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Palo Alto’s proposal to limit light pollution and make buildings safer for birds slammed into a wall of skepticism this week when the city’s Architectural Review Board dismissed it as too onerous and restrictive.
The board’s feedback at a Feb. 15 hearing likely spells delays for city planners, who were hoping to bring a bird-safety ordinance to the city council for adoption by this fall. Instead, board members requested a new hearing and suggested significant revisions. These include exemptions for single-family homes and greater focus on open space preserves, most notably Foothills Park and the Baylands.
Palo Alto has been looking to adopt new rules for bird-safety building design since last year, when the city council included it on its list of desired environmental initiatives. While other cities in the area, including Mountain View, Cupertino and Sunnyvale, have such rules, Palo Alto does not.
Council member Lydia Kou noted at the council’s 2023 annual retreat that the city is poised to see significant growth in the coming years and made the case for making new buildings safer for birds.
“It’s pretty traumatic when you see a bird hit glass and just end up on the ground, fluttering away,” Kou said at the retreat.
But as the Feb. 15 discussion demonstrated, identifying the problem is far easier than crafting a solution. The board was sharply critical of a proposal from planning staff to adopt a new “dark skies” ordinance that would set limits on exterior lighting and a curfew for businesses requiring them to switch off the lights at 10 p.m. or two hours after closing, whichever happens first.
The board also requested significant revisions to staff’s proposal for a bird-safe ordinance, which is modeled after Cupertino’s law, and which would require glazed windows and prohibit glass enclosures on top of buildings, particularly when they have green roofs.
Shani Kleinhaus, environmental advocate with the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, made the case for adopting the new rules to protect birds, whose attraction to light makes them vulnerable to crashing into glass barriers.
“They get attracted to local buildings as well as to the sky glow,” Kleinhaus told the board. “And they confuse their migration patterns, and it exposes them to the hazard of the human environment, whether its glass in buildings or cats or other hazards.”
But while the board generally supported the goals of the program, members generally agreed that the proposal goes too far. Board Vice Chair Kendra Rosenberg called the proposed dark sky rule an “overreach” because it fails to distinguish between different parts of the city and different types of buildings. Downtown Palo Alto, she said, should not be treated in the same way as nature preserves.
“There’s too much variation. There’s too much going on,” Rosenberg said.
She and board Chair Peter Baltay also opposed applying the bird-safe rules to single-family homes and suggested that the city focus its efforts on nature preserves and on large commercial structures. Rosenberg argued that there is a huge difference between a four-story building that is predominantly made of glass and a two-story home with regular windows. She also said she was not comfortable regulating light emission from inside the building, as city planners had proposed to do with the curfew rule.
“Once you start going inside someone’s building and affecting how they’re operating and how they’re doing things, you’re crossing a pretty notable boundary,” Rosenberg said.
Baltay also supported a lighter touch when it comes to dark skies and to new requirements for bird-safe windows, which may include glazing, mullions or fritted glass, which includes patterns that birds can detect. He said he was concerned that adding new rules for homes could discourage development of much needed housing.
“We’re trying to make it easier to build buildings here in California, to make more housing available,” Baltay said. “This is the exact opposite of that. We’re just adding another complex level of regulations. What are we thinking? This is crazy.”
Their colleagues generally agreed. Board member Yingxi Chen said the city should differentiate between different neighborhoods and make the Foothills and the Baylands a priority. Board member Mousam Adcock, meanwhile, suggested that the city prioritize its own facilities when it comes to bird-friendly design.
“It seems like the city and public property within the city should be an exemplar for others,” Adcock said.
Board member David Hirsch was more amenable to regulating residential projects in environmentally sensitive areas, particularly if these buildings have significant glass features. But he agreed with his colleagues that the focus should be on nature preserves and on commercial projects. He cited a recently approved automobile dealership on Embarcadero Road, near the Baylands, as an example of the types of buildings that need to be regulated to ensure a bird-friendly design.
“The city should continue to focus on commercial buildings with a lot of glass,” Hirsch said.
This lack of support for City-wide bird glass and dark sky’s is shortsighted beyond belief. And the ARB suggestion that it only pertain in nature preserves and the foothills is just goofy. That’s were you least need it because there is far less development. We need both measures to apply all over town where lots of birds are.
Is this a matter of a bunch of architects not being able to rise above their own self interest? City Council must review this matter.
For a town that always wants to be the leader, we look ridiculous. Other towns around us have adopted both measures. We now need to catch up.
I’ve never seen a dead bird outside any of my windows.
There are over 1 billion birds killed by slamming into our glass each year in the US. This board should do its research about bird safe glass. There are now UV protective glazes applied to glass that are not even visible to humans but birds who have UV vision can see the patterns and avoid the windows. Why would we not require a safer product to be installed everywhere to protect the lives of a billion birds?
It is clear that the overpopulation of humans and our encroachment into all areas of the world has lead to the ongoing extinction crisis of most animals and plants of the world. Such human hubris to claim exemptions for certain individuals and buildings when any clear window can look like a flight path for birds in the area. There are products out there that will do the job well and only our lack of regard for other species is stopping their implementation.
I hope the city council won’t let an uneducated ARB drive the conversation where concern for the wildlife of this area should take precedence over their skewed views of what is appropriate for humans.