 Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and and call to order tonight's meeting of the city of Santa Rosa Planning Commission and ask for roll call Please let the record reflect that all commissioners are present Next we'll go ahead and move on to approval of minutes for our July 25th minutes any comments Corrections on that not seeing any those will stand as printed I'm gonna go ahead and move on to Public comments, which is a time for any member of the public to address the Commission on matters of interest to the Commission That aren't listed tonight as a public hearing We will be taking comments on the study session separately, so that's that I have one card Dwayne DeWitt Thank you. My name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland trees, please Please save our trees. I hope you're all looking at a packet I gave to you about how trees save cities this was published almost two months ago in a national magazine and It points out that saving city forests Helps cities now this city adopted a climate action plan some years back and yet as I rode a bike over here the other day I saw the trees were being cut down wholesale along stony point road because they were beneath a wire They hadn't been trimmed just to keep them from getting near the wire Just cut off right at the stump line next to the lawn and that's happening a lot and trees aren't being replaced and I came down here today to the planning department because someone had turned in a request to have a stately old coast live oak Cut down. I went and I looked over the tree and lo and behold. It's actually a valley oak carcass lobata so the thing about it is this article which I hope you will read points out that by preserving trees It's actually helping cities with their own initiatives the things that they said They wanted to do with their climate action plans So this city specifically is doing really well at it and if you'll see on the page 25 There's actually an urban forest there that looks a lot like the Roseland neighborhood that we have spent decades trying to save and Preserve not just save it but preserve it especially from what we call the queens of concrete The people in the bureaucracy who believe oh, yeah We've got to put down lots more concrete for anything to be usable by the public And that's not the case people like to be in urban Neighborhoods and this is a spot where you folks can make it happen Over there in Roseland right now at the same time throughout the city That's what the Planning Commission is for so it would actually take you to be more proactive And I hear tell there'll be a general plan update and the state has a conservation element in it Along with air pollution now trees act as a filter on air pollution I just happen to be from Roseland Creek Census District, which is the most disadvantaged underserved and overburdened community in the entire county and we have a very high rate of Childhood asthma especially for people of color because they're cutting down the trees not replacing them and the diesel trucks are rolling through So please help us with our needs, please trees, please Thanks, Dwayne any other members of the public wishing to speak under public comment. I Am not seeing anyone rise. So I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment Move on to planning commissioners report any reports from commissioners I just wanted to let you know that I Alistair Blyfus was kind enough to make sure that each of us had one of the Waterway trail little pamphlets so that we have that in our little supply of documents So that's why they were on the dais today was he had those delivered to us It's the it's the creek thing so Any other planning commissioners reports Department reports Yes, we are looking forward to a joint city council planning commission study session next Tuesday They don't have a specific time the preliminary agenda will post well the agenda for next Tuesday will post I think later today But the preliminary shows our joint session at 3 o'clock on Tuesday and that joint session Will be our general plan update Scope what we're doing is we're putting together a Request for proposals for our general plan update and it's our check-in with the Commission and Council to make sure that our RFP is Asked for what we'd like in that update And so I'll see you next Tuesday at that meeting Okay Next statements of abstention By Commission members no statements of abstentions, okay Before we move on to our scheduled items. I wanted to consider reordering that tonight moving the Recess storage item up to first in line and moving the study session second mainly because it's going to probably be a very long study session, so How's the Commission feel about that any? Any concerns about doing that? Okay, so then that's what we're going to do is Go ahead and move to the public hearing part and begin with item 10.1, which is the recess self-storage Presoning hillside development permit tentative parcel map and minor conditional use permit It is an ex parte disclosure commissioner card or anything to disclose. I did visit the site and I have nothing further to disclose Mr. Kaya, I also visit the site and have nothing further to disclose Visited the site and have nothing further to disclose Nice chair weeks visited the site and have nothing further to disclose Mr. Peterson, I also visited the site and have no new information to disclose Yeah, I have nothing to disclose. I Also visited the site This was heard at waterways. I was not in attendance at that meeting So I was not able to hear it at the waterways committee meeting and I have no new information to disclose So with that we'll go ahead and move to The staff presentation Susie merit Murray's season your planner will be giving our staff presentation Madam chair, yes, I apologize, but we we have a technical difficulty with the PowerPoint We're going to have to take a three-minute recess to get that uploaded. Okay. I Think we can handle that Okay, it looks like you're ready to go Susie Murray will be presenting Thank you and pardon that small delay the project before you today is the recess storage Project, it's a mixed-use development and proposes a self-storage building and two multifamily residential Structures there are 14 residential units being constructed in the two the two Structures and what this slide tells us is that those 14 units put us just shy or half a percent closer to our 5,000 new units goal by 2022 but what this slide doesn't tell us is that we've already constructed of that five or 2500 we've already constructed Over a thousand units over 1,100 units or we correct that we've had building permits pulled for 1,100 units And we've got about another 1,500 to go so we're making really good progress and because of projects like this The project is required to annex two parcels into the city of Santa Rosa the the Site or the site is is one of two parcels adjacent to each other there a county island that make up a county island And they in order to get water and sewer services from the city. They are being required to annex all of the Development is proposed on the parcel at four to two four Sonoma Highway So the project also includes a tentative map a tentative parcel map to subdivide that Property into three different properties and Construct as I said the self-storage and the two residential structures the required entitlements Include a mitigated negative declaration Last night. We received some late correspondence which was put given to you rather late today So I wanted to to address that throughout this Presentation and I'm going to start now So the mitigated negative declaration was circulated for 30 days, which commenced on July 2nd And that 30-day period was completed on August 1st We received that late correspondence on August 6th or on August 7th last night So mitigated negative declaration is before the the Planning Commission tonight for action the projects all also includes a pre-zoning application and the pre-zoning is the first step for a Property owner to annex into the city a property owner. That's yeah a county Property into the city the pre-zoning is required for the annexation And it is typically consistent with the general plan land use designation in this case. It is exactly that consistent the pre-zoning The annexation application is filed with Lafko I and I Thank You local agency formation Commission The Sonoma County Lafko they are the final say and how people get water or sewer services Within the city when it's in a situation like this the other alternative would be a utility certificate This this this project was not a candidate for the utility certificate because it's such a small county island and completely surrounded by city Lafko will accept the annexation application after the city council acts on the pre-zoning The project also requires a hillside development permit while the site is generally flat There's one area a small area that's has a slope of greater than 10% That permit the hillside development permit is the is one of the reasons that this project is before the Planning Commission today The tentative parcel map is actually three parcels. This would normally go before the subdivision committee and Just to save time be more efficient. We've elevated it to the Planning Commission The conditional use permit is a minor conditional use permit. It's for a self-storage community or a self-storage facility within a general general commercial zoning district and That requires a minor conditional use permit as does attached housing the project also Has a design review associated with it and the design review will be reviewed by the design review board Because of the size of the structures Here's an aerial view of the site and the annexation boundary the two there those are the two properties the Property located at 4200 Sonoma Highway on the left side of the screen is Fully to develop there is no development proposed there although the entire scope of the project For the mitigated negative declaration included both properties The physical development will occur at 4224 Sonoma Highway and this is where the other entitlements come in This is out also a good time to mention that during the waterways advisory committee meeting several of the members commented on The number of trees that are being removed as part of this prop or this project and asked that those be revisited They were revisited out of 60 trees 58 will be removed not all of them are heritage trees that are being removed but And the tree replacement plan will be done in compliance with the city's tree ordinance This project has a pretty long History with the city back in November of 2016 The applicant held their first pre-applicate or had a pre-application meeting with city staff and Into the April of 2018 came back for a second pre-application meeting During the first out pre-application meeting staff suggested that the applicant include housing on the part of their parcel because they were basically front-loading the Self-storage unit on the front and are on the front of the parcel adjacent to the highway The applicant took those words under consideration and came back with a new design and included the 14 housing units They the project went to concept design review shortly after that And we had it held a neighborhood meeting at which two people showed up for the neighborhood meeting that was noticed under the previous Noticing requirements, which was property owners within 400 feet The only people that showed up actually represented the property at forty two hundred I believe at forty two hundred snow my way In September of 2018 we received all but one of the entitlement applications in The parcel map or tentative parcel map is followed in January of 2019 water waterways advisory committee was held in April and As I said earlier the Mitigated negative declaration was circulated on July 2nd I also like to point out that both the waterways advisory committee meeting and the the concept design review meeting are Open to the public. They're not publicly noticed necessarily, but they The agendas are made public so the general plan land use designation for both properties is Retail and business services It's surrounded to the to the north by medium density residential I should say to the north and to the west by medium density residential to the east by more Retail and business services, and then Santa Rosa Creek is adjacent to the south Zoning for the surrounding properties is generally consistent with the general plan The project required an initial study which resulted in a mitigated negative declaration the mitigation measures in the document applied to aesthetics air quality cultural and tribal resources geology and soils hazardous materials hazards and Hydrology and biological resources one of the questions that came up in the letter Well, actually two of them one was about hazardous materials the fire department requires a phase one for projects like this prior to Construction and depending on the information in that project it triggers It may or may not trigger the need for a phase to the fire department monitors hazardous materials Also biological resources there was some concern about the biological resources addressing Fort are up to 18 housing units And this wasn't the project that was being proposed when that biological assessment was was being done the Project was they were still deciding, you know what they were going to do They were directed by staff to consider the worst-case scenario and address that and the environmental impact So the environment I'm sorry and the mitigated negative declaration. They did that so that in doing so they considered a worst-case scenario It's The project is within the scope of what was what was reviewed The site plan like my empty arrows up there. Oops Here's the site plan one of them and this shows us a couple of things First the self-storage facility which is up in the upper left-hand corner. That's adjacent to Sonoma Highway the kind of a purplish color that's the street that extends from Streamside Drive up to Sonoma Highway and there are six units of attached housing that are thoughtfully placed right next to the Existing residential neighborhood. They're off steam stream side drive There's another eight unit housing unit that's placed Adjacent to the creek path and then the self-storage facility which I already talked about What's also I know which I haven't mentioned yet is that the applicant has agreed to give the city a an easement for an emergency well site This is for a source of emergent for now emergency water supply and I think we all understand why we need that so I Heard from a planning commissioner asking me to explain a parking Or a variance an engineering variance that's here I'm gonna if if there are more questions after the comments that I have I have Engineering staff here to answer those questions after my presentation The engineering variance addresses the three parking spaces that are shown on the bottom of the screen with the arrow That's pointing up at them those parking spaces are there in an unusual Place, but they are on private property. So it's private parking that helps meet the 36 parking space requirement what What the variance is for is because my understanding is that they're they're very close to where the property takes access from Sonoma Highway Because of that sharp turn that people will have to make from Sonoma Highway. It's unlikely They'll come barreling around that corner and and you know run into a car that's pulling out or backing into a parking space There's this this is an interesting diagram also it shows how They really work to get to meet all the requirements rather than asking for parking reductions and what have you there are five parking spaces along the On the right side of the self-storage Facility and those parking spaces will be on the property of the self-storage facility But they are reserved for the use of the eight-unit residential structure overlooking the creek path And the reason that they're adjacent to the self-storage facility is because fire department needed access to the roof And so they will go over the cars rather than having to move the cars when they were proposed on the other side of the road there Let's see here's Rendering of what it will the project will look like from Sonoma Highway And again this product this design is not final it has to go to the design review board First but they have seen it during concept design review and we're generally Okay with the design Here are Perspectives of what the the project will look like looking both east and west from the the San Rosa Creek path and So the nice thing here is we're putting you know eight units of eyes onto the trail To increase safety there and make it a more usable path for San Rosa residents or anybody else who wants to walk down that path It's a very nice path, and I am not a Santa Rosa resident But this this gives you an idea of what what walkers will see here is The proposed elevations which again will go before the design review board For the development Really what I'm trying to show you here is the development from on the right side of this Elevation how the building slopes or steps with the slope the roof line Basically steps with the slope During during the staff's review as I mean we really shoehorned a lot on to this property And there were several issues that we discussed a lot Circulation We've got the circulation down the street the connecting street Parking was an issue. We finally got that worked out as I explained earlier with the fire department roof access and Some of the city easements there's another large easement that goes across the the backside of this property and that's for a new trunk line Staff with various departments work closely with the project engineer and the applicant and we came to a point where I can say With confidence there are no unresolved issues So during the neighborhood meeting I mentioned that two people showed up. They were both in favor of the Project other comments that staffs received through the project process During a site visit one neighbor came out and indicated full support from their balcony event of the development going on next door There was a concern from another neighbor that about a Self-storage facility right at the gateway There was some concern in the letter That was received yesterday about the construction hours and generally we have a standard standard construction hours from 7 a.m. To 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, I believe it's 8 to 6 on Saturdays and no constructions on Sundays or holidays this project due to its proximity to an existing residential neighborhood Has been conditioned to limit those hours. It's I believe it's 7 7 to 6 Monday through Friday and 8 to 5 but I don't it's in the conditions of approval on Saturday again no construction on Sundays or holidays The letter Emphasized concern about the public process as I've said here in addition to several notices being sent we met all the requirements of the then and now noticing requirements also You know, they're the the design review board meeting the concept hearing or meeting and The waterways advisory committee meeting those were both noticed The annexation process the city and Lafko work together. Yes as far as having you know Communication Lafko doesn't accept that application until the city has taken action on the pre-zoning and I think I addressed all the environmental concerns that were outlined in that letter, but if you have any other questions I am happy to answer or try to answer them and With that it is recommended by the Planning and Economic Development Department that the Planning Commission take the following actions in support of recess storage Project adopt a mitigated negative declaration Recommend a council pre-zoning the two-parcel County Island into the CG zoning district approve a hillside development permit approve a tentative parcel map and approve a minor conditional use permit and I'm available for questions. I think that I think the applicant wants to say a few words and Staff are here to answer any other engineering questions Commissioners any questions of the staff right now? Yeah, come here Dougan Yeah, I've got um, I think it's just clarifying but on Slide 11 the tentative parcel map. It doesn't match the background of the parking site plan as far as Where the spots are located and also can you Describe how the gated areas of around the self storage work is there parking within the gated areas? for the self the storage patrons So the reason that the the two Diagrams are different. We had a late issue for the the fire fire department access and so I'm gonna say slide 11 is an an older version where I'm sorry Wait a minute. No, actually. No, that's that's correct. I'm sorry. I don't what's not the same on the parking So on this one it doesn't look like there's Parking adjacent to the stealth storage building. Oh I'm sorry. Yeah, this is a pre this is This site plan was a little bit earlier and they provided this site plan which actually shows where the parking has been Relocated to the so it's directly adjacent to the building. I'm sorry. This this exhibit was provided at a Late date as yeah to support that so the gated driveway for the self storage area So those parking Spots that are adjacent to the building the storage building that are for the residences are not within the gated area No, they are not the gated area is right on the the kind I don't want to say the south side It's I'm gonna say on the bottom of the the teal green building the large The large building up at the I wish I don't know if I have an arrow in here Do I? All right, I'm gonna try and describe this with my words here the self storage facilities is up in the left-hand corner of the Oh there yay Here we go That the gate is here and it's so that people can get into here and unload their vehicles This will have access from here And oh, I like this little thing and and these three parking spaces are reserve spaces guest spaces that should be utilized for Guests for this you these units So it's it's really these units have garage spaces. It's eight units over there They have they have four garage spaces for tandem spaces They have more parking over here that'll be reserved for them more parking over here. None of it will be behind gates Okay, not even for the people who are just using the storage facility the people who are coming into the storage facility there's they'll be unloading in this area and This is where the gate is It's in this area does that make sense Is that right You know what the applicant can also come down and clarify the site plan and that may make that'll be better for you Okay, thank you. Okay Any other clarifying questions? Okay, so would the applicant like to make their presentation? Fortunately you have to go up there Oh Thank you very much for taking the time tonight to hear about our project We're obviously very excited about it. My name is Reed Hamilton I am the owner of a recess self-storage and recess really was kind of the only thing I was good at school So this is what we decided to name this project We've been working on this project as Susie mentioned for going on three and a half years and it's it's been a long project It's something that we're developing don't need to be closer. Okay, sorry We're currently developing self-storage in four of the western states now And this is hands down my favorite project and one of the reasons is is when we look at self-storage Everything in our world is a three-mile radius You know nothing outside of that really matters and so we try to identify spots where essentially self-storage has been underserved and In this project in the three-mile radius. There's actually only one self-storage facility, which is absolutely Unheard of in the self-storage space when I talk to people who are veterans of the industry and tell them that we're working on a project in Northern California, of course, I don't tell them exactly where but tell them that we're doing that And there's only one project in a three-mile radius People are flabbergasted so we're very grateful for the opportunity to be able to work on this great project And we're also really excited to do something different and hopefully provide some really great homes for the folks here So I don't have a long presentation more importantly. I'm here to answer any specific questions of you like but Thank you again for the time You want to ask the applicant the questions about the parking you have anything to add about the parking question So your question is are they're going to be designated parking essentially behind the gates and yes There's certain areas in the facilities where that are going to be designated for loading So whether somebody pulls up in a you know 45-foot box truck or at somebody in a pickup. There's going to be areas for them to park For sure, I mean we have to for us to be successful We have to make it very easy for people to utilize our facility And is there just the one gate or is it is there a fence all the way around? So I'm I'm slightly hesitant to answer this because in the past when people think of self storage They think of you know Bob wire fence and wife beaters and guns and stuff like that and that is not the case that here at all We'll be using very high-tech I guess kind of surveillance equipment almost everything might be done electronically and so we may have a gate and we may not Because we what I'm getting at is we might not need to even have a gate so Does that answer your question? Sure, okay. I I'd also like to clarify that gate. I've just been corrected by Engineering and the fire department did eliminate the requirement for the gate So and the other thing that I would like to to clarify is that? Well, one of these is not as an older exhibit up on the My PowerPoint the plans that were attached to your The agenda are accurate. They're the they're the current plans. We just verified the parking and the attachment file Any other yeah, vice chair weeks has a question for the applicant, okay So just a general question. Do you anticipate maintaining ownership of the apartments or do you plan on selling them off? just curious I You probably don't know no I I can tell you if I if I can afford to do it I'm going to do everything in my power to hold on to them Just because I think they're they're in a beautiful location, but I just I don't know if I personally I'm gonna have the capital to be able to do that so So I'll let you know if they're for sale though Any other questions of the applicant right now, okay, great. Thank you So This is a public hearing tonight. I'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearing. I don't have any cards on this item But okay, mr. DeWitt, you know the drill Wayne DeWitt. I'm from Santa Rosa and the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group I did not turn in a card because I thought the study session was coming first tonight be gone I'm concerned about the idea of Building a nice building in a residential area that's not for residents That's essentially housing belongings. I understand the business plan. I understand what the folks are doing I have nothing against the idea of people need a spot to put their stuff But it'll be really wonderful if that big building could actually be more housing Multifamily housing it's actually not faced any problem with the smaller housing being proposed out there So I would hope that if you go ahead and prove this you would at least put in a caveat that should the future hold a change of the use of that tall building that it could be converted over into housing these types of things do exist and It is possible for General commercial as I understand it to have housing and as you see the new hotels that are being built along highway 101 in a modular format They can quickly get housing up you have housing in a hotel down here on Santa Rosa Avenue next to the freeway also So it could be a commercial housing situation It's just a matter of how innovative you folks become as you try to solve our housing crisis We do not have a storage crisis So I want you to keep that in mind and hope that you'll become more proactive. I can't stay for the rest of the Session here I have to be somewhere for five o'clock, but I'll be back for the study session I want to make sure that the handout I just gave to you about vacation rentals is looked at by you folks before we go further into the housing debate Thank you for your time and good luck on your project Thank you. Mr. DeWitt any other members of the public wishing to speak on this item? I'm not seeing anyone stand up. So I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the commission and commissioners any other questions of the applicant or staff Okay And I think just in in response to mr. DeWitt's comment, uh, mrs. Murray, could you Sort of describe how the land use general commercial is looked at when a developer comes in how the housing has gotten added and So both uses Attached housing that I mean if the building were to be converted it would be attached housing And it would it would require a minor conditional use permit these uses are both allowed Through that process in that zoning district the general commercial zoning district this I'm going to back up a little bit The general plan land use designation Um is retail and business services in this area Again, both commercial and residential uses are permitted And it's through the entitlement process that we look and see if if it makes sense In this case staff is recommending approval because the commercial is adjacent to commercial On this property and residential is adjacent to existing residential If in the future that somebody wanted to change that that The storage facility into housing It could be done. It would it would be a big building permit I think that would probably be where the problems would lie But it could be done through a minor conditional use permit. The other challenge would be of course meeting parking requirements, but Okay Thanks Okay, so Uh, yes, commissioner car. You have a question I do and it's kind of a follow-up to your question. So Had the city Chosen to pre-zone this for residential use, how might it have affected this procedurally? It would have um If it had been chosen for specifically for resident one of the residential zoning districts It would have had to also get a general plan amendment because we're The the zoning was selected to be consistent with the retail and business services land use So that's kind of the overarching goal and we try to comply with that So if if it were a housing if it had a residential Land use designation I I don't know off the top of my head. I don't think storage facilities are allowed in residential areas It just was a follow-up to be clear. So you can see the different colors on the exhibit above The subject site is red. So retail business service. So it's intended for commercial development, but over the last You know five ten years. We've Updated that designation to be flexible to allow the opportunity for housing on these sites. So through the minor use permit process you can Um evaluate the site and its suitability for residential in this case It's bringing in both so as you can see it was a challenge to do that but it was accomplished and then as you can see to the West it's a different color. It's residential medium density that's intended for residential use and Your there isn't it's not the same opportunity. It's intended for residential multi-family Not for commercial. So there are two different designations This one is just exercising. It's it's well both in both opportunities at the same time Okay, any other questions Okay, so with somebody we've got a lot of resolutions So with something like to move the first one, which is our mitigated negative declaration For the purposes of discussion and I think what we'll do is I'll ask you to discuss the project generally If there's anything that we need to amend and the other resolutions will do that as we go So somebody like to move that resolution And we're We're struggling a little with our technology here Okay, does anybody have it nobody has it You have it. Okay. I have it. Okay. Good. Then you're up for a number I'd like to move a resolution of the planning commission of the city of sanarosa adopting a mitigated negative declaration Including a mitigation monitoring program for recess self storage and mixed use development Located at 4200 and 4224 sonoma highway assessor's parcel numbers o 3 2 dash o 1 o dash 0 0 5 and 0 3 2 dash 0 1 0 dash 0 2 3 file number prj 1 8 dash 0 5 0 and wait for the reading