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Palo Alto’s elected leaders and housing developers don’t always see eye to eye, but their visions converge on San Antonio Road, an artery on the city’s southern edge that everyone agrees is ripe for residential growth.
The city’s housing plan envisions building about 2,000 dwellings in this area by 2031, roughly a third of the total citywide target. And developers are playing ball. Earlier this month, Acclaim Companies filed a preliminary application for a 198-apartment complex at 762 San Antonio Road. And last year, Juno Realty Partners and Far Western Land and Investment Company applied for a 350-apartment complex at 3997 Fabian Way, near the San Antonio corridor.
But as the City Council tries to win state approval for its Housing Element, it is wrestling with other questions: What should this new residential neighborhood look like, and what types of amenities will Palo Alto need to build to support San Antonio’s future residents?
To help find the answer, the city has enlisted a team of consultants: planning students from the California Polytechnic State University. Since September, 16 fourth-year students have been studying the land use patterns and zoning designations on San Antonio Road as part of their final project. The goal is to create a concept plan for an eclectic area that today only includes a smattering of residential, commercial and industrial uses and a dearth of transportation amenities, with the notable exception of driving lanes.
With so much riding on San Antonio, the Cal Poly group came to Palo Alto on Jan. 24 to ask area residents what they would like to see. Armed with giant maps, Lego blocks and giant sheets with Mad Libs-style exercises, the student planners joined about 50 residents and city staff at Mitchell Park Community Center for a wonky and whimsical workshop designed to solicit ideas about San Antonio’s future.
While the class is treating the planning process primarily as a learning opportunity, Palo Alto’s planning staff will use the Cal Poly concept as a launch pad for broader and deeper community discussions about San Antonio Road’s future. The ultimate goal is to craft a coordinated area plan, a long-range document that often includes significant zoning changes and additions of valued amenities such as housing, parks, shopping areas and bike lanes.
“This gives us the initial opportunity to engage the community,” Planning Director Jonathan Lait said.
The group’s planning exercises highlighted the variety of views that local residents have about housing in the San Antonio area, which stretches roughly from Alma Street to the Baylands. When asked to place Lego blocks on a map to illustrate what they want future development to look like, some groups created skyscrapers surrounded by open spaces; others opted for lower-scale villages.
Arthur Keller, a local resident and former planning commissioner, said his group thought the segments of San Antonio near Alma Street and near Charleston Road were particularly suitable for growth. The group’s Lego plan included mixed-use developments in these areas, with retail on the ground floor, housing above it and a nearby park.
But while participants had different views about what exactly the housing should look like, there was far more consensus about the facilities and general atmosphere they would like to see. Just about every group supported adding transportation amenities to make the street safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. Many residents said they want to see the area become a destination for shopping and dining. Popular proposals included protected bike lanes, tree-lined sidewalks, new shuttles and transportation links, expansive parks and rooftop restaurants.
The common desire to see San Antonio become less car-heavy became particularly clear during the Mad Lib-style exercise. One group said that they want the character of San Antonio Road to be “not a parking lot,” another said it should feel safe when you walk, while another made the case for more parks and trees.
Cal Poly professor Dave Amos, whose class is tackling the assignment, told this publication that the group plans to submit its report in March. The Jan. 24 workshop, he said, was a critical milestone for the students as they conduct outreach for the project. He said going into the workshop, the group had already been working on conceptual alternatives, examining different densities and various types of transportation improvements. These plans, however, were subject to revisions based on feedback from local residents.
“We had no idea what the feedback was going to be,” Amos said.
For both the Cal Poly students and the city, the planning exercise comes with some sense of urgency. The students are concluding their term in late March. The city, meanwhile, is now a year late in getting state approval for its Housing Element, a document that lays out its plans to add 6,086 residences by 2031.
Until the state Department of Housing and Community Development certifies the Housing Element, Palo Alto will remain vulnerable to “builder’s remedy” applications, which effectively ignore zoning restrictions and include both the Acclaim Companies and Juno Realty Partners and Far Western Land and Investment Company housing projects.
The council, in other words, has every incentive to move fast when it comes to revising land use laws to encourage housing on San Antonio.
Some of that work has already begun. In October, the City Council voted to loosen density and height restrictions in commercial and industrial zones in this area with the goal of encouraging dense housing development in the area next to the Mountain View border. Zones where heights have historically been capped at 35 to 50 feet would now have height limits of 45 to 60 feet, though developers can rely on the State Density Bonus law to get heights of up to 95 feet.
Vice Mayor Ed Lauing, who attended the Jan. 24 workshop, said that even though the completion of an area plan will take some time, he hopes to see — and approve — housing projects on the corridor even before the exercise is completed.
“When we do a plan based on this (Cal Poly effort), this doesn’t mean we won’t be approving housing permits,” Lauing said.
I attended this workshop. The Cal Poly Students were poised, articulate, and professional. However, I was disappointed with the format of the workshop. Residents sat at 8 or 9 tables, full of NIMBYs, YIMBYs, and MIMBYs (Maybe In My Back Yards). We argued our positions, and the most assertive members of the group dominated the activities. The activities funneled comments and ideas into a very narrow template decided on beforehand by the students or planning staff. I don’t trust the completed exercises to accurately reflect community opinion. A Q&A with city officials and an anonymous poll of attendees would have been more effective in determining public opinion.
It is important to plan the future of our city and a good idea to include the Cal Poly students for their design ideas. Perhaps the city council can eliminate the expensive consultants and rely on Cal Poly.
As the review begins, all should recognize that there is no housing crises in Palo Alto. Although the city is burdened with unfunded state edicts, the planning is addressing the historical supply and demand equation. The development companies should raise their own funds at whatever rates the banks offer for the development and new infrastructure requirements – power, sewage, water, energy, parking, etc. The projects should be profitable and not require any public funds so Palo Alto can focus on transit and street development. It should also not destroy the quality of life in the neighborhood so human engineering is a requirement.
Nothing in the above article covers the mass amount of cement needed to be poured in this area. The ROLM/COM/INDU area (meaning, toxins in the soil). I am sure those dominating the “table lego” game were mostly Boomer, R1 Zone SFHO’ers who wish to wish the housing crisis away with all the stack and pack “planned” community 2000 and “beyond, out and away from my home zone”. 2000 units is like creating a small town out of place from now where! 12-24 units inner spaced with-in and under our city’s canopy. Yes.
You are sooo wrong — most of us are SFHADUHO (single family + ADU home owners) and STAY off my low water, native grass, organic lawn dagnabbit!
So, you think just rando-shoveling of apartment buildings (presumably taking up canopy space) is going to do it? We have large chunks of concrete sites at Fabian way near 101, and directly across 101 at E-Bayshore along with the area around the Foster Museum (someone will need lots of $s to buyout/build out there).
These could be turned into high-density but complete villages with stores, restaurants, facilities, light industrial, school below, and housing above. People there would have direct access to 101 for commute, direct access to bike paths up and down the bay and in high enough density could bring a real walkable village. Moreover, we could dip San Antonia under and create large “over parks” etc. Seems much better than plopping rando islands of high density that just has to travel out for all their needs.
So are you encouraging the commute the other way? Long hours behind the wheel of a car to jobs, blowing out more toxins. The jobs are here. As for direct access to 101? Try to sustain life where all the air, light, noise pollution are centered. — and no bus line or even near the Cal-train station. Walkable rideable reachable doable community is where its at. Mixed use home within and under the city canopy is best all the way around. Brick and mortar consumer retail commerce is hanging on by a thread. Plopping boxed units in hinter land is not a silver lining for climate or inclusion. But it sure sounds like some here would really not like welcome new-comers or the very wage earners who work in the stores, rake our leaves, clean our pools, plumb our toilets. Exclusive is the word.
What Cal-Poly campus are these students coming from? I did not know that we had a local campus. WE do have CSU campuses – San Jose and Hayward.
@Resident 1-Adobe Meadows. Agreed. There are three Cal-Poly campus Cal-Poly Pomona, Cal-Poly SLO and Cal-Poly Humboldt. Which were these studies engaged from. Perhaps all three. And yes at Oscam’s Razor. Done with all the auto-cad computer design enhancements that “looks” good on paper from the exterior and zero for the inside where yes, humans will live, grow, love, celebrate, pray together. How do you build community with a Lego brick?
Oh me! You get community feedback from people who actually already live there. These meetings are open and free. You start with first things first. Physically trying to place housing on large maps. Very eye-opening even trying to do that. Even dispersing that area, 2000 units would mean, oh about 50 substantial apartment buildings. Where are you exactly going to just put them? They need transport, water, electricity increased sewer. All that is much easier to do in grouped settings that at the same time could actually support new stores, restaurants, school, middle parkland etc.
I’m surprised that in all the building projects, nobody seems to mention resources for schools – do we really expect no new students from the new housing? Or do we have sufficient capacity in the right place already? Is PAUSD involved in the planning discussions?
Go to the meeting — we were putting new school facilities that could also function as night community centers right next to the dense building blocks.
PAUSD has lost about 2000 students in the last 5 years. The new housing will not replace those students in the near future. The housing needs to be planned first and then track its effect on enrollment. PAUSD should have more than three years to plan for any overcapacity situations.
I grew up in Los Angeles – one of the biggest school systems in the nation. Every school system has to deal with every city creating new, lower cost housing in which families with school age children move outward from city centers. In LA that was the valley. In this area the Pleasanton area moving outward. Schools have to have specified number of children to “balance the books” on facility cost, teacher cost. If you do not have enough children then schools are closed and children bussed to other locations. There has to be a serious recognition that you are adding children in areas with increased housing – it is always a changing balance..
The major issue with all of the housing wrangling is that there is no inclusion of the government funded activities required to support housing. It has turned into a knee jerk situation which is not going to end well. There has to be enough overall funding for all of the components for building a city effectively.