Sometimes what we found was that the requirements oftentimes were about maybe even 50% higher
Than what a private developer actually wished to provide oftentimes in terms of actual parking
And the really the the impact of this is it negatively impacts viability and affordability of development
For those of you who are not familiar about how much parking costs
It can start at about roughly about ten thousand dollars for a surface space
roughly about $50,000 per space for a parking structure and
$70,000 and above for an underground space
So parking quickly becomes a multi-million dollar investment
and you can see how it drives the affordability of
Projects not to say that parking isn't desired by developers oftentimes developers will want to provide parking
But they don't want to over supply parking which is the issue that we currently face and a lot of empty parking spaces at certain areas
last thing is that we do find there's actually there are actually opportunities
to better share parking either between new uses or with uses are existing to
really make most use of empty lots where we can so what are we proposing here the
biggest change that we are proposing that Lord has mentioned was changing
minimum parking requirements throughout the city and we'd essentially be
recommending that in two zones the first zone is within a half a mile of what we
call your major transit stops. Major transit stops are either your rail
system or your the tempo line essentially the BRT and you can see that
here in the blue buffered areas it takes up you know a fair amount of the city. I
will note that in these areas currently state legislation AB 2097 has already
eliminated most almost all of your minimum parking requirements in these
areas anyways, so our sole recommendation really for this this part of the city is just to eliminate
those remaining minimum parking requirements that exist, primarily for event centers and hotels. I
think it's really the two things. Outside of those half mile areas, essentially all in the green area
that we see here on the map, we're kind of we're offering two options. One is either to reduce
minimum parking requirements to better align with market demand, so as I said a lot of the requirements
right now are maybe roughly 50% higher than the actual demand or to eliminate
minimum parking requirements altogether and simply let the market and private
development decide how much parking they need to provide. Oftentimes in
circumstances like this if you were to build you know a development in the more
suburban part of the city a developer will want to provide parking simply
because their their tenants or their residents will likely bring cars and they
know that in order to sell or lease units they will need to provide parking
so these are the two options essential we're providing you today we are there I
should note too there is some zoning designation called the BTOD designation
that currently exists within the city that has some maximum parking
requirements associated with that we are not recommending changing those those
are actually set by state law so if you see that in your packets that's that's
why those are still in there. So our recommendation as of right now of the
of these two options is at the very least is to go with reducing minimum
parking requirements and not only reducing them but consolidating them
from many many many different categories down to about half a dozen and there's
good reason to do this particularly and the consolidation really happens on the
non-residential side, is because this really helps businesses turn over at the
end of the day. I always like to liken it to saying I own a flower shop, it's
successful, I do well, I go out of business. My colleague Alex wants to come
in with a restaurant, he can't. The restaurant requires significantly more
parking than my flower shop does, so the shop sits empty and this prevents
businesses from turning over easily when they don't have similar parking
requirements associated with them. So the consolidation really helps. Two is that
we, as you can see, from the middle column to the right column, the existing
requirements, the proposed requirements, that they've all been lowered to a
pretty significant degree in some cases. For the multifamily or multi-unit
residential, generally speaking it's about half a space per unit lower. And
again, we use, this is not just randomly plucked out thin air, we use industry
data actually looking at peak parking demands for these various uses and also
compare them to the supply that many developments here in the city currently
provide similarly with office space and commercial uses going to two spaces per
thousand square feet and three spaces per thousand square feet again this
actually aligns very closely with what peak demands are for those areas and of
course it ranges again from industrial which is much lower to institutional as
well. And when we talked to stakeholders about all of this there was very strong
support for either reducing or eliminating minimum parking requirements
all together because there was a general sentiment among the various
stakeholders that we talked with that yes while parking is essential and
people do like to have it to get around that dictating higher requirements that
result in empty spaces is not beneficial for the affordability of the community
or for other objectives of the community like the Climate Action Plan. In addition
to vehicles we're also talking about bicycle parking requirements and these
bicycle parking requirements cover both short and long-term bicycle parking so
again like a bike rack you might just pull up to if you're you know up to a
coffee shop long term if it's like a locker for example for a variety of uses
but we're also starting to include things in here that more up-to-date
codes are included. These days it's not just a bicycle, now you have a cargo bike,
now you have an adaptive bike, and sometimes these bikes are different
sizes. Traditional bike is about 2 feet by 6 feet needed space, cargo bike,
adaptive bike is about 3 by 10. So having standards that align with that. Similarly
having charging for e-bikes, e-bikes are becoming much more ubiquitous these days.
employees, for larger uses like offices and industrial having showers and lockers available
for employees to use.
And these minimums here are, as you can see, kind of similarly set up on the left and the
right and you probably don't want to have to squint hard and read all those numbers.
But the main thing that we're really driving at here is the code currently calculates a
lot of the bicycle parking, as you can see the short-term spaces in the existing requirements
column as a percentage of the vehicle requirements so if you provide 20 car
spaces you provide one short-term bicycle space regardless of whether or
not you know it's a strange calculation to make I'll say to boot the code also
has no long-term bicycle parking requirements outside of the be Todd
areas for most of the non-residential uses I think I need a non-residential so
So across the board, I think we're generally recommending increases to both short-term
and long-term spaces as well as the associated requirements for adaptive cargo, etc.
In addition to this, there's two other areas I'd just like to touch on to wrap it up.
One has to do with unbundled parking.
So unbundled, for those of you who are not familiar with the practice, unbundled parking
essentially separates the cost of parking from the leasing or sale price of a unit.
So I go, I get an apartment, I pay $2,000.
The parking space might be included in that space,
in that price, or I might pay $1,800
and have the option of paying $200 for my parking space.
And so this is what we call unbundled parking.
State law, AB 1317 already requires communities
in Alameda County to unbundle
for developments that are 16 units or more.
So this is just a slightly beefed up version of that,
I should say.
So that covers everything from five units or more.
But the reason why you do this is because it really increases
housing affordability.
So people are not required to essentially at least
or purchase parking spaces that they don't need,
and that they can purchase spaces that they do want,
and actually want to use.
And lastly, I'll end on the shared parking note
that I talked about.
And this is really more about, I mean, both good practice,
but also complying with state law.
There's two state laws out there, AB 894,
which essentially says that communities
must allow shared parking within 2,000 feet of a site.
Right now, shared parking in a very limited sense
is allowed within the city, but this would very much broaden it
so that if I'm in development and I come in,
that if something is within 1,000 feet walking distance,
not as a crow flies walking distance,
that I can agree to jointly use their facilities
if there's parking available.
The other piece is AB 2097, which I talked about before,
which eliminates minimum parking requirements.
There's also a lesser known clause in there
that allows cities to require that any time
a development is built in these areas,
the city can require that any or all of that parking
during some or all the day is publicly accessible.
So if I have a business and my hours are nine to five,
the city can require that my parking be publicly accessible
outside of business hours
so that I can't simply chain off my lot.
The law also allows cities to require price
and car share parking as well,
but that really wasn't the intent of this.
So that covers all the parking pieces of this.
And with this, I will turn it over to Alex Mercuri
to talk about TDM.
Thank you and good evening, members of the commission.
I'm Alex McCury with Nelson Nygaard,
and it's a pleasure to talk to you about the TDM components
of this project.
I'll give a quick recap about the TDM process.
We started reviewing existing conditions and plans.
We did some best practice research
to look at what other cities in California
are doing to get some sense of the different shapes and sizes
that TDM programs can come in.
We met with stakeholders, received lots of input,
and feedback about the different ways that TDM can happen
and the different potential benefits and concerns.
And then we produced recommendations memo
and draft ordinance.
So that's where we are today.
Some of the key findings that came out
of those early phases of work
were that there are challenges today for TDM.
Staff time at the city and funding for TDM are limited.
development is not in a position to absorb
major new requirements or costs.
And behavior change, which we heard a lot of positive feedback
about from stakeholders, we recognize takes time.
It's difficult for TDM to happen all at once.
It takes a lot of work over years
to shift people's attitudes about how they travel.
So despite those challenges, we recognize
that we have to start somewhere, that taking that first step
is really important in building a successful TDM program.
And once you have a program, it can grow, it can adapt,
it can expand, but having a sort of starter approach
can provide a lot of benefits
that you can build on in the long run.
And there are some immediate benefits to consolidating
some of the requirements that exist today
at the regional level to make work easier for staff
and easier for developers to follow and comply with.
Our approach embraces these findings.
So some of the key principles that
led to the development of the ordinance and guidelines
were focusing on a starter TDM framework that
had simple, clear, easy to follow requirements and guidance,
as well as supporting guidelines to help educate
and to help developers implement.
It includes both mandatory and optional strategies
to make sure that folks are doing things that are important and providing also flexibility
in how TDM is implemented and how the requirements are satisfied. And all of these requirements
are really calibrated to the local conditions and constraints. Again, focusing on not creating
new costs for development, not requiring new resources at the city to manage or implement
of these programs and aligning those programs
with existing requirements at the regional level
and growing that program over time.
So where we landed with our recommendations
are really anchored in these five core components.
As I mentioned, a set of mandatory TDM measures
that are slightly different for residential
and for non-residential land uses.
Selection of optional TDM measures
where projects must pick at least one
that have flexibility to pick something that works best
for that project or the context.
A simple TDM checklist for staff to review
to ensure that developers are complying
with the requirements.
And a mode share survey every two years
to see how the strategies are working
and to start to provide data to staff
to manage the program and adapt over time.
Compliance would be done through a self-certification process.
Again, focusing on minimizing the need
for new responsibilities for staff.
I'll quickly go through some of the details
before wrapping up.
So the requirements come in kind of three buckets here.
So this focuses on a brief summary of the thresholds
for which projects would be subject to TDM requirements.
So for non-residential projects,
these would apply to projects that are 50,000
or more gross square feet.
and for residential projects, new developments
that are 25 or more dwelling units.
Again, submittal requirements would consist
of a simple TDM checklist rather than an extensive plan,
and monitoring and reporting would be done
through self-certification submitted to city staff.
Mandatory TDM measures would include a mode share survey,
again, to gather data and to ensure
that measures are working as intended,
supporting TDM efforts with education and information
efforts.
This is a really important part of successful TDM,
reaching out to people, teaching them about their options,
helping them learn how to navigate modes of travel
they may not be familiar with.
So a few different specific recommendations
for non-residential and for residential projects.
And then supporting TDM with parking management strategies
that align with the same principles of meeting mobility
needs without overbuilding parking or over-incentivizing
parking.
Optional measures, again, the recommendation
is that each project must select at least one.
And there's a slightly different list of options, again,
for non-residential versus residential projects.
Options include flexible work arrangements,
providing pre-tax transportation benefits,
providing or contributing funding to shuttle service,
and providing end of trip amenities for people
who walk, bike, or roll, providing information on site
in the form of real time transit information displays,
installing bicycle repair and maintenance tools
and facilities, and providing financial incentives
as parking cash out or discounts and incentives
to try other modes.
For residential projects, also considering
on site amenities that support delivery services
and package services, as well as on-site car share service.
I'll just close with some considerations
for growing this kind of starter approach over time.
In the long run, successful TDM programs
do require additional resources, things like staff time
to make sure that developments are complying with requirements
to kind of proactively go out and audit or just work hand
in hand with developers to make things successful.
That will take time and resources.
And also, financial resources to directly fund TDM offerings
and mobility services.
Complementing and supporting TDM with these resources,
with more informational resources,
investing in a transportation management organization, a TMO,
like the one that operates the Link Shuttle, that
can be a great partner for growing these programs
with a lot of hands-on experience.
And then lastly, strengthening the program
by ratcheting up the requirements.
So increasing the number of optional measures
that must be selected, phasing out
some of the lower-cost optional measures that
may be working well today, but over time,
maybe not doing enough for the goals of the city.
And then expanding monitoring and enforcement efforts
beyond self-certification.
Again, those would be really beneficial things
to consider in the long run
but would be directly integrated
into this kind of starter approach
that we're recommending tonight.
With that, I'll turn it back over to Lourdes.
Thank you so much for being patient while we present.
I'll just read off the formal recommendation.
So staff does recommend that the Planning Commission
adopt the resolution recommending that city council repeal and replace zoning code chapter 4.0 8
off-street parking and loading regulations and adopt zoning code chapter 4.1 zero
Transportation demand management and we are available for questions
Thank you for the report. Appreciate that
Does the Commission have any questions for staff? You should be hot now Commissioner rich
Thank you. Sorry
No worries.
Fantastic report.
Thank you very much that you synthesized
a lot of complex information in a way
that was easily digestible.
That's not an easy thing to do, I appreciate that.
I also had some questions beforehand
and I thank Secretary Wayland-Lee
for responding to those or staff responding to those.
I do wanna follow up on two of those.
One is regarding the TDM,
the applicability of renovation as a trigger for the TDM,
I heard clearly in the parking presentation that this was for new developments and we're
not adding requirements to existing uses and I think that's clear in the 4.08. The 4.10
includes some language at the end that appears to extend it to renovation that impacts more than 20
square feet or something even if there is no change in use or no expansion of the gross square footage.
And um is that is from the from the answers I got understand is that's intentional and that we're
intending to extend the TDM to projects that do not do not increase the gross square footage
and do not do a change in use but they involve a renovation above a certain gross square footage
or percentage. Is that accurate?
All right, so that's partially correct.
So what if the TDM would apply to new developments with those thresholds that we see above,
but for any significant additions or changes of use,
this would apply to renovations that would trigger the 40,000 square foot addition,
which, again, a renovation does not necessarily include a footprint expansion, right?
But if you are renovating and for example, say you have an apartment building that has
50 units, but you've decided to convert them to
70 units now you're adding 20 residential units
so really the trigger there is the number of units right a
Renovation with those number of units or if it's a non-residential project
it would be a renovation with that square footage which technically that wouldn't apply but if you write an addition of
40,000 square feet and a gross square feet then that would trigger
complying with the TDM ordinance
So if we're looking at four point ten point one oh three applicability
section three B
It says all renovations additions or changes of use that impact at least twenty percent of existing project gross square footage
This applies to right. That's you that's projects that do not have a change in use and project have not added any square footage
Okay, so I want to make sure I follow the to the letter of what you're saying. Can you repeat that?
So the heading under I found it in there just maybe the last cause
Do you have a question for me? Yes, if you can repeat. Okay, I'll start with the heading
It says significant additions or changes of use and then under
3b it says all renovations it adds the words renovations there
Which doesn't which we don't see in 4.08 and we don't see in the heading there
So in addition to additions or changes of use that now we're adding renovations as a trigger for the applicability of the TDM
Right. It seems that seems to be throwing the net considerably broader than the heading indicates or that 4.08
indicates and
My question is first is that intentional and if it is how are we going to define renovations?
How are we going to with how are we making that determination?
it seems pretty easy to understand if we're changing the use very clear if we are adding gross square footage very clear of
The renovation is it could be building permit and that could certainly be it or it could be
Is there a planning?
Some sort of planning on so how are we going to determine renovations? I would hate for
As much as I support this I think is a fantastic program. We've got here
I hate for a roofing project for example that requires a building permit arguably affects more than 20% of the gross square foot
It's ready to be triggering TDM
Not that TDM right now is difficult, but that clearly this is a starter program as we heard and we're looking to
ideally
Improve it down the road
And the word is intended to be used more generally speaking and to encompass the scenario in which maybe you're not adding
Square footage to the existing building footprint, but for example, you might have an industrial building with a certain portion of it
Usually 10% rate dedicated to office
but if you decide to expand that office and that office and not add to the footprint of the building and that would be a
change of views and if that gross square footage that becomes office is 40,000 square feet or more
then this would apply. So there can be renovations where there are no physical additions
usually coupled with changes of views and so I think that's why we kind of lumped up all that
overarching concept of the renovations additions and changes of views together.
But we are welcome to any changes where you think that might clarify.
I'll I'll add that the commission desires to
to amend the heading to make that clear and
recommend that we include
Some more parameters on what the term renovation means. I think staff would be happily to support that addition
Thank you and my second question is is
pretty small really but
As a bicyclist I parked my bicycle at lockers at BART and I believe the dimensions of the lockers at BART are not compliant with
With our parking that we've established now because they use these
Triangular shaped parking that you can access from either side. So
It's not a rectangle
With two feet clear the whole way it starts wider it went in maybe three feet at one in two and a half and then it
Goes down to nothing as as triangles do
And so it's a I think it's a little longer than what is shown in here and a little wider at one end
But it goes to nothing at the other end and it requires a clear space on either side
So it may not this may not be something that comes up, but it is
it's something I wouldn't want to prohibit because it they're
Manufactured and they're widely available and they seem to work if you've got space on both sides
And I think I moved into comments instead of questions there so I apologize for that
So I'm done
Okay to bring Brian though
You can either answer at the desk or if you'd like to come
Yeah, no, absolutely. We're happy to provide more flexibility in dimensions here. What we provided was camps
Standard right and you see that in many different codes around the around the country, but if we're looking
To add more flexibility so we don't prohibit these sorts of things from coming in happy to make those additions
Thank you. Those are my questions
Thank You commissioner rich moving on to commissioners uber
Thank You lordus that was a great report and and thank you both lots of details
Just a few questions here and and I don't have a page number or anything to reference
So I'll just kind of go to the order that I have the questions
For unbundled parking
When we talk about the management, right
So there was a response to one of the questions regarding parking management strategies
You know, how do you ensure that people who decided or chose not to pay for parking aren't parking in
every single spot in every single neighborhood and and the response was that you know, well
It could potentially take several forms including time limited parking and carb
You know curb restrictions, and I'm wondering if parking requiring requiring parking permits in
residential areas
Where people are already parking in front of their own homes or things like that?
Is this something I'm thinking of Berkeley if you've ever been to Berkeley and you can see that
After a certain hour you aren't even allowed to park on those streets because people are coming home from work
And if you're parked there, they can't park in front of their own home
So I'm I'm just throwing that out there if that's something that the city is up for
You know considering for residents
I do think that you could get into situations where people are going to become very combative
in certain situations
So we the city does have a residential parking permit program
It is written such that it would only apply in residential areas, right? And so the DA and SA
Zoning districts are not technically residential zoning districts. So there's a bit of a difficulty there
That would be something that Public Works would have to explore as that's within their purview
but there are
you know, sometimes other measures portions of downtown already have time limitations and some parking meters and
Enforcement on a staff that follows through on that
Okay, but in a residential area residents have some type of outlet to be able to communicate that things are
Okay. Yes, I believe it's
Just roughly. I believe there's some sort of petitioned certain number of people people and then it gets brought up to a
specific committee I believe I
Don't know if you wanted to add
Okay
There was a there was a slide
for the below, you know, you had this chart of,
it was this amount of parking spaces required, 1.5,
and now this is what's being proposed.
If you could bring that up again.
What I noticed is that for the below market rate units,
for the same amount of bedrooms,
you're requiring less parking spaces
for the below market rate units.
And I'm sure this is purely developer driven
based off of does it pencil out
because below market rate,
they're not making the same amount of revenue
off of a below market rate development.
But has there been any study to show
that below market rate tenants or users
or residents have any less vehicles than market rate?
That is a, can you hear me?
Yup, okay.
That is a perfectly legitimate question.
And I will say yes.
So if you look at, generally the manual we tend to go to
for industry-wide data is called the Institute
of Transportation Engineers Parking Generation.
When you do look at that, you can see on the whole
that parking demand for affordable housing units
is lower than what it is for market rate.
I will note that when we talk about affordable housing,
we could be talking about many different things,
anywhere from moderate income all the way
to very low or extremely low income.
And I will say that within those categories,
there are significant differences.
So if you're talking about moderate income housing,
no, the vehicle usage is roughly the same.
If you're talking very low, extremely low,
yes, the vehicle usage is significantly lower.
But for the purposes of setting the code,
we kind of lumped it together into one affordable category.
Okay. And then for residential,
there were some requirements for the T for the TDM for you know the different
types of uses and I'm wondering for residential oh yeah there it was like
two slides back there had the pictures of the bikes and things I think on it
this one or this one here so for residential buildings I'm wondering if
you couldn't add as a requirement bicycle repair if it's not already no
actually let me go to the other slide that's actually on one of the TDM slides
Alex help me out here which one is it bicycle repair do I speak sure yes thank
you for that that comment we can certainly consider that right now it's
one of our optional measures so that would be something a residential
project could provide to satisfy TDM requirements but we seem like a low
asked to make it a requirement yes it is definitely the lowest cost probably
lowest complexity option to satisfy and we could certainly promote it to the
mandatory measures okay and then for the required shared the city has the option
to require that there is, you know, in some circumstances shared parking, right?
So if we could just go back to that slide. So would the required shared parking,
let's say I'm the one who owns the office building and then people come home
in the evening and they are required, the office building is required to
share their parking lot. Correct. Is that paid or unpaid? It doesn't actually the
law itself AB-2097 doesn't specify that but ostensibly it should I think what
they're envisioning was unpaid that would be public what they the law
technically doesn't say shared it says publicly accessible and so you can
interpret that I suppose in different ways. Yeah because it seems like if they
they make you pay for it, then it's not really sure,
it's not really accessible.
Exactly, and that's why I would say,
if it actually came to a court decision,
I would think that the intention was free.
Right, right, okay.
And that's part of AB 2097?
Correct.
Okay, great.
Last question, thank you for your patience.
There was an optional TDM requirement, I believe,
that said, and I believe this was for office buildings,
that they could say, flexible work arrangements.
Yes.
And it seems like that is a no-brainer.
Everybody's gonna say, yeah,
we have flexible work arrangements.
So it seems like you would wanna,
if you're gonna make that an option,
it should have some teeth to it.
Like, you know, this percentage of hours per week
employees you know we offer it to the spending man hours a week are flexible
right because it otherwise it doesn't really mean anything if there's no
numbers or requirements thank you yes to offset the parking yeah that's a great
really appreciate that suggestion we had you have some additional details but
could go further to making sure that that was a meaningful requirement yeah I
I don't know the number but I'm sure you guys can do the math okay, thank you very much
Thank You Commissioner Zuber
Commission or vice chair Mendoza
Thank you. Thank you for the presentation
I'm gonna make a quick quick coming and I'm gonna get to some questions that are relevant. I
seen
And this is something that I often
Coming on I seems like a pattern when it comes to developers whether it's
commercial or housing that they're seeking I mean they talk about cost
that prohibit you know being pencil out certain developers developments and it
seems that they you know the mentioned requirements you know CEQA requirements
environmental requirements affordable housing requirements now parking
requirements and what something that comes to mind to me is that you have a
a regulatory framework related to developers,
but once you start applying all these exemptions
in order to make projects pencil out,
then it seems that the actual regulatory framework
becomes almost meaningless,
because by the time you add up
all the exceptions that they're getting,
the regulatory framework is being diminished.
And I see regulations as protecting the public
and the public interest.
So there's something in general that I see often,
or my opinion, basically.
Now, regarding the specific issue,
and I get to an anecdote, an experience that I went through,
has there been any analysis regarding the reduce
of parking requirements, my impact neighborhoods
like parking availability in neighborhoods
and also how it might impact seniors,
low-income people, disabled people.
And I'm gonna give you one example
that I should be probably ashamed of,
but I'm still gonna say it anyway.
In the last 13 years, I lived in San Leandro.
I never had a parking ticket ever.
In the last six months, I got in two.
And let me tell you what happened.
I went to downtown San Leandro,
and there was a parking meter with the new apps
and all this stuff, and I looked at it,
and it seems to me that it said
that it had 50 minutes left, right?
And I've seen that in other places,
but actually, it said that the minimum,
Anyway, I read it wrong, and I walked away and got a ticket.
And I'm a technologist.
I work with technology for servers and Unix
and all that stuff for many years.
So my worry is that if the parking is diminished,
and places where people were previously parked
with any problem, now you have all these new meters
and electronics, that you need apps now.
And you need to go and get your license plate
and enter into this device.
And it seems to me like maybe some seniors
might have an issue with downloading the app
and all that stuff.
So I'm concerned about that aspect.
And I think I just have all my questions.
Sure.
No, happy to answer here.
So I'm going to answer it kind of in two parts,
because when we go, sorry, I'll scroll back up
where the appropriate graphic is. Yep, okay. Here we go. Because ultimately we
really are talking about two two parts of the city. So in the blue shaded areas
they're well called the AB-297 zones. Right now you more or less have no
Minoma parking requirements right now for most things. You can't require parking
for most things to be built regardless. And that's just something that every
community in California is learning to grapple with in terms of how you
you properly manage your on-street parking. Even developments built in those
areas are still providing parking oftentimes in many cases. So that's one.
The other side in terms of whether or not you reduce parking, your minimum
parking requirements or choose to eliminate them all together. Right now
your parking requirements are set so high that I can almost guarantee that in
many cases you'll build a lot of empty parking spaces at the end of the day.
they won't even be filled. So when we gave this option to reduce or eliminate
we set the reduction basically to what the peak demand would be. So we said you
know what if you eliminate part minimum parking requirements altogether you
stand a greater chance of having more on-street spillover right and that can't
happen which is why we reduced them still but then eliminate them altogether
right so you still have that kind of safety blanket in there. I will note too
that even having minimum parking requirements doesn't prevent spillover
parking, right? So oftentimes you have an apartment building or even just houses in
general and people's most convenient option will be to park on street
because it's free and it's available and frankly in the hierarchy of parking
people love to park on street because it's the easiest thing to get your car
too. So even having really high and minimum parking requirements won't
necessarily always solve your on-street spillover issue. Now again, eliminating
parking requirements might altogether I could understand why that would might
give you concern. There may not be enough parking. Again, some
developments would still provide parking, but with the reduced minimum parking
requirements that we're talking about, we're still setting those to the peak
demand. Not like midway, not somewhere there, it seems lower than what you
currently have, but I would emphasize that your current minimum parking
requirements. I doubt there was any actual empirical analysis about how those were set
to begin with. All right. Thank you. I share moving back to Commissioner Zuber. Commissioner
Mendoza's comments just reminded me of a study that was done in Chicago was not actually
a study. It's a it's a situation in the city of Chicago, which we're nowhere near the city
of Chicago in size, but where the city allowed
a public parking garage or facility,
or they handed over all of the meters and the public parking,
do you know what I'm talking about,
to a private organization who then absolutely
gouges the residents?
And so I only mention this because I'm wondering,
And I fully embrace this staff report
and what we're trying to do here in San Leandro.
But I'm trying to figure out if anyone has thought
about a circumstance where a developer comes in
and they don't really, they reduce the parking
and that's fine and well.
But then there is an adjacent open parcel or something
and then someone privatizes this parcel,
or they start to use this parcel as very high parking,
high price parking, or say,
oh, well, now since we don't have,
since people don't have parking
and they can't park in the neighborhood,
now we're gonna build more parking structures.
I'm just trying to,
if there's been any kind of studies
that show that this is what happens,
or if it's really more of a positive outcome?
Well, it probably doesn't shock you to think or hear this,
but it's more of a positive outcome,
at least from what we've observed.
Now I will say, and there's reasons for this.
If you do have high demand areas,
there will be spontaneous cases
of kind of privatized parking, right?
You go to a Dodgers game, sorry, it's down in LA,
but whatever, any sports game, I'm not from LA.
But it made me think of it because I do know
In those areas, people oftentimes
will rent their parking spaces, because they
know it's a high demand thing and they're
willing to make a buck.
Sure, you can park in my driveway.
Those things will always exist, and that will naturally
just occur.
In terms of actually providing and building parking,
though, that's expensive stuff you're talking about.
And there were some organizations that,
I should say companies, that actually
tried this model of coming in and saying, OK,
you have a parking lot, let me run it for you to price it
so that people could use it.
They haven't really taken off.
It hasn't really been that successful because oftentimes,
frankly, as soon as any price was introduced,
and especially in an off-street lot that's less convenient,
it basically just killed its usage.
I actually did a project two years ago down in Santa Clara
County where an independent lot owner tried
to do that in the downtown.
Yes, I'm going to price this lot.
no one came because there was no incentive to.
So again, pricing in itself is not bad,
but you really wanna be careful in the circumstances
in which you use it and actually justify it
because of the high demand.
Hopefully that answers your question.
Yeah, no, that does help.
And Whelan or Lourdes, I don't know,
does the city have a map that identifies,
does the zoning map, I should say,
identify open parcels that could potentially be developed as parking lots
or parking structures. We've maybe at times we've met certain semi-vacuum
parcels but we do have used regulations that speak to whether or not a parking
lot can be installed as the land is right similar to retail sales or
industrial. And so they do vary by the zoning district. Just a quick check right now for
DA 1, which is the northern area of East 14th spanning, you know, once you hit the residential
units behind, they would only be allowed to establish a parking lot, right, a paid parking
lot kind of situation within administrative review, which is a zoning permit staff level,
they have to show that this would actually work okay yeah I just I'm just
thinking of what a city could look like if we start to like let allow every open
parcel to then become parking and yeah so there are some controls one of the
things that we notice here is for example the broad blue area the AB 2097
no parking required zones a lot of them are actually sort of portions of
residential that are backing up against East 14th being more higher density and
whatnot so generally speaking we don't we wouldn't imagine that somebody would
actually ask for that nor would the residential zoning districts allow a
parking lot to be established okay thank you thank you I just had a couple of
items here you mentioned that you had talked to stakeholders there were a
series of discussions that happened imagine some development firms were
involved in those discussions as well too. Was the general sentiment that the
minimum parking standards that are in place right now are prohibiting them
from using the term that a lot of commissioners have used penciling out
their developments and moving forward? Was that the general sentiment? So we did
talk with developers and I should also note too that we're working with MTC
regionally on parking policy. So I've actually had a chance recently to talk
with many different developers and lenders as part of this too. I will say
this for an affordable housing developer yes the the parking requirements can
oftentimes be prohibitive in terms of just making a pencil out right market
rate you can get away with it a little bit easier because you'll pass the cost
on right they're not gonna eat the cost those empty parking spaces will be paid
by someone else. So oftentimes it becomes less of an issue, but ultimately drives up
the cost of housing kind of needlessly. Sometimes it does actually, even a market
rate circumstance, I have seen it not pencil out entirely. It just depends on
the circumstance, particularly when you get into any sort of garage or underground
parking, immediately it starts causing problems with penciling out because
it's extraordinarily expensive. Gotcha, understood. Yeah, I guess my thought
there is for the market rate developments completely agree. You know, I
think there's a scenario where it makes sense, the cost can be flowed down, new
tenants would ultimately incur that, and if there is a scenario where maybe it
doesn't pencil out for the developer, we've seen it here at the Commission
where those developers come here and petition for a variance. They partition to pay for
the in lieu fees and move down that path of not adhering to what the minimum parking standards
are but instead potentially moving down that pathway of a variance being brought to the
table and considered by the city. So maybe that's one thing I'm trying to balance in
my mind is market rate reducing parking not necessarily holding developers to
the minimum standards that are in place right now and the trickle-down effects
that could be seen to neighborhoods I know you're saying that it may not be an
issue but I've lived it and in my area of San Leandro where I live where there
was a recent three-story development with 40-some odd town
homes that was recently constructed.
And that had a two parking spot covered requirement per parcel.
But we know San Leandro is a multi-generational city.
I mean, two parking spots usually transitions
or translates into four parking spots with the amount of folks
that live and cohabitate together.
it does ultimately become an issue for vehicles that have two dedicated parking
spots turning into four and those other two needing to find somewhere else to
park and it ultimately becomes an issue for the neighboring streets and that
being a flow down effect well so I'll just respond to that real quickly you're
right I mean depending on the different areas that you work in you can have that
effect I've been doing a lot of work recently in the canal district in East
San Rafael very multigenerational housing lots of lives there and so we have lots of issues such as that I will say though that
again
Simply providing or requiring the provision that parking doesn't mean it's going to get used
And you know, I mean I can say yeah, I did a parking study. I remember once down in Southern, California some years ago and
You know talking to neighbors around there was abundantly clear that virtually no one use their garages
But the street was packed with cars, right? We actually had one with a stakeholder say that here
I think it was down in the marina area that basically
We have enough parking but everyone parks on the street anyways at the end of the day
Whether you require the parking or not the real issue has to do with how you manage your on-street parking
So long as your own street parking is free and unregulated. You will have
most of the time lots of cars on it, so I just caution you because
Simply having higher minimum parking requirements doesn't necessarily solve your problem
But it does increase your housing affordability issue
You can pursue it through in lieu fees. That is something those cities have done although you're in lieu fees frankly
They can't exist in the in the blue zone here in the a B-297 zones anymore
That's that's done and but you always could choose to exercise that in other parts of the city
But just realize again those costs get passed down and part of what we were tasked with as part of this was to try to
Increase housing affordability. So again, it's it's a it's a balancing act. I would say
Sure, I understood
Yeah, I think probably what Commissioner Zuber was mentioning earlier a permit parking program for
Some of these neighborhoods that might be impacted by new developments or potentially
Developments that have grown in size could be something that is pursued by those by those neighborhoods
So now that we're on on this slide here, and I just wanted to be clear because there's a lot of information contained in this package
But in terms of what's before us today the blue area we're eliminating
Eliminating minimum parking requirements the green area. We're reducing it to the table
depiction that you had up on a prior slide
So it's not as though the green area is being eliminated. It's only that blue area that we're considering
So to clarify the blue area right now
Has almost no minimum parking requirements in it because of state law
The only requirements pertain now to event centers and hotels for some reason they made carve outs for those
To be honest, I don't think those are things that really cause issues here
It's much easier to just get rid of those and at least try to promote some sort of development
Outside of those areas what we are recommending is to reduce the minimum parking requirements in this way
If you want to eliminate the parking requirements, you can that is an option, but we are recommending this
Sure
Okay
Got it makes sense
all righty and
Shared parking you had a graphic where it was showing residential and office
Is that to preclude?
Potentially a scenario where you have residential against commerce and there's an area of commerce can shared parking be allowed in that scenario. Oh
Absolutely. This this was just illustrative. You can you can share parking in a whole host of different ways
You could even share between two residential uses if you wanted, although it might not be as effective
But the state law a be 894 doesn't differentiate in that way
So it says basically if there is another use and it has adequate availability
You are entitled to be able to share that with them. If obviously you're both in agreement
And I guess for future developments that maybe fall in that category where there is
an underutilized parking lot
That could be could be used to a better service
How would that process work? Is it a is it a scenario where we can build in?
requirements conditions of approval for that developer to adhere to that code that you just mentioned and speak to
The parcel the commercial parcel about shared parking implementing a shared parking program
So the the state law allows
Basically requires you to allow it to happen
But doesn't necessarily say that you the city can require shared parking. Is that am I addressing your question correctly?
Yeah, okay. I'm just looking for a way that it could flow down to the developer to kind of hold them
Accountable in terms of starting that dialogue and looking into a shared parking scenario
So there are I mean if you do want to go down that road
Sorry, I'm kind of sighing a second not because of you because I'm trying to think
There are ways that you can try to manipulate the code and the requirements such that you provide
lower
requirements if they take advantage of shared parking for example, right
so
Or you make your parking more publicly accessible either or so I actually
Create an ordinance like that years ago down in Southern California and we intentionally had lower
Standard set or lower I should say lower parking requirements set for developments that had publicly accessible parking
right now again that I
Would say just caution you that only really works for not for commercial uses
It's very hard to get residences to open up their parking to be publicly accessible because of safety issues
But you know, there are ways you can try to work around that
Okay
appreciate that
And last two questions that I had is um, so for TDM
There was mention of TDM incentives
There's an incentive option here providing financial incentives for alternative modes
Is that to say extending out to EV vehicles?
Incentives for
Having an EV vehicle and influx potentially of parking spaces that offer charging options
Yeah, great question. Usually with TDM
the goal is not to include EV amenities for for for vehicles as
a way to satisfy requirements. Partly because the goal is typically to reduce vehicular trips,
but not always. Sometimes if the metrics used are reducing greenhouse gas, some cities might
integrate it. So our recommendation here is to focus on vehicle trips, partly because of our
close alignment with parking as well. So those things are hand in hand. So as recommended today,
We would not include Eevee as a way to satisfy that but some cities do it
Would it be?
Would it be a major lift to incorporate Eevee as part of the TDM program in front of us?
It could be a straightforward way to incorporate Eevee by adding it as an optional measure. It might be something to
Align closely with
It has a lot of overlap with general parking requirements with with the components that Brian was speaking to so it might be worth
Considering whether TDM or the parking code is the best place to require that and that's that's again
Maybe a reason that many cities will focus on
Defining vehicular requirements like EV spaces in the parking components than keeping TDM focused on trip reduction
but
as a
Sort of matter of complexity it would be straightforward for us to essentially add it to this list of
Measures that would satisfy the the requirement to do one optional measure
And that would be to 410 1.04
be
one
That'd be in that section
Yes, that would be the recommended place to incorporate it if if that was a direction. Okay
right, so be one would be for them
Must require all of these. I'm so sorry for me one would be for non-residential optional and B2 would be
residential projects optional
Okay, I think it sounds like Brian might have some questions about our
Clarifications about Evie charging. Yeah, I do just just to make sure that we're we're not repeating things are already in state law
So are you referring to?
vehicle Evie
Sorry electric vehicle charging requirements within residential and non-residential uses as a TDM measure
Yeah, I think I'm referring to it in the residential section residential. Yeah, so just as a point of reference
So the California green building code already has a series of electrical vehicle charging requirements built into it
They actually update that code every three years. They just updated it again
And increased the amount of charging capacity that new projects need to have now you can always
Choose to exceed those
And we can certainly you know come back with more information about that about what those are because they're pretty detailed
But just so you know that there are already requirements out there that do require EV charging
Okay, and I apologize if everyone already knows that but just for for reference for the public
If I may, the multifamily
development standards already do require or allow for AV chargers to be
installed as an amenity and so that's also in there. We could also
update that if that was a necessity in the future, of course.
Thank you for that. I appreciate it. The last one, just because I kind of see it in
My neighborhood here is 4.08 or 132, restrictions on residential parking, subsection B which
talks about maximum impervious surface in required front yards and then sub point one
says maximum coverage.
We're not more than 50% of the front yard, if I'm reading that correct, can be paved.
how is that being tracked or how is it what's the metric that that corresponds back to that
and if I just you know walk through my neighborhood there's there's lots that have like 80 percent
if that maybe 100 percent completely paved to our community preservation team will receive
complaints and work with the property owners to make them compliant and this is a reiteration
of existing requirements, just clarification.
And you said it's the community preservation team.
So we have, you know, previously code enforcement,
we have officers who are part of that team,
and they will receive complaints
through the C-Click Fix program.
And then they would go out there and measure.
And if they are out of compliance, there's a, you know,
they'll start the process of notifying the owners
to correct the issue.
Okay. Got it.
Thank you.
OK, we've got two more comments here.
I'll go to vice chair Mendoza.
Yes, just a quick bottom line question.
So could we say that by applying these changes,
it incentivizes development and that in turn
benefits the community?
So I mean, just summarizing everything that I read,
that seems to be the versus, which is my concern,
which I've seen in other instances,
versus this benefiting the developers
at the expense of the community
and externalizing certain costs
that are gonna be bought by the city and the community.
So that's basically my...
Yes with this you know the impetus of this being I guess coming from the climate action
plan and housing element the intent there is always to provide you know a better quality
of your life and also reduce costs for the developer so that is the intent that is really
where we want to go with that it sounds like we have other supplemental answers sorry I
just want to chime in too because it's an excellent point that you make it's a valid
concern right that because one thing that we do caution cities with is simply
creating rules where the public right of way is used by private development as an
offset for their costs right and so what we always say is that in these
circumstances it really behooves the public sector to be able to manage its
resources as it needs to right now you do have free and abundant parking on
Street is just it is and a lot of people do get used to that. At the end of the
day though when you do reduce these requirements for development it actually
does reduce the cost of housing. The there's a study by UCLA ITS that just
came out a few months ago that shows about as a percentage of the cost every
time you build a one-bedroom apartment for example about 20 to 30 percent of
the construction cost is just parking right if you have structured parking in
It they found that when minimum parking requirements were first introduced actually in Oakland of all places
Originally housing prices jumped by about twenty thirty percent. There is a direct correlation here
So it's not just a feel-good measure that we hope works. It actually does get passed down
Now will everyone pass down the full the full chunk of the cost maybe or maybe not
But in a marketplace where people are trying to be competitive with their products
It behooves them to price it at a point that makes sense for people to buy
But I just wanted to reemphasize with that that you are absolutely right to be concerned about giving away public assets for free
You don't you definitely don't want to do that, but there are very effective ways
To be able to make sure that doesn't happen and I would obviously encourage the city to pursue that in a way
That's not costly to existing residents, right?
It doesn't have to be a super costly measure or a burdensome one to be able to prioritize streets for resident needs
I'll just briefly add that from the TDM perspective our goal with these recommendations was to ultimately be
neutral from a developer perspective to not be an incentive or a cost and trying to strike that balance and the comments tonight been very helpful for
continuing to
refine and think about
How these optional and mandatory measures?
strike that balance
One of the most important benefits that we see for taking this step now is building public capacity to do TDM
So even if the requirements themselves are modest
TDM takes time and expertise and repetition and iteration
Taking you know going from square zero to square one is much harder than going from square one to square two
so some of the feedback we've heard about
Looking at these and thinking which which of these are really low costs that are going to be too easy
Do we want to make those mandatory over time or now are really?
powerful tools that you all will have by taking this first step of just having a
Framework that then you can you know twist the knobs in the dial. So so again the starting point we're aiming for is to be
Neutral from a developer's perspective and then you can build from there
We're to Commissioner Zuber
And I think this would be for Lourdes to
Will will this resolution apply to already entitled projects that are not yet under construction
No
okay
so I'm going to just give an example of
a project that is already entitled may or may not have its building permit and
Was previously required to have a certain amount of parking, but has not yet
Put shovels in the ground or obtained a building permit
This resolution would not apply
They would still be required to have the previous
parking
I'm sorry that you're a king. Give me an exact
Project III. I have a project in my mind. I don't know which one it's on the corner of
Bancroft and Estadio for the fence around it.
School project, you know, this would not.
It's across from the middle school.
Right. Yeah.
So your question is, will these requirements apply?
Well, I mean, the way I look at it
is it's a relaxing of requirements, right?
And so I'm wondering if someone can go back
what they did and if they were previously required to provide parking
can they say oh well now I'm no longer required to provide parking. I was
looking at the city attorney to be careful by talking about a project that
may become that may come before the planning commission at some point but
we can use it as a hypothetical if you if you if you'd prefer I if they if
If they applied for a new project at this point,
they'd be subject to the rules that are in place,
that would be in place at the time
of their applications deemed complete.
There are also some projects that were required
to provide certain parking as amenities
for inclusionary housing units that made it
so that they were just as good quality
as the units that were marking rate.
This would not affect those.
So it is sort of a depends kind of answer, unfortunately.
But generally speaking, this is for new developments
post the adoption of the code.
OK.
I think this is yet to be, again, I support this.
If I'm thinking about my constituents
what they might be thinking right you know once this passes I think it's
important to ask the question and I don't know if I really got an answer so
I'll say that let me just say this that I think that if there are projects in the
that currently are entitled and were required to have the parking that if
things change I would recommend that the city be upfront about those changes
with the community that that's I guess I've said my piece I am taking that
Absolutely.
And I guess just one final thing on my end, what's the frequency that the TDM regulations
are reevaluated and then subsequently, you know, any potential changes to the zoning
code for parking regulations being either adjusted as a result of maybe the re-survey
that's been done against the TDM?
So what's the frequency that it's evaluated?
zoning code amendments don't really have a regular frequency so we could bring it
up next year if there's changes that we want to update the chapter 4.08 for
example but it's not on a schedule okay it was that does that answer your
question so if Alex can weigh in on if there's any like industry best practices
in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of TDM ordinances?
Great question.
From a TDM perspective, so the TDM
recommends surveying every two years.
So you would start to see trends emerge in two-year increments.
I'm not aware of cities that have standard time frames
for which they look at the code and revisit the code.
But one thing I did want to point out that I think is relevant
is that part of the strategy in how
we've developed this framework is
to have streamlined code components and then
administrative guidelines that can be updated more easily.
And there are relevant details in the administrative guidelines
that clarify the extent to which some of these measures
must be implemented.
And so the idea is that those could be revisited perhaps
frequently as every two years as you're getting data that frequent adjustments
with TDM is considered something that is generally helpful as long as it's not
complicated for people to keep up with but you get a lot of data to give you
feedback and show you what's working and what's not. I can't speak to how that
informs necessarily parking minimums but I would say you're thinking on the order
of every maybe five years or so from a TDM perspective looking at a significant update.
Thank you for that and maybe it's more so kind of a staff research effort but I would just be
curious if in you know two years from now after we make these these parking modifications within
a two-year time frame did these changes really materialize into what we are potentially going
to be approving tonight by way of additional developments coming into the
city and it being more of a streamlined sort of fashion for developers to meet
now a reduced minimum parking requirement so if there's any sort of
like from this point in time tracing back two years these are the amount of
developments that happen and these developments were impacted by parking
from this point in time onward over the next two years these developments have
move forward and parking reductions have helped or kind of you know spawn
those to to where they're currently at. The zoning code itself has only had well
adopted in 61 I believe I believe in 92 we had a major zoning code update
wherein they created many land use categories and added to the already
quite lengthy list of land use categories in the parking table and then
I believe in 2001 again it was another quite a big revamp as well adding a few more other categories
But we've never had an analysis like this one
from my recollection my experience
There are many points in time when we can go back and see what the effect of something is that that we've adopted has made but
At present time. This is the zoning code amendments we're proposing. I'll add that that staff can commit to
tracking data and see if we can identify,
analyze and identify the effectiveness of the code,
or the proposed code changes.
I will cause the commission that it may take,
it will depend on the pace of development
when we get enough applications in
where we can evaluate the true effectiveness of it.
So we can determine appropriate time to report out on it
based on the amount of development activity that's occurring.
Fair enough. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Any final comments? Last comments? Going once, twice.
Commissioner Rich. So we're on comments, not questions anymore.
We, I'm sorry. We have not opened.
We are on questions still. Any final questions? No. Okay.
So no questions. Then we'll move on to public hearing. Public hearing.
Is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak on this item?
Do we have any speaker cards?
No speaker cards?
Okay.
Closing the public hearing section
and bringing the item back to the commission for discussion.
Any commissioners wish to discuss the item?
Commissioner Rich.
Thank you.
I appreciate the report.
I appreciate the presentation tonight.
I support this resolution.
I support its goals like housing affordability
and reducing vehicle trips and combating climate change.
I support the way this is drafted.
I think it's really unusual for this kind of streamlining
that we're seeing here.
And I'm not that familiar with government,
but this is making things simpler.
I find it elegant in its efficiency and clarity.
I think this is good government.
I support it.
For some reason I have Commissioner Tom Julu shown on screen did somebody hit his
His box there. Okay. There we go
Thank you
any other comments from commissioners
commissioners uber
I'm gonna echo what what Rob said. I I do think that this is good government and and I also think that the
presentation was I loved that you guys had all of the charts and everything
that we could go back and forth with it was very easy to reference so
appreciate that very much and I will say I don't know if this is a comment but I
did have two additions to the resolution and I am not certain how or where those
fit in to the resolution so any other comments from commissioners I'm just
going to echo the same presentation was very thorough everything everything was
comprehensive so thank you for that information okay well do I hear a motion
to adopt a resolution with potential amendments included I do think I'm gonna
need help with this because it was like a many hundreds of page document and I
don't know exactly where it fits in. So there was the inclusion of a bicycle
repair on the residential property and then there was adding some type of ratio
to the flexible remote employees. So again I don't I don't know how that fits
into the resolution, but, um, Wayland, can you help me state how that works?
I think I can assist in the, in the, in crafting the motion, but I also want to say that in
the course of discussion, Commissioner Rich also recommended, uh, changes to, uh, section
4.10.3 to include, um, renovations and also include a definition of renovations for that,
for that section, and then Chairperson Tejada,
I believe, recommended including ease supportive amenities
as optional TDM strategies and 4.10.194.B.1 in addition
to your recommendation to include bicycle repair station
to list the mandatory strategies
and include more meaningful detail
to the flexible work arrangement strategy.
If that captures everything that was discussed,
you can fold that into the motion okay okay make a motion that we adopt a
resolution recommending that the city council adopt an ordinance amending
chapter four point oh eight off street parking and loading regulations and
adding chapter four point one zero transportation demand management to the
San Leandro zoning code zc a 26 dash 001 with said additions we have a motion on
the floor or a motion on the floor is there a second commissioner rich I second
okay it has been moved by Commissioner Zuber and seconded seconded by
Commissioner Rich to consider a resolution recommending the City
Council amend the zoning code to modify parking regulations and establish
transportation demand TDM regulations with said additional amendments
included. Please cast your vote. Okay votes are in. Five yeses passes unanimously.
Perfect, thank you. Appreciate it. On to presentations. The next item on the
agenda is presentations. Mr. Secretary, are there any presentations this evening?
We do have a presentation this evening. Our economic development team led by
Katie Bowman and Des Woodworth and Lars Hall will be making a presentation on
some of the fantastic work that they're doing in the community related to the
innovation action plan and the retail action plan. With that I'll hand it off
to Katie to do introduction on the item. Good evening commissioners. I know many
of you and it's nice to be back here tonight. I'm Katie Bowman, economic
development manager with the city. And we're here today to talk about two items that we've been
working on under the 2024 economic development strategy, which we went and we talked about with
you a couple years ago now. So it's really good to be back. And so we, you know that in the past
you all have expressed interest in the work in trying to, you know, in continuing and as we start
to bring things forward.
Projects may come before you.
Also, it's helpful to have context
as to what's going on in our local economy as you review.
I heard lots of discussion about development and feasibility
and things like that.
Tonight, we're going to be talking about work.
Two of the really key initial items
under the economic development strategy
are what we call the Innovation Action Plan and the Retail
Action Plan.
So that's where we're going to focus our discussion tonight.
and just for framing, these plans are under two
of six sections of our work
under the economic development strategy,
which you may recall.
And so for the innovation action plan,
we worked to evaluate and put together a strategic plan
to work and support strategic companies
that have potential here in San Leandro
where we have a competitive advantage
that can bring good jobs and potential for growth.
And so we're doing this work.
You may or may not have seen we're doing this work
under the city council as a work plan.
And there's an economic development work plan.
And so this work falls underneath that.
And you can see several of the tasks
that we're working on here under that.
And so why do we want to attract innovative companies?
This might be where, oh, yes.
So also, I do want to note, so we have two key members of our team here, Des Woodworth,
economic development specialist who he is focused on the innovation action plan, and
he's going to share with you some of our analysis.
Lars Hall is focused on our retail action plan, and he'll share with you some of that
analysis.
And we'll go through a good amount of things, and then happy to dig in on your questions
and comments when we're done.
Thank you, Katie.
Good evening commissioners.
As Katie mentioned, part of what we're doing with the action plan is trying to come up
with a good way to drive ourselves in a particular direction.
In the development of the action plan, we did that in conjunction with our economic
development consultant, Alex Greenwood, who brings significant experience in part based
on his work in South San Francisco, where he helped create the life science cluster
that is such a mover and shaker in that area. The action plan gives the city a specific
data-driven look at the way the types of industrial businesses that San Leandro is likely to
benefit most from, where we have an opportunity to attract and grow those businesses and also
holds the greatest opportunity to bring high-quality jobs to the area in the future. The plan is
designed to provide specific actions that the city can take to pursue these
industries including marketing, industry partnerships, and ways to enhance our
infrastructure and other actions. The industries actually let me just make
sure that we're on the correct spot. I think we're good there. Yeah okay there
we go. The industries that were selected are those which that allow
San Lander to offer a strong growth potential are financially sustainable and provide high quality jobs as well as being
Involved in significant investment equipment and development all of which contributed to sustainable vitality for the city
To develop this plan we performed
extensive analysis of employment and industrial data
Combined with interviews with industrial leaders through the analysis
we identified four target industries including life sciences or med tech, clean tech, food
tech, and advanced manufacturing.
We further narrowed down our targets to identify specific sub sectors that provide the best
opportunities for San Leandro.
For instance, in the life sciences and technology area, which is an area that includes a lot
of different types of businesses.
We identified high value medical device manufacturing, digital health contract drug manufacturing
and incubators among others.
We did the same kind of analysis for all four of the sectors that we had identified the
broader categories.
After we had identified the specific business types that we wanted to target, we learned
more about each industry, what their real estate needs are, what their facility and infrastructure
needs were, as well as the business trends that they're experiencing.
We also want to understand what issues the city will have to confront in working with
these businesses to attract and grow them here.
This allowed us to come up with a specific list of action steps that the city can take
as we move forward with our business attraction, including one-on-one business support,
focused business attraction and marketing efforts,
outreach to industry leaders and property owners to encourage investment and support additional relationships,
continued city efforts to streamline and update regulations,
and to support those target industries,
exploring the feasibility of offering financial incentives to our target industries
and finally a partnership with PG&E,
which I'll note is one of the areas
where we are most likely to have infrastructure challenges
to our objectives of encouraging growth.
We think that we may need as much as 200 megawatts
of new electrical power over the next five to 10 years
in order for us to be able to do all of the work
that we're anticipating for attracting innovative businesses.
So it's critical that we work with PG&E
plan for that need. On the plus side we have been successful in setting up
quarterly project coordination meetings with PG&E and we hope that we'll have
that we hope and what we are hoping to have productive advanced planning
discussions with PG&E in in June. With that I'll hand it back to Katie who
will share some of our many things that we've been doing in terms of
implementation.
So we've been working.
We completed this innovation action plan over a year ago
and are able to share some of the steps
that we've been taking and the results.
And one of the core things that we, and as in particular,
focus on is the one-on-one business expansion assistance.
So we're not just chasing shiny new objects,
looking to support our existing businesses
and help them grow and add jobs and invest here in San Leandro.
And so on an ongoing basis, for instance,
working with about a dozen companies
and a variety of things come from that.
We have seen just recently Coreshell or, well,
a company called Seacrete.
We work with the mayor to provide letters of support
as they do funding applications.
Seacrete, we've been able to provide
a couple letters of support.
And with that, they've gotten $10 million in grants.
And the most recent one where we provided a letter,
I think we looked and we were 0.4% was that it?
0.4% below.
They were only 0.4% above the person in second place.
And so those little differences in support from the city can really sometimes make a
difference for these businesses.
Another business that has been doing a lot of expansion in the city is called Core Shell.
They're a battery startup.
We have a number of businesses in town who are working on cleaner and more efficient
battery technologies in what we would call the clean tech industry.
Coreshell came here about five or six years ago.
They started as a smaller business
at the West Gate Center at gate 510.
They expanded there.
They then moved to a larger facility
in the complex along Williams Street.
They expanded there.
They expanded there again.
And now they're looking for a manufacturing space in town
with our support and advice.
they applied for and won a startup World Cup,
got a million dollar investment with that.
And so we work to connect to these businesses
and help them know about opportunities
and help them find and solve problems that they have.
So, and also, as Des mentioned,
we do a lot of basically what we would call marketing
for the city, a lot of telling the San Landro story.
We do that through a variety of ways.
One of our biggest venues is the blog San Leandro Next.
And on the different social media channels,
we've got thousands of followers in that way.
We do speaking events.
We also have created some new marketing materials, which
I think you have on your dais.
And we use that to share with investors
or if we go to conferences for people
to know what is San Leandro all about from a business
perspective and what are opportunities.
We also did, last summer,
worked with the San Francisco Business Times
and did an extensive insert
in the San Francisco Business Times,
sharing that, getting in front of,
I think there was 880,000 impressions
on the San Francisco Business Times online portal
related to this.
So really looking to increase name recognition
in show businesses that there are a lot of opportunities
here as well as we do broker events and things like that. And ways that we see this pay off
on the property development side and some of these developments you've seen come before
you as planning commissioners, you get the sneak preview. We do continue to have investment
in the industrial area. Really it's our strongest sector from both a real estate business and
job perspective and so this is just a handful of buildings that are in the works at this point.
One example that we like to share that really shows by the numbers kind of the value that these
properties can bring. There's an example here at the top right. There's a property on Farallon
and in 2024 we started working with a business called Pacific Fusion. We do have two companies
looking into fusion energy located here, which is really cutting edge. I think it
comes off of technology that was discovered in 2024 or something like
that. It's very new. And so, so they, you know, work there's, there's really a lot
of really cool potential and they're looking for their R&D space here. And so
Pacific Fusion moved into this space on Farallon. And then in 2025 the property
sold for 62 million dollars which was three times the value that it was
previously assessed at and and then so that results resulted in a one time
transfer tax for the city of about half a million dollars and then on an ongoing
basis these just bring additional baseline higher property value on this
one about 40,000 additional property value dollars a year and as we mentioned
just continuing to build the relationships with the property owners, with the businesses. We do find
some of the the the biggest value relationship and the biggest impact that can be made to help
bring businesses, bring investment to San Leandro, increase our our local economy is through the
property owners and um them making investment and opening the doors to growing businesses.
and one good example of that is called B3 investors. We may have talked about them with you before. They
own the Westgate Center and have about 300,000 square feet at the second floor of that center
which is research and development office space. They have about 400,000 square feet along Williams
Street and then several years ago they bought Bayfair Mall and they are making research and
development space there and really investing in that facility. As Des
mentioned, we are also working to build a better relationship with PG&E, help to
ensure that our businesses understand the process so that it can be as
efficient as possible because everywhere we go now really big in the in the Bay
area or all of PG&E's area really kind of the biggest thing that now businesses
as we hear about as they're looking to expand as power.
That's the number one issue, so we are looking into that.
And so over the next year,
things that we're gonna be doing related to the plan
will be continuing a lot of our work.
Some additional new things you'll see,
we're gonna always continuing to work to make the website,
convey well what's going on,
what opportunities are available,
so we'll be doing work there.
also working on tracking data, some operational things,
and also we'll be working with Wayland and the planning team
when, as additional zoning updates come forward,
help to review those from a business perspective
to look and see to what extent how they would help or hurt.
Also looking to update zoning definitions
to meet current trends and current business types.
And with that, I will take a quick breath,
and we'll go ahead and transition over
to our retail action plan.
So the second one that will give you an overview.
And so the retail action plan
is also a part of the council work plan.
And under that, we're going to be working
on several different projects.
with that I will hand it over to Lars and he can share with you all about the
plan. Thank You Katie and good evening commissioners. Well so to build on the
idea of next our vision here with the retail action plan is to look at what's
next in retail. Of course we aim to bring in the types of retail that the
community desires and values. We are working to prioritize experiential
retail and strong placemaking in order to create vibrant retail destinations in San
Leandro, and we're of course seeking to modernize and enhance shopping centers and retail districts
to strengthen their position here in the Bay Area.
So after an RFP process, the ED team contracted with a team comprised of two local brokerages,
TRI Commercial and Metrovation Retail Resources.
These are professionals that work in the area,
in the arena that we are looking at.
And we were very fortunate to be able to work with them.
Those, that team was led by Ed Delbercaro
from TRI Commercial and Christine Furstenberg
from Metrovation.
And they took a deep dive
into San Leandro's current retail market
and looked forward to see how we could position ourselves
in a more competitive position.
So some of the findings that they've arrived at
were some of our strengths being our location,
of course, no surprise there,
right here on the I-880 corridor
and close proximity to Silicon Valley.
We have a surprising household incomes,
which is a positive indicator.
We have a very pro-business reputation as a city,
meaning that businesses enjoy coming here
and find us to be a good partner
in their success getting up and started.
Some of the challenges that they came across, of course,
was the, what we all know about the growth
of online retail kind of putting a damper
on the traditional retail as we are all accustomed to.
There's also a slowing and aging population
which further creates some challenges.
And then there is some low retail tenant turnover
largely due to high upgrade costs and relatively low rents
with an underutilized and obsolete spaces.
So it becomes really difficult and costly
when a tenant leaves to upgrade that for a newer use.
There was some real deep dives
into looking at our different sectors
within the retail environment,
at what we have, a good amount of what we need more of,
as you can kind of see here.
So the strongest opportunities that we have
are within restaurants, auto parts, home furnishings,
et cetera, you can see the rest.
And then of course, we also see an area
where we are a bit over supplied.
This gives us a good idea of where we want to focus our energies for some future tenants
to come in.
But I should also say that Santa Leona does serve a diverse community and changing demographics.
And so there is room to attract some ethnic businesses, ethnic groceries, new restaurant
concepts that would reflect that diversity.
then I wanted to mention that we there are some strategic priorities attached
to this that we have we know that commercial development costs are high
right now so some recommendations from the team was for the city to incentivize
new development by simplifying the development process specifically by
reducing non-construction related barriers also to increase residential
density near the downtown in order to increase foot traffic and demand for
higher quality retail and lastly but maybe among the more important to
prioritize safety and the perception of safety around our shopping districts
because people will shop and dine where they feel safe not where the statistics
say they are safe.
So I want to talk a little bit about what our next steps are
and how we're going to address some of these findings.
The team, like I said, did a really deep dive.
They focused on creating practical and easy
to implement steps for staff and designed it in a way
that we could work most effectively with retailers
and the retail professional community.
So the team identified three sections of activity.
This is the first one, market readiness,
but also marketing and outreach
and support for shopping centers.
As you can see on here,
we also have some five major action categories
that are basically highlights of where we can focus
some of our efforts.
We want to and are in the process of modernizing
and optimizing our ED web pages on the city's website
and creating new outreach materials
that are more effective for retail recruitment.
We are going to create a database to track retail inquiries
and to match the applicants or the interested parties
with available spaces.
This is one of our more time intensive efforts.
We also want to, or actually we're nearing completion
of a zoning review, which is one of the highlights here.
You saw on a previous slide that we had an event for,
and it was a, what traditionally is called
a broker breakfast where we invite people
from the commercial real estate community.
And we are planning now to do annual events
specific to the retail broker community
and other retail professionals.
And then we are revamping our business incentives
that has actually also been completed very recently
to make some of those amenities more readily available
to our, especially small businesses.
So the second section was retail marketing and outreach.
We've done some things already, but this
is by no means a small feat.
We are continuing to work on how to position ourselves
to communicate better with the retail community.
So what we've done so far is update, add actually some pages
to our website and the little thing you see there
on the laptop that is a little snapshot from our retail
opportunities page, which provides information
that is very attractive to the retail community
and critical for their site selection
and being able to determine whether San Leandro is
the place for them.
We are also changing our flyers.
We just created this flyer here that I think you also
have on the dais for the ICSC Monterey conference
that was in March.
ICSC is the International Council for Shopping Centers.
And the Monterey conference sees about 1,000 attendees a year.
So that's an excellent place.
to market the city and this flyer with the guidance of the consultants, we were able
to put together something that really speaks to the retail community and gets their attention
quickly, simply and attractively.
Our outreach strategy involves a couple of different things.
going to begin and maintain regular contact with listings brokers in order
to see what they're up to. We want to know what opportunities are coming,
what listings they have, who their tenants are that are looking for spaces,
so keeping that dialogue open is crucial. We want to track their deal progress and
we want to provide any support that we can whenever that is appropriate.
So the result of this is we're ending up with a really strong marketing toolkit that we
can use moving forward.
The third section was shopping center outreach, and this is one that is a little bit more
critical perhaps than some of the other ones. The key strategy here is to engage
with shopping center owners and identify challenges that they may have and
encourage small but visible upgrades. We're talking physical upgrades to the
shopping centers. This is an essential tool for them to be able to refresh, look
more attractive and therefore be able to lease up faster and charge higher
rents. As an example if you've all seen Marina Fair down on Doolittle they
started just by renovating one building and with the success of that leasing
that up and being able to charge higher rents they decided to refresh the entire
shopping center and it's it's really going gangbusters. I don't know if you've
been down there it's it's really nice so this is that kind of thing but we would
basically be boots on the ground see what needs to happen speak with the
property owners and find low-hanging fruit that they can take care of in
order to be more competitive in the market so the takeaway from this is
small improvements can drive some significant results and with that I'm
I am going to turn it back over to Katie.
So just to end, we do always love to share stories
about success on the retail side,
things for you to check out and enjoy in the community.
So over the past year, we have had some exciting things open,
one of the very big news things that I'm sure you've seen
in the central Kallen development
that was supported by the Planning Commission
here in downtown is the new Sprouts grocery store.
And of course, Phil's Coffee at that location as well.
We've also had some different service businesses,
from Pilates to martial arts.
Also, very recently, a new Ace Hardware
opened up in the greenhouse.
And they're going to be having a board cutting.
Instead of a ribbon cutting, they're having a board cutting
next week, and they're going to be having specials next weekend.
So if you're interested, check that out.
Not an endorsement, sorry.
But also down at greenhouse, coming within the next year,
hopefully, there is a proposed SkyZone indoor recreation
facility may actually be coming before you.
So you may learn more in that way.
Also some new restaurants opening in the former Goodwill
space. One's going to be called Tang Bao, one Tang Bars, so some different Asian
concepts that are doing well in other locations. So we're really happy to see
things coming there. Also on a regular basis restaurants in San Leandro, we have
a really great variety of restaurants that you know really gets the attention
and recognition from reviewers. From Smack Burger downtown that had the best breakfast burrito
in the bay I think was what it was quoted. There's some really exciting pulled noodle
dao artisan noodle which is in the manor at the manor shopping center. Vivid bibin which is
on floor. I'm forgetting it's right across from living spaces and pack and save. So they got,
they're on the top 20 Korean restaurants in the bay and they're a new restaurant. And so there's
lots of fun things going on there, as well as on the on the formal side. La Vanta is took over the
former, oh my gosh now I'm gonna forget, but they're at the corner Musaka, the
former Musaka space at Bancroft and Dutton and and so certainly we we've
already been doing a lot of retail recruitment and with this strategy we're
we're continuing to be focused to help to bring even more. With that I can stop
and we are happy to answer questions. Thank you for that presentation appreciate
it. Opening it up to the Commission for questions I see our Vice Chairman Doza
in the queue. Thank you. Thanks a lot that was that was great and I really I'm
really glad to see everything that you're doing for the city. I'm familiar
with I think we had a with the team I had a meeting about maybe a year and a
half ago with some ideas so that that speaks to my interest in in this issue
for many years so everything that you presented there is great but going back
to my interest if you Google my name and the San Francisco business times you're
When I see an article about me there from 2006
regarding these issues.
One thing that I'd like to encourage you,
which I'm sure you've heard this debate
between chain businesses and local businesses.
I already see that you do having emphasis
in promoting local businesses.
So I'd like to encourage, continue doing that,
as you probably heard all these numbers,
but there is some data from a guy called Michael Schumann,
the Local Economy Solution,
where he determines that for every dollar spent locally,
you get four times the benefit from local businesses
versus chain stores and large companies
that oftentimes we provide them with tax incentives,
and they promise to create certain amount of jobs,
And sometimes that doesn't pan out entirely.
But it's still important to bring those big guys in.
But for local businesses, obviously, it's
also important to put attention to them,
put in some resources that they need.
And eventually, it seems that that
benefits the local economy even more.
So just that's a comment I wanted to make.
This is National Small Business Week.
Give a plug.
So stop by a local shop this weekend.
There's a variety of resources available for them
this week and a national call to support them.
Thank you.
Over to Commissioner Rich.
Thank you.
That was a fantastic presentation.
I particularly enjoyed some of the action steps
that were listed on there with the industry innovation,
the infrastructure, the working with PG&E.
I've been out of the business for a few years now,
but PG&E used to be a challenge on all sorts of projects.
So to the extent that the city
can help to facilitate those relationships,
I think that's great.
I think there may be opportunities for that
to extend beyond the industry and innovation
into housing potentially.
But if there's lessons learned
that can lead to greater efficiency and development
and relationship with PG&E, that's fantastic.
Similarly on the retail action plan there. I think the additional permit guidance, especially for immigrant owned businesses is fantastic
Looking at compliance from the user perspective. I think is really helpful and it's good governance again. So I thank you for that
over to Commissioner super
Yeah, this was a great presentation and
Makes me really proud of San Leandro we I think we've come a long way
those it's a it's a lot of work to do this to bring businesses to the city so
I really appreciate this you breaking it down into the different objectives and
goals thank you so much one of the items was about public safety whether
perceived or real and I'm wondering if you've done any outreach or any
partnership with the city of San Leandro Police Department I don't know maybe it
was six seven eight years ago the city of San Leandro had the police officers
on mountain bikes and they were really just part of the community just I you
know just riding downtown and wherever and I think it it really made at least
families I think feel like there was a presence right and so I'm just wondering
if there's anything like that that is forecast to yeah yeah we we talked to
police all the time and regularly connect businesses with police and
and remind businesses and everyone,
please report everything, call,
because they're all about data is really helpful to them.
But yes, so on that security side,
we also fondly remember the downtown officers.
That program was phased out for a variety of reasons,
but really what came in its place
in a very intentional manner
was the downtown safety ambassadors.
So there is a non-police safety ambassador team
that's managed through the Downtown Community Benefit
District.
You may know SLEA.
And so the city does contribute a large amount of funds
to help support that.
And they actually are able to offer some more time and attention
than our very busy police are able to do.
They're on foot in teams in Blue Polo's and Downtown.
And they are trained in de-escalation.
And they have been working.
I don't have their stats in front of me.
But actually, they have some really impressive stats.
Thousands of encounters a year, helping from walking people
to their cars that are available.
They have relationships with all the downtown merchants,
with all the small businesses.
And they're keeping an eye out for them.
But also, if they're individuals who are causing problems,
There's a lot that happens these days in that gray area where it may not be a
crime or be something that police can respond to immediately.
And so they're really able to help in that regard. So that's one thing,
you know,
always open to an interested in additional opportunities as,
as resources are available because there's a district downtown and there's
enough businesses to pay into it that,
that makes it possible there where we're not able to do that everywhere.
But yeah, and so the downtown ambassador is that
It's it's gonna continue to be funded
For is it? Um, yeah. Yeah, actually that was just the topic of discussion at the budget hearings
Um, yes, so they are they will there it's continuing at flat funding that they are funded for the next fiscal year and
Projected for the next after that as well. Okay. Thank you
Yeah, thank you for that presentation. That was very thorough. I just had a couple of questions here one of them was
there was a slide on market readiness and
It was touching on I think a new database. That's either rolling out or had just rolled out
That's encouraging to see it's it's somewhat of like a matchmaking sort of scenario where open vacancies are then
Being able to match up to potential tenants or new uses that could fill that space
Just curious before this process rolled out. How did that process occur?
What what was the pattern in place before this new database? Yeah, so for
Maybe the whole 10 years it's certainly for many years
We have had access to the costar commercial listing service and we provide as a service in Lars's our point person currently
where if we get inquiries about people looking for space we're able to look at
commercial listings and provide them information on it so it's been going on
in a little less of a formal way but we you know so on an individual basis
tracking you know who you're communicating with and through internal
spreadsheets and things like that so in general you may have heard you know
Certainly at a city-wide level with the council work plans and other things continuing to work to work towards
tighter performance tracking performance metrics
Our work is very varied. So it's it's it's a hard thing to pin down
But we are working on
You know finding efficient ways to track and be able to share our work and continuing to work to share those data points
Like we did tonight. Yeah
And is that database such that if you go to San Leandro's web page and click on economic
development, it'll take you to that database if I'm a developer or interested in a potential
property I can go there and find the information?
Yeah.
I wouldn't use the word database.
So what I might be able to show you, but if you go to sanleyandro.org backslash retail,
we do populate available commercial listings with their flyers available.
So it's a listing versus a database.
Okay.
That's great.
I'm just also reminded here of a consultant presentation
that happened in a city council meeting back in February.
I want to say it was.
And that presentation was hitting on commercial use,
mixed use.
And I think the phrase that that consultant used was
potential commercial listings that are at a point where they've reached critical
mass of being vacant for a longer tenure of time being considered and
reevaluated for the potential of mixed use and moving into a category of mixed
use. How close does the communication happen between economic development and
can say I guess planning in the sense of being able to bridge that gap for those critical
mass vacancies potentially switching over to a mixed use setting on a commercial footprint.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're just right down the hall.
We're all in the same department.
So we talk every day, every week.
On that topic of commercial sites converting to residential, in general, and Waylon can
correct me if I'm wrong, our commercial zoning does permit housing.
So it's not zoning that's restricting housing being built on those sites.
So it's us not having a strong housing market.
So from a like a multifamily at this point is not is not penciling.
We have a lot of multifamily approved that isn't being built.
So unfortunately, that's that's not the reason, but but certainly, for instance, in the Bay
Fair area, we also have a concerted plan showing how there can be higher density housing
in a transit oriented development manner. So we do for instance as there was
outreach to the property owners in the Bay Fair area we and planning you know
speak to them about you know what their opportunities are for their property
which in that case includes kind of more of that mixed use but in general I think
right housing is there's a process but it is under state law now permitted and
pretty much all of our commercial areas. Okay. And then just to kind of localize
it to Greenhouse, Greenhouse Market, a couple things there. So safety, security,
definitely would agree in that sense, where the downtown ambassadors may be
One Avenue, but since Greenhouse isn't nowhere near downtown, I'm wondering what
sort of boots on the ground to use your presence there, Lars, what sort of
boots on the ground presence to maybe make the safety and security feel that
much more prominent it's good to hear that I've lived it yes ace hardware is
open and the sky zone that's news to me so great to hear new businesses coming
in on board is is a great sign of what's happening there in the greenhouse but
there's always that kind of lingering stigma to the transient community
community the transient community that's close to the 238 8 8 80 corridor and you
know maybe how that spills over into the greenhouse market and doesn't necessarily
provide for a safe shopping environment all the time what measures can be done
or can the city help with in that regard certainly would be interested in your
feedback as to whether things have gotten better that but I but certainly
we've had a number of conversations with the property owner, the property
managers with connecting directly with police and police, um,
talking to them about some of their legal options with individuals. Um,
and so them as a property owner following up and working with police
understanding, um, what are some of the tips and tricks to,
um, um, to get,
get, um, directions to stick for individuals who are,
who are, you know, doing things not conducive
to the shopping environment, things like that.
And so we do have a interdepartmental task force that,
or group that meets to discuss different things.
And so if, and when, you know, specific problems
or complaints come up there, it's a way for public works,
police, community services, human services,
community development, maybe police,
to be able to discuss problems and make sure it's
on everyone's radar.
So that center certainly on everyone's radar.
But if there are some specific new things happening,
I'm certainly happy to hear about it
offline so that we can have the group take a look.
Sure.
Appreciate that.
Yeah, and then my last one is there
was a slide that was brought up on screen about kind of like,
I guess it was the redundancy between too many businesses
of the same kind that are kind of prominent
within the city.
To what extent does economic development have a voice
in like retail or commercial shopping centers
where we can avoid that being the case?
And I look again at greenhouse market.
Greenhouse market has, I would say probably 80%
of its business in the restaurant,
restaurant field of services.
So I'm just wondering if as new businesses are coming in,
economic development can weigh in on maybe having
a mixed use of what services are brought in
versus kind of the next redundant restaurant
being brought on board.
Yeah, we as the city can offer recommendations
but under the zoning code of the property only has rights
to bring in businesses, whatever businesses
that are permitted in the code.
So we don't have tools to force or just not the right word,
but yeah, so, you know, and in general right now,
as you see here, restaurants are really
the strongest retail sector at this point.
Restaurants are a retail.
You can, you know, you can't go eat at a restaurant
on Amazon, so, and so really,
They are what drive people to these centers.
And so I think just our reality in these shopping centers
is a lot of food.
But it brings gathering, and it brings people
to do other things, food and necessary goods,
your drugstores, which they're also struggling.
But grocery, which is also food.
Grocery, restaurants, and other types of uses
are really hard at this point, which
is why we're very you know we do want to encourage other gathering places like
Sky Zone that right you can't have your kids jump on a trampoline online either
and so we all need places for our kids to go play and have birthday parties and
things like that so we're working hard in that area too. Okay and the new
restaurant that's coming into the former Goodwill at Greenhouse notice that it's
just like stalled in construction where there's been little to no progress for
six seven months maybe is is that an issue where there's a holdup with
permitting with permitting or anything that's within the city's control or is
that more so the developer yeah we don't believe so I think we actually were
talking earlier this week about checking in with them to see if there's anything
we can help with so you learn what's going on. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Any further
questions? Yes. Okay. Over to Vice Chair Mendoza. Yes. One, one, something that came to mind about
10 years ago, I used to have this meeting at you probably remember the Puerto Bay restaurant
on Washington Street. And you used to have a very nice event room there. So once a month I used to
have a um it was like a local initiative that I was doing a an event bringing in people to support
local businesses and I would I would host the event and bring people in and and uh I did that
as a community activist type of thing so are you aware of anything like that happening in the city
uh that that you might you know be aware of or somebody else doing something like that
I'm not totally sure of what your event involved,
but in general, as I'm sure you know,
our business chamber of commerce holds different events.
We have the San Leandro Chamber.
We have a black chamber.
We also are working more and more closely with the Oakland
Chinatown Chamber, which has a lot of members in San Leandro,
a lot of businesses moving here, as well
there's a couple different East Bay Latino chambers so they do work and so
for instance on May 21st the the chamber will be doing a small business expo down
at the Bayfair Center actually May 21st and so there'll be businesses able to
table and share their resources business service providers able to share their
resources and I believe as well some small maker shopping opportunities for
for us citizens.
That's great.
Yeah.
On that, you said, because I just reminded me of something
that I will notice even back then.
So what I was doing was specifically to promote,
this was very specific, locally owned, small businesses.
And sometimes what I will hear is that, by the way,
back then I used to be a member of the Hispanic Chamber
Commerce in Oakland. I was a member of the borough directors and one of the
things that motivated me to do this extra thing on the side was because the
chambers, which they do great great work but and this might be biased on my side
but I noticed that they put a lot of resources into bigger companies and I
felt, I don't know if that's the case, that locally owned small businesses were
being a little bit neglected. So hence that's why I was doing this particular
event and so just to clarify so so what it was it was I wouldn't buy local
businesses and local people with a specific purpose of promoting locally
owned small businesses as a you know just focusing on that but everything you
say is right I mean all these organizations are doing great great work
And and they are also helping promote small businesses. So it's all good. Yeah. Yes
So I think that small business expo may be similar and then also
Every first Friday the chamber does offer first Friday networking that actually is available for non chamber members as well, I believe
Yeah, the other just generally open to the public and we see a lot of small businesses that that one as well sharing their resources
That's mainly I think the small businesses that attend that one
Okay, well thank you very much appreciate you. Thank you all and for staying late into
the evening. Okay, the next item on the agenda is commission
reports and announcements. Does staff have any updates under this item?
I just have a couple updates for the or announcements for the commissions before turning it over
to the rest commission for items. First, as the commission knows that we regularly prepare
a development activity map and table,
we tried to get one ready for this meeting,
but there's a couple of like changes,
recent changes that we're gonna update
and so as soon as that's available,
I'll send the commission email that's up on the website.
Also, before the meeting we dropped off a couple items
in front of your mic, one with a one table
from the housing element annual progress report,
which summarizes housing units permitted
since the start of the housing element cycle
which gives you a snapshot of where we are at
and relates back to somewhat to our individual conversation
related to parking about the work that needs to be done
to meet this community's housing needs
as there's still a significant amount of production
needed to meet the city's housing goals
during the planning period.
Also, there is a, I printed out a, the city's new housing element information dashboard,
which is a website that the staff created to help communicate progress towards meeting
the housing element goals in a way that's easier to communicate than the annual products
report that which which we produce every year which is bound by the standard
forms in the in the produced by state HCD so give that to the Commission for
information the Commission can ask questions or provide any feedback related
to the the report but also is going to suggest for the purpose of time and that
I can bring this back again next time if the commission which is to absorb information
It provides more comments at that time also, but happy to
Collect any comments from the commission about that information at this time and then lastly
I just wanted to let the Commission know that we are likely to have a June meeting. It's not certain yet, but I think a
update to the city's ADU ordinance is
Probably gonna be ready in time for for June. So we'll let you know as soon as we can confirm. That's the
They'll be happy in in June. So that's the that includes my
announcements
Thank you for that update are there any other announcements that members of the Commission would like to make
Commissioner rich
I'd like to thank Secretary Lee for this arena information here
I think reviewing it on another night to in the hour is a good idea
but I think it relates completely to what we were talking about today on parking and cost and development and and how we're
trying to eliminate obstacles to
development particularly housing development
Any other comments from commissioners?
No
Seeing none the time is now 935
This meeting is adjourned