he was chair. And I think that's the envelope that I'd like to continue to push as chair is that I would like to challenge our applicants to create beautiful architecture to further enhance the natural beauty of our beautiful city. So. With all due respect, I'm not opposed to any of that. What I am concerned about is our impression of what beautiful is versus what the applicants impression of that is. And if there is some really serious design flaws that we need to pay attention to, I'm all for that. But if it is something that is, could go one way or the other, my inclination is to take the applicant's approach to that because they are professionals as well as we are. And so that's what I'm saying. So I just caution us just to pay attention to that. Absolutely. And I totally agree. It is a slippery slope sometimes. And I think we have to really be careful of where we're laying our comments. So well said, John, and I appreciate that. So I think at this time, I'd like to maybe entertain a motion to continue this project to a date certain of October 7th. So anybody want to make that motion on the board? I will make a motion to move the 3011 Dutton Meadow concept of design review, Colbyn Creek, not a project, DR 21-040 to the October 7th design review board meeting. Thanks, Michael. Do I hear a second? I'll second that. Thank you, Adam. I'm assuming no discussion since we've kind of had it already. So with that, I'd like to take a roll call vote, please. Board Member Birch? Aye. Board Member McHugh? No. Board Member Sharon? Aye. Board Member Wolskie? Aye. And Chair Weigel? Aye. So we've been so moved to continue the project to October 7th. Sounds like, right? Correct. So thank you, applicant team. We appreciate that. And hopefully we'll see you back. Thank you very much. We will see you on the 7th. All right, thanks so much. So before we move on to the next item, we've all kind of been sitting here a while. So let's take a five minute break and, well, seven minute break, let's call it. And see everybody back at 6.35. 6.35. Thanks so much. Okay, so let's have everybody turn on their cameras here and then we'll get rolling in a minute. Okay, it's 6.35. So we are reconvening and we're going to go to item 9.3, concept design review, Aviarra, Sequo Natta project, no action required, concept design review, 1385 West College Avenue, DR 21-043. And I would like to turn it over to Susie Murray, who is the project planner for the staff presentation. Good afternoon, Chair Weigel, and members of the design review board. The project before you is concept design review. Again, no action is required. It's the Aviarra Apartments, located at 1835 West College Avenue. Again, it's concept design review for 136 units. Comprised of three-story structures, two-in-three bedroom units, and it will be 100% affordable. I'm steaming up here, hold on one second. The required entitlements are minor design review, which after receiving comments from the design review board, will be heard by the zoning administrator. Here's an aerial view of the site as it is today. And here is kind of a neighborhood context. The star is at the site, you have a shopping center to the east, single family residential and duplex, so single and duplex units to the west, and see there's a park to the north and what have you. So the general plan land use designation in this area is medium high residential. It's within the north station area specific plan, and the zoning is R330, SA is the station area plan, and the zoning and general plan land use are consistent. You can also see by this graphic that there's actually a lot of different land use types around this area. So we've got some higher density residential, adjacent to low density residential. We've got retail services very close by, and parks and what have you. So here's an aerial view of the, or I'm sorry, this is the landscape plan, and I like to use this as a site plan just because I think it provides a little bit more context. You've got the residential units surrounding the property, and I'm not gonna talk too much about this, I'm really gonna defer to the applicant. And they have their own presentation. Here's some of the elevations that we saw in the project plan packet. And we have received comments. We actually had a neighborhood meeting last night. So the comments that we received prior to me putting together this, or yeah, prior to the meeting when I put the presentation together, really were about parking, circulation, and that there was some confusion about a recently approved project at the site, and this will supersede that project if it's approved. At the neighborhood meeting last night, some other things that came up. Again, parking was a big issue. The people on Manhattan Way to the West and the Safeway Shopping Center to the East are very concerned about overflow parking from this unit or this development. Circulation was also a concern. We had a request for providing paths of travel from this complex over to the Safeway Shopping Center next door, also to the smart site. There was also some concern about exiting out of Manhattan. It's already difficult to turn left out of there. And right, I was made aware of, and this will just exacerbate that was the concern. So again, this is not a project in CEQA because tonight, what is before the design review board is a concept design review and there will be no decisions made pertaining to the project. So with that, the applicant and the Planning and Economic Development Department are requesting that the design review board provide comments and direction for the AVI area project. I know that the applicant has a preservation or a presentation and I'm happy to load it when you say so. For those that cannot see the screen, my name is Susie Murray. I'm the planner for the project. And my telephone number is 543-4348. And I'm sorry, that's an area code 707. And my email address is SMURRAYatSRCity.org. Thanks, Susie. I actually have a quick question, just for, as I was listening to your presentation there. You said something about a previous project and multiple projects. Can you clarify that for me a little bit, please? Sorry. Yeah, a couple of years ago, well, a year, between a year and two years ago, there was another project. I believe it was 85 units. I'm not that, I wasn't the planner then. So I'm not super familiar with the project. And I'm sure the applicant can explain more, but it was approved. It went through the whole process. And then it was kind of back to the drawing board and they've come back with another project for 136 units. My understanding is the previous project was market rate and this is affordable. Okay, cool. Thanks. Yeah, I'm remembering the project and I remember the developer. It's coming back to me. I think Adam, probably Adam and Michael were on the board then. They may remember it too. So excellent. All right, so let's go to the applicant for their presentation. And Michelle, can we get them hooked up with their top-end privileges? I'm gonna get their presentation. Yeah, you get the presentation. We'll do that over there and we'll get it all rolling here. Jeff, you should be able to unmute yourself. Yes, I just saw that. Thank you. And then I go back here. So if you have our slides loaded up or ready to go. I'm getting there. Bear with me. Yeah, I get it. So while Susie's loading that up, could you address the previous project for us? Yes, let me just introduce myself first in our team. My name is Jeff Johnson. I'm a principal with McKellar McGowan Real Estate Development. And we are obviously the developer on this project and also the owner of the site. My partner, Chris McKellar, is here with us today as well. And our team is here also. The presenters are going to be Kirk McKinley, our architect with McKinley & Associates, Christine Talbot, our landscape architect with Quadriga. And James Jensen will be available to answer questions as needed. He is our civil engineer with Adobe Engineering. And we also have in the house tonight our affordable housing consultant, Chelsea Investment Corporation. And they are here in the form of Sherry Hoffman, I believe, is in the house. It was two hours ago. We also assembled. I'm hoping everybody's still here. Yeah, so we have Sherry Hoffman and Becky Constantine. I believe we have Ken Gunn from a conam. Conam would be the ultimate manager of the property in case there are operational questions people have. As far as your question, thank you, Chair Weigel and the Design Review Board, we are really pleased to be here today. I just, at the risk of sounding, something, I want to say, we appreciate this process a lot. It's really valuable to us, I think, to be able to get this kind of early review and early input from the Design Review Board. So we really appreciate your time and we appreciate this opportunity. We did, we did, boy, I don't have the exact date in my mind. It was a year, year and a half ago. We did go through the review process and did get a 117 unit, a market rate project approved for the site. Because of the different incentives and the need for affordable housing in this state, we've been thinking for a long time about how do we get our hat in that ring and how do we participate? And we have chosen to propose this project as 100% affordable as opposed to the market rate to kind of respond to those incentives we see from the government. And we have, in doing that, we have Chelsea Investment Corporation as our advisor and consultant on this. They've done a ton of affordable housing projects in the state of California, I think primarily in the South, but I think everywhere in California. And our architect, Kurt McKinley, has been involved in those projects as well. So the planning and design of affordable projects is definitely in the wheelhouse of the team you are looking at today. Does that answer your question, Chair Weigl? It absolutely does. And while you were talking, I went to your website and I found the project and I very clearly remember reviewing it now. Okay, yes, right. So it's great. And we did make some changes, which I think based on your guys' review last time, we did make some changes to the architectural style. And I don't want to get on Kurt's toes here, but Kurt McKinley, but we did change some of the dramatic, more modern elements to a more residential sort of style at your guys' direction. And you'll see that in what we're presenting today. So if you can... Yeah, so I think we've got the presentation up now. So you can just go to your team and walk us through this. Thanks so much. Okay, so let me just sort of set the table. So if you can go to the next slide, please. Okay, this is the site. We are at 1385 West College Avenue. We are in the North Station priority area. And we're about just under four acres. Just, we are just to the west of a very large Safeway shopping center. And it's also a neighborhood shopping center. So a lot of the basic day-to-day needs of our residents can be satisfied. Right there, walking distance. We're also close to Finley Community Park. I don't need to tell you all the amenities that are available there for our residents. And West College is on a bus route as well, heading to the smart station. Maybe the next slide. This is part of our landscape plan. This is also slide 23, has a little more detail on this. And Christine tell that we'll talk more about this. But this gives you an idea of the site plan. We access off of West College and off of Cal. And you can see where we have neighboring properties. We hold back. So on that west side, where you see the kind of the bottom of the page, there is nobody on the, there is no building on the property line similarly to the north. Our project is, we propose three storey apartment project. There'll be six buildings, 136 units versus the 117 market rate that was approved. And we're talking 100% affordable to low income renters. The exact level of affordability is still in discussion. It could be average 60%, it could be average 80%. We're not quite sure yet, but there are 84 or two bedroom units and 52, three bedroom units. Each unit will have a private balcony or a patio with some storage. We are asking, we're in the R330 zone and designated consistent with that under the general plan. We are asking for a small density bonus because of our 100% affordability of 16%. So we're going from 117, which is kind of by right to 136. That's a 16% density bonus ask. We could under the North station priority planning guidelines, we could go to 100%. We're only doing 16%. The parking, I know has been a question for the neighbors. We have 174 parking spaces on this particular site plan here. In the evolution of the site plan, we're getting a few more, it looks like at 178. That's about a 1.3 ratio. Our requirement is 1.0. So we're over parked based on that requirement. There's been some discussion about the Cal Lane, and I will leave it to James and the engineering folks to talk about that maybe in more detail, but we are going to improve Cal Lane on our side to city standard, and in doing that, we will be adding, we believe we will be adding offside parking there, which does not count against our, doesn't count for our 174 parking spaces are under 78. And there will be about 17 units or 17 parking spaces added on Cal Lane there. Next slide, please. That's a less pretty picture of the site plan. Next slide. And this is kind of a summary of what I just explained. There'll be six buildings. Height limit is 45 feet, will be 32 to 37 feet. And there's some more details there. At this point, if you can go to the next slide, at this point, I would like to turn it over to Kirk McKinley. Kirk, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. Yep, there. Can you hear me now? Yes, go ahead. Okay, this is Kirk McKinley. I'm with the McKinley Associates. We designed the last building, which was approved on this site. And if we could go back two screens, two slides back to the basic building design, just it. So everybody can understand the building, although architects on this relate people on the board. The building are 24 units or 16 units. You'll notice the buildings that surround the exterior of the building on Cowell and West College, as well as on the north side of the project are 20 unit buildings. The buildings we had previously had garages on one side of the building on the first floor. These are stacked townhouses. So we have 24 units with no garages and it's all surface parking. The breezeways we have are the entry breezeways between the buildings. I think you can see them if you look at the West College, the building running on the West College Street. We have two breaks in the building which house a stair and entrance to the units. And they actually pass all the way through the units, unlike the last project, which they only loaded from the backside. So we have a better circulation, better connectivity throughout the entire project. And then we have the, a center kind of core in the center of the building because we moved the building off of the West property line as Jeff noted. So we don't have that close proximity to the residential to the West side of the project. There's one 16 unit building in that center core area. And then there's a six or a 12 unit building. I'm sorry, there's more 24 unit building and a 16 unit building in the center core. And for the units on the ground floor of the 16 unit building are a community area that opens out onto a wreck area in between the two buildings. And so you've got these two wings with the building you have these separation walkways that go all the way through the building and it's a three story concept. We can go to the back up two slides, forward two slides, please. Nope, other way. There you go. The forms of the building, and I think some of your board members have seen the forms of the building on the old project that we did. We've retained a lot of the forms because they're more residential and character and they were well received by the community. In fact, after the community hearing, I got several people coming up to me thanking me for making the building look more residential. But you can see that the, we've got the gable end features in the front. We've got some slope wrists on a three story building which really gives you more of the character of the residential building. It's more horizontal in character with the forms, the shadow boxes on the ends of the buildings are built out from the face of the building and incorporates some of the balconies and create a nice shadow play and there's great form on the building. So that's very broken up, but it does reflect a lot of the changes that we made in the first project. And it was intentionally done to, because it was so well received to do it in this project. Next slide. In fact, you can see it a little bit more here without the color on the building. You can see that the gable ends and the C-shaped channels on the ends of the building, we are putting wood siding on the bottom of the building similar to the way we did on the previous design to give a grounded base and to break up the three story elements of the building. Next slide, please. These are the ends of the building. Again, they have the materials brought around the ends of the buildings. To maintain the character, the actual shadow boxes return around the corners of the buildings as well. Next slide, please. This gives you the idea of what we're talking about in terms of the breezeways between the buildings. So we've got, so we got, what was it? Four, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So we've got 10 units, 10 units, two, four, six. Now we've got eight units per floor, 24 units per building. And this particular building has all two bedroom units in it. We also have buildings that have three bedroom units on the ends of the buildings. These are very livable units. We've done quite a few projects for Chelsea Development. We've probably done over 12 affordable projects for them and we probably have 12 on the boards right now for them in various stages. The biggest one being 404 units. So we have a lot of experience in affordable housing and making the units function well and be very livable. Next slide, please. So roofline of the building just for all you architects. So you understand the building a little bit better. Next slide, please. This is the, another one of the, I think this is the all, this is the three bedroom unit. Yeah, it's a three bedroom unit. No, it's a two bedroom, the building that has two bedroom units on the end of it. You can see it's got the same character, same quality that the other buildings do. Next slide, please. Again, you can see the diagrammatically, a little bit more unenhanced, but you can get the character of the building to see the forms a little bit more strongly. Next slide, please. Ends of the building as well. Next slide, please. A lot of the buildings on this particular site layout with the buildings have the long side against the street. And so we have a lot more front entries along the street, a lot more connectivity that way in terms of this design versus the previous design. But you can see how the buildings are very similar in character and they all have these breezeway concepts and they're structured the same way. Next slide, please. End of the roof plan. Next slide. This is the smaller building that's got the community center on the ground floor. Next slide. Again, the forms of the building. Next slide. Ends of the building. Next slide. And you can see where we have taken out units on the ground floor on the left-hand side of the building and put it in a community center. Now we haven't had the value of having con-am management review of the layout of the building, which I'm sure that some of the internal layouts could be modified, but that particular facility is on the ground floor of the building in the core area of the project. And it houses the laundry, community space, rental management office, computer stations, kitchen services, the community area, as well as a little bike storage area. Next slide, please. I think there's a, we have a, and that's the upper floor of that building. Next slide, please. Rift plan. Next slide. These are the unit plans and blow-up units. So you can get a little bit more character the way they work. They're handicapped and sensible on the ground floor. And, but not on the, we've actually maintained the same accessibility on the upper floor, just for economic sense, because all the bathrooms stat. But you can see that they're very, very livable plans and very comfortable plans. Very organized and accommodated in terms of furniture layouts and things of that nature. Next slide. This is kind of a blow-up of the commercial, the community space. And you can see that we've integrated the washer dryer areas in this building. So it actually, those are probably going to shift because they're actually on the wrong side of the building, but I'm sure management will straighten us out on that one. But we're hoping that this promotes people coming into the open space between the two buildings because they have to do their washing and drying and closes there. And it creates this kind of sense of community that you go down and you use the outdoor space and you go ahead and use the community space. Next slide. This is a landscape plan. I'm going to let our landscape architect chime in on this. Christine, a little Christine. Michelle, can we, Christine Talbot, I think needs access to speak there. Hi there, sorry about that. I'll lower my hand now. This is Christine Talbot from Quadriga Landscape Architecture, thanks Kirk. So yes, you're looking at the landscape plan and just to orient you a little bit, north is to the left and then south is to the right. I always have to tell that to myself. So I think that some of the important things that we heard from the neighborhood group that I want to reiterate with the landscape plan is the pedestrian connectivity that we're creating by improving the sidewalk and streetscape along West College Avenue and also Cal Lane, including street trees and stormwater improvements. So I think it'll really create a lovely environment and help some screening from the street and provide some shade. As Kirk was discussing, there's entries off West College and also off Cowell and then there's pedestrian entries all along the frontage. So there'll be free movement in and out of the property. Some of the approach that we took to the design as far as open space, we're providing the three required spaces based on the design guidelines. One is the Totlot, which is really the center feature that you see in red there in the center and it's adjacent to the community room. So there's kind of an indoor-outdoor usability to that space and eyes on that space. And then there'll be shade trees and planting so it'll be a pleasant space to play. We also incorporated more of a hangout space to plan north of that area. There's what looks to be an eye that has trees flanking both sides and some seating there. And that's intended to be like a teen hangout space with maybe some game tables, space for dining and hanging out, still visible to residents, but set aside a little bit. And then our third more organized open space is a community garden that's to the lower left of the screen. We've incorporated some area to provide garden space for residents. And then the majority of the site, we've created these little seating areas around, just little nooks so that people can get out of their house and maybe have a seat outside and look at the landscape or have a private moment. So we wanted to incorporate a lot of those little moments as well. The tree planting is going to be consistent with fire requirements. So we haven't specified exactly which trees we'd like to plant on site, just pending aerial access requirements. We do know that we will have to have some lower trees on cowl lane and then also on the main drive lanes. So we'll be looking for those spaces where we can incorporate larger shade trees for sure to make up for the fact that we have some smaller trees to provide fire access. Overall, the planting pellets gonna be, we're gonna meet the Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance. We're gonna be very concerned with water efficiency. We're not providing any lawn space. It's all gonna be drought tolerant in quotes. Water efficient landscape with lots of interest and kind of very like to say bulletproof because of the use. So we want it to look good all the time. And I think that we did talk last time about tree mitigation. We'll be removing a couple larger oak trees for the street improvements, unfortunately. So we'll be looking to mitigate those onsite, those oak trees, and then also the walnut trees that will be removed. Thank you so much. I will turn it back over to Jeff. Yeah, thank you Kirk and Christine. And I think at this point that concludes our presentation and we look for your comments and input. Cool, thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you. I went and dug it out for the board. If you guys wanna look at the December 5th, 2019 minutes from our meeting then, which you can look at in iLegislate on your iPad, that is where the comments were recorded from the November 7th meeting where we reviewed the original project. If you're curious about kind of what the commentary was about the previous project. So if you wanna go dig that up, feel free to. And so that being said, I think we'll go to public comment. Is everybody cool with that? And then we'll go to our questions and go from there. So we'll go to public comment now. And three minutes a person. Again, reminder, we'll put it up on the screen here. And then please only comment about the project currently being discussed. So do we have any raised hands? Judy, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute and if you could please state your name for the record. Sure, this is Judy Erbus. You all know me. The plan from two years ago was create a great concern on our Manhattan Way neighborhood. This one is probably triple that. Parking is already dense on Manhattan Way, especially on the south end nearest this proposed project. There are three multifamily units on that end without adequate off-street parking. And there is even someone who lives on West college who has to park on Manhattan because there's no parking on West college. I wonder where you expect 250 to 300 cars to go and that number will be addressed by the husband in a minute. Recently in Cinderella development down off of Stony Point off of Sevastopol Road which is a market rate, I was told there are many as five cars per home and there's virtually no street parking available most of the time I visited a friend there. I had to park illegally across his driveway to be able to see him. People do not ride on your empty buses, they drive cars. I would like my guests to be able to park near my home. It was suggested we might get parking permits but the city does not enforce those on the evenings and on the weekend which is when most of the cars would be parking. Yes, we need affordable housing but build it with realistic parking not just what is allowed. What is legally allowed is not necessarily what is best for the existing community. Our quality of life and property values are important too. This parking situation is a disaster for Manhattan way homeowners and residents. Please, please don't allow this to happen to us. And then I would like to ask a question which I'm sure can't be answered right now but perhaps someone who can provide this to me. I'd like to know where all of the affordable apartment complexes in Santa Rosa are. And I'd also for the developers like to have the addresses of your affordable projects in San Diego that are managed by the same management company. I would really appreciate having those. And thank you and my husband wants to talk now too. So I'll cede my 40 seconds to him. Can I do that? You could also, what we've done in the past of there are two folks in the same household that we're just sitting in the same place is we've allowed them the same three minutes just because you're a different person. So if he's not logged in separately, we'll just go ahead and restart the three minutes and have him state his name in the same way that you did. So go ahead, sir. Hi, my name is Greg Rebus and I also live at 1239 Manhattan Way. And talking to the parking issue, so I'm kind of back to the upload math that I did based on a PV article yesterday saying it's totally possible that a three bedroom apartment can have five working adults in it. If that's the case that generates 208 cars or trucks, the three bedroom, same sort of concept with a number of possible working adults in a two bedroom could add another 252 cars for a grand total of about 5,460 cars, 174 designated individual parking spaces. I'll dial that back. I mean, if there's only two cars per unit, which is gonna be a low number, what's going to happen is we're gonna have 102 cars basically looking for parking spaces on Manhattan Way or Wild Rose, which is just immediately south of the Safeway parking lot. If any of you live anywhere near Safeway on West Side, I impeach you, implore you to, excuse me, implore you to sit at the south end of Manhattan Way and look left and right during about any hour you pick other than from midnight till four o'clock in the morning. Given the fact that this project is gonna have an outlet to West College on West College and another one on Cowell, the backup for us to make left turns and sometimes right turns is going to become really problematic and dangerous. There is a bend in West College just east of Manhattan Way that makes it difficult to see cars coming in that direction. That road is now a, well, I wouldn't call it a drag strip, but it's definitely a raceway and cars have to be going at times well over the speed limit. And I would hazard an uneducated guess that some cars are going down that road at times at 60 miles an hour. Somebody is gonna get killed and from what we heard yesterday, the chances of additional stop lights have not worked well. Speed strips don't work because first responders don't like to have to slow down their rigs to get across it. And there's just a lot of very deep rooted concerns about traffic impact, parking impact and quality of life and property values on every resident I've talked to on Manhattan Way. Thank you very much for hearing my comments. Thanks so much. We appreciate your comments and your wife's. We'll move on to the next raised hand, please. Just out of curiosity, how many do we have? We have three currently. Thanks. Andre, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. And if you could please state your full name for the record. Yes, hi, I'm Andre Lucero. I'm a property owner on Manhattan Way. You know, I had one comment initially about the design which is, I think, I gotta thank you for some of the sensitivities that have been shown by the design team based upon some of the previous comments. And I think a lot of concerns were taken into consideration and I think that's great. My concern about the design as it is is that the one side that is facing West College Avenue, even though it pops in and out, it still appears as very much a big tall wall that has a lot of elevation to it. And I'm thinking that maybe the lower floors could be out proud of some of the higher elevations. And that would be more in keeping with some of the architecture that's in the area. And then the other comment that I have somewhat reflects what we were hearing before in that the number of residents has greatly increased. And that is a concern from parking and from just general population increase in the area. And I understand that we do need low income housing and we need housing in general. But I think it's a really high density for this location. And that's all I got to say. Thanks so much. We'll move to the next person. Natalie, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. And if you could please state your name for the record. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. Thank you. Natalie Matei, director of real estate for Safeway. I oversee our six stores in the city of Santa Rosa. I've worked in Santa Rosa for 21 years and have 24 years experience in the business. In addition to the letter that Safeway sent in this afternoon, I'd like to briefly touch on four items. Number one, as mentioned in the last project discussion, I'd like to bring up notice. If we can ask for planning to please let us know the address that notice for Safeway was given. Additionally, the property owner of the shopping center when I spoke with him previously, he had not been aware of the project either. So just want to see what addresses the city has on file. Number two, I'd like to ask for a description of the process for review and approval of the project. I've been told that no application's been filed yet. There's been discussion with the design concept review and application is supposed to be filed. So I'm a little fuzzy on what the actual status of an application is. That dovetails into my number three, which has to do with the site plan lacking dimensions. And also questioning whether there's been accurate base drawings submitted to the city. We've discussed with the applicant, we've requested CAD drawings so that we can run our delivery truck templates on Cowell. And the drawings that we received had challenges with them. So I'm not sure if the drawings that we're reviewing tonight are similarly challenged. And then last, number four, we're concerned not only about the parking deficits, real life implications for our customers and for the neighbor's quality of life, but there are physical impacts on the environment that are associated with those impacts. So if we have a parking deficit at the apartment complex and residents are trying to park in the shopping center, which we would tow, but we don't wanna come out of the gate with that, we're gonna be looking at safety implications of traipsing through the landscaping, crossing the street with unknown pedestrian and bicycle connections there, or cars simply circling the entire shopping center in the neighborhood looking for parking because there's not enough in the actual project. So if we can please get responses either tonight or as follow-up to the comments raised in the Safeway letter and the four items I discussed just now, thank you. Thank you so much. We'll go to the next public comment. Is this the last one or do we have any more? Yes, it looks like this is the last hand. Okay, excellent. Oops, excuse me one moment. Steve, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. And if you could please state your name for the record. Well, hi, my name is Jean, he's been straight. I'm Steve's wife. He would also like to speak if that's possible. We're husband and wife. We live at one, two, four, three, Manhattan Way. And we have many concerns regarding the project, primarily density. We just feel that there's the traffic already is very difficult out on West college where some of the neighbors trying to make a left hand turn and we do have a center lane and sometimes there's a collision of one person's trying to get in going right and left and we've had many close calls, one recently with a bicyclist who happened to be going the wrong way. So first of all, West college is not bicycle friendly at all. We are also cyclists and we ride our bikes down there and it's very scary. I imagine that this is gonna be a continued concern. Also in the current design plan of your egress, ingress to your apartments, it's very close to Manhattan. So I can't even hazard a guess as to what it's gonna be like trying to add that with so many people in and going in and out. We're already having struggling with it. I can't imagine it without a stoplight at the very, very most least. And then once again, I feel like that property site is way too small to be trying to carry out a density of 136 units and doubling that in cars. I could see duplexes possibly, single family homes, but you're abutting another neighborhood of single family homes and some duplexes. And to me, this is completely unacceptable. I mentioned at our last meeting about the height of three-story building. It's going to completely block out our son and air quality I'm concerned about. And usually we can see the sunrise in the east and also sometimes the moon. And I know that's gonna be completely a concern. And the design team has spoken very eloquently about the livability of their hard work they've put into their designs. But I'm wondering what about our livability as previous residents of this neighborhood that has been here for such a long time and has been, you know, I don't know, just it's a very, it's highly concerning to me, but I will stop there. And if my husband Steve could speak, that would be great. Yes, so we're gonna reset the clock. And then if he could please obviously again state his name and all the other pertinent information that he'll have three minutes to speak. So go ahead. Great, thank you. My name is Steve Huebenstrein. And obviously I live with Jeanne here on Manhattan Way. I think parking and traffic is the huge concern for everybody tonight. One of the things that hasn't been brought up too much tonight that hasn't been brought up before was the increased traffic just coming down Manhattan. And we are good or bad, it's sort of a feeder street from college over to the nearest elementary school to this project would be Helen Lehman's elementary school. And about, you know, three times a day pretty much been clockwork, you know, is the parents bringing their kids to school at eight, picking them up some at 12 and then coming back at 2.30 and at those times a day. Boy, the traffic on Manhattan is crazy. And now with the extra density and population, I'm sure it's many of those folks need to get their kids elementary school. And the nearest way, the quickest way to do it is to come out of this project and go 30 feet down college and turn right on the Manhattan and go flying down Manhattan because you're late and get your kids to school. It's just, I can't even imagine this. It's also Manhattan is also a connector from college to Gernville, which is a parallel road to college to our north. And a lot of people are cutting across Manhattan to get to Gernville road from so. Yeah, Manhattan just turns out to go to her path. Unfortunately, is one of these very convenient cross streets between two very large busy streets, college being very busy, too busy like been brought before the speed limits, I would agree. We're assuming said it maybe wasn't a drag strip out there, but a raceway. I think it's a raceway. It's a drag strip. It is crazy on college. Somehow rather this, I don't know how this isn't been addressed yet by the city. And they're raising down Manhattan and they get over on the Gernville. Well, I think they do the same thing where they just speed up and down Gernville. And this has all become gonna be much more of a problem with the large development, high density that's feeding into this. And Manhattan just unfortunately is gonna be right in the middle of all this. People rush him down Manhattan for all these various reasons. Anyways, that's it, my time's up. Thank you for letting us speak. It's very nice. I like it. And thank you for attending and speaking. We appreciate all public comments as we've previously stated. Michelle, do you have anybody else raising their hand? No, there are no other hands. So seeing no more raised hands, we will close public comment. And so I think what I'd like to do is I'd like to address a couple things quickly that I heard in public comment, which the board will likely ask. So I thought I'd address it this way. So we did kind of go over the DRB process earlier, but Amy, could you give us a quick summary about what this project would experience specifically to help aid the Safeway folks? I'm gonna pass it over to Suzie since I think she's identified the path for this project and then I can follow up as needed. Yeah, perfect, that'll work. Thanks, yeah, either one of you guys. You'll get an answer. So the permit path right now, it's really pre-formal application. So there has been an application submitted. It's an application for concept design review and this has been a real challenge getting that understanding clear. So I'm just gonna give my, we have three types of pre-application applications. One is a pre-application meeting with staff where the applicant presents their project to staff and staff gives them the guidance to get through the entitlement process. The second is a concept design review where the applicant has the opportunity and planning really facilitates the discussion between the design review board and the applicant. And the third is a neighborhood meeting or community meeting. We call it neighborhood meeting and that's where city staff facilitated discussion between the developer or the applicant and the community. So last night we had a neighborhood meeting or the community meeting. I tried to explain at that point and I will now that city staff have not done any analysis on this project other than looking at the permit path. So the next steps after this concept design review requirement has been met because again, this property is within the priority, a priority development area. So through our resilient city measures and addressing the housing crisis, we have enabled those projects to come to the design review board on a concept basis, get adequate feedback when you're able to and then the project can go to the zoning administrator for a public meeting for and review, which is intended to be a much easier process. It is still discretionary, it still requires all of the CEQA review. And so what would happen if we get the comments from the board tonight, the applicant can take all the comments that they've gathered so far, go make their adjustments to their plan packets and then they'll come in and they'll submit their formal density bonus application, which is staff level review and design review for the zoning administrator. And yeah, that's that. At that point, I believe the zoning code requires within 45 days of that application submittal that we send out a notice of application. We have received very clear instruction from the council that affordable housing projects are our number one priority. However, they still take quite a bit of time to review the impacts. And I'd like to just address the parking and the circulation is something that we will look at. We will look at it in depth. We're not gonna create an unsafe environment. Yeah, so I think just to clarify again, so tonight we're not taking any action. We've talked about this before. We provide commentary to staff. Staff then goes back once the formal application has been submitted for the zoning administrator component, which would be minor design review, just to clarify what that is. Major design review is when you come here to the board. So minor design review, well, you could do major, whatever. There's a wrinkle there with some of the prior development areas, but we won't go into that. So what ended up happening is that so they take their documents, what's required by what would normally be required for preliminary design review and final design review, they have to bring to the zoning administrator. So they bring a full package to get approved. It's a public hearing, but it's ministerial instead of a board. Or isn't it ministerial, isn't that the difference? No, it's discretionary. Ministerial is more like a building permit, yeah. I always mix this up. So anyway, it's still discretionary, but it's a staff member as opposed to the full board, thus hopefully it's making the process more expeditious. And so then, yeah, so that I think so that was the process, right? And so I think the next piece that came to mind when questions were being asked, and I think this may be important for the public to understand and maybe the applicant can answer this for me, is they can build their project that is already approved. They could build their market rate project if they wanted to, because it's approved, right? I mean, they would have to get their building permits and all that kind of stuff, but they could effectively, if they wanted to, they could just scrap this whole thing and build what's approved, correct? That's true so long as the project stays alive. So typically, again, I haven't researched this project, but I would assume it was approved for a two-year period. They can file an extension 30 days prior to that expiration. And I think they're entitled to four, three, four one-year time extensions. So they could technically keep the project alive for six years after, then the state's also stepped in and given some housing projects, additional extensions. I think at this point, it's 18 months for projects that don't include a tentative map. So that bumps us up to seven and a half years that it could stay alive. And so there's a specific reason I'm asking here. So if we can get the applicant, they're speaking back, I'm gonna ask a question about what was the previous unit count? What's the current unit count? What was the previous parking count? And what's the current parking count? I think this may be somewhat enlightening to both the board and the public. Jeff, you should be able to unmute. Yeah, I just unmuted. Boy, okay, the previous unit count was 117. Our parking ratio, I'm sorry, Chairman, I... It's okay, I looked it up. I'm trying to drag it out of my memory here. I think it's 192. Parking ratio was like 1.6, something like that. Yeah, it's 197, I pulled it out. I just was hoping you would do it. Okay, thank you. It's 197, yeah. Okay, 197. So this project is 136 units and 174. As I said, in our current planning, we're looking at 178 and 179. So we're looking at the difference between 16 and 13. I think that's accurate, Chairman, but don't hold me to that. No, I totally get that. And here's the reason I ask. So the project as currently approved has less units, but more parking. But it only has like 19 less units, right? Right, yeah. 19 is right, yes. Right, and then you have maybe 20 less parking spaces. So then my follow-up question is, because this is an affordable project, what we have seen with a lot of affordable projects is deed restrictions in terms of rental agreements, whereas you may or may not get a parking space, right? Do you guys have any plans for that in terms of, if you rent a studio apartment and you don't have a car, you don't have to pay for the parking space kind of thing, thus effectively reducing the car need, I guess, at the property? We have no studios. So no, we haven't really looked at, and I might defer to Chelsea and Con Am on this, but we haven't looked at exactly how that will work, other than that we have one per unit plus some extra. But how that actually gets allocated, I would have to defer to my affordable housing people as to how that gets done. Yeah, totally. I'm just, I guess what I'm trying to tell, mentioned to I think the public is, many of these affordable housing projects have some sort of item written into their rental agreement about what kind of parking space they get, if they get one, if they don't get one. And if you guys that don't have that figured out right now, that's totally fine, but I just wanted to point out that that's kind of how parking can be controlled, like car usage, things like that. So there are ways to do that, to kind of make it less car intense. And Leah, thank you so much. Can I please maybe ask Sherry Hoffman or somebody on her team to weigh in on that, please? And I would point out also one thing that these are, this is specifically a family oriented project. So the idea is families with kids, okay, not five working adults living in these units, not to say that couldn't happen on an occasion, but that's not the intent of this project. The intent of this project is put kids in beds. And that's what we're trying to do here. So there are more bedrooms for sure, but we see kids in those bedrooms, not the other thing. So Sherry or somebody from the Chelsea team, can you guys chime in on this, please? Sherry, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. Hello, good evening. This is Sherry Hoffman from Chelsea. I don't know if Ken from ConAm is on our professional management company, but I will respond as best I can. And to comment on Jeff's comment about the household sizes. Yes, it is true that these will be families with children. We would not have five separate adults living in an apartment with five cars. This is four families. And regarding the cars, we do have parking management that we can put into the leases, which is why I would defer to ConAm. And again, I don't know if Ken is on the call. We do require, we have have given permits to the households so that they have to record the number of cars that they have. Each tenant must put within their lease the number of cars they have. And we can authorize, we can allocate parking permits to the residents so that we keep guests out of the project. We manage that very well with ConAm, keeping guests out of parking at the project. We do find in our affordable housing, Chelsea's developed over 120 projects. I've been with Chelsea about 25 years, currently on and operate about 94 projects, 8,200 units. And we do find that our average parking count is about on a family project is about 1.2 parking spaces. So we believe this 1.3 ratio is sufficient to meet what we commonly have at our projects. Again, we own and operate about 94 projects now. And so we believe that these ratios are appropriate because there will be families living here with children. Cool, thank you so much for answering. I think those were kind of the big ticket items from the public that I heard, that I thought that we could try to plow through there. So now I'd like to go to questions from the board. It looks like Michael's chomping at the bit over there. So I'm gonna let him go first. I had one question to tack on to yours. I did not see the original application. It was during my hiatus. So my question was, did I hear that there were garages in the original, in the current? Yeah, in the original one, it looked like there were, I think there were 17, it was either 77 or 17. I can't, I looked it up and then I pushed it away. Just cause I wanted to show you. If I might defer to Kirk on that, but there were, yes, there were garages, yes. They were taking up basically the livable space, I guess you would call it, but there were garages. Many garages, I'm just, I'm trying to say that effectively, a number of those garages may or may not have had cars parked in them. So the 1.6 may really have been 1.3 by the time you, by the time you factored in unparkable garages due to those being filled with storage or. You try to control for that, board member urge, but yeah, you're right. I'm just saying, effectively, it may have been the same, same rate by the time you were done on an ongoing basis despite your best efforts. So. As far as, are we on questions or? Yeah, I was trying to get kind of the big questions from the public kind of out of the way. I thought that would be helpful for, for the public and the board. Cause I imagined some of those questions from the public perked up your ears as well. So do you have any other questions of either the applicant or staff? I don't. Okay, awesome. So we'll go to John. Any questions of applicant or staff? No, I have no questions at this time. Thank you. Perfect. Thanks, John. Adam. No questions. Cool. And Sheila. Just a couple. I'm curious and maybe this is for Sherry Hoffman. If there is a manager or manager's unit on site. And then my second question is on the building plan exterior elevation. We have a schematic front elevation A and schematic front elevation B. And on both of those, there are these horizontal bars. And I want to say they're, they're stucco, one's orange, one's white. And I'm wondering if those are decorative pieces or do those have a functional purpose? And those are my two questions. Thank you. Okay. So Sherry gets one and Kirk gets the other. I believe. Yeah. Okay. And this is Sherry. Yes, there is. There is. I don't want Sherry answering the second one. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I'll take the easy first one. There is on site manager that lives at the property and we'll be working in the office daily. Well, they'll have a day off or two, but we operate the leasing office and on site manager does live on the property. And then the architectural question to the architect about the orange and white. I think they're porches potentially, but I don't know. I think is that what you were asking Sheila? Yeah, I think that's porches, but he'll know better. Yeah, I just need to understand exactly where it is. We do have siding on the front of the building, which has horizontal lines on it. I don't know if that's what you're talking about on the base of the building and it actually pops up with the second story, but the other horizontal lines would be the balconies with handrails above them. Maybe that's what you're talking about. And so we did want, we did want to, Board Member Wolskie, we did want to make sure that the residents did have some outdoor space and some outdoor storage opportunities in each unit. And that's what we've done. Okay, so these are the frontages of the balconies and they provide maybe like a privacy screen. If I specifically knew where, but generally speaking, we did not try to make. So I had staff throw it up on the screen here. So I think what Sheila's talking about is the C-shaped kind of backwards and forwards banding on both elevations. Yeah, that's the backwards C-shaped. Oh, that's actually like a shadow box. It's built out from the face of the building by about a foot and it creates some form on the outside of the building and brings up some of the flatness of the character of the structure. It's similar to what we did on the previous approved scheme. Okay. All right, thank you. So it actually builds out from the more yellow background. It's actually built out a foot from that. And I think you might be able to see a little bit more in the perspective. Yeah, go to the first page of the applicant presentation. I think that you can definitely see it on that. It's very clear on the 3D view. Yeah, it's actually a pop out on the face of the building. Sheila, I'm seeing it now. Okay, yes, yes, I see it much better now. Thank you. And there are some balconies, I think tucked behind it in some instances and then it's also just proud of a, you know, a wall. Yeah, in those windows and stuff. Okay, perfect. You good, Sheila? Okay, any other questions from the board before we go to comments? Okay, seeing no more questions. Sheila, would you like to start on your comments on the project or do you want to go last? It's up to you. Yeah, I can go. I'm in between my computer glasses and looking at things. Okay, well, we were just talking about, you know, the shadow box effects for me. And this is, you know, board member McHugh will probably find this nitpicky, but I'm not a huge fan of that C shape. I would prefer that we had, I guess it's the horizontal wood siding going vertical that whole way. That for me, it's a little disruptive to have that piece go vertical there. That's just me. I really like that there's a manager on site. I think that we'll make a world of difference. So I appreciate learning that information. Like that it's an affordable housing project and that you're taking advantage of the incentives that are available right now. And let's see, I appreciate the separation from the neighbors that you're having this, putting the parking next to the neighbors to the North and the West. I know there was some concern about shadowing, but it would be much greater if these buildings were next to them. You know, with the roof lines, I'm a little bit waffling on this. There was, it looks a little bit gabled and then we're going into this modern flat roof style. I'm almost wondering if it might look better. Most of the architecture here looks a little more modern and flat roof and maybe it might look better just to keep to one style. I don't know how everyone else feels, but I felt it was a little disorienting to go from gabled to flat. Let's see if there's anything else. So I noticed on the landscape plan, some of the gathering and seating areas were near the trash enclosures and we're a concept review, but I would just encourage you to put those, locate those more in the open space areas and the community area and not near the trash enclosures. So those are my comments. Thank you. If I might just say, can I just say one thing? Yeah, totally. Yeah, go ahead. Something I didn't mention, nobody mentioned was there was a 75-foot PG&E easement that borders our West property line between us and the nearest home to begin with on Manhattan Way. And so back when we did all this originally, we did a shadow study and it turned out that there was no significant, there was no impact on the properties to our West. And that was when we had a building on our West property line. So I just want you to be able to visualize this as we are a property with a 75-foot buffer between ourselves and our neighbors on Manhattan Way. So the idea that we're taking light in the air, we did that study and we were very sensitive to that and it turns out that that just was not an impact. That's good to know. I appreciate that. I also forgot to mention, I like the opener hallway I think that adds a lot of light and natural ventilation and I like that aspect of the project. Thanks. Thank you. I had forgotten about that 75-foot easement. I remember we talked about it in depth. Yeah. It's a big, it's a, it's a big one. Just we're very, we're very offset from our, from our neighbors to the West, very offset. Yeah, absolutely. And so now you have both the easement and the parking area. Right. It's all very, very far away. Exactly, cool. All right, board members, Sharon, you're up. Hey, great. Yeah, and I'm glad first off that that easement was brought up right away, Shilin, that that was part of that because I was gonna bring that up just to remind the process that that is there. Cause that was a big point of discussion in the first, it was two times that this came before us. You've got good memory, good memory, by the way. We had to come back. We do not wanna come back again, by the way. That's exactly. Well, it's funny because one of the, one of the board member Wolskie's comments about the Gables, I wish Warren Hedgebest was here also for this meeting because that was one of the things he wanted to, he commented upon and wanted you to bring into the second iteration of your design. So, but that was highlighted again. Cause it was, the first iteration was very modern. But it was all the modern design that you were looking at, Sheila. And then now it's got that, you know, elements that kind of softened it. And so my first comment is that I enjoyed the, I was a proponent of your design when it was the previous iteration. And I still am a proponent and enjoy it now. And also appreciate that you mentioned that you were, you kind of residentialified it to become a new word, that you've taken it and have kind of a, you know, you brought in some of that playfulness and are emphasizing that livability as well. I, yeah, kudos for taking advantage of the incentives to look at affordable housing. That's great. You know, we need all types of housing, but for you to kind of, you know, switch gears and to take advantage of some new incentives and looking at some new energy. And we, you know, our previous discussion of the Rena, the housing allocation, you know, this is great that you're willing and enthusiastic. And it's nice to hear about your, also your other projects about doing affordable housing as well. Because I think this could be a real asset, you know, with this new iteration. So thank you for that and kudos for going the affordable route. The design itself, as I said, I think this is a great evolution with what you brought before. And so I won't comment too much upon it because it did get to sort of comment on the original design a couple of times, but I think it's still a good design. It's innovative. It doesn't look like all other housing, you know, it's got some real new feel to it, which I enjoy. Let's see. I'm also glad that the Suzy Planner Murray, thank you for the great explanation and mapping out of the process, moving forward with this because this site, it certainly does, it's a very complicated site, you know, you're wedged between residential area, schools and a shopping center and West College Avenue, which is a complicated road. Certainly a racetrack. Yeah, my son's preschool was just down the road from here, down across the street from the family center. So I know this area very well. I would like this area also take my life into my hands. So I hear all of these comments and the concerns and I do hope and I do know that the city is going to be looking at that as this project moves forward. Traffic calming, certainly street lights will definitely be taken into understudy. And so that's gonna be very important and especially with the neighbors concerns about Manhattan Way. And we didn't really have anyone commenting from across College Avenue, but I'm certain neighbors across there are concerned and should be concerned as well. So thank you, Planner Murray, for really laying out the process for us because I think it's gonna be good for people to feel secure in knowing that all these concerns are going to be brought under that purview. As far as the, so I talked about the architecture, the layout, yes, I appreciate that you're really thinking in terms of livability, in terms of family. I would want to push that a little bit more in terms of the site layout and really I think Sheila mentioned the gathering areas near the trash enclosures, kind of thinking about where they are. I think there could be some thinking about really how to create spaces for this very dense development to really create spaces for people to be, to have some livability and some ownership outdoors. The two central gathering areas, the teen hangout area, glad that you called that out. It's always taught lots that are specified, but I like that. So thank you for that, Christine. And along with the play area. Another area that it seems kind of tacked on a bit is the community garden area. In terms of outdoor spaces and livability and ownership there, I wonder if having that be more of a multi-purpose area could be a real asset to the site gardens and being able to, when you live in an apartment to get your hands in the dirt and grow things is very much an important thing to have for a lot of people. But there's a lot of people on here. And so thinking about ways that we can really multi, have a lot of people be able to use these areas all at once. So the areas to be able to use the outdoors are limited though. And so I understand those constraints as well, but I'm interested to see how the design thinking evolves and the, in terms of the layout. Also, I really appreciate the leafiness and trying to bring shade and minimize heat island like we talked about in the last project. I think this is well on its way. And as I think in some great iteration and a great evolution of this project. So thank you for this and best of luck with the process. Thanks, Adam. Thank you so much, Board Member Charron. John, you're up. Board Member McHugh, sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I'll defer my comments to, I'd like to hear more from our fellow colleagues on the board. Oh, sure. No problem, John. We'll go to, do you want to go after me or after both Michael and I are done? You just want to go at the end? Would that work for you? Yes, please. All right. No, no problem at all. Michael, you're up. Great, thank you. Yeah, this project is very well thought out and a great presentation tonight. I missed the first round here. I'm glad to hear from Susie that several of the comments that were addressed by the public are yet to be approached by the city. And I'm certain that the city will do a great job through its review around traffic and safety issues and lots of other things. So again, coming back to the purpose of this board, I think that your roof drawings are incredibly sexy. So they are appreciated. Thank you for bringing them to the table here. Oh, that's very, very fascinating. Yes, I love the roof drawing it says. What they illustrate to me is... I don't understand any of them, but go ahead. They illustrate to me how well thought through the entire project business and to be able to take a look at those and be able to understand the project and its context is really important. I think that the design is fantastic. I love the Gable Roof piece and the traditional character that that brings forward in a clean contemporary way and the contemporary, I love the way that the roof that runs over the second and third floor bridges pulls those things together. So I think that your eye never stops moving around these elevations. I think there's gonna be a great deal of shadow and that we don't see looking at elevations. Design professionals can look at a rendering like this and understand it with a level of detail that you've given and understand what's gonna happen. So it is, I just think this is a very well thought through project. Obviously it's been through a good deal of review here before. I think that if the commitment to the amenity spaces that are in the landscape drawings can be met and maybe improved with some of my colleagues' comments, this is a project that will not be difficult for the zoning administrator to pick up on a positive review from the Design Review Board tonight and be able to see it through to the end. So my office has been near this area for decades and I know the area very well. I do understand the changes it's gone through from being a sleepy leftover agricultural area to a patchwork development, to now trying to form this into something that's a really livable area with great schools, good attachments to transit, et cetera. I wanna throw out a hope that over time the State Utility Commission and the City of Santa Rosa and SMART can work out the Jennings rail crossing not far from here so that there's a walkable path. It's a long walk from here, but a walkable path to the station on Gernvill Road. I've been a big proponent of that for a long time. So I wanna see this part of town succeed. I would like to see more residents. I'd like to see more vital commercial space. I think this project is a great step toward that. So those are my comments. Thanks, Michael. I guess the only thing for me that would, I agree with everything that's been said, but I think the only thing for me that's maybe that could amp this project up maybe just a touch would be the introduction of an additional gabled element on like the front elevations. And so, Susie, would you mind throwing up the applicant's presentation and going to, I think it's page seven maybe? No, I need a floor plan. Page eight, page nine when you get a chance. Basically what I'm trying to say is so that the gable elements that you have are nice because they're bumped out, right? So you're doing some sort of relief by providing additional space or you're doing it artificially by just building it out and cladding it. Either way works for me. I think it would be nice if you actually built it out a little bit, but whatever. But I think you can do the same thing on the, what, go back one, go back one. Nope, what the heck? Floor plan, not a roof plan. Maybe the next one. Okay. Hey, there we go. Okay, so what I'm pointing out is so the gable relief exists where the porch and the bedroom are in kind of what's called plan one in the middle there and that's where you're getting that additional bump out. I think an additional bump out could happen on the plan twos where the two bedrooms exist facing out. So you could create an additional gable element similar to the main one. And I think address also Sheila's comment about the banding and how it potentially kind of interrupts the sighting that's coming down. I think I liked the banding when it was on the more modern building. I think now that you've made it more a residential vernacular that kind of C-shaped banding doesn't fit as much as it did previously. So I would be in favor of just getting rid of the banding completely and then pulling the horizontal sighting all the way down to the ground and adding an additional gable element. Does the architect understand what I'm saying? I think is the question I would ask. If you could maybe unmute him. No, I'm just, yeah, I'm here. Actually, the floor plans don't represent we're actually popping that element out on the gable ends. Yeah, I saw that. It's just, I think, yeah. It's not shown on the plan, you know, because you don't see the build out, but we are building that out. And we actually have looked at putting gables on all of them, but we felt it got too repetitive. And too similar. And so we kind of backed away from that, but we could take a look at it again. You know, I think I could go either way, right? I mean, I think it potentially, I understand what you're saying about it being kind of a little bit too repetitive. I mean, I think you could change it up materially in terms of how that gable is expressed as opposed to using panels or stucco as you've kind of indicated. You could use something else. Maybe in that way, it's not repetitive in that sense. So I just think that little C, the C banding shadow box doesn't, it doesn't relate to the kind of the new modern, kind of modern house vernacular you're establishing elsewhere. That's all. I mean, take a look at it. I'm cool. Like I said, I'm cool either way. I just think it's a way to potentially create a little bit more cohesiveness. And then also I think address, just to kind of drive to the finish line, some of those original comments about making it more quote unquote residential. But like I said, I'm cool either way. And sorry, there was one other thing I had. The way that the gable that runs, I guess, longitudinally, the long gable and how that transitions to the flat roofs on either side, I think that could be kind of looked at. I don't know if it means bringing the Eve line up a little bit so you don't have that little like kind of triangle nugget of the flat roof. I think that was what was bothering me on the- Yeah, it's kind of a detail issue. Yeah, it's kind of a funky little detail. And you know- We've actually done it before on other buildings and it actually comes off really nicely. Oh, okay, cool. I mean, to me it looks like a waterproofing nightmare. You're talking about this little, yeah, I know we're talking about dimensions. Yeah, the little transition. Yeah, so I mean, I would just maybe take a peek at it. If you think it's good to go, then we're probably okay. I just think it just feels a little fussy. But yeah, beyond that, I would agree with Sheila about pulling us down. We talked about that. And then the last final things, there's no trash enclosure details. Obviously, we would encourage you to make whatever trash enclosure you make feel like the architecture of the buildings. Sure. Since you didn't have anything submitted. Everybody loves a good looking trash enclosure. Let me tell you. And then obviously no lighting package was submitted. So that would obviously be required for the zoning administrator. But those are all of my comments. So I think we'll turn it back over to John now for him to pull up the rear here. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Drew. I appreciate that. I support the comments of my fellow board members. And for me, I like the design. I like the color palette. I'm supportive of what my fellow board members have said with respect to comments. And therefore those are my comments. So I like the project and I'm glad that you are developing affordable housing. We desperately need it. It's a project that we have to have and I'm very supportive of. Excellent. Thanks, John. So that brings us, I think, to a close unless anybody has any final thoughts. Michael? No, okay. I saw you getting ready to maybe press a button. So that brings us to a close. I would encourage, I think if you have some of the comments we heard from the public, particularly I think the Safeway folks, it sounds like staff is probably going to get in touch with you guys. Do you guys have any other comments? I would just like to request that the applicant be given a chance to ask any clarifying questions or just verify that they understand what you're looking for. Sure. It sounded like we already kind of had that, but do you guys have any questions? Is the applicant team or are you good? Jeff Johnson here. I think we're good. I don't have questions myself. I appreciate all of the comments and the enthusiasm that you have for this, which we share to bring this to the community. But I will defer to my design team as to whether they have any comments or questions about the input. And if they don't, they don't? Yeah, well, if they raise their hand, maybe if they have a question. So it looks like we got a question from somebody, so. No, there's a problem member. It sounds like it might be a member of the public. Oh, okay, sorry. So typically we wouldn't do this. Is it somebody that has spoken previously? Do we know? No, so it does look like we have two hands raised, one that has not spoken and then one that has spoken. Okay, so typically what we've done because concept design is kind of loose, I guess is what I would say. And we do like to offer the public the chance to speak. Unfortunately, the person that has already spoken, we will not grant them that right because they already got to speak. But the person who hasn't spoken, let's bring them up and give them three minutes here. We'd love to hear your comments. Thanks. Okay, Trevor, you should have a prompt allowing you to unmute. And if you could please state your name for the record. Can you fucking hear me? Yes, but if you could please not use that type of language, we would appreciate it. No, no, that's fine. I'm just, you know, the water, the energy blackouts. I mean, what the fuck? You keep cramming people in the sand. I'm sorry, sir, I'm sorry. We're gonna have to cut you off. That type of language is inappropriate. I apologize. That's really inappropriate in a public forum. Thank you very much. So with that, I think we're pretty much done. Does staff have any other comments? Okay, so I think that's it. Everybody have a great weekend. We will adjourn the meeting. Have a great night. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for your time. I really appreciate it and your input. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks, Drew.