Good planning or anti-housing? Good planning or anti-housing? (October 01, 2004)

Council's rejects large project, avoids new development fight

by Bill D'Agostino

Developer Harold Hohback is going back to the drawing board.

On Monday night, the Palo Alto City Council rejected Hohback's proposal, four years in the making, to build a four-story, 258,282-square-foot housing, and research and development project on Page Mill Road.

"I thought I was doing the city a favor by taking the site and trying to do something with it," Hohback said. He is considering his options, but said he might sell the land and take a financial hit.

"Anything I do now is going to be a loser," he said. "I've got an alligator I've got to solve. I'm exploring that now."

By rejecting the project, the council avoided a battle with its opponents, who had threatened another voter referendum to block construction.

"Kill it now or I'll kill it for you," warned Bob Moss, from the Barron Park Neighborhood Association. A similarly controversial 61-unit housing complex at 800 High St. was placed on last fall's ballot after neighborhood activists fought the council's approval. It barely got the voters' approval, and is now under construction.

Many of those same activists praised the council's split vote (7-2) on Monday night to reject the new Page Mill Road project. The opponents argued the elected officials wisely ruled against an "abusive" proposal that was way too large and offered the community too few public benefits in exchange for letting the developer construct a larger building.

But supporters of the 51-foot-tall project -- which would have butted up against the Caltrain tracks, possibly bouncing sound into nearby homes -- believe the council unreasonably gave credence to lobbyists trying to stop Palo Alto's redevelopment.

"I don't care what they say, it was an anti-housing move," said Carol Jansen, who's consulting on the project. (She also worked on 800 High St.)

"'Put it in somebody else's backyard' is what I think they're saying," Hohback added.

Those who opposed the plan, as well as city staff, spoke in favor of having housing on the site, but only around 100 units with no office space, not the 177 units and 45,000 square feet of office space that the developer proposed.

"You can't say, 'Because I'm putting up housing bleep everyone else around,'" said Doug Moran, the president of the Barron Park Neighborhood Association. "We all have to fit with everyone else."

In the future, the properties might be rezoned for all residential. Jansen alleged, though the city would never be able to get an all-housing project since a developer would lose $3.5 million.

The majority of the 177 rental units would have been two bedrooms and rented for approximately $1,500 a month each, with 32 "below-market-rate" units renting for less, Jansen noted.

Hohbach, who has developed other buildings in the area, asked the city to rezone the properties (at 195 Page Mill Road and three lots along Park Boulevard) as a planned community (PC) zone. Such zoning allows the city to give a developer leeway to build a larger building, and therefore make more profit, in exchange for the community receiving "public benefits."

Current zoning would allow only a 109,940-square-foot building, with half being housing. Hohbach offered a water fountain, a bronze sculpture, the redevelopment of the end of the road for public use, and below-market-rate rental-housing units as "public benefits" for his upgrade.

The council disagreed that his offer was enough to warrant the huge upgrade (two-and-a-half times the current zoning) in development rights, and also argued that the project, located next to Agilent's office building, was incompatible with the residential neighborhood across the tracks.

"This isn't a duck, and it's never going to quack," Mayor Bern Beecham said. The Planning and Transportation Commission also opposed the project.

Despite its strong words, the council failed to give the developer much guidance for any future proposals. Other developers attended Monday's meeting, presumably trying to gauge the council's temperament for high-density housing projects.

Council members Dena Mossar and Jack Morton, who voted for the project, wanted it to be sent to the Architectural Review Board (ARB), so that the advisory body could review and/or tweak the plans.

"I'm not sure that the project, as we see before us tonight, would be a project that I would ever vote for or approve," Mossar said. "But I do feel that I don't have enough information."

Morton sounded more supportive, saying the plan "may be just on the verge of too big."

Afterward, some of the project's opponents and city staff argued that the ARB -- which reviews aesthetic issues -- was not the appropriate place to review overriding land-use quandaries.

Thirty speakers favored or opposed the development on Monday night. Some nearby residents said it would add noise, traffic and block views of the Foothills, while others felt the rental units were needed in Palo Alto's tight housing market.

Staff Writer Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com

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