 Hey, I'm going to call the January 7th, 2021 meeting of the City of January Planning Commission to order. Could the clerk please call the roll? Commissioner Conway? Here. Greenberg? Here. Nielsen? Here. Dawson? Spellman? Here. Chair Schifrin? Here. Okay, well, there's nobody absent. Are there any statements of disqualification? And now come to all communications, which is the time for members of the public to speak or anyone to speak on items that are not on the agenda for tonight for up to three minutes. Do we have anybody waiting to speak at all communications? There's a person on the line, but they haven't indicated that they wish to address the commission at this time. Okay, they may be here for one of the items that will be coming up. Last call for all communications. Hearing without no one, we'll move on to the approval of minutes. The recommendation is that we approve the minutes of November 19th, 2020. Is there any discussion on the minutes? So I'd like to move approval of the minutes. I'll move approval of the minutes for November 19th, 2020. Thank you. Is there a second? I'll second. I'd like to move by commission of Spellman. I'm seconded by commission of Maxwell, who got himself unmuted faster than Commissioner Greenberg. And so now we'll have a roll call to approve the minutes. Commissioner Conway? Aye. Greenberg? He's still muted. You know, there's the two mute buttons. Sorry. Aye. Nielsen? Thank you. Let's stay and I was absent. Dawson? That's unanimously, I will now move. One thing, there's one thing on this. I'm noticing that Commissioner Maxwell was absent as well. That is correct. I realize that I was not. I will recall two abstentions, Commissioner Maxwell and Commissioner Nielsen. I know that you need a second. You need a different second since he was the one that seconded the motion. Good point. Commissioner Greenberg, do you still want a second motion to approve the minutes? I second. Okay. You need another roll call vote or are we okay? I've recorded the two abstentions and the rest are eyes. Okay. Thank you very much. And now move to general business, the nomination and election of the chair and the vice chair. I checked the bylaws and the whoever's elected tonight will take their new offices at the next meeting. I want to just first open nominations for chair. The way it works as I remember it is that anybody can make a nomination. When nobody else wants to make a nomination, somebody can make a motion that nominations be closed. That means a second that would be voted on and then we would vote, assuming we would vote on whoever is for the position. Is there a nomination? Commissioner Nielsen and then Commissioner Conway. Yeah, I would like to nominate chair shifrin for a second term as chair. Okay, thank you. Nominations don't need to be seconded by yourself. Commissioner Conway. I'd like to nominate. Yeah, I'd like to nominate commissioner Spellman. Okay. Are there any other nominations? Would somebody like to move the nominations be closed? I'll move that nomination to be closed. Is there a second? I'll second. Moving seconded that nominations for chair be closed. Could we have a roll call vote? We close the nomination. Commissioner Conway. Aye. Greenberg. Aye. Nielsen. To get to the two ways, I'm not sure unless the staff has preferred, there's a particular way to do it. We could go to each commissioner voting for the nominee they choose who would like to or we could just take one nominee and then vote on that person and then vote on the next person. Might be easier since there are only two to just go around and have everybody vote for the chair that the nominee who they want. Is there any objection to doing that? Okay, was a clerk called the commissioners and what you do is just state who you would like to vote for for chair. Conway. Commissioner Spellman. Greenberg. Commissioner Schifrin. Nielsen. Commissioner Spellman. Dawson. Commissioner Schifrin. Maxwell. Commissioner Schifrin. Spellman. Spellman. And Schifrin. Chair Schifrin. So I've been elected to be the chair for next year. Thank you. We'll now have nominations for vice chair. Again, there's no need to second the nomination of their nominations for vice chair. Commissioner Conway. Commissioner Greenberg. Are there any other nominations? I nominate Commissioner Conway. Commissioner Maxwell. I'm also going to nominate Commissioner Spellman. Okay, did you say Commissioner Spellman? Yes. Are there any other nominations? There are only three people left. If there are more than nominations, be closed. I'll move to closing nominations. I say that Commissioner Conway moved and Commissioner Nielsen seconded the nominations. Yep. Could we have a roll call vote to close the nomination? Commissioner Conway. Hi. Greenberg. Hi. Nielsen. Hi. Dawson. The way I'll handle it is, each commissioner will vote for who they would like to be, who they'd like to be elected as vice chair. If no one gets four votes, the top two people will go around again with the top two. So it's Commissioner Greenberg, Commissioner Conway, and Commissioner Spellman. Vote for one of those three. We'll declare please call the commissioners please. Conway. Commissioner Spellman. Greenberg. Hi, Commissioner Conway. Nielsen. Commissioner Spellman. Dawson. Commissioner Greenberg. Maxwell. Commissioner Spellman. Spellman. Commissioner Spellman. Different. I will join the majority and also vote for Commissioner Spellman, and Commissioner Spellman is elected vice chair. Congratulations. Any further discussion on this item? We'll now move to item number three, objective development standards, test fits in general plan zoning, reconciliation. This is continued from December or December 3, 2020 meeting. Do we have a stamp report please? Hi, good evening commissioners. As you'll recall, this item was originally on your agenda. At the end of last, your final meeting of the year in December, and we didn't get a chance to get into it then. So we've come back now. And that's the test that we did for objective standards. So we have our consultant team here on the line with us and I will introduce them in the middle of my slideshow here. I'm going to sort of do a little bit of background and then I'm going to introduce the consultants to talk through the test bits themselves. So let me show the correct screen here. While you're doing that, let me just say in terms of if there are people on the line who want to speak to the side and know what it will work. I have a staff report commissioners will ask questions and then we'll open it to the public. And then if there's any action, the commissioners need to take it. We'll come back to the commission for action. I'm sorry. Continue with the staff report. Yes, this project is how it fits in the larger context of city policy, how we got to this point. So the city has a general plan, the 2030 general plan. It was adopted in 2012 after seven years of community outreach and work and the zoning code that the city currently has our municipal code. Our zoning standards and does not fully implement the general plan that we are currently operating under. There was an initial effort to create zoning that's the typical process. The general plan is updated zoning gets created that influence that general plan that prior effort was called corridor plan. Internally work on that project stopped in about 2017 and then formally the city council ended that project in August of 2019. They gave us new direction to begin a new effort. I've quoted part of the motion in your staff report and the direction included language that the effort should preserve and protect residential neighborhood areas, existing city businesses as the highest level policy priority. Encourage appropriate new residential and mixed use development, specifically, including enhanced affordable opportunities at appropriate locations along the city's main transportation corridor. The staff again working on that effort to sort of reconcile the difference between the existing zoning and the existing general plan in August of last year. The first step was sort of to reach out to folks who had been involved with the prior effort and hear from them about how they understood this direction. What their hopes were for this next effort, etc. Through doing that, we realized there was quite a wide range of opinions, concerns, definition of what a neighborhood is. I mean, really, there was a lot of ground between all of our various participants in those two focus groups. And it kind of seemed like that project was going to not put the city in a good place in terms of having standards and zoning that we could use to actually review projects against. So staff started to get concerns that we weren't going to have standards we could use to review projects against because the state law changed at the end of 2019. And SB 330 was passed. You all have heard about SB 330. I'm going to talk about it a little bit later, but it really kind of changed the landscape, the way that we are allowed to regulate development for at least the next five years. So in October of 2019, staff brought forward the idea to apply for a grant and SB 2 grants to develop objective standards, which SB 330 requires that we use. The council gave us directions to pursue that. And so we have in the May, it's sort of, there was a bit of a slowdown at the beginning of 2020, as I'm sure there was for many of us, but we did manage to finally get the grants appropriated and select our consultants over the summer. We selected our planning partners and we're just so pleased to be able to be working with them and we've kicked off our projects. We finally kicked it off in September of 2020. And this is our first item that we're bringing back to your commission. For really sort of a substantive take on it. So we were here when we were here in December, we had, you know, qualitative discussion about our outreach process that's going to be moving forward. But at this point where this item, we really kind of start to dig into some of the technical aspects that are going to be part of this project. When I said earlier, the mismatch between the general plan and the zoning code and that the zoning code doesn't happen at the general plan. Specifically, what I mean is the general plan created three new zoning districts that are specifically targeted for mixed uses. So that means a mix of a commercial use and typically a residential use. So the parcels that you see on this map that are shown in colors in orange, yellow and brown, carry those mixed use land use designations in the general plan. And most of them carry a commercial zoning district. And those don't have a full alignment in terms of the capacity that they allow. Specifically, the parcels that are shown in brown is the place where there's that largest mismatch. Going back to this for a second. Also, these parcels in brown were sort of where the core of the concern that we've heard from the community about, you know, there was concern that led to stopping the quarter plan about excessive intensity and buildings that were really out of scale with the neighborhood. And those comments were focused on these parcels that are shown here in brown. So that's why, as I'll talk about in a minute, these were the parcels that we chose to focus on first with our first set of test set analysis to look at zoning and general plan housing capacity. So just to make sure that we have a bit of a common understanding. The housing crisis act of 2019, also known as SB 330, really changed the landscape of the way that your commission and the way that the city council is accustomed to regulating housing proposals in the city of Santa Cruz. And not just in Santa Cruz, everywhere in the state, every jurisdiction in the state is going through some level of adjustment to the standards that have come out of SB 330. So without going into an excessive amount of detail, because I'm sure you there is an excessive amount of detail that could be gone into here. I just want to be sure that we all understand the housing crisis act of 2019 requires that when reviewing housing development, cities use objective standards. They define that term to mean standards that are to be compared to an objective outside measurement that is knowable to both the applicant and the reviewer of that application. These are things like height limit with a definition of how height is measured, things like, you know, angles of setback related to, you know, adjacent uses. So things that can really be defined and measured and laid out so that they're clearly available to the public reviewers and applicants. And so that's what we're going to consider. We must apply these standards to the extent that they allow the plan capacity of the development of the parcel to be fully realized. So, in situations where we have development standards that would prevent a parcel from being developed at the density for which it is planned. We're required to sort of bend those rules and accommodate the amount of density that is actually planned for the parcel. So does this mean that we can never lower density through a condition? Not exactly. And the law has a very high standard. We have to show with my written findings with a preponderance of the evidence that the development would cause a direct and unavoidable impact to the public health or safety. And that that is based on written public health and safety standards. So what this means is we can't lower height on a building because based on shading, right? We can't, you know, it says we shall not reduce the intensity of housing and reductions in intensity of housing are then defined to include reductions in height, density, FAR, increased setbacks, increased requirements for open space. Anything that would lessen the intensity of the housing. So I just want to be really upfront. This is really different than what we're used to. It's uncomfortable for us. It's uncomfortable for you. The community is going to be uncomfortable with it. And it's our reality. This project, we're going to come up with objective standards that we can use to make sure that the development that happens over the next five or perhaps more years continues to reflect the values that we really have about Santa Cruz and continues to look like it's a long tier. We're going to do that to the best of our ability. Why do we do a test? What's the purpose of doing a test? So what we're really trying to, the question we're really trying to answer is, does the zoning code allow the plan housing capacity to actually be realized? So on these parcels that we're looking at the MSHD, the general plan allows a pretty significantly different floor area ratio and density of housing units than what would be allowed under the zoning code. So what, and that's clear, just kind of from looking at the numbers for each of the designations. So we wanted to take a look at these sites specifically because once the decision point that is actually before your commission tonight is, do you want to recommend the council that we move forward with amending the general plan? Or shall we go ahead and finish this work on objective standards before we pursue any further possible amendment to the general plan? So for that reason, we're really at this point focusing on those MSHD sites. Those are the sites where there's the biggest gaps between what the zoning is currently intended to allow and what the general plan envisioned in those places. So with these tests, we're really trying to test how those two things kind of line up with each other and where the pinch points are, you know, and then how we can kind of, what we would have to do to actually get to that full capacity in the general plan. And then, and then also, because there's also an economic component, we're also kind of testing, are there things we could do that would make the project even more likely to get developed? So make the cost per unit a little lower. So we kind of looked at a number of different pieces just to sort of understand how the zoning and the general plan work together. These are not recommendations. These are not real projects. None of this is a proposal at this point. I want to be really clear about that. We're just trying to understand how these different standards work together or don't work together. So a test fit includes a physical component and an economic component. The physical component is a building envelope and a basic layout so it's an outline of a building. So these look blocky. They don't look pretty. They are just intended to sort of give you the idea of what a skeleton of a building might, the space that might occupy on a parcel. And then there's also an economic component that considers what's the cost per unit in these different scenarios where we have different numbers of units, different number of parking spaces. All of those things have costs. And so our economic consultant looked at what the cost per unit would be for each of those. For the purposes of this exercise, we only looked at rental housing. The primary difference in development standards between rental housing and for sale housing has to do with the amount of required open space for sale housing has a higher requirement for open space. And because we are interested in creating standards that work for rental housing, typically rental housing has a lower profit margin and is a little bit harder to develop. We felt that that was the most appropriate approach to take to just focus in on standards that would work for rental housing. And then also I need to mention that we are not looking at density bonus projects. There are dozens of ways that a density bonus project could be proposed. This is an image on the slide of a recently proposed density bonus project that is on one of these MX HD properties. Because the density bonus could be implemented in so many different ways and with so many different economic outcomes, we don't have it in the scope to analyze all those dozens of different ways. Also, that's not the point of this exercise. The point of this exercise, as I said, is to really test how does our zoning match with our general plan? And are we actually able to meet our obligation under the state law to have standards that allow full realization of that planned capacity? So that's really the goal that we're trying to achieve with these. So the mixed use high density MX HD land use designation allows for a floor area ratio of 2.75. Our consultants are going to talk a little bit about what a floor area ratio is, but that's essentially a way of describing the bulk of a building. It's on a property and a dwelling units per acre density count of 55. So along with that, certain small units under our general plan don't count towards density. So two of them in one bedroom unit, in addition to SROs, which are single room occupancy units, those don't have to meet that same density standard. So ultimately it's the floor area ratio that ends up determining the number of units that can actually be built on a property. The CC zoning that is currently applied to all of these MX HD properties has more specific standards, a maximum of three stories, a maximum height of 40 feet. We do allow, excuse me, an additional 20% of height with a development agreement, which would get you to a total of 48. So that's the height limit we used here in the test fit. No setback is required on commercial properties, so zero setbacks front side and rear except for the but residential properties. And in that case, they have to match the adjacent setback on the residential parcel. The distance between buildings on the same lot of 10 feet required open space is 150 square feet per unit that can be private open space or communal open space or a mix. And then the required parking varies a little bit based on the uses. So the commercial parking varies a lot based on use. We just amended our standards for residential parking. So those are more consistent, but the commercial parking has a really wide range. Now I'm going to introduce our consultant team Meredith Rupp with urban planning partners and Kristen Hall from the design and they are going to talk through the rest of the test fit. Nice to see you all commissioners this evening. And I'm Meredith Rupp, the project manager for this effort. And we have Kristen Hall, our urban designer and to just as Shrivastava from strategic economics to tell us about economics. And one idea is our principal is also on the line to help answer questions. So for the consultant portion, we're going to start with a little bit of background. You can go to the next slide Sarah. We'll talk a little bit about our methodology. We'll go through two different test fit sites, both the physical and economic component and then we'll close with some insights of what the test fits have taught us. Our three outcomes for tonight are that you all understand factors that are impeding development under the current development standard. As they exist today, that all of us will have a framework on how to move forward relative to our objective standard. And finally, the city staff will get a recommendation or council will get a recommendation on next steps for the general plan zoning inconsistency. And the consultant team won't be involved in that part, but we're happy to have provided some information that might inform what that looks like. I don't go too much into this next part since Sarah did such a great job of laying it out. But the main takeaway is that we need our objective standards to accommodate the maximum intensity that's in the general plan of 2.75 far in Santa Cruz's case and that is to be compliant with state law. And now I will pass it over to Kristen to talk a little bit more about the physical component test fit. I think you're on mute Kristen. Now can you hear me now. So Sarah, great job on the set up. Thank you so much for that. And you talked a little bit about these development standards. I just wanted to take a second to explain a little bit more in depth what each one of these standards means. And as we talk about these test bits, what we're really trying to do is understand if all of these standards match up in a lot of cases, you know, height FAR parking dwelling that's great. Or they sort of steer an envelope, but some of these elements tend to take up more room in the envelope than others. And so we get a kind of a mismatch. So max height is a fairly simple one to understand. I think we all understand that it's the height of the building. But then FAR is the amount of area as proportional to the size of the lot. So for example, if you have a 100,000 square foot lot that had a 100,000 square foot building on it, that would be an FAR of one. If you were to take that building and stack it into two floors, you would still have an FAR of one, but now you have a height of 25 feet. And if you were to take that same building area and stack it into four floors, you're only taking up 25% of the lot. But you're at 45 feet to a much higher height. Obviously your FAR is still one. So you can see how these things are related, but they're not exactly the same. And then next slide, we can look at parking and parking as a land use is quite a building intensive use. It's usually about half of the square footage of the building that we're looking at and parking standards require a minimum number of parking spaces to be built. So when we talk about parking ratios in the Santa Cruz context, it's requiring a minimum number of parking spaces. And so if you just, for example, take a two bedroom unit, it's roughly 900 square feet for a two bedroom unit. And if you look at the space to park two cars, which is what's required for a two bedroom unit, it's roughly the same square footage. It's a little over 800 square feet. And that's taking into account the space for the cars themselves and the circulation, the ramp, the elevators, all the kind of mechanical stuff that goes into a parking structure. So if we look at our FAR diagrams again, what you can see is in an FAR one situation, we're seeing about half the square footage being used for parking. And so again, you can see how high FAR and parking all kind of come together in these three different scenarios, which look very different from each other, but all have the same numbers except for height. And then if we go to the next slide, dwelling units per acre, I find this to be the trickiest one to understand and kind of proceed because dwelling units per acre relies so much on the size of the dwelling unit. So if you have really large dwelling units, you may have the same number of units on a parcel, but it would be take up much more area than a project that has much smaller units. And so here's three examples of projects that have the one on the left has 44 dwelling units breakers kind of a town home, psychology, sort of low rise. The middle one is 55 billion per acre kind of typical apartment building, higher rise. And then on the right, we have a 61 dwelling units per acre project. This is the densest project, but it's actually the lowest height of all of them. And this is just because again of the difference between the scale of the unit in each of these scenarios. So I find dwelling units per acre to be kind of a tougher one to get your head around and we're going to look at how this stacks up with FAR, which is our other measure of density. So on the next slide. So we, in this test as Sarah set up, you know, we're looking at rental housing in the next year's high density zones, but she talks about those ground areas. We're looking at the general plan designation. We're also looking at the zoning for each of these. And so I'll talk about those different standards and we're just looking, you know, do these standards line up. FAR and dwelling units per acre line up. Do they match height? Do they match parking requirements? And what kind of thresholds do we hit as we look at these different levers if we want to call them that of these standards? And the next question is, do these standards enable developments that are financially feasible? And so for each one of the tests that we show you, Suja is going to talk you through how they work economically. And if they don't work, what are the levers that the city can adjust? And we'll see how these different thresholds work with these different levers. So we're going to look at a typical building site, which is actually quite small in Santa Cruz for these mixed use zones. There's along these kind of main corridors, quite small little parcels. We're also going to look at the most buildable building sites because small sites tend to be difficult to develop, particularly with multi-family housing or mixed use projects. So we're going to look at a really buildable site that's larger and no adjacent low-scale residential. So when I say large, one acre or larger, the larger the site, the more feasible it is for development economically. And then we're going to compare a mixed use project with a residential only project. So you're going to have sort of, we're going to look at the large site, look from small to high. And then we're going to look at a, for a mixed use option, then we're going to look at a residential only option. Then we'll do the same thing for the smaller site. On the next slide, yeah, here you can see kind of a zoom in of this brown area. These are the two sites we selected to look at. And the blue star there is the large site at the corner of Soquel and Water. And then the small site is a site further down Soquel. And again, just kind of one of these typical sizes, we could have picked any number of these sites, but we picked one that we thought kind of represented a good typical smaller site. And so as we're looking through these, we're using a number of development standards and hang in there with me. There's a lot of numbers here. But the maximum building height we're looking at for the mixed use high density designation is 48 feet. That's because 40 feet is allowed. And then an additional 20% of height is allowed if a plan development criteria are met. And we are assuming that because these developments require a 15 foot ground floor height. So for retail, that's a very typical height measurement for ground floor retail. And then for each of the floors above, it's 10 feet for each floor. So in this scenario, we're looking at four floors, which comes out to 45 feet. We're looking at a floor ratio of 2.75, which is what's designated in the general plan. And note that covered above grade parking is included in this number. So when we have structured parking, that's part of the building envelope that's counting towards our FAR. And that's similar to that diagram that I shared you earlier on where it counts for part of the FAR inside of that envelope. We're looking at dwelling units per acre of 40, dwelling units per acre, which is for the residential only project. The zoning designates 40 dwelling units per acre for those. And then when we have a commercial project, there is no residential density max. So we're using the FAR density. So you'll see in some of them, we're looking at 40 dwelling speaker as our density and others were looking at the FAR for our density metric. So two different ways of measuring density. So I'm going to show you, you know, all of these metrics for each one of these sites. You can kind of understand how they all compare. And then, as Sarah mentioned, the smaller units, the studios and one budget actually don't count towards the 40 dwelling units per acre. So that's just sort of a quirk of the, of the zoning. And so where you see 40 dwelling units per acre max actually allowed to do more. And what we have found in a study of recently developed projects is actually 80 more than 80% of units that have been built in the last five years. We're actually one bedroom and studio units. So quite a large amount of those smaller units that we're seeing being built. The last kind of big set of numbers I'm going to throw at you is the parking requirement. And on the next slide, we are going to use the city's recently adopted parking minimum. So when you have a studio or one bedroom, that's one parking space required for a two bedroom unit or larger, but two parking spaces required. You take those and you add 10% for visitor parking. So they're additive. And that's what we have for residential parking for retail. If you have a kind of a shop, you know, a typical kind of retail non restaurant retail use or fitness use that's one space per 250 square feet. So if you have a shop or a gym, that's 1000 square feet. You have to provide for parking spaces for that shop or gym. For restaurant uses, there's a higher parking ratio. And that would be 100 one space per 120 square feet. So that's basically give 1000 square foot restaurant, which is, you know, a smallish to medium sized restaurant. That's eight parking spaces required. And then we're also allowed to take a 35% reduction in the number of spaces required if the project meets certain criteria for the, they're, they're fairly achievable criteria. So we're going to assume for our test fits that we have met that 35% reduction. So that's what you'll see in our function. Okay. So numbers all out there. Now let's look at the site. So we're going to start off with this large site, which is at the corner of so Cal and water. And if we look at it from street view, we can see it's a 1.3 acre site. It's a single tenant. This is the 24 hour fitness. We chose a single tenant site because it is easier for a developer to acquire a building like that and redevelop it makes it sort of more feasible. It's a little bit more about the having multiple tenants on a site and what that does to economics. That could be something we talk about in the conversation afterwards. Also, this site was selected because there's no adjacent low scale residential. So if you have a high density site next to a low scale residential neighborhood, there are certain step back and step down requirements that you have to take on the site. We actually picked this site because it doesn't, it's not encumbered by any of those. And the idea is if we, if we can make it work on this site, that's great. If we can't make it work on this site that indicates to us that something is not working between these different standards that they're not all matching up. Okay. So the first thing we looked at is just, you know, this is a corridor where there is a great potential for some commercial uses lining this block. And you could imagine as these corridors could really support a nice retail environment. So we said, first thing, let's put some retail on the ground floor. So we started with lining the streets with retail. And if we just provide this amount of retail that's shown in pink. We actually have to provide the amount of parking that's shown in gray. So just putting this amount of retail on the site and providing the parking required to meet that retail. We've already gotten an FAR one on the site because we've completely covered the site. We're at a height of 15 feet, which is appropriate for retail. We have no parking for residential because we have no residential uses. And we were required for 86 parking spaces as we met those 86 parking spaces. And you can see I have this, we have this bar across the top that we'll be referring to. And you'll see these numbers change as we go through these tests. So that was kind of the first place we started. Then we said to ourselves, okay, so that's quite a lot of parking. And we know we're not going to be able to get that much housing if we have to add another level of parking. So what if we just pretend for a minute that all of that parking goes to residential. And there's no parking for retail. We're, you know, let's pretend this is kind of small scale walkable retail. Maybe it doesn't need that parking and all that parking is going for the residential. Then what's the next threshold that we hit? If we max out our FAR 2.75, we get to 45 feet. We get a fourth floor of housing there, but you can see it doesn't fully cover that fourth floor. So we're at 45 feet, but not totally. A dwelling units per acre where we have a 114 units total, 89 dwell units per acre. We're still fine with that because remember, this is mostly one bedrooms and studios and those don't, those aren't, you know, aren't covered under that 40 dollars per acre. And now we've met the parking requirement for the residential. And but we obviously haven't met it for the retail. So just by looking at having the parking, we're barely meeting the height limit when we hit the FAR. Okay. So the next iteration we looked at was to say, okay, well, let's meet the zoning code. Let's meet the parking requirement. Let's add that second floor of parking. Let's meet the full height at 45 feet and let's see where we are on FAR. So in this case, we've met 45 feet. We've got all the parking we need because we have two levels of parking in there now. And we're at a 3.48 FAR. So formally speaking, this is all consistent. The form of this is consistent with the max height, but the FAR is now gone beyond the 2.75. And then, and because we have the second level parking, we can meet all the parking required by both the residential and the retail uses now in this version. And then moving from here, we looked at, we said, okay, well, this is 45 feet. 45 feet is the max height in this area. But if we were to make the most sufficient building we could, using the industry standard for type five construction, which is what this is, we would actually go to 55 feet. 55 feet is the height at which you've maxed out this type of construction. So you get efficiency of the scale. And you are driving down your cost per unit by adding that one extra floor. And you'll see this in two justice members. So in this case, we've added a fifth floor. We've obviously gone beyond the FAR. We've obviously gone beyond the max height. We've gotten all of our parking requirements met with those two floors for the residential. We're meeting a third of the parking requirements for retail. So we're not quite meeting all the retail parking requirements. But we have 48 more units of housing with this one extra floor. So if housing was the motivating factor, then this would be the most efficient cost per unit. Okay, so something to consider now is, let's think about this. I told you we'd look at it with mixed use and let's also look at it with just residential. Now we're taking a step back and we're saying, okay, if we were to just look at the maximum FAR, so just that 2.75 number, we knew that was the first threshold, well, parking was the first first threshold we hit. But then FAR was the next threshold we hit. So let's look at just a residential option where we don't have to provide the retail parking. In this option we hit 2.75. We get that fourth floor, but it's not a full fourth floor. So we're leaving some units on the table. We've gone beyond the 40 drawing units per acre limitation. So you can see here, FAR, we've met, drawing units per acre. If 40 was required, we've blown way past that with 106 drawing units per acre. So that's really clear here, the mismatch between drawing units per acre and FAR and the volume that both of those achieve. And then with this one, we're able to almost fully park the project. We would have to use some sort of stackers or something. We have 90 spaces that we've been able to find in this with our one floor parking. We need 114. We may be able to use stackers to get to that. Okay, and then the last version of this large site is to again take this idea that if we really wanted to max out the development at 55 feet, I think there's a label. Sorry, next slide. If we were to really max out this development at 55 feet, we would be obviously going past FAR. We would be maximizing the type, the building type. So getting good efficiencies of scale. And then obviously we're well past the drawings for acre. But in this scenario, we have 2 floors of parking. So we're able to meet all of our parking requirements and we're able to meet for this additional 48 more units of housing, all the parking required. So that was a lot. I hope it made sense. And to just is going to talk a little bit about the cost implications of each of these. Great. Thanks, Kristen. So here we're basically just taking the numbers that Kristen provided for each of those prototypes and putting them into a perform a model that just tallies up the cost of development. So this graphic shows the development costs by different categories. And I apologize, something pasted in wrong. You can't see the exact value on that first bar for a soft cost, but there's essentially 4 categories of costs. One of the top cost includes things like city fees and permit. It includes architectural engineering and other consulting services and other kinds of, you know, the professional side of doing the development project. The building costs are the hard construction costs. The parking is also a construction cost. So we wanted to split that out because we're really trying to understand all the implications of the parking requirements. And then the land is the blue at the bottom. And we're expressing all of these costs for unit basis so that you can really look at a comparison of all of these different tests. So the first one that Kristen described was, you know, where you're mapping out the FAR. And in that one, the total development cost of 471,000 per unit. And as you go up with your requirements in prototype two or test fit to where you're maximizing the height, but you have two full levels of parking here. That bumps up your cost per unit. And then as you start to become more efficient by allowing for more units and less parking, you start to really bring down the cost. So you can kind of see the variable of parking and how much that shifts the equation across these different scenarios. Whereas in the test fit number two, you have 53,000 per unit of parking costs in the most efficient one, which is a residential only scenario where we're really maximizing the building type. The parking cost is 34,000. And the land value also is consistent. So you have a 1.29 acre site. You have to pay for the cost of the land, whether you do 50 units or 100 units. So certainly that's another big factor. And those are those are the levers that kind of move the most based on how much you can achieve on the site. In addition to the construct overall construction costs that also along with how many build, how much building you can get on the site. So this is just sort of illustrates the efficiency to cross these different types of it. So to sort of summarize on the next slide, the financial feasibility that we tested was, you know, really just basically comparing the cost of development to the revenues or value from a residential rental project. So the rental unit is going to achieve the rent that it achieved, whether you're able to do 50 units on a site or 100 units on a site. So in extent, you can maximize the number of units as to your revenue. So the, I think the ones that are the most financial financially feasible or most profitable in terms of whether a developer would be likely to pursue it based on the return that they're receiving from the project. Our prototypes are test fits four and five, the ones that are residential only and have more units on the site. In general, we find that mixed use on these very tight sites can be really challenging compared to residential only and there's really few reasons for that. As you guys know, the retail climate is shifting rapidly and a lot of times it's very difficult to lease those spaces and be able to rent them out at that revenue and achieve the revenue that bring a developer close to breaking even on the development cost. There's also the parking that's associated with Christian scribes in a lot of detail and the cost of providing that is significant. So for the purposes of, you know, when you're going out and trying to get financing for these projects, typically most lenders will assume that the retail space is not going to be a revenue generator. So it's really seen more as an amenity to the overall project and to the environment, but doesn't necessarily bring you a lot of financial gain. So on the next slide, I just wanted to kind of show what would happen if you try to get more of the parking underground. So, you know, we're looking at the test fit with the parking above ground, which adds to your AR calculations. If you were able to put parking underground, it would certainly help with lowering the AR, but it does significantly increase the cost of development. So the estimates right now in Santa Cruz are that for an above ground podium parking space is about 40,000 per space to build. And if you did an underground parking where you have to activate deal with a lot of water issues, that's more like 80,000 per space. So it really doubles the parking cost per space. So overall total development costs could be as much as 12% higher for a project, depending it's really depends on how much parking you're providing. And it's different for each of these. I think I'm going to turn it back now to Kristen to talk about the small site. Yeah, so just looking so we're going to kind of go through that same progression looking at one of these smaller sites. And again, it's the site down further on 6th Soquel in this kind of smaller little brown patch. And so it is 0.16 acres in size, which is quite small, but this is a common size and shape in this area. You can see the street view of it here. It has a building existing on it with a parking lot in the back. And so we're going to start by looking at the just 35 feet on the site. And so what we can see in this massing is that the gray is parking. What you can't quite see in this massing is that the parking, if you imagine we're driving in off of Soquel into the front of the parking, it actually flares out into a lot wider parking area behind that pink area. So that pink area is just a kind of a little 800 square foot retail space facing the street. And then we have a little lobby between the two so you can get to the elevator core, which is the kind of lighter gray. So in this scenario, we are able to get with that configuration of parking and parking spaces. We're able to get this little retail space and then we get some residential above in this configuration which allows them to have light air because they'll have to have a little, you know, they have to have a view out the back or the front and then a kind of a little breezeway. Because these sites are packed in next to each other right so they can't have windows on all sides so fairly constrained from a design perspective. So with this we're getting nine units. And we're getting those nine parking spaces where required to get to parking spaces for 800 square feet of retail we only have enough space for one of those parking spaces. So the first thing here we hit with parking, that was our first limiting factor in this mixed use small version. FAR is well below and we're at 35 feet, which is well below our max height of 48 feet. If we're good then kind of look at the next step, the next thing we hit is let's take it up one more floor and it's 45 feet. So in this scenario, actually 45 feet pretty well matches up with our FAR. We're getting an FAR of 2.56. It's a little bit below the 2.75. This is really different than in this scenario before where we could get to the fourth floor but we couldn't quite build the whole fourth floor. In this case, they're actually the FAR and the height are kind of matching as well. We're getting 14 units out of this scenario but you can see that comes out to 87 dwelling units per acre. So 87 dwelling units per acre sounds really dense but this isn't an incredibly dense project. The amount of parking we need is 12 spaces for the residential. We only have 10 spaces. We're giving them all to the residential and then we don't have enough space for the two parking spaces left over. We might be able to get, again, some staffers in here to be able to get that parking working. So even if we look at the next height slide, so this one again, if we wanted to max out this typology, this type 5, the typology to get the most efficient building. So we're kind of trying to lower the cost per unit. We're past that fair, we're past height. We're getting 19 units on this site. Obviously can't park all of them with our 10 parking spaces and it could be kind of tricky to get, you know, all of those parking spaces into stackers. So let's see what the impact of this is in our economic results. And then if we were to take this mixed use scenario and instead look at a residential only scenario, we just looked at the 45 foot option next slide, which is again, it's the same FAR. We're basically matching our FAR and our height. We've turned that little pink retail space on the ground floor into a little residential unit. And now we have one more unit with 15 units and we don't quite have enough parking again, but we believe we could probably get it with stackers. I just wanted to say one more thing about stackers, which is that they are not widely seen. So as a solution, they, I think they're, they're quite inconvenient and cost prohibitive potentially might be the reasons why we're not seeing them kind of being used more broadly. So I'm proposing stackers here as a sort of design solution, but they haven't been widely used in reality. So just put that caveat out there. Okay. On the economic side, similarly, we looked at development costs per unit using the same category. And you can sort of see prototype six, which is the 35 foot mixed use project is the most expensive to build on a per unit basis, 531,000 per unit. And as you go, get more efficient. So with prototype seven, you still make use staying at that height of 45 feet and staying within the FAR limit. That's significantly dropped the cost per unit by about 80,000 per unit. And then you achieve even more efficiencies when you go to residential only because you're able to swap out that part area that's dedicated to parking for more residential units. So you're, in all of these scenarios, you have 10 parking spaces and get more units out of the other. So to kind of summarize on the financial feasibility findings for the small site on the next slide, we generally have found that these, it's a very small site point. It's less than a quarter of an acre. It's really difficult to make that work for especially the 35 foot height limit project. That's one where the costs actually exceeded the revenue that you could expect from the project. So you're going into negative value for that prototype, just cost more to build all that space that you can get from the small number of units that you're getting on that site. If you look at prototyping eight and nine, those are the residential only scenario and the mixed use with the higher height of 55 feet. Those have a higher likelihood of development. It provides a higher number of units. And again, you know, you have those things fixed costs of that parking podium, land acquisitions that are built into each of these prototypes. Again, more units mean less cost per unit. And then just looking at what we learned about these development standards, can 2.75 FR be reached? Absolutely. But the project may not conform with other standards and it may not be economically feasible. So 40 dwelling units per acre we found is much more restrictive than the 2.75 FR. We hit that limit well before we hit the FR or even the height. And for small residential only projects, the parking, the height and the FR tend to align. But again, the diligence breaker do not. And then for the other projects, FR and parking maximum are preventing development from reaching that kind of maximum height. So parking, particularly where we have retail and just to linger on that point a little bit more next slide. Thinking about those parking requirements for retail are quite high. And so mixed use developments do need an extra potentially level of parking, which is expensive to build as suggested. But then, and then I also building that extra level pushes as they are over the limit. So if we want structured parking for these buildings where it's kind of encapsulated not visible from the street, we actually can't. And then on small size retail parking is incredibly difficult. And I think functionally doesn't make a lot of sense because a lot of these types of developments like the ones I showed you would have sort of garage doors and want to limit access from the streets. They wouldn't want a lot of public access until parking garage. I do think that retail makes a lot of sense along these corridors, you know, kind of creates a nice character. You know, it's a nice sense that you have residential units along those streets. It can, you know, those aren't always the nicest units to live in and they're not always kind of activating the street in an exciting and kind of vibrant away as retail is. So if mixed use continues to be a priority and you wanted to have retail along these corridors, some ways to achieve that would be to reduce the parking requirements for retail, particularly for the restaurant use. To exclude parking from the FAR calculation or to eliminate a parking requirement for that kind of small scale retail potentially. And then just the last point was we did have a developer focus group where we spoke with six local developers and architects on the barriers and conditions for mixed use and multifamily projects in Santa Cruz that they have worked on. So they were sharing from their experience while we were looking at these texts and kind of coming up with our own conclusion. We wanted to ground truth them and understand what they're seeing happening out in the real world. And some of the insights they shared with us were that height limits are incredibly prohibitive, especially if you're not going after that 20% increase, like we assumed in these scenarios. So if you have to have retail on the ground floor, you're losing an entire floor within that 40 foot height limit. You can only do three floors. Also the ground floor retail and parking requirements as you've seen are prohibitive. They were finding that in the real world. They also pointed out that bicycle parking requirements are quite high and are difficult to achieve or just space intensive. And that's another one of these kinds of levers on these envelopes and with high water tables and requirements for drainage. They're finding that the cost for de-watering these sites and dealing with drainage is much higher than it had been before the state passed those new stormwater requirements. Sarah and Kristen, I'm sorry, I'm through Jaffa. And now we're available for questions or is there anything you wanted to add? Yeah, the only thing I'll add two things. First, to Jaffa, I'm so sorry I didn't introduce you. I didn't see you once before I started talking to like that. Oh God, maybe she like can't come tonight or something. So apologies to Jaffa for strategic economics. And then second, I will just say I have a few more slides getting to ultimately a recommendation from the planning commission, but I think it makes sense. That was a lot of information that we just threw at you all. So I think it makes sense to stop pause here for a moment and see if there are some questions for the consultant specifically about this content. You know, Sarah, maybe it would be, since I don't want to open and close the public meeting twice to have you finish the staff report and then we could have questions about both from the planning commission and then open it up to the public and have their comments on both. If that's all over the commissioners. However you prefer to do it. Okay. Okay. So, conclusion. Just then and Meredith and to Jaffa kind of wrap this up already, but there are challenges with developing these small sites and we have a bunch of them. They are here on. So, Helen water, they're most of the sites on mission. I think we're going to encounter this. I think this is going to come up again as we do our, our next set of tests, looking at the other zone districts development on small sizes. It's going to be challenging 2.5. They are can be reached with adjustments to height and parking. So, it does seem like we can actually get there with the development capacity envisioned in the general plan. So, I'm hoping residential projects are cheaper to develop the residential and mixed use kind of ends up supporting the retail in those projects. So, you know, something we may grapple with is exactly how much retail do we want to keep in a mixed use project. How much of a priority is that for the city. We know that, you know, part of the direction from the city council again to preserve existing city businesses. That means preserving commercial space generally and new development is that specifically about, you know, from the existing structures and low rents that businesses enjoy in these like, you know, 50 year old buildings. We're going to talk about that and then reduced intensity. So, anything less than a 2.75 that they are based on those calculations that we saw about cost per unit is really seems like it would probably slow housing development. So, just sort of something to keep in mind as we consider whether, you know, general plan amendment would be by a solicit point. So, our recommendation is that your commission recommends to the city council that no general plan amendment be initiated at this time. And that the work on the objective zoning standards be completed before revisiting that possibility of an amendment to the general plan to reallocate any development density within the city limits. So, any questions from the commission. Okay, well, I want to thank both you and consultants for their report. We'll start with questions from commissioners. Maybe you should close the screen so I can see. Do commission have questions even for staff all for the consultants. Yes, I can you hear me. Yes. Yeah, thank you. I have a just a couple of, you know, broader general questions. So, one of them would be. What in lieu of if we wanted to move forward with general plan amendments now prior to completing this work. What type of amendments would we be proposing. I don't clearly understand that in public public doesn't really understand what those changes would be. As you talk about at the beginning of this discussion, the framework moving forward relative to the objective standards work. I didn't really get from the conclusions what, what that direction is. If maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Sure. Okay. Thanks for those questions. My head is a little bit all over the place today. Sure. And I just had some technical difficulties. Could you repeat your 1st question? Yeah, 1 of our options. Apparently is move forward with general plan amendment now right prior to completing this work. Okay, if we did that. Not suggesting that we should what would we be going for what changes would be proposing. So, let's see. So with the action that the city council took in August of 2019. Part of that direction was that the staff should consider amendments to both the zoning codes and the general plan to resolve these differences. So with the passage of SB 330. What that came to mean that direction was that any change to the development capacity on the MSHT sites because let's recall the MSHT sites. This is the source of the conflict with the community folks are quite frankly object to the amount of intensity that's currently allowed under the general plan on those properties. That's a basic problem and lots of folks in adjacent neighborhoods would like to see that intensity relocated to other places. So that those buildings are not as intense as they are currently committed to be those potential buildings, I should say, so anything that's proposed on those sites. So the general plan amendments that's been sort of tossed around in the community would be to take some of that development capacity from those MSHT sites and move it to other places. So we would be looking, we would be changing the land use pattern that's envisioned in the general plan by designating new land to be residential that isn't currently residential by zoning other lands that's already residential by a higher development capacity. We would be doing something to change the current pattern that's in the adopted general plan and change it to something else so that the intensity along water and hotel would be less. That would be like a big involved general plan amendment process or be, you know, another big project. We would be talking about, you know, what's the pattern, what are our goals, where did this pattern come from, you know, how does land use interact with transportation and what, you know, the natural environment, all of that stuff, all of those discussions. So based on this information, we thought we would have enough, we thought that these tests would tell us what we needed to know about these sites and would tell us whether we really, you know, 2.75 is really going to be so different and so intense and we're going to need 80 foot buildings to get 2.75 FAR that, you know, oh my gosh, we really do need to consider an amendment to the general plan. That's not what we're seeing, you know, in the test this we're seeing something that yes taller than what's currently permitted, and also not completely out of scale with what we see around Santa Cruz. So, hence our recommendation that we go ahead and finish this work first before we, you know, bring up that conversation again of do we still need a general plan amendment is this, you know, is this intensity really so unacceptable still to the community. That's what we're talking about when we talk about the general plan amendment. And then your question was. Yeah, it goes back to your very first slide tonight's outcomes. Right. So there was understanding by the commission on on the development standards and their impacts, etc. And then the framework moving forward for both the consultants and city staff relative to the objective standards work. Right. What is that framework that you could elaborate on how that process is going to move forward. For developing the objective standards and how to fit into that process that your question. Yeah, I mean, you could look the road to that statement. I guess for me, have you listened to your presentation? I didn't have a clear understanding of what that takeaway was going to look like. Okay, well, so maybe Meredith and second on this as well. But I'll take a stab at it. This is kind of our first step to analyze what we are. What's the lay of the land? Like, what are we working with? What are our current regulation? How are they, you know, working and not working? The next step in public outreach is going to be a matter of setting determining and defining and writing down what are our values about housing? What are our concerns as a community and as a city? Efficiency is not our only goal. Right. You know, we're not just trying to produce the most efficient amount of housing. I mean, if that were the case, we would have had no appeal on Pennsylvania. We would be getting no letters about a 31 water. You know, obviously we have other priorities and concerns and values as a community. We need to figure out how to have all of these things work together given what we know now about how our zoning and general plan works and doesn't work. We can have an informed conversation about how those values, that definition of Santa Cruz character might be achieved through a zoning code. So it sort of sets us up to have this next conversation with the community and then be able to translate that into standards that will meet all of those goals or come as close as possible. I should say to meeting all of those goals. The goals we are required to meet under state law and then the goals that we have for ourselves as a community in terms of maintaining the character of Santa Cruz. So this is the beginning piece and it sort of helps us have that conversation in a informed and productive way with the community. Yeah, that's very helpful. I mean, you're saying a lot of the words that I was hoping you were going to say as far as, you know, Santa Cruz, how do we get the values that, you know, we're looking for as a community, you know, into this process. So yeah, I think that's, that's great. That's all I was looking for. Thank you. Other commissioners have questions. Yes, Commissioner Nielsen. I just wanted to follow up on commissioner Spelman's first question that Sarah answered just as a clarification. So the way I understand it is that the density within these zones cannot be reduced, right? Within that, if we're going to do a general plan amendment, there's no, there's no ability to reduce the density. They could just be shifted around. Is that correct? Right. So within our jurisdiction, within the city limits, we need to maintain a consistent level of development capacity. It can be shifted around, right? If that's, you know, if we determine, at any point, this body, the city council recommends that we, you know, reevaluate the pattern that we're currently using. We can do that and we can shuffle it around a little and that's, you know, is a piece of work and it's possible to do that. But we can't decide that we're done or that we're going to grow less than we have already committed to accommodating. Right. Okay. And then the follow-up, the other question I have, excuse me, is, is this a time, like in terms of recommendations, is this a time to be talking about, like, modifications to, like, parking, if that's a way that we want to move? I mean, because based on the presentation, it seems like parking is a fairly limiting factor. I would definitely take comments on that on parking. I'll let you know that the scope of work for this project had initially slated some parking analysis tasks to the optional. And based on these test kits, we've decided to go ahead and do those tasks. So we're, you know, working on redistributing our grant funding so that we can fund that work. So we are going to be doing a parking analysis so that we will have that as we, you know, bring forward another recommendation about parking. At this point, we're sort of, let me just say this, we're going to be scoping that parking work specifically within the next couple of weeks. So the test fit will inform that because you're right, parking is absolutely a constraining factor, especially that retail parking component. Okay, thank you. That's it for me. Other commissioners have questions? Yes, commissioners Dawson and commissioners Conway. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that I understood you correctly that so one of the things that potentially put me on the table is like you said, I was just looking at the general plan map and looking at the land use pattern of the city. So, so I'm looking at a very low density area. I mean, up zoning is potentially on the table to redistribute those high density areas. I understand this a lot of work, but it is potentially on the table. Is that correct? Yeah, I mean, if a general plan amendment is initiated, you know, that amendment can go from the point of like a couple of policies all the way up to, you know, the general principles and divisions, you know, we could have it, you know, you could. It's a living document. Yes, it can be amended and anything is on the table. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Conway. Yeah, thank you. And thanks to everyone for the report. I guess I'm going to follow up on Commissioner Nielsen's questions about parking. Obviously, we are all concerned about parking. It's a really active discussion in the community. And to the extent that, you know, these tests that they're showing us that it's difficult to have viable commercial spaces along our commercial corridors. And that that's stopped by parking, I think, and by our parking standards and our parking needs. I find that very concerning. And so I'm wondering what kind of tools and I guess I may be down in the weeds prematurely, but I'm wondering about what the tools are that we could have to not make, you know, every single parcel produce all of the parking and still meet an overall parking need for the community. I mean, I know that in the prior planning efforts, neighbors were extremely concerned about parking impacts. So I guess what the test fits, one of the things they show me is that parking is almost a fulcrum of what's going to make these projects viable. And especially if we really do want to have both commercial and residential uses along our corridor. So I guess my question, and maybe it's premature, but is, you know, does, is it still currently to review parking alternatives in order to implement the general plan right now? What do you mean by parking alternatives? Well, I just know some of the things that we've talked downtown. We talked, you know, in the past, even in some of these areas about disaggregating parking so that every parcel wouldn't have to create the parking right on the same site. But it could be within some standard of nearby to again meet the balance of neighborhood concerns while still making for viable projects. Within these really constrained sites, small sites. Okay, so great question. I'm going to ask the Meredith to pop in here. I'm just pulling up the scope of work. I actually don't know exactly what is in scope. I am looking at us right now, but maybe Meredith can talk generally about what we're anticipating covering in those parking analysis tasks. And it might be that it's a premature question to maybe I could just flag it as a concern if it's too soon to answer. Definitely not too soon to think about it. Maybe we do want to refine it based on what we've been discussing tonight. As it's currently scoped, we'll have our transportation consultants do parking occupancy surveys to see how much of the parking in these retail uses is currently being used on average. And then the second half of it will be recommending what potential new standards will be for different, I think we did four different zones or uses. And Sarah, if you've actually pulled it up, maybe you can fact check me on that. I don't think we said, I don't think we scope to look at more creative solutions, but that is a great idea and maybe something I can discuss with Sarah if we want to open it up to other things besides just parking ratio. We will make note of this. I don't see a specific number referenced in what I just looked up, but that is, it's a really excellent question. And, you know, when we were doing the work on residential parking just in Q3 of last year, there were many creative ideas, you know, maybe having parking ratios that differ depending on what type of street you're located on. So that those that are, you know, on these major corridors that have transit service that are in proximity to a lot of housing automatically have a lower parking requirement than the same use on a different property or in a neighborhood perhaps that already has like really impacted street parking. Maybe in that neighborhood, we really have a higher off street parking requirement. So there are a lot of creative ideas out there about it. I don't think we're going to get 100% of the way there with this project. And I think we are going to come back with some different recommendations about the ratios that we currently apply to commercial space. And maybe some ideas for future work. Parking is like a really big topic. And there's just, we won't run out of work to do on that for sure. We'll get some of it done with this purchase. Greenberg? Yes. Thank you. This is a great presentation. And I, I had a question along the lines of Commissioner Conway, one of them. And, you know, the idea of there being neighborhood lots potentially consolidate parking. I like these other ideas you mentioned. You also had a slide. I believe it said that if certain conditions were met, there could be a 35% reduction. In parking requirements. And I don't know what that was about. I don't know if you could say more about that. Sure. Yeah. So that is, um, that's actually something that was just part of the recent package of updates to our parking standards. So previously we had several different ways that parking might be able to, you know, the parking requirement on a parcel might be able to be reduced. And I think they totaled up to 30%. And they included things like additional life parking and, um, providing transit passes to your, um, you know, using trans, what is, what is TOD? Um, trans. Transit oriented development. Yeah. Transportation to man management. Yes. Thank you. TDS. That's the one I was supporting. TDS. So there were, there were several of those that already existed in the code. We wrote in with this last round of updates, like a really specific process of how to apply. We added also, um, you know, unbundling parking. That was something that we talked about, you know, separating the cost of the parking space and the cost of a residential unit or a commercial space. Um, and so that is now a process that's available to, um, applicants, both residential and commercial applicants to reduce their overall requirement on a parcel. And they can go up to a maximum of 35%. So, and we have a list of options for them that's like, you know, the total of those options is like. 117%. So you can't use all of them. I mean, you could use all of them, but you still would only get a 35% reduction. That's how it, that's how it's currently written. Okay. And then that can be factored into the feasibility, the economic feasibility studies and so forth. Yeah. Yeah, one thing like those things and measure out the cost of reducing versus the buildable space and so forth. Right. Okay. So that would be useful. But yeah, maybe this is too much in the weeds. I guess I was wondering, I don't know if there was a scenario that people were interested in also where there was building that was being done on top of already existing retail and any of these spaces. If that was something in terms of in cell development or this is all completely new development. I'm going to invite Kristen to talk about that. There are often challenges with building on top of existing single story structures, but very often the structures themselves aren't constructed to support weight on a second floor. That's how they were built. And so sometimes I know that, you know, trenching, repouring the foundation can be prohibitively expensive for the number of units you might garner from an old building, but maybe Kristen has some more insight she can offer. I can't hear you, Kristen. I don't feel a little mute. Is that better? That's better, yeah. No, Sarah, you said it well. You have to design structure in order to support the levels above it. So for existing structures to add on. Usually it's very, especially if they're older buildings and depending on how much weight you're adding buildings are typically only engineered for the size that they are built to. And, you know, in situations where there may be a large parking lot or something like that, you could build on the parking lot adjacent, but the smaller the lot again, you know, the more challenges you have with parking and all these various factors. In general, the bigger the lot, the bigger the building, the more economies of scale that you get and access can also be difficult if you're trying to build, you know, multiple buildings on the same lot or something like that. So I hope that answers the question. That's very helpful. Yeah. And I don't know, and this is kind of in the weeds, I guess, but in terms of the feasibility financially of the retail, if there's already existing retail that's successful and can, you know, and we saw something along these lines on Front Street, you know, the preservation of existing retail in the new building that already has people like, you know, going to, you know, a kind of client base. And you can show that the success of that business or or community space. And sometimes that can be a factor maybe that is added into the calculation. That seemed like a useful thing to consider. But in any case, my final question is really this. What are we supposed to do in terms are we is on the table for us to consider the question of dwelling units per acre as well. Is that something it seemed like that was a limited factor to some degree in addition to the parking. And is that something that is to be considered. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, our, our obligation is to accommodate the existing capacity that we are planned to accommodate. As we talked about, you know, the way that we count our unit based on some languages in the general plan and some language that's in the zoning code for mixed use projects, particularly for area ratio ends up being the limiting factor. So we can consider changes to the dwelling units per acre. I think if we were going to change those in the, I don't think we need to change those in the general plan, I should say, but we could consider changing the way that we regulate residential only projects in commercial zone districts. So that is something that is available to us. I, I'm not really anticipating that we're going to, that that's going to be one of the primary tools that we use to be completely honest. And, you know, at this point, lots of options are on the table. Other commissioners with questions. I have a few questions. I want to follow up on what you were just saying in terms of. Who needs to decide what these standards are? Ultimately, the staff will make recommendations and the council will decide as long as they're legal. Is that not correct? When you were just talking about, you said something that sounds very interesting in terms of it sort of plays into the notion of requiring commercial uses in commercial areas on the ground floor as a potential objective standard. I mean, most, you know, many urban areas, the idea, and I think it refers to this, of having commercial on the ground floor makes for a more vital neighborhood rather than just having blocks out there that people have to, especially if we want people to do more walking, a walkable neighborhood really has a mix of uses. So is that a potential objective standard in terms of within the mixed use districts to have a standard that there needs to be ground floor commercial? Yeah, that could be a standard, you know, ground floor commercial, X percent of the building, or X minimums for footage, or, you know, wide depth. Currently the zoning code, just a minor footnote, currently the zoning code does allow fully residential projects to be built in the commercial zone districts. I understand that. Okay. A question about the economic projections, I'm always kind of, I appreciate getting them as kind of a model, but we really didn't get any of the assumptions that went into that model. What the rents would be, what we got, sort of a general cost of construction. I just wonder is it possible to get the pro forma that was used and putting together the, you know, the economic determinations about what was viable and what wasn't viable? I get the, I would get concerned when I get a very specific figure of how much we cost to build a unit when there are lots of variables, reading rent and cost, how long the owner is on the land, what construction costs are very important. There are all sorts of assumptions that go into it, and I'm always a little nervous about trying to not be all that clear that I'm understanding what happened in terms of not seeing any of those assumptions. So I guess my question is, is it possible to see the pro forma that were used in coming up with the economic projections that were provided to us? Rebecca, do you want to speak to that? Yes, I can answer that. So we are supposed to do a model that would be actually a tool that everyone can use to understand what these different levers, what the different objective standards do in terms of cost, and that will have all of the assumptions in it. So we're still in the process of building that tool that it will be kind of an interactive tool that everyone will have access to, including, you know, we're envisioning it as being something that is very transparent. So everyone can kind of understand what the inputs are and what the implications would be as something like changing parking ratios or adding an additional floor. The reason we haven't done that quite yet is we're still determining which of the objective standards we're going to be testing with that tool, and that's going to see the basis of how we build the model. Great. Well, I look forward to seeing the details of that. I want to just, you know, say a word about parking since it's come up a bunch. I think we have a lot of creative programs and the council has recently adopted a whole bunch of these parking standards. And, you know, my worry is people driving around the block five times trying to find a parking space because the city is no longer providing parking as part of the development. Obviously, it makes the development cheaper, but it doesn't necessarily make good policy in the time of concerns around sustainability. So I think, from my perspective, it would be useful to see what the effect of the creative programs we've already come up with before we start coming up with more creative programs. Finally, and this has nothing to do with the test fits. In one of your earlier slides where talking about the state law, I think it read that it was possible to have the conditions for lower density if there was a direct and unavoidable impact. And from my mind, that's a secret term, unavoidable impacts are major issues with SQL. And I just wonder if I want to sort of raise that issue that as I'm reading that if there's a sequel analysis and the sequel analysis determines that the aesthetic impact will be significant and unavoidable. That would be the basis that if I'm understanding that requirement to reduce the density. Am I understanding that correctly. Unfortunately, no, that provision is limited to direct and unavoidable impacts to the public health and safety that are based on written public health and safety standards. So this would be things like development in a floodplain development on a hillside. Aesthetics are really unfortunately not a component of that. So how do you see SQL playing into this whole process. What a great question. So we are so required to do a sequel analysis. The sequel analysis would have to consider effects to the natural environment and the built environment effects on traffic, water supply, all of those kind of things. And I think that given the state of this. The reality of the state law, the ability for jurisdictions to use things like aesthetics and neighborhood character to reduce development capacity has really been limited. That is the express intention of the legislature. It looks like Lynette has something wonderful she wants to add. Lynette Diaz from UCC muted. You have to unmute yourself. Does that work. Yeah. Great. Okay. So actually current CEQA regulations were recently updated in the last few years to not allow aesthetics to be considered a significant impact. They actually prohibited for urban areas, which this area would meet those criteria. So aesthetics in any case independent. Oh, we lost your audio. I'm having problems. And so in any case, independent of the health and safety, which is like littered water or as, you know, water, fire, lands, I think that aesthetics is not a health and safety and but independent of that. This is not considered a significant impact under CEQA along. Urban corridors in and in more areas where transit and sex are about. I really chose a bad example because, you know, my concern is the CEQA in general, whether it's air quality, runoff problems, ever, if there are potentially significant impacts and there are mitigation measures that are proposed in the CEQA document. So I think that the CEQA regulations might have an impact on the number of units on the amount of density. I'm just wondering how that's going to play out because they're both, you know, the CEQA is an important state law, just like the new laws are important. I just think that's something to consider as we move forward with this process. Okay, any more questions? I'm going to open it up to the public. Are there members of the public who would like to speak on this item? You'll have up to three minutes and please identify yourself. Members of the public that wish to speak on this item, please press star nine to raise your hand. I don't see any raised hands, Chair. Okay, we did receive some written correspondence. So I thought maybe those people would have. There's one now. Okay, here we go. Hi, yourself and you have up to three minutes to provide your testimony. Thank you for coming. You can be unmuted. Hello, my name is Sue Terrence. And I have a few questions. First of all, can you tell me how many units currently have been permitted but not built? To give you testimony, Ms. Terrence, and then I'll ask staff to respond. And remember what we're talking about tonight is objective standards. So to the extent you're asking, you can ask about or make comments on objective standards. Okay, maybe I could expand a little bit on the last question. Which was how CEQA plays into this. And if there are public health and safety issues, with the speeded up timing, it doesn't seem possible to get some of the concerns met that are health and safety concerns. And not only that, but there are projects that are now in the works. And we may not have resolved these issues about the zoning and general plan discrepancies. So one is how do we deal with projects that are already in the work when we don't have a resolution yet. And the other one is how do we get our concerns met in time about health and safety issues? That's it. Thank you very much. Could I ask staff to respond to those two questions, please? The first question again was about the number of units. Well, I think it was more about how the objective standard process is in process. How do we deal with projects that are in the works as we haven't resolved the objective standard process? Okay, so we currently still have. May I interrupt? I heard three questions. First, how many units have been permitted but not built? And I am going to hope that Eric Marlett can weigh in with that answer very shortly. Then she had this question about how do we handle projects in the interim before we have all of our objective standards drafted? And that's going to do a great job answering that question. And then she asked a question about how do we make sure that CEQA is complied with given the expedited timeline that we currently have to review a project? I can speak to those second two questions and that we still currently have a development process that these projects would have to follow. And as far as CEQA goes and health and safety and things like that, a project that is required to go through a CEQA process would still go through that process. And there is a time for community input throughout that process and for review of draft EIRs, things of that nature. So that process would continue for these projects. It would be for CEQA project. The rest of the process would be more streamlined because a lot of the development review would already be taken care of through the existing objective standards that were developed through this public work that will be undertaking over the next year. If I understand what you're saying is if a project is subject to CEQA, depending on what the CEQA requirements are, there will be sufficient time for it to go through the required CEQA process. Correct. Then in terms of projects that are sort of in the works, it's a kind of mix and match. We just use the current process, try to apply the state, the new state standards, and, you know, as information becomes developed, that those would be, any new standards would be applied as well. I do want to clarify that under the new requirements of SB 330, when a project does apply for the city, the development standards in place at the time of that application are set in place. So for a project that's submitted right now and falls into the current standards that we have now, say it's still around a year later and we create these objective standards, the project would still only be required to meet the standards at the time of the middle. What if they're not the, they could argue that the standards are not objective? Would they still be subject to them? Correct. There would be, we do have several standards that are objective, but the reason we're going through this process is that we do have a number of standards that aren't objective. And yes, technically a developer who were to submit right now without a comprehensive set of objective standards would not have to meet those objective standards. And they would have more leeway in terms of what what's developed and how if they were to choose that route. Let me just clarify because I heard different things. What I hear you saying or clarify, are you saying that to the extent the city has subjective standards, the development that's already been applied for now that SB 330 is in effect would not have to meet those standards, those objective standards. Correct. That's what I understood. Mr. Morales, did you want to say something about the number of units that are in the project? With respect to that question, I don't have that data readily at hand. Counter Donovan and our advanced planning division might and we can certainly post that after the meeting once we round that data up. I wanted to add though, the other thing to consider on existing projects is, there are also provisions in SB 330 that state that if a preliminary review is committed and deemed complete. That conceptual project is vested for a period of six months in the ordinances and policies that are in effect at the time it's being complete. So, you know, in theory, a preliminary application could come in, say a month before the objective development standards are actually adopted. And as long as they get their project in within the next six months, they're subject to the laws and effect at the time that pre application was deemed complete. Okay, thank you. Is there anybody else in the public who would like to testify on this item? Okay, please identify yourself. You have about three minutes. Yes, my name is Ken Brown and I'm a transportation public works commissioner and also they're involved in the review of the quarter plan. I wanted to say that parking was a key issue and what they found when they did a study with economic planning and systems on sokel alone and this is with a density of 55 and 2.75, not an unlimited density. They found they were constrained and didn't have a future supply of over 2,553 parking spaces of which 613 were public parking spaces, which would then have to be supplied because it's also tied and that is with half of the required parking for commercial use at two per thousand rather than four per thousand. So it was quite constrained. And because of that, the final proposal from the consultants was that you reduce the far down to 1.75 and only in some of the key nodes, maybe go up to above 2.0. The parking and the commercial impacts were so significant that this level of density would have a very negative impact. I might add that these high density mixed use areas and it's only specific to water and sokel is not even on ocean or mission. You're covering the areas that are used by the surrounding neighborhoods. So if you want to walk, you know, create walkable neighborhoods and this are fairly successful commercial districts already. You're dealing with shoppers and buttery and safe way and staff alike. You're dealing with a very entirely Hong Kong real theater. You'll be dealing with very, very well known community centers of our surrounding neighborhoods. So I really think that even if you do objective standards to deal with the existing pipeline of business that does seem to be coming in pretty quickly that you still consider a general plan amendment because of these issues that came up before in the quarter plan. I don't think you can ignore them. And so I think that they have to be considered. I also should add that there was actually objective standards. I believe that will produce as part of that project. I actually have a copy of them. I also would invite you to look at the ocean street area plan where they spent two or $3 million developing objective standards and I don't understand why those couldn't be used with sokel and water since that is already something that went through a lot of that is interested the surrounding neighborhoods. People like Rick Hyman and Deborah Mark in the neighborhood put a lot of into into the idea of how to deal with neighborhood protection and character. And I know you have to put it in the voice of objective standards, but Rick Hyman in particular is quite good at this. And I would say that this could be developed. I also want to add that the reason why so many people against the quarter is also is that you're taking urban threads very dense urban threads and putting within 10 to 20 feet of single family homes. You don't see that downtown. You see service streets. You see parking lots. And then you see it kind of slowly enter into the neighborhood areas. Those could be part of objective standards, but they're not a part of the quarter plan and that's why so many people objected to it. If you have something like a tree one water street in its present form, and it's affordable housing. I can only say to you with all the perspective that we're getting from people that do want affordable housing, but do not like that project. I think you would really set that the idea of embracing future affordable housing project in this area. And we spent a lot of time with 708 water sheet making sure that was a beautiful project and that people have fully embraced affordable housing in this part of town. And I think you need to sort of use that same discipline with other projects. Otherwise, you're going to get a lot of pressure and I'm already hearing it. It's quite significant. Even people that were very much for transit oriented development are very much against that project. So, please reconsider, come up with some preliminary objective standards and still consider the general plan amendment. Also note that on Laurel Street already doing general plan amendment. We're doing general plan amendments with the housing element in the past and April 2015. I don't quite understand why we can't do general plan amendments. We did it with downtown, but we're doing this all the time. We shouldn't be constrained by the fact that we can't do it on this area. I don't see why we can't do that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can I have the clerk if you're keeping track of the time? Did you not hear the timer go off? No, I did not. Okay, I'll move it closer to the mic then. If anybody else has a fire on this item, please identify yourself and you have, hopefully after three minutes. Hi, my name is Angfer. I thank you all for your time service and attention to this matter and appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all. I did send in a written comment. I'm not going to recapitulate that. I do want to indicate that I recognize and respect the process that staff and the commission are going through to try to reconcile the general plan with zoning ordinances. Clearly, this is going to take some time. And during the time that that's happening, we need to think about the impacts that we're going to leave for ourselves for our children and for our grandchildren. And to that end, I am grateful for the comments I've heard so far from the commission that seem to be receptive to the idea of a general plan amendment that would give you some tools to be able to deal with the potential impacts of project. That may be in the pipeline now during the time that we're working to develop these objective standards. So I support and encourage the commission's work to not only pursue the objective standards, but also put in place general plan amendments that allow some reallocation of density so that we can avoid long term impacts that we will all regret. Again, thank you for your service. Bye-bye. Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak to the commission on this item? I don't see any other hands raised. Okay. I'm going to bring the matter back to the commission. We have a staff recommendation that the planning commission recommend to the city council that no general plan amendment be initiated at this time. And as the work on objective zoning changes be completed before revisiting the possibility of a general plan amendment to reallocate development capacity for housing within the city. Are there commissioners who want to comment on the staff recommendation commission at Conway? Yeah, I'd actually like to ask staff to clarify. The staff report made the point that there was a reason for recommending the objective standards doing that now rather than taking on a general plan amendment process. And I would like just a little bit more clarification about that because I can say for myself, seeing the projects come through that we've seen recently without having objective standards is tremendously frustrating. So I come out of the gate wanting to have some tools available sooner rather than later. And I understood that was why it was recommended that we do objective standards now. Is that right or is what's the timeline if we were to, you know, to give us some tools as quickly as possible. The work that we're doing on the objective standards, the zoning standards, because they are grant funded, they will have to be done by the end of 2021, really absolutely no later than January of 2022. Launching a general plan amendment is would be a significantly more involved process. You know, just think about the level of outreach to our last general plan was a comprehensive update, right? Not just an amendment, but that was a seven year process. So I would expect, you know, reallocation of density is not a small amendment to the general plan. I would guess that it would take at least 18 months to do the work and then another 12 months to do the sequel review. So we're looking at two and a half years to get that to, you know, pursue that. If that is the will of the commission and the will of the city council, you know, staff is ready and prepared to do that and do that outreach and have those conversations with the public. We are not saying we can't amend the general plan. We are saying we don't recommend it at this point because we are going to learn so much through this process of developing objective standards that will inform that work as we move forward. Also, what we've learned so far from these tests is that if we care about developing housing at any price level, reducing intensity will not support that. Reducing the intensity on these sites could lead to a situation where every project we get is a density bonus project. The density bonus provides more affordable housing. So that's great. It also provides less control for a local jurisdiction. So there's a balancing act. We want to have standards that can allow development within them, right? Because people and all developers aren't only always going to go for the density bonus, right? So our recommendation is that we go ahead and finish this work. We focus hard on it and get it done by the end of the year. That's going to be our quickest tool to getting some of the control back that we really, honestly, we just have watched through the change in state law. We can't use these subjective standards that we've relied on for decades. So, hence our recommendation. It is only a recommendation that commission can make a different recommendation for the city council. Thank you. Yeah, thanks again to staff and the consultants for walking us through this. This is very complex land use patterns in the city are very complex and there are a lot of drivers to be considered. But I do want to just make the point that the land use pattern we have in the city and why there are so many people in certain areas of the city, especially on the east. You heard one of the people who gave testimony today talk about how the high density use is literally right next door to to neighborhoods. And so that our land use pattern across the city and the density across the city is not equally distributed across the city. And so it's very clear that we need affordable housing. We can't take that density down in any way. But I think it's important for us to really consider, even though this would be a significant amount of work to really think about the what the conditions on the ground now in the city and how we distribute. The density across the city. There are large swaths in certain sections of the city that have very little density at all. And then it's aggregated in certain areas. And I know there are reasons for that. And there's a there's a lot to consider, but the short of it is I really think there's a significant amount of work to really think about what the conditions on the ground now in the city and how we distribute the density across the city. And there's a lot to consider, but the short of it is I really think we should be thinking about revisiting our land use plan for the city, given the new laws, given the conditions on the ground and make it match and meet the values and the needs of the community. So, thank you. Other commissioners. And then commissioners. Did you have your hand up? Yes. Yes. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, so I tend to agree with. I'm going to go one way. It is incredibly frustrating to, you know, be sitting on the commission and having very limited tools at your disposal to sort of, you know, review and place on a project. And so I'm interested in understanding how we can get to that answer quicker. I think it sounds like a general plan amendment on its own. Does have a long timeline as well. I also think there's quite a bit of confusion around what exactly the objective standards are just in general. Right. So what, what are the categories of objective standards that we can develop? I think there's a potential here to develop some kind of a tool that gets on the city's website. The consultants that have dealt with these issues already could start to communicate what these types of criteria are that we're going to be going after essentially. So that people get a better sense for what the real scope is and what the specifics are that we're going after. I find that it seems to be somewhat of an abstract concept that people aren't really grasping quickly and clearly. So that, that, that would be my goal is trying to find the quickest path forward. So that we have some things in place that we can hold our head on. Thank you. Our commission Greenberg. Yes, thank you. So many great comments that I'm thinking about one about to say a couple things. One is, yes, the objective standards process makes sense to try to move forward on as well as a commission or something, figuring out the categories of those standards. And, you know, it seemed like the presentation was really helpful in getting us to think about all of these variables that go into the cost of the project, the capability of the project. And whether or not the objective standards should can can help us to think about those kind of, you know, the variables. And specifically I'm thinking about, you know, the presentation showed it seems all kind of newly built market rate development. And I'm wondering in thinking about, for instance, the goal towards expanding affordability, how those variables shift, depending on, you know, who owns the land, for instance, and the land costs. You know, it was, you know, publicly owned or something like this, how it shift if it's high level of affordability that subsidized, you know, in some fashion, or other kinds of soft costs are mitigated because of the level of affordability. So I'm wondering if this interactive tool, and these different methods that, you know, Commissioner Solman is saying, and, and Sujata Srivastava was mentioning that it's going to be this tool developed, whether it could account for those different kinds of variables associated with the production of affordable housing as part of this and variables associated with, you know, different types of developments that are some private, some, you know, mixed, some public and so forth, or more public, more social housing. So that's one set of questions and whether in the community discussions, whether the degree to which affordability, how that can be an objective standard, how that the measurement of affordability itself can be, if at all, you know, an objective standard. So that's one question is kind of a, maybe a big one, but the second one is about, you know, the concern about the concentration of development in different parts of the city. And at the same time, the length of time it would take to undertake an overhaul of the general plan. While we're trying to, you know, kind of move a bit more quickly, and whether or not it's conceivable. And I just don't know that there could be like a simultaneous area plan for the west side. That's developed short of overhauling the general plan or, you know, from amending the general panel together, whether the goal of kind of develop, you know, spreading more development could be done without, without the amendment of the general plan altogether or not. That's my second question. I will take a stab at your second question first. If we change the development capacity on any parcel of property, we have to simultaneously, I mean, to lower it, we have to simultaneously increase the development capacity on another piece of property. I didn't mean to lower it. I meant to increase in another place, you know, just to increase it without lowering it. Yeah, on the lower west side, the far, the far west, lower west side, or however it's referred to, like around, you know, in the area around Delaware and so forth. Yeah. The area around Delaware is actually, I think you're talking about the area next to, I'm just like losing all my words. The new development by Marcus B. Max is there off of Delaware, that whole area. That's actually one of the city's only reservoirs of industrial property. Right. So, you know, it's one of the last opportunities we would have in town for an office park or a major employment center. Not to say those things can't change. Like I said, the general plan, the zoning ordinance, these are living, breathing, changing documents that, you know, we amend over time. And, you know, in order to do something like that, that would want, we would want that to be really carefully considered and I, well, theoretically, that could happen as a separate standalone specific plan process. I don't believe that would be quicker. And I also believe to make more sense for that to happen in the context of like, what is the pattern that we want to have? Do we want to create sort of like equalized density everywhere in Santa Cruz where we just have single family homes and like maybe towns homes everywhere? Or do we actually prefer to concentrate it? Which this is a conversation you have with a general plan. So when they had to be, you know, in the early part of the 2000s, and then they selected what we are working with, which is the, you know, the idea of focusing new development to places where transit already exists for commercial units already, uses already exist so that we have the potential to create more walkability and more transit oriented development. Not to say that like, you know, new satellite locations can't also be transit oriented. You know, we see this around part in the Bay Area. Right. But it's a big conversation is, I guess, my point. So could purchase perhaps that could happen. I don't think it would be faster. And I, you know, personally, I think it makes sense to be considering all of it together. To answer your first question was, which was about, you know, how can we help we can consider how affordable housing, the very factors that change the level of affordability, even like more significantly than what we examine in these tests. I think there probably is a little bit of room for that. And I will say that the financing mechanisms for the restricted affordable housing are significantly more complicated and diverse than the financing mechanisms for market rate housing. And the standards that wind up in our zoning code, which let's recall that's where we're headed is to have standards in our zoning code have to work for all of it. Right. So, I do think that's an important conversation. And I know that it's going to come up when we talk with the community. The primary objective standard that we have that influences affordability is our inclusionary requirement. You know, which you all are continuing to work on, you know, setting that setting how we kind of make that work. Getting into a lot more of the details about like, could we change the land cost? Could we change the way it's financed? Could we factor in, you know, some government grants? I'm not sure how, I'm not sure how ultimately what, how that's going to get us closer to zoning standards that work for all housing. It's a really important conversation. And I don't want to say we're not going to talk about it. We will be discussing it. And I'm just not sure that it's going to wind up in this pro forma tool in quite the way you're describing. Sujata, do you have some comments on that? Thank you, Sarah. I think you laid the groundwork really well. Affordable housing does have a very different sources and uses of funding in the way that they think about a development project. But affordable housing developers still have to deal with high construction costs. And high acquisition costs for land for the most part, unless it's a publicly owned site, as you said. So most affordable housing projects are still working under a lot of the similar types of constraints as a market rate developer. The difference is that they have other sources of subsidies. But on a cost per unit basis, the construction costs are not usually that different unless they're lucky enough to be able to build on a publicly owned site or donated site. So, you know, it's possible that the tool could incorporate a lever on the value of the land. But I think that you would see that if you spoke to affordable housing developers that they also really rely on having flexibility on many of these same standards. And they often request the same types of conceptions. And that's kind of the logic of the density bonus off to is that being able to offer sessions makes it more possible for you to provide more affordability. And you, your comment also made me realize I neglected to tell you all that our performer analysis is assuming the existing inclusionary requirement of 20% of units affordable to low income households. So there are some affordable units included in all of those prototypes that we should. Thank you. Other commissioners. Yes. I have a question for staff. Just going back to objective standards. It seems to me that, you know, there could be targeted like fairly targeted objective standard that would be able to mitigate some of the, maybe some of the issues. For example, with the MX HD zoning being right up against, you know, single family housing. Because it's up again. So in some of the on this map, it's up against like the load. I don't know what the designation is. I guess it's or one, for example, versus versus some other ones that are like LM zoning, right. So we've got you've got like, kind of a low density, and then you have medium density, and then you have higher density. So all these different, these different zones that are up against these up against the MX HD. I think that's what it's called. But it seems that you would, there could be objective standards that target or targeted towards like, what are the, what are those edges like between, you know, certain zones versus others. So I think there's ways that that could happen where we don't have to, you know, maybe it's not a need to go through and just like completely go back into the general plan and and move these things around. But, but it could be just about how do we treat those edges to be appropriate. Because, you know, it does seem that like that that zone that MX HD zone right up against the R1 district or the or that low density single family is that that's a that's a tough boundary, right. And so, but how do you, how do you merge those two together to be appropriate and sensitive versus like how that might go up against the medium density or up against a more commercial district. So, I started out as a question is kind of becoming a statement, but, but that is, but am I correct in, in the, in the thought of being able to target those having kind of targeted objective standards, based on like adjacencies to other districts. Yeah, so there's two parts. My answer. So first, yes, that is what you are describing is an objective standard. And, you know, we, we already have some of those in our zoning codes. Perhaps they're not as robust as we might like. But for example, currently in the commercial zone district, zero setbacks on all four sides, no setbacks required on commercial property, unless you're neighboring a residential property, in which case, you have to match the residential setbacks to which you're adjacent. Okay. So, when you have a side yard, a residential side yard, as we had on our test fit site up against the rear yard of a commercial property, that gives you sort of that gives us about an eight foot setback. I think actually on that site, it was actually those sites actually don't RL so it might have been a little bit different, but for an R1. It would be eight feet, I believe. When that's the back of a commercial building that may not be a setback to be right up next to your house. So, you know, I think we could think about larger setback. The thing we will need to keep in mind is that in order to maintain the same capacity on the site, we're going to have to try something off in order to get that larger setback, we may have to allow more height. Or we may have to reduce the amount of open space that's required on the project or the amount of parking. So, all of those trade off are what we want to hear from the community about. What are the values that Santa Cruz has? Is it really important to have space between single family homes or single family homes? What we really want to protect when we say protect city neighborhoods, do we mean create distance between single family homes and any new development? Only if it's mixed use or commercial, is it also, is it the same standard? If it's mixed use or if it's residential only, does it matter how tall the building is? All of those questions are things we're going to get into and we can absolutely set standards. We have, and as I mentioned, we have a few already. I think there's also one about a 45 degree line for shading. So, you know, an objective standard just has to be something that is measurable, knowable, and well defined. So, that can be about materials, colors, architectural styles and elements, setbacks, setbacks, articulation, fenestration, type of glazing, ground floor retail, commercial uses combined with residential. You know, the amount of parking, the location of the parking, the type of lighting, all the things, right? This can all be objective. And, you know, one of our commenters mentioned the Ocean Street area plan is a great example that many of those standards in Ocean Street area plan are objective standards. And, you know, there was a lot of community work that went into creating that. And this process is going to reference that plan. So, we're going to use, take those standards that are objective. We're going to use them to apply to the sites that they're planned for. You know, that's part of the process. So, the other part of my answer to your question is the reality is that single family homes order every commercial, almost not every. Many, many, many of our commercial parcels order single family homes, or at least parcels that are built with single family homes, even if they might technically be zoned for more. Creating big transitions between single family neighborhoods and commercial properties simply is not built into our pattern as it is today. In fact, this was, you know, when we had, we did have a discussion with the city council about, you know, what would it mean to reallocate some of the density. You know, one of the options is that you could take some of that existing capacity off the corridors and move it to the next, you know, 100 feet of parcels off the corridor. So, like, mostly concentrated on the, you know, corridors, you wouldn't have to completely redo your traffic study. And yet all the buildings would get smaller and all of those, you know, existing single family homes would get up. Some people like that idea. Some people did not like that idea. I mean, I think that the whole concept of, like, transition is going to be a tricky one around here because Santa Cruz is, like, pretty geographically constrained. We're really attached to these historic single family homes, which is not a bad thing. I love our single art historic structures as well. I live in a single family home. I appreciate that I can live in that kind of neighborhood. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to do that. And also, this capacity, this development, this art housing needs to go somewhere. You know, so the idea of protecting neighborhoods when we wrote the general plan, the idea was to keep it out of the neighborhoods and put it on the commercial corridors. So now what we're hearing from the community is that that's also part of the neighborhood. So show me part of Santa Cruz that's not in a neighborhood. There isn't. Everything is in a neighborhood. We all, you know, Delaware is a neighborhood, you know, the lower west side, UCSB is a neighborhood. All of these places are existing housing with existing homes and neighbors. And changing is happening and will continue to happen. You know, we plan starting from where we are now to move us into the future. And that's the intent of the general plan to take us to the next step. And we can amend that. We can take another look at it. You know, we've lived with it for a couple of years and maybe the community has decided like we really made the wrong choice and we prefer rather than having, you know, four or five stories on the corridors. We'd rather have two to three stories everywhere rather than single family single story home. You know, I mean, that would be one option that would be a pretty drastic change from where we are now with our documents. But, you know, as we consider how to do those transitions, that is a reality of it is that there may not be space for the kind of transition that folks really want to have because what they want to have is another use that transition. And that's an upstanding right like that's changing the zoning on someone's parcel. This process isn't going to do that a general plan amendment could do that. You know, we're going to grapple with it as best as we can and they're going to make some limits. Any other questions and commissioners. I have a few comments to make. We're still, I mean, I know I'm still trying to come to terms with implications of state law. How much it really does restrict the discretion of the city. We stick it a lot. One of the areas that seems to provide some flexibility is this area of objective standards. I think I understand the direction that staff would like it to go. I'm not sure I support that direction 100%. I think it's important that we go through that process and really look at what are the alternative kinds of objective standards that can be out there that the commission ultimately will be recommending to the council. It could affect affordable housing. They could affect the design of housing. I think there's, we do need to hear from the community, but I do think in this kind of never never land that we're in now where we can't use our traditional standards, but we don't have any new objective standards. It's not a good place to be. And we need to move forward expeditiously and work out what are the objective standards that are acceptable to this community. I think that's going to be a long process and be a difficult process. I think staff has just gone through a number of the issues that are going to have to be confronted with the ultimately have to have to get there. It may well be that really objective standard resolution. There'll be less of a need on the people will feel less of a need to have to do that. I don't know. It's still a lot of uncertainty. So at this point, I really am willing to be supported by really support the staff recommendation. I think we need to know more about what the objective standards are going to be before we start mucking around with the general plan. And let me just say for a response to some of the people who testify that projects that are in the pipeline would not be held up by if the city initiated general plan amendment. They would still have the right to go through under the current general plan. So I don't think that it's really a way of trying to down zone some of the property where either where I might agree that the proposed project is excessive. I don't think initially a general plan is going to be helpful. I don't think that that's going to allow for even if it's ultimately successful. And I think it's problematic that it would really have any effect on projects that are working their way through the process. So. Given that I appreciate the information we've received on the objective standards tonight and the relationship between height and parking and entity somewhat overwhelming. I appreciate having that. So I did a meeting with staff to clarify some of my confusion. I think I understand better what the exercise tonight is all about. And I think this is a process that's going to go going to continue the commission is going to be involved in it. We'll have a chance to have an input and ultimately make a make a recommendation. And I think that that's the best we can hope for at this time. And therefore I don't I don't think it would be would make sense. And to try to initiate a general plan project that I think will be very difficult to understand until we have the objective standard. So if somebody want to make a motion. Yes, so I would I agree with the statements you just made chair ship and so I would move to approve the staff recommendation to forgo the general plan amendment and move forward with the objective standards process. Second. Second. Seconded by Conway discussion on the motion. Not seen anyone. Okay, let's have a roll call vote. All in favor of the motion say aye. Mr Conway. Aye. Greenberg. Aye. Nielsen. Aye. Dawson. Different. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. I want to thank staff. The consultants and the members of the public we testify tonight. This is going to be a process. I hope you stay involved. Okay, so we'll move on to a reestablish a planning commission ad hoc sub housing subcommittee. I certainly favor reestablishing that. That committee I think there is still work to be done on. You like to call workforce housing and I think also on ways of streamlining the inclusionary ordinance, beyond what we've already done. I, what I'd like to do is reestablish that commission. I don't know if we need to vote to reestablish the commission. The committee on the subcommittee. I'm sorry. Probably do. Yeah. Six months is usually a charge for an ad hoc. Right. We're somebody like to make a motion to reestablish the ad hoc housing subcommittee. I'll make a motion to reestablish the ad hoc subcommittee. Housing. To me. Sorry. It made the motion somebody second. I'll second. Second. Any discussion. Okay. The local vote. Commissioner Conway. Greenberg. Hi. Nielsen. Hi. Dawson. Maxwell. Bellman. Hi. Chiffrin. Hi. To the unanimously approved to reestablish the housing subcommittee. In terms of appointments. I'd like to appoint Commissioner Greenberg. Commissioner Conway and myself to the subcommittee. And that's the commission wants to object to those appointments. I think that I have. I did share. I'm able to do that. Oh, I'd like to ask staff to maybe set up a meeting with. Subcommittee and relatively near future. I know. Well, why don't we move through the rest of the agenda. And find out when other items are going to come back to us. That might be appropriate for the subcommittee to talk about. So we're moving out of information items. Mr. Larry, you're going to give the report. Thank you. Good afternoon or evening. Commissioner. We have a couple of updates for you tonight. First, the Pennsylvania Avenue project that you heard last month. Wanted to give you a heads up that that has been appealed. And so the city council will take up that project. And we are anticipating that that heads to them in. February. We tentatively have that scheduled for February 9th. And then. To. Share Schifrin's comments about items that the housing subcommittee. May be interested in on the 21st of this month. You'll recall that there were some items that were continued. Related to the last inclusionary housing. Conversation that you all had. You recommended approval of some of the. Clean up items and you also continued some of the items related to workforce. You continue those to a date, certain 11 or excuse me, 1 21. And. The. How. If possible, could meet before that. If there's still more time that's necessary, then that item could also be continued at this point in time. That is the only item that we have scheduled for the 21st. Of January. And. I think that's about it right now, but if you've got any questions about upcoming schedules, I'm happy to answer those for you. You may be interested. That the. The. Resoning general plan amendment LCP amendments that you looked at for the metro station is going to council on the 26th. That'll be copied coupled with a. AB 2162. Recommendations. Which would allow for an administrative approval of. The design permit. That's something that's going to be associated with that. In fact, because that's publicly owned, it wouldn't even trigger a design permit. So. That's something that the council will be considering at the same time. Along with. This theater. Calvary church project. A similar use of AB 2162, except being privately owned. That would trigger a design permit. So. Few of those things that are up. That would be great. I think that would be great. Thank you very much. I would ask if possible. And if the commission. The subcommittee members at the time. It would be possible to meet before the 21st. That would be great. To consider that. The item that was continued. And also I would appreciate getting the staff report that was. That was presented at a commission member way back. That listed a whole bunch of items that. Could be looked at by the housing subcommittee now. It got sort of focused on the. Section 8. Issuing inclusionary. Which took up most of it. I think it would be good to. Review what else was proposed to see if there are others. That the committee committee wanted to work on. I'm sure that. I was just going to say if you'd want to reference that it was the. Second meeting in December. Of. 2019. Good memory. Remember what happened. The other. Advice to just. No. I was taking a quick look at the city council agenda for next. And it appears that the riverfront project is back. Is that all the case. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for mentioning that. The front riverfront project was continued from the. December. The first meeting in December. I think it was the 10th. Last month. And that will be heard. Well, it's expected to be heard. You know that the council. Will be deliberating on that project on Tuesday. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Who's the staff to the housing subcommittee? That is Jessica DeWitt. And I'll note that. She was having trouble logging on, but I do see that she is on the line listening in. Okay, good. Great. Okay. In terms of subcommittee advisory body or reports. I'm just asking if there are any commissioners. I know we're getting near the end of this technical, the West coast drive study. Nothing seems to be happening with that. It's probably going to be coming forward soon. It's going to be on much longer. I'd really prefer if somebody else on the commission would want to take over that slot. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have an interesting act. I'd be happy. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. If that works for the other commissioners, I would be happy to step into that role as I continue. So you can focus on the new subcommittee. I'm happy to do that. Very happy. It's very technical. And it's not an area that I have very much technical knowledge. I would appoint you to be our representative on the West coast drive adaptation study. Technical advisory. Hopefully. To be wise, West will contact you there. Make sure you get all the documents. Any problem with that? I was just going to let you know, you said you weren't sure about the timing. Matt may have some more specific timing, but I believe that that would be that the. Consultants work is being evaluated right now. And the draft is going to be released to the task force or the. The subcommittee members. Probably in February and then it would. Be in front of the commission circa March. Probably April at the latest. I don't know. Matt may have the specifics. But I think that's roughly accurate. Correct. Yeah. I think you got a leak. Great. Thank you. Well, I think it might be good. Commissioner Dawson for you to, you know, immerse yourself in that and get brought up to speed. Because it's kind of becoming to the commission. I have, you know, I'll have what background I have by attending. But, you know, other commissioners will also have to be coming. But if you can get a head start, that's good. So if there's no objection, we'll just do that. And then. Are there any items referred to future agendas? None. I think we're now ready to be adjourned. I want to wish everybody a happy new year and. Stay healthy. Thank you very much for this. Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye.