by Peter Gauvin
On the night before Election Day, the City Council moved on to the draft Comprehensive Plan's recommendations to revitalize Midtown and, on the most controversial ideas, punted. It wasn't political jitters, though, but the desire to wait for the results of the current site plan and traffic study being done in Midtown. They're due out in February, and the Council expects its review of the draft plan to drift on at least that long.
The two hot issues the Council will revisit then are the proposals to narrow Middlefield Road to two lanes and, secondly, to prepare an extensive areawide plan of the entire Midtown commercial area that would, among other things, examine the construction and financing of a central plaza.
The main reason the Council postponed action on the areawide plan is that the site plan now being done for the nine property owners on the northeast corner of Middlefield and Colorado Avenue, where the former Bergmann's and Midtown Market buildings have sat empty for several years, may provide some of the same information. A more extensive areawide plan could easily cost more than $200,000, said City Manager June Fleming.
The traffic study should also help the Council decide if it supports narrowing Middlefield from four to two lanes.
"The purpose of narrowing Middlefield is to improve the flow of traffic while creating a more walkable area," said Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee co-chair Will Beckett.
Comparisons were made to Willow Road in Menlo Park, which between Middlefield and Highway 101 successfully carries a heavy traffic load on two lanes, plus a landscaped median/center-turn lane and bike lanes.
On Middlefield, the multitude of driveways and lack of a center lane mean that traffic often backs up when cars are trying to turn into parking lots and side streets, Beckett said. Merchants say the conditions have also led to a high number of rear-end collisions.
But Council members such as Ron Andersen are concerned that reducing Middlefield to two lanes would choke traffic so much that many drivers would take residential streets instead, creating other problems.
Planning Commissioner Tony Carrasco noted that north of Oregon Expressway, where Middlefield has two lanes, cars travel slower and the atmosphere is more inviting to pedestrians. The policy question is simple, he said: "The Council needs to decide if it wants a quieter, smaller pedestrian area or an auto throughway."
The Council also spent considerable time debating the semantics of whether Midtown is a "multi-neighborhood center," as the draft plan designates it, or just a plain old "neighborhood center."
CPAC and staff said it was designated as multi-neighborhood because it clearly serves more than one neighborhood. But most of the Council felt it is closer in character to a neighborhood center--such as Charleston, Alma Plaza and Edgewood shopping centers--than a multi-neighborhood center like California Avenue or Town & Country.
Planning Director Ken Schreiber said it really makes no difference; it wouldn't make zoning any more intensive if it were a multi-neighborhood center.
Nevertheless, the Council voted 8-1, Mayor Joe Simitian opposed, to reclassify it as a neighborhood center.
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