Welcome to this January 15th Design Review Commission.
May we do the roll call please?
Yes, thank you, Chair.
We'll have Vice Chair Newsom.
I am here.
Commissioner Basting.
Here.
Commissioner Riley.
Here.
Commissioner Case is on a business retreat,
and as you know,
we are down to four commissioners.
In any case, we have a quorum.
Terrific.
So, consent calendar, is there anything that we would consider putting in the consent calendar
tonight?
We, I have no recommendations.
Very well.
On to public communications.
This portion of the meeting is reserved for comment for items not on the agenda.
We can't act on them.
But is there any public communications?
Items not on the agenda?
Seeing none.
along. Public hearings and study sessions, I believe we have one tonight, right? Has
anybody had any ex parte communications regarding the North Italian sign project?
No. No. Okay. Does staff have a presentation?
Yes, thank you. Good evening design review commissioners. My name is Jessica Gonzalez,
senior planner, and I will be presenting the North Italian sign application. So getting
Getting started with the project location, the site is located at 1179 Locust Street.
And North Italia is a restaurant that proposes to occupy the existing single-story tenant
space which was formerly occupied by Tillies.
The site is within the larger Plaza Escuela Shopping Center development and zoned pedestrian
retail within our downtown area.
And the project scope before you tonight involves installing a new wall sign for the new restaurant
business.
So here are some photos of the existing tenant space within the building.
And just a quick overview of the required entitlements for the restaurant they have
applied for and received an AUP to serve alcohol.
The project is before the DRC tonight though for review of a wall sign which does require
a few exceptions to the master sign program and a sign height increase allowance from
the DRC.
The larger project itself does include repainting the building, adding some awnings and some
railing to the front.
And so since those exterior changes do fall under our minor design review classification,
the exterior changes will be reviewed by staff as a staff level design review and issued
once the project for design review is deemed complete.
And so here is a depiction of the one wall sign that is proposed above the new restaurant
entryway.
The sign is approximately 48 square feet in size and proposed approximately 26 feet above
grade.
As you can see, the sign includes the words North and Italia.
Here's more sign details showing the 2.5-foot-tall sign lettering that reads North, followed
by the 14.5-inch lettering for Italia, as well as a night view of the internal illumination.
And so as I noted, the project site is located within the Plaza Escuela Shopping Center,
which has an approved master sign program.
The sign program allows for three tenant signs at the subject site.
Those three signs are shown on the screen in a red circle.
This image was taken from the master sign program sign allowance.
However, the three former tenant spaces were combined in 2010, which is depicted on the
right side of the screen.
And so as such, the applicant is seeking some deviations from the MSP criteria to allow
for one larger sign at the new combined space
which does require DRC approval.
And so the MSP for the site is pretty prescriptive.
And so as proposed, the one sign requires a few deviations
from the sign size, dimensions and letter height.
As really explained in the staff report,
staff does support these exceptions
as the space has been combined
and the larger project frontage
that support the larger sign.
Oh, let me go back.
And additionally, the sign also requires some exceptions
from the sign location design and illumination allowed
under the MSP.
Again, staff supports these deviations
given the modern design of the sign
and internal illumination which is consistent
with other tenant spaces within the shopping center.
And just lastly, the Wanner Creek sign ordinance
does restrict the height of any wall sign to 25 feet in height.
However the ordinance does allow for the DRC to approve a higher sign upon making the findings
of the screen.
As outlined in the report, staff does feel the findings can be made as the higher sign
includes good design and the sign is placed in front of the business that's proposed.
And so here is a project rendering of the sign and how it ties into the overall remodel
of the site.
As I mentioned, although the design review will be reviewed at a staff level, we do welcome
any feedback from the DRC on the design.
And so with that, staff does recommend that the DRC determine the CEQA categorically exempt
and approve the draft resolution granting the master sign program exceptions, sign height
increase subject to the conditions of approval.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Does anybody have any questions about the presentation?
Okay.
Is there, so no questions.
I'm good.
Okay.
I mean, actually let me ask a question.
So how does, like in terms of the height because it's above the height, how does it compare
to the Cheesecake Factory?
I don't have the exact height of the Cheesecake Factory sign.
I know I did pull those approvals and it has similar illumination as the North Italian
sign that's proposed.
I just remembering being out there,
I believe it's pretty similar in terms of being
on the upper facade of the wall.
It is, yeah.
I was just doing the same.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's, so we're not really creating a precedent.
This precedent has been allowed before.
Yeah, and how about.
Correct.
Yeah, like other signs go further down the line.
Do they have exceptions or is this the only one?
Looks like the Cheesecake Factory has one.
So there was an amendment to the master sign program to allow the cheesecake factory
Sign and that was done. I believe shortly after the master sign program was put into place
Okay, and it was done for this portion of the site too. However, the site still hadn't been combined
Okay, the tenant spaces
There's a couple other shops down there that had
Amendments to I think it was the men's men's warehouse and also Nick the Greek. I believe yeah, I think they had one. Yeah
OK, well, that's some total of questions.
Thank you.
How about public comment?
Do we have any public comment?
No.
Hearing none, do we have any commissioner comments?
No?
I think it looks nice.
Yeah.
Fresh.
Me too.
I mean, I agree.
I think, first of all, I'm really excited to have them come
because we certainly have enjoyed going in Southern California, go to the ones
in Southern California, it's a great business. It's interesting fact it's the
same ownership as Cheesecake Factory. I learned which is kind of interesting but
I mean I think it if that's it I think maybe let's just how about we do a vote.
I move to approve the draft resolution that we have in our packet granting
final master program sign exceptions. Okay. How about a second? I seconded. Okay. We'll call.
Commissioner, Commissioner Besting. Yes. Commissioner Riley. Yes. Vice Chair Newsom. Yes. Motion
carries. Approved. Okay, great. So that closes the public hearing. And so we're going to
move on to Commission considerations. And I understand we have a presentation, so let's
go ahead. We there are two actually there's one item one item listed and
put for City Council priority setting and then we're gonna put in one before
that which is a quick announcement from from Director Vandenbrand. Great. So the
quick announcement actually you know would come in item six but I'll just
quickly make an announcement that just to remind you that there is going to be
a joint a special joint meeting of the Planning Commission and the Design
and review commission on the 30th,
which is a Thursday of this month at six o'clock,
and the intention is to just do a quick overview,
a brief study session on the sign program
for the city and the accompanying ordinance update.
We're relaunching this effort,
and so just wanted to do that as an announcement.
Shall I proceed to the next item?
Let's proceed to the next item.
Okay.
So in terms of a presentation,
there's not a formal presentation.
Council had wanted each of the commissions
to be able to provide the commissions
with an opportunity for input
on the council priority setting.
So that on February 11th,
council is going to be having a discussion
about the priorities,
the council priorities for the next two years.
And currently those priorities are diversity,
equity and inclusion, economic development
and job creation, environmental sustainability
and climate action, parks, facilities
and other infrastructure and public safety
and social wellness.
And in your commission packet,
there was a bit more information that was given
about sort of all the things that are behind it.
So for example, the parks, facilities,
and other infrastructure.
The effort to essentially to rebuild
and to construct a new Heather Park Aquatic Center
and community center was on there.
And then under economic development and job creation,
permits, streamlining, and a number of the activities
that this commission actually sees is on there.
So the way that has gone with other commissions
is that there hasn't been a formal vote,
but people have been given an opportunity
to be able to identify what you might think
as a commission you'd like to recommend to counsel
for consideration as a priority.
And amongst the variety of things
that have come before this commission,
there are certainly process improvements,
permit streamlining,
other economic development related activities,
and then also general plan update.
That is not currently a priority,
but it's one that council had considered in the past,
along with housing.
And several of those items actually have come
before this commission in the past couple years,
specifically around some process improvements
and permit streamlining,
and changing some of the roles of this commission,
making it more advisory, and just as examples.
With that, I'm happy to, I'm gonna stop,
but I'm happy to answer any questions,
and you get to structure your input and debate
however you want as a commission.
I mean, anybody wanna start?
Anybody have any general comments about this?
I guess, I have a question.
Is that, are the things that were priorities previously,
are those not to be considered as priorities moving forward?
Or how much is it coming up with all new things
or changing those things or that type of thing?
So you could make suggestions about the priorities.
So that, you know, these are the category areas.
And so that if in your opinion,
as a commissioner, as a commission,
that the city has a lot of work underway in a certain area,
that you would recommend that something else
be considered as a priority, you know, as a substitution,
that's one option.
Another option is maybe, you know, saying,
So you could recommend entirely new priorities,
but most commissioners haven't done that.
There's usually some sort of hybridized type of approach
that here these things need to rise further up
in the consideration and resourcing.
And then there's work that's occurring already
in these areas so that some of the commissions
have made recommendations in their feedback to council
to consider alternate, one or two alternate priorities
in lieu of, or, and then others have said,
yeah, keep these five, and that add these also.
So it is up to your discretion.
Anything else, any ideas?
I have a question.
So these are general philosophic priorities, correct?
not specific to trends or things that we've been seeing
lately coming here.
So you could take trends or things that you've been seeing
here and you could, so I'll only give you an example
to help, you know, your discussion perhaps for a bit.
So that you may choose to say we have been seeing
this trend to do X and because we've seen so many of X,
We think that the city should consider
as part of one of these priorities
or as an alternate priority, taking an action,
a policy action to just using the example
of the sign right there to update a sign ordinance
that allows these things to happen automatically
without having to come to this body to consider.
Or alternately, you have been seeing X coming through
and you've consistently denied it,
and so would like to have some emphasis
or research done around that.
So those are examples.
Or there may be something in your role in your public
or your professional lives that you're seeing
that you feel that the city would benefit
from putting more emphasis on.
so we have a sort of a we have a mandated housing requirement under which of these does that fall
that is a very good question it is not currently a a priority i know there's irony in that
but the thought had been at the last council priority setting that at that juncture there
was such a big push to get the housing element to be adopted you know adopted and put in place
that there was, you know, a sigh of relief. I think that we've since found that that was
just the first step. The one thing that I that I've noticed is there's kind of a,
what do I want to say, that the neighborhood outreach and information around the infill housing
projects, I would like for us to work philosophically on some better way of requiring the developers
to do a little more to fit these new projects that we've been seeing and that have popped
up in pretty much all of our neighborhoods into the neighborhood, as opposed to dropping
in what they did before in multiple other locations, and it doesn't necessarily fit
in the neighborhood, and it doesn't speak to the neighborhood, and it's not necessarily
communicating with or in the traffic and the pedestrian levels aren't necessarily communicating
with the neighborhood as a community and that's sort of a philosophical approach to this.
What do you guys think of that?
I'm just, that's something that I know.
We shouldn't have to sit here and say, look, you've got this giant wall and you've walled
out everybody and that's not acceptable.
That's some way that we can think of to outline.
It's got to be stitched into the fabric of the city.
Right.
Exactly.
I think so it's kind of glad you articulated that yeah
Anything else? It's it's happening. It's going to happen. It's a good thing
It's happening people should be able to do these a to use they should be able to do these other things, but they shouldn't be
exclusionary
of the surroundings
They should they shouldn't be
So different that they that they are an eyesore in a neighborhood
Point of clarification and I think you said it I just can't hear that good and you did say infill residential projects. Yes. Yes
Any of them really?
Well, and there is an overarching philosophy and requirement that things do go with
You know the rest of the city is just for some reason. It's not
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's part of the the code, right?
Matches the neighborhood, right?
So, one of the challenges that every jurisdiction within the state of California has is that
there had been new legislation and as part of the current set of priorities and permit
streamlining, the only criteria that any housing project can be evaluated against are objective
design standards and those guidelines.
And so, there was a concerted effort to update those and have those adopted last year.
And in fact, two of the members here, you know, on this commission had worked very diligently
to help update those standards and those in essentially to elevate the base requirements
of those objective design standards.
Okay, true.
I was one of those people.
I think we need to think about what the secondary effects are of these housing projects.
So if you go and you can build a house in your backyard or build a podium housing of
higher stories, what has to be done to the infrastructure on every level to accommodate
that?
So, we're talking about roads, we're talking about transit.
How do you, you need to kind of do an overlay
of the planning exercise and going, okay,
first we used to think this was possible,
now this other thing is possible.
This other density is possible and probable.
So, what are the kind of impacts
we'll let it have on the city?
I don't think, I think that's probably how you say it
because it's really like, we have no power
over these state housing things,
but they can exist and you can go put
building on a property, even if it might be something
we might not support, but with that as a reality,
what else do we have, what else has to be done
to make, you know, Walnut Creek a vibrant city
and do there need to be more parks
around this what kind of planning overlay
might have to be done?
I don't want to put words in your mouth.
I'm going to the very concepts that you're talking about
and the things that you're asking about
would fall within the, you know,
a framework of a general plan update
and our current general plan goes,
it was adopted in 2006 and goes through 2025.
So many of the things that you're talking about
would fit within that, you know, kind of box bucket,
whatever you want to call it.
Well, I think that in that case,
that would be a reason to make it a priority,
make the general plan update a priority.
And I could add that one thing that didn't change
was the city's ability to charge impact fees.
So impact fees are typically for the exact items
that are fixes, improvements that you've mentioned.
with those incoming funds,
how do you decide to prioritize it?
And that's where the general plan update comes in, right?
So that's good that there's theoretically money to do it,
but sometimes money, if it's just sitting there,
it gets used for other things, so I think so.
I think, you know, I think for me it's,
my brother has been involved in the city
and around a long time with the issue of homelessness.
You're also talking about housing, right?
So, housing for who?
So like, and I don't know how really to articulate it,
but there's a lot of talk about low-income housing
and offsets and so forth.
How does that get fulfilled?
Immediately adjacent to this now 30-foot tall wall
within four feet of their back fence
because that was essentially state guided project
that we couldn't say much about.
So to your point, I think that goes in,
that we need to talk about that
in the context of the general plan
because we can't penalize people
who are already in affordable housing
by allowing developers to just cookie cutter these things
that went in that spot and work just fine
in this more commercial location,
but don't belong in a neighborhood
where there's already people
who need and deserve that housing.
Yeah.
I mean, you could talk about in the context
of the general plan update,
but the first thing you said
was diversity, equity, and inclusion,
which is very important, right?
but what we're about is physical things, right?
So like how diversity, equity, and inclusion is,
there have been many names for this over the years,
but very little progress.
And so saying it at the top of the list is meaningless
unless you come up with a plan for how that's done.
And I would argue that all, I think it's right,
that belongs at the top,
But every one of those other priorities
needs to rift off that and say how you're doing it.
And that comes down to housing.
It comes into things like transit,
how people ride bikes around town.
Those type of things are very important
to actually making a resilient and diverse community.
So I think the diversity, inclusion thing's a great thing,
but I think they need to drill down
say what that means, because I, you know, I'm an architect, I do public works, and I
always get asked the question about how I'm going to do it. And it's hard to do when you're
doing like one thing, but really, if we're going to go say that or actually tell other
people that that's a deliverable, you need to tell them what you're looking for.
So in my previous career as an urban infill developer,
residential mixed use developer,
I did a project in the mission called Mosaica.
And it was called Mosaica because it was a mosaic,
because it included homeless repositioning housing
and family affordable housing.
And my piece of it was to develop
the condo, four cell condo project
that paid for the rest of it.
and it also had repositioned neighborhood retail.
So there's ways to think about it as an overall
and incorporate those things.
I'm not saying we have a lot of space to do it
here in Walnut Creek at the moment,
but what we were just talking about with that last project,
with that obviously affordable section
of single story apartments immediately adjacent
to this project, there's ways to be more sensitive to it
somehow within the requirements that we have
to allow it to...
Yeah, it's like these projects,
I think that these housing projects we're doing
are great frankly, I think it's important that we do it,
but the way the legislation is,
is it's like you have this building
and it just floats in from space.
Doesn't speak to anything around it.
And it doesn't have any of those wonderful things that you mentioned, right?
Because you can't go through that process
so it behooves us as a community to actually say okay, well we're having this project and
Everything around it we have we have to actually soften everything around it
to accommodate some of those things which I think goes back to the general plan update, but I
Feel like that would be a very important thing to say in a general plan update
I don't know.
I agree with all of that, particularly the housing
and who the housing is for.
And having DEI has to do with many things, right?
And economics is a huge part of that as well.
So really, if we are gonna be diverse and inclusive,
it is taking into account all levels of that economic.
Yeah, I mean, sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, well, I'm gonna mention something else now.
So a few.
But I also, and I think in light of what is happening in LA
and in light of just how it has been here,
really talking, going back again
to environmental sustainability and climate action.
And I think it's even more important.
And I realized that I don't know
as a Walnut Creek resident what the disaster plan is, right?
What if Shell Ridge was on fire, what's the plan?
what are we supposed to do?
And I think that it is inevitable
that these are gonna become more and more common events
and that as a community, as part of that general plan,
we need to really look at acknowledging it
and figuring out how our community understands
and is communicated with
and how we sort of take, acknowledge that it's happening
and communicate out to our citizens.
Because as one, I don't know what would be happening, right?
And we all live, it's the wonderful thing
about living here, but the flip side is.
I mean, if you look at those shots of Altadena
and you look at those grids of streets,
there's no way any one of those people thought ever
that their house was, there was a firestorm.
wide streets so forth it's it's it's staggering so I think it's a really good
point yeah it's the same thing and we are just the same as the ad right the
theaters interesting how they survived yeah it's it's it's actually no accident
right so and there was another story of it I've watched in 60 minutes about how
one person came in this fire marsh from another and he came in a safe two houses
just by pouring liquids on the gas meters well what what are the things
that you have to do as a community to actually harden the community against
These threats right. Yeah, it's
Exactly in care public safety one of the two. Yeah, but
And that's in the way where you know, there's ways in which it there's they can't be separate
They are the same right the housing and this it's all they are related to each other, but
It's just it's really important. Yeah public safety and climate action are the same thing in many ways, right?
they're all linked and
By the way, I mean if you go look at all to Dina, I mean
That's a that's a blow to
Diversity Echo and inclusion. Oh, yeah
so it's I mean that that's that's the trick is how
You know, it's really I was involved a lot of projects after the Oakland fire all those years ago
And they were there were a lot there were lots of code changes that were made
then
It's hard it's hard to believe how long it's been and and house is built after that time are safe
So if you go look at look down at LA or oak really LA
You see that there's houses that they seem to have been immune. But the reality is that they're just done to the new codes
so but
In an existing community like this you don't have the ability to tear down everything and restart it
you just have to do to provide the security in other ways.
I mean, building codes are great,
but we live here all our lives,
we might impact 10% of everything.
And the rest of it is in trouble, maybe.
Well, anything else?
I think those were really good points.
Thank you very much.
We will be attempting to summarize this
and then conveying this to counsel.
Not right now.
Okay.
Thank you.
Well, that was a lot better than I thought, so thanks.
Okay, so with that, going on to the next thing is,
do we have any commissioner member or staff reports?
I have none, none, thank you.
Okay, all right, good.
So then we're gonna adjourn.
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