Okay, it is 7 10 and I'm calling to order the meeting of the San Leonas City Council today. We have a special
Meeting of our council or special session at this point in time. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance
At this point in time madam clerk, would you read your announcement?
Yes, mayor
If you would like to make a public comment during the minute pause you if you don't mind because we haven't taken role to establish
Quorum, please proceed
Council member Aguilar
present
Council member
Bowen
resident
Council member bolt
present council member simon present council member apologies vice mayor viveros waldon present
thank you and mayor gonzalez i am present as well at this point in time council member agilar i'd like
to give you the floor with respect to your announcement uh thank you mayor gonzalez under
California Government Code section 54953.8-0.3 section A1. I am notifying the City Council
of my need to participate in this meeting remotely for just cause. The need is I have
a physical condition caused by medications related to a recent significant dental procedure. There
is no one over the age of 18 in the room with me currently. That ends my announcement.
Thank you. The City of San Fernando conducts orderly meetings to fulfill its mandate.
Discriminatory statements or conduct that would potentially violate the Federal Civil Rights Act
of 1964 and or the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. California Penal Code sections 403
or 415 are per se disruptive to a meeting and will not be tolerated. Please see the City Council
Handbook and City Council Meeting Rules of Decorum for more information. Madam Clerk your announcement.
If you would like to make a public comment during the meeting, you can do so in person or via Zoom.
If you are present at the meeting, please complete a speaker card and submit it to the city clerk before the item is presented.
If you wish to make a public comment via Zoom, you can use the Raise Your Hand tool when the item is called.
During the public comment session, speakers will be invited to speak and will have a set time to share their comments.
countdown timer will appear for their convenience and when the time is up the
microphone will be muted all raised hands outside of public comment will be
lowered to avoid confusion once public comment is opened hands may be raised to
speak okay at this point in time thank you very much for your announcement do
we have any reportable action coming out of closed session thank you mayor no we
did not take any reportable actions in closed session but direction was
provided the staff. Thank you. So moving to item number four consent calendar. Are
there any items on the consent calendar that council members would like to pull
from the consent calendar? Okay just confirming. So would you like to pull an
item council member Aguilar? No, mayor Gans also like to move the consent
calendar. Okay so I will take that motion and but first I'm going to take public
comment on this item, then I'll come back and I'll give you the motion on the
request to approve move to move the consent calendar. At this point I will take
public comment on our consent calendar. Mayor we have not received any comment
cards but we have two hands raised online. Please proceed online. Our first
online speaker is Douglas Spalding. Thank you. Good evening everyone. The sun has
I would like to speak to item 4C. I have a quick question, which is, I'm wondering if this
consolidation of the city clerk position within the city manager's office is something that's
just being done now or was this done previously and so we're just kind of going the way that we
have been going for a while. But whatever the situation, I would like to lend my endorsement
to appointing Sarah Bunting in the most permanent way possible. And I really was impressed at
the last meeting and recent meetings with the some rather complex and emotional and
difficult agenda items, just how Miss Bunting really navigated it so well. And I've always
appreciated her friendliness as well as her professionalism. So let's make it unanimous.
Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker is Alvaro Ramos. Can you hear me? Yes. All right.
So item four A should be scaled back completely.
We need to prioritize the main boulevards that everyone uses.
Stop preserving suburbs.
The cul-de-sacs are a dead end.
They are too expensive and a loss for American cities.
We need to urbanize San Leandro.
Measure BB funds should go to public transit.
We would have less damage on the roads from car dependency and better opportunities for
economic development.
development block grant funds come from the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
not the Department of Cars and Suburban Development. Block grant money runs out because it's a
limited resource, and this is a waste of CDBG funds. Do not use CDBG for streets. Do not
use CDBG for sewers. Use CDBG for a project that you can pause halfway if there is a disruption
in federal funding? What if Russell Vogt, the head of Office of Management and Budget,
cuts CDBG and leaves us with holes in the ground?
Item 4B. On January 19, 2026, a sewer line collapsed, spilling 240 million to 300 million
gallons of untreated wastewater into the Potomac River. This is the perfect example of how
sewers can become a public health disaster. They can pollute the environment and they can destroy
public infrastructure. The city must prioritize at-risk sewers by identifying the sewers that are
most the oldest, the most decayed, the most deteriorated. In this instance, the federal
government refused to do anything about the Potomac sewer line because they do not care.
they claimed that it's the problem of state and local governments. Beware. Because they're not
going to be cooperative on these issues with us. That's it. Thank you. The next speaker is Lucas.
Lucas, are you there? Lucas, we cannot hear you. Sorry, can you hear me now? Yes. Oh, thank you so
much. Thank you for your patience. I really appreciate it. I wanted to call in and say I
I fully agree with the comments made by the previous speaker. And I also want to commend the council and the city employees for an excellent job on item 4B. Not necessarily about the things that the previous speaker mentioned, but about the bid summary document. I think this is the best bid summary document that I have seen in a long time, the engineer's estimate. I think I'm seeing here nine or so different bidders. This really does give the public a clear idea of what it is.
of what we, the city thinks something should cost,
what the public market and the bidders think
something should cost.
I'm very glad the city decided to go with a reasonably priced
vendor in this case, all of the items.
So there's 40 items, I think, in that spreadsheet
that get all cost estimates.
This is very helpful, not just, I think, for us as the public,
but for other cities to use as benchmarks
for similar sized projects.
at the same time, item 4A only has the engineer's estimate and two bidders. And I wonder, did we do
the same level of work in seeking bids for a much, much, much larger sized project? The project in 4B
is only 1.1 million. The project in 4A, I think the total cost estimate in 4A is something like
the city of Toronto. And we're
something like to second that councilmember bolt I'd like to think it
second that with an additional comment following up with Douglas falling said
congratulations and we're in good hands with Sarah Bunting thank you so we've
got a motion by councilman regulator with a second by councilmember bolt at
this point in time seeing no further discussion please vote councilmember
Aguilar may we have your vote please? Aye. Thank you. All votes are in. The motion
carries unanimously with all members voting yes. We move to item five, 5A.
Tonight we have a public hearing to afford Calco's companies an opportunity to be
heard under section 5.6 councilmember bolt you oh yes this is an item on which
you have a statement yes I must recuse myself because a real property is on
this item yes if you could step out and we will contact you when this or step
off the dais to be precise so thank you for your public disclosure and recusal
on this item so here we do have a public hearing to afford Calco's companies and
to be heard under section 5.6 of the disposition development agreement dated
July 22nd 2020 and a formal action potentially by a minute order of the
City Council to terminate the DDA only with respect to portions of the property
to which the default applies and we've got City Attorney to introduce this item
thank you mayor tonight council by way of summary in accordance with the
disposition and development agreement the DDA as we'll call it in short between
the city and Cal Coast companies that's originally dated July 22nd 2020 the City
Council is required by that agreement to afford the developer the opportunity to
be heard at a public meeting before taking action to terminate the DDA the
action tonight will be by minute order so by letters dated January 10th 2025
in March 14th, 2025, the city provided Calco's companies notices of default of
the disposition and development agreement and those notices essentially
go to violations of the schedule of performance and the developer became in
default of the schedule of performance on December 19th, 2022. The DDA of course
can be accessed on the city's website under the department tabs for the
community development department under projects. The specific defaults involve
several items, all of them to be summarized under the completion of the
post commencement ground lease requirements for the general contractor,
construction contract, and bonds and security. Let me break that down just a
little bit so that it's in much plainer English. What those obligations, so those
requirements are would have been to obtain the necessary permits to complete
the post-commencement ground-leaf requirements in a timely manner and
under the DDA the disposition and development agreement the developer is
required to obtain all necessary city and other public agency permits for site
preparation for developer Western elements and to commence construction
construction within 24 months following effective date of ground leases for the
developer hotel the developer restaurant the market and the multi-family elements
the DDA further defines what site preparation permits for site
preparation means site preparation is very clear it's the preparation required
for development of each of the developer project elements as I stated just now
the hotel, the restaurant, the market, and multifamily elements, as well as the park
promenades and boat launch. This includes specifically including tree removal,
demolition of existing buildings, and hardscape improvements, including but
not limited to asphalt pavement, concrete sidewalk, curb and gutter, and other
improvements floodplain and sea level rise mitigation surcharging geotechnical
mitigation and rough grading in accordance with the scope of development
this schedule of performance and the shoreline responsibility map all of it
which is contained at the DDA within 24 months meant December 22 2024 which is
24 months from the effective date of the ground leases in 2022 finally in
addition on March 14th 2025 the city also sent a follow-up default notice on
the revised schedule of performance related to the developer and city
entering into a public improvement agreement for the Western elements and
other public improvements and this is the failure of the developer did not like
I said Calco's did not prepare or present to the city any public
improvement agreement for the developer Western elements and other public
improvements therefore the city sent notices of default which triggered a 90
day notice to cure 90 days to cure the default that did not that did not occur
and therefore we are here now to terminate the agreements available to
answer any questions just checking councilmember Aguilar do you have any
questions at this point in time because if not we will move to Calco's no
Questions. Okay. So at this point in time, we will move to afford a representative from Cal Coast the opportunity
to address the council
Good evening. Mr. Mayor
Council members. My name is Ed Miller. I'm president of Cal Coast. This is my 117th
Public hearing here in the city of San Leandro after 16 years
I guess a couple things
It's and I think there's probably
There's always a little bit of disconnect and projects that are this large
You're I've been I think this is 35 City Council members five mayors
for
City managers, so there's a loss of continuity sometimes especially when you're down to the obviously I
You're not the last City Council, but you're the last one least in this regard so
To give you a little bit of perspective of where we are and then I can address some of these other issues
But I think are much more complicated
and there are
legal
Issues that have to be addressed that I think we can address they can't do it here tonight, but the
Give you a little bit of background. So we receive we were chosen in 2008 October as a developer after a
This city went through an RFP process
In 2011 we formed the citizen to action committee that group of 34 individuals that represented
various districts in the city worked with us starting in 2011 and
It's some of them still continue to work with us, but through
Basically, I guess 2022
In 2011 when we started with with the community action group we developed we started developing the plans for the marina
In 2014 we went out with the beginnings of our CEQA requirements and our EIR.
That was in 2014.
Going through that process around 2017 or so we received our final EIR evaluation and
approval and subsequently within 30 days, the marina in filed a CEQA lawsuit that took
another two and a half to three years while we were going through all that we were still
processing the plans and processing having our community meetings we had sea level rise.
Sea level rise we spent two years quarter of a million dollars on the study we had an
agreement with BCDC as to what elevations as far as the sea level rise
levels were that we were going to we were going to build to. Subsequently a
new chair of the board decided that all sea level rise would come to the
maximum. At that point in time, this was about 2019 or so, at that point in time
that was made the entire project unbuildable, and it had to be totally
redesigned. Frankly at that point we were looking at it was not going to be
possible to even build done in the marina, but after quite some time of
reevaluation, looking at the C-level RISE study, we wind up scrapping seven
years of plans that we've worked with the community, the Citizens Action
Committee, for seven years were scrapped and we had to redo those plans, bring
all those properties back off of the marina or off of the bay, redesign them,
re-plot them, change the elevations. It's a substantial amount of work and you know
one of the things I have to say that and then I've been doing this 40 years I
started this project I was 50 some years old I'm 72 I don't quit we don't quit
all of our projects are difficult in the city but when you're in the state of
California you have laws and you abide by those laws and those laws take an
in an ordinance amount of time to get approvals and get your entitlements
through on an easy project.
It's seven years.
Once we wind up with doing an EIR,
it extends sometimes to 10 years.
In this instance, you had many different elements
of development.
You had housing.
You had apartments.
You have hotels.
You have restaurants.
You have markets.
It's now, all of a sudden, you have five different elements
where, typically, it takes you seven years to do one.
One project for us in Los Angeles or San Francisco
is 10 years to get through once we do CEQA.
And that's the same thing that occurs here.
That's just the reality of doing business in this state.
And I'm not complaining about it.
I live with it.
Once we go through sea level rise
and we redesign the entire site, we redesign the buildings.
And if you go back through and if you take some time,
go into the city website, go back through and take a look
at the variations of this development over the years.
The substantial amount of time, effort, and money
was spent in designing and redesigning the project down
there.
But once we did that and we came back,
then we went back through the city process,
having people evaluate where these new, the plotings were,
where the new buildings were placed.
Then we had to go back through CEQA.
Now we had to go back and amend REIR to adjust for that.
What I'm talking about when you look at doing these kinds of projects and making these amendments,
it's years, and it's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this.
So this is not a simple process, and I will tell you that Ed Miller doesn't want to be here the 117th time.
It's not of my benefit. It's certainly not profitable for us, not for my time, not for my staff's time and our company's time,
to just elongate a process like this.
To give you another example,
we just received in December of 25,
a provisional permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.
So we were dealing with seven different
outside governmental agencies on the marina.
We're dealing with Army Corps of Engineers,
BCDC, Water Quality Control Board,
Fishing Game, Natural Resources.
We have, in an example, just the application
to Army Corps of Engineers.
That's 585 pages.
It's over $350,000 in consultants.
That took five years.
So just because we're not in here,
we're dealing with staff,
and I have no complaints about staff.
We are working diligently, constantly.
We have 13 to 14 consultants, environmental consultants,
architects, engineers, landscape people,
working on this project constantly.
So in the last five years, we just literally
got approval from Army Corps, from ECDC, and Water Quality
Control Board.
Those are the three major governmental agencies.
And those approvals, they're extensive.
They go to drainage, they go to floodplain.
There's multiple missions.
Monarch Bay butterfly, environmental.
We have a drainage ditch on the golf course
that we had to relocate.
So we relocated it over to the new golf course
that we're building next to the Monarch Bay butterfly.
That took years, years to go through the community process,
to go through fishing game, to go through water quality
You guys who are Army Corps of Engineers, these are not simple things to do.
I will tell you, most developers would have been long gone, but that's not us.
And we have fought these battles.
We've paid every single dime.
We paid it.
You didn't pay for the EIR.
That EIR just alone was $465,000.
The consultants behind it were another $650,000, $1.1 million just for the EIR.
C-level rise is almost half a million dollars now.
We have spent in this city 24 million dollars, 10 million of which, 10 million we have given
to the city.
When we go and we file for a plan check, the city takes our money and at the same time
they evaluate how much staff time are we going to have on this project.
They come back to us, it's 35,000 dollars.
We pay it.
I don't pay that in any city. I pay my my plan check fee
The the other issue here that's critical and you talk about why we're not doing certain things
But we're not doing them. I'll give you an example
Let's take
El Dorito where the hotels to go so the city on all these parcels that we're talking about has a license agreement
I don't have any access to these parcels
I have I have to buy by the license agreement you have you own it you you run these you run these parcels. I do not
You collect rents you collect taxes. You collect insurance money from
El Trito
So mr. Miller we've given you ten minutes
What I'd like to do is a courtesy is give you some additional five minutes to address the particular topic namely
The potential action by this council today. Thank you. I met five minutes
Sixteen years for five minutes. It's expensive. I get it
So what I would say is that what I would propose let's get it this way because I don't want to get into
I think it's
Obviously, you don't want to hear it
but what I would propose is that we have a principal to principal meeting that you have you have a group of
Council members and staff and myself and our people we don't need attorneys
We need to be act like adults act like real business people and sit down have a discussion
Because we have responded to every one of these
Allegations and no one's responded back to us and there's much much much more and deeper issues here that need to be discussed
And this probably isn't the forum to do that and I'm happy to do that and try to
Work through this I guarantee you one thing. I will build this project
You can fight me all you want, but I am not going anywhere
I've had other people here in this city already tried a strong army to go and not do this deal
I'm here and we're not and we are we intend to get this project done
But I tell you for the sake of the community what I would ask you to do is set some time aside
And let's sit down and have a discussion and see if we can work through this
I believe we can and I believe it after 16 years and this community working as hard as it has to
To put this project together. I mean we were just we were the canvas the community with they were the painters
that whole project down there comes from the cack and
We're proud of it. I love this city. I'm a kid from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
I worked I worked as steel mills my my my wife worked for unite here
We're union people the I just signed the PLA just finalized appeal that took several years
So if you want to just go and throw all this away, I can let you but if you want to try and do it
That's that's your volition. I'm just proposing to have some time where we can sit down
Have another have a discussion and see if we can work through this and I think you need to understand what's happening here
I don't think you do. I know you don't but I think it's imperative that
representing the public and your constituents that you should have at
least one meeting after all these years and all this money that we've given and
you've spent a time and effort that you've spent and your staff has spent on
this project. I it would be a real injustice not to at least sit down and
have a conversation and see if we can work through these issues. That's all I
Thank you. Thank you. At this point in time, do we have any questions for
Mr. Miller? Because if not, I will go to open our public hearing. Okay, seeing no
questions at this time, what I'd like to do is open our public hearing so that we
can hear from the public. The time is 740 and the public hearing is open. Mayor, we
have received one comment card and we have one hand raised online. Please
proceed in person. Our in-person speaker is Deborah Acosta. Good evening mayor and
council. Tonight's public hearing regarding the Cal Coast development
agreement reflects decades of effort to redevelop one of the San Leandro's most
important public assets, our beautiful waterfront. The current agreement
represents roughly 15 years of just one attempt within that much longer story.
projects like this are enormous undertakings even when financing is
strong building an entire waterfront district with housing hotels parks and
infrastructure obviously as we've just heard can take decades and requires
extraordinary capital and coordination across the Bay Area waterfront projects
such as Alameda Point or Redwood City's waterfront development redevelopment
have taken decades and billions of dollars to deliver tonight's herring
also comes in the context of a bankruptcy involving Cal Coast. When projects struggle
for decades, it is usually not just a contractual problem. It points to deeper structural challenges.
One of those challenges here is connectivity. The marina is both economically and physically
disadvantaged and disconnected from the city's core. Downtown Bart and the rest of San Leandro
are separated from the shoreline by major barriers, including the BART corridor and Interstate 880.
Until that larger connectivity issue is addressed, redevelopment proposals will continue to struggle.
And at the same time, the conditions shaping waterfront developments, as we've just heard,
have changed dramatically. Climate science now points to more extreme weather, rising seas,
and increasing infrastructure costs projects conceived years ago need to be
reconsidered through today's resilience lens so perhaps this moment invites a
broader question imagine what if we step back and reenvision the marina for the
conditions we actually face today thank you mayor that concludes our in-person
comment cards so we will close in-person comment we will open online comment
please. Our first online speaker is Douglas Spaulding. I thank you. Mr. Miller, if I may
say through the chair, you and I don't know each other, but I have a personal family stake in the
marina. My relative arrived here in 1872 in the person of Moses Wicks, who did a lot to
to develop the marina because he brought oysters
around the horn from Pet Chog in Long Island.
And I frankly am kind of bummed that I haven't been able
to make my walk out to the mosaic for quite some time
to pay homage to my relative.
Give it up man, I hope there's not 118th meeting
about this, the time has gone by.
and your marks are revealing things like climate change,
sea level rise, we're done with that.
No, we're at the beginning of that.
The marina is a fantastic place to have a park.
It is a terrible place to develop
much more than what's there.
It sits on 60 feet of mud.
It's not like the Brooklyn basin in Oakland
where we can put up high rise after high rise
to high rise, you've got to drive those piles pretty deep to get away from liquefaction.
And it floods now. Meet me at the corner of Marina and Neptune Drive during the next
King Tide event, and we can both be entertained by the little fountain that the manhole cover
turns into because the water squirts up a foot or more in the air. You know, water is
that wonderful state of matter that assumes the shape of its container.
And so it just will go wherever it wants to go.
So I think Calco's proposal is done with.
And it seems like you missed a lot of deadlines and opportunities already.
I don't think there's a reason for the meeting.
Thank you, sir.
Your time has elapsed.
The next speaker is Lucas.
Thank you.
Can you share me?
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you for taking my comment again this evening.
I want to start by asking, what's Plan B?
Whatever the council decides today, what is Plan B?
We've been working on Plan A, since it sounds like 2008.
I've only been following this project since 2018.
But 16, 18 years of working toward resolution,
and I haven't seen in that whole time a viable Plan B.
We knew this project was in trouble a long time ago,
many years ago, with all these liquefaction problems,
the earthquake problems, the environmental impact studies.
These are things that don't inspire the public confidence.
Now, this year, we're reading in the news about bankruptcies.
These things don't inspire public confidence.
But the council had many years to come up with a plan B.
And I don't see it if the decision before the council
today is let's try to give this developer the opportunity to work through whatever bankruptcy
process they need to work through and have this project as something they can point to
as a reason to have that be resolved favorably so the project can move forward. Let's try
to give them that opportunity because if we take this away and we scrap this project,
I worry that it's going to be another 18 years before plan B gets realized, gets reviewed
by the community. The permit, the developer mentioned, I don't think they're reassignable.
I don't know if the Army Corps of Engineers, if you can just swap in one developer for
another. If whatever you're debating, decide whether what you're debating is another 20-year
commitment to redevelop the property, that's not going to happen in any of our lifetimes.
I hope this person gets to see at least one building built on this property. Otherwise,
not looking very good. Thank you for taking my comments. Thank you. The next speaker is
Alvaro Ramos. So I just wanted to say this is the first time that I'm honestly hearing about this
project and this issue which may indicate that maybe there are there's a significant population
that lives in this city that probably doesn't know what we're talking about tonight and that
signifies a need for transparency not enough information about it I could only scrape together
what little information bits and pieces I could from secondary news articles online but you know
I want to echo the the comments from environmentalism that sea level rise has the capacity to destroy
any property development on the coast this should be a lesson that we need to build inland and we
have to stop building on the coast because there's no way to keep the water out. It's
just not possible. That's it. And comment. Thank you Mayor. That concludes our raised
hands online. Okay. It is 7 48. And I'm closing the public hearing. At this point I'll come
back to council members to see if there are any questions or comments. Okay. Seeing no
hands raised I think I'm gonna move to a motion at this time and so I would move
that City Council adopt the staff recommended minute order is presented in
the recommended section in the recommendation section of the staff
reports specifically as it relates to the developer hotel element the
multifamily element the developer restaurant element and the market
element. Vice Mayor. Second the motion. Okay looking for any discussion on this
item. So seeing none let's move to a vote. Oh, sorry. Please proceed. Thank you. I
just wanted to make just one quick comment and really it's around
acknowledging the amount of community expectation around movement in that part
of town. And in particular, just wanted, we, at least myself, I really wanted to
see this work. I hoped and I think that our team has been working diligently.
particularly one of one of the defaults was around failure to pay property taxes
and to me that speaks to miss revenue for all of the public agencies that
depend on everyone paying our property taxes and so in addition to all the
other reasons that are stated in the report in terms of the developer's
default of the schedule of performance on a personal level I do want to see
the marina become a place where people want to come and spend time and I will
just leave my comment at that, but appreciate the time. Councilmember Bowman.
Thank you Mayor. I understand that this project has been around for a long time,
a lot longer than I've even been in San Leandro, and this is obviously something
that many community members know about, but also many may not, and so for the
purposes of clarity and transparency. Mayor, I'm not sure who this is going to
go to and I appreciate the City Attorney's presentation in the beginning,
but can you share a little bit about the how we got here and in terms of
terminating the DDA, even what that means and what that applies to, just so that we
as a community understand what exactly is transpiring and what exactly the
motion is and and how it relates to the project. So at this point I'm gonna let a
city attorney with this question please let me know if you'd like some
additional information. Thank you councilmember Bowen. The specific the
action tonight is specific to the default notices that we provided to the
developer related to the revised DDA
scheduler performance. And the main
issue is that the post commencement
ground leash requirements which are
provided in the DDA and I'll restate
here is that a site preparation the
post commitment commencement ground
leash requirements were not obtained the
permits for those which are necessary
permits to complete those requirements were not obtained in a timely manner by
the developer and the DDA requires that the developer obtains all
necessary city and other public agency permits for site preparation for the
Western elements the hotel the multifamily the restaurant and the
market and they had to obtain those and commenced construction within 24 months
from the effective date of the ground leases,
which was around the end of December, 2022.
Site preparation under the DDA required development,
site preparation required for the development
of each of those four elements I just named,
included work on the park promenades and boat launch,
and included tree removal,
demolition of existing buildings,
demolition of hardscape improvements,
including asphalt pavement concrete sidewalk,
floodplain and sea level rise mitigation, surcharging,
geotechnical mitigation and rough creating.
Those needed to be, the permits for that work
needed to be obtained within 24 months,
which would have been December 22, 2024.
That did not happen.
So notices were provided in January 2025
in accordance with the DDA notices of default,
which triggered a 90-day cure period,
cure for the developer to commence doing the work
that was required, obtaining the site permits, et cetera,
and obtaining the site permits, having the site permits.
On March 14, 2025, the city also provided a notice of default
as pertains to the public improvement agreement requirement.
and Cal Coast and not by the time that was required prepare represent to the
city any public improvement agreement for the developer Western elements and
other public improvements which was required by the schedule performance so
they failed in the provision to defaulted it as to the schedule of
performance thank you for that clarification
Um, the DDA is for the western portions of those four elements that you described.
Um, does just so, um, I understand with a DDA, um, what, um, I guess, um,
I'm trying to understand, as the agreement, what does it live with?
What is it tied to?
I'm trying to understand how the...
Sure.
The DDA defines the schedule, a performance for the development.
The specific development.
The specific development.
It specifically states what needs to be developed.
and the schedule for doing so.
When to start, when it's supposed to finish.
Okay.
And is there any relationship between the DDA
and the ground leases for those four projects?
So. Four elements.
The four elements.
They are connected in that they pertain to the parcels
because the city ground leased,
provided a lease of city land
to the developer to develop on each parcel
those four elements.
So in addition to defining what the developments were
and the schedule, we also provided them a lease
of city land so that they could develop
the DDA requirements on those particular parcels
of land that were leased.
They were a tenant to the city.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, seeing no further discussion, Vice Mayor, please.
Thank you. I just wanted to underscore one comment that you made, City Attorney Pia Rota.
It sounds, please clarify, it sounds like the default happened several years before
the notice of default, so there was an opportunity. What was the time lapse between technical
default pursuant to the DDA versus the notice of termination of the leases and
then now the yes thank you Vice Mayor you are correct we technically did not
exercise the termination until now but default notices were sent all the way
back to January of 2025 and March 2025 there could have been a cure at any
any moment in time in accordance with the DDA.
So that's when the notices were sent out?
Correct, because of the court and schedule performance, yes.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, looking down the desk for any further discussion
on this item.
Okay, so seeing none, we do have a motion on the floor
with a second, so motion by myself, second by Vice Mayor.
Does anybody need to have the motion reread?
Okay, then let us proceed to a vote.
That is the motion to accept staff's recommendation
and as written their amended order.
Council Member Aguilar, may we have your vote?
Aye.
Thank you.
All votes are in.
The motion carries unanimously with Council Member Simon,
Council Member Bowen, Vice Mayor Veros-Walton
Americans all as and councilmember Aguilar voting yes and councilmember
bolt recused at this point time we will bring councilmember bolt back to the
dais and we'll proceed with item 6a here we have a presentation on the
innovation retail action plans under the City Council's economic development work
plan and I do believe we have economic development manager Katie Bowman where
are you Katie there I see you please come on up because you're going to
introduce our item tonight as well as Alex Greenwood Ed Delvacaro and Christine
Furstenberg if I've got that pronounced correctly. Good evening mayor and council
Katie Bowman economic development manager and we're very excited to be
here tonight to talk with you about several major projects we're working on
under the economic development strategy and work plan the innovation action plan
and the retail action plan. And with that I will dive into the innovation action
plan. We will have with us tonight several of our expert consultants who
will be helping to provide some additional background as well as our
staff is here too and we will go through this and be available to go more in
depth and answer questions. And so with me tonight I do have Alex Greenwood an
economic development consultant we have worked on a number of projects with
Among other things he has done a lot of work related to innovative company
attraction including in South San Francisco and other places. And also we
have Des Woodworth from our team who is our staff lead on on innovation
attraction matters. And so just for context for the council work plan these
this project falls under project 4.1 and also several of our implementation
action items are in there and with that I will hand it over to Alex thank you
Katie and good evening mayor and council Alex Greenwood I'm with the
council's permission I apologize but I'm going to take the slides out of order
because I think it'll make for a better story so the the innovation action plan
is designed to give the city a clear specific data driven look at the
specific types of industrial businesses that are the best fit for what San
Leandro offers and also have the greatest opportunity to provide high
quality jobs and sustainable revenue for the city. The plan is also designed to
lay out a work plan with specific action steps the city can take to pursue these
in these industries.
So why innovative companies?
It turns out that innovative industrial businesses
are particularly a good fit for what San Leandro offers
in terms of our workforce, our infrastructure,
the way the city is laid out.
And they also have very strong growth potential
and the ability to provide high quality jobs.
involve a significant infrastructure and investment. All of which contribute to
sustainable economic vitality for the city. So to develop this plan we
performed extensive detailed analysis of industrial and employment data combined
with input from our local property owners brokers and industry leaders.
Through this analysis we identified four target industries they're shown on the
slide here, life sciences, clean tech, food tech and advanced manufacturing. But then
we wanted to dig deeper because we know that each of these industries include a broad range
of business types, some of which are growing, some of which are contracting. So we wanted
to understand and identify the specific business types that offer San Leandro the greatest
opportunities. For example, in the med tech industry there, we identified several industry
sub sectors that have particular opportunities for San Leandro. These include high value
medical device manufacturing, digital health, contract, drug manufacturing, incubators and
a couple of others as well. And we did this level of analysis for each of the four target
industry shown in the slide. After we identified the specific business types
we wanted to focus on, the next step is we wanted to learn more about each
industry, such as what their real estate facility and infrastructure needs are,
what business trends they are going through, and what issues the city would
have to face in the process of pursuing these businesses. And so from out of that
analysis we came up with a specific list of action item action steps for staff.
These action steps include one-on-one business support, focused business
attraction and marketing, outreach to trade associations, industry leaders,
property owners, and other members of the development community. Continuing the
city's efforts to streamline and update the regulatory and approval process for
these target industries, not just at the city level but also at the regional
level, exploring the feasibility to offer financial incentives, and finally
partnerships with PG&E. And here I want to note that our analysis identified
electric infrastructure as the single largest infrastructure issue that the
city faces. Our analysis indicates that the city will need at least 200 megawatts
of power of new electric service to be installed over the next five or ten
years in order to allow the city to reach its full potential for attracting
innovative businesses, so it's critical for the city to work with PG&E, the
California Energy Commission, and others to effectively plan for our long-term
power needs. With that, I will hand it back to Katie. And so I'll give a brief
overview. We've been working to implement this plan over about the past year and
I'll cover several areas and highlight some of the projects and successes. And
And so really day in and day out, what we and Des here
are working on is working with the companies
that we already have today in business retention
and expansion and helping them to grow here.
And so over a dozen companies he's in regular work with
and helping them in all these different ways.
One example of success was with a company called Coreshell.
They are an innovative battery startup company,
started in San Leandro around 2019, 2020,
have expanded over several spaces.
They're now at 2020 Williams.
And we're now working to support them
as they look for a bigger space to do manufacturing.
And throughout that time, been helping
them connect with resources, provide letters of support
with the help of the mayor, and let
them know about the startup World Cup through which they
won a million dollar grant for winning
the International Startup World Cup.
Also, we have worked in business attraction and marketing.
And here we just wanted to pause to show
some concrete examples of the real estate market
recognizing the value of our industrial area
and the benefits from a fiscal perspective that that brings.
And so listed here is some different transactions
and projects that are underway.
We have about three projects approved or planned.
And so at any given time, there are
several industrial buildings in the works in San Leandro.
And one example I want to share with you at 2021 Feralon, which
is up at the top there.
They, in 2024, a very, very innovative fusion energy
company called Pacific Fusion, leased space in there.
We work to support that.
And they leased the space in 2025.
The property sold for over $62 million,
recognizing that it was a stabilized asset
with a growing company.
That was three times the value that the property
had previously been assessed at.
And that resulted in a one-time transfer tax
of over a million dollars, or excuse me,
over half a million dollars to the city,
and an estimate of $40,000 in additional property tax
a year at that new property valuation.
So very exciting for me, I would say, from that perspective.
Also, on an ongoing basis, as you know,
we do a lot of marketing and communication
about San Leandro through a variety of measures.
Our primary way is through San LeandroNext.
We also do interviews.
You can see here a flyer that we made that's on the dais
as well.
We also, last summer, did an insert
in the San Francisco Business Times.
We hold events with developers.
We also work to build relationships, and thanks to the mayor and other council members who
have joined us on visits with businesses to learn about what they need and to show them
that we're a business friendly community.
And finally, as Alex mentioned, really working to start to dig in on the challenges related
to PG&E.
It's an infrastructure challenge for the businesses.
It's not a city infrastructure challenge, but through this we have for the first time
started to have regular meetings with a representative from PG&E and work to
track private projects and help to provide assistance and explanation and
from this we were actually able to take a project that was in the PG&E review
process for over three years and the logjam has been broken and everybody
understands what they need to do and they're going to be preparing for
construction and installation in the fall. And with that for next steps over
the coming year we will continue much of this work. There's much more to be done
but things that you'll hear from us in the future related to website updates,
zoning updates, and continuing to assess incentives. And with that I will quickly
turn over to our next item and bring up our next consultants. So we have the
retail action plan and with me here we have Christine Furstenberg with
Metrovation and she works focuses on real of retail real estate as well as
strategy. We have Ed Delbacaro with TRI commercial with expertise in commercial
and industrial and a lot of experience in the Stanley intro market and with
that showing that this is item 4.4 on our work plan and the goals of this plan
as those of you who worked through with us on the economic development strategy
is to help to bring more quality retail that the community wants, experiential
retail, and make physical upgrades. And with that I'll hand it over to Ed. Thank
you Katie and thank you City Council. So I'm going to present some of the key
findings of the study. By the way these are very brief summary of bullets from
that summary. It's all on the city blog that shows the extensive work. So
first of all I'm going to talk about what the assets are. The city has many
great assets, one is location it's in the center of the South 880 corridor next
to Silicon Valley and as Alex mentioned that there's some kind of benefits with
that. San Leandro is experiencing a rising household income that's great for
retail. It also, thanks to the staff, has a very pro-business culture in terms of
attracting tenants. What are the issues facing the market? One is online
shopping is a factor and is growing. In fact, is how many people here use Amazon
or equivalent? That's part of the issue. Forty to fifty percent of retail is now
purchased online and not in bricks and mortar. So that's how do we deal with that.
The other issue specific to San Leandro is slow population growth. This whole
area, the south 80 corridor, also aging in place. Older people don't buy as much
merchandise as a new formation couple, so that's one of the factors to deal with.
The other issue impacting San Leandro and some of the nearby cities is a low
turnover of current retail tenants in the older buildings, and one reason for
that basically is that when you have an older building, would it cost to upgrade
it with ADA, fire sprinklers, the rents are just not high enough today. But what
are the opportunities despite this? And San Leandro is experiencing some of
these positives. Oh I did it. What works and what doesn't work? So the city's
demographics are changing and the retail mix is now reflecting that. The household
income is increasing. So Sprouts and Phil's Coffee is a prime example of that
rising income. That's good news. We did a void study with Christine's firm and we
identified what retailers sectors were missing and what were the demographic
filters that those companies were looking for. Sprouts is a direct result
of that study. What other sectors were identified? Ethnic grocery stores
reflecting the changing population demographic. Restaurants, sporting goods,
home furnishing stores equivalent now, what are the
Opportunities or what challenges should the city take action on?
In general right now. We have a slow market unrelated to San Landro high interest rates tariffs
Construction costs etc. We're all combining to hurt retail. No matter where you are in this area
Despite that and that's a key word what can San Leandro do today and the city staff will start to implement that
So when the cycle turns, where is the city positioned to take advantage of that is to continue?
To improve the process and just be faster than adjoining cities in the in terms of the approval process to
Continue the efforts to increase zoning for more residential downtown
creating walking traffic
Etc. Density leads to more people leads to foot traffic leads to more retailers
continue the efforts to emphasize public safety.
Yes, the crime statistics are down,
but the perception is still out there
that there's a crime issue.
So again, continue the efforts to make public safety.
Now I'm gonna turn it over to Christine.
Thank you, Ed, and good evening.
I wanted to talk tonight about implementing the plan.
A plan is no good if it sits up on a shelf
and the council and staff never use it.
So what we wanted to do with the plan
that we came up with is make certain
that there's a very, very clear
and implementable action plan.
So the action plan's overall approach was to,
we took the information from the deep dive
that Ed had talked about.
We created the action plan and made it doable
with steps that we as brokers,
because this consulting team is almost all brokers,
that we as brokers have seen other economic development
staff use and be effective with when interfacing with retailers.
The action plans implementation program
was organized into three sections of activity
with five major categories of action shown.
And I've got those five categories right there.
In the first section under market readiness,
That's where one of the suggested steps
was to create a database to track retail space inquiries
and match the retail space inquiry
with maybe a space that's available in the city.
That can be incredibly effective
with bringing in new retailers quickly into the city.
A second step in the implementation program
was to have a zoning review.
I believe you guys are in the middle
of a zoning review right now.
It's very important.
You've heard about it from the Innovation Clause.
You'll hear about it from us retailers and brokers.
It's very important to do, and you are doing that.
Another step that was suggested was the revamping
of the business incentives that are available
to attract and assist some of the different retailers
that you choose to go after.
we provided a list of retailers using the void analysis,
we provided a list of retailers with phone numbers
and names that the staff can actually call.
And those are some of those retailers
or some that you may want very much
and you've got some incentives
that might be available to them.
Another short term step is on the market readiness,
is hosting local annual events
for brokers and property owners.
We actually had a round table event last year
that was attended by property owners and brokers
and it was really, really interesting.
I think everybody in that room learned something new
about retail in San Leandro.
But there's nine other steps just in section one.
In section two, it's our marketing
and communication outreach implementation.
Some of the suggested steps under the marketing
include the creation of a dedicated webpage with up-to-date information for
the brokers, developers and retailers. A webpage like this is critically
important not only to build but to keep up and you've got a dedicated staff that
will be keeping this up. Again that allows a retailer looking in San
Leandro to find what they need right away versus go on to the next city.
the creation of marketing materials. You can see on this screen the marketing
materials that were created are pretty amazing and very sophisticated. They
advertise San Leandro to retailers and brokers at ICSC events and ICSC is the
International Council of Shopping Centers. There's over 50,000 members and
that includes retailers, developers, brokers, and service vendors. So again
advertising to that organization, you're getting access to the retailers
directly. And under the outreach section of the action plan, the plan recommends
that staff maintain regular contact with the listing brokers of San Leandro
properties. The staff needs to know what deals are in process. If there's a list
broker their it's their job to go out and be talking to tenants who is it that
it has the best likelihood of coming in and can the city help in any way from
the third section of the action plan implementation steps the third section
is support for shopping centers which I think is one of the most important it
suggests that staff interface with shopping center owners on a regular basis
to identify challenges and encourage owners to make small but visible upgrades.
I know staff has been doing this and they have had some impactful
conversations. To support staff in these efforts the consulting team actually did
an assessment of three centers in San Leandro to identify challenges.
Are we good? Okay I am gonna sign off and turn it one more step and I'm turning it
back over to Katie if if the mayor would like we can continue otherwise we
can happy to answer just wrap up it's always awkward when you and suddenly but
if you've got it covered you've given us some good things to think about a short
short yeah so briefly here as I mentioned at the beginning we do know you
know a big thing as well for the community and for us is looking at how
how to support and upgrade the physical retail spaces,
which have shown, for instance, that the top shows Marina
Fair, the bottom shows the former Bank of America
along Fairmont.
And in both of those, as they remodeled,
their rents increased quite a bit,
and they've brought in new tenants.
And so not only for the community,
but for the property owner, that investment pays off.
So we, working with the consultants,
they assessed three different centers
and looked at some specific recommendations
that we can make, some specific strategies.
And they're outlined here, and these are things that we can do,
we can recommend to all property owners.
And finally, just some fun at the end.
So we already are getting lots of great retail,
lots of great restaurants.
We have been working in the retail area for years
and years, and excited now to be working
in an even more strategic direction.
But in the meantime, just to tout some of our successes,
we're very excited.
Ace Hardware is going to be opening potentially
with a soft opening mid-March in the greenhouse marketplace,
as well as, of course, everyone has been excited about Sprouts.
Many of our restaurants have been
getting lots of critical acclaim, many of them
for this picture here, the best sizzling rice
bowl in the Bay Area.
And so that's a Korean restaurant.
We've got other Chinese restaurants,
all sorts of really authentic, great places being recognized.
And with that, I will also share, of course,
Phil's coffee is coming.
And they as well are working towards a mid-March opening.
So with that, we're happy to take questions.
Thank you.
I think what we're going to do on this presentation
to take public comment first and then we'll come back for questions and dialogue.
At this point in time do we have any public comment commenters. Mayor we
received one comment card and there are two hands raised online. Let's proceed in
person please. Our public speaker in person is Deborah Acosta. Good evening
once again. I want to begin by acknowledging the work economic
Development Manager, Katie Bowman and her staff have done on the innovation and retail
action plans, supporting small businesses, filling storefronts, helping entrepreneurs
and assisting high growth businesses succeed are all an important part of a healthy local
economy.
And I absolutely appreciate the effort that has gone into these plans.
these matter because they help our business community navigate real
challenges especially as retail districts continue adapting to major
economic changes. At the same time it's helpful to remember that plans like
these work best when we think about how the pieces of our economy connect. San
Leandro has strong assets our industrial base our transportation access our
our business districts, our emerging innovation economy
and yes, our education ecosystem.
The opportunity for the council is to keep asking
how these pieces support each other as the city grows.
In fact, there was a time nurtured by former mayor
Stephen Cassidy and the council
when San Leandro gained national attention
because the city connected infrastructure,
industry and partnerships in ways
that helped us compete with some envy
in the Bay Area economy.
The Marina discussion earlier tonight
is a good reminder of why that target larger view matters.
When major projects are considered in isolation
from the surrounding challenges,
they can struggle for a long time.
Plans like the ones before you tonight are important tools.
The opportunity now is to keep connecting those efforts
so they reinforce each other
and strengthen San Leander's long-term economic.
Thank you.
Your time is up.
Mayor, that concludes our in-person comment cards,
and we have three hands raised online.
So would you please proceed online?
Our first online speaker is Douglas Walden.
Hi there.
Well, that was great.
I really appreciate that presentation.
Very informative, very well thought out.
I've made a lot of notes,
I'm afraid I'm going to run out of time,
so maybe I'll start at the end first.
As an educator, I would hope that we take advantage
of the economic development to come.
So for example, let's get our secondary students
into substantial internships.
I know there's already a great internship program,
and also look to develop high school academies
that align specifically with the sectors
that were identified tonight.
I know San Lorenzo already is set up that way,
I'm actually not as familiar with San Leandro.
The 200 megawatts kind of caught my ear.
I think we should over plan for something more than that.
250, 300 megawatts.
But let's not go down the AI hole
that's gonna require even more power and more water.
Let's not construct another Russell City
natural gas power plant.
Let's do leverage a variety of renewables.
Into into modular plants with solar and wind and heat pumps and an industrial
scaled fuel cells, so let me go back to the
The other question that first came up which to me was
What attracts economic development and you know, we've been having a discussion about housing
I think that matters to both to
industry and employers and employees
And we need a mix that includes affordable housing. We can't expect all these jobs to be white college jobs
We need
The housing protections that we're talking about and we also need to acknowledge the history of redlining and other housing discrimination
Let's just face up to it a redlining
Ordinance is not going to cost you any money. Let's just do it. Okay. I'm out of time. Bye. Thank you
next on line speaker is Alvaro Ramos. So I'm calling as an urbanist stuck in the suburbs.
I am disgusted by certain projects in this presentation. Here's the deal. I don't see
economic development through unsustainable suburban infrastructure that loses the city
money and is too expensive to maintain. What is the cost of deserted parking lots for industrial
warehouses and big box retail shopping centers. It never lasts. Suburban hell perpetuates
elder abuse in our city. Senior citizens are trapped in their houses because they cannot
drive anymore. Our sidewalks are abandoned because there is no accessibility out of our
neighborhoods and hence Americans do not get their daily exercise. They got to have a car
to get around. We require mixed use development and public transportation. That is the way
we improve accessibility out of our neighborhoods to participate in the economy for both workers
and consumers. I think it's ironic that this presentation that the city did advertises
BART in the marketing. But you're not providing advancements in public transit. The most expensive
item for household budgets after housing is transportation. Car prices are too expensive,
insurance costs are high, maintenance costs too much, and fuel prices are rising. The car addiction
that we have makes the United States' infrastructure a failure. It holds us back. A developed country
is not where the poor drive cars. It is where the rich ride public transit. And let's also
talk about a real issue, energy. Residents are paying hundreds of dollars for winter utilities
with Pacific gas and electric. I can only imagine the expense for the expense of production
cost for businesses. So the cost of living, the cost of production are burdening the California
economy. That's everywhere. Thank you. The next speaker on
mine is Lucas. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, thank you for
taking my comment again this evening, Mayor and Council. I
wanted to speak to item 4.1 in the presentation or slide 4.1
on presentations on page five and just generally ask what's
taking so long. Why is everything here in this action plan taking so long? So the 2024,
sorry in 2024, but I see items like complete city brand assessment and develop a marketing
strategy to improve visibility and identity. That was started in Q2 of 2025. It just wrapped up in
Q2 of 2026. At least there's five quarters. Does it really take us a year and a half to
do a city brand assessment. I don't know, it feels like it should have, I don't even
want to ask about how much money that took, but it feels like it should have taken a lot less
time to realize that a lot of the cities in the East Bay, even people in San Francisco don't know
that we exist. It's challenging to move the brand of one of these cities and I don't know that it
would have taken a year and a half to figure that out. The first row in that page, implement
innovation action plan and provide city council with an update two years from q3 of 2024
to q4 of 26 uh of 2025 to 2026 two years to come up with an action plan i mean this should be done
in like a quarter two quarters at most i can't imagine you know at my job my manager coming to
me and saying you know you have to do this or that and you get two years to come up with an
and action plan and give me an update.
On page, I think it's on page 18 of the presentation,
sorry, yes, it's on page 18 of the presentation,
project 4.4, grade gathering, vibrant gathering places.
From Q1 of 24 to Q4 of 25,
instilled beautification, art and wayfinding.
I very much appreciate that.
The things that improve the city.
Thank you, sir, your time has elapsed.
Mayor that concludes our online comments.
Thank you.
At this point in time, we're gonna close public comment,
come back to our council members
for questions and discussion.
Beginning with Councilmember Bowen.
Thank you Mayor.
Thank you for the presentation.
I get really excited about economic development,
so I wrote lots of notes,
but they're all over the place, so bear with me.
The one thing I wanted to add on that very first slide
or in the beginning was around assets.
I wanted to offer another asset
that I think should be included
when we're talking about San Leandro.
And I think that it is like safe and family friendly.
And I obviously, I have a present bias with that
because I have a family with three young kids.
So I'm constantly around young families
and they genuinely are incredibly excited
to be in San Leandro and to want to do things
and San Leandro are always asking for more things
than San Leandro, so I just wanted to uplift that
as a real asset that we're having.
And I mentioned it in another presentation we had before,
but another asset is around our schools
and how they support our families.
And that's a very direct connection to community
and community being in the city
and wanting to really create and have these third spaces.
I have been to almost all of these retail new restaurants,
really excited to go to Vivid Vibim.
I'm giving these businesses a lot of my council pay,
and I'm excited to do so.
It's really exciting,
and people are really excited about it.
The idea of community and third spaces,
there is right now a shift in retail.
There is a lot of research that goes
into looking for new items, products online,
but people do miss and want to be part of being in person
and going and being in places together.
And so I think like thinking about what that hybrid
looks like for the city of San Leandro,
especially if we're trying to make it more walkable
and be able to have a lot of different activities together.
I think our downtown right now is becoming incredibly
and has been really vibrant.
And as the weather gets better and time change,
it is going to be a lot more,
there are going to be a lot more people walking around.
And so the more opportunities we have
for people to engage and stay wherever they are shopping,
I think that's really gonna impact San Leandro.
The biggest, I think, barrier that people have,
whether it's a prospective retailer
or a person that wants to do something in San Leandro,
whether it's to shop or to build something,
is around the friction or the sludge
of being able to get the information
or go through the process.
So I really appreciate the information
you shared around implementation.
but if possible, really to minimize how much work
a potential retailer has to do in order to see themselves
and find the information that they need
to be able to do something in San Leandro.
It doesn't take much to get distracted
and to want to go and do something else in a different city,
especially if something seems, it pops more,
but it really is, I'm not kidding,
like at least once a month, if not in most conversations
I have with a group of people, somebody throws out an idea
about what they would love to see in San Leandro
or what they would love to do themselves.
So there is this entrepreneurial spirit that is here,
but how do we really cultivate and support that
in a way that goes from idea to being able to help you
go through the process?
So I appreciate the call out to like being able to figure
out what spaces exist, right?
In a way, that's not just me forwarding an email
to economic development, right?
Because we want a concert venue or we want, personally,
and I want this for myself,
but I want a plant shop wine shop.
So if anybody's interested in doing that, let's talk,
because I will happily support that.
But restaurants, shared kitchens, all of those things,
especially women and people of color are part
of several different women's entrepreneurial groups.
And we meet at restaurants and businesses here
in San Leandro and they really want to do things here,
but they're working in their home offices
because they don't have a shared space necessarily.
So that's why we're trying to get out more
to see what's out there and what's possible,
but creating different tracks for people,
whether they're small businesses or larger businesses.
And something about the cost of housing,
but actually more expensive than the cost of housing,
in all 50 states, higher than rent
is the cost of child care.
And so if we're going to be having these large businesses
in San Leandro, after the work day,
the thing you're going to rush to go do
is to pick up your child.
So if you can have your children be in the places
where you're working in the same cities,
you are more likely to go pick up that child, stop by the library,
go to the cafe, go to the restaurant,
go to the activities, and so creating those loops that
enable people to be able to take the barriers that they have
and then make sure that they're served in San Leandro,
and then I will, I'll stop there for now.
Can't tell Councilmember Aguilar to see his hand up,
okay, perfect, I'm gonna come to Councilmember Bolt.
Yes, thank you for the presentation.
It's nice to see this type of work
and hear the different ideas that are coming in front of us.
I do wanna thank Dez, though,
for the opportunity to go into these different,
facilities in San Leandro that you took me to to recognize some of the community partners we have
and and companies that are doing great work that's really beneficial for me to see how it's
coming together and and all the work that's being done by staff to make sure we're trying to keep
them in our city and having those conversations about finding larger spots for them to grow into
that's that's amazing so thank you I do want to ask a couple questions about the
presentation Ed when when there was a slide up there and it was talking about
some of the missing sectors I don't I could have missed it but I don't believe
you mentioned some of the sectors that were missing so I just wanted to see I
have four minutes to cover I know I get it I just wanted to see if there were
some things in there. So what we basically do is we first create a demographic
profile we what are the factors that go into what a acquisitions persons for a
retailer wants. Population within a half mile, quarter mile, mile radius, ten mile
radius. Ten mile would be the regional type activities where people would drive
from Oakland or Fremont to get here and what are the half mile, quarter mile
will you walk to or drive to. And so then we match that against household income,
Education age and all the other factors that go into purchasing then we come up what we call avoid analysis
Who's here and who's missing?
So these categories here were the ones that were missing
So for instance one of the things that we discovered in a previous study that we did with city of San
Orlando is most people have a 10-year
Image of a city 10 years old and not current
So the San Leandro what we discovered and you know
one of the questions is how come I don't have a Trader Joe's or a high-end supermarket or equivalent and
What we found out is that the demographic profile of San Leandro has done this higher household income more diverse
So there's a large percentage of Asian Chinese percentage down the city versus 15 years ago
So when you match that against the retailers
Acquisition profiles and location profiles you come up with what's missing
So, Sprouts actually looked at that demographic information when they made their decision.
Phil's is what we call a telltale, the equivalent of Pete's, you know, versus nothing wrong
with it.
But 7-Eleven coffee is a profile versus somebody who goes to Phil's, connoisseur, taste, et
cetera.
So, Stanley Andrew is entering that phase where it's now with better household income,
education what industry what retailers can you now attract that meet those
profiles and so these are some of the sectors that we that are not here that
could be more more come okay is that a question it doesn't and additionally I
need to step up my coffee taste because I actually like 7-11 coffee but there's
nothing wrong with that yes okay and then and then that and that also is
speaking to like the oversupply to like like when we're talking about some of
the the pieces that that it's saturated in our market and and is that aligned
with household incomes is that also the way you guys are doing that? Yes I mean
there's two first of all department stores are dinosaurs so that's why you
have empty Macy's JC Penney's and Sears that used to be the catch-all for all
these various sectors. So now that we don't have department stores and I don't
care if you're Walnut Creek, Palo Alto or San Leandro, that's an issue. Second is
two household incomes actually need online purchasing. People who need two
jobs to pay the rent and the mortgage don't have time necessarily with child
care and everything else. So online is definitely there. But in answer to your
question there, we did look at what's oversaturated, therefore these are what
are underrepresented. We think there's more room for another grocery store for
instance downtown. We think there's more room for some of the more there's
definitely more restaurants that could come downtown to cater to the growing
diversity here. Okay thank you yes and I will echo that you know the different
sectors that I see in my daily job and how we're developing around the Bay Area
A lot of it, you know a data center. Well, we don't have the infrastructure to handle the data center
It might bring a lot of money, but there's it taxes a lot of resources
but the idea that we're gonna put an emphasis on getting a
higher quantity of
Electrical supply to the area is key for us because that's how we're actually gonna get some of these higher paying
So I appreciate the analysis and the deep dive. Thank you for all the work
Vice mayor, please
Thank you
Thank you to Katie does Lars everyone who's here and the rest of the team who helped support this work
Thank you so much for your work
I
Have two main comments
one
Anyway, I have two main comments. I think
I
And I think the presentation highlights this but I've experienced fantastic culinary experiences here in San Leandro
but not just of the new places.
I'm talking about some of the legacy businesses
that we have in San Leandro,
like Manor Grill, and Elios, and Ronickers,
and all of these established businesses
that also need the support of innovative marketing
and positioning, because they think
that that is something that we see as a tension between,
and I'll share as a newish transplant to San Leandro,
I married into third generation San Leandro family.
So I constantly am exploring these places
that people have gone with their grandparents.
And I don't, I just wanna elevate that tension.
And I know that I've seen them,
I've seen those types of businesses highlighted
in our economic development collateral,
but I just would like to elevate that
because I think that for those of us
who understand and value where we came from,
but also wanna look ahead,
I think there's just this balancing act
of supporting these established businesses.
And then also, we have some of these other restaurants
that, at least in my experience, they are ethnic-centric.
So we have one of them that was highlighted
was Dow, Artisan Noodle.
We have Metro Taquero that opened two locations, one
in Marina and one over on East 14th in San Leandro Boulevard.
And then we have some unexpected celebrities,
like this fish sandwich that I have shopped at that place
for so long.
and I never thought it would take off like that,
but okay, here we are.
But I think that this is something that,
one, as leaders on this council,
but also as leaders and representatives of the city,
we're constantly kind of balancing these two,
a kind of legacy, but also like a deep,
I think now kind of a tradition of ethnic, fantastic food
that I think we talk about it.
But I'm constantly telling people,
if you want green salsa, go to this place.
If you want good posole, go to this place.
And if you want good hand-cut noodles, go to this place.
So I think I'm constantly kind of an ambassador for that.
My question is, how is the team balancing
and market these legacy kinds of businesses?
And I'm just talking about restaurants,
there's a myriad of other businesses that are legacy,
like Mr. Plastics and a bunch of other.
So how are we balancing these legacy businesses
with the retail and business and innovation industries
that we wanna attract?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And also, I was remiss to introduce Lars Hall, who
is our lead on retail-related matters.
Many of you know him.
He has a lot of great relationships
with the businesses, with the property owners.
So sorry about that, Lars.
But one thing he will be doing is working
on updating a restaurant guide, different ways
to support legacy businesses.
It's getting out and telling the story.
There's a variety of ways, right through a guide,
Through social media shares, we've
been collaborating with the communications team
as they work on videos, as well, and looking
into different parallel paths between new and legacy.
Also, we collaborate with the Chamber on Restaurant Week,
which is a really good way to try to get people out
and explore the old favorites and new finds.
And as well, we'll be helping to share about the Taste of Asia,
which is an activity going on in May, as well,
sharing about Asian restaurants in town.
Thank you.
And then I just have one last question.
It's more of a comment, but we were talking about
some of these priority industries
that we're looking to attract.
And I think one of the inevitable tensions
is balancing the need for us to control our emissions
and the city's plans on our climate action plan
and balancing that tension, right?
We wanna attract these priority businesses,
but the reality is that they use water and electricity
and that increases our emissions and our water use,
which is a finite resource.
So it's not necessarily as a question,
but it's something that I'm looking to kind of connect
the dots across the various plans to think about
how we can responsibly grow, both in our population and our types of like
economic ecosystem and our workforce development, but also balancing the need
to control that type of growth in a way that is responsible for future
generations. Thank you. Councilmember Simon please. Excellent presentation by
your staff and consultants very nice job a lot of information here and I'm very
excited the direction that we're heading in San Leandro. One question and one
comment the question is a 62.75 million dollar sale why did that sell for three
times the previous amount I'm happy that it did just curious about that and then
my comment or question slash comment would be retail arrivals so happy that
Ace Hardware is coming. Thank you for getting that to the greenhouse we really needed that push.
Look getting the the cash registers running bringing in those tax dollars.
Costco as we know is so busy bursting at the seams. Oakland has nothing so everyone from
Oakland comes to San Leandro. Just whenever you go it's just a madhouse which is good.
You go down 880 Hayward Union City, Newark, Fremont, three Cascos in a very small span and they're
just cranking in the dollars and we're not. I'm curious why are we not cranking in those dollars
because Cascos can barely handle their bursting. So if this goes into my common question,
there's other retailers outside of the immediate water side of the bay that we aren't tapping into.
For example, I worked in Concord for 25 years. There's tons of stores out there that we don't
have here, big ones, such as, gosh, it's slipping my mind. Okay, Sam's Club. I know people are going
to say Walmart, but Sam's Club is huge. It's just like Walmart, gas station, the whole nine,
we've got tons of space why are we not bringing in the Sam's Club to crank in
those retail dollars to take some load off of Costco because I don't think
they're going to build another Costco in San Leandro and other small stores that
can bring in money that people love I know people that drive to Dutch bros
and conquer just for the coffee literally they do it it's a small little
coffee that we could pop anywhere why don't we have that so just thinking about
bringing in shops that are not around our immediate area that I know people
will spend money in to get the tax dollars in. Thank you.
Do you want me to answer the Costco question?
Sure.
Okay. Your Costco does more than all the other ones. So they had to take,
I represented Costco and I know this because I did the Hayward Costco because they couldn't handle
what the amount of sales that you're doing in San Leandro is huge. And based on that,
they had to put another Costco,
they had to open another Costco.
They've just started a new program
where they're opening Costco's closer to each other.
So now they've got two in Fremont
and or Newark and then Fremont.
And that has never happened before
that they would open them that close.
The one at the New Park Mall and then Pacific Commons,
they just hadn't done that before.
So that one in New Park is kind of an experiment
that they're doing.
And whether or not it really pans out, we don't know.
But your Costco is still bigger than those.
You're bigger than Hayward.
You're bigger than Pat Commons.
And you're bigger, of course, than the new one at New Park.
Your Costco is probably even bigger than Concord.
And Concord's one of the biggest in Northern California.
So I think you should be really proud.
But we need them.
There are more shoppers than Kalsko can handle in San Leandro.
That's my point.
And they have to go down to Hayward now.
We want them to stay in San Leandro.
OK, yeah, go ahead.
So you're just asking about, I think what we can do
is continue to work with them as they talked about gathering,
really honing in on that available.
Real estate on the property owners and working with with our consultants and other retail contacts to find out, right?
So in addition to Costco, you know, who is the contact for Sam's Club?
Who else is expanding who might be a competitor since we have plenty of demand or does you know?
Do they want to do more? So always open to opportunities and and thank you for that suggestion and
Was there another part the three times the price for the oh, yeah
so precisely not not exactly sure it's overall it's an indicator of the market
strength and it's not the first time we've seen large increases in property
value depending on how long the property was owned and you know so the market is
really strong another example had been the Westgate Center it saw similar kind
that's a great way to get a
that we're seeing a lot of. A
the coming years to be to be doing further assessment of hotel opportunities
and I think as we've discussed before it it's certainly in a lull right now but
to be ready to be poised to try to attract opportunities when the market
improves. Did you have something to add? Unfortunately this is not a good time to
be in the hospitality business. Seven hotels within ten miles of year have
been foreclosed on. They're tearing down the Hilton by the airport, downtown
and Oakland is losing three hotels.
The average hotel occupancy in the East Bay is 60, 62%.
You need 70% occupancy to make it work.
We're not a tourist destination,
so it's the business concept hotels
for Monday to Thursday night.
People in LA now have a Zoom meeting.
They don't fly up here like they used to pre-COVID.
So right now, San Francisco has hotels
on Union Square being foreclosed on.
So yes, hotels are a good thing for TOT,
but right now some of the hotels that are still operating
are going to be torn down
because they're just not making it.
Thank you for that explanation.
And Katie, I think one of the great things
about marketing San Leandro is BizNow.
And I've been to a couple of events where
We work with the developers and you, the mayor,
we're all great at presenting and saying,
hey, this is what we're doing.
Having panel discussions as to how we're working
to bring new businesses.
San Leandro, do we anticipate conducting?
I know we talked about a little bit,
but do we have anything on the calendar in the future
or what is the next steps on that look like?
Yeah, so as a part of the plan,
we are working towards doing a retail-specific event
in the coming year, I think in the fall.
And so will we doing that?
We will explore.
We've been to a broader development
and real estate-related one.
And in any given year, we are working towards those.
And as you mentioned, it's a really great way
to reach out and start to build those relationships
and to introduce new developers, brokers, but also older ones
to encourage them to continue to invest.
Thank you.
Those are my questions.
OK, so to wrap this up, I've got a couple of thoughts
of my own.
And I will not repeat everything that others
have offered already.
So do you think that Sandlander does
have a number of older buildings?
And there might be an opportunity
in at least some circumstances where
we could, if we were creative, support
the financing of certain transitions.
And I've heard complaints about the cost
of covering fire conversions.
So just be thinking creative ways.
When you think about economic incentives,
it doesn't have to be necessarily tax breaks,
but it could be some sort of financing
based on increased tax revenue, increased property value.
I just encourage you to keep that in mind.
I do think that we should continue our efforts
to celebrate and show gratitude, particularly
when we have property owners that are updating
their properties.
I feel very strongly that the work that's
been done at Marina Fair is just amazing.
It just has so transformed that location, the types of businesses
that have gone in as a result of that.
And every time that there's girls on the run at the marina
or some sort of event at the marina,
always encouraging people before you get out of town,
it's literally half a mile away,
just stop there and grab a bite to eat.
So I think that it's just so much more inviting.
And so things that we can be doing
to support those efforts and to just appreciate,
to show gratitude to the property owners.
A lot of times those people like to fly under the radar
and I get it, but by the same token,
I think that we need to make sure that they understand
how much we appreciate what we're doing.
I'm very grateful for the work that you're doing with PG&E.
I think that is absolutely strategic
to us wanting to be advanced manufacturing location.
The biggest complaint that I hear about
is power, power, power, power,
and if I haven't mentioned it's power.
So understanding how to work that system most effectively
is critical to what we're doing.
So I do think that that's a strategic investment
that you are undertaking.
I do believe that I've seen a recent effort
to promote our own businesses here
in the city of San Leandro, the communications I think
that you were speaking about.
I also believe that's strategic.
I think that bragging about what we have and then jumping
onto the social media craze and reposting things
that others are saying, this is fantastic, right?
If it's getting a lot of likes and traffic and we see bumps,
That's good, and we should join that joy
in promoting our businesses and our communities.
So thank you for what you're doing.
And let's just keep pushing along that realm.
I think the last thing that I'll just highlight
is I'm particularly grateful for the strategy.
And by strategy, I really mean that strategy
is all about making choices.
Strategy is about deciding what you're not going to do.
Strategies, I'm going to do this.
I'm not going to do that.
And I feel that by identifying targets, that helps us focus.
Focus, focus, focus, discipline, discipline, discipline.
And what I also like is the tactics in the work plans,
because strategy is just an idea.
And it's really the tactics in the work plan,
that business aphorism, culture, and inaction
eats strategy for lunch any day.
Strategy is just worthless if you don't have the actions.
And so thank you.
And I see much more activity.
And I just want to make sure that we keep focusing on that.
And I'll just kind of close with this thought,
because obviously I came from the business world.
But I think that the concept really applies.
Namely, in the business world, we'd
always say stop talking about business development.
Go out and do business development.
You can have meetings internally all day long.
And that doesn't make, that doesn't go into track businesses.
That doesn't build relationships.
That doesn't tell our story.
So just not that you're spending too much time
in internal meetings, but always keep in mind
that economic development, business development,
growing the economy is about what's happening out there
in the business world, meeting people where they are,
and being able to tell our story very effectively.
So thank you for all that you're doing.
think you've gotten some good feedback from the council as a whole and we
encourage you guys to keep doing your good work. Thank you very much. At this
point in time it is 902 and we are going to take a 10-minute break so we will be
back at 913. Thank you. We are in recess. Okay I'm calling us back to order the
time right now for our record is 9 13 so at this point in time we are going to
proceed with a presentation on proposed draft code amendments related to retail
cannabis dispensaries here to introduce the item is deputy city manager Eric
Engelbart council and members of the community who are here whether it's
either online or in person pleased to be here tonight to continue our discussions
related to cannabis policy. Before we dive in, of course, this presentation
aligns with the City Council's adopted economic development work plan. Just a
brief overview of the items staff is going to cover tonight as part of the
presentation. We'll start off with a little bit of background information and
how we got here tonight. Then we'll have a recap of the rules committee meeting
discussions that took place over late 2025 and their related
recommendations and then we'll provide an overview of some proposed code
changes and some proposed modifications to this sensitive use setback and
distancing comparisons. We'll then have a few location visualizations of potential
zoning changes and then a summary of the recommendations. So how we got here
tonight as you may recall this past May back on the May 19th of last year the
Council adopted an ordinance to award a fourth operating permit to nug wellness
and then at that meeting as part of that action City Council also directed staff
to take a matter on cannabis policy to the rules committee and specifically
with a potential discussion or an expansion the discussion of a potential
expansion of the number of licenses related process for wording them as well
as direction to treat other dispenser operators comparably to how nug was
treated. Then between June and December of 2025 there were three Rules Committee
meetings at which cannabis policy was discussed and which there was a robust
deliberation by the Rules Committee members and then this past December at
the December 10th meeting the Rules Committee did direct staff to advance
the project forward for full City Council consideration and that's how we
got here tonight. Just a little synopsis here of the Rules Committee's
recommendations and those items that were covered and captured at those
meetings. We're gonna start off here with the first several bullet items or those
areas where there was a clear consensus among the Rules Committee members and
then we're going to discuss those areas where there was a lack of consensus. So
starting at the gate here you can see there was a clear consensus on
incorporating a definition of youth center. Although our current code
requirements do state that there needs to be a distancing requirement between
the established having a new dispensary and a youth center, the definition of a
youth center is a bit unclear and so we are recommending adopting a definition
which we'll get to in just a few moments. There was also clear
consensus to allow setback modifications to account for physical
Barriers such as free raise or waterways and so we'll show you some draft code language on that
There was clear consensus on allowing the issuance of two additional cannabis operating permits. That's for a grand total of six
And so you'll see some code provisions on that
And now switching to the areas where there was a lack of consensus among the rules committee members
Relates to the specific changes to the distancing requirements and we'll get into that in more detail in a few moments on slide 11
And there was a lack of consensus on the modified zoning districts in which retail cannabis would be allowed
And then lastly it's it's worth noting that there was
Some discussion by the Rules Committee and some direction to staff related to tobacco
Retail uses and specifically concerns were expressed about the aesthetics of tobacco retailers
as was
Covered at that meeting. It was noted that tobacco policy and tobacco regulatory controls are kind of a separate and distinct item
That is very distinct from cannabis with that said it's also worth noting that back in just this past November
Following an extensive public outreach process. The council did just recently adopt a
number of new tobacco regulatory changes already and so to the extent that the council does separately direct staff to modify
Existing tobacco policy and regulations after we get through the cannabis policy process
That would likely impact the City Council's adopted work plans
Some also in addition to that discussion. I just covered from rose committee. There was also some
questions that originated from rules
One of them you can see at the top
There was a question about whether or not the greenhouse the owners of greenhouse marketplace or the Bayfair Center would allow cannabis retail
our staff from our community development department did reach out to the ownership of both of those
Shopping centers who responded that they would not be interested in allowing such use types at their sites in the absence of
changes in the federal regulatory environment
the committee also inquired about
proximity to child care centers
So we've included more information on that issue on slide seven and you'll note as we just to jump ahead a little bit
We are recommending a 600-foot distancing requirement for the establishment of a new campus dispensary from child care centers
Which would align with state law. It's also worth noting
State law is already rather permissive when it comes to the establishment of child care centers
And there's they're really there are basically allowed by right
In any location where residential uses are already permitted
The committee also inquired if the San Lander Chamber of Commerce or if the slia had taken a formal position on cannabis
And at the time of writing and publication of this presentation before you only the slia board had provided a formal response to that
And they stated that they while they were supportive of an expansion of what's known as the green zone and the areas where cannabis could
be allowed they were not supportive of a retail cannabis dispensary within the
sleet district boundaries. We also want to thank the Chamber of Commerce for
hosting city staff. We gave a lengthy presentation at a special meeting of the
Chamber Board to discuss cannabis policy. We provided an overview of
what's being under consideration and that was back in November and as the
time of publication the chamber has not provided a formal position on the matter
though I understand an email may have been submitted to the City Council on
this issue earlier this afternoon. Additionally there were some general
questions about just the nature of conditional use permit process and so
we'll get into that in slide 10. So just diving right into some of the things I
just covered a few moments ago, you can see on the screen there we've
incorporated a Giraffe Youth Center definition. I won't read every line of
of this but you can see this is a rather robust definition and this in many ways
mirrors the city of Alameda who went through a very lengthy public outreach
process when they were when they were establishing their own code requirements
related to cannabis and we believe this provides a strong definition that
provides clarity which our current code does not provide. You can also see here
draft distancing provision that we're proposing as we'll get into in a few
moments in more detail the current code requires a thousand foot setback for
most sensitive receptors and we're recommending that be modified to 600 feet
to align with state law and then we also per direction from the rules committee
we're recommending that there be some language that takes into account
significant physical or geographic barriers you know the classic example of
this would be you know if we require a 600 foot distancing requirement and the
Dispensary wants to set up and there may be a school or another sensitive site
That's technically five hundred and ninety nine feet away
But it's on the other side of a freeway or on the other side of a railroad tracks or a channel that you can't even
physically get around that the planning commission when they review the permit has the ability to take that into account and
Then as I mentioned earlier, there was clear consensus
The Rules Committee was interested in allowing for the issuance of two additional cannabis permits
And that's a relatively straightforward amendment, so you're just striking out the cap on the current restriction on not more than four permits and allowing six
Regarding the cup process
We wanted to cover this in light of some of the dialogue at the recent rules committee meeting
Because we want to make it just clear to the committee to the City Council as well as the community
That even if the council tonight were to adopt everything that we're recommending that you all direct us to proceed forward with
It does not in itself create a buy right entitlement for cannabis dispensary to set up.
So say for example you adopt the changes to allow a 600 foot distancing requirement and
the various zoning restrictions.
It's not like of a cannabis dispensary then comes in and meets all those rules that are
automatically going to get their CEP.
They still have to go through a public hearing process.
They're still going to have to know the neighbors are going to have to be notified about it.
There's going to be a public hearing before the planning commission.
going to be an opportunity for you know people who have concerns with that permit to state
you know to elevate those concern in a public forum and then also there's an appeal process
so ultimately whatever decision the board the planning commission makes on that cep could
ultimately be appealed back to the city council if someone were dissatisfied with the outcome of
that hearing process and in addition to all of that as well as all of the existing findings of
approval discretionary findings that are already applicable to CUPs as another
measure of precaution we are recommending incorporating what we're what are known
as the special findings that the City Council already adopted in which are
applicable to cannabis manufacturing permits already and you can see those
items one through four but the intent of that language is to provide again that
additional discretionary language to give that assurance to the public that
the Planning Commission has that authority to essentially, you know, deny
an application for a dispensary permit if it just doesn't make sense. If we're
just looking at it from through the lens of, you know, just this is a good
location for it, and for any other reasons there, it would give more
opportunities for the Planning Commission to have that regulatory teeth.
Switching gears here, this, I know there's a lot of numbers on the slide. This is
intended to show a matrix of what the current distancing requirements are here
in Alameda County, and one area that I really want to highlight for your attention is this
first row in particular, and you can see we are currently, in a lot of ways, and in particular
in this column, San Leander, is currently an outlier. As you will call, we set up our
regulatory framework well over a decade ago. That was prior to the adoption of any state-level
regulation on cannabis, and there were very few agencies or municipalities in the region
who are allowing this type of use. Fast forward to today, cannabis for lack of a term, better
term is more or less normalized in Alameda County. And you can see most of these communities
here with all these rows have allowed them. And you can see with the exception of Union
City, no other city even has a residential setback requirement from cannabis use, retail
uses. And I think part of the reason for that, as you know, many of these neighborhood commercial
You know where you have a supermarket or a 7-Eleven etc are inherently just they're designed to serve the adjacent residential areas
And so that's why they typically are set there and the challenge is with our structure when you impose that residential setback
All over the city you essentially
Blow out most of the viable sites in the city and the bottom line is our current code
our current map is extremely restrictive and as we'll get to in a few moments it really it really highly highly limits and constrains the
viability of finding a viable site. And so you can see there this row here in
this last row in white is what our current requirements are and again you
see we were much more conservative when this is set up at a thousand feet and
we're proposing staff is recommending modifying that to 600 feet which aligns
with the statewide standard as well. And so we can see here this map was also
previously presented at the Rules Committee you can see on the left these
are and I want to add these are these are these are the best are these are our
best estimates based on available information but generally speaking the
map on the left is orange parcels generally is where you can see currently
employ it when you apply all the setback requirements we discussed earlier you
can see what's left as viable sites and you can see most of them are kind of
tucked here in the industrial areas out in areas in district six six and seven
three. And then you can see what the staff proposal is which is to allow
cannabis retail uses in any industrial commercial zoning districts which is
what it would be shown at right. I do want also though reference again as I
mentioned earlier just because something if this map were to move forward and
they were to direct us to move forward with it it doesn't mean that if any
cannabis dispensary operator came in for an application that they would
automatically be permitted to be there. They would have to go to that public
process, the public hearing process, the neighborhood notification and all that
subject to an appeal to the City Council if someone disagreed with the outcome of
it. So it's it's not a by right thing we're talking about. It's really just
expanding the map of potential sites. So in terms of our next steps here, staff is
recommending that the City Council give direction to staff to proceed with the
following items that you can see on the screen, which we already discussed a few
moments ago including allowing those deviations from the setbacks to account
for physical barriers, adding that definition of the use center, allowing
for the two additional retail permits, and modifying the required setbacks as
shown on that matrix that we just presented a few moments ago, and then
modifying the zoning code to allow dispensaries in the full range of
commercial industrial zoning districts as shown on slide 12, and applying those
additional special findings as well, and then in terms of next step if you were
to direct us to proceed accordingly our next top would be taking this package to
the Planning Commission for their review for any elements that involve the zoning
code changes and then bringing back the whole package for final review and
approval before the City Council via the first reading at a future meeting.
And so with that that concludes the staff overview but we'd be happy to
answer any questions or take your feedback. Yeah I think let's take public
comment on this item then we're gonna have a robust question answer. Mayor we've
received two comment cards on this item and there are not any hands raised
online currently. Let's begin in person please. Our in-person speakers are Nara
Um, Laura Del Baca and Emily
Grago. Good evening, Mayor and
council members. I know I've
talked to lots of you over the
last eight or nine months about
this and I've toured several of
you at, um, harbor side. I also
sent an email tonight with some
potential draft language for a
second location for harbor side
that NUG received last year getting a second satellite location. But one thing that I did
add in the language that I sent over is a request that any second location for dispensaries
be granted to those who have been vetted and have an operating history and good standing
in the city. I think that both NUG and Harborside have spent a great deal of money and gone
through all kinds of hoops and difficulties in order to be compliant operators in the
city and I think that's important if you are going to reward a second location that you
know who you're who you're partnering with and I support have definitely
support the the potential sensitive use waiver I think that right now as you
could see it's nearly impossible for for folks to find that second location we do
understand that the that the chamber and the downtown association do have some
issues with downtown being included and that's completely understandable we
We would ask that however you move that this happen quickly and we would hope that you'll
take up the second location for Harborside at a future meeting in the near future so
that they can start to identify those locations because they are so difficult to find and
so they can begin the CUP process and give you guys some taxes in the air.
Your time has elapsed.
The next speaker is Emily Grago.
Is this gonna come down far enough?
Eric?
I'm gonna tip down.
Hopefully you guys can hear me.
Hello, everybody.
This is really funny.
Oh my god.
Does it go down more?
Oh, it goes down even further.
Okay.
Okay.
I even do have a little hill on.
All right, guys, here I am.
I'm not hiding.
emily grego presidency of the sally-andred chamber of commerce
we have talked about this topic several times at several different border
director meetings and the reason is because we have to consider the
perspective of our diverse membership and the broader goals of the city but
where we've landed is we do support modernizing the ordinance by aligning
setback requirements with the state of California guidelines allow additional
cannabis permits and expand zoning beyond the current green zone with the exception
to prohibit cannabis businesses in the downtown area.
So we believe this strikes a balance aligning setbacks with the state standards creates
a framework that's clear and more consistent and easier for businesses and regulators to
implement and understand and additional permits and expanding zoning in appropriate areas
also recognizes that cannabis is legal and regulated and a regulated industry
in California thoughtfully expanding opportunities in designated areas can
support economic activity and investment. At the same time we know that
there is a distinct and intentional vision for downtown San Leandro to
create a welcoming family friendly and pedestrian oriented destination and many
businesses and stakeholders invested in the continued growth and character of
that area so for that reason the Chamber believes it's important that cannabis
zoning not be expanded in the downtown district so we we we are happy to expand
zoning expand permits modernize the ordinance so that we're not back you
know 15 years ago or whenever this started but you know downtown we've got
a vision for it and we'd like to see that vision kept through thank you thank
Thank you Mayor that concludes our comment cards from in the room, and we have one hand
raised online.
Okay, so we close public comment in person, we open public comment online.
Lucas, you may unmute yourself.
Thank you teacher.
Can you hear me.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I remember I called about this cannabis situation so many times in the past, I am still opposed
to expending the number of permits in the city. I don't think that we should even have
the stores that we do. Remember, this is a smoking product. This is an addictive substance.
People debate that. And it's still illegal at the federal level. I called about this
last time, and I urged the council to remember your oath, the Pledge of Allegiance, to the
republic. And we have laws, and the supreme law of the land is the constitution, and the
laws made in pursuit of it. Federal law says that this product is not legal and the state
disagrees but you have a no. And the federal law, as far as I understand it, is going…
Other than that issue, other than the whole, I think you're doing legal things, you could
wait a few months and wait maybe for the current administration to re-categorize cannabis.
There are all sorts of other issues like public safety and crime where these things tend to
you. Homeless shelters attract homeless people and drug stores attract drug addicts. It doesn't
take a genius to figure it out. There's a risk to youth, not just by placing these stores in
neighborhoods. They're around where people go. That's why they're stores. People go there,
they're stores. Parents bring their kids. Oh, let go. You sit in the back trunk. Maybe I'll go
into the store. I pick up whatever I want. It normalizes this behavior with the kids, no matter
how far away you put it from youth centers or schools. The city sends a signal that this type
of behavior and this type of use is okay. For 50 years, we've been fighting against smoking,
and now we combine smoking plus THC. What a great idea. I wonder how this will turn out in 40 years.
The odor and the nuisance element of marijuana is far worse than it is with tobacco. It lingers
longer. It sits in your clothes. Let's not have this in our city. There's a reason why the chamber
doesn't want to downtown it will destroy them thank you your time is up mayor that concludes
our we'll close public comment and we'll come back to council members for questions discussion
as you see fit we'll begin with council member bolt okay thank you for the presentation looking
it thank you there's we're reducing the next to the libraries to zero as I see
it on this chart can you go back to that certainly yeah from a thousand feet
to nothing and then the residential and the houses of worship personally I have
a problem with that I don't libraries is like the the one thing that I have the
biggest problem with I don't agree that if we're talking about youth centers for
the right reasons we're saying let's not allow it next to a youth center a
library is akin to a youth center there are tons of kids that go in and out of
that facility all day weekends and hopefully during after-school hours so I
I personally have a problem with that, I don't think that is acceptable to just eliminate
that setback around the libraries, houses of worship and then the residential zones.
Especially when you go into the map where it actually gives us those new locations in
the purple.
Everybody's got their own feelings about this stuff.
When we talk about it'll vitalize economic activity when we go into some of these purple areas
Well, guess what? There's not a lot in district six because it's an industrial area
So bringing people down there
for that reason
That's a no-go for me. That doesn't even equate but then when we push them in like we're saying
Not in the downtown area
You know because of commerce what have you but then you go into Manor
Or porkies and all that is and it's purple it seems like we're saying it's okay in that end of town
But it's not okay next to us. I'm not okay with that. I think that's a flawed
Angle to take and I just hope we go back and revisit that because if
Libraries are gonna be an NA and we can put them as close as we want literally
Almost directly across the street from our newest library the way this purple
Lines up on fairway
I'm just not acceptable with that. So I'll stop there. I'll listen to the rest of the the council's comments for now
Vice mayor, please
Thank you, I did actually notice that corner on Farnsworth and and
at Manor Boulevard and it was,
and I know why, there's commercial space around there,
there's available space there.
So I could see, anyway, I saw that disparity,
but I also do want to support
SLEA and the chamber and
excluding the downtown,
particularly the SLEA kind of borders.
I don't know what would be the mechanism to do that,
just in terms of what would be the vehicle
to exclude the downtown?
Because there's like a border, right, that Salia has,
it's very defined.
What would be a vehicle for that?
Well, thank you, Vice Mayor, for that question.
Absolutely, your council has the authority to prohibit that
if the council desires as such,
and it's fairly clean and straightforward,
although I would clarify that the jurisdictional boundaries
of SLEA versus how the city defines downtown
via the DA zoning are not exactly the same thing.
So we would need clarity on that as well for context
as far as the city's definition.
Maybe this is a good segue.
I can pull up a little quick map here,
but I can show you it.
I don't know if the, yes, that's already showing up.
So this area in Aqua is all the various DA,
that's downtown areas, the acronym.
But that is how the city defines the downtown area zoning
and there's sub zones, there's like DA1, DA2, DA3.
We have our planning manager here
if we wanna take a deeper dive beyond that
in terms of those definitions.
But this Aqua, I don't know that that necessarily precisely,
I don't believe that precisely mirrors the SLIA boundaries.
So just big picture, I'm assuming that our,
what the city defines as downtown is a much larger footprint
than the SLIA footprint.
Right, because they see the east 14th quarter
kind of shooting out into district five, okay.
And then just real further too, again, you could,
Council would, if it had the prerogative,
we could break that up, that downtown area further
in a D1, D2, DA1, D2, D3, D4, D5, et cetera.
Yeah, I would like to explore that,
but I also, keeping in mind some of the,
I think there could be a perception
of like some parts of the city having kind of more,
like kind of not in my backyard sort of vibe to this.
So I'm also concerned about the library.
I didn't notice that in the presentation.
Also, I just have a question in terms
of the youth definition, the Youth Center.
Am I reading this correctly, that martial arts and combat
sports or cultural or similar education,
those are not, I think those would not fit
under the youth center definition.
I welcome our planning manager to speak to that.
And right, the definition that's shown,
the way that we presented is the definition
that the city of Alameda adopted
to provide some more definition to youth center.
In that definition, martial arts studios
would not be considered a youth center.
I think their aim from reviewing their staff port
and other documents that they produce,
their aim was similar to ours.
If there is to take a existing ambiguous definition
and provide some clarity to make sure
that staff is administering it evenly and fairly,
and it can be easily identified what's a youth center,
what's not the council can provide direction in terms of what to include in the definition what what not to
But staff is largely concerned being able to quite correctly interpret what the definition means and be able to
apply it evenly
They're also gonna have city manager offer some additional commentary
Thank You mr. Mayor. Thank you vice mayor for the question
I think the other point for martial arts is that there are martial art businesses that
Their clientele is specific also to adults and you think of MMA
Another jiu-jitsu they actually have businesses that are martial arts that don't provide services to youth
But there are plenty that do as well provide services to you
Yeah, I'm I'm thinking specifically of palance stuff does provide after-school programming for more than five hours a day
And they have youth programming in the afternoon. So it's continuous from about 11 depending on school whenever schools let out
they have an after-school program,
and that would be under the SLIA borders
and under the downtown.
So I'm particularly concerned about the martial arts,
but I guess it would not count
because it offers more than five hours
of youth programming.
But I just, that's something that I'm just thinking about
And there's also a June upper corner.
I don't know how many hours it'll be open throughout the day, but that's also a family
type center with a lot of young, young children and families going there.
So, that's kind of where I'm at.
I'm looking at library, similar to Councilmember Bolt, looking at the library radius.
And then, don't know how I feel yet about the residential, but want to explore that.
So I guess I don't have, I will not be adding my voice to the consensus on that.
And then, let's see, and that is it for now.
I do want to follow up just to get clarification
from legal and or deputy city manager.
So I do want to specifically consider
a facility like Palance.
It's not unique to Palance that is involved in martial arts
as a service offering.
I think no one would dispute that reality.
But they also offer these other services,
commonly thought of in that context.
So under this definition,
would something that council,
that vice mayor has described,
would it be a youth center or not a youth center?
And if you want to just give some thought to it,
that's fine too, because I don't want you to get it wrong.
It's just kind of confusing to me, and I wasn't quite clear that the answer aligned
with how I was thinking about it.
I welcome our planning manager who's taken a deeper dive on this, but my reading of this
is that in those examples, if those facilities, such as Palance or others, are offering greater
than five hours a day that's serving youth, then they are a youth center, and therefore
the setback applies.
The conversely, if you have like a 24-hour fitness that primarily serves adults, but
maybe offers one hour a day of karate classes, but the other 23 hours a day they're not doing
that then they would not qualify as a youth center and I think that's the intent of that.
I would also share, obviously I'm not a city of Alameda employee but having just kind of
peripherally monitored those discussions. I know this was a huge contentious process and they went
through a very robust process about this and there's a lot of gray areas there and I think
I think this was the outcome of that public engagement
process to try to thread that needle
to protect the distance, ensure sufficient setbacks are
imposed for those examples.
Like the pallets or others, where five or more hours a day
they're serving youth, so they should get the setback.
Versus those more like other facilities
that are kind of doing martial arts as a side thing that's
not there as more of an ancillary function as
opposed to their primary function,
they are not given the setback.
Because I think the challenge is if you take away
or you strike out too many of these caveats,
then you're heading back towards the direction
of our current map, where things are so restrictive
that it becomes not viable for business
to censor operators to identify viable sites,
because there's so many potential gray areas that
may partially serve youth.
And so this is just one of those inherently challenging issue
areas that all cities are grappling with.
And this was Alameda's outcome of that process.
But of course as always the council is the prerogative to modify that and it may what worked in Alameda may not work here
And that's your prerogative too. I want to come to council member Bowen and I'm gonna talk to legal counsel on the side
Thank you. I know that if we can go to the map with the purple
one of the
longer
Conversations we had during rules was about
What this map actually covers if you were able to overlay all of the setbacks that were
on the map. So for example we have like I think a section that would be like I
think it's like the MacArthur shopping area right like you get to the right I
think like Estadio and MacArthur. I think there's right like it's like a
little pocket and so technically that would be eligible but not really because
there's a preschool right behind it and so this map doesn't necessarily mean
that it could go anywhere where it's purple, so there are already going to be automatically
different setbacks that prohibit many of the things that we're concerned about.
And so I don't know the specifics of like the corner where the library is, but I mean
I certainly, you know, if we want to keep it at 1,000 feet, I am like very supportive
of that, but it is it does not mean that I think if we were able to actually overlay
what would be available, what places would actually lease to a dispensary.
Like, the number is going to go down much, much more, and the idea is to expand the map
so we can potentially bring in more businesses.
And so that was the intent and the conversation that we're having in rules.
I also am not supportive of carving out a specific downtown that is based on a one—I
I obviously I support SLIA and really appreciate like the board and the work
they're putting in but I am I personally think that if there is a business in the
if there is a property in the downtown that would be eligible given all of the
setbacks because there are lots of youth centers from different facilities
schools down there as well lots of lots of activities that would be
excluded from it that we would at least allow for the opportunity. I just went
on again like we always go back to Alameda in this particular case because
we really looked at their use case but I literally just went to a five-year-old's
birthday party that was I don't know like a block and a half from the the
nug dispensary downtown and it was incredibly vibrant and safe and kids
were out and families were out and I did not feel the concerns that are often
expressed I was actually just more impressed by how vibrant the area was
and I will say that there are plenty of constituents that I have conversations
with that have said oh my gosh that would be really interesting and I would
love that it was downtown. I would love to go to Fieldworks and go to Sola and
go to these new restaurants and then have this downtown. So I just want to
offer that perspective. Thank you. We're going to come to Councilmember Simon next.
Thank you Eric for the presentation. I thought about this a lot a bit, a lot
about thought about skin light sorry I thought about this a lot since the last
rules community meeting and I appreciate the feedback from downtown and the one
thing I don't want to do is is you know force this on to neighborhoods or force
this on to people I don't think that's fair to the people that live and work
there I think there's lots of lots of areas in San Leandro where I think our
opportunities where folks would be comfortable with it but where people
aren't comfortable with it like downtown I don't I don't I wouldn't want to force
that on them that goes to other smaller downtowns like the Manor downtown at the
intersection of Farnsworth and Manor I wouldn't want to they don't they don't
Manor does not want that either so I wouldn't want to force it on them so they
have a library there the Manor library is very close and just in general the
setbacks for residential I think having a cannabis dyspentry right next to a
right literally your neighbor five feet away is not okay and that's the way it's
currently shown within a you could have a dispensary five foot from your house
I'm reading that correct right well right is that okay with through the
chair if I were addressed so not necessary short answer is not
necessarily because although technically yes if someone came in with a proposal
for the manner adjacent to a residential zone yes technically if this map were
adopted they would meet that requirement but they would still have to go through
a public hearing process and they would have to meet those special findings that
we talked about and so the Planning Commission would have to assess does
that proposal in the manner is it situated appropriately is it situated
appropriately distance from schools shall occur centers parks or other
sensitive land use of appropriate measures set up is it suitably designed
to secure aesthetically compatible with the surrounding area and it won't be a
burden so it's there's all these subjective findings no one noticed in
land use speak that those are called discretionary findings that the planning
commission would still have to make so even if the cannabis dispensary comes
and says we meet the requirements of the chart the planning commission could
still say yes but we use the planning commission based on the feedback or if
the neighbors came out and said we strongly oppose this there's a method by
which the Planning Commission could still say no by virtue of this
discretionary permit path. So that's the point I'm trying to make is that just
because something technically falls on this map is not a by right like oh you
get it. It still has to go through a robust discretionary review process with
the public hearing and people are still dissatisfied with the outcome after the
seven-member Planning Commission makes a decision that can decision can be
appealed right back to the City Council and you all would have the final decision
on that. Irrespective of whatever numbers we come up with today as far as the
distance. That's my point it's just that it's not a by right thing that it's just
one layer of a multi-layered process of review and requirements that they have
to go through. Okay I still think there should be some type of setback and just
not NA maybe 500 is a bit much but I think something should be there and I
think it's good that we're allowing additional dispensaries I support that
for six valid permits I think that's great but I think this map we really
have to fine-tune and not force it where downtown doesn't want it manor
downtown doesn't want it I think there's a lot of a lot of other
Bay Fair we heard doesn't want it greenhouse doesn't want it so I think we
have to be careful with this map thank you is it okay if I had one one
additional comment on that theme I'll make a very brief and we cover this at
length in the Rules Committee but there are the other factor floating around all
this is because of the federal prohibition that affects landlords
ability to lease to cannabis typically if a landlord property owner has any
kind of a federally backed mortgage so for example they basically have a loan
from a bank then they're particularly going to prohibit cannabis uses so that
factor in of itself also there's a huge limiting factor in the ability for a
cannabis dispensary operator to find a viable site meaning they either have to
to buy the property outright without a loan,
or they have to find a business, a property owner
who owns it without a federally backed loan or mortgage,
and who is willing to allow the use.
So when you overlay all those factors,
just kind of speaking to that,
that there's kind of inherent complexity
to finding a site irrespective of what number,
distance numbers we wind up today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm gonna go to Councilmember Aguilar, next, online.
Thank you, Mayor Gonzalez,
and thank you, Eric, for the presentation.
I just wanna let folks that dispensaries
are welcomed in district three.
I think I have most of them in my district.
I think with regards to the setbacks,
my council colleague does make a good point
with regards to libraries.
I think like you mentioned with regards
to the Pine Commission, I had a dispensary,
there are many sites, you know, that are viable for dispensaries in San Leandro. So if there is,
is there an exception process where if a dispensary is within that setback,
can they apply for an exception to go through planning to verify, you know, for planning to
verify whether or not, you mentioned a boulevard or freeway or a channel separating a neighborhood.
Would that be a possibility for a dispensary to apply for an exception?
The current code does not provide detailed clarity on such an exemption. However, if the
council were to direct us to move forward with this recommended modification to our definitions
in our municipal code. It would indeed provide a path forward for the planning commission to use
to utilize as a mechanism to allow such a deviation such as council member Aguilar just described.
Thank you Eric and I know there are some you know businesses that are just that are desolate that
that, you know, a dispenser can perfectly fit
in that location.
So I just want to be amenable to that,
but I do support the extra licenses.
Was there any talk in expanding the licenses to eight or 10?
Was that a conversation?
Mr. Mayor, okay, if I address that question, Council Member.
No, there was not.
staff at the time of the initial proposal
did not include numbers as of the depth beyond that.
We actually, well, the original staff proposal
just referenced the existing number of four permits.
Rules committee consensus was to allow two more
for a grand total of six.
Gotcha, okay, I support the six licenses.
And we had a public commenter who mentioned
a license, so let's say Harbor Side or NUG has a license
and they're actually, what is it called?
Cultivating, I believe.
Would that, that would be considered an extra license.
So that would be considered two licenses.
So if Harbor Side was looking to do the same thing as NUG,
that would be four licenses total.
Would that be an additional license?
Presently we have an adopted ordinance that the council had separately adopted via separate option that prohibits commercial scale cultivation of cannabis in San
Leandro
So to the extent your reference to cultivation that we currently prohibit it basically
The only exception is prop 64 allows by right of any resident of California
I think have six plants for personal use in their domicile, but that's for personal consumption only not for commercial
So there's insanely under there's no current permit path what available to to conduct commercial scale cultivation
So basically any cannabis sold at our dispatch retail dispensaries has to be grown or cultivated another jurisdiction and allows it
budget and is that an option to
allow
cultivation and Xandli under I
mean certainly state law allows cities to make that decision and so to the extent the city council desired to
modify the previous ordinance that prohibited commercial accultivation the
council has that prerogative of it so it so chose and that's something that I
would support okay thank you for her for that eric those are my questions at
this point in time we have reached our time limit do I have a motion to extend
Vice Mayor motion to extend a 1015 do I have a second on that motion council
member bolt it looks like. Thank you just for the record, I know it wasn't
recorded. I'll second that sir. Thank you so much. So at this point in time please
vote. Motion to extend until 10-15. Council member Aguilar may we have your
vote please? Aye. Thank you. The motion carries unanimously. Okay I think everyone
has had a chance to speak at least once.
So I'd like to just weigh in just a little bit,
and then I'll come back for a second round.
Because part of what I'm struggling with
is I'm not getting a lot of consensus.
I haven't heard any opposition to expanding
the number of permits, so let's just start with that.
And so I think that from a staff direction perspective,
we're going to be fine with that.
Where I'm hearing just a lot of folks going back and forth,
what do we do with downtown?
What do we do with the downtown manor at the intersection
of Farnsworth and Manor?
What do we do about this location?
What do we do about that location?
So I don't think that we have consensus there yet.
I do think that at least I'm getting the sense
that there is some sensitivity to libraries
and there's sensitivity to neighborhoods.
And what exactly that looks like, I'm not sure.
But what I will point out just as an FYI, in some sense,
when you look at neighborhoods, there are like seven,
slightly less than half the cities that say,
nowhere near a neighborhood,
because we just don't let it happen in the city.
So I think that there's some,
it's not like we're an outlier in that sense.
We just have to think about the broader county.
Now, this is a more progressive area,
and so I think we take that into consideration.
But what I think is being proposed is zero.
And I'm not sensing that there's broad support for that.
Big picture, I think what I'm gonna end up recommending
is that given the discussion that's happened here
that we go back to rules and kind of try to hammer it out
a little bit more to come back with something
that's gonna be more sufficiently palatable
but we'll let council members weigh in.
I think at rules I had asked about liquor store permits
and trying to make sure that we're at least somewhat
analogous as proposed would these be aligning to what we do for liquor stores
defer to our planning manager on the setback requirements for just just for
clarification your questions regarding the minimum separation requirement
between liquor stores yes as I look through if I instead of saying cannabis
dispensary and I just said liquor store for example bar right I just I'm trying
to draw a connection to what we do and just big picture is it similar or is it
materially different if you can give me one moment I have in my notes but okay
okay because I know we talked about it I just don't think that that answer ever
came back I'm struggling to see it myself but it is online on our website I
I do think that one thing that's instructive about what we're
experiencing here is I don't have anybody from the public, from the
neighborhoods, from the wherever speaking. I don't know what that means, right? It doesn't seem to
cause a lot of turmoil. Is it that we haven't done enough outreach? Is it that
people really just don't care? But I'm struggling with that because we're up
here protecting individuals to some degree but I don't hear the individuals
speaking out so I'm just I'm notating that I don't really know what to do it's
just more of a comment of what I'm observing someone come back to my
council members but my inclination right now is to kind of go back with rules or
okay on the permits but let's kind of do a little bit more vetting and maybe some
public exploration. Coming first to council member Bould and then to
council member Bowen. Yes thank you and I will say the context that council member
Bould gave helped me a little bit with this idea because I'm looking at the map
and I'm saying did you know I'm sure you did but did we look at some of the other
schools besides just USD for instance St. Leander's or St. Felicitas or
assumption how they align in that group but with the context that councilmember
Bowen said you guys would look at any of the schools be it that we said that
there was a child care right behind the shopping center on Estadillo so I
appreciate that that makes a little more sense and I think a vice mayor would
call this teasing out some of the information that we have because I
I think it is really important and I do support growing the number of licenses that we have
from four to six, that's fine.
But I will reiterate that the libraries, I think that's a good idea maybe go back and
kind of figure out what we could do around the libraries and then one that I didn't see
and maybe you guys discussed it but didn't come up was senior centers and what that means
and what they think, you know from the bottom to the top let's make sure we're
doing it all. I think it's important for us to make sure that when we're making
these decisions were and I'm not saying nobody is not doing what they need to do
but I just wanted to raise that up so I would support that we go back to rules
and kind of clean it up a little especially around libraries and and some
of these little blips on the map that showed this would be a good spot and I'm
looking at it going oh it'd be a horrible spot so. Councilmember Bellin
please. Thank you. I would actually support changing the or not changing the
the set back for libraries, keeping it as is,
and supporting the others,
these amendments.
In terms of, you know,
I was just thinking about senior centers,
it's interesting because I did the research
around trends with cannabis use
and more people actually use cannabis,
consumed cannabis, not showed the language around it,
but then alcohol, actually.
And so there's a real market for it that, again, is regulated.
If we want to increase the number of permits,
but not increase where they could be located,
then we're just increasing permits
for the same pool of locations that is already
less than optimal in terms of where they could be.
And I've heard numerous times, like a phrase around,
like we don't wanna force this on anybody.
I'm not so sure how having expanded eligibility
forces it upon any particular person or neighborhood
because they still have to go through
all of the eligible setbacks that we talked about,
plus the financing, plus the planning commission process,
plus just public comment in general.
there's already going to be extensive opportunity and general challenges to
being able to have one so if we're going to ask if we're going to increase
permitting then we do need to increase where they could be otherwise then why
are we increasing permitting because that's the problem that we have right
now councilmember Simon please as far as the public coming out and speaking is
past 10 o'clock and most people are sleeping so it's really hard for the
public to speak and we as council members represent our districts and I
think we're each doing doing a pretty good job at that I know I've spoken to
my constituents about this sounds like councilmember Aguilar has too and
district 3 has quite a bit of industrial area it has some residential industrial
and he's representing his district and more than happy to open up district 3
so we are increasing the area not just the number of permits so we are making
big strides here I think we should take an incremental approach I think just
opening up the floodgates is is too much I think we should take a stepwise
approach and I think we can flush that out more in rules I agree with that but
I think looking at just the map here of District 3 there's a lot of purple in
District three that's open to us to talk about and school routes. We also
have to talk about in the manner or oil. There's one way to get to a royal
that's down Washington Avenue over the bridge and hundreds of kids walk down
that route and you're going to put one right along a high school kid route. We
have to think about that too. Uh, so I look forward to this coming back to
rules and if we can make some good ground here I think we just have to be
take a stepwise approach. Thank you. Okay so at this point in time I feel like
there's a consensus to take the discussion that's happened today. I know
that Deputy City Manager is taking a lot of notes, City Manager is also taking a
lot of notes, I've taken a lot of notes and I think Rules Committee members have
taken notes. So to take all that feedback and go back to rules and take another
to bite at this apple, but with kind of a little bit more narrow scope on what's on the table.
Are any final thoughts from council members before we break for the evening? Council member,
Aguilar, please. Just just just a quick comment, mayor. A quick ask is that, you know, I think we
had the chamber speak and, you know, advocate on behalf of of SLEA. But, you know, I think we
we should also really consider downtown
because that's the heart of the city.
And if there's any way that we can allow a dispensary
in that vicinity, that would be a great asset in that sense.
So that's just my ask on that.
Thank you.
And so these thoughts will come back to Rules Committee.
That's the will of this council.
Right now, the time is 10.13, and we are returned.