Secretary please call the roll. Commissioner Kwok. Present. Commissioner Ward. Here. Commissioner
Klopp. Here. Commissioner Reiser. Here. Commissioner Niting. Here. Vice chair Anderson. Here. Chair
Strongman. Here. Okay moving on to item 2 the consent calendar and I believe we do
not have anything on the consent calendar. Yes. Which in case we will move on to
public communications this portion of the meeting is reserved for comments for
items not on the agenda under the Brown Act the Commission cannot act on any of
these issues raised during the public communications that may respond briefly
to statements made for question and questions posed requests clarification
or referred the items to staff do we have any members of the public willing
to wanting to make comment.
See none.
We'll move on to our item four, our public hearings.
And the first public hearing of the applicant
has withdrawn the re-not short-term rental
conditional use permit applications.
Number Y23092.
So we will go on to the next item,
which is project residential mixed use objective standards
and updates to the design, review process, zoning,
text amendments, locations, all throughout the city.
So we'll start out with a staff report.
Thank you.
Good evening, Chair Strongman
and members of the Planning Commission.
My name is Janine Cavalli.
I'm a senior planner here with the city of Walnut Creek.
And I've been coordinating the update
to our design review, residential,
and mixed use design standards and guidelines.
And I'm pleased to be presenting to you
update on that project alongside some zoning code amendments that will be going through
that update our development standards and propose a revision to the design review process.
So I'll begin this evening's presentation with project overview including project history,
purpose and process and I'm here with other members of our project team including Alessandra
Lynn Dean of Rami and Associates and she'll be presenting to you this evening the residential
and residential mix use design guidelines and standards book.
And in addition I have with me Ben Schuster an associate planner with the city and he'll
be presenting the proposed changes to the design review process.
And after the presentation we will all be available to answer any questions you may
have.
So we began the project back in 2019 to respond to changes in state law which I'll touch on
a bit more in the coming slides that speak to a requirement for objectively written standards.
The project began as an update to our design review standards and guidelines which was
fairly outdated, was created in 1996.
And as the project progressed, state law continued to evolve and the project's scope also continued
to evolve, and so it included not only looking at that 1996 book, but in addition, taking
a look back at our zoning, ensuring that standards were objectively written.
And then also, as we progress in the project, we receive some new direction from City Council
to take a look at our design review process, particularly look at permit streamlining and
the creation of to promote the creation of new housing and also be consistent with these
recent changes to state law.
So I've already mentioned state law a few times so what do I mean when I say that?
So the next couple of slides will give you a little bit of the historical legislative
context and some of the council direction that we've received that sets the framework
for this effort.
So back in 2018, Senate Bill 35 first introduced this concept of objective design standards.
But at that time, it was only for projects with affordable housing units.
And so at that time, staff did propose and then council subsequently adopted an addendum
to the 1996 guidelines to include some objectively written standards, primarily for mixed-use
projects because the 1996 book didn't really contemplate mixed use at the time.
And then in 2019, SB 330 expanded the scope of objective design standards to also address
market rate and multifamily housing units.
We then were awarded a grant in 2020
to help fund the effort
to prepare these objective design standards.
And then in 2021 was the first time
that council identified permit streamlining
as one of the city council's top priorities.
And subsequently that has been identified
in every subsequent year since then.
In 2022 Senate Bill 9 further streamlined single family
residential approvals.
And the following year council adopts an SB 9 ordinance
which requires the creation of objective design
standards for architectural compatibility.
So that was then folded into the document
before this evening.
And then lastly in July of last year council
gave direction to revise the design review process and the role of the design review
commission and looking at making it an advisory body instead of a decision making body.
So a little bit more about objective design standards, SB 330 affords streamlining to
eligible housing projects that meet all objective standards.
So whether the objective standard is in the zoning code, in the general plan or in a design
review standards and guidelines book, any project that is residential or residential
mixed use with at least two-thirds of the area devoted to residential must comply with
these objective standards in order to be afforded that streamlining under SB 330.
So it's become very important to ensure that our standards, our design standards and our
development standards are objectively written so that they can be applied to new projects.
So what do I mean when I say development standards versus design standards?
So under the purview of the planning commission, I'm sure you're familiar with development
standards, those that are in the zoning ordinance that not just set the requirements for land
use but height, setbacks, parking ratios, floor area ratios.
So a lot of the like overall amounts of the like developable area, whereas the design
review standards and guidelines look a little bit more at the how does something, what does
it look like?
How is it designed?
And so those get into more details of the elements of the building, elements of the
site, of the landscaping.
So it's looking at materials, locations of where these things are located, and the like.
So the various documents that I'm going to talk about, the first is the residential and
residential mixed use design standards and guidelines document.
And again, that's attachment one in your booklet.
So the objectives for this project are to clarify the city's expectations for design
of projects. So when a new project comes through, we're being very explicit and clear about
what the expectations are for design in the city. And that also helps with streamlining.
It's anticipated to reduce the amount of, you know, back and forth, rounds of revisions
if the city makes those expectations more clear.
So updating the 1996 design standards and guidelines, as I mentioned, and really focused
on any gaps. So we did do a gap analysis, and as I identified earlier, mixed use was
definitely one of the gaps in the 1996 book that we did a fair amount of research and
make sure that the new book addresses. We also wanted to modernize, look at best practices
and prioritize standards for residential and residential mixed use. As I mentioned, that's
what really drove this project to begin with,
to be in compliance with state law.
And then, as I mentioned earlier,
we did receive a state grant,
so we are striving to meet our grant deadline,
which requires us to complete the project
in September of this year.
So currently, the 1996 guidelines and standards
is a single book, but as we worked to consider
the future and understanding that there are now different requirements for residential
versus commercial projects.
We decided to split that out into two books, and so the first book being the residential
and residential mixed use, which is again the one that we're bringing forward this evening,
and then we'll be following up at a later date with the book that's focused on non-residential
projects.
So this slide sort of highlights a number of the differences between that 1996 version
of the standards and guidelines, and the one that's being presented this evening.
We not only wanted the standards to be clear and objectively written, but also just the
overall format of the document to be more user friendly, and to incorporate more photos,
graphics, and tables, and other things, tools that help visualize, visually communicate
the standards.
As I mentioned earlier, we did a gap analysis.
This list here are some of those items.
They also include things like outdoor dining, which has become, especially since the pandemic,
the more important and prevalent type of land use and activity in our, especially in our
downtown that we want to make sure we have appropriate standards for.
And then also we found a number of duplications of language between that book and what was
in the zoning and other documentation.
So we not only looked just within the focus of that document, but other documents that
touch on the same topics to make sure we weren't being duplicative, redundant, or perhaps inconsistent.
So we were doing cleanup as well.
So in the drafting of this document, we did an extensive process of vetting the various
standards and guidelines.
We started with a social media contest asking people what they were what elements of buildings
downtown excited or interested them.
We did a number of developer forum meetings and stakeholder focus groups.
We also established a city working group that was comprised of two designer view commissioners.
One was an architect, the other a landscape architect, and we had regular meetings with
them as well as city staff from our engineering department
our planning department and engineering.
I didn't see that already. Current planning. Sorry.
And so we met regularly and really just went line
by line looked at every word every every sentence
in those standards and vetted them very thoroughly.
And so, I think, you know, everyone in the DRC seemed pretty confident with the document
when we presented it to them back in May.
So I'm now going to hand it over to Alessandra to kind of dig into the sort of cover-to-cover
of what's in that document.
All right.
Good evening, Chair Strongman and members of the Commission.
As Jeanine mentioned, I'm going to walk through some more of the kind of high level details
of the content of the objective design standards.
So as you see here, this is the high level table of contents.
Chapters two through seven apply to multifamily and residential mixed use developments and
include site planning, architecture and building design, outdoor spaces, parking, walls and
fences, and lighting.
And then chapter eight applies to single family residential homes.
And chapter nine applies to kind of those missing middle housing types.
So duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes and townhomes.
And then finally chapter 10 has some compatibility standards for SB 9 units.
So each chapter contains a number of design topics.
And this slide kind of demonstrates the structure for each design topic or section.
So each begins with a brief intent statement and that kind of explains the overall purpose
followed by the list of standards and guidelines for that topic area.
So again we covered this a little bit but standards are objectively written priority
design criteria that all projects must follow and they're written with shallow statements
whereas the design guidelines are strongly recommended design criteria with which projects
should comply, but they're not strictly mandatory.
And there is some flexibility there on how projects meet each guideline, depending on
unique or differing, you know, project circumstances.
And guidelines are written with should statements.
And then this, or I'll back up and say, per state law, clear and objective standards are
defined as involving no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and are uniformly
verifiable by reference to an external
and uniform benchmark.
So to provide kind of an example of what we mean
by a standard or clear and objective standard
versus a guideline, we have here a standard
versus a guideline for lighting.
So as you can see here, the standard would be
pedestrian oriented lighting, not taller than 16 feet
in height, shall be placed along pedestrian paths,
multi-use paths, and other walkways at minimum intervals
of every 40 feet.
and by contrast, a guideline might say
pedestrian oriented lighting should be placed
at regular intervals and it should be,
the height should be appropriate for the setting.
But what does regular intervals mean?
What does appropriate height mean?
Those are very subjective.
That means something very different to different people.
It's also important to note that not all standards
can be turned into, or sorry, not all standards
and guidelines can be turned into clear
and objective standards, which is why there are still
some of these guidelines that are sprinkled
throughout the document.
And they speak again to that kind of larger intent.
And this is because sometimes it's just not possible
to develop a clear metric for some of these,
or to evaluate them in that way because of, you know,
varying sites, circumstances, or conditions,
or potentially even outside agency requirements.
But again, to get back to this issue of flexibility
versus being strictly cleared objective,
we wanted to build in some of that design flexibility
through the standards.
And so for many of them,
we've provided a menu of options to choose from.
So in this example for treatment of corner buildings,
we say, okay, you can meet the standard
by including at least two special corner treatments.
And then we give them this menu
and they can choose two from the list.
And again, that's kind of how we build some more flexibility
into these clear and objective standards.
So now I'm gonna walk through
some of the high level contents and topics
and the types of standards we have under each.
So under site design, it covers access and circulation,
services, service refuse and utilities and landscaping.
So for instance, under access and circulation,
we have standards for creating smaller blocks
and new connections, minimizing curb cuts and driveways
to reduce conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles
and creating pedestrian pathways that are connected
to parking and bike parking and outdoor spaces.
We have standards that address the location
and screening of services, utilities and equipment areas
to minimize their impact on the pedestrian experience.
And for landscaping, we have standards
that address minimum size and spacing of trees and shrubs.
We have some limitations on turf
and some guidelines on drought tolerant landscaping,
as well as stormwater management standards.
Under parking, this chapter includes standards
such as locating parking to the rear and sides of buildings,
creating pedestrian routes through parking areas,
screening surface and structured parking from public view,
and also ensuring that surface parking lots
have trees and landscaping.
And then the lighting chapter includes provision and design
of pedestrian-scaled lighting and limitations
on light trespass onto adjoining properties,
just among others.
And then for outdoor spaces,
That chapter is broken into three sections.
So they address each of the three different types
of outdoor spaces,
publicly accessible outdoor spaces such as plazas,
private common outdoor spaces
that are shared by all building residents.
So that would be, for instance, a courtyard
or a roof deck in a multifamily building,
and then private personal outdoor spaces
such as individual balconies.
And each of these include minimum dimensions
for those outdoor spaces.
And then additionally for publicly accessible outdoor spaces and private comment outdoor spaces, we have minimum landscaping requirements, as well as requirements for minimum amenities that we want to see in those spaces such as seating, shades, structures,
you know, play structures, etc.
Under building design, this chapter includes standards that focus on portions of the building
visible from the street, public realm and outdoor spaces, and include standards such
as required articulation and modulation to kind of mediate the scale and massing of buildings,
providing weather protection and accentuating entries, encouraging a variety of materials
and colors that really add visual interest to a building, standards that address the
design of the ground floor whether it be a residential ground floor or a retail commercial
storefront.
As Jeanine mentioned we have some outdoor dining standards for outdoor dining on private
property and then we also have a set of neighborhood compatibility standards that address appropriate
it transitions from higher density development
to lower density development.
And then lastly, I mentioned previously,
chapters eight, nine and 10 have standards
for single-family homes, those missing middle housing types,
and also SB9.
So in addition to having very similar standards
regarding kind of site design and building design,
but again, tailored to those smaller
house type building forms,
We also address topics such as townhome configuration
on a site, landscaping of private streets and pathways,
garage doors, transitions and privacy,
and again that SB9 unit compatibility with the primary unit.
And with that, I will turn it back over to Janine.
So now I'm gonna move us back into the realm
of zoning amendments.
I'll go over very briefly the development standards
and the topics that we're amending there
before I hand it over to Ben
that will speak to the design review process amendments
that are proposed.
So this slide here identifies the topics
of the set of proposed development standards
that are in your packets.
We prepared these while we were working
to make our design guidelines and standards more objective.
It became apparent that some of them as we rewrote them to be more objective and clear
really fit better within our zoning code and so that's what these items are here.
So for example, some of the landscaping standards were not clear at all.
So we needed to set some minimum amounts, while others might have just said the design
interview commission will set the minimum landscaping amount so now we need to be more
clear of what's to be expected.
So parking and loading we have some new provisions for both passenger and non-passenger loading
zones where there's multifamily unit developments.
We have some of the lighting that Alessandro was speaking to was more about the fixture
height, the ones in the zoning code are more about the actual minimum amount of illumination
in certain areas so that they feel more safe.
We also have some new screening requirements around fences and walls and primarily what
are some of the allowed or prohibited materials.
And then these last two items are really it's not new content, it's content that's being
moved from the 2018 addendum that I mentioned earlier
to the zoning code.
So I'm going to hand it over to Ben.
Thanks, Jeanine.
Ben Schuster, community development.
Going to be talking tonight about the design review process
and just wanting to acknowledge we're
going through a lot of materials.
So thank you all for hanging in there.
I think we're over halfway at this point.
So a few more minutes.
So how is design review changing?
We're doing a number of things.
These are kind of the high level overview of what's happening.
Essentially, we've incorporated new roles and responsibilities
for various bodies.
We're proposing new categories of design review.
We're codifying project review thresholds
that have existed since the 1970s out of a design review
commission resolution.
And then we've kind of done a top to bottom reorganization
of the design review article for clarification
and ease of use.
So, new design review categories.
We're proposing three here.
I'm gonna go left to right here, ministerial,
objective and then discretionary.
So, ministerial design review is designed to,
for state housing law projects like Jeanine mentioned earlier,
for example, Senate Bill 35.
These are required by the state to be ministerially approved without discretion,
without public hearing, and so any such project under this type of design review would be done by
the community development director, aka staff. I do want to note that this is very rare in,
you know, the past six, seven years that these bills have been around. The city has had two such
project subject to ministerial review. Looking at objective design review, this is again kind
of based out of state housing law. Chief among those, Senate Bill 330, again Janine touched on
that previously, requires the use of objective standards to review qualifying projects, which
are residential or residential mixed use projects. And here the approving body has some limited
discretion in so far as a project can be denied based on a narrow set of health and safety
findings that's outlined by the state.
And in the final category we have is discretionary design review.
Think of this as kind of what we have today essentially and it's been designed in that
way to match as close as possible.
This applies to all our commercial projects in the city or any residential project that
opts out of objective design review through the inability
or desire to not meet an objective standard.
They want to do something different,
or they're requesting a variance, for example,
from a development standard in the zoning code.
And so this gives the city and the approving body
the most discretion over a project.
Then moving on to our existing, well, not existing,
but proposed review thresholds.
So I mentioned the Design Review Commission in 1977,
I believe, issued a resolution delegating some
of their design review authority to staff
for small, minor projects.
On the left-hand side here is kind
of a representative list of what those projects are.
Kind of the primary projects we've seen over the years
has been those kind of small additions to residential projects
or minor new residential construction,
such as a custom single family home,
and then commercial storefront remodels.
And so then by extension, major projects
is everything else that's not on that list.
And those would typically be subject to the Planning
Commission's approval.
So we are asking the commission tonight
for their input on a potential change
to those thresholds.
The city council is part of their direction
to staff in July, 2023.
Did not ask staff to consider revisions
to the review thresholds,
but we do feel like there are some potential revisions
that can be made that would help kind of relieve
some of the approval burden of the planning commission,
given that this is a new responsibility of this commission
while still staying true to Council's direction
of keeping staff's review for smaller projects.
And so this change you see on your screen
would be one proposal that we're, again,
asking for you to weigh in on tonight,
basically would extend staff's review per view
for remodels or small additions
to any sized residential development,
instead of limiting that to just small residential products of four units or less.
So kind of putting it all together.
We have here a table.
This is found, I believe, on page five of your staff reports, so I've put it up here
as well.
The Planning Commission is called out there in orange for you.
Kind of key takeaways from this table.
The Design Review Commission, the DRC, now becomes an advisory-only body to the Planning
Commission.
The Planning Commission now assumes the bulk of the Design Review Authority previously
held by the Design Review Commission, as well as the City Council, which had on very rare
cases some Design Review approval granted to them.
The zoning administrator now has a role in the Design Review process where they did not
previously and that's given to them through a process that we're proposing
to basically roll up design review approvals to the highest reviewing body
when it's tied with another entitlement so for example when a design review
application comes in with a variance of variances heard by the zoning
administrator we're proposing that the zoning administrator now hear the
variance and the design review approval in one meeting.
And then lastly, the city council
will now become the appeals body for all planning commission
decisions as they are today.
So how does this impact you?
So I'm sure you're all curious.
So we took a look at the last four years of design review
approvals.
So that's January 2020 to December 2023.
In that time period, the city approved a total
of 174 design review applications.
67 of those were approved by the Design Review Commission
and 107 of those were approved by staff.
And so the Planning Commission would, for the most part,
pick up those 67 design review applications
approved by the DRC.
You average that out over four years.
you get about 17 projects per year.
So now I'm gonna walk you through four quick examples,
real world examples that have come in
over the last few years,
kind of get a sense of kind of the projects we're seeing
and then also how the process may or may not change
based under our proposed framework.
So this is a Wendy's, I believe it's on a treat in Maine.
Came in sometime last year for design review.
It's a they just wanted to essentially refresh their storefront today.
That is a staff level design review given to staff by the delegations of authority and under the new system.
We would classify this as a minor project subject to discretionary design review.
What it amounts to is there's no change to the design review approval process.
The applicant wouldn't even notice a change.
Second example here is a small residential development.
Three detached condos.
They requested a variance and then some tree removals.
And so you can see here the zoning administrator
does the variance, the minor subdivision
and the tree removals, and then it went back to staff
for design review.
Again, staff reviewed this because it was under four units,
four new units.
Under our proposed process, the, again,
as I previously mentioned, the zoning administrator
picks up the design review as part of the overall approval process and so it
just goes to one meeting. Third example here, Primrose Preschool. This is
currently under construction I believe in the Orchard Shopping Center. They were
seeking design review approval and a conditional use permit so this body did
see them at some point. That approval process, it went to the DRC for a
study session went to the planning commission for approval of the use permit and then went
back to the DRC for final design review.
Again on the proposed process, the DRC still gets an opportunity to weigh in and provide
their design comments at a study session and then it comes to you as the planning commission
where you would act upon both the conditional use permit and the design review application.
And then finally, this is 1910 North Main.
It's a residential mixed use development, I believe over by the target here in downtown.
And they only needed a design review and some tree removals.
So they went to the DRC, got everything there under the new system.
The DRC sees them as a study session and then it goes again to this body because they are
are a major project, a major residential project,
and you would act upon the design review
and the tree removals,
and this project would be subject to objective design review
because it is a residential project.
And finally, just a little bonus here,
administrative alignment, just one slide, I promise.
So as we were kind of going through
this very comprehensive code cleanup,
basically up and down the entire municipal code,
We realized this is a great time to do a little low hanging fruit cleanup.
As you may be aware, the community development department reorganized the planning manager
position, has been replaced by the assistant community development director position, which
some here has filled.
And so basically it was just a find and replace.
Where the code mentions the title planning manager, we substituted it for community development
director and did that dozens and dozens of times.
Not particularly related to design review, but again, just a quick and easy code cleanup
that we wanted to include here.
So now I'm going to give it back to Janine, who's going to take us home.
All right.
So I'm going to touch on what the next steps are.
So again, this evening's meeting is a study session, and we will be back.
Our tentative date is April 25th where we will be looking for a recommendation to council
for adoption of the proposed zoning amendments.
Then we'll be doing some more work on the nonresidential book that I mentioned earlier
and that comes back to you in the summer.
And then in between that we would be taking to City Council in May both the residents
residential mixed-use design review standards and guidelines for adoption, and then also
the requests for the amendments to the zoning code.
So the recommended action this evening for the Planning Commission is to receive the
draft design review standards and guidelines document, and to review and provide feedback
to staff on the proposed zoning code amendments listed here, and to provide input on the threshold
for staff design review that Ben mentioned earlier which would expand the definition
of minor projects and then would therefore go to staff a level design review.
So that concludes our presentation and we are here and happy to answer any questions
you may have about anything we presented or anything that's in your packet.
Thank you for a very detailed exhaustive presentation.
We are in a study session so we will ask start asking questions of our staff right now on
any of these topics and then we'll turn it over to have a public hearing first.
Okay.
Who would like to start?
Commissioner Ward.
Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you for all of this.
It looks like there's a lot of detailed work
and we really appreciate it.
I can tell you search and replace
is not just search and replace though,
so I'm not buying that in terms of the work you did
with regards to that.
I did have a question though,
how does it affect me, right?
That's what I wanna know.
You said you took 2023 basically to look at
the number of design review projects that were done there,
but I think our experience has been as a commission
that we had quite a slowdown due to COVID for projects.
And I'm wondering if you feel like that time period
is a reasonable sample for the year.
Yeah, let me clarify.
It was a time period of four years from 2020 to 2023.
And so it was the average.
Oh, okay.
Still kind of a sweet spot of COVID.
I know we had a lot of meetings canceled.
There weren't a lot of projects coming through.
It's all, I guess I shouldn't say guessing,
there's estimating, perhaps a better word, but.
Yeah, that was the data that was most easily accessible
to us, but we can go back and follow up with looking
at some other maybe pre-COVID years to get a better chance.
Yeah, I don't know, you go back too far
and then it loses relevance for that reason too.
So I'm just, I guess I'm just highlighting the issue.
I'm wondering about that.
I also am wondering with the reorganization,
are you anticipating that we're gonna
need additional staffing for the zoning administrator position or is that just
kind of a reorganization of duties somehow? No, the zoning administrator is
fulfilled by a variety of staff and community development. So it's not just
one person now saddled with additional work it's more of a just a functional
title for what's going on there. Yes. Okay, all right. That's all I have for the
moment. Thank you. Thank you. A couple of questions about kind of the process and
how this connects up to the state requirements. I noticed in some of the
categories there would be a number of standards, maybe half as many guidelines,
some would be about the same number, some would be a few more guidelines. Since the
state is trying to get us into an objective situation, when you have an equal number of
guidelines or even more guidelines and you have standards, how does that sit with the
state as far as are we really being objective or are we just kind of shuffling the easy
part over to standards and still keeping a lot of discretion in the guidelines?
So the way that I want to answer that question is we, I wish I knew the page number of that
1996 document, I could probably look it up, but we do have a lot more objectively written
standards in the proposed document significantly more.
I would say that that initial document was primarily guidelines and the standards that
were in there were not objectively written.
So we have made a big transition and evolution to primarily objective and the guidelines,
those don't necessarily apply to projects that are eligible for the SB 330 project as
much as like those aren't required.
The objective ones are what's required.
So I don't think that we've reduced the number of objective standards if that's we've significantly
increased if that answers your question. I'm just wondering if it's enough. I think I was just gonna
add to what Janine said and say what we focused the objective standards on really those priority
design criteria that we really want to see and then I feel like the guidelines are a little bit
of a bonus right it's like this is a nice to have but it's not a it's not a deal-breaker right it's
It's not so important that we have to see those necessarily with every project.
The next question is about variances.
I assume the variances are sort of in the same situation they are now, which is you
can ask for suspension of some rule or another or standard guideline, I suppose.
If there's some justification that, you know, your project is different than others and
deserves a kind of a different look from from what this standard is, is that
still possible with the objective standards? If it says 400 feet before you
have to have an opening in a building you know what if it's 420 because that
block is you know 850 feet wide. Right so in terms of the objective design
standards you either meet them all and you follow the objective design review
process or if you don't meet one, then you are in the discretionary process just to make
it real simple.
Right in your mind, next question.
Okay.
I was looking at the ministerial and objective and discretionary.
My first question was, does that mean, you know, once you've categorized, you know, is
the entire project objective or ministerial or can there be parts of it which are ministerial
And parts of it are objective and parts of it are discretionary.
That you know, you've met, for example, there are some simple things that, you know,
it's easy for the staff to say, yeah, check that box.
There's other things that, you know, you really want to take a close look
and see if the standard has been applied objectively.
And then there may be some things to which there's, you know,
some guidelines that address it.
It sort of sounds like you're saying, well, a given project has to fall into one of those
categories.
Yeah.
So if you want the SB if you want to be eligible for SB 330 streamlining, you need to follow
every single objective design standard.
Whether it's a design standard, development standard, zoning, a general plan, policy that's
objectively written, everything.
As soon as you deviate, then you're not following the SB 330 criteria and you're not eligible.
And you can think about it this way that if the project is consistent with objective standards
So it's in the objective design review
Path then the city has you know more limited discretion, but let's say if the project things
Oh, we you know we want to make certain changes
we now require a general plan amendment for some reason that that takes it out of the
protection under that objective design review path and so
once you're making a change from an objective design standard, then you're not meeting the
eligibility for that path.
And I think that's why that makes this slide here all that more important and why we made the decision to
incorporate and try to build in flexibility through these
menus where you can pick one or two or
to meet the standard and you have the flexibility of which ones you select.
last question is I'm not sure I understand that the thought behind the
change in the process we have designed review currently you know approving a
project for those items and it only comes to us if there's an appeal and now
that's become a two-step process where the design review looks at it and they
make a recommendation, then we look at it again for an approval, and is that some way
to kind of better apply the objective standards or is it that you don't trust design review
to really do design review and not, let me rephrase that, you know, they're doing design
Review and not so much the objective standards, which is kind of how this whole thing started with the state
You know, they wanted to take some of that flexibility away
But
Is there I guess I'm trying to figure out why the Planning Commission gets dropped into the process
Didn't seem necessary before
so stuff
We're directed by City Council to look at changes to the design review process
we brought to them some options one of you know one of the options was to put
more of the authority on staff one of the options was to keep the designer
view commission as is another was the options before you today and so it was
City Council's direction to staff to pursue the option that we're looking at
today you know one of the reasons they didn't pick the option of just going to
staff which was one of the options because ultimately it is if you meet the objective
standard there really isn't much the design review commission or this body can do to not
approve that project and so one option was like let's make it ministerial it's a checklist
staff looks and they meet everything that's passed but council wanted to be able to have
body that has that design experience, a body with architects, with landscape architects
to review the project.
There are high standards in Walnut Creek for the look and feel of buildings and site design,
and so they still felt that that was a value to have.
In terms of why not keep it there, one of the reasons was this loop back around, and
There became a process where something was approved by planning commission and not approved
by designer view and we counsel thought that there was that wasn't a very clear transparent
process or efficient process and so we were looking at all those things clarity, transparency,
efficiency, and I don't know if any of my colleagues want to add anything to that.
I think I can add to, you know, one of the intents of revising this process is, you know,
you still the city still wants to keep input about design review.
And one of the ways to do that is through the objective standard, you're quantifying
or you're, you know, making objective the design features that you want, and also from
the inputs of design guidelines and from the design review commission.
So you have that component.
The other thing is that under the SB 330 revised rules,
if a project meets the objective standards
and they have a complete application,
the city has to go through the process
approving or denying the project within five meetings.
And that includes all the meetings of the city bodies
and any workshops or study sessions in appeal.
And so the city is trying to respond to that
and that's an eventual response the city needs to have
to be able to fit within that timeframe of factoring
and any potential appeals or continuances of the project.
So that's kind of the idea behind that change.
Other commissioners?
Okay, I have a few minor questions
about the actual, the booklet itself.
Going through it, a couple of things struck me
as maybe missing or somewhere else in the municipal code.
For example, cell transmitters are now being put
throughout neighborhoods.
Do we have any design?
Say on that, or is that cell transmitters?
Maybe we need something.
And then...
Yeah.
What was the question?
Does this, I'm sorry, Chip Griffin, principal planner.
It's basically, I didn't see anything specifically
in the document on cell transmitters.
I don't believe this book includes anything to do
with the cell industry, cell phone industry at all.
Is it somewhere else in our municipal code then?
We do have, in fact, we're taking a look
at that ordinance as well and clean,
because there's a lot of state law
that we need to abide by as well,
because it's which has taken away a lot of local control.
So we need to clean that up.
We need to take a policy paper
that we have in turn and codify it.
Okay, thank you.
Next question is also electronic is evidently,
Electric vehicle chargers are now being attached
to the outside of dwellings.
Do we have anything on that?
Or do we have any design on that?
Or do we need some design on that?
We didn't contemplate that, but I think,
I know that Rami has done a lot of objective standards
elsewhere, have you seen that?
We have, I haven't actually seen any standards
that speak to the design of individual EV charging on a home.
like on a single family home.
We have gotten questions about this before,
more for multifamily and provision of EV charging
within multifamily buildings, which is,
there are provisions in the California Green Building Code
already for EV charging and wiring
for multifamily projects and commercial buildings.
But yeah, I'm trying to think, I haven't seen them.
That's not to say in my own neighborhood,
I have seen some interesting setups
where people who don't have an EV,
like they don't have a garage,
run an extension cord across the sidewalk
and plug in their car on the street, which is not great,
but yeah, I haven't actually seen anything specifically.
So yeah, that's something that we could look at
if you direct us to do that.
And one thing that kind of,
I don't like artificial turf,
I saw that several references to the area.
Is there a way we could not have it?
I'll take gravel, I'll take dirt, I'll take anything.
Yeah, we do have it limited.
Dog parks was one of the few areas.
Yeah, we have it limited to more high activity areas.
So it's supposed to be only for things like dog parks
or sports exercise type areas where you have a lot of activity
and foot traffic, but not for, that's not to say,
you know, that the city would wanna see artificial turf,
you know, replacing people's, you know, front yards
or, you know, front setback areas and stuff.
Well, Kaiser Hospital in their courtyard
does have artificial turf now,
and it's not aesthetically pleasing.
So, and finally, can we, the mix,
in order to allow for permit streamlining,
can we do something with allowing the mixed use part
of the development to be really mixed use?
Because with my tenure on the commission,
I've seen quite a few small projects come through
where it's looking for CUPs and I go,
why do we really need a CUP for that?
It, to me it fits.
And it's, we need to broaden it out a little bit.
So I might need a little bit more clarity on the question.
Are you asking for a certain percentage of the land use?
If somebody wants to put a car dealership in under there, why can't they, or life insurance
sales office, I don't think we have enough retail to fill up all of the retail spaces
and all of our mixed use, and I think we need to be more broad on that.
Right.
For the scope of this project, we are only looking at physical features, not the land
use.
So that might be more of a discussion we have when we look at like doing a general plan
update and a holistic zoning cut update.
And I know there's an economic strategy out there that was adopted recently in the last
year or so that does touch exactly on that.
So I know that that will be one of the documents that's considered when we do do that general
plan update which looks at land use or takes a you know a fresh look at the
land use. If I could touch on one more thing about the lawn I'm just
thinking because that triggered a lot of discussion the the turf and that's why
we limited it but you know sustainability water use will wade into
the equation which is one of the reasons we didn't want to reject it outright and
then maintenance you know a lot of times when there is a real lawn it's not
maintain or it might be in an unusual shape or slope and so those tend to be
better suited for artificial chart. Okay thank you. And anybody else have other
questions? Yes. This must have been pretty difficult to put together so I get it.
I'm I'm curious. There's there's been quite a bit of legislation that allows
you to turn commercial properties into residential such as AB 2011 which I
understand might have some minor changes in this next legislative session and I'm
not an architect at all but it's interesting I was taking a look at some
of the development objective development standards and I wonder do they do they
lend itself should someone actually want to do an AB 2011 project? I personally
have never done one and I actually haven't seen very many of them because
it's actually very difficult. I think it's it's not very easy to do and I'm
looking at like the courts or the the court the private outdoor space
requirement for multifamily. I'm just wondering how in the world... I don't know.
It was just, it was just a question. So that's question number one. And then question
number two, which is way easier because I just threw like something really big at
you. I'm... when I saw that threshold going to staff for four, we had it up
here earlier. It was 500 feet. It was new construction for less and then anything
less than 500 feet, right? There it is. Did this have anything to do with SB 9?
To... No. Okay, never mind. Can you see how SB 9 you can do four, split the lot, two
main, two eight, and I figured, oh, that's why they did that. I'm just curious. No?
Okay, never mind. It was beautifully integrated with Senate
film. Right. And then to your first question, I mean a lot of what goes into
to the standards we're looking at today
is the kind of exterior part of the building.
And so some of the questions that you think you're talking
about like conversion of use might happen in the interior,
but then you did mention courts.
I mean, you know, one of the things that we've,
we have encouraged in the past are just seating areas
for office workers or even in the auto sales industry
for waiting for your, you know, your car to be serviced
or cleaned having an outdoor space to sit in is nice.
So I think that a lot of these things could be repurposed.
Specifically, we didn't look at this entire document
with that in mind,
but I do think that there are opportunities
that will could be.
Thank you.
Any more questions?
I just have one more comment.
So I'm a lawyer and it took me way too long
to figure out why you were colluding courts
in this entire section.
So I just am confessing that right now,
but I did figure it out eventually.
So, oh, not that kind of court, the other kind of court.
Okay, got it now, so.
Yeah, it's a remnant.
It was already in our zoning code.
We had it applied to multifamily units and mixed use,
and we just simply wanted to apply it
to all multifamily units.
At this venture, we didn't take the opportunity
Maybe clean up some language or revisit it. I mean I've had a lot of projects
I've dealt with it that use that language. It was it was my own complete brain freeze. I just thought it was amazing. So
last chance
Thank you for all of your very very hard work for months and possibly years now
We need to have a public hearing open up for public comment
And if anybody member the public which I don't see too many here. We'd like to come down and comment on this
Oh, we're welcome to come down
seeing none we will return it back to the Commission and
One of the things we are supposed to give directions to the staff to for the next thing
Process and one is that our opinion of the
Thresholds for review which I believe is the screen we have in front of us
Yeah, I'll bring that up for you.
Does anyone would like to start on that one?
There's no need for a motion.
It's basically.
That's right.
It's a study.
It's a study.
What would your comment be then?
OK, Mr. I have to admit, I'm still
trying to get my head around design review to the planning
commission that appealed to the city council.
so I hadn't really focused on how the staff fits
into each of those.
I take it the intent was to,
given that the objective standards
give a cleaner direction for decision,
the idea was that more projects could in fact be handled
necessarily by the staff.
And so the question is, was that threshold when,
when does the staff say this doesn't need
to go to design review?
So is that the question we're trying to answer?
What that threshold is?
So Ben, do you wanna come?
Let me go back to that particular slide
clarify because it is a little confusing you kind of have to get your head around
it. I have some notes here. Yeah so basically you know again we were
looking at everything and so part of the thought process was you know staff today
already has the authority given to them to approve up to four brand new
residential units and thinking about that versus the impact of a small
addition you know 500 and one square foot addition to a you know 200 unit
apartment building seemed like you know that was kind of the four units were
maybe more of an impact right and so this is just kind of a way to I guess
I guess, clean things up to say, hey, the impact here,
we think is roughly the same.
And again, acknowledging that this is all going to be new
for the Planning Commission.
And so maybe there's an opportunity here for staff
to just alleviate some of the number of projects
that come to this body.
As part of our research, we're really not getting
that many of these types of projects,
like remodels to existing apartment buildings,
or rather additions, we do get some remodels.
And so that was kind of the intent
behind those, just some cleanup.
If I could clarify a little bit of the cleanup,
you'll notice the word remodel that was missing.
So this adds remodels to the list,
not just an addition of 500 square feet or less.
And by splitting it out into the, on the right-hand side, into two components.
The first component, we're basically saying new construction of four or fewer dwelling units.
That stays the same.
But what's changing is that remodels or additions of five or more units would also be considered minor.
So that's the main change.
I don't know if that helps clarify.
So if someone's building a single family house or two flats,
that would be by definition ministerial.
That would be staff review.
Yeah, because it fits in the four units
or less of new construction.
That's the first category, right?
Any other questions?
Do you have any, is that enough direction for you?
Have we given you the direction you are looking for?
So we've answered questions and I think now this is the time where if you have any like
direction on if you wanted us to look at anything else, what do we have on the list?
I want to go back to that slide.
Commissioner Ward.
It seems like that we're all, now that we have more understanding, thank you for answering
all those questions that I feel like, unless people have a lot of disagreement, we're pretty
impressed with what you've given us here and we think it should be, you know, moved along
to the next stage, which I think is the council, correct?
With perhaps the only exception being that Chair Strongman has suggested maybe looking
into the electric vehicle charging station question a little bit, just to see.
I mean, I have one on the outside of my townhouse,
and it's no big deal, but that's my story.
I'm sticking to it, but I think that that's certainly
a growing area and something to be considered,
and there's safety concerns and all kinds of stuff
that are folded into that.
So I think that would be a good addition,
but other than that, I haven't heard anything from any of us
that would suggest that there is anything more
that you would need to do other than accept our commendation
for a job well done and to move it along to the council.
So that would be my suggestion.
Whether that needs to be a motion or just a comment,
there it is, so maybe we can all give it the thumbs up
or something, I don't know.
And the next step would be that the zoning code
recommendations to council would come back
to the planning commission for a formal motion.
Okay, let's do that too.
That sounds great.
I guess, thank you.
So that we've kind of addressed two, one and two.
In terms of number three,
there was some clarification that we provided.
Based on that clarification,
do you think that number three is something
we should bring forward to council
as an option for their consideration?
Believe so unless somebody disagrees with me.
Let me try to clarify again.
So I've got three units to build.
I bring them to you.
Is that, so that goes to a staff review
because four units are less.
And it does today, so that's not changing.
The four units are less of new construction today
and what we're suggesting, it's the same.
So does the staff review include the option to say,
you know, there's some tricky things here
in interpreting the objective standards
or how they're applied here.
you know, I think the design review ought to take a look at this.
Is that one of the options or is it simply, you know, because of the cut off, the threshold,
it falls in your lap and you have to deal with it?
Yeah, so basically we need to codify very clear thresholds in the code as to whether
or not it goes to staff or not.
Does that answer your question?
Well, what I'm asking is once it goes to staff, can staff take a look at it and say, you know,
This is a little bit more complex or there are some policy questions involved or whatever,
you know, which is sort of not what you're hoping with the directive standards but, you
know, they don't always work the way you think they might.
You know, is there an option to say, yeah, it's possible that the staff can deal with
this but in this case I think, you know, maybe the designer view should do it or is it simply
a cut off?
So that is something that's an option today, based on the delegations of authority, the
planning manager can and has in the past been able to because of this exact situation you're
describing say, hey, you know, we want the Design Review Commission to take a look.
That option will go away.
And so, you know, again, based on everything needs to be objective, there needs to be very
clear objective thresholds for everything, right?
And so if we say for it's for and there's no the only way the next body up, which would
be this body would hear that would be on appeal, essentially.
So essentially, then you would the staff would probably turn the project down by design and
the applicant would appeal it to us then.
If they didn't comply with objective standards, we would act in a way that any body, any approving
body in the city, would need to act based on state law, which would be to turn down
the project.
As we always do, we would work with the applicant and say, hey, you're not meeting this standard.
We highly suggest you revise this, otherwise we're going down this path of denial.
We always have that conversation with applicants.
We want to get to a place of yes, right?
And we want to see things built, and more often than not, those changes are made.
And if they disagree with you and decide to want to appeal, now, would that come directly
to us?
Or would that?
Yes.
It would.
Okay.
Do you have what you need from us at this point in time?
I'll dive in again.
Okay.
So again, thank you for that explanation with regard to that and I think it was a good
clarification that the four unit issue is not a change for us at all.
And we don't see all of your checklists and analysis that goes on behind that, but we
know it happens.
So I think I and I think the rest of the commission feel very comfortable with the thresholds
you provided.
And again, I would suggest that we recommend that it be moved on to the City Council for
their review.
Thank you.
Thank you very much and we'll move on to Commission considerations do we have any reports by staff.
Okay and moving on to Commission members and staff reports a commission members have anything announcements.
Seeing none we are adjourned.