Revolt of the property owners Revolt of the property owners (May 28, 2003)

South of Forest Avenue commercial property owners get organized

by Don Kazak

Owners of commercial properties in the nine-block South of Forest Avenue (SOFA) area had a few words for the Palo Alto planning staff last week: Don't mess with our properties.

Out of the 65 property owners in the SOFA area, 47 have written letters to the city objecting to proposed zoning regulations for the neighborhood. The changes would prohibit any new offices on Homer Avenue or Emerson Street, and would also restrict whether owners of properties on other streets could replace existing offices with another type of office use. The neighborhood is currently a mix of housing, small offices, auto shops, a few retail stores and the big Whole Foods Market.

At a Thursday night meeting organized by the planning staff in response to the letters, property owners said the city should let economics determine the mix of commercial uses in the area.

"I'm confused," said Tom Harrington, the first property owner to speak at the meeting. "Palo Alto is going to change the rules and tell me who I can rent to. Why are you doing this? So Palo Alto can become a place of vacant buildings?"

Harrington's concerns echo that of many property owners in the area, who prior to the meeting attended an organizing dinner at Spago's hosted by developer Jim Baer. If their buildings go vacant, owners fear the city will dictate what they can and can't do with them.

The zoning changes are an attempt to preserve uses, like retail, from being taken over by offices, said Lisa Grote, the city's chief planning official.

"The office-use problem has solved itself," Harrington said, referring to office vacancies around town. "I would respectfully suggest that you leave the zoning alone."

The regulations pose "a fundamental hostility" to office uses, Baer said.

"To me, this is a reactive piece of legislation," he said. "It's an attempt to solve problems which don't exist. This is the single worst piece of staff work I've seen in 25 years, and I don't like to say that of staff."

The pending regulations were proposed on a narrow, 6-5 vote of the SOFA Working Group, a group of residents and property owners. Some people feel that residential interests, not commercial interests, emerged victorious in that process, said Chop Keenan, a SOFA property owner and developer.

"The fact is that we don't have a very good buy-in for the (SOFA) plan," Keenan said.

Keenan also said that SOFA is not a good place for new retail stores because there is a daytime shortage of on-street parking now. "Converting to retail where you don't have parking is a recipe for disaster," he said.

The SOFA Working Group has been meeting for the last three years to develop a set of proposed regulations for the nine-block area bounded by Alma Street, Ramona Street, Forest Avenue and Addison Avenue. The city's Planning and Transportation Commission, meanwhile, has come up with a slightly different set of regulations, with the two sets of recommendations differing on some of the details of how existing office uses can be replaced.

The City Council, faced with a conflict over the 800 High St. project earlier this year, directed city planning staff to come up with a proposed set of SOFA regulations by this summer. Then, there was some hope of resolving opposition to the 800 High St. project -- 61 units of housing approved by the City Council -- but that issue has now qualified for a referendum and will be on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The city, meanwhile, is trying to finalize the SOFA regulations. To that end, the Planning and Transportation Commission will meet June 25 and the City Council is scheduled to take final action July 21.

The 40 or so SOFA property owners who showed up at the meeting last week will show up at those meetings, too, Baer said. "This thing has a life of its own, now," he said.

One of the property owners, Simon Cintz, said the SOFA area is made up of small properties, many of which have been in the same families for generations. "People worked very hard to develop their properties, and many of the restrictions in the SOFA plan undermine that investment. We are really more than pieces of property." Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com